phosphorus2
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User ID: 3264
phosphorus2
6mo ago
Ok in the context of what you are saying US News doesn't matter. I think Harvard and Yale etc. care for bragging rights. But big picture doesn't matter.
None of the rankings or loans or grants really matter, as long as businesses keep hiring from Harvard, bar associations keep admitting Harvard Law grads, Medical Boards keep licensing Harvard Med grads, other schools keep admitting Harvard undergrads to grad school or hiring Harvard PhDs for professorships, etc.
If Harvard Law loses accreditation then Harvard Law grads will absolutely not be hired. In most states, by law, you can't sit even sit for the bar if you don't graduate from an accredited law school. Likewise with Harvard Medical - graduation from an accredited medical school is a requirement for a license in most states. So if accreditation is lost, these schools are done.
https://www.princetonreview.com/law-school-advice/law-school-accreditation https://lcme.org/about/
The agencies that accredit HLS and HMS are given approval from the Department of Education. The DoEd has a lot of power over these institutions, but not direct power to just go in and delist Harvard. But it can apply a lot of pressure. Enough to kick out Harvard? No idea. My guess is not unless forced. The ABA seems very liberal, they're already fighting Trump tooth and nail.
phosphorus2
6mo ago
I think it would harm Harvard a lot. For one they would no longer be eligible for the US News college rankings list. Going from a consistent top 5 to not in contention doesn't seem good for admissions or donation solicitation.
The story will not fully be "Trump targeted us unfairly and stripped our accreditation". It will also include "they already got sued and lost for being racist (SFFA v. Harvard), they refused to stop being racist, now they lost their accreditation. Also antisemitism." Yes Harvard will always be a prestigious institution, yes it would survive the loss, but its still a pretty big egg in the face. I'm not sure they can spin their way out of it. Especially after SFFA v. Harvard.
Students losing ability to transfer credits, losing federal subsidized loans, no student aid would all follow the loss. None of which I think would matter too much, of course everyone will still clamor for Harvard. But accreditation as a concept will survive for these things alone, Pell Grants and subsidized loans may not matter to Harvard students, but they sure do matter for almost everyone else.
And if accreditation were destroyed - what does the current administration lose?
phosphorus2
6mo ago
The Trump administration has made it abundantly clear that showing your belly is the wrong move, because it won't earn you the tiniest shred of leniency.
I don't agree with this, at least in terms of the war on higher education. Can you substantiate? Take what happened with Columbia:
March 7th: $400MM funding frozen to Columbia. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-administration-cancels-400-million-grants-columbia-university-rcna195373
March 21st: Trump admin sends CU a list of demands to unfreeze funding. Columbia publicly agrees to Trump admin's demands. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/nyregion/columbia-response-trump-demands.html
March 26th: Leaked conversations reveal that, internally, CU was singing a very different tune than what they publicly agreed to. CU president Katrina Armstrong minimizes and downplays changes. https://freebeacon.com/campus/what-columbia-university-president-really-told-faculty-members/
April 1st: CU president Katrina Armstrong deposed by congress and questioned, among other things, about the faculty meeting. Transcript (again) leaks. https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2025/04/09/federal-government-questioned-armstrong-over-campus-antisemitism-on-april-1-according-to-leaked-transcript/
April 6th: Katrina Armstrong steps down as interim president of CU
April 9th: CU gets hit with another $250MM funding freeze https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/politics-elections/2025/04/09/nih-freezes-millions-more-funding-columbia
This sequence of events does not read as CU gets hit, capitulates, and then gets hit with their belly showing. It reads as CU gets hit, lies that it will make changes, gets exposed for lying, and then gets hit again. There was never any capitulation by CU.
Do you have any examples of colleges who actually capitulated and got hit again?
phosphorus2
6mo ago
Columbia caved and didn't get their funding back, so there's not much reason for Harvard to accommodate the Trump administration's demands that they install right-wing commissars to monitor the university for wrongthink.
The Trump admin has the power to crush Harvard. They have HUGE reasons to play ball, the things that the administration can do to them are existentially threatening. They can probably fight and defeat a lot of Trump's demands in the courts, but I don't think they can fight them all.
