Yeah, the whole system is meant to work by assuming the president has the country’s best interests in mind and is willing to do what it takes to uphold them. Even when corruption inevitably wormed its way into every level of government, they still like they should pretend to have the country’s best interests in mind just to appease the population, so a lot of good happened even while a lot of bad was going on beneath the surface.

Now we’ve got a president who openly commits crimes and exploits the fact that the people meant to stop him are his subordinates now, and people still support him. It’s essentially proved to all corrupt politicians that they don’t need to hide it anymore, and no longer need to even halfheartedly care about the country’s best interests.

Our whole system that assumes the guy on top will at least feel compelled to “do the right thing” is instead being led by someone who ruins everything seemingly for fun, and he’s setting that example for a bunch of people who are eagerly waiting to be next in line when he finally dies.

Basically, people do what the law enforcement - like police and judges - say because they go to jail for a long time if they don’t. There are plenty of other punishments that aren’t jail, but those are really only enforced with the threat of jail time if you don’t comply, so it all comes back to jail in the end. Nobody’s going to come after Trump to put him in jail because he’s the president, and even before then, he had enough money to make sure nobody came after him anyway.

Nobody but the wealthy know exactly how they get away with their crimes, but I’d imagine some high-ranking members of the police force and probably several other people from other government agencies are willing to look the other way for a bit of cash, which allows the people who have that cash to essentially treat every crime like nothing more than a fine.

I’m not sure, but I’d be surprised if he didn’t use his power as president to dodge it somehow. Or he just ignored it - who’s going to actually come after him over it anyway?

Yeah, in spite of Trump literally being a felon while also being president, people still can’t shake the idea that he’s somehow forced to follow the law. He’s actively ignoring a bunch of judicial orders, but people keep celebrating whenever another is added to the pile. We’re simply unable to understand that when Trump - or any rich person for that matter - gets a sentence that “makes them” do something, they can just… not. And nothing bad will happen to them.

It never left. We just used to be confident that nobody in power was stupid or suicidal enough to use one given the mutually assured destruction, and that confidence has since gone up in smoke.

So you’re saying she’s betting that while republicans will have significantly more corruption, democrats will be the only ones punished because their voter base is the only one that actually cares? Honestly, you could very well be right about the result of a hypothetical universal ethic report release, though I’d be surprised if MTG was smart enough to think 2 steps ahead like that.

3, but yeah. I’d have them on while I was working since the pacing is pretty easy to follow. Plus I’d read the manga back in the early 2000’s, so I could remember the major plot points well enough without needing to devote my full attention.

This works out perfectly for me. I started watching the anime a few months ago, but I lost steam around halfway through, so this gives me some time to take a break before catching up!

Small price to pay, imo. When my job was forcing everyone back into the office in 2021 I just picked out one of the headhunters who contacted me on linkedin, got an offer for a remote position with better pay, and brought it to my employer to get a raise and the go-ahead to keep working remotely. I’ll suffer the occasional spam email for the knowledge that I have options for another job lined up pretty much whenever.

I mean, the bleak thing is that the world works through people making deals with murderers to not be murdered, instead allowing other people to be murdered. I don’t give a shit about her gender, I just want a story about a good person winning in spite of corruption, not a bad person winning because of it.

As bleak as it is, given the high amount of other political opponents that died, the fact that she didn’t is likely an indication of how nice she plays with the people doing the murdering. I’m hopeful that she’s just good at dodging assassins, though!

Well, yes, but that’s kinda my point. If you don’t patent, you get exploited, like how the discoverers of insulin synthesis decided not to patent, so companies patented similar, but not exact methods, and now it’s incredibly expensive. But, as you said, if you do patent, there is still a risk of exploitation if the patent holder sells to an exploitative company. However, that exploitation is still less likely than when not patenting, so I support the practice so long as patenting is still possible.

I worked at a small nonprofit back when genes were still able to be patented; we mostly studied the condition Pseudoxanthoma Elasticum, and held the patents to a few of the genes associated with it. However, we still allowed people to research them freely - we only patented them to prevent a company like Myriad Genetics, who had been patenting genes so that they could sell expensive genetic tests, from patenting it instead. We celebrated when genes were no longer able to be patented; I imagine that the researchers working with golden rice will do the same if we’re ever lucky enough for GMO’s to no longer be able to be patented.

I wholeheartedly agree. I was working for a small genetics nonprofit when they removed the ability to patent genes, and the whole office had a party to celebrate. It was mostly a celebration about freedom to research and test, but we were also very excited to no longer have to deal with having a bunch of patents. Even though we let people research the genes freely, we still had a bunch of paperwork that needed to be done any time someone wanted to do so.

Selection technically isn’t modification, since the modification had to have already occurred for it to be selected for. However, modification certainly did occur, and all crops are genetically modified. Indeed, all living creatures are genetically modified, as without modification, evolution can’t occur.

The public fear of GMO’s is largely due to Monsanto, who aggressively protect their GMO crop patents to the point where farmers who just happened to have some seeds blow into their fields have been sued.

The issue with GMO’s isn’t the modification, it’s the lax patent laws that allow companies like Monsanto to exploit people for profit, giving a bad name to the field as a whole, in spite of the immense potential good it can do, for which Golden Rice is a prime example.

The huge difference is who holds the patent. The example you gave involves Monsanto, the patent holder for several GMO crops, and a terrible company that does everything in its power to make money by exploiting people. Golden Rice, however, is patented by the scientists who designed it, who likely only patented it so that a company like Monsanto couldn’t just make some similar GMO and patent it instead, using it to exploit people even more.

This same thing happened back when genes themselves were able to be patented; some companies like Myriad Genetics would patent genes like the BRCA gene, a common source of inherited breast cancer predisposition, so that they could charge an arm and a leg for testing. So, researchers and non-profits would patent genes that they found just ensure they could be fairly studied and tested for.

Ah, my mistake. I’m surprised people can be so publicly selfish as to actively strike against the notion that there should be a greater amount of people who can save lives…

This is like how American schools are authorizing unqualified people to be teachers to “resolve” the teacher shortage. It’s not “empowering,” it’s a dangerous short-term solution that they’re choosing over fixing the actual issue because that would require making actual positive change.

It should be pointed out that Israel is clearly NOT doing this in response to Oct 7th. Hamas was clearly responsible for Oct 7th, and Israel is clearly not attempting to retaliate against Hamas; bombing a building on the off chance that your enemy is within it isn’t a counterattack, it’s just terrorism, and repeating that action on the scale that Israel is repeating it is not a war, it’s genocide.

Yeah, I’m a bit surprised. Pokemon cards have sold for more than that on dozens of occasions.

You’re dancing around the basis of my argument. They’re not counterattacking Hamas, they’re killing Palestinians. It’s like if you punched me in the face so I killed your innocent grandma and called it justice.