First of all in a fight between Donald Trump and his staff versus Harvard I’m gonna go ahead and  put my money on Harvard and it’s world, renowned lawyers.
OK, so they eliminated $2.6 billion in federal grants. Now they're preventing Harvard from enrolling foreign students.
Sounds bad, right? Definitely for the students, but even if you assume $100,000 per year per student, that's "only" $680 million. So their second attack is with reduced leverage. If your goal is to crush Harvard into compliance, you want the attacks to amplify, not weaken each time. So it's already feeling like a deflated balloon.
They want to strip Harvard of its tax exempt status, but that's around 20% in capital gains, which are only realized when they sell assets. So if I'm the president of Harvard, I ride it out; I sell just enough to get by for the next year until it winds its way to the Supreme Court and gets overturned. So they just need to sell $3 billion in assets and pay about $600 million in taxes. After a verdict is rendered, they might even get that amount back in the judgement.
Either way, once again a weaker attack than the previous one (assuming, as the Trump administration must) that any revocation of tax-exempt status will be o
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OK, so they eliminated $2.6 billion in federal grants. Now they're preventing Harvard from enrolling foreign students.
Sounds bad, right? Definitely for the students, but even if you assume $100,000 per year per student, that's "only" $680 million. So their second attack is with reduced leverage. If your goal is to crush Harvard into compliance, you want the attacks to amplify, not weaken each time. So it's already feeling like a deflated balloon.
They want to strip Harvard of its tax exempt status, but that's around 20% in capital gains, which are only realized when they sell assets. So if I'm the president of Harvard, I ride it out; I sell just enough to get by for the next year until it winds its way to the Supreme Court and gets overturned. So they just need to sell $3 billion in assets and pay about $600 million in taxes. After a verdict is rendered, they might even get that amount back in the judgement.
Either way, once again a weaker attack than the previous one (assuming, as the Trump administration must) that any revocation of tax-exempt status will be overturned.
And what's left? Arresting the president and board of overseers? There aren't many things to realistically try after this. Time and momentum seem to be on Harvard's side.
I’m not even worried about the money to me, an idiot, the problem is: 1) Trump told Harvard to eliminate DEI positions 2) Trump admin scrubs diversity and DEI programs from public schools 3) Trump tries to eliminate foreign Harvard enrollment 4) Trump tries to dictate History lessons including history.
Will Trump try to eliminate foreign or non-citizen enrollment in public schools? I know people think I am over-cautious here but My wife is a green card holder, what sorta prejudice does this open us up too?
Will Trump try to eliminate foreign or non-citizen enrollment in public schools?
That's not over cautious. This will happen soon. I think most Americans (see: white) are relatively safe right now, but immigrants (authorized or not) are clearly targets that they are attacking right now. Get ready to protect your family now.
Really hope you and your wife make it through this okay. We're all gonna need to help each other.
Actually we are cutting our losses and moving back to her home country. We’d stay and tough it out if we didn’t have a kid. But it’s hard decision and struggle with Trump‘s idiotic domestic policy, along with skyrocketing cost-of-living and completely unrealistic prices on health insurance.
It’s just too much all at the same time for us to stay 
There is so much discussion and uncertainty on species when its really very simple. We can add categories under species for more specificity but the definition of species must be objective and true. A species is any group of creatures that can reproduce and produce fertile off spring. This is a clear line that objectively determines where 1 species ends and where 1 species begins.
Now we can use another term either subspecies or breed, which can be described as a population within a species that predominantly reproduces within their subgroup. Problem solved? This allows for cases where 2 subgroups of animals can reproduce with each other but rarely do and completes the tree/pyramid of life.
That doesn’t define a whole species, it just establishes that a pair of organisms belong to the same species. And most randomly-selected pairs of conspecific organisms would fail this test: if both organisms are the same sex, or if either one is immature or infertile.
And in order to define species unambiguously, this pairwise test would have to be transitive, but IRL it isn’t: there are cases where a member of population A can produce offspring with members of population B, and members of B can produce offspring with members of C, but members of A can’t produce offspring with members of C.
wow, so there are continuums. In that case group B is the "transitional" group between species A and C or the common ancestor between the 2. I guess we'd need a category for this situation. What a mess. Maybe "Intraspecies".
It just feels wrong to leave the tree/pyramid of life incomplete as far as categorizing.
At the end of the day it sucks but there's no perfect way to do it. Grouping organisms into species is very useful in a lot of ways, as is grouping and classifying lots of other natural phenomena, but nature doesn't necessarily follow clean definitions even if it's useful to us.
You're kind of just looking at an arbitrary resolution of life and getting hung up on categorizing.
At the end of the day, we are made up of complex chains of DNA and RNA and proteins and all of the building blocks of that came from rocks floating in space.
We know this to be true, weve found the precursors and building blocks of life in asteroid samples we've taken back to Earth.
Life begins way before what you consider to be a species.
I'm afraid that you don't quite see all the complexity involved. I'm not saying I see all of it, but I can see there is more to it than you think.
What about bacteria? Not only don't they don't often use sexual reproduction, so they don't need a pair of parents to produce offsprings, but they exchange plasmids and therefore DNA with little regard for species.
Plants are a complete mess of genome duplication, aneuploidy and whatnot. In these aspects, they are sort of scary to me.
Also, what about formation of a new species? Do you think there is a clean-cut time when they stop producing offspring? Also, what exactly do you mean by fertile? Where do you get a partner to test if the offspring is fertile?
These are just a few problems that came to my mind right away. I'm sure there's loads more. I'm afraid that the notion of well organised, easy to categorise world just doesn't match the real world. Species are more or less a continuum. Incidentally, so is life. We have no good definition fornlife either. Just use whatever definition is useful at the moment and
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I'm afraid that you don't quite see all the complexity involved. I'm not saying I see all of it, but I can see there is more to it than you think.
What about bacteria? Not only don't they don't often use sexual reproduction, so they don't need a pair of parents to produce offsprings, but they exchange plasmids and therefore DNA with little regard for species.
Plants are a complete mess of genome duplication, aneuploidy and whatnot. In these aspects, they are sort of scary to me.
