domain:aporiamagazine.com
GBRK
1d ago
There is no empirical evidence that "a gun-- and especially a small gun-- is worse that useless" in a any particular self-defense situation.
To clarify, I'm defining "worse than useless" as "likely to increase your net chances of death on net." I'm aware that there are situations where brandishing a weapon would de-escalate the situation, but virtually all of those situations also apply to having a visible large weapon. Meanwhile, if you get in a stickup because the robber is under the impression that you're unarmed, trying to pull out a weapon is almost guaranteed to escalate, not de-escalate, the situation. Most probably not in your favor, given who starts with a weapon in their face
Or, this simply isn't true; it's a gun-banner just-so story. Or, worse, they cut down the long guns so they're concealable enough, and now you've got would-be robbers with more lethal weapons.
just-so stories are explanations; this is a prediction based on assuming rational economic behavior. That's not a perfect assumption, but if you want to attack it, you can attack it on its merits rather than by handwaving.
Anyways, robbers can already get concealable weapons that are plenty lethal. Meanwhile, you can't exactly conceal crew-serve artillery no matter how hard you try. I think it's a very safe prediction that concealability would go down, even if weapon lethality would go up, and also that concealability is a larger factor in death rate than weapon lethality. The only exception to that is people starting a revolution or civil war, which I admit is possible, but the whole point of the second amendment is to let people fuck around and find out if they really want to. Having a world full of concealable, low-lethality weapons is just the worst of all possible worlds-- poor security, and no chance of overthrowing a corrupt government.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
I mean, you’ve never tried to flirt with a woman you just ran into? Imagine that but….
Jiro
1d ago
In practice, I'm routinely bombarded with images created by people trying to get me to give them my money
I specifically mentioned that if there's a profit motive, it's different.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Aren’t their pockets they believe this right now, due to climate dooming? They don’t seem like the happiest people.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
I mean, if they really believed that Trump was going to institute an authoritarian regime and they couldn’t stop it… well none of these people strike me as true believer martyrs(republicans usually don’t either). They’d be loudly cheering on Trump so they don’t get purged.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
I never said it was pro-social.
Ultimately fertility is a coordination problem and coordination problems are hard. But you have selfish reasons for wanting it to be solved even if you don’t care about the prosocial ones or the intangibles.
philosoraptor
1d ago
Honking a car's horn except to warn of danger is already a traffic offense.
Is this true in NYC? Because if so, seemingly every second Manhattan driver needs a talking-to.
Markass
1d ago
The trans streamer incident was in 2022, one year after Null's article in 2021. I believe the 2021 article comes after a video game emulator developer named Byuu killed himself in June of that year. His death was weaponized by Hector Martin and blamed on the farms, despite ample evidence to the contrary, which resulted in Dreamhost dropping the site in 2021. Later in 2022, Byuu's death was one of the things referenced during Keffals' #DropKiwifarms to successfully pressure Cloudflare into dropping them too.
I have been a regular at kiwifarms, unfortunately, God, I have wasted my life.
I've written 10 threads there and I find the site is useful in knowing what NOT to do if you ever find yourself in trouble.
Markass
1d ago
It doesn't seem like there is such a thread on the Kiwi Farms. I think the topic is sufficiently old (from the 00s apparently) that nobody has explored it yet.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
1d ago
I’m not demanding they form a militias or something to be taken seriously. But the complete lack of any action beyond standing outside with signs doesn’t really do much to convince me that these guys are serious. It’s like someone screaming that tge house is on fire from the bedroom while queuing up a Netflix movie. The actions don’t match including the actions including by people who have power and should know what to do and could do things to either slow it down or impeach or launch investigations or hold hearings. Yet… they don’t.
