Francesco Dalla Ricca

There was always enough virtue in this Republic to save it; sometimes none to spare, but still enough to meet the emergency.
-Abraham Lincoln

Democracy must be built through open societies that share information. When there is information, there is enlightenment. When there is debate, there are solutions. When there is no sharing of power, no rule of law, no accountability, there is abuse, corruption, subjugation and indignation.

My quote of the day

Atifete Jahjaga

A response from MIT rejecting "The Compact"...

orgchart.mit.edu/letters/rega...

Comic. PERSON 1 to person with white hat: I finished all the gen-ed back in 2010, and I’m up to the 400-level courses in most departments. But now one of my advisors is saying I “can’t have more than 20 majors” and “need to graduate next year.” It’s outrageous! [caption] My university is making it really hard to finish a 100% all achievements speedrun.

100% All Achievements

xkcd.com/3148/

By higher power, Arendt isn't referring to a God but power structures that can restrain the power of an individual (IE a Congress)

It is obvious that this absolute power becomes despotic once it has lost its connection with a higher power than itself.
-Hannah Arendt, On Revolution

Wow, what a highly innovative company! With that kind of fraud, they can minimize their overhead and maximize their throughput.

Ideas cannot digest reality.

-Jean-Paul Sartre

James C Scott, Seeing like a State
1998

Officials of the modern state ar, by necessity, at least one step removed from the society they are charged with governing. They assess the life of their society by a series of typifications that are always some distance from the full reality these abstractions are meant to capture.

Florida Decided There Were Too Many Children The state’s elimination of vaccine mandates is a courageous first step toward decluttering itself of any excess kids.

Florida Decided There Were Too Many Children

A picture of Yoko Ono's 'Painting to be Stepped on'. Note the indication of not to touch the painting.

A close up of a painting revealing its name: 'Painting to be Stepped on'

The fact that I'm not allowed to step on this painting feels antithetical to Yoko's intentions

A meme of Marge Simpson holding a potato, where Marge represents the artist Ellsworth Kelly saying that the potato (representing random shapes) is neat.

I'm not a fan of their art

This 'pursuit of happiness'... holds that men are entitled to 'the ghastly privilege of pursuing a phantom and embracing a delusion'.

Hannah Arendt, On Revolution
Quoting Howard Mumford Jones

NIH scientists say that mRNA vaccines have saved untold thousands of lives. A heroin addled nepo baby whose brain was partially eaten by a worm says mRNA vaccines are worthless and even dangerous. For busy medical patients, it can be hard to know who to trust.

I tried using ChatGPT in my research, but I dropped it when it became clear that I couldn't rely on it to give me accurate results or even to point me to useful papers.
I'm not at all confident that the new version will be like having a PhD expert in my pocket, let alone an entire team

I think all the time that this is the "science reform" we need to be having. Discrimination in science probably costs us more in scientific insight and scientists' well-being than anything else. AND these toxic patterns are not independent of fraud because toxic cultures create fraud pressures

Apparently Ulysses Grant's bullies called him "Useless Grant" boy howdy children haven't changed in their capacity for evil

