secstate

sorry for the downvote, but you misunderstand the motive of his asssasin. Abe and his family were directly involved in a church movement that had harmed the assassin's family. Strangely, it had very little do with politics, and so elections could not have righted the perceived wrongs.

But they don't just self segregate. The law is wielded as a weapon for economic segregation which makes the escape the GP was able to accomplish exceedingly difficult. Also, you are insinuating that they escaped by dint of personal effort alone, when I suspect they had their own luck and privileges (as did I) in finding themselves no longer living in poverty.

The biggest problem with this entire thread is that it paints a black and white picture of the situation. As though by building more housing the only possible outcome are poor people doing drugs next to my kids' school. Guess what, there's already people doing drugs next to my kids school, even in "nice" neighborhoods. This is not black and white. You don't have to pull someone down to raise others up. I'm sorry the GP (and it seems you, via defense) believe that their escape means they are better than those who could not "care about themselves" enough to better themselves. What a sad state of mind.

I don't live in a socialized-medicine country, but I think this is a solved problem where capitalism still allows one to pay for private health insurance that will cover eye color change surgery.

While I appreciate your effort to avoid constitutional violations related to health care, we already walk all over (and have historically simply ignored) the constitution with regards to zoning, taxation, bank loans, voting, protests, free speech, etc, that this seems like a silly hill to die on, especially given the upsides to single-payer healthcare.

And to be clear, all those constitutional violations are abhorrent and should be actively legislatively and judicially worked against (not executive-ly because that branch almost by definition works against the constitution). But given our history of red-lining, voter suppression, un-banking, rich tax exceptions, NIMBY zoning, etc, I'm okay with single-payer, so long as there are private options if you think surgically modified eye color can make you more employable or improve your quality of life.

This. Goddamn am I sick of people claiming bias on a news organization with tacit expectation that somewhere the platonic form of news information exists which is objectively true and unbiased.

It does not exist, it never will exist, and if Serenity has taught us anything, it's that you can't stop the signal, Mal.

I was traveling in the EU a year ago and was in need of a toothbrush. The one I picked up at an arbitrary pharmacy in Antony, FR has nothing special about it but has lasted (I mean the bristles are not wearing hard or splaying, getting soft, whatever the usual failure mode for a toothbrush is) in 12 months of use. And I'm usually pretty hard on my brushes.

Why can't we in the US just have nice cheap things. Why is everything an electronic life-hack with a fun take on how to be eco-concious, that involves buying something I don't already own?

For what it's worth, the toothbrush was also not the cheapest I could find (that would have been Lidl or somesuch), and was made in France, so maybe that makes a difference.

Also, dentists recommend X-rays A LOT, too.

There was a great book (that I thought was called Nerds 2.0, but now I can't find it again) that I read decades ago that described how Cisco got there start. Running wires through gutters on Stanford's campus and hoping no one asked any questions. Built their own routers and what not. The official story now looks like Stanford knew what a great idea that was, but the history that Lerner provided in the book suggests that their initial response was pretty negative and only positive once they formalized the project and made a company around it.

I dunno, the problem with processes is that they still get it wrong sometimes. But absent any sort of process all you get is trash. Wikipedia has managed to maintain a certain credibility in the world largely due to these democratic processes. Do the processes fail sometimes, sure. But I'll take this over 4chan any day.

In the meantime, the only government-like structure left in Gaza is Hamas, and so if you say the Gaza Health Ministry, anyone who knows what's going on, understands that Gaza is run by Hamas, which makes the reporting super dubious, AND clearly Hamas-run. So I think for most people, it is super redundant to use it every time it's referenced. Once at the top of an article as a quick reminder, sure. But to insist that the name of the organization is the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which is a ministry of the Hamas-run Gaza government, that's foolish and only useful for folks with a specific agenda.

Goddamn, that is a hideously well-reasoned article. Don't even worry about your phone. What about all the little things that have batteries in it. What's to stop a state actor from embedding minor explosives in our TV remotes, kitchen appliances, our goddamn inexpensive bluetooth headphones (ugh). Hell, any rechargeable cell on Amazon could be tampered with.

I suspect there are technical issues with some of those applications, but I feel like I woke up in a different world after reading this article.

