What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.

— Hon. Billings Learned Hand

When we have devolved to "tit for tat" when we're no longer looking for liberty and justice. There is nothing our Constitution can do, there isn't some magic arrangement of words written by long dead men that saves us, that saves our notions of liberty and justice.

It will not be denied, that power is of an encroaching nature, and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.

— James Madison (Federalist 48)

James Madison is talking about power-grabs here. He's stating that, there's never going to be some magic law written down on paper that's going to stop power-grabs. People, the people we put into to power, the people who have the trust of the public. People That's it. That's all there is. That's the only thing that stops it. And when the people aren't there to stop it…

You cannot.

This is why this kind of talk is dangerous. This is why making it personal and not looking to protect the public is bad. Because, like it or not, people like DeSantis, if they're not defending this nation, if they are simply looking to "tit for tat" to make some sort of point. They hold a mighty amount of trust and they're using it to be on the look out for retribution rather justice.

There aren't any magic words in the Constitution, it's inside our heads that matters. This is the stuff that starts getting sobering.

It does apply to the President. Colorado's judge erred here because they did not have access to Federal documents.

We have the minutes from the 39th Congress that literally indicates that it applies to the President.

Why did you omit to exclude them [The office of the President and Vice President]?

— Sen. Reverdy Johnson (D-MD)

Let me call the Senator's attention to the words 'or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States'

— Sen. Lot Morrill (R-MA)

It was a very specific question that was answered by the Senate while they were discussing it. So Judge Wallace's determination is incorrect on the merits. Judges can be wrong sometimes, that's why we have appeals.

Oh and just for everyone to remember. The 39th Congress was the one that wrote the 14th Amendment. We weren't some weeks old nation by that point and we literally have the minutes from that Congress discussing the 14th Amendment.

It's not some open question as to "does 14A S3 apply to the President"?

Why did you omit to exclude them [The office of the President and Vice President]?

— Sen. Reverdy Johnson (D-MD)

Let me call the Senator's attention to the words 'or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States'

— Sen. Lot Morrill (R-MA)

Or does this apply to this instance or just the Civil War.

This is to go into our Constitution and to stand to govern future insurrection as well as the present; and I should like to have that point definitely understood.

— Sen. Peter G. Van Winkle (R-WV)

It's not some "well what did they mean by such-and-such? Oh we have no record of that." No, no. We literally have the transcript for this one.

The only open question is "does Colorado get to determine if Trump committed an act to disqualify him or not". We literally have the answer for all the other stuff straight from the mouths of those who framed the 14th Amendment.

In conclusion

Okay I lied. This.

In an exploratory analysis, we constructed dose response curves by plotting (Figure 8) the mass of DNA for spike (red) and plasmid ori (blue) found in Pfizer (upper panel) and Moderna (lower panel) vials against the SAE reporting ratio (SRR).

SAE means Serious Adverse Effect and this comes from VAERS data. The same database that had someone turning into the incredible Hulk from a flu vaccine.

Accordingly, for our exploratory dose response analysis we only used VAERS data originating outside the USA to reduce this confounding. Additionally, we have noted some discrepancies in data obtained through the downloaded version of the VAERS dataset

I mean. Fuck these people and their bullshit. They are literally indicating that "yeah what we're saying is bullshit" in technical terms but then get on Twitter and say "make a logical argument!" You basis for trend data on SAEs is shit. If qPCR in lab shows nothing (values underneath the threshold by the FDA), taking SAEs and saying "Oh well SOMEONE died according to the VAERS therefore there must be a multiple effect that if we take the base value we have found in lab and multiply by that, then it's got to be a gazillion fold increase in DNA fragments!!"

It's all fucking bullshit logic and it's a fucking preprint from October! No one is picking this up except the nuts because anyone with half a brain can see this is bullshit from start to finish. If you look at figure 7 and figure 8 in that preprint, we're about to get algebra here, figure 7 shows a linear curve for both Pfizer and Moderna and Moderna is so clean, it goes off the graph when kept to the same scale which is why it has a red box around it. Then look at figure 8 where he adds in his SAEs, it's a graph that just fucking flies upward geometrically.