Now if this were 1935 Berlin, and these people believed that the crazy Austrian was about to destroy democracy, the actions don’t remotely fit. They can’t be made to fit unless they don’t actually believe what they’re saying, or they’re actually okay with it, but playing tge part. Psychologically, I think the LARP angle makes a lot of sense. It explains the sort of slacktivist protests, the lack of fear of saying something that the reactionaries don’t like (a good way to get arrested in actual authoritarian regimes), the lack of action by anyone in congress, and on it goes. Now there’s always been a certain romanticism of “plucky resistance movements.” The genre of resisters bringing down or stymies an authoritarian regime is a staple in Hollywood. Star Wars, Red Dawn, Lawrence of Arabia, pretty much every WWII movie ever made, Handmaid’s Tale, Hunger Games. It’s a trope buried pretty deep in American mythology. And so people who are disappointed in losing the culture war might well project that movie trope onto American politics, especially because it allows them to cast themselves as the heroes of the psychodrama. It’s easy to cover up a life you aren’t happy with by pretending to be on some kind of great crusade for Justice. It’s also great for a party that barely has a real agenda because if you are fighting Palpatine, it doesn’t matter that your big idea is shovel-ready projects or something — you’re fighting evil.
Bartender_Venator
1d ago
You just get exposed to different pathogens than your immune system is used to, it's traveler's diarrhea (which can absolutely hospitalize you if you're unlucky). I would assume all the unpasteurized cheese or cured meat or whatever doesn't help in avoiding trace levels of them which will be nothing to a local but will thrive in an unprepared gut. If you want to avoid it, avoid anything that wasn't cooked before serving, and wash your hands like it's April 2020.
Federal Medicaid cuts in the OBBA are hitting NC in two months and they're pretty severe. The effects of this funding cut will slash a lot of things that I think most people right or left wing would agree are useful to have.
First every provider gets at least a 3% rate cut. Then due to the share of spending, a much larger rate reduction of 10% is on inpatient and residential medical institutions. This includes acute care hospitals, nursing homes, PTRFs (basically the mental hospitals/modern asylums), and intermediate care facilities (these are for intellectual/developmentally disabled people who need intermittent nursing).
The rate reductions will see an already stretched mental health system in the state need to cut back on access more. For an admin that claims to want more institutional treatment of the mentally ill, addicts, etc, this will ironically be one of the biggest deinstitutionalization effects in the state.
Another effect is the removal of GLP-1 drug coverage for obesity. I don't think I need to prove that they're very effective at weight loss, and obesity is a major health issue so a lot of people finally finding themselves losing weight are going to be hurting in the next few months as their prescriptions get cut. While GLP-1 medications isn't yet a net positive financially, the impact it has on people's health can not be ignored.
This also will likely hurt their ability to ensure proper compliance with the program.
Sangvai also indicated administrative cuts ahead, including ending or reducing contracts, letting temporary employees go, and ending some quality control and compliance functions. “These cuts will significantly impair NC Medicaid’s ability to be responsive to emerging needs and inquiries, monitor services for quality and compliance, and continue making timely operational improvements,” he wrote.
And as they point out
“Despite careful efforts to minimize harm, the reductions now required carry serious and far-reaching consequences. Most immediately, reduced rates and the elimination of services could drive providers out of the Medicaid program, threatening access to care for those who need it most,” Sangvai wrote. “NCDHHS remains hopeful that additional appropriations can be made to prevent these reductions.”
Medicaid reimbursement rates are already lower than commercial insurances tend to be and plenty of providers won't take it for that reason already.. This will likely get even worse, as poor and disabled people struggle to find providers.
This is especially going to hurt the poor rural areas (ones that voted Trump in) that are already struggling financially and don't benefit as much from economy of scale like the local areas.
About a week ago The Asheville Citizen Times did a report on the nearby rural Mitchell county and their upcoming fears over the cuts.
For example, they're worried that the already tight financials of the Blue Ridge Regional might be forced to close
During a June 19 special meeting of the Mitchell County Board of Commissioners, Jeff Harding, chair of the all-Republican board, said the hospital’s closure “could be devastating to our small community” and urged residents to contact their elected officials.
At the meeting, commissioners passed a resolution in support of the hospital, calling it a “vital resource,” one that saved lives during Helene, which devastated Mitchell and the surrounding counties the hospital serves.
