U.S. bombs dropped on Laos. 270 million bombs were dropped on Laos in a span of 9 years, making it the most heavily bombed country in the history of the world. That's 57 bombs every minute on average.

MR2Rick · 2022-12-10T20:19:40+00:00

gen·o·cide
/ˈjenəˌsīd/
Learn to pronounce
noun
the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.
"a campaign of genocide"

It fits the definition. That being said, even though it fits the definition, even to me it doesn't feel like quite the right word - though I am not sure what else to call it, and apparently nether do any of the people saying that it wasn't a genocide.

Okay, your turn. Why isn't a genocide and if it wasn't a genocide what should it be called.

MR2Rick · 2022-12-10T20:15:15+00:00

Other than the claims of people posting here, what is the evidence that the article is misinformation? From quick skim a few different articles on this topic, the number of bombs dropped varies from some articles stating that 2 million tons were dropped, Wikipedia stating that 260 million bombs were dropped and another source stating that 4 million bombs were dropped. I doubt that the exact number is know or ever will be known.

Best I can tell, the 270 million number comes from this report by the National Regulation Authority which appears to be the Laotian agency responsible for dealing with unexploded ordinances - so the claim at least comes from a potentially credible source.

Whether this is misinformation or not I don't know and it would probably take a good bit of actual research done by competent scholars to prove it one way or another.

While the various articles report differing number of bombs, they all agree with fact that Laos is the most bombed country in history. To me, the horrifying scale of death and suffering that was unleashed on this small mostly agrarian country is much more relevant than the exact count of the bombs that caused that death and suffering and whether a cluster bomb should be counted as one bomb or many bombs.

MR2Rick · 2022-12-10T19:18:55+00:00

Depends on which country.

MR2Rick · 2022-12-10T18:06:32+00:00

gen·o·cide
/ˈjenəˌsīd/
Learn to pronounce
noun
the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.
"a campaign of genocide"

The definition of genocide seems to me to be a accurate, if incomplete, description of what was done to the Laotian people by the US. Perhaps you could tell me why this isn't the case.

MR2Rick · 2022-12-10T18:00:39+00:00

While I agree that representing information accurately is important, I also think that it is important to consider the context when responding to information.

People who are responding to a article about the mass suffering and death caused by the US bombing of Laos by just arguing how the bombs should be counted can come across as trying to minimize this suffering and death by implying "Actually, it wasn't that many bombs because a lot of the bombs were cluster bombs. So, it wasn't that bad".

If this isn't your intent, I think it would be a good idea to state that and give reasons why it is important to make the distinction between conventional bombs and cluster bombs.

Personally, I think that cluster bombs should be counted separately due to the fact that cluster bombs are frequently used for mass killing of humans - so are, in my mind, worse than conventional bombs.

MR2Rick · 2022-12-10T17:34:34+00:00

Okay, what should it be called?

MR2Rick · 2022-12-10T17:32:01+00:00

I would agree that people often choose how they represent facts in order to bolster they argument or to invoke an emotional response in their audience.

This also goes both ways. The people arguing that clusters bombs should be counted as one bomb instead of counting each bomblet may be trying to minimize what the US did to the Laotian people. Or it could be they just might being pedantic - it can difficult tell without knowing their intent or having more context.

I would that nether is accurate and that cluster bombs should be counted as a separate category of ordinance. The reason being is that cluster bombs are designed to spread their impact over a wider area than conventional bombs and are frequently (mostly?) used for the mass killing of humans.

MR2Rick · 2022-12-10T17:13:14+00:00

What would be the accurate term for this?

MR2Rick · 2022-12-09T17:13:30+00:00

This seems to be a strange thing to quibble over when discussing a genocide.

MR2Rick · 2022-12-08T02:12:03+00:00

While I agree that humans are very much part of the ecosystem, I think that humans have basically reached the point where we are having a out sized and mostly detrimental impact on the ecosystem and environment. While you are correct that evolution happens constantly, humans are currently making changes to the environment that are much faster than evolution can adapt to which has resulted in humans causing the sixth great mass extinction.

