Now I know not many people give a feck about Suriname, but damn this is a pretty historic moment. They've just convicted their sitting president Desi Bouterse to 20 years in jail for his role in the murders on 15 political opponents back in 1982. He's on a state visit in China right now, and the council used that fact to unexpectedly start with the sentencing today.
General CE Chat
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Is he gonna claim asylum in China?
Nah, everything's possible but normally Bouterse is getting back in a couple of days and will appeal the verdict while continuing his presidency. Probably fire up his base, play it real nasty like always. But it's the beginning of the end for him, elections are up next year and the protests will be stronger than ever.
It's a nice unexpected moment of justice though, no one was expecting this in a trial that's been going on for almost exactly twelve years now and where Bouterse seemed untouchable. The special court that gave this verdict consisted of three female judges who went off the radar for almost a year before suddenly reopening today in a special protected courthouse, and everything seems to have been planned perfectly,
Thanks for the reply brother. Are you of a Surinamese background?
Nope. My father lived there from '63 to '74 though!
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Stealing some stuff from reddit:
The only explanation I can think of would be Chomsky's description of Watergate - it is a scandal because one section of the ruling elite attacked another. Meanwhile, the surveillance, manipulation, and assassinations of Cointelpro or the deception and crimes revealed by the Pentagon Papers have been buried, just like the more recent Iran-Contra and Bush/Blair in Iraq. So we remember Nixon's resignation in Watergate but that was the exception.
So, are people's memories too rosy of politicans resigning when they were caught in scandal? Or is there an actual different between the times?
The only explanation I can think of would be Chomsky's description of Watergate - it is a scandal because one section of the ruling elite attacked another. Meanwhile, the surveillance, manipulation, and assassinations of Cointelpro or the deception and crimes revealed by the Pentagon Papers have been buried, just like the more recent Iran-Contra and Bush/Blair in Iraq. So we remember Nixon's resignation in Watergate but that was the exception.
Meet the Left’s Founding Fathers
Rather than regurgitate a stale description of these great thinkers’ ideas, which is available all over the Internet, we shall take an irreverent look at what makes these figures significant in the minds of leftists. A quick look at the “Dirty Thirty” will hopefully be on some counts informative and illuminating.
https://www.conservativedailynews.com/2012/05/meet-the-lefts-founding-fathers/
1. Plato
[...]
30. Barack Obama?
Rather than regurgitate a stale description of these great thinkers’ ideas, which is available all over the Internet, we shall take an irreverent look at what makes these figures significant in the minds of leftists. A quick look at the “Dirty Thirty” will hopefully be on some counts informative and illuminating.
https://www.conservativedailynews.com/2012/05/meet-the-lefts-founding-fathers/
1. Plato
[...]
30. Barack Obama?
Classic reading. The comments section did not disappoint. Did discover Any Rand was an atheist. How does that play out in conservative world? Never heard that talked about.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ishu-international-organization-idUSKBN1YW048
Devastating truck bombing in Mogadishu today.
Devastating truck bombing in Mogadishu today.
Whenever I notice news of an attack in Somalia, the scale is always crazy:
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Videos show awfully big damage and flooding.
Will Any Crap We Put into Graphene Increase Its Electrocatalytic Effect?
The doping of graphene with a plethora of elements has been reported as enhancing its electrocatalytic performance.(1,2) It has become almost a paradigm that the once fantastic graphene for electrocatalysis(3) is not so fantastic anymore and that we need to add something to it (i.e., a dopant) to make it great again.(4−10) Following this trend, graphene has been doped with many different elements, including N, S, P, B, etc.; in all cases, the electrocatalytic effect of the doped graphene was enhanced.(1,11−13) It apparently did not matter whether the doping atom/group was electron donating or electron withdrawing; the effect was always claimed to be electrocatalytic.
...
