Well I am an Indian who lived in US and worked for top companies for 10 years and left back to my home country as I did not want to be beholden to the Green card waiting time or take some unethical pathways (I see a lot of abuse of O1 now). I find coworkers from smaller and friendlier countries sail through and become Americans.
The point is that immigration can never really become a true meritocracy and even I recognised the privileges I had to reach to US in the first place. The country's ethos, ideas are grandfathered into the law alongwith numerous loopholes or sneaky ways. There is never a social compact where I did X , I deserve Y coming true. I suspect globally we are at the tail end of this type of immigration from Global South to Global North as well
It means in the long term there might be more efficient ways to ship 'energy'. If you ship containers full of solar PVs, batteries and use it over their lifetime the amount of 'total energy' transported for a given unit of energy to transport the materials might be an order of magnitude or more higher
If I was getting 8 $ burritos with clearly marked ingredients and total automation end to end, I would gladly work with such a variant of Chipotle as well, even if it cuts workforce by 80% in such a scenario.
Frivolous employment maximisation with words like human connection do not make sense for survival necessities. It works better with discretionary spending
Yeah the relatively recent paper that takes LCOE and adds back a bunch of cherry picked system costs is a PITA to refute because it's inherently complicated and actually has some good points.
The problem is every good argument for renewables will always inevitably have someone come up with some kind of counterpoint that on the surface may seem reasonable to those without the time or inclination to deeply research it all.
Energy is complicated.
FWIW I agree with a sibling poster who said to just say "its cheaper".
Well one hobby I had when young was collecting these matchboxes. It was rumored that collecting 1000 unique ones would unlock something and gave rise to a rat race, this is pre Indian internet and no one really knew what it would unlock. I would look into the dirtiest of places against my family's protests.
A variant of the iconic 'Ship' called 'Shib', probably a misprint was the most prized possession. When I rethink this, it seems the poor man's version of baseball cards or other collectibles but as fun, a jugaad fun activity in times of extreme scarcity
Me and my friends collected, traded and also played a game with stone by staking match box covers. The idea is everyone stakes match box covers in a small circle drawn on an open ground. Everyone then takes turn to throw stone at the pile. Whichever match cover that’s dislodged out of the circle belongs to the thrower. Also played it with cigarette packet covers.
Makes sense actually — if everything is identical by design, the only thing that makes one copy different from another is the mistake. Rarity has to come from somewhere.
> Today’s approval was issued 61 days after BLA filing, marking the sixth approval under the Commissioner's National Priority Voucher (CNPV) pilot program and the first gene therapy product approved under the program
That appears to be a late 2025 program based on the dates on the FDA page which would make it a Trump administration policy change. I don’t have any real knowledge here though. I’m just a guy clicking links. But if this is a policy change that’s exciting for approval of the other gene therapies for related conditions once the technology is solved.
I do agree that FDA was quite risk averse before especially in areas where the risk - reward would be better for terminally ill or other patients. Having said that this is a different kind of risk reward treatment where the patient might themselves like to try it even if the risks were elevated compared to other post Phase 3 solutions.
AFAIK critics pointed this to be a form of regulatory capture as well.
“President Trump promised to accelerate cures for American families — and we are delivering, especially for children with ultra-rare diseases who cannot afford to wait,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “We are cutting unnecessary red tape, aligning regulation with modern biology, and clearing a path for breakthrough treatments to reach the patients who need them most.”
“This guidance is a critical step the FDA is taking to tailor our regulatory approach to patients with ultra-rare conditions,” said FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, MD, MPH. “It is our priority to remove barriers and exercise regulatory flexibility to encourage scientific advances and deliver more cures and meaningful treatments for patients suffering from rare diseases.”
Now, you can be caught in the fun partisan civil war on emotions or simply look at outcomes. Good work being done at the FDA, just fact.
You're presumably referring to the ideologically driven cuts at the NIH and a complete misunderstanding of the efficacy-effectiveness gap in macro-level Research outcomes at the FDA? The ones that have led many prominent Professors of Medicine like Celine Gounder to conclude that “The current administration is waging a war on science.”?
RFKs deleterious impact on scientific research and its funding is well documented in the context of the NIH. 2025's Bethesda Declaration ably details the culture of 'fear and suppression' present under RFK, and the $9.5bn in grants and $2.5bn in contracts he had cut, impacting over 2,000 projects. It concludes with a chilling warning regarding plans to cut up to 40% of NIH's $48 billion budget in the future.
