That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.
I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.
There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
There was no cost to many CEOs / CFOs / Boards from sprouting the woke message and it made them look ‘cool’ to a certain audience (plus cementing their chances of gaining other benefits such as positions on other Boards et ). Hence they did it.
It has now been proven there is a cost and hence the rowing back.
I have genuine respect for those who truly believe in the principles, even if I disagree with many aspects of what is being said. What I can’t stand are the fence sitters who will sprout their wokeness to look good but who retreat at the first sign of problems.
Dove still seem to be onboard from the latest ads.
Ben and Jerry's went way beyond normal corporate wokeness - at one point they were campaigning to stop western governments backing Ukraine.
Amazing. I would have not believed it although a personal decision.
Story about many thousands of Public Rights of Way potentially being lost. This is quite a technical thing going back a decade or two, and it's good to see it making the news agenda.
This is an obscure one I have been flagging up for a bit.
"All historic rights of way must be recorded by 2031, according to rules set out in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000.
But countryside campaigners are concerned the paperwork-heavy process is so slow that some paths may never be recorded.
Paul Howland, a volunteer with walking charity the Ramblers in Hampshire, has lodged more than 100 applications with his local authority, requesting specific paths be added to the official map."
“What we’re doing is recovering old paths that have often been in place for centuries," he said.
"Once [a route is] determined it'll be there forever, for my children and grandchildren and for future generations, and that makes it all worthwhile."“What we’re doing is recovering old paths that have often been in place for centuries," he said.
"Once [a route is] determined it'll be there forever, for my children and grandchildren and for future generations, and that makes it all worthwhile."
Jack Cornish, head of paths at the Ramblers, said the government should scrap the 2031 deadline altogether.
Commenting on the backlog, he said: "I'm not massively surprised by the figure, but it is shocking.
What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?
Too many assumptions. Chance of being on a boat that sinks in a year is easy. But for that specific boat, you need to look at design issues compared to similar vessels, location, storm, any aggravating factors (crew). That kind of maths is how you end up jailing mothers who have multiple babies die of SIDS.
As DJL notes, the chances of two defendants dying* (any cause) within x period of a court case might be more relevant and much more easy to calculate. But even then, there are an awful lot of court cases each year and an awful lot of years to consider. Coincidences happen and "the driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is assisting with enquiries" for the unfortunate runner is a strange way of doing a hit.
But yes, it does make you stop and think, doesn't it?
*not confirmed yet for Lynch, of course, but seems very likely, unfortunately
Total landlubber but the boat looks ready to sink in this photo and it's just normal seas
That's a typical problem with yachts. It helps to have one leg shorter than the other.
Like the haggis? Of course that only works when you’re running around the hills in a counter clockwise direction.
That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.
I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.
There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
There was no cost to many CEOs / CFOs / Boards from sprouting the woke message and it made them look ‘cool’ to a certain audience (plus cementing their chances of gaining other benefits such as positions on other Boards et ). Hence they did it.
It has now been proven there is a cost and hence the rowing back.
I have genuine respect for those who truly believe in the principles, even if I disagree with many aspects of what is being said. What I can’t stand are the fence sitters who will sprout their wokeness to look good but who retreat at the first sign of problems.
Dove still seem to be onboard from the latest ads.
Ben and Jerry's went way beyond normal corporate wokeness - at one point they were campaigning to stop western governments backing Ukraine.
Although not one of their customers, I have a grudging admiration for Ben & Jerry, first for persuading adults to eat children's food in industrial quantities, and second for getting them to eat ice cream with lumps in.
17/ Ultimately, the Russian decision will be one that makes most sense politically to Putin. Military realities are important to him but the survival of his regime is an existential matter. Putin will need to decide which is the most dangerous to his regime – giving up on taking Pokrovsk and Toretsk in 2024 or not regaining control of Russian territory quickly.
It's interesting that "Mick" (I have no idea who he is) thinks tac nukes are a possibility.
I think VVP will at least threaten this, if things get extremely shitty for him.
Tactical nukes are off the agenda imo. For a start, will he want to nuke Russia, or even Russia-adjacent Ukraine? Second, previous Russian sabre-rattling led to low key stories in the press about US nuclear bomber routine exercise flights.
What we might see is a very large conventional bomb or several on Ukraine-occupied Russia. Civilians have been evacuated, buildings can be rebuilt after the SMO, and it will take out some of Ukraine's best soldiers.
I doubt anyone has any great wisdom as to the chance of tactical nukes being used. Mrs Putin perhaps.
Well, up to now, all those predicting Russia will use tactical nukes have been wrong, and I have been right. That could change tomorrow but I stick to my guns forecast.
What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?
Too many assumptions. Chance of being on a boat that sinks in a year is easy. But for that specific boat, you need to look at design issues compared to similar vessels, location, storm, any aggravating factors (crew). That kind of maths is how you end up jailing mothers who have multiple babies die of SIDS.
As DJL notes, the chances of two defendants dying* (any cause) within x period of a court case might be more relevant and much more easy to calculate. But even then, there are an awful lot of court cases each year and an awful lot of years to consider. Coincidences happen and "the driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is assisting with enquiries" for the unfortunate runner is a strange way of doing a hit.
But yes, it does make you stop and think, doesn't it?
*not confirmed yet for Lynch, of course, but seems very likely, unfortunately
Total landlubber but the boat looks ready to sink in this photo and it's just normal seas
That's normal heeling.
A rather more technical discussion can be found here:
A knockdown with sudden dragging of the anchor due to the high turning moment of the mast seems plausible, and if the hatches were open it could fill quickly.
The other boat at anchor in the storm that gave the witness account notably was ketch rigged, so lower masts.
Schooner rigged (but yes two masts). I read somewhere today that multiples of this hull were built and all the others are ketches, for good reason.
Is it common for luxury yachts to have sails and masts? It sounds a bit 19th Century.
Lots of people like sailing for its own sake. It's also paradoxically very practical as all big sailboats also have engines so you have two entirely independent propulsion systems
That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.
I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.
There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
There was no cost to many CEOs / CFOs / Boards from sprouting the woke message and it made them look ‘cool’ to a certain audience (plus cementing their chances of gaining other benefits such as positions on other Boards et ). Hence they did it.
It has now been proven there is a cost and hence the rowing back.
I have genuine respect for those who truly believe in the principles, even if I disagree with many aspects of what is being said. What I can’t stand are the fence sitters who will sprout their wokeness to look good but who retreat at the first sign of problems.
Dove still seem to be onboard from the latest ads.
Dove have been doing the "real women" advertising for decades, it works for them and isn't woke IMO. It's a direct appeal to their target market, Dove isn't an aspirational brand and using beautiful models to advertise their products wouldn't make sense for them. I do, however, think that they're starting veer into promoting obesity and unhealthy lifestyles but I guess it works for them in a country where 2/5 women are overweight.
But it's an object lesson in 'products having meaning'. All branded goods do, of course.
Unilever, which is pretty well defined by its brands, never ditched that - they just ditched the bits of meaning that weren't contributing to sales.
That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.
I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.
There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
There was no cost to many CEOs / CFOs / Boards from sprouting the woke message and it made them look ‘cool’ to a certain audience (plus cementing their chances of gaining other benefits such as positions on other Boards et ). Hence they did it.
It has now been proven there is a cost and hence the rowing back.
I have genuine respect for those who truly believe in the principles, even if I disagree with many aspects of what is being said. What I can’t stand are the fence sitters who will sprout their wokeness to look good but who retreat at the first sign of problems.
Dove still seem to be onboard from the latest ads.
Ben and Jerry's went way beyond normal corporate wokeness - at one point they were campaigning to stop western governments backing Ukraine.
Although not one of their customers, I have a grudging admiration for Ben & Jerry, first for persuading adults to eat children's food in industrial quantities, and second for getting them to eat ice cream with lumps in.
I have not bought any Ben &Jerries since the donation re Ukraine and will not be doing so.
Having said that I was not a large scale consumer of their products before that. An occasional tub in the cinema was about it. Not really sure I see an obvious upside to businesses expressing views that are unrelated to their product.
Of course, as all sensible people know, ice cream should be vanilla at all times, although a sauce on it is acceptable.
17/ Ultimately, the Russian decision will be one that makes most sense politically to Putin. Military realities are important to him but the survival of his regime is an existential matter. Putin will need to decide which is the most dangerous to his regime – giving up on taking Pokrovsk and Toretsk in 2024 or not regaining control of Russian territory quickly.
It's interesting that "Mick" (I have no idea who he is) thinks tac nukes are a possibility.
I think VVP will at least threaten this, if things get extremely shitty for him.
Tactical nukes are off the agenda imo. For a start, will he want to nuke Russia, or even Russia-adjacent Ukraine? Second, previous Russian sabre-rattling led to low key stories in the press about US nuclear bomber routine exercise flights.
What we might see is a very large conventional bomb or several on Ukraine-occupied Russia. Civilians have been evacuated, buildings can be rebuilt after the SMO, and it will take out some of Ukraine's best soldiers.
I doubt anyone has any great wisdom as to the chance of tactical nukes being used. Mrs Putin perhaps.
Well, up to now, all those predicting Russia will use tactical nukes have been wrong, and I have been right. That could change tomorrow but I stick to my guns forecast.
Indeed. Lets hope everyone concludes that there's no upside for anyone in such a thing. (Which is my conclusion, but I'm very sure that I basically don't know)
That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.
I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.
There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
There was no cost to many CEOs / CFOs / Boards from sprouting the woke message and it made them look ‘cool’ to a certain audience (plus cementing their chances of gaining other benefits such as positions on other Boards et ). Hence they did it.
It has now been proven there is a cost and hence the rowing back.
I have genuine respect for those who truly believe in the principles, even if I disagree with many aspects of what is being said. What I can’t stand are the fence sitters who will sprout their wokeness to look good but who retreat at the first sign of problems.
Dove still seem to be onboard from the latest ads.
Ben and Jerry's went way beyond normal corporate wokeness - at one point they were campaigning to stop western governments backing Ukraine.
Amazing. I would have not believed it although a personal decision.
What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?
Too many assumptions. Chance of being on a boat that sinks in a year is easy. But for that specific boat, you need to look at design issues compared to similar vessels, location, storm, any aggravating factors (crew). That kind of maths is how you end up jailing mothers who have multiple babies die of SIDS.
As DJL notes, the chances of two defendants dying* (any cause) within x period of a court case might be more relevant and much more easy to calculate. But even then, there are an awful lot of court cases each year and an awful lot of years to consider. Coincidences happen and "the driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is assisting with enquiries" for the unfortunate runner is a strange way of doing a hit.
But yes, it does make you stop and think, doesn't it?
