gattsuru
12hr ago
I'd also consider bringing prosecutions that would be incompatible with active executive orders, for acts committed while those executive orders were active, to be a bad escalation. Not an unprecedented one, but because such a modification doesn't count for ex post facto stuff a space that has a lot of There Be Dragons.
gattsuru
12hr ago
Leaving aside a specific fandom that has other reasons to favor original art, KendricTonn on X Twitter has been able to make it work, and he's part of a non-trivial circle doing so just to a degree that's visible to normies.
((And also woodblock printing, which is kinda in a complicated place on the 'is it original, or is it a print' thing.))
I don't think the economics make easy sense at scale, but there's enough of it that it could in a fully-automated-world.
gattsuru
12hr ago
Drawing as well, here. I never was going to be able to enough time to be good, but I took lessons, read a lot of books, and practiced quite a decent amount in both traditional and digital forms, and I've either gotten worse or learned to notice the flaws in what I was doing more. There's some really fundamental skill related to taking the visual composition of something apart into its components, and I can do that mechanically, but whatever's necessary for art just isn't something I've been able to grapple with. I can trace fine (or at least not so bad as to be actively painful to watchers), so I've started using some of those resources for other tasks, like woodblock or airbrush work, but that first step is just beyond me.
I'm not very good at woodworking, either -- I'm too afraid of the tools -- but I've kept at it, since it's useful even if you're awful. Will admit I haven't made anything like a full furniture set, though, either.
Stained glass was one I thought would be fun, and I can do it, but was never really interesting enough to keep my attention after three or four pieces.
gattsuru
18hr ago
Cancelling executive orders are an escalation cycle, but not a very serious step. Biden entered office bulk-cancelling Trump's executive orders, and I would expect to see the same thing happen again the next time the White House changes hands regardless of Trump's actions here.
Pardons are more serious, if he tries to prosecute someone with a pardon, for behavior clearly covered by the pardon. The courts will, absolutely unsurprisingly, boot such an attempt very early in the process; there's zero votes to review the pardon power at SCOTUS, and not many in the 5th Circuit. That's a kinda bad, because there's some evidence available that people used the power of the pardon without Biden's direct acknowledgment and maybe without even having been delegated that power, and that can go into some really bad (and Nicholas Cage movie-) tier problems. But it's not really resolvable this way, and it'll encourage and invite new and innovative attempts in retribution that have courts willing to rubber-stamp wrong Blue-Tribe opinions on this matter.
If it's just making sounds that could cover that, but not acting on it, it's a step in the escalation spiral that was crossed over a decade ago.
Trying to argue that autopen'd signatures on full legislation is void would be a massive escalation. Not as big as I wish it was, since there's been a few other cases where Presidents stopped defending or enforcing laws that they didn't like, but still huge and with a wide variety of downstream effects, some of which would be so bad that I don't want to talk about them publicly.
... but even with that, I can't think of an equivalent on the left to this.
There's been a pretty wide array of counterexamples. I'm a big fan of The Saga Of Defense Distributed, because it culminated in the courts specifically accepting the argument that a previous court-recognized settlement wasn't worth the toilet paper it was written on, but see for example Bank Pause Letters for a space where I don't have a lot of sympathy for the victims, or this mess for just a wide variety of examples.
gattsuru
19hr ago
That's fair, but I'd caution about stereotypes. I work with a different sort of mechanic than, say, hydroacetylene, but there's a lot more overlap between the techie side of things and the automotive maintenance bro these days, just because tech stuff is much harder to avoid these days. I've helped hunters make a psuedo-shot-spotter tool for their range, traded some car advice for tips on hooking neopixels up to an offroad atv, and maybe half of the mechanics have or have access to a 3d printer.
((That said, they'd probably have at-best-mixed feelings about helmets on adults for leisure biking.))
gattsuru
1d ago
WhiningCoil's had multiple woodworking projects, dr_analog's project was focused on hardware but to support biking, and we've had a couple DIY car repairs (or people like me complaining about car repairs: I'm actually fighting with door power window repairs again myself). My rant about FIRST and STEM outreach is the geekier side of physical handicraft, but it's still more about assembling and greasing gearboxes or running CNC machines than it is about the comparatively entry-level code side of things. As, more prosaically, was the war on dandelions.
