HelixDab2 @ HelixDab2 @lemm.ee

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2 yr. ago

Well, yes. But not counting undocumented immigrants means that they would have lower numbers on the census, and would end up having less representation in congress, and thus less ability to exert control and harm the 'right' people. It's just stupidly counterproductive.

If you really want to electrocute yourself, pop the cover off your breaker panel, and grab the main line coming in to the breaker box. Home service is 200A in most cases, and the individual circuits are going to be less than that before the breaker pops. 200A at 240v (I think?) without a breaker or fuse to blow is more than enough to electrocute you.

Okay, let's say that they only counted citizens, and the questions on the census reflected that. Texas and Florida would both lose representatives, since those states have larger undocumented immigrant populations. So I don't know why they would want to do that.

freeze drying is not the ultimate food preservation method.

Ultimate? No. But it's part of a suite of food preservation tools. Without watching the video--YouTube is doing that annoying thing where it requires sign-in--I can say that you need to be able to use multiple food preservation techniques. You should learn to do canning as well, and you really need an effective vacuum sealer (that can use heavy-duty mylar, versus specialty plastic bags) in order to effectively preserve freeze dried foods, and those mylar packages need to also be sealed in containers away from pests that might chew through the bags.

Freezing food, by itself, is only useful as long as you have electricity. If you're entirely off-grid, and have over-capacity solar system, that might be good enough, if you have a LOT of freezer space. The least expensive freezers I can find are around $25 ft^{3; costs decrease slightly when you're talking about large walk-in freezers, but that requires a building that can accept a walk-in installation, and $25,000 for a 1000ft}3 freezer is more than most people can afford.

Drying foods in general is decent, and high sugar content--fruits in particular--can lasts decades if they're vacuum packed with oxygen absorbers. Even though dried foods will have some moisture content, the sugars act as a preservative and prevent the growth of bacteria. (Sugar curing meat is definite a real thing, much like salt curing; more on this in a sec.)

Canning is good for some things, but certain things can not be safely canned, and canning is slooooooooooow. It also requires a botttle/ring/seal for each and every thing that you can; seals are not reusable.

Dry goods don't need to be freeze-dried; you can vacuum seal most of them with oxygen absorbers and desiccants, and be fine. Things like flour can mostly be put in large buckets with gamma seal lids and be okay for years at a time. White rice stores wonderfully for the long term, as do dried beans. (However!, dried beans must be soaked prior to cooking, the soaking water discarded prior to cooking, and can not safely be eaten raw. Cooked canned beans are a better choice for anything other than very long term storage.) Brown rice has a high fat content relative to white rice, and has a bad tendency to spoil, as do nuts of all varieties; I haven't tried vacuum sealing them with oxygen absorbers and desiccants to see if that preserves them for longer than a few years.

Meats can be preserved by curing. This is, however, a very exacting process, and it not recommended unless you know what you're doing. It requires a temperature and moisture controlled container and a few weeks of time, and fucking it up means that you kill yourself with bacterial contamination.

Freeze drying works for complete meals where you can't freeze things, and you want food that's going to be ready-to-go, either rehydrated or dry. Yes, you can eat freeze dried things without reconstituting them, although it's not terribly pleasant in some/many cases. If you, for instance, made a stock-pot full of red beans and rice, freeze drying would be the ideal way of preserving it and making it shelf-stable.

I will personally vouch for Russell at KE Arms; he genuinely believes that the second amendment is for all people, regardless of race, gender identity, sexual orientation, or religion. He's a good dude, IMO.

But fundamentally, yeah, it's nearly impossible to buy a firearm that is 100% ethical. I know that Karl Kasarda (InRangeTV) likes Desert Tech, because they've been good to IRTV and haven't given him shit about politics, religion, or affiliation with marginalized groups. I don't like Desert Tech, because they're run by the Kingston Clan, which is a fundamentalist Mormon cult. I'm also unwilling to buy from Daniel Defense, because they actively market themselves as being a "Christian corporation", and I oppose that kind of religious bullshittery.

