WesDym

https://mastodon.social/@wesdym

Cranky armchair wonk and word nerd.

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Last Notes

2026-04-07 19:53:22 UTC

Meanwhile, in one of the most politically backwards parts of the US, a public debate is brewing about whether it's appropriate or not for a sitting school board member to tell a student, "God, you're hot!" and ask what school she goes to -- while touching her. It was in public, and on camera, and some of his colleagues laughed, so you can understand how it's complicated.
https://www.wsmv.com/2026/04/06/god-youre-hot-tennessee-school-board-member-says-student-during-board-meeting/

2026-03-30 19:47:43 UTC

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Crap chart, I'm sorry. This was cutesy image-making, minimally informative, and even confusing. Produce might be composed, but that's not 'recyling' for this kind of tracking. While flags are cute, the actual names of countries would have easily fit on the bars, and would have been actually informative to more people, instead of requiring them to know all those flags or cross-ref them.

2026-03-22 04:53:05 UTC

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I'm no mathologist, but this seems like a stretch. Is the argument that mathematics used or developed by crappy people is itself suspect for that reason? Is the math not able to be valid on its own, if it was developed or associated with crappy people?

2026-03-17 11:39:38 UTC

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What's going on in the foreground? I get that it's a guy with an outboard motor, but what's next to him and behind him?

2026-03-13 23:33:00 UTC

For babies born this year, life expectancy is highest in five liberal states. And lowest in five conservative ones.
https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/study-reveals-stark-differences-in-life-expectancy-across-us-states-over-the-past-century/
On average, blue-state babies can expect to live 14 years longer than those born in red states. For comparison, this discrepancy is 20% greater than the difference between North and South Korea after more than 70 years.
This is mostly a story of improvement: All states were similar in 1900. Blue startes got a lot better; red states, much less.

2026-02-03 20:24:35 UTC

Why do so many assholes who make or edit videos talk so fast, or re-edit videos to make it seem like people are talking faster? I'm sorry, but that's an asshole move. You're not communiting more by that. You're communicating LESS. Stop being stupid about this.

2026-01-27 17:36:07 UTC

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That is indeed correct.
Anyone who hasn't read Frank Wilhoit's essay about this yet, go do that now. You can't understand conservative speech without understanding conservative thinking.

2026-01-25 21:44:42 UTC

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I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. 'Disease' is a very broad term. Even 'virus' is a very broad term. SARS-CoV-2 can be transmitted by BREATHING. HIV cannot be. The comparison is at best embarrassingly ignorant, and at worst despicably disingenuous.
Masking and distancing are known and proven methods for reducing transmission of airborne pathogens. Only an idiot or an asshole would say otherwise.

2026-01-16 13:37:13 UTC

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He was looking for any excuse to shoot someone he badly wanted to shoot. It's as simple as that. He called her a "fucking bitch" almost immediately after killing her. He's sick in the head, needs to be taken off the streets and probably locked up, and needs very aggressive professional help -- and a lot of study, because he's not the only homicidal maniac on this force.
There's no special mystery here. It's entirely deliberate and premeditated on his part.

2025-12-29 02:42:23 UTC

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What I love about your comment is knowing that it will someday be published among others like it, as examples of how pig-headed many people of our time were about an innovation that people of the future will take for granted. You might even live long enough to see that, and get interviewed about it.

2025-12-22 15:24:05 UTC

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I think it's reasonable to suppose that that's happened more than once, including back in our species' homelands in Africa. Probably to our species' forebears, too.

2025-12-14 02:03:59 UTC

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Okay, what do you think it's also about?

2025-12-14 01:49:10 UTC

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OP had 20 years to set up local storage for up to 6TB. 8TB currently goes for under $300. They could have, but didn't, instead naïvely putting their trust in a giant faceless corporation who doesn't care about them or anyone. OP is an 'expert' who apparently didn't back up important and irreplaceable data in a form they controlled directly, even though they easily could have.
I read it. What point do you believe you're making?

2025-12-14 00:45:59 UTC

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Local storage is relatively inexpensive. No one should have be 'terrified' of this.

2025-12-05 07:51:28 UTC

TIL that camels evolved in North America, and then migrated to Eurasia ~7myo, and those left behind went extinct quite recently -- thousands of years after humans had already arrived in the New World.