Also, what about formation of a new species? Do you think there is a clean-cut time when they stop producing offspring? Also, what exactly do you mean by fertile? Where do you get a partner to test if the offspring is fertile?
These are just a few problems that came to my mind right away. I'm sure there's loads more. I'm afraid that the notion of well organised, easy to categorise world just doesn't match the real world. Species are more or less a continuum. Incidentally, so is life. We have no good definition fornlife either. Just use whatever definition is useful at the moment and don't forget to specify it when necessary.
I mean Israel has done this, and also failed to do it one time:
On 10th October, 2001, Israelis attempted to bomb the Mexican Legislative Assembly and blame it on Pakistan. They had false Pakistani passports but were caught.
More likely though this is not the case as full false flags happen when something much larger is at stake. Israel is sitting decently comfortably right now, even with Europe suddenly switching sides (which is more likely to do with Trump's crappy foreign policy).
There's always a higher chance of intentional neglect, like Israel's "failure" to spot Hamas's original invasion plans because they wanted a reason for escalation. It's entirely possible they were aware of a threat but chose not to act.
Then again with how fast the media is all over this, who knows.
That's too much credit in my opinion. This is bound to happen statically. Israel just had to wait and capitalize on it. It's amazing it took this long. We didn't seem to care when a landlord killed a Palestinian child who was his tenant. They didn't seem to care when a Zionist shot two Arab Jews that they mistook for Palestinians.
I guess he figured if any pro-Palestinian speech was deemed terrorism, he might as well become a terrorist. I just don't know why people like this target low-level staffers instead of the individuals most responsible, other than ease of access I guess.
People that get to this stage aren't often thinking clearly. They are looking for place to release the anger and pain.
It's why Luigi was such a unique case of vigilante justice. He was actually thinking clearly, and agree with him or not, he hit a target that most of the country thought "well, yeah that was bound to happen eventually".
Allegedly obviously. Luigi allegedly did this. I still think they got the wrong guy.
Shooting two Jewish rando's in the US will accomplish nothing for Gaza. It casts Palestinians in a negative light, bolsters Israeli propaganda and distracts Americans from Gaza's plight.
Were they shot because they were Jewish, or because they were Israeli? There is a difference, but equating the two as the same thing is part of why Israel is getting away with genocide.
I completely agree that killing them achieves nothing for Palestine. I also think killing them, even if it could is abhorrent as they are not combatants.
Sure, but there are also degrees of involvement. I think Netanyahu is even worse than those on his right that are so hateful racist. They are clearly awful. However, he seems to be committing genocide purely to save his kin from political machinations. Just doesn't care about human life one bit.
The degree of involvement of a non combatant is effective only in the public understanding of that position.
Luigi as an example. The public clearly understands that material impact even though that CEO isn't directly killing people. We all know why he did it.
Anyone taking action "politically" and not just "emotionally" would understand this. I don't advocate for vigilante justice. But I will make a judgement on when it's done.
Luigi shifted public opinion in favor of his cause. This killing is only hurtful to the cause. There is no positive shift here. Especially in the positions and power of the targets.
All we can do now, is push back in the disgusting use of pro Israel people that are salivating at this incident in order to further justify starving Gaza.
I bet the administration will label it far left terrorism and will use it to stamp out opposition. The shooter’s loose connection to Democratic Socialist party will be a propaganda piece to label all democrats terrorists.
Sincerely, what else could be meant by what they said?
When a child is murdered in Gaza those advocating for Palestinians point to it as a reason to end the bloodshed. Hundreds of children were murdered by Israel just this week. No one in the media has spoken there names or talked about their hopes and dreams.
When an Israeli diplomat is murdered those advocating for Israel use it as a reason why they need to continue to murder said children. The diplomat is treated like a human. Their names are known. The media tells us the sad story of their hopes and dreams that were stolen from them.
Palestinians are not treated as humans. Their deaths are statistics. Israeli deaths are treated as tragedies.
It's a reason why this genocide continues. You have to dehumanize a population to the masses. And Israeli has succeeded in dehumanizing Palestinians, at least to the Western world.
The deaths of their own diplomats are simply tools to continue to justify their genocide. They don't care about their diplomats anymore than they do their hostages in Gaza.
Sorry. I've been advocating for Palestine since I first learned about the conflict truly as a young kid in 2015: as an ignorant college kid that visited my first major city of Chicago on an internship. Spoke with a Palestinian women and gave her a nod and an "ok" as she desperately tried to connect with me on what was being done to her family. She is was just holding a sign alone as I passed through the city. I was an ignorant idiot then. But even though I treated her like a random panhandler, what she said still stuck.
I'll never know exactly what she said to me. But I know it's when I started to care. I have definitely become cynical and frustrated, and tired since that time. But, I do really appreciate your reply.
I just only hope my own frustration or "snark" is heard in the same way.
Yair Golan, a left-wing politician and former deputy commander of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), sparked outrage on Monday when he said: "Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if we don't return to acting like a sane country.
"A sane state does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not set itself the goal of depopulating the population," he told Israeli public radio's popular morning news programme.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit back, describing the comments as "blood libel".
Fuck Netanyahu and his cynical exploitation of "antisemitism" accusations for his own murderous ends. The thing that made the blood libel libellous, and the accusation antisemitic, was that the people accused weren't killing babies, and they were accused because they were Jews. It's not blood libel to point out the fact that the IDF, under Netanyahu, kills children without a second thought every day.
I mean, it's the same with the 'dual loyalty' trope. Yes, before Zionism it was pure anti-Semitism, but if you have Zionists in high places in multiple Western countries doing everything to support Israel even at the expense of the safety of said country, what else can you call it?
Noun (derogatory): A person who engages in intimidation, harassment, or other abusive behaviour while claiming to be a victim, often using the perceived victimization to induce others to engage in bullying of the intended victim.
Welcome to Israel, the only ~~democracy~~ fascist state in the Middle East. Also note that the only reason it's that low is that the rest want to prioritize the safety of the hostages, not that they're anti-genocide. Opposition to the genocide itself is very much a minority position in Israel.
