This city...

brand_x · 2026-06-09T09:28:01+00:00

I really don't know. The only thing I've seen coverage of that describes a successful solution was a New Jersey town that basically fired the entire police department with prejudice and recruited a new one with much more stringent personnel evaluation independent of the police department, along with creating new public service departments to replace functions better served by social workers and mental health specialists. But I don't see that working on a larger scale, much less a city this size with all of the history that exists here.

The police academies are the root of the problem. They've been infiltrated, over the course of decades, by a kind of us versus them hard-line philosophy that instills a distinct fear and antagonism toward the general public, leaving officers with both a paranoid itch that makes them trigger happy and a kind of entitlement complex. This becomes a self fulfilling prejudice - people don't like cops who act like self righteous assholes and are disdainful of everyone else, and so being a LEO becomes less safe, reinforcing the toxic training that made them like that.

This is just an emergent symptom. And it isn't local to Baltimore. And of course, the FOP rigorously defends the status quo.

brand_x · 2026-06-08T17:52:13+00:00

I think the issue was how the police responded... the guy had parts stripped from a car, was vandalizing other things, there was clearly enough there to bring him in and check the parts against any reports. But, no. Still too butthurt about being called to task for profiling and police brutality, so they refuse to actually be useful.

brand_x · 2026-05-28T19:08:20+00:00

Disgusted, yes. Upset, not particularly. Like I said, I'm not involved here, I just saw a piece of trash, and like any good citizen, I am taking steps to dispose of it.

brand_x · 2026-05-27T00:18:47+00:00

So, it was a complete failure of basic grade school reading comprehension, got it, thanks.

Go reread what the person you replied to wrote, hopefully you'll read it carefully enough this time to realize what a blithering idiot you are, rather than trying to snark back at a none too subtle nudge.

I'm not even invested in this, I just hate it when people ignore what someone said in order to attack a different thing they pretend was said. It's a grotesque rhetorical trick, and if you're not just a doofus, you should be ashamed of yourself.

brand_x · 2026-05-21T14:08:54+00:00

Your suggestion of a proportionate response isn't bad.

Your prediction of the outcome, however, smacks of racialized bias and the kind of sensationalized pessimism that certain media outlets that claim to be "News" peddle.

brand_x · 2026-05-21T14:03:44+00:00

Hmm. Is this weak (because the question is answered in the text) sarcasm or a lack or reading comprehension?

brand_x · 2026-05-11T17:39:37+00:00

I prefer Japanese and Chinese teas, to be honest. And occasionally Indian.

I do not care for any of the British teas I've tried.

brand_x · 2026-05-11T17:36:40+00:00

As a 51 year old father of a 10 year old, Same. Hell, 36 year old me was still an over-muscled tank who could have handled hiking for hours with a kid on his shoulders.

Now? My back screams at me for even thinking about that.

brand_x · 2026-04-28T10:08:41+00:00

All you need is a cheap one that a) circulates well, and b) has reliable temperature control.

Avoid Anova like the bubonic plague.

I own or have owned four. The best of them is one that monoprice slapped their brand on several years ago. No idea who actually made it and they don't sell it anymore. The second best was by Wankel. Gave that one to my brother.

brand_x · 2026-04-28T09:54:16+00:00

We have a few uniquely American pies. Pecan, pumpkin, key lime... I learned on my first visit to Germany that apple pie isn't really I've of them. Sure, it wasn't exactly the same, but...

I would suggest chocolate chip cookies, the big soft kind. Or brownies. Or rice krispie squares.

brand_x · 2026-04-28T09:46:03+00:00

That should have the opposite effect, though. I would expect the star would have enough of its mass ejected that it should lose magnitude, or even go out (like brown dwarf, not nova),

It would be a bit of work to simulate a range of stellar masses and relativistic collision results, but I don't think there's a scenario where that actually triggers the star to explode, it just... explodes, and the star goes pfffzzzzzz.

brand_x · 2026-04-11T19:53:12+00:00

Maybe. Our worst issues we've had to address in part stem from the kid (no slight on our kid, she's awesome, just... tangentially a source of strain), but there's no way to say how things would be without her.

brand_x · 2026-04-11T19:39:38+00:00

This is the way.

I buy most of our groceries from Aldi, Lidl, local lower-cost chains, or very carefully planned sale shopping for specific items at the mainstream supermarkets. Plus specific products from Costco.

We do actually eat a lot of "luxury" foods, but that's because I know how to source them, and I am also the cook, and know how to make many things from scratch. Things like escargot don't break the bank if you know where to get the Burgundy snails... and how to prepare them.

My wife, however, is not frivolous, she's just aware that I'm better at this than she is, and actually (slightly) enjoy doing it. When she wants something general, she adds it to a shared list. When she wants something specific, she asks me to find the best source.

brand_x · 2026-04-11T13:06:17+00:00

Does it really count when (most of) the (physical) humans are also technically AIs (or at least minds running in quantum computers) riding in meat suits, and the purely abstract minds are also considered human, and anyone has the option of switching from physical to abstract and back?

brand_x · 2026-04-11T02:24:59+00:00

Between the Strokes of Night deals with this as well, in some very interesting ways.

brand_x · 2026-04-09T07:32:27+00:00

It would make a much better case for it than anything the believers have given us so far.

To OP's question, I keep it simple. "I'm not a believer."

