JulianRota
2yr ago
The latest abortion kerfuffle is decently well in the past now, and we've had a number of good threads on it in various places. I think it's a reasonable time to ask here:
Have you changed your personal opinion or political position on abortion access at all over the course of the last year or so? If so, to what, and based on what?
JulianRota
2yr ago
I think we have to draw a distinction between raw intelligence and application. Lots of people are really smart, but only apply their intelligence to one or two specific things. Think of a PhD particle physicist or something who understands super-complex topics and makes contributions to the field. I'd bet a lot of people in those types of positions never apply their intelligence outside their fields and their opinions on CW-adjacent topics are pretty much whatever the media they view tells them. Maybe they just never cared to, maybe they're shying away from anything that'll create conflict, who knows.
I don't think there's any real communities out there that are genuinely smarter than us and open for anyone to join and contribute. Maybe there's sort of a community in the sense of bloggers who read and respond to each other, but that doesn't form as tight-knit as a single forum or group on some app.
There may also be a thing where some of the really smart people have realized that you don't really move societal needles by writing effort-posts on nerdy subjects to people like us. It seems much more effective to use that intelligence to learn and practice the arts of persuasion and propaganda. How many people have chosen to do that instead and how smart are they really? We may never know.
JulianRota
2yr ago
Yup. Even though they did eventually make it directly configurable by the forum admins after all, would you really want to be downstream of a team that says things like that? Who knows what they're gonna do next?
JulianRota
2yr ago
It is kind of ironic that for a community of programmers, TM settled for a fork of rDrama. This might be a passion issue but raises some questions nonetheless. TM isn't hackernews but TM isn't /r/redscarepod either. This point is probably not worth thinking much about, I am sure the alternatives/tradeoffs were considered. Ultimately it's an optics thing.
I was around the development group more when the choice was made to settle on rDrama. There are indeed a lot of other forum systems out there, some of which are using more sophisticated technology. But if you really dig into them, virtually all of them are one-person projects that have never had any significant contributions from anyone other than the original creator, have never been proven on a high-traffic site, particularly with mega-threads like we do and probably at least a few active attackers, and have basically no thought put into proper moderator tools or anti-spam. At least a few of them are also actively hostile to anything non-woke - see the Lemmy slur filter scandal.
rDrama may not be the best designed system out there, but it's at least okay, is open-source in the form that actually serves production traffic, is reasonably well-supported, has some decent mod tools that were straightforward to expand, and has been cooperative with us.
JulianRota
2yr ago
Not a progressive, but I suppose the charitable explanation is the same as mine - that maybe no actual person claims to support both at the same time. And/or they believe (naively IMO) that nobody will want to attack anybody or break into houses if the proper progressive policies like government-provided healthcare and UBI are enacted.
The not so charitable explanation is that progressives want anybody who disagrees with them or who would prove their beliefs false to die broke in a gutter somewhere and aren't real particular about exactly how that happens.
Which one of those is true? That's not for me to say, you'll just have to examine their actions and claims and decide for yourself.
JulianRota
2yr ago
The issue with this IMO is that you're conflating beliefs that different groups have had at different times and putting them all under the banner of "conservatism" since they've all found themselves on the Red Team side for various reasons. Yes, both sides of the culture war have created some odd bedfellows, but that's the consequence of having 2 sides and big-tent movements. Your argument would be more meaningful if you could cite a specific person or group who actually believes all of the things you say are contradictory at the same time.
I could just as easily complain that Blue Team contains both people who want better conditions and rights for workers, and people who want open-borders immigration. Or that want us to stay out of foreign wars, but want direct intervention in the Ukraine war. Or that think you shouldn't let people have guns because they should call the police, but want to abolish the police.
JulianRota
2yr ago
1 and 2. Guns wear just like any other mechanical device, but mostly by rounds fired through them rather than anything else. Pretty much all manufacturers publish somewhere what parts are recommended to be replaced at what round counts. Every gun, if fired enough, will have some part fail eventually, usually leading to jamming or inability to fire. Very few people will actually fire enough rounds through any gun to wear parts out though. And like any other device, it depends on whether you've actually broken or worn enough parts where the cost of replacement is more than a new item.
There are a few special case situations due to weird laws. Registered transferrable machine gun receivers in the US are extremely expensive and mostly can't be replaced, so people will go to crazy lengths to repair the serialized parts.
