That is definitely true, but also raises an interesting point, we have also never evolved a mechanism to ruthlessly remove it for the small energy advantage it would give us. Part of that is because the threshhold conditions are too small, but another is that holding onto some of that old stuff as potential future building blocks might be an advantage in future evolution. Having mechanisms that drive a species into a non-evolving monoculture is almost certainly a genetic dead-end.

Was it ever a theory? It's really just an observation. Although human embryos very definitely do have tails. I mean, you can call it something other than a tail if you want. Proto-tail, temporary tail, vestigial tail, etc. but it's clearly quite real and there. I think you might be conflating someone's exaggerated version of the concept with with the actual reality and rejecting the reality as a consequence kind of like people think that martial arts training doesn't make anyone a better fighter because they are confusing real life martial arts training with an action movie.

No one (mostly) is telling the people who actually study this stuff that they are wrong. They're saying that the headline is wrong about what has actually been shown here. The headline is just clickbait nonsense. The brain isn't suddenly revealed by science as two separate organs or any nonsense like that. There has just been an observation of structure during embryonic development.

Basically, it isn't fiction per se, but is pretty much meaningless. Nobody thinks that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is an "evolutionary advantage". It just demonstrates that we come from a process of evolution where we are changed forms of our direct evolutionary ancestor, they are a changed form of theirs, and so on back to our very earlier ancestors. If you take the tree of life and the set of nodes in it back all the way, that path through is our evolutionary line (mostly, anyway, there are other methods of getting DNA from other branches that mostly apply early on with single celled organisms, etc. but that can still potentially happen even later on). Within that evolutionary line, from node to node things get added, dropped, and modified from our genetics (including what are now called epigenetic factors). For our actual ontogeny (growth from a fertilized gamete to a full version of our species) that means that truncated forms of those ancestors necessarily get expressed in our development. We start as a blastula which is like a ball of cells, then turn into a sort of donut which elongates into a tube, which then develops into all of our internal organs, etc., we take on a vaguely fishlike, then infant amphibian-like form, while we develop a spine, arms and legs and a head, etc. with some of the features that started to express then vanishing (though sometimes not). This was observed early on and stated as "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" and even back when the term was coined, it was obvious that full ancestral forms weren't being fully expressed, just vestigal traces of them.

As for whether there actually is an evolutionary advantage or not, while no one is really claiming there is, it's not like there isn't potentially an advantage to retaining DNA for features we don't have as adults any more. Evolution through natural selection does happen through mutation, but sometimes that mutation is just activating dormant genes. In general, natural selection uses a toolkit of parts. Some of them ancient, some of them absolutely brand new, and some of them slight modifications of something ancient. An example we could consider are tails. Humans have DNA for tails, and we have then at a certain point in our ontogeny, and sometimes people are still born with them. It is entirely possible that, given time and the right selective pressures, some future descendant species from us could develop tails again from DNA we still have around. So, it could be argued that there's an advantage to the vestigial DNA for producing tails and that expressing it during ontogeny keeps it at the ready, so to speak, so that it can be useful. Mostly though natural selection tends to work on thresholds. For lots of these features, the simple fact is that there's no significant disadvantage to this old stuff hanging around so, even without a potential advantage to keeping it, there's no big disadvantage to it staying. That said, the advantage is that it's intertwined enough with our early development now that any mutations that get rid of it probably have high odds of leading to outright failure of development because, as mentioned, we have built up layers and layers and layers on top of this stuff.

You apparently asked stupid questions. No one was arguing that embryonic development passes through adult, fully formed versions of the traits of our evolutionary ancestors. Also, no one was arguing that it's some sort of evolutionary advantage. What it actually illustrates is that evolution is an iterative process of building on and modifying what has come before, which is well understood. It's like the idiotic "why haven't men evolved away nipples?" question. You jumped in to "debunk" something that no one was asserting and with what amounts to a silly semantic argument as well.

To be clear, dismissal and loss of benefits are not criminal punishments. That's just a job loss thing. Basically everyone who gets convicted of a felony loses their job and often at least some of their benefits. No-one ever counts those things for regular people when they get raked over the coals by the legal system. For example, people who spend weeks or more in jail for something they didn't do don't get compensated for the loss of their job/career. It's treated legally as completely separate from detainment, incarceration, etc. so there's no reason to treat it any differently. They got fired and lost their benefits for extreme incompetence, they just happen to work for an organization that handles that and punishment through the same process in some cases.

