Oh, it is very likely that there's all sorts of things of that sort that he doesn't recall. And lots of others that he probably recalls but not with enough certainty to talk about under oath.
Whether or not he approved a particular grant personally eight years ago, it's reasonable for him not to recall. Or, at least, it would be reasonable other than that, of course, he's known for ages that he was going to be asked about this specific thing and, as counsel points out many times in his objections, Fauci prepared heavily for the deposition. It would be very reasonable for him to have read up on the grants he knew he was going to be asked about to be able to recall basic facts about them.
But even then, most of the "do not recall" responses really aren't the damaging parts of the deposition.
I did like the part where Fauci was handed an email he had written where he discussed a paper and described it as a gain-of-function paper [shortly after having testified that nobody used the terminology "gain-of-function" anymore, since it was overbroad and vague], and he was asked whether, in this email, he had referred to the paper as a gain-of-function paper or not (with the text of his email literally in his hands) and his counsel objects on the grounds that it was a "mischaracterization" to assume that, because the email was written by Fauci, that it contained his words.
That actually ends up being one of the more damaging parts of the testimony -- not because it's some big admission that this study was doing gain-of-function -- everybody knows that -- but because Fauci has repeatedly testified that NIAID was not funding any coronavirus-related gain-of-function studies. If Fauci had not described the study using the phrase "gain-of-function", his argument that "gain-of-function is broad and mostly-meaningless" might possibly have carried the day -- he testified that way because that's what he was asked about, but maybe in his mind that phrase meant something else. But then there's the email where he talks specifically about the gain-of-function study which he knows (at the time he wrote the email about it) was NIAID-funded. So, if he ever testified [after writing that email] that NIAID did not fund any gain-of-function studies on coronaviruses, well... that would be perjury.
Still, relatively unlikely perjury charges will be made to stick (or even seriously attempted) -- Bannon remains the only person in basically forever to be actually prosecuted for lying to Congress, and unless Covid gets back to a state where the government is trying to reintroduce restrictions/mandates, I don't foresee anybody spending the political capital to try that case.
And all of that presupposes that that portion of the deposition is even admitted as evidence. It may or may not be -- there were, after all, standing objections. And while objecting to assuming that the sender of an email was its author is a bit specious, some of the other objections might not be as unreasonable.
No, this will almost certainly not hit the frontpage. The dupe detector has already started removing all the threads, even though on other topics it only engages after a topic actually gets picked up.
Every effort will be taken to suppress this story, just like the story it's talking about. (And remember that dang has before admitted to manually editing scores and reordering the front page to suit his preferences for what the community talk about)
None of the threads are even in the top 500 posts, despite the score being much higher than plenty of other posts which have made it. (Most of the things on the 15th page are like 5 points in 12 hours)
edit: Here is a recent comment from dang himself where he talks about a moderator altering the score of a post downward because it wasn't the kind of content that they wanted to be popular:
edit 2 since im not allowed to reply to you @dang:
I posted the one because I was not being believed. Finding a bunch of them was too much work. You may not "make a secret" of it, but clearly lots of people don't know that the frontpage is actually what the moderators want folks to talk about, not what actually gets the upvotes. Oh, and reread your comment to me. Your comment uses exactly the style and tone for which you routinely chastise folks. You're doing a really good job, actually, of making my point for me.
> edit 2 since im not allowed to reply to you @dang
You're allowed to reply to me just fine. Your account is rate-limited because you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle and ignoring our requests to stop. That's against the rules for good reason: it destroys what this site is supposed to be for. We ban accounts that do it, and you know what else? despite every ideologue's passionate perception, we do so regardless of which ideology they're wedded to.
Normally I'd take the rate limit off, at least temporarily, since there's nothing you're saying that doesn't have a straightforward refutation, and I like answering criticisms and trusting readers to make up their own minds. However, I have to meet a friend for dinner in 5 minutes and probably won't be able to look in on this thread for a few hours. Since you've already posted a bunch of false and/or misleading things (starting with "Every effort will be taken to suppress this story" and downhill from there), I think it prudent to wait until I'm free to respond.
Seems pretty silly to cherry-pick one comment as if it's a gotcha when I've posted such things a thousand times or more and none of it is secret. HN is a moderated/curated site—it always has been, and no one has ever claimed otherwise.
It'll be really interesting tomorrow to see how much tech and media end up suppressing this story too.
Presumably, just like with the story this is all about, they'll just ban all mention of it and delete everybody's accounts because of "safety" or something.
I'm actively watching a variety of mainstream press to see if any of them cover the story, but honestly I doubt they will, other than maybe to have an AP fact check that says that the whole thing is false and that Elon made it all up.
You're posting on a site where I'd guess that even the figurehead (PG) is so sick of the petty squabbling that he now almost never posts here himself. I imagine PG has confidence in how @dang attempts to moderate HN.
My suggestion is that instead of thinking about the moderating preventing certain topics being discussed, understand that it's trying to discourage things that engender certain styles of discussions. @dang talks consistently and clearly about wanting posts that satisfy intellectual curiosity. There are other sites for that.
As one example to hopefully demonstrate this isn't some political bias: while other sites seem forever covered with articles and threads about negative Musk/Twitter stories, they very rarely make it from New to Front here, because I'd say moderators have little confidence they ever lead to HN-style discussions.
Nah. S&P have to handle this kind of thing very carefully, so that they don’t lose the market’s trust. It’s impossible to imagine them sabotaging themselves just for some silly punitive action against a tiny company like Twitter.
Yep, housing is one of the few things whose relative price has increased, primarily because the planet is the same size now but there are more people.
In other areas, people were absurdly more wealthy in 2016 than in 1916 -- in terms of the quality of food, transportation, healthcare, nearly all household goods, services of most kind except domestic/household staff, and of course all the technology that didn't exist at all then.
Think about it this way: the planet is the same planet, but an hour of work at an average job should on average buy you an hour's worth of stuff-made-by-labor (of average skill/value). As human productivity grew due to better equipment, better materials, better science, and more efficient operations, the amount of stuff an average hour of work produces is way higher -- and thus the average worker can afford more/better stuff for the same amount of time worked.
Some work got way more productive, some got a little more productive, and a few things (like domestic help) are exactly the same level of productivity as before. And so some things, we have absurdly cheaper or better things, but others have gotten slightly more expensive instead.
There is some good material in that book, and it is written in a manner that appeals to a wide audience, so the book does some good, but generally, Kiyosaki is a salesman (of himself as a genius) above all else, and often gives hot takes that will draw attention but have minimal real value behind them.
This claim is typical of a Kiyosaki take: it is extreme, it seems plausible, it draws attention, and it has no real basis in research or reality. I'm not saying the economy won't crash (it might or might not), but Kiyosaki doesn't have specific data backing his thesis.
