FriendOfDeSoto

How would this be different if the other guys were in charge and you wore a MAGA hat? Wouldn’t the law work the same?

As a caveat, I understand that the GOP presents a greater threat in being vindictive towards those they perceive as not on their side. I don’t mean to diminish that threat. And good luck with the work you are doing. If we take that threat out of the equation, this could just as well be a “TIL FOIA can work” post in general.

It’s only $1.

Log this: you violated rule #1

You didn’t learn anything today.

I think this is worthwhile posting again as a “TIL that leaf blowers are a good way to defend against tear gas” when this post gets removed for falling fowl of rule 1.

TYL you cannot trust a statistic that you haven’t forged yourself.

The physicist in question was an unapologetic pedophile. Not saint material.

Does this make any sense?

Yes.

First they define pregnancy to start before conception.

That’s not what’s happening. This is a statistical math problem and the last, reliably known variable is most likely the last period of the person before conception. That doesn’t mean they were pregnant before conception. If neither the date of the last period nor the date of conception are known, they use a different method, probably ultrasound picture comparisons, and add a lower number.

Discrimination in hiring happens every day. Be it conscious or subconscious. If there isn’t a hard, unavoidable quota no one can force anyone to hire people they don’t like. The laws may just forbid them from being this forthright.

Never attribute to malice what you can more appropriately attribute to stupidity. The people who coded this may be young and not even on their first divorce yet. To me, that’s what this family plan business falls under. To leap from that to organized discrimination of folks being born out of wedlock seems a tad too conspiratorial from my POV.

This may be a fryable fish. Yet I see much bigger fish elsewhere.

What may also hold back development of functional patchwork family plans is legal hot water. Not every split is amicable. The Googles and Microsofts may simply have decided they don’t want to be put in a situation where they need to adjudicate between two warring ex partners whose bitterness is overriding their child rearing responsibilities with petty disputes. And building a system where maybe new partners can gain access - even just by mistake - to their spouse’s kids accounts also has very bad PR potential when it turns out the step parent is abusive.

Nevertheless you should let them know about your feedback. Patchwork families are quite common and they can probably do more in that area.

It does not address the question at the core: who counted what and how? Even if we accepted it as given that men were more effective in the suicide department, which may very well be backed by all individual studies, that would not make international comparisons, the like we see in the title, any more reliable. I did not see a source for this TIL and that’s why I’m throwing heaps of salt on it.

Unlike other governments who are (more) honest.

This has to fall under the category of “never trust a statistic you didn’t forge yourself.” I’m confident without looking that the amorphous Western countries don’t all count suicides and attempts the same way. And for China you would have to trust official numbers or generate your own because the one thing the leadership does not like is looking bad in the international community.

The other question I would have is this ratio based on absolute numbers or per capita. The reason why I ask is that China has a massive gender imbalance, a blast from the past when the one - child policy was in play and millions of female embryos were somehow aborted. And here I would also assume that official population numbers may not be entirely correct to make the generally known problem within the country look less severe.

If there are more men in absolute numbers, there will be more male suicides, some of which one might attribute to the ripples downstream of that very same imbalance.

Whoever concluded this may have accounted for all the pitfalls in their study. And the result may be fantastically accurate. But we oughta be careful and keep more than just a few grains of salt handy when we hear about something like this.

And if we have found a way to reinforce a straw, then we will have found a way to reinforce the planet as well. Danger averted.

You’ve discovered the birthday problem.

Ich sach ma so es wär mir lieber er wär der Chef von den Verein und nicht mehr dran an die Atombombenknöppe.