yunyun333
2d ago
It's not a chokehold, but the chest needs to expand to take in fresh air. The amount of breath you need to vocalize is a lot less than the amount needed to get sufficient oxygen into the lungs.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11036158/
The MPD training specifically told officers to put suspects in the recovery position (lying on side) once they were handcuffed to alleviate positional asphyxia.
yunyun333
2d ago
I'm no doctor, but his autopsy reported 11 ng/mL of fentanyl and 5.6 ng/mL of norfentanyl (an inactive metabolite of fentanyl). This indicates the dose was recent. He had a habit of doing this (based on a 2019 arrest where he tossed back a handful of percs while in the passenger seat of a car being pulled over for having an invalid plate). And there were meth/fent pill fragments in the car with Floyd's DNA. That being said, opioids via oral route generally take longer to cause an overdose compared to injection, obviously, and the entire arrest took slightly over 20 minutes. And another expert testified that Floyd didn't show the classic signs of overdose. Fent is much stronger than oxy or morphine, but the chemical pathway is identical, so tolerance to one should affect the other.
yunyun333
3d ago
And being put on your chest and having a weight on your neck/upper back makes breathing a lot harder. Guy had massively clogged arteries and was high, but his blood fent level, especially for a long time addict, did not suggest overdose.
What doomed Chauvin was keeping his knee on well past the point where Floyd was actively resisting. The other cops found Floyd had no pulse and he kept his knee on. Cops are often really dumb.
yunyun333
3d ago
Based on Minneapolis police rules, Chauvin was probably in the clear until Floyd went unconscious ~5 minutes in, at which point he definitely should have gotten off his neck.
It's hard to tell if another officer was holding down his legs, but either way a knee on your neck while lying chest down can very easily restrict your chest from expanding enough to get air. When people OD from fent they usually passively conk out instead of panicking about being unable to breathe.
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000007159353/george-floyd-arrest-death-video.html
yunyun333
5d ago
The 'weak' version of tariffs slightly increased inflation and the cost is almost entirely borne by American consumers and companies, as expected. Also, very predictably, SCOTUS struck down his use of 'emergency powers' which means that the government has to pay back hundreds of billions to companies.
The other problem with the tariffs is that they were retardly overbroad. This US tire plant had to shut down because Thai rubber was tariffed, even though rubber can't be grown in the US. The salutary effect of tariffs is supposed to be onshoring, but nothing much has happened; companies will just pinky promise Trump that they're totally planning to build more factories at home and quietly cancel once he's out of office. It's also worth bearing in mind that the US does have a strong manufacturing sector with extremely high productivity and value-add, like assembling airplanes.
yunyun333
8d ago
Total electricity production isn't a useful metric here. The US hasn't been power constrained (until recently) and prices are consistently lower, thanks to fracking. US electricity production leveled off in the 2000s as incandescents were replaced with fluorescents and LEDs (this change alone has saved countless QALYs).
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/04/27/opinion/electricity-power-grid-infrastructure.html
Sure, datacenters are putting pressure on the grid, but there's a reason they're being pumped out over here.
yunyun333
8d ago
Fracking won so hard that no one talks about it anymore. It still causes miniquakes when the wastewater is injected underground, and some people will randomly get methane in their water supply, but total US energy dominance outweighs such petty concerns.
One of the best reddit accounts covering the war is /u/Duncan-M (who also has a substack). He has little bias and thus gets shit from the pro-UA and pro-RU cheerleaders in about equal measure.
Anyways the recent updates are that SpaceX disabled Starlink for the Russians, which they somehow were dependent on, thus heavily disrupting their comms system, enabling Ukrainian advances. The war is more drone heavy than ever, and fast unjammable comms are a must have to coordinate attacks.
In addition, previously Ukrainian recon drones were limited to about 10km past the FLOT (forward line of own troops) due to counter-drone AD, but have been able to penetrate past this, enabling reconnaissance and deep strikes into the Russian logistical rear.
This is not to imply that the Ukrainian manpower crisis has subsided, because it hasn't, especially since General 200 is busy plugging away with "Assault Forces" (ie Meat) as per Soviet doctrine. But it's less relevant than ever. In conclusion:
The shortage of infantry is being counteracted by advances in drone warfare. The Ukrainian capabilities have never been better, and Russian capabilities dropped at least a bit since February when they lost access to Starlink, which it comes to find out they had become dangerously reliant on through 2025.
