Rov_Scam
4d ago
Sorry I'm just getting to this now, but the upshot of this case isn't that tens of thousands of people will become felons. The regulation being allowed to stand simply means that companies that sell such kits will be subject to the same requirements involving licensing, background checks, serial numbers, etc. The reason the court didn't get too into the weeds over the raw block of aluminum argument was because, as it was a facial challenge, specific examples weren't at issue. If and when the ATF starts demanding compliance from distributors selling aluminum ingots, complete with CNC machine or no, then they can raise an as-applied challenge and maybe get a favorable result.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
Like it or not, the term "classical" has become the term used to describe all music that emanates from the European art tradition, from Gregorian Chant to John Cage and beyond. Several other terms to describe this overarching meta-genre have been proposed, but none have really stuck. Art Music and Legitimate Music come with the implication that other kinds of music are somehow of lesser value, and can be confusing to the general public. Professor Feinberg from the Great Courses Series uses the term European Concert Music, which is probably the best term from a purely semantic point of view (it comes from Europe, was intended to be performed publicly rather than privately [as with folk music], and doesn't contain any implied superiority), but it's a mouthful and hasn't been widely adopted. Furthermore, the term "classical" has also been widely used to describe music that comes out of similar traditions from other parts of the world, e.g. Indian Classical Music or Chinese Classical Music.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
And if he's an American citizen, then what? Is ICE just supposed to take his word for it?
And that would be his second chance to present evidence, when there's some hearing via either the U.S. or his home country to show proof of his status and/or disprove the basis for his detention so as to obtain release from custody.
Well, that's kind of the point, isn't it? In the present case the government is arguing that he isn't entitled to any hearing, even though they admit that he shouldn't have been removed. The whole process is designed to be impossible to challenge.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
At which hearing he was granted protection from removal. Presumably, had he gotten a hearing this time, he could have presented that as evidence. As it was, he didn't get one, and neither would an American citizen. The whole point of OP's argument is that only citizens should be entitled to due process, yet there's an inherent contradiction in that one who isn't afforded due process has no ability to prove his citizenship.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
If they didn't skip the steps when entering the country, it would be MUCH easier to determine their rights and status under the law! Government would have some record of their entry, they'd presumably be able to present some tangible evidence of their status, and they might actually have a case file open to process their claims to stay here.
And at what point is he supposed to actually present this evidence?
Rov_Scam
6d ago
As the resident audio enthusiast, I can only think of a couple use cases for soundbars, neither of which would seem to apply here. The logic behind soundbars is that, with televisions getting ever thinner, they lack the internal real estate to produce decent sound. This may be true enough, but I've sampled numerous soundbars at my parents' house and various vacation rentals, and I haven't noticed much of an improvement (and I say this as someone who can normally detect subtle differences between speakers). For soundbars to give a sleek form factor, they suffer from similar limitations as televisions, namely limited driver size and depth of cabinet. You simply aren't going to get significant bass improvement from 2" full range drivers, and models with subwoofers have to set the crossover frequency higher than normal.
There is an improvement in sound, but if you're the kind of person who listens to music streamed from Spotify over a small Bluetooth speaker, it isn't going to be the kind of improvement that's noticeable, and even a cheap stereo system is going to perform much better. This is especially true for movies, where most of the sound consists of human voice frequencies that are easy to reproduce. If you watch action movies with a lot of explosions and the like, TV speakers will have trouble producing deep bass, as you alluded to, but a soundbar without a subwoofer isn't going to make much of a difference in that respect.
The first use case I can think of is if your TV produces sound that is noticeable bad rather than merely inadequate, e.g if it sounds tinny or there is a noticeable resonance. In that case, it may be worth getting a cheap soundbar, but I wouldn't splurge for one. The other use case is if you're the kind of person who actually can detect minor improvements, but is prevented from using a stereo due to the spousal acceptance factor. But that person isn't asking about it in a non-specialized forum. I personally have my TV hooked up to a separate amplifier I use for music and speakers that are over 4 feet tall and weigh 75 lbs. apiece, but I only use it if I'm watching a movie, and even then not all of the time.
