SteveKirk
5mo ago
That doesn't change the way the state is managed though. It's a one-party regime, and no number of Republicans showing up to the polls has done anything to even slow down the insanity.
SteveKirk
5mo ago
Yes? Because that's exactly when all the news is going "be careful this weekend, because one match could send the entire state up in flames! Anyone could just go out there with a can of gasoline and choose from this extensive list of high risk areas to incinerate! Smokey the bear says: only you have the sweet sweet power of life or death over thousands!"
SteveKirk
5mo ago
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Dcgikq73isVL9x1Q9 good view of some of the houses in question. You can see how much money there is in Beverly Hills, and how impossible it is to clear the forest away from the houses. As far as I'm aware there's really no option but evac and rebuild every so often if you want to live there, because prevention and fighting are both a lost cause in that environment.
Ironically cali is far more overgrown than normal due to all the rain last year. those strong Santa anas dessicate anything even after recent rainfall, then all you need is a spark.
I'd say "look, there's clearly only one wolf whose lung capacity is presumably limited. It's probably cheaper in the long run to keep building houses out of sticks, especially in non-wolf-threatened areas. Also shooting the wolf would be cheaper than building every pig a wolf-proof house"
There's almost certainly a few areas in the US where building much heavier/different structures makes economic sense due to fires, floods, or hurricanes, but it's so expensive that building cheaper elsewhere probably makes more sense unless you already have far more money than sense. (Especially in flood zones)
I hate to sound like an urbanist, but I'm looking at The Summit housing development near the fire, and if people want to build in the forested hills and grasslands outside of LA and SF, they can probably bear the cost of occasionally rebuilding their $6M mansions. Them choosing to build in such a risky location shouldn't affect the viability of those (horrible but cost-effective) 4-over-1 apartment complexes in denser areas.
Personally I'm well aware my tinder shitbox inna woods would be a lost cause if there was ever a wildfire here, and budget for it accordingly. But it hasn't happened yet, and I could build 3 or 4 of these places before the breakeven point. It's the price I pay for not having to walk on nothing but concrete, which I'm convinced sucks the soul from my body.
SteveKirk
6mo ago
The really funny part is banning people for describing the exact perspective of this user in terms he would agree with himself, re.
It is the common good for everyone that social conservatism, much like institutional Civil War era slavery, is no longer tolerated by civilized societies, and is socially ostracized. Such as, for example, Turning Point. I do not believe that organization has anything useful to say, and so I find the motivations for why someone would want to listen to useless things dubious, unless they found it useful.
progressivism cannot exist alongside conservatism, because all of the progress done by the former will always be challenged by the latter.
the value of a forum like this is that it allows progressives, at least such as myself, to observe a rich diversity of right-winged thinking to identify the more insidious and subtle dogwhistles indicating the traits of a conservative, so one may steer clear of them in IRL interactions.
There needs to be some discussion about this. I'd be happy with a rule requiring all claims of "this is what leftists believe" to be backed up by quotes. But there needs to be some way to say "look, they openly say they have no intention of communicating with you, let alone coexisting with you" without breaking the rules, especially when literally everyone involved on all sides agrees it's true.
I really want to dissect this part of social worker culture, but it's difficult because so much of it happens behind closed doors, and is only hinted at in official documents.
The first time I noticed it was the glamorization of "sex workers" in my college sociology courses populated by future social worker girls (I was one of two guys in all of the classes). And it was always "sex worker," the same way fetish communities fixate on specific words to describe things.
The upper level course that I didn't take by the same prof had the girls go to the closest sketchy part of LA to campus and larp as hookers, then write an autoethnography about it. There wasn't a single guy by that course, of course.
We keep seeing these tiny glimpses of it, like that scandal with the woman including "sex worker" in a school career day, etc., but it's never explicitly argued for or explained in detail. I still don't understand how it exists in that weird superposition of "sex work is good, men who employ sex workers are evil predatory pedophiles."
In normal practice the "sex positivity" media glosses over it entirely by making all the examples "queer" and thus non-problematic by definition; we've all seen those tumblr-style comics with the hello-kitty bright colors and smiling lumberjack-bearded women giving handjobs to a wheelchair guy in a hijab.
Do we have anyone at all who could do a deep dive into that whole culture? It seems like one of those heavily onioned ones where you don't get to see the heart until you've passed through all the layers of initiation rituals and privately had "the conversations y'all folx aren't ready for."
It worries me because (as already pointed out) these people already seem to run our entire social work and therapy systems, and we've already seen other "inner circles" of crazy socjus ideologies bubble to the surface and burn through mainstream culture with no resistance.
People saying "that stuff's crazy, nobody wants that crazy stuff, you're crazy" aren't much comfort when they were saying the same thing about racial socjus in 2015.
You military recruiters have gotten really clever, but we're still not going to join.
