5434a
1d ago
those that wield great authority or wealth would be held to a higher standard of morality
What's the deal with the people I've seen around here saying that the elite should have greater licence?
Seems like on the one hand there's the argument that they're our betters and should be exemplars of virtue, on the other hand there's the argument that they're our betters and they should be enforcers of virtue because even if they fail to embody the same virtues the rot of the masses is a worse outcome than the transgressions of the elite.
Presumably it's a reaction to the feeling that they're neither exemplars or enforcers and have allowed standards to decline at both ends of the social spectrum. That then raises the question of whether they wanted that outcome and used their power to achieve it or whether they were either powerless or too unwilling to use their power to prevent it.
That's pretty much why I chose it, I like reading the seminal pieces of genre fiction to see how they compare to their popular depictions.
Unfortunately the subsequent Bond films slowly regressed closer to the mean and I gave up on them entirely after watching Skyfall.
5434a
2d ago
Middle and upper class have more money to spend on means such as gifts, concealment, etc. More opportunities too as the same resources grant greater agency. The only defecit is in motive as they potentially have more to lose.
5434a
3d ago
I think the cutter was new as unlike everything else in the tool case it was spotlessly clean and wrapped in what looked like a factory applied shrink fit rubber cover that unavoidably tore a little when I carefully took it off, so I assume it was its first outing. Good tip though, I probably wouldn't have thought of that. Any suggestions for a non-dedicated cleaner? I've got isopropyl, mineral spirits and a degreaser that I use on my bike chain.
5434a
4d ago
Had my first go at using a (borrowed) router today. Need to rig up a ghetto method of deflecting the dust as my lower half looked like a pine-y snowman and there was practically a radiation style shadow behind me after profiling one small piece. Good results otherwise after one quick test piece to better dial in the motor speed and pace of cut to avoid the unanticipated scorching. Far more productive than my one attempt at making a round over using a file but like most power tools despite it's undeniable productivity and accuracy it's not a "nice" tool to use.
Found some crafty YouTube ideas for converting it into a router table too but that's for down the line when I own my own, for now I'm just interested in getting this project structurally finished before the end of the month.
5434a
6d ago
What is a pajeet? Urbandictionary has it variously as a slur which could refer to Canadian Sikhs, north Indians, Hindus, Indians in general, or any South Asian.
5434a
6d ago
It will probably come in helpful to equip one of those old computers with dual NICs so that you can experiment with different ways of managing network traffic.
5434a
8d ago
Does the list include some words that don't even exist?
Yeah, I remember doing well on previous vocab quizzes posted here but there were some suspicious head scratchers in this one. It's not so much that I wasn't sure what they might mean so much as even as a native speaker I'd never seen them before. Didn't stop and check though.
5434a
8d ago
Dickens' Selected Short Fiction. The latest piece was a satire of British rail train refreshment staff extolling the noble and unchangeable tradition of consciously and deliberately providing the worst food and service possible.
It's amusing to come across these small social insights from history that continue to be relatable.
5434a
10d ago
"I want this on a t-shirt!"
Then people started trolling with images from Disney, Nintendo and worse https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-want-this-on-a-shirt-bot-bait
5434a
11d ago
The epistemic collapse is that if a woman can be anyone who says they're a woman then we can't know what a woman is without asking everyone what they are, and taking their answer at face value. It's not an ultimate erasure of any meaning whatsover, but it's not really much better. It doesn't produce a model of our universe, it destroys the consensus and replaces it with an idiosyncratic label. What I call X he calls Z, and what he calls Z she calls Y. At that point you effectively are unable to talk about "women" in a meaningful manner.
Beyond women, what does violence mean? What does Nazi mean? If I tell you that violent Nazis are active on a local university campus do I mean that German centenarians who were members of the NSDAP are there physically wounding people, or do I mean that somebody mocked my objections to their putting up a Trump poster? Or what if I say that Europe was rocked by Nazi violence during the 1940s? Do I mean Belgians were upset about some Hitler posters they saw, or that stormtroopers kicked their doors in and killed them while tanks rolled through en route to Paris? You'll have to ask me what I meant to be sure because a consistent meaning has collapsed and now we can't talk about violent Nazis until you do so.
This is bad for the people who pushed it too because now there's no need to become a woman when they can simply say they're a woman without any other changes, and when people hear warnings about violent Nazis we can justifiably assume they're neither violent or Nazis.
5434a
11d ago
Different manifestations of insularity. If you set up a lot of habits that set you apart then you're more likely to stay apart.
5434a
12d ago
Does it though? The women's scholarships still exist, and M2Fs are just as easily used as an argument that women continue to be disadvantaged by men than they are an argument that the scholarships should cease in the interests of equality.
Women vs men, whether for or against, is not helped in either direction by conflating women with men. "Women aren't disadvantaged, this man-in-a-dress has done every bit as well as men do without extra help", or, "Women, which includes men-in-dresses, need their own resources otherwise men will have them at a disadvantage". This is just an argument over who gets to wear dresses.
5434a
12d ago
Having separate words for talking about biological sex and gender is useful.
Yes, and we already do: Male/female and man/woman for sex, and masculine/feminine for gender. And people are already free to choose whether to be masculine or feminine. Sadly for those who would like it to be otherwise there are hard and inescapable limits on how far gender overlaps with sex such that no amount of changing one's gender will ever change one's sex.
If someone starts a Pretty Dresses And Nail Art Club then there's nothing stopping men from joining. If someone starts a Women In STEM scholarship grant it should be for women, not people in pretty dresses.
5434a
13d ago
How do the deals work? I've looked at stuff on AliExpress without taking the leap and a lot of it boasts huge discounts but it gives the impression that those are only to get you through the door for your first purchase and the undiscounted prices are, while better than the eBay resellers, not that amazing.
