HelixDab2

@HelixDab2@lemm.ee
0 Post – 1478 Comments
Joined 1 years ago

Yeah, but does he like his step dad? Maybe he's planning on ratting his dad out, ever think about that?

Obama was prevented from closing Gitmo by congress. IIRC, a big part of the problem was how to handle the criminal cases; all of the prisoners ("detainees") in Gitmo have been tortured, the chain of evidence has multiple breaks in it, and it's highly debatable that they can be tried in any kind of court. Yet intelligence agencies remain convinced that the remaining prisoners are guilty of terrorism. Congress didn't want to move any of them to the US, because they didn't want purported terrorists being held on US soil because ???

The president isn't supposed to be able to act unilaterally, but we've allowed that Overton window to shift towards heavily authoritarian.

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To paraphrase Nietzsche, that which doesn't kill you psychologically scars you and leaves you with a lifetime of therapy bills.

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According to Mormons, god is literally male, with (perfect) male genitalia. There is also a god--the-mother, who is female, and is both secret and sacred (they really don't like talking about her), and also utterly subservient to god the father, because of course she is. According to Mormon theology, both gods were once mortal, and were raised up to godhood by their godly parents; Mormons--if they're good enough--can go to Mormon super-heaven, where they will also become gods in their own right. Before everyone was born physically, they were born spiritually, in... More or less the same way babies are born now, except in heaven, to a heavenly mom. And there were hundreds of billions of spirit babies, so I guess that god the dad and god the mom really like sex or something? The implications start getting really, really weird, very fast. Which is part of the reason why Mormons don't usually want to talk about stuff like this with people that aren't Mormon.

I believe that the quote is, "As man is, so once was god. As god is, so man can become," or something like that.

Source: was Mormon for >25 years.

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It's not lying under any conventional definition of lying though. Saying something is a lie usually indicates deceptive intent, along with a knowledge--or a reasonable belief--that something you're saying isn't accurate. If I believe that the earth is flat, and I say so, am I lying? Or am I just wrong?

Biden said that he would cancel student loans; he's done everything in his legal authority, and a few things that weren't, to try an cancel them out. Do you think that the fact that SCOTUS prevented him from doing so makes it a lie? Or was he unable to follow through due to factors that he couldn't directly control?

If I remember correctly, Republicans in Georgia have consolidated voting locations in Atlanta--which is heavily Democratic--despite there being long line and hours of waiting in 2020. Is it intentional? 100%. In the rural parts of Georgia--and I'm pretty rural--you're in and out in only slightly longer than it takes to read the ballot.

About 45 minutes, as I recall, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I think that was the year that marriage equality (e.g., gay marriage) was on the ballot in Michigan. (I just looked it up; it was a vote to amend the state constitution to ban civil unions and marriage equality.) That was in 2004. Since then, I don't remember ever having to wait more than 10 minutes when voting in person.

I'm very surprised that you haven't heard of Ghost of Tsushima; it has been a highly successful game.

But maybe I am mistaken? I would swear that I had to accept EA terms and conditions to play, but it's by Sony and Sucker Punch. I dunno.

Eh, I dunno, I'm currently really enjoying Ghosts of Tsushima, although strictly in off-line mode. And I enjoyed the first Jedi: Fallen Order, again, solely off-line.

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It’s out of their hands.

Uh, yeah, it literally was. Unless you're saying that you want the president to be able to do whatever they want, even when a majority of congress and courts say no.

This might give you some better idea of what happened.

Currently I recommend bupropion and atomoxetine, but once I get an appointment with a psychiatrist, I'll probably recommend lisdexamphetamine.

Modafanil is pretty great too.

So, uh. That glove isn't leather. You don't need to break in a glove that isn't leather, because vinyl isn't going to shape to your hand with oils, etc. the way leather will. Same goes for shoes; unless your shoes are all leather, there's no break in period.

Yes, plastic will melt in the oven. And that's what your glove is. Or was.

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Unless all these Gen Z kids actually fucking VOTE it won't matter, because Boomers fucking do.

