gattsuru
3d ago
If you're the sort to write reviews for places you buy from, I would recommend mentioning this as part of the review. The vendor may not realize it as a potential problem that could have been solved with a single-page printout or a sticker, and it's not just bad for the frustration. While modern WiFi is less likely to damage itself from running without a load than older devices, it's still not great for the hardware.
gattsuru
4d ago
To be fair, the popular science version of came from an obnoxious 'science popularizer' and deGrasse Tyson of his day that fudged a lot of the analysis as hard as possible -- made more obvious when he reused similar scenarios for climate change and the aftermath of the Kuwait war, the latter of which pointedly didn't happen.
But the actual scenario of hundreds of megadeaths is bad enough.
gattsuru
5d ago
Show examples of him holding to his principles, whatever you propose them to be, in a way that undermines Dean's view of his 'brand'.
I'd like to be wrong, but without having searched, did Hanania comment against the Biden proposal to tax unrealized gains? Because if not, even accepting the Trump actions as worse, it's going to be very hard to see this as not carefully calibrated for whatever situation Hanania wanted to comment on.
gattsuru
5d ago
I’d highlight the old Homeworld manual as another great strong point. The game’s mechanics were okay, if a little easily solved, but the universe it drew and the bounds of what it left to the imagination were fantastic.
gattsuru
6d ago
Why is that the case?
Having a spinning secondary disk that's constantly plugged into your computer helps prevent some concerns that overlap with RAID benefits (eg, single disk hardware failure) and some that RAID can't help with ("oops I overwrote this file I need"). It only partially mitigates catastrophic physical risks (such as theft), and does not mitigate at all mitigate catastrophic malware or user error concerns. I have dealt with multiple users who've had ransomware not only hit their main drive, but every drive plugged into every computer on their home network; I've seen a couple people accidentally overwrite their storage drives when reinstalling Windows or Linux.
This is a low risk, especially if you're computer-savvy, but it's also very low-cost.
Since I ended up opting for a TV ...
Ah, sorry, misread that.
Is that humidity sensor easy to install?
No, unfortunately. There used to be some decent commercial ones, but the brands I know about look to have stopped manufacture. That probably means that, with the growth of good AIOs, leaks are a lot less common, but I do know of a few major AIO manufacturers that have had recalls over leaks.
I've usually stuck with condensate cutoff switches and put them inline for the power cable, but this requires some familiarity with wiring and crimping 110v or 220v AC power. Home water leak detectors can be useful and they're literally set-and-forget (modulo The Apps), but make sure to get one that has a humidity function, not just direct drip detection. Be aware that they won't shut off the system, they'll just beep at you to do so.
It's reasonable to skip one, and most people do. If you do not use a leak detector, do regularly inspect (1/month) your PC internals, especially at fittings near the CPU waterblock, for any signs of corrosion, 'grit', or dampness. I'd also recommend being extremely aware of the PC's intended physical orientation: AIOs are very dependent on gravity feeding the pump, .
gattsuru
6d ago
Get a cheap set of cable ties -- I'm a big fan of velcro, but there are moderately good magnetic or flex-plastic ones. Good wire management starts on day one, and if you let it get bad you'll never fix it.
A moderately good USB dock can make your life a lot more pleasant, both to just have extra options to put a plug in, and since USB-C ports fit pleasantly-and-destructively inside USB-A ports. They're not very expensive, but the lowest-end ones can be worse than nothing; expect 15-25 USD for something notTemu grade. Some, but far from all, B560s support Thunderbolt, either stock or as a generally pretty cheap add-in card, and while desktop users will seldom if ever want to use it as an expansion for graphics cards, it can be useful for data transfer or other high-throughput peripherals.
Contra ToaKraka, I'm not a huge booster for RAID at home, since there's a lot of subtle failure modes and it doesn't protect you from the most common failures (RAID is not a backup). That said, a cheap USB platter drive can set you back around 50-80 USD, be trivial to automate, and save a lot of potential frustrations even if everything Is On The Cloud. Does require regularly unplugging it to get the most out of it.
If you have available PCIE slots, NVME expansion cards will set you back 10-30 USD, depending on quality, and are a nice way to bulk up on storage if your motherboard is limited. That said, unless you get a B560 in mini-ITX, I'd expect three slots in a prebuilt, and that's more than enough for most users.