For 3, This video by Inrange, related to Forgotton Weapons does a good rundown of the tradeoffs of bullpups. Short version is you're basically always going to be giving something up (ability to casually switch which shoulder you're shooting off of or ability to easily clear malfunctions and verify empty or loaded) in exchange for the shortened length. The worlds' militaries sometimes like them for being easier for soldiers to carry around in cramped armored vehicles and aircraft. As a civilian, they're perfectly adequate for any reasonable use, but you're not going to be in the situations they really benefit from.
For 5, I have no idea about how things are in Europe, but in the US, it's fairly common for bigger ranges to have rentals and to be willing to show newbies how to do some basic shooting. Maybe they have the same there in countries where the laws permit it.
For 6, I've never heard of anyone doing that. Probably there's some super dedicated people somewhere who do that, but I've never met them. Pretty much all quality firearms already have finishes good enough that no such special treatment is necessary.
JulianRota
2yr ago
Before addressing whether armed self-defense is practical on mass transit, I think the more important issue is how too many over-thought regulations makes CCW highly impractical. In real life, when an individual is choosing to leave their house to go about their business, they either choose to strap on a gun, or don't. If they do, then they're going to be armed over the course of everywhere they go and everything they do doing that trip - it's not like the gun just disappears when it's inconvenient. If there's someplace on the way that they're not allowed to carry at, they have to either avoid that place or mode of transportation, or carry anyways and take the risk. If you ban carry on mass transit, then you're effectively also banning it for everywhere anybody might want to go via mass transit.
Now, how effective is it? It's pretty much never going to be necessary or justified to shoot along a whole train, whether it's empty or full. Any self-defense is basically going to be at touching distance. Think more like this Joker clip than a 25-yard range (the beginning is justified, but chasing down and executing the guy who ran away, not so much). If your primary objective was self-defense on trains, you might be at least as well served by training empty-handed martial arts or other weapons like knives or Kubotans or something like that. Having a gun might be helpful in some possible situations there, but it's probably going to be at contact range, which is a whole different type of gunfighting to train.
Another thing to remember - if you're carrying a gun, than any fight you get in is now a gunfight, regardless of what you might have intended. Did someone just call you whatever slur pisses you off the most? You better learn to shrug it off and walk away, because if you tell them "fuck off, asshole" and it ends up escalating into a fight where you draw or shoot, you might well be considered the bad guy legally speaking since you didn't do everything possible to deescalate the situation. You have the power to end conflicts with lethal force, but along with that power comes the responsibility to try your best to deescalate any confrontation that doesn't justify that.
JulianRota
2yr ago
I agree, and that's why I don't consider the overall American healthcare market to be meaningfully capitalist from a consumer's viewpoint, and so in that case the morality of a capitalist system does not apply, in so far as owing the person doing a job for you a fair wage for the work that they performed.
JulianRota
2yr ago
I agree, and would specifically like to have just the parent post. Seeing the full context is often too distracting IMO. Plenty of things, especially short things, are tough to evaluate as good or bad without seeing the 1 or 2 level parents of the discussion - was it a nasty sneer in response to a reasonable point, or a continuation of a well-received round of joking around?
JulianRota
2yr ago
Having read through this whole thread, I wanted to say that I consider myself a strict capitalist in most things, but the whole industry of medical billing is so ridiculous for so many inscrutable reasons with everyone pointing fingers at each other that I find I'm unwilling to make any moral judgements at all for anything any particular patient chooses to do.
It is indeed pretty incredible that the situation is seen as ridiculous universally enough that the credit bureaus are now ignoring medical debt.
I don't know that I'm inclined or qualified to really defend any particular party in this mess. But I do notice that everyone seems to love to make the insurance companies the boogiemen. Aren't they all publicly traded though? If they're wildly profitable, can I invest in them and get some of that sweet healthcare cheat money? If not, well where's all the money going? What if they're just struggling to eke out some tiny profit while being constrained by an ever-changing maze of legislation and trying to juggle the conflicting demands of a dozen different groups, as the sole party with some responsibility to actually make the books balance somehow with the totality of everything that's going on?
JulianRota
2yr ago
I have noticed that a significant part of Reddit now seems to be "support talk". Instead of jokes and trolling, it's all people saying "terrible thing X happened to me" and all the responses are some variation of "oh my god I'm so sorry for you here's some hugs"
JulianRota
2yr ago
Western-made jets supplied to Ukraine
I think this is far less likely than you think. The issues of spare parts, tools, how many people would need to be trained in maintenance procedures, availability of compatible weapons, and ability to integrate with existing air defense infrastructure, including radios, radars, IFFs etc seems to me to make this virtually impossible.