2025-12-04 16:13:49 UTC

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And yet, one should fully expect it, if you buy something like this.

2025-11-28 21:46:02 UTC

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Make something idiot-proof, and they'll just invent a cleverer idiot.

2025-11-13 14:58:43 UTC

I really don't know why Christians bother to wear crosses. What is that for? To try to advise other people that you're a good person? Generations of hardened criminals have sported crosses. They imply nothing about you at all, except that maybe you're too naive to grasp that. And it's just as believable that you're a gangster. It's like how so many traitors wear flag pins; it only proves that you think it proves something, when it doesn't.

2025-11-07 22:00:52 UTC

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And what more could a man in prison do? Because you know that's the tale, right? Daedalus and Icarus were in prison. Daedalus fashioned usable -- not ideal, but usable -- wings from what they were able to get, which wasn't much. Seeing as how they were in prison and all. He explained to Icarus what to do and not to do. Not a manual. Direct instruction, as the maker.
It's hard for me to imagine how Icarus's failure can be pinned on him.

2025-11-07 13:42:58 UTC

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I've always seen that tale as one of gross user error. The wings worked just fine for Daedalus. Icarus ignored the use warnings he gave him. The system failed the user Icarus because he exceeded the stated use parameters he'd been told, not due to design flaws. Daedalus did the best with what was available to him, and could not have designed them better. They worked as long as you used them the way he said to, and didn't use them the way he said not to.

2025-11-07 01:44:43 UTC

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Peter Thiel is fucking insane. The things he "thinks" are not meaningful or rational. They're just the gibberings of a crazy man. He's functional enough to get through the day, and when you're rich enough but not too far gone, you're 'eccentric', not crazy.
Think about this remark. Now ask yourself, what kind of person says things like that? Right. A crazy person.

2025-11-04 07:52:19 UTC

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And, '70s VW pickups were versions of the Type 2, know to Americans as the Microbus. Presumably, everyone knows those were not built to last half a century. While there might be a valid claim about a brake job, the shop is not your mommy, Tim, and has no obligation to baby your abandoned car while you, I don't know, give Taco handjobs or whatever you spend your time doing. If you're that fucking rich, you can pay them to do that; but you didn't, because you're a stupid piece of shit. Fuck you.

2025-11-04 07:39:24 UTC

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Likewise, the Golf was about 10 years old in 1984. The Mk1 was sold as the Rabbit in the US. It was nothing special in the '80s -- I knew people who had them -- and definitely just rolling shit 40 years on. How did he even find one in one piece? Why does he think an '80s econobox would be anything but shit now? What the fuck is wrong with this guy?

2025-11-04 07:32:42 UTC

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I admit I don't know a lot about the ZJ (made 1993-98), but I did have a different Jeep of that same generation, and know a bit about what was going on with that company at that time. Chrysler bought Jeep from AMC in 1985, and the ZJ was a completely new thing; Mellon's was only the 3rd model year, when they were still shaking out the bugs. It was nice, but there were never any GREAT Jeeps of that time, because of all the fuckery going on. A '95 ZJ really is just disposable junk now, Tim.

2025-11-04 07:24:31 UTC

In the common phrase, "complete asshole", the word 'complete' is normally just an intensifier. Sometimes, though, it's apt and accurate.
Tim Mellon, who is worth over $1B, is a complete asshole about his shitty old cars that were never very good to begin with, and should have been crushed years ago. This is a man who could afford to buy a new car every week, and never worry about going hungry for the next three generations.
THIS is what a complete asshole is.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/trump-donor-who-reportedly-gave-130m-to-pay-troops-sues-ct-dealership/ar-AA1PBOHu

2025-10-30 01:15:04 UTC

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Well, yeah, they can. What's your point? I mean, that sucks, but it's still true. What argument are you trying to make here? What was that deal about some tape? That's weird to me, and I want to hear more about it. I'm not going to read the book for this, though. So if you don't want to tell me, oh well.

2025-10-30 01:11:56 UTC

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Got news for you, books are not real life.

2025-10-30 01:05:20 UTC

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Any way, absolutely none of this is even relevant to my original comment, so I don't even know why this discussion is happening.
You seem to think I'm wrong that soldiers didn't have to shoot her, for, um, reasons? I honestly have no fucking idea what argument you're trying to make here.