Your monitor and GPU will very likely support HDMI, knowing nothing other than the stats you provide, but double-check both support and compatibility -- a lot of highest-framerate options work best over DisplayPort. Adapters are cheap (though I'd recommend splurging around ~15 USD), but they suck to have to wait a weak for, and with tiny number of exceptions these adapters are unidirection.
There's some specialty things (eg, if you get water cooling, a cheap pump shutoff humidity sensor can save you a lot of frustration; if you do a lot of console- or simulator-like gaming there are some recs I can give for gamepads or throttles; VR headsets can change a lot of interests), but I'll assume that if you had those constraints you'd have mentioned them (and water cooling is pretty marginal today).
...the upshot of this case isn't that tens of thousands of people will become felons...
18 USC 992(a)(3): "It shall be unlawful (3) for any person, other than a licensed importer, licensed manufacturer, licensed dealer, or licensed collector to transport into or receive in the State where he resides [...] any firearm purchased or otherwise obtained by such person outside that State, [exceptions not relevant here excised]".
It's probably the sort of thing that gets six months for the first offense, if I've read the Sentencing Guidelines and presuming no previous criminal history, but it's still a felony by its plain text.
The federal definition of firearm is separately extremely widely-reaching, and the Biden administration also fucked with the definition of 'engaged in the business' to such a point that people who aren't even selling guns can get hit with it, but you don't even have to do any gymnastics, here. We don't have exact numbers on how many people bought a covered kit, not least of all because the BATFE is absolutely playing 'we'll never tell' as to what is a covered kit, but just the strict examples of Polymer80 and BlackHawk kits that the opinion focuses on get somewhere in the literally hundreds of thousands of kits sold; tens of thousands is a low-end estimate (the BATFE estimated 2.1m PMFs, and 500k owners).
The only thing that's protecting anyone with one of these firearms is the difficulty tracking them down, the government's pinky promise that it won't bring enforcement from manufacture before the date of the rule's enactment, and Kavanaugh's committment to enforcing that 'willfully' mens rea. And there's reasons (that I've discussed with you!) that people have reason to be skeptical of every one of these things.
((And even that's overstating it, since the BATFE just disavowed retroactively enforcing a serialization requirement and has left definitions of the law so poorly described and so prone to change that people are probably today buying things that they think are legal, and that the ATF does not. And, you know, this case given tacit permission for the most expansive possible reads. The very argument that the Biden admin brought to court was that the terms 'always' included this prohibition, and that they're just clarifying what was always illegal 500k people ago.))
So what's really going is that it would take political capital and legal scrutiny that a Trump administration probably wouldn't want to bring, and a future Harris or AOC maybe wouldn't want to bring. Great, if you're not paranoid! Still a felony if you're praying they don't change their mind without having to change the law.
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.
It was a pre-enforcement challenge under the APA; the court decided to make that a facial challenge, as far as I can tell without even questioning the plaintiffs or providing clear examples of past opinions making APA pre-enforcement challenges. The court did go into several specific examples to highlight what they believed was clearly covered -- they refused to set bounds not because they wanted to leave the factual questions alone completely, but because they didn't want to deal with setting limits. People called this right after oral arguments.
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.
Yes, because of Gorsuch's opinion here, it will be impossible to seriously challenge this or almost any other new regulation, unless a manufacturer is willing to put both their freedom and their business on the line, and the BATFE decides to bring enforcement, and the manufacturer is able to put up the literally hundreds of thousands of dollars that a legal defense will involve while also having their business be considered proceeds of a crime, and the DoJ doubles down on enforcement for a case rather than punching out if and when it thinks there's a moderate chance of an unfavorable result, and and and.
Because the DoJ will be able to forum shop 'select the best jurisdiction for a relevant charge', these will be happening in the sort of circuits where judges will explicitly defy any interest in second amendment rights. In most cases, a distributor will have to commit hundreds or thousands of the same 'felony' just to keep their business or pay for material and capital until the DoJ notices them and decides to bring enforcement. Perhaps they'll be able to get money orders through, given the extent that the feds are willing to pressure financial institutions on this matter (that's a recent one, not the old Choke Point!).
If they are very lucky, the BATFE will not shoot their dogs.
That's my point. It's been my point since that Grisham rant; it's been my point since I first posted on this rule. The willingness of the courts to play along with procedural games around mootness, serious threat of prosecution, et cetera, have long stopped fulfilling any interest in judicial efficiency. The regulatory administration no longer cares about allowing people fair notice regarding what is and isn't illegal. Instead, we've made it impossible for people to know their rights, or to know what they need to do to comply with the law.
