650 karma · joined June 19, 2022
It had been installed in my father's office and he took me in to see it one day. After going through a three-week (!) course on how to use it he taught me how to use it and I probably submitted the first word-processed book report in the history of my school.
I have very fond memories of that 200lbs behemoth.
If we were passing downwind of a landmass I could smell it even if I couldn't see it!
Both trees and regular dirt have a smell that carries for miles and miles and when you've been on a fiberglass boat with no trees and dirt for days the smell really, really, stands out.
I imagine that ancient maritime explorers, at sea in the vast oceans for weeks not days, would have been able to smell remote forested and guano-covered islands for hundreds of miles.
If the students would simply stop raping people and dying of fentanyl overdoses which lead to their parents suing the school I'm sure Stanford would not have as many rules for what occurs on campus.
Or we can choose as a society to free Stanford of civil liability for the actions of people who aren't Stanford employees on its campus.
It is normal, typical, common, and expected for universities in the United States to completely prohibit alcohol consumption on campus.
These rules seem like an attempt to regulate on-campus activities to a degree much lower than in public institutions.
The US-Korean SOFA (status of forces agreement) was amended in the mid-2000s to segregate US military personnel in Korean prisons from the general population and:
1. Allow them to bathe at least once every five days
2. Prevent forced labor requirements from exceeding 12 hours per day
3. Provide food prepared to the standard of the US military in lieu of Korean food
4. Provide undergarments like underwear and socks to supplement their prison-issued smocks
https://www.usfk.mil/Portals/105/Documents/Publications/Regu...
Prior to this change labor often exceeded 12 hours per day, the physically larger US personnel were collapsing due to malnutrition, bathing was not permitted, nor were socks and underwear.
When I was there, pre-SOFA amendment the briefings were very detailed about the conditions under which prisoners lived as part of a "scared straight" initiative-- "Don't fuck up or you'll wish you were in Leavenworth, here is the shit, with photos, of what South Korean prisoners go through."
A British consulate guide notes the meagre diet and harsh conditions prisoners operate under.
>Meals are adequate, but very Spartan. British Nationals sometimes cannot fully adjust to the Korean diet. Funds from the prison work programme can be used to buy a small quantity of supplemental foods.
>The Korean authorities do not tolerate dissent from prisoners (e.g. assaulting or talking back to guards, or for refusing to co-operate or follow instructions). Their methods for handling dissent can be harsh, and on occasion has resulted in physical abuse. Such abuse is unacceptable, and we will take it up with the Korean authorities on your behalf if you so wish. You may also raise it with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Well, maybe it was true 30 years ago, but it is no longer.
The vast majority of US states have transparency laws no different from Florida.
https://granicus.com/blog/foia-101-public-record-laws-in-eac...
https://www.muckrock.com/place/
https://www.nfoic.org/state-freedom-of-information-laws/
https://www.rcfp.org/open-government-guide
Floridaman is a thing, but not because of Sunshine laws.
Floridaman reports are usually cheap-and-easy police blotter retreads for maximum clicks at minimal cost and practically every jurisdiction everywhere publishes their police blotter.
This may have changed since I lived there in the early 2000s, but they shave your head and make you perform hard labor for 12 hours a day, usually farming to raise most of the food that you will eat while incarcerated.
In the South Korean Army, seniors beat juniors with impunity and abuse them so brazenly that US soldiers get briefings to "mind your own business" when they arrive and again before any joint operations with the ROKA-- and the prisons are worse. My roommate when I lived there was a KATUSA, a Korean soldier who spoke English who was embedded in the US Army, and he was happy every single day because every Korean male has to be in the army and "in the US army they don't beat the shit out of you".
In the US a fraudster like Kwon will go to a facility like FCI Otisville.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/41°29'47.0%22N+74°31'38.0%...
Please note the tennis courts and baseball diamond.
When you ask for examples of this happening they get really mad and try to hide your question by downvoting it.
8 million being children aged 0-14
46 million being "working aged" 15-64
36 million being 65 or older
Population Projections for Japan: 2006-2055 Outline of Results, Methods, and Assumptions (PDF) https://www.ipss.go.jp/webj-ad/WebJournal.files/population/2...
Let's ignore the assertion that 15 and 16 year olds are "working aged" no matter how you allocate resources 46 million workers cannot support 36 million retirees.
Today there are around 3 million healthcare workers in Japan out of a working aged population of 80 million. In 30 years the number of retirees will be the same but the working aged population will roughly halve. This is just people working in hospitals, in-home care specialists are not counted. Nor are bureaucrats, only workers in 24 categories of direct-support healthcare fields are counted.
Human Resources for Health Country Profiles: Japan (PDF) https://apps.who.int/iris/rest/bitstreams/1147882/retrieve
There are already critical shortages of healthcare workers and in 30 years the demand will be the just about the same (most healthcare resources are consumed by the elderly) but the labor pool will be smaller.
If there were 0 bureaucrats there still wouldn't be enough people.
Many European nations face the same demographic challenges that Japan does, to a very slightly less severe degree.
Robots are one solution.