*not confirmed yet for Lynch, of course, but seems very likely, unfortunately
Total landlubber but the boat looks ready to sink in this photo and it's just normal seas
That's a typical problem with yachts. It helps to have one leg shorter than the other.
Like the haggis? Of course that only works when you’re running around the hills in a counter clockwise direction.
Males have legs shorter on the right side, females on the left side so they can run clockwise and anti clockwise respectively and meet as they run around the hill into one another.
What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?
Too many assumptions. Chance of being on a boat that sinks in a year is easy. But for that specific boat, you need to look at design issues compared to similar vessels, location, storm, any aggravating factors (crew). That kind of maths is how you end up jailing mothers who have multiple babies die of SIDS.
As DJL notes, the chances of two defendants dying* (any cause) within x period of a court case might be more relevant and much more easy to calculate. But even then, there are an awful lot of court cases each year and an awful lot of years to consider. Coincidences happen and "the driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is assisting with enquiries" for the unfortunate runner is a strange way of doing a hit.
But yes, it does make you stop and think, doesn't it?
*not confirmed yet for Lynch, of course, but seems very likely, unfortunately
Total landlubber but the boat looks ready to sink in this photo and it's just normal seas
That's a typical problem with yachts. It helps to have one leg shorter than the other.
Like the haggis? Of course that only works when you’re running around the hills in a counter clockwise direction.
Males have legs shorter on the right side, females on the left side so they can run clockwise and anti clockwise respectively and meet as they run around the hill into one another.
Hmm… in my line of work we tend to call that a coercive relationship that does not involve free consent.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.
I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.
There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
There was no cost to many CEOs / CFOs / Boards from sprouting the woke message and it made them look ‘cool’ to a certain audience (plus cementing their chances of gaining other benefits such as positions on other Boards et ). Hence they did it.
It has now been proven there is a cost and hence the rowing back.
I have genuine respect for those who truly believe in the principles, even if I disagree with many aspects of what is being said. What I can’t stand are the fence sitters who will sprout their wokeness to look good but who retreat at the first sign of problems.
Dove still seem to be onboard from the latest ads.
Dove have been doing the "real women" advertising for decades, it works for them and isn't woke IMO. It's a direct appeal to their target market, Dove isn't an aspirational brand and using beautiful models to advertise their products wouldn't make sense for them. I do, however, think that they're starting veer into promoting obesity and unhealthy lifestyles but I guess it works for them in a country where 2/5 women are overweight.
But it's an object lesson in 'products having meaning'. All branded goods do, of course.
Unilever, which is pretty well defined by its brands, never ditched that - they just ditched the bits of meaning that weren't contributing to sales.
Mayonnaise will never have "meaning" and neither will stock cubes. They are commodity products. Dove is a beauty brand, it needs to connect emotionally with buyers. Unilever foods operate in a completely different market, most people don't even know that it exists and owns 10% of the food products in the supermarkets. Their products will sell based on two things - price and quality. If the mix of those is good then customers will buy their products, if the mix is bad they won't regardless of how many times they get Brian Blessed on TV to advertise Hellmans.
Lurpak is probably the best recent example, Arla were running a huge advertising campaign for it trying to "connect" with customers because they'd stupidly put the prices up and cut the size by 20%, they suffered a huge drop in sales because customers are rational, in the last few months they've dropped all of the advertising and the kilo price of Lurpak is now about the same as it was before they cut the pack size so sales rebounded. Ultimately, it's butter and one type of butter will be basically the same as another type for 90% of customers, if they see the own brand is 25% cheaper and 25% bigger they will try it at least once.
What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?
Too many assumptions. Chance of being on a boat that sinks in a year is easy. But for that specific boat, you need to look at design issues compared to similar vessels, location, storm, any aggravating factors (crew). That kind of maths is how you end up jailing mothers who have multiple babies die of SIDS.
As DJL notes, the chances of two defendants dying* (any cause) within x period of a court case might be more relevant and much more easy to calculate. But even then, there are an awful lot of court cases each year and an awful lot of years to consider. Coincidences happen and "the driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is assisting with enquiries" for the unfortunate runner is a strange way of doing a hit.
But yes, it does make you stop and think, doesn't it?
*not confirmed yet for Lynch, of course, but seems very likely, unfortunately
Total landlubber but the boat looks ready to sink in this photo and it's just normal seas
That is pretty normal. Looking at the boom and jib I assume it is on a beat. If it were a racing yacht or racing dingy or a racing catamaran it can be going over far far more than that. It is what they are supposed to do. If it goes too far you can let the sail out or turn it into wind, but if it goes too far the sails will spill the wind and the keel will prevent it from capsizing. In a dingy or catamaran there is no keel so you go for a swim (which I have more times than I care to remember).
I'm looking at an open deck a few tens of centimetres from the waterline. How do they avoid the boat being flooded?
What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?
Too many assumptions. Chance of being on a boat that sinks in a year is easy. But for that specific boat, you need to look at design issues compared to similar vessels, location, storm, any aggravating factors (crew). That kind of maths is how you end up jailing mothers who have multiple babies die of SIDS.
As DJL notes, the chances of two defendants dying* (any cause) within x period of a court case might be more relevant and much more easy to calculate. But even then, there are an awful lot of court cases each year and an awful lot of years to consider. Coincidences happen and "the driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is assisting with enquiries" for the unfortunate runner is a strange way of doing a hit.
But yes, it does make you stop and think, doesn't it?
*not confirmed yet for Lynch, of course, but seems very likely, unfortunately
Total landlubber but the boat looks ready to sink in this photo and it's just normal seas
That is pretty normal. Looking at the boom and jib I assume it is on a beat. If it were a racing yacht or racing dingy or a racing catamaran it can be going over far far more than that. It is what they are supposed to do. If it goes too far you can let the sail out or turn it into wind, but if it goes too far the sails will spill the wind and the keel will prevent it from capsizing. In a dingy or catamaran there is no keel so you go for a swim (which I have more times than I care to remember).
I remember spending a happy afternoon on a small 'uncapsizeable' training boat in dead calm on loch goil trying to capsize it while the instructor laughed at us (I think they're was a bet involved). We did get the tip of the mast to touch the water.
ETA: No, I think what we managed was to get the guy hanging off the top of the mast into the water, not the mast itself
Story about many thousands of Public Rights of Way potentially being lost. This is quite a technical thing going back a decade or two, and it's good to see it making the news agenda.
This is an obscure one I have been flagging up for a bit.
"All historic rights of way must be recorded by 2031, according to rules set out in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000.
But countryside campaigners are concerned the paperwork-heavy process is so slow that some paths may never be recorded.
Paul Howland, a volunteer with walking charity the Ramblers in Hampshire, has lodged more than 100 applications with his local authority, requesting specific paths be added to the official map."
“What we’re doing is recovering old paths that have often been in place for centuries," he said.
"Once [a route is] determined it'll be there forever, for my children and grandchildren and for future generations, and that makes it all worthwhile."“What we’re doing is recovering old paths that have often been in place for centuries," he said.
"Once [a route is] determined it'll be there forever, for my children and grandchildren and for future generations, and that makes it all worthwhile."
Jack Cornish, head of paths at the Ramblers, said the government should scrap the 2031 deadline altogether.
Commenting on the backlog, he said: "I'm not massively surprised by the figure, but it is shocking.
Make the assumption that any rights of way "recorded" by paperwork submitted by 2031 have been preserved, unless they have been specifically considered and thrown out.
This could end up being quite awful if it's true. It's so difficult to make sure kids don't eat random bush berries, I have no idea why an adult would choose to do it.
That's nuts.
Potatoes and tomatoes are part of the same family (as is tobacco) and they always strike me as suspicious looking. I don't know who first ate them but they were braver than I would be.
Alkaloids are bad for you, folks!
Could have been worse - she could have found some 'parsnips' on the beach. Hemlock water-dropwort is our most poisonous plant and is sometimes mistaken for such.
Many months ago we found loads on the beach at Southwold. The dog was very interested. I assumed parsnips, but also thought how? A parsnip freighter going down seemed unlikely. Then I looked them up. Eek.
Hemlock Water-dropwort is along most of the lanes arounfd us.
If I ever need to check out, then a caeser salad of the leaves would be as effective (and less messy for everyone else) than walking in front of a train.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?
Too many assumptions. Chance of being on a boat that sinks in a year is easy. But for that specific boat, you need to look at design issues compared to similar vessels, location, storm, any aggravating factors (crew). That kind of maths is how you end up jailing mothers who have multiple babies die of SIDS.
As DJL notes, the chances of two defendants dying* (any cause) within x period of a court case might be more relevant and much more easy to calculate. But even then, there are an awful lot of court cases each year and an awful lot of years to consider. Coincidences happen and "the driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is assisting with enquiries" for the unfortunate runner is a strange way of doing a hit.
But yes, it does make you stop and think, doesn't it?
*not confirmed yet for Lynch, of course, but seems very likely, unfortunately
Total landlubber but the boat looks ready to sink in this photo and it's just normal seas
That is pretty normal. Looking at the boom and jib I assume it is on a beat. If it were a racing yacht or racing dingy or a racing catamaran it can be going over far far more than that. It is what they are supposed to do. If it goes too far you can let the sail out or turn it into wind, but if it goes too far the sails will spill the wind and the keel will prevent it from capsizing. In a dingy or catamaran there is no keel so you go for a swim (which I have more times than I care to remember).
I'm looking at an open deck a few tens of centimetres from the waterline. How do they avoid the boat being flooded?
Floaty things tend to float, other things being equal. If they stop being equal that cockpit is be passively self-draining (with drains which discharge above the waterline) and have all sorts of automatic pumps as backup.
That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.
I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.
There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
There was no cost to many CEOs / CFOs / Boards from sprouting the woke message and it made them look ‘cool’ to a certain audience (plus cementing their chances of gaining other benefits such as positions on other Boards et ). Hence they did it.
It has now been proven there is a cost and hence the rowing back.
I have genuine respect for those who truly believe in the principles, even if I disagree with many aspects of what is being said. What I can’t stand are the fence sitters who will sprout their wokeness to look good but who retreat at the first sign of problems.
Dove still seem to be onboard from the latest ads.
Dove have been doing the "real women" advertising for decades, it works for them and isn't woke IMO. It's a direct appeal to their target market, Dove isn't an aspirational brand and using beautiful models to advertise their products wouldn't make sense for them. I do, however, think that they're starting veer into promoting obesity and unhealthy lifestyles but I guess it works for them in a country where 2/5 women are overweight.
But it's an object lesson in 'products having meaning'. All branded goods do, of course.
Unilever, which is pretty well defined by its brands, never ditched that - they just ditched the bits of meaning that weren't contributing to sales.
Mayonnaise will never have "meaning" and neither will stock cubes. They are commodity products...
Not for Unilever. Otherwise they wouldn't be called Hellmans or Knorr, and they wouldn't bother advertising.