How anyone can sit there and present these two graphs and say "yeah I stand behind this extrapolation" is ... I've run out of words, but it's stupid! It's literally this. What a fucking fraud. I cannot believe that this is the fucking world we are living in. This even being a thing people are citing is just quite literally the antithesis of science. And the ultimate conclusion of the preprint.

Our exploratory analysis of the relationship between the residual DNA content and SAEs reported to VAERS is preliminary and limited in sample size but warrants confirmation by examining many more lots and vials

NO. Absolutely NOT. Pulling an R2 out your ass and saying, "Oh this warrants us to get more free vials!" is some bullshit logic. To be clear, so the person tested in lab that concentration and found all the vials to be mostly clean (detectable DNA but under the FDA's guidelines). And then took the Lot IDs of those and looked up how many SAE reports came up. Then took some Lot IDs that had a lot of SAEs and based on the information they had came up with a number of how much DNA would have been in those lots.

So say you buy yogurt and find out 2 people got sick off the yogurt for Lot ID A and found that Lot ID A had 1% bad stuff in your lab. Where recall for the yogurt only happens at 5% bad stuff. Then you look up reports that Lot ID R had 23 people report being sick, so you go, "Oh well 23 is 11 and some change times worse, so Lot ID R must of had 12% bad stuff in it! I have no proof that Lot ID R had 12% bad stuff in it, but it must of have that much to get that many people sick!"

THAT'S NOT LOGICAL!!

Now granted the person indicates that they took some things into consideration and what not, but none of that matters. You're just pulling numbers out of your ass. If you haven't actually tested Lot ID R, you cannot say anything about it, especially using a database that people routinely lie to. And admitting that "oh there are some problems" doesn't mean those problems disappear.

I hate myself that I read that bullshit. I cannot believe this is the conversation. Florida is seriously fucked and it's going to hurt people who don't support this bullshit.

(continued)

The preprint mentions this:

Using fluorometry all vaccines exceed the guidelines for residual DNA set by FDA and WHO of 10 ng/dose by 188 – 509 fold

Which is correct. The random DNA is considered a contaminant. But not because "oh no! It's going to enter your DNA!!" but because of that first point I just mentioned.

One, the DNA isn't loaded up into the NLCs…until a random white blood cell sees it and says "this doesn't belong here" and then nom-nom

That contaminant will elicit an immune response to clean up the trash. That immune response can be your arm being super sore, you getting a bit feverish, and so on. You know, that shit they tell you about when you get the shot. 99.(a whole lot of nines thereafter)% of the trash will get picked up this way. But your immune response isn't super big because it's just trash clean up, your body knows the difference between that and infectious agent. The latter is what kicks in that tiredness and feeling really icky that comes with a vaccine, which that's the mRNA's doing.

Which by the by the preprint mentions.

However, qPCR residual DNA content in all vaccines were below these guidelines … with qPCR and SAEs warrant confirmation and further investigation

This is because the preprint measured DNA via one method and got that 509 fold measure and then did it with a different way to measure and found 10ng/does (that would be value the preprint is indicated in folds).

And the thing is when these two values are so different, that is typically called BULLSHIT. Which is why on the way out they indicate "warrant confirmation and further investigation". Basically, "I know my numbers are bullshit, but still...... We should be on the watch!"

And guess that's the short version of this really long comment. The preprint admits, it's fucking bullshit. And that Ladapo is resting on this bullshit for an argument is even higher piled bullshit.

Okay that's all I'm writing about this.

Okay let's talk about what Ladapo is pointing to. It's this preprint from October of 2023 from the Center for Open Science (COS). Now preface, COS is an open place and there's quality there, but it's open, so there's also bullshit. So approaching anything within COS should be taken with massive grains of salt. Additionally, you should take what I have to say as such too. In fairness, I'm relaying information from a person I know who works on infectious diseases.

Alright let's move on. What's this preprint saying? Here is a breakdown, remember this is just a breakdown glossing over the finer points here.

