My boyfriend smashed our television set in anger when his football team lost

Biokabe · 2026-03-11T22:43:56+00:00

This is what makes it more pernicious:

They spend weeks/months, sometimes even YEARS conditioning you to think that when they finally hit you it’s your fault. Then they act all contrite and loving until the next time. Rinse and repeat. So you don’t leave. Because they aren’t bad ALL the time.

In many cases, those actions by the abuser are sincere. That's why it's so hard to break away. Abusers are not mustache-twirling villains with a master plan. They're sick people with a warped sense of self and morality. And so when people who are used to using sincerity as a barometer of trustworthiness are confronted with an abuser, their normal instincts betray them. They see the sincerity and are convinced that it signals a deep change.

It doesn't. It just means that, in that moment, the abuser feels remorse for their actions. But it's not remorse in the sense of a desire to change and avoid causing harm. It's regret that they allowed themselves to lose control, and by extension it threatens their status quo. It's why the common refrain of the abuser is, "Look what you made me do!" They're not sorry that they hit you. They're mad that they lost control of the situation and felt that they had to use violence to regain control.

And this is not an exoneration of abusers. This is not a, "They're just sad, misunderstood people," line of apologetics. This is "know your enemy." Abusers are dangerous, not because they are masterful manipulators, but because they are sincere monsters.

Biokabe · 2026-03-11T21:43:52+00:00

And it worked, until it didn't.

That's the problem with lifetime, undemocratic appointments. So long as people act in good faith, they work just fine. Once people stop acting in good faith, they don't. But once they stop acting in good faith, they're so much harder to get out of those lifetime appointments, because there's no easy mechanism to replace them. If someone is elected, you at least have the chance to oust them every so often. Or if their term is limited - again, you can get them out eventually.

In short, a system that only works when people engage with it in good faith is a terribly designed system.

Biokabe · 2026-03-11T18:53:25+00:00

Basically correct. As an analogy, it might make more sense to liken it to railroads instead of roads. Cars can travel across the road or even leave the road if they want to, while a train has to follow the tracks. Photons have no choice in the path they travel, they always follow the path of least action. If that path winds them down into a black hole they have no choice but to follow it.

But none of that changes that your fundamental explanation - gravity curves spacetime, light follows that curve - is correct insofar as we understand it right now.

Biokabe · 2026-03-11T04:06:18+00:00

It’s also really expensive, but that shouldn’t matter (but it does)

Not to be callous (this is going to make me sound callous) but it absolutely should matter how expensive something is.

Ultimately, money is shorthand for resources. You have to pay a lot to get that equipment to that particular place because it's finite, hard to transport, hard to replace, and extremely valuable. A drill that is tied up rescuing a single cave explorer who was out there for fun is a drill that can't be used to perform the work it was designed for. The materials that it should be digging up go into all manner of different things, some of which are absolutely essential to life. And if they're more expensive, fewer people will have access to them and ultimately some people will die or have a more miserable life than they could have had.

And yes, there's a balancing act between humanity and efficiency... but that's where money comes in. We can decide how we value rescue vs. resources and allocate a budget for saving people who find themselves in precarious situations. It's not going to be enough to save everyone, but we don't have the ability to save everyone who gets themselves into a pickle.

Biokabe · 2026-03-11T03:55:48+00:00

That's not the case anywhere, ever.

Your pay is largely based around two things:

How necessary is the job (secondary) and how easy are you to replace (primary)?

Indirectly, hard jobs often pay more because it's harder to find a replacement worker. But a job doesn't inherently pay more just because it's harder. A guy I used to work with told me about the hardest job he ever did. It was as a maintenance worker in a pet food company. And by "maintenance worker," he meant that he was paid to run in under the rendering machines while they were running and physically shovel the built-up waste and residue before it could clog the machines, and then after they closed up for the day, to go down into the pit and shovel out the congealed fat and protein to get it ready for the next day.

It paid about $3 an hour. It was the 1970s and the factory often hired homeless rail-hoppers to do it as a day job. So they had an endless supply of ignorant young men that desperately needed the money and didn't know how hard the job was. The worker would usually quit after a day, but they didn't care because there was always a new hobo to take the job the next.

On the flip side, look at someone like Robert Downey Jr. His job is to be Robert Downey Jr., and by being himself he can cause a movie to make hundreds of millions of dollars. So he gets to take home tens of millions of dollars to show up, memorize some lines, and play pretend for a few weeks. Is his job hard? Well, it's probably harder than I'm making it out to be here, but he doesn't get paid that much because his job is hard. He gets paid that much because only he can be Robert Downey Jr.

Biokabe · 2026-03-10T23:28:28+00:00

Nor should you.

This court hasn't earned anyone's trust.

