The thing that gets me is that these people are all really smart. If someone is willing to lie and do math, why not work at an unscrupulous pharma/finance company? They'd make way more money and do way less work. I'd even argue that fraud in the private sector is less unethical - if investors give money to a fraud they deserve to lose it, and regulators take an adversarial stance and have whole orgs (in theory) policing fraud like the SEC and FDA.

It takes a really particular kind of scumbag to seek a position of public trust, make a bunch of trainees financially and professionally dependent on them, accept taxpayer money intended to help cancer patients, then commit fraud.

Wife and I did Dorf Romantik on a recent long train ride and we had a great time. It’s very cozy/calm which helps when you want to stay low energy and not bother your neighbors. And I fully agree with the battery pack idea - it gives me a ton of peace of mind when I’m traveling.

What in the world is the original context here? Have these people never encountered a puddle before? Her foot is completely immersed in gutter water and his white pants are about to be soaked and gross.

According to the article they're spending $17 billion to increase production.

I like how the first message is in both languages, but the second is only in English.

Great shot! LA Union Station?

Source? I want to believe this but the first page of my search results is all articles saying that WIC will shut down within days and SNAP is unlikely to last much more than a month.

New construction sometimes doesn’t even help, when developers knocks down an old affordable 12 unit apartment building and build a luxury 36 unit building, you’ve created -12 units of affordable housing.

The argument I hear against this is that the 36 people who move into the luxury apartments moved from somewhere, and so 36 other apartments become available. The reduced demand for the vacated apartments then drives their prices down.

Of course, housing as a market is super distorted for a bunch of reasons so this effect is muddled. But I think it would be a net negative to fully disregard supply and demand in a market-based economy and preserve 12 affordable units in favor of 36 luxury ones.

Largely agree with all your other points though.

Three of the six currently operating maglevs are in communist china

This is a really cool read with lots of very strong results, but "show" doesn't seem like the right word for the specific claim the article makes from the paper. In grad school we had a professor who led the first year seminar who drilled into us the importance of using the right word to communicate inferential strength. "Is consistent with" is weaker than "suggests" is weaker than "shows" is weaker than "proves" (really only mathematicians should use "prove"). Section E3 on this website has a similar hierarchy.

My "speak up in seminar" reflex was going off here because this article jumps one - possibly two - whole levels of inferential strength from what's actually written in the paper.

In the paper, the inferential claims in the "communal effort' part are:

These differences clearly suggest a lack of evident social stratification...

further revealed no clear signs of social stratification

It's possible I missed a stronger inferential claim about the communal aspect - Please correct me if so!

I think "are consistent with" or "suggest" would more accurately communicate the strength of the results. The evidence presented that the drainage system was a communal effort is that the houses were the same size and the graves didn't seem to be differentiated. This seems like absence of evidence for a state authority/hierarchy, not evidence of absence.

Man, sorry you had that experience. Stuff like this bums me out. I moved to San Diego largely because of my experiences coming to the beach when I was growing up, and after living here 10 years I rarely ever go because it's so stressful to get in and out on nice beach days. When I do go I either pay for a rideshare or waste a bunch of time on the bus.

I don't hold any particularly exciting political views, but I'm starting to see a lot of the reasoning for people questioning the modern state of cars. Looking at your situation, there was nothing actually wrong with the shuttle system - it came on time, 25mph was plenty fast for your trip, it was an efficient use of public space, and it didn't require 50 sq ft of beachfront San Diego real estate for parking. The problem was other vehicles and the way they were driven. PB would be a safer place that could be enjoyed by far more people if the shuttles replaced most of the car traffic. But when the starting conditions are "this street must accommodate 3000lb+ vehicles that exceed the speed limit when they feel like it, and are driven by people who are often drunk or unfamiliar with the local roads", no sane person will travel without their car :-/

DW news (dw.com) is pretty good and not too sensational. They’re like German PBS with a whole English side of the site.