Making the mRNA requires scientists starting with circular pieces of DNA called plasmids. The plasmids contain the genetic code for the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. (slight aside here) The spike protein is how the virus enters your cells so that it can be copied, producing more virus that then subsequently infect even more cells. The idea of a vaccine is to have an antibody already within you that can attach itself to the spike. When an antibody is attached to the spike, the spike cannot attach to one of your cells, because the anitbody is quite literally in the way.

(okay back to the main part) The plasmids are reproduced billion fold via bacteria. A chemical is added to the bacteria that makes them release the plasmids they've created. An enzyme causes our target spike DNA to be cut out of the plasmid and then another enzyme causes that DNA to be made into mRNA. A final series of enzymes then takes the DNA and slices it into nonsense, think paper shredder for DNA. The mRNA is extracted and that's added to a nanostructured lipid carrier (NLC).

(okay another aside) NLCs are made up of a few parts:

• A surfactant which is a chemical that has surface tension. Here's a cute example of water doing it
• A lot of solid lipid nanoparticles. Think of it as really, really tiny blocks of lard. That fill the inside of the surfactant.
• The actual mRNA also inside.
• A liquid lipid basically a watery like oil that fills the rest.

There's other parts to keep it fresh and what not, but that's the main points. All of these are easily broken down by your body since they're all basically fat, oil, or somewhere in between those two (lard-ish like). The way they deliver their mRNA to your cell is by getting close to your cell's wall and kind of "bubble popping" because the surfactant is made to do that when it's touched by things like your cell wall. Sort of how a soapy hand doesn't pop a bubble but a dry one will. It's a bit more complex, but that's roughly how it works-ish.

(back to what I was saying) So we have the NLCs loaded up, but obviously during this whole process, some DNA fragments from the DNA shredder gets into the final product. This plasmid DNA is what Ladapo and the preprint are talking about.

Okay so we now know where the DNA they speak about is coming from. Does it actually pose a problem? No.

One, the DNA isn't loaded up into the NLCs, so the odds that it'll make it to a cell wall in the first place is really low. Remember the inside of your body is a torrent of flow, if your payload isn't in a ship (NLC) it'll get carried away by the flow. The DNA is likely to run into all kinds of random things inside your body, slowly damaging it until a random white blood cell sees it and says "this doesn't belong here" and then nom-nom.

Two, your cells have walls. And neat thing, it was a whole todo that lead us to the technology to convince a cell to take in a random lipid we gave it. TL;DR - It was really fucking complicated!! Cells don't like random shit getting inside them. Go figure.

Three, yes there is an even smaller chance that a fragment might actually cross the cell wall. Once inside there's a whole dizzying city in there with all kinds of organelles doing shit. Odds are any one of those things is going to catch the fragment just floating around in there. And when caught is sent to the recycler.

Four, your actual cell's DNA is inside the nucleus. Which has it's own complex wall and security system. The odds that any one fragment makes it pass that barrier are unfathomably impossible. But even still.

Five, if it gets pass that. It can't get integrated into your DNA. That requires a sequence of specific enzymes to signal to the cell to begin that process. Which random DNA fragment floating around wouldn't trigger. The odds that, that function is on-going AND a fragment has made the long journey bypassing literally every security system in your body. Even with the preprint's 5,100 ng/dose contamination, you have better odds of finding a specific grain of sand on this planet (1 in 7.5 sextillion), than that happening.

(continued)

But that then begs the question, which court establishes that? Because in the Colorado sense, three different courts made determination on the matter. And Article I Section 3 Clause 7 of the Constitution seems to imply that there is a difference between the political ramifications and the criminal ramifications of acts. While impeachment is established in Article I of the Constitution as being vested for the President as the House to decide and the Senate to adjudicate. Nothing in the 14th, Section 3 seems to delegate the political ramifications to any one group.

So Trump isn't guilty criminally of insurrection, but the 14th doesn't seem to indicate that you absolutely need a criminal indictment to carry out the political aspects of section 3. Colorado's determination isn't robbing him of life and liberty, just of his qualifications for political office.

