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Semester3383

@ Semester3383 @lemmy.world

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Comments
179
Joined
8 mo. ago

  • Janet Mills Is Flopping in the Fight for Maine Senate

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  • I live in Maine. Every week I get email alerts telling me where Platner is going to be, and what I can do to help. (I'm currently doing huge amounts of OT, so I don't have the time to volunteer.) He's doing town halls weekly (I think that he's doing Millinocket soon; I should be able to make that one), and constantly doing outreach. I see his campaign posts on Bluesky all the time. He came to a town near me, a town with a whopping 6000 residents, and treated everyone respectfully, including the MAGAt that was there trying to poke holes in his campaign.

    I have seen ONE Bluesky post from Mills' campaign. AFAIK, she's done exactly zero town hall meetings, certainly not ones where she's taking questions directly from the audience. I haven't seen any campaign signs, no radios ads (altho I only listen to Maine Public Radio; but I also haven't heard anything about her campaign there), and I've seen Collins' ads on the TVs at the gym, but nothing for Mills. Oh, the Collins ad? It's got a great snippet from Mills saying that Collins has done a lot of great things for Maine. Oops.

    So I don't fucking know where Mills is spending the money that she has.

  • Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

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  • The fact that the cancelled in the face of public pressure means nothing; they can always resume the partnership once the pressure subsides.

  • Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

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  • 10% is pretty close to a controlling interest, since many shares never vote at meetings.

  • Tips to vet whether a person you are dating or know might be working for ICE?

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  • Ask them if they've read Ammon Bundy's piece about immigration, and ask them what they think of it. Keep in mind that Bundy is pretty far right in almost every way, but almost all of his right-wing militia buddies have abandoned him on this.

    IMO he's arrived at the right conclusion, but his reasons--because god--are nonsense. It's going to be interesting to see how his worldview changes as he realizes that most of the people that he thought were True Believers like him were only allies of convenience.

  • What's a word that's code for 'expensive'?

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  • In my job, I need to use materials that have a mil spec; that means it's literally military grade, but it's just saying that it meets or exceeds a certain specification for X product that is used in the military in some way. IMO, if something says 'military grade', but isn't listing the mil spec(s) that it complies to, then it's essentially meaningless.

    I do have a compass that I think was advertised as military grade. It's the same lensatic compass that is currently used by the military (...when they aren't using GPS...), except that it doesn't use tritium on the face. The half-life of tritium is about a decade, so it didn't seem like a great idea to pay a ton extra for something that would barely glow in the dark in 20 years or so.

  • Flock CEO calls Deflock a “terrorist organization”

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  • That's like saying that it's inevitable that murder and rape will happen.

    Just because someone is going to do it eventually doesn't mean that you shouldn't have the death penalty for doing it.

  • Best gas masks

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  • The proprietary cartridge design kills it, IMO. It's like making a super-gucci AR-15, but then it only uses your mags, and your mags cost $150/ea., v. $20 for a Magpul.

  • Best gas masks

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  • Don't fucking buy Mira products; they're overpriced Czech surplus. The OM-90 is the Czech designation for Mira's CM-7M, and you can get them for $90 on eBay, vs. the $450 or so that Mira charges.

    Honestly, get yourself an M-40 that's in good shape, buy a 40mm-to-3M-bayonet adapter, use some 3M P-100 cartridges (you can get them for about $2/ea. when you buy in bulk). P-100 will filter out all particulates--even finer particulates than a HEPA filter or N-95--and will also filter out water- and oil-based aerosols. That covers all riot-control agents, because CN, CS, and OC are all aerosols, and not true gasses. Almost any surplus gas mask that's been made in the last ~30 years, seals, and uses a 40mm NATO cartridge is going to be just fine for riot-control agents.

    If you are really worried about a P-100 filter being insufficient, get a few new old-stock NBC filters. NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) filters were phased out about 15-20 years ago in favor of CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear) filters, but if they haven't been used, they'll be absolutely okay for riot agents.

    If you wear glasses--and many people do--get a spectacle insert for whatever mask you have. Glasses break the seal, and while you will probably be fine with contacts in, that's not necessarily a good risk to take. Supposedly the Kris Optical Mag-1 glasses can be worn under a mask without compromising the seal, but I can't personally attest to that. I think that they're one of the older styles of BCGs that were issued, but I'm not sure.

    Oh, and get GOOD hearing protection. Consider high-end electronic ear muffs, and wearing ear plugs under them. Some places are using LRADs to disperse crowds, and those can wreck your hearing.

  • Best gas masks

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  • N95 is insufficient. You want a P100 filter cartridge; P100 will filter out oil-based and water-based aerosols, as well as all particulates. They will not filter out true gasses, but, good news!, CN, CS, and OC are all aerosols, not gasses.

  • Best gas masks

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  • No. Avon still exists, they have the current contract to make the M-50 gas mask. (Which, BTW, is not compatible with standard NATO CBRN 40mm cartidges.)

  • Would the United States actually risk a Tiananmen Square incident?

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  • Yeah, no. The religious nutter part is utterly irrelevant.

