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DuplexFields

Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.

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joined 2022 September 05 05:51:34 UTC
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DuplexFields


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 05 05:51:34 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My priors are that the progressive technocracy are the de facto rulers of the planet at this point. That means Trump gets his business (of completed buildings, fulfilled contracts, and repaid loans) taken away for “fraud,” and SBF gets a slap on the wrist and another couple billion to play with.


If we were on Reddit, I’d ask the RemindMe Bot to remind me in a year and a half.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
HCQ, when taken with zinc, has always been the silver bullet. It worked wherever it was tried. People were sneaking it into the hospitals to give to their relatives. I guess the Mayo Clinic finally had to bow to actual science.


Anecdote:


Since I couldn’t get any HCQ, I took tonic water (quinine water) with lots of zinc, plus horse paste (ivermectin), vitamin D, and vitamin C during my first bout (probably Delta, Nov. 2021). I remember the final night of the fight, when I felt the characteristic flu-like aches, and took aspirin. The next morning, I felt far better than the previous week, and I was on the mend; I lost my sense of smell for a year, but didn’t have brain fog or long COVID. My dad and mom, squarely in the risk zone of their 70’s, took a similar medicine regimen and also both survived without long COVID.


On my second bout (summer 2022, Omicron), I got a week’s groceries and prepared for another long haul. Vitamin D and zinc, plus tonic water and walking outdoors in direct sunlight, but to my surprise it was over in three days. Not only that, I felt great afterward! I felt better than I had before the illness, oddly.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You found one of the five reasons I voted for him. it seemed obvious to me at the time that Hillary would have pushed NATO forces right up to the Russian border on Ukraine. She wanted Gaddafi’s, al-Assad’s, and Putin’s skulls on her wall, figuratively.


One of the “scandals” from before he was even in office was his “office of the President-Elect” having pre-inauguration contact with the Russian Ambassador, to reassure Putin that Trump didn’t want war. The point of having ambassadors is to ensure diplomacy! Talking with an ambassador is probably the furthest thing from collusion I can imagine.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I am the group it describes. My ancestors came over on the Mayflower, in the New England Puritan wave, in the Pennsylvania Dutch wave, and whenever the Scottish (not Scots-Irish) came over. I drink cow milk and eat wheat and cheese with zero side effects.


What I don’t like is that “white” carries more weight than “American” for my political rivals, and hate that it’s carrying that weight for the enemies of my enemies.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Microsoft changed it, now it sucks


I need to document this somewhere quickly, and this is where I can do it without having to create a new account or review subreddit rules. I’ll repost on someplace more visible later.


In the latest feature update (service pack), Windows 11 23H2, Microsoft has changed a piece of syntax in how batch files work in the venerable old Windows NT command line interpreter, CMD.EXE, successor to MS-DOS’ COMMAND.COM and my custom batch files are breaking.


Setup:


    

  1. In Program Files, in a certain folder, is a batch file designed by someone else. It works pretty darn well, so I’ve never had to ever debug, refactor, or otherwise fiddle with it. It’s not at all involved with the issue I’m having, I just mention it for documentation completeness.
    2. 

  2. In that same folder are several custom batch files I’ve used for ten years as wrappers for that batch file, to pass it specific arguments. Once I figured out how to call the main batch file correctly in Windows 7’s CMD.EXE from a wrapper batch, I’ve never had a problem no matter which Windows computer I’ve copied it onto.
    3. 

  3. In the shell:sendto folder which holds right-click-menu shortcuts, I’ve got a shortcut to each of the wrapper batch files. They “start in” the Program Files folder where the main batch and my wrapper batches exist.
    4. 



I’ve documented TWO new bugs I’ve never seen happen! I used the batch files last week on this computer without any issues, upgraded today due to a forced update, and ran into this problem.


    

  1. The %~f argument has different output. It has always returned the full path of the specified file without the file extension. Now it returns it with the file extension! This messes up my string manipulation for naming the resulting converted/altered file. EDIT: actually, it's always been like this. Whew.
    2. 

  2. Windows’ Send To right-click command passed the selected arguments to the wrapper batch file without full path names, resulting in the batch files using the arguments as if they were in the directory of the batch files, and not in my documents’ actual location!
    3. 



Oddly, the second bug has vanished after I documented it in a two separate tests. The first bug, however, persists.