Yeah, I think bibi may have finally worn out israel's permanent default monopoly on victimhood that made him think he could get away with anything forever.
A provision "hidden" in the sweeping budget bill that passed the U.S. House on Thursday seeks to limit the ability of courts—including the U.S. Supreme Court—from enforcing their orders.
"No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued," the provision in the bill, which is more than 1,000 pages long, says.
The provision "would make most existing injunctions—in antitrust cases, police reform cases, school desegregation cases, and others—unenforceable," Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, told Newsweek. "It serves no purpose but to weaken the power of the federal courts."
The provision would bar courts from enforcing contempt citations for violations of injunctions or temporary restraining orders unless a bond has been paid.
Nah, it's the perfect position, be able look like you're pushing back while complaining you don't have the power to do it. A certain political party perfected that tactic.
I think it would have to be more direct. But since it applies to federal courts, there are probably a lot of orders being ignored right now. So they should have thier pick.
I don't know how legislation works... but in legal documents there's usually a provision that says if any part of this document is found to be invalid for legal reasons, only that part of the document is voided, and the rest remains in tact.
Not even one single Democrat voted for this bill in the House. What makes you think they'll do it in the Senate? I understand Democrats suck, but come on.
The issue is a lot of the gun nuts fearing tyranny are fine with this cause it's their team. Republicans have always been hypocrits, and now we can point to chances where they could have fulfilled their dream, but instead have become the bootlicking cowards we all knew them to be.
Yeah well the thing is: If no one enforces the judiciary's edicts, but they all say aye to whatever trump's new decree of the day is then Judicial is just standing there foot in mouth ...
It's amazing that it took the US 10 times less time than Russia to become a full dictatorship. Putin started openly cracking down on opponents in 2011, 11 years into his rule (technical Medvedev was prez at that time, but not really). It amuses me to no end that some americans believe that the US is going to turn back into a democracy on its own, without them taking up arms against maga.
Again, to what end? there is already enough to seriously consider actual treason charges with everything he has done in the last 8 years. If they wanted to actually go after him, they'd have enough to bury him for the rest of his, hopefully, short life...
If the Courts can't enforce rulings against him l, then there isn't even a theoretical check on his executive power. So even if he were impeached he could refuse to leave office, with no courts able to compelling the justice department to drag his ass out of the white house.
Several people the courts ordered released, were released. So it isn't true that he isn't following any of the scotus orders. People are saying that this law change will allow him to ignore all orders without threat of being held in contempt. I'm not sure that interpretation is correct. And even so, I imagine that scotus can just declare it unconstitutional. That will put the question in the hands of the people scotus asks to enforce their contempt rulling. I imagine if those people refuse, the court can ask for volunteers to be deputized. So all in all it isn't clear where this is going.
We already have a basic problem Governance ideally is people of good intentions coming together to make things better Conservatives don't have good intentions Prosecutors control law enforcement Courts have no way to enforce their rulings
This only works if everyone is honorable and defends their power. Just the writing of this bill (and others) shows the legislature's willingness to cede their own power. I have little confidence that the current SCOTUS bench will do anything to keep their own. Add to that a weakness in our 3 branch system that only one branch has the power of force.
"No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued," the provision in the bill, which is more than 1,000 pages long, says.
The provision "would make most existing injunctions—in antitrust cases, police reform cases, school desegregation cases, and others—unenforceable," Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, told Newsweek. "It serves no purpose but to weaken the power of the federal courts."
This is the kind of legislation you would use to pave the way for fascism. It sets the stage for autocracy. It has in mind a ruler. There's no other explanation.
We do, supreme judicial authority is given to the SC in article 3 of the Constitution. This person you're replying to isn't being very clear that the explicit power to overturn laws was established in Marbury v Madison.
This power is called Judicial Review and it was understood to be the way the SC is supposed to work. A Federalist power grab by John Adams forced the SC to be explicit and say "we can overturn laws because that's the only way the SC is coequal to the other branches".
In other words, Judicial Review was always an IMPLIED POWER of the court, but a court case made them spell it out.
All they care about is the grift they’re pulling today. If you’re a republican at this point you’re either a white supremist, a billionaire, a psychopath, or an idiot. There’s no middle ground any more.
Harvard says the administration's move is unlawful.
And most likely, it is.
However, for a foreign student to enter the US currently to study (presumably for several years) does kind of feel like jumping onto a hovercraft crewed by eels.
Which is the exact intention here... The chilling effect. Whether or not it holds up in court isn't as important as making our country an undesirable place (in this case, for the most intelligent students in the world) to come to.
Trump is pure evil, he is only driven by greed and revenge. American society has become sociopathic from decades of extreme right sociopathic propaganda, which is why Trump is allowed to continue. USA has collapsed morally, and is now collapsing politically. It shall be interesting to see how this develops. We are cursed to live in interesting times, so we might as well embrace it, and be entertained.
I've been warning about this moral collapse of USA for more than 20 years, but after Trump getting elected twice, I'm not sure I actually give a shit anymore. The rest of the world will just have to move on independent of USA.
I too spent some of my childhood in the American South, and also several years in my 40s. My distaste for the South is well informed, and it's my only prejudice that doesn't embarrass me.
There are good people and bad people everywhere, and smart people and stupid people everywhere, but there's a noticeably higher percentage of bad, stupid people in the South.
even before the conservative(buying) take over of most of the MSMs, they were already most leaning right wing in some form of another. America never had a chance.
Why would an international student want come to the US when they could be deported or imprisoned any day? Or if they leave the country for a trip might not be allowed back in to finish their degree?
Because thousands of them started their studies years ago, and want to finish the degree they paid a lot of money for. This also affects current students
He gave a speech and or comment the other day where he said in regards to all of the bullshit power grabs are going on, paraphrasing here, that they better be careful because the shoe is going to be on the other foot one day. That the Republicans won't be the majority forever and someday the Democrats will be and then they can take advantage of all these changes and rules. I heard that and I just fuck. First of all no it won't. Second of all Chuck wouldn't know what to do with it if it was. Third, just please shut up and die already you God damn dinosaur.
