domain:abc.net.au
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
4hr ago
That was me, and as we discussed at the time that's a horrendously inaccurate and uncharitable take on what I was saying.
Anyone can click through and see what you said.
I have to eat my words on this one, though my opinion is unchanged.
The last time I seriously looked into this was circa 2005. When I go looking now the results are incredibly one-sided. As such, my tone and attitude were inappropriate and I apologize.
Yet I clearly remember many, many accounts of Jews getting decent healthcare -- self-reported, mind, not according to the nazis. My expectation is that the truth has shifted outside of the overton window and sources which might paint nazis in a more nuanced light have been deprecated. Certainly this would be in keeping with google's general ethos re: filtering search results.
This will understandably not be very convincing to you, but integrity dictates that I owe you a response.
If you're feeling up to it, I'd still like a response too:
Are you disputing that inflating the numbers suits the Zionist agenda, or are you disputing that the institutions which would do so had many incentives to do so and few if any incentives not to?
And, if neither, what makes you think the numbers are sound?
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
4hr ago
· Edited 3hr ago
7.77 million tons of rice production annually isn’t trivial
It's about 15% more than US rice production, and Japan's biggest crop by far. Meanwhile, the US with only roughly 3 times the population also produces 8.5 million tons of sorghum, 48 million tons of wheat, 117 million tons of soybeans (which Japan imports a good deal of), and 370 million tons of corn. Of course, these are all cereal grains and all subject to harvesting and processing with automation; Japan no longer has to rely on peasants with sickles and hand flails. That's why nobody talks about rice pickers but rather fruit pickers. Automated fruit harvesting, at least for first quality fruits, is something that hasn't been solved for many fruits.
Green tea is a little more like fruit, in that the top quality stuff is hand picked, but harvesting of lower quality stuff is automated. But 77,000 tons really is trivial.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
4hr ago
They are written for a US audience, so you might need to make substitutions from time to time if things aren't available in UK stores.
The UK might be poor and shabby, but not quite that poor!
If the two of you are so keen on it, I'll keep my eye out for ingredients. I'm more concerned about the fact that I can't identify the make of my oven or what the settings do, and I'm entirely a noob at baking.
You probably mean minima.
No.
this is a.. novel definition
I suppose Jacques Ellul only died 30 years ago. But I would have expected everyone here to be long familiar with this ancient history given we discuss the philosophical implications of AI on the daily.
Care to reproduce such arguments in full instead of waving at them?
The section on medicine as a human technique is of course most relevant to this conversation, but I don't recommend skipping around if you are unfamiliar with philosophy of technology and the associated jargon.
Are you typing this on a "simple" device?
No. Semiconductors are arguably the most complex things mankind has ever made. Especially using this definition.
They could, in an ideal world, live short but tortured lives! Is that a tautology?
No, it's a non sequitur.
You seem to conveniently enjoy that particular fruit of modernity, while crying about this one.
I'm not sure what part of my writing evoked any kind of detectable emotion. I assure you it is purely analytic. I'm critical of modernity whilst living in it. What else could be reasonable?
Call me an ungrateful atheist for living in creation if you must. I can't help but look at what I'm doing.
Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder
So I was indeed right to believe you take the DSM-V to have the power to decide the meaning of a word that has existed since the 1500s.
I think the fact that you'd take Wikipedia's word over that of Oxford reflects poorly on your conception of the world, frankly. But this is a silly semantics exercise anyways. I have clarified what I meant beyond doubt. If my vocabulary irks you, so be it.
by that definition, one could be addicted to collecting stamps, to morning walks, or to breathing. You have diluted the word to uselessness.
No, I've used in in a way you don't like, which is common and in accord with its historical usage. There is a difference.
I have no "authority" over you
You misunderstand. It is the expert authority on your own language and thinking I recommend you remedy, not your authority on me.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
4hr ago
You've got your cognac, I've got a bottle of cheap rosé from the nearest supermarket. Life, if not good, is doing okay today.
My romantic meal that I strategically prepared for mt then gf my now wife consisted of cold beer and some homemade kebabs with basmati rice on the side. I marinated them, had the skewers all ready. The one food my wife doesn't like on planet earth? Lamb. My kebabs were made of lamb, which is itself hard to come by here. Plus never serve anything but regular Japonica rice to a Japanese person, unless you are calling it something besides rice (eg risotto). But we did get married.
