ANewFormation

The Civil Rights Act and related topics are part of the US Code (laws) [1] and are completely unrelated to DEI. The legal redresses available for discrimination have not changed whatsoever.

The Civil Rights Act is exclusively about equality of opportunity and requires affected employers hire without regard to race, religion, and other protected classes. So for instance universities using racial quotas was deemed unlawful precisely because of the Civil Rights Act.

DEI stuff was in a very different spirit that really ran against the ideals of the Civil Rights Act. For instance it compelled affected organizations to specifically endeavour to hire based on the race and other characteristics of applicants. It's not entirely clear to me why it wasn't tossed immediately as being in violation of the Civil Rights Act.

[1] - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/chapter-21

FDR forced people to give up all their gold assets at a fixed rate, under threat of imprisonment for a decade. He then proceeded to nearly double the declared exhange rate up once the government had confiscated everybody's gold.

All done by executive order. Makes basically all modern EOs look pretty innocuous by comparison.

That said I actually agree and would love to see a sharp reduction in executive power, especially as it comes to using the military. If we're going to go bombing places, that should require a declaration of war from Congress. And 'emergency' powers should not be enabled for decades on end.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

Your stereotypes belie a lack of familiarity with researchers. Here [1] are the demographics of PhD researchers.

White individuals are significantly under represented (and even more so in STEM) though it's not for any nefarious reason. Science has traditionally been merit > all. And lots of highly skilled individuals from China, India, and so on are pursuing education and work in the US, which makes the competition for these spots very different than a random sampling of Americans.

[1] - https://www.zippia.com/phd-researcher-jobs/demographics/

You can read about PIER plan requirements here. [1] Archive since the page is already dead. Things are moving ridiculously fast for government to the point I suspect there was alot of desire to get rid of all this stuff before, but people were unable to do so.

Anyhow it had nothing to do with the merit of the project or the team which were obviously already being evaluated. It was nothing but an unrelated ideological conformity test added as a requirement.

[1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20230104150813/https://science.o...

You're definitely right and I also do not agree with that stuff either, but it was mostly done "appropriately" in that it was through avenues, like the State Department or CIA, who have propaganda as part of their mission.

In this case you had things like the Department of Energy requiring Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research plans to even apply for funding.

The two big differences I see is that that is a wholly inappropriate avenue for ideological enforcement, and that it's also exceptionally divisive.

Things are changing in modern times but historically free markets, capitalism, and so on were very widely shared values. The contemporary equality of outcome (versus opportunity) stuff is extremely new and extremely divisive. The government pushing it, and frequently in very inappropriate ways (the military also comes to mind) is just very weird.

If this were the case then they would be replacing the ideological conformity sections with different ideological conformity requirements. Instead they are simply stripping ideological requirements, period.

Whatever a scientist happens to believe in, these changes would not imperil his ability to receive government funding. But in the previous system, if one felt that unconditional merit was the most fundamental factor in science (and refused to simply lie) he would have been found it much more difficult to secure funding.

This seems great. It's increasingly apparent that the government was spending countless billions of dollars to push ideology in plainly weird ways. Why should somebody researching e.g. fusion for the Department of Energy also need to create a Promoting Inclusive and Equitable Research (PIER) plan, to even apply?

This should greatly reduce the overall bureaucratic nonsense in science and help get back to science simply being science without imposing ideological conformity tests.

This'll do it - https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/focus_on_naep/student_grou...

From 1998 to 2022 "English learners" (as its their term) tripled from 5% to 14%. They do offer accommodations, but are tested.

And fwiw I think they should be, just as are students with learning disabilities. It's because this is your student body, which will become the society of tomorrow. Knowing how that society might look, and in which direction it is trending, can inform decisions being made today to help shape a better society for everybody tomorrow.

Your example of men on the Moon is precisely what drives people to support more privately driven progress.

Because that was an amazing achievement orchestrated almost entirely by government, but then once the geopolitical factors motivating government to support it faded, the entire human space program was defacto cancelled.

Over the next 50 years progress in human space sharply regressed and, if not for Elon and SpaceX, we would very likely still be on that trajectory.

Governments can be whimsically unpredictable in a way far beyond how companies can normally behave. In fact this is exactly what this topic is about!

Yip, pretty much exactly this. It's easy to get confused because they have all the makings of a person, but their minds are just still extremely underdeveloped.

For a silly example in teaching chess - a typical issue is kids moving way too fast. You can explain to them why it's bad, and they understand. They can then even show you exact moments where they really hurt themselves from moving too quickly, and so on.

So after this you think to yourself - 'I did a great job. He not only knows not to do this, but more importantly - why.' Then next game he's right back to playing like he starts with 10 seconds on his clock.

