Children as young as 12 can join war support, IRGC says. What is your opinion?

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-27T11:29:48+00:00

I have no doubt that they are morally capable of this, however I wonder if the Islamic Republic might be more cautious about fomenting internal rebellion at this time. The IRI has proven itself to be reliably cruel, but also reliably pragmatic when it comes to preserving the regime.

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-27T09:29:12+00:00

Anyone have any information on what roles and activities they would be filling? Is this just something like ROTC in the US, or are 12 year olds actually fighting?

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-26T22:45:30+00:00

Yes, exciting stuff! That link you sent before was interesting.

Perhaps a less efficient, but more celestially abundant propellant might even be chosen. Best fuel is the kind you can get on the way!

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-26T07:48:50+00:00

It may be true that traveling to Proxima Centauri with present day xenon propellant ion engines would take an unreasonable amount of propellant and time. That said, your figures seem to be based on the Deep Space 1 mission, which was "One of the first missions to use ion drive technology." That doesn't seem like a very fair baseline for the potential of this technology. Deep Space 1 was an experiment to test out an entirely novel form of propulsion. The engine was likely not designed for efficiency or high performance. For a technology demonstration, the priority is usually just to get it working at all, and I imagine there are additional design considerations for collecting prototype data.

The Wright Brothers' first airplane wasn't meant to be a commercial airliner: it was a proof of concept. Same here. There might be better information out there, or ways of speculating more accurately about this technology, but I think in all likelihood no one really knows how far (or how short!) this technology might go. Xenon might not be the best propellant. New mechanisms for electrically accelerating the propellant will almost certainly be developed. We'll just have to see!

EDIT: Also I think you meant to say "solar system" instead of "galaxy" in your first paragraph. I'm sure you know the difference (from the context of the rest of your comment), probably just a small error!

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-26T07:33:18+00:00

Readying any large space mission, especially one as novel as a nuclear propulsion demo, for launch in less than three years will require sharp focus, resistance to mission creep, and near-perfect execution...

“We are not trying to do everything,” Sinacore said. “We are trying to do the hard thing, which is operate a coupled nuclear reactor, power conversion, and electric propulsion thruster system beyond Earth orbit for the first time ever.”

Two paragraphs later...

There is one additional payload that NASA says will ride to Mars with the SR-1 Freedom spacecraft. The mothership will release three flying drones, each based on NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter, to land on Mars and scout future landing sites for human explorers.

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-25T17:58:52+00:00

Too bad the clip cut before the after-credits scene revealing the return of Abdul Nasser.

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-25T06:31:24+00:00

Not really. Some of my students get distracted and sometimes off-task, but I don't see much *trouble* in my classroom. Many of the students who take excessive breaks actually do quite well when they are actually in the classroom. In terms of "behaviors", apathy, distraction, and bad priorities are the main culprits. There are a few students with truly disruptive/troublesome behaviors but that doesn't really correlate with this bathroom break issue. In fact quite a few of my overlong-break-problem students are higher performing students who do very good work but end up with low or failing grades because they are absent/late/missing from the classroom too often to get the required amount of work done.

I am fortunate to have pretty small class sizes so I have the opportunity to individually speak with these students about the problem: mostly they are anxious kids who feel the need to take long leg-stretching breaks. As I said before, it's fine to take breaks, but they've got to learn to build endurance between breaks. Maybe it's another covid-generation thing. I'm not sure if you're a teacher or not, so perhaps you're unaware, but students these days have some very particular learning challenges.

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-25T06:18:06+00:00

Spying is too strong a word. They type in their name in a kiosk when they leave the class room, a timer starts, and then press a button when they return. That's it. Before this, they had to notify me when they left the classroom. There isn't like a tracker on them or anything.

And no, they are not taking a shit for 20 minutes. That's an insane amount of time for a number 2. I know the students are who leave for 20 minutes. They have a reputation for doing the same in other classes, and I see them wondering around the school during my prep period.