This, and I wish the warnings in the article were the chief takeaway for the general public. These attacks have to be condemned internationally NOW. The use of the new weapons for the first time is a perfect time to discuss universal condemnation and agreements amongst at least state actors to never do it again.

Read the article. Success by disrupting Hezbollah for a month or a year means nothing if you've effectively demonstrated to the world that ubiquitous technology can be weponized by robust non-state actors and triggered at random.

Apart from the very well articulated point in the article, is the fact that they crippled Hezbollah, but everyone proximate to these attacks are much more likely to be polarized against Israel.

Weponized batteries are not the answer to how to stop Hezbollah.

Correction, the best way this ends now is that Bibi lives to a nice old age and dies of natural causes and not in prison. This is not the Empire of Japan. This is a poorly funded proxy war being kept just below a boil so certain members of Israel's political class are not found to be criminals.

Yeah, I get that people in established positions feel attacked from many angles these days, so defining things like intention become very important to justifying the belief in why they've chosen their perspective. Also, it's easier than ever for truly bat-shit crazy ideas to catch people's imaginations. But how, then, are we to recognize paradigm shifts?

Herodotus was accused of just making shit up and accepting legend as fact by his near-contemporaries. Now a lot of what he wrote is accepted as being closer to the truth than what almost anyone else wrote down then.

What is academic history other than repeated attempts at revision?

History is literally the stories we tell ourselves about the past. There are facts there, but the arrangement of such facts will (and should) always be open to revision. Anyone claiming to have figured out the One True history of humanity should be viewed with extreme suspicion.

But for the judge to be amused would require the affected person to have the legal intelligence, moral fortitude and general life "legalness" (because maybe you doubt your US legal status even if your life is mostly above board) to pursue one shitty officer's stop.

I've definitely been detained for what seemed to me an acceptable amount of time for a traffic stop, but who's to say the cop can't come up with myriad reasons it had to take that long? Is 35 minutes too long? Is 38 minutes? Who's keeping time, and who's word is taken as truth?

I appreciate your willingness to push for your rights here. But the situation is surprisingly similar to refusing to let a cop search your trunk. You can say no, but that K-9 unit is going to take four hours to get there from the station 20 minutes away. They will make your life hell.

I've definitely been in hospital situations with my children where I was honestly afraid (perceived or real threat, I still don't know) that they were going to report me for child abuse if I took my kids home and refused care. People with authority are kinda scary, and while I love for us to all choose rights over security, sometimes I just don't want to have to fight for everything.

And this is where police states evolve from.

Your last point is very important. Zoning at a federal level would be required to clear some basic anti segregation. Would it be perfect? No. But the zoning in my town is 100% in the same spirit as redlining. No one would describe themselves as racist or classist. Maybe that's just human nature?

So true. Fun to point out all the flaws in the other major tech companies, but the locked nature of Apple, while seemingly providing opportunities for "security", also makes you feel like cattle in a feed lot when you try do something they don't want you to do.

Safari faults aside, I've never felt more constrained by the whims of a corporation than when I try to reset the password on my Apple ID. Even remembering the process makes me a little feel a little claustrophobic.

Years ago there was a hurricane that made it up the New England coast. I remember a story of a father and daughter in Acadia National Park who had wandered out onto some exposed rocks (with about 40 other people) to watch these huge waves crash just below them. Eventually one wave was larger than the others and it knocked all 40 people onto their asses, while dragging the father and daughter (who were right on the edge) into the ocean. The father drowned.

All I could think was how colossally dumb you had to be to assume the waves just going to sit there crashing below you. It was clearly a huge storm surge. And then how horribly tragic and preventable the outcome was. Some people, man.

EDIT: Misremembered it. Three people were swept out, and it was the 7-year-old daughter who died. God damn, how awful.

https://www.bangordailynews.com/2009/08/23/news/three-swept-...

Oh boy, life is hard. So much of these arguments feel like the fallout from attacking social and philosophical human problems with Objectives and Key Results or something. As though if we can just push the number of people identifying as female in higher education up that will unlock the next level OKR for increasing pay, and that will make people identifying as female equal in a socially capitalist society.