So, yes. Then, after all of the above, you might get a favorable result, even in light of the clearest violation of the statute's text possible.
gattsuru
8d ago
My point is that he did have an opportunity to prove his citizenship. Any parade of horribles predicated on not getting one kinda has to run by that point. If you're centered on the removal to El Salvador rather than any other country, which is all his protection from removal covers, that's certainly fair, and no small oopsie woopsies fucky wucky from the Trump admin, to absolutely no one's surprise. But it's a different class of problem.
((While I'd argue that mistake should count as a due process violation, I'm not sure it actually does under existing law; Baker and progeny have left the bounds of the due process clause very narrow even for actual citizens after actual hearings.))
gattsuru
9d ago
At least in Abrego-Garcia's case, the proceedings leading up to the October 10, 2019 hearing.
gattsuru
9d ago
I will caution that the DoD claims that it isn’t true (which they would) and more critically that the PAL was never used for the Minuteman, and the codes for the Minuteman never had eight digits
gattsuru
9d ago
I'm skeptical that even the raw brick of aluminum would be decided by courts, given the Saga of Defense Distributed and its progeny. The breadth of the rule here includes several not-very-subtle indicators around the Coast Runner-style deployments, and the DoJ did not disavow them, and SCOTUS didn't even care here enough to mention it in the opinion proper.
That’s kinda the crux of it. Were it reasonable to pretend that the court case was only over Polymer80, I might have some quibbles about notice and ex post facto laws, but I wouldn’t be anywhere near as frustrated with this case; the line between 80% and 81% lowers had always been a little prone to ATF fudging.
But Polymer80’s dead. Among living competitors among the plaintiffs, BlackHawk’s ‘kit’ didn’t include everything required to make the receiver, pointed not selling the kit and jig under one package (never mind the rest of the gun), and at the other extreme Defense Distributed sells ‘0% receivers’ (aka CNC machines with a block of aluminum) that would be a hilarious joke were the Biden DoJ willing to commit to not counting them too.
Without that, you’re leaving literally tens of thousands of people to retroactively become felons, with the defense that they can bet their freedom on it at any time and maybe win in a half-decade, over behaviors that were well-accepted for literally decades. If the major questions doctrine can’t cover that, it’s not clear what it does cover.
If you don't have dedicated audio outputs from your television (or other device), there are not-awful soundbars that are cheaper than a used 2.1 setup, and sometimes cheaper than just a used receiver for a 2.1 setup. If the comparison was something like a TCL S55H versus a standard receiver, a pair of 8" or 9" speakers, and a sub, you're... probably going to pay nearly twice as much for the not-soundbar setup, even used. For new, even powered speakers are hard to get in your price range without being garbage. If you really just want some bass, it's a hard argument to skip.
The other argument in favor of soundbars is size and convenience. About the only support you need is an available electrical socket and maybe a tiny shelf or table that you're probably setting your TV on anyway. Cabling-wise, the single HDMI (or toslink, or yada) is ... actually still more complex than you'd expect (do you want lossless Atmos? Because then you need eARC, and a compatible HDMI cable), but it's at least less of a spaghetti pile if you don't want to spend a weekend on cable management, even compared to a relatively simple 2.1 setup.
A Great soundbar config's still a little bit more expense than a used standard receiver+2.1 channel configuration (Wirecutter recs this, and they're about the only part of the Times I trust), but it's convenient enough that it's okay, and you can rarely get nicer soundbars with fancier configurations that can approximate a 4.1 configuration without paying too much more or having to route wires through drywall. For someone like me, who's neither an audiophile nor has particularly sensitive hearing, it can be a reasonable compromise. Or at least would, if I didn't use headphones religiously, or lived in an apartment.
For audio quality, yeah, I'll second Rov_Scam. Soundbars only really provide better bang for your buck when you're in the bargain basement, and for a lot of that space you're only going to get noticeable improvements if the television is absolute crap. Even at the higher end of your price range, the used 'standard' speaker market will win pretty quickly. Audio isn't quite like motor behavior -- there are replacements for displacement -- but the parts here are near-universally fungible, and the soundbars have extra constraints.
gattsuru
9d ago
Not much. The court filings mostly has the plaintiffs argue it as vagueness, and the state punting on that question as only relevant for as-applied challenges. If you know much about how milling works it's kinda incoherent -- not just in alloyed makeup, but also heat treatment and method of manufacture -- but I don't think anyone involved really did, or would care if they had.