So then - ok forget all the logic stuff. Each move I want you to literally sit on your hands for at least 10 seconds before moving. And suddenly - the problem is resolved.

1 in 5000 seems very off. A quick search has it occurring in 1.7% of all games which sounds about right. [1] If he indeed said 1 in 5000, it might have been from a database with lots of quite low rated games.

There are two reasons I think it's one of (calling it the most was a bit of hyperbole) the most important basic endings.

One is that it's not only relatively frequent but also an endgame that just constantly sees the 'wrong' result.

The second point though is what I already mentioned - it really teaches you a lot about how a bishop and rook can play together. If you can genuinely internalize that ending, your play with these pieces, in all phases of the game, would just naturally improve. Again it's similar to the way that the B+N ending can help improve your play with those pieces.

I mean sure it's useful to know that R and f+h pawns v R is only a [difficult] draw, but that knowledge is not very useful outside of that exact scenario.

[1] - https://thechessworld.com/articles/endgame/chess-statistics-...

Any sort of geopolitical expert is generally going to be labeled as such because he works in the domain at a reasonably high level.

The problem with that is that when at such a level, political factors start to come into play.

The net effect is that in any conflict, the winning side will have competent and qualified expert geopolitical analyses, while the losing side will have propagandists.

So the geopolitical expert is, at best, a liminal species.

Consider my side of the bet eating crow with a side that, if you're right, then you'll have mastered arguably the single most important basic ending.

I'd strongly recommend checking out an endgame manual or a youtube video on the proper way(s) to draw it. It's going to take a lot longer than weeks if you just try to learn it through experience.

For further incentivization I can practically guarantee you will also gain rating points if you succeed here - it really requires substantial 'feel' for how rook and bishop can work together (as well as certain stalemate tricks and more), and that's applicable far outside just this ending - same how learning to mate with B+N really improves your feel for how those pieces can collaborate.

But I'm not sure you appreciate what you're getting into here. R v R+B makes B+N look like child's play.

Do let me know if you're seriously going to try this. I'd honestly just like to know how it goes, and can just hit you up in a couple of weeks in some rando thread. It'd be pretty awesome if you succeed!

I'm also curious. When I first taught some younger kids I went in thinking they were like little people... that did not work well.

When I instead started to treat them as glorified chimps, everything went better for them and for me.

In the meantime I'm still somehow expecting that my children will behave like little people... Haha, humans really suck at learning, even from our own experiences.

There isn't a GM that hasn't studied RBvB, and most have also played numerous games with it.

But it's just very difficult to execute properly. Let a 2000 go study it for weeks - he'd still lose it against strong play.

People often see chess as just a game of knowledge, but in practice it's much more like a skill in that for a strong player they'll generally see the right move(s) in a position near instantly. The time spent is then just comparing and double checking stuff.

This is why you might see in e.g. a press conference some journalist ask why the player didn't play 34. Ne5, and they'll think for a few seconds, go ooooo wow as they rapidly work out the [invariably computer generated] idea, and then respond that they simply didn't consider it.

This is how players like Magnus are so strong and why the time control doesn't really matter - his intuition just tends to quickly lead him to better ideas than for other players.

Yeah I was considering all issues rather than just anchor. Another source [1] gives 100-200 incidents per year with 16% as anchorage, so 25 a year (from anchors alone) is probably a safe estimate.

I think most of us thought these incidents were exceptionally rare, so a recurring pattern of incidents itself would be suggestive of nefarious behavior. 'Oddly' enough the frequency datum was omitted from seemingly every single article on this topic.

[1] - https://www.iscpc.org/publications/submarine-cable-protectio...

It turns out that these incidents are actually incredibly common [1], about once every 3 days. But 'undersea line disrupted temporarily in mundane way' wasn't exactly international news until it could be tied into geopolitics.

[1] - https://blog.telegeography.com/what-happens-when-submarine-c... (telecoms intel service/site)

It's not about forcing a draw but recognizing that the only reasonable move loses the queen immediately.

Assessing the ending is irrelevant. All one needs to know is that having 1 piece is better than having 0 pieces. Not actually always true, but that's the beauty of this puzzle - you don't need anything other than the most basic logic to correctly solve it, at least the first move.

It's just a norm and has been for centuries. For composed positions it should also generally be white to move.

You're right that this isn't necessary (particularly when the board is labeled) but by doing something weird you're just going to distract and confuse some chunk of people from the point you're trying to make - exactly as happened here.

The thing that makes the puzzle neat is that it's one that a reasonably clever person who literally just learned the rules of chess should be able to solve.

There's no nuance to it whatsoever beyond needing to demonstrate knowledge of the rules of the game.