Immediately after the storm hit, the hospital became a hub for relief efforts. It wasn’t just where people could go if they were severely injured and needed care, it was the one place where nonprofits, the federal government and others could show up and help, Kimmel said.
Blue Ridge Regional is the hospital of Spruce Pine, a town you might recognize from coverage of last year's storm as being one of the only places in the world with high quality quartz. It's still important to have some people in the surrounding region for this work (and other work providing for the quartz industry and workers) but their small size as mentioned before doesn't benefit from economy of scale and impact of automation has had a toll on their wealth too. Still they're very important to have around, making up anywhere from 80-90% of the high quality quartz used in the world. And sometime soon, they may be without a hospital, a hospital that was pretty useful during Helene.
So that's the issues my state is going to be facing soon. How is it going to impact your state Motte users?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1d ago
It is a time-honored strategy and I make no judgment. As I say in an encouragement thread it's less easy to comment on what is essentially an empty screen. I realize not everyone approaches the Motte quite how I do--I who may as well be using my SSN government issued ID number as username (though it's true my name is not George ).
Tanista
1d ago
A leftist might also argue that shooting first and helping the descent into lawlessness without public buy-in benefits fascists, who already believe in violence and want to discredit the status quo. It's especially bad if Trump already controls the government.
A much less extreme form of trying to play the man (all of the prosecutions, which Democrats do not see as unprovoked) has arguably already backfired.
aqouta
1d ago
I mean there are philosophical arguments that can be made, and I'm sure people will make them. But there is also the cold hard economic argument to be made that a population collapse means a whole lot of old people in your cohort are going to die slowly alone in pools of their own waste.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Every life has intrinsic value.
Yet, Christianity honors the martyrs who refused to renounce God even in the face of death.
There is a value above life in this view. There are forms of continuing human civilization that would not be worth it.
Corvos
1d ago
Isn’t that what we’re doing here? To my mind, this explained better by @kky’s theory of traction.
The average person has no idea how to get from “I am upset about this” to “I am taking effective (paramilitary?) action against it”. If I remember correctly, both the CIA handbook for building an internal insurgency and the famous “Rules for Radicals” both hypothesise that showing supporters intermediate steps along this path is the primary purpose of an effective resistance movement.
articles about Surrey policewomen posing as joggers to catch men harassing women out exercising.
I wish I had a fraction of the energy and creativity for upskilling and entrepreneurship as so many women have for finding excuses to farm sexual attention with plausible deniability.
This would be another example for how, in Western societies, the compromise with respect to the trade-off between female freedom and protection is expressed by limiting male freedom and protection. We can’t suggest to women that they could dress less thottily, so let’s arrest men instead. This would fit well in a country where people can be arrested for hate-speech.
Catcalling is an avenue for women to humblebrag; she's so attractive as to be catcalled all the time. A Wojak with a seething mask in front, but smirking behind it, comes to mind.
If you were a culture warrior back in 2014, you might remember "10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman," which generated pushback from diverse angles (most of the men in the video were not white
It reminds me of US police bodycams. Progressives went from being pro- to anti-bodycam as the bodycams just reflected that indeed, non-Asian minority suspects are as wrong-thinkers might think they are—perhaps worse. Thus, bodycams became a Problematic vehicle for which stereotypes might be reinforced, like security cameras in Californian public transport later on became.
For better or worse, cat-callers are by default, an unsympathetic group, like drunk drivers or age-of-consent-trespassers. There’s compass unity between progressive and social conservatives, with only a staunch subset of libertarians willing to go to bat for them. However, I could see progressives getting around to support cat-callers for disparate impact reasons.
So, neither apparently severe nor an established pattern of unwanted behavior! With specific regard to harassment, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (PDF) suggests that any "unwanted behaviour directed at an individual with the purpose or intent of humiliating, disrespecting, intimidation [sic], hurting or offending them" qualifies, even if it is a single incident. The laws I was able to find use slightly different language, suggesting that harassment is anything a reasonable person thinks harassment is, plus "alarming the person or causing the person distress"
Such verbiage allows for “know the workplace rules”, to be attractive and not be unattractive. Just read her mind, bro, otherwise know your place. In addition, it allows for anarcho-tyranny, where men of different cultures could have different views on what constitutes “reasonable person.”
