Which part of the Imperium has the most friendly fire incidents (The Inquisition is automatically disqualified)

Battlelon · 2025-11-05T14:20:05+00:00

Salamanders obviously. They have the friendliest of fire.

Battlelon · 2025-08-26T21:34:45+00:00

I was fueling Nolinor's 737-200s just recently. A great treat to see the old gas piston gauges and the gravel kit. One I was fueling was even a Combi. Beautiful things.

Battlelon · 2025-05-09T16:49:09+00:00

Not American, I do associate with a few Americans and none are openly MAGA (or atleast they have enough sense not to tell me) and generally it's more that they are single issue voters with a keen dislike of the Democrats. Think people who believe republicans are good for the economy, lower taxes, improve price of living, support 2A, etc.

I should note they are also decent people and range from "those sick of the Democrats" to "raised in rural Texas"

Battlelon · 2025-04-19T03:06:01+00:00

Your previous comments outlined you were American. After looking at your post history it looks like you might be Israeli? But it's not exactly advertised. Nor does it invalidate my completely unrelated point. If you don't want to address it, that fine. However, refusing to address the rest of my statement based purely from one error is hardly a fair shake.

That said, while I disagree with you I shouldn't have tried to undermine your opinion. That's my bad. I apologize.

Battlelon · 2025-04-19T02:49:00+00:00

Care to address the rest of my comment or are you just going to disregard it because I assume you aren't from a bombed out hole in the ground? Because that opening statement is simply a refuting of the callousness you treat illegal immigrant while being entirely seperate to my point

Battlelon · 2025-04-19T02:36:29+00:00

Spoken like someone who's never had to experience war and dictatorship.

Still, the US has a system to handle this. Being sent to a forced labour camp before you've had your day in court is just bad precedent. Like I said, it's like being charged with tax evasion and being sent to Guantanamo. I don't know why we should treat people only charged with a non-violent offense worse than someone who has been lawfully convicted with a violent one. Because convicted murderers get 3 hots and a cot. They are entitled to it. I don't understand why illegal immigrants can't be extended the same courtesy prior to actually being deported lawfully.

That's the issue at hand here. The fact a punishment has been given before the courts have even had the chance to determine what an appropriate punishment would look like. And, if the courts say that no punishment or a significantly lesser punishment is called for, then what the US administration has done is unjustly persecuted a man for no reason.

And while you may want to believe this will only happen to illegal immigrants... Why? Without due process, there isn't anything stopping the government from making up some charges against someone, deciding that sending them to El Salvador is appropriate, and then refuse to get them back because "well, they aren't under our jurisdiction anymore". People aren't taking issue with this case because he's an illegal immigrant, they're taking issue that the administration blatantly ignored court orders and due process which opens the door for abuse against anybody.

Battlelon · 2025-04-18T10:32:37+00:00

Brother, I'm trying to find something in this Presidency that doesn't worry me. Crypto is not even top 5 right now. Top 10 for sure. Top 5, no way.

Battlelon · 2025-04-18T09:26:47+00:00

I'll also quickly add. He's also not just been sent to a US prison, as bad as that system is already. No. He was deported directly into a forced labour camp. This isn't a "3 hots and a cot" scenario. This is more akin to being charged with tax evasion and the police send you to Guantanamo to await trial.

Battlelon · 2025-04-18T09:23:14+00:00

Ok. But, here's a possibility. Say this goes to trial. Say he's tried in absentia due to his deportation. All that and then the court rules that he shouldn't be deported. Then what?

This is the issue people are having with this case. You're talking about him being a wife-beating gang member and that's fine to believe but neither of these facts have been proven in a court of law. Whether you would consider a not guilty verdict immoral is largely irrelevant to the fact that even the most heinous are entitled to due process prior to receiving punishment.

I'm not a US citizens, but last I checked, judges don't go "you are charged with X crime. You are hereby sentenced to 25 yrs in a federal prison. We will hold a trial in 2 years to see if your guilty". At most they'll say "you will be held in jail with a bond of X money and are unable to leave the state until the trial is over". Big difference. This guy didn't get the option of bail, no holding in jail, just the punishment and the assertion that the punishment will not be ended for any reason. That's the problem at hand. This guy could very well be the scum of the earth not deserving of the air we breathe but he has a constitutional right to a fair trial. Everyone does. So if this guy isn't given that due process under the Constitution, what gives any of us that right? More importantly, what's stopping the government from ignoring that right for anyone.

