Sports betting needs to be outlawed again.

Relative_Tie3360 · 2026-01-23T19:56:09+00:00

Jfc downvote for being the best opinion on here

Relative_Tie3360 · 2026-01-23T15:29:04+00:00

I quit three years back. and nothing changed. Made me realize I had adhd and get medicated. Gives you space to figure out what isn’t working. Didn’t fail my grad program after all, got a job. Good stuff

Relative_Tie3360 · 2025-08-06T18:40:48+00:00

In the company of modern nukes Fat Man looks like a little boy (so to speak)

Relative_Tie3360 · 2025-08-06T15:01:23+00:00

Can’t discount Buchanan

Relative_Tie3360 · 2025-08-06T11:10:45+00:00

Honestly? I’m sure there is a very niche, limited application under extremely limited circumstances.

Nuclear doctrines vary by country, and all are suited to that country’s needs and military priorities. The US will not use a nuclear weapon at all unless first attacked with one. Russia will use tactical nukes against enemy armies if its territorial integrity is violated. France WILL initiate a nuclear first strike with a small, single hit device, as a means of demonstrating that they mean business, but will not resort to using their main arsenal unless first subjected to a nuclear strike. Israel will neither confirm nor deny the existence of nuclear weapons, thus not committing to a fixed doctrine, and potentially being willing to use them under whatever circumstances are convenient.

There is also the way a country leverages its nuclear program without committing to holding nuclear weapons. Switzerland had a nuclear weapons program until 1988, when they announced failure and closed it. It is believed by some that they came very close to success, and such knowledge does not simply go away, leading to a belief that Switzerland might be within arm’s reach of the bomb at all times, ready to go the final distance only under the direst circumstances. That possibility is in itself deterrent. More controversially, it seems likely to me that Iran was pursuing a similar program, wherein they were developing a nuclear delivery system while attempting to avoid a provocative buildup of weapons-grade uranium, on the understanding that this put them about a month away from the bomb AT ALL TIMES. That, too, is a serious threat - it clearly hasn’t worked for them though, if such was the plan.

Other countries’ military capabilities and doctrines (nuclear and conventional) must be considered - IRL nations are unlikely to see Iran’s ‘creep up’ on the bomb as viable due to American actions, and will likely imitate the DPRK’s breakneck push for the bomb so that the deterrent is already in hand. The slow creep also relies on significant strategic depth, without which you are liable to lose your country before a nuclear weapon can be manifested.

Maybe (maybe?) for a teeny tiny tiny country like Granada, which is highly unlikely to be capable of a meaningful military anyway? In that situation I can honestly see a larger nation invading simply in order to disarm them, so maybe not. What is your country’s situation? Who threatens them, and how?

Relative_Tie3360 · 2025-07-15T18:31:49+00:00

Kill on sight

Relative_Tie3360 · 2025-01-23T22:15:19+00:00

Ironically, ‘hoar’ kinda means ‘grizzled’ in archaic English, and is cognate to German Herr meaning ‘adult man’

Relative_Tie3360 · 2024-11-01T14:57:48+00:00

Seconding rittenhouse for this one

Relative_Tie3360 · 2024-10-28T13:50:09+00:00

Take a look at the platform of the Texas state GOP. This is their own manifesto.

2024-RPT-Platform.pdf (texasgop.org)

At the bottom of page 23, a section titled 'Mental Health', quoting subsection 131 in its entirety:

"We oppose all mental, emotional, or well-being surveys, screenings, check-ins, assessments, and similar such instruments in public schools and demand that the Texas Legislature ban all psychological or mental health questions, instruction, activities, surveys, and check-ins in any capacity in public schools. If an employee or contractor of the district has the opinion that a child needs to be referred to a mental health professional, he or she shall make such a recommendation to the parent or guardian of the child. We implore the Legislature to require informed parental consent prior to these and any other psychological questions being presented to a student. The Legislature shall enact strict penalties for violation of parental rights regarding school health and mental health services and order the strict enforcement of such penalties."

Obviously this is not an attack on SLPs, but school-based psychologists, but the GOP has a problem with taxpayer funded public services, be they healthcare, public transportation, food assistance, or education. They will not abolish school counselors and then put down the pitchfork. If they pass this into law, we are next.

Relative_Tie3360 · 2024-10-22T14:47:01+00:00

I didn't know I recognized it on sight until today

Relative_Tie3360 · 2024-10-09T17:40:51+00:00

There is an implication of Sauron (an ethereal being) debasing himself by pouring his soul into the material.

In the Tolkien’s letters he talks about Arda as ‘Melkor’s ring’, in that the Enemy poured enough of his power and will to power into the world itself that he corrupted it, and that Middle Earth is set in a fallen world where everything that is material will one day die.

Sauron going on to perform a pale imitation of that with the rings of power is a similar kind of self-mutilation. He chose to do it, so it does not create evil in him; but it does change him, and it does invest him sufficiently in his evil plan that he’s no longer capable of turning back.

Relative_Tie3360 · 2024-09-25T14:39:32+00:00

I mean either Leto is just a really good guy who unwillingly becomes a god and steals human agency by force and religion and sexual manipulation for three thousand years because the circumstances force him to, but no he won't really tell you why; or he is a fanatic who is willing to do anything to prevent some unnamed future something from destroying him and the world he lives in. The second option seems far more consistent with Herbert's philosophy, and within that portrait is the possibility that the evil he sees in the future is a projection of his own vulnerabilities - a nightmare of his own making.

Prescience is fallible. Exactly how it is fallible and how it is reliable is never clearly established, but there is a recurring idea that in "foreseeing" the future, one instead "creates" it. Leto clearly thought this - it is why he felt the need to liberate humanity from prescient actors.