2025-10-30 00:55:56 UTC

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We seem to be having different conversations, about different things. I'm talking about TV miniseries that came out 30 years ago. You seem to be talking about one station's house rules, right now. These things are very slightly related, but mostly not.

2025-10-30 00:52:07 UTC

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I used to train DJs, and I have no idea what you're talking about. In truth, it's not even clear to me what you're saying.

2025-10-30 00:41:07 UTC

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I'm sure this played well on release, and who doesn't love Kathy Bates, but the writing could be much better. For one thing, there's no reason at all to shoot her. Just pull her away from the board, duh. I mean, if you wanted compliance, you can force it without undue violence. If you're of a killing mind, then why stand around yelling? It doesn't make sense.

2025-10-27 04:21:53 UTC

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Sure, okay, whatever.

2025-10-27 00:30:55 UTC

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Not sure what you mean. An enterprise site, sure; that requires constant expert management. But a basic informational website is just text plugged into a template that needs little maintenance. Usually, you're just renting the template from the host anyway, and they're the ones maintaining it, because that's in their interests. That's all Facebook is, after all.

2025-10-24 01:33:55 UTC

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C'mon, Vermont, you know you want to.
New Hampshire.. well I won't place bets.

2025-10-22 06:52:23 UTC

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Web hosting is cheap, and it's stupidly easy to set up a page. There's lot of engines that basically just DO it for you, if all you want is to share information with people.
Companies that have only a FB page and nothing else are being needlessly stupid.

2025-10-20 01:08:31 UTC

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Know who else is leaving work tomorrow? Four fifths of the folks who maintain our nuclear arsenal. I'm sure it'll be fine, though.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/17/government-shutdown-nuclear-agency-nnsa

2025-10-20 00:43:50 UTC

Thanks to the shutdown, know who ran out of money yesterday? SCOTUS. Know who runs out tomorrow? The entire REST of the federal court system.
https://thehill.com/homenews/5561016-federal-courts-shutdown-impact/

2025-10-13 12:50:22 UTC

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There's more problem than that. Columbus wasn't Italian, either. Even if people of his time reckoned the notion of 'Italian' -- which they didn't -- he claimed (without proof) to be Genoese, which was DEFINITELY not Italian, by ANYONE'S reckoning of that time. No one knows his actual ethnicity, but he apparently considered himself Portuguese, and seemed to be regarded as such by others, too.
He probably wasn't really Catholic, either, but more likely Jewish.

2025-10-13 01:14:52 UTC

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James Burke, one of my personal heroes went over this in chilling, reality-based detail half a century ago, in this short sequence from the first episode of his masterful series 'Connections':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKELMR6wACw

2025-09-27 17:03:08 UTC

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The method I've always taught works for anyone willing to make the effort:
Wait a few weeks for your memory of the performance is faded, so that you can listen to it objectively. Then listen, and listen in different environments and on different equipment, to better understand how your performance sounds under those different conditions.
Identify problems coming from speech habits, mic use, recording, or mastering, and work on them one by one to improve. It takes awhile.

2025-09-27 16:55:43 UTC

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I was taught 1:100, but that's surely not exactly correct. But the exact number is not important. The point is to understand that if three people tell you they think the soup is salty, WAY more people ACTUALLY think that, but aren't telling you. It's a principle taught in hospitality, because many people instinctively assume the complaints they hear are the only ones there are, when the actual figure is orders of magnitude higher. You just won't hear from those people.

2025-09-27 16:48:39 UTC

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And there's no reason you'd know, since you're in no position to. What I do know is this: Most people never speak up. Most people want to avoid confrontation, worry about what other people might think of them. I'm not like that. I call the phone number on the back of commercial vehicles being driven badly, and probably get people fired. I'm fine with that. It needs to be done. The point is, for every complaint you hear, there's a hundred you never will, but they still exist.

2025-09-27 06:43:38 UTC

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I do not agree. And I won't give my time to someone who'd unmindful of all potential listeners. Respect and consideration aren't too much to ask from someone who clearly wants other people's time and attention.