In the oral arguments there was one aside, but it was heavily focused on metaphors and contradictory:
JUSTICE ALITO: I'm going to show you. Here's a -- here's a blank pad, and here's a pen, all right? Is this a grocery list?
GENERAL PRELOGAR: I don't think that that's a grocery list, but the reason for that is because there are a lot of things you could use those products for to create something other than a grocery list.
JUSTICE ALITO: All right. [crosstalk] If I put out on a counter some eggs, some chopped-up ham, some chopped-up pepper, and onions, is that a western omelet?
GENERAL PRELOGAR: No, because, again, those items have well-known other uses to become something other than an omelet. The key difference here is that these weapon parts kits are designed and intended to be used as instruments of combat, and they have no other conceivable use. And I think the further evidence comes from the fact that Respondents themselves agree that a disassembled gun qualifies as a weapon. So this is on page 37 of the VanDerStok brief.
JUSTICE ALITO: Okay. So that's helpful. So your definition is a group of components that can readily be converted into something and have no other use. They must have no other use in order to constitute that thing?
GENERAL PRELOGAR: In the circumstance
JUSTICE ALITO: In that situation, they already constitute that thing?
GENERAL PRELOGAR: I think that you can recognize that something is a weapon even if it's non-functional if it is clear from objective evidence of --
JUSTICE ALITO: No, I think that certainly is true from the face of the statute because it has to be -- it's sufficient if it's capable of being converted into -- into something that can expel a projectile. All right. Thank you.
JUSTICE BARRETT: General Prelogar, I just want to follow up on Justice Alito's question about the omelet. Would your answer change if you ordered it from HelloFresh and you got a kit, and it was like turkey chili, but all of the ingredients are in the kit?
GENERAL PRELOGAR: Yes. And I think that that presses on the -- the more apt analogy here, which is that we are not suggesting that scattered components that might have some entirely separate and distinct function could be aggregated and called a weapon in the absence of this kind of evidence that that is their intended purpose and function. But, if you bought, you know, from Trader Joe's some omelet-making kit that had all of the ingredients to make the omelet and maybe included whatever you would need to start the fire in order to cook the omelet and had all of that objective indication that that's what's being marketed and sold, we would recognize that for what it is. And it -- it doesn't stretch plain English to say, I bought omelets at the store, if you bought all of the ingredients that were intended and designed to make them, especially under statutory language that refers to something like breakfast foods or things that can be readily converted to make breakfast.
I think the logic would not include raw bauxite ore, in the same way that the hypothetical did not turn to raw wood pulp or a laying hen, but I'd not want to bet on it. Given the incoherence -- something counts if it has "no other use", except if it's marketed the right way it could have other uses -- I don't think anyone's seriously drawn lines for the question of how far they're willing to take the rule.
gattsuru
10d ago
To be fair, we (finally) did get a decision in Gustafson from the PA Supreme Court. After well over four years, and just shy of a year from oral arguments at the state supreme court, it turns out that the commerce clause lets the federal government control interstate lawsuits. Don't worry, though: many, many, different, states different states have taken the intermediate time to drive a truck through whatever interpretations they could find post-Remington.
VanDerStok has dropped.
In 2022, the Biden administration released the "frames or receivers", often known as "ghost gun" rule, reinterpreting the Gun Control Act of 1968. This law controls much of what distinguishes a "firearm" under federal law for purposes such as sale, manufacture, transfer, gunsmithing, and licensing of the above. Notably, it had long had an exception for self-produced firearms, either for Commerce Clause reasons or to avoid crushing hobbyists. There was even a small industry, dating back decades, in producing 'kits', of incomplete firearms or tools for creating firearms that could be manufactured at home or in common workspaces: many got explicit ATF permission.
Though these things could make firearms, they were not themselves firearms... until 2022, where they retroactively were. The previous standard had a concept of "80% lowers", which, though not official, were so well-understood in the business that the ATF has a webpage (still active today, don't take legal advice from the government!) specifying exactly what level of remaining manufacturing would be required to turn a non-firearm into a firearm. While obstinately focused on specific manufacturers with especially easy-to-produce firearms kits, this rule was expansive, poorly defined, and often incompatible with the basic text of the statute: the ATF argued that it could apply to nearly any material, under nearly any conditions, based not solely on the actual product but even on its marketing material or separate tools.
Nor was this rule some minor paperwork technicality. The simple unlicensed manufacture for sale of a firearm can earn five years prison for each count, and the guidelines range with no previous criminal history goes from two to three years. And there's a whole set of downstream regulations and statutes that can add onto that.
