I'm not a fan of the Biden administration by any means, but if you wanted to bring back manufacturing, the Biden administration's chip and green initiatives seem to be the right way to do it. Those sectors also bring in enough jobs that there are whole non-profits being set up to help with workforce issues.

There's a somewhat heated debate amongst the various types of leftists going on right now on the various social media around the idea of tariffs. A lot of trade unionist types going back to the industrial revolution, and a lot of social democrats in the 20th century, have been in favor of targeted tariffs as a form of protectionism for workers (can't lose jobs to manufacturing in Germany if we have tariffs on German-made goods here in 1840s England, now can we! sorta thing). A lot of internationalists are like, "Tariffs are a form of nationalism. All nationalism is bad. Therefore all tariffs are bad." And the various types of Marxists (including the internationalists) point out that tariffs don't end up helping workers, they just help capital (there are a bunch of Marx and Engels writings to this effect from the 1840s on). It's been an interesting discussion, with good points on both sides (but still, tariffs are bad, and don't help workers!).

Union leaders in the U.S. seem to heavily favor tariffs, particularly on cars, and a year or two ago, their members largely agreed, but recent polling suggest union rank and file are increasingly anti-tariff generally. I suspect that a Democratic mayor of Michigan has to say "Some tariffs are good" to keep on the auto unions good side.

I’m not the one who introduced the term “cold” to the conversation.

Sigh. Alright, man, onto the next conversation, where maybe you'll decide to be a productive participant, or maybe you'll do this sort of sh*t. See you there.

Aha, straw-manning, another common conspiracy-theorist tactic.

No, I'm not saying COVID is just a bad cold. I'm saying its symptoms heavily overlap with other respiratory viruses, including the flu and the various types of viruses that get classified under the common cold. And the majority of people who get COVID, especially healthy people like, say, athletes in the military, experience only the cold-like symptoms. However, COVID is not just a bad cold, because in its more severe form, it is much worse than either the cold or the flu (or at least was worse than the flu, before widespread immunity and vaccination; I haven't seen the latest mortality rate numbers for COVID, but I suspect they've dropped down closer to the flu). And that's before we start talking about long COVID and its various manifestations.

My point is all we know is that 7 Americans who participated in the World Military Games in 2019 had COVID-like symptoms, and that this 7 is not an unusual number for that time in the military, even compared to units that sent no one to the World Military Games. So those 7 people tell us nothing, for better or worse. You'll have to look elsewhere for clues, I'm afraid.

Oh man, by all means, keep talking about alternatives. The problem isn't that you're talking about alternatives on a podunk website in 2025: it's that scientists keep saying there's a very real impact on research because people in power keep insisting that they, the scientists, focus on the alternatives.

I mean, I know in your mind, the conspiracy is more than likely, it's almost certain, and therefore what's actually being suppressed is the conspiracy, but seriously, scientists have been saying for years now that the pressure they're getting is very much from the opposite direction.

What's great here is your logic:

Syllogism 1:
If a report is required by law to be released, it is important.
This report was required by law to be released.
Therefore, this report was important.

Syllogism 2:
If a report was not required to be released, but is important, it should be released.
This report was not required to be released, but isimportant (per syllogism 1).
Therefore this report should have been released even though it was not required by law to be so.

If you read the report, or even just the sections I quoted above, you'll see that it says nothing that could possibly lead anyone to conclude that U.S. military personnel contracted COVID at the World Military Games in Wuhan in 2019 without a great deal more evidence. It mostly just looks like about the number of people you'd expect got colds. It just so happens that they got colds a couple months before a worldwide pandemic with cold-like symptoms originated in the place they were. It's weak even as circumstantial evidence goes, if you take 2 seconds to think about it. But you're thinking like a conspiracy theorist, so 2 seconds is more than you have to spare.

So in addition to reconfirming the laziness of conspiracy theory thinking, we have another common feature: draw a conclusion from false information, and when the information is shown to be false, continue to the maintain the conclusion as though it had been proven anyway.

I realize that, post-February 2020, we're all virologists and epidemiologists now, but man, I really suggest reading some of the actual research by virologists and epidemiologists. I even linked a Nature write-up of a recent (published in February) study on the origins of the virus above. It's a good place to start.