2025-09-27 04:07:07 UTC

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It's like the NPR station near me that has a bassy output mix. I'm sure it sounds great on their equipment, and probably also for their better contributors. But it sounds like shit in my car, and I often can't understand it because lower tones just hum out.
This guy's doing something similar, and maybe it sounds great to you, but it doesn't to me, and that shouldn't be the case. I used to teach this stuff, and it's very obvious to me what he's doing wrong.

2025-09-27 04:02:14 UTC

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Oh, I remember this guy. I thought he looked familiar. He's one of countless online 'talents' who needs to improve the audio aspect of his programming.
If you're in the habit of speaking out of your balls, first of all, don't be. Anyone can learn to speak more clearly for the narrower bandwidth and dynamic range of electronics. Assume your listener is using shitty equipment, not whatever costly, sexy stuff you've got.

2025-09-26 18:16:20 UTC

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I've met wonderful people there, and still do. NH's main problem, as I see it, is having much too large a state legislature, which makes it all but inevitable that jerks and nuts will get elected who wouldn't in most other states.
That's been made worse by the libertarian Free State Project, which seeks to exploit that weakness to pursue a kind of autonomy.

2025-09-26 18:07:22 UTC

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Depends what you mean by 'Maine'. Originally part of Massachusetts, approximately the northern third of present Maine (often referred to generally as Aroostook) was in dispute between the US and Britain for about half a century before present borders were agreed. That's the main (or at least original) reason it's less developed than surrounding areas. Various parts of Maine have been under various powers at different times, including France, GB, and the short-lived Acadian republic.

2025-09-26 18:02:02 UTC

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As a New Englander, I am EAGER for our region to become a province. Assuming both sides are willing, of course, we'd realistically be provisionally a territory, probably for at least a decade or more, maybe several. I'm fine with that.
And this almost happened a long time ago, during the War of 1812. Lots of New Englanders seriously entertained the idea of asking Canada (then under British rule) to take us, because we had no beef with them and were sick of being part of that war.

2025-09-26 17:54:37 UTC

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This is a very simple cost/benefit concept that most people don't understand because they don't know the facts. It's cheaper to just give away care to people who might be gaming the system, because it would be more expensive to try to prevent that, and every time it's investigated it's found that actual incidence is much lower than feared. It's just not WORTH addressing.

2025-09-26 16:19:20 UTC

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As a student of history, the near future of this is clear to me. There will be targeted vandalism of some of these facilities, and even violent groups organized for that purpose. This will happen out a need to balance public resources with public need, not merely anger or outrage. It will seem necessary, and for that reason is all but inevitable.
Yet again, powerful but jealous, short-sighted figures have chosen, of their free will, to foment violence they could have avoided.

2025-09-26 04:46:24 UTC

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If you want to hear this guy at his peak, check out this piece.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t4KLOm7pO0&list=RD1t4KLOm7pO0&start_radio=1

2025-09-24 23:05:48 UTC

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Stop using Meta. Stop using corporate media. It's never going to get better. There are alternatives.

2025-09-15 17:16:20 UTC

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2/ That makes it easy to characterize the speaker as dishonest or unhinged, and dismiss EVERYTHING they say. It's like old "You fuck ONE goat!" joke: Like it or not, we are all judged by our worst act, not an average.
Yes, they lie. They lie a LOT. And they play this game of mischaracterization all the damn time, and it works on the stupid cows they're trying to persuade. But we need to be BETTER than that. Winning by being shitty doesn't actually win anything, in the long run.

2025-09-15 16:11:29 UTC

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The exact words he used, however insincere (and I'm sure they were), were within current statutes regarding threats to the US. He might have meant differently (and probably did), but his actual words are not what the headline said, nor could they be fairly interpreted that way.
If this was a professional news organ, this statement could be libelous.
But my larger point is, piling BS on top of BS won't win you anything you want.

2025-09-15 15:19:55 UTC

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He's naming specific valid targets, not "everyone who criticized Charlie Kirk". The man is a ridiculous, blusterous ass-clown, yes, but in this clip he's not saying what the headline says he is.
If you want to win, well, anything, there's good reasons to want to do so on the strength of intellectual honesty. It's way too easy to dismantle and dismiss the claim made by the headline, which then discredits the claimant.
Don't stoop to their tactics. Be better.

