high-capacity magazine

Notice how they never tell you what high capacity is.

A normal handgun–as in, a regular Glock 17–will have magazines that hold anywhere from 13-21 rounds in a bone-stock configuration, depending on caliber. The only firearms that don’t have this kind of capacity are micro-compacts, and guns that were originally designed by John Moses Browning before WWII.

This is sleight of hand to make it seem like the perpetrator was doing something deeply nefarious, when damn near any defensive handgun is going to have a “high capacity” magazine straight from the factory.

Progressive metal.

One of my favorite bands has a song where it sounds like everyone is playing a different time signature simultaneously, and it feels out of time and chaotic… And then snaps into focus perfectly, before breaking up again. (I can’t identify the time signatures, no. I can hear at least two, and I’m pretty sure three. I think the drummer is doing polyrhythms?) You can listen to the same song five times in a row, focusing on a difference part each time, and hear something new each time. Or take Opeth’s “River”; the same same song seems to effortless combine elements of country, blues, 70s rock, NWBHM into something that feels both classic and new. (“New” despite being originally released in 2014.) Or, shit, An Abstract Illusion’s “Woe”; it’s nominally split into 7 tracks, but the lack of breaks between songs means that the whole thing flows into a single piece. Or, or or!, “Castaway Angels” by Leprous; Leprous stretches and strains the definitions of what metal is, and is not. While some of what they do is clearly metal, are they still a metal band?

The only thing that’s a real constant in progressive metal is that the bands all have impeccable musicianship.

If the customer base skews wealthier, you’re going to have more people shopping there that are pulling in $500k+ annually, and probably a handful that are pulling in over $1M. If you only have one bottle in that price range, but you have 100 members at a given location that have enough income where that seems like a reasonable purchase, then you’re probably going to be able to sell it.

There’s a bar in Chicago, Lady Gregory’s, that has a whiskey bible. They will sell you 40yo Scottish single-malt whiskey–they have multiple choices, including from distilleries that have been out of business longer than I’ve been alive–by the dram, at up to about $250 per dram (as of the last time I was there, in 2016). Assuming that they’re using the American standard dram measurement of 4ml/dram, that works out to up to $46,000 for an entire bottle.

People that shop at Costco skew far wealthier than the average American. Given that only a few Costcos, in very wealthy areas, are going to have even a single bottle of $28,000 whiskey, it’s entirely reasonable to expect that they’re going to be able to sell it.

That’s your very best-case scenario, with a $600 helmet, in controlled impacts. Once you start looking at real-world crashes, those numbers start going up significantly, especially because you don’t hit the ground once. If you hit the ground at speed, you bounce, and you roll.

I was assuming that it was bicycle helmets that you were referring to with the comment about a ‘styrofoam [sic] skull cap’.

I used to commute about 28 miles/day in Chicago by bicycle (I lived in the Little Village, Humboldt Park, and then Austin neighborhoods while I was working in Skokie); a heavier, fuller-coverage helmet is miserable outside of late fall/winter. The weight and ventilation difference is far, far bigger than you can imagine, unless you’ve tried it. Overall, I would recommend using a bicycle helmet when you’re on a bicycle, and a motorcycle helmet when you’re on anything with a motor.

You’re simply wrong.

For voters that lean Democratic, the top issues are healthcare (76%), SCOTUS appointments (73%), abortion (67%), economy (68%), climate change (62%), gun policy (59%), racial and ethnic equality (56%), and finally foreign policy (54%). Foreign policy covers a lot of ground, and it’s number 8 overall on the list of most important things to Democratic voters. While it’s hard to find polling on the genocide in Palestine specifically, the number of people for whom that is the most important factor is very, very low

It may be true that, of the people who are normally back-the-blue-no-matter-who that aren’t this year, that it comes down to genocide in Palestine, it’s simply not true for voters as a whole. You can argue that it should be important, but–again–“soft on terrorism” is not a winning strategy in a national political race, and that’s exactly how Republicans spin any support for the tens of thousands of Palestinian non-combatants that have been genocided by Israel. Including the Palestinians in the West Bank that are being murdered by Jewish right-wing extremists.

I hope Harris wins, and I hope that she does more than Biden has been willing and able to do. But if Trump wins, then we’re pretty much guaranteed that Israel is going to eliminate all Palestinians in the region.

It’s my opinion that we should not stick with and try to iterate on a bad, unjust, and unfavorable system for the sake of keeping prices low with our current dietary preferences.

My issue is that you’re trying to legislate changes to diet, and you’re doing it by eliminating options. Or by making it unaffordable to anyone without significant disposable income. If you change ‘preferences’, then the issue goes away on it’s own; factory farms exist because there’s a demand.

