I have seen a couple articles (e.g., here noting that the prosecution presented a new theory on motive this time around:

Prosecutors in the original trial said Knox and Sollecito, along with a man named Rudy Hermann Guede, had killed Kercher during a drug-fueled sex game in which the British student was an unwilling participant.

. . .

In the Florence retrial, prosecutor Alessandro Crini contended that the motive was rooted in arguments between roommates Knox and Kercher about cleanliness and was triggered by a toilet left unflushed by Guede, the only person now in jail for the murder.

The previously alleged motive had seemed implausible to me, but I can make even less sense of the new one. How did the prosecution argue that Guede and Sollecito had any motive to kill Kercher based on a disagreement about cleanliness between roommates Knox and Kercher? (Although the prosecution did not presumably have to prove anything against Guede, who has already been convicted, I would think they would still need to do something to make sense of his part in the murder.) I have not been able to find any accounts explaining more about exactly how the prosecution argued this new motive.

At any rate, even leaving aside the forensic evidence (or lack thereof), I would think that such a fundamental change in the theory of case would militate in favor of reversal on appeal (i.e., it suggests that the prosecution, rather than basing its theory on the evidence, has instead pursued a strategy of presenting any argument that results in the conviction of Knox and Sollecito), but I don't know enough about the Italian justice system to even know if such considerations are properly part of the appeal.

Thanks!

That link did imply that the 10% of funding that is federal is structured as grants, which surprised me. Though it's not clear that it means exactly the same thing as in this post.

that portion of resources that is actually up for grabs [are grants]

That sounds close to a tautology to me. Aren't grant applications the way that one grabs resources that are up for grabs? (OK, I can think of other examples, like specializing in disabled students, but...)

Most of the money/resources schools receive comes in the form of grants.

Could you provide a source for that?

If you "know that there isn't actually any way to fix the problems," why do you care if the grants are scored in insane ways, or the interventions targeted demographically, or that 98% of the money is embezzled?

(Incidentally, a reason to give away incentives demographically rather than by test score is that they become an incentive to sandbag the early scores. Which could then produce the illusion that the program improved scores.)

What did the guy claim to have spent the $800,000 on?

Currently, my firm and its allies are trying to push the government into forcing the schools to use a Bayesian prediction model, in which you feed an individual student's test scores for the past 5 years

How much predictive value do you lose if you just use 1 year? Using a single test is transparent. Is that politically good or bad?
(I guess I'm assuming that "test" means a standardized test. If it means comparing students across different tests written by different teachers, it might not seem fair to use them naively, but sometimes transparency is more important.)

Meta karma-related question that occurred to me on reading the post on Retributive Downvoting, but which didn't really fit there: One thing that I sometimes do in upvoting/downvoting is to calibrate my vote based on how many up or down votes the comment already has; for example, if a comment is at plus 10, but I think it's only a tiny bit good, I might downvote it; whereas if a comment is at -10, but I think it's only a little bit bad, I may upvote it (whereas if the little bit good comment was at 1-2, I would upvote, and it the little bit bad comment was at 0-1, I would downvote it).

But perhaps that is a wrong approach. Indeed, it would probably be inaccurate with a very new comment, but I am often rather late in reading through comment threads, and would guess that by the time I read through many comments have settled close to their ultimate score. Does anyone else do that, or have a view whether it is a correct or incorrect approach?

This may overlap with some of the other issues listed, but I think it comes from a slightly different place mentally/emotionally: They're purposefully trying to disengage early rather than getting into a fight about who has the "last word" on the subject, e.g., on some level they may want to respond or even to "win" the exchange, but they're purposefully telling themselves to step away from the computer.

I love it!

I wanna be the Society for Rare Diseases in Cute Puppies!.

I'm an aspiring babyeater.

The latest hot fanfic: Aubrey de Grey and the Methods of universal sex.

That which can be destroyed by awesome warm fuzzies should be.

In the new version of Newcomb's problem, you have to choose between a box containing timeless hugging and a box containing fun.

For example, when discussing gender-related problems, it seems inevitable that some proposed solutions will generally be better for men, and other solutions will generally be better for women. If people are selfish, then they will each prefer the solution that's individually best for them, even if they can agree on all of the facts. (It's unclear whether people should be selfish, but it seems best to assume that most are, for practical purposes.)

But isn't it possible that in any given bargaining situation there may also be a win-win solution that makes the pie bigger and leaves everybody better off than the status quo? Discussion, debate, and further exchange of information could at least theoretically lead to a previously unrecognized win-win situation being found.

ADBOC to the first link in this context — its tone is appropriate if the target audience is unrepentant creepers* who need to be shamed into shaping up**, but as advice to random people who may or may not behave creepily, it feels way too aggressive, like it's presuming guilt. (The third link, on the other hand, is great tone-wise.)

* A narrower category than "people who behave creepily some of the time".

** Not that I would expect it to work well; most people wouldn't consider the author a moral authority who's entitled to shame them. Behavior modification is hard.

For sci fi for about that age, maybe Interstellar Pig, although it does not seem to be available on Kindle. Might be a little scary (scared me when I was about that age). Caveat - haven't read it since I was a kid, so not sure how well it holds up.

Even as an adult, I enjoyed The Mysterious Benedict Society books by Trenton Lee Stewart. 4th/5th grade is probably about right. How can you not love a series with a book titled The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma?