I’m saying I’m not the one that accused you. You’re confusing me with the person who responded before me.

I’m not the person who first responded, I accused you of nothing…

The British repeatedly gave blankets they new had smallpox. Todays evidence is that nothing happened, the virus was already dead. But it’s worth mentioning that from a Native American perspective this still happened, they received blankets and shortly after they had an epidemic. Whether they contracted it from the blankets or not is sort of besides they point, they intended to infect Native Americans with smallpox and local tribes ended up having a smallpox epidemic shortly after. Maybe they found another way, or maybe someone got infected by coming in contact with the British during one of the conflicts. But does it really matter? With or without blankets they still murdered millions (thought to be the largest genocide in human history) of native people on their own land simply because they wanted to steal all the land. They didn’t need smallpox to do that, they did it with guns, and forced starvation.

Presuming of course that they absolutely weren’t going to replace those microscopes without that endowment.

In many, if not most, cases there would never be room in a budget for an electron microscope at your average mid sized or small school. Keep in mind we’re talking about a million+ dollar expenditure.

In many cases improvements like a building or an electron microscope absolutely hinge almost entirely on donations, that’s why they are so attractive to a donor. They can make real lasting improvements to a college or university that wouldn’t otherwise exist.

Even the endowed scholarships that go to assist with tuition are never as big as people think. If you have a $100,000 endowed scholarship. The school is likely only giving $4,500 of that out each year so they can grow the endowment at the same rate they give out money, thereby ensuring future students get more help.

I’ll paraphrase a real world example. School X has a $100 million dollar endowment, with $65 million going to endowed scholarships, that’s only ~$3 million a year for tuition relief. That same school is looking at a $45 million a year budget. Certainly they could chose to spend down their endowment and give their students 2 years of free school… And then what? Pass on the 3 million a year budget shortfall to future students?

I work in higher Ed, I agree the system is broken, but most schools endowments come no where near being able to give free tuition.

Most donations are restricted to the purpose of the donation. You’d need to know how much of the endowment is for scholarships. Sometimes schools will have an immense amount of money, but can’t actually lower tuition because the money is tied up in other things. If I give money for an endowment that supports future replacement of electron microscopes, that does fuck all for your tuition.

When I was traveling in South Korea they had these at some counter service and fast food restaurants. Since often people didn’t speak English and I don’t speak Korean they were immensely helpful. They had several languages and settings that made ordering so much easier. From an accessibility standpoint they are awesome.

People vastly over estimate the danger of riding a bike. It’s comparable in lethality to getting on a highway in your car, slightly less lethal in most places, but slightly more dangerous for non lethal injuries, iirc.

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