-The total amount of funding to Harvard under review is 9 billion, 2 billion was just frozen, so there is another 7 billion for them at risk.
-Trump has also threatened their tax exemption status (501c3) per the BBC. From what I can tell there is precedence for stripping tax exemptions status due to racial discrimination in admissions. See the Bob Jones case below. Now connect the dots with SFFA vs Harvard.
-They can also threaten their accreditation status - no accreditation, no federal student loans.
-Another avenue would be sicing the DOJ on Harvard Professors. If you receive a federal grant and plagiarize or fake data then that is fraud. There is history of professors getting prison time in egregious cases. A bit further reach that I am not fully sure of would be charging plagiarists with wire fraud - if you knowingly plagiarize a paper, put that paper on your CV, and then got a job with that CV then wire fraud charges might be possible. I think it would be hard though, from what I can tell you would have to prove that the plagiarist got the job from your plagiarized paper. You'd have to prove knowingly plagiarism too, and I think that might be hard to prove to a jury. Even in the case of someone like Claudine Gay.
-Last, but still impactful, would be revoking or denying student visas. They have already been doing this. Foreign students are a quarter of the student body.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz01y9gkdm3o https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Jones_University_v._United_States
phosphorus2
6mo ago
The IRS has stripped 501c status from universities for racial discrimination in the past.
"Neither petitioner qualifies as a tax-exempt organization...[i]t would be wholly incompatible with the concepts underlying tax exemption to grant tax-exempt status to racially discriminatory private educational entities. Whatever may be the rationale for such private schools' policies, racial discrimination in education is contrary to public policy. Racially discriminatory educational institutions cannot be viewed as conferring a public benefit within the above 'charitable' concept or within the congressional intent underlying 501(c)(3)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Jones_University_v._United_States
In SFFA v. Harvard Harvard's admission policies were found to be in violation of the 14th amendment, and racially discriminatory. Which seems like it could threaten its 501c3 status.
phosphorus2
6mo ago
Its not every winter, they measured when exposed to 19 C. Which is basically room temp. So it would be every month about 3k calories (1 lb) for the warm conceived groud vs the cold. Just because they were born when its on average 10 C outside instead of 18 C.
Its ridiculous lol
phosphorus2
6mo ago
These people are legitimately claiming that being conceived April 16th through October 16th means you have a slower metabolism because it was warmer out and that did something epigeneticly to you. And it is to the extent, per Fig 2.2b, that people born in the cold half of the year burn 1650 cal /day vs 1550 cal/day for people born in the warm temperature half of the year.
From the study:
Preconception exposure to low outdoor temperature and temperature gap affects offspring’s metabolic phenotype, promoting higher EE in humans. Our findings propose a conceptional theory, named PfOHaD. This concept suggests that environmental factors, such as temperature exposure before conception, can programme physiological traits in offspring, potentially influencing their health outcomes across generations.
Is there any evidence, outside of this study, that being conceived April 16th through October 16th (or in warmer months / areas / seasons in general) will lower your metabolism at all, much less 100 cal/day?
All else equal, the same person conceived in Nigeria will have a slower metabolism than if they were conceived in Norway?
I find this noteworthy for three reasons —
I don't think you should find this noteworthy, I think you should find it not true. "You burn an extra 100 calories if conceived in winter because epigenetics" is a very strong claim with very scant evidence.
phosphorus2
6mo ago
Its a major problem for people trying to lose weight, its not a major problem for "your body is made of matter and therefore obeys the laws of thermodynamics; so CICO is unambiguously true to the extent it is a thermodynamic statement"
phosphorus2
6mo ago
It is disproved on the grounds that humans are not machines, they are in fact living animals, and hunger no more obeys our will than thirst or sleep. If I ask you to voluntarily keep yourself at starvation level for an extended period of time, and offer a moderate monetary reward, you will break after a few weeks when you smell a slice of pizza or remember cookies exist. If hunger were subordinate to our will, we wouldn’t have instances of cannibalism caused by intense hunger despite the preferences of the hungry party or the threat of eternal damnation. And when you remember that modern life already requires willpower and cognitive expenditure, it’s no more surprising that the obese cave to hunger than that a thirsty person drinks sewage.
