HelixDab2 @ HelixDab2 @lemm.ee

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2 yr. ago

Related to this - all fabrics used by the military need to be both Berry-amendment compliant, and NIR compliant. What that means is that, first, they need to be made in the USA (because you don't want to outsource military equipment if you end up going to war with the country that makes shit for you), and second, it needs to not show up like a sore thumb under infrared light, A lot of fabrics and dyes will show up as hot spots under IR, which means that they show up great with night vision. NIR-compliant fabrics will still appear camouflaged under IR.

That's why those nylon-cotton blend Crytek combat pants are something like $450, when the Chinese knock-offs made in poly-cotton are about $70.

They're eggs taht have blue-tinted shells. Really. AFAIK, aside from the color, there's no real difference between them and brown or white eggs, if the chickens laying the eggs are treated equally. Free range & cage-free eggs, particularly with small flocks that aren't just eating chicken feed (e.g., they're also foraging) should have a slightly better nutrition profile. People with more discriminating palates than I have say that the yolks have a more orange color, and a better flavor.

Sadly, I have no way to import a KMR L--02 Orca OR, since the ATF makes it such a pain in the ass to import onsey-twosey, and the tariffs mean that if they ever get a US distributor, it's going to be out of my price range.

But I did get a CZ Shadow 2 Compact a week ago, and that's going to be my carry and competition gun for however long these tariffs last.

I'm going to have to get a few pounds of powder, primers, and a few thousand bullets (the projectile part), because all of that is going in increase in costs, too. I was quoted a price of $315 or so for 8# of Vihtavouri N-135 powder; I'll probably try to get 16-24#, 15,000 small rifle primers, and at least 8-12# of Ramshot Silhouette powder. About half of the raw materials to make bullets--lead, copper, brass, nitrocellulose, etc.--end up being imported, because we simply can't keep up or don't have the mines.

I spent $7/dozen on cage-free, free-range blue eggs a few days ago. They were delicious on my gyudon.

Stoning for being gay is mentioned all over the bible...? There's a mistranslated part in the old testament that says that it's an 'abomination', but textual analysis indicates that it was a condemnation of pederasty--which was common among the Greeks at the time--rather than a condemnation of being gay. Paul def. had a problem with gay people, but that appears to be a revulsion with Roman practices and customs, rather than anything strictly religious. Jesus said nothing about it directly. On the other hand, Jesus DID say that you should gouge your eyes out rather than look at a woman in lust, and yet, evangelicals elected an unrepentant, thrice married, multiple-adulterer as president.

For starters, you actually join the League of Nations you proposed at the end of WW1.

...Which doesn't address the issue. How, EXACTLY, do you enforce anything without the willingness to use force? Have you seen NATO Peacekeepers? They rarely--if ever--use force, and as a result they are almost entirely ineffective at preventing shit.

Open borders, international business ties, and populations with international relations deaden the enthusiasm for interstate military conflicts in between neighboring states.

Tends to, but the accords that ended WWI required Germany to pay absolutely ruinous reparations; even with open borders, international business ties, etc., the economic depression caused by that treaty would have laid the foundation for WWII. Moreover, I note that both the US and the EU had fairly solid trade ties with Russia prior to their invasion of Crimea, and that has done pretty much fuck-all to temper Putin's imperial ambitions.

So, again: how do you enforce ANYTHING without being willing to use force?

Arguably, the biggest deterrent to a Chinese naval invasion of Taiwan

Do you really believe that? Or is it maybe that the US always has a naval detachment close by, and has pledged to use military force to ensure that Taiwan remains free? Because China has certainly been ratcheting up their insistence that Taiwan is theirs, and that they intend to take it.

Christians have already de facto decided that parts of the bible aren't a good basis for laws; otherwise, we wouldn't have laws allowing someone to declare bankruptcy. As far as I can tell, most countries that are majority Muslim allow for bankruptcy procedures when a person or business is insolvent and will be unable to pay their debts. Israel also has bankruptcy laws that dissolve debts.

The number of countries where a debtor must pay back every single farthing they owe, regardless of solvency or ability to pay, and the debt passes on to heirs, is vanishingly small.

