gattsuru
1yr ago
A lot depends on how sophisticated the attacks are. It's not a lot of explosive (wild-ass-guess, say a hundred grams, on the high side?), but if you crack open a case and there's a weird goop with a couple wires sticking out of it, and the pager still works with said weird goop disconnected, that'd be one thing. If it's either modifying or wholesale replacing components such that it's an integrated part of the device... there's people who could do the necessary disassembly and maybe even code path analysis, but it's well outside of the typical threat model up until now. And in a more extreme case, I could imagine equipment that was normal on disassembly, because the actual threat would be passive and distributed through the plastic shell.
I'm not even sure I'd trust the US military to be able to do that sorta analysis for mission-critical equipment.
gattsuru
1yr ago
Technically Medicaid, but here:
The dishonesty of this shell game is so self-evident that it’s not worth dwelling on. The point is that they want to ban abortion, bankrupt social security, and toss people off Medicaid and dissembling is how they want to do it.
But it's not exactly subtle why he wants that framing, and it's the same game as always.
gattsuru
1yr ago
They sound like (distant) screaming children, either when you're trying to move a live trap, or when any but the most humane kill trap goes off, which especially since they're most active at dawn and dusk can be an Interesting way to get a reputation. But they are prone enough to overpopulation that sometimes it's necessary.
gattsuru
1yr ago
Allegedly, the specific pagers were purchased through a single kinda-sketchy reseller:
The name of the Budapest-based firm first cropped up in a statement by a Taiwanese manufacturer, Gold Apollo, whose label appeared on the devices. Gold Apollo said it did not manufacture the devices and that they were made by its Hungarian partner, BAC Consulting...
According to data on CompanyWall business, which classifies and analyzes financial information and business information on firms, BAC Consulting posted a profit after tax of 18.3 million Hungarian forint (€46,400/$51,700) on revenue of 215 million Hungarian forint (ed: around 610,000 USD?) in 2023. The company posted a profit after tax of 5.8 million Hungarian forint in 2022...
DW visited BAC's official address in Budapest, but didn't meet or see any employee from the firm. Nobody responded to the doorbell. An A4 sheet of paper with BAC's name printed on it is the only proof of the company's existence. Residents of the house told DW that they don't know this company, and that they rarely see any correspondence sent to the address.
I'd expect there's serious problems trying to separate sales from Hezbollah from non-military sales in Lebanon, and the total sales number probably means a lot more individual items than it looks at first, but this doesn't look like the sort of outfit that does a company that has the capacity to do many 3-10k batches of assembly at this scale.
Of course, that assumes they were compromised by BAC. A compromise further up the supply chain would be much less targeted, one downstream would probably be much more.
gattsuru
1yr ago
It's old now, but I wonder if anyone remembers the first season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. I haven't watched it in probably 15-20 years, but a major plotline from it is that the intelligence services essentially meme an assassination attempt of a prominent politician into reality.
In the first season, it's a combination trying to meme the assassination of a corrupt police chief, lead primarily by a retired military corrupt politician ("General Secretary" in the dub, probably a mistranslation of cabinet secretary). ((It's also marginal as an example of a Stand-Alone Complex. The original hacker Laughing Man did exist, and the protagonists meet him; the lack of a true original comes from him discovered the underlying conspiracy of his time thanks to either an accident or someone airdropping a file on him, and because the violent actions the Laughing Man archetype developed after the original friendly kidnapping were a result of said cabinet secretary trying to play up the 'bad acts' and the Laughing Man logo getting used everywhere... as it did in real life.))
It's the second season where intelligence services other than Section 9 are involved; the Individual Eleven manifesto (which doesn't actually exist as a written text) is somewhere between an invasive meme and a straight-up brain-computer virus built to force those with certain traits into a murder-suicide plot targeting the Prime Minister, masterminded by a high-level incredibly annoying Central Intelligence Service bureaucrat.
gattsuru
1yr ago
If there had been some day-one arguments about how the geese deserved it, I'd absolutely agree, perhaps with some quibbling about unequal treatment of the law given how obnoxious hunting (and nuisance) permits can be.