It also creates this weird power imbalance. 'Advanced economies' are supposed to be just that, yet 'developing economies' cutting off their grain, steel and manufacturing is a far bigger threat than an advanced economy cutting off digital services, luxury goods, and financial markets.

The history of North Korea is quite interesting. The mass starvation was in the 90s and mostly caused by US sanctions. They were wholly dependent on foreign imported oil both as fuel and as a way to make fertilizer with the USSR as their primary source.

When the USSR collapsed in the 90s, they no longer had any source for oil owing to sanctions. Their farming was thus severely impaired, and starvation was the predictable result.

We then post facto gave them emergency aid, likely with the idea of turning the people against their government and to the people starving them for geopolitics. Shockingly, it didn't work.

Their deepening relationship with Russia is mostly just a return to the past.

I think this is yet another example of how sanctions are quite a useless tool. If we'd straight up gone for the carrot (perhaps simply trading oil for arms at fair market rates) instead of waiting to starve people first, North Korea could very possibly be a friendly nation today.

Of course this sounds absurd only because most people don't realize South Korea was also under brutal dictatorships for most of its life since the Korean War (their first democratic election was in 1987) - big difference is those dictatorships were backed by the West and allowed to engage in more normal trade and development.

Realpolitik is far dirtier (and often painfully myopic) than most realize. I'd love to read a textbook about current times from a few hundred years from now...

It's not about military indoctrination but the popularity of the leader. Yoon is exceptionally unpopular. If he had 80% approval, instead, he would probably now be the dictator of The People's Democratic Republic of South Korea.

Without that approval the best you're looking at (from his perspective) is mass unrest which an opportunistic nation like their neighbor could foment, support, and exploit.

Haha, yeah I should have put quotes around "only" but you have to keep in mind that this ~900billion that remains is the entire government budget for everything besides stuff like medicare, social security, and so on.

When people think about government spending they tend to handwave away billions and, as per this thread, millions are seen as a rounding error.

But I think thats because most people are thinking about the entire budget - which is around was 6.7 trillion on total revenue of 4.9 trillion.

But when "only" 900 billion of that is left for all the neat things government could do it really nails home the impact of things like a trillion dollars per year spent in interest on the debt.

It really also makes clear why starting to slim things down is essentially becoming necessary. The current system is not sustainable.

We treated a pigeon back to health from a failed cat attack - healthy enough to eat and walk, but not fly. It took a while but she eventually fully regained her ability to fly.

She had some rather distinct markings and would hang around the house pretty regularly after that. Then one day outside she was getting seriously groomed by a larger pigeon and wow is that where that term comes from?

Anyhow yeah she returned the grooming (which I'd later look up was her way of saying 'yeah I'm down - let's go') and I never saw her, or him, again.

So yeah - there could've been a happier ending there, especially because when a cat does eat a pigeon there tends to be evidence left.

The interesting thing is predator and prey both die when they get too slow. Not sure which side has a worse ending there! Then there's disease or even a simple scratch getting infected.

The world's a brutal place, probably all worlds. Because the very nature of evolution means species that exploit the most thrive the most. The obvious exception of things like a solar feeding plant isn't even an exception. The great oxidation event caused one of the greatest mass extinctions on the planet - we evolved to thrive on oxygen but for most of the other life alive at the time it'd be like if plants today produced cyanide gas.

You need to take a break and actually think about what you've claimed to have read about exporting inflation.

A few hours ago you had no clue what it was, and skimming a few articles has not yet meaningfully improved upon that.

FWIW - I wrote this after starting to respond to the strong USD vs exporting inflation nonsense. Again you're having a 'I don't understand why destroyed homes cause tornadoes' moment.

I enjoy a good debate but this nonsense on loop paired with your somewhat bizarre belief that places like Japan are great to live (for average locals) is too much.

Fishing is dangerous work and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.

What matters are the data which nobody has dug up. Was there a significant reduction in fatalities following this committee's creation? Did it have a significant and likely causal relationship on those declines? And finally - assuming there was a decline d the committee was responsible for it, are they still meaningfully necessary or are the prior established rules sufficient to maintain the improvements moving forward?

A very small nitpick but the discretionary budget of the US is far smaller than most realize - in 2024 it was only 1.75 trillion.

And notably, most military spending is discretionary, so the remaining funds for basically all the neat dynamic things government can do is less than a trillion.

A million is of course still a rounding error at e.g. $900 billion, but it adds up really fast, especially when you consider that these are ongoing costs.

This looks rather extremely similar to something that Unreal already natively supports. Here is a demo video from them - https://youtube.com/watch?v=8tBNZhuWMac