There's some genuine drop in interest and development along those lines, especially post-COVID, but it's also hard to talk at length about it, especially here.
gattsuru
2d ago
Surprisingly, no.
Trivially, there are levels of armed conflict that would be acceptable and even laudatory. If New Yorkers could accept self-defense or defense-of-others by innocents against illegitimate threat to life and/or limb, we'd be in a much better place. Just as trivially, there are levels of endorsement I can give that are hundreds of miles short of what is not just common but already mainstreamed to the point of being room temperature; endorsing Rittenhouse is not going to give any genuine sanction to Jay Jones.
These aren't without their risks. There are definitely progressives willing to hallucinate that the knife-waving meth addict who broke into someone's house at midnight tots wasn't gonna hurt nobody, and that the police officer considering a speeding ticket was a dire threat to life; there are people who were already drooling over the shooting the children of political opponents now and did respond to the Rittenhouse defense by doubling down. But those are concerns in the same sense that a schizophrenic legitimizing a murder because the radio waves in his teeth told him it was okay, and sometimes by the same biochemical pathways.
At a deeper level, the Litany of Tarski wins. If you're arguing game theory and utilitarianism, it's not just enough to believe that pacifism is the best behavior with the best outcomes. Most advocates aren't even willing or able to pretend.
Within 24 hours of this post, two National Guard members were shot and killed in Washington DC, by a shooter that alleged targeted and ambushed them.
I'm willing to give another 24 hours from now before speculating on the motives of that shooter. The shooter has been capture and is expected to survive. I'll note, however, that nationally syndicated television did not wait to see whether the man was a gangbanger or schizophrenic before giving justifications for the shooters actions.
It's possible that Dilanian is fired in a week. Would you like to make a wager?
Because I'd wager that your lefty college buds can get all the justifications and friendly tongue-washing from broadly published news media that everyone treats with far more respect than it deserves; the wig-wong waggling here doesn't really matter.
Edit: I shouldn’t trust politicians. “conflicting reports”
gattsuru
3d ago
Oof. Do you have similar issues with other USB devices in the same physical ports? Keyboards, mice, usb thumb drives, especially anything with higher power draw or running in faster USB modes? Or is it just controllers, nothing else?
Do you know your motherboard? If not, grab CPU-z and check the mainboard tab, then check for BIOS updates from the manufacturer. Especially AMD motherboards have had sometimes-very-weird issues with specific USB modes in early BIOS releases.
The problem occurs regardless of whether I use a front USB port (belonging to the case, connected indirectly to the motherboard) or a rear USB port (belonging directly to the motherboard).
It's a bit of a hail-mary, but try unplugging the connection from the motherboard to the front side panel (they're keyed, so it's pretty easy to reinsert the right direction when you're done testing). In humid environments, I have seen bad connections there cause problems all across a hub. PCI(E) expansion cards are cheap as another try if you've got the available slots, but unfortunately most physical stores that stock them will charge an obnoxious premium.
Both because, yes, it's easy for you to whine about what you're not allowed to say when you're not the one who would get visited by the FBI,
There's a really morbid joke here, because on one hand, yes, we have very specific test cases on this very specific hypothetical, and back in 2013 I had some sympathy for the state's concern even if some of the actual actions were clearly overkill response to hyperbole. From Zorba's position, that's clearly the correct calculus...
For conservatives.
When an actual assassin got within inches of doing a Gallager to the then-Presidential Candidate and now-President, and someone started talking about aiming better next time, the fascist brownshirts didn't break down her door at midnight and the FBI or Secret Service weren't knocking on every message board she'd been to; she got fired from Home Depot and every progressive in the country started taking cancel culture seriously for three seconds before promptly finding an asshole they wanted to fire again. When a major political activist got shot in the throat, with audience members dancing in glee while he bled out on livestream, I gave you, specifically, a long list of people who weren't going to suffer after it, and not only did I manage to guess right in almost every case, it was only going to surprise you if they all turned out to be true. It's actually kinda impressive how direct and explicit the threats have to be before this FBI -- this administration's FBI -- is going after anyone.