2025-09-13 03:20:47 UTC

Rough Up Bill
#BoreAMovieOrShow
#HashtagGames

2025-09-13 03:19:46 UTC

The Touchables
#BoreAMovieOrShow
#HashtagGames

2025-09-13 02:44:18 UTC

Mr. Smith Goes to Wash His Car
#BoreAMovieOrShow
#HashtagGames

2025-09-09 22:05:49 UTC

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I don't think it's surprising that a comet from a different system would have a noticeably different chemical composition than those from our own.
No one should listen to anything Avi Loeb says, even if it's, "Help, I'm on fire, piss on me!"

2025-09-02 12:35:23 UTC

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No, literally any qualifying candidate can run in any primary, and parties don't decide who's qualified -- statutes do. I'm not sure why you seem to think that parties get to decide who can run in their primaries. They can't. They can decide who they will back, but they can't keep people from running in them because they don't like them.
Now you seem to have gone from 'allowed Bloomberg' to run to 'allowed him to speak'. I don't know if you're moving goalposts, but this is pointless.

2025-09-01 12:56:35 UTC

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It's not complicated. Well, not too much. It's basically two factors: stupid voters, and professional propagandists. The latter operate against the former very effectively. Rich people have been running the world for at least half a century now. But they don't know how, and it's coming apart for them, so they're panicking now. That's at least half of what's going on right now.

2025-09-01 12:54:18 UTC

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Primary candidates are chosen by primary voters, not parties. Anyone may run in any party primary, and the party cannot stop any given candidate from winning nomination by that. That's how Taco took over the GOP: Most GOP leaders of the time couldn't stand him, but GOP voters felt differently, and that was the end of it.
There's no legal mechanism that would have allowed the DNC to disallow Bloomberg from running.

2025-08-31 18:53:20 UTC

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I've always assumed that the broad housing market most directly reflects the most fundamental factor in economics, supply vs. demand. It is one of the fundamental and essential resources -- habitation space and shelter -- which everyone needs, like air and water. As the human population grows while the world does not, it's inevitable that the value and therefore cost of housing must rise, for that fact alone, no matter what else is going on.

2025-08-14 01:49:29 UTC

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For anyone wondering, the plaintiff of record is Kim Davis, former Rowan County (Kentucky) Clerk, who is trying to dodge a six-figure judgement against her for refusing to issue a marriage certificate to a same-sex couple. She's represented by Liberty Counsel, who are -- and I don't say this lightly -- legal theocrats.

2025-08-14 00:22:23 UTC

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Our species is not going to make it. We have perfected the art of being suicidally stupid.

2025-08-08 02:14:16 UTC

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"The US government" is nothing more or less than the distilled manifestation of net will of The American People. This is like asking, "When will our employees do what we want?" They already are. It is the American People who lack a sustained interest in science. We decided to elect people who reflect that in the decisions they make on our behalf, and they're doing that. It's not their fault. It's ours.

2025-08-07 20:19:35 UTC

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This reckless and illegal practice will eventually lead to mistaken identity and a shootout, mark my words. Part of me wonders if someone high up WANTS that to happen, as a pretext to even greater authoritarian oppression.

2025-07-28 21:31:22 UTC

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I know all of these words, but I have no idea what this arrangement of them means.

2025-07-18 16:21:49 UTC

There's something hilarious but sad about people in North America with Irish or Italian surnames complaining about 'immigrants'.

2025-07-18 00:38:45 UTC

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Golly, does CBS have any competitors? I bet that would be a cherry property for them to pick up.

2025-07-17 23:58:13 UTC

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I love the sentiment, but there are more people I'd love to see here, such as Carl Sagan and James Burke.

2025-07-16 00:59:19 UTC

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My point is, Americans who grew up in Florida find it incomprehensible that there are people in New England whose culture is not very different from a few centuries ago. "No American would spell it 'colour'," they say. But they are wrong. They don't know better.

2025-07-15 13:24:50 UTC

The US is very big, and many Muricans naively believe that their regional culture --- what they're personally familiar with -- is typical of the whole, which is never true. Many firmly believe that NO Muricans have any British/UK/Commonwealth habits, which is not only not true, but has NEVER been true. They forget that the oldest parts of the US *started out* that way, and many people in those areas are *still* like that.