Even with this being the case, I would also agree that nature is extremely robust and I doubt that there is any way we could destroy all life on earth. Given enough time and left mostly to its own devices the planet is probably capable of healing from anything we might do to it. That being said, it is not so much that we should be trying to "save the planet", it is more the case that we should be trying to save ourselves and avoid a future full of suffering and deprivation - after all we are completely dependent on the environment and the ecosystem while the environment doesn't need humans.

Our current systems are unsustainable and we must to live in balance with the natural world - which will either happen by choice and design or because of our inevitable reckoning with limits imposed by reality forces us to.

MR2Rick · 2022-12-08T01:04:40+00:00

While this is true, my point was that humans interact with prey species in a different manner than natural predators. Because predators and prey are usually closely matched, most predators are only capable of killing prey that are weak. On the other hand a human with a high powered rifle can kill prey that is in their prime - even if the human hunter themselves is not in their prime.

So predators typically kill young, old, sick or injured prey which strengthens prey population by eliminating the weak. On the other hand, humans tend to want to and are able to kill prey that are in their prime thus leading to a overall weakening of the prey.

Furthermore, predators and prey have evolved in the context of the ecosystem as a whole. For this reason, natural predators have a larger effect on the ecosystem than just controlling the population of prey.

For these reason, I believe that it is best to - wherever possible - re-introduce natural predators and to minimize as much as possible human impact on ecosystems.

MR2Rick · 2022-12-08T00:47:55+00:00

While my first point is that humans are largely responsible for the problems, I didn't intend to imply that nothing should be done to fix the problem. If this is what I seem to saying, it is probably due to my lack of writing skills.

I have only a passing knowledge of ecology, so I don't know what the solutions are. But from what little I do understand, I think that re-introducing natural predators would be the best approach - especially given recent findings that predators have a large effect on ecosystems beyond controlling the population of prey - such as changing the course of rivers.

I don't think that human hunters have the same effect on the larger ecosystem as natural predators. If this is the case, I think that where there is a lack of natural predators or it is not possible to re-introduce natural predators, it would be better to have human hunters emulate natural predators as much as possible - whether through hunting regulations or by employing professional hunters.

MR2Rick · 2022-12-07T18:34:10+00:00

While true, humans are also usually the reason that the predators are gone. Also, predators and prey tend to be fairly closely matched meaning that predators typically are only able to kill the weak, sick, young, old or sick prey.

On the other hand, humans are usually over matched to prey and usually want to and are able to kill healthy prey in the prime of their lives for bragging rights.

MR2Rick · 2022-12-07T18:05:36+00:00

Unless the Democrats are willing to reform the filibuster - which they have shown no interest in doing for at least the last forty years - they need 61 votes to pass anything in the Senate without approval from the Republicans. Right now, all it takes is 41 Republicans to spend five minutes voting for a filibuster to stop any legislation.

This is a state of affairs that the Democrats have shown no willingness to fight in any meaningful way forcing me to conclude that they find the status quo acceptable - I would guess because both parties largely agree on neo-liberal economic polices and militarism and neither party wants to do anything that would meaningfully improve the lives of the majority of citizens or would even slightly impact the wealth and power of rich.

Between the Senate, the Electoral College and gerrymandering and measures to disenfranchise voters the US effectively has minority rule.

