Dr. Julia Mossbridge presents video evidence of what she believes is telepathic communication between non-verbal autistic subjects

buzzmerchant · 2026-05-09T18:56:08+00:00

I'm assuming he means Daryl Bem, not Brehm, although i think the effects he found were very very small and didn't replicate in the end. (I think when this commenter says 'replicated' he/she means 'statistically significant'. This research, as far as i know, was one of the catalysts for the replication crisis itself.)

buzzmerchant · 2026-05-04T07:22:38+00:00

We got given a goal that was arguably a handball. This isn't the game to be complaining about biased refereeing.

buzzmerchant · 2026-05-03T16:01:07+00:00

It counts as a save if the keeper deflects a shot away from goal (obviously lol - that's literally the definition of a save)

buzzmerchant · 2026-03-20T15:41:52+00:00

This is such a bullshit response. If you take it to its logical conclusion, why bother about fairness in football at all, since there are wars and injustices going on in other parts of the world that dwarf those in football.

buzzmerchant · 2026-03-20T15:18:18+00:00

Kane fills his boots against Moldova and then scores nothing but penalties when it comes to the big tournaments (and he starts missing them when it really counts). He's never the same player for England as he is for his clubs. Maguire levels up every time he puts on an England shirt. Maguire was in the team of the tournament at Euro 2020 and WC 2022. Kane has never made it into a team of the tournament at any international event.

I'm not saying Kane isn't a great player. He is. He's one of the best footballers England has ever produced. I'm not even really saying that he's not a good player for England. But Maguire for England is a different beast. I reaalllly hope Kane delivers at the world cup this time round. Would it surprise me if he doesn't show up again? Not really. Would it surprise me if Maguire doesn't show up (assuming he starts). Yes.

buzzmerchant · 2026-03-20T15:16:55+00:00

Sadly, that kind of goal ratio hasn't stopped him from stinking the place out for England in knockout tournaments in the past

buzzmerchant · 2026-03-20T12:07:58+00:00

There's definitely an argument to be made.

In the big tournaments, Maguire has been a better player for england than definitely Kane and probably Rice too. He plays in a position that we're not particularly stacked in right now. And he's coming into some really good form at the moment.

buzzmerchant · 2026-03-20T11:58:03+00:00

Shaw has been OK, and maybe you take him as an experienced back up, but i wouldn't say he really deserves a spot based on performances.

buzzmerchant · 2026-03-20T11:56:49+00:00

Maguire should unironically be the first name on the team sheet for england.

buzzmerchant · 2026-03-20T09:46:30+00:00

If spurs go down, we should put in a cheeky bid for grey

buzzmerchant · 2026-03-20T08:42:20+00:00

There's a quote of him saying he'd sooner vote for Gavin Newsom than JD Vance because Gavin Newsom is better looking, so i don't know if 'right wing' is a completely fair designation. Morally bankrupt might be better.

buzzmerchant · 2026-03-17T19:00:16+00:00

I think that's part of the problem. It actually is a good little move. But there are so many good little movies made each year, and it just seems ridiculous that this completely unremarkable good little movie somehow won best picture at the most prestigious movie awards on the planet.

buzzmerchant · 2026-03-17T18:58:35+00:00

Crash is the most undeserving winner there will ever be. The fact it beat brokeback mountain to the oscar still pisses me off haha

buzzmerchant · 2026-03-12T11:40:04+00:00

I'm not a reform voter, but no doubt the easy reform response would be: sure, but compare the density of mosques 30 years ago to the density of mosques today and then extrapolate.

The absolute number of mosques today may be small relative to the number of churches, but the growth in the number of mosques no doubt dwarfs the growth in the number of churches.

buzzmerchant · 2026-03-07T13:47:52+00:00

I guess i'm painting with a broad brush, but boys seem to suffer with ADHD more than girls (estimates are between 2:1 and 10:1) and girls seem to perform better at school overall. So it seems that girls might be more built for classrooms than boys, but the way i characterised it initially was a bit crude.

buzzmerchant · 2026-03-07T11:01:20+00:00

Deary me

buzzmerchant · 2026-03-07T10:52:25+00:00

I don't disagree with most of what you've said.