If it wasn’t for the unavoidable fact that eliminating farm subsidies would increase food insecurity, I’d say do that. But there’s no good way to do that in a way that won’t also increase risks of farms going bankrupt and poor people not being able to afford food.

If you’re finding that people don’t want to change their diets with the messaging that you’re using, then you need to change your messaging.

To be fair, motorcycle helmets use the same technology as bicycle helmets do: EPS foam that crushes and breaks in a crash, rather than sending the kinetic energy straight into your skull and brain. Motorcycle helmets have a bit more EPS foam, cover more area, and have heavier shells, because you don’t have to worry as much about ventilation on a motorcycle as you do on a bicycle, and weight is really important when you’re on a bicycle. While there are a small handful of full-face bicycle helmets, they aren’t very reasonable for most people that are commuting.

And yeah, if you’re on a bicycle, please stop at red lights, and at least look before rolling through stop signs.

Modular helmets are less safe than full-face helmets, period, full stop. That’s absolutely undeniable. Take a look at the SHARP ratings for the very best modular helmet they rated, the Shoei Neotec 3; “93% Percentage of impacts where the face guard remained fully locked”. That means that 7% of the time, in controlled tests, the face guard came unlocked. (BTW, A Shoei Neotec was my first helmet, before I got over my claustrophobia.) That is not something you want to worry about in a crash, especially since real world crashes are not carefully controlled.

There’s a reason that you’re not going to get away with wearing a modular helmet at a track day; they simply are not as safe as a proper full-face helmet.

I would ask yourself what you think hitting the ground face-first at 30mph would feel like, and then use that when you consider whether you want a full-face helmet or not. :)

Just remember that ATGATT means helmet, jacket, pants, gloves, and boots, and all of them have to be intended and rated for riding.

Most “riding” jeans are trash, not worth the money you pay; they’ll have a little bit of Kevlar lining, and maybe a hint of padding at the knees, but that’s not going to help you significantly. Do yourself a solid and get some real riding pants that zip to your jacket, like RevIt!, or Dianese.

Leather costs more up front, and less in the long run. Textile apparel is usually destroyed in a crash, but leather is usually good for multiple drops. I’ve had four crashes (none hugely significant; partial tear to a rotator cuff on the last one); my jacket and pants look rough, but they’re still perfectly fine for protection.

Pants and jacket should fit fairly closely; you don’t want them moving around when you crash. Loose is not your friend in a crash. They should have CE1 or CE2 inserts at the knees, hips, coccyx, back, shoulders, and elbows. You may need to buy the inserts separately.

You can get pants and jackets used safely, as long as they’re in good condition.

Get gloves with palm sliders. Replace gloves about annually if you put more than 5000 miles on your bike each year; the palms will wear thin, and protect less as they get used. Gauntlets will protect your wrists; I suggest them over shorties. How much are your hands worth to you? Spend that much on gloves. I’ve burned through multiple pairs of Alpinestars Supertech and Knox Handroid gloves, and I’m currently using Five RFX1; these are daily ride gloves for me. (Supertech gloves are nice, except the palm slider is aramid fabric instead of TPU. Is $500 a lot for gloves? Sure. It’s about $15,000 less than reconstructive hand surgery though.)

Boots should protect your ankles; they should have some kind of armored cup there if they’re leather.

Do not accept anything less than a full-face helmet. Just, don’t. Never, ever, ever buy a used helmet. Never, ever, ever buy a helmet that isn’t from a recognized brand, and from a reputable source. (Amazon is not a reputable source.) If a helmet seems too cheap to be true, do not buy it. Helmets are one-crash only; if your head touches the ground, replace the helmet.

If your helmet doesn’t have a chin bar (full or modular)

Modular helmets will not protect your face adequately in a crash. Even with a chin bar, the face part tends to open up when you hit the ground. If you value your face, get a good full-face helmet. I have an AGV K1; it’s good, fairly lightweight, acceptably ventilated, and usually under $200. You don’t need to get a Shoei or an Arai; any full-face helmet sold on e.g. Revzilla is going to be fine, as long as it fits.

Here’s another way to summarize this: Wealthy ‘liberal’ elites want to make groceries even more expensive when food prices have been rising faster than the CPI.

Factory farms, as distasteful as they may be to many, keep food prices lower through economies of scale. Once you start shutting that down, food gets sharply more expensive, especially for the people that can least afford it. Energy would be better directed, IMO, towards improving conditions in industrial farming, rather than trying to eliminate it.

CAFOs apply to dairy farms with >700 mature cows. So you’re saying that it’s not going to affect any dairies?

They said nothing about them being small family businesses; they said that they’d been a part of rural Sonoma for generations.