And how, exactly, do you enforce the accords--the accords and reparations that directly led to WWII--without the use of military force?

People want to be safe

I think that, in order to make it work, you also need to have a national single-payer healthcare system so that when someone does get infected with an STI, they can get treatment without breaking their bank account. But you also need to ensure that they aren't unable to pay their expenses during a course of treatment, and you certainly don't want prostitutes infected with HIV working until their viral load is so low that they're effectively unable to infect other people. (And yes, free PREP would help, but given that a number of sex workers are prostituting themselves in exchange for drugs, I don't think that worrying about exposure to HIV or getting PREP is very high on their priority list.)

I do think that a bare minimum would be for cops to have to take reports of sexual assault against prostitutes seriously. ...Which would require major criminal justice reform...

What up, fucko?

Relationships come with boundaries and limits though, right? You're treating monogamy as ownership, but that's backwards. My partner free to have sexual relationships with whomsoever they want; however, they aren't free to have any relationship at all with me if that's a choice they make.

I affirmatively chose my partner; when I made the choice for them, it meant that I made a choice to give up my sexual and romantic autonomy to pursue the relationship with them. I can take my autonomy back at any time, but if I do, I also permanently give up the relationship that I have; that is a boundary that they set, and I knew that when I chose the relationship.

I have been in polyerotic/multiamorous relationships. What is lacking in them is depth. Building relationships takes time, and time is always more limited in poly relationships. The more partners you have, the shallower each relationship gets. Oh, yes, I know that poly people will say that love is infinite. And perhaps they're even correct. But the time you can spend with each person is very definitely finite.

Have you considered life in sunny Qatar? You'd probably like it. Oh, and debt doesn't die with the debtor there; it's passed on to the heirs. It's an absolutely fantastic system for ensuring that the wealthy always get to stay that way.

Okay, yes, let's make sure that help is available if they want it. But what if they don't? Should a suicidal person be forced to accept help that they don't want?

Moreover, if you forbid people from ending their own life at their own discretion, who really has ownership over their body?

I'll go farther than that: the highest paid worker should be paid no more than X compared to the lowest paid worker or contractor/subcontractor, including 1099 contractors.

I think that it's more complicated than that.

Okay, so there's regulation. Who bears the cost of compliance? What happens when a sex worker is out of compliance with safety regulations, e.g., they are infected with HIV and aren't informing clients or using barriers? How do you handle that?

Keep in mind that a lot of people turn to sex work on an irregular basis, to pay for rent, drugs, or similar; very few of them are going to willingly go through any kind of licensing process, and most will lack the ability to pay for a license.

So, I'm genuinely curious - what do you think the US should have done during WW2?

You're making a ton of straw-man arguments.

1. You don't have to be the best. You do have to be good enough to get scouted by a professional team if your goal is to play professionally. I never at any point said that it wasn't worth playing if you couldn't be the best or do it professionally. I spend a lot of time shooting competitively; it's likely that I will never make Master or Grandmaster in anything, and as a result I'm never going to be sponsored or be able to earn a living at it. (...Not that the money is very good anyways.) So what? I still have fun.
2. In sports, playing professionally is a meritocracy. Socioeconomic class matters insofar as having more wealth and privilege means that you'll have access to better training prior to becoming a professional. But the child in question already has access to training, through a parent that plays professionally. But that's all the farther that socioeconomic class gets you in sports. People from poorer backgrounds often get to go far in sports, if they have the skill.
3. Yes, OP could be wrong. On the other hand, OP is claiming to be a professional in the field, and is therefore more likely to have an informed opinion.
4. Success is a combination of directed effort, an inherent capability; it's not one or the other. If you lack certain inherent capabilities, then all the directed effort in the world won't get you where you want to be. You can have all the gifts to achieve greatness in a given field, and yet fail completely if you don't carefully direct your ability in that area.
5. See above. The kid already has access to top-tier training, and is not making the grade necessary to perform at a professional level. Ergo, the part that is lacking is capability. ...Which is why my anecdote is relevant; it's not my unwillingness to work my ass off that has limited my power lifting aspirations, it's my physical capabilities. (And yes, I really did work at power lifting. And will again once my shoulder finished healing, even though I'm never going to be competitive at any level.)
6. Of course the kid isn't going to be at the same level forever. But he's not on track to be at a level where he's capable of playing professionally. A 16yo that's capable of going pro--esp. when they have access to high-level training--would be expected to be performing at a certain level. According to OP, he isn't. The probability is that, while he will continue to improve (up until age catches up with him), he is not going to be at a professional level in time to make a career of it.
7. You're drawing a false dichotomy between being honest/realistic with your children, and having a relationship with them. I'm gathering, from what you're saying, that you don't believe that the parent should give their child a realistic assessment of their performance, and should simply be encouraging; it that correct? It seem like you believe that putting all of your effort into a goal, and failing to achieve that goal would not cause deep bitterness on its own; am I reading that correctly?
8. "It’s my opinion that it’s better for parents to encourage their children in their dreams [...]" I partially disagree. I think that parents need to encourage children to set realistic goals in life, and goals that can be stretch goals. Maybe that looks like going to school to become a biologist, and going on to medical school if biology ends up being fairly easy for them. Maybe that looks like going into a trade if they're good at working with their hands. Playing professional sports--or being a touring musician that makes enough to live on, etc.--is like winning a jackpot in the lottery. Sure, you gotta play in order to win, but for every person that wins there's millions of people that don't. I would hope that you would say that anyone planning for retirement by buying lottery tickets was a fool, even if that person was your child. But even so, you can play sport for fun.