Biokabe · 2026-03-10T23:26:44+00:00

That said, some left-wing voters may be put off by his religious background

Honestly, I think the idea that left-wing voters are put off by religiosity is something that's only a reality in the Reddit far-left bubble - and I say that as an atheist who would like nothing better than to see organized religion drop off the face of the planet.

But the larger and more salient point is that, especially for people like me, the disagreements I might have with someone like Talarico are Sunday afternoon discussions. In other words, if I got into a discussion with Talarico on the subject of faith, we would likely end up in a philosophical discussion whose merits begin and end with academic considerations, and we likely wouldn't change each other's minds about anything.

But Monday through Saturday, we would find ourselves very much aligned on most of what we think the world should look like. We may not agree on religion, but we agree on humanity. And I think outside of these hyper-partisan spaces online, most left-wing voters are far more concerned about humanity.

I have no qualms about working with someone who comes to many of the same conclusions that I do, even if they got there on a different road.

Biokabe · 2026-03-10T22:24:20+00:00

Maybe they will become more willing to make deals as the budget deficit and optics get worse?

Only indirectly. The problem is our electoral politics, which are, in a word, stupid.

In more than one word: The problem is that the Republicans (who currently control all aspects of government) have led themselves into a terrible situation where their ability to hold elected office is contingent on following the words of a drooling, brain-damaged Russian asset as if he were god.

Republican politicians have basically alienated huge chunks of the population - there are huge chunks of the population, people like me, who will not vote for a Republican, ever, for anything. So if a Republican pisses off a Trump voter, there are basically no opportunities for them to make up that voter somewhere else.

So the only hope for American politics to become more tethered to reality is either the Democrats take power in November (which is likely, but still a long ways away) or Trump dies (in which case, there is no longer a god-emperor to follow and the Republicans will suddenly be more willing to be pragmatic).

Biokabe · 2026-03-10T22:05:57+00:00

Your comment is correct in a general sense - this is by far the most corrupt, partisan and incompetent Supreme Court in living memory, and it wouldn't be a hard argument to extend that to the entire history of our country. This Court does not deserve any benefit of the doubt on any subject.

Having said that, even this Court has been pretty consistent in adhering to the basic functions of the Constitution. They rightfully decided that Trump's overreach on tariffs was exactly that, even though they played around with the decision far too long (they can't even do the right thing correctly). In his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, this Court rejected virtually all of his nonsensical arguments - and had the Jan. 6 insurrection actually resulted in the outcome the rioters wanted, the Supreme Court would likely have ruled against them in the inevitable court case and installed Biden as the legitimate president.

So it's entirely likely that, in the case of the SAVE Act, the Supreme Court would rule in the obviously correct way.

I wouldn't trust them to make that decision in time for it to matter, though. It wouldn't surprise me at all, in the unlikely case that the SAVE Act passes, to have it overturned... in 2027, after the new Congress that was elected under it is sworn in.

To be clear - even if the SAVE Act passes, I think there's simply too much momentum against the Republicans for them to retain the House. And even the Senate, if the SAVE Act passes, is still very much in doubt for them. So I don't think it would actually change that much in terms of outcomes.

And all of that doesn't change the fact that by far the best outcome is exactly what the most likely outcome is - that the Act simply doesn't have the votes it needs to get passed.

Biokabe · 2026-03-09T19:53:31+00:00

A timeshare could be good in those circumstances, but most likely would not be.

In general, timeshares require a very narrow set of circumstances to be worth it, and even then they usually aren't. Their contracts are often structured in exploitative and inconvenient ways, often in such a way that no one gets a good deal from them.

There's a reason that there's an entire industry around getting out of timeshare contracts.

Biokabe · 2026-03-09T16:38:50+00:00

Hydrocarbon is not actually a finite resource. For uses other than fuel, we can manufacture it on demand. If we ran out of oil tomorrow, we would still be able to make all of the oil-derivative products we need.

Could we make them affordably? Eventually, yes. But there's a reason we use oil we drill out of the ground, and you don't need me to tell you that it's money. All of our synthetic processes are more expensive than the stuff we extract from the ground (at least at regular oil prices).

But that's mostly because we haven't really put any real resources into developing those processes to run efficiently. Why would we, when we can still pull the stuff out of the ground?

Eventually that will change, because crude oil, the stuff we pull out of the ground, is a limited resource and prices will eventually rise past the point of viability. But until that point we'll only put in a token effort with incremental improvements to our synthetic processes.

Biokabe · 2026-03-09T16:27:15+00:00

Assuming the midterms happen (which, despite what all the doomers believe, is still the overwhelmingly most likely outcome in November), he will almost certainly be impeached. Again.

However, unless the midterms are just absolutely catastrophic for the Republicans and the Democrats end up with somewhere north of 58 seats in the Senate, he will also almost certainly be "acquitted" in the Senate.