I've despised him ever since he collaborated with the clumsy Republican smear campaign to destroy Al Franken's career. Franken is 100x the man and senator than that weak, spineless, insipid Schumer will ever be.
Israel has denied entry to a group of doctors and humanitarian workers hours before they were set to enter Gaza on Thursday as the Palestinian health minister announced that 29 children and elderly people in the enclave have died from starvation in r…
I used to say Gaza is an Israeli prison for Palestinians. But I was wrong, because it turns out it's actually a concentration camp for the extermination of them.
As Andrew Cuomo emerges as the front-runner in New York City's mayoral race, several women who accused him of sexual harassment just three years ago say they feel betrayed and forgotten.
Some of the women likened Cuomo’s well-known bullying and taste for revenge to that of the current president. Karen Hinton, who accused Cuomo in 2021 of making unwanted sexual advances toward her in 2000, described the former governor as “the Democratic Party’s own Donald Trump.”
“I think Cuomo, in another timeline, is probably super jealous of Trump,” Liss said. “They use the same playbook.”
They're literally just quoting some of the women who have been sexually harassed by Cuomo.
Look if you disagree that's fine but I personally am sick of the Democratic party hosting these kind of scumbags in its ranks and then pretending they're not exactly like Trump.
When will democrats like Gillibrand understand that this kind of shit makes them look like they don't stand for anything. She says we are a country of second chances but for wealthy men like Cuomo its an endless string of "second chances" which kind of undermines the word "second" since its more like his fiftieth chance. She ran Al Franken out of the Senate for less.
But I guess I shouldn't expect much else from someone who has a history of sucking up to the NRA and is a crypto shill.
Unfortunately Jews in Europe face a lot of backlash. A lot of it by the deliberate and constant equating of Judaism and Israel by Israeli lobby groups, politicians and classic antisemites. In Germany the government and some media outlets harass antizionist Jews.
We dont need to love any people beyond loving them as our neighbors. Singling out people to "love them" over other people also is a form of discrimination and othering. In Germany there is the term "philosemites" coined for people who make that absurd show of "loving Jews" typically also being rabidly pro-Israel.
We should just live in peace with people and enact specific protection against specific discrimination where necessary, but stop putting people on a pedestal.
That being said if your relationship to all people is that of "loving them" then it should apply to everyone.
At least 29 children have died in recent days due to starvation in Gaza, said Palestinian health officials, as the humanitarian crisis deepens under Israel’s ongoing blockade and bombardment.
“In the last couple of days, we lost 29 children,” Palestinian health minister Majed Abu Ramadan told reporters on Thursday, describing the deaths as “starvation-related”, Reuters reported.
Decades before transgender became a household word and “RuPaul’s Drag Race” became a worldwide hit — before visibility brought rights and recognition — there was Bambi, the Parisian icon who danced for Hollywood.
The moment that changed queer history occurred on a sweltering summer day in early 1950s Algeria. An effeminate teenage boy named Jean-Pierre Pruvot stood mesmerized as traffic halted and crowds swarmed around a scandalous spectacle unfolding in the conservative Algiers streets.
All had stopped to look at Coccinelle, the flamboyant “transvestite” star of Paris’ legendary cabaret, the Carrousel de Paris, who strutted defiantly down the boulevard, impeccably dressed as a woman, sparking awe and outrage and literally stopping traffic.
What Pruvot — who would become famous under the female stage name “Bambi” and Coccinelle’s best friend — witnessed was more than mere performance. It was an act of resistance from the ashes of the Nazi persecution of the LGBTQ+ community in World War
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Decades before transgender became a household word and “RuPaul’s Drag Race” became a worldwide hit — before visibility brought rights and recognition — there was Bambi, the Parisian icon who danced for Hollywood.
The moment that changed queer history occurred on a sweltering summer day in early 1950s Algeria. An effeminate teenage boy named Jean-Pierre Pruvot stood mesmerized as traffic halted and crowds swarmed around a scandalous spectacle unfolding in the conservative Algiers streets.
All had stopped to look at Coccinelle, the flamboyant “transvestite” star of Paris’ legendary cabaret, the Carrousel de Paris, who strutted defiantly down the boulevard, impeccably dressed as a woman, sparking awe and outrage and literally stopping traffic.
What Pruvot — who would become famous under the female stage name “Bambi” and Coccinelle’s best friend — witnessed was more than mere performance. It was an act of resistance from the ashes of the Nazi persecution of the LGBTQ+ community in World War II.
The private university can enroll whoever they want, but the executive branch literally controls immigration/foreign affairs. So the students can attend remotely.
Harvard is better off with the damage being done than by giving up things it doesn't have to give up and still having the damage done at a later point.
They're in it for the long-haul. If they roll over now they'll absolutely get crushed. Letting people and organizations get away with defiance, even for a moment, is weakness and authoritarians can't ever appear weak.
DHS said that in addition to barring enrollment of future international students, "existing foreign students must transfer to lose their legal status." The revocation, which DHS said was the result of "pro-terrorist conduct," was first reported by The New York Times.
What does it mean that they “must transfer to lose”? Is she saying if they transfer they lose their status and that that transfer is being forced, or that they must transfer or lose it?
It reads like they are saying a student would have to transfer to lose status. So current students are fine, but if they transfer their visa is revoked.
DHS said that in addition to barring enrollment of future international students, “existing foreign students must transfer to lose their legal status.”
Every single Ivy League school and many prestigious (like top 75ish) schools in America have an “endowment” worth x amount but also a whole separate money cannon if you piss off the alumni. I don’t donate directly to my university but I would if Trump came for them. And I’m, sadly, not a billionaire but they exist.
You can tell I’m not a billionaire because if I were, I wouldn’t be posting on this broke ass web site. I’d be off the coast of the Riviera in the hot tub on my yacht getting a foot massage from a mysterious, ethereal beauty known only as “La Marionnette.” (I’d have a team of old timey whalers to fend off the Orca attacks. I’m not as stupid as a real billionaire.)