In practice, though, we had people here wanting to make bet money about a thing Not Happening.
gattsuru
1yr ago
I'm sure it's a total coincidence that not a single conservative politician has even been a seasoned enough political operative to avoid having some sentence somewhere reframed dishonestly in ways that a) every mainstream news organization repeats and b) no mainstream news organization corects.
... This seems to be smuggling a few assumptions in here.
There's a 0., where several politicians were repeating claims made by locals in Springfield. [The original writer has since retracted, albeit under media scrutiny that's... close to wrestling gif levels of coercion.]
And then there's a -1., where Vance specifically, the guy who first brought it to national attention, had also spent over a month highlighting other problems with Springfield's ability to handle the migrant influx of this scale, while being a Senator for the state. Ie, being very likely to get direct calls from people who complained to him.
[I don't think this is epistemically healthy, even if most conservatives aren't echoing Trump's mention of dogs. But on the other hand...]
gattsuru
1yr ago
Yeah, I've intentionally (and, uh, unintentionally) lit off some pretty high-capacity lipo batteries; even with direct punctures crossing multiple cells (don't do this!) it won't light off anywhere like these. Really big ones, scooter- or car-sized, can push out enough energy that people trying to put them out can inadvertently produce hydrogen gas that can detonate, but they're not fitting in a pager and you need a ton of water.
LiPo fires are scary because they burn so damn hot and so damn fast.
gattsuru
1yr ago
There's... also a really morbid question, whether the law clearly excludes the D&C here from its coverage. The statute is available online:
No abortion is authorized or shall be performed if an unborn child has been determined in accordance with Code Section 31-9B-2 to have a detectable human heartbeat except when: A physician determines, in reasonable medical judgment, that a medical emergency exists; [rape or incest and genetic abnormalities exceptions not relevant here]
What is 'medical emergency' defined as?
'Medical emergency' means a condition in which an abortion is necessary in order to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or the substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman. No such greater risk shall be deemed to exist if it is based on a diagnosis or claim of a mental or emotional condition of the pregnant woman or that the pregnant woman will purposefully engage in conduct which she intends to result in her death or in substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.
There are certainly some state laws that have overly restrictive rules, but these exceptions seem, at least to my layman's eyes, reasonably well-written to include serious dangers to physical health, while excluding mental health or suicide/self-harm risk. There are fair arguments regarding whether it is good policy. There are probably even non-crazy reasons to argue that some of the other exceptions are insufficiently clear -- there's some clear tradeoffs around the fuzzy area between 'spontaneous miscarriage' and 'tots not self-induced'.
I've not seen a particularly credible argument why this case doesn't fall under this exception, even well considering hindsight bias. ProPublica doesn't seem to link the leaked report (for some reason!), but I don't think you need to wait til 9AM ("organs failing") or 645AM ("taken to the intensive care unit") is necessary, and the doctors here waited until 2PM. I think there's a very strong support about medical necessity 930PM the night before. That seems especially true given that these laws have literally never been used against a doctor in Georgia, where we have countless examples of insufficient care medical liability in the same time period. I don't think anyone individually made cackling laughter and then wrote down 'kill her' on Thurman's medical history eight hours in, but there's pretty serious and systemic errors if 'vomiting blood' and 'acute severe sepsis' isn't being considered a medical emergency.
It's a really controversial claim to propose that hospital as systems are willing to fuck around in deniable ways to make politically-useful arguments, while playing with their patient's lives, and incredibly bad claim if true. I would like to get some set of more serious arguments against it than other ProPublica authors are willing to attempt, because I'm gonna make it.
And it isn't nice from your behalf to be calling right wingers who aren't abandoning anything remotely conservative being the most bellgerent men to walk the face of the earth, and so what you demand as right wingers to behave like, comes off as an attempt to control them.
I mean, I'm neither going to pretend to be one of the 'nice' people, nor claiming that the 'nice' people are actually nice -- Romney's my central example in the above post because he's particularly two-faced about it in a single book and a single article, but if you want one of my rants about David French I've got a pretty wide variety to choose from! And there's definitely a tendency for a Russell Conjugation of politeness, demanding carefully-drawn borders of acceptable discourse that one would never be tempted to overstep, while calling people they don't like as acting moronic.