As far as I'm aware, there are only categories of people when it comes to "the invention of the GUI":
1. People who know it was a long and involved development process involving many people starting in the 1960s.
2. People who don't care.
edit: Lol y'all some bitches.
As far as Assange goes I think he is a liar.
The primary piece of evidence I use to support this is that he claims that his media firm, Sunshine Press was a non-profit when its documents of incorporation list it as a private limited company.
https://www.facebook.com/WikiLeaks.SunshinePress
>Official Facebook Page-- The Sunshine Press (Wikileaks), is an international non-profit organization
(That's all I've got as its website is dead now)
Incorporation document: https://www.scribd.com/doc/47601520/SUNSHINE-PRESS-PRODUCTIO...
Definition of EHF: https://island.is/en/limited-liability-companies
A second piece of evidence is that the original release of Collateral Murder was edited to remove the armed men accompanying the journalists who were killed and the unedited version was only released after public outcry. The presence of armed men escorting the journalists may have been used to justify the attack, which occurred just a couple hundred meters from an active firefight, so the context was deleted in the initial release.
A third piece of evidence is that Assange lied to John Young, a highly-respected member of the "leaking" community to get him to register the original Wikileaks domain waaaay back in the day and then the Wikileaks community turned on John when he dared speak out.
https://cryptome.org/wikileaks/wikileaks-leak.htm
Finally, a fourth piece of evidence is that they used Wau Holland (Chaos Computer Club) as an initial fundraising arm to funnel money to Sunshine Press, and Wau Holland promised an audit of the substantial sums of money being directed to Sunshine Press, but they only ended up publishing three bare-bones "transparency reports" after millions had been spent and their tax-free status had been revoked for funding a for-profit enterprise. Once it became impossible to funnel donations tax-free to the for-profit business through Wau Holland donations slowed, communications stopped, and the association between the two ended. Please note that none of the banking shenanigans going on at the time impacted Wau Holland.
https://wauland.de/en/projects/enduring-freedom-of-informati...
Does any of the above make me an authoritarian?
That seems extremely extreme to me but as a fan of water so >0 Primes and/or Splenda packets per day every day seems extreme so I may lack context.
I think most Quests are doing what mine is doing: sitting in a drawer unused.
In my case it was because my pupillary distance is too wide for the Quest (and almost every other VR headset) so everything looks blurry all of the time no matter what.
It sucks being only slightly smaller than Hafþór Björnsson.
Every person I know who has a Quest bought Beat Saber and Job Simulator, played for a couple of weeks, and then put it away.
Every time I ask for examples people get angry, or if they're mask-off they reply with a very obviously drug-addicted hyper-racist, hyper-sexist, men's rights advocate who is pretending to be a doctor or guru or alpha male and who is, as part of their "cancellation", raking in millions from basement dwelling losers who like being told that they are special and the world is against them and so it's obvious that the cancellation controversy surrounding them is a grift.
Now I can walk.
Hooray for god complexes!
In surgeons it means they have the confidence to perform some of the most difficult tasks a human being can undertake and is a net positive even though it makes them difficult to be around.
With cryptobros it makes them easier to catch after their schemes inevitably blow up because in their arrogance they refuse to consider than anyone could ever be smart enough to catch on to them.
Very few people upgrade every year. The average lifespan of a mobile phone is 2.5 years.
In the late 2000s that length of time was lower because phones were improving by leaps and bounds every year but now phones are waterproof, have more resilient screens, cost more, and performance increases between models have slowed.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/17/smartphone-users-are-waiting...
The lifespan increase pattern is mirroring the personal computer upgrade cycle, but more rapidly.
Genocide isn’t just “killing” people. Look it up.
And I don’t give a god damn about shit that happened 20 years ago.
I care about now, and the future.
I would call you a fucking idiot but that goes against the rules so instead I’ll call you uninformed.
Since you’re obviously lazy, here:
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
a. Killing members of the group;
b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Russia is doing at least four of those.
Russian government officials have publicly, irrefutably, unquestionably admitted to “e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” on television, in front of the world.
https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2023/02/22/ysph-research-reve...
https://newlinesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/An-Independ...
You disgust me.
Genocide is very rarely a local crisis.
"Russia isn't genoci..." Yes. Yes they are. They are committing genocide against the Ukrainian people by all legal and colloquial definitions of the word "genocide".
Here are several hundred instances where Russian politicians and media figures called for genocide: https://www.justsecurity.org/81789/russias-eliminationist-rh...
If the United States invaded and tried to annex Canada through sham referenda held at the point of a gun after a years-long campaign to vilify them as commies, promised to destroy its national identity, and relocated its children south of the border for Americanization and reeducation, people's tones would be very different.
> but western propaganda portrays Russia as wanting this
In the above link there are several hundred official statements from Russian politicians confirming that they indeed do want this.
With links to the statements.
I run my hands over my stubbly chin and gaze deeply into my own eyes, wondering.
"Why can't I figure out some way of ripping off audiophiles?"
"Some dude sold a marker used to color in the edge of CDs to audiophiles for like $20. A $0.50 marker for $20. C'mon man think of something."
"Am I too moral, or just an idiot?"
