All true -to paraphrase Otto Bettman, the good old days were terrible! I’m just saying that things are significantly better now (or at least they have been) than whatever decade or century MAGA wants to be nostalgic for. Trump is pushing us backward and that is a hugely awful, alarming prospect.

Yes, shame hasn’t always been a perfect barrier against evil. But we have actually come a long way and fought a Civil War and passed a bunch of laws to cement that progress. I’m just hearing a lot of despair that everything is and always has been horrible. What we need is outrage and pushback.

"I could be a mentor to this very sharp person but as they aren't interested in me romantically I'm going to have to cut off all communication with them."

"Also, only men get the best mentors like me who can help them get into top journals. Clearly that's because men have higher IQ than women."

For NDs, the discussion doesn’t happen robustly and that’s when the scores can change a lot, and errors and misunderstandings can get corrected. Also, most do strive to write careful critiques on their own but discussion helps focus less experienced reviewers who are often junior faculty themselves.

Sure, but people used to expect better character in men running for high office. There have always been horrible scumballs and somehow there was enough social pressure to keep the worst of them either hiding their behavior or getting found out and removed. Still happens-see e.g. Matt Gaetz.

In my dozen years on NIH study sections, grants pulled out of the triage bin for discussions never moved into funding range. But there’s a huge difference between getting ND and getting serious critiques that can help scientists refine or redirect their efforts. This is a loss esp for jr scientists.

The main question is whether to overturn Humphrey’s Executor, a 1935 case that said statutes can limit presidential removal of “quasi legislative” and “quasi judicial” officers. Modern courts say those terms are made up, but they are not. In fact, they are deeply rooted in administrative law. 2/3

But it’s worse now. In the American past most of these crimes were desperately covered up, because they weren’t consequence-free. Maybe not prison but certainly loss of reputation and/or political viability. It’s only now that we have voters electing a man who openly brags about rape and assault.

That’s what’s so weird to me- the swooning. By supposedly smart, well-educated and comfortable people. Not all Germans and not just Germans - it’s a human flaw. We have to deal with that.

Camellias!❤️💕

My dad thought many were ethnic Germans. One of his surgical colleagues was St Louis-born German. The guy would scrub with him in the morning and send him anonymous cutout-letter missives in the afternoon telling him to stop being a Communist and quit supporting desegregation at the hospital.

And Ford notoriously published that towering work of Russian fiction, “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”.

I recall my father telling me that it took so long for us (the US) to enter WWII because of all the German sympathizers.

You have captured perfectly my sense of Leonard Cohen

Also a strange periodicity of “other”.

Some of my high school classmates think these checks are coming

Unfortunately this is the sort of thing USAID would have responded to. I don’t even know who is helping #Jamaica now except for some religious groups and that small plane that just crashed in Coral Springs.

I SAID “Prometheoarchaeota”!!