Ummm, what? Homicide was basically impossible not to prove. The flyboys never even tried to pretend that they didn't hit the cable or that their hitting the cable killed those people. Those facts were never, ever in dispute. That's homicide by definition. Either you don't know what homicide is, or you're conflating it with manslaughter and murder.

It's not like one of the officers didn't later publicly admit that they were intentionally flat-hatting, so there's no real question that it absolutely was negligent homicide, i.e. manslaughter at least. The reality is that every single air force pilot and most civilian pilots knew absolutely when this happened that it absolutely was not the fault of bad maps or bad altimeters. It was absolutely clear to every expert, which included the people trying them, that either they knew they were flying too low just by sight or the only other explanation is that they were somehow completely and utterly incompetent for their jobs. Flying while being that incompetent would also, of course, be negligent.

Of course, none of that argument is necessary since, once again, one of the officers later admitted it.

Once again, that's not a criminal punishment.

Who, nonetheless, are accessories who share responsibility. Especially as accessories to the related obstruction of justice that occurred immediately after landing.

There are several problems here. One is that maps or not, deliberately flying under the cables was a well known stunt for pilots from Aviano Air Base. There were complaints from locals about this behavior going on well before this incident. It's possible that this particular crew just happened to fly into that one particular valley and drop to the exact altitude of the cables by sheer coincidence while other pilots from the same base were knowingly doing it, but it doesn't really pass the sniff test. Oh, also, as far as the cables not being on their maps. Not actually true either. That claim was debunked decades ago. So, while I'm not saying that you're lying, you are repeating a lie or, at the very best a statement made irresponsibly in ignorance to defend the indefensible.

Basically, every bit of real evidence points clearly towards machismo-addled flyboys treating massively expensive equipment and human lives as their playtoys, swollen with unearned confidence that their godlike skills and reflexes would stop anything bad from happening and therefore regulations were meaningless. And, of course of their sad inflated egos killing a busload worth of people and the military bending over backwards to help them get out of it (I mean, seriously, they didn't even look for any recordings to start with until they were forced to later).

Dmb is trying to make a slap on the wrist sound significant. One officer got six months (actually four and a half) for obstruction of justice (in a mass homicide case, mind you) for destroying the evidence and another plead guilty to obstruction and got no actual criminal punishment. The other crew members had their charges dropped. Basically, they got the merest of slaps on the wrist.

These were pilots who were flying low under the cable car cables for the thrill and to prove themselves. Basically toddlers with testosterone. They caused a mass homicide event, lied and covered their way out of it, and got protected by the military.

This is the simple reality of these morons that buzz beaches, etc. There are actual safety rules and regulations for a reason, but they know that they can ignore those and safely much lower, much closer, etc. And they're not wrong... like 95% of the time. The problem is that the actual rules and regulations exist because people who aren't morons can look at that 5% and realize that it's an unacceptable risk.

The laws in question should just straight up be the transitive property. Any paid agent of government should be restrained by all of the restraints on government, plain and simple.

Low pay? Median US salary is $51K. Median US police officer salary is $77K. There might be high burnout and turnover, but the pay is generally pretty good all things considered.

Be very careful with 4 and how it's worded. You'll end up with a lot of police officers shoving suspects up onto the hood of their car all the way to the windshield to block the camera, then arresting them for "obstructing" the camera.

I think you're forgetting that, if that search leads to the car being pulled over, then to a search of the car, and they find a dead body in the trunk, the way the concept of the fruit of the poison tree is supposed to work someone could get away with murder for that "haha", etc. The dead body in their trunk and all additional evidence gathered as a result of that too could potentially become inadmissible leaving the prosecution with an obvious murder, but no evidence. The police are supposed to take their work - including the paperwork part of it - seriously.

Yeah, I'm sure those Genovese cable car passengers loved their flyover (under) experience.

Regarding b. They get 21% of their revenue from government. However, they get 61% of their revenue from Starlink. Now, I could pay myself 100% of my salary and thereby earn double what I am earning now... except that's preposterous. So, if we don't count SpaceX paying itself, it's still getting more than 50% of its revenue from government contracts. (because if we take out that 61%, then you have 21% from government contracts and 18% from other so, out of that remaining revenue the majority is still government contracts).

Stephen Miller is the grandson of Pogrom survivors, and yet...

I think you're conflating Elon Musk with Tom Mueller. Where are these supposed whitepapers that Musk himself authored?