KMC
5d ago
Conor McGregor seems to have plans relating to this, emphasis my own.
I do not condone last nights riots. I do not condone any attacks on our first responders in their line of duty. I do not condone looting and the damaging of shops. Last nights scenes achieved nothing toward fixing the issues we face. I do understand frustrations however, and I do understand a move must be made to ensure the change we need is ushered in. And fast! I am in the process of arranging. Believe me I am way more tactical and I have backing. There will be change in Ireland, mark my words. The change needed. In the last month, innocent children stabbed leaving school. Ashling Murphy murdered. Two Sligo men decapitated. This is NOT Ireland’s future! If they do not act soon with their plan of action to ensure Ireland’s safety, I will.
He's got a number of tweets in a similar vein. Could he be the next celebrity politician?
KMC
5d ago
Is this just a sticker you put on the nose pads? I was thinking of the strap that connects to your ear pieces and wraps around your head. Croakies, in other words.
For surgery, I might consider athletic goggles like Horace Grant, but I suppose those are more for contact situations, and it could cause issues with fogging.
KMC
5d ago
I have no idea if you can play two melodies on a guitar. Theoretically it should be possible, but I can't think of an example.
What you're thinking of is counterpoint, I'd say, and whether you can tell the two melodies apart depends on the quality of the musician and the quality of the composition. It's much harder to distinguish multiple voices on the same instrument than it is between different instruments.
Any musicians there? Is there a word for musical instruments that can play only one melody simultaneously and those who can play several? Is it "polytonic"?
The phrase is technically polyphony, apologies to @Ioper, since I was confusing polyphony in music with polyphony in instruments. I'm not sure calling instruments polyphonic was prevalent before synthesizers, since that appears to be the main reason to use the word.
Polytonic means can play more than one tone, so monotonic means only one tone, like a drone or drum.
KMC
5d ago
Yes, but the repeated requests for the bare link repository indicate that there is demand and interest in discussing more than what gets brought up, but the purposefully high barriers to entry prevent those topics from even being raised at all, and thus no responses can be prompted, regardless of quality.
KMC
5d ago
Apparently the mods don't believe that low effort, low quality posts can prompt high effort, high quality responses despite ample evidence to the contrary.
I've been banned repeatedly, and while I surely earned some of them, the majority have been what I consider tickey tack and unreasonable curtailing of reasonable discussion. This is right according to profile from my perspective.
KMC
5d ago
Not that the partition of India was clean and easy, but we're living in a world where such a partition happened last century. The model is there, so mostly what I'm bemoaning is a lack of imagination.
I'll take the former Georgia colonial territory
From the (Mississippi) river to the sea*?
*Ocean
KMC
7d ago
Think about the practical implementation of these policies. Force them where and how?
Probably back over the Mexican border, since the vast majority of them came in through that avenue. As for how, the same way the state does everything else: with the threat of uniformed men with guns.
Tell them all to pack their bags?
That would be first, and easiest, solution and was actually proposed by a Republican candidate for President in my lifetime. He referred to it as self-deportation.
Send them to other nations that don't want them?
Yes, exactly.
What if these nations refuse to take them in?
We lean on them, the same way we do to get our way all the way around the world in a thousand different ways. Starting with sanctions, probably, or withholding of aid. Or we simply move the people across the border and present it as a fait accompli.
What about the large proportion of minorities that are second or third generation immigrants who do not have a place to go if displaced?
It depends on how intermixed they are, first of all, but anyone who has been ethnically distinct for three generations in America gets little sympathy from me and can be deported to where their grandfathers came from.
You keep raising these logistical issues as if they are the moral issues but they simply aren't. Removing them is a logistical issue, and it can be resolved using all of the regular tools we already have, once the decision has been made to do so.
I don't get the reticence. How has any state gotten anything accomplished at any time in history? By deciding to do it and marshalling their resources to the task. This is no different.
KMC
7d ago
but their existence itself
It's not their existence that is contentious, it is their location. They are free to exist elsewhere, and if they choose to stay they can be forcibly removed, as Pakistan deported hundreds of thousands of Afghans. It's absurd to say that the very existence of those Afghans is in contention, it is their location that is the problem and it was their location, not existence, that was corrected.
I particularly hate this use of "existence." It's manipulative and dishonest.
KMC
7d ago
Any particular reason? I remember Summers from getting fired from Harvard for telling the unpleasant truth, and for working at the treasury. Any reason why either of those apply to being on the board of AI, or is it something I'm missing?