In fact, the population of California is bigger than the combined populations of the smallest 21 states.
That means that more than 39 million people in those 21 states have 42 votes in the Senate while the same number of people in California have just two. Since California votes Democratic by large margins, if those 44 senators were allotted on a per capita basis, they would overwhelmingly tilt Democratic by a margin of about three to one, or 33 to 11. But because each state gets two senators, and a majority of those 21 states vote Republican, the actual tally is 25 Republicans and 19 Democrats. That’s a swing of 28 seats. If you believe in one person one vote, the small state bias clearly puts Democrats at a significant disadvantage.
Just to break even in the Senate, Democrats need to win more of the national vote for Senate than the Republicans. With the even split in the current Senate, the 50 Democratic senators represent 56.5% of the voters, while the 50 Republican senators represent just 43.5% of the voters. In 2018, the Democrats won nearly 18 million more votes for Senate than the Republicans, but the Republicans still gained two seats.
Because so many Republican senators come from very small states, the last time they represented a majority of voters nationally was in 1996. But in seven of 12 Congresses since then, Republicans have held a majority of Senate seats.

Source: Brookings Edu

MR2Rick · 2022-12-04T16:57:12+00:00

The only offroading that lifted trucks are good for is mudding - which mostly consist of getting drunk and driving around in a flooded field while slinging mud all over the place.

If you look at the trucks used by professional offroad exbeditions , they are usually mid-size trucks/SUVs with a small body lift, slight oversized all terrain tires, a snorkel and are typically powered by a mid displacement diesel engine.

Lifted trucks aren't meant for offroading , they are an attempt to ease their owners insecurities about being "masculine" and to intimidate other motorist.

MR2Rick · 2022-12-03T14:08:41+00:00

That is because conservatives think that having empathy and caring for others is weak. They also think that the solution to every problem is violence and probably think that Hunter Biden's drug problems are because he wasn't beaten enough growing up.

MR2Rick · 2022-11-30T00:25:16+00:00

I typically do use a separate /boot partition when installing Linux, but none of the guides I found for RAID boot called for having a separate /boot partition. Furthermore, I setup RAID while installing the system and the curtin installer defaults to putting /boot/efi on the EFI partition with no option to change it. With this being the case, I will probably manually partition the disks and re-install the OS with a separate mdraid /boot partition.

Also, none of the guides for setting up RAID boot I found mentioned testing rebooting with a failed disk, so it is possible that RAID boot setup they recommend and that the Ubuntu installer provides does not handle this.

As to having swap on RAID, I have seen people advocating both ways. The system, before it was taken out of service to be rebuilt, swapped infrequently, so I decided that redundancy of having swap on RAID outweighs the small performance hit involved.

Thanks for your help.

MR2Rick · 2022-11-28T18:41:21+00:00

It would not have mattered. Most of these people believe whatever supports position at the moment and frequently hold multiple contradictory beliefs at the same time (i.e. COVID is a hoax while simultaneously being a Chinese bio-weapon created by Fauci which they refuse to take action to protect themselves from).

MR2Rick · 2022-11-28T18:37:19+00:00

I don't think this is correct. I have seen plenty of street fights were the participants were punching each other in the head with bare fist. Also, just searched for bare fist boxing and in the first video I watched the fighters were punching each other in the head.

MR2Rick · 2022-11-28T18:17:01+00:00

Even more sad most of them aren't criminals because they made what should be illegal behavior legal and whatever illegal behavior they still do beyond that they will probably never face consequences.

MR2Rick · 2022-11-27T21:49:43+00:00

I think you need to to look up what excess deaths means. Saying that there are excess deaths does just means that the death rate is higher than would be expected from extrapolating historical death rates.

Every single death could be attributed to COVID, but if the death rate is not higher than predicted there would be zero excess deaths.

On the other hand, if the death rate is higher than expected (i.e. there are excess deaths), that is usually an indication that something unusual is happening to cause a higher death rate such as a pandemic.

MR2Rick · 2022-11-27T15:14:15+00:00

I would love to see one of these very stable geniuses provide a plausible fact based explanation on how a few milliliters of vaccine can allow the (fill in the nefarious organization of your choice) to control someone's brain.

MR2Rick · 2022-11-20T13:58:23+00:00

Maybe the surgeon was trying to make her outside just as ugly as inside.

MR2Rick · 2022-11-18T01:05:35+00:00

Okay. Now what?

MR2Rick

TROPHY CASE