What did the court decide?
There, remember, the GCA authorizes ATF to regulate “any weapon (including a starter gun) which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive.” Inhering in this language are two requirements. First, a “weapon” must be present. Second, that “weapon” must meet one of three criteria: It must be able to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive, designed to do so, or susceptible of ready conversion to operate that way. As the Fifth Circuit saw it, §478.11’s provisions addressing weapon parts kits are facially invalid because no weapon parts kit can ever satisfy the statute’s two requirements. We disagree because, to our eyes, at least some kits will satisfy both.
There are some annoying procedural frustrations, here. Neither the questions presented, the cert petition, the response to cert petition, nor the district court opinion mention the challenge as "facial" at all. Only the last brief from respondents uses the word "facial", as the last allowed full filing, and does not do so under the defense that literally any reasonable application of the statute would prevent pre-enforcement challenges to any unreasonable ones. The SCOTUS opinion cites a BlackHawk complaint, but it and an appeals court opinion use the word only in the sense of the regulation being directly in conflict with the statute. SCOTUS does not provide a citation for the principle that APA challenges must show every possible enforcement of a law would be unreasonable; a dissent points out that the nearest similar matters are Salerno, Reno v. Flores, and INS v. NCIR, none of which were APA questions.
The federal government -- under Biden! -- specifically disavowed that "no set of circumstances" standard :
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: General, I want to know what our standard of review here is, because I can imagine a frame or receiver that is just a block of metal that -- not readily convertible. I can also imagine some part kits that require such tremendous amount of work that it doesn't qualify as readily convertible. So, if I can point to one item that wouldn't qualify, would -- could be swept up potentially by your -- by the new regulation, is that enough to defeat a facial challenge? Is it enough, or is that always an as-applied challenge?[...]
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: You -- you use the Reno -- you use the I -- our statement in INS versus NCIR, which basically tracks what you're just saying. But, in Reno versus Flores, we used a different standard and said that a respondent, to prevail, must establish that no set of circumstances exists under which the regulation would be valid. You didn't go that route.
GENERAL PRELOGAR: That would be an even more stringent standard [crosstalk] and I think a burden that Respondents can't surmount. But we think, even under the INS standard that we cite in our brief, it's very clear that there's nothing on the face of the Gun Control Act that [crosstalk] prohibits this approach to regulation.
What were the gun makers asked during oral arguments?
JUSTICE JACKSON: [...] Do you concede that under a facial challenge like the one that you've brought, your task is actually to demonstrate that your alternatives are the only permissible ones under the statute?
In theory, this isn't the last word on the matter. This was not a Second Amendment challenge to the regulation; you have to look elsewhere to see how absolutely doomed any such attempt would be. The majority opinion turning the plaintiff's question into a facial challenge does leave open as-applied challenges, should defendants be willing to risk their freedom at the court's pleasure, with the knowledge that even an imminent victory could be mooted and they be left with the bill.
It'd be funny to imagine the Trump admin taking some pro-gun funhouse mirror of the Obama-era suit-and-settle, or to willfully lose suits by arguing them as poorly as possible (Guilliani needs a job something to keep him busy, right?). We had a natural experiment on that, though, last time around. The punch line is that it didn't matter what the settlement said, because the contract was just a piece of paper.
Thankfully(?), there will be volunteers, whether they know it or not: the ATF's rules are so broad that they cover anything but a literal "unformed blocks of metal", and I'm not convinced that even the duration of the Trump admin will keep to the bounds of that rule. But I don't think they'll get anywhere with legal challenges; lower courts willing to defy Bruen are not going to read this opinion within its own four corners, and SCOTUS is punting on everything else anyway. Anyone that thinks the revival of the commerce clause would apply to them is gonna have a bad time no matter how square they are in Wickard v Fillburn territory. Instead, we're going to be stuck in a world where people don't even know the borders of the law that they're defying.
Takeaways:
- The court did not just decide the case for any enforcement of the regulation, but in dicta endorsed a bar that is low: a half-hour to hour of unskilled work with power tools available in normal stores. There's a fun takeaway in the majority opinion about a kit that someone was able to put together in 21 minutes, and perhaps that could be a reasonable bar, but it kinda falls apart when you find out that the guy was a trained mechanic who looked through several video guides beforehand and ended up doing it wrong enough the thing needed to be repaired later. The government didn't actually commit to nonenforcement for marginal cases (for whatever 'commitment' matters), but even had it, there are Actual Industrial Manufacturing Processes that do not require anything unavailable from Home Depot that could easily crank out a couple receivers from raw aluminum billet in that time. And, unsurprisingly, the usual crowd has taken this interpretation to every possible end; it might take a few months for lower courts to run rampant with it, but they'll make a Bungie AI look like a Jetsons character.