So right now, considering the way both sides fight this war, unless Russia dramatically changes its operational planning and stops giving any shits about territory and focuses purely on increasing Ukrainian casualties, then Ukraine's infantry manpower shortage probably won't cause any sort of collapse.
yunyun333
17d ago
It is bad for society to encourage a red queen's race of self torture. Same reason why we should not encourage tiger parents to go overboard with private tutoring and such for their children.
yunyun333
17d ago
What's revolutionary about this? Yes, being attractive has many perks. No, you should not hit your jaw with a hammer to develop a chad jawline.
yunyun333
17d ago
Again, neither of these are government suing government. The keepseagle settlement and the later cy pres disbursements were approved by a district court and the salazar settlement was funded by an act of congress. There's somewhat more accountability than... none at all.
yunyun333
17d ago
There's no difference between the government suing a private company (which does not want to pay billions of dollars in restitution, to NGOs or anyone else) and the government suing itself?
yunyun333
18d ago
The difference is that this power was effectively created by SCOTUS decision, not a "settlement" between two complying parties. If you want to complain that the executive has continued to accrue power through expanding agency scope and congressional inaction... you'd be right but that's not related to the issue of a colluding settlement.
yunyun333
19d ago
This is just spoils, which is somewhat politics as normal. What is more worrying is his pure vindictive streak in relation to spoils. For example, the House and Senate both unanimously passed an anodyne bill to fund water supplies for rural Coloradoans - Trump vetoed it and the House bowed down and didn't un-veto it. A few days ago, Colorado governor Jared Polis pardons Tina Peters, the lady who tried to demonstrate election fraud (and ended up showing that it was her own Republican number 2 that caused an 'anomaly') - and Trump passes the funding. Lauren Boebert even points this out but doesn't stop kissing the ring.
yunyun333
21d ago
Second temple Jews who performed miracles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanina_ben_Dosa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honi_HaMe%27agel
Obviously they did not manage to attain as much notoriety as the most famous person to ever live.
yunyun333
22d ago
The Pharaoh had magicians that could do cool supernatural things; YHWH's feats were simply superior. The Tanakh implicitly accepts the existence of other gods.
Another example is the prohibition on sacrificing to Moloch. Presumably this would not have been necessary unless people were actually being tempted to do such a thing. Why? Because it worked! (See 2 Kings 3)
yunyun333
22d ago
How would we react if someone wrote a book which took it for granted that everyone knows that, IDK, Jimmy Swaggart routinely performed honest-to-goodness public miracles in the 80s - a book which seemed merely interested in telling us precisely what it was that empowered him to do so?
Jesus was one of many holy miracle men. He isn't even unique among second-temple Jews (see Honi the circle drawer and Hanina ben Dosa). It was taken for granted back then that certain humans were uniquely empowered by God(s) to do cool shit.
yunyun333
25d ago
Foster was the one assuming too much authority. Cops can have their guns out when approaching your window. Everyone else should make it crystal clear you're not going to perform a street execution.
yunyun333
26d ago
I think both the conviction and the pardon were reasonable, or at least plausible. Perry was clearly spoiling for a confrontation. But a man approaching the window with weapon at low ready is teetering on the edge of immediate risk. Foster assumed a cop-level authority to which he was not entitled.
yunyun333
26d ago
Trump won because people felt the economy sucked, and because of the border. People try to make US politics more complicated than it is. If people don't like the economy, they vote for the other guy. With gas up 50%, we'll see how the "interacts with reality" thesis holds.
yunyun333
26d ago
Several of the rally organizers were successfully sued for civil conspiracy.
Anyways, most of those guys have fallen off the face of the earth. Richard Spencer has renounced white nationalism. It's hard to imagine a Unite the Right style rally being held in 2026. On the other hand you have Trump posting Obama's face on monkeys on social media, so who knows what the future holds.
An influencer couple announced that they aborted their pregnancy because the fetus had Down syndrome. This upset a lot of people including some fine congressmen.
However, it's actually very common. Screening for genetic disorders is generally performed between 10 and 20 weeks, giving plenty of time for a reasonably early choice. "As a result of these elective terminations in the U.S., there was a 37% reduction in the numbers of babies with Down syndrome born in 2018. This means that in recent years there were 37% fewer babies with Down syndrome than could have been born". In Iceland, almost all such diagnosed pregnancies are aborted after testing.
People with Down syndrome are clearly generally capable of living "happy" lives. They have the equivalent intelligence of an 8 to 9 year old. Most 8 to 9 year olds seem happy enough to me, and it would not be a horrible curse to live decades in such a condition. Perhaps we might ask if such a life is fulfilling, but a young child can't comprehend what that means; as well ask your dog if he's fulfilled by sniffing butts and digging holes.
For the caretakers of course, life may not be so rosy. Taking care of a small child indefinitely, knowing all of the joys and sorrows of adulthood that they will never experience, does not sound fulfilling, to say nothing of the physical and monetary toll. It's therefore unsurprising that most parents choose not to condemn themselves to such a future.
God in His infinite wisdom creates babies with far worse afflictions. Most people would agree that it is ethical, perhaps mandatory, to abort nonviable children who will live only hours in agonizing pain after birth. Down syndrome, as a patently survivable condition, lies on the edge of this boundary.
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