    What IS relevant is that the ATF entrapped the dude; they wanted him as an informant, so they spent a long time cajoling and threatening him into cutting a shotgun down for them ("short barrel shotgun", a National Firearms Act of '34 violation), and when he did, they immediately fucked his life. He ended up getting arresting him, he bonded out, and then got multiple differing dates for a court hearing. He didn't trust the courts because he thought the gov't was out to get him (spoiler: they were), and so skipped court. The judge issued a warrant improperly, and then the US Marshalls showed up, and everything went downhill.

    It was a very, very clear case of entrapment, and what the gov't did was inexcusable. It doesn't matter that they wanted him to spy on the Aryan Nations, what they did to try and bend him to their will was evil.

    Don't minimize that shit.

    The gov't can, and will, crush every single person that they can get away with crushing.

  • My wife came out as gay last night

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  • I have known people that were the appropriate gender for me, were interested in me, that were nice, healthy, great smiles, genuine, fun, smart, kind... And I had absolutely no attraction to them.

    Sometimes you just aren't attracted to someone, even when everything should be right. Sometimes you're attracted to people that you know for sure would be absolutely terrible for and to you (like the person I felt limerance toward that was a literal crack addict, probably sleeping with people for drugs, definitely a mean person, deeply mentally ill... ...and none of that affected how I felt). You can't control your feelings; feelings just are. The best you can do is control what you do with them.

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  • In addition, check out ShivWorks Instagram page. They use videos of real fights to show just how fast shit starts, ends, and how badly things go. Fights and assaults usually start with someone sucker-punching someone, not with people squaring up.

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  • Well, you'll get arrested for carrying one in most places, since they're not exactly concealable, and getting the sheath off of one takes far more time than pulling a gun from concealment and doing a 'failure to stop', AKA Mozambique drill. Also, you have a limited effective range; if someone is inside about 3', you can't use the sword effectively, and would need to drop your sword and switch to your rondel.

    They're really only effective if your opponent is riding a horse, or is a pike phalanx.

  • I've never been in a situation where me having a gun would have made things bettter.

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  • I have. I've been in places and situations where being able to get someone to back down and slow their roll would have been a better outcome than what I was able to get without being armed. Shit just happened around me, and I couldn't exit the situation in good conscience. It's terrifying to try to stand up to stop shit from going really sideways knowing that if it does, there's not a lot you can do except be a meat shield for someone else. Almost all defensive gun use doesn't involve shooting; it involves having a gun, knowing how to use it, and using the threat of force to stop someone else from escalating a situation.

    People say that when seconds count, the police are only minutes away, and fuck me, that is extremely optimistic. I've never had the cops show up in under five minutes; the closest was about ten minutes, and that was after a shooting in my 'hood in Chicago. CPD showed up after the ambulance.

  • I've never been in a situation where me having a gun would have made things bettter.

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  • Interestingly, a lot of gun violence in the US comes down to neglected spaces. Without changing anything else, cleaning up vacant lots, demolishing abandoned buildings, adding street lights, and general neighborhood beautification cuts down on a LOT of gun violence. Violence intervention programs--teaching kids restraint, essentially--does a lot too.

  • What's your favorite movie that is in a language which you do not speak?

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  • Oh. Uh. Hanzo the Razor: Sword of Justice (1972) Hanzo the Razor: The Snare (1973) Hanzo the Razor: Who's Got the Gold? (1974)

    They're, uh, something. I think that they're probably part of the reason that I really got into shibari. The films are graphically, cartoonishly violent, misogynistic, as close to pornographic as you can get in 'mainstream' Japanese cinema, and there's just something about them. My partner HATES them, so use your best judgement before attempting to watch them.

  • Locked

    Proposed instance policy update on Zionist accounts

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  • I'm an outsider to this instance, so my vote doesn't count.

    I'm fine with banning Zionist content and users. I'm starting to see them regularly on Bluesky; they make inflammatory claims, but don't back anything up, and immediately resort to ad hominem when challenged. Even if you thought that some of the claims they made might have a degree of validity, they're still disruptive assholes. So far I haven't run across any that are acting in good faith; the accounts I've encountered sound like Israeli psy-ops.

  • it's just human nature

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  • You may not pay a lot of attention to how much water you use if you have a well, yes.

    On the other hand, if you live in northern Arizona, and you have to pay to have water trucked in, you pay REALLY close attention to how much water you use. I may not waste water by average standards, but by the standards of a person that lives in a desert, I waste enormous amounts of water.

    People tend to be less zealous stewards of resources when their lives aren't directly impacted when they personally waste those resources. When resources are managed in some way, people tend to exploit them until they're gone or destroyed. A very real example is the deer population in Georgia; prior to the institution of game control, white-tail deer were hunted into extinction in the state. It took >40 years, and the unwavering efforts of a single DNR employee, to reintroduce white-tail deer back into Georgia.

    This isn't me saying that capitalism makes the most efficient use of resources, because it obviously doesn't. But resources that belong to all--like clean air and water--need to be managed in some way so that they continue to be available to all.