Point is, you gotta pick and choose.

Well, no. Not the entire reason. California resulted in the Mulford Act in '67 which banned open carry of firearms, but the Gun Control Act of '68 wasn't directly related to it. The GCA was more about commerce in the wake of Kennedy's assassination, because the Carcano rifle that Oswald used to assassinate Kennedy had been bought as mail order. (And note that the NRA was in favor of both at the time; it wasn't until the 80s that the NRA took a hard turn to the right. They used to mostly be about marksmanship and hunting rather than political activism.) (Depending on whether or not 6.5mm Carcano ammunition is manufactured in the US, and isn't readily available in the US, a 6.5mm Carcano rifle might be legally an antique and not subject to the GCA provisions, which is kind of ironic.) One of the effects of the GCA was to ban the importation of small, cheaply made, and readily concealed pistols; those regulations remain in effect today, and pistols that don't pass a fairly extensive checklist can't be imported. The GCA was preceded by the National Firearms Act of 1934, which had originally been intended to functionally ban handguns (which is why short barreled rifles and short barreled shotguns are part of the act), but that got stripped out prior to the vote. That's the act that originally made it very expensive to own a machine gun, silencer, SBS/SBR (and still makes it a pain in the ass).

But, to your point, Reagan was the governor of California at the time, and he was a flaming racist (...who concealed it under 'law and order' and 'welfare queen' language), and the Black Panthers being armed freaked him the fuck out. he was responsible for signing the Firearm Owners Protection Act in '86, which did some good things as far as the now-activist NRA was concerned--like making it much easier to transport firearms across state lines--but also banned machine guns produced after 1986 from being transferred to private owners under the NFA of '34.

Really diving into the history of gun regulations and politics in the US is incredibly complicated and dense. There are bad actors on both sides--notably Michael A. Bellesiles and John Lott Jr.--so getting accurate information ends up being really hard.

Fucking FINALLY.

Yes, women should be armed. Gay people should be armed. Trans people should be armed. Religious minorities should be armed. People that are on the political left never should have ceded the right to keep and bear arms to the political right.

I'm planning on getting certified as a firearms instructor through the NRA (because no matter how shitty the NRA-ILA is, the training programs are solid) this coming year so that I can start working with The Pink Pistols and Operation Blazing Spear.

I would strongly suggest that people try reading This Nonviolence Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible.

If you're one of the people that is considering getting a gun, please listen to the "It Could Happen Here" podcast episode titled, Safe Gun Ownership.

I wouldn't say that it's the 'vast majority' of imports that are banned. The Gun Control Act of '68 mostly ends up applying to very small, often cheap, pistols ("Saturday night specials"), and guns that don't have a "legitimate sporting purpose". The ATF has said that practical shooting competitions (e.g., two gun, three gun, etc.) doesn't count as "legitimate sporting purpose", but the IWI Tavor is sold in the US, and is manufactured in Israel. source for that claim

Right now Turkish guns are having a moment. The Turks are making cheap firearms--sometimes very good, sometimes just cheap-- and sometimes making outright clones of more popular popular firearms. True, you'd be supporting Erdogan, but hey, you can't always win.

Personally, I'm waiting for someone to start importing KMR pistols. The KMR L-02 Orca OR looks like an improved CZ Shadow II Orange, but I suspect the $3200 price tag is lot steep for most people. :(

If the manual says not to, then I would tend to avoid doing so. If that's the case, and you're getting oils burned on to it, I'd suggest using Dawn Power Wash on it, and a non-abrasive scrubbing pad.

I failed the original game very early on. I've heard that lock picking was MUCH harder on the console than it was on PC; it kept getting me killed. And I was just kind of frustrated, put it down, and never picked it back up again.

...But I loved the history in the little bit I did play.

