unholythree

My father has commented to me about the weird warrior/war-fighter phrasing that came into vogue in the late 90’s. He remembered as a young soldier in the early 80’s not hearing those terms at all, but during a stint in the National Guard in the years before 9/11 he started hearing that sort of phrasing all the time.

It stuck him as vaguely undemocratic or even slightly barbaric. More suited to some caste in the Middle Ages than a modern all volunteer force of citizens-soldiers.

Tropical tree seahorse?

You gotta make sure they install them right. The UV light can degrade the insulation on wires, or break down expensive HEPA or bag filters.

If they put the light in the wrong place it can mess your equipment up.

So why did this conversation needed to be kept from malign rogue anti-Trumpers in the NSA (who would be risking very real jail time) but did not require the basic level of OPSEC that would keep the editor of the Atlantic out?

Well Jefferson certainly wasn't ever wrong about anything. He certainly wouldn't have held any beliefs contrary to 20th or 21st century values. /s

Obviously the dude had a lot of good ideas, but just grabbing anything he said and acting like it's gospel is flawed for dare I say a pretty glaring reason...

I guess you could argue back in 1776 AI and aluminum had a roughly equal impact, only for aluminum to over take AI and become far more important by the early 20th century…

Pedantic sarcasm of course.

Yeah people forget that Sushi was once considered very adventurous to most people, and than a huge percentage of American men only first experienced hot sauce as Tabasco sauce in the army. Other than ethic enclaves I think the American palette was historically considered pretty underdeveloped.

He’s not your “bro” little mister, he’s clearly your elder!

I wonder if a better use would be to establish a new medical school at a university without one. It seems like if society has too few doctors we need additional medical student spots more than a reduction in medical student debt.

Yeah it’s always crazy looking down some street perpendicular to the levee and seeing something the size of a skyscraper on its side slide by at 10 mph.

If the scratches are on the inside it might not look too bad after you fill it with water, but still a bummer.

The noise maker (alarm) is still close to him.

True, but these are also medieval farmer’s fields, about as all-natural and organic as possible. They are certainly more natural than a parking lot, and barring very much stone construction would probably rewild within a generation or two.

Edit: The more I think of it the stone construction really is the most unnatural part. Especially the ancient tradition of building those little walls using the stones you cleared in order to plow.

Definitely. Filtering particulates and tempering the outside air is the way to go in anything but most extreme situations. I suspect even designing a fallout shelter you would want to go that route.

That’s like saying spheres aren't real because no perfect sphere exists. I think objectively exploring the merits of both sides of an argument is possible, and in many cases laudable.

I’m not saying all arguments on every issue are made in good faith or are worth exploring, and of course some things are simply facts. I’m also not condemning editorials where a writer is expected to try and persuade. However, I do think there is merit in a form of journalism that summarizes the strongest arguments on both sides of an issue in dispute, rather than simply picking one side and running with it.

I recall hearing an NPR piece in the past couple months that was discussing how best to handle reparations for slavery. The entire piece clearly came from the conceit that reparations would be good and desirable. All of the expert interviewees supported and spoke favorably of reparations with no counterpoints, the few opponents were extemporaneous "man on the street" interviews. The end effect was an one sided piece almost contemptuously disregarding any opposition. Certainly not a convincing message to the 68% of US adults (including 49% of Democrats) that don't support reparations.

More than the staking a clear political position on the matter, it was the presumption and condescension that was the most off-putting. Far too often their pieces have adopted that tone. With the "right-thinking" guest or guests interviewed by the "right-thinking" host about a issue clearly the listener would agree with too... if they are "right-thinking."

Indeed. While you might dislike Neo-liberalism, Reagan-ism, or Bush's "Compassionate Conservatism," as Walter Sobchak said: at least it's an ethos.

Trumpism believes in nothing but suborning yourself to Trump's will and needs. Sure there's some vague isolationism and xenophobia, and some pandering to Christian nationalism, but the only consistent policy position is fielty to Trump. That's why there aren't any interesting Trumpist pundits. The House is twisting itself in knots right now because they can't decide what he wants or will tolerate regarding Ukraine funding. A real party with a policy would have an articulatable agenda, probably with some dissenters on this or that, but all the current Republican party can agree on is how great dear leader is, and Democrats are bad.

Except inflation, in the US we gave everyone money a couple of years ago (probably had to) and it caused (probably unavoidable) spectacular inflation. We narrowly achieved our soft landing, but that should have taught us that while sometime helicopter money works, it isn’t free.

I think this will go over poorly in some parts of the democratic coalition. I don’t know that blue collar workers including blacks and hispanics will care for this much, or that centrist suburbanites will like it either. Continuing to loose support in the first group or slowing/receding support in the second could be a serious problem.

The public service loan discharge “used” to be broken and people were always rejected, but they made significant overhauls a few years back. My father for example, had his loans forgiven for working at a public library for a decade or so.

The comparison was specifically to the last attempt which was just scattershot. Radiologist who just paid off you loans: no soup for you! Radiologist who still has loans but will soon also be rich: have a bunch of free money.

This new loan forgiveness (which as a loan-less dropout I’m not crazy about either) at least seems directed as a handout to poorer loan holders. If I’m going to be screwed, it’s slightly nicer knowing it’s not to a give-away to the tax brackets above me.

I go to a restaurant where the owner has recently hung a sign reading “The World is Yours” as though Tony Montana from Scarface should be regarded a fount of wisdom.

Maybe it’s just my small sample size, but I’m surprised at how many of the artists are women given the dates. I wonder if there is something about botanical illustrations that was particularly inviting to women of the time.

Parent poster didn’t seem interested it meeting some arbitrary diversity metric, it was that huge amount of potential talent is entirely unknown.

Because the barrier to entry is low, talent filters up better in many other sports. We probably know who the best hockey player in Canada is, but who would be the best dressage rider is a mystery because few kids have access.

Gold is just off it's (at least) 200-year high of December last year. I bet we can attribute both in part to real or perceived/imagined inflation.

The Dotcom era was a bubble because a ton of tech companies had business models that were terrible or sometimes just ahead of their time; but investors were eager to get in on these newfangled internet companies that were all going to the moon. It wasn't economical for pets.com to ship 50 lbs bags of dog food in 1999. Amazon made it because back then they just sold books (and maybe cds?) which have always been fairly affordable to ship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble

I think your right, the tricky part is always navigating these technological changes.

If you imagine life in colonies here around 1776, there was no photographs to doctor, no Zapruder film, or Nixon tapes, and yet newspapers existed and people lived in a relatively high trust society. People generally had faith in contracts, the law, and the government; but not a lot of ways, as an individual, to verify much at all.

I think eventually we’ll have to go back to that model of simply picking individuals and institutions to trust. Hopefully it’ll make people more selective.

I remember a joke (or conspiracy theory) from the 90’s that the US Postal Service wanted to charge people per email.

I don’t think that’s true at all! How would that go over in the next congressional election? How would that go over with the greater than one out of two US households that own a firearm? How would that go over with the rank and file of whatever agency was supposed to enforce this spectacularly illiberal and probably unconstitutional mandate?

Trying to restrict the free movement of citizens here would throw the country into hellish anarchy, why would any “power that be” attempt that? The cost would wildly exceed any benefit.

And even predators in the wild don’t die under professional care in a hospital bed surrounded by loved ones. It’s probably a violent death or starvation.