Well we could debate taking the driver's license for people involved in a DUI about the same as this topic in the vein of "is this the right play?" The notion is that folks who are apt to take the mechanisms of Government and use them as such to violate an oath they took to defend the Constitution, are likely folks we don't want to hand back control of those mechanisms so they can get another crack at it. Sort of how we don't give folks in a DUI back their license until there's been a clear "rehabilitation" or if we want to be pure cynical "a debt to society paid". The point of not giving them their license right away is because they could potentially do a lot of harm with it being just handed back to them.

And you've indicated that it seems desperate. And yeah, the whole mechanism of disqualification and the whole fact that treason is one of the very few things in criminality that's laid out by the Constitution, is such because nobody wanted people to just randomly start firing off disqualifications. It's made to be a really, really, really, really last resort kind of thing. It's supposed to be something that we try all these other hundreds of things first before using. So if it feels desperate in the sense that the word is defined as Having lost all hope; despairing it's because there isn't a lot of hope that the GOP has pulled itself together enough to prevent someone who incited people to storm the capitol and attempt to upend an election from taking the nomination again.

None of this developed in a vacuum. Trump has done and said things that few other Presidents have said and done and all the mechanisms before have in one way or another nixed the person from returning. Those functions have stopped working and that's getting more into a complex topic about why and it's a long history. But I can tell you there was a transformation of the GOP and how they conducted themselves pre/post Haley Barbour and it especially came to a head with Reince Priebus and you can get even deeper on how our forcing of a two party system has led to this.

But in summary, the GOP as a political apparatus has a great deal of control ceded to them via codification in various State laws. They are absolutely not just some group of folks coming together, lots of States have laws, rules, or regulations that basically establish them that say 3rd parties don't get to enjoy. But the GOP has lost a lot of internal control and regulation of their own apparatus, I mean look how shit show the 2016 GOP primary was. Look at the 2024 GOP primary and how the person leading the nomination isn't even in the apparatus ran debates. There's zero control mechanisms working within that political group. That's problematic because the GOP gets a free pass to get on the ballot in pretty much every State, by default they show up there.

So you've got a group that gets to be in the election without the normal State level checks and balances but that group has lost complete control over their political machine. That's so many red flags that it is a red flag factory. So with all of those controls failing within that party, yeah, we've got to pull the emergency brake here. It is a big deal.

It’s giving him even more credibility

Well I'll say this. Trump makes the point that the political elites run the show and what not. And yeah, as far as the two party system goes being forced down us, yeah, no disagreement there. But he advocates "none" for political apparatus control and that's too far the other direction. And that's actually a worse direction. Ideally I'd like something in the middle, but if we're making it binary, I'll keep the two party system as it is (just a personal taste).

And I think that really sums up what we saw in 2020 and what we are looking at for a 2024 run. You've got two really bad options here. One is obscenely bad and the other is just bad in the business as usual kind of way. So with all that said, as far as granting him "credibility" yeah, it highlights something wrong with what we got. But holy shit, there's no part of what Trump is offering that we want to replace what we got with.

You know here in Tennessee I've heard a saying that came about with Governor Ray Blanton. "If you think the professional politicians are bad, just you wait till the amateurs show up." I get what Trump is spitting here, but best I can do is buy about 10% of it because the other 90% is pure madness. So he, in my book, doesn't get points for saying something that surface level is correct but deep dive into is a sea of authoritarianism horror.

Shitter's full!

Probably ten years, seven minimum with a $10k fine plus court costs on the assault alone. Additional five years likely with all of the contempt of the court and related charges. Then again, he was denied bail for his prior so he might fall in NRS 207.010 which would put him into Class A felony territory. Which then that would be ten minimum with max twenty-five years.

Either way, he's going to be getting plenty of time for self reflection. Last I checked Judges tend to not like that kind of stuff in their court.

With regard to the 14th Amendment Section Three, a person who has sworn an oath, and then engages in insurrection, is disqualified. Congress is given the power to "remove such disability;" this is wholly different from Congress being "the one who disqualifies."

I couldn't agree more here. The notion that the one that removes the disability indicates that someone added it. Being silent on the who isn't an oversight by those who carefully framed the 14th. There's a realization outright that calling out traitors and ensuring that they cannot attempt rebellion was a role for anyone who swore to uphold the Constitution. To vest the power in a single branch is just inviting those seeking a rebellion to overtake that branch and call it mission complete.