EDIT: Well, that's embarrassing. After checking my deleted files on a Windows 10 computer, it turns out I was wrong about "bug" 1: it's always been that way, I've just grown so used to it over the past ten years that I forgot how it works. But bug 2 did indeed happen.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for August 18, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


my Dad and Uncles used the G.I. bill to get STEM degrees and were also willing to move the family around for job opportunities. Law obeying, studious, industrious, and economically astute seems like a good rubric for "Rasied 'Em Right!" when compared with impulsive, prone to violence, substance abuse, obsessed with vague notions of honor but .... geographically consistent?




Why should smart people move away from small towns, especially now that the Internet has come? It’s not the dirt that’s dumb in rural communities, and it’s not the water which makes addicts of the townsfolk.


As for geographic consistency, their kin died for that ground within two or three centuries of folk memory. It’s a far more precious price than a mortgage. (I can’t say I feel that same drive myself, as my parents’ families are from Ohio and Michigan, yet we live in a huge modern city in New Mexico. I can, however, sympathize with Barney Google and Snuffy Smith over in the holler by the crick.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for July 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
3 of the larger dose pills sold at my local Krogers grocery, I don’t know the dose off the top of my head.


Yes, it was a subtle effect at first, but now I’m no longer groggy even at 6:30am! If I’d had these in high school or my first attempt at college, I might have gotten better grades and made some money off the dotcom boom.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Part of the joy and sorrow of Heaven I anticipate is having no illusions.


This means I will remember the full depths of the public and secret sins I’ve been saved from by Jesus’ sacrifice. I will be made aware of the kinds of sins I would have committed if I hadn’t been sealed by the Holy Spirit and motivated by love instead of spite or greed. I will be left knowing just how righteous God would have been to condemn me away from His presence for eternity.


With no illusions, I will also be able to see the righteousness of the condemnation of all who chose to reject the Way of love-for-all and the damage they willingly cause wherever they may be. If one of the dwellers in misery is a close relative or even a lover, I will mourn them, but I will be disgusted by the depths of the evil they chose and agree they deserve their fate, just as I would have.


This all assumes the particular variant of Christianity I’ve been taught is theologically and cosmologically accurate. I’d like to be pleasantly surprised that all humans throughout history have ended up accepting Jesus’ forgiveness either before or after their death, and Hell ends up holding only the demonic angels who rebelled. I pray nightly that all will have ended up saved. But having watched both Sound of Freedom and the documentary Anne Frank Remembered this month, I don’t have hopes quite that high.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Bigfoots/Yeti are clearly the giants of the Bible, and the Smithsonian has a giant-finding operation which covers up their North American archaeological evidence. It was the Bigfoots of Michigan who provided king Solomon with his copper, in trade for gold, and it’s that gold which the Smithsonian is after. The Mormons were supposed to reveal them as the rightful rulers of America, which is why Mormons have been so vigorously persecuted.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You should see how The Kids These Days react to Avenue Q.


Which I really enjoyed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The question Western/European civilization now needs to answer is at what point migrant camps / ghettos / unassimilated population centers / banlieues / HLMs become colonies in the colonial sense.


Native America was overtaken by European colonies, and the most famous was Plymouth, refugees who broke from England’s church but stayed tied to England politically.


One other thing scares me: France is a nuclear-armed power; imagine if the Conquistadors had found natives’ nukes and given them to the 17th century Vatican.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I found an angle of attack on this analogy, by way of an alternate analogy.


I’m a Christian. My religion was started by a Jewish rabbi we believe to have been Messiah. It was promulgated by other Jews; its clams of promises rest on the Torah covenant. Our holy book has a part where a Jewish lawyer explains how and why the difference between Jew and gentile is no longer a factor in God’s judgment, and that we believers are gathered into the promises of God. We also identify the Spirit of God living in our hearts as the successor Temple to the one the Romans destroyed, and Jesus as both the final high priest of Judaism and the final lamb of sacrifice.


By my reckoning, that makes me a Jew. If transwomen are truly women, Christians are Jews.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 21, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Facts first:


    

  • 

    Maxwell Ghislane, Epstein’s madame, was wealthy because her father paywalled science journals which had previously been free. It is widely believed that user MaxwellHill was her Reddit account, one of the earliest and most constant users.
    

    • 

  • 

    Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz was a free info activist. He was in big legal trouble for using MIT’s fast Internet to freely download massive amounts of paywalled science journal archives. He died by hanging.
    

    • 



Theory:


    

  • The Maxwells’ science journal empire would have been threatened if Swartz’ free information activism had spread to the student populace. She used intelligence service tactics to get close to the inner circle of Reddit admins and powermods, and applied psychological tactics to push him to commit suicide.
    • 



Even if not true, it’s interesting that both Swartz and Epstein were found dead, hanged. Miss White in the server room with the noose.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 10, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The new movie Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is absolutely well worth watching, as an entertaining film and a rationalist SF film. I deem it worthy of the franchise name and its classic SF heritage.