50 billion dollars is how much the Harvard endowment is worth. Money they can draw from for any reason including to hire the best Harvard lawyers to fight the government with or to pay ongoing costs of drinking the school of the government takes away any money they were previously giving the school. Other schools don't have this type of money so they have to do what the government says or cease to exist.
Umm. I'm sorry, but it looks like we've got a misunderstanding? I'd simply never heard the word "billion" shortened to "billy" before, and I was asking where you got that term from. (Though now I'm even more curious what you thought I was asking.)
As snobby as it it is. It hosts all aspects of society. Harvard law school has a trap and skeet team that's very pro 2A. On its own it's not too shocking. But this is in very Blue Massachusetts.
Similar to how MIT has pistol and rifle clubs.
You have the opportunity to share various hobbies and political leanings all in a bubble of elitism.
The Trump administration barred Harvard from enrolling or retaining international students, accusing the school of fostering antisemitism, violence, and ties to China.
DHS revoked Harvard’s student visa program certification, forcing current foreign students to transfer or lose status.
A federal judge temporarily blocked the administration from acting against current students.
A new method for diagnosing brain tumours could cut the time patients wait for treatments by weeks to hours and raise the possibility of novel types of therapy, researchers have said.
According to the Brain Tumour Charity, about 740,000 people around the world are diagnosed with a brain tumour each year, around half of which are non-cancerous. Once a brain tumour is found, a sample is taken during surgery and cells are immediately studied under a microscope by pathologists, who can often identify the type of tumour. However, genetic testing helps to make or confirm the diagnosis.
“Almost all of the samples will go for further testing anyway. But for some of them it will be absolutely crucial, because you won’t know what you’re looking at,” said Prof Matthew Loose, a co-author of the research from the University of Nottingham.
The approach is based on devices that contain membranes featuring hundreds to thousands of tiny pores, each of which has an electric current passing through it. When DNA approaches a pore it is “unzipped
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A new method for diagnosing brain tumours could cut the time patients wait for treatments by weeks to hours and raise the possibility of novel types of therapy, researchers have said.
According to the Brain Tumour Charity, about 740,000 people around the world are diagnosed with a brain tumour each year, around half of which are non-cancerous. Once a brain tumour is found, a sample is taken during surgery and cells are immediately studied under a microscope by pathologists, who can often identify the type of tumour. However, genetic testing helps to make or confirm the diagnosis.
“Almost all of the samples will go for further testing anyway. But for some of them it will be absolutely crucial, because you won’t know what you’re looking at,” said Prof Matthew Loose, a co-author of the research from the University of Nottingham.
The approach is based on devices that contain membranes featuring hundreds to thousands of tiny pores, each of which has an electric current passing through it. When DNA approaches a pore it is “unzipped” into single strands; as a strand passes through the pore it disrupts the electric current.
Bullshit. The united states has always failed to prosecute bad actors. They executed 1 general after the civil war. The rest of the Confederate government got to live out their days free. All of the governors that fought civil rights never got punished, nor did the cops that still tried to enforce segregation after the civil rights act. Nixon and everyone that worked with him got away with Watergate. What didn't Reagan get away with?
The US will only punish poor people with no political power if they dare try to change the system.
I hope I'm wrong this time, but US history is disappointing
I hope I'm wrong this time, but US history is disappointing
When examined closely, you'll find that there's a reason that I'm calling it a regime, and not administration.
What this regime is doing (forcing out good people in every sector, replacing them with regime loyalists), is exactly what must be done when this regime falls.
There is absolutely no doubt that they must be purged from every sector.
No help is coming from the outside, so Americans need to decide for how long they'll allow the regime to shred all checks and balances, and vandalize their economy, and shred their ability to cover the basic necessities.
We allowed Confederates to serve in the Senate after the war. These people were part of an armed rebellion against the US government and we allowed them to take office
I feel the effects of this government daily. I haven't gotten good sleep in months and wonder every day if tomorrow is the day I lose my job. If I lose my career that I've dedicated my life to. All due to Trump's executive action.
It's a far stretch to go from my cynicism to assuming that I don't care or I'm unaffected by this regime. I do care and I feel the impacts.
If anything I'd argue I fear US history will repeat itself and these people will not only get away with it, but they will also continue their political careers. I'm afraid that's what will happen because it has repeatedly happened. I hope I am wrong. I hope this time is different. I will support actions and people that seek to end this madness anyway I can, but I fear nothing will happen
You claimed it was not effecting me personally. I gave you an example of how it was. Believe it or not having an income, housing, food to eat, and health insurance is actually pretty god damn important to me.
I made no more comments on my opinions of this government. I'm equally as disgusted by those things. What would you have me do? I go to my local protests regularly, but that is only so effective if at all. If you're going to suggest I personally go out and start an armed rebellion, don't. Neither you or I will be doing that, but you are more than welcome to prove me wrong.
We are almost certainly on the same side here. I'm just fearful these people will not face justice due to our country's historic precedence. I wish I could have your confidence that they will face appropriate punishment, but I'm skeptical and doubt the American people. So maybe instead of trying to make me into a strawman or attach false claims onto my comments, just take them for what they are and go find an argument worth arguing.
Despite its popularity on the Right, Don't Tread On Me has functional appeal across the political spectrum.
Also, if they wanted a meek and incapable populace, they would have restricted firearms purchases, rather than flog the idea that as many firearms as possible should be sold to the public.
I mean maybe but the ultimate "dont tread on me" is about the death penalty and nobody is at his court house. Nobody is bothering to keep that story alive and thriving. It had it's 2 minutes of fame. We moved on. Rinse and repeat for everything on the left. Like there's no momentum for anything worthwhile. The only time there's traction is for things that really do not have clear goals. It all seems like the left is led astray and herded. Why isn't Luigi on every Reddit and Lemmy and Twitter and Facebook thread right now? It leaves me with no hope for anything else.
It's fun! We have apps that we use to scan barcodes, helping us identify American products so we can leave them on the shelf! Any sense of loss on any nostalgic product, is easily forgotten, as i purchase trays of one and a half dozen eggs at will.