My favorite part of the word salad that is their argument is that the Supreme Court of Colorado erred but a lower District Court that found that Trump took a different oath was correct.

But the district court ultimately concluded that section 3 was inapplicable to President Trump because he never took an oath “as an officer of the United States.” App. 282a (¶ 313) (“[T]he Court is persuaded that ‘officers of the United States’ did not include the President of the United States.”)

Because we literally have the minutes of the discussion when the 39th Congress discussed the 14th Amendment and indicated that Section 3 would "obviously apply to the President" and that the explicit mentions in Section 3 were to alleviate confusion.

Why did you omit to exclude them [The office of the President and Vice President]?

— Sen. Reverdy Johnson (D-MD)

Let me call the Senator's attention to the words 'or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States'

— Sen. Lot Morrill (R-MA)

Senator Morrill shut down outright the notion that section three could ever be considered as "not applying to the President". That's how obvious it was to the people who wrote the Amendment that the entire point was that "we had a civil war, but just because we won did not mean the Confederates nor their rebellion would cease to exist".

More to the point.

This is to go into our Constitution and to stand to govern future insurrection as well as the present; and I should like to have that point definitely understood

— Sen. Peter G. Van Winkle (R-WV)

So let's be entirely clear here. Section 3 absolutely applies to the President and it absolutely applies to ANY insurrection. There are zero other ways to read this. We literally have the minutes of the discussion at that time. This isn't like we don't know what they intended, they were very clear that future people would try this shit and they absolutely wanted that eventuality covered. And Congressional record is acceptable evidence into the Supreme Court. If SCOTUS today ignores this record, I mean fuck, there's not a slicing it any other way than they're attempting to play favorites.

And on that, I highly doubt they'll buy this argument that Section 3 doesn't apply. Now they may find something else, but that it doesn't apply to the President, oh hell no. There was nobody in the Senate or House who questioned if Section 3 applied to the President during the 39th Congress. It did and saying it doesn't is some revisionist bullshit.

Now they do mention "Rucho v. Common Cause" in the argument. In this they're trying to portray that "is someone disqualified" as a political question rather a legal one. Courts aren't allowed to weigh in on political questions.

They also mention roles of Congress via the 20th Amendment, Article II, and section 5 of the 14th Amendment. And via these they indicate that it's implied that Congress is the one who disqualifies. However, they fail to mention the 10th Amendment where if the Constitution is silent on the matter and Congress has passed no law, then the law falls onto the States and the people thereafter. So the question that can be raised is Colorado's 10th Amendment right superseded by this "implied" Congressional consent?

It would give the SCOTUS a get out of jail free card by basically saying "well it's not up to SCOTUS, it's up to Congress" and calling it done. However, it would weaken one of their favorite things, State's Rights. Because the ability to determine disqualification on things like citizenship and age are very clearly at the State level, that's even a question. So it would make things this weird thing where if it's age or natural born status that's the States but someone with intent to hand the US over to Russia, nope that's Congress.

And above all else, why the fuck would we have an electoral college if some of the biggest issues on qualification are up to the whims of Congress? Like that does even make sense. But I think the electoral college should go away anyway, but that's a me thing.

At any point. There's wiggle room for SCOTUS to massively disappoint yet again! But on the question of does this apply to the President or not. HELL FUCKING YES IT DOES. Every record we have points to that conclusion. If Colorado's Supreme Court can err, so can the court that Trump is relying on to be correct on this issue.

He’s just tired from the pudding pop.

Hey we all know the saying from that Orange website a lot of us came from. We should have one for here too. How's?

We tried and made it worse Lemmy!

This could be our icon!

Just as an aside here. The preprint Ladapo is citing, one of the key authors of that paper's website has their certificate expired. They should really consider getting a professional to handle their site. That really dampens people who are reading the preprint to see what's actually in it and looking up the various folks involved in it. Like I started looking for guy's email address and now it's like "guy c'mon, hire someone to do your site and if someone is actually doing your site, you should get someone else."