That being said, I rather dislike catcallers. To me, it’s aesthetically bad in not being a good look.
It’s also annoying in boosting women’s egos and baseline paranoia levels. Men catcalling is rendering it more difficult, on the margins, for higher status and/or better-looking men with some semblance of tact who would otherwise have a shot at the catcalled women. Yes, yes, I know—other men have always been the primary victims of men cat-calling women. *crosses arms, turns away*
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
1d ago
I don’t see it that way simply because none of the actions they take are consistent with the idea that “reactionary enemies” are about to end civilization as they have known it. The same people refer to ICE as the Gestapo and to Alligator Auswitz and Palentir reading their social media posts also are mostly bitching on the Internet, and occasionally attending a weekend protest that doesn’t interfere with normal life at all. I think most of the “reactionary Nazi” stuff reads more like a psychological need for significance in their own times than the thought that these are actually threats to civilization. Even in Congress, the minority leader is Jewish and he’s not doing anything more than sending angry letters around. If they really believed in Trump’s Nazi party, it seems like you’d be doing a bit more than leaving tge equivalent of 1-star reviews on the internet.
My field is drone airspace management, so this is mostly a concern with drones using GPS to autopilot. In a recent region of interest, the difference between the WGS84 ellipsoid and the EGM geoid was about 100 feet of altitude. So if people weren't on the same page, there could be drones up each other's asses while they are supposed to be stratified by altitude. GPS is natively in the WGS84 ellipsoid system for altitude, but that doesn't mean your specific GPS system nor the things you have digesting that data and sending it along the chain aren't converting it to something else. I don't process raw GPS, so I can't personally attest to this "fact". Lots of people tell me their GPS outputs EGM or MSL.
Now, I'm not a pilot from the 50's, but I believe their analog instruments for altitude worked off of barometric pressure and were calibrated against MSL. I believe every increasingly sophisticated EGM geoid model is attempting to match more precisely the reference frame of observed MSL. Generally pilots think in MSL because if you ever look up the altitude of an airport, it's reported in MSL. But like I said, not a pilot, just my observations from the outside.
I have witnessed relentless confusion, to just not even having an awareness that there is a difference, between the WGS84 ellipsoid and MSL/EGM geoids. Especially, but not limited to, between the old world of manned aviation and the new world of drone aviation. When things like this happen I'm amazed it doesn't happen every fucking day from the shit I've seen. I don't know where the government is hiding all the competence.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
1d ago
Progress doesn't exist. There is only degrees of survival and almost everything is a tradeoff.
Things that don't sustain themselves die. In the long run no other phenomenon really matters.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Before GPS (and to some extent still), pilots used barometric altimeters, which would be set based on local observations.
It's incredibly unlikely that the effect of government policy post-independence has had more of an effect on local genomes than the effect of literally thousands of years of caste-based rule. If you have less smart people now, it's because of the castes. And in any case, while I'm inclined to doubt IQ research in general, even if I were to accept it, IQ looks like it's basically just correlated with cold weather, and high-iq countries almost invariably lack castes. Actually, if I was going to bet on anything increasing IQs, it would be the existence of longstanding meritocratic civil-service exams tied to a powerful, well-renumerated bureaucratic class. Tying wealth and therefore reproductive fitness directly to a measure of analytical fitness seems like it would apply the most powerful selection over the broadest possible pool of candidate genes.
Also, England didn't replace their underclass. It did literally the exact opposite-- replacing celtic with roman with germanic with norman nobility. The underclass sticks around and interbreeds with the newcomers every time, both accepting "fallen nobility" but also producing its own occasional homo novus granted land and titles. Honestly, if you want a genetically elite upper class that's just objectively the sane way to do it-- instead of assuming prima facie that your ancestors 3,000 years ago had the very best genes and you're going to preserve them forever, just continuously skin the cream off the top while siphoning the congealed milk off the bottom.
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