circuscritic @ circuscritic @lemmy.ca

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2 yr. ago

The correct answer is neither.

Miracle drugs are almost exclusively funded, or heavily subsidized, by the public sector. Typically through NIH grants, or other public funding mechanisms through the University system.

R&D budgets for a big pharma go to things like reformulating existing brand name drugs, to prevent them going generic as they are supposed to under current law. Or other high return, reduced effort, drugs i.e. new dick pills, narcotics, etc.

Executive pay and bonuses are not going anywhere, no matter what happens with these drug prices. They will cut their company to the bone, and then collude with private equity to take them private and gut it, before they ever considered cutting down their bonuses or stock options.

I assumed it was going to be some slick evil mastermind unknowingly drugging his nanny.

He was literally just coming home when she just dozed off, and covering her face with chloroform rag...but she was waking up remembering a rag smelling of chemicals and passing out.

After the third or fourth time it happened, she put a hidden camera up.

Sure enough, this sadistic dumb fuck, did it again, but this time in full view of the hidden camera.

He only confessed because she went to the police and showed the idiot knocking her out with chloroform and abusing her, yet again.

What? You mean other than bolting two snowboards to the bottom of each skid and not being a total bitch about it?

This is 98% the right answer, but you drop them somewhere that keeps them intact, and believable enough so that people take them, and spend the rest of the weekend going to thrift stores trying to find an external floppy drive, and the next month trying to figure out how to get their iPhone to mount it.

I understand they wouldn't get involved in regular local mail mailbox crime, but this was inside of a US Post Office.

That has to be the easiest layup possible a USPIS agent to get a case closure off from, but now I'm really curious about what jurisdiction local police or sheriff's deputies even have when dealing with crimes that occur inside of the post office, which I'm fairly certain are federal buildings.

I always thought that crimes that occur on federal property, or land, are automatically assigned to federal law enforcement.

Postal Inspectors are Federal Law enforcement, and while you could argue that their budget hasn't kept up with inflation, it hasn't been cut either.

Point is, while I'll always support the need for the US Post Office, and support employees who work in any capacity to deliver mail, I can't be as charitable with the USPIS when they have the manpower to spare for warrantless surveillance programs.

...why wasn't this handled by the Postal Inspectors?

I assumed someone repeatedly breaking into PO boxes is something they would actually want to investigate...?

Either because it comes across more clearly over comms, or someone flipped a coin.

But, it is called that outside of the military, sometimes...sort of.

I was expecting to read the article and find some seventh level of hell legal trickery bullshit, but it does sound like the organizers fucked up.

John Thurston, the secretary of state, rejected the petition outright, saying that organizers had failed to correctly submit a sworn statement confirming that paid canvassers had been instructed on how to collect signatures.

However, while I may be an expert in bird law, with a focus on dick towel related torts, I don't know shit about Arkansas state law or their regulations for proposing ballot measures.

Maybe someone who is can tell me why this isn't the fault of the organizers, or if some other shenanigans are at play?

Any chance that they submitted the document, but didn't complete some arcane ritual like having it delivered by a female virgin courrier? Or not including a list of the mother's maiden name for every canvasser?

Is the Biden administration lead by conspiracy theorists as well?

Again, inclusive and circumstantial, but pretty far removed from crackpot conspiracy theories and tinfoil hats.

Direct quote from that NYT article I linked:

In addition to the Energy Department, the F.B.I. has also concluded, with moderate confidence, that the virus first emerged accidentally from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese lab that worked on coronaviruses.

They aren't conspiracy theories, at least, not according to the US Government and Biden's DoE:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/us/politics/china-lab-leak-coronavirus-pandemic.html

Circumstantial evidence, not conclusive either way, but clearly the Biden administration feels the evidence is weighted slightly more on the side you just called a conspiracy theory.

Which again, is all they allege for ebola, but unlike the co-author of that first paper I linked, I don't have a PhD in virology, so what do I know.

Those are both pretty through examples of indepth investigative reporting, by credentialed and experienced independent journalists and researchers. There's plenty of threads to pull on once you start reading into it.

It's also been covered by Ryan Grim, former DC Beauru Chief for The Intercept. I believe he has recorded interviews up with either researchers from those articles, or some other journalists specializing in covering scientific and medical fields, I forget which.

I've read the reporting, looked into the journalists and researchers behind it, and find them credible.

If you don't, it doesn't affect me any.

https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/did-west-africas-ebola-outbreak-of-2014-have-a-lab-origin/

https://jacobin.com/2016/07/ebola-west-africa-sierra-leone-bah-zoonotic-health-corruption-imperialism/

I have no idea how this lab will operate, but these types of labs are often used by government agencies whose own countries have prohibited certain types of extremely dangerous and risky research.

There's actually a lot of good circumstantial evidence that the really big Ebola outbreak some years ago likely originated from a lab in neighboring country, that was being used by US government funded scientists, doing work that they were not legally allowed to do on US soil.

It's late and I'm tired so I am not going to dig up the reporting on that, but there has been some great coverage on the topic in the few years that it's worth reading up on.

Whether or not any of that has any relevance to this specific laboratory, or how they'll operate, I have no idea. Just pointing out that whatever upside can be gained by this type of research, is also accompanied by serious risks.

You put so much effort into that post, that I almost feel bad pointing out that you probably should have read the comment I was replying to... you know, the one above my comment.

But, if you're having a hard time locating it, I pasted the relevant quote that I was responding to:

"...opportunity for a movie-like secret mission with a bag full of consumer drones..."

But yeah, I guess if you completely ignore the actual text I was responding to, you might of had a fair point.

Did you ever stop and think that maybe the problem with Gen Z was their lack of coal mining experience before the age of 12?

If this is your first time thinking about it, let me save you the trouble and assure you that yes, that is the problem.

So, long story short, we need to elect legislators that will finally allow young children back to working full-time in the mining industries.

Except for OP, it seems like they already have all the health benefits that come from spending an entire childhood breathing in coal dust.

Yes, and that's what Ukraine is doing at the moment. But they're doing it in the cities like Moscow that actually matter to Putin, and the Russian elites.

The comment I was responding to was talking about taking a lot small drones deeper into Russia, which are places that Putin couldn't give a shit about.

So, if they aren't useful for destroying critical infrastructure, and Putin and the Russian elite don't care about any psychological impact on those civilians, what is the point? Which is why I covered using them to target civilians, and why that would be a bad idea.

Saboteurs and Ukrainian assets inside of Russia are not an unlimited resource. Wouldn't it make more sense for them to use their time doing things that actually politically harm Putin, or impact the wider Russian war effort?

I know it's been done on the unit or tactical level, but I wasn't aware of another example of this level of it being operationalized at this scale before

If you have an example to reference, would you mind sharing? Not being sarcastic, I'd be interested in reading up more on how that is dealt with at scale.

That might be an unintended benefit, but no, the rationale is pretty sound.

Basically Ukraine identified the local IP ranges and mass scanned them for open webcams for intelligence gathering and scouting purposes.

It's pretty ingenious and I am left wondering if this is the first time this tactic has been deployed at scale during a conventional war.

Regardless, I expect this is one of those things that we will see moving forward in any future conventional wars, including governments requesting their civilians turn off their IP cameras, or otherwise forcing them to.