That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.
I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.
There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
There was no cost to many CEOs / CFOs / Boards from sprouting the woke message and it made them look ‘cool’ to a certain audience (plus cementing their chances of gaining other benefits such as positions on other Boards et ). Hence they did it.
It has now been proven there is a cost and hence the rowing back.
I have genuine respect for those who truly believe in the principles, even if I disagree with many aspects of what is being said. What I can’t stand are the fence sitters who will sprout their wokeness to look good but who retreat at the first sign of problems.
Dove still seem to be onboard from the latest ads.
Dove have been doing the "real women" advertising for decades, it works for them and isn't woke IMO. It's a direct appeal to their target market, Dove isn't an aspirational brand and using beautiful models to advertise their products wouldn't make sense for them. I do, however, think that they're starting veer into promoting obesity and unhealthy lifestyles but I guess it works for them in a country where 2/5 women are overweight.
But it's an object lesson in 'products having meaning'. All branded goods do, of course.
Unilever, which is pretty well defined by its brands, never ditched that - they just ditched the bits of meaning that weren't contributing to sales.
Mayonnaise will never have "meaning" and neither will stock cubes. They are commodity products. Dove is a beauty brand, it needs to connect emotionally with buyers. Unilever foods operate in a completely different market, most people don't even know that it exists and owns 10% of the food products in the supermarkets. Their products will sell based on two things - price and quality. If the mix of those is good then customers will buy their products, if the mix is bad they won't regardless of how many times they get Brian Blessed on TV to advertise Hellmans.
Lurpak is probably the best recent example, Arla were running a huge advertising campaign for it trying to "connect" with customers because they'd stupidly put the prices up and cut the size by 20%, they suffered a huge drop in sales because customers are rational, in the last few months they've dropped all of the advertising and the kilo price of Lurpak is now about the same as it was before they cut the pack size so sales rebounded. Ultimately, it's butter and one type of butter will be basically the same as another type for 90% of customers, if they see the own brand is 25% cheaper and 25% bigger they will try it at least once.
You've clearly never heard of TanTan Mayo:
Introducing "TanMan Mayo: The Candidate's Choice!"—the only mayonnaise that captures the rich, golden glow of democracy in a jar. Crafted with the finest eggs and just a touch of carrot juice, TanMan Mayo is the condiment for those who understand that appearances are everything.
Why settle for a pale, unremarkable mayo when you can have one that shines as brightly as your favorite over-bronzed politician? TanMan Mayo is perfect for slathering on your sandwiches, just like your candidates slather on that irresistible, sun-kissed look. It's the secret sauce behind every successful campaign, giving your bland meals a burst of color and charisma, even if the content leaves something to be desired.
But that's not all! TanMan Mayo doubles as a quick touch-up for your own tan. Got a debate coming up? Smear a little TanMan on your face for that extra oomph. Remember, in the race to the top, it's not just about what you say, but how you say it—with a golden glow that screams, "I'm ready to lead!"
TanMan Mayo: Because in politics, if you can’t convince them, at least you can *dazzle* them.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "1 in 5 million chance" of having the wrong person is actually a "9 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asking for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
17/ Ultimately, the Russian decision will be one that makes most sense politically to Putin. Military realities are important to him but the survival of his regime is an existential matter. Putin will need to decide which is the most dangerous to his regime – giving up on taking Pokrovsk and Toretsk in 2024 or not regaining control of Russian territory quickly.
To put it bluntly, he has almost no army left. That after two weeks, he’s been unable to stop a continuous advancement by the enemy into Kursk, is astonishing.
Two weeks ago we laughed that this was a daring raid by a bunch of Ukranian special forces, to put a few blue and yellow flags around then get out quickly, but it’s clearly now turned into a full-scale invasion of Russia, with tens of thousands of civilians evacuating every day.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I'm sure there are many people here that could write such a header, but stats is the most likely area to inflict a mathematical face-plant.
We had a link the other day suggesting that random wasn't random.
Anyway, Mathematicians are expensive! I'd need at least a fiver.
That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.
I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.
There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
There was no cost to many CEOs / CFOs / Boards from sprouting the woke message and it made them look ‘cool’ to a certain audience (plus cementing their chances of gaining other benefits such as positions on other Boards et ). Hence they did it.
It has now been proven there is a cost and hence the rowing back.
I have genuine respect for those who truly believe in the principles, even if I disagree with many aspects of what is being said. What I can’t stand are the fence sitters who will sprout their wokeness to look good but who retreat at the first sign of problems.
Dove still seem to be onboard from the latest ads.
Dove have been doing the "real women" advertising for decades, it works for them and isn't woke IMO. It's a direct appeal to their target market, Dove isn't an aspirational brand and using beautiful models to advertise their products wouldn't make sense for them. I do, however, think that they're starting veer into promoting obesity and unhealthy lifestyles but I guess it works for them in a country where 2/5 women are overweight.
But it's an object lesson in 'products having meaning'. All branded goods do, of course.
Unilever, which is pretty well defined by its brands, never ditched that - they just ditched the bits of meaning that weren't contributing to sales.
Mayonnaise will never have "meaning" and neither will stock cubes. They are commodity products...
Not for Unilever. Otherwise they wouldn't be called Hellmans or Knorr, and they wouldn't bother advertising.
But they are and the new CEO has recognised that, which is why advertising for those commodity brands has been pulled back across TV and online. Mayonnaise will never have "meaning" and Unilever management has adjusted the marketing strategy to reflect the reality of their product line up better.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
Is that so? Sad to hear it.
I quite liked Owen and thought he offered a lot to the national conversation.
But sounds like he has strayed into the deep end of the online pool...
It happens to everyone on Twitter eventually. Dave had it right, too many tweets make a twat.
I've quit twitter for Bluesky. Less addictive, less going on (which is a positive really) and no Musk. So far has been good.
But ultimately suspect that kind of social media is just a massive time waste.
I know someone who aborted a Tesla purchase because of Musk's antics.
You just had to get abortion in there
Fwiw, I've seen a bunch of windscreen sunshades in California that say "I bought my Tesla before Elon went mad"
Other EVs are available. And on that note, I see Octopus are offering an hour of free lecky again tomorrow. That's the third time in a week. I don't do many miles, so at this rate I'm going to be able to run my car for nothing during the summer.
This could end up being quite awful if it's true. It's so difficult to make sure kids don't eat random bush berries, I have no idea why an adult would choose to do it.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Thanks - I think my figures are probably going back 20 years at least.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.
I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.
There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
There was no cost to many CEOs / CFOs / Boards from sprouting the woke message and it made them look ‘cool’ to a certain audience (plus cementing their chances of gaining other benefits such as positions on other Boards et ). Hence they did it.
It has now been proven there is a cost and hence the rowing back.
I have genuine respect for those who truly believe in the principles, even if I disagree with many aspects of what is being said. What I can’t stand are the fence sitters who will sprout their wokeness to look good but who retreat at the first sign of problems.
Dove still seem to be onboard from the latest ads.
Dove have been doing the "real women" advertising for decades, it works for them and isn't woke IMO. It's a direct appeal to their target market, Dove isn't an aspirational brand and using beautiful models to advertise their products wouldn't make sense for them. I do, however, think that they're starting veer into promoting obesity and unhealthy lifestyles but I guess it works for them in a country where 2/5 women are overweight.
But it's an object lesson in 'products having meaning'. All branded goods do, of course.
Unilever, which is pretty well defined by its brands, never ditched that - they just ditched the bits of meaning that weren't contributing to sales.
Mayonnaise will never have "meaning" and neither will stock cubes. They are commodity products...
Not for Unilever. Otherwise they wouldn't be called Hellmans or Knorr, and they wouldn't bother advertising.
But they are and the new CEO has recognised that, which is why advertising for those commodity brands has been pulled back across TV and online. Mayonnaise will never have "meaning" and Unilever management has adjusted the marketing strategy to reflect the reality of their product line up better.
No, they've just realised that some brands have more value than others.
'Meaning' was never the problem. Trying to attach meaning which was more than a given product could ever bear was the problem.
To risk analogy, a single word, and a novel both carry meaning. Just that one carries a lot more weight than the other.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
Is that so? Sad to hear it.
I quite liked Owen and thought he offered a lot to the national conversation.
But sounds like he has strayed into the deep end of the online pool...
It happens to everyone on Twitter eventually. Dave had it right, too many tweets make a twat.
I've quit twitter for Bluesky. Less addictive, less going on (which is a positive really) and no Musk. So far has been good.
But ultimately suspect that kind of social media is just a massive time waste.
I know someone who aborted a Tesla purchase because of Musk's antics.
You just had to get abortion in there
Fwiw, I've seen a bunch of windscreen sunshades in California that say "I bought my Tesla before Elon went mad"
Other EVs are available. And on that note, I see Octopus are offering an hour of free lecky again tomorrow. That's the third time in a week. I don't do many miles, so at this rate I'm going to be able to run my car for nothing during the summer.
Oh, I drive a completely normal, not in the least bit impractical, electric pickup truck. From a company other than Tesla.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Thanks - I think my figures are probably going back 20 years at least.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
No, but they routinely take a DNA swab from someone who is in custody for any reason.
I had a particularly smart Jury question recently. They asked, how did they know to check the DNA of the accused? The answer, of course, is that the DNA tested had matched an entry in the DNA database because the accused had been previously convicted. Of course the Judge did not tell them that but someone on the jury had worked it out.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Such probability calculations are also often wrong, as they ignore confounding factors.
That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.
I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.
There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
There was no cost to many CEOs / CFOs / Boards from sprouting the woke message and it made them look ‘cool’ to a certain audience (plus cementing their chances of gaining other benefits such as positions on other Boards et ). Hence they did it.
It has now been proven there is a cost and hence the rowing back.
I have genuine respect for those who truly believe in the principles, even if I disagree with many aspects of what is being said. What I can’t stand are the fence sitters who will sprout their wokeness to look good but who retreat at the first sign of problems.
Dove still seem to be onboard from the latest ads.
Dove have been doing the "real women" advertising for decades, it works for them and isn't woke IMO. It's a direct appeal to their target market, Dove isn't an aspirational brand and using beautiful models to advertise their products wouldn't make sense for them. I do, however, think that they're starting veer into promoting obesity and unhealthy lifestyles but I guess it works for them in a country where 2/5 women are overweight.
But it's an object lesson in 'products having meaning'. All branded goods do, of course.
Unilever, which is pretty well defined by its brands, never ditched that - they just ditched the bits of meaning that weren't contributing to sales.