KMC
12d ago
The road network as it is today only exists thanks to the government, why should it then not be able to regulate who can drive
Probably because this is not one of the limited powers allotted to them, and therefore none of their business.
I for one am glad to be free (or freer than I otherwise would be) from a drunkard killing me in his car
Yeah, and you're free to only buy cars that spy on you and can shut themselves down if they don't like what you're doing.
I don't care about freedom from drunkards, I care about freedom from the most powerful organization in the history of the world. The two are not the same and conflating them is deliberately missing the point.
KMC
12d ago
This is among the things that governments can get away with under the ridiculous excuse that this is a licensing issue and not a criminal one. This is directly downstream from every liberty-infringing restriction designed to punish drinking and driving, and comes from exactly the same place and for exactly the same reason. The same reason why refusing to take a breathalyzer in the field can get your license suspended despite not being found guilty of anything is why they think they can use the same cudgel to beat another group of people.
I had not heard of this rule, but I could hardly have asked for a better example of why you never let the government start sliding down the slippery slope. DUI laws are among some of the worst offenders.
KMC
14d ago
And as far as I know, America doesn’t have much public healthcare, so these kids getting surgeries while they’re underage have got to be the beneficiaries of rich parents who can afford to foot the bill.
Just because we don't have public healthcare doesn't mean it's a free for all. Every single state has an Insurance Commissioner who is charged with regulating insurance in the state. Through this type of regulation, states have required any health insurance plan offered to include coverage for hormone supplementation and cosmetic surgery. Of course, this is not exactly the same from state to state, but in many, many places the only kinds of plans you are allowed to offer are required to pay for this, so every single different employer-offered health insurance plan is going to pay for your child to be sterilized as a teenager.
KMC
30d ago
Well when inflation is always positive and never negative, I don't blame anyone for confusing speed and location. When people complain about inflation, they're really complaining about price, so until we get deflation their complaints are never addressed.
As someone who wants to be paid in silver quarters, because that lays bare the debasement of our currency, this is missing the point. You need to address the ratchet that only allows prices to move in one direction.
You're ironically demonstrating your own illiteracy. There's a word for what you're describing: innumeracy.
My apologies. Mea culpa.
KMC
30d ago
Thanks for making it, I also saw this making the rounds this morning and wasn't sure what to make of it. Bloody hockey videos aren't exactly something I want to study closely, but if I recall Petgrave does dive forward and kick his leg backward.
KMC
30d ago
you realize that the only states rights they really cared enough about to secede over were slavery
Which is why they didn't agree to the Constitution until they had assurances that it was under their control. I view that they are right in that assessment, you seem to think that they should have just rolled over and quit.
Note that one of their core objections was that Northern states would not enforce laws like the Fugitive Slave Act within Northern territories.
If Massachusetts didn't want to return fugitive slaves, they shouldn't have agreed to the Constitution that requires that of them.
Article IV
Section 2
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.
A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
Making Abolition punishable by death is just as unconstitutional as refusing to return fugitive slaves, by the words of the one and only constitution. Only one side was able to impose their unconstitutional vision on the other.
KMC
30d ago
Cowboy Kent Rollins does open-fire dutch oven cooking.
KMC
30d ago
North was being ungentlemanly
I would say dishonest, violent, radical, unconstitutional, and illegal rather than ungentlemanly.
it is still the South seceding over slavery
It is the South withdrawing her consent to the Union, and each of her Free and Independent Sovereign States deciding to discard one Union and to form another. And the reason was not because of slavery, but because of federalism and the threat to that status as Free and Independent Sovereign States. Sure enough, after the Civil War, nobody really considered any of the states either free or independent or sovereign, so I'd say they had the right outlook, correctly predicted what their opponents wanted, and correctly resisted it when it became obvious that conflict could not be avoided.
KMC
30d ago
All emphasis mine.
The very first paragraph from South Carolina.
The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
Further reading, though I'm tempted to just copy the whole thing
In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.
The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.
It's not slavery, it's about reneging on the deal you previously made. None of the slave states would have joined the union in the first place without the concessions they received, concessions intended to prevent the North from controlling the South. Those concessions were systematically undermined and ignored for decades until finally it was obvious that the North never intended to perform on the duties it committed to, and never intended to respect the limits of the federal government.
South Carolina did not agree to be ruled by New York, South Carolina agreed to form a Union with New York under the condition that New York is obligated to return slaves to South Carolina. If New York doesn't want to do that, it's up to them to dissolve the Union, but instead they simply ignored the constitution and the agreement they had made with the free and independent states of the South in order to impose their rule.
