FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
No bio...
User ID: 675
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
Is it gundam-style mecha that seem unappealing, or legged war machines generally?
I'm not much of a gundam fan myself, but I really love giant robots and grittier mechs, for basically the same reasons I love more realistic war machines. They're big and complicated high-tech amalgamations of concentrated power, and the extra complexity of arms and legs just enhances their appeal.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
Do you get the appeal of tanks, warships, planes, and similar military vehicles?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
While it is certainly a talking point of the US-out-of-North-America crowd that the US funded the Taleban against the Soviets, the organization in fact did not exist until the mid-90s.
The Taliban as a banner did not exist until the mid-90s. I'm pretty sure the large majority of the notables who founded the organization in the 90s came up fighting the Soviets as mujahedeen.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
ryukahr streams Mario Maker and Kaizo Mario gameplay. low-key, mildly amusing fluff.
The Creepcast is two youtubers reading creepypasta, and reacting to/critiquing the quality. I usually listen to a straight recording of the story in question, and then listen to their version as a sort of commentary track.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
"Hock" in this context means to throw; he intended to "Hock" himself out into the wilderness to survive by his grit.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
Much of my own skepticism about the evironmental movement comes from a childhood spent reading Ranger Rick, and a good enough memory to remember the predictions it made.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
If the US government had decided it was in their strategic interest to not use them on Japan and keep it a secret, it could have very well been decades.
No, it wouldn't have been. the science was already public. That's how the US government became aware of it in the first place. Scientists were studying radiation since Curie discovered it, and they would have continued to do so, within America or without it. In fairly short order, they would have broken the science wide open.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
De nada, and sorry if the above came across as snippy. I really enjoy these posts.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
Among the military sites are command headquarters and radar installations, while civilian targets include power plants and major transportation infrastructures like tunnels and bridges. The documents indicate that of the 160 targets, 82 are military installations, with the remainder being civilian infrastructure.
I am pretty sure power plants, tunnels and bridges are not described as "civilian targets" when America or its allies bomb such structures, which I'm pretty sure we have in many, many previous conflicts.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
Why? We had the will to do so. We decided to be in charge, we decided we had the right to dictate what parts of their culture they could keep and what had to change.
And look at what we explicitly chose to let them keep.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
No mention of Bacha Barzai?
In 2011, an Afghan mother in Kunduz Province reported that her 12-year-old son had been chained to a bed and raped for two weeks by an Afghan Local Police (ALP) commander named Abdul Rahman. When confronted, Rahman laughed and confessed. He was subsequently severely beaten by two U.S. Special Forces soldiers and thrown off the base.[41] The soldiers were involuntarily separated from the military, but later reinstated after a lengthy legal case.[42] As a direct result of this incident, legislation was created called the "Mandating America's Responsibility to Limit Abuse, Negligence and Depravity", or "Martland Act" named after Special Forces Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland.[43]
...
