corin_

I suppose it's just less likely to be misunderstood among people who 8 months ago had never heard of the concept of "R" (or "the R number", or "c" probably) - especially in a language that people hearing "R" in a sentence will probably hear it as "are" or "our" before "R".

I'm much more annoyed by use of "coronavirus" to describe this specific virus.

A zebra crossing is a specific type of pedestrian crossing with specific rules different to those of other types. It needs a non-generic name (and look) so people understand how it works. Sure you could change your suggestion to something like "non-light controlled pedestrian right of way crossing" but I'm glad we say Zebra instead!

No the flashing balls go with zebra crossings, pelicans use actual traffic lights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelican_crossing

You can never guarantee that in the future we won't realise an existing consensus won't be shown to be flawed, but without the benefit of hindsight is there any option more consistently reliable than following healthcare professionals & experts in related scientific fields?

Is it really new?

Some news about tweets is justified - for example the president of the US has at times announced policies on Twitter first. It's a modern equivalent of making an brief announcement to the press or sending out a very sparse press release.

And the tweets that you (and I) hate to see reported, those of random people and especially headlines like "Twitter goes mad about (whatever)" somehow making an entire article out of quoting 6 random Twitter users... it's a digital form of voxpops on TV or reader's letters in newspapers. All of them can be a nice addition at times, but in my opinion the vast majority shouldn't be part of a "news" medium.

Personally, I wouldn't include Mother Teresa in a list of examples of people who deserved it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa

Does the patient need to know which drug is being tested?

"You'll be given either a psychedelic or a stimulent, followed by x testing" - then knowing which drug you're getting doesn't mean you know if you're in the placebo group or not?

If all participants have never tried psychedelics, maybe it could be tested against a non-psychedelic psychoactive drug so both groups would feel something?

> I feel like even a child knows that a dinosaur is a reconstruction. How could it be anything else? They don't exist today.

It's possible to see recreations of extinct animals that humans have overlapped with enough to write and draw how they looked. It's even possible to see real specimens of extinct creations, such as the Oxford Dodo https://www.oumnh.ox.ac.uk/the-oxford-dodo

You don't need much more knowledge, but definitely more than "they don't exist today". But equally with colourised photos/video: you don't need more knowledge than "this was filmed before it was possible to film in colour, so all colours are guesses".

Let's try to improve things rather than say "they're successful so who cares"?

There's just a huge amount of evidence from a large number of solid sources, and I guess the reason people downvoted without replying is that unless you're really incapable of very basic googling you could be trolling.

If sincere, maybe start with this wikipedia page and follow its sources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea

Interesting, thanks for sharing!

But actually that wiki page says the judgement regarding "coming to the nuisance" was based on precedent set by a different case almost 100 years earlier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturges_v_Bridgman

I'm not familiar with the American tax system, but couldn't they just not claim that charitable donation when filing their tax returns? Surely it's not illegal not to tell the IRS about a charitable donation you made, and therefore not get any tax deduction for it, regardless of whether or not you received benefits from the organisation you donated to?

(Of course, that wouldn't mean that nobody ever does report this sort of thing to make tax savings, in which cases I would assume you're right it would be tax fraud but again I'm not the person to answer that.)

But the question is also: which college?

It's a fine view that nobody should be denied great education, but if an entire country's annual cohort of high school diploma recipients all applies to the public college considered to be the best one they obviously couldn't all attend that one.

I'm curious - here in England, calling a person or a group of people "backward" would be rude/demeaning. Is that different in India, or is it a case or mixed wires in translating terms to English? Or do the people being called that find it demeaning but it's still socially acceptable among other people?

Vaguely speaking I agree, but it's not really that simple.

Should reporting about crime be fine if you need to illegally access a document that proves the crime happened? What if to get the info you need to murder many people, should that still be legal because you're doing it for the sake of reporting on a crime?

Unless you think the second is just as acceptable. suddenly it's less simple and you need to plan for all the possible ways that various laws might be broken in an entirely ethical task of reporting about a much bigger crime.

I completely agree that he shouldn't be detained inhumanely, but if he's a flight risk it's right that he should be detained until the court rules on extradition. What should change is the inhumaine bit.

(And I also agree that the US shouldn't have a case against him, and I strongly hope our legal system in the UK will reject the extradition, though I'm not very optimistic).

edit: And even if the Swedish accusations are 100% false and political; the UK legal system shouldn't be expected to jump to that conclusion without investigation if presented with an international warrant for his arrest.