No, it is not disproved. The second law of thermodynamics does not apply to only machines, it applies to everything.
You are conflating "calories in" with hunger. In a thermodynamic system sense, hunger does not matter. Hunger is not a thermodynamic property. Hunger has nothing to do with the second law.
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A person can be hungry and intake no calories.
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A person can be not hungry and intake many calories.
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A person can be hungry and intake calories.
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A person can be not hungry and intake no calories.
Yes, humans generally eat when they are hungry and do not eat when they are full. But this is outside of the second law.
So CICO is a theory in the sense that conservation of energy is a theory
That’s not how the expression is used. The expression is used with the implication that the feasible locus of control in obesity is our willpower in regards to caloric intake.
I have never heard of CICO used in any other manner than "eat less calories than your burn and you lose weight". But why not engage with what CICO actually means instead of how you think people use it? What does it matter how it is used?
What you describe is not actually a blow to CICO, it is a blow to what you contend is the common usage of CICO. Which, what would you like the second law of thermodynamics to say to that? "Congratulations, you have defeated your own definition of CICO?" Ok?
Only if you ignore the hundreds of millions of times it has practically failed. (I have a photo of a plane with a lot of red dots to show you.)
CICO does not actually fail in a thermodynamic sense. People just don't have the self control to limit the "CI" part to below the "CO" part. Maybe you could consider it a failure in a "people have a hard time limiting their diet because hunger is powerful" sense. Or "when people get hungry for a long time their metabolism slows down and reduces the CO which makes it harder to lose weight" sense. But in a energy in = energy out + energy accumulated system sense, it does not fail.
phosphorus2
6mo ago
This is very similar to a 2024 case against a UK clothing chain Next. Equality Act lawsuit, but this time "underpaid" and mostly female retail works vs evenly split gender warehouse workers. Alex Tabarrok from marginal revolution has a good write up.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/09/equality-act-2010.html
The court used or accepted the use of a rubric to determine if the jobs were equal in value. 11 categories, each of equal weight. The retail job scored 440, the warehouse job scored 340. Which was enough for the court to the two jobs were equal in value. Next owes 30 million in damages and must equalize pay.
phosphorus2
6mo ago
Procedural justice that enshrines substantive injustice will eventually be seen as a mask
You describe the system that allowed Garcia to stay here in the first place. He had no right to be here, yet he was here. All of the procedural justice applies to keeping people with no rights to be here in the country. None of the procedural justice applies when they break in. We have a system where anyone can waltz on in, and it takes a herculean effort to remove them.
phosphorus2
6mo ago
If they just grabbed him off the street and deported him I would be more open to your POV. But they didn't. He is not an American, it was properly established and litigated he was here illegally.
phosphorus2
6mo ago
I also have a right to rule of law, and I rank my right much higher than his.
What evidence did Garcia need to stay here? Per his 2019 removal proceedings the only evidence he needed was testimony of him and his family that they were threatened. Why would I believe him when 1) he didn't apply for asylum until it was clear he was going to be deported and 2) his family at the time were in Guatemala, not El Salvador? I just don't believe him.
phosphorus2
6mo ago
I would maybe agree with your feelings if Garcia made any effort to come here legally. But he did not. He chose to lie and cheat his way in. So I feel it is reasonable to deport him, regardless of the outcome.
phosphorus2
6mo ago
Yes he was wrong. He fabricated a specific claim of danger to game our asylum laws. That some totally different thing happened to him has no bearing on his original claim.
phosphorus2
6mo ago
This centers the criminal, and his rights, and what is in his interest. What about my rights? And my interests? Why should my state put the interest of someone who has zero right to be here above mine?
He is not an American. He has zero right to be here. He broke the law to be here. He lied that he was in danger to abuse our asylum laws. He is not a good faith actor.
Given the harmfulness of being locked up indefinitely in a country with a spotty human rights record, I would argue that this demands due process on the scale of a capital crime trial.