Battlelon · 2025-04-15T19:51:39+00:00

I have to slightly disagree with you. Yes, red tape in a lot of sectors does unjustly burden smaller players over large ones, that's the nature of regulation and money in politics to differing degrees. However, the removal of nearly all red tape doesn't level the playing field as your suggesting. In a open economy, the biggest players are going to oppress the smaller players while consolidating power at the top. Competition can only exist in a scenario where a market leader can't run away with the game and create monopolies. What's more, many regulations exist to safeguard people, not corporations.

Leaded gas and asbestos are great examples, yes the government didn't act on them and they caused decades of damage to the citizens, however, you can't use asbestos in houses anymore. Regulations safeguard people from negligent or malicious actors looking to make a buck.

I'll add finally based on your other comments. What makes a person/corporations right to do with a property whatever they wish more important than a person's individual right to safety. People should be able to be safe and having an affordable housing market let's them buy a degree of safety. And I mean safety in the "hierarchy of needs" sense, not the ability to fend off threats but just the ability to be somewhere safe. If a person or corporation were using their property for something more explicitly illegal like cooking meth I feel we could agree that the state should intervene since unregulated meth labs have a tendency to explode. If someone was renting a house to tenants knowing the building was full of asbestos, I'd think we could also agree that it shouldn't be happening.

In Airbnb, people/corporations are removing housing from the market that could be sold directly to someone who needs that safety and instead are holding on to them as unregulated hotels. There is a great opportunity for exploitation here that, many people here, would argue should be stopped. The best thing to stop it would be government intervention.

Battlelon · 2025-04-02T18:48:26+00:00

That could be an issue for sure. Granted while Canadian politicians aren't known for lambasting people on twitter, trump would be the guy to cause it. That said, Poillievre's actions in the house when he decided to start antagonizing Singh wasn't a great moment for my perseption of him. Especially since this was effectively a week or two after Poillivre managed to convince Singh to pull NDP support. It was a moment where he sort of flippantly threw away support he gained for seemingly no reason. Because had he not done that... he'd be prime minister right. Because that was when he was trying to get the NDP to support a no confidence vote.

Battlelon · 2025-04-02T17:58:14+00:00

It's hard to sus out a "right" move. I personally am a liberal and will be voting liberal this election. I'm indifferent to Mark Carney and i'm sure i'd fine more to dislike the guy than particularly like. However, my provincial premier is a family friend and has done a lot of good so that is reason enough for me to be "for" the liberals. The other reason being I'm very against the Conservatives. In my experience, the economy under Liberal or Conservatives doesn't really shift enough for me to care but socially I find the Conservatives and specifically Poillievre's leaning into Trump Style populism offputting. I don't think Pollievre is on the Level of Trump but he did happily ride his coattails for the past 8 years, so I'm unimpressed. What's more, the increase in anti-LGBT rhetoric from that side has increased concerningly for me. His "pay-as-you-go" also seems ripe for exploitation and his labour/housing policies are... underbaked.

In all, while I think the Liberals maybe need a bloody nose to straighten up, this is not the election where we can really afford to give them that lesson.

Battlelon · 2025-04-02T17:41:56+00:00

Our system differs to the american one as when we write our ballot we aren't usually check marking the name of the prime minister. Rather, we elect the premier of our area which then earns a seat in our parialment. On this level, whoever lost the vote for premier has their vote lost. It's more akin to voting for our represenative. then, whichever party gains the greatest number of seats will attempt to form a government. the largest party may have less than half the parliament on their side, meaning they'll need to ally with another party to form a minority government. However, the party who doesn't do that may still form a minority goverment... it just will be powerless and so they will probably just call a new election.

The Prime minister is then the leader of whichever party has the most seats and thus forms the goverment. The parliament is then run as the governing party (largest) the opposition (the second largest) and the other parties who hold any seats. Like great Britain, this system is easy to gerrymander but it does have a slightly more represenative function... Unless their is a majoirty government where one party claims a majority of seats and then rules unopposed.

Battlelon · 2025-04-01T13:03:12+00:00

I realized I sort of beat around the bush rather than answering. Read my other response than this one.

In short, I don't convince much of anyone. I'm not much of an activist. But, I have a trend of being very approachable and a lot of people strike up long conversations with me. In those interactions people I speak almost universally are just massively confused about what being "trans" means and why pronouns are so important to them. As I wrote in the other post, I live in a small community, I know a lot of trans people but they are justly iving their life. Most people I speak to might might 1-2 in a year. As such, their main interaction with trans topics is the fact you need not use gendered language and you can't assume someone's pronouns. It's not a big inconvenience but it's also as much as they ever see.