We all know how this works now: you sign up because of the recruiting video about jumping out of a helicopter with a flaming sword to deport giant Mexican dragons, and then you end up marooned in some desert for two years jerking off under a Humvee for $9.50/hr
SteveKirk
6mo ago
I think you'd be surprised. A lot of the Canadian gun owners I know are serious patriots and former military. They'd be about two "America's hat" jokes away from suicide bombing Trumpenreich troop convoys, even if they'd Gaddafi Trudeau afterwards as well.
The enemy of my enemy is only my enemy's enemy, as they say.
SteveKirk
6mo ago
Where did Dase end up, if anyone knows? Last I heard he was in turkey iirc
New ban on basically all semi rifles, owners can store them until confiscation is arranged due to the unprecedented scale of the ban; they tried to rely on "voluntary" turn-ins like with previous smaller bans, but it didn't work.
Handgun sales were banned already, I'm not sure if they moved on confiscation there yet.
SteveKirk
6mo ago
People who want georgist taxes think that's the answer to every problem though. It's the new MMT for /r/neoliberal posters now that "inflation doesn't matter" doesn't pass the laugh test.
SteveKirk
6mo ago
Waiting until the Canadian gun confiscation finished would make it much easier, and also be a hilarious lesson. Right now they can still keep their rifles but aren't allowed to take them to the range, and the process of rounding up door kickers to seize them is only just starting.
Mentioned this a few weeks ago, iirc it's $20,000 a year. Something like 10x my entire lifetime of medical expenses, but I end up paying for it anyway.
SteveKirk
6mo ago
Did anyone play Battle For Wesnoth as a kid? Open source fantasy strategy game from the early 2000s, which I just found out is still getting content updates to this day.
Most projects like this fall apart within a few years if they ever get off the ground at all. It's the sort of thing that makes me tempted to do a deep dive into the history and organization to learn the secrets of its longevity. Same with openTTD and freeciv, which have even more impressive histories.
The Wesnoth organization has an actual constitution detailing the responsibilities and powers of the various officers and sub-groups, but is it the rules or the men involved that keep it going?
I sympathize with your frustration at still being judged for the Lyra plushie 12 years later. On the other hand, it was absolutely hilarious.
It's exactly the sort of bait post whose only intention is preventing real discussion that I was talking about last week. Watch people spend 50 man-hours engaging with it too.
The really creepy part is watching several new accounts pop up to do this whenever some topics are mentioned. Is it lurkers deciding to jump in, or are there groups monitoring for certain topics to disrupt?
Jimmy Carter signed a bill that exempted the Tellico Dam from the Endangered Species Act.
I remember seeing political cartoons about this from the 70s, but never heard about the resolution.
I wonder if articles like this are a sign that the green profiteering-through-subsidies wing has finally had enough of the green profiteering-through-lawfare wing. The Inflation Guarantee Act had more than enough billions for both teams: everyone could have been paid a respectable upper-middle-class wage to not build solar farms while filing EPA claims and counterclaims for eternity, never having to stoop to doing declasse productive work for money. And so far that's how it's gone, with all the money vanishing into a black hole.
Maybe a few people are actually interested in getting something done for once
SteveKirk
6mo ago
Why is the cat fedposting?
- why wouldn't the cat fedpost
- if you were smart, you'd be doing the same thing
Just start with mint. I use the xfce version on old hardware, but it doesn't get as much dev attention as the shinier enviros.
Linux often has a problem with not clocking down and putting accessories to sleep, causing high idle power use. This is something you can fix (I use the xfce cpufreq plugin that gets my old laptop down to .8ghz and <15w), but they really need basic windows power management settings out of the box.
SteveKirk
6mo ago
I'd be proud to be banned for that post. I can't think of a better way to prove everything I said was right.
there is a reason I personally am not going to pull the trigger
Has one meaning, come on, are you serious? That sentence isn't interpretable as saying anything other than "I would pull the trigger, but I'm waiting for a triggerman instead"
God it's all so fake and manipulative. I'd rather deal with the actual bots.
The "weird" attack on Vance was literally invented by a propaganda consultancy firm and algorithmically boosted by bots. If that doesn't count as the product of an inhuman "thing" we're going to have to have some discussions about the nature of humanity.
If your mother gets called by an automated telemarketing scam pretending to be you needing bail money/gift cards, is that the action of a human, or a malicious thing directed by human intelligence? Is the correct response for her to argue with it, or slam the phone down and curse the thing that tried to hurt her?
If something that looks almost exactly like your wife except for the featureless empty black eyes comes to your bedroom window and asks you to let it in, what do you do? Ask it politely how it's floating outside the 2nd floor, or nod to your actual wife to get the fucking shotgun and a bible?
1870 also probably didn't help the European impression that elan beats machine guns. Shows how easy it is to draw incorrect lessons from major events
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