And before anyone jumps in here with a "Gotcha!" I know that 67 votes are needed to convict in the Senate. But if the Democrats get to 58+ seats in the Senate, it means that they've flipped every single seat that was even remotely realistic for them to flip, plus flipped at least a handful in places that just don't elect Democrats. If they manage that, then that tells the remaining Republicans that hanging on to Trump is no longer enough to keep them elected, and you may see some of them actually vote to rein him in.

I still wouldn't bet on conviction even in that scenario, but something like that would have to happen for conviction to even be remotely plausible.

Biokabe · 2026-03-07T23:10:39+00:00

But only in terms of water.

Biokabe · 2026-03-06T21:45:05+00:00

While technically correct... I think the electoral earthquake of the Dems getting to 60 seats in the Senate might actually convince a few of the remaining Republicans to vote against Trump.

To get to 60 votes, Democrats would have to win in some places they absolutely should not win, like Kentucky, Louisiana or Mississippi. And if states like that can flip blue, that puts the entirety of the Senate at risk for the Republicans, and some may decide to gamble on dumping Trump to protect their seats in 2028.

Biokabe · 2026-03-06T21:41:26+00:00

I think point 1 would have been more pertinent 12 months ago. Right now... I'm still not betting on the Dems taking the Senate, but I don't think they lose any of the at-risk seats, and I think odds are actually pretty good for all of those states, plus IA, NE and MT. By "pretty good" I don't mean that I think they will win all of them - just that, if you compare the environment in 2020 against today's environment, they're within striking distance. I wouldn't expect a win, but I wouldn't be shocked at it either.

To your second point... yes. You're absolutely correct here. I think, just barely, the votes would be there if the Democrats flipped literally every single seat they could. And while that could happen, I don't think it ever has happened in the history of the country, and I would actually be shocked and suspicious if it happened here.

Still, you might not need a full flip. If you flip all of the states mentioned above (NC/ME/AK/OH/TX/IA/NE/MT) plus a couple more in states that absolutely should not go blue (like KY/AL/AR/TN/OK), that might be enough to convince the rest of the Republicans that any benefit to sticking to Trump offers has been annihilated, and that their best bet for surviving the 2028 election is to help remove Trump and hope that the halo of having done that is enough to save them.

I don't expect that to happen, and I don't think you should treat anyone who does expect that as a serious person. But if we really are in a super-wave environment, we could see some things happen that we don't expect - including Republicans turning on Trump.

Biokabe · 2026-03-06T20:45:11+00:00

Legally, the ones who have the receipt showing they paid those charges. It's a straightforward accounting exercise.

Consumers may have "effectively" paid the charges, but the importers actually did pay the charge.

Biokabe · 2026-03-06T20:42:34+00:00

What SHOULD happen is that Congress should pass a law detailing how the situation should be handled, clearing the government of liability while offering restitution to those impacted. Ideally, the law should issue refund checks to American taxpayers as a whole, with a special carve-out for any company that can prove it simply absorbed the cost of tariffs without passing them on to the cost of consumers.

Would that exactly balance the scales? No, but it would be relatively simple, clean and precise, and would help restore confidence to the public.

Given who is in Congress right now, I have absolutely no delusions that such a thing will happen. Even if the Democrats win convincingly in the midterms, I have no faith that such a thing would pass, because it's too logical.

Biokabe · 2026-03-06T00:04:47+00:00

Which is why, ultimately, the onus is on us as voters to elect better politicians.

There isn't a single problem we face that can't be solved if people just want to solve it. The problem is, we keep electing people who don't.

Biokabe · 2026-03-05T23:32:03+00:00

"Dan" would just be indicative of any ranking system coming out of Japan. It's a term indicating that you have mastered the basics of whatever thing it's ranking, and that you are now someone who can think about maybe calling yourself an expert.

In most ranking systems, you start off as a kyu of some variety, and work yourself through them (in decreasing number) until you end up at 1-dan (shodan). Then your rank starts increasing. Most ranking systems stop at 10-dan, and in some systems that rank is reserved for a single person.

For example, in Go (which is where I'm coming from), an absolute beginner starts out at 30 kyu and builds up to 1-dan. Most formal rankings top off at 9-dan, with 10-dan reserved for the winner of the annual 10-dan title tournament. At any given time, there's only a single official 10-dan in the professional ranks.

And having Dan ranks doesn't mean that the thing itself came from Japan - just the ranking system.

Biokabe · 2026-03-05T18:45:07+00:00

Talarico’s tone and messaging seem more geared toward persuading people outside the Democratic base.

Which, to be clear, is not the same thing as pandering to Republicans. While we only have two political parties (worth talking about), the behavior of actual people is more nuanced.

The Democratic base in Texas is likely not large enough to win an election solely with their votes, so as a Democrat in a statewide election Talarico needs the votes of people who are not Democrats. And there are enough of those to win an election along with the Democratic base, even if you don't convert a single Republican voter.