Oh, you think the choices are trash? Well fucking vote in the primaries then. Get involved at a local level, and start promoting candidates that represent you. Don't just bitch and moan that the choice is between a codger and senile draft-dodger.

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Here's what this means:

If you favor access to reproductive healthcare, you NEED TO VOTE IN NOVEMBER.

The GOP will absolutely vote to restrict access to all reproductive healthcare now that SCOTUS has refused to do so.

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I'll take, "Laws that violate the 8th Amendment" for $100, Alex.

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EDIT: I am wrong about the sample size. Yes, the sample is a little small, but not too far off. They're registered voters rather than likely voters, which is not quite as good, but, again, no terrible.

The poll surveyed 892 registered voters and has a margin of error of 3.2%.

As FiveThirtyEight would say, that's a bad use of polling. That's a very small sample size, and there's no indication that it's representative in any meaningful way.

Even more important, Obama has said she has no interest in being the president; she's not willing to run.

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This kind of thing pops up repeatedly. There's some big, splashy news about a male contraceptive, and then it flames out, or ends up being vaporware.

The problem is that you need to stop a few million sperm with every single ejaculation; reducing that number by 99% means that you're still risking pregnancy. Severing the ductus deferens (a vasectomy) means no sperm get through; trying to clip or block them means that some can potentially get through. Hormonal BC has the same issue; while it significantly reduces sperm count, it may not eliminate it entirely. (And there can be some really significant negative side effects from eliminating endogenous testosterone production, since hormonal levels need to be pretty far out of whack before there's a really big cut in sperm production.)

OTOH, women have to stop two eggs per month, or stop them from being implanted in the uterine wall. A 99% reduction in fertility for women means that it's very, very unlikely that they're going to be able to get pregnant.

(Yes, women suffer from hormonal BC as well, but some women need it just to be able to live normal lives. It's overall less of a problem than it ends up being for men. And women have the option of an IUD as well.)

Personally, I'm in favor of vasectomy; it's allowed me to avoid having any children for 20-odd years now.

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FWIW, nitrogen asphyxiation is one of the methods that's preferred by advocates of assisted suicide. Done correctly--by which I mean in a way that doesn't allow a buildup of CO2 in your bloodstream--it's not only painless but gives you a mild high. The proper way to do it is with something like a BiPAP, where the air that's being piped in is pure nitrogen, and the CO2 is all being removed immediately so you aren't breathing it back in. Without a buildup of CO2 in your bloodstream, your brain doesn't recognize that you're suffocating.

Have you ever breathed in helium from a balloon and gotten lightheaded? It's about like that.

I'm in favor of the death penalty in very, very rare cases--and this is not one where I would support it--and this is one of the surest, least barbaric ways to execute someone.

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I wish for one electron to disappear from every atom. The net result would be that all atoms would now have a positive charge.

True, it would not only end all life on earth, but also destroy the entire earth. But everything would be positive.

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There's an interesting dissonance here; he praises Putin for being a strong leader, a good leader, but then he compares himself to Navalny. How does this even work in his mind? If Putin is good and strong, then surely Navalny should have been killed for opposing him, right? And where does that leave Trump, if he's like Navalny?

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indicates that this person might groom children for real

But unless they have already done it, that's not a crime. People are prosecuted for actions they commit, not their thoughts.

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“What effect the condemned person will feel from the nitrogen gas itself, no one knows,” Dr. Jeffrey Keller, president of the American College of Correctional Physicians, wrote in an email. “This has never been done before. It is an experimental procedure.”

We do, in fact, know what a person feels from nitrogen suffocation, and we know because nitrogen suffocation happens accidentally with some degree of regularity from workers that don't follow proper safety protocols.

At first you feel out of breath, but you don't feel panic from it; it's like exhaling everything in your lungs, and then breathing in solely from a helium filled balloon (which I'm guessing most people have tried). You feel slightly high and light headed because the oxygen in your bloodstream is rapidly depleted; you are hypoxic. As you take a second and third breath, your vision tunnels, and you pass out. Your body has a mechanism to detect a dangerous buildup of carbon dioxide in your blood, but since you're expelling the CO2 with every breath out, and breathing nitrogen back in, that panic response doesn't get tripped.

