You can use less weasel words.
Often I feel like the question I want to ask is
becomes
I want to ask:
and less passive voice
Being articulate" is a skill I feel like I do not have, and I would like to practice this skill."
becomes
I'm not articulate, and I want to practice being more articulate
You can stop using filler words by not using them! Know what you're going to say when you talk. If you don't know what to say next, don't say "um." You should stand there, quietly, until you have something to say. That is powerful. Listen to someone who has a refined speaking style like Ted Cruz and notice how he never says um. You should also watch the Cambridge Union debates and listen to how the more eloquent speakers speak in rehearsed phrases. The best way to sound smart is to spend hours preparing something and present it as if you made it up on the spot. Really smart people will have a ton of prepared phrases, so many that they can talk on a wide variety of topics by saying something they already know how to say and just modifying it a little.
This is racist? The poster doesn't mention race once. And his point is supported by research. Perceived intelligence tracks measured intelligence well even when the observer sees just a photo.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-6494.7103008
companies throwing out the conventional wisdom on using years of education as a filter for hiring
This comment presumes that the reason companies aren't hiring more under-18 people is because of their own executive decision rather than a result of onerous labor laws as the post posits. A quick test for this is to see what happens when there aren't labor laws making it impossible or difficult for kids to work. History shows that even unskilled children were used as laborers. So I find the core of your comment kind of falls out.
Also, I still don't see any positive reason to give any credence to proclamations of the FBI. They are clearly as corrupt as the CIA if not more so.
I find that your first two articles support my position as stated. 22% of republicans believe human activity is contributing a great deal to climate change, and 89% of democrats think the government is doing too little to stop climate change while only 35% of republicans agree. I for the life of me can't figure out how that jives with the specific questions about extra efforts the government could do, but whatever (if only 35% think the government is doing too little, how could 88% think the government needs to do more??) .
With the abortion article, you should look at the actual pollster's highlights and not the poorly formatted forbes highlights. https://apnorc.org/projects/public-holds-nuanced-views-about-access-to-legal-abortion/. 64% of republicans believe abortion should be illegal in most or all cases. 76!!% of democrats think it should be legal in all or most cases. This is a massive contrast and the median for each group lies in the "most" group skewed towards the "all" category.
And these polls are just for people who identify as republican and democrat. Please read my original comment which said 'conservative' and 'liberal.' If you want to be horrified, be horrified.
[party elites, politicians and donors] have much more radical views than the median voter of their party
This is quite false. The median conservative wants gay marriage made illegal, abortion banned, significantly lower taxes, and does not care about human production of CO2. The median liberal wants men competing in women's sports, at-will abortion up until birth, wealth re-distribution, and global reductions in CO2 emissions. Yet these views are reflected in few of either party's senators and congressmen. I wouldn't take Yglesias's word on how radical politicians are given most all of what he writes is democratic propaganda.
You underestimate the power a boss has over his subordinates when he is part of the in-group. You're coming at it from a perspective of Barr being the out-group and him having to use his explicit power to get things done, when in reality a lot of what goes on in government (and corrupt corporate orgs) is done with tacit power. Few DOJ, CIA, and FBI officers have a full picture of just how their work is misaligned with the interests of America. But most all of them have a general understanding that they are to be more loyal to the organization than they are to America.[1] Through his familial and otherwise corrupt connections, Barr is part of the in-group at the US corrupt apparatus. It can be as simple as most inferior officers knowing he's with them.
So Barr doesn't have to explicitly tell the guards to look the other way, he doesn't have to tell the FBI to run a poor investigation, he doesn't have to tell the DOJ to continue being corrupt. As long as it becomes known internally that the big boss wants the Epstein situation cleared up it'll be done. Lower-level bosses who have the full faith and confidence of their inferiors put small plans into place to get it done. It's what the boss wants and the boss looks out for them.
Picture Musk's possible purchase of Twitter. Do you think that if Musk bought Twitter, even as a private owner, he would suddenly have full control of the whole apparatus? Of course not. The people with real power would be his inferiors who have been there for a while and are part of the in-group. The only way for Musk to get a hold of Twitter would be to fire quite a lot of people, many who are integral to the organization. If Musk gave a directive to unban all the conservatives Twitter banned in the past, it would take months to years to get that done. The employees with their hands on the buttons capable of doing it in a day will drag their feet. Their superiors will pretend their department doesn't handle that problem. Reports will be written saying they're, 'Getting it done.' And some employees will resign in protest.
An executive that is part of the in-group of his organization can get a lot done more quickly and secretively than an executive who is considered an outsider.
This is most clearly evinced by CIA hiring practices. They are incredibly insular and make much of the hiring process about having strong loyalty to the organization. They intentionally search for blackmail and anything in an agent's history they can use against them. The interviews are highly subjective and applicants are restricted from discussing anything they're questioned about. The CIA even outwardly say that their goal is to create their own community. Anecdotally, I had two friends apply to different US intelligence agencies, both of which were rejected even though they were highly qualified (both now work in highly-skilled private jobs earning six figures). From their description of the interview process it seems as if they were rejected for lacking the required ideology. Both friends are decidedly un-ideological, but that is not enough for the US intelligence agencies, you must be willing to toe the line or they won't accept you. ↩︎
Google is also punishing this kind gesture. When viewers skip over dead-air at the end of a video that really hurts the video's recommendations in the algorithm.
I don't really see the why for your assertions in your post here. For example:
Ok, it's not nice. Its understandable that many people don't want to think they're not good enough. But if they truly are not good enough then the effort they spend towards solving alignment in a way they can't contribute towards doesn't help solving alignment. The niceness of the situation has little bearing on how effective the protocols are.
Ok, this is a notion, maybe it's right, maybe it's not, I'm just not getting much from this post telling me why it's right.