If you're looking for improvement in the $200 price range, a cheap stereo system is going to blow all but the most expensive soundbars out of the water. The used market is your friend here, especially stuff from the '90s and '2000s that's too old to have any value but not old enough to be "vintage". Pretty much any receiver you can find from the Big 3 (Yamaha/Denon/Onkyo) is worth buying, and even stuff from lesser brands like Pioneer, Sony, Techincs, etc. is going to be fine. Don't worry too much about wattage since anything above 15 watts is more than adequate at normal volume, and that's what budget receivers were running in the '70s. The speakers are going to be more important to the sound, though the brands will be different—B&W, Boston Acoustics, Polk, Infinity, Cerwin Vega, PSB, ELAC, Paradigm, and Klipsch are examples of what to look for, though these brands all sell new speakers with stratospheric prices so don't be discouraged if the prices on some used models seem high; I believe all of them have made inexpensive bookshelf speakers at some point that can usually be had for cheap on the used market, and they sold more of these models than anything else so they aren't hard to find. Avoid Bose; they sell cheap speakers that are marketed as a premium brand, and they always command higher prices on the used market than they should. If you find anything you're interested in locally, feel free to DM me and I can probably tell you if you're getting a good deal.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
The left took over these institutions because the right couldn't be bothered to defend them. 25 years ago, while there was a clear left-wing bias in academia, you could still be a conservative and get tenure and publish papers without too much controversy. And conservatives were still telling my generation that if we pursued a career in academia, or government, or the nonprofit sector, or whatever, we were idiots, because those jobs were for people who couldn't hack it in the private sector. Hell, just look at their paychecks. Hell, I remember us joking after our first semester in law school that we could relax for a few weeks between the end of finals and discovering that we were all destined for the public defender (never mind that a year later working as a PD seemed like a pretty good deal).
Government jobs were for the mediocre, nonprofit jobs were for the bleeding hearts. But academia was the worst. At the age when your peers are all established in their jobs, have mortgages, and are trying to figure out how to coach a little league baseball team, you're living in a shithole apartment in a college town on a stipend, hoping that you'll get to move to rural Nebraska so you can teach history at a small liberal arts college that's not even offering tenure. And even that's such a long shot that it's pretty much your dream job at this point. The GOP at this time was preaching a civic version of the prosperity gospel: Taxes on the rich only serve to penalize the most productive/talented/innovative citizens. If you make a lot of money it's because you deserve it, and if you don't it's because you simply aren't as good. And God help you if you were on welfare or some other kind of public assistance, which was evidence that you were simply lazy and expected a handout.
This wasn't the case among Democrats. The important thing in Democratic families wasn't maximizing your paycheck, but having a job that made full use of your talents. So if a smart kid wanted to be a taxi driver, that was looked down on, but if he wanted to be a teacher, it was okay, even if they both made the same salary. So there was a period, probably beginning in the 1980s, where the number of conservative PhD candidates began dwindling, year by year, and as conservative professors retired, they were replaced by liberals. By 2015 you had a critical mass of leftist professors and new Republican orthodoxy that was repugnant not just to liberals, but to old guard conservatives, and has no intellectual foundation. At this point, it's hard to imagine what a conservative academic would even look like, since the tenants of conservatism are all dependent on the fickle whim of one man. So even the conservatives who have made it through probably aren't conservative in contemporary terms, since up until fairly recently no self-respecting conservative economist, for example, would ever wright an academic treatise on why 30% tariffs are actually good, and no conservative political scientist would write a treatise on why the US needs to invade Canada. As much as the right complains about this, the wound is entirely self-inflicted.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
Music generation is one of those things that's existed in "AI form" for years, but no one noticed or cared. Band in a Box has been around since the '90s. It will automatically generate songs in more styles than you can imagine, and output to MIDI. It does all this using traditional non-AI software algorithms, and has steadily improved since it was initially released. To this end, it blows anything AI-generated completely out of the water, as the system requirements are anything even the cheapest PC can easily handle, the customizability is direct and straightforward (if you want to say, substitute one chord for another you just swap them out rather than have the AI generate the song over again and hope it does what you told it to do and not anything else), and it manages to avoid the inherent weirdness that comes as an artifact of using neural networks to predict sounds. It's also incredibly easy to use for a first-timer who has a basic understanding of music, though it has enough advanced features to keep you busy for years.