2025-07-15 12:42:48 UTC

The fact that a conjecture is (at least as far as you know) 'possible' proves and justifies absolutely nothing.
Fax technology, samurai warriors, and Abraham Lincoln all co-existed for at several years. So it's POSSIBLE that a samurai sent a fax to Lincoln. But it's not very likely.
To avoid being stupid in the world, you must have enough sense to rationally gauge what's reasonably likely and worth consideration -- not merely the extremely low bar of what's not literally impossible.

2025-06-26 22:00:54 UTC

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I've long considered this the single most important economic chart of the last half century, but I've also wanted to know more about it. What exactly happened that led to this decoupling? I feel like knowing that could help us work towards turning it back around.

2025-06-15 01:42:40 UTC

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""Police say all 60 individuals will be charged... ." Maybe, guy, MAYBE.
Police don't get to decide who's charged with what. Only the judiciary can decide that. Police can SUGGEST charges, but it's not their call. And they obviously know that.

2025-04-18 15:23:59 UTC

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There's been robust debate along these lines for decades and generations, and it's mostly philosophical. Arthur C. Clarke argued that the cultural maturity required for a society to achieve inter-stellar travel should make it all but impossible for them to be so deeply troubled, and while that's impossible to prove without evidence, it 'feels' right to me, based on a lifetime of observation of my own species.
I don't feel this thought experiment was fully thought through.

2025-03-25 02:11:46 UTC

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For anyone curious, this is what it looked like before (GMaps StreetView, Aug. '23):
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.7827787,-71.4191657,3a,75y,142.42h,95.72t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sNFODSuEdizR0DRSOnycwZg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D-5.717660677212081%26panoid%3DNFODSuEdizR0DRSOnycwZg%26yaw%3D142.42448638533594!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDMxOS4yIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
If that link doesn't work, look for JCT Elmwood Ave (US-1) just south of Depew St (opposite side) on GMaps.

2025-03-14 12:55:53 UTC

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More and more, no matter their nationality, I'm coming to interpret 'influencer' as 'self-centred douchebag'.

2025-03-09 12:02:45 UTC

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Based on some rough estimates, that seems unlikely to me.
The US population is 340M. 2% of Americans would be nearly 7M. 7% would be nearly 24M. Definitions vary, but there were around 500mass shootings in the US last year. (GVA)
These numbers would require around 14K victims on average per shooting, and 48K witnesses on average for every one of those, which seems very unlikely.
Gun violence is a very serious problem in the US, but these numbers don't seem right to me.

2025-03-07 20:15:08 UTC

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Okay, but it's unclear to me what the connection between the things you mentioned in close proximity are. How did the Biden administration "handle" this, and how did that affect you or others?

2025-03-07 20:09:48 UTC

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Let me see if I understand this. Were you personally arrested directly by "the Biden administration", or under colour of federal law? That seems unlikely.
The administration is free to express their opinion and suggest doctrine, but rarely has legal power to directly enforce either. It's typically individual schools, under state and local law.
In the same way, the White House can bloviate all they want, but claiming authority does not grant it.

2025-02-24 13:46:39 UTC

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Including some US leaders. Pres. Clinton attended Oxford, too.

2025-02-23 21:49:08 UTC

Most of the people purportedly let go in the name of 'government efficiency' were paid by regulation sector fees, not by tax-payers. This won't actually reduce govt costs or taxes. But it WILL cut valuable regulation for public health and safety.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-firing-federal-workers-not-110521883.html

2025-02-21 14:00:19 UTC

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Really? Like whom? Toddlers?
By the time you dumb stuff down for the dumbest people, you're no longer communication for productive purpose, unless your purpose is tutoring such people.
The world cannot wait for literally everyone. When the ship is going down, you have to focus on those able and ready to help. Time is very short.
And if you want to do Dada poetry, that's fine, too. The point is, your choices must reflect and further your purpose.

2025-02-21 13:29:28 UTC

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Right, but these creeps have no respect for veterans. Not a single member of the Trump family has served in at least five generations. In fact, that's why they're here at all: Don's grandfather was denied re-entry to his native Bavaria, as a draft-dodger.