One may exaggerate only a little by saying that if we spit on graphene it becomes a better electrocatalyst. Having 84 reasonably stable elements (apart from noble gases and carbon), one can produce 84 articles on monoelemental doping of graphene; with two dopants we have 3486 possible combinations, with three dopants we can publish 95,284 combinations, and with four elements there are close to 2 × 106 combinations. One may start wondering whether there is any reason to do so, whether all the efforts in graphene doping for electrochemistry are justified. We decided to take this argument a step forward and to show experimentally that such efforts often do not bring significant insight. We demonstrate in the following text the meaninglessness of the never-ending co-doping of graphene. We decided to follow the hyperbole of ever multiplying dopants; however, instead of using expensive and toxic chemicals such as ammonia, fluorine, chlorine, boranes, etc., we took a page from the pre-Haber–Bosch era and sought natural materials for the fertilization of graphene and used guano as a dopant.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac...PNTHT1IUrNxdutVcs5InROQRet8pNFkPRVkbqVwbqxg0#
The doping of graphene with a plethora of elements has been reported as enhancing its electrocatalytic performance.(1,2) It has become almost a paradigm that the once fantastic graphene for electrocatalysis(3) is not so fantastic anymore and that we need to add something to it (i.e., a dopant) to make it great again.(4−10) Following this trend, graphene has been doped with many different elements, including N, S, P, B, etc.; in all cases, the electrocatalytic effect of the doped graphene was enhanced.(1,11−13) It apparently did not matter whether the doping atom/group was electron donating or electron withdrawing; the effect was always claimed to be electrocatalytic.
...
One may exaggerate only a little by saying that if we spit on graphene it becomes a better electrocatalyst. Having 84 reasonably stable elements (apart from noble gases and carbon), one can produce 84 articles on monoelemental doping of graphene; with two dopants we have 3486 possible combinations, with three dopants we can publish 95,284 combinations, and with four elements there are close to 2 × 106 combinations. One may start wondering whether there is any reason to do so, whether all the efforts in graphene doping for electrochemistry are justified. We decided to take this argument a step forward and to show experimentally that such efforts often do not bring significant insight. We demonstrate in the following text the meaninglessness of the never-ending co-doping of graphene. We decided to follow the hyperbole of ever multiplying dopants; however, instead of using expensive and toxic chemicals such as ammonia, fluorine, chlorine, boranes, etc., we took a page from the pre-Haber–Bosch era and sought natural materials for the fertilization of graphene and used guano as a dopant.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac...PNTHT1IUrNxdutVcs5InROQRet8pNFkPRVkbqVwbqxg0#
Softbank CEO, Tony Blair, and the Saudi Crown Prince will help build Indonesia's new capital
Indonesia is building a new $34 billion capital city that will be steered by none other than Softbank CEO and WeWork financier Masayoshi Son, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
https://archpaper.com/2020/01/indonesia-capital-committee/
Indonesia is building a new $34 billion capital city that will be steered by none other than Softbank CEO and WeWork financier Masayoshi Son, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
https://archpaper.com/2020/01/indonesia-capital-committee/
good article, he gets a lot of hate on the left too (for going on tucker, for """being a liberal""") but his principles have always been obvious to anyone following him.
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This is a dangerous misrepresentation/deliberate misreading from one of the most influential social scientists - a man cited by Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. His entire premise is wrong - the polygenic scores are built from gene-IQ correlations that themselves are contaminated by environmental effects.
His solution to the inconsistencies in test scores, etc. is basically something like the society of GATTACA, where the genes themselves are a better indicator of your potential than your performance or even your test performance.
Edit - same explanation from an actual expert:
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This paper very recently appeared (not reviewed yet) - https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/2qfkt/
seems interesting
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The resources put in to trying to find a way of measuring an imaginary G are some of the most wasted in all scientific endeavour.
Alchemy was a more worthwhile venture.
Alchemy was a more worthwhile venture.
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Rental car overflow at airport due to pandemic + moderate drought: thousands of cars destroyed or damaged. Minor loss in the grand scheme of things, but the scenes were remarkable.
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good podcast/interview with Karl Friston
This phenomenally mindblowingly stupid tweet (most schools are closed) is a good time to re-post this excellent article about Megan McArdle, a fairly incompetent and often evil opinion writer who has failed upwards from the Economist blogs to the Atlantic to Bloomberg to WaPo.
https://www.pastemagazine.com/polit...mcardle-fails-upwards-again-this-time-to-the/
Highlights
The only consequence for being wrong and reprehensible repeatedly when your job supposedly demands you be correct and reprehensible is to get promoted, since you got the important part right.
