𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍

The top YouTube comment hit the nail on the head, though: the problem is that 49 million people didn’t watch the Carolina rally.

Thank you.

Well, shit. I never thought I’d see the day something like this made progress in a 1st world (economically; I know there are connotations, but I don’t know a better, more PC term) country.

Go (South) Australia!

Bonus if it can edit .sc files, a-la the best spreadsheet editor, sc-im.

Oh yeah. We are super sensitive about our subs.

I once worked for a compny that subcontracted out to the government and to comanies contracting with the government. We were bidding on a job working with some company who was making sonar systems for the nuclear subs, and I was brought along to basically represent the dev team to work on the (a?) software component. I had to get a secret security clearance, which - if you haven’t been through this - is a dozen or so pages of the last decade of everything about your life: every address you’ve lived at; a list of people and contact information who’ve known you for that entire time and who will vouch for you; every job you’ve held and contact info for the companies… everything except an actual anal probe. And remember, I had to do this just to get into the building to talk to these people. I mean, maybe not normally, but they weren’t going to waste their time talking to me if I didn’t have the clearance. Then when I got there, it had the craziest security I’d ever seen: an outside badge door, so you had to call someone to get you, a little room with a security guard station, then another secure door the security guys had to open. And then there were badge doors in the building for different sections.

The job sounded fun: I was told one phase of testing required the developers to go on a test cruise, to answer questions and debug while underway; getting to ride in a nuclear sub (without having to join the Navy) might have been worth suffering my claustrophobia and massive distrust of submarines in general. But we didn’t win the bid, and I never got to use that security clearance that was such a massive PITA to get.

Anyway, it made me very conscious of just how serious the US takes submarine security. This guy, I expect, will disappear into an oubliette and never be heard from again.

It was a moment of nihilistic pessimism.

I was in the Army in the 80s, near the end but still during the Cold War. We were still training with the Soviets as the presumptive adversaries.

So one time I was home on leave visiting my family. I was out late with friends and came back in the wee hours to find the front door locked; with no key, I just curled up on the front porch and went to sleep.

I was awoken by an explosion: the sound filled the air and kept roaring. It was still night, but over the houses in the direction of The Big City dad’s house was close to, the sky was bright as daylight. I panicked and banged on the door - I was certain The City had been nuked, and WWIII had started.

Turns out, there’s an Air Force base at The City, and sometimes the jets took off and used their afterburners, which made that loud percussive roaring sound that could be heard for miles. The light I saw was… just light pollution from The City. I wasn’t used to that much light pollution, and waking up from a dead sleep to it, my brain didn’t process it.

While I didn’t quite soil my pants, the incident scared me more than I think anything else has in my life, before or since. I think, with Putin’s efforts over the past decade to resurrect the Soviet empire, I’ve been low-key expecting a nuclear incident, which is almost impossible to not have escalate.

Escalations at the Eastern borders of Western Europe alarm me more than anything else. If India and China start posturing, that’d be worse, probably. But it’s the cycle that makes this concerning, and the fact that so many Americans seem to have forgotten why our (great-)grand-parents fought WWII, and are embracing and defending fascism, deflates me.

So maybe a little joking there? But mostly just defeatist. If someone like Trump can get elected, and has a serious chance of re-election; if our supreme court is partisan and has clearly corrupt members; I don’t know. What do you think?

It’s been a couple of generations since we’ve had a world war. We’re due. With any luck, the Russian nuclear arsenal will be in as good shape as the rest of their military.

Block the poster, or the whole magazine?

Thank you for your service.

This is the kind of hard-hitting science we need!

Not just you. I don’t remember which Fallout game I got, but it probably wasn’t the first, and I got to like the second objective where I’m supposed to help some settlement restart their power generator by finding some part, and I realized I was too bored to continue. It was like I could see the entire game stretched ahead of me as more of the same.

Not all games are for all players, so I never thought “Fallout sux”; it just wasn’t my bag. I think the Fallouts are micro-farming long-winded objectives for really small benefits; I guess a lot of people like that, but it’s not for me.

AND it seems that cultures either domesticated cats or ferrets for the same purpose: pest rodent maintenance.

I find it not surprising, but really interesting, that some of the animals that have become the most common pets in the West had competition; and that it may have taken only some relatively small events and it could be raining foxes and ferrets instead of cats and dogs.

Last time they tried this (that was Munich IIRC) it was just too early. All they really had access to was OpenOffice, which - and I appreciate all the work that went into it by all the selfless contributors! - was kind of shit. Now there are a least three office suites with decent MS compatibility, which is critical for being a functioning part of a larger organization, not to mention Office365 web if worst comes to worst. At least they wouldn’t have to roll back everything if they encounter problems, like Munich did.

This is great news.

Bail is something you post to keep you out of jail you’re already going to, it’s not debtor’s prison. And we do it all the time; when people can’t post bail, they continue on to jail.

I love examples of why it’s wrong to equate the actions of a faction with the whole people. Israelis are not Netanyahu, Palestinians are not Hamas, Russians are not Putin, and Americans are not Trump. We can argue about culpability of citizens in the actions of their leaders, much as we can argue whether a person’s parents are responsible for their behavior, but whether they’re effective or not these protestors, and people like them, restore some of my faith in humanity.

It’s always the young adults who are fighting against the evils of the old leaders, isn’t it? I’m telling you, the world needs Carousel.

while leaving most intact.

Judge McAfee’s decision found that six counts out of the 41-count indictment against Mr. Trump […] lacked sufficient detail.

Emphasis and eliding is mine.

He dismissed 6 of the 41 charges, saying that if prosecution wants to refile with more information they can.

The article claims this a “victory” for Trump, which is about as generous a definition of “victory” as I’ve ever read.

Was going to say, you may still have to swing it around and strike a pose for a cosplay pic, maybe check if it’s going to hang awkwardly in the scabbard of the costume, or maybe just let that little inner kid loose in the back yard in some imaginary battles against hordes of invaders. Maybe you want to know if it’s going to rattle alarmingly, or feel as if the blade will fly off the hilt at any moment.

They may be toys, but you still don’t want to be buying crap that’s going to fall apart in the middle of a con.

Now’s a great time to learn about rate limiting and honeypots. Even so, I hope you can talk them down further seeing as you don’t sound like a large company.

I wouldn’t.

Actions speak louder than words. It doesn’t matter (to me) what Putin’s justifications are for anything he’s doing; I don’t care. This is the world stage: I can see what’s happening, and this is enough for me to judge.

If I had to negotiate with him, I’d care. But that’s not my job, so I get to judge him by his actions.

Sláva Ukrayíni!

Yup. Super dark period in US history, and a tragic couple, regardless of their crimes. Not a good look for us.