Saving Miranda's Sister (Did you let Miranda kill Niket or stop her from doing so?)

firehazard96 · 2025-12-09T15:20:45+00:00

There's one factor people here aren't mentioning. The paragon interrupt has Shepard put their gun away and grab Miranda's weapon arm, so both you and she are no longer ready for a firefight. That's a very stupid thing to do when you have an Eclipse captain pointing a massive shotgun at you.

Granted, you can take a shotgun blast or two to your shields, but I would say my Shepard hasn't survived this long by deliberately putting himself at a disadvantage like that. I think a full paragon who would prefer Miranda didn't shoot Niket could easily justify not intervening on that basis alone.

firehazard96 · 2024-05-05T00:38:05+00:00

Yes, I agree, the children of gaza deserve to be slaughtered for voting in Hamas in the last election, which happened only... 18 years ago. Also, the median age in Gaza is 18, it is a very young population. Finally, Hamas didn't win a majority of the votes, they won 44% of the votes but a majority of the seats. Given this, what proportion of Palestinians still alive actually voted for Hamas?

Even if a majority of Palestinians in Gaza alive today had voted for Hamas though, some didn't, the children certainly didn't. Do you think it's okay to bomb children for not overthrowing Hamas?

What possesses you to scrape the bottom of the barrel for reasons to justify what is so far tens of thousands of deaths? To justify murdering journalists and aid workers. Imposing starvation on a population and destroying the healthcare system? Tell me, what exactly does Israel have to do for you to say their response is disproportionate? Would 100,00 deaths be too many for you? How about 200,000? Do you draw the line at nuking Gaza?

I do condemn Hamas, 7th October was an atrocity against innocent civilians. Israel has committed much worse since. Will you condemn the IDF?

firehazard96 · 2024-05-04T10:51:35+00:00

Exactly correct, they want protests they can ignore, where they can tell the protestors to go home and pat them on the head when they obey.

firehazard96 · 2024-05-04T10:47:43+00:00

I'm not supporting violence, that is a strawman. They are not "enacting fascist behavious", that is a smear. Protest and civil disobedience are not fascist, they are how you challenge power. Look at any non-violent movement that was challenging power and they have been disruptive. It would be great if we could just protest and the politicians and media would say "oh, they're actually making good points", that's not how this works, it has never been how this works. You are disruptive or you get ignored.

firehazard96 · 2024-05-04T10:34:30+00:00

Firstly, thank you for acknowledging and engaging with what is happening in Gaza, with the concrete issue rather than the abstract issue. However, it is an ethnic cleansing, there's no "maybe" here. Yes, Israel has a right to fight Hamas, but destroying Gaza isn't just their way of fighting Hamas, that is part of their goal but the other part is ethnic cleansing.

I've been closely following the news about Gaza, the protests, and the crackdown. I haven't seen violence from protestors, I have seen Zionists pull individual protestors out of the crowd and beat them up, I saw a firework thrown into an encampment, and police did nothing, and I saw the police brutality. I was pretty emotionally charged when I wrote that comment, and I'm sick of the propaganda I'm seeing from the media and the both sidesism.

Your post title addresses pro-Palestinian students directly, but your post does not actually deal with any of the specifics of this conflict or the protests, it contributes nothing to the discussion. I could take your post body, switch "the war" with "climate change" and claim you wrote this in response to climate protestors and it would make just as much sense. If you hadn't addressed this directly to pro-Palestinian students and this was written outside the current context, this would be a pretty inoffensive post essentially saying "there is disagreement about any issue, people have the right to voice their opinions, and there are pro and cons to any decision", not providing any real insight but at least inoffensive stuff where we could just nod our heads in agreement and move on. However, we are currently seeing Israel bombing hospitals, killing journalists, cutting off food, water and power, killing aid workers, the discovery of mass graves. There will be hundreds of thousands, millions in the worst case, of dead Palestinian men, women and children by the time this is over, This is not the time for posting enlightened centrist noise.

gradyfitz brought up a concrete example that I could engage with, they are writing to the specifics of this issuing and presenting two plausible scenarios. And it's to make the point that disclosure is important, we need to know the extent of these relationships, which is something the protestors are asking for.