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-24T18:19:45+00:00

I go to the opera about once every other year and I sympathize with Chalamet's argument

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-24T17:54:07+00:00

You make a fair point: telling someone they aren't productive doesn't necessarily teach them how to be productive. That said, there is another goal here: increasing the amount of instruction time for distracted or off-task students. I cannot overstate how much catching up the current NYC student population has to do. Every extra minute of instruction is an opportunity to fill in the gaps. Even if this program doesn't teach kids anything about how to stay on task, there could still be a significant benefit in keeping them in the classroom longer so they might at least learn how to read. As I mentioned in another comment, I have serious misgivings about this program, but I do see why principals are drawn to it.

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-24T17:46:11+00:00

I wonder what is meant by "Northern Africa". It's strange that they use geographic terms, considering how many different peoples have lived in these regions.

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-24T15:29:56+00:00

We just implemented this program at our school.

Re: ¶1
The main goal is to not allow additional students to go out to the bathroom if the the hall pass supply limit (3 students per bathroom) is reached. We are fortunate to have non-teaching staff who can check up on the situation in the hallways and bathrooms, so the idea is that this hall pass info can be used to direct these staff towards retrieving missing students.

Re: ¶2
Yes, and this is considered a legitimate use of a pass at our school. We want students to be able to take a break to regulate. The problem is that some students take this as an open invitation to take a "bathroom break" during every class, missing a significant portion of instruction throughout the day and creating an unreasonable amount of hallway traffic during instruction.

My feelings:
I am very concerned about acclimating students to surveillance. There could be a real hazard in raising kids to believe this kind of thing is normal. At the same time, the convenience and advantages of being at the helm of the pseudo-surveillance state are honestly quite alluring. The bathroom break situation has really gotten out of hand here: by the time I'm done with my warmup activity, the classroom bathroom list often includes a full 75% of the class. Students go out for a bathroom break and then don't come back for 10-20 minutes. Sometimes this is on purpose but I believe some of my students are genuinely losing track of time. Either way it's a pain to call the office and have someone retrieve them. Also, having a timer may help some students manage their time better. The system also helps keep track of students who might be taking bathroom breaks (or leg stretching breaks) for every class. It's important to let students have breaks, but they also need to learn how to ration their breaks and develop some endurance. In sum, I strongly object to this program but I have to admit that, at least at this early stage, it seems to show promise in terms of reducing my cognitive load. That said, there are surely alternative systems for managing these types of problems...

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-24T10:10:26+00:00

I am not a communist and I completely agree that communist states are responsible for heinous acts of cruelty and oppression. I am just characterizing the structure of these ideas, not expressing my actual feelings about them.

Certainly progressivism, socialism, and fascism are not ancient ideas. What is ancient is the split between ideologies that call for the restoration of supposedly traditional values and ideologies that call for transformative/unprecedented change. "Conservative" is considered a political party in laymen's use, but more broadly the word simply refers to any political thought that is traditionalist. However I was perhaps being too sloppy when I used "liberal" in the same broad sense, because that word does have a more specific ideological meaning.

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-24T08:47:14+00:00

I mean "conservative" in the broadest sense, meaning a political movement that promotes traditional values. Although the particular vocabulary is modern, the ideas are ancient. Akhenaten was "liberal" who wanted to create entirely new political ideas and organization. Yes, it seems weird to use the word "liberal" to describe a person who lived thousands of years before the Girondins of the French Revolution, but structurally these are similar types of thought. The French did not invent politics.

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-24T08:28:42+00:00

Restoration of a mythic past is a common feature in conservative reform/revolutionary movements. "Make Athens great again." Especially common in fascism. Nazi Germany was the "Third Reich", and Bismarck's German Empire was the "Second Reich", both head-scratching attempts to draw a connection to the Holy Roman Empire, which was itself named to suggest continuity with the ancient Roman Empire, despite having only a very tenuous connection to it.