The article you posted, by a yellow rag, says they were required by law to release the report, but it references a law that says no such thing (the quote in the article is "publicly available on an internet website in a searchable format," but their link to the law actually takes you to the same report, and the part of the law that has that quote is actually about other reports related to Wuhan and the DOD (I've included the entire section of the law below). In other words, you don't know that they were required by law to publish it, and the yellow rag you linked to doesn't seem to know either.

It seems more than likely that the report came out, it was a big ol' nothing burger (because that's what it is), and they just sent it on the Congress along with a bunch of other stuff without thinking about it further.

The other feature of the conspiracy theorist is laziness: he or she is willing to accept, without question, the mere conjecture and outright misinformation of any publication that says anything that confirms their conspiratorial suspicions, but he or she is unwilling to do even basic checking of the facts and assumptions presented in said publications, despite the fact that it takes mere minutes to do such fact checking most of the time.

The committee directs the Secretary of Defense to submit a report to the Armed Services Committee of the House of Representatives not later than January 1, 2022 describing:
(1) All contracts the Department of Defense signed with the
EcoHealth Alliance or its affiliates by year from 2012-2021 in
spreadsheet format, to include purpose, location where contract was performed, cost, metrics, contract number, contract oversight organization, and whether any funds were provided ultimately to the Wuhan Institute of Virology;
(2) Whether any DoD-funded research projects involving
EcoHealth Alliance or its affiliates were performed in China or
in support of research performed in China, and if so, a
description of the projects, the work performed, and the risk
assessments DoD used to evaluate the project;
(3) Whether DoD issued any awards to the EcoHealth Alliance or its affiliates that are not available on USASpending.gov;
(4) Whether the Department sponsored any classified
research involving EcoHealth Alliance or its affiliates; and
(5) Copies of the agreements, initial research reports, and
all progress and final reports from the EcoHealth Alliance or
its affiliates.
This report shall be submitted in unclassified form and
made publicly available on an internet website in a searchable
format, but may contain a classified annex.

ThTh6: this really sounds like they just made some edits to a few genes (14?) in modern wolves, ignoring whatever other genetic differences there are between modern wolves and a species that last had a common ancestor millions of years ago, and called it a dire wolf. Maybe this is the first step in a more complex attempt at resurrecting extinct species, but right now it looks like they just have some slightly genetically modified wolves, not anything like actual dire wolves, to this lay person.

Keep what hidden? And did they try? Have you ever seen a report like this before for any sort of event?

You've made a bunch of assumptions about what happened with the report, what the report secretly means, etc., and drawn your conclusion from those assumptions. It's like the Ontological Argument of Conspiracies: if you can conceive it, then it happened.

Relatedly, man, conspiracy theorizers are so keen on finding evidence of a conspiracy that they'll latch onto literally anything. Though Slade already said that better than I.

I read the report. It would be difficult to conclude from it that COVID existed pre-December from it, given these quotes and the reports own conclusion:

Data surveillance reports from military treatment facilities indicate no statistically significant difference in COVID-19-like symptoms cases at installations with participating athletes when compared to installations without them. In addition, no significant increase in COVID-19-like signs and/or symptoms was documented for the dates of October 2019 through March 2020 as a result of U.S. Army separate surveillance testing.

and

Data surveillance reports from military treatment facilities indicate no statistically significant difference in COVID-19-like symptoms cases at installations with participating athletes when compared to installations without them. In addition, no significant increase in COVID-19-like signs and/or symptoms was documented for the dates of October 2019 through March 2020 as a result of U.S. Army separate surveillance testing.

It sounds like 7 members of the U.S. military who attended the games in Wuhan had COVID-like symptoms, which are, as we all know now, very consistent with other respiratory viruses, including the flu and the common cold (which would include various other coronaviruses and rhinoviruses). These 7 wouldn't have stood out, given that a bunch other servicemembers all over the world also had colds, if there hadn't been a global pandemic that originated in Wuhan (likely from racoon dogs, the cute little buggers, the latest research suggests).

Buncha people in their 50s and 60s, a few years from what would have been a decent pension after decades of work, deciding, you know what, why not work doing repetitive, body-destroying labor for a fraction of what they were previously paid, getting their pay docked if they screw up one piece of a widget out of many thousands in a day, with no paid time off and no real ability to form a union because labor laws have been gutted. Seems likely.

