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Fictional alien time travellers can’t be black, insist morons
  • I just hope they eventually cast some fully Britishized actor originally out of Hong Kong... one trained in certain things Hong Kong actors are known for. I want a kung fu Doctor. :p

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    Percent of People Who Consider Themselves Living in the Midwest
  • From the driver's seat of a semi, Colorado feels like bits and pieces of its neighboring states smooshed together. You got Utahrado, New Mexirado, Wyomirado, and, yes, Nebraskarado, which is probably where the Midwestern Coloradans live. The only part where I really feel like I'm in a distinct state is the high mountain forests that shoot down the middle of the state.

    Denver is probably where it is because it's right at the intersection of quite a few of these biomes. I wouldn't be surprised to learn it's been a major trading center for about as long as humans have roamed the continent.

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    Percent of People Who Consider Themselves Living in the Midwest
  • Coastal part is The South. Inland, you get Southwest. Then there's the panhandle, and while I don't know much about what the locals think of it, from the driver's seat of a semi it's indistinguishable from the flatter parts of Oklahoma. (Meanwhile, one of my favorite truck stops is in the hilly part of Oklahoma: the Chocktaw travel center in Stringtown.)

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    Percent of People Who Consider Themselves Living in the Midwest
  • "Midwest" was once called "West". Like, Ohio was "The West", with "The West" meaning anything west the coastal plain.

    Then people went even further west, but they still wanted to call the west of the past "West" so they called it "Middle West".

    You kind of see the same thing in Asia. To Europe, Jerusalem was in "The East". Heck, even Constantinople was in "The East?" Then people saw just how much East there was. So... Middle East?

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    Supreme Court will weigh banning homeless people from sleeping outside
  • This seems like a no-brainer to me... though it probably isn't. Obviously you have a constitutional right to sleep, wherever you can make space for yourself. If these cities and downs don't want people sleeping outside, they need to provide indoor space for people who haven't actually committed crimes. We treat our criminals better than we treat our homeless.

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    Maryland bill would force gun owners to get $300K liability insurance to wear or carry
  • All they have to do is, instead of calling it a "law", call it "militia regulation" instead. "Militia" is the entire arms bearing populace; if you own a gun, you are, by definition, part of the Militia. And the 2nd amendment doesn't merely say "everyone has a gun"; it does so in context of maintaining a "well regulated militia". All the right to "keep and bear arms" does is prevent them from requiring we store our arms in a central armory (which was one of the controversies over the matter in England when the right was in development).

    I would say we also have a right to own a car. That doesn't prevent them from requiring we maintain the capacity to bear responsibility if we should accidentally exercise that right improperly.

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    Mother Shares How Video Games Radicalized Her Son To Run Around And Pick Up Coins
  • Because I played Dragon Quest and Zelda, I developed an unfortunate predilection for walking into strangers houses and smashing pots and vases and stuff. Took years of therapy to break that habit. :(

    I still can't even look at a barrel.

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    "Please stop telling me to leave my comfort zone"
  • Discomfort stimulates growth, but the actual growth happens during periods of recovery. That is true of the body, and I have little doubt it is true of the mind, as well. I'm not saying people should never step out of their comfort zone. But just like we shouldn't be judging people at the gym because, from our perspective, they should be able to do more, we should be extending compassion to those of us who have difficulties in the mind, particularly considering we can only know our own perspective, not theirs. I mean, you wouldn't expect a guy in a wheel chair to be doing leg presses, would you?

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    Pluralistic: Apple Fucked Us On Right to Repair (Again).
  • This is what I figured was going on when all those articles came out about Apple "changing its position" on right-to-repair. The politicians got to claim a victory, but Apple was in the details.

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  • I generally use "anarchist" to describe my political philosophy. I'm pretty sure I'm using it correctly, but I'm not certain. I haven't had much contact with other "anarchists", just a bit of exposure through history and such.

    First off, to me, "anarchism" doesn't mean "no government". Rather it means "no intrinsic authority". What I see among historical anarchists is an opposition to practices that, frankly, aren't all that often practiced any more, in the political realm. I'm referring to rule by bloodline and such, nobility and royalty. I get the impression the early anarchists wanted to do away with royal governance, in favor of a federation of voluntary governments instituted at the local level. Which is to say, they believed in government; they just wanted to do away with imposed external authority.

    But I do see our current economic relations as having a great deal of externally imposed authority in it... though going into my beliefs about why, and what could be done about it, would be beyond the scope of this essay.

    To me, anarchism means the following:

    1. Favoring no unnecessary relationships of authority.

    2. Where authority is necessary, it should be granted by those over whom the authority is exercised, directly and individually, to the greatest extent practicable. So, for example, if we have an economic system that leaves both employers and employees with the same level of market power (we do not, but if we did), the employer-employee relationship would qualify, since it commences by choice of both parties, and can end by the choice of either party.

    3. Where this is impracticable, the authority in question should always be temporary, with a clearly delineated end. For example, the parent-child relationship is necessarily one of authority, since children lack the faculties to make all the decisions one needs to make. But this relationship should be premised on preparing the child to survive outside this relationship, and have a clear end point (the point of their majority). And I mainly include this but just for the parent-child relationship; I can't think of any others.

    All this being said, I know there are those for whom Anarchism means "no government", usually detractors who don't actually understand the philosophy... or so I assume. Do I assume incorrectly? Is my use of the term wildly incorrect? I really don't know.

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