ChemicalRascal

It really doesn’t have to be a “fact of life”, and it isn’t in many places, such as Australia and England – nations with very similar degrees of economic prosperity, and very similar cultures, to the USA.

The Looker is fantastic. I was particularly disappointed to learn that Blow took it as an insult, though.

Solar wind is not going to just yeet stuff around like that. It’ll have some sort of impact, but it’s not like, you know, actual wind.

Whisked off into space by what, exactly?

A large swarm of satellites, forming an adjustable solar shade, sitting around L1 for Earth-Sun is likely the best approach we would have. The swarm wouldn’t be in a geosynchronous orbit, though, but instead a heliosynchronous one.

Good stuff, Georgia. Especially with it being unanimous. Though given Trump’s demonstrated typical approach, I can’t imagine the rebuke from the court will prevent him from making similar attempts in the future.

Realistically? Something a lot like what we currently have, but with everyone having access to prompt healthcare, living in comfort. A focus on community and cooperation being more dominant in the culture, rather than competition and comparison.

Exactly this. On Reddit, you would end up with stuff like r/TrueStarWars and such as a result of bad mods moderating badly — but those communities would have a harder time taking off due to the name being less searchable, and individuals needing to be “in the know” about why one sub has “true” out the front.

With everyone being able to take the same community name, just across different instances, there’s a potential for a better, more competitive process to take place instead. It won’t be perfect — @starwars is going to be in a much more immediately advantaged position than, say, @starwars — but in theory the playing field is closer to being level.

I just learned to accept that I am weird and filthy.

You’re absolutely right. Heliocentrism and geocentrism aren’t “questions of reference frame”, they’re cosmological models.

Nobody is using a geocentric model when they launch satellites, as any geocentric model that works with our existing observations of the universe ultimately does not have a functional understanding of gravity. And it will be remarkably difficult to keep a satellite in orbit if you disagree with the universe about how gravity works.

We have the foreknowledge of seeing EEE happen with XMPP/Google Chat, now. We can fight back against EEE against ActivityPub as it actually happens, with instances defederating with Meta and so on, when they start actually taking those negative actions. It’s gonna be fine.

rip rif

Exactly this. If Reddit wasn’t pulling in enough revenue to have value, as a business, it would have collapsed years ago.

They’re Tankies. Don’t confuse Tankies and communists, even if there’s a certain historical adjacency there. They are ultimately different concepts.

Something something, that’s how you get a Nazi bar.

Many jurisdictions would treat that as facilitating copyright infringement.

Well, her being a cop is self-evident, but let’s review the entire comment:

She’s a racist, classist noeliberal and a fucking cop (or close enough).

Her political career has been chock-full of attacking public institutions like schools, protecting white-collar crime which destroyed countless lives, protecting child molesters in the church, implementing policy against the poor, and protecting prison slavery. I’m not sure where exactly the confusion lies.

I would argue that, frankly, her being a neoliberal should be explained, for the sake of discussion, but her being racist and classist should be. The details of her career being “chock-full” of various acts should be coupled with specific citations to reporting of those acts. And so on.

I don’t like Harris, mind, but the comment being discussed could have established its evidence in a more convincing manner.

Sure. But still, why a tower? Even at their best, towers are just shelves that require more floorspace.

I fail to see what the pillar provides over just having a bunch of plants in a wire rack or shelves, beyond automating the act of watering – which there are already better ways to do anyway, ones that don’t involve having a bizarre, potentially-maintenance-heavy solution like what the pillar presents… or you could just water your plants by hand.

As such, this pillar feels like an entirely unnecessary thing. They’ve reinvented shelves, with watering. Loud shelves, because that contraption must make noise. They’re not even good shelves. I’ll just take regular shelves, thanks, and a watering can.

Point three seems entirely noncredible to me. They were doing a thunder-run, by all appearances. That doesn’t just happen. You don’t accidentally cross the Rubicon, you don’t just happen to go “whoopsie, we’re in the Moscow Oblast, aren’t we goofy goobers!”.

And then the assertion: “However, I want to emphasize that image has always been a secondary concern for Putin.” Isn’t that just… objectively false? Image has always been huge for Putin. He presents himself as a strongman, a man able to lie to your face, but is so powerful that you, the Russian citizen, can do nothing about it.

I think Beau of the Fifth Column’s hot take is more likely – Wagner wanted out of the war for a host of reasons, they especially didn’t want to be taken control of by the MoD and essentially dissolved into the state apparatus. So Prigozhin decided to gun for Moscow in order to be able to force Putin’s hand and let Wagner return to Africa, doing the PMC stuff that Wagner has been running around doing for years. This has probably been something he’s been trying to negotiate for a year or so, but it all just came to a head with Bahkmut and the new contracts MoD was trying to push.