ulyssessword
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User ID: 308
ulyssessword
2d ago
@07mk: "I guess that's just a long-winded way of saying that The Boy Who Cried Wolf is, unironically, a pretty decent fable with a pretty decent lesson."
...
Again, as far back as 2016, I recall reading someone, maybe on SlateStarCodex, saying that they're not afraid of Trump, they're afraid of who might come after Trump. Now, I'm somewhat afraid of Trump, but not that much more than any other Republican POTUS, but I'm definitely more afraid of what could rise up from the farther, even more extreme right wing due to much of the left having so completely discredited its ability to criticize such people.
Sounds like the person you remember was riffing off of You Are Still Crying Wolf:
This, I think, is the first level of crying wolf. What if, one day, there is a candidate who hates black people so much that he doesn’t go on a campaign stop to a traditionally black church in Detroit, talk about all of the contributions black people have made to America, promise to fight for black people, and say that his campaign is about opposing racism in all its forms? What if there’s a candidate who does something more like, say, go to a KKK meeting and say that black people are inferior and only whites are real Americans?
We might want to use words like “openly racist” or “openly white supremacist” to describe him. And at that point, nobody will listen, because we wasted “openly white supremacist” on the guy who tweets pictures of himself eating a taco on Cinco de Mayo while saying “I love Hispanics!”
...
Stop crying wolf. God forbid, one day we might have somebody who doesn’t give speeches about how diversity makes this country great and how he wants to fight for minorities, who doesn’t pose holding a rainbow flag and state that he proudly supports transgender people, who doesn’t outperform his party among minority voters, who wasn’t the leader of the Salute to Israel Parade, and who doesn’t offer minorities major cabinet positions. And we won’t be able to call that guy an “openly white supremacist Nazi homophobe”, because we already wasted all those terms this year.
ulyssessword
3d ago
Though I think your second part is a little unfair. In a crowded city, there will always be a park or school or something with a couple blocks of the site.
There are a few stories of that. IIRC, one city has "sex offender bridge", which is the only location within city limits that's more than X distance from Y locations, and therefore the only legal place for registered sex offender to live in the city.
ulyssessword
3d ago
Thanks for link. Based on that last quote, I definitely wouldn't want to buy a "0% receiver". I'd even be a bit worried about buying a small piece of 6061 aluminum bar stock from a (normal) metal supplier. Raw ore is probably outside the letter of the law, but I know how much I trust the courts with that.
I think it's safe to say that an empty field is not a gun. Until you start digging.
ulyssessword
3d ago
the ATF's rules are so broad that they cover anything but a literal "unformed blocks of metal",
Was there ever any further debate on what they meant by "primordial state" in that legislation? To my mind, a formed (simple block) piece of precisely-alloyed metal is not "primordial" in the sense of "from the beginning of the world" or "constituting an origin; fundamental". To reach that status you'd have to go back to bauxite or magnetite ore that you could dig from the ground.
ulyssessword
4d ago
I find it interesting that it took more than 24 hours for @HereAndGone to point out that 1937 movie is in not original but is based on Grimme brothers tale.
I don't know about everyone else, but I didn't mention that fact because I thought is was already well-known, and (unlike you) didn't have any arguments that relied on it. I wouldn't read anything more into it.
ulyssessword
4d ago
It's not the "one drop" rule if it isn't strict. That strictness is the defining characteristic of the "one drop" rule.
See also: This Black woman's bone density scan results list her ethnicity as 'white.' Why that's a problem. I looked at the picture at the top of that article and went "...really??"
ulyssessword
7d ago
By that standard, a good fraction of cars on the road don't qualify as human-driven.
(My idea for self-driving car laws: It has to pass a standard driver's license exam, and has to carry insurance. Anything past that is consumer protection instead of a valid safety concern.)
ulyssessword
7d ago
Who has ever dreamed of expensively converting electricity into hydrogen, struggling to store the ultra-leaky, diffuse, explosive gas and then turning the hydrogen back into electricity?
I have. There was a short period of time where you could draw a straight line from the current (ineffective) storage methods to the promises of some developing technologies, then out a couple decades and get pretty impressive energy densities. Of course, it didn't actually happen and lithium batteries filled that niche instead.
Reading through your linked article, I thought it was obviously a hydrogen chemical plant, which would produce useful ingredients for industrial processes like steel production (there must be a reason to do it centralized instead of on-site, right?). But no, it's a power plant. Then I thought it must be a hydrocarbon refining plant that split off the easy-to-get hydrogen from hydrocarbons and used it in some sort of novel turbine that took advantage of its properties (Compared to natural gas, it has higher flame temperature, different exhaust gasses, and ?????). But no, it's a green hydrogen power plant. They're breaking water molecules in half then putting them back together again.
ulyssessword
8d ago
Are you logged in? This is the refusal I got: https://imgur.com/aWMC56O
We're reading a news article. One from the New York Times no less. Who's to say that there wasn't criminality at the root of this case?
The New York Times and SecureSignals, who are selecting what you see here, did not focus on that because it doesn't make a good story.