If such a product emerged fully formed in 2022, people would be talking about how it's a disruptive game-changer and that the days of professional musicians and songwriters are clearly numbered. But since it's been around for 35 years nobody cares.There are two primary use cases for it. The first is for songwriters who want to generate some kind of scaffolding while they work out the individual parts, and want to do mock-ups of how the song will sound with a full band. The second use case, and the one that causes a lot of music teachers to recommend the product to their students, is the ability to generate backing tracks for practice. I've never heard of anyone using a BIAB-generated track as the final product, except in situations where the stakes are so low that it would be ridiculous to even bother to have friends over to record it.
If BIAB hasn't managed to disrupt the music industry in any meaningful way by now, I doubt that AI will. It might generate the kind of generic slop that Spotify uses for playlists like "Jazz for a Rainy Afternoon", but I doubt it will make music that anyone cares to actually listen to.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
It depends on whether this is all there is or if he has more. By holding the story until key players would be testifying under oath within 24 hours and thereby forcing them on the record under oath before the administration could coordinate their response, Goldberg has already shown a degree of savviness beyond simply reporting the story straight up. There's a possibility he's just doing this one step at a time to elicit excuses like the one you've just given , only for those excuses to fall flat once more comes out.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
I think you're misunderstanding me; I'm not saying that the science is useless, but that the arguments based on the science are useless. They're almost always made in bad faith, because the people making them, at least on the anti-trans side, won't agree that gender dysphoria or whatever you want to call it is a condition in need of treatment. Thus, weighing the risk of treatment against the risk of no treatment is useless because any treatment will have some degree of risk, and to them the risk of no treatment is zero. It's like taking a medication for a dangerous condition.
I would add that, when it comes to the science we have now, I generally agree with everything you said, and that the pro-trans side similarly acts in bad faith by downplaying the risks and acting like every kid who plays with his sister's dolls is obviously trans and needs to be put on medication immediately. My gut feeling tells me that puberty blockers probably aren't a good idea, and that even if they were fully reversible, going through high school looking like a ten year old probably isn't any better for your mental health than being the "wrong" gender. But I recognize that a lot of my own apprehension is more cultural than scientific, and things change in the world of science. Maybe the current treatments are crude, but I imagine that there's a lot we still don't understand about endocrinology and physical development, and I wouldn't foreclose the possibility that more sophisticated treatments will become available in the future that reduce the risks associated with the current ones. But I don't trust that, if and when that day comes, the Tennessee legislature (for instance) will revise their opinion on the matter and change the law accordingly. To that end, despite my personal objections, I tend to bristle at state legislatures that seek to make the decision themselves rather than allow parents and doctors to make it together.
Rov_Scam
12d ago
Arguments concerning the science of anything relating to puberty blockers or hormones or anything else concerning transgenderism are useless, because no one making arguments on either side really cares about the science. All it is is cover for whatever argument they want to make. For instance, suppose some children develop a heart condition that they may grow out of but will become a dangerous, chronic problem if it persists into adulthood. There's a treatment that can significantly mitigate this risk if the child starts taking it around age ten, but it comes with a catch: It has its own risks, and can cause permanent damage itself if it's unnecessarily used. If you're a doctor making a recommendation or a parent looking to make a decision, then your conclusion would depend on a number of factors—the likelihood that the child will grow out of the condition, the amount of damage the untreated condition is likely to cause, the amount of damage the treatment is likely to cause, etc.