JulianRota
2yr ago
I see what you're trying to say, but the issue as I see it is the assumption that all criminal attackers can be easily deterred. For the average individual in most places, the majority risk of attack is indeed the opportunistic thief. That's someone who is somewhat rational in that they have no particular reason to target you, they're just looking for an easy buck. If they see you as harder or riskier than average, say by pulling any kind of gun, then they're going to get out of there for easier prey. While these are the most common threat for most people most of the time, and probably the great majority of all, it certainly doesn't cover everything.
There's plenty of reports of attackers who are irrational and will continue to attack until dealt injuries that are immediately serious or lethal. These people may be serial killers out for the blood, or on lots of drugs, or mentally ill in various ways. They might be much more motivated to attack you in particular, maybe due to being an abusive ex or stalker, or a gang hit, or a mob informant, or some other personal grudge. These sorts of things may be a small minority of cases overall, but they're definitely out there.
From everything I've seen on caliber effectiveness, the benefits of going bigger are only marginal within the group of what's considered "major calibers". There are many reports of small calibers such as 22LR or 25ACP doing essentially nothing at all to stop an attacker immediately, even if they might need medical care later. I would be surprised to see data indicating that the difference between these calibers and, say, 9mm is marginal.
For these reasons, I don't think it's right for the state to mandate or regulate things like caliber of defensive weapons, since they can't easily know what threat you might be facing and what your needs might be. If you personally choose to carry a 22 because you think it's good enough plus light and cheap, and are willing to risk it not being enough someday, then that's your right. You're welcome to try to convince others of this, but not to mandate it IMO.
Although, to go back a bit, I think I'd be okay with some higher level of licensing or training being required to carry larger caliber guns. I don't think they do anymore, but Texas used to have concealed carry permits with different levels, depending on the type of handgun that you qualified with - I think revolver and pistol were the only ones commonly used.
JulianRota
2yr ago
Seems so to me. As far as I know, there's no formal term for "failed war of independence" distinct from a war between two factions for control of an area they both share. Maybe we should make one up.
JulianRota
2yr ago
I mostly agree that it's inherently nearly impossible to get authoritative numbers on these non-firing DGUs. Even if it was reported and a police officer responded, what are they supposed to do with "This guy came after me, but I pulled my gun and he ran away"? How in the world would they verify that it's true, and what would they do with it if it was?
On the low-end gun side, I would say that deterrence inherently depends on the belief that the one deterring does have the ability and will to carry out destructive actions. Right now, any attacker doesn't have any idea how effective a defender's gun is, and probably doesn't have the time or inclination to try and figure it out in the moment. But if it was mandated, criminal attackers would have a government guarantee that any guns their prey might have aren't very effective, which might change their thinking some. It doesn't sound like such a great idea when you think about it like that.
Even on the nation-state level, fake deterrence is something to be very careful with. A fake division of inflatable tanks and artillery pieces may be useful to fool an enemy with poor reconnaissance for a few days, as was actually done by the allies in WWII. But it would be foolish to take that example to mean that we should build an entire fake army with no real weapons and just depend on the enemy giving up to it.
JulianRota
2yr ago
Interesting, looks like that's worth a read too. The thing I ended up finding most persuasive in the previous discussion was this article, whose thesis is basically that the great majority of colonies were basically voluntary, with most of the people in the colonized country actually preferring the overall fairness and organizational capability that the colonizing nations brought to bear.
JulianRota
2yr ago
The term "shadowban" was invented in the context of phpbb-style single-thread forums, which were usually fairly low-traffic. The visibility of the specific post in a specific thread is very binary there - either you see it in the correct position, or you don't. So Shadowbanning there is a simple concept with a specific meaning.
Twitter works very differently in that it's theoretically a flat system and every tweet by every user is at the same level. Time is the only natural thing to filter by, but even that doesn't really work that well - if you follow 10 people, you probably don't really want the one that tweets once a day to be effectively invisible due to being drowned out by the one who tweets every 10 minutes. There always has to be some sort of algorithm in place to determine which order tweets show up in. A strict "shadowban" meaning your tweets never show up outside of viewing your timeline would be easy, but also very obvious. But when you have an unknown and unaccountable algorithm deciding whose tweets are seen when by who, it's equally easy to make any tweet show up less or lower for any reason you feel like. If your tweet gets 10% of the engagement you would have expected, well who's to say whether it just wasn't a very good tweet, or it was artificially deboosted?