Except, biologically female people still carry very different burdens when it comes to human reproduction. So probably, the next OKR will be to develop a vat that simulates uterus so we shall all be free of the tyranny of our bodies and everyone will be exactly the same as everyone else.

Life is choices. Choices are hard. We are all privileged in variable ways and it will always be hard to measure equality. I don't know how to help someone who has a PhD from Yale find a partner who they would perceive as their equal. Nor do I know how to force CIS people identifying as male how to choose partner that has more education than them. Some problems we're gonna have to solve without a Key Result.

EDIT: Nevermind, this whole thing is just an add for a tutoring service :(

So, here's my hot take (which probably isn't terribly original): Compulsory school math should end before algebra, and the rest of the curriculum should be taught the same way (or better) to how we teach art or music.

If you need advanced math for your career, teach advanced algebra or calculus as needed. At the very least this will force post-secondary schools to be honest about how prepared students are leaving secondary school. Right now, it "those people's fault" for how poorly prepared for advanced math most kids are.

Basic math literacy is incredibly important. But being able to solve quadratics or discover geometric proofs is colossally unimportant to 98% of humanity and it's importance can usually be determined based on personal interest in a career. Let's be honest with ourselves that most people well and truly will never need advanced math. Exposed kids to it as a fun game or art form, not a tool that they will never use.

Should learning to use a belt sander be an educational requirement to move from 9th to 10th grade? No, no it should not.

I think you're exactly right here. It's not that people don't think of it as a health device, and that probably helps sales via justification. But most people I know who have it, when asked, have no F-ing clue what about their health they're tracking.

And yeah, if you do care that much (amateur or pro athlete training) there's no way the A-watch is the primary device for you. Garmin is the king of the hill in that market.

I remember back when I'd spit the growth-for-growth-sake-is-cancer thing. But the reality is, unless you've spent time in a low/no-growth economy, how on Earth can you speculate on what is good or bad about it? All the last three generations of humans have ever know is unbridled, fantastical growth. And being pessimistic about continued growth is the definition of literal ignorance of what a no-growth or negative growth society looks like.

I'm not saying I have all the answers, or that we can keep this game going forever. But let's not pretend everything will be better when we finally stop having future generations to build our cars or take care of us in our old age. And no, robots wont do it for us (maybe cars, but damn, I hope I don't have robots taking care of me in my dotage).

I feel like this misses the problem with Authy. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of 2FA alternatives for Authy. But when my 401K provider requires Authy to login in without providing a generic 2FA option, THAT is the problem.

I use it primarily with my own Jellyfin instance, but there are Netflix, Disney+ and pretty much anything you can think of plugins. The YouTube irritatingly complicated to get working, but then there are "play on kodi" plugins for various browser so you can flip what you're watching to the big screen. It's really an amazing project.

Love a good hack. But in this case, I just use LibreELEC (kodi) and call it a day :D

And yet, now here we are in the 21st century, where it feels like we're on the opposite side of the time delay problem. Instead of the War Powers Act, what if we allowed congresspeople to use PEKs to vote by proxy in the case of an emergency (definition needed)? Surely that would be better than creating a all-but-in-title king out of the executive branch as concerns conflict?

And despite this, some people DO insist on living just on the edge of legality. I recently had an interaction with someone declared a "vexatious litigant" in Texas. That's a legal status that requires them to get authorization from a judge before opening a new lawsuit against another party.

I prefer a world where most people don't ride the edge of legality.

And the problem is, zoning is almost never the answer to healthy growth. Is it useful for segregation? Yes. Is it useful for temporarily sustaining property value. Yes.

I know there are some counter examples, but I always think about the beautifully organic growth from some of America's greatest cities in the early 20th century. And how that growth would be categorically impossible today because everyone's afraid someone's gonna build a lard rendering plant next to a single-family house. Or that poor people will move in across the street. Goddamn I'm sick of selfish assholes.

Because we've inverted the pyramid. School enables people to work and make money. Education is a side effect of the daycare, and unless you go home to motivated and curious parents, likely the best you can hope for is they get socialized enough to not chronically get fired in pretty monotonous careers.

Careful how you swing that axe of relaxed zoning. Got me nearly kicked off my local town council. "Why can't that town two towns over build more apartments for our day laborers?" they all ask in unison.