It seems like it's absolutely possible to solve all of the unrealistic problems that exist in CRPGs. You could have a rational encumbrance system, where you can only have the armor you're wearing, minor supplies in a backpack, and everything else has to go on a pack horse. You could have realistic hit points, where a solid hit from an enemy with a sword meant very rapid death from blood loss or organ damage, hits on armor did nothing, you got physically tired quickly and had to actually rest to feel better (ever done HIIT training?, like that), and when you were exhausted you just collapsed and got stabbed to death. They could have realistic movement speeds, where trying to walk across a kingdom would take a month in real time.

But would it be fun? Would anyone want to play Medieval Minor Nobility Life Simulator?

Dubya at least had a face of 'compassionate' conservatism, and believed in the rule of law. Yeah, he bent the law a lot, but he never outright broke it. He was incompetent--or, he was at least not up to the task of being a president--but not apparently malicious.

Pity that SCOTUS stepped in with the Florida recount, since it was eventually found that Gore should have won. I wonder where we'd be on climate change now if Gore had won? Oh well Florida, enjoy your flooding and hurricanes.

He allowed American Surveillance with Patriot Act I and II.

People at the time were begging for that. There were a very, very few civil libertarians that realized just how dangerous those acts would be, but the people, as a whole, were really behind them. Just like the people went in gung-ho for the start of GWoT.

He is essentially the ripple effect of everything we’re dealing with today and Trump is merely the symptom of that.

I'd put that at the feet of Reagan first. Reagan was the one that cozied up to the 'moral majority', which was based in racism and misogyny, what with Bob Jones University being forced to desegregate. That's where the birth of the alt-right (which I guess is now just mainstream Republicans) happened.

But again - how would they know that someone was undocumented? If someone started new social media accounts when they arrived, and bought a new phone/started new service, then what do they have that's going to reasonably demonstrate that they're undocumented? Particularly if they buy a pay-as-you-go phone, which doesn't require any kind of ID to buy and activate?

Absolutely.

But the loss of the manufacturing base, and the subsequent decrease in number of people covered by labor unions, has been one of the single largest factors that's harmed the middle class. It's not the only thing, but a manufacturing base ends up being a pretty important part.

tariffs very rarely ever benefit the country establishing the tariff.

Well. It depends.

If tariffs are sustained, then it can make sense to establish domestic companies that can supply the goods that were previously being outsourced. In that respect, over the long term--and I'm talking, like 20-30+ years--it could be positive. One of the things that made the US economy strong in the 60s was the fact that we had strong labor, and strong manufacturing; outsourcing our manufacturing has harmed labor and the middle class.

But that's all very long-term stuff. It's taken us 40 years to get to where we are now, and bringing manufacturing, and strong unions, back can easily take just as long. In the short term, it's going to be super-bad for the working poor and the middle class.

It isn’t legal to own hand grenades in the US

Not correct. It's an 'other destructive device', and is covered under the National Firearms Act of 1934. Each one would require completing a transfer form, waiting for approval from the ATF, and cost $200 for the tax stamp. ...And would then be usable exactly once.

You might be able to manufacture a grenade with an ATF Form 1 approval, but I'm not positive. And, again, it's a single-use item that requires a $200 tax stamp.

How have you forgotten Remedy, with Alan Wake, Control, and Quantum Break?

I feel like Finland might be where I belong. If only I could realistically learn Suomi...

Lots of weirdly emo ballads, TBH. The metal is good, but it's still pretty niche from what I understand.

It depends on what you're doing with it.

I use it solely for Ace XR, which is a dry-fire simulator/tracker. Ace XR is available solely for Meta Quest (2 & 3), so I didn't really have many options. Unfortunately, I'm currently rehabbing a serious injury, and I am unable to practice.

For gaming? Not really. I like the PSVR2 headset more for that; it's a better headset overall. I'm still working on getting it set up to work with my PC though. As other people have said, getting corrective lenses for a headset really makes them more enjoyable if you need glasses; it's a pain in the ass to have to put in contacts when I want to use VR. For the Meta Quest specifically, and upgraded head band and spare battery (that also acts like a counterweight) is very nice to have.