That's all, I'm still reading the preprint though and getting through it.

Dude's certificate below:

    
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I think that's what people dislike the most. That Stefanik used her massive amount of bullshit to false dilemma Gay into a bad PR light. But Stefanik is also alumni of Harvard, in fact she was at one point VP of Harvard's Institute of Politics. She's got skills to pay the bills, especially when it comes to the way faculty speaks at Harvard. Gay walked right into it and that's something she should have seen coming. That's part and parcel, as much as we like to bemoan it, of politics. Perhaps one day we will reach a political climate where we frankly and openly discuss the woes of society and address them outright. But boy oh boy is someone fooling themselves thinking that day is today. Which as an aside is why I've always had issues with the mantra of "when they go low, we go high". No call their bullshit out and stone their ass for going low, damn it!

People like Rufo will read into this as "it's a win against DEI" but the reality is, this event is just one of many in a complex string of things that play into an over arching attempt by some to maintain the "good old boys" way of life. There's multiple aspects of "good old boys" like "Make America Great Again", "the war on Woke", and what not. But there's a need to remember that as much as these folks like to talk about meritocracy, that's not actually what they want. Or at least they do a lot of things to demonstrate that, that is not what they want. And this whole episode of these President's falling to the traps of Stefanik are just yet another demonstration that they aren't after quality or work ethic, they are after preserving a way of life they feel is under threat.

expose the rot in the Ivy League and restore truth, rather than racialist ideology, as the highest principle in academic life.

— Christopher Rufo (via X formerly Twitter)

That's what this ultimately plays out as. They're under the impression that asking folks to equally weigh all factors in a position without undue passion is some form of racialist ideology. When in fact it's just Rufo's lack of knowledge at real world inequality. They're not exposing rot, they're just going after folks they have a grudge with. Stefanik wasn't asking genuine questions to further testimony in collegiate response to a world event, she was just hawking got'chas and she's insanely good at doing that.

Out of all of this, I think that's the important aspects to see in this. It's folks trying to preserve something that we should have in my opinion done off with already. But unfortunately the Associated Press has decided to write an article on the "munitions of the right" which is just more code for "let's make left/right politics even more polar." Stefanik is a demonstration of how Congress is becoming worse. She's very smart and only really foolish people sell her short of that, but bullshit is selling like hotcakes in Congress right now. And to me the "why does bullshit and Dark Brandon sell" is a better question. Because if the goal is to actually reach that day where we talk frank about social ills and address them, we have gone into hyper reverse on reaching that goal. And this piece from the AP really smacks of the drivel that fuels that vehicle. I don't think that should be our goal (or at least not the primary one, politics isn't black and white for a reason), but for those who want that as a goal, this piece is classic anti-that goal with it's quips that exist to only further polar opinion on the matter. When in reality, Gay likely going back to work in a position that she can sow seeds that may one day change the calculus of the traditionalist alumni that she faced as President. Yes, it is sad that it has taken Harvard this long to have a black person as President. Clearly the alumni of Harvard are having a hard time with it to the point that they are feeling fine to overtly suppress such. But the kids today are tomorrow's alumni and sometimes taking the longer approach is better. Yes, it is shit. But the more I see the younger generation, the more I see a very clear change for the what I would consider better. And there is a lot of very unhappy people about that trend.

We must not stop until we have abolished DEI ideology from every institution in America

— Christopher Rufo (via X formerly Twitter)

And this is the whole thing. Republicans talk a big game about meritocracy, but they themselves do not believe in it. There's a lot of the Dunning–Kruger effect within Republican ranks, this is why they rely so heavily on grifting. They are for the most part faking it till they make it (or most likely get called out). George Santos is like the extreme end of this.

So the question is why does this ideology contrast so heavily with things like DEI? And the reasons are to promote keeping a silent status-quo. White guys hire white guys, that's just the straight and narrow about it. And folks like to push, "Oh well I'm judging them based on merit!" That's where that Dunning-Kruger effect comes in, because there's a lot of blatant faking it going on.