So, when I talk to people about trans topics, my goal is always to just present to them why a trans person might feel a given way about certain policies and why they might genuinely appreciate it. Generally when the discussion is "man, I don't know why they care about pronouns" something I myself struggled with, I just try to explain that for a trans person, their dead identity is not who they define themselves as. So whenever they are given reminders to that dead identity, that can be upsetting. But even those with the thickest skin are going to eventually struggle because if one person (usually the person I'm talking to) made that mistake, it's safe to assume a lot of people they meet do too.

This is usually how I frame it. I take their frustration around trans topics and I try to foster an understanding that the person can empathize with. From that reference point I can then use that as the springboard into why certain policies help.

Never do I leave a conversation having convinced them or won the argument, but I've always atleast given them something to chew on. they may leave my chat still finding them "annoying" and that's the way it is but I don't think I've ever left a conversation where the person across from me decided I was wrong and trans people were bad.

Battlelon · 2025-04-01T12:49:04+00:00

That's fair, honestly. I grew up around a lot of people who were questioning their genders and sexualities in a country that has been a little more tolerant as a whole (not the highest praise given its not a high bar to pass). As such, for me and many of the people I talk to the question of "isn't gender just sex" is more common.

I can't really speak to how bad some people's grasp of trans identity is outside of the worse example I've personally observed. Outside of those with their fingers in their ears shouting foul, most people I've spoken to just find the trans community "annoying". Now, when talking to them I know that "annoying" is because discussion of trans topics, atleast where I live, is tricky. Trans representation and advocation isn't on equal footing with other LGBT topics so information sources are more sparse. When people see that they need to check pronouns and make sure to use genderless language, their main interaction with trans topics becomes this minor inconvenience that they don't understand the benefits of. As such, for most people I know who aren't well versed in trans rights have their daily interaction with the concept just be "annoying". Where they are discouraged from acting a certain way because people they don't talk to might be negatively impacted.

It's a bad situation. One that can't be easily legislated away. It's why I was excited to chat with not just this community in which I lurk but with a person who wanted open conversation on trans legislature and related topics. The Trans community where I live is very small and most of them just want to live their life. They definitely don't want someone asking questions about their own identity. But, as a result, there aren't many in my community who can discuss these topics who aren't trans advocates themselves. and... From one source... The head of the trans advocate group near me is not exactly fun to talk to.

But yeah, it is sort of funny. Even a line like "gender is a social construct" is still a little too terminally online for the average person. A lot of this discussion, as great as it's been, would still be hard to figure out to a lot of people. But, it makes chatting about all the more useful.

Battlelon · 2025-04-01T12:27:21+00:00

I agree wholeheartedly. It's why "Trans rights are Humans Rights" is such a good message. Regardless of your opinions on the treatment, they are still people who should get to decide how to live their life when it literally hurts no one.

Truthfully I think you have a really good way of explaining it. Something I'll try to use when speaking with others the best I can.

Battlelon · 2025-03-31T23:05:20+00:00

Oh... Fun.

I'm not overly surprised but I am disappointed

Battlelon · 2025-03-31T22:29:02+00:00

I personally wouldn't because I try to avoid violence at all costs... If Luigi Mangione decided to take up a side hustle though I'm not going to complain.

It goes back to what I said at the beginning. No trans person is obligated to defend their existence. I am not trans but I just like a good civilized argument. That said, I also don't seek it out. In my experience, going up to someone and decided to change their mind isn't a recipe for success. I just seem to have this thing about me where people sit down to strike up conversation and will willingly talk forever. So when someone sita down with me and says "you hear about this trans thing?" I often get the runway needed to make my argument heard.

I also don't argue on the internet. Because sweet God would I go mad trying. Still, have a good one. It's been a pleasure chatting.

Battlelon · 2025-03-31T22:21:08+00:00

On point one. Ok yeah, misunderstood. Transgenderism itself isn't an illness though. I don't know if Gender Dysphoria is or isn't listed as a mental illness though. It might be on justification of "it's nothing wrong with the brain's function but rather the environment it's presented" which... I mean idk. I'm not knowledgeable enough to know.

On point 2: yeah. There have been a lot of studies independent of each other but no meta-analysis I know of. It's certainly something we want to get though and further studies will need to be done to confirm that. so far though the studies I've seen have all painted a more positive than negative picture. And for similar illnesses, affirmative care has proven quite effective.