At an FDA level, the same strategy was clearly evident last August when Trump fired CDC Director Monarez after clashing heads with RFK over vaccine policies barely a month into her role. Kennedy had demanded she fire career agency officials and commit to backing his own advisers. Four high-ranking officials resigned in support with Monarez.
In a similar vein, RFK then performed a clean sweep of the legacy 17 person vaccine panel in favour of his handpicked eight person vaccine panel – half of whom share ideologue Kennedy’s famous distrust of vaccines. Democrats on the Senate Health Committee summarised it blunty in an open-letter to RFK: “By removing all 17 of ACIP’s members and replacing them with eight individuals handpicked to advance your anti-vaccine agenda, you have put decades of non-partisan, science-backed work – and, as a result, Americans’ lives – at risk."
Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel subsequently said the company would not invest in new phase 3 infectious disease vaccine trials due to growing opposition from U.S. officials to immunizations.
This was then further compounded when the FDA RTF'd Moderna's new Flu Vaccine on spurious grounds in February, with the Alliance for mRNA Medicines calling the decision “unprecedented,” claiming the FDA was in “disarray,” and warned of a “threat to public health.”
Even last month a federal judge concluded RFKs actions re: the panel were not lawful, and that earlier votes by the panel to downgrade recommendations for hepatitis B vaccines for newborns and COVID-19 shots were invalid, blocking the Trump administration’s much publicised overhaul of the childhood vaccine schedule.
The only partisan stance at the moment would be not acknowledging the systemic dismantling of these scientific safeguards and institutions to the detriment of the American population as a whole.
I know the MSNOW daily hate machine is fun, so engaging and gives life meaning. But laying off the emo crack for a while would open your mind beyond partisan viewpoints.
Very positive news. I have something similar but in a much more difficult gene with different manifestation, but at least this gives me hope that something might come up in 1-2 decades.
Fingers crossed. I thought the same when I had heard Stefan Heller at Stanford give a talk 15+ years back. I am sure progress is happening but Biology is hard and the hope is AI and other developments are giving it a push
Also when discussing Mughals the most important elephant in the room is ignored. Their intention to totally Islamise India. But this is more about Indian history being editorialised by few communists and others as they hate the notion of a caste system filled India and prefer the Mughal & British rule in their sanitised version. The historic animosity in different groups exists and persists to this day and is reflected in these perspectives. The atrocities of Mughals are not only glossed over, they are completely whitewashed, especially their demolition of 1000s of temples, subjugation of native population and many other crimes are painted as something normal in their time when reality is much more complicated. This is to not even speak of the over romanticisation of Taj Mahal as something 'Indian' while ignoring numerous other architecture that still survives to this day. When pointed out that many mosques were built on top of temples whose basement still survives to this day that part of history is conveniently ignored.
The British and Mughals were fine with the caste system. Caste is a pan Indian social phenomenon found even amongst Muslims and Christians (and Jews) of the subcontinent, as well as the dharmic religions. I agree that there's a bizarre desire to only acknolwedge the Islamic empires, but I'm not sure it's about caste.
Britain in particular was completely into the caste system and made huge lists of which caste ought to fill which roles in its government.
All of this is problematic of course. However while its fairly easy to criticize England in the Indian context, it is bizarrely difficult to criticize the Mughals because some people are offended should anyone in their religion ever be criticized
Given their military superiority during their zenith, if they really wanted to do that, they could have. But we didn't see that happen even within their core territories.
That's nuanced, they were always challenged every few decades, from Marathas to Ahoms in North East. Fighting with all Hindu princely state instead of making them ally would've surely might have been counter productive. While it was their intention to Islamise, and many did, but it was impossible without an extremely cultural backlash that they also feared.
Again even within their "safe" core territories we don't see an organized ongoing program of mass coerced conversion. So the point is - they weren't trying to totally Islamicize India and whether you believe that's because they didn't care to or they were afraid to due to political calculation doesn't really make a difference.
Remember, most Indians who converted did so due to the influence of wandering Sufi mystics who were regarded with suspicion by the court-aligned clerics.
Your assumption is that mass pogroms were possible, such attempts would've lead to massive revolt and unification of all hindu ally's and perhaps Mughals losing power. Having said that in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, Iran ( which was Zorastrian ), state discrimination and oppression of Zorastrians were used.
Again that doesn't mean all Indians converted through sword, but discrimination was a tool, jizya, and even extreme oppression. India has more Zorastrian than modern day Iran, more Sikhs, Jains and even countless Tribal religions. All other neighbouring countries which had Islamic rules have either a dwindling population, or nothing left.
There were also financial reasons not to, just as there were with the Ottoman Empire in Eastern Europe -- Islamic law says that no Muslim can be taxed more than a non-Muslim so non-Muslims were handy to have around because they could be taxed more.