Alas, I can't get much in the way of goat-mutton in Scotland. That's what I was used to back home, but to be fair, well-prepared lamb comes close. Evidently your culinary skills came in handy! If Mrs. Hale doesn't like lamb, you can't go wrong with making chicken kebabs. It's too late at night for me to order some, but the idea itself has got me hankering.
But yeah I take your points. I think I just hate semaglutide. I feel like if we were in a 70s movie semaglutide would be Soylent Green. Or similar. Something out of one of the darker Ray Bradbury stories. Just a hunch. Probably I'm wrong. Do let me know.
Your innate suspicion is far too common. Modern culture has primed everyone to be suspicious, to look for things that are "too good to be true". That might work for narratives or literary fiction, but reality isn't quite the same. Sometimes, the uncaring universe is kind enough to give us things that are unalloyed goods, and also good. So it was for antibiotics and vaccines, and so it goes for Ozempic.
While not literally perfectly safe (what is? No drug I've ever heard of, and I've heard of most), it is a paradigm shift when it comes to one of the most pressing issues of our time. It is a solution to the obesity epidemic, even if that is somehow dissatisfying to some. I can only stress that the universe is uncarinv, not actively malevolent. Good things happen, or are even discovered, every now and then!
If you need to lose a few pounds, or many, you can't do much better. You can always stop once you hit your target, and seek other ways to keep yourself there. I would hope that getting my own mother, as well as myself, on it would be a sufficient signal of confidence.
It's here. Do not have high expectations.
Followed, which costs me nothing at all. Hopefully you'll get around to writing more!
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
4hr ago
Yeah unfortunately the dragon temple is... real bad, imo. Though to be fair I got through it, whereas the final dungeon was so hard that I can't actually make any forward progress and kinda stopped playing the game as a result.
Overall I felt that Metaphor was a pretty uneven game. There are some real high points, but also some real low points (like the aforementioned dragon temple). I enjoyed it well enough, but I don't think I would ever play it again (and haven't even managed to finish my first playthrough due to the difficulty issue I ran into).
faceh
4hr ago
Man I don't think there's much moral judgment going on.
Aesthetic, yes. Maybe a bit of psychological, but unless you're Jewish I doubt there's much inherent moral judgment towards people making minor changes to their own bodies.
I kinda just wish it wasn't as popular among otherwise attractive single women as it apparently is.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4hr ago
I was confusing tomatoes with other fruit-picking where there is a machine to scoop them up:
For example: https://x.com/TechInsider/status/1271322529362132994
I think that farmers (and businesses generally) are lazy and don't behave economically efficiently. It's creative destruction that raises efficiency, slowly and painfully. The British were notorious for not upgrading their machinery in the steel industry, you had steel chambers for early nuclear plants being forged in blast chambers designed for producing dreadnought armour, 40 years old. Or using gear they got from germany as war reparations from WW1 even in the 1960s and early 1970s! So the British steel industry got razed. It's basically gone. The German steel industry is going too but they did reap some counterintuitive gains from the wartime destruction meaning they had to rebuild and get leaner and smarter.
Capital investment and R&D is always good in my book.
Jiro
4hr ago
But the thing is, it didn't look like an MS-13 tattoo. It was made of symbols and in a fit of pareidolia people made the symbols match MS-13.
If it actually was a MS-13 tattoo I'd expect we'd have heard of other gang members using it.
There was a commenter here who said women lacked "accountability" because they want to be able to f*** without risking being pregnant for nine months.
That was me, and as we discussed at the time that's a horrendously inaccurate and uncharitable take on what I was saying.
This is entirely typical of you. In my opinion you don't belong here and I for one will be much happier when you inevitably wear out the mods' welcome.
(And no; I won't be litigating this or anything else with you again, nor should others.)
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
4hr ago
Second banana bread, though I put way more than one banana in. About three bananas per loaf, if memory serves. Also have some butter on hand for when it comes out of the oven; you'll be glad you did @self_made_human.
For this and for all other things baking related, I will forever shill the King Arthur Flour website. They have a ton of recipes, as well as detailed blog posts explaining the reasoning behind why some things work. They are written for a US audience, so you might need to make substitutions from time to time if things aren't available in UK stores. But the ingredients in banana bread are so basic I'd be surprised if they didn't have them.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4hr ago
My point is that life isn't to be found on exoplanets (certainly not for long), that 40 years or 40,000 years is nothing to an immortal being, that Dyson Spheres make about as much sense as burning dung for fuel.
Huge expenses from our perspective are trivial for a powerful civilization working on astronomical timescales, not biological timescales. Maybe it takes 150 years to build their gigantic planetary scale accelerator complex for highspeed travel (it probably wouldn't if they just spin up more workers or use advanced construction methods). Maybe it takes 1000 years to build a dark matter refinery. Why would they care? They have billions of years to work with.