EDIT: She was charged with "obstructing governmental administration", so there was some criminality here. It was very likely against school policies, but I'm not sure if that's enough to count next to vandalism or attacks.
ulyssessword
10d ago
If the most right-wing examples you can think of literally contain more left-wingers than right- (such as Charlottesville, if you include counter-protesters), then I'm comfortable calling them less vulnerable.
ulyssessword
10d ago
Sure, if you could find any. And if the Democrats got into a deporting-immigrants mood. And they had publicized their views enough. And...
ulyssessword
10d ago
How far can it stretch before it stops being "this weapon", and shifts to being a different one? If the standard is "...her[/his] presence in the United States hinders the administration’s foreign policy agenda.", then campus protesters (or rally organizers, or similar) are pretty much the only valid targets.
The right-wing base doesn't generally shout their opinions from a soapbox in the same way, and therefore isn't as vulnerable to this.
ulyssessword
11d ago
I think they're referring to the general disdain at the root of Liberal decisions. I can't point to any explicitly discriminatory laws, but the differences in impact are pretty clear.
- COVID vaccines were distributed to the provinces proportional to (total) population. The Federal government is responsible for providing healthcare to Treaty Indians, while Provincial governments are responsible for providing healthcare to the rest of their residents. The feds assigned a larger-than-proportional number of the doses to go to them (which is probably appropriate given the risk factors) from their province's stock, and as a result non-Native Manitobans got worse access than non-Native Ontarians due to that province's larger Native population.
- They wanted to increase affordability, so they cut the carbon tax for some home heating. Specifically, for home heating oil which is (almost) exclusively used in the East, while the West uses natural gas. When asked about it, a Liberal MP said that Westerners should elect more Liberals if they want to benefit from the government. This is the clearest example IMO. (Saskatchewan decided that it wanted that tax exemption too, so it stopped collecting/paying the carbon tax on all home heating. I just checked and haven't seen any news about it since then, so it sounds like it worked.)
- Equalization payments are above 100% of "equal" because the Liberals maintained a Harper-era law that reduced equalization amounts (at the time. Then circumstances changed and the formula gives a different result). Instead of the "have" provinces mostly in the West bringing the "have-not" provinces up to their own level of economic prosperity and services, they're forced to push them above their own levels by a few billion dollars.
ulyssessword
13d ago
We already did state-run education and it resulted in...
Did switching to a central system change those results?
ulyssessword
15d ago
How does my saying that it is Good, Actually imply that it's terrible?
I read "Good, Actually" as inherently sarcastic, kind of like "cool story, bro" doesn't mean that the story is cool, or that they're a bro.
I have no idea why I believe that, though.
ulyssessword
15d ago
Then it's not so much "Nobody carries around..." as "There is nothing that could be carried for...". That seems like a bigger problem.
ulyssessword
15d ago
That proves that you were...when it was issued, it doesn't mean you are one now.
Isn't that an impossibly high standard?
Like, you can prove that you were issued a driver's license, but you can't prove that you have a valid one now. I'm sure there's a way around that issue.
ulyssessword
16d ago
It has to have at least one flaw. There is a crack in everything.
ulyssessword
16d ago
Unfortunately it’s a lot easier to let people in than kick them out.
Well, shucks. Guess it's best to just give up completely, then. /s
If it's hard, then that just means it takes more work. Might as well get started now.
ulyssessword
16d ago
Yeah I just don’t think these petty deportations are good politics though.
Highly-publicized deportations seem like meat for the base, and also serve as a chilling effect for illegal immigrants. It's also a wedge issue where the Right gets to paint the Left as opposing the Rule of Law.
There are 10+M immigrants under Biden...
I don't see any reason to deport immigrants who applied and were accepted. At worst, the government could stop approving new applications and let any existing temporary ones expire without renewal.
Immigrants who commit normal crimes (like murder) or break immigration law should be deported and/or punished in other ways. Just like anyone else.
Next Dem president likely to let 20M in next round, at this rate…
That sounds like a call to deport 20M extra so that the immigrant numbers are at the right level at the end of their term. (jk?)
ulyssessword
16d ago
I don't think "fake it 'til you make it" is a very good basis for a legal system. Continuously breaking the law for years is worse than breaking it for days, all else being equal.
ulyssessword
16d ago
an independent nonprofit...fired last week by the Trump administration.
What? If they're independent, why didn't they laugh off his powerless bluster and stay on the job? That's what I would do if Trump told me I was fired.
If he has the power to fire them, he probably has the power to access the building. I find it suspicious that they aren't debating the first point.
ulyssessword
16d ago
Currently, he can talk about anything he knows or suspects. After the gag order, he wouldn't be able to talk about the entire topic. This is because lawyers are smart enough to not fall for this trick from SSC:
Your best bet is to call every psychiatric hospital that they could plausibly be in and ask “Is [PERSON’S NAME] there?” Sometimes, all except one of them will say “No”, and one of them will say “Due to medical privacy laws, we can’t tell you”. I know this sounds ridiculous, but it really works.
See this editorial for a more in-depth explanation:
But the reasoning was hardly nefarious. It was because receiving such briefings would have circumscribed what Poilievre could say about Chinese interference, a point on which everyone agrees. As the leader of the Opposition, Poilievre believed, reasonably I would say, that any briefing offered would be used as a way for the government to get him to stop criticizing it over its lax attitude to election security.
I recommend reading https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ before using melatonin, as there are some misconceptions out there. Specifically, the standard pills you can buy have about 10-30x the dose you want.
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