I'm tired of people lying about it. The South was right to secede, and they have every justification to do so. They stuck a deal which was ignored and undermined for 80 years, until finally they had had enough and left.
And then Lincoln conquered them and forged the American Empire, and now we don't hear about the Free and Independent State of South Carolina, or These United States.
The Civil War was about federal conquest of the continent.
From Texas:
The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.
By the disloyalty of the Northern States and their citizens and the imbecility of the Federal Government, infamous combinations of incendiaries and outlaws have been permitted in those States and the common territory of Kansas to trample upon the federal laws, to war upon the lives and property of Southern citizens in that territory, and finally, by violence and mob law, to usurp the possession of the same as exclusively the property of the Northern States.
The Federal Government, while but partially under the control of these our unnatural and sectional enemies, has for years almost entirely failed to protect the lives and property of the people of Texas against the Indian savages on our border, and more recently against the murderous forays of banditti from the neighboring territory of Mexico; and when our State government has expended large amounts for such purpose, the Federal Government has refuse reimbursement therefor, thus rendering our condition more insecure and harassing than it was during the existence of the Republic of Texas.
...
The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the fugitive slave clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions-- a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation.
...
For these and other reasons, solemnly asserting that the federal constitution has been violated and virtually abrogated by the several States named, seeing that the federal government is now passing under the control of our enemies to be diverted from the exalted objects of its creation to those of oppression and wrong, and realizing that our own State can no longer look for protection, but to God and her own sons-- We the delegates of the people of Texas, in Convention assembled, have passed an ordinance dissolving all political connection with the government of the United States of America and the people thereof and confidently appeal to the intelligence and patriotism of the freemen of Texas to ratify the same at the ballot box, on the 23rd day of the present month.
KMC
1mo ago
being part of the US is defined by ideals, not descent---this is taught in elementary school civics
Yeah, since 1960. It is not original, it's a deliberate propaganda effort, one that I've chosen to reject. I do not believe that America is a nation of ideals, or of immigrants. I think those are lies meant to manipulate me and people like me, and they've mostly worked very well. However, they are lies that I reject.
KMC
1mo ago
We can debate whether or not the South would have abandoned slavery on its own initiative without it being forced to do so by the Union's victory in the Civil War
I think it's pretty clear they would have, and that the Civil War was more about Federal control over the states than it was about slavery. I judge this based on how other countries prohibited slavery, specifically England. I don't think they would have continued slavery indefinitely any more than Brazil did.
but I don't see how one could deny that the intent of the founders of the Confederacy was to preserve slavery in perpetuity
Their intent was to withdraw from an agreement that they felt their supposed countrymen were not following. The basis of this refusal was of course slavery, but it could have been something else. I think you should read the declarations of secession. I did, and while slavery is right up and down all of the documents, it's revealing how many different complaints they had, and how reasonable those complaints are. These independents states agreed to combine to form a union for mutual prosperity, and the conditions of that union had been trampled for decades because one side was unwilling to abide by the agreement they had made.
What's even more confusing is that, for most of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, it seemed like it was fine to like the Confederacy.
The vitriol towards Confederates I see in stories like this and in some of the comments here seems new. I can't say that those commenters are wrong--I share their reasons for disliking the Confederacy, although something (maybe just the loyalty of my Southern blood) prevents me from reacting with the same level of antipathy. I just wonder what happened to the truce that seemed to have once reigned in this particular culture war.
What happened was Obama, and then Trump. And it's not about the Confederacy, it never really was and never really will be. It's about me, and white people like me, here and today. The one single person whose actions were most responsible for this statue being melted down is Donald Trump. When he won in 2016, half the country declared war on the basket of deplorables, and sought to tear down their statues and destroy their culture. Literal culture war. The statue was melted this week because Trump won in 2016. It was melted to show whites that this country doesn't want them, it doesn't want their history, it wants to rewrite the history of their nation to exclude them.
I didn't even vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020, but I can tell when people hate me and want me, my parents, my brothers, and my children dead and gone from this world. I can tell when they take symbolic actions, and I can interpret the symbolism. Now I wish I did.
KMC
1mo ago
Well, he was Virginian, not American, but the statue was built fifty years after his death, by Americans who had chosen him to represent them.
This seems completely backwards. There doesn't seem to be much evidence that school can improve someone's mind, but if you have control over someone's body for a thousand hours a year, you can certainly accomplish something with their body. Further, I would say that the body must come before the mind, and that much of our failure in schooling is because we don't respect this, and somehow think that mind and body are independent and separate, rather than the mind being a subset of the body.
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