Mayonnaise will never have "meaning" and neither will stock cubes. They are commodity products. Dove is a beauty brand, it needs to connect emotionally with buyers. Unilever foods operate in a completely different market, most people don't even know that it exists and owns 10% of the food products in the supermarkets. Their products will sell based on two things - price and quality. If the mix of those is good then customers will buy their products, if the mix is bad they won't regardless of how many times they get Brian Blessed on TV to advertise Hellmans.
Lurpak is probably the best recent example, Arla were running a huge advertising campaign for it trying to "connect" with customers because they'd stupidly put the prices up and cut the size by 20%, they suffered a huge drop in sales because customers are rational, in the last few months they've dropped all of the advertising and the kilo price of Lurpak is now about the same as it was before they cut the pack size so sales rebounded. Ultimately, it's butter and one type of butter will be basically the same as another type for 90% of customers, if they see the own brand is 25% cheaper and 25% bigger they will try it at least once.
I'm not sure I subscribe to this. Lurpak is still a premium-priced product and manages to be so because of its premium brand positioning. I don't keep up with their price (I try to buy British dairy) but it seems they just got greedy. But that's very different from saying butter is just sold by the yard and the cheapest wins.
I also don't think it's all about making the customer 'feel' something as in get weepy during an advertisement, but it is about occupying a position in the consumers' mind that is beyond 'what you get for the price'. If anything, I think most brands would benefit from going back to their original positioning strategies (Volvo = safety) rather than silly emoting adverts, but that doesn't undermine the branding concept, it just means modern advertising is crap.
"Airport given green light for millions more passengers as Rayner approves expansion Angela Rayner overrules local Labour council in ruling on London City Airport"
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Thanks - I think my figures are probably going back 20 years at least.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
No, but they routinely take a DNA swab from someone who is in custody for any reason.
I had a particularly smart Jury question recently. They asked, how did they know to check the DNA of the accused? The answer, of course, is that the DNA tested had matched an entry in the DNA database because the accused had been previously convicted. Of course the Judge did not tell them that but someone on the jury had worked it out.
It is worth remembering that whenever you submit DNA for one of those "profiling companies" to see whether you are susceptible to skin cancer or dementia or supporting Reform or whatever, then the default tick box allows the the lab to share the results with law enforcement. (In the US at least.)
What this means is that when they get DNA at a crime scene, they can usually find a couple of people who are cousins of the accused. This can really help them narrow down where they should be looking.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Thanks - I think my figures are probably going back 20 years at least.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
No, but they routinely take a DNA swab from someone who is in custody for any reason.
I had a particularly smart Jury question recently. They asked, how did they know to check the DNA of the accused? The answer, of course, is that the DNA tested had matched an entry in the DNA database because the accused had been previously convicted. Of course the Judge did not tell them that but someone on the jury had worked it out.
It is worth remembering that whenever you submit DNA for one of those "profiling companies" to see whether you are susceptible to skin cancer or dementia or supporting Reform or whatever, then the default tick box allows the the lab to share the results with law enforcement. (In the US at least.)
What this means is that when they get DNA at a crime scene, they can usually find a couple of people who are cousins of the accused. This can really help them narrow down where they should be looking.
Well a) only idiots go with profiling services, b) law enforcement should only be keeping records of those found guilty....I don't want harrassment because some own cousin does something bad
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Thanks - I think my figures are probably going back 20 years at least.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Thanks - I think my figures are probably going back 20 years at least.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
No, but they routinely take a DNA swab from someone who is in custody for any reason.
I had a particularly smart Jury question recently. They asked, how did they know to check the DNA of the accused? The answer, of course, is that the DNA tested had matched an entry in the DNA database because the accused had been previously convicted. Of course the Judge did not tell them that but someone on the jury had worked it out.
It is like when a convicted adult "cannot be named for legal reasons" which means that, probably, there is another case ongoing with them that would be prejudiced if a guilty verdict in the first case became public.
What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?
Too many assumptions. Chance of being on a boat that sinks in a year is easy. But for that specific boat, you need to look at design issues compared to similar vessels, location, storm, any aggravating factors (crew). That kind of maths is how you end up jailing mothers who have multiple babies die of SIDS.
As DJL notes, the chances of two defendants dying* (any cause) within x period of a court case might be more relevant and much more easy to calculate. But even then, there are an awful lot of court cases each year and an awful lot of years to consider. Coincidences happen and "the driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is assisting with enquiries" for the unfortunate runner is a strange way of doing a hit.
But yes, it does make you stop and think, doesn't it?
*not confirmed yet for Lynch, of course, but seems very likely, unfortunately
Total landlubber but the boat looks ready to sink in this photo and it's just normal seas
That is pretty normal. Looking at the boom and jib I assume it is on a beat. If it were a racing yacht or racing dingy or a racing catamaran it can be going over far far more than that. It is what they are supposed to do. If it goes too far you can let the sail out or turn it into wind, but if it goes too far the sails will spill the wind and the keel will prevent it from capsizing. In a dingy or catamaran there is no keel so you go for a swim (which I have more times than I care to remember).
I'm looking at an open deck a few tens of centimetres from the waterline. How do they avoid the boat being flooded?
Ok I'm not the one to answer that as I am not an expert on yachts. Racing dinghies and catamarans were my thing and most of them had nowhere for any water to go inside, because there was no inside. But I'll have a few guesses. Firstly most of the deck is flat so water just washes off. It is normal for water to come onto and over the deck. I don't know what happens if you flood the inside, but I assume there are pumps to bail out surplus water. If you are moving you might well have self bailers. One dingy I owned had self bailers which were useful if I capsized, but they were a pain to shut as I couldn't do so while hanging out and while tacking I had other things to think about and in the process of tacking water would come back in through the self bailers. I suspect yachts are somewhat more sophisticated.
I imagine that yacht could cope with a broach, but you wouldn't want any open doors. A friend of mine got caught in hurricane level winds in the Bay of Biscay and his small yacht was rolled which is quite an achievement without losing your keel. It came back up and they managed to get back to the UK (minus a mast and lots of stuff from the deck). They were all battened down though. He did think he was going to die.
The keel should always bring the boat upright. The keel balances out the force on the sails. As the sails get closer to the water the effect is lost and the keel counter acts it. Dinghies and catamarans don't have keels so you have to lean out, sometimes on a wire to counter the sails and sometimes you fail.
I have no idea what happens if the boat fills with water. I assume they don't sink but I don't know.
Obviously more dramatic things can happen. I'm not keen on yachts. 99% boring 1% dangerous. Dinghies and catamarans however can be very exciting and although you can get hurt are rarely dangerous.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Thanks - I think my figures are probably going back 20 years at least.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
No, but they routinely take a DNA swab from someone who is in custody for any reason.
I had a particularly smart Jury question recently. They asked, how did they know to check the DNA of the accused? The answer, of course, is that the DNA tested had matched an entry in the DNA database because the accused had been previously convicted. Of course the Judge did not tell them that but someone on the jury had worked it out.
It is worth remembering that whenever you submit DNA for one of those "profiling companies" to see whether you are susceptible to skin cancer or dementia or supporting Reform or whatever, then the default tick box allows the the lab to share the results with law enforcement. (In the US at least.)
What this means is that when they get DNA at a crime scene, they can usually find a couple of people who are cousins of the accused. This can really help them narrow down where they should be looking.
Well a) only idiots go with profiling services, b) law enforcement should only be keeping records of those found guilty....I don't want harrassment because some own cousin does something bad
Are you telling me that noone in your extended family has gotten a DNA test? These days, it's increasingly common. Heck, your Aunt Dorothy might have gotten one as part of her cancer treatment, to see which of the various chemotherapy treatments she is most likely to be able to bear. That now means that if the police find your DNA at a crime scene, they will be able to work out that it's one of Dorothy's nephews.
"Dorothy," they'll say, "can you think of any of your relations, probably a nephew of yours, who might torch an Apple store?" And at the very least, they'll be able to look at her family tree, and you'll be recieving a call from Plid.
Every year, there are more DNA samples being collected and stored, and that means your ability to remain below the authorities radar screens is diminishing by the day.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Thanks - I think my figures are probably going back 20 years at least.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
No, but they routinely take a DNA swab from someone who is in custody for any reason.
I had a particularly smart Jury question recently. They asked, how did they know to check the DNA of the accused? The answer, of course, is that the DNA tested had matched an entry in the DNA database because the accused had been previously convicted. Of course the Judge did not tell them that but someone on the jury had worked it out.
It is worth remembering that whenever you submit DNA for one of those "profiling companies" to see whether you are susceptible to skin cancer or dementia or supporting Reform or whatever, then the default tick box allows the the lab to share the results with law enforcement. (In the US at least.)
What this means is that when they get DNA at a crime scene, they can usually find a couple of people who are cousins of the accused. This can really help them narrow down where they should be looking.
Well a) only idiots go with profiling services, b) law enforcement should only be keeping records of those found guilty....I don't want harrassment because some own cousin does something bad
Are you telling me that noone in your extended family has gotten a DNA test? These days, it's increasingly common. Heck, your Aunt Dorothy might have gotten one as part of her cancer treatment, to see which of the various chemotherapy treatments she is most likely to be able to bear. That now means that if the police find your DNA at a crime scene, they will be able to work out that it's one of Dorothy's cousins.
"Dorothy," they'll say, "can you think of any of your relations, probably a nephew of yours, who might torch an Apple store?" And at the very least, they'll be able to look at her family tree, and you'll be recieving a call from Plid.
Every year, there are more DNA samples being collected and stored, and that means your ability to remain below the authorities radar screens is diminishing by the day.
That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.
I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.
There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
There was no cost to many CEOs / CFOs / Boards from sprouting the woke message and it made them look ‘cool’ to a certain audience (plus cementing their chances of gaining other benefits such as positions on other Boards et ). Hence they did it.
It has now been proven there is a cost and hence the rowing back.
I have genuine respect for those who truly believe in the principles, even if I disagree with many aspects of what is being said. What I can’t stand are the fence sitters who will sprout their wokeness to look good but who retreat at the first sign of problems.
Dove still seem to be onboard from the latest ads.
Dove have been doing the "real women" advertising for decades, it works for them and isn't woke IMO. It's a direct appeal to their target market, Dove isn't an aspirational brand and using beautiful models to advertise their products wouldn't make sense for them. I do, however, think that they're starting veer into promoting obesity and unhealthy lifestyles but I guess it works for them in a country where 2/5 women are overweight.
But it's an object lesson in 'products having meaning'. All branded goods do, of course.
Unilever, which is pretty well defined by its brands, never ditched that - they just ditched the bits of meaning that weren't contributing to sales.
Mayonnaise will never have "meaning" and neither will stock cubes. They are commodity products...
Not for Unilever. Otherwise they wouldn't be called Hellmans or Knorr, and they wouldn't bother advertising.
But they are and the new CEO has recognised that, which is why advertising for those commodity brands has been pulled back across TV and online. Mayonnaise will never have "meaning" and Unilever management has adjusted the marketing strategy to reflect the reality of their product line up better.