if he’s not great at football even though he’s living with a pro, that shows me how little you value him.

Some people simple don't have the ability to be good at some things, no matter how hard they work at it, no matter who mentors them. Very, very few people have the ability to be a Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart regardless of what kind of mentorship they have.

Let me give you a concrete example.

I've had a major shoulder surgery after tearing the shit out of my supraspinatus and the labrum. The supraspinatus passes through the acromium process on the scapula. The acromium process has roughly three different shapes, which are largely determined by genetics. A type I acromium process is smooth, and allows the spuraspinatus to pass through easily. Type II and type III acromium processes have pronounced 'hook' shapes--type III significantly more so--that make injury to the supraspinatus much more probable. I have a type II acromium process. Had Mary Lou Retton been my mother and coach, and I'd tried to be a gymnast, I would have destroyed both of my shoulders long before I was ever going to be going to nation-level events; the limits of the shape of my scapula would have made success impossible, given that a strong and stable shoulder is required in gymnastics, regardless of sex/gender. I would likewise be unable to be a competitive powerlifter, for much the same reason; working up to a nationally competitive snatch would have also destroyed my shoulders. (And, in point of fact, it was working on push-presses that killed it.)

People are not a tabula rasa, only needing the proper encouragement to become paragons in a given field.

I had a friend that made it through O-Hare and LaGuardia security with a 4" switchblade in her carry on; not a spring assist, an actual automatic knife, back when they were illegal almost everywhere, but after Sept. 11. Somehow security missed it both times.

Meanwhile, I nearly missed a flight because someone running the x-ray machine didn't know what brass collar points were.

I'm gonna out myself here.

I got a lot of shit from a small handfull of 4th wave feminists because I decided that I preferred monogamy over open relationships. I got shit because the things I enjoy doing are traditionally masculine, things like firearms, longsword fencing, motorcycles, weightlifting... I was told that leaving poly relationships for monogamy meant I had 'toxic jealousy', and my enjoyment of traditionally masculine past times meant that I was engaging in 'toxic masculinity' (or, alternatively, 'toxic heteronormativity'). Were they using those terms wildly incorrectly? Sure. But that's not actually relevant. They were attempting to shame me for choices that I was making for myself. There was no point where I told other people that they couldn't make choices for themselves, but I certainly got told that my choices for myself were wrong.

Is this all 4th wave feminists? Of course not. I'm old enough to realize that the people I knew aren't representative of all feminists, or even a majority. But just like the 'not all men', there are enough, and they're vocal. They do real damage to young men by telling them that, by simply existing and being traditionally masculine--even when they support women's rights--that they are the problem.

I don't know how to prevent that small number of people from doing an outsized amount of damage, short of trying to be inclusive to everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity/expression, or sexual orientation.