- This could be a new era in regulatory overreach, where Trump could write hilariously unlawful regulations and successfully defend them under the 1% of coverage that was actually within a statute, but odds are better this is just another One Case Only special, given the extent the opinion shies away declaring any test proper and leaves open space for the conventional words-mean-things review where Gorsuch hasn't decided that the statute's dead author had wanted to use artifact nouns. Again, months, not years.
- Did I mention Gorsuch wrote this opinion? I think that puts to rest the various claims that his extremism-in-defense-of-virtue rulings like McGirt or Bostock were just the inevitable conclusions of strict textualism: the textual analysis in this opinion is little more than mind-reading about what the writers must have wanted to cover and intended to do.
- There could be a statutory fix. Stranger things have happened, albeit not often. I'd not give it good odds, though, not just that the politics aren't in favor of it passing, but also that were it passed, there's no reason for the ATF to not just find the rule it wants again from the breadcrumbs. Once you endorse the dictionary-writers changing the meaning of words to fit whatever goal the Blue Tribe wants today, this sort of fair-weather textualism can be stretched to whatever one side wants.
- This guts the rule of leniency (at least for the purpose of gun stuff). If any interpretation of a rule can defend every interpretation, with a defense limited to post-jeopardy pleadings, people are stuck stumbling in the dark. There's some serious due process concerns, and they are unreviewable now.
- Maybe we'll get some massive revision in other cases on Second Amendment matters, but the tea leaves aren't looking great. Lower courts have been actively and aggressively defy the explicit text of well-settled law and good policy under nitpicking pretext, and there's been no serious attempts to slap them down. Duncan v. Bonta has dropped for a third time, it got the exact same answer as before the last GVR, it didn't even attempt any of the demanded Bruen analysis, and it's so unnewsworthy that if I had to write it up I'd be stuck focusing more on the VanDyke YouTuber stuff. Maybe one of Duncan, Ocean State Tactical, or Snope will get actual per curium rather than a GVR that lower courts resist, but even the actual cases the court hears get multilated by the lower courts, and SCOTUS clearly isn't willing to provide any protection from any of the multitude of abuses of Heller and Bruen we've seen, years in.
- That's two dissenting judges. This court got two. Yes, Kavanaugh separately wrote a concurrence that quibbles about the due process ramifications of only protected because the law requires "willful" violations, but given the ATF's record here and elsewhere, the court's unwillingness to take challenges to other expansive understandings of 'willful', and his inability to get literally anyone to sign onto that concurrence, that's weak medicine. Dedicated activists can take this, along with endless punting on 'easy' cases that would favor Second Amendment rights as a call to bring undeniable cases or to go VanDyke Or Bust for any future SCOTUS noms, but for everybody else, this makes The_Nybbler's position seem the reasonable one. You aren't going to reform the entire judicial system, state and federal, in any living person's lifetime, and nothing less will actually get your freedom back, while talking heads will pretend it's an unabashed success of the conservative movement that they didn't get everything they wanted the second they wanted it. Where planting fig trees makes for a great metaphor, it runs into problems when an entire political movement has been wildly successful bringing the copper nails around every four to eight years. The soap box, ballot box, and jury box might protect someone doing something, but they don't protect your rights.
For commentary on the internet,
- Paranoia Agent (2004, 13-episode anime), more of a psychological or supernatural horror than cyberpunk, but very focused on the surrealism of modern society. Not a good first anime because so much of it is intentionally unsettling, but fan be fulfilling if you're familiar with what conversations its having. Serial Experiment Lain (1999) falls into a kinda similar boat, though again pre-millenia and imo a lot of its futurist bits have aged far less well.
For general worthwhile classic anime, with some fudging for what range "early 2000s" includes:
- Cowboy Bebop (1998, 26-episode anime) is one of the ones that probably doesn't need recommendation, but any list missing it is incomplete. Technically pre-millenia, but most of the American following only tracked on in 2000/2001. Space bounty hunters undergo various bizarre antics, ranging from the morbid to the ridiculous and back.