Half of my ancestors were kept in the dungeons at Seringapatam for decades for the crime of being Christian by a Muslim ruler, which resulted in 2/3 of them dying. What gracious overlords we had to let the other 1/3 not die even though they could have killed them. I remain eternally grateful to their magnanimity.
Just because the world doesn't recognize how awful that Islamic rule of India was to the actual people living there doesn't mean we don't get to criticize those who continue to glorify it.
When you can't criticize someone you should ask why.
Should this behaviour be generalised to all Islam rule all the time, or was it more specific to Tippu Sultan in he Kingdom of Mysore ?
Should we generalise the Albigensian Crusade as an example of typical Catholic rule over christians (but heretics!!) - that saw 200,000 killed (not imprisoned).
I'm not generalizing. All I said is that people should not be called Islamophobes for pointing out very real events in the Indian subcontinent. The simple truth is that even mentioning that a Muslim ruler did something wrong in the Indian context often ends up with death threats, claims of 'Islamophobia', and other attempts to silence people. The history of India is large and varied; there is a persistent effort to pretend the history of Islam in India is glorious and wonderful. No such bias exists for the Hindus or for the British / Portuguese, who are often criticized without much fuss.
Many Islamic rulers of India killed people or forced them -- via violence -- to convert to Islam. Not sure why this is controversial or Islamphobic. Someone pointing out that Islamic rulers had enough power to be even worse but didn't is not some great claim of charity on behalf of the Muslims -- far from it.
Also, let me guess -- you never knew about the captivity of the Mangalorean Christians (who would, lol) -- you read a wikipedia article, and now you pretend to be such an expert at it that you can say things like:
> That was a very big deal in a specific locale 220 years
ago to be sure,
That specific locale, 220 years ago had actual people inside. Like real people. It's a big deal because it affected real people, if that wasn't clear.
> Should we generalise the Albigensian Crusade as an example of typical Catholic rule over christians (but heretics!!) - that saw 200,000 killed (not imprisoned).
I currently attend a Dominican parish, and I openly criticize the Albigensian Crusade. No one issues death threats; there is no claim of 'Christophobia'; etc. Similarly to all the various interventions by Christian polities. That's the point -- we are relatively free to criticize Christian colonialism, genocides, etc. The same is true of most religions. There's only one religion of which criticism is constantly met with speech trying to cajole others into silence.
This general disposition towards criticism of Islamic regimes and Islamic genocides means that it's relatively normal to be skeptical of Islamic rule, both ancient and modern. Islam seems unable to criticize itself. I'm hardly the first to notice this.
I agree that people should not be called {slur} for pointing out very real events in the world.
> mentioning that a Muslim ruler did something wrong in the Indian context often ends up with death threats,
Location dependant really, in some contexts that goes down well. eg: {fill in an example yourself, I'm certain you can name various communities that love to trade in bad stories about {X} for various valuies of {X}}
> Also, let me guess -- you never knew about the captivity of the Mangalorean Christians
Well, your ability to "guess" could use some work, I'm long in the tooth and can reel off a slew of atrocities .. what are your thoughts on the Coniston Massacre, for one such event?
> and now you pretend to be such an expert
Really? Can you highlight how I "pretended to be an expert"?
> you read a wikipedia article
That was to confirm / check I had guessed the correct event via your description, you seemingly overlooked the JSTOR lit review which, TBH, is the kind of thing I first read given myself and my reading habits predate the creation of wikipedia.
> that you can say things like
Just to be clear, is it your position that this 15 year long imprisonment was not a big deal at the time? Are you insistent that the imprisonment lasted longer than 15 years ( 'decades' as you stated)?
If not, then we seem to agree with the statement I made.
I'll also state that in the years that have since passed that event has become an even bigger deal for some, the story having grown and morphed .. in ways discussed in the JSTOR review.
If it helps, my general disposition tends towards _not_ generalising particular historical events and atrocities as a trait shared by all {X} for some {X} unless supported and also properly examined as to whether such traits are confined to {X} or have a more common general human pattern.
By way of example, I avoid generalising the well documented and extensive sexually predatory behaviour of the various Christian Brother groups about the globe to be the behaviour of all Catholics.
The point is that immigration can never really become a true meritocracy and even I recognised the privileges I had to reach to US in the first place. The country's ethos, ideas are grandfathered into the law alongwith numerous loopholes or sneaky ways. There is never a social compact where I did X , I deserve Y coming true. I suspect globally we are at the tail end of this type of immigration from Global South to Global North as well
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