It's easy to reach that conclusion if you have never been active in a party. The democratic party does have a good local ground game that is run by volunteers who actually have beliefs and principles. The problem is that at the end of the day the candidate who wins in the one who can pull in the most money, and that's true no matter what. Where do you see a situation where an independent candidate can pull in enough money to win an election? The message is important, but getting the message out is what brings in votes. Just as the democrats need a more coherent message than just "we're not Trump", an independent needs a better message than just "I'm not a democrat or a republican" - and they need backing in order to get that message out.

There have been some democratic candidates who have been able to get some local traction without taking special interest money, but that's only possible if they had a large war chest of money ready before they announced their candidacy. An independent would face the same challenge.

My late wife did undergraduate research in photosystem II where there was quantum effects back in 2002. She did her PhD thesis on proton coupled electron transfer (PCET) in soybean lipoxogenase, then had a long career developing models for Fortran code that did quantum simulation of proteins (she was behind Tagdock in Amber MD). This is nothing new; several biological systems have quantum effects that are central to their mechanism.

Some people seem surprised by the glasses and how they can be used in perverse ways. These people seem to have forgotten what the original aim of facebook was. The website itself started as a way for "bros" - who would have been called incels had the term existed then - to trade pics of women from their campus. How many of those pictures do we think were taken with consent? Even if they were taken in public they still could have been creepy. This is just the same mindset, applied to technology that didn't exist at this scale in the early 2000s.

Biochemist here. I've done genomics, I've done proteomics, I have customers in diagnostic medicine currently. My PhD was on protein-protein interactions, which is a big part of how our immune system works.

A lot of people are quick to jump on the fact that the Theranos system didn't work, and many others claim that it was impossible and never could have worked. While indeed their system didn't work, that doesn't at all disqualify the principle.

For one case study of how far we've come in recent times I point to genomics. The first draft of the human genome took more than a decade start to finish and cost over $1B. Now we can sequence full human genomes on a commercial scale for $500 or less, and it's done in less than a week with far better resolution than the first draft.

From genomics we went to proteomics; classifying proteins in a organism instead of just genes. This tells us more about what cells are doing (although transcriptomics can bridge the gap to a certain extent). Proteins are often better disease markers than genes as well for a similar reason. When proteomics started getting off the ground we were cataloging proteins from large amounts of cellular extract. Now we can catalog and in some cases quantify proteins from individual cells. We can also use protein staining and imaging mass spec to show which cells from a biopsy are expressing aberrant proteins (again as disease markers); we've reached a point where we can do this in real time on live tissue.

One of the biggest faults in the Theranos system was in the fact that blood is not the best serum for disease markers. Yes there are markers in there but not everything goes in there, and not always in quantities that are easy to observe. Blood is great because of how much is in there but lots is missed there as well.

I think you two are both correct here. The company was mostly funded by very wealthy investors, those folks lost money and are getting their pounds of flesh back by way of seeing her rot in jail. As you point out there were also actual patients who had tests ran (uncertain now what tests, where, by whom) and received crap results; those people of course are getting nothing back because they don't have enough money to be considered worth anything in the courts - even if they died as a result.

You're not wrong that the democrats are run by a bunch of cowards. They propose a plan, and reliably fold on it as soon as the MAGA party comes up with a (not at all) clever insult that invariably tears the plan down to a single word bite. The democrats do have ideas, they just have no spine to actually push them through.

Show us how you know essentially nothing about the Ford Pinto without telling us that you know essentially nothing about the Ford Pinto.

On the plus side, at least we still have enough readers on this site to have at least one person who meets that criteria. I guess that's something.

I think a two party democratic system is terrible and it should be easier to create new parties. The current two should likely be split.

My reasoning is that a democratic system should not be treated as a sports game of two teams. There are plenty of views and we need variety of representation, not to simply fall in line with the two options available or be treated as an outsider.

Then there is the destruction of the social safety net, which compounds the problem.

Many working class people felt abandoned by the Democrats and then voted for the Republicans, believing in the lies being peddled by Trump.

Even worse, things like affordable healthcare and economic support are being further destroyed under Trumpâ(TM)s watch.

Unfortunately neither party seems to care and until a new party can be formed, then itâ(TM)s only âoeindependentsâ who seem to be the champions. Unless those champions can get together to form a party, they are going to have a hard time pushing for the needed changes

Social media addiction is a subset of screen addiction, and screen addiction is destroying Gen Alpha at an alarming pace. I have so far found zero specialists who can help with this. It's not just a matter of taking screens away, we have literally turned an entire generation into junkies who will lie and cheat to get their fix. The adolescent mind never stood a chance; male or female.

If Meta wants a nicer spot in hell they can at least help with the mess they have profited off of. Help train the next generation of rehab specialists and help people find help. We made big tobacco do it, we can make these monsters do it as well.

That is not a trivial feat in the least. You don't have to give your kids smart phones, you don't have to have a PC at home. You can try to send your kid to a school that deemphasizes technology. And yet your kid will still end up with a screen addiction because it is that consuming. Kids don't have a chance. What today's kids face today is so far beyond what any of us grew up with that there really is no comparison.

My youngest siblings grew up on a heavy diet of Barney and Friends and it drove me up the wall. At least there was only a certain time of the day that was available on broadcast TV. And my 8 bit NES was not portable in any reasonable meaning of the word. Those barriers are gone now and the programming targeting kids makes Barney look like Mr Science.

That's a design and implementation issue. If the data center doesn't have a backup battery or generator and they committed to "five nines" availability, then they are at fault. If they didn't commit to "five nines" availability, but 911 treated at such, then that is a problem on the 911 system.

Emergency systems should be able to operate in a "dumb mode" and in the absence of grid power. If that means throwing more humans to support the situation, then so be it. In the end these systems are meant to be serving humans and not the other way around.

Well this is just untrue.

The migrants are not all back in Morocco, some have landed on mainland Spain, and in the meantime have committed theft, assaults and rapes.

This is not some kumbaya peaceful action, this was a literal invasion (50,000 people entering a territory with a population of 80,000) and should have been met with force.

Sounds like a scenario for a low budget film that sets Star Trek in a David Elisson / Trump world. Maybe even find a way to craft that into an episode featuring an authoritarian dystopian world.

Sure it might result in some people getting fired, but there is a good chance theyâ(TM)d not be following the company out of state anyhow?