But that's a heart condition. It has no political, cultural, or social implications. The only circumstance in which society will judge you for your choice is if the scientific evidence clearly supports a particular course of action, e.g., if the chances of the kid growing out of it are low, the consequences of an untreated condition are severe, and the potential risks of treatment are mild. But if it's anywhere near a Hobson's choice, it would be unusual for people to make categorical statements about what the correct course of action is in all cases, or for there to be a sustained public effort to influence legislation on the issue.
So ultimately whether it's reversible doesn't matter. For the anti-trans crowd, if it were 100% consequence-free and there was next to no chance that the kid would grow out of wanting to be the opposite sex, they would still be against it on principle. The same is true in the other direction, though the hardcore trans activists are much fewer in number. So quote statistics and talk about risks until the end of time if you want to, but keep in mind that it's irrelevant to the conversation.
Rov_Scam
12d ago
If you're looking for something more modern, Jake Spicer's You Will Be Able to Draw series seems pretty highly regarded.
Rov_Scam
12d ago
Sometimes its by a less attractive friend who can police the men
This is your opportunity right there. Since 90% of guys will hit on the more attractive woman, the less attractive one is used to used to her getting all the attention and ends up playing sheriff out of resentment, if nothing else. If you hit on the less attractive one, she feels validated, and the more attractive one is both relieved that she's not the one getting hit on and feels good for her lovelorn friend finally getting some action. And if you start talking to a group of girls, always be prepared to hit on the least attractive one in the group. If this girl is a real dog, then don't necessarily throw in the towel, but have realistic expectations.
any girl out doing nightlife stuff has a guaranteed 12+ guys in her phone via dating apps and thus maximum optionality.
Probably but you have to consider the following:
- Half of the guys she matches with won't ever message her
- Half of those who do will open with something like "You have a really nice face but it would look much better smashed up against mine".
- Half of the ones who don't are incapable of texting anything other than "Hey" or "How's your weekend going?"
- Half of the ones who are capable of texting aren't capable of maintaining a conversation in real life
- Half of the ones who actually can maintain a conversation can only do so for about an hour before changing the subject to all the nasty things they want to do to them
- The remaining 1% or so of men, knowing they're in rarefied air, think they're God's gift to women and act like it.
At least this is the impression that I get based on conversations with attractive women I know who have tried it. And that doesn't even include guys who will text for weeks without asking the girl out. So if you meet someone in a bar you can at least speed run to the final step without being burdened by the inherent douchiness that affects guys who are too successful on dating apps.
Rov_Scam
13d ago
Read a modern translation of the Iliad done by a woman with a classics PhD that contains an extensive introduction describe the tedious research that was done to ensure that the meaning is true to the original Greek, taking historical context into account to ensure as little misinterpretation as possible from the average reader. Then read Alexander Pope's rhyming translation, that's probably more Pope than Homer. The modern translation is more accurate, but the Pope is more fun.
Rov_Scam
13d ago
Chromebooks are terrible and overpriced for what you get. They aren't meant for software but for cloud computing, so if you want to do something basic like chew a picture in .tiff format you have to upload it to the cloud. Forget about running Word, it's Google docs or something similar. The better spec'd ones are the same price as a cheap laptop with less functionality. Your best bet is to go to a computer store and find something you like that fits your budget. Just don't get the cheapest one because they're tech from five years ago that probably won't last another five. I have a Lenovo IdeaPad that I bought for 700 bucks on a Costco deal during the pandemic and it's still going strong (I wouldn't even think about upgrading at this point) but you probably don't have to go that high end. If you can afford it, it's worth getting something nicer that you don't have to worry about. I can't comment on keyboards because I'm a desktop guy and hate typing on any laptop for anything more involved than entering search terms into a browser.
Rov_Scam
15d ago
It's because he's going about it in the worst way possible. He's basically insulting them, telling them their trade policies (that he renegotiated!) aren't fair, and that they're letting drugs and whatever else over the border, then trying to coerce them with economic warfare and veiled threats of invasion. This isn't some rogue country that happens to be next to us, but probably the closest of many close allies. If there's ever any chance at a union it's through even closer cooperation. The first order of business should be trying to get all tariffs and duties down to zero in both directions, and negotiating some kind of Schengen-style agreement to get rid of border controls.