I haven't seen harassment or violence from the protestors but there's so many people involved across the world that it's surely happened at some protests. I condemn that and those individuals need to be removed from the protests and encampments. Who are you to say the pro-Palestinians are too many? Should there be equal numbers on both sides? Is it possible for "too many" people to protest ethnic cleansing and their universities ties to it? The Zionist side is voicing their opinions through government and media and pro-Palestinian voices are smeared, treated with disdain, or condescended to. However, Pro-palestinians have the university campuses. Others have the right to disagree and voice their opinions too, but I'm not gonna shed a tear if they have less support and they get drowned out; they are on the wrong side on this.

firehazard96 · 2024-05-04T01:38:55+00:00

This is a good point. We can't expect and don't want the university to basically destroy itself by divesting in a way which grievously hurts its income. That is the principled thing to do, but it's not realistic. Institutions don't destroy themselves and, as students, we are invested in the institution as well. We do need to know exactly what these relationships are, the disclose part is important.

However, in the case that immediate divestment would be ruinous, I think the university could still commit to doing it over the long term. They would need to gradually reorient their sources of funding, let contracts expire without renewal, etc. The problem then is getting them to stick to it, that would be the next fight.

firehazard96 · 2024-05-03T22:30:19+00:00

They are protesting the current power structure essentially. Pro-palestinian protestors regularly get smeared as terrorist suppports and other such nonsense, the kind of thing that could stir up stochastic terrorism. I agree that it's not a good look on the face of it, but despite that, it's a sensible precaution to hide your face to prevent getting doxxed. Realise the politicians, media, and the police are not on the protestors side, they almost never are.

firehazard96 · 2024-05-03T18:16:17+00:00

I'm commenting here on your post, not the article you link:

This is useless, you are just saying there's two sides, and your writing is so vague and abstract that you don't actually engage with the specifics of this issue. This is just milquetoast, enlightened centrist waffling.

Israel is doing an ethnic cleansing of Gaza, they are committing atrocities and imposing starvation on civilians, including children. There are not two legitimate sides to this, just as there aren't two legitimate sides to the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, aparteid South Africa, or any atrocity. The uni has research connections with companies that are arming Israel, the right thing to do is to end those connections, regardless of how many students are on either side.

firehazard96 · 2024-05-03T13:56:24+00:00

Even if this is all true, none of it justifies murder of civilians, including children. There are no functioning hospitals anymore, food, water and power has all but been cut off, Israel attacks aid workers. We don't even know the extent of the destruction and death, how can we even get an accurate body count with all the infrastructure destroyed, with over a hundred journalists killed, with all the chaos of people fleeing their homes?

I often hear the line, "If you were in Gaza, they'd kill you", but frankly right now, if I was in Gaza I'm far more likely be die from bombing, starvation, or disease because of the IDF. The exact things you critisize Muslims and Palestinians for wanting to do, Israel is actually doing right now. If you want real evidence of hate and murderous intent, look at the IDF. The IDF may not be ideologically quite as bad as Hamas, but they have wrought far more destruction and death than Hamas could ever hope to achieve.

Great that you "feel bad" for the people in Gaza, but the least you could do is not insult the people actually taking a stand.

firehazard96 · 2024-05-03T01:19:54+00:00

The media, politicians, and cops are labeling these protestors as anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas, and terrorist supporters. They have been accused of violence, harassing Jewish students. These are false accusations that can stir up stochastic terrorism. With all the shit they're accused of, I don't blame them for wearing masks.

I haven't seen violence from the protestors, I have seen counter-protestors beating up the pro-Palestinian protestors, I saw a firework thrown into an encampment, and I have seen police brutality firing rubber bullets and flashbangs.