Our knowledge of physics is overrated. Still no fusion power! What could we achieve if we had a particle accelerator that ran all the way around the world? What could AI discover if given hundreds of years, billions of terawatts, giant computer complexes the size of countries? This is mindboggling sci-fi stuff for us, it's boring and primitive for a powerful civilization.
We know what to look for as far as technology
No, all we know is what we can see. And we can't see 95% of what's out there!
Mantergeistmann
4hr ago
33 hours, roughly halfway through? Dragon Temple, I'd guess? That one can be a bit of a slog - probably my least favorite portion of the game - but hoo boy do you have some plot and characters coming up! As well as some solid challenges, but aside from one specific fight, the game is good about giving you the tools to overcome its bullshit, which I rather enjoy.
But even outside the main plot, a lot of the Rank 8 bonds are just fantastic, and I really do enjoy the gameplay. Enough thinking, enough action mixed in with the turn-based, and I actually find the grinding reasonably enjoyable. I really like every single party member, which is fantastic, and while you can customize them, you're also incentivized lategame to keep them in their original roles somewhat.
A good portion of the reason behind my replay is admittedly that I'm very close to 100% achievements, but I wouldn't bother if I didn't love the game. I find myself re-looking forward to scenes, dialogue, and even some boss fights.
TL;DR: Louis is a top tier villain, Fantasy is real, Esperanto-esque chanting is a bop, and Peerless Stonecleaver (or Wanton Destruction, I don’t judge) goes brrrrrr.
Also, the manga is being released and translated. It changes a few things around, and can be a bit odd in the pacing, but it's pretty fantastic. Worth reading, and it won't spoil anything for where you are (the manga is just reaching Martira, the first town along the way to Brilehaven after you get the gauntlet runner -- I say because I myself always forget Martira's name).
No_one
4hr ago
The laundry series is not half as scary as Scratch Monkey, his first novel.
Stross needs to be terrorized in real life to produce great art (e.g. Scratch Monkey was written while he was implementing credit card transactions..in Perl), and I'm seeing much promise here with the rise of nativism and Trump.
2rafa
4hr ago
Apparently Epstein was able to set up a meeting between some JP Morgan execs and Netenyahu? That sounds like deeper connections than you described:
Not at all, in fact it’s explained if you read my piece. Staley and Dimon were not particularly well connected in Israel. Epstein was close to Lauder and Wexner and could easily have asked either of them to raise the request with Netanyahu, for whom in any case it wouldn’t have been unusual to meet with senior figures at the most important Wall Street bank. That is most of what Epstein did in his later years, namely send emails to people in his Rolodex whom he had met in his decade of relentless socializing pestering them to do minor things that he could trade in for other things.
There's also the possibility that the operation was tied to a non-Mossad Israeli intelligence operation that pertained to internal divisions in Israeli politics.
It’s possible, and there is nowhere I disagree that Epstein may have played politics for Barak during the slow emergence of the modern Israeli security state in the early 2000s. But again, that was after he acquired fame and fortune and long after the sex stuff started, during which time he would have been a nobody to anyone in Israel.
eee
4hr ago
Quoting her is a good source of her opinion on an issue. It would also probably be a good source for the view of the administration as a whole (though Trump seems to disagree with his own people a lot). How exactly is it a good source for the view of the vague mass of people that you are ascribing her view to? Politicians and party bureaucracy always have disagreements with their supporters.
This argument--that you didn't even make--that you can assume their view is in congruence because they aren't making a big fuss about it is completely nonsensical and completely unsubstantiated. Hell, it would be hard to provide evidence for it though a few op-eds, essays or tweets from credible sources would work somewhat. Even if you had that though, why would we think that everyone has heard this random interview on 60 minutes? If they disagree, would they care enough to voice their disagreement? It isn't like we are talking about Obama drone striking people or something that would cause actual outrage.
Since you are having so much trouble with this I will help you out and give you a recipe of how to make a good post:
- Start with actual examples of what someone says.
- Describe their view briefly, in a way that they would recognize and agree with
- Criticize their view in precise terms
- Provide evidence for any factual claims
No_one
4hr ago
They got my money (early on), but with how tough the playerbase was, and how they never fixed cheating I never really played the game. Maybe 20 hours.
We are getting pretty close to being able to have games where bullshit like 'memorizing where loot is' and 'memorizing great ambush spots' stop mattering.