Rov_Scam
17d ago
The left would go for that in a heartbeat, if only to demonstrate the illiteracy of the GOP. The pre-1965 immigration restrictions did not impose any quotas on immigration from within the Western Hemisphere. While it put Asian immigration to a dead standstill, the focus was limiting immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe.
Rov_Scam
19d ago
Title I funding incentivizes concentrating impoverished students in great enough numbers to qualify for the funding. There’s a cliff where the funds just go away. I’ve seen this play out when our district was redrawing school boundaries, it was the top priority.
In my experience, most conservative-leaning people want the poverty to be concentrated, though. I can think of several small districts in old mill towns near me that are having enough trouble staying solvent with Federal funding. If that dries up then it's game over for them and they will be forced to merge with the wealthier suburban districts that surround them, causing a much bigger uproar among Trumpy types than an obscure DOE incentive structure.
Rov_Scam
20d ago
They did pretty well through the point and shoot era, and their cameras were everywhere if you cared to look; in 2005 they led the market in camera sales. They just weren't involved in the pro market the way their competitors were, so when that market died they had nothing to fall back on.
Rov_Scam
20d ago
I think the best illustration of this principle lies in the downfall of Kodak. Their bankruptcy is often cited as a cautionary tale of what happens when you obstinately stick to old technology in the midst of a changing landscape. But that it were true! Yes, Kodak was synonymous with film in the early 2000s, but, while digital cameras existed, they were expensive and people were still buying a ton of film. So they weren't going to just stop producing it (and they still haven't). But the idea that they didn't see the writing on the wall and failed to embrace digital photography is a myth. They wholeheartedly threw most of their effort into what they perceived the transition to digital would look like. They manufactured inexpensive digital cameras and supplies for making prints at home, and they put kiosks in stores and malls for people without the equipment to make prints. What they failed to anticipate was a world where the market for cheap cameras would move to smartphones, and where social media would replace the need to get prints of everything.
And the reason they didn't anticipate it was because they couldn't anticipate it. No one could. Digital cameras started gaining market share before the rise of social media and phones with acceptable cameras. If you told someone in 2003 what the low end of the photographic world would look like 5 years later, they'd tell you you were nuts.
Rov_Scam
21d ago
That assumes that crime and vagrancy are the reason Americans don't embrace public transport. But these aren't problems everywhere. Pittsburgh transit doesn't have these problems, at least not to the degree that anyone has expressed concern about them. I used to rely on bus lines, including some that served bad neighborhoods, when I lived in the city, and the worst thing I had to deal with was poor people listening to shitty rap music with cheap headphones that didn't contain the sound well. While this may be one of the reasons that some people say it's relatively easy to live here car-free, most people still use their cars to get around, despite the fact that narrow streets and a dearth of easy parking doesn't make driving particularly easy, either.
Rov_Scam
22d ago
I always wanted to point that out about Griggs but Duke was so adamant about how that totally wasn't what they were doing that the court just accepted it at face value, so it's codified in the opinion. The problem isn't so much that it's a bad case as it is that if it went the other way plenty of companies in the South would have come up with bullshit tests to justify continued discrimination.
Rov_Scam
22d ago
I doubt it will make much difference. The part about Griggs that everyone forgets is that the reason they weren't allowed to use the test was because they couldn't show that it actually resulted in better hires. The government already uses aptitude testing much more than the private sector, not to mention domain specific testing. I had to take an aptitude testing for hitting when I got my job with the state, and I've never had to take one in the private sector, excepting an $8/hour inventory job I had in college.
I actually used to have to do this kind of genealogical work when I was in oil and gas. It's a pain in the ass, and a lot of time you simply can't find anything. That being said, this is a little easier since you're only trying to figure out who the living heirs are, and not who the living descendants and devisees are of a guy who died in 1906 and had 9 children.
Don't DIY your own legal work; hire a lawyer. It's not expensive and it's easy to fuck it up if you do it yourself.
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