No, they've just realised that some brands have more value than others.
'Meaning' was never the problem. Trying to attach meaning which was more than a given product could ever bear was the problem.
To risk analogy, a single word, and a novel both carry meaning. Just that one carries a lot more weight than the other.
Two other thoughts.
One is that we're currently in, if not a recession, a bit of time where growth is slow, and companies tend to draw back on marketing and advertising. (See the woes of ITV and C4.) It's good for CEOs to have a better story to wrap around that decision than "we can't afford it".
The other is that, as well as the amount of meaning you attach to a brand, the nature of that meaning matters, and depends on who you are trying to sell to. I hope that, had someone pitched a woke advert for a bloke product, I'd have advised them to turn it down a bit. Not go full on Bernard Manning, but no further than that Athena poster of a hunky man cuddling a baby. Which is where fiascos like Bud Light came from.
For many years I've almost always worn Merrell shoes - very comfortable moccasin style, but really not great to look at. I now find that my feet have lost the immunity to cruel and unusual punishment that they once had. Even shoes that are long friends aren't now greeted as such.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Thanks - I think my figures are probably going back 20 years at least.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
No, but they routinely take a DNA swab from someone who is in custody for any reason.
I had a particularly smart Jury question recently. They asked, how did they know to check the DNA of the accused? The answer, of course, is that the DNA tested had matched an entry in the DNA database because the accused had been previously convicted. Of course the Judge did not tell them that but someone on the jury had worked it out.
It is worth remembering that whenever you submit DNA for one of those "profiling companies" to see whether you are susceptible to skin cancer or dementia or supporting Reform or whatever, then the default tick box allows the the lab to share the results with law enforcement. (In the US at least.)
What this means is that when they get DNA at a crime scene, they can usually find a couple of people who are cousins of the accused. This can really help them narrow down where they should be looking.
Well a) only idiots go with profiling services, b) law enforcement should only be keeping records of those found guilty....I don't want harrassment because some own cousin does something bad
Are you telling me that noone in your extended family has gotten a DNA test? These days, it's increasingly common. Heck, your Aunt Dorothy might have gotten one as part of her cancer treatment, to see which of the various chemotherapy treatments she is most likely to be able to bear. That now means that if the police find your DNA at a crime scene, they will be able to work out that it's one of Dorothy's cousins.
"Dorothy," they'll say, "can you think of any of your relations, probably a nephew of yours, who might torch an Apple store?" And at the very least, they'll be able to look at her family tree, and you'll be recieving a call from Plid.
Every year, there are more DNA samples being collected and stored, and that means your ability to remain below the authorities radar screens is diminishing by the day.
Well I don't really have an extended family
Hmm and an idea for a book, brother is talking about getting ancestry23 or whatever its called test so you kill him with the motive of not uncovering the crime you did 20 years ago
That said, I've seen an awful lot of LinkedIn posts over the last 2-3 weeks as various senior professionals in my network couldn't resist the temptation to grandstand about how much they deplore racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and homophobia etc, but I've noticed these are getting far fewer likes and reshares than before.
I think companies have begun to realise it doesn't make them money. Disney learned this the hard way over the last 4 years with flop after flop after flop and this year with two movies that resisted all of the bullshit they had two huge successes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine and there's rumours now that Marvel has cleaned house and fired all of the people who were responsible for the failures they had from 2020-2023 because Disney can't afford for more $275m budget movies to do what The Marvels did and only make $199m globally landing them with an estimated an actual loss of ~$250m and a ~ $500m loss against expectations.
The Bud Light (and, to a degree, Target and Disney) episodes brought home to many companies there is an actual financial / share price cost to such policies.
Not just that it's generally a distraction, Unilever dumped all of that "products must have meaning" bullshit when the last CEO got sacked and the new guy has just concentrated on delivering for shareholders and getting rid of Ben and Jerry's and the 1y gain is ~18% since he's gone back to basics and dumped all of the bullshit branding exercises.
There was a poisonous attitude building among company execs from ~2018-2023 which was "well if they don't agree with what we're saying we don't want their money" but this really seems to have unwound over the last year or so, I actually found that UK companies were very susceptible to that attitude (as I'm sure @Casino_Royale will attest to).
There was no cost to many CEOs / CFOs / Boards from sprouting the woke message and it made them look ‘cool’ to a certain audience (plus cementing their chances of gaining other benefits such as positions on other Boards et ). Hence they did it.
It has now been proven there is a cost and hence the rowing back.
I have genuine respect for those who truly believe in the principles, even if I disagree with many aspects of what is being said. What I can’t stand are the fence sitters who will sprout their wokeness to look good but who retreat at the first sign of problems.
Dove still seem to be onboard from the latest ads.
Dove have been doing the "real women" advertising for decades, it works for them and isn't woke IMO. It's a direct appeal to their target market, Dove isn't an aspirational brand and using beautiful models to advertise their products wouldn't make sense for them. I do, however, think that they're starting veer into promoting obesity and unhealthy lifestyles but I guess it works for them in a country where 2/5 women are overweight.
But it's an object lesson in 'products having meaning'. All branded goods do, of course.
Unilever, which is pretty well defined by its brands, never ditched that - they just ditched the bits of meaning that weren't contributing to sales.
Mayonnaise will never have "meaning" and neither will stock cubes. They are commodity products. Dove is a beauty brand, it needs to connect emotionally with buyers. Unilever foods operate in a completely different market, most people don't even know that it exists and owns 10% of the food products in the supermarkets. Their products will sell based on two things - price and quality. If the mix of those is good then customers will buy their products, if the mix is bad they won't regardless of how many times they get Brian Blessed on TV to advertise Hellmans.
Lurpak is probably the best recent example, Arla were running a huge advertising campaign for it trying to "connect" with customers because they'd stupidly put the prices up and cut the size by 20%, they suffered a huge drop in sales because customers are rational, in the last few months they've dropped all of the advertising and the kilo price of Lurpak is now about the same as it was before they cut the pack size so sales rebounded. Ultimately, it's butter and one type of butter will be basically the same as another type for 90% of customers, if they see the own brand is 25% cheaper and 25% bigger they will try it at least once.
On butter, the exception is that Irish butter is much better than British butter, and for you poor folks in the old country, the premium price of Kerrygold is worth it, regardless of how much money they waste on crap advertising.
Although the butter is only relatively less expensive here because all the other groceries are more pricey. A punnet of strawberries worked out as €0.50 per strawberry at the weekend, and alcohol consumption seems to be declining because the price of potatoes has got to be so dear. The price of potatoes is a big deal, and if it doesn't see the current government hounded out of office then there's no justice in the world.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Thanks - I think my figures are probably going back 20 years at least.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
No, but they routinely take a DNA swab from someone who is in custody for any reason.
I had a particularly smart Jury question recently. They asked, how did they know to check the DNA of the accused? The answer, of course, is that the DNA tested had matched an entry in the DNA database because the accused had been previously convicted. Of course the Judge did not tell them that but someone on the jury had worked it out.
It is worth remembering that whenever you submit DNA for one of those "profiling companies" to see whether you are susceptible to skin cancer or dementia or supporting Reform or whatever, then the default tick box allows the the lab to share the results with law enforcement. (In the US at least.)
What this means is that when they get DNA at a crime scene, they can usually find a couple of people who are cousins of the accused. This can really help them narrow down where they should be looking.
Well a) only idiots go with profiling services, b) law enforcement should only be keeping records of those found guilty....I don't want harrassment because some own cousin does something bad
Are you telling me that noone in your extended family has gotten a DNA test? These days, it's increasingly common. Heck, your Aunt Dorothy might have gotten one as part of her cancer treatment, to see which of the various chemotherapy treatments she is most likely to be able to bear. That now means that if the police find your DNA at a crime scene, they will be able to work out that it's one of Dorothy's cousins.
"Dorothy," they'll say, "can you think of any of your relations, probably a nephew of yours, who might torch an Apple store?" And at the very least, they'll be able to look at her family tree, and you'll be recieving a call from Plid.
Every year, there are more DNA samples being collected and stored, and that means your ability to remain below the authorities radar screens is diminishing by the day.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Thanks - I think my figures are probably going back 20 years at least.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
No, but they routinely take a DNA swab from someone who is in custody for any reason.
I had a particularly smart Jury question recently. They asked, how did they know to check the DNA of the accused? The answer, of course, is that the DNA tested had matched an entry in the DNA database because the accused had been previously convicted. Of course the Judge did not tell them that but someone on the jury had worked it out.
It is worth remembering that whenever you submit DNA for one of those "profiling companies" to see whether you are susceptible to skin cancer or dementia or supporting Reform or whatever, then the default tick box allows the the lab to share the results with law enforcement. (In the US at least.)
What this means is that when they get DNA at a crime scene, they can usually find a couple of people who are cousins of the accused. This can really help them narrow down where they should be looking.
Well a) only idiots go with profiling services, b) law enforcement should only be keeping records of those found guilty....I don't want harrassment because some own cousin does something bad
Are you telling me that noone in your extended family has gotten a DNA test? These days, it's increasingly common. Heck, your Aunt Dorothy might have gotten one as part of her cancer treatment, to see which of the various chemotherapy treatments she is most likely to be able to bear. That now means that if the police find your DNA at a crime scene, they will be able to work out that it's one of Dorothy's cousins.
"Dorothy," they'll say, "can you think of any of your relations, probably a nephew of yours, who might torch an Apple store?" And at the very least, they'll be able to look at her family tree, and you'll be recieving a call from Plid.
Every year, there are more DNA samples being collected and stored, and that means your ability to remain below the authorities radar screens is diminishing by the day.
Well I don't really have an extended family
Hmm and an idea for a book, brother is talking about getting ancestry23 or whatever its called test so you kill him with the motive of not uncovering the crime you did 20 years ago
I have a similar story: a friend of ours was going to get a DNA test, and his parents begged him not to. Turned out his dad was not his dad.
Story about many thousands of Public Rights of Way potentially being lost. This is quite a technical thing going back a decade or two, and it's good to see it making the news agenda.
This is an obscure one I have been flagging up for a bit.
"All historic rights of way must be recorded by 2031, according to rules set out in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000.
But countryside campaigners are concerned the paperwork-heavy process is so slow that some paths may never be recorded.
Paul Howland, a volunteer with walking charity the Ramblers in Hampshire, has lodged more than 100 applications with his local authority, requesting specific paths be added to the official map."
“What we’re doing is recovering old paths that have often been in place for centuries," he said.
"Once [a route is] determined it'll be there forever, for my children and grandchildren and for future generations, and that makes it all worthwhile."“What we’re doing is recovering old paths that have often been in place for centuries," he said.
