Monument @ Monument @lemmy.sdf.org

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2 yr. ago

Sigh. Todays word of the day is kakistocracy.

Anecdotal, but I’ve been tracking a package for over a week as it made its way across the globe. This evening the USPS site is throwing an error.

Morning edit: back to functioning. But you really never know with the clowns in charge.

For now, as of this moment, that’s not likely the case for the vast majority of folks in the U.S. There are no guarantees that will be true in the future, or even 8 minutes from now. (Which, I note, is also in the future, but it establishes the scale of my expectations for the collapse of pro-social mores in the U.S.) No word on folks who have broken healthcare systems in other parts of the world, however.

The rules are that they can’t take off or land unless everyone is properly seated.

The pooper was forcing the entire plane to remain in the air.

Many years ago I was on a plane that hadn’t taken off yet, and someone was in the bathroom. They couldn’t taxi until the person returned to their seat, and after several announcements, flight attendants wind up having to knock on the door so the person (who I assume at that point was hiding due to embarrassment) would return to their seat. We missed our takeoff window with ground control and had to wait an additional half hour to find another window. All of my flights connecting flights were delayed until it could land, but a severe storm blew through, grounding most of them for about an hour more.
In the world of flying, these sorts of small delays have unintended consequences with system-wide effects.

But the pilot featured here was beyond the pale. That was a grotesque and inappropriate response.

I sincerely hope they’re smart enough not to trigger that.

Someone posted an article elsewhere on the thread about China practicing “dogfighting” in space - which, after you remove the fear-mongering, is just them figuring out how to do satellite-satellite maneuvering. Still immense opportunity for runaway collisions, but it seems like the military applicability is more toward sabotage than blowing things up. I could definitely see a scenario where high value satellites have had small boosters affixed to them, their electronics tampered, or some other way of commandeering or de-orbiting them to deprive their owners of them. A microwave + laser could disable smaller sats from above, then ablate some of their exterior to sap momentum so gravity drops them in short order. (Maybe. That’s idle speculation, but generating the power and dissipating the heat in space could make that idea impossible.)

That seems less concerning to me after reading the article.

Russia and the US are also known to conduct proximity operations to their own and other satellites, she added.
[…]
Referring to China’s operations as “dogfighting” in space is “not helpful” because it “automatically ascribes hostile intentions to activities that frankly the US also undertakes,” Samson added.

It’s concerning that they are developing the capability (which can be used in multiple ways) in the same way that any geopolitical rival developing capacity that competes is concerning, but “dogfighting” evokes the idea that China is planning to fly around and blow stuff up, in an irresponsible, Kessler syndrome-inducing way.

The same people who regularly give us uninspiring and insipid candidates to run against demagogues and repeatedly act surprised when they lose ground expect to gain control of a White House where the current president is treating democracy as if it’s an optional hindrance – expect to take power?

If nothing else, I admire their optimism.

This is that “when they came for ____” moment when the people of the U.S. need to do something.

I hope they do. On purpose.

Ooooh, so scary!
They hide their work behind public websites, and make their decisions in shadowy public meetings that (mostly) can be joined and participated in online. All their secretive work is hidden behind publicly accessible docket systems, hearings that anyone can attend or join as an intervenor, and open workgroups. If that’s not enough evidence of a clear conspiracy, consider this: Anyone can use the deep state’s FOIA laws to file a freedom of information act request to get more information about any topic. OoOoOoOoO

They’d threaten legal action for defamation and bury it before it was published.

That’s sort of the funny thing - I think my experience/exposure to muriatic acid sort of colored how cavalier I am about it. I didn’t check precise concentrations, but a gallon can be had for $10 from a hardware store. I’ve seen guys just pour it on the floor, slosh it around with a mop, and seem to have no care whatsoever about incidental skin contact or getting it on their shoes. (They did wash their hands after, but seemed unhurried to do so.)

Not that I’m advising cavalier behavior with hydrochoric acid, but perhaps I have a shifted baseline for understanding the caution one should take. (I mean - I’ve never worked directly with it myself, so…iunno.) Also very possible the products I’ve seen are a lower concentration than the ‘bubbling, foaming, melting your face’ concentrations of HCL we might otherwise expect.

It does come in a plastic bottle - HDPE, I believe, so I think a standard paint pen would work for it. Provided the wicking material was not organic, it would probably survive just fine.

No, that’s bullshit.

As a pretense: You have boundaries and you understand that others have agency.

If someone tries to guilt you into doing something, you enforce your boundaries. If you feel someone you know is being forced into doing something, you make your case and you back the fuck off. Their agency guides the choices they make, up to and including making choices that you, yourself, would not make.

Claiming that civilization is being manipulated by ‘weaponized empathy’ is horse shit designed to dismiss the agency of the people who made choices to help others. It’s sociopathy wrapped up in reasonable enough sounding psychobabble.

Musk is a sociopath so convinced of his own greatness and so desperate for a tax cut that he’s willing to let people starve and say it’s because he knows better.

You know, when I envisioned this, I imagined some person with a 5-gallon sprayer, like they use for yards/pesticides. I sort of assumed they’d be doing it alone, with no one around, and (presumably) with some knowledge/awareness of how those sprayers work - so like, protective clothing, a mask, goggles, and being upwind. But you’re right that it’s dangerous despite all that. And it’s sort of an obvious thing to be carrying around.

New mental picture of this activity: Jars that have been safely filled at home thrown from a distance while no one else is around.
Or for discretion, a tide pen that has had the contents replaced. Bonus: It will still remove stains (and the fabric).

Ultimately, however, it’s not something I’d actually entertain. I don’t see that as an effective outlet for any statement I’d like to make. Surely not for the risk/reward proposition. But it’s darn funny to think about.

Honestly, it would be funnier if someone sprayed them with muriatic acid. (Hydrochloride acid)

The damage to the metal is not fixable (as in, the rust can be cleaned away, but the damaged areas just keep re-rusting). It avoids the issue of insurance payments (just clean it, bro), and of burning the vehicles (releasing pollution). It basically marks the car for life, makes it unsellable, and, full offense, if someone buys one, they deserve a lifetime of annoying maintenance issues. Fuck their gleaming monument to fascism.

I used to have dreams all the time that I was being attacked or chased and could not fight back effectively. In some, they were full on night terror territory, where I’d be crying out, and others could not wake me.

Then the weirdest thing happened – for a very brief period I did boxing as fitness (instead of like, actually boxing). And I discovered that I can actually throw a hard punch (you know, when I’m prepared for it and have my hands wrapped and am wearing boxing gloves).

But for some reason that knowledge broke my suspension of disbelief as it relates to dreams. If something attacks me in my dreams, I know that the inability to punch means I’m dreaming, so I semi-lucidly just wake up now. If something seems too shitty to be to true, my brain just pulls the escape hatch and I wake up.

His brain worm has measles.

It’s not quite like that. My workplace is surprisingly good on the hours, they just aren’t great on responsibilities or scope.

It’s… a lot of work in very broad specialties, with little backup.

There’s a checklist, with a box after the jury box.

I’m not in a position to type out a long comment, but this link should give you the answers you need.