And, of course, there's no FBI investigation after WhiningCoil's very specific example of Jay Jones saying worse than Corcoran said, when Jones sent his texts directly to one of his political enemies. Like, duh, obviously, that's not something that's even worse considering as possible.
That's not the joke. The real fun is that convention isn't limited to calls to assassinate political rivals. Indeed, there's a lot of other reads to WhiningCoil's position that aren't assassinating political rivals.
But we know that this rule applies to a wide variety of other matters -- whether it be advocacy of lethal force for the specific case of defending yourself from a man trying to beat your head in, or saying mean things about teacher's unions or school boards. There's a very specific post about a number of recents -- and about countless other prominent events -- that I will pointedly not make, here, because as you're very clearly saying, it's not allowed. Doesn't matter that isn't specific, hell, doesn't matter that it's advocacy of something that's legal.
What's the penalty for being late?
gattsuru
4d ago
Weird. Are you seeing anything change in Device Manager when you plug in or unplug the controllers? If there's no sound or tree reloading behavior, that points to an issue with the USB hardware on the motherboard. If there are changes, set up an event manager filter to track down what they are; unknown device IDs can also point to hardware issues (usually a past short-from-D+-to-5V). If it's a desktop, switching to different USB ports or to a PCI(E) motherboard might be a cheap way to get back up and running.
Trivially, there are pretty significant costs to flight.
More seriously, there's very little guarantee it would work. I'll point, again, to KendricTonn getting a Kirk Smirk in Ohio meatspace, or to my own experiences over half-a-decade ago. Crusading AGs from Blue States have brought the long arm of the law against people who did try to escape, or (as people trying to publish CAD files from Texas have found out) even if they were never in New Jersey to begin with. WhiningCoil cares a lot more about trans stuff than I do, but Wyoming specifically isn't exactly matching with his goals there despite a legislative and regulatory environment that specifically ordered or legislated it.
And then you get the federal government decides that they're going to have a new interpretation of a law and want a nice high-profile grab, you get your skull ventilated at 6AM, the cops doing that put more effort into documenting your soon-to-be-widow's morning piss than the pre-dawn raid, and no one in office in Arkansas cares. The supposed libertarians otherwise traumatized by the presence of masks for law enforcement they don't like will suddenly find crickets, the people who would burn down buildings over government overreach will suddenly decide to roleplay owls with a 'who, who'.
gattsuru
4d ago
As I understand it, though, because the case can be appealed, the state gets another shot at proving it.
While this is one of the few times a state can appeal an acquittal, appeals primarily review mistakes of law. The state does not get a do-over unless they can successfully persuade the appeals court about that first. I think Rov_Scam is being far too deferential to the judge, here -- there's a lot of judicial 'I could imagine alternative explanations' in that order -- but the standard to retry is so high I would be very surprised if they get a second go.
gattsuru
4d ago
But the way I recall it, when Musk bought Twitter, the reaction of the Biden admin was not to try their very best to burn Tesla and SpaceX to the ground.
For that very specific example, the Biden FCC did in fact cut a major SpaceX (StarLink) contract/grant program on clearly spurious grounds (see FCC v. Starlink here for further details), the Biden EEOC brought questionable claims of anti-immigrant discrimination against SpaceX directly. And those are just the ones with Biden admin people directly signing the paper.
gattsuru
5d ago
I'm not a high-caliber dev, but I've used and will recommend gitkraken, especially for very large teams or very distributed projects; it's one of the few that handles heavily forked projects and related PRs well. That said, I don't know that that it does much to solve these specific issues.
gattsuru
8d ago
I've got a major love for its genres*, so grain of salt, but I like it enough that my biggest complaint's that it's too short. Story's pretty strong if sometimes a little jank, the animation's great, and the voice-acting works a lot better than I feared given how heavily they leaned on youtubers. There's definitely room for improvement -- the central minigame is a little too easily broken, and The Last-Second Redemption feels like it's more earned by a player than by a character -- but it's well worth the entry fee.
