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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 21st, 2023

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  • Yeah, this was an easy one to call. It’s repeated in other countries as well.

    One other factor that they don’t mention is that the surge in street opioids corresponded to a crackdown on doctors writing opioid prescriptions. I saw this coming when I was doing policy analysis and looking at unintended consequences in complex systems. I don’t remember much about what degree of a surge we saw in prescriptions, but I do remember all of those “pill mill” headlines. That always struck me as a pretty manufactured crisis - but even if not, the crackdown certainly didn’t improve the situation.









  • The joke is that it is emphatically not deadnaming. It’s disregarding a preferred nickname, but calling into the discussion the topic of deadnaming because he and his culture are massively transphobic.

    I know we’re just two strangers passing in the night, but I want to be extremely clear that I would never deadname someone, regardless of their political beliefs or their stance relative to the trans community. I completely and totally respect the rights of all trans persons and for all people to define who they are.

    I will also continue to call X Twitter and refer to it as deadnaming for the same reason, but if tomorrow Elon were to come out as trans I would respect their chosen names and pronouns.

    I’m a cis gendered mostly gay man who has been active in the LGBT political and civil rights community since the days of ACT UP, I know the semiotics of genderism well enough to put together a course on it, and I’ve seen every episode of Pose.

    I know your comment was very well meant, and I am in no way criticizing you for it. It’s coming from the best of places. I just want to be very clear where I’m coming from as well.



  • It’s just political posturing.

    1. They don’t have a military. The National Guard units would come under the command of the President of the US, and any units in rebellion would know they’re facing courts martial for crimes that would be career limiting in that the penalties could include anything from life in prison to execution. It’s literally treason by the legal definition.
    2. Even if any significant number of troops were to choose to violate the law, modern war isn’t about riflemen. There’s a massive infrastructure required to keep tanks and planes running, not to mention things like carrier battle groups. Northrop and Raytheon aren’t going to be forfeiting USG contracts to sell missile systems to Ohio.
    3. Only the president has the nuclear codes, so nuclear blackmail can’t work either.

    There isn’t going to be another civil war. Too much has changed between then and now in terms of military and economic organization. This is just Texas whacking off yet again, as they did under Obama and Bill Clinton.

    The very real risks we’re facing are the election of Donald Trump - this is the biggest threat - and far right domestic terrorism. The former is an existential threat to the United States and should be treated as such. The latter is a law enforcement issue and should be treated as such. I suspect the Proud Boys are infiltrated all to hell as are the other major organizations, but there’s the potential for a significant amount of harm being done on a larger than 9/11 scale, although it’d be drawn out.



  • It’s not a totally unreasonable impression, but no, this will not turn into a second civil war. The Guard units of each state can be called up for federal duty. The National Guard is part of the US Department of Defense and thus ultimately answers to the DoD and the US president as commander in chief. The US military has multiple components, including regular services (eg the full time Army), reserve components (eg US Army Reserve) and National Guard components. The latter two are part-time military with one weekend per month training duty plus an annual training. Guards members and Reservists hold regular full time jobs.

    The Guard units are deployable by the governors of their respective states, and so can be used in emergency situations like natural disasters. They have also been deployed against what have been perceived as riots that threaten lives and properties of the individual states.

    However, they are subject to activation by order of the US president and they fall under the national command authority. Guard personnel take the same oath to the constitution as other military personnel, and cannot legally refuse federal activation. Guards personnel would be subject to courts martial and face potentially extreme penalties including being discharged from service under criminal conditions, being stripped of rank and benefits, and jail time in federal prison. This would be what we call a career limiting rule.

    So, if push comes to shove, Biden can activate the NG and order them to stand down or to implement policies to maintain order. Thinking the NG units and in particular their commanders would disobey a presidential order because they just love their state governor and hate the president so much is getting into Turner Diaries levels of right wing apocalyptic fantasy.


  • I’ll change my socks every day, and more if I’m swapping out workout clothes for fresh clothes.

    Oddly, I really don’t experience foot odor. Other bits can get rather ripe, but whether I’m wearing boots or going barefoot, my feet just do t get funky. That said, I have had athlete’s foot and I’ve seen what happens when someone doesn’t change their socks after days of marching and working in the field. I know it’s not a major danger for me at this point, but I’ve got a whole drawer full of socks, and in any case I want them to match with my shoes and pants.


  • I know. I’m old enough that I worked through the Y2K problem. Not me literally - I was working on a different class of systems - but I literally sat next to COBOL devs who were paid to work on green screens on an IBM midframe for more than half their time to get rid of the two digit date representations on systems operating cellular communications as well as the ones that ran sales and services for a large telecom company. It was my first real job in the industry, and I remember the Gateway type computers sold at Sears with the “Y2K Compatible!” stickers on the front.

    My phrasing was both tongue in cheek and a callback to another problem that similarly had some people dreading the end of the world with nuclear reactors running amok and planes crashing from the sky.

    In any case, he had a bigger impact on the world than most humans ever will, and going out peacefully at 85 really doesn’t sound all that bad.

    It would have just been really funny if his gravestone could have listed his dates as Born June 6 1936 - Died December 13 1901.



  • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlHave mercy on our souls
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    6 months ago

    People also like to argue it’s an acronym, but do you pronounce NASA the same as you pronounce the first letter of each word of National Aeronautics and Space Administration?

    Um, yes?

    I’m assuming we’re talking about the two A letters here, since nothing comes to mind about a different pronunciation of N or S in American English.

    In American English - at least in my experience - the first sound in aeronautics is exactly the same as in “air,” which is also the same as in “administration.” We don’t generally say it as in “ear-onautocs.”

    Also, I’m curious - has anyone ever published a study describing whether or not the difference in pronunciation differs between sectors in the computer science community? Particularly, is there a difference between normal developers and those who write in a Lisp?


  • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlDragons
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    6 months ago

    Wings evolve from legs though, generally speaking. This means that a four legged dragon with wings would have conceivably evolved from a six legged creature. You can get hand-wings or arm-wings, and we’re not entirely sure but think insect wings may have also evolved from legs or some other kind of similar structure.

    But pretty much you can either have wings or legs/arms. You have to trade them in. That’s why the whole angel/demon thing doesn’t work either. The traditional harpies work but they’d be furry and not feathered. I haven’t worked out the wingspan for them but you could probably come up with a reasonable guess. They’d be more bat-people than bird-people, and I suspect that their chest areas would be less generously proportioned than is typically seen in the artwork. I’m not going more into the physics of that one though.



  • I bought the steam deck with the largest storage available, and still ended up picking up a 1Tb SD card. I wouldn’t end up tossing that idea unless you have a modest library without a lot of the big footprint games.

    I’ve reached that point where I’ll spend some extra money to avoid the inconvenience of having to redownload a game if it’s at all unavoidable, and the internal storage gets filled up a lot faster than you’d think. You know your own library and habits, but you might be happy to have one on hand.