"Once [a route is] determined it'll be there forever, for my children and grandchildren and for future generations, and that makes it all worthwhile."
Jack Cornish, head of paths at the Ramblers, said the government should scrap the 2031 deadline altogether.
Commenting on the backlog, he said: "I'm not massively surprised by the figure, but it is shocking.
Make the assumption that any rights of way "recorded" by paperwork submitted by 2031 have been preserved, unless they have been specifically considered and thrown out.
I'd go with that, but I'd abolish the deadline completely. This is an historic right, so there's no reason to remove it ... other than a Theresa Villiers zero notice decision by fiat back in 2023 which ignored all the consultations and work done by a Stakeholders Working Group with both users and landowners over years before that.
Me - I think we need access legislation on the Scottish model, which seems to work well.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
Is that so? Sad to hear it.
I quite liked Owen and thought he offered a lot to the national conversation.
But sounds like he has strayed into the deep end of the online pool...
It happens to everyone on Twitter eventually. Dave had it right, too many tweets make a twat.
I've quit twitter for Bluesky. Less addictive, less going on (which is a positive really) and no Musk. So far has been good.
But ultimately suspect that kind of social media is just a massive time waste.
I know someone who aborted a Tesla purchase because of Musk's antics.
They seem to attract the worst people.
Urgh. I'd definitely prefer a 1968 Mercedes 280 SL.
The mounted automatic machine gun on the back might make getting into Edinburgh during the festival a bit easier....
It's mad that they don't have a city centre wide ban on private vehicles (like Bath, with suitable exceptions) during the Fringe. South Bridge is chaos with thousands of people walking in the road. Cowgate is downright terrifying in the early hours.
The council need to stop messing about and set the place up for the hundreds of thousands of people who spend August here.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Thanks - I think my figures are probably going back 20 years at least.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
No, but they routinely take a DNA swab from someone who is in custody for any reason.
I had a particularly smart Jury question recently. They asked, how did they know to check the DNA of the accused? The answer, of course, is that the DNA tested had matched an entry in the DNA database because the accused had been previously convicted. Of course the Judge did not tell them that but someone on the jury had worked it out.
It is worth remembering that whenever you submit DNA for one of those "profiling companies" to see whether you are susceptible to skin cancer or dementia or supporting Reform or whatever, then the default tick box allows the the lab to share the results with law enforcement. (In the US at least.)
What this means is that when they get DNA at a crime scene, they can usually find a couple of people who are cousins of the accused. This can really help them narrow down where they should be looking.
Well a) only idiots go with profiling services, b) law enforcement should only be keeping records of those found guilty....I don't want harrassment because some own cousin does something bad
Are you telling me that noone in your extended family has gotten a DNA test? These days, it's increasingly common. Heck, your Aunt Dorothy might have gotten one as part of her cancer treatment, to see which of the various chemotherapy treatments she is most likely to be able to bear. That now means that if the police find your DNA at a crime scene, they will be able to work out that it's one of Dorothy's cousins.
"Dorothy," they'll say, "can you think of any of your relations, probably a nephew of yours, who might torch an Apple store?" And at the very least, they'll be able to look at her family tree, and you'll be recieving a call from Plid.
Every year, there are more DNA samples being collected and stored, and that means your ability to remain below the authorities radar screens is diminishing by the day.
Well I don't really have an extended family
They're not as much fun as you think...
shrugs I never met most of them and when I did they were already dead which means they are no longer party people
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Such probability calculations are also often wrong, as they ignore confounding factors.
Contamination of a sample is but one.
Mixed or contaminated samples are rarely a problem because they can identify the differing patterns of various DNA strands in the sample. What the defence tend to focus on is secondary DNA transfer with lots of examples of someone holding a lectern or other convenient item picking up the DNA of previous users of the lectern, etc. The forensic scientists invariably have to concede this is possible, especially if they are dealing with traces. If there is more then they may express the view that this is less likely but they can't rule it out.
And, of course, in rape cases the question moves from whether there was penetration to whether or not there was consent, something that DNA doesn't help with at all.
What was the chance of Mike Lynch's yacht sinking. Has anyone worked out the odds ?
Too many assumptions. Chance of being on a boat that sinks in a year is easy. But for that specific boat, you need to look at design issues compared to similar vessels, location, storm, any aggravating factors (crew). That kind of maths is how you end up jailing mothers who have multiple babies die of SIDS.
As DJL notes, the chances of two defendants dying* (any cause) within x period of a court case might be more relevant and much more easy to calculate. But even then, there are an awful lot of court cases each year and an awful lot of years to consider. Coincidences happen and "the driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is assisting with enquiries" for the unfortunate runner is a strange way of doing a hit.
But yes, it does make you stop and think, doesn't it?
*not confirmed yet for Lynch, of course, but seems very likely, unfortunately
Total landlubber but the boat looks ready to sink in this photo and it's just normal seas
That is pretty normal. Looking at the boom and jib I assume it is on a beat. If it were a racing yacht or racing dingy or a racing catamaran it can be going over far far more than that. It is what they are supposed to do. If it goes too far you can let the sail out or turn it into wind, but if it goes too far the sails will spill the wind and the keel will prevent it from capsizing. In a dingy or catamaran there is no keel so you go for a swim (which I have more times than I care to remember).
I remember spending a happy afternoon on a small 'uncapsizeable' training boat in dead calm on loch goil trying to capsize it while the instructor laughed at us (I think they're was a bet involved). We did get the tip of the mast to touch the water.
ETA: No, I think what we managed was to get the guy hanging off the top of the mast into the water, not the mast itself
I have capsized so many times I have lost count. 4 times in one race. My biggest event though was crewing on a catamaran which pitchpoled (somersaulted). I was out on a wire and we were going hell for leather when the helm dug the hull into the water. I was full out on the other hull with only the soles of my feet touching the boat. The rest of me was hanging from the wire. Next thing I know I was flying through the air and then hit the water and went down some way. I tried to stop myself coming up which was hard as I had a buoyancy aid on because I was concerned about being hit by the boat. This was nonsense though because the catamaran had obviously stopped dead in the water and was now upside down. But you don't think clearly when you have just taken an involuntary flight.
Here is a video of an epic pitchpole. I doubt mine was anywhere near as spectacular, but in my mind it was.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Thanks - I think my figures are probably going back 20 years at least.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
No, but they routinely take a DNA swab from someone who is in custody for any reason.
I had a particularly smart Jury question recently. They asked, how did they know to check the DNA of the accused? The answer, of course, is that the DNA tested had matched an entry in the DNA database because the accused had been previously convicted. Of course the Judge did not tell them that but someone on the jury had worked it out.
It is worth remembering that whenever you submit DNA for one of those "profiling companies" to see whether you are susceptible to skin cancer or dementia or supporting Reform or whatever, then the default tick box allows the the lab to share the results with law enforcement. (In the US at least.)
What this means is that when they get DNA at a crime scene, they can usually find a couple of people who are cousins of the accused. This can really help them narrow down where they should be looking.
Well a) only idiots go with profiling services, b) law enforcement should only be keeping records of those found guilty....I don't want harrassment because some own cousin does something bad
Are you telling me that noone in your extended family has gotten a DNA test? These days, it's increasingly common. Heck, your Aunt Dorothy might have gotten one as part of her cancer treatment, to see which of the various chemotherapy treatments she is most likely to be able to bear. That now means that if the police find your DNA at a crime scene, they will be able to work out that it's one of Dorothy's cousins.
"Dorothy," they'll say, "can you think of any of your relations, probably a nephew of yours, who might torch an Apple store?" And at the very least, they'll be able to look at her family tree, and you'll be recieving a call from Plid.
Every year, there are more DNA samples being collected and stored, and that means your ability to remain below the authorities radar screens is diminishing by the day.
Well I don't really have an extended family
Hmm and an idea for a book, brother is talking about getting ancestry23 or whatever its called test so you kill him with the motive of not uncovering the crime you did 20 years ago
I have a similar story: a friend of ours was going to get a DNA test, and his parents begged him not to. Turned out his dad was not his dad.
Yes heard many stories like that especially for children that were adopted young and the foster parents never told them. Just speculating it would be a novel motive for a murder mystery
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Thanks - I think my figures are probably going back 20 years at least.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
No, but they routinely take a DNA swab from someone who is in custody for any reason.
I had a particularly smart Jury question recently. They asked, how did they know to check the DNA of the accused? The answer, of course, is that the DNA tested had matched an entry in the DNA database because the accused had been previously convicted. Of course the Judge did not tell them that but someone on the jury had worked it out.
It is worth remembering that whenever you submit DNA for one of those "profiling companies" to see whether you are susceptible to skin cancer or dementia or supporting Reform or whatever, then the default tick box allows the the lab to share the results with law enforcement. (In the US at least.)
What this means is that when they get DNA at a crime scene, they can usually find a couple of people who are cousins of the accused. This can really help them narrow down where they should be looking.
Well a) only idiots go with profiling services, b) law enforcement should only be keeping records of those found guilty....I don't want harrassment because some own cousin does something bad
Are you telling me that noone in your extended family has gotten a DNA test? These days, it's increasingly common. Heck, your Aunt Dorothy might have gotten one as part of her cancer treatment, to see which of the various chemotherapy treatments she is most likely to be able to bear. That now means that if the police find your DNA at a crime scene, they will be able to work out that it's one of Dorothy's nephews.
"Dorothy," they'll say, "can you think of any of your relations, probably a nephew of yours, who might torch an Apple store?" And at the very least, they'll be able to look at her family tree, and you'll be recieving a call from Plid.
Every year, there are more DNA samples being collected and stored, and that means your ability to remain below the authorities radar screens is diminishing by the day.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Thanks - I think my figures are probably going back 20 years at least.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
No, but they routinely take a DNA swab from someone who is in custody for any reason.
I had a particularly smart Jury question recently. They asked, how did they know to check the DNA of the accused? The answer, of course, is that the DNA tested had matched an entry in the DNA database because the accused had been previously convicted. Of course the Judge did not tell them that but someone on the jury had worked it out.
It is worth remembering that whenever you submit DNA for one of those "profiling companies" to see whether you are susceptible to skin cancer or dementia or supporting Reform or whatever, then the default tick box allows the the lab to share the results with law enforcement. (In the US at least.)
What this means is that when they get DNA at a crime scene, they can usually find a couple of people who are cousins of the accused. This can really help them narrow down where they should be looking.
Well a) only idiots go with profiling services, b) law enforcement should only be keeping records of those found guilty....I don't want harrassment because some own cousin does something bad
Are you telling me that noone in your extended family has gotten a DNA test? These days, it's increasingly common. Heck, your Aunt Dorothy might have gotten one as part of her cancer treatment, to see which of the various chemotherapy treatments she is most likely to be able to bear. That now means that if the police find your DNA at a crime scene, they will be able to work out that it's one of Dorothy's cousins.