Shadowban is a popular term for the concept, but the literal meaning isn't very useful when it comes to representing how Twitter actually works. It seems like a motte and bailey situation. One side could say Twitter doesn't shadowban because they never actually do the exact literal meaning. The other side can say that artificially suppressing the reach of a tweet in more subtle ways may technically not be the literal meaning, but it's the same idea, and they need a word to express it that is understandable and has some punch to it.
JulianRota
2yr ago
I don't think anyone here could know for sure. Presumably they have some way of tracking such things for admin-level stuff like ban evasion and self-promotion. But how would they direct people towards you specifically? Maybe on subs with huge post and comment counts they could list your posts/comments higher than normal for some specific people. That seems like an awful lot of work on their side though, and what's the benefit?
If that's happening, seems more likely something about your opinions or writing style sticks out. I've noticed before that I have several opinions and pet positions that seem rather unique, and wonder if anyone ever took the trouble to try to correlate other accounts across the internet based on that.
JulianRota
2yr ago
Depends which one - at least 5 or so channels that I saw built them, probably more.
Those automotive turbos aren't supposed to produce thrust at all, the exhaust is supposed to be run through the usual mufflers. With bare exposed turbine exits, it'd be just a little. You'd probably need to build a proper nozzle to generate much thrust.
JulianRota
2yr ago
It does seem to create weird trends. I like to watch videos of people building things. One day, I watched a video of somebody building a bizarre contraption termed a turbo burn barrel, which involves connecting a automotive turbocharger to a sealed metal barrel full of burning wood and starting the turbo going with a leaf blower. Pretty amusing, I thought. Well it seems either this was a Youtube creator trend or the algorithm decided I loved it (or both), since I kept seeing a constant stream of turbo burn barrel videos for the next few weeks, which I mostly did watch. Then all of the sudden it just stopped and I hardly ever saw them anymore. I saw a few hints suggesting videos in that genre were still getting made, but it seemed more like the algorithm just decided to stop showing them to me for some reason.
JulianRota
2yr ago
I've started reading Kurt Schlichter’s Kelly Turnbull series (yes, the protagonist's name seems rather odd to me). At a surface level, it's a fairly standard thriller series with a strong Red Team tint to it. Most of the standard thriller tropes are present along with the expected potshots at Blue Team.
The really interesting part IMO is the portrayal of exactly how America falling apart might look. So far it seems to change a bit from book to book depending on what current events happened around the time each one was written. I feel like I ought to write a summary of it with some points of criticism and possible agreement, but I think I'd rather wait until I actually finish the series first to get a fuller idea of how it's portrayed.
JulianRota
2yr ago
Spoken or written?
For spoken, IME basically everybody who started with another language and learned English later will have a very noticeable accent with characteristics of their native language. This seems to be very difficult to avoid without years of effort to adjust your accent.
Written tends the other way. Sometimes there are errors or odd ways of phrasing things characteristic to a particular native language, but it's harder to notice and easier to avoid. It tends to come out more in more casual communication.
JulianRota
2yr ago
This sounds far broader scope than you can get useful advice for on the internet. There are probably consultants you can hire for things like this, and there might be mining companies that specialize in handling cases like this - doing all of the planning and work to actually extract marketable minerals on a property you own, taking no money upfront and giving you a cut of the revenue. I don't know if there are consultants that actually advertise, but you can probably go to a conference or something to find somebody with experience in the industry and pay them for some advice.
I had been pretty default pro-choice, having been basically a 90s libertarian. I feel like I've moved a little bit in the pro-life direction. Reasons:
This article detailing how abortion access actually works across the first world. It seems to be significantly less accessible than the seeming American / Feminist default position of on-demand all the way up to birth across the rest of the first world.
Among left-wing activists, they seemed to have moved from the previous default of "safe legal and rare" to being proud of abortions, shouting them from the rooftops, and openly advocating for as many of them as possible. This seems sick to me.
A thought I had that doesn't seem to want to go away: If you're actually raising a child, would you tell that child at some point in their life that you had had an abortion previously? What would you expect them to think of that? Children can be really annoying and inconvenient at the best of times. Virtually all of them will be imperfect in some way. The reason why we give children unconditional love is because they are so extraordinarily dependent on their parents and they know it, so they're naturally terrified at the idea of being abandoned. How can a child expect that from you once they realize that you basically killed your previous child because it was inconvenient? Oh, we didn't have a good job and weren't sure how we would support ourselves - does that mean that once you actually have a kid, if you lose your job or get in an accident or things get tough some other way, it's bye bye kiddo? Okay so you don't tell them. Unless they manage to find out some other way. Or maybe just don't do something that you'll never be able to tell your kid?
More options
Context Copy link