There's some fun debates about whether the belligerent assholes or the 'nice' hegimonizing swarm are more directionally correct, but I'm willing to assume for the sake of this discussion that the assholes are at least a little more honest, or at least make finding the truth more likely in the end. My problem is that even at the most charitable, being just a little more honest than the 'nice' hegimonizing swarm is damning with extremely faint praise.
Like, for your specific example, progressive are and always were also going to quibble about Springfield vs Dayton and Haiti versus Africa, or whether one example is enough, but they can also now deflect because there weren't any dogs involved. There's actually a decent number of social and structural reasons that dogs are particularly unlikely, but even without them there's just the bit where it wasn't even on the twitter radar pre-debate. It's possible Trump had some external information otherwise. There's reason his advocates have mostly dropped it, though.
It's not that this is necessarily 'more' lying. I'd quibble with MacDougald a lot, here: as much as Trump is a bullshitter, you can absolutely find a ton of examples of just straightforward lies from the 'Nice' people, including many in last week's debate. My complaint is that if we belligerent assholes are advertising ourselves as talking about the truth, it'd be nice if belligerent assholes were actually doing that.
((Just as my complaint over at theschism is that it'd be nice if the 'Nice' people weren't talking about how they should metaphorically punch and literally remove from public discussion the people they disagree with.))
gattsuru
1yr ago
According to KassyAkiva, the Violation of Constitutional Right Causing Injury charge was not read during the arraignment. Still can be added in, but not including it now is more typically a sign it's been dropped. May have been thrown in at arrest, charitably out of mistaken understanding of events, or less charitably just to spice the news coverage -- no small amount of mainstream coverage heavily contradicts the clear video.
Hayes was allowed (5k USD) bail, albeit with a GPS monitor and curfew. But it's a long way from Kessler, where it took over a week to arrest someone who had far less clear evidence of legitimate action.
As for Branca's analysis, in normal states, I think the situation is more complicated than Branca suggests. To quote from Massad Ayoob:
Another element of disparity of force is position of disadvantage. Maybe my student is 6’ 2’’ 220 pounds and a body builder, but they are seat belted into their car and in the road rage incident the attacker is punching them through the open window. That seat belt is going to act like an accomplice that is pinning your arms and holding you in place. You will not be able to get body weight behind a counter-punch, you certainly will not be able to kick, and you would be virtually unable to slip or evade a punch. That was the classic element in the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin trial when the evidence showed that Zimmerman had, in fact, been down on his back, with a taller man smashing his head into the pavement.
That doesn't make it a slam-dunk, given the presence of allied protestors, but it can definitely aid -- once downed by a surprise attack, both juries and caselaw are . But Massachusetts caselaw is especially messy here, his prosecutor is famously bad on self-defense of any kind (in fact, was the prosecutor in Caetano!), and the jury pool is gonna be a clusterfuck.
On the flip side, Massachusetts is one of very few states where prior bad acts by an attacker unknown to the person claiming self defense not only may be used at trial, but must in some cases. The falls outside of the realm where it would be clear reversible error to exclude unless the state disputes who was the "first attacker", but there's still a strong precedent to work with. And the attacker is, unsurprisingly, a piece of work.
But, again, Massachusetts juries, so not a great situation.
gattsuru
1yr ago
"You're so Nice. You're not Good, you're not Bad, you're just... Nice."
Into the Woods is a 1987 Sondheim musical (and a 2014 live action movie), throwing together a bunch of Brothers Grimm fairie tales into a stew, and then asking what happens after happily ever after. While later pieces in the same genre would often re-invent, twist or just completely invert the morality and drives of their main characters to provide a more morally 'complicated' story, Into the Woods is a good bit more restrained in its re-imagining. The heroes remain protagonists and the villains jerks; it's just what this does to them and those around them that changes.