In a 2013 documentary by Vice Media titled This Is What Winning Looks Like, British independent film-maker Ben Anderson describes the systematic kidnapping, sexual enslavement and murder of young men and boys by local security forces in the Afghan city of Sangin. The film depicts several scenes of Anderson along with American military personnel describing how difficult it is to work with the Afghan police considering the blatant molestation and rape of local youth. The documentary also contains footage of an American military advisor confronting the then-acting police chief about the abuse after a young boy is shot in the leg after trying to escape a police barracks. When the Marine suggests that the barracks be searched for children, and that any policeman found to be engaged in pedophilia be arrested and jailed, the high-ranking officer insists what occurs between the security forces and the boys is consensual, saying "[the boys] like being there and giving their asses at night". He went on to claim that this practice was historic and necessary, rhetorically asking: "If [my commanders] don't fuck the asses of those boys, what should they fuck? The pussies of their own grandmothers?"[45]
In 2015, The New York Times reported that U.S. soldiers serving in Afghanistan were instructed by their commanders to ignore child sexual abuse being carried out by Afghan security forces, except "when rape is being used as a weapon of war". American soldiers have been instructed not to intervene—in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records. But the U.S. soldiers have been increasingly troubled that instead of weeding out pedophiles, the U.S. military was arming them against the Taliban and placing them as the police commanders of villages—and doing little when they began abusing children.[46][47]
According to a report published in June 2017 by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the DOD had received 5,753 vetting requests of Afghan security forces, some of which related to sexual abuse. The DOD was investigating 75 reports of gross human rights violations, including 7 involving child sexual assault.[48] According to The New York Times, discussing that report, American law required military aid to be cut off to the offending unit, but that never happened. US Special Forces officer, Capt. Dan Quinn, was relieved of his command in Afghanistan after fighting an Afghan militia commander who had been responsible for keeping a boy as a sex slave.[49]
Far be it from me to imply that there isn't a certain amount of logic here. Fighting child-rape is part of the founding myth of the Taliban, so obviously if we're fighting the Taliban child-rapists are natural allies. The same logic applies to drug dealers, clearly, which was why we spent twenty years just never quite getting around to any serious effort to crimp opium production, something the Taliban was also quite good at, and why Afghanistan had four times more land being used to cultivate poppies at the end of the war as it had at the start.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
The Wonderlic test was first written in 1939; Duke Power Co. only adopted it as a requirement on the same day they could no longer legally discriminate directly on the basis of race.
...So on the day the law said they could no longer screen by race, they stopped screening by race and started screening by IQ test. And this proves to you that they were still screening by race, because they... complied with the law to stop discriminating by race?
What screening method should they have switched to, in your view?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
It was a rental, pretty clearly chosen for the political salience. The news is reporting that they loaded it with gas canisters and large firework-type mortar shells. Amusingly enough, I'm reading reports that the stainless steel panel construction of the truck contained and directed the blast, greatly minimizing the harm that might otherwise have been caused. It's notable in the "after" photos how little damage the truck's body sustained; I guess that's also evidence that firework mortars and gas canisters aren't that effective as car-bomb filler.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
It appears the authorities quickly wrapped up the ISIS flag so it couldn't be photographed.
Alternatively, the guy himself covered his flag to conceal his intentions on the way in, and then neglected to unfurl it in the heat of the moment.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
We buy our groceries at a membership outlet. We just did a grocery run this last weekend. We bought no alchohol or candy, nor any other specialty products, no junk food; we bought a variety of fresh fruits and veggies, milk, bulk ham and turkey, hummus, bread, and so on. our grocery bill is more than double what it was two years ago.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
Politics runs on hope. When you have no hope to offer, no credible policy proposal that can serve as a vessel for the public's aspirations for a better life, policy starvation sets in and the public transfers their support to the most credible available proposal. Since people are lazy, the most credible available proposal will be at least somewhat more radical than the recently-discredited proposals. Repeat until the problem is solved or radicalization triggers a crisis that eclipses all previous priorities.
What's your view on fiscal multipliers from local consumer spending?
Speaking personally, I don't have a view on "fiscal multipliers from local consumer spending". I'm not confident I could even define what that is.
What general group of people is in charge of measuring "fiscal multipliers on local consumer spending"?
What level of credibility do you personally assign to their measurements?
What legible consequences do you observe accruing to this group of people when they get this sort of question wrong?
If it turns out that their estimates are wrong, what follows?
We've had lots and lots of immigration over the last few decades. Can you point to the effect of "fiscal multipliers from local consumer spending" in the historical economic data?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6mo ago
American tech workers are seriously overpaid relative to other developed countries.
No they aren't.
Now, you might say that this is merely me making a naked assertion, negating the naked assertion you've originally provided. But in fact, I can back this assertion by pointing to a) the market producing the salaries you consider excessive, and b) the relative success of the American companies providing those salaries versus foreign tech companies employing foreign workers.
Further, it's interesting to me that you are so transparently hostile to the one segment of the American economy that offers be best and most obvious hope for widespread economic growth and prosperity. How much poorer should Americans in general be, in your view? Which class seems to you to enjoy appropriate compensation?