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https://www.pastemagazine.com/polit...mcardle-fails-upwards-again-this-time-to-the/
Highlights
There's more in the article, including her encouraging people to beat up anti-war protestors, saying that Goldman did nothing wrong in 2008, and training primary school children to crowd-rush school shooters.
The only consequence for being wrong and reprehensible repeatedly when your job supposedly demands you be correct and reprehensible is to get promoted, since you got the important part right.
@sammsky1 What does this have to do with the election exactly, and why bother giving them an extra voice regardless?
I don't understand the political or cultural significance of the flag in relation to the question, hence why I asked question.
And I imagine both parties are making a political point which will influences opinions in upcoming election, hence why in that thread.
Kim Jong-un 'in grave danger' after heart surgery. Other sources speculating that he has suffered brain death.
I've been following the tragic story of the 4 police officers in Melbourne, Australia who were killed when they were hit by an out-of-control lorry. They were standing in the emergency lane with a man who'd been speeding in his Porsche, who had tested positive for drugs. He fled the scene of the accident (he didn't get hit himself because he'd walked off to pee), but before he ran off he took graphic pics of the scene which he posted on social media.
This today in The Guardian:
I find it very hard to imagine how a human being could do that to another person. It's really shocking.
This today in The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/austral...hat-killed-four-police-officers-to-face-court
I find it very hard to imagine how a human being could do that to another person. It's really shocking.
Moved here because of off-topic.
I thought the idea - how I understood you - that things like this might be unique to the US, or the worst there throughout the world, was pretty outlandish. Not because of any illusions about the scale of the problem there, but because so much brutality against so many people in so many places is commonly overlooked, as it's out of the Western-centric public's focus. And too often I see critics of "the West" resort to not looking too closely for it, to maintain political battle lines. (More or less the mirror image of what Western identitarians do.) I severely dislike that, hence my reaction.
I get now that you mostly thought of it in US-specific terms, although - as above - I think that makes the comparison a bit redundant. Of course local circumstances and conflict lines differ, and some in the US are quite exceptional. And of course a racist neighborhood watch is different from a pogrom mob, or a criminal gang, or a rogue police force, or a clandestine terrorist cell. Which is why any comparison automatically shifts the focus towards larger underlying patterns, imo.
To me, a sweeping worldwide comparison like you did only makes sense when you loosen the criteria a good deal. Local circumstances are never the same, that's for sure. So under these more general premises I was thinking of:
- people getting mistreated or killed out of racist/ethnic/religious motives
- armed rackets "policing" the streets, feeling a sense of impunity over attacking specific parts of the population
- a decent to surefire chance of state authorities looking the other way, or being perpetrators themselves
I thought the idea - how I understood you - that things like this might be unique to the US, or the worst there throughout the world, was pretty outlandish. Not because of any illusions about the scale of the problem there, but because so much brutality against so many people in so many places is commonly overlooked, as it's out of the Western-centric public's focus. And too often I see critics of "the West" resort to not looking too closely for it, to maintain political battle lines. (More or less the mirror image of what Western identitarians do.) I severely dislike that, hence my reaction.
I get now that you mostly thought of it in US-specific terms, although - as above - I think that makes the comparison a bit redundant. Of course local circumstances and conflict lines differ, and some in the US are quite exceptional. And of course a racist neighborhood watch is different from a pogrom mob, or a criminal gang, or a rogue police force, or a clandestine terrorist cell. Which is why any comparison automatically shifts the focus towards larger underlying patterns, imo.
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MEP Luke Ming Flanagan is literally all mouth and no trousers.
An impressive fire in Aubervillier.
https://www.ksat.com/news/local/202...um=social&utm_campaign=snd&utm_content=ksat12
Family of 6 found dead in SUV at home in Stone Oak, San Antonio police say
Father, mother in their 30s; children range from 11 months to 4 years old