"Dorothy," they'll say, "can you think of any of your relations, probably a nephew of yours, who might torch an Apple store?" And at the very least, they'll be able to look at her family tree, and you'll be recieving a call from Plid.
Every year, there are more DNA samples being collected and stored, and that means your ability to remain below the authorities radar screens is diminishing by the day.
Well I don't really have an extended family
Hmm and an idea for a book, brother is talking about getting ancestry23 or whatever its called test so you kill him with the motive of not uncovering the crime you did 20 years ago
The twist being, you later find out he was adopted.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Thanks - I think my figures are probably going back 20 years at least.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
No, but they routinely take a DNA swab from someone who is in custody for any reason.
I had a particularly smart Jury question recently. They asked, how did they know to check the DNA of the accused? The answer, of course, is that the DNA tested had matched an entry in the DNA database because the accused had been previously convicted. Of course the Judge did not tell them that but someone on the jury had worked it out.
It is worth remembering that whenever you submit DNA for one of those "profiling companies" to see whether you are susceptible to skin cancer or dementia or supporting Reform or whatever, then the default tick box allows the the lab to share the results with law enforcement. (In the US at least.)
What this means is that when they get DNA at a crime scene, they can usually find a couple of people who are cousins of the accused. This can really help them narrow down where they should be looking.
Well a) only idiots go with profiling services, b) law enforcement should only be keeping records of those found guilty....I don't want harrassment because some own cousin does something bad
Are you telling me that noone in your extended family has gotten a DNA test? These days, it's increasingly common. Heck, your Aunt Dorothy might have gotten one as part of her cancer treatment, to see which of the various chemotherapy treatments she is most likely to be able to bear. That now means that if the police find your DNA at a crime scene, they will be able to work out that it's one of Dorothy's cousins.
"Dorothy," they'll say, "can you think of any of your relations, probably a nephew of yours, who might torch an Apple store?" And at the very least, they'll be able to look at her family tree, and you'll be recieving a call from Plid.
Every year, there are more DNA samples being collected and stored, and that means your ability to remain below the authorities radar screens is diminishing by the day.
Well I don't really have an extended family
Hmm and an idea for a book, brother is talking about getting ancestry23 or whatever its called test so you kill him with the motive of not uncovering the crime you did 20 years ago
I have a similar story: a friend of ours was going to get a DNA test, and his parents begged him not to. Turned out his dad was not his dad.
Yes heard many stories like that especially for children that were adopted young and the foster parents never told them. Just speculating it would be a novel motive for a murder mystery
It would be a pretty good premise. I'll let you know if I write it .
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Thanks - I think my figures are probably going back 20 years at least.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
No, but they routinely take a DNA swab from someone who is in custody for any reason.
I had a particularly smart Jury question recently. They asked, how did they know to check the DNA of the accused? The answer, of course, is that the DNA tested had matched an entry in the DNA database because the accused had been previously convicted. Of course the Judge did not tell them that but someone on the jury had worked it out.
It is worth remembering that whenever you submit DNA for one of those "profiling companies" to see whether you are susceptible to skin cancer or dementia or supporting Reform or whatever, then the default tick box allows the the lab to share the results with law enforcement. (In the US at least.)
What this means is that when they get DNA at a crime scene, they can usually find a couple of people who are cousins of the accused. This can really help them narrow down where they should be looking.
Well a) only idiots go with profiling services, b) law enforcement should only be keeping records of those found guilty....I don't want harrassment because some own cousin does something bad
Are you telling me that noone in your extended family has gotten a DNA test? These days, it's increasingly common. Heck, your Aunt Dorothy might have gotten one as part of her cancer treatment, to see which of the various chemotherapy treatments she is most likely to be able to bear. That now means that if the police find your DNA at a crime scene, they will be able to work out that it's one of Dorothy's cousins.
"Dorothy," they'll say, "can you think of any of your relations, probably a nephew of yours, who might torch an Apple store?" And at the very least, they'll be able to look at her family tree, and you'll be recieving a call from Plid.
Every year, there are more DNA samples being collected and stored, and that means your ability to remain below the authorities radar screens is diminishing by the day.
Well I don't really have an extended family
Hmm and an idea for a book, brother is talking about getting ancestry23 or whatever its called test so you kill him with the motive of not uncovering the crime you did 20 years ago
The twist being, you later find out he was adopted.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Thanks - I think my figures are probably going back 20 years at least.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
No, but they routinely take a DNA swab from someone who is in custody for any reason.
I had a particularly smart Jury question recently. They asked, how did they know to check the DNA of the accused? The answer, of course, is that the DNA tested had matched an entry in the DNA database because the accused had been previously convicted. Of course the Judge did not tell them that but someone on the jury had worked it out.
It is worth remembering that whenever you submit DNA for one of those "profiling companies" to see whether you are susceptible to skin cancer or dementia or supporting Reform or whatever, then the default tick box allows the the lab to share the results with law enforcement. (In the US at least.)
What this means is that when they get DNA at a crime scene, they can usually find a couple of people who are cousins of the accused. This can really help them narrow down where they should be looking.
Well a) only idiots go with profiling services, b) law enforcement should only be keeping records of those found guilty....I don't want harrassment because some own cousin does something bad
Are you telling me that noone in your extended family has gotten a DNA test? These days, it's increasingly common. Heck, your Aunt Dorothy might have gotten one as part of her cancer treatment, to see which of the various chemotherapy treatments she is most likely to be able to bear. That now means that if the police find your DNA at a crime scene, they will be able to work out that it's one of Dorothy's cousins.
"Dorothy," they'll say, "can you think of any of your relations, probably a nephew of yours, who might torch an Apple store?" And at the very least, they'll be able to look at her family tree, and you'll be recieving a call from Plid.
Every year, there are more DNA samples being collected and stored, and that means your ability to remain below the authorities radar screens is diminishing by the day.
Well I don't really have an extended family
Hmm and an idea for a book, brother is talking about getting ancestry23 or whatever its called test so you kill him with the motive of not uncovering the crime you did 20 years ago
I have a similar story: a friend of ours was going to get a DNA test, and his parents begged him not to. Turned out his dad was not his dad.
Yes heard many stories like that especially for children that were adopted young and the foster parents never told them. Just speculating it would be a novel motive for a murder mystery
It would be a pretty good premise. I'll let you know if I write it .
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Thanks - I think my figures are probably going back 20 years at least.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
No, but they routinely take a DNA swab from someone who is in custody for any reason.
I had a particularly smart Jury question recently. They asked, how did they know to check the DNA of the accused? The answer, of course, is that the DNA tested had matched an entry in the DNA database because the accused had been previously convicted. Of course the Judge did not tell them that but someone on the jury had worked it out.
It is worth remembering that whenever you submit DNA for one of those "profiling companies" to see whether you are susceptible to skin cancer or dementia or supporting Reform or whatever, then the default tick box allows the the lab to share the results with law enforcement. (In the US at least.)
What this means is that when they get DNA at a crime scene, they can usually find a couple of people who are cousins of the accused. This can really help them narrow down where they should be looking.
Well a) only idiots go with profiling services, b) law enforcement should only be keeping records of those found guilty....I don't want harrassment because some own cousin does something bad
Are you telling me that noone in your extended family has gotten a DNA test? These days, it's increasingly common. Heck, your Aunt Dorothy might have gotten one as part of her cancer treatment, to see which of the various chemotherapy treatments she is most likely to be able to bear. That now means that if the police find your DNA at a crime scene, they will be able to work out that it's one of Dorothy's nephews.
"Dorothy," they'll say, "can you think of any of your relations, probably a nephew of yours, who might torch an Apple store?" And at the very least, they'll be able to look at her family tree, and you'll be recieving a call from Plid.
Every year, there are more DNA samples being collected and stored, and that means your ability to remain below the authorities radar screens is diminishing by the day.
Lucy Letby is an interesting phenomenon. Seems she's now being politically weaponized by the British Right as a way to bash the NHS.
Letby truthers are really very odd but it is not just the British right. Private Eye too has been questioning of it.
And Owen Jones. About the only tweets he's doing these days about anything other than Gaza are on Letby.
I do wonder how much support Ms Letby would get were she not - to put it bluntly - an attractive young lady. We're all suckers for beautiful people.
I wouldn’t classify her as beautiful and I don’t think many would TBH. Personally, I think a key reason she got convicted was her behaviour / demeanour at trial which came across as emotionally detached / weird.
I haven’t followed things too closely but there certainly seems enough questions to ask given the issues raised, doubts raised by experts about evidence etc.
Someone on here mentioned that there is an interest on the Right to imply Letby has been framed. That is maybe true but, conversely, there is an incentive on those invested in the NHS to put the blame of so many deaths on a rogue and evil nurse rather than look into more fundamental issues. Both sides have a vested interest in pushing their views on this one.
If people are asked to assess how honest and trustworthy they are based on a photo, then they will tend to give much higher marks to better looking people. I don't really think that is a contraversial point. Nor do I think it controversial to claim that - if all 70 million people in the UK were ranked in order of attractiveness - she would be comfortably in the top quarter.
This does not make her innocent or guilty; I am merely pointing out there is cold, hard scientific fact that we (as humans) are suckers for physical appearance. And I find it odd that you doubt this.
Don’t think I did dispute that physical appearance influences things (it’s certainly not in my post) but more her personality may also have had more of an impact and / or she wasn’t particularly stunning enough to influence the outcome.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
I think the fear is that we have had some serious miscarriages of justice before based on mathematical models, the SID cases being the most obvious example.
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
The mathematics is bollocks (or, not bollocks, but not relevant). Who cares if it's mathematically unlikely to be someone else than her (under various assumptions that probably don't hold). Even if the maths is correct, unlikely things happen all the time. People win lotteries, get struck by lightning, elect Donald Trump...
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
I don't know how good DNA sampling is nowadays but it certainly used to be the case that if you trawled the country for someone matching DNA at a crime scene you'd expect to find about 10 people.
A supposed "5 million to 1 chance" suddenly becomes a "1 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asked for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
The standard probability calculated when there is an adequate supply of DNA is described as a likelihood of not less than 1 in a billion. This is calculated by the number of branches on the DNA found that match the accused. It has been explained to me that in most cases the chances of a false match are significantly less than 1 in a billion but that is the highest ratio they use in their reports.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Thanks - I think my figures are probably going back 20 years at least.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
No, but they routinely take a DNA swab from someone who is in custody for any reason.
I had a particularly smart Jury question recently. They asked, how did they know to check the DNA of the accused? The answer, of course, is that the DNA tested had matched an entry in the DNA database because the accused had been previously convicted. Of course the Judge did not tell them that but someone on the jury had worked it out.