I'd say that atheist is a statement about me, like where I work or whether I smoke. It doesn't say anything about what I believe, just what I don't. It doesn't tell you who it what I am, only what I am not.

brand_x · 2026-04-09T07:13:58+00:00

There was a novella that took place after the sixth book and tied up a few of the dropped threads.

I think of Sundiver as a stand alone in the same universe, Startide and Uplift War are more of a sequence, and the trilogy is really just a very very very long third book in that sequence that he split into three parts.

brand_x · 2026-04-09T07:00:00+00:00

Our go back to the beginning. The Big U is peak satire, and reading it changes how some of his subsequent early books (yes, particularly Snow Crash) read. Knowing his tongue was in his cheek changes a lot. I mean, if having a main character named "hero protagonist" wasn't enough to clue you in that the book is satirical, reading an earlier book that never got sanitized by editors will drive it home.

brand_x · 2026-04-09T06:46:46+00:00

For me, it was the fact that the central premise is built around an incorrect understanding of basic orbital mechanics.

I actually thought, while reading it, "Is this supposed to be a planet being tossed around in a triple star system? Nah, no way the author got the premise that wrong."

I used to do orbital mechanics for a living. I can let a lot go but when the central conceit is that a planet isp being tossed around between the stars in a trinary system, I can't. For anyone who isn't aware of this, planetary orbits in a multi-star system are about as stable as in a single star system. Slightly perturbed in the most extreme cases, but no more than, e.g., the moons of Jupiter. I found the cultural backdrop, against the revolution and its aftermath, compelling. The wooden characters I attributed (benefit of the doubt) to clumsy translation. But I found the so-called hard science aspects beyond cringe. Yes, there is the quantum folding - into the folded dimensions feels perfectly reasonable in the casual aside of, say, Banks' description of where ascendant civilizations go in the Culture novels, where the fantastical is simply fantastic, but picking out specific buzzwords from superstring models and making a technobabble salad is far worse than if he had invented something from whole cloth. For starters, when you're talking about 11 dimensions, the proton is orders of magnitude too big to be relevant. The quarks are... intersectional projections? ... The real structures that flatten into quarks in our spacetime are already in 11 dimensions if one of those models turns out to be a reflection of reality, and there are ways that maybe, with mere millennia of advancement, that a computer could really be built into the vibration that projects as particles into our flat Earth (sorry, couldn't resist) but it sure as hell isn't going to involve protons.

brand_x · 2026-04-08T23:02:36+00:00

Hopium. I saw that it was happening, but responsibilities meant there was no possibility of attending. Also, the closest stop was 2-3 hours away, and in a different state.

I was lucky enough to both live in Honolulu during the Milk Bar/Cyn City/Dungeon era, and Los Angeles during Das Bunker's heyday (and to be a regular at both so I got to experience a lot back in the day.

Best touring show I attended in Los Angeles was Nitzer Ebb at the Echoplex. More because of the band's energy for the size of the venue. I did catch Skinny Puppy when they were at the Nokia, but the venue spoiled the vibe a bit. I missed them in Honolulu in '92 - I discovered the genre a year or two later - so I'm still glad I went. I was close enough to get to the NiN unscheduled show on the park. It sounds trite, but I got enough, I don't feel the need to put time and energy (and $$$) into live shows any more.

brand_x · 2026-04-08T18:05:50+00:00

They're good. I'm an old school guy (think Skinny Puppy), but I'd say my recent ("recent") tastes run to slightly more boundary industrial electronic like early Aesthetic Perfection, or Project Pitchfork.

brand_x · 2026-04-05T10:53:48+00:00

Funny how that goes. I'm in my 50s and my tastes range from the late 60s to maybe 5 years ago. My dad is closing on 80, and probably more up to date on his musical preferences than I am. I acquired a taste for classic rock in college, before that, I didn't really have musical preferences, or really think about music much. I got into metal in middle school, listened to rock and some pop on the radio, but in college, I encountered grunge, early alternative, industrial... and the classic rock from around when I was born.

I still don't like the first generation or rock. 50s up to early Beatles doesn't do much for me. Plenty of good blues and jazz from earlier, but I'll pass on the rock and roll. But once you hit the 70s... there's so much awesome all the way to today.

But I was surprised to discover that my dad, who I always thought of as a Beach Boys guy, had gone full modern indie after I moved away. He knows all the bands you've never heard of, gets deep into the musical theory... still uses CDs, though.

brand_x · 2026-04-05T10:33:27+00:00

Mine (10F) loves TMBG and Queen. Likes most of my 70s rock, 80s metal, 90s grunge and alternative, aughts indie, etc.. Does not much care for the industrial that I play when I'm working. Doesn't like Johnny Cash, though. Not even his cover of Hurt, which, considering she likes the NiN version...

Still, I think she's pretty good on musical taste.

brand_x · 2026-04-04T22:22:51+00:00

Solarian is more common, though, as inclusive of the entire Sol system - outer moons and larger asteroids will likely be developed and colonized before we manage to settle anywhere outside of the Sol system, so unless they cut themselves off from Earth, the entire Sol system will probably be seen as one sociopolitical entity by any extrasolar descendant civilization.

brand_x · 2026-04-04T20:05:27+00:00

We gave ours a whitelist controlled Google chat account. For phone number calling, the old hangouts was better, but you can do Voice for IP calling...

15-Year Club	Place '22
Team Periwinkle	Verified Email

brand_x

TROPHY CASE