In particular, the tweaks here recognize that one good day does not make for a happy life, nor does everything that is heroic end up being good. Because this is a musical, and subtlety is for cowards, this is explicitly stated in song, with the villainous Witch belting out complaints about how the protagonists are Nice. And this predates the Nice Guy discourse; she's complaining that they are the sort of people who end up being protagonists.
Mitt Romney released a self-titled biography recently, and did a related media tour, as he saw the writing on the wall retired, and there were certain parallels that hit my brain and wouldn't leave since, nor have been left unassisted by other events since. Like no shortage of claims from him and his allies, quite a lot of the focus is on how his particular brand of Dignified, Professional, and Polite conservatism is important, and how its federal prominence has recently and near-completely collapsed. I can get some specific quotes for those interested, but chances are very good you've heard them before, and it's far from specific to Romney or even to conservative critics of populism. There's no shortage of politician, political, and non-political actors that really develop a personality and identity as being nice, above all.
"I'm not Good, I'm not Nice, but I'm Right."
While the play follows several different viewpoint characters, much of the connecting force and impetus for events comes from the Witch: in the first act, she needs the Baker to collect items to cure her curse of ugliness, she took away Rapunzel in her tower, her magic beans get Jack to the giant's tower, so on. While the second act is more about the consequences falling from those decisions, she still plays a serious role. Even up until her removal from the play in the final act, she's the one with ideas.
And she's not a good person, and they're not exactly nice ideas! She's gets the Baker to cooperate with the aid of a curse she placed on his house decades ago, she took Rapunzel from the Baker's father, she's just an all-around unpleasant (if funny) person to be around. Her final demand is to have Jack, to let him be crushed by the Giantess. If it weren't for how important those ideas were, no one would stand her.
For conservatives, especially the sort of conservatives who complains a lot about Romney being a RINO or use the phrase 'controlled opposition', there's a lot to complain about important and truthful ideas that either weren't getting voiced, or are only given enough attention to disclaim or throw under the bus. In many cases, it is that niceness that acts as an argument against recognizing even the strongest version of these positions; but even the strawman version where the bloodless (as far as the death of a child can be bloodless) story gets no attention and justifies the cruel story exists. I've pointed before to VanDyke as presenting vital information about procedural gamesmanship -- not despite, but because of the very traits that lead to him being seen as unqualified by the ABA.
... but the Witch is not always, actually, that right. The Last Midnight (and the Witch being literally eaten by the earth in the film version) is driven by her demand, and the rest of the cast's refusal, to surrender Jack to the Giant's Wife, who is currently in the process of stomping half the kingdom and much of its subjects flat. That demand might be ethically justifiable given Jack's killing of the Giant, but given that the Giantess is nearly blind and squishing much of the populace of the kingdom by accident or indifference, very far from clear that it'd actually salve her anger (especially in the film version). Even small asides, like the growled promise that the Baker will never find his sister who can never be reached, often end up wrong. Her prophecy about the protagonists being doomed to repeat their sins and the sins of their forebears, unsurprisingly, doesn't last to the curtain call.
The obvious metaphor today would be to point toward "they're eating dogs", which lacks even Vance's deniability of 'heard reports of' or the memeability of the oral sex joke. But that's just recency bias, and it wasn't even the most recent one at the end of that debate night: he and his quite willing to throw out the implausible (bluetooth earrings!) with the at-least-precedented (leaked debate questions) to the overt and obvious (ABC 'factchecking' things wrong). Call it bullshitting if you want, but at best it's distracting, and more often it's only defensible at all by pointing to the rest of the politician populace -- ie, no defense at all. And it's not like he's alone, here. I'm not a huge fan of Ken White of PopeHat calling everyone he doesn't like a dogfucker or shoot up federalist society meetings, but it'd even more damning when he yells those sorta things and also can't be bothered to take his 'serious' writings seriously.
((For a lighter-weight comparison that everyone involved would absolutely loathe, Neil deGrasse Tyson's schtick has increasing focused on what would charitably be called improving awareness of nitpickingly specific scientific knowledge, at the cost of coming across as obnoxiously uncharitable... and also doesn't even do that.))
"You're all liars and thieves... Oh, why bother? You'll just do what you do."