Infinity Salvadorans, Infinity Afghans, Infinity Somalians
phosphorus2
6mo ago
I understand why it was done by Garcia's lawyer. But before I looked into it I would have assumed that its against the rules to lie to judges in the lawsuits (or whatever it was) you file. The claim is that:
the U.S. government has never produced an iota of evidence to support this unfounded accusation.
Which clearly is not true. They did have evidence. Maybe it was really weak evidence, I don't know, but it was evidence. I'm not a lawyer, but can you really just get away with blatantly lying like that?
phosphorus2
6mo ago
The alien claims that the govt. has presented no evidence that he's a member of any gang at all, let alone MS-13 in particular.
How about we check for ourselves?
Here is the specific claim from Abrego Garcia v. Noem linked by OP:
'19. Plaintiff Abrego Garcia is not a member of or has no affiliation with Tren de Aragua, MS-13, or any other criminal or street gang. Although he has been accused of general “gang affiliation,” the U.S. government has never produced an iota of evidence to support this unfounded accusation.
Here is what the government says in their DEFENDANTS’ MEMORANDUM linked by OP:
During a bond hearing, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) stated that a confidential informant had advised that Abrego Garcia was an active member of the criminal gang MS-13. Id. ¶ 31. Bond was denied. See id. ¶¶ 34, 39; see also IJ Order, infra Ex. A, at 2–3 (finding that Abrego Garcia was a danger to the community); BIA Opinion, infra Ex. B, at 1–2 (adopting and affirming IJ Order, specifically finding no clear error in its dangerousness finding).
...
Abrego Garcia is barred from disputing that, as a member of the criminal gang MS-13, he is a danger to the community. This factual finding was made in his bond proceedings before the agency, IJ Order 2–3, and he appealed that finding to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which affirmed it as not clearly erroneous, BIA Opinion 1–2. Because he did not seek further review of the Board’s decision, that decision is a final judgment precluding relitigation of the issues it resolved.
So the government has presented evidence that Garcia was in a gang (a confidential informant). And the court has found that he was in fact a gang member. And when Garcia appealed that finding, the finding was affirmed. Which he did not again appeal.
Seems... not ideal... that people can just make stuff up in the "FACTS" section of court documents. Why are people allowed to claim things as "FACTS" that clearly aren't facts? The government either has or has not presented evidence that Garcia is in a gang. Both can't be true, and both sides are claiming that they did/did not provide evidence. Someone's "FACTS" are not actually factual.
phosphorus2
7mo ago
watching her torturously dragging herself through mandatory remidial physics and algebra classes
Children take algebra in middle school. If we want our doctors to be the best, or even good, then we simply cannot have anyone who struggles with middle school mathematics as an adult. Questionable that someone who struggles with remedial algebra is in college, much less med school. How did she get in? Don't you have to take like the MCAT? Are you overselling here disability? You're describing a woman who can barely read...
but because she literally can't read what the problem is asking without making symbol transposition/translation errors, and has to redo every problem about five times to arbitrate the inevitable failed attempts.
oh god, she can't even read and shes a doctor prescribing medication. What if she needed to read it six times instead of five, would she even know? You're telling us she is incapable of deciphering words.
They pushed for disability accommodations because they wanted my sister to be given a chance to prove herself,
A disabled doctor. I'm glad your sister got to prove herself at the expense of the health of her patients. Good for her, I'm sure she is really self actualized.
I know this sounds really rude, but I don't know your sister. I know her through your words. And you have told me she is someone who can barely read, struggles with basic math, and also prescribes extremely vulnerable patients powerful medication. If what you're telling us is accurate, its just evil. Its your sister putting her aspirations over the health of her patients. No, your sister who can't read shouldn't be a doctor. How did she get through med school? Can she really not read?
phosphorus2
8mo ago
A student being more open about their feelings
That "more open" was a political and ideological choice by the state. Interest groups lobbied to make "more open" happen. Students and schools did not used to be open about sexual minority identities, but now they are. If you change someone's views, you have converted them.
Maybe this is just a disagreement about the wording, I take "conversion" to be more along the lines of "trying to change their actual feelings" rather than "changing their willingness to be open".
We do have a disagreement about wording, because I am using the actual definition of conversion and you have made up your own incoherent definition. A students "willingness to be open" is a students feeling! If you are try to change a students willingness to be open, you are trying to change their actual feelings! That is what it means to convert someone!