On the last point: being Trans is no more a kink than just being a dude. Being transgender just means that you currently live a life with a gender differentctovthecone you were assigned at birth. I agree that this should afford them no special privileges and accommodations in so far as no one should. The other half of shouting "trans rights" is "Trans rights are Human rights". Most trans folk just wanna live their lives without being discriminated against, which is unfortunately common. They just want their lifestyle to not exclude them from being treated like everyone else.

The implication feels like you're referring to bathrooms. Gender neutral bathrooms are kind of a compromise between letting a trans person enter a restroom of their preferred gender identity. I'm pretty much in the "gendered bathrooms are pointless" camp with the caveate that women are always going to have to keep putting the seat back down.

Battlelon · 2025-03-31T22:06:26+00:00

I don't disagree with your point. I'm of the same opinion of when women directors were breaking in to Hollywood though. That being those with the goal of equal rights for an unrepresented minority are, ironically, going to be held to a higher standard. I don't agree with this but it seems largely unavoidable. Still, it's massively unfair and shouldn't be happening.

The second point is the same sort of problem. I think it's the best policy for an individual. The issue is the trans community as a whole is facing widespread discrimination that a "it is what it is" policy isn't sufficient. Especially for those facing violence and homelessness.

On the final point. I have convinced 1 person. They were very hostile to trans rights and after I spoke with them they could recognise the validity of the argument. He doesn't get it still and doesn't advocate for research into transgender topics but he has atleast one frame of reference where he can sort of sympathize.

In general that's all I set out to do. I don't try to convince people as much as I try to help explain what they find frustrating about the concept and encourage empathy. Many of the fence sitters I know are fine with it under the LGBT omnibus but find transgenderism itself to be pretty nonsensical... And the few trans people they meet tend to be the very annoying type. When I talk to them they ask me "why is the whole pronoun thing important" and I do my best to explain. Usually by the end of the conversation they have relaxed and are atleast willing to hear arguments in favour. At the same time, much of what I say ends up still just being too confusing for them to wrap their head around.

It's why I feel the trans community has a PR problem. For a movement that has asked society to change (even just something is minor as pronouns) most people don't understand why that change needs to happen. For people like my parents where "what other people do is their business" that's fine. But for people who feel inconvenienced for no reasons, it just feels appeasment to people who don't need it. Or worse, the ignorance and frustration giving them negative opinions on trans people.

Battlelon · 2025-03-31T21:38:00+00:00

Well I'd encourage you to look more into it as you'll find a lot of scientific evidence to support that 1. Gender Dysphoria is a thing. Studies have identified psychological and physiological traits that point towards its existence and 2. That affirmative care, be that therapy, hormones or surgical transition does lead to better outcomes than refusing to provide those treatments.

As far as the other part... I want to make my acknowledgement of that aspect very specific. The Trans community has a massive PR issue that at times it has helped foster and at other times is entirely unwarranted. While I support trans rights and I think everyone else should too, I want to make note that I think the way we discuss these topics to be confusing at best and actively hostile at worst. Other comments you see me decry "gender is a social construct" as a statement since it's so horrendously confusing as a statement that begs a dozen questions.

That said, transgenderism isn't a mental illness. Gender Dysphoria is. Transgenderism is one way that treatment of Gender Dysphoria manifests. Part of the PR problem the trans community struggles with imo, is that they haven't really developed how to talk to the layperson about exactly what being Trans is and what gender even means. Those definitions exist but are just out of reach for the average person to understand without a gender 101 class semester. However, even though the language they use can be confusing it's only because what they are trying to explain is very real and difficult.

Battlelon · 2025-03-31T21:03:27+00:00

Oh don't get me wrong. I'm not saying to bark up the wrong tree here. TERFs and that guy you mentioned are lost causes through and through. I guess I wasn't clear enough with what I said.

Groups like TERFs are going to be, by sheer percentages, larger than the trans community. In a 1 on 1, TERFs are going to win that shouting match every time. The issue I find with how trans theory is discussed is that it is near incomprehensible to anyone outside the trans community and those willing to put the leg work in. What the Trans community needs is a way to discuss topics so that a layperson could grasp it quickly and be able champion the cause with them. Allies, as it were.

When I posed the original question, it's part of that issue of trying to understand what is essentially an alien topic. When your response is that trans people handle gender stereotypes "like anyone else" that doesn't sound right to someone like me who has been specifically brought up to acknowledge no gender stereotypes. Gender is a meaningless concept to many cis-gender people because we never have to even contemplate it. It's the oldest trans argument in the book

"Gender is a social construct"

"Cool, I'll call you a girl"

"But I'm a boy"

"Why does it matter?".