How's Galen Weston doing this quarter?
Quite well in imagine. He'll be eaten if and when it becomes warranted.
We have no ability to maintain
Which is why we look elsewhere for reliable trade partners.
The momentum is dead. I get you want to say "we're doing great" but our fellow Canadians already forgot. This is my point in all of this. Not being honest in this very serious situation is not doing any favors. The news cycle moved on. The mob moved on. There's outliers holding the fort but that main body moved on and it's frustrating to not address that. It's extra frustrating that I know you care but that you'll say "it's going great" when you and I both know it isn't. That the pressure stopped building.
"Without saying the word boycott, Loblaw chief financial officer Richard Dufresne acknowledged on a conference call with analysts that the company "did notice a bit of an impact in certain markets." However, he said that sales had returned to normal by the end of the second quarter, which closed June 15."
"The overall financial impact was minor for us," Loblaw CEO Per Bank told analysts."
Just like the last boycott was super effective 😆 We're fucking cooked man. Living in denial isn't helping shit.
Look I like your passion. You care. But don't let that cloud the reality of how fucking garbage we all are at this. You're holding on too tightly to people who aren't putting in the work. They're all waiting for media or politicians to help them. These people can't be bothered to maintain any of these movements. They'll stand around in a street for 8 hours, go home and just move on with things. Rinse and repeat.
It's like being in a boat with a hole in it. You can keep bailing out the water for everybody, but until you patch that
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"Without saying the word boycott, Loblaw chief financial officer Richard Dufresne acknowledged on a conference call with analysts that the company "did notice a bit of an impact in certain markets." However, he said that sales had returned to normal by the end of the second quarter, which closed June 15."
"The overall financial impact was minor for us," Loblaw CEO Per Bank told analysts."
Just like the last boycott was super effective 😆 We're fucking cooked man. Living in denial isn't helping shit.
Look I like your passion. You care. But don't let that cloud the reality of how fucking garbage we all are at this. You're holding on too tightly to people who aren't putting in the work. They're all waiting for media or politicians to help them. These people can't be bothered to maintain any of these movements. They'll stand around in a street for 8 hours, go home and just move on with things. Rinse and repeat.
It's like being in a boat with a hole in it. You can keep bailing out the water for everybody, but until you patch that hole, you're just going to keep sinking.
But I'll listen. What metric are you using to determine the boycotts are having any kind of significant impact. I can go on many sites and barely see any mention of things. No new contact. No discussion. Maybe an article a week mildly related to it.
The right has tapped into something. Go mention Rosanne on a YouTube video and watch the comments come in. There was a video of Jon Stewart skewering Republican the other week. Fuck all for engagement, a lot of comments were shitting on Stewart for being a fascist sympathizer. The right are playing chess and we're eating the pieces from the checkers box in the garage. They're putting in the work and it's fucking brutal to realize. But it's true.
Do you think you'll see memes and jokes of this huge L for Trump or it go away in like a day or two? I haven't read the comments, how many are just "he's racist" said ad infinitum. Not only is there no momentum. The memory fatigue and lack of content refreshing is killing us
President Donald Trump showed a screenshot of Reuters video taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of what he falsely presented on Wednesday as evidence of mass killings of white South Africans.
Just like the last boycott was super effective 😆 We're fucking cooked man. Living in denial isn't helping shit.
Unconvinced. Watch me not buy American goods.
Look I like your passion.
No you don't. I find your faux empathy to be idiotic.
You care.
Significantly more than you do.
But don't let that cloud the reality of how fucking garbage we all are at this.
Your failures are your own. Quit chirping, start lifting.
You're holding on too tightly to people who aren't putting in the work.
Remarkably, your words do nothing to draw me to your idiotc side.
They're all waiting for media or politicians to help them. These people can't be bothered to maintain any of these movements. They'll stand around in a street for 8 hours, go home and just move on with things. Rinse and repeat.
While i campaign relentlessly for complicity. My view only coincidentally in lock-s
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Just like the last boycott was super effective 😆 We're fucking cooked man. Living in denial isn't helping shit.
Unconvinced. Watch me not buy American goods.
Look I like your passion.
No you don't. I find your faux empathy to be idiotic.
You care.
Significantly more than you do.
But don't let that cloud the reality of how fucking garbage we all are at this.
Your failures are your own. Quit chirping, start lifting.
You're holding on too tightly to people who aren't putting in the work.
Remarkably, your words do nothing to draw me to your idiotc side.
They're all waiting for media or politicians to help them. These people can't be bothered to maintain any of these movements. They'll stand around in a street for 8 hours, go home and just move on with things. Rinse and repeat.
While i campaign relentlessly for complicity. My view only coincidentally in lock-step with foreign propaganda efforts to undermine national unity.
It's like being in a boat with a hole in it. You can keep bailing out the water for everybody, but until you patch that hole, you're just going to keep sinking.
Enjoy more doom and gloom imagery, in keeping with my brief to sow discontent and pessimism.
But I'll listen.
Of course you will.
What metric are you using to determine the boycotts are having any kind of significant impact. I can go on many sites and barely see any mention of things. No new contact. No discussion. Maybe an article a week mildly related to it.
You're working under the assumption that I give a fuck about your points. Your overarching agenda is clear, and there is no useful function in attempting to persuade you of anything.
The only thing that you could possibly get me to do, is boycott a specific American company or industry harder by naming it.
Not only would that be personally delightful on principal, I'd enjoy knowing it was because of something stupid you said.
Furthermore, you get me all excited about thinking of trade agreements with everyone but the United States.
Thanks for sparing me your wrath. I don't know how I'd have survived if you brought the thunder.
But this is pathetic.
Your waning resolve? Agreed.
Just get better
At what? Derailing you from your shit take? I'd say that that's going rather well, actually. Not much of an effort needed, as you're not even remotely difficult to handle.
Ah, this must be the "meritocracy" I keep hearing about. For some reason I thought you had to be a member of the Trump family or a Fox News host to take part.
The DOJ charged Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver with "assaulting" an ICE agent after she tried to visit a detention center in her district.
Footage shows ICE agents were the aggressors during McIver’s visit.