But it is not just being "more open". LGBT is a group specifically and deliberately organized around sexual minority identity. The idea that sexuality, and particularly minority sexuality, should be incorporated into identity is a central tenant of LGBTism. So it is not just being open, because a person being open about something is inherently a person incorporating that thing into their identity.
phosphorus2
8mo ago
What evidence do you have for this? I don't see any large scale proof that a large number of gay people are trying to actively "convert" straight kids into same-sex marriages when they're adults. And don't be citing campaigns based around accepting LGBT students, it needs to be widespread proof that they're trying to convert children since that was your wording.
The CDC says a quarter of high schoolers are LGBT, a dramatic increase from what it used to be. Acceptance (and celebration) of LGBT students has resulted in more of them. That is what happens when things are accepted and celebrated in societies. Why would it not? Why do you think LGBT is a special case? In what sense have those students not been converted? What is your justification for discounting an acceptance campaign as conversion evidence? No justification is given.
The idea of a "campaign based around accepting LGBT students" is inherently political. It was a choice to make this a value of the state, and organizations like GLAAD put a lot of resources and effort and human capital to make it a value of the state.
phosphorus2
8mo ago
Everything is an official act if the president wants it to be. Everything else gets done by underlings and receives pardons.
This is not true, reference the SCOTUS case above.
Also nothing about pardon power has changed from Trump, the president could always pardon people. The only change to pardon was arguably Biden giving blanket pardons for future acts.
phosphorus2
8mo ago
Democrats adopt progressivism because it is useful to them-- because they have particular common needs the ideology serves. They would still be (mostly) bound together if they found a different way of addressing the same needs. That's why I call democrats the urban party-- because their needs and desires are fundamentally a result of what urbanites need and want.
I don't think this makes any sense but I don't care enough to dispute it.
Uh, the fact that we're already here? Two trump assasins and luigi. Unless the economy skyrockets and things start getting immediately better now we're already going through what later historians will probably call "the american troubles" or something alike.
What evidence do you have that any of those 3 people acted in coordination with anyone else? I have seen none and the official account is that there is none. So in no sense could these 3 instnaces be considered organized political violence, by even the broadest definitions. In the context of this thread, where you are mentioning paramilitary groups, this is not a serious response.
Political violence, sure. But 1) organized 2) political 3) violence, no.
phosphorus2
8mo ago
To be clear, which I was not really, this is the context of the original claim I had in mind:
I think a future democratic president could also do a lot to obstruct efforts at combatting anti-rich and anti-old paramilitaries.
Ok yes the LA riots and 2020 would both meet the bar of organized political violence. But I think both of these are much closer to "tacitly approved race riots" than to "paramilitary organizations targeting political and / or ideological opponents". They are not and have not been permanent political fixtures, its something that bubbles over every 30 or so years (1967, 1992, 2025).
Even if I were to concede - and say yes, ok, these are two examples of paramilitary orgs targeting people I don't think it proves OP's point.
A man that owns an acre in the urban core is just as much a property owner as a man who owns 100 acres in Nebraska. Whose land is worth more? Where do the rich reside? In the urban core. Who has greater security needs - the property owner in the urban core, or the property owner in Nebraska?
You're probably thinking in terms of burglars and murder statistics. Start thinking in terms of organized political violence instead.
The 1967, 1992 and 2020 race riots were all urban phenomenon. They were targeted at urban whites, not the old or the rich or suburban / rural. Don't quote me on this but I wouldn't be surprised if the rioters burned down and destroyed more of their own community than those of who they were mad at. Even if I were to concede these count as paramilitary orgs doing paramilitary political violence, which I think is very weak, they have historically been targeting by proximity more so than anything else. They aren't going out the the country to do whatever OP has in mind.
About 2 weeks ago ICE arrested 2 people at the same mikwaukee courthouse and it caused a lot of pushback. They were probably expecting trouble. Also some were plainclothes, they went unnoticed when judge dugan told the rest they needed to talk to the cheif judge. Them going unnoticed and hanging back by the courtroom is how they caught the guy going out the side door.
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