VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
No bio...
User ID: 64
After some thought, and spending time with kids, I have come to the opinion that my own transition to adulthood is probably best delineated by when I stopped being bored: the world is an interesting place and there is far more stuff I want to do and skills I want to acquire than time to do them all. I won't say I don't procrastinate ever, but I am never sitting around wondering what to do. Kids aren't very good at this, in my experience.
To consider a hare-brained thought, The Internet is a (questionably ethical) form of Gom Jabbar. "What's in the box?" "Slop. Endless slop. And also the collective knowledge and creative works of mankind."
The test is whether you fall for any of the well-trod failure modes of The Internet, or actually drive to and engage in self-actualization as Maslow intended.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
Plenty of contemporary commentary, admittedly not all from conservative partisans, used the phrase "taking advantage", which IMO is at least suggestive of the question, but not directly implying non-consent.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
If you're going to consider "coersion" and power dynamics in this context, the question of whether an intern (age 22) can consent to "sexual relations" (depending on the meaning of the word "is") with the de facto Leader of the Free World is going to come up at some point. And I don't think it's a question either side really wants to dig up and grapple with deep down: Clinton mostly won the issue, but modern leftist views on the issue look a lot more like Republicans in the '90s than either side would care to admit.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
Even with that, the PA doesn't really control Gaza anyway.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
I don't think they recognize any state's claim to the territory, do they? I guess that's not completely unprecedented, but I think in practice it is for populated territory.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
That seems to depend on who is making the judgment, and whether the 'potshot' is an unguided missile launched at civilian population centers (which happen to include grocery stores, and maybe a few valid military targets) or IDF forces firing at what I assume they deem (validly or not) 'suspicious' actors seeking to steal or disrupt humanitarian aid distribution.
Neither really brings joy, though.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
Today I learned this distinction. Thanks!
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
If Isreal decided "fuck it, Gaza's borders are open. We're just gonna sit behind the border wall and do our thing, the people of Gaza are free to do whatever" then yeah, I would assign them zero responsibility.
They did do this in 2005 when they removed (sometimes at gunpoint) all the Jewish settlers in Gaza. The naval blockade and walls went up years later in response to the rockets and other attacks. I think this is part of why the Israelis question whether peace is possible at this point: Gaza's government, and arguably it's populace that hasn't overthrown it, supports attacks on Israel, even questionably effective ones, at almost any cost to themselves.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
For large browsers I think the US wins again, with moose.
Not for the bison? They're heavier, but less gangly.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
We allow, even encourage, some very long comments, and I think it'd be helpful to have a way to fold the comment itself without hiding it's responses. Some sites have 'click to show more ' on long posts.
The CSS highlighting of new comments since last page load is fantastic, though.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
I'm not sure exactly when it disappeared, but that sounds about right. I know the laws still allowed it in some cases through at least 2000, but I never saw it myself. My parents have stories of it happening.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
I feel like this is missing some obvious "thirteenth tribe" joke, maybe in reference to the great Mormon work of literature Battlestar Galactica.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
I know a Jewish family that has carefully acquired and maintained multiple passports across generations rather openly based on the lived experience of their parents (and grandparents, and great grandparents) during WWII. The cynics would say "rootless cosmopolitans" here (and maybe there is an element of that), but having heard their Holocaust stories second-hand, I see why they care so much.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
Anecdotally, corporal punishment in (rural) schools was ubiquitous through well after WWII. I'm not going to defend the practice, but there are plenty of family stories of it within living memory.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
I suspect China's relationship dynamics are more related to gender asymmetry than divorce laws. Or at least it's a huge confounder that merits consideration.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
It would seem like the "millionaire next door" approach would work plausibly for rich guys not quite rich enough to be public figures. Maybe that happens often enough (has golden handcuffs from startup acquisition, still drives a Prius), but I've never seen it explicitly called out as a strategy. If you're rich enough and a public figure such that Google knows who you are (doctors, lawyers), that seems harder.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
There are fairly common news reports of them in several California and Colorado cities that I can recall offhand.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
There are plenty of mountain lions in the US, and I think they're "big cats". I've also seen claims of jaguars' range extending across the border from Mexico, but relatively few documented encounters.
I've personally seen a bobcat, but that probably is too small to count.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
Considering taking the grill-pill: Does anyone here have any experience or recommendations on pellet smokers? I've had some success in the past smoking meat on a basic kettle grill with charcoal, but it's a bit of a pain to setup and baby sit all day. I'm thinking it'd be interesting to get something a bit more turn-key to make it easier to do more frequently, and pellet smokers (Traeger, et al) seem frequently recommended these days for both traditional low-and-slow barbecue and occasionally for other outdoor cooking (pizzas? burgers?). Are they actually as good as advertised? There are tons of models at different price ranges, but which features (and sizes) are actually useful?
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
The law in most of the West (maybe world) says that you can effectively record strangers in public without permission with a few exceptions.
Is this true in the EU? I'm not the most aware of it's specific laws, but it seems like something GDPR and friends might frown upon. The EU is a non-trivial part of "The West", although I know the UK likes it's CCTV.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
He couldn’t steer private conversations, he couldn’t delete crime-think from social consciousness. He could chill things by arresting obvious and loud dissenters, but that is much more limited than what social media does via AI and deletion.
I think this is an least partly overselling our AI panopticon overlords. This might be true in online spaces, but those aren't everything, and even then offshoots of sites challenging moderation policies are common (Bluesky, Truth Social). And they have almost no power over IRL discussions and actions -- despite attempts made a decade ago, seem to have overreached and receded. To hear Reddit tell it, there basically aren't any Republicans anywhere in the US, and nobody shops at Hobby Lobby. And there are people that cloister themselves to the extent they believe this, but as it turns out the levers of political power aren't particularly beholden to Reddit dog walkers mods.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
The international laws of warfare are somewhat vague about blockades sinking cargo vessels carrying materiel in times of war: it's something the Allies did their fair share of too. Even if you include them, it's on the order of 10k deaths, and still weights poorly against the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, and I think the point still stands.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
This isn't a unique system, though. Maybe the degree of adversarial-ness is, but there are plenty of sub-state level actors with differing degrees of autonomy. American Samoa issues its own passports, but isn't an independent state or full protectorate ("nationals, not citizens"). New Caledonia has a somewhat similar arrangement. And it's not all obviously-colonial arrangements either: the Crown Dependencies of the UK don't seem to have active independence movements that I've heard of, but seem about as sovereign (perhaps with fewer border checkpoints) as the PA in the West Bank is on paper.
VoxelVexillologist
🇺🇸 Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1yr ago
If you exclude civilian ship crews, the total number of US civilian deaths in WWII is around 100, and single-digits if you only count state territories at the time (not Alaska or Hawaii). British civilian deaths, despite the Blitz, were still pretty small compared to Germany and Japan. Civilian casualty ratios are a terrible metric unless you want to be an Axis (or Soviet) apologist.
At the risk of invoking a meme around here, "What did you think 'Never Again' looked like? Vibes? Essays? Poetry?"
Of course it potentially meant finding or making a safe place for themselves and investing in defense spending to be too thorny to tangle with again. That mentality clearly seems to explain how they interact with parties that call for their deaths regularly (see the Houthi flag, for example). Many of those calls come from Muslims, but I'm not sure they like Richard Spencer any better.
But that 'Never Again' thread runs in other groups too: see defense spending in Poland and Finland, arguably China and Korea too. Or why you shouldn't ask the South American with a German last name when their ancestors moved to the New World (not always 1945, but it's common enough).
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