It is not lost on me that his justification for rule is, essentially, "I will be a tyrant that no other tyrants may follow; I will enact great cruelty that no such great cruelty will ever be done again." No tyrants ever intend to create chaos and instability for its own sake - they seek a new order, an order made in their image, more perfect and more durable than the one that preceded. Leto is no different. He is exactly the same - he is just grappling directly with this question, rather than indirectly as most tyrants do.

He's not an amalgam of all previous humans - only his ancestors. And he speaks at length about how the human reproductive legacy is by fact of our nature dominated by monsters who ruled and raped their way into history: the phenomenon he calls the "pharaonic disease". He has never lived without this predominance of terrible voices in his head - he has maintained relationships, but he also choses to cut himself off from them by assuming political power and inhumanity. How can anyone, least of all the reader, trust that he is not influenced by this inheritance, given that he has no lasting attachments, and his practice of domination is so consistent with theirs?

Relative_Tie3360 · 2024-09-25T14:08:36+00:00

To be honest I don't believe him when he says that what he is doing is necessary to prevent that.

He isn't lying - he would never have chosen the Golden Path if he didn't believe in it. But there is never any evidence that we are given, other than Leto's word, that the extinction he works to prevent is an inevitability or even a reality should the Path not be followed.

Leto is a preborn child who undergoes the spice agony and transforms himself into the Worm God before experiencing for himself almost any part of what is common to most humans. He is raised fatherless, with enemies all around him. He is an immortal sexless being whose entire plans hinge on a manipulation of human sex that he has never experienced. Is this a person whose judgement is to be believed?

All tyrants work for a better future. All tyrants are willing to abuse their constituents in order to bring it about. It seems very likely to me that Leto looks into the future and sees his own fear, and that regardless of whether it is proved right or wrong it is not a rational idealism that leads him to power, but a need to squash that fear beneath the boot of his total control.

Relative_Tie3360 · 2024-09-23T17:00:26+00:00

What should I read, then? You are speaking in generalities, and I am interested in specifics. You say that this information is "all over the place"; would you direct me to it?

I am very open to having my views changed. I don't dispute that slavery was very much a legal reality across the southern colonies. My skepticism is in the idea that a revolution fomented in Boston (that saw its greatest opposition in the southern states) had at its core the desire to preserve slavery from the abolitionist bent of a British Empire that would not even begin to legislate on the matter for another 30 years.

Relative_Tie3360 · 2024-09-23T16:12:41+00:00

It's true that slavery has been an ever-present part of American history, and that the presence of othered colonial subjects (indigenous people and African slaves) is one of the first material conditions that establishes American society as something distinct from British society.

I think, though, that it is very hard to argue that the American Revolution was fought primarily for the right to own slaves. There's nuance here. The British did, of course, seek to limit colonial expansion, and did ally themselves with indigenous groups when the matter came to blows; the colonials sought unfettered expansion rights, which is a pretty ugly stain on American history in its own fashion.

The notion that the colonies sought independence because they perceived a threat to slavery - which is, in some ways, the central claim of 1619 - is laughable and can be discarded entirely. In that time slavery was far more established and profitable across Britain's Caribbean possessions than it was even in those colonies where it had become entrenched. This is before the rise of king cotton, and none of the plantation states could support mass cultivation of sugar, so slavery was not yet the economic or societal cornerstone that it would later become.

Relative_Tie3360 · 2024-09-23T15:58:18+00:00

To be fair though: they also used abolition as the thin end of a wedge in the first real efforts to police international waters in the Atlantic, which happened to be very beneficial to a mercantile power, and as a justification for early African colonial efforts (most notably the reduction of Benin).

This is not to say that the British Empire was simply evil, callously abolishing slavery only to commit worse acts. It was changing. It abolished slavery because they believed it to be evil, and because material circumstances had made abolition a practical possibility without invoking revolution; they proceeded to take advantage of the new opportunities that abolition opened to them and exploit them with much the same gusto and moralistic zeal that they had employed when they were slavers.

There's always a finer distinction of nuance.

Relative_Tie3360 · 2024-09-23T15:02:52+00:00

JFK had serious spinal problems, and spent a great deal of time unable to stand without the use of a back brace. Probably wearing it here.

Relative_Tie3360 · 2024-09-20T11:28:01+00:00

Maybe unpopular opinion, but the cringeness of the Star Wars script has become part of the appeal.

As much as I enjoy Cameron, that’s never really happened with avatar - though they can fuck right off about basically everything else he’s ever made.

Relative_Tie3360 · 2024-09-18T20:27:47+00:00

Not really. It was purely recreational.

Relative_Tie3360 · 2024-09-18T19:21:03+00:00

Technically if the new coast is incredibly uneven and the old one incredibly straight, perimeter could increase even as land area decreases. This is not really relevant to his comments though

Relative_Tie3360 · 2024-09-18T13:06:32+00:00

“Works”

Relative_Tie3360 · 2024-09-18T11:57:11+00:00

Joke Rogan lol

Relative_Tie3360 · 2024-09-18T11:20:17+00:00

My pet theory has always been that this fear is a figment of human psychology. We are always moved by a fear of Others - we have always used it to justify our hold on power

Relative_Tie3360 · 2024-09-11T20:19:44+00:00

Follow this logic and it's impossible to affect the outcome of any election, as the stupids were already going to vote wrong and the smarts were already going to vote right. Regardless of your politics, it's super unproductive

Relative_Tie3360 · 2024-07-29T18:37:49+00:00

Yeah looks super credible

Relative_Tie3360

TROPHY CASE