I mean, we joke, but white guy saying the internet is a series of tubes is likely faking knowledge, just kind of calling as I see it. And there's a lot of that. Not just lawmakers, I see it in IT all the effing time. Like my previous employer, it didn't go without notice how the backend development group was a guy's club. And they may say "Oh well it's all based on merit". Nah, friend, we had at least two "Postgres Devs" who hadn't the faintest clue about what an Index is. It's a hard sell on the merit thing.

And I see that a lot. And I'm not one to judge on folks who are missing some knowledge, I'm not holding a bar at folks being able to recite from memory how to do a red-black tree in C++, that's not really important. But what I do have issue with is when there's an almost implicit grant for men on knowledge. Because one of those devs that didn't need to be there was in the running with someone else who happened to be a woman, and we just happen to hire a guy who was actually good at spitting bullshit. Perhaps that's the manager that hired the person's fault or whatever, but it gets into that silent status-quo. Like, maybe the manager wasn't actively thinking in their mind, "this person has a vagina, there's no way I believe them!" But he totally was like "Oh man this guy is funny as shit and brings a special energy to everything".

And that's that meritocracy Republicans want to preserve and DEI seeks to introduce an element that's outside of that silent status-quo. Suddenly, these managers can't look at that "special energy" the same way as they used to. There's other things that they have to measure along the way. And don't get me wrong, hiring someone for the sole reason "they are a black woman" is not correct, but Claudine Gay’s ascension is not strictly because of that. And the fact that Christopher Rufo attempts to surmise it as such is a big display of this faking knowledge. Because the hiring her is way more complex than Rufo can actually comprehend, he's just faking his "knowledge". Much like his Master of Liberal Arts ass trying to surmise CRT, literally nothing he has said on CRT bears any kind of actual knowledge behind it, it's all surface level musings that he panders as "fact". And Claudine Gay's resignation is complex too. So the folks saying she's being bullied out of her spot are glossing over a lot of the complex interactions in politics and money that Universities do actually have.

Gay is returning to her position as faculty and Dean of Social Studies which she has enjoyed since 2015, of which she obtained that position through a very complex history of academic excellence. The plagiarism claims were reviewed by independent bodies at Gay's request and their findings were summarized by the Harvard Corporation here. In which they found two things indicated by omission from citation, but those omission from citation did not rise to the standard routinely used by Harvard for plagiarism. But no one mentions this, that it's been looked over and she did not meet the criteria for plagiarism and that finding absolutely played a role in considerations.

But more importantly this. Gay is not leaving Harvard, in fact, I would argue that she's moving back into a position where she can do more work than where she was. Harvard is clearly not ready to advance outside of their own silent status-quo, there's a lot of "traditionalist" who form the bulk of Harvard's philanthropy. And Gay may have looked over the sentiment and come to the conclusion that now was not the time to push on that from the position she was in at that time. It's fairly complex and until she actually spills beans about it, we can only at best speculate. But yeah, the poor performance before Congress played a role, President's from Universities have a very big PR role they fill and poor performances play a role in that.

If cooked well done yes. That means a uniform 160° in the meat or hotter.

A lot of places do not do this with their meat, especially hamburgers. Thus, they rely on low population of the virus that can be mostly killed at a uniform 145°.

If the population of the virus is high uncooked, not enough is killed at 145° to be deemed safe to eat.

This is also why immunocompromised people must eat well done burgers. There is no population of the virus above zero that’s safe for them.

A lower court judge in August 2022 agreed, finding that Emtala was silent as to what a doctor should do when there is a conflict between the health of the mother and the unborn child

And that’s absolutely correct. This has been a big point about “codify Roe” that Congress hasn’t addressed.

The tenth amendment says that if Congress is silent on a point, State’s get to weigh in.

This has been an ongoing thing that folks have indicated for Congress to fix especially since 1992 when we had Casey, when literally SCOTUS dropped the hint that Congress really needs to step up on this massive missive.

I don’t like the ruling, but it’s absolutely the correct one. Biden gave it a shot but this one is completely on Congress to fix. The President can’t unilaterally attempt to fill in a blank that States have already filled in.

It’s this same power that allows California to command a lot of their environmental programs, to deny it to Texas would destroy a ton of protections California has created.