One bonus is that you don’t have to have watched the previous reboot trilogy series, they’ve included minimal continuity but honor what they have.


EDIT: There’s exactly one bit of woke, but it’s easily ignored as they don’t make a spectacle of it. It was probably as required in order to have it made as the few swear words were to have it rated PG13.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
have you tried taking vitamin D in the morning? I would really love a bigger sample size than just me suggesting that vitamin D has positive mood effects.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 25, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Protip: to get your soldiers referred to as “murdered civilians” in the press, simply don’t have uniforms.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
From the Trump side, we did see an attempt to overthrow democracy, and it was successful: the Biden coup.


    

  • Tallies were reached in a variety of ways which one side found alarmingly suspicious, but court cases alleging fraud were not adjudicated with “discovery”.
    • 

  • Believing that an attempt to overthrow democracy was under way, that side gathered in the nation’s Capitol to protest.
    • 

  • Hundreds of thousands of Trump fans gathered peacefully, hundreds of militiamen joined the protests without firearms. All of them could have abided by a clean loss, but not a dirty theft.
    • 

  • Events happened which cannot be agreed upon for tribal reasons, and the media took one side’s descriptions as the absolute historic truth while prosecutions took the the other side to jail.
    • 



If 2020’s election season and J6 were indeed a Biden coup, it was portrayed to those in the know as a way to pre-empt a seemingly inevitable Trump coup, complete with Nancy Pelosi’s daughter capturing events for a documentary intended to portray events as a 9/11-style attack.


If it was a Trump attempt at seizing power, it was the most ridiculously convoluted and ineffective plot in political history, with an impromptu army of hundreds of thousands just giving up without firing a shot.


If it was all just a series of bad game theory moves which gave each side's actions the illusion of malfeasance through tribal lenses, it is a tragedy of democracy all around.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for September 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Alcoholism, despite the stereotype, almost always has an emotional component which, if resolved, removes the driving compulsion to drink, though not always the urge.


Behaviorism has identified four drivers of behavior: attention, escape, access, and sensation. Some memory in her past, I’m guessing, carries a stressful semantic meaning which makes her feel she is required to escape. By my experiences, probably an initial event and a reinforcing event.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
We have the REAL ID Act, federal standards for a state ID card as a proxy for a national ID. But I assume you mean free in cost and provided to citizens by default instead of forcing them to apply for one in addition to freedom to obtain?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’d just like to register my repugnance with your axioms and your conclusions. Statistics are not people, and people who believe in eugenics and dysgenics believe (in my experience) in genetic destiny far more than statistics does.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for July 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
No idea. I assume I got my blood levels of vitamin D3 up before the effects started. I’d say try it daily for a month, 15 min to half an hour after your daily alarm.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for July 7, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A Bluetooth Logitech keyboard. Unfortunately, after a few minutes, the widely-spaced chiclet keys were too distracting. I was going to buy it, but it’s no great improvement in my WPS.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Jewish communists and Jewish fascists




…Jewish libertarians, Jewish Objectivists, Jewish capitalists, Jewish socialists, Jewish eugenicists, Jewish Muslims, Jewish Christians, Jewish atheists, Jewish Ukrainian Nazis, Jewish CEOs, Jewish actors, Jewish news editors, Jewish bloggers, Jewish poor people on welfare, Jewish homeless drug addicts.


Jews are so fully integrated into mainstream culture in every respect that they’re in every profession, creed, and political group. To assign any collectiveness to Jews as a whole at this point is as fallacious as making the same list with Irish-descended or German-descended people. That’s my answer to “the Jewish Question.”


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 21, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I believe this one. “The Flat Earth Society” used to be a fictional group cited to mock people, like calling someone “president of the The Narcissists’ Fan Club”.


I remember someone once telling me it was a skeptic’s group dedicated to promoting scientific thinking, by providing challenges such as defeating the view cited in its name. However, I did a few Google searches a few years ago and found no evidence of such a group ever having existed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If the US government issues visas for a hundred million inhabitants of the third world to come to the US, Texas can’t do anything about it other than secede.




Issuing visas would, at the very least, include an enforcement mechanism for finding and deporting people who don't meet their visa conditions. This would put the lie to either "Republicans don't like immigrants, 'illegal' is just a fig leaf for hate" or "Democrats don't want any border security, they just want new voters, either this generation or the next."