Sunday’s Forum
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Russia continues to intensify its air attacks on Ukraine. From Reuters,
Another uproariously funny anecdote from rehab:
I passed my cognitive skills test with a higher score than did two doctors and three nurses here!!!!!
BUGGER OFF, DONALD TRUMP!!!!!! I’M SMARTER THAN YOU ARE!!!!!
@CSK: Congratulations! Though I’m not exactly clear why they would be testing you for that.
I recommend Krugman’s substack for yesterday, Science Under Siege: A Talk With Peter Hotez and Michael Mann
I’s an interview with Hotez and Mann on their book Science Under Siege, about the current anti-science movement.
An interesting bit in it:
How’s that for an effective therapeutics model? The cure for any disease is whatever generic drug you can pick up cheap and repackage for sale at a profit.
@Jay L. Gischer:
Thanks, Jay. I think they automatically administer the cognitive test to anyone who wanders into their precincts for patient care, no matter the cause.
@CSK: so when they asked you to repeat the 5 words, you got them right when they didn’t? 😉
I am a little curious as to why they tested the doctors and nurses, and what happens if they fail.
Ezra Klein has an piece with video up at the NYTs. There’s a gift link at Memeorandum.
It’s worth watching just for the Senator Jon Ossoff clip. My kind of human being and Klein not unsubtlely promotes him as the kind of democrat we need to take on the Party of Trump. Jeffries, Schumer and DNC guy Ken Martin better step up or step aside
@Gustopher:
I got the words correct, and in the right order. That seems to be important.
But…wait. Wasn’t that also Trump’s huge accomplishment? The one that proved he was a stable “jenius”?
Does that mean I’m no smarter than D. J. Trump?
Shit.
Yesterday we were talking about free speech. Trump decided late to attend the U.S. Open Tennis men’s final today. The WTA has asked broadcasters to not broadcast crowd reaction to Trump’s presence. The broadcasters will likely voluntarily comply because they don’t want to antagonize either Trump or the WTA. They got the WTA to ask instead of the White House, so it’s not a 2A violation. Still strikes me as egregious.
They just said Trump’s already in his box, so they were clever enough to not risk a greeting from this NY crowd.
Also, too, they delayed the start of the match from 2:00 to 2:30 because security delayed people getting to and into the stadium. It’s 2:35 and half the crowd is still outside with rain threatening. Is there anything this self-absorbed a-hole won’t screw up?
I thought that I had outrage burnout, but the flames got stirred this morning when I ran into an old friend at coffee. Two years ago, she developed a serious breast cancer. She entered into a clinical trial because it was more promising than the conventional treatment. Her health is doing well, but DOGE defunded the trial before sufficient numbers of patients were enrolled for signifance. Her doctor, the primary investigator, is scrambling to find funding for his department. One of the doctors has taken a job in the UK. Is stopping cancer research going to save money? What is the impact on the power and prestige of the USA? This is another shameful example of fumbling the ball by the Trump regime.
I just learned a new word: implicature. You don’t know you need a word til you stumble upon it. I intend to use it and annoy people.
@CSK:
The only people dumber than El Taco are those who voted for him.
@Kathy:
I’m so relieved to read that.
@CSK:
@Jay L. Gischer:
I assume the cognitive tests are to ensure no lack of function due to anaestheitcs?
I’m assuming anaesthetics were used in your treatment, but it’s a standard thing for post-op in the NHS.
Nice to see you still rate as top decile smart.
Hope the rest of your recovery is going as well.
@Kathy:
Oh, come on, some people who voted for Trump must, given the statistics on intelligence and voting, have been far less dumb than Trump.
Just self-interested fools; there’s no law that says clever people can’t do silly things.
See, much of history.
See also the Supreme Court, come to think of it.
Smart people doing dumb things.
@Kathy:
Thanks for that link.
“American Lysenkoism” is a useful comparative metaphor.
Both the Soviets and the Nazis and Mao were addicted to the idiocy of the “triumph of the will” over recalcitrant reality.
But reality generally has the last word, will otherwise as much as you wish.
Viruses remain viruses, CO2 remains liable to increase heat retention, evolutionary selection selects, ecosystems function within limits of available energy inputs and processes, gravity continues to operate towards the centre of mass, etc etc
@Eusebio:
Russia continue to strike symbolic and civilan targets, I suspect due to the FSB defualt as “war as political psychology by violence”.
Meanwhile Ukraine (and their European supporters, I suspect) continue to hit actual strategic targets.
Latest estimates are that as much as 25% of Russian refinery ouput may now be offline.
And Ukraine is also continuing to hit Russian air defences and railways.
(imuho, its a stone cold certainty Euro-NATO data is informing Ukrainian targeting, and to hell with the US DoD.)
Performative psychology vs operational effect.
My bet is on the latter.
@becca:
Ossoff, absolutely
https://x.com/ossoff/status/1946318914880778491
I think it may have been On the Media, on Friday, where the interviewee mentioned something about linking healthcare and corruption as a possible line of attack