Don't know if you get reply notifications, but I forgot to reply the other day saying thanks for this comment. I'm looking forward to reading more on the subject!

While I don't think it ought to have been as long as it has been, it's worth noting that a) He has previously fled to take asylum in a foreign embassy to avoid arrest, so it's understandable why bail wouldn't be granted again and b) He actually requested this extradition hearing be delayed due to not having had enough time to prepare (which the judge denied).

I've not read her book (though it's going on my list), but the second citation in your first comment suggests that it's just on the research side that they should abandon current classifications, but that the DSM definitions are still needed on the clinical side.

Does she propose a better classification system, something like what she'd replace it with in the next DSM if it were up to her? Because if we don't yet know how to split current ASD diagnoses into more specific classifications, isn't it better to have this rough grouping than to say "this person has an unknown disorder"?

The purpose of buying call options is to to make a profit. It's hard to imagine that buying them and doing nothing other than buying them could be considered illegal. That's not manipulating the system any more than Buffet manipulates the system every time he buys stock (by also sending out the message that he thinks the stock is worth buying, just because he bought it without even needing to say anything about it).

For communicating internationally, it's much easier to think "it's 10am there, what does that mean in terms of whether this person I know is likely to be asleep/working/etc" than to think "it's 10pm here" then try to remember what's going on at the same-named 10pm on the other side of the world.

While I don't disagree in general, worth pointing out for anyone who hasn't used Twitter "threads" that you can now write all your threaded tweets before posting the first one - so it's not quite as bad as when you had to write a tweet, send, reply to it, send, repeat etc

Thanks for the extra examples!

I know far too little to judge around Japanese culture myself, so interesting to read :)

Those aren't necessarily examples of Western companies displaying "aggressive levels of cultural ignorance", just examples that they've not penetrated the Japanese market (which I don't disagree, can be caused by cultural ignorance).

The last game I worked on getting publishing deals for, you could easily look at it and say "hah, cultural ignorance".

But we rejected deals with publishers who wanted to just give us some cash and then start promoting the game in various Asian countries with no changes, because we understood that changes were needed and that unless we, in Europe, hired people who knew exactly what to change we needed a publisher who would dictate the changes.

In the meantime... the cost of adding Japanese language to the game and not blocking Japanese buyers on Steam was minimal, far less than money made from a fairly small number of Japanese gamers buying it despite not being adapted at all. We just didn't have the business case for doing a proper Japanese version with a big push to get users there.

It got auto collapsed because it's a reply to my comment that got flagged and killed. Almost certainly users flagging it (although oddly it's also positively upvoted) not a mod decision.

For most non-racists, it goes without saying that race-related violence is unacceptable.

Sadly it also happens often enough that we aren't going to tweet/write a comment saying "this is bad" every single time it happens.

Whereas the BBC journalist using that word was a) not a common event b) as seen in this thread not such a binary good/bad thing even among non-racists and c) affects news standards that broadcast to huge numbers of people.

If I could prevent one physical attack by allowing one use of the word on the TV I would, but I don't think it's at all hypocritical or virtue signalling that many people felt it more important to talk about the journalism than the case being reported.

> It's the same thing as saying "the n word" to me

The difference IMO is that one is a reminder to anyone listening that they should never use that word, whereas the other is a normalisation or hearing it.

I'm certainly not an expert on this subject though, and being white myself I take my lead in this area, and on this story, from non-white people who I know or who I follow in politics/media/etc. I can't speak to how the majority of black people on the UK feel, but definitely plenty of them understood the context and were still very outspoken against it.

Here's one high profile example (the one that arguably made BBC back down) https://news.sky.com/story/sideman-quits-bbc-over-use-of-rac...

The victim's family specifically requested that the journalist repeat the phrase used in full. The journalist/editors obviously made the choice, but they chose to go by the family's wishes rather than by the general consensus on whether it's acceptable to say that word even in the context of reporting about it.

Yes you're right, sorry if anyone read my comment to imply that BBC actively used that word to describe a black person themselves.

But it's pretty much accepted in the UK and especially UK media that if reporting on it, you say "the n word", especially if you're a white reporter.

A lot of people were extremely offended, even in the context you've added, and the BBC have now acknowledged it was wrong.

The reason for today's boycott is partly their delay (and initial defence), and partly a wide, subjective view of institutional racism among large parts of the BBC.

This is obviously a very complex topic, but for now can't we at least agree that we don't need to hear the n-word purposefully spoken by BBC News?