domain:arjunpanickssery.substack.com
LotsRegret
1hr ago
Sure.
Here are some examples of the extra legal and other groundwork the GOP/Trump did this time to prevent a 2020 repeat.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-prepared-pivotal-court-battles-could-decide-2024-election
https://apnews.com/article/trump-rnc-jan-6-legal-team-lawsuits-13d24822cc4899e5934a07661fe649e3
flailingace
2hr ago
It's not about maximizing harm to Russia. It's about harming Russia in a way that doesn't destabilize it. Western intelligence is terrified of the balkanization of Russia, because it has nuclear weapons stored all over the place, and even one ending up under the control of a lunatic would be enough to end the world. See also my comment one level up for my fuller thoughts.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2hr ago
People still do. I think it was shunted through YouTube for a while; there are pretty large groups that moved from video game covers to mainstream covers to live shows. For all I know this has moved to TikTok.
We still have things like an Avett brother doing a ten piece tribute album. Here’s Duran Duran covering all sorts of stuff. I personally loved the covers on Adrian Quesada’s Boleros Psicodelicos.
And then there’s Europe. I was going to say Eurovision, but the song I had in mind was actually X-factor. Talent programs may have peaked twenty years ago, but they’re still a source of covers!
I voted for Harris and I'm annoyed that I have to deal with 4 more years of Trump, but I'm mostly fine. I am even looking at the silver lining a bit since he has some interesting people in his orbit.
But all of my liberal friends are so bummed. I'm not sure what to do about it. I kind of want to take them and just shake them a bit and say look everything will be fine. Stop believing the propaganda. We're not descending to Christian fascism! We're not going to have a national abortion ban! This will almost certainly not affect your life in any way! Nothing ever happens!
But I think that might be the wrong approach.
I guess I'll let them process their grief and come out of their shell when they're ready.
In the meantime, my urge to troll right now is 11/10 since a small part of me uncharitably considers these displays as very histrionic grief vanity. But I am resisting, for now.
TitaniumButterfly
2hr ago
Man I am getting severely Baader-Meinhof'd about Rumble today. Swear I've never heard of it until last night, and four references since then.
flailingace
2hr ago
Okay, the answer to this is actually pretty simple.
In short, the fear of all the Western players is nuclear escalation. There are three ways this likely happens. One: Ukraine starts winning the war, and Putin is pushed into a corner. Two: Russia starts winning the war and gets too close to NATO countries, which leads to direct conflict with NATO, which Russia cannot hope to win without relying on nuclear weapons. Three: regime change in Russia. Putin is a known entity, but anyone who takes his place, especially in the context of a coup, would likely be more radical. Putin already keeps a lot of radicals around who are openly calling to use tactical nuclear weapons, and in a regime change scenario we have no idea who would end up on top.
Once you have this framework, everything NATO and the Biden admin has done is obvious. They can't let Russia win the war, but they also can't let Ukraine win the war. So what's the solution? Slowly degrade Russia's capacity in a way that doesn't destabilize the country, until eventually their economic and domestic issues become so serious that Putin thinks it's better to come to the negotiating table.
What are the problems with this? We're seeing them right now. Firstly, Russia is not as alone on the world stage as Western leaders thought. Putin has in fact built a coalition of autocratic states that are backing his play. North Korean arms and troops are now directly participating to cover the manpower losses in the Russian army. Iran likewise has fully aligned with Russia. This threatens to make the Ukraine war into a world war without the West changing their policies.
Second, the West does not understand the Russian people. Russia is perhaps the most fatalistic country in the world, and also one of the most resilient. The Russian people can handle a lot of suffering and punishment. Poorer Russians are quite happy to roll the dice as assault soldiers in a war where they will very likely die. For Westerners, a mortality rate of 5% in our military would be shocking - nobody would sign on. But a poor Russian with no other path to prosperity (many of them actual criminals freed from prison for this chance) will sign on to a 50% chance of death, shrug his soldiers and say "maybe I'll get lucky". Russians are also quite patriotic, and willing to suffer to see their country succeed. Combine this with the increasing levels of information control (it is, for instance, illegal in Russia to speak poorly of either the government or the military) and you'll see why there is no public outcry against the war - Putin's popularity has actually increased as the war drags on, despite signs that the Russian economy could well collapse within a year. In other words, there is no pressure on Putin to change. Quite the contrary, things really seem to be going his way.