Nitrogen suffocation has been a preferred choice for right-to-die advocates.

We can argue about how the death penalty is applied, and whether it should exist at all (I believe it should, but is almost always inappropriate), but there's no serious argument about whether nitrogen suffocation is a good or bad way to die. The people continuously fighting against this execution are fighting the method because they've lost all their other avenues to prevent the execution; attempting to call this process 'untested'--when it's been tested by a large number of people using it to end their own lives, and tested via industrial accidents--is the only option that they have left to prevent this execution.

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A quick check online says that Samsung--which has about 25% of the global market--sold at least 1M OLED televisions and 8.3M QLED televisions in 2023. So, let's say that they sell 9.5M televisions annually (I'm not sure if the numbers are global or US-only); that's $190M in pure profit from advertising alone. For a billion-dollar plus corporation, that might seem small, but it's certainly enough to get them to take notice.

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Yes. Replace your rear tire immediately.

Also, have you considered riding somewhere that isn't straight? You've got no meat in the middle, but you've got nice, fat, juicy chicken strips on the sides.

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The governor literally had a trap set in the Rio Grande river to drown undocumented migrants that attempted to cross there. It was the death penalty, for a misdemeanor offense. He then lost a lawsuit about it, and refused to comply with a court order.

So I would say that it's likely worse than depicted in books, and the people saying otherwise live in a very soft, comfortably cocoon.

he would often pose as a 15-year-old girl

Authorities say that Lee accused one of the teens at a local restaurant of being a pedophile

Let that sink in.

He accused a teen interested in an age-appropriate partner of being a pedophile. The age difference between the people that killed Lee, and the 'victim' Lee was pretending to be online is, at most, 4 years.

Fuck that dude. That kind of accusation wrecks lives.

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...But, why?

I can download a white noise app for free, and never have to worry about any advertising at all. Why would I insist on listening to one that's going to have irregular breaks to tell me that I should use Nord VPN, play Raid: Shadow Legends, or get therapy through Better Help? (Caveat: I actually use Nord VPN, and have for about six years, but I'm probably switching to Mulvad or Proton in a month.)

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Don't give your TV the wifi password, kids. No, you don't need to 'finish setting up' your TV; it works just fine as a dumb display.

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She needs to learn to shut the fuck up, because she doesn't help.

This is like telling your SO to 'just calm down' when they're really angry about something.

$10 says Kemp and the legislature will not comply with the order.

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Try organizing with other long-term locals to tightly regulate and license short-term rentals. Structure a local ordinance so that you can run a genuine hotel or real B & B, but can't rent out a vacation home; eliminate the profit motive.

Additionally, I would suggest organizing to revamp zoning laws so that you can have high-density housing built in the town center. (Be warned that you'll get a lot of NIMBY people if you try that though.)

Well, here's your problem.

Republicans, by and large, want Trump.

Democratic voters, by and large, want to make sure that Trump loses (much like the person he is), and would like any candidate that can offer a high probability of that happening. Biden has already beat Trump once, and has, overall, been a pretty decent president. (Yes, the Israel thing is a mess, I know. From the river to the sea, etc.) Dems might prefer a younger candidate that's better at ramming legislation through--which no Dem could do right now, not with Republicans controlling the House--but preventing a Republican victory is more important.

So that's how we've arrived here.

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Okay, yes, under the law that currently exists, Hunter Biden was absolutely guilty.

On the other hand...

Doesn't it strike people as just a little bit fucked up that you can lose a fundamental constitutional right that easily? Should you lose the right to, say, vote if you smoke pot (which is still illegal under federal law!)? Should you lose the right to a trial by a jury of your peers, with legal representation, if you're addicted to Oxy? Should you be forced to go to an evangelical, Christian nationalist church if you're an alcoholic? There's a pretty decent argument that conviction of a violent crime--including misdemeanor domestic battery--should cause you to lose your 2A rights. But this isn't a case of someone being convicted of anything.

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First: It's a site dedicated to electric vehicle promotion. So it might be a tiny bit biased.