Ironically it's put me off signing up because I don't want to waste the new customer discount on buying a couple of TPU inner tubes if I might want to buy a much more expensive item later.
5434a
14d ago
I'll definitely make a small/portable router table once I have the router. As useful as it would be a table saw is out of the question though.
Americans are lucky that a lot of you seem to have large garages and basements to use, and YouTube being mostly American often gives the impression that table saws are the next step up from owning a power drill. I did eventually find the British corner of YouTube where people squeeze their hobby woodworking into our more typical potting sheds, but if I worked in my potting shed I'd then have nowhere for my gardening stuff.
Alongside the creativity aspect I just have an aesthetic dislike for solving problems by waving a credit card. On the other hand the last time I made a foot stool shaped object I did it using only a Swiss Army knife with a saw stroke of <2", and there was that time I cut a crude mortise for a door lock using little more than a screwdriver and a vegetable knife, so I won't deny there is a certain minimum threshold of viability.
I'm not sure what I'll make next. I've got a lot of projects I'd like to make, a lot of jigs I'll need to make, and a few more tools to buy. Quite keen to learn some sewing actually, was thinking last night that I could start off by making some sort of upholstery cushion for the top of this stool. Should be fairly straight forward, I don't think fitting gets much easier than a small flat rectangle.
5434a
14d ago
It's 100% on the list. In the meantime this is a small project and I kind of like the challenge/discipline of making do with what I have. Plus despite having added ~25m of shelf space most of that was instantly consumed and I'm still very limited on space and storage, so while a router is justifiable a lot of the larger and more practical tools are off the table. If anything the move right now would be to buy a block plane but again, I like the challenge of having to get creative.
5434a
14d ago
I'm currently making a foot stool and having my first go at cutting mortise and tenon joints. I don't have a router so I cut the first set of blind mortises with a multitool + chisel and now I'm doing through-mortises with a jigsaw. It's going much better than I expected, and it's a whole lot nicer to make something where I can pick up and rotate the entire piece with one hand than it was building full size built-in bookcases inside the same actively occupied space they were sized to fit. And yes, putting two coats of finish on 8 uprights and on both sides of 36 large shelves did indeed take forever.
Next step is deciding how I'll create the chamfer/roundover without owning a router or a plane. I've seen people do it with rasps but I don't want to tear and chip the soft pine, but I'd also like something faster and less dusty than sanding. I'll have to try out a few methods on the off cuts.
5434a
19d ago
Heard a piece on the radio about this the other day. IIRC apparently what happened was they were paid equally per their contracted hours but the binmen were allowed to go home when their work was finished while the cooks and cleaners had to stay until the end of their shifts. The cooks etc then sued the council for pay discrimination because they were doing more hours active work for the same pay.
It's arguable that the binmen had finished their work, so why sit around the yard drinking tea just to fill out the hours. It's also arguable that the streets are never perfectly clean so why couldn't they pick up a broom and get to work refilling the bins if they've got a couple of hours left, they're not being paid to drink tea or leave early. Obviously at that point they stop working so hard because they don't have the incentive to finish early any more. At some point the council propose reducing either the number of binmen or their hours (and resulting pay) and you get a strike.
5434a
20d ago
Might squeeze in a few ornamental annuals. I've got phlox, sunflower, sweet pea and cosmos seeds and I'll buy some fuchsias when they're in the shops.
Most of my gardening is reducing the size or number of things, not increasing them.
5434a
20d ago
I can happily drink half a bottle of whiskey, it's the entire can of condensed milk I struggle with.
Cheap Irish cream is ~£7/700ml. Cheap whiskey is £7 for enough to make 700ml of Irish cream.
If you break it down the major taste elements are sugar, whiskey and coffee/chocolate combined with a cream texture. It's easy to put those together and tailor them to taste without the need for condensed milk and the corresponding need to make up a whole bottle.
It's worth making it for the experience, on the other hand for me the experience taught me it's not worth making it. It's like making up a whole bottle of one specific cocktail.
5434a
22d ago
After one attempt at making my own I decided it's cheaper and easier to just buy the ready made stuff. Alternatively add cream, whiskey, optional flavouring and a lot of sugar to coffee. Easy, quick, cheap, versatile, and you can readjust the ratios to your taste every time. No need to mess around with sterilising bottles or using up half a bottle of whiskey each time either.
5434a
28d ago
I assume you've already checked you're not playing 5.1 audio through a 2 channel system, I struggled through a number of films around the time 5 channel rips got popular before I remembered to check and set my software to force 2 channel playback. I'm not sure if dedicated separates have that option.
On the other hand something like Tenet was irredeemable.
Ownership is possession that is maintained via power, whether that is de jure or de facto, de jure just being de facto by formally distributed means. You can't create an alternative because you can't nullify possession.
Set aside legalities, if someone has possession of a piece of property and doesn't want anyone else to have it what are your options for taking it from them? Overpowering them. If you successfully overpower them and take possession yourself, how meaningful is it for the first person to say that they "own" that property while it's in your possession and they lack the power to deprive you of it? They could say that they're the rightful owner, but without a greater power to grant, recognise and enforce those rights they're not worth the paper they're not even written on.
I'm not a poli sci nerd but surely this has all been covered centuries ago. Hobbes, maybe?
The only plausible alternative I can think of is something like gay luxury space communism where there's such abundance that the value of material goods has come down to basically zero. Even then certain things can't be replicated, such as standing space at the top of the Eiffel Tower. At that point your faced with the problem of assigning that limited resource, and no matter what system or philosophy you come up with it will rest on you having the possession of that resource to enact your preferred method and defending it from others who would deprive you.
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