I don’t think I’ll be surprised if I see an awards ceremony in the near future when a Trans athlete medals and then the awards presented will showcase that the “real medalist” is the non-Trans athlete. No doubt, instead of an asterisk (*), these idjits will but a plus (+) by the Trans athlete’s name. That is, if they even deign to list the name.
I saw this stat posted in another thread a while ago, and it made me think: Is this something the Democrats could fix? We’re all wondering how to break through the GOP media bubble, and this seems like an opportunity to me. The Dems spend millions every year trying to reach people with ads. Why not try diverting some of that into making local papers a thing again?
Create a publishing system. Print a daily paper that includes one section that is largely the same on a national or regional scale, but which includes at least some local content, like highschool sports or mayoral elections. Centralize the printing, and ship them to local distributors. Rent a small local office and hire one or two locals as reporters, and it wouldn’t be too expensive. Add in some advertising, and you’d even offset some of the expense. And since it’s owned outright by the Democratic Party, or some affiliated Super PAC, there’s no worries about the papers being bought up by the right-wing media empires.
Don’t be blatantly “Democrats YES!”, but just prioritize real news, real numbers, and real analysis, and see what happens.
In typical Clusterfuck fashion, it’s not clear if they actually used illegal wiretaps to find the leakers, or if Hegseth just claimed that they used wiretaps to find them, to cover for the fact that they fired these guys for reasons other than being the leakers, but want to cover that cover-up up, with Hegseth, true to form, being too stupid or drunk to realize that such wiretaps are illegal.
So, the eternal question: Criminal, or just criminally stupid? You be the judge.
And in further anti-education / anti-science clustery fuckery:
“RFK Jr. says he may bar scientists from publishing in top medical journals
“Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took aim at reputed journals such as the Lancet and said the agency will create ‘in-house’ publications instead."
“‘We’re probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and those other journals because they’re all corrupt,’ Kennedy said during an appearance on the ‘Ultimate Human’ podcast. He also described the journals as being under the control of pharmaceutical companies.”
Kind of a “good idea, wrong reason” situation. There are legitimate issues with government-funded research being published in journals which quite often require expensive subscriptions to access. Lots of people think such publicly funded research should be freely available to everyone. So an in-house publication system isn’t an inherently bad idea.
Of course, he’s doing it because of fantasy “corruption”, which I’m just guessing is actually “Applying actual scientific standards”.
Oh, lord. I posted in another thread about how stupid it was for him to try to blackmail us over this, but it’s even worse than I thought!
I hadn’t seen that graphic they used. Wherein the “Dome” not only clearly covers most of Canada’s populated areas, it also covers about half of Mexico. They don’t even understand the geometry of “domes”!
Disagree. I teach medical terminology, so I spend a lot of time with these journals. They are not written for the general reader. If you can read what it has to say, you are, by and large, able to afford a subscription (because you’re a doctor) or you have access to a subscription (because you’re a student and can get it through your library). I imagine hospitals etc. also subscribe.
Your point stands a bit better in other fields, which is why Open Access is becoming a thing (though there are issues with that, too). For these particular journals, though, I don’t think this is a reasonable argument.
It’s not so much an issue of practical utility as it is a principled stand on public funding of science. Aside from the access issues, why should these journals be able to make a profit off publishing research that was publicly funded?
For the same reason that government scientists get a paycheck and don’t just provide their services to the public for free? It costs money to produce science. That cost includes materials, staff salaries, and publishing. Publishing should perhaps be non-profit, but then, why not make the equipment suppliers non-profit? Why single out publishing?
Uh, Donald, if the U. S. is as awesome as you keep saying, shouldn’t other countries be paying to become part of the U. S., not paying to stay out?
Seriously, that is implicit in what Trump is saying. Give us money or we’ll make you a state; do Donald Trump, and his followers, not know how extortion is supposed to work?
I’m reminded of a story where a church was destroyed by fire and its members were pledging this and that to get it rebuilt. One guy pledged to replace the bell, which is very, very expensive. He was praised for his generous pledge but he knew the other funding would inevitably fall short and the church would never be completed to the point there would be a place to put the bell.
When the other little kids wouldn’t play with the demanding, hypersensitive kid who complains about everything and everyone, he’d have no opportunity to learn.