Western countries, if they were able to continue the current levels of support, might have been able to continue the war at the current level for another year, at which point there's a real chance the Russian economy would fall apart. This was essentially the Biden strategy. However, Ukraine is almost at the end of it's rope. They cannot recruit enough to sustain the fight, as anyone who was going to volunteer did so two years ago. And many Western publics have gotten tired of spending boatloads of money on a strategy that has not been explained to them, that in fact looks like a black hole of taxpayer funds with no end in sight.
And so, I'm somewhat hopeful about Trump coming in. I think he can credibly threaten to change the status quo. The way I imagine it is: he proposes a cease-fire deal, which both Russia and Ukraine must refuse based on their geopolitical needs. Then, because Russia turned it down, this gives Trump carte blanche to increase support, not just in materiel but in the permission to strike into Russia that Biden has been refusing for the past two years. In other words, Trump may have the freedom to actually apply pressure to Putin in a way that the Biden alliance has steadfastly refused to do out of fear of escalation. I may be wrong, and Trump will swing the other way and force Ukraine to roll over and surrender. But I personally doubt it. I don't think he wants to go down as a deal-maker who lost a negotiation with Putin. I think he's fundamentally a bully, and will effectively use the power of the US to force Putin into a negotiation where Trump comes out looking like the winner. As far as I can tell, that's what the MAGA people mean by peace through strength.
Throwaway05
2hr ago
I think the perception is more important than the reality here. The lefts wants to paper over all of her faults right now, but if she had won give it 5, 10, 20 years and their is going to be a big old asterisk on the first female president.
That Scarlett Letter would be tough to manage in the long term.
Throwaway05
2hr ago
I can't endorse this enough. I've been more positive than you on Trump for a long time, but even with that (as well as an outright hatred of the woke) I still bought some of the propaganda, and I never really had an interest in hearing his speeches.
Now he sits down with Rogan, they both sound reasonable despite the spin, and their personalities make sense and match to others I have encountered in my life. I don't think Trump meets the criteria for narcissism after that interview, and Vance is clearly one of us regardless of any flip-flopping.
Even with all the practice in avoiding the democratic propaganda machine I still fell for it.
DradisPing
2hr ago
In one of Canada's few contributions to the English language, it's actually the Dominion of Canada.
It's meant to convey a large self governing territory that's part of a larger empire where there are sparsely populated areas and native tribes that aren't exactly under the control of the government, but don't have the population or organization to be recognized as their own territories.
SteveKirk
2hr ago
I just like sprites more than 3d models, maybe weirdly. Plus it means my next PC build can be a 9800x3d with the same GTX 970 I've had for 6 years.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2hr ago
Jesus Christ.
I only knew SAE for something extremely tasteless they did while I was in school. I’d worry about giving away personal information, but their list of incidents is too long to really narrow it down.
Does your Trump theory have any predictive power? The valence was basically predetermined as soon as they said the word “fraternity.” Calling it a hate crime is a pretty natural addition when they’re on video calling him a faggot or whatever.
Here’s a local site with a similar spin.
TitaniumButterfly
2hr ago
Almost like some kind of motte and bailey?
SteveKirk
2hr ago
Jesus, glad you got lucky. Is your bathroom fan on a timer that runs for hours a day? That was code for my place, but disabled it right away.
Having a washer and dryer in the house rather than a shed sounds like a lot of trouble. I'd never even thought about dealing with lint in an interior.
DradisPing
2hr ago
The only downside is, it's not 3d. Why, I can't tell you,
I prefer Satisfactory because I like the 3d.
However there are definitely people who strongly prefer the circuit diagram type problems that Factorio makes you solve.
It could be a visual thinker thing. Or possibly a electronics vs software background.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2hr ago
and yet when people say that we shouldn't be doing it, the argument is that we've got to protect the poor Ukrainians. There's this maddening bullshit arbitrage between "protect the Ukrainians from the evil Russian Orcs", and "We should harm the Russians as much as possible, who cares what it costs the Ukranians."