Except... one of the Witch's mistakes is claiming that the protagonists and their fellow travelers are nice. The Baker steals Red Riding Hood's cape and tricks Jack out of his cow, his wife cheats, Cinderella is gormless, Rapunzel has no idea how to interact with normal people, Red Riding Hood's turned her trauma from the wolf eating her not into grl pwr but into oft-unchecked aggression, Jack's a sociopath and a thief, the princes are "charming, not sincere". Again, no small part of the play is pointing out that the acts needed to turn a wish true don't come free, and also that they're often not exactly nice things to actually do. At best, the protagonists are willing to rationalize or excuse their faults and bad acts; at common, they project them on each other; at worst, they just don't want to have to think about it. There is literally a song of nothing but that!
(tbf, not one of the better ones)
Romney portrays himself as a man of dignity and kindness, and no small number of his biggest fans can't help but agree... at the same time that Romney gives constant asides about what specific person he disrespects most, or tells stories about how he and his political allies "burst into laughter" as soon as the target of that laughter left the room. The famous 47% gaffe might have played particularly poorly in Peoria, but it's not like the man was slow to. It gets worse if you look at the guys who tried to work for his campaign.
And, of course, it's not limited to Romney -- the currently sitting President who ran on his moderation also released a first-party political ad including an innocent citizen as a "white supremacist", still up on twitter, the people opposed to Romney -- or even to politicians. I have and will complain at length about pundits who have strong words and split the finest hairs about extremism in pursuit of virtue, and then lose track of the topic entirely as soon as there own vice comes to challenge. This sorta perverse combination of Abilene Paradox and whisper-or-not-so-whisper cruelty campaign is frustratingly common even down to small-scale organizations.
There's an excuse that the Kind get outsized and mean outspoken response, and that's what drives people who made it their brand to occasionally fall to snark and crude response. At best, it's an excuse for incivility; more often, it's an excuse waved before slapping someone for placing the last straw. Kindness has its limits
"Oh, why bother? You'll just do what you do."
Unfortunately, this stanza is about where the metaphor falls apart: the Witch decides she's rather exit the stage than continue to deal with these putzes, throwing away her magic beans and inviting every and all curses just to get away from them. The odds of Trump ever deciding to voluntarily be anywhere but the centre of the spotlight is about nil. Nor would Trump be willing to act the scapegoat responsible, as the Witch offers when she gives her ultimatum -- she'd take all the blame, be responsible for all their faults, if only she gets to try to make the problem go away. And the problem is far broader than him. We're not getting away from this just because one politician retires.
-
Even before we get to the problem of exploring the chasm between “I for one welcome abandoning anything remotely conservative” and “I must be the most belligerent man to walk the face of earth if I want to be based”, is it even possible to get kind Abileners or honest belligerent assholes? I'm not saying that would be good, but it's bad when the bad option can't live up to its own awful marketing! Forget a Buddha-like calm detachment; it's hard to avoid calling morons morons no matter how much you know it's not worth it, and many of the important things for belligerent assholes to discuss are hard or impossible to really 'know'.
-
Is there a space in between those two points, even theoretically? Even before we get to the pragmatic considerations or human failings, is there even theoretical space where one could be a polite and civil critic who still takes likely-but-unpleasant discussions seriously? (Not just the right: can the progressive movement surface its more serious critiques, without #KillAllMen or Guillotine Rose fandom tagging along?) I'd say it was one a goal for the rationalist movement, but that's just an indirect way of saying it's not gonna happen.
-
If not at the individual level, are these perhaps organizational workarounds? One can at least imagine a straight-man/wise-guy combo that distributes responsibility such that the overt temptations are at least not as present, and that's historically been no small part of the role of public relations, but does that actually buy you anything? Or does this just drive the problem one layer earlier, where the organization instead will be either compromised or ripped apart?
gattsuru
1yr ago
The steelman is that stochastic terrorism something something -- you only need one or two complete nutjobs in an audience of (supposedly) three million followers and however many indirect listeners to go on a bizarre stalking incident or drive through someone's front door (or just send a lot of junk e-mails or phone calls, which they counts as physical safety). That's still not a very strong steelman, given how rare it is, but they do act like they believe it.