The charges are politically motivated and part of a broader pattern of Trump targeting opposition figures (especially Black Democrats) who challenge his policies.
The media’s coverage has been extremely soft on criticism for these alarming abuses of executive power, but this is nothing new to those of us who have seen the news in the last 12 years.
Somehow the article (and your summary) leave out the actual complain.
ABC news: "She is accused of making "forcible contact" with authorities, including allegedly slamming her forearm into a Homeland Security Investigations agent and pushing and using "each of her forearms to forcibly strike" an ICE officer, according to the complaint".
Sorry, I'm just summarizing the article to practice my writing. if it isn't in the article I usually won't catch it. Thanks for the additional context though!
I hate how the media doesn't call out anything this regime does as what it is. They softball everything.
And I somewhat get that news articles should be facts with no editorializing. But this stuff is the political weaponization of the DOJ. It's not an opinion, it's a fact at this point.
No ody wants to be on the bad side and have the government for after them. It's so funny everything the Republicans blamed them Democrats for they are doing.
Hmm wonder if they have a secret pizzeria where they eat children.
This is what's been happening throughout both Trump presidencies and elections and probably long before. Sanewashing, attacks on the left, and nothing but compliance. Journalism has been dead in America for decades.
Let's see, Healthcare United just got caught killing elders by forging DNRs and not treating stroke victims. Then the conservatives snuck in an amendment to ban all abortion nationwide from being covered by healthcare. Radio silence....
Yeah it is clear media is complicit at this point. They don't want you to know the truth.
They are trying to ban all ACA health plans from covering abortion. This hits home for me because we lost a child at nine months and we have a certificate of abortion.
These dumb fucks don't even know that technically all miscarriages and pregnancy complications that result in the death of the fetus are considered abortions.
Fucking pig men making decisions about shit they don't even understand.
"The ACA marketplaces provide affordable health insurance plans to a large number of Americans, with over 96% of HealthCare.gov enrollees"
Needless to say this is completely illegal in a reconciliation bill that is supposed to contain no new policies. They don't care they are breaking the law because no one will call them on it. Hell, people don't even know it happened.
As decentralised social networks grow and evolve over time, so does the meaning of the word decentralisation. People do not understand a meaning of a word in a vacuum, they form an understanding of what a word means based on their think other people think a term means. The term decentralisation is a good example of this: it is clearly an important term to the communities that make up networks like the fediverse. But the meaning of the term decentralisation has shifted over time. Communities take on a shared mental framework to understand a technology. Once a framework has been established, changes to that shared framework are slow, and can happen due to forces of other communities who have a different shared perspective.
The fediverse, and the networks that it grew out of, are decentralised social networks in two different ways: they are decentralised in a technical description of how the network architecture looks. But the fediverse is also decentralised in the sense that this became a core part of the identity of the network. For a variety of reasons, as the fediverse
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As decentralised social networks grow and evolve over time, so does the meaning of the word decentralisation. People do not understand a meaning of a word in a vacuum, they form an understanding of what a word means based on their think other people think a term means. The term decentralisation is a good example of this: it is clearly an important term to the communities that make up networks like the fediverse. But the meaning of the term decentralisation has shifted over time. Communities take on a shared mental framework to understand a technology. Once a framework has been established, changes to that shared framework are slow, and can happen due to forces of other communities who have a different shared perspective.
The fediverse, and the networks that it grew out of, are decentralised social networks in two different ways: they are decentralised in a technical description of how the network architecture looks. But the fediverse is also decentralised in the sense that this became a core part of the identity of the network. For a variety of reasons, as the fediverse grew and matured, being decentralised became a core way how people on the fediverse understood the network themselves. When Elon Musk took over Twitter, it gave a strong validation of the idea that centralised ownership of social networking is bad, and thus that good social networks should be decentralised.
Over time, the meaning of the term ‘decentralisation’, as understood by people on the fediverse, grew more diffuse. Other characteristics of the network became conflated with the idea of the network being decentralised. Traits of centralised platforms that people deemed bad, such as a single algorithmic timeline controlled by an oligarch, became a template for how an alternative social network should do the opposite: only have a timeline where the content displayed is fully controlled by the user. The boundaries blurred between features resulting from a decentralised networking architecture versus those from human-focused product design. It is totally possible to create a decentralised social networking platform with only algorithmic timelines. But the connection between fediverse platforms largely only having ‘following’ feeds and the network being decentralised was regularly implied.
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As decentralised social networks grow and evolve over time, so does the meaning of the word decentralisation. People do not understand a meaning of a word in a vacuum, they form an understanding of what a word means based on their think other people think a term means. The term decentralisation is a good example of this: it is clearly an important term to the communities that make up networks like the fediverse. But the meaning of the term decentralisation has shifted over time. Communities take on a shared mental framework to understand a technology. Once a framework has been established, changes to that shared framework are slow, and can happen due to forces of other communities who have a different shared perspective.
The fediverse, and the networks that it grew out of, are decentralised social networks in two different ways: they are decentralised in a technical description of how the network architecture looks. But the fediverse is also decentralised in the sense that this became a core part of the identity of the network. For a variety of reasons, as the fediverse grew and matured, being decentralised became a core way how people on the fediverse understood the network themselves. When Elon Musk took over Twitter, it gave a strong validation of the idea that centralised ownership of social networking is bad, and thus that good social networks should be decentralised.
Over time, the meaning of the term ‘decentralisation’, as understood by people on the fediverse, grew more diffuse. Other characteristics of the network became conflated with the idea of the network being decentralised. Traits of centralised platforms that people deemed bad, such as a single algorithmic timeline controlled by an oligarch, became a template for how an alternative social network should do the opposite: only have a timeline where the content displayed is fully controlled by the user. The boundaries blurred between features resulting from a decentralised networking architecture versus those from human-focused product design. It is totally possible to create a decentralised social networking platform with only algorithmic timelines. But the connection between fediverse platforms largely only having ‘following’ feeds and the network being decentralised was regularly implied.