And I have noticed that there’s a strong trend of city people moving to rural areas, and then complaining about the things that have been there for decades before they moved in. It’s a little ridiculous. I moved out of a city because I wanted to be closer to farms and forests, live off a dirt road with spotty cell connection and power that goes out if Mother Nature sneezes, and have bears that go rooting through my composting. Bitching about people that have been there since long before I showed up seems… Shitty. And trying to run them out when it’s pretty damn likely that I’m personally benefitting from their business seems even worse.

I’m happy to explain, although it’s a like drinking from a high-pressure firehose. So much of this isn’t going to make sense to anyone that wasn’t raised Mormon. There’s so much cultural garbage going on in Mormonism that people outside of it simply don’t have a frame of reference for to make sense of it. If you really want to get an idea, I’d suggest the Mormon Stories podcast, by Dr. John Dehlin, which is currently clocking in at 1951 (!!!) episodes, averaging a little over two hours each.

I’m not going to deal with their Truth (capitalization intentional) claims in depth; those have already been adequately covered by Jeremy Runnels, among many, many others. It’s very, very clear, once you start digging, that all of the Mormon church cult Truth claims are complete hogwash, and rely on feelings rather than any factual basis at all.

Okay, but, lots of religions make bullshit claims, right? That, by itself, shouldn’t necessarily make a religion awful, right?

Fair enough. So lets move on to the meat and potatoes of what really makes the Mormon church cult bad; they exert undue authoritarian control over their members. I’m going to use Steven Hassan’s BITE model here, and go through each salient point. Again, this is a lot, so buckle up, buttercup. Keep in mind that a lot of this isn’t doctrine, but it is dogmatic practice, and is supported and encouraged by leadership at the highest levels.

Preface all of this with the understanding that the Mormon church cult believes that attending Mormon temples is a requirement for salvation.

This is going to take me a few hours to get through, so I’m going to come back to it when I have time.

The problem you have here is that it’s simply not an important issue for most people that are likely to vote in this election. It’s not even in the top ten most important issues for the overwhelming majority of people. Harping on this issue does nothing to help, won’t change the core position, and is likely to end up harming the cause of stopping genocide.

“Soft on terrorism” is a good way to lose a fairly large chunk of voters (because the Oct. 7 attack was terrorism, no matter how you want to justify it). “Opposing genocide” only attracts a very, very small number of voters that wouldn’t have already been voting Democratic.

Is this shitty? Sure. Welcome to the worst nightmare of all: reality.

You DON’T GET the CO2 concentration in proper nitrogen suffocation. Most people that are in oxygen-free environments don’t even realize that it’s happened; they get lightheaded, short of breathe, then black out and die. Any gas that’s heavier than air and isn’t CO2 can cause that kind of suffocation in an enclosed space, which is why SCBA equipment gets used in a lot of industrial applications. For instance, welding in enclosed spaces? The argon or nitrogen can easily kill you before you realize you’re in any danger.

If you, for instance, connected your CPAP mask to 50# nitrogen tank, and cracked it open, you’d be breathing in straight nitrogen, and exhaling CO2. There would be zero CO2 buildup. As a result, zero panic. The problem is when you try to displace oxygen, but not CO2; you need to be displacing both so that you’re not rebreathing your own CO2.

And you don’t get to tell me what I do or don’t believe in.

I can tell you, and everyone else, that you’re lying, because it’s clear that you are. What you say, and what you do, is consistent with people that are religious conservatives, not with people that are actually leftists, or Satanists. I can say that what you say you believe is not what you actually believe, because you haven’t yet acted in a way that’s consistent with your claims.

None of my communities are racist

Uh huh. And I’m sure that your posting about transracialism and apparent support of it has nothing to do with white people raised in white families trying to erase ethnic and cultural identities by claiming them as their own, right? And I’m sure that you don’t mean it as a very thinly veiled attempt to refute the existence of transgender and gender-queer people either, right?

Oh, and hey, you entirely failed to address your red-pill community.

And attacking someone’s religion, regardless of what it is, is wrong too.

Yeah, no. You choose whether or not you adhere to a religion. If you don’t want to be Mormon, you can send a notarized letter to the records department in SLC and have your name removed from their records. Or you can choose to publicly do things that will get you excommunicated, like advocating for protecting children from sexual predators (like, say Sam Young did). If you don’t want to be tarred with that brush, then stop being Mormon.

The entire Mormon religion is a rotten religion, and it was started by a con man. Anyone that knows this, or has the ability to learn it, and still follows the con deserves condemnation. The information is out there for anyone that truly has an open mind, which is why Mormon leaders keep telling members not to read any sources that aren’t approved by the Mormon church. How’s that quote from Dalin Oaks go? Something about how things that are true, but not faith-affirming, aren’t useful?