That said, having seen similar stuff in other environments, I'd expect that the average person is either in the 'it's what I use to win in other contexts' or 'but the politics he advocates would hurt me' or even 'his political aisle used violence somewhere so he must be ejected'.
gattsuru
1yr ago
Cell phone video shows a man yelling at a group of pro-Israeli demonstrators, who were peacefully protesting across the street from him. That man, who's not part of the protest, is seen crossing the street and tackling one of the demonstrators.
Investigators said that's when that demonstrator, identified as 47-year-old Scott Hayes of Framingham, allegedly shot the man who tackled him.
Hayes was arrested and charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. [emphasis added]
The video (cw: someone getting shot) is available, and while not the literal clearest cases of self defense that I've seen, is pretty high up there.
Hayes is set to be arraigned today. We'll see what the result of this philosophy causes.
gattsuru
1yr ago
Yeah, the worst-case a lot of people were proposing back in 2005-2008 didn't seem that bad. Big bad game developers might make extra content only a tiny fragment of the playerbase is interested in, and charge them extra for shit I don't care about? Oh no, not that briar patch! Yes, yes, selling to willing buyers at the current market price, but everyone knows this stuff is worthless, and indeed most people want it to be worthless since PTW is a deathknell.
And then we started getting more and more DLCs or MTX that fail to fit well into the space between 'should have been in base game' and 'shouldn't have been in the game at all'.
FFXIV's been less bad about it than most, but it's a) a subscription game and mtx, b) there's a lot of goofy non-mtx gear, and c) still has some pretty bad stinkers (a literal whale mount for whales). And I still get the feeling that some of the treadmillisms around goofy gear and seasonal events are a little downstream of it. I'd also put Rimworld and Oxygen Not Included in the same boat -- it does seem like it's helping fund genuine improvements and development, but both feels more like making a different game out of the original, rather than extending on or augmenting it.
gattsuru
1yr ago
While I agree that the 'metaverse' was useless crap, much and most of the Facebook money has been going more to VR hardware and infrastructure. That has been getting remarkably good, both in terms of direct stats (resolution, image quality, refresh rate, headset weight, tracking fidelity, passthrough video quality) and user experience. The StreamLink/AirLink over Wifi6 works with surprising quality, and even five years ago that was a ridiculous unbelievable pipe dream to get as even some glorified iPad Game gimmick.
It's just the business case kinda sucks.
gattsuru
1yr ago
The post you're responding to is showing as "Filtered" to me.
If the question is about how failure rates pop up, these studies are based on reporting. This goes into a lot of the statistics and processes, including some counterintuitive results (effectiveness of imperfect use is often underestimated, because many studies only ask about imperfect use where pregnancy occurred).
Mechanically, breakages are the most understood 'correct' use failure, with incorrectly applied (unrolled separately and then placed onto penis, air inside) or stored or outdated condoms, vigorous sex, age, and insufficient lubrication being some of the most common risk factors. Incompatible materials (eg oil and a latex condom) are usually lumped here, though there is a fair argument they should be considered imperfect use. About a fifth to a third of people a year using condoms report at least one condom break, although this is not evenly distributed.
Slippage is... about what it sounds like. You'd think it would be more obvious and easier to withdraw and reapply a different condom or move onto other sex acts, compared to a split down the side of a condom, but you still see 10-20% reporting it happen, usually pretty often if it happens at all.
Leaks are the least understood and I think play a bigger role than most people expect. "Correct" condom use is to withdraw immediately after ejaculation while firmly holding the base of the condom tight. Waiting too long (or just deflating fast enough) gives a lot of opportunity for semen to get around, and while it's something only a small percentage of people report having problems with, as a behavior it's one with the clearest immediate mechanisms for semen transfer, and with the least clear distinction between 'right' and 'wrong'.
Semen just getting around, separate from sex itself is another risk. People overestimate the risks of preejaculatory fluid for pregnancy, but the guy finishing and moving to help his partner finish without washing his hands first is both plausible and easy to overlook.
gattsuru
1yr ago
Either a specific STD panic or some sort of lobby. Maybe they just really wanted to beat the allegations of sex-ed pandering to men?