"They're so god damned gullible. Why can't I figure something out? They're all old and rich, it's not like I would be hurting anyone..."
I then sigh and continue on with my day.
It's a bunch of bros moaning "arbitraaaaaaaage" while trying to rip each other off.
The amount of crypto used for actual goods and services probably amounts to about $3.50 per day.
$3.50 is much less than $34 billion
What accuser?
Neither the Economist nor the commenter to which you replied is the United States of America.
I think.
Maybe the commenter is the literal United States of America?
edit: Your spelling of "defense" and the person to which you replied's comment history seems to indicate that a non-American is accusing a non-American of being an American.
How droll.
The war cost a little over $300 billion. $50 billion of that was through individual purchases of War Bonds, the rest came from banks and taxes.
Bankers and merchants have always funded the United States. A representation of Robert Morris, the "financier of the American Revolution" is painted in The Apotheosis of Washington, the fresco decorating the ceiling of the rotunda in the Capitol building where he is shown receiving a bag of gold from the god Mercury. Soldiers and supplies were paid for with "morris notes" which was a proto-currency of the US that was backed by Morris' personal fortune.
https://allthingsliberty.com/2019/03/how-robert-morriss-magi...
Just about 30 years later, banker Stephen Girard almost single-handedly funded the War of 1812.
It does not.
For the last 20 or so years, the majority of persons entering the United States without authorization entered legally on a visa or visa waiver and then overstayed their allotted time.
Of the remaining, many of those are asylum seekers and it is explicitly legal to enter the United States by any means possible for the purpose of seeking asylum.
>Any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival...
https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid%3AUSC-prel...
Mainly it's people bitching about Apple, hawking their doomed startup, or pretending to know Rust but all of that is too much for a snappy website name.
edit: Also, sometimes people will wax poetic about a shitty project some dude did on a Thinkpad running i3.
This rule was to shield the identities of those people from the federal government, so that those states would participate.
You may not like that but being in the United States without permission is not a crime, it is a civil offense like operating a radio station without a license or pirating a DVD, and it is up to the states to decide if they want to help the federal government with non-criminal civil cases.
I am an election judge in a state that issues drivers licenses to non-residents, primarily people in the years-long process of applying for asylum (which, by definition, makes them neither illegal nor undocumented) and I can assure you that processes are in place to keep them off the poll books.
There are more instances of republican candidates' wives voting multiple times for their husbands than there are cases of non-residents voting.
edit: the explicit reason it is not a crime to be in the country without permission is because if it WAS a crime then people accused of being in the country without permission would be granted due process, be subject to stricter rules of evidence, and have the right to access to representation, which they are not if it is a civil offense.
The government does not want due process, stricter rules of evidence, or the right to representation for people it says are in the country without permission, which is why thousands of US citizens have been deported by mistake. (but people don't seem to care because those US citizens' names end in vowels and they are deported to countries where color graders throw a yellow filter on the footage whenever a film is set there)
Because:
1. We aren’t “in” Ukraine so we can’t leave— they are fighting for themselves, and
2. It is unlikely they will give up and submit like the ANA because of their morale, which
3. Is evidenced by this POW, knowing he is about to be executed, saying “slava ukraine” milliseconds before having his brains blown out by Russian war criminals https://twitter.com/protasm19751/status/1632740245237030914
We spend more than any other country on earth. ($4.3 trillion in total, ~$800 billion in annual federal spending alone)
Per-capita we spend the most but our systems suck.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CD?most_...
If that 1% was redirected, hell, if every single dollar of the defense budget was completely transferred into healthcare, it wouldn't make a difference.
The insurance and pharmaceutical companies would gobble it all up.
There is more than enough money already.
Increasing spending from $4,300 billion to $4,368 billion won't fix anything.
The only way to improve our systems here at home is to improve them.
Same goes for education and social security.
The only nation that spends more on education per-capita is Luxembourg and they don't count because they are the size of a postage stamp. If we completely zeroed-out ALL defense and Ukraine spending nothing would change, the system would soak up the money with no net effect.
In terms of social welfare spending the United States spends the exact same per-capita as most of its peers. We are right in between Germany and Italy in terms of spending. Same as above, the broken systems we run would just soak up the money with no effect.
That $68 billion is having a huge impact in Ukraine, though.
edit: Think of it another way. $68 billion is about $200 per American. That isn't even enough to cover the cost of an annual checkup with a physician assistant at a clinic, when billed to insurance. (my last one was billed at ~$500 to Blue Cross with an out of pocket cost of $85)
If we zeroed out Ukraine aid and sent everyone a check that could only be used for healthcare, that would be about enough to get your blood pressure checked by a nurse-- and practically nothing else.
https://hub.conflictobservatory.org/portal/sharing/rest/cont...
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
***(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.***
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/genocide-conv...
Would you like more?
The number of times room service has barged into my room without my knowledge and/or permission can be counted on 0 fingers.
If this has happened to you you may want to reexamine what hotels you stay in because the only thing you have to do to not experience this, even if you forget to hang up the "Do Not Disturb" sign, is lock the deadbolt on your hotel room door.