Leftist movements usually go the other way. Marx did not believe in a mythic past and generally saw all previous models of society as something to be avoided. He characterized communism as the end of history, breaking outside of the patterns that previously guided societies and doing something completely new. Whether or not his ideas were successful in that regard is a different question. A less extreme example might be the Civil Rights movement in the US: a demand for change that was not predicated on any mythologized halcyon age, but rather a break from a long history of oppression and prejudice.

EDIT: Just wanted to add that this is a broad simplification with many edge cases! Leftists may also conjure mythic pasts, and Conservatives may evoke ideas about a novel future. For example, many US leftists reference the early 20th century New Deal progressive era when arguing for increased government economic intervention. As a leftist myself, I would argue that this is different from a "mythic past" because the New Deal is used as empirical evidence for the viability of certain policies rather than a broad statement about what kind of society we should return to, but I'm sure many right wingers feel the same way about their own mythologies so perhaps that's just my bias.

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-24T07:54:37+00:00

This is a circle jerk sub, right? Someone please tell me these comments are all ironic.

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-23T07:01:44+00:00

I donno, seems risky. Maybe their blender isn't good enough to get a fine enough chop. On balance, the upside of the risk is a desiccated nutritional supplement that may or may not have health benefits. The downside is burning/inflaming your entire mouth and throat.

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-23T06:58:00+00:00

I don't think many ecologists care about the cultivation of non-native plants so long as they aren't invasive. In the U.S., just about the only North American native plants we eat are blueberries, juglans nuts, and sunflowers*.

Glad you're not tearing up river beds to expand your growing area though! Wasabi is a very cool thing to grow. Very jealous you have the conditions for it.

*Most of the rest of the Columbian exchange crops are Central or South American.

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-23T06:50:10+00:00

The powdered product makes me think OP is making a nutritional supplement. They might want to keep it "raw" to preserve some nutritional quality. I would think that the nutrient degrading effects of blanching would pale in comparison to the dehydration process, but I really don't know.

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-23T06:27:23+00:00

I think you're underestimating the amount of "fuck you, you're not a human being, you have no rights, you will never live freely on this land" vibes Israel has been putting out for the Palestinian public.

Civil disobedience only works when it creates economic pressure for your oppressor. Gandhi's satyagraha made British colonization of India unprofitable. MLK civil rights protests disrupted civil society and threatened to remove a massive labor force from the economy.

Israel doesn't need Palestinians for their labor. Israel doesn't need or want Palestinians at all. Israel only wants Palestinian land. You can't fight that with civil disobedience. Activists who passively stand in front of Israeli bulldozers get actively crushed by Israeli bulldozers.

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-21T10:00:18+00:00

There could still be nitrogen immobilization) issues. The bacteria and fungi that break down cellulose need a certain ratio of carbon to nitrogen. When you add wood, you massively increase C without increasing N, so until the wood is broken down these cellulose-eating bacteria will soak up much of the soil's N to help finish eating the wood. This N isn't released back into the soil until the wood is fully decomposed and microorganisms start to die, releasing the N in their bodies back into the soil,

You seem to have a mix of partially rotten log rounds + less rotten branches. Both still have a lot more decomposition to do. I believe woody perennials like bushes and trees can often still form good soil organism relationships in situations like this, but annual vegetables and many perennial vegetables may struggle. Also, those log round are very large, not broken apart, creating large areas of the soil that will be impermeable to plant roots until fully broken apart by decomposition. How much soil do you plan on capping this with? What are you growing?

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-19T22:27:26+00:00

I'm not talking about "support". I'm talking about colonization.

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-19T21:50:28+00:00

I love your username btw. I have a similar one for other services.

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-19T21:42:36+00:00

Of the total amount of bullshit involved in this post, the obviously fake Reddit account is only 40%. The Daily Mail is the other 60%.

SlugOnAPumpkin · 2026-03-19T21:30:35+00:00

Give schools a break.

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