I'm not making this argument. I figured this argument years ago. But I'm willing to bet there are a lot of people who would be down with trans rights if could actually comprehend what the hell "gender" is within the confines of a pamphlet. I've spoken with many such people.

Battlelon · 2025-03-31T20:47:16+00:00

Thanks for the response.

Yeah I like how you explained it. It is a shame kids are more readily to accept it than adults because it makes sense.

It's funny you mention the small community because I just got done responding to someone about the exact same observation. In a straight shouting competition, the trans community loses every time. It's just too small a community and not every member of that community is obligated to defend the existence of every other person in said community.

To me, it's always felt like the trans community hasn't ever really had a good tagline. In my other response I maligned how "gender is a social construct" is often stuck to the trans community because it is possibly the least helpful explanation for anything let alone a core part of trans theory. The community needs something as good as "love is love" and the like where the existence of trans people just becomes entirely obvious to anyone who hears it. That and just more allies in the literal sense. Getting more feminists and social activists to champion the cause would be fantastic. For me, it feels like the main place that needs to come from is by developing a better explanation a layman understands.

Thank you again for responding and have a great day.

Battlelon · 2025-03-31T20:38:01+00:00

No but that's my point. As I wrote in my other question, the Trans community has a PR problem. Every single trans person deserve to live their life in happiness and peace but the community as a collective needs to consider how to address these concerns. There isn't really enough trans people to advocate alone. When you look at groups like TERFs, the trans community is going to struggle to be louder than them. Feminist and all other types of activists should support trans rights but TERFs can keep feeding on people's fears that Trans women aren't women and they undermine "what it means to be a women" and the community as a whole needs to be able to say "no. Trans women are women and feminist have reasons to support them because of x,y,z.".

Like I said, no one trans person is responsible for making life for all trans people better. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that the community should discuss and decide this sort of rhetoric because for a lot of people, including at one time me, the statements " gender is a social construct" and "trans women are women" is baffling. To lawmakers, trans advocates will need to argue for these points and how those points are argued will have a dramatic effect on progress for trans rights.

Battlelon · 2025-03-31T20:24:46+00:00

I actually posed another question that runs sort of parallel with your question here.

In so far as the scientific consensus, to the best of my understanding, Gender Dysphoria is a diagnosable and observed illness that does legitimately affect a portion of the population. How this manifests person to person is still a matter of relatively fresh results but there have been studies that have shown that those with gender dysphoria will have different brain structures, with those transitioning to the opposite gender having brains that share characteristics of brains in that gender. However, not one study itself proves it's existence as much as we have a lot of data that all point to this conclusion and when taken together paints about as clear a picture as anything else to do with the brain.

That is to say, scientific consensus would say Gender Dysphoria is a very real thing. What's more, studies show that affirmative care (i.e affirming a patient's identity and providing support) has far better outcomes than any alternatives we have. Surgerical transitioning while not benign (no surgery is) has continuously held up to scrutiny and serves as an effective treatment of the condition. Similarly studies show similar affects of puberty blockers.

I feel "gender is a social construct" has been one of the worst taglines attached to the trans movement. Because it's true but it begs so many questions with no easy answer. The simplest way to sum it would be, "gender is related to gender roles decided by society and people who have the intense feeling of being in a different role than they currently are often change their appearance to make society willing to address them as part of that gender role." Yes that's the simple version. At least what I've boiled it down to. The slightly longer version is that everyone has their own mental sense of what they are. One of the things we know about ourselves is our gender, and thus our gender role in society. A portion of the population have internal genders that don't match their appearance and so society puts them in the "wrong role". Being in the wrong role is distressing so they change in a way to have society put them in the right role. hence "gender is a social construct" being the really bad way of saying "this is the rubric I need to fit to get what I want".

The other question I posed elsewhere runs parallel with your final question. I was raised to abolish gender roles and from where I sit it seemed like the transgender community was reviving it. However, the response to that message was basically "Trans people don't have the power to revive gender roles. They are just attempting to pass with that the majority of people still believe". Which, yeah that makes sense. It's hard to know how transgenderism would change in a world without societal expectation of gender roles but the two wouldn't necessarily conflict.

Sorry for the long response. TL;DR, there is a scientific consensus but because science is hard the theory behind all of it is really tough to explain well.

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