It is worth remembering that whenever you submit DNA for one of those "profiling companies" to see whether you are susceptible to skin cancer or dementia or supporting Reform or whatever, then the default tick box allows the the lab to share the results with law enforcement. (In the US at least.)
What this means is that when they get DNA at a crime scene, they can usually find a couple of people who are cousins of the accused. This can really help them narrow down where they should be looking.
Well a) only idiots go with profiling services, b) law enforcement should only be keeping records of those found guilty....I don't want harrassment because some own cousin does something bad
Are you telling me that noone in your extended family has gotten a DNA test? These days, it's increasingly common. Heck, your Aunt Dorothy might have gotten one as part of her cancer treatment, to see which of the various chemotherapy treatments she is most likely to be able to bear. That now means that if the police find your DNA at a crime scene, they will be able to work out that it's one of Dorothy's nephews.
"Dorothy," they'll say, "can you think of any of your relations, probably a nephew of yours, who might torch an Apple store?" And at the very least, they'll be able to look at her family tree, and you'll be recieving a call from Plid.
Every year, there are more DNA samples being collected and stored, and that means your ability to remain below the authorities radar screens is diminishing by the day.
Is torching an Apple Store OK?
Would it be better if the person who did it wasn't caught?
What if people were injured/murdered?
What kind of society do you/we want to live in?
Complex questions, many of which don't have easy answers.
Comments
https://nypost.com/2023/03/20/ben-jerrys-co-founder-gave-1m-to-group-opposed-to-us-arms-for-ukraine/
This is an obscure one I have been flagging up for a bit.
"All historic rights of way must be recorded by 2031, according to rules set out in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000.
But countryside campaigners are concerned the paperwork-heavy process is so slow that some paths may never be recorded.
Paul Howland, a volunteer with walking charity the Ramblers in Hampshire, has lodged more than 100 applications with his local authority, requesting specific paths be added to the official map."
“What we’re doing is recovering old paths that have often been in place for centuries," he said.
"Once [a route is] determined it'll be there forever, for my children and grandchildren and for future generations, and that makes it all worthwhile."“What we’re doing is recovering old paths that have often been in place for centuries," he said.
"Once [a route is] determined it'll be there forever, for my children and grandchildren and for future generations, and that makes it all worthwhile."
Jack Cornish, head of paths at the Ramblers, said the government should scrap the 2031 deadline altogether.
Commenting on the backlog, he said: "I'm not massively surprised by the figure, but it is shocking.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1k3719g0p4o
gunsforecast.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3imOt__Ce-c
Livestream is livestreaming. Launch is due in just under an hour.
Unilever, which is pretty well defined by its brands, never ditched that - they just ditched the bits of meaning that weren't contributing to sales.
Having said that I was not a large scale consumer of their products before that. An occasional tub in the cinema was about it. Not really sure I see an obvious upside to businesses expressing views that are unrelated to their product.
Of course, as all sensible people know, ice cream should be vanilla at all times, although a sauce on it is acceptable.
But ultimately suspect that kind of social media is just a massive time waste.
Perhaps I have been working too hard.
I’m not an expert on the case but there feels enough odd to suggest it should be looked at more.
https://x.com/acnewsitics/status/1825750431533760784
Very few lawyers, and even fewer jurors, have any real understanding of mathematics. To give you an idea I am considered unusually numerate amongst my cohort and yet I have lost count (ha) of the number of times I have made basic errors on here.
I think we are right to look at the modelling critically but we should not ignore the other evidence whilst doing so. My hesitation, at the risk of setting another haggis running, is why I would never support capital punishment. If we had it she would have been a prime candidate.
Lurpak is probably the best recent example, Arla were running a huge advertising campaign for it trying to "connect" with customers because they'd stupidly put the prices up and cut the size by 20%, they suffered a huge drop in sales because customers are rational, in the last few months they've dropped all of the advertising and the kilo price of Lurpak is now about the same as it was before they cut the pack size so sales rebounded. Ultimately, it's butter and one type of butter will be basically the same as another type for 90% of customers, if they see the own brand is 25% cheaper and 25% bigger they will try it at least once.
ETA: No, I think what we managed was to get the guy hanging off the top of the mast into the water, not the mast itself
If I ever need to check out, then a caeser salad of the leaves would be as effective (and less messy for everyone else) than walking in front of a train.
Fwiw, I've seen a bunch of windscreen sunshades in California that say "I bought my Tesla before Elon went mad"
Maybe worth a thread header on the use and misuse of statistics in cases like this?
Otherwise they wouldn't be called Hellmans or Knorr, and they wouldn't bother advertising.
Introducing "TanMan Mayo: The Candidate's Choice!"—the only mayonnaise that captures the rich, golden glow of democracy in a jar. Crafted with the finest eggs and just a touch of carrot juice, TanMan Mayo is the condiment for those who understand that appearances are everything.
Why settle for a pale, unremarkable mayo when you can have one that shines as brightly as your favorite over-bronzed politician? TanMan Mayo is perfect for slathering on your sandwiches, just like your candidates slather on that irresistible, sun-kissed look. It's the secret sauce behind every successful campaign, giving your bland meals a burst of color and charisma, even if the content leaves something to be desired.
But that's not all! TanMan Mayo doubles as a quick touch-up for your own tan. Got a debate coming up? Smear a little TanMan on your face for that extra oomph. Remember, in the race to the top, it's not just about what you say, but how you say it—with a golden glow that screams, "I'm ready to lead!"
TanMan Mayo: Because in politics, if you can’t convince them, at least you can *dazzle* them.
A supposed "1 in 5 million chance" of having the wrong person is actually a "9 in 10 chance" unless you have some additional evidence.
I never understood the police asking for people to be sampled so as to "eliminate them from enquiries". Or at least, I never understood why anyone would volunteer.
We had a link the other day suggesting that random wasn't random.
Anyway, Mathematicians are expensive! I'd need at least a fiver.
There are some exceptions to this. If the sample is very small or if the accused comes from an ethnic minority which has comparatively few contributors to the data base measured against then the likelihood of the sample not being from you is much lower but as a generality if you know you didn't do something the risks of giving a DNA sample for elimination purposes is vastly lower than the risks of going to a jury trial.
And, of course, the police are entitled to take a sample from you anyway if you don't volunteer.
Would the police really get permission to sample everyone in a town?
'Meaning' was never the problem.
Trying to attach meaning which was more than a given product could ever bear was the problem.
To risk analogy, a single word, and a novel both carry meaning. Just that one carries a lot more weight than the other.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy9elrjpry0o
I had a particularly smart Jury question recently. They asked, how did they know to check the DNA of the accused?
The answer, of course, is that the DNA tested had matched an entry in the DNA database because the accused had been previously convicted. Of course the Judge did not tell them that but someone on the jury had worked it out.
Contamination of a sample is but one.
I also don't think it's all about making the customer 'feel' something as in get weepy during an advertisement, but it is about occupying a position in the consumers' mind that is beyond 'what you get for the price'. If anything, I think most brands would benefit from going back to their original positioning strategies (Volvo = safety) rather than silly emoting adverts, but that doesn't undermine the branding concept, it just means modern advertising is crap.
Angela Rayner overrules local Labour council in ruling on London City Airport"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/08/19/london-city-airport-expansion-rayner-overrules-council/
What this means is that when they get DNA at a crime scene, they can usually find a couple of people who are cousins of the accused. This can really help them narrow down where they should be looking.
https://www.permanentstyle.com/2023/09/the-style-of-king-charles-top-level-classic-menswear.html
I imagine that yacht could cope with a broach, but you wouldn't want any open doors. A friend of mine got caught in hurricane level winds in the Bay of Biscay and his small yacht was rolled which is quite an achievement without losing your keel. It came back up and they managed to get back to the UK (minus a mast and lots of stuff from the deck). They were all battened down though. He did think he was going to die.
The keel should always bring the boat upright. The keel balances out the force on the sails. As the sails get closer to the water the effect is lost and the keel counter acts it. Dinghies and catamarans don't have keels so you have to lean out, sometimes on a wire to counter the sails and sometimes you fail.
I have no idea what happens if the boat fills with water. I assume they don't sink but I don't know.
Obviously more dramatic things can happen. I'm not keen on yachts. 99% boring 1% dangerous. Dinghies and catamarans however can be very exciting and although you can get hurt are rarely dangerous.
"Dorothy," they'll say, "can you think of any of your relations, probably a nephew of yours, who might torch an Apple store?" And at the very least, they'll be able to look at her family tree, and you'll be recieving a call from Plid.
Every year, there are more DNA samples being collected and stored, and that means your ability to remain below the authorities radar screens is diminishing by the day.
One is that we're currently in, if not a recession, a bit of time where growth is slow, and companies tend to draw back on marketing and advertising. (See the woes of ITV and C4.) It's good for CEOs to have a better story to wrap around that decision than "we can't afford it".
The other is that, as well as the amount of meaning you attach to a brand, the nature of that meaning matters, and depends on who you are trying to sell to. I hope that, had someone pitched a woke advert for a bloke product, I'd have advised them to turn it down a bit. Not go full on Bernard Manning, but no further than that Athena poster of a hunky man cuddling a baby. Which is where fiascos like Bud Light came from.
The story says it is stirring up racial hatred and I’ve seen the content, but perhaps you’re fine with stirring up racial hatred.
Although the butter is only relatively less expensive here because all the other groceries are more pricey. A punnet of strawberries worked out as €0.50 per strawberry at the weekend, and alcohol consumption seems to be declining because the price of potatoes has got to be so dear. The price of potatoes is a big deal, and if it doesn't see the current government hounded out of office then there's no justice in the world.
Me - I think we need access legislation on the Scottish model, which seems to work well.
The council need to stop messing about and set the place up for the hundreds of thousands of people who spend August here.
And, of course, in rape cases the question moves from whether there was penetration to whether or not there was consent, something that DNA doesn't help with at all.
Here is a video of an epic pitchpole. I doubt mine was anywhere near as spectacular, but in my mind it was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1MnPadNmJI
Many people want to uncover their ancestry, but – driven by Brexit – others also hope to regain access to the EU
https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/aug/18/rise-in-dna-tests-used-to-claim-citizenship-of-other-countries-brexit-eu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se-didBGn8A
In every magazine and the journals
For every bad move that this Kamala makes
They got a good explanation
https://www.jcpc.uk/cases/docs/jcpc-2015-0079-judgment.pdf
Would it be better if the person who did it wasn't caught?
What if people were injured/murdered?
What kind of society do you/we want to live in?
Complex questions, many of which don't have easy answers.
PA - Insider Advantage Trump +1
VA: Roanoke Harris +3
NH: St Anselm Harris +7
Also, re WI, note abortion is only the 5th most important issue for independents:
https://tippinsights.com/why-trump-is-poised-to-reclaim-wisconsin-in-2024/