* both VNs with some strategy or reaction gameplay dropped in like Uplink, and serious-but-not-grimdark superheroics like the Astro City and Common Grounds comics.
gattsuru
9d ago
The downside to building a good memory is that you end up with a good memory, though in that case it's because of MorlockP's treatment of "I can save her" as particularly verbotten that it stuck better (and was more searchable).
It’s not unusual a claim, even for straights.
((Though not universal; there’s no shortage of people in that thread not noticing until much later, and I myself was a very late bloomer in both the sexual arousal and romantic attraction senses. Those I was curious about what other guy’s dicks looked like well before I wanted to do anything and that I’d assume straight guys didn’t, so maybe I was just really clueless.))
There’s an uncertain question of whether it’s post hoc hindsight, and a bigger question whether it distinguishes sexual orientation from romantic orientation. But the split attraction model is itself a controversial mess, and enough of its ‘clearest’ cases are just as clearly closeted that I’m skeptical of self-reports.
gattsuru
10d ago
... there's a fun story from the criminal justice sphere, and by fun I mean incredibly depressing.
It's an old Freakanomics bit that drug dealers don't actually make that much money, but despite being in Freakonomics, it's actually true. The distribution agents and runners make peanuts, even mid-level dealers that handle a lot of cash end up spending a lot of that to replace stock, and you have to get real close to the top of the chain to break into high five figures or low six. Now, admittedly, that's tax-free and you don't have to deal with McDonald's customers, but there's a whole new level of problem when 'can't leave work at work' goes from late-night on-call to slightly more energetic concerns, whether from police or from other criminals.
Why would people accept a risk of 45 calibre wakeup calls for less than they could make sllepping fries ends up one of the big driving questions for criminology, and unfortunately there's a ton of different partially-right answers : lack of access to conventional employment, cycles of poverty, casual users making a little bit of money on the side, yada yada.
If you ask the actual people, though, a very common answer (especially once you get away from the casual users) is that they don't plan to stay at the entry-level. After all, it's not like the people at the top now have been there very long, and turnover for the mid-levels is often ridiculous. They're always hiring!
It seems stupid, from the outside view. They're jumping to get into the shoes of imprisoned (or dead) men, with at most vague motions about how they won't step into whatever trap got the immediate previous owner and not the thirty other previous owners. Maybe it is stupid.
They're still always hiring.
gattsuru
11d ago
In a mainstream story, not a ton, and most of the cases I can think of it's at least arguable that the writer believed the character to be a hero or 'conflicted', all evidence to the contrary aside. For a male example, Aizen from Bleach (not recommended) or Jacen Solo from __ or Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men for a more entertaining version; for female ones, Kreia from KOTOR2 is probably the best-known among readers here, most others usually fall around into genres (romantasy and college drama stuff).
Actual Mary Sue turns evil stories are rarer. Kreia and Jacen fit, but only marginally.
Stories where a powerful Chosen One ends up turning to the Dark Side -- without being flat characters that wrap the story around themselves -- are a little more common, but usually different, not least of all that they typically have the actual protagonist take the center of the narrative away from them. Tai Lung from Kung Fu Panda, Dylan from Control. Arguably Wanda from the DCAU kinda straddles these two positions, but she's a pretty unusual case.
Fanfiction, everywhere. Quirrelmort from HPMOR was pretty overtly intended as a send-up of the concept, and succeeded so aggressively that even after the story's conclusion a lot of people didn't get the joke, but original characters, Draco, Hermoine, or Harry made far more competent (or faced off against dumber authorities) taking out their frustrations on random characters or fictionalized versions of real-world targets happened a lot. MLP had Gilda, Trixie, and Princess Celestia as pretty common go-tos, Transformer fandom's got a lot of people who love the Decepticons, yada yada. They're not always Sues, but they tend to be less considered stories, so not a surprise that they're common.
gattsuru
11d ago
Jedi Knight had some at-the-time impressive FMV bits, but the story was not exactly the core of the series. Knights of the Old Republic is much more heavily on the RPG side with correspondingly deeper story, and a lot of KOTOR 2 and especially its end boss in particular is focused on questions about the Force and its Dark Side and what that means to individual people force-sensitive or not (along with a bit of theodicy and anti-theism).
