VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
No bio...
User ID: 64
but plenty of civilized countries like to play that game.
"So there I was in a pub in Belfast enjoying a lovely Imperial pint and watching the local match, when my accountant back in Boston called asking about retirement contributions. I got lots of weird looks at the bar when I said 'I want to contribute as much as I can to the IRA', and you'd think the room went cold."
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1d ago
I went to a smaller school that often had take-home essays and even exams (up to the professors, more common in smaller honors classes). While cheating might have happened somewhat, it is possible IMO to instill a culture that expects people to follow the rules even when they aren't being watched closely. But it was occasionally enforced by expelling violators.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3d ago
PP seems to show up in lots of anecdotes about cross-sex hormone prescriptions, especially for trans minors with relatively few questions asked. As far as I can tell (see SCOTUS thread) those are rather controversial. But I can't say what fraction of their business that is.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3d ago
You could do far worse than Terry Pratchett, IMO.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3d ago
public high schools in the US average around $19k in per student spending, no correlation between spending and outcomes.
Is that true across public schools? I've often wondered if the extra funding thrown at Title 1 schools that typically underperform actually makes the correlation negative, but I've never found an actual dataset.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3d ago
IIRC around the end of the first Trump term, we got perilously close to dueling national injunctions for "must continue DACA" and "must immediately halt DACA", which isn't a sustainable way to run a national judiciary.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4d ago
The Federalists were absolutely right
The Federalists were against adding an explicit Bill of Rights, and only chose to do so as a compromise. The Anti-Federalists wanted to enumerate the rights, and I think have ultimately been proven right.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4d ago
In real estate, when you have a claim, even a weak claim, it represents leverage, and you can get your counterparty to negotiate and give you something for it. You never let it lapse for nothing.
This is somehow the most logical explanation I've heard for 2020, and I hadn't heard of it before.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4d ago
The Jet A open air burn temperature is 1,030 °C, considerably less than the melting point of even lower melting point steels.
True, but the theory isn't that the beams melted, it's that they weakened due to the temperature. Structural steel loses half its room-temperature strength at 500 °C, and the chart I can find doesn't go much past that. Structural factors of safety are high, but not that high, and it's unsurprising IMO that they'd fail at "extended structural fire" temperatures, which is why we mandate automatic sprinklers in such buildings these days.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
6d ago
Who is stealing detergent?
A while (a decade or more, now) back, there were a series of articles about Tide being used as street currency for drug sales. I'm uncertain if that is still true, or even was ever particularly common, but it probably is at least known to store managers.
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/01/14/why-would-drug-dealers-use-tide-as-a-currency
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
6d ago
Nobody has argued about embryonic stem cell research in a while. Although we have had left-coded arguments about HeLa cell line research.
Younger commenters seem to consistently under overestimate how long the South has been "Deep Red" territory: the legacy of the Southern Democrats held on at the state level well into the '90s. I am frequently amused at local Blue commenters in my Red state complaining about (perceived Red) state laws and policies that were actually enacted by the Blue team 40 years ago.
Was Manchin the last of that breed? He just left office this year.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
6d ago
I bet 'perceived crime rates' includes observations of crime-adjacent activities that wouldn't ever be measured in 'actual' rates: the appearance of ubiquitous graffiti (see pictures of 80s subway cars), or of loitering ne'er-do-wells in the park isn't necessarily a wrong perception about crime rates.
You don't have to fully endorse the broken windows theory of (causing) crime to accept that frequent observations of broken windows can cause a true perception of rising crime rates.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
7d ago
This would be an interesting case if some state decided it wasn't going to recognize marriage at all.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
7d ago
I will at least observe that Red states have been, even in this era, pushing back on the prevalence of online porn. Pornhub, notably, has blocked a number of states that have passed relevant legislation to require age verification. It's Very Possible Nowadays to circumvent such things or find sites that don't care about (American) jurisdiction quite so much, but it is happening.
Notably, though, the argument is less "this content is sinful", and more "this content is demonstrably poisoning the relations and sexual health of our children".
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
7d ago
It missed its chance to be the one and only 10th Amendment precedent.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
7d ago
I think Putin's stated goals of destroying the idea (the meme as it were) of a distinct Ukrainian identity is, under the more expensive definitions, considered "genocide", but I will concede that it's a much less central example than "industrially kill them all" or just "evict them from their lands and ignore the obvious implications" that people would typically point to in WWII.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
8d ago
I wonder if that's how presidents had to be in the past, and the rest of us reading the newspaper listening to radio watching on TV following social media real-time feeds just weren't as knowledgeable about those realities until recently.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
8d ago
And yet no one is seriously accusing them of being genocidal.
I think "no one" is excluding a lot here: the governments of several NATO member states have made such claims, and the ICC (which admittedly isn't held in the highest esteem everywhere) has issued arrest warrants for Russian leaders on genocide or genocide-adjacent charges.
I'm not suggesting you have to agree with those descriptions, but I think it falls well short of "no one."
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
8d ago
Under a very loose definition of "ethnic cleansing", the IDF forcing Jews out of Gaza in the 2005 withdrawal (in some cases unwillingly) fits the definition, but is hardly the central example you're looking for.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
8d ago
The zipper and button closures on men's and women's jackets and shirts are traditionally reversed from each other, too.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
9d ago
The external bed of a pickup truck is also easier to clean than the inside of a van, so you can haul dirty things that you might not want inside your van (cans of gas for your lawn implements, deer carcasses, brush) and hose it out when you're done.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
9d ago
Gaza also bans abortion and IIRC limits birth control pretty heavily, in addition to promulgating pro-natal memes, even if they are "eventually outnumber the [redacted]."
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
9d ago
I'd be cautious there that a middle option is technically possible: Obama ordered airstrikes on Syria against ISIL, and there have been American boots on the ground there since (unclear on exact deployment dates and current status), but they've remained in a limited capacity as such without being a full-blown invasion a la 2003. It's possible the exact wording of your prediction may matter quite a bit.
I think this is far more complicated a topic than a single sentence can do justice to, but the Christian tradition, as much as it would like to attribute everything to Jesus, wasn't written in stone at the Ascension or Pentecost. Most of the "emphasis on female promiscuity" parts I can think of are from Paul, and were written a bit later.
I'd also point to the context of family matters in Rome at the time: Augustus rather famously enacted some policies that encouraged fidelity and "family values" before Jesus was born (and were continued on and off again with later emperors), and it's difficult to fully extract the existing Roman cultural context from the Christianity that took off there.
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