Soleos

Once upon a time they had mirrors. But with the rise of political extremism and divisiveness, they replaced all mirrors with camera-based digital displays so they could flip the image and see their true selves represented, not some distorted atrocity.

You could curve the proportion to income to scale impact to something more equitable. How you decide what's equitable would be another problem to solve, but I imagine it would involve benchmarking around the middle class and poverty line. Right now fine rates are okay for the middle class, so keep the proportion similar, fine rates really fuck up poor people, and fine rates mean nothing to the upper class. So imagine you you feel would be a fair impact for a fine and scale it accordingly.

They offer reputation. Career advancement is highly dependent on publication history and impact. Getting into a prestigious publication means your work will more likely be read and cited. Because highly reputable journals can charge high publication fees (because it's in such high demand), they get to set the industry norm, which other less reputable journals/publishers get to follow. It does cost money to develop and maintain that reputation for rigour and impact (i.e. good science). But yeah it's exploitative AF. There are attempts for less profit-motivated publications... But making those rigorous while still being democratic is hard

Maybe they will stop screaming when we stop murdering them. https://www.statista.com/chart/30779/map-of-trans-and-gender-diverse-people-killed/

Interpretation note: there is a smaller list of cases where it's confirmed they were murdered for being trans. There is a gray area between likely and unlikely that trans-hate was the motive.

China's EV's putting brakes on oil demand

I appreciate your statement and generally agree. However, there is nothing complicated or contradictory about the harm caused in rape or the need to protect children from predators.

All good points. Sorry I'm coming from a non US perspective where climate change denialism is present, but less fervent. I like your definition of "truth from a rarified point of view", though I might also considered non-rarified or pervasive, and factually well substantiated truths can be used as propaganda as well. The 95%+ consensus of scientists on climate change is both factually/meaningfully/importantly true and also used with a propagandistic flavour in many examples of political persuasion for example.

My post was more aiming at acknowledging propaganda as a vehicle of persuasion for any and differing representations of reality (political groups) that exists in parallel with the the establishment of facts of reality. Some representations will adhere more or less with the factual arguments.

An interesting exercise is to replace "Communism is bad" with "Climate change is coming" and interrogate how we feel about that and why.

It is interesting to reflect that propaganda is involved for all kinds of policy application, including science. As someone trained in sciences, it's always a bit uncomfortable seeing folks extolling science as the exclusive solution to everything. The role of science in society is deeply tied up with values, norms, and policy. I think it's always good to have a healthy dose of critical self reflection, so we can engage better on the level of humanized reasoning, rather than on the level of regurgitated propaganda.

The difference is less that it's in some circumstances only marginally better. Rather, it's more that when you advocate for better coverage in EU, the pushback might be more along the lines of "that's too expensive or an inefficient use of highly limited taxpayer dollars, but I'm open to continuing to evaluate the impact and economics of it". In the US, sometimes the pushback is "you don't like it? Then GTFO, you communist traitor!"

Gotta love how the more "Applied" a field is, the more "Impure" it is.

Ukraine is doing fine building their own drones. They seem to have a fast iteration cycle with their growing drone industry. Their priority for foreign aid is artillery shells, missile systems, and vehicles/planes which is harder for them to produce en mass

Not defending Subway overall, the price increases are nuts. However that experience of yours is definitely an individual franchise problem, not a "corporate culture" problem.