Is it Quants?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
7mo ago
I replied elsewhere that I see Saul of Tarsus as being an example of things exactly playing out this way with how he subverted the religion of Jesus.
...Based entirely on groundless supposition, since if you are correct then he did such a masterful job that he left no evidence behind. Or did he do just slightly bad enough a job that he fooled the subsequent two thousand years of Christians, and only you alone have penetrated the fog? Again, intellect centers on one's own brain, etc, etc.
The world you write about has zero antibodies against a woke style purity spiral takeover where the infiltrators find their niche and then start gently rebuking everyone for everything because they don't adhere to the rituals in the 100% correct way, always ensuring that they are "holier than thou" for the people they are rebuking.
This world actually existed, and we can directly observe that it did not, in fact, play out this way. Based on my understanding of the historical record, your assessment appears to be straightforwardly wrong. Based on the closing paragraph, it seems to me that you're doing the thing where one assumes that humans become less complex, intelligent and willful the further they are from the seat of these properties, which is of course one's own self.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
7mo ago
absolutely. Andor isn't perfect, but it's leagues better than any of the sequels (I also skipped 9), and is probably the best Star Wars material made since the original trilogy.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
7mo ago
run the numbers and find out. My understanding is that Sweden's underclass is (or was, before mass immigration) much, much smaller per-capita, so filtering it out wouldn't change the outcome much. By contrast, the US underclass is very large, and so it swings the numbers. This matters because the standard claim is that Swedish policies would fix things, but there's no reason to believe that Swedish policies made the underclass small rather than not having an underclass being what allowed Sweden to adopt its policies.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
7mo ago
Forget about the whore - Kony embraces God and he's alright?
Part of repentance is confession and taking responsibility for what you've done. If Kony is truly repentant, he should confess his crimes, make restitution to his victims, turn himself in to the authorities and submit to punishment willingly.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
7mo ago
I was raised a Conservative Christian. I ditched the Conservativism in 2002/2003, and the Christianity around 2004, and went atheist and deep blue on pretty much everything but guns; I actually left the country for Canada under Bush because I was deep into blue tribe conspiracy theories about 9/11 and stolen elections, among other things. I came back to the states in the Obama years, but stayed deep blue. When the Feminist blast-wave hit my position in ~2013 IIRC, I was initially very concerned and highly engaged and all gung-ho for Social Justice. It took a couple months of actually paying attention for that bubble to pop.
"SOCIAL JUSTICE NOW!"
"Social Justice is vitally important, but some misguided people are doing it wrong, they need to stop that!"
"They aren't stopping, they need to be stopped, guys this isn't the way"
"Wait, why are all the people around me cheering the bad people on and shouting at me, this is crazy, what the fuck is going on"
"Either I'm going crazy, or 90% of my social class has gone abruptly crazy, and I can't tell which"
"Nope, it's them. They're betraying True Liberalism, which we must fight for."
That played out over about three or so months, and I came across Slate Star Codex while trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. I started limping my way back to Christianity around then, but still identified as deep Blue for another couple years, thinking that Social Justice was just a temporary aberration which could be rolled back or corrected. I spent a long time arguing against the Zunger thesis and in favor of Scott's niceness, community and civilization, until eventually I realized that I was losing those arguments because Scott was wrong and Zunger was straightforwardly correct. That destroyed what was left of my allegiance to Blue Tribe, and I've been moving Red ever since.
Cool.
This is a discussion forum. So far you've made two posts back to back of short, declarative sentences. Declarations are not discussion. If you'd like to discuss something, it would help if you would put some effort into presenting the topic you would like to discuss, ideally by framing a question and elaborating a bit on why you think it's salient.
Alternatively, if you are not really interested in discussion but are only here to preach to an audience, then I'm afraid this is not the place for you. This presumes of course that we have not already seen above all the engagement you intended, in which case... problem solved, I suppose?
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