2025-02-21 12:29:42 UTC

Again: Speaking faster DOES NOT mean COMMUNICATING faster. Far too often, it means the opposite, often FAILING to communicate. Speech, like any medium, must be clear and coherent to communicate anything. Slow down. Speak clearly. Don't use gimmicks. Turn down background music. Use complete, grammatical sentences. PAUSE between sentences. Use tone and cadence to clarify your logical structure. Use expository methods to deliver logically constructed statements. CLARITY above all else, every time.

2025-02-11 04:38:55 UTC

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I'm generally bad at 3D stuff, but I can understand this. Next question: What kind of digital layup scheme works for this? I mean, I can figure that out, too, but I'm wondering if there's an existing template for it.

2025-02-10 07:38:19 UTC

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Grow up already. And goodbye.
Hopefully you'll someday realize the folly of what you've said. How it's not merely misguided, but actually damaging.
Good luck with all that.

2025-02-10 07:28:07 UTC

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Modern humans have been around for over a quarter million years explain for us all why memetic problems didn't "pass on" long before now.
Explain why most of the people at the Unite the Right rally were not "old men". Explain why the Treasury has been taken over by people under 30.
This is not just a dumb idea, but a dangerously ignorant one. If you just wait for problems to die out, you'll be waiting a long time.

2025-02-09 04:29:44 UTC

"Someone should probably tell the rich that workers banding together to present formal address of grievances is the alternative we worked out a long time ago to breaking down the factory owner's front door and beating him to death in front of his family. I feel like they forgot." ~ Holden Shearer

2025-01-12 15:53:10 UTC

Just in case you might still be tempted to visit Florida: Independent police review boards are now banned by state law. Police corruption and misconduct are now regulated only by police themselves. So you'll need to decide how lucky you feel travelling there. Because if you get UNlucky, there's not a lot to protect you.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2025/01/11/civilian-police-oversight-florida-crumbles-after-new-law-kicks/

2025-01-02 14:14:24 UTC

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Can't be. It would make some kind of sense if it was.

2025-01-01 20:29:10 UTC

A chief driver of quasi-medical woo-woo in the US is that it's budgetable even when it's costly. You know how much a jar of functionally useless pills is, but you don't know what many actually useful treatments may cost you until you've committed to care, because of our predatory insurance systems -- which exist only to enrich a tiny handful of obscenely wealthy people who profit from everyone's inevitable illness or injury.
Maybe THEY'RE the problem.

2024-12-30 06:40:41 UTC

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The case was dismissed 25 November, with no verdict.
We're all free to BELIEVE Trump is guilty of insurrection -- I certainly do -- but it's factually incorrect to say that he's been found guilty of that by a court of law. He has not.
Congress MAY decide that, and if they did then they could also declare Electoral Votes for him worthless. That's the idea discussed in the original article they're talking about.

2024-12-26 02:10:21 UTC

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I work with real estate records, including in some rich places. Rich people have good cash-flow, which qualifies them for equity mortgages to pay for their lavish lifestyles. They don't really have that money. They're borrowing from their future selves, and must eventually pay -- eventually, much more than if they just lived more modestly. Everything comes at a cost, and living like an aristocrat costs more.

2024-12-22 21:45:14 UTC

It may be worth reminding people that Elon Musk grew up in a privileged white family in apartheid South Africa who benefited handsomely from that regime's shameless racist doctrines. There's no good reason to assume he doesn't still hold those values today. Indeed, there's good evidence to suggest the opposite.

2024-12-20 18:10:47 UTC

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It will. Louisiana is one of the worst-run states in the US, and well below the administrative and scientific standards of many whole countries. They just can't seem to get it right there, and the main reasons are cultural. They have no good excuse.

2024-12-13 01:46:48 UTC

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We put a dozen men on the Moon, in six visits, but they were all over a half a century ago. When we brag about this, it's like the comedy trope of the middle-aged guy still bragging about his high school sports accomplishments. It's glaring admission that we haven't done anything as glorious since then.

2024-12-08 16:59:06 UTC

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I would distinguish here between 'private' (not publicly owned or run) and 'for-profit' (capitalist, stock-selling). It's the profit motive that creates this problem, the need to feed share-holders. (As well as legal obligations to those ends.) There's no reason that a private NPO could not run an effective health-insurance system that occurs to me.