Folamh3
2hr ago
Last year my girlfriend bought me the book A Hero of Our Time by Lermontov, as I discussed here.
Folamh3
2hr ago
nightcore version
Gen Z "listen to a song at the tempo at which it was originally recorded" challenge (this is impossible)
gattsuru
2hr ago
I'd recommend it even if renting: bathroom fans in particular are pretty prone to get clogged with random junk. And even without a fire, the reduced airflow from lint can be enough to promote mold in bathrooms if you take showers often. Landlord should take care of it between renters, but there's a lot of space between should and did.
Even hand-cleaning with a wire-brush-on-a-stick is pretty effective. Just be sure to hit the inlet at the drier, the outlet where it exhausts, and then run an empty no-heat cycle on the drier for a couple minutes -- a lot of people clean out the side nearest the drier heavily, and then get surprised that the outlet gets clogged.
MathWizard
Good things are good
2hr ago
That last link on Maryland's laws is confusing me. In particular, section (c) is almost redundant. It's basically trying to say "parents with photos of their kids who happen to be nude aren't in violation unless it's like actually porn" to prevent overapplication of the law where it's not intended, so that when your four year old goes streaking across an otherwise wholesome family video you don't go to jail as a sex offender.
But the specific wording in section (c) is different from the wording in section (a), which draws attention to the differences. In section (a), it says you can't have media where the minor is
(1) engaged as a subject of sadomasochistic abuse; (2) engaged in sexual conduct; or (3) in a state of sexual excitement.
In section (c) it says parents may not have media of their own children where the minor is engaged
(1) as a subject of sadomasochistic abuse; or (2) in sexual conduct and in a state of sexual excitement.
Which means that parents specifically ARE allowed to have content where their child is engaged in sexual conduct XOR in a state of sexual excitement, as long as it's not both simultaneously???
Is this reading correct? Maybe they're trying to ward off the case where a two year old is having their diaper changed and pops a boner randomly? I'm not sure why you'd be filming that in the first place, but I suppose it makes sense not to prosecute it on the same level as actual CP.
However this opens a logical loophole where it appears that the law as written would allow pornographic videos involving your own children (with unambiguously sexual conduct), as long as it's not sadomasochistic in nature, and the child themself is not sexually excited by it (so them pleasuring an adult would be fine), since such an act wouldn't meet the criteria for c1 or c2. What am I missing here?
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
3hr ago
I have a big issue with your statement. It sounds correct but in my mind doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Yes, but I'm not concerned about whether it stands up to scrutiny in your mind; I am only concerned about whether it stands up to scrutiny in reality.
What is reality? Who decides that exactly?
Let us say the institutions claim there is definitely no train coming down a set of railroad tracks. Reality is what decides whether someone standing on the tracks when that train arrives gets crushed or not.
MollieTheMare
3hr ago
Glad it mostly worked out fine.
The lack of a proper place to mount extinguishers is a major flaw in the residential building code, IMO. Like the IBC spent the last three revisions updating the spacing of outlets on a kitchen island, but there's no standard place to mount an extinguisher.
For those who are not renting, I highly recommend just buying a vent cleaning kit. Online or at the home center. Apparently you are supposed to clean your dryer vent every year, and if you already own a drill and vacuum, a cleaning kit is less than the cost of calling a chimney sweep out. Once you're set up, the additional time per vent is pretty small.
MathWizard
Good things are good
3hr ago
Not quite. There's still the broader bathroom that itself contains the stalls. Men and women both are going to feel less comfortable pooping in a stall next to someone of the opposite sex, and coming out and washing their hands, or doing makeup, or whatever. Not that it's super comfortable to do that among people of the same sex, but its worse if they're opposite. All of the unisex bathrooms I've encountered are real life are defined that way because it's like a normal house bathroom: one room with one toilet, one sink, and a lock on the door. From that perspective then, the benefit of sex-segregated toilets is the economy of scale because you can build 5 stalls in a large room much more cheaply than you can build 5 separate rooms.
You know when you’re watching a movie and a line of dialogue includes the title of the movie?
Same energy as this comment.
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