- Kino's Journey (2003, 13-episode anime). Excellent animation and sound direction, broadly applicable themes, and strong execution, but the strongest part is simply the tone, which I'd call somewhere around 'The Little Prince, but with a gunslinger and talking motorcycle instead of a space-prince and his rose'.
- Pretty much everything from Ghibli, but Howl's Moving Castle (2004, film) and Spirited Away (2001, film) are probably the strongest 2000s ones, with Princess Mononoke and Kiki's Delivery Service being older great works. About the only one I won't recommend is Grave of the Fireflies, and that's less because of its quality and more because of its motif.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (2007, 27-episode anime), the central super robot anime. There's a few meh bits -- episode 4, for example, or the gratituous booba character -- but generally combines strong animation, style, music, and theme. A show that strongly rewards going into it relatively unspoilered, though.
- Dai-guard (1999), Gundam 08th MS Team (1996), or The Big O (1999) are all moderately-good 'realistic robot' anime. Not very realistic, but all good as a turnaround from TTGL.
- Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2009). The first anime (2003) wasn't bad, and familiarity with certain scenes are kinda a cost of entry in anime fan circles, but the remake was resoundingly stronger in characterization, in addition to a better budget and direction. There's other okay shonen from this era -- Soul Eater is the only one I can really call worth its time, and that's still in a popcorn sense -- but FMA:B is outright strong in nearly every respect.
- Mononoke (2007, 12-episode anime). The Medicine Seller must track down the cause and drive of various supernatural ailments, though this often focuses more on the moral failings and limits of the humans he's working to protect.
gattsuru
10d ago
Trace highlighted the New College of Florida as a potential example. There's ways that's had an impact, but in turn it's increasingly obvious that this will only last just so long as DeSantis is willing to burn a lot of political capital on it. Not Republicans in general, given the recent immigration enforcement mess, but DeSantis specifically.
gattsuru
11d ago
It’s not like STEM is immune, or even that resistant: the Hirsch-Dias feud is noteworthy only because we actually got to see the denouement in public, and the fraud was ‘replicated’. Had Hirsch not had such a bee in his bonnet, Dias would have ended up just like the Mxenes guys: maybe embarrassed, but Not Actually Proven.
gattsuru
12d ago
Yes. Yes it was.
Falsely.
I’m not gonna say that’s an exception the swallows the rule on its own. The wrong position on the ACA or AWB might be cited as wanting to kill poor people, before found justification for firing, and there’s other times where positions are seen themselves as evidence of disqualificating in capability, such as where just having the wrong background had an academic review board talk about ‘beating that college out of her’ (and, tot’s coincidence, not hiring her) . Of course, most stuff gravitates to race and sexuality as most controversial, regardless of the facts on the ground, and especially if Skibboleth is trying to distinguish ‘criminal justice’ and ‘immigration’, that makes for a self-parody. An RPG forum I once frequented formally banned any support of ICE or defense of antiabortion laws (and informally banned any serious criticism of BLM); there is no position that modern progressives will fail to call racist or sexist or both.
But let’s look again at Skibboleths claim:
The sticking point is basically always about either gender/sexuality or race, and often beliefs that would be considered boundary-pushing even in conservative milieus.
Not ‘understood as’. Not ‘painted as’. Is.
gattsuru
12d ago
Do you want some gun rights examples? Because oh boy do I have gunnie examples; shall we start with the people who did get fired for putting twenty bucks toward Rittenhouse’s defense fund?
Even for gender/sexuality, the progressive taboos are far more often dependent on matters that are not controversial, or worse are only controversial to the opposing direction. There’s fair argument against misgendering a trans school shooter, but it’s not some universal standard, and people did still lose literal careers over (liking a tweet that did) it.
gattsuru
29d ago
In this case, he must mean "I don't think the media is covering this enough", or "the media isn't being adequately sympathetic to Tesla".
Hm...
No, I don't think that's a particularly charitable phrasing on that.
In particular:
There would be mass media hysteria and FBI investigations.
"FBI" (nor "ATF") shows up in those articles, even the paywalled one, and even said 'ominous' report could scarcely be called hysteric. None mention another recent incident that one would consider relevant and is increasingly popular as a reblog target in BlueSky and Tumblr spheres.
gattsuru
30d ago
At the trivial level, it's something that's immediate, either in firsthand matters or in terms of someone they know. Yes, ostensibly these countries usually focus most enforcement on places where other legal jeopardy turns on less objectionable focuses (and actually avoid getting international tourists involved), but it's somewhat sobering to pack for a trip and put back the sex toy or leave behind a fanfic-in-progress after realizing that you'd be depending on that enforcement 'prioritization' to avoid serious jail time or worse.