Pretty good game, too, if you're into the genre.
gattsuru
11d ago
I'm... kinda confused by the window example. I can go down to the hardware store and buy pet-resistant screen door mesh that can protect against a hundred pound dog lunging and clawing for thirty-plus minutes, or chicken-wire grid that block less air intake and is designed to protect a chicken coop against invasive predators for weeks at a time; both will cost less than thirty bucks. Even if we presumed Safety Above All, there are simple solutions that would be as or more effective and allow much better airflow (and be compatible with boost fans).
- Truce at Bakura has the Resistance and Empire join together to fight off space dinosaurs that powered their machines with the tortured souls of harvested force-sensitive species, and really played into the Jedi as warrior-monks in the western-religious sense. Only mention of the Emperor is that he sold out the titular planet; Anakin Skywalker shows up as a ghost looking for forgiveness... and Leia tells him to fuck off. It was such a bold new direction that a lot of writers pretty carefully tiptoed around the whole thing for about a decade after.
- Crystal Star is so weird that the only other EU book to mention it is only did so to glass the main planet involved. Weird cult sacrifices people to summon an extra-dimensional entity. Pretty sure it started out as a Star Trek novel and got lost somewhere. Not good, but definitely nothing like any movie.
- I, Jedi focuses on an ex-cop-turned smuggler Force Sensitive working undercover to track down his disappeared wife and facing off against a pirate gang, while he Forrest Gumps his way through a bunch of post-Endor events. It's... actually a bit of a fix fic for the (tbf bad and very Empire Builds Another Superweapon) Jedi Academy Trilogy, so it's not the most accessible for people who haven't read others parts of the Expanded Universe, but it's a major point getting away from a lot of the trite Rebellion V Empire and Big Superweapons Go stuff.
- Rogue Squadron (and the imo even better Wraith Squadron) books are a bit of a The Expendables: the stories are military fiction with high body-counts and more focus on intrigue. They're set against the Empire in most books, but the commanders are drastically different, and the closest thing to a superweapon is a not-very-special biological weapon more notable for its political impact.
- New Jedi Order set a New Republic - which was mostly at peace with mostly-run-out-of-evil-people Empire since the end of The Hand of Thrawn series - against extragalactic invaders who were both religious fundamentalists and cut off completely from the force. About the only Original Series bit is the increasing use of planet-destroying superweapons, but that's a bit like complaining about oversized guns in Warhammer 40k given the topic focus.
- Legacy of the Force falls after that, with the son of Han and Leia facing a force vision of the future holding that the only way to protect the galaxy and his daughter was to turn to the Dark Side and become a Sith Lord. Controversial, but there were some interesting bits: Jacen's a byronic hero/villain who genuinely struggles against the easy routes of power and hate and pride, and it's not a battle he can ever win... and then there's an Evil Bigger Badder Plain Evil Guy.
These aren't always good (I really dislike both NJO and LOTF for pretty dumb canned heat), and the ones that are good aren't always original (The Thrawn Trilogy's a send-up of the very 'Empire Reborn' stuff that you're criticizing and has to invoke it to deconstruct it, Wraith Squadron has a few comedic bits that are basically Down Periscope In Space). Sometimes they're even just plain weird: I'm not recommending Darksaber when I say it's the best Kevin James Anderson work, but it actually does pretty a good breakdown of why the Empire's whole philosophy is so fucked up even if it's so deep in Bathos that there are Austin Powers jokes.
Yeah, this is one of those Universal Human Experience things; having post-puberty children of the same gender (and sometimes even opposite gender) sharing rooms is either unspeakably verbotten or absolutely normal, sometimes within the same social class just fifty miles away from each other.
It was kinda awkward for me and my brother, even (maybe especially) because neither of us had come out, but it's also just something you deal with and it's not that big a deal.
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