Second: Their criteria was for their claim was, "13 percent of the cases with starting difficulties are electric cars". Well, golly gosh gee, how surprising that an electric car would be easier to start in cold weather, since as long as you have any juice left in your battery, it's gonna go. You don't have problems like diesel fuel gelling, or oil turning into molasses. (If it gets cold enough, your battery might freeze solid, and then you have real problems.)

Finally: "[...] electric vehicles are involved in roughly 21% of all its cases so far in 2024" Given that Norway is roughly 25% electric vehicles--they don't give the exact percentage in the article--that's... Pretty much in line with overall percentages. It might even be high, given that EVs are more likely to be new than ICE vehicles.

If we're going to do cars--and I don't think that there's a reasonable alternative that can be brought to bear in a reasonable time--then I'm all for electric. But this isn't a great way to promote them.

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Republicans in Georgia aren't the only ones with rifles.

Trust me.

Last time the Georgia fascists met an armed contingent--at Stone Mountain, during the BLM protests--they were the ones that backed down, not antifa.

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Frozen green beans from Costco. They were contaminated with listeria--there was a recall--and I was one of the lucky ones that got to have a stay in the hospital. The CT showed that the blood was just because the constant shitting had stripped the lining out of my colon. The hospital never got a culture, just gave me a bunch of antibiotics, so the law firm that was handling the recall told me to fuck off with my hospital bills.

1/10, would not repeat.

But Blaine Conzatti, president of the Idaho Family Policy Center and a leading anti-abortion lobbyist, is not bothered by the lack of government support. Pregnancies, births and child care are not the purview of the government, he said, but of families, communities, charities and, most of all, churches.

See? See the pivot there? Look carefully!

Pregnancies, births, and childcare are not the purview of the gov't. ...Except that pregnancy is the purview of the gov't when it comes to the right to terminate an unwanted or unviable pregnancy. It's clear and obvious hypocrisy. from the religious crowd.

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He wasn't the president when the crime was committed, ipso facto he didn't have presidential immunity.

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...And?

Murder can be just without being legal.

The murder of billionaires, and CEOs of oil companies (along with all other oil executives) is morally justified, even if it's not legal.

For anyone that's interested in a deep dive into what kind of shit was going on here, John Dehlin has covered this pretty extensively on his Mormon Stories podcast. Episodes 1805, 1807, 1808, 1809 (removed due to threat of a lawsuit for defamation; you'd have to find an archived copy. Adam Steed is a difficult interviewee in many ways, unless you are already deeply, intimately aware of Mormonism; his thoughts are often very jumbled and he has a hard time expressing things in a linear fashion), 1817, 1817, 1825 (tangentially; it's about "Visions of Glory"), 1826, 1844, 1865, 1869, and 1873. It's also tangentially related the the Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell murder cases, in that the beliefs of Jodi Hildebrant and Ruby Franke were both heavily influenced by the same apocalyptic book, "Visions of Glory".

Keep in mind that the episodes I just listed comprise roughly around 30 hours of listening. About half of them are long-form interviews. Unless you have an an interest in cults, religious indoctrination, apocalyptic beliefs, this is probably not going to be your thing. And unless you were raised Mormon--or have listened to the other 5400 hours or so of podcasts that John Dehlin has done--it's probably going to be a little hard to follow what's going on.

A very, very short version is that, while Franke was always borderline abusive as a mom (and that's pretty par for the course in Mormon families, TBH), Hildebrandt is an incredibly charismatic, persuasive psychopath that used a version of Mormon theology to induce her to be far, far worse than she would have otherwise been. If Hildebrandt had been male--because you must be male to have real power in the Mormon church--she almost certainly would have ended up leading a fundamentalist cult.

EDIT When I say that Franke was borderline abusive, I mean that she was borderline before she met Jodi Hildebrandt. Once Hildebrandt attached herself to Franke, Franke's behavior became overtly, obviously abusive. In my opinion, Franke was always vulnerable to acting in that way, but Hildebrant was who convinced her that abuse was appropriate and moral.

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