Ok, so what is the casualty total? We don’t know because it’s never been reported. Haaretz said it was 260 as of April 2024. Al-Jazeera said 860 five days ago. I’m sure you can tell me all the reasons those are wrong, but won’t actually be able to tell me a number.
No_one
4hr ago
There are probably alien mechanisms in the solar system but we won't find them for centuries.
No_one
4hr ago
It's actually kinda good as TV. You only feel it insults the viewer's intelligence like once per season, instead of every 5 minutes like a normal TV show.
No_one
4hr ago
I loved the aesthetics of 'Your Name' but found the plot kind of lame. It made no sense whatsoever. Yeah, I don't care the clouds were kitschy. Same is true of every other film of his I've seen, including the latest, Suzume.
E.g. 'The place promised in our early days' had an impeccable vibe and mystery to it, but in the end the whole thing made ..little real sense at all. Still, enjoyable. Also I feel like I'd want to go see coastal Japan eventually.
They were largely not sovereign nations
The Swiss and Spanish were (almost like that's why I mentioned them). The French remain relevant simply because they never adopted 7.62 NATO in any meaningful way until after the FAMAS.
The Czechs are also an interesting case, having fielded a service rifle in 7.62x45 in 1952 (more powerful than the existing 7.62x39 cartridge). So clearly the 'intermediates are the future' case isn't as clear-cut even when you have weapons available to you that are already in intermediate cartridges, but intermediate cartridges are limited in their usefulness if the gun you're using isn't a carbon copy of the StG-44 (the Czechs even had some of these actively lying around that the Soviets used to deniably arm some of its allies in North Africa).
And the StG-44 is a legitimately expensive gun to make especially if you're not well-versed in German space magic- you need magazines (and they need to be completely interchangeable; it's easier to do that with 9mm), the gun itself is more complicated (it needs to fire from a closed bolt to be viable at range), you need to supply it with enough ammunition to work (and you go through more rounds with these than you would with a full-power rifle round), and it's just as heavy as a full-power rifle is. The Czechs would eventually do the vz. 58, which is still a milled gun 15 years after it theoretically could have been made with stampings; Germany was legitimately that far ahead with the technology.
Another interesting example is Yugoslavia; they bought up most of the German surplus and were still actively using StG-44s (and AKs in 8mm Mauser, of all things) into the 1980s to supplement copies of Soviet equipment. Of course, they were and remain a relatively poor part of the world, so that wasn't as much by choice.
and forced to do so by Americans due to NATO
There was nothing stopping other countries from fielding two weapons or even to adopt it in the first place if they had sufficient logistics to do something different (or had already adopted something in large numbers re: France- who I will remind you was in possession of the future-HK engineers in charge of the StG-45); the US was doing that themselves (.30 Carbine) in the first place anyway.
So no, I'm not interested in the "stupid burger country intentionally screws up procurement" story. I will happily say that about the XM7 but in that gun's defense the US doesn't have any usable 7.62 NATO small arms in inventory aside from stuff at the end of its service life, so if they're going to switch to a more efficient (and more powerful) cartridge for a rifle and machine gun now is indeed the time.
Japanese adopted 6.5mm
Which is why I said
or with the .264s
for plenty of nations fielded rifles and machine guns in 6.5mm and 7mm (the 6.5mm cartridges all use .264 projectiles, except for the Italians who used .268). The two largest ones that actually used them in combat all dumped them for something in .30 during WW2 for reasons I already stated.
2rafa
4hr ago
I think the primary beneficiary of Epstein’s sex trafficking operation was himself and maybe a small handful of actual friends, who he probably didn’t care to blackmail but may or may not have kept kompromat on. Separate to that was his love of the game and of impressing successful and powerful people, which he enjoyed doing his whole life, regardless of whether or not they shared his sexual proclivities. In the course of the latter he may have traded in secrets, although it was never close to being his main line of work.
I think the only way to make it 'clearer' was to not make the whole fanfic explicitly about disrupting the canon set up by Rowling in every way possible.
That is, its still pretty possible that there was an incompetent Lord Voldemort who got destroyed by the combined might of the good wizards...
AND there's a vastly more competent dark wizard who isn't blatantly evil but is definitely running machinations in the background that are far and beyond what Voldemort could achieve, whilst having nothing to do with voldemort.
I guess the one factor I didn't see right away is the why, as to why a supergenius wizard with demigod-level powers would want to adopt that persona for long periods of time. That came out later.
But yeah, he practically bashed people over the head with clues.
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