And while the various polls about progressives thinking everyone in the political party is gay are kinda hilarious, they're downstream of enough of that one-in-twenty-ish that everyone knows a good few pretty closely.
At the more intermediate level, it's something that ends up with epicycles built around it. Russia doesn't just ban The Gays or pride parades, it bans 'propaganda' about The Gays, has a whole bunch of cultural stuff about stuff that hints of gayishness, and then there's an unofficial brigade of people with a lot of practical support among the police that don't mind if individual gays have Particularly Bad Safety Incidents.
It's a bit like how some rightwingers get really focused on HBD or religious freedom or (in my example) gun rights, even if they're not personally in the pinch point, because the support and actions for these policies end up fractally wrong, too. This usually runs into limitations sooner than liberals expect -- Qatar Airlines isn't cutting scenes out of Mitchels v. The Machines, since even if they cared that much they wouldn't see a lot of the subtext or short-of-bright-flashing-lights text -- but it doesn't stop at don't ask don't tell, either.
The deeper issue is that it's something that a) has basically zero organized internal opposition within the progressive movement, with only a tiny fragment of often-nutty people willing to tolerate disagreement with mainstream progressive pro-LGBT matters, and b) has external domestic opposition, of which the behaviors of external opponents becomes a useful banner. If Uganda has the death penalty for homosexuality (kinda, insert thirty asterisks here), and American social conservatives can be linked to these positions in general (again, asterisks), you don't have to limit your focus on what domestic policies those social conservatives might actually be trying to implement; you can tell everyone What They Really Want To Do To You (asterisk).
gattsuru
1mo ago
Do you have a link to the text of that grant application, rather than just the objective description?
Because there's a fair complaint about claims made without evidence, but when randomly selected high-profile examples with public evidence available come about, looking deeper into the matter -- and often not having to scratch the surface that hard! -- shows a lot of stuff getting hollowed out and skinsuited.
((And, yes, there's also the bit where UoI does the greengrocer bit:
To live out our land-grant mission, we set high goals for diversity, equity, inclusion, access, and belonging. Those goals permeate our universities and research, our healthcare facilities and the companies we help launch.
But that /could/ have been left off the grant application, and the whistleblower complaints not true. Still, if you have access, I'd be willing to make a bet at some moderate odds.))
[cw: probably implied tmi]
In straight porn, it's much more likely to be dom/sub or degradation stuff, especially straight not-pegging stuff, but that sells it a bit short. For the gays, a lot of it's psychological for non-dom/sub reasons, either a way to formalize preparing to top/ready to be topped, or as part of other play to help loosen someone up.
That said, there are some physical bennies, including many that aren't readily achievable in other ways. It's great for getting someone more in the mood before starting to stretch them out, for example. For the rimmer, there are some sensory benefits (if the rimmee is scrupulously clean; there's reason I joke about it being the only good arg for dental dams), but like eating someone out in other forms, it's very much about what you bring to it: if you're really focused on how your partner's reacting it can be a fun time from watching that. For dealing with women, you want to be a lot gentler and a lot more certain that everyone's on the same page, but it's a great option for people who like the sensation of hotdogging but don't like insertion there proper.
There's a lot of prep work involved, and it's definitely not for everyone, but it can be worth it.
It can, but there's some pretty serious practical differences long after any novelty's gotten the chance to wear off. Not all those differences are for the better -- they're a lot less forceful, so to speak, sometimes to the point of being minimally 'productive' -- but the difference in refractory period is measurable.
There are also sex toys that focus on backdoor and clitoral play, as well as some that are intended for the clit, front, and back. All are generally a not-favoured realm for more reputable companies, though, given the risks of cross-contamination.
That's, uh... not the only use case or argument for the design. Pressure on both the prostate and the rim is a significant part of the point (both in and out), and being able to have regular increases and decreases in that pressure can be beneficial. Beads are also built so that they can physical fit in lengths that would otherwise not be practical, even compared to similarly slim semi-rigid toys.
Partly, but also so that they can fit in and stay at a consistent depth, rather than getting pushed out. The flare, conversely, is more important to prevent anything from getting sucked up there.
There are toys designed for large and continuous insertions. Some of that's size queens, but with the right textures and reasonable sizes they can work out for normal butt people -- they're not as good for prostate play, but a lot easier to work with if you're focused more on the actual motion going in and out.
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