Comic. The Most-Observed Animal and Plant in Each State on iNaturalist. (Not the most common species in the state, just the one people have reported the most times.) [labeled map of the US] WA: Mallard/Western Sword Fern. OR: Mule Deer/Western Ponderosa Pine. CA: Western Fence Lizard/California Poppy. HI: Green Sea Turtle/‘Ōhi’a Lehua. ID: Mallard/Big Sagebrush. NV: Common Side-Blotched Lizard/Creosote Bush. MT: White-Tailed Deer/Common Yarrow. WY: American Bison/Sticky Geranium. UT: Mule Deer/Utah Juniper. AZ: Ornate Tree Lizard/Saguaro. CO: Mule Deer/Great Mullein. NM: Mule Deer/Creosote Bush. AK: Moose/Fireweed. ND: American Bison/Prairie Rose. SD: American Bison/Hoary Vervain. NE: American Robin/Common Milkweed. KS: Ornate Box Turtle/Amur Honeysuckle. OK: Pond Slider/Eastern Redcedar. TX: Northern Cardinal/Pinladies. MN, WI, IL: Common Eastern Bumble Bee/Common Milkweed. IA, MI: White-Tailed Deer/Common Milkweed. MO: Brown-Belted Bumble Bee/Amur Honeysuckle. AR: Three-toed Box Turtle/Chinese Privet. LA: Green Anole/Baldcypress. IN: American Robin/Amur Honeysuckle. OH: Eastern Pondhawk/Virginia Springbeauty. KY: Common Box Turtle/Amur Honeysuckle. TN: American Robin/Christmas Fern. MS: Northern Cardinal/Pale Pitcher Plant. AL: Gulf Fritillary/American Sweetgum. GA: Green Anole/American Sweetgum. FL: Brown Anole/White Beggarticks. NY: Eastern Gray Squirrel/White Snakeroot. PA: White-Tailed Deer/Garlic Mustard. WV: White-Tailed Deer/Great Rhododendron. VA: White-Tailed Deer/Eastern Poison Ivy. MD: White-Tailed Deer/Wineberry. DE: Fowler’s Toad/American Pokeweed. NC: Eastern Gray Squirrel/Christmas Fern. SC: Northern Cardinal/American Sweetgum. NJ: Spotted Lanternfly/Common Mugwort. VT: Common Eastern Bumble Bee/Eastern White Pine. NH: White-Tailed Deer/Eastern White Pine. MA: Common Eastern Bumble Bee/Eastern White Pine. CT: Common Eastern Bumble Bee/Striped Wintergreen. RI: American Herring Gull. ME: American Herring Gull/Canadian Bunchberry.

iNaturalist Animals and Plants

xkcd.com/3118/

"They took shrapnel out of my heart" - a life saved by Ukrainian ingenuity A magnetic extractor is changing the face of front-line medicine in Ukraine.

'They took shrapnel from my heart' – the magnets saving lives in Ukraine.

The pen-sized magnetic extractors are powerful enough to lift a sledgehammer.

🧪💣🧲🇺🇦
www.bbc.com/news/article...

But one thing SCOTUS did make clear is that its ruling doesn’t have to be final. Congress has a say in the scope of the courts’ equitable powers - i.e., a judge’s authority to craft remedies in a case. It should step in to reestablish the constitutional balance. /fin

Could it be that they were always contrarians, but that the debate changed to one where the contrarian position is much less defensible, thus highlighting their nature?

-Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America 1833

Time does not arrest its course for nations any more than for men; both move forward daily toward an unknown future. When we think things are stationary, it is because we fail to see their movements. Men who move at a walking pace appear stationary to those who are running.

Between the centuries of misery and disorder there are others when societies come to rest when the human race seems to draw breath. In actual fact, such times are more apparent than real...

The fact that different organizations will give contradictory advice will increase confusion and embolden anti science influencers to peddle their conspiracy theories.

RFK Jr's actions have greatly hurt public health and public trust in medicine.

AI, peer review and the human activity of science When researchers cede their scientific judgement to machines, we lose something important.

AI, peer review and the human activity of science

Postvaccination seizures among 12- to 23-month-olds according to vaccine received: VSD study population, 2000 -2008. 50 45 - →—MMRV - MMR + varicella —*- MMR alone -*— Varicella alone 40 per 100 000 doses 35 30 25 Seizures 20 15 10 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 Days after vaccination Klein N, Fireman B, Yih WK, Lewis E, Kulldorff M, Ray P, Baxter R, Hambidge S, Nordin J, Naleway A, Belongia E, Lieu T, Baggs J, Weintraub E, for the Vaccine Safety Datalink. Measles-Mumps-Rubella-Varicella Combination Vaccine and the Risk of Febrile Seizures, Pediatrics, 2010.

Kuldorff is now going to present on the MMRV vaccine. The slides have not been posted. CDC has a briefing doc:
www.cdc.gov/acip/downloa...

MMRV was shown to have a slightly increased risk of febrile seizures compared to separate MMR + varicella vaccines in a VSD rapid cycle analysis.

They needed no facts, no information; they had a "theory", and all data that did not fit were denied or ignored.
-Hannah Arendt, On Lying and Politics, 1971

A CNN news notification : The convicted killer crab walked between two walls and pushed through the newly installed razor wire to break out of prison, authorities say

*crab-walked