This is a month old, but I just stumbled upon it this morning:

https://sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-agents-of-history.html

Relevant for the sizeable OT contingent clinging to the "If white people had been able to express their race-realist views in the classroom/workplace, none of this would have happened" theory of the (re-)rise of Trump.

No, the issue is that the way the tariffs were set is very, very stupid. Like, no rational person with even a basic understanding of economics or international trade would set tariffs that way.

More importantly, on a personal level, I'm not online as much as I used to be, so the opportunities for serious owns are few and far between, so thank you, man, for teeing one up for me. Next time, read the articles you post.

The lesson of St. Pierre is that we just need to return all of the Jordan's to Cambodia, and we'll be all even.

Going around Derek for a bit, this equation and the results it produces are really bonkers.

Consider a couple of examples. First, Cambodia, which was given a 49% tariff rate. Cambodia is very poor, which means: a.) it doesn't buy much stuff from wealthy nations, including the U.S., because it can't afford to, and b.) its workers have very low wages, so they can make stuff cheap, which means they can sell a lot of stuff to us because we like to buy cheap things. So, according to Trump's data, Cambodia exported 12.66B worth of stuff, and imported around 0.32B. Using Trump's equation above, you'd do (.32B-12.66B)/12.66B, which gets you .975, which they presumably rounded to .98, then divided that by two, to get the "reciprocal" tariff rate of .49. In other word, because Cambodia is really poor, and can't buy stuff from us, but can sell us stuff cheap, we've imposed an almost 50% tariff on their goods. Will this compel Cambodia to become rich and start buying as much stuff from us as they sell to us? Only time will tell. Also, so much for buying cheap stuff from Cambodia.

It gets worse. Recall these are called reciprocal tariff rates, with the equation in Derek's link (which he hasn't read) actually supposed to show the tariff rate that we're reciprocating. But it's just a calculation of the trade deficit. So, using the silly equation, we're told that St. Pierre, a tiny island of fewer than 6k inhabitants with no actual tariffs has a 99% tariff rate on U.S. goods, meaning, because we divide that rate by two (see Derek's article, which he should read), our reciprocal tariff is 50%:

https://x.com/a60483647/status/1907845183762268378?t=2fDogTqNqbKsncntRHVoYg&s=19

But wait, what is the source of the trade deficit? Inhabitants bought some sort of equipment from the US, and wasn't working and needed to be replaced or repaired, so they returned it, the Trump administration used that return as an export to the U.S., and now they get a 50% tariff.

I was not joking when I said this is hardly better than using AI. Really, I think they'd have produced less ridiculous results if they'd just used AI instead of their silly little equation (from Derek's article, which he really should read before commenting about it).

Strange to have a self-described billionaire as president, and the richest man on the planet as, er, co-president, and ask where the oligarchs are.

I mean, I get the joke, but the oligarchs are in the fishin' building.

OK, you didn't read the article you posted.

Did you read the article you posted?

Yes, using exports-imports divided by imports, then dividing that by 2, is much more scientific than using AI.

What are some good policies?

Back in the early Aughts, we definitely didn't live in a world where people could deal with these kinds of questions. Hell, to even attempt to understand why we had been attacked was deemed support for terrorism. It was a bleak time in American history, though bleak times in American history might be most of the time in American history, so that may not be saying much.

(Oh look, more evidence just today.)

Let me also add that I think killing civilians is wrong regardless of who those civilians are, just so there's no doubt in what follows. I'm trying to get at what discourse is OK among faculty at a public university, and what discourse should result in harsh penalties for university departments, like what's happening at Columbia. That out of the way:

We know civilians are being targeted, and we know journalists are as well. It's not really up for debate, and I point you to google for the copious evidence.

But even if you don't agree that there is clear evidence Israel has targeted civilians, let's stipulate it for the moment. So, considering that Hamas argues, and has points in international law in favor of their argument, that as an occupied and/or besieged populace, it is legal for them to strike out at the people occupying besieging them. Put differently, Hamas believes they are at war, under military siege, and therefore what they did was an act of war. Many throughout the world see their actions as part of the resistance movement, even if they condemn violence against civilians and taking civilians hostage (Israel, to be clear, also regularly takes civilians hostage; and, it should be noted, regularly uses human shields).

Is this discourse, which might end up with some people arguing in support of Hamas, allowable, or do we have to ban it from universities? Who, then, gets to decide which attacks on civilians are terrorism, and which aren't? And therefore, which faculty can support, and which they can't?