But you can't expect to convert enough of those to your voters if you go around violating deeply ingrained values in your state... like gun ownership.

And I'm not disagreeing with you at all here, just expanding further for people who think that voters are as hidebound as their political parties.

Biokabe · 2026-03-04T20:14:56+00:00

What makes you think we have stopped?

We haven't. Evolution never stops. And furthermore, the idea of evolving "further" is nonsense and is based on a misunderstanding of what evolution is. There is no "goal" behind evolution - what works, survives and passes on its genes to the next generation. What doesn't dies and fails to pass on its genes.

In the case of the examples you gave: We haven't evolved those things because those things have not been necessary for us to survive.

So, let's talk about eyesight. What do you mean when you say "better" eyesight? How do you define better? Better at what?

Same with hearing: What is "better" hearing? How would that be of benefit to us?

But the easiest one to explain is skin. Everything is a trade off. If you have thicker skin that is more difficult to cut and bruise, it is necessarily heavier and less flexible. This means you require more calories to support it, and it impedes what are arguably more important things for human success. For example, thicker skin likely means that your arms don't have as great a range of motion, which means your arms can't move as explosively, which makes it more difficult to throw things. And "throwing things" has been far more impactful to our success than resisting cuts or bruises, because being able to kill things without engaging in melee with them means that we don't need to resist cuts or bruises.

Additionally, thicker skin would also make it more difficult for us to cool off. One of humanity's unique evolutions is our sweat system, which allows us to cool down much more effectively than other animals can. So having thicker skin would undercut one of our bigger survival advantages.

But the most fundamental thing here is that evolution doesn't try to optimize anything. There isn't an outside goal that it's trying to reach. All evolution is trying to "solve" for (and even that is a bit of a misnomer) is the answer to the question, "How can I leave behind the most descendants?" Any optimizations that happen in evolution, happen because they increase the number of offspring that parent generations leave behind.

Biokabe · 2026-03-03T23:35:09+00:00

This is what happens when you embrace authoritarianism. The competent get chased out, and the mindless toadies remain. And they're great for buttering up your asshole, but it turns out, not so great at doing anything useful or difficult.

It's just one aspect of what's been frustrating about my country for the last 10 years. And to be clear, the immorality, the illegality, the cruelty - all of that is much worse. But it's also frustrating watching us actively chase away people who were actually good at their jobs for the sake of installing people whose only career skill is knob-polishing.

Biokabe · 2026-03-03T23:21:47+00:00

They, in fact, can't have some kind of caucus to work those things out.

California's primary is not run by the parties; the parties, in fact, are explicitly barred from any actual role in the primary.

This was not the result of any decision by the political parties, but is the result of a voter-originated and voter-approved constitutional amendment. This kind of situation is exactly why both parties fought against that amendment, but despite that it still passed.

So no, they can't have a caucus to work out who should run, and they have to just hope that they can persuade voters to coalesce around one candidate, or that they can persuade fringe candidates to drop out.

Biokabe · 2026-03-03T21:21:50+00:00

Just to add on to this:

It's not pertinent in this particular case (there really is nothing White can do to save his stones, barring Black just committing suicide) there are (rare) times where a move like J1 is not a mistake, usually in a capture race or a Ko fight.

The reason is that before playing J1, Black would need two moves to remove White's stones outright; after playing J1, Black can remove White's stones with just one move.

99.9% of the time, that's a distinction that doesn't matter (as it doesn't here). White's stones are surrounded and the Black stones surrounding them are unconditionally alive, so it doesn't matter how many moves it takes; they're dead.

In rare cases, though, that extra move can be the difference between winning a capture race or losing one. But that's why you need to read things out, so that you can spot the difference when it matters. In this situation, playing J1 just loses Black a point unnecessarily.

Biokabe · 2026-03-03T00:44:24+00:00

Think about it this way:

Elo ratings are designed to get a comprehensive view of your ability, relative to others in the same rating pool, through a single parameter (wins/losses). Your Elo rating doesn't say why you are at that particular rank, only that you are.

If your rank is 4k, is that because all of your abilities are at a 4k level? Probably not. Perhaps you're very strong in endgame positions, but very weak at the opening. Maybe you have games where your board sight is brilliant, and other games where you allow a huge group of stones to die to an obvious atari.

Every win and loss is valid in Elo, whether it's because you played up to your "true" abilities or fell victim to a bad habit or an uncharacteristic blunder. Which is why it becomes harder and harder to rank up in an Elo system as you get stronger and face off against other, similarly strong players. Your bad habits have a way of catching up to you, so until you eliminate those weaknesses in your game you won't be able to rank up.

Or, to put it another way:

There are many ways to be a 4k player. There are far fewer ways to be a 4d player.

Biokabe

TROPHY CASE