A network like the fediverse has an architecture that is easy to recognise as being decentralised: there are multiple independent servers that are all talking to each other, without one central entity. But there are other ways to create social networks that are decentralised, using a different architecture. Nostr is a good example of a decentralised social network that operates in a significantly different way, while also being clearly decentralised.
For the fediverse community, the mental model of decentralised networks such as the fediverse itself, but also email, became more dominant. There was less space to consider other ways to design a social network that is also decentralised. The size difference between the fediverse and the much smaller Nostr network made other alternatives easy to brush aside. But the growth of Bluesky and the ATmosphere network changed this dynamic.
The goal of Bluesky and ATProto is to create a decentralised social network, but with different characteristics and goals than the fediverse and ActivityPub have. For people on the fediverse, decentralisation became the main way how they analysed this competing network. As Bluesky is by far the largest app on the ATProto network, by multiple orders of magnitude, Bluesky not actually being decentralised became a common criticism. I made a similar argument in fall 2024, about how Bluesky has not meaningfully distributed power due to how clustered the people are around a single app. However, that is something different than the technological network architecture being (de)centralised. These criticisms became intertwined with each other, especially from the fediverse side.
In recent weeks, people have made some significant progress in using Bluesky (in technical terms: engaging with posts with Bluesky’s lexicon) with infrastructure that is entirely independent from the Bluesky company. This demonstrates the network being decentralised in a meaningful way. But as the term ‘decentralisation’ has become so intertwined with other meanings, both regarding other network architecture as well as the spread of the user base, that conversations around these developments became hopelessly confusing. The achievement of using Bluesky without using infrastructure owned by Bluesky PBC became solely analysed through the frame of “is the network decentralised”.
In all this discourse, it has become lost that decentralisation is a description of a network topology, and not an intrinsic Good. People do not actually care about decentralisation itself. Decentralisation is valuable because it enables other properties, such as network resilience, and are more resistant to capture by oligarchs.
Within the ATProto developer community, the discourse that essentialised decentralisation led to a counter reaction, where decentralisation is not seen as a useful term anymore. Instead, other descriptors should be used, to consider specific features that the network enables. While the community seems largely in agreement that decentralisation has lost a lot of its usefulness as a way to analyse the network, there is less consensus on what other factors the network should be judged on.
As an observer of both networks this makes the current situation particularly interesting. One developer community seems to come to an agreement that one mental framework has lost some of its use, while the other developer community has not done so. Furthermore, it is not clear yet what framework should take its place instead. Is it a framework of analysing a network by its possible failure modes, or something else entirely?
Binky
in reply to RandAlThor • • •WhatsHerBucket
in reply to Binky • • •Tolookah
in reply to WhatsHerBucket • • •IninewCrow
in reply to RandAlThor • • •Placebonickname
in reply to RandAlThor • • •First of all in a fight between Donald Trump and his staff versus Harvard I’m gonna go ahead and  put my money on Harvard and it’s world, renowned lawyers.
2nd, how is this not government overreach? 
xyzzy
in reply to RandAlThor • • •OK, so they eliminated $2.6 billion in federal grants. Now they're preventing Harvard from enrolling foreign students.
Sounds bad, right? Definitely for the students, but even if you assume $100,000 per year per student, that's "only" $680 million. So their second attack is with reduced leverage. If your goal is to crush Harvard into compliance, you want the attacks to amplify, not weaken each time. So it's already feeling like a deflated balloon.
They want to strip Harvard of its tax exempt status, but that's around 20% in capital gains, which are only realized when they sell assets. So if I'm the president of Harvard, I ride it out; I sell just enough to get by for the next year until it winds its way to the Supreme Court and gets overturned. So they just need to sell $3 billion in assets and pay about $600 million in taxes. After a verdict is rendered, they might even get that amount back in the judgement.
Either way, once again a weaker attack than the previous one (assuming, as the Trump administration must) that any revocation of tax-exempt status will be o
... show moreOK, so they eliminated $2.6 billion in federal grants. Now they're preventing Harvard from enrolling foreign students.
Sounds bad, right? Definitely for the students, but even if you assume $100,000 per year per student, that's "only" $680 million. So their second attack is with reduced leverage. If your goal is to crush Harvard into compliance, you want the attacks to amplify, not weaken each time. So it's already feeling like a deflated balloon.
They want to strip Harvard of its tax exempt status, but that's around 20% in capital gains, which are only realized when they sell assets. So if I'm the president of Harvard, I ride it out; I sell just enough to get by for the next year until it winds its way to the Supreme Court and gets overturned. So they just need to sell $3 billion in assets and pay about $600 million in taxes. After a verdict is rendered, they might even get that amount back in the judgement.
Either way, once again a weaker attack than the previous one (assuming, as the Trump administration must) that any revocation of tax-exempt status will be overturned.
And what's left? Arresting the president and board of overseers? There aren't many things to realistically try after this. Time and momentum seem to be on Harvard's side.
Placebonickname
in reply to xyzzy • • •I’m not even worried about the money to me, an idiot, the problem is:
1) Trump told Harvard to eliminate DEI positions
2) Trump admin scrubs diversity and DEI programs from public schools
3) Trump tries to eliminate foreign Harvard enrollment
4) Trump tries to dictate History lessons including history.
Will Trump try to eliminate foreign or non-citizen enrollment in public schools? I know people think I am over-cautious here but My wife is a green card holder, what sorta prejudice does this open us up too?
MegaUltraChicken
in reply to Placebonickname • • •That's not over cautious. This will happen soon. I think most Americans (see: white) are relatively safe right now, but immigrants (authorized or not) are clearly targets that they are attacking right now. Get ready to protect your family now.
Really hope you and your wife make it through this okay. We're all gonna need to help each other.
Placebonickname
in reply to MegaUltraChicken • • •Actually we are cutting our losses and moving back to her home country. We’d stay and tough it out if we didn’t have a kid. But it’s hard decision and struggle with Trump‘s idiotic domestic policy, along with skyrocketing cost-of-living and completely unrealistic prices on health insurance.
It’s just too much all at the same time for us to stay 
wanderwisley
in reply to RandAlThor • • •