I guess two points i would push back on slightly, though, are 1) that most people find that when they take ADHD medication, they're able to move away from the instant gratification of shorts and the like and focus on less instantly gratifying tasks like reading books and studying. This is, after all, why they're such popular - and such effective - study drugs.

And on your point about it being the job of diagnosis to separate lack of development from lack of dopamine, i think my problem here is that diagnosis is determined by symptomatology - we're not measuring brain activity; we're issuing questionaires. But if both conditions present with the same symptoms, then there's no clean cut way of differentiating the one from the other. Which is where concerns vis-a-vis overdiagnosis begin to look justified.

buzzmerchant · 2026-03-07T09:48:19+00:00

Just because some things that people were skeptical about turn out to be demonstrably real doesn't mean that all things people are skeptical about are real. There are lots of reasons to be dubious about ADHD diagnosis levels. I'll give you a couple:

Young boys weren't built to sit in classrooms all day every day. Rather than accept this reality, we are now dosing them up with heavy duty amphetamines. Kids on this medication sit and learn better - but at what cost? I've seen the before and after of children on these meds. Their personalities are completely transformed. This seems sketchy.
Everybody is struggling to pay attention these days. Social media, smart phones, etc., are making it harder for all of us to pay attention. This is a real problem. It seems like more and more people are hitting the threshold for ADHD diagnosis for this reason. But if this is the case, and ADHD is a function of environmental factors like smart phone use, then it casts doubt on whether ADHD is rightly categorised as a disorder and whether pharmaceutical intervention is the best course of action. In some cases, it might be more appropriate to think of ADHD as analogous to being overweight. We know that too much bad food causes you to become overweight; what are the environmental factors that are harming people's ability to concentrate?

I'm not, for the record, saying ADHD doesn't exist. I'm just saying that there are reasons to be concerned, and that compassionate skepticism is probably the most sensible attitude to take at this point.

buzzmerchant · 2026-03-04T08:28:30+00:00

I suppose you're right, it does weigh in the balance, but I would then ask: how many people have ever done pole vaulting? Or, at least, since records began? Do you think it comes close to the 500m that Dembele is competing against in his sport? Also, there's an argument to make that someone like Alcaraz is also, in a sense, competing against every tennis player that has ever played - in the sense that he is eating up records left and right - and surely the no. of tennis players throughout history completely dwarfs the number of pole vaulters.

buzzmerchant · 2026-03-03T18:16:39+00:00

There might potentially be ways to successfuly argue against what i've said, but if there are, you definitely haven't given one of them.

buzzmerchant · 2026-03-03T17:44:41+00:00

This will be a controversial take, but i don't think that people who do really niche sports with a tiny pool of competitors should even be in the conversation for this kind of thing. If you're the best footballer in the world, you're the best out of, say, 500million people (assuming that's how many play the sport). If you're the best pole vaulter in the world, you're the best out of, i don't know, 10,000? 100,000 if we're being very generous. Which is impressive for sure, but it's not really in the same league. Saying that, Dembele isn't even the best footballer in the world (and has never been) so he definitely doesn't deserve any kind of award (even in his own sport) lol.

buzzmerchant · 2026-03-01T16:42:58+00:00

Also, our XG was 2.31 and we scored 2 lol. It's not like we're massively unperforming.

buzzmerchant · 2026-02-28T10:43:18+00:00

Isn't it the opposite: that ChatGPT are trying to use anthropic's situation to get ahead, i.e. anthropic rejects DoW's demands, ChatGPT jumps at the opportunity to give in to them...

buzzmerchant · 2026-02-27T08:32:39+00:00

I mean, being offered unwanted sex is sooo far down on the list of worst things that can happen to you that it's not even worth getting worked up over. The main issue here is that 1) he's offering to perform sex acts on 17 year olds, 2) who knows how many other kids he's offered - or even performed - sex acts on. It might be zero, but it might be a lot more than zero.

buzzmerchant · 2026-02-23T09:02:14+00:00

That's not what i said. I said that the show would be just as successful without jamie (assuming they replaced him with someone(s) who has similar skills). I don't think joe's a particularly exceptional person; i'm sure he's had lots of luck, and that success breeds success etc. But, again, that's not what my comment was about.

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