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A lot of it is truthful information for sure. But sentences along the lines of “the west has never forgiven Haiti” are quite obviously biased and tell of a rather black-and-white view of the world. The west is not monolithic. Haiti is so far away from those countries that most of the west probably couldn’t care less about what’s happening in Haiti. Just like most South American countries couldn’t care less about what’s happening in Ukraine.

With the former colonial powers of Haiti, especially France, that’s of course a different case and they contributed a lot to the sad state of affairs in Haiti.

Or “if I were president of Haiti, first thing I would do is remove Haiti from Caracom”. Yeah… Okay why? Whatever the history was, why would someone think that less regional cooperation would improve anything for Haiti? Also what kind of undemocratic mindset is that? You could at least say “I would do a referendum.” Alright, she was probably joking… But she’s definitely far from unbiased or objective.

In any case I think if you asked the average Haitian what they would like to see in their country it’s probably the same thing people need and crave everywhere: Peace, and a good economical perspective to improve their livelihood. And for that it doesn’t matter if you’re part of an empire or not. You can very much be free and be part of an empire.

Ultimately you need stability to achieve peace and prosperity and the chances for that are often even higher when you’re part of an empire. Most people on earth would always prefer peace and stability over revolution if there’s any alternative to the latter.

Lol, sounds totally unbiased to me…

After all, why wouldn’t you believe in unbiased reports from a channel named “neutrality studies”?

The problem is not that one has to communicate the significance of research. However since the people with money don’t understand the science, they can easily be mislead. And there are also big trends when it comes to funding so you can participate in the buzzword olympics to secure your funding. And this is where you leave the path of just communicating your research and its potential honestly.

The second point where this Nobel prize winner is very right is that it’s all about networking, all about names. I don’t know why we can’t just publish research under a pseudonym, a number would suffice. This would make publishing and reviewing less susceptible to bias.

Sorry, my irony detector must be malfunctioning.

And which reviewer or publishers verifies how “significant” a contribution is beyond seeing some initials matched with tags like “visualization” or “experimental design”? That’s right, nobody. It’s not even remotely traceable who did what if you’re a reviewer.

Academia is full of fraud and people trying to secure their share of credit because in academia it’s all about names, as the twitter exchange above illustrates so profoundly. And the other driver for the sad state of academia is of course having the quantity of published papers as the most important criterion for academic success. The more papers, the more citations, the bigger your name will become. It determines your chances of getting funding and therefore your career. If you want to make a career in science you have little options but to comply with this system.

It’s still an answer since most people base their vote on emotions and identity, not rational evaluation of policy.

Well that’s not the type of emotional argument that I was referring to lol. I don’t know why you would think I’m talking about myself. I don’t own a car.

I’m just trying to understand others that don’t live like me in order to find the necessary compromises. Because that’s what needs to happen in a democracy.

I understand that you’re desperate but not much good will come out of that emotion. It’s not that people are evil and care about nothing and that this is the reason why they don’t act in a meaningful way. This line of thinking is just plain wrong for the vast majority of the population. Yes, people are also lazy but they also have many many everyday problems and can’t make changing their lifestyle right here right now their top priority. Yes we have to fight for changes, in the media, on the policy level and also make the good alternatives a good deal to choose. But that won’t happen with accusations and self-righteousness, I’m sorry.

You can try to teach people what a good consumption decision is w.r.t. global change. But it won’t work in 99% of cases. People are often emotionally attached to their way of living and many have tied a part of their identity to it.

I don’t care about what counts as excuses because there is no ethical consumption in capitalism. What I care about first and foremost is reducing GHG emissions effectively, within the system that we’re currently living in. And for everything else you have to offer people real alternatives if you want them to change their behaviour. And changing that behaviour will not come true by only making factual arguments but by understanding people’s emotions and identities and accounting for those in your argument. It’s clear that people in rural communities (and a large share of the population lives there) will drive cars for many years to come and these cars have to be EVs.

Thanks for telling me again. Very helpful but besides the point.

Well it’s baffling to me to have “pollution” as the first point of that list. It’s just beyond my comprehension how one could state that a non-combustion car doesn’t help with pollution problems. Yes alright, there’s still microplastics… But hey, please visit a city like Beijing and tell me again that EVs don’t combat pollution on a massive scale.

It’s nice to be critical and yes, cars are shit for our society. Nevertheless our society has been built around them and people will drive cars. They might do so less in 50 years but right here right now with the way society is organised EVs do definitely play an important part in reducing emissions. Change takes time. And people like the ones protesting against the Gigafactory prefer to ignore this context. To me this line of thinking is naive to say the least and can also be seen as self-righteous and delusional by those for whom no alternative is available now. Lecturing people about their lifestyle is not going to change anything.

Okay, I’ll believe that right away. I thought you were maybe talking about the technology in general. But now it seems like you were referring to these particular projects which are are abused for greenwashing instead of research and continuous improvement.

I hate that people try to lecture others on how bad the last pandemic was handled but they haven’t even understood this very basic and intuitive property of infectious diseases.

To me it’s just ridiculous to somehow speak for “rationality”, “facts” or “the science”, only to proceed to ignore basic facts and evidence and resort to fearmongering instead.

Are there some studies to back that claim?

Gtfo russian troll. Yeah, I look at the last three years and think: Biden… He only wants war!! Lmao

Wrong. EU countries have given over 50 billion $ support so far. Germany alone has given roughly 28 billion. There’s only a handful states that are in opposition against it, including lighthouses of democracy like Hungary…

Ah okay! Thought it was gigantic compared to the regular frigates on the right but that’s probably just because of the perspective.

Holy s*** what is that thing? Haven’t played since 6 months or so.

Genius! With that thing you always have your squatty potty with you.

Stupid at this point in humanity’s history? Why should it be stupid to make it cheaper to fly payloads into space when we have unprecedented demand for renewable energy? Without interference of the atmosphere we could harvest solar energy much more efficiently and reliably.

We are likely to see a space elevator build in 100 years and it will be a good thing for humanity. For example we’ll be able to remove nuclear waste from earth and send it away for good with negligible costs.

These are just two economic examples. From a scientific perspective cheap space flight is valuable because it enables a lot of advances, like the next generation of space telescopes, working as interferometers without atmospheric disturbances.

So I think it’s everything but stupid for humanity to expand it’s space operations if this is accompanied by meaningful regulations. The latter of course will require a lot of energy to achieve.

Finally a meme about the bridge!