My impression's that they wanted to have something relevant for the (cis) lesbians, and that's pretty much all that comes up -- it's still hella low risk rates for the really dangerous STDs, but at least relevant for things like cold sores.
((Ironically, dams are still more useful for guys, even separate from STD risks, but I'll admit I have a lot of sympathy for sex ed teachers not wanting to get into rimming.))
Part of it is that condoms seem to be extremely high-variance in how much people tolerate them. With the exception of a few gay guys with pretty specific kinks, no one likes condoms, but I know some people who seem to have slightly reduced sensation, some who it's meh, some who take forever to get there and not in a good way, and some who can't stay hard or perform with a condom period. Ymeshkout's written about about polyamory and condoms that suggest it's got a lot of revealed preference sorta stuff going on.
((The Standard Explanation for condom shyness is too much masturbation, somehow. The conspiracy theory level answer is that the FDA has historically been extremely restrictive about what types and especially sizes of condom are acceptable, for ease of testing, and this leads to a situation where being even slightly off from the average in one of any dimension leads to a condom that's always slipping off or like wearing a bad cock ring. And very few people are average. But I'm not sure.))
This is part of why 'normal use' statistics for condoms end up really close to effectiveness with the withdrawal or rhythm methods, where even perfect-use numbers aren't great.
The Pill has different problems; complex drug and food compatibility, highly dependent on keeping a good schedule, the interactions with weight are a mess, and the personality changes are... not great.
There's a lot of hope that (especially copper) IUDs have/would solve a lot of this -- they're not without their religious opponents, but less so than even the morning after pill, and they skip almost all of the above with a shockingly high effectiveness -- but it's still kinda hard to get buyin from (non-Planned Parenthood) doctors for women of childbearing age, and they're exceedingly painful for most women who haven't been pregnant before.
gattsuru
1yr ago
My model for DeSantis is that he was preparing into March or April of 2024 at least competitive, and hoping to consolidate the other non-Trump candidates as they started to drop out. His initial model had been MAGA-y but-competent, intending to pivot to slamming Trump once some big enough scandal hit to kinda force that, preferably something that let him emphasis the competent bit without having to step too specifically against conservative or MAGA positions.
And the first big scandal that hit in that time frame was the Bragg Indictment.
gattsuru
1yr ago
I've got a summary of some of the history here, if you're interested. That post skipped over DataSecretLox, but it formed in Summer 2020, mostly from the SlateStarCodex open thread and subreddit readers (w/ a bit of tumblrsphere).
Most of these splits weren't on the matters of politics, at least directly. The tumblrsphere was leftish by ratsphere and SSC standards, but mostly bifurcated to allow more informal and scattershot discussion in a more person-oriented view. TheMotte subreddit split from the SSC subreddit because people were harassing Scott enough that he had a nervous breakdown, and the compromise was that any political discussion needed to be several steps away from his identity.
The CultureWarRoundup, as much as it favored righter-wing viewpoints, was more about different takes on what engagement styles people were going after. Probably still political, but not as much as it seems in retrospect. I think there was one or two explicitly right-wing one-person schisms, but I can't even find them now. TheSchism was meant as an explicit political schism in the aftermath of the Rittenhouse stuff, and a naive experiment, so I guess that makes two relevant ones?
So I guess, yes, that is a lot of bad signs for the general population, but more for how the explicit efforts went than by their existence.
gattsuru
1yr ago
It's the full thread, or at least down to :
Quite a lot of lipo have more than two leads, starting at a third thermistor wire, going up to per cell voltage leads, and eventually going to annoying Apple bullshit.
And even with two leads, if you're manufacturing a thousand battery-bombs, there's a lot of ways to do a one-wire (and ground) protocol to pass data to a microcontroller, which can easily be the size of a grain of rice. Or you could hard-short the battery leads on a battery without builtin overcurrent protections, and use it as a primary for your real explosives -- even a well-contained lipo fire is definitely hot enough to set off most thermal-ignite explosives.
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