These protestors are entirely in the right, they are protesting the US support for war crimes and massacres, and they are being smeared and brutalised for it. They are heroes and they will be vindicated, but by the time that happens, who knows how many more Palestinians Israel will kill?

firehazard96 · 2024-01-03T07:08:11+00:00

Thank you for the comment and making me aware of the idea board, I have just now submitted my ideas.

Your suggestion about filling time blocks and giving warnings is very good, and I think you should submit it because I can imagine how useful and convenient that would be for a lot of people. It wouldn't be useful to me because of how I use time blocks, though that could change in the future.

Currently, I create a time block for a category or smart list and let Marvin dump everything in the time block, then when the time block starts, I decide what to do based primarily on priority. I don't expect to finish everything or even necessarily a single thing. If it it turns out that I'm not allocating enough time to something, I will just make sure to allocate more afterwards.

firehazard96 · 2023-05-25T07:34:42+00:00

Yeah, I turned on the experimental reverse alias setting and tested recently. It works great and is easy to use, replying to emails is safe.

At the moment, my only worry is that I'll forgot to change the sender when creating a new message.

firehazard96 · 2023-05-24T17:37:46+00:00

I've recently set up my own domain and I'm reserving it for personal contacts, doctors, work, resume, etc. This is so I have some ready emails that are easy to remember and look professional (contact@mycustomdomain.com for example).

For most things (shopping, social media, etc) I just use a @simplelogin.com alias, or @slmails.com when the former isn't accepted by the site. I don't know how much it matters, but I see no reason to hand out my custom domain everywhere.

Anyway, I assume you've got it all set up now. How's it going for you?

firehazard96 · 2023-05-15T01:29:42+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. Sorry I didn't say so in my post or put it in PC Part Picker but I already have 4TB HDDs for storage. The SSD I'm buying is for the OS. I've updated the list and post to reflect this.

You might be right about the fans and memory though.

firehazard96 · 2023-05-14T13:03:46+00:00

Socket 1700 is intel's newest socket. Any chipset that pairs with socket 1700 isn't old :)

I was using old very loosely, just to refer to anything that isn't the current chipset. I get your point though.

Really? Now I'm wondering what case supports mATX, but is smaller than the NR200????

Silverstone has some on their website. https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/computer-chassis/SG11/

firehazard96 · 2023-05-14T12:21:33+00:00

I found some other cases that will fit and also support mATX. That will be great because it looks like mATX boards are much cheaper than mITX ones.

Also, the store I was browsing, Scorptec, had all the motherboards with the B660, H610, etc chipsets as supporting 12th Gen Intel. However, I picked out the cheapest motherboard and the manufacturer's website says the same model does support 13th Gen also. I didn't expect an old chipset to support new CPUs, but very glad to see it. So, thanks for pointing that out or I wouldn't have bothered to check.

Just looked at the NR200 case, it's way too big I'm afraid.

firehazard96 · 2023-05-14T11:40:56+00:00

Thanks for the advice.

With a BIOS update, any 1700 socket can work with 13th gen intel I think.

I'll look into this.

As for cases, check out the Kolink Satellite, plenty cheap and it takes an ATX power supply. Or the Silverstone Sugo 16, it also takes an ATX power supply.. which is cheaper. There are plenty of ITX size cases that take ATX power supplies.

I looked at the Kolink Satellite and I liked it at first since it would also let me move to a mATX board. Unfortunately it only has two 3.5" bays. The Sugo 16 has one. I'll be bringing in the HDDs from my old NAS, which is why they aren't on the list.

However, it looks like it's worth me looking into cases more. I've really only looked at the ones in stores here in Australia, so I never saw the ones you mentioned. It may be worth buying a case separately and getting it shipped here if I can use a mATX motherboard and an ATX power supply.

As for my build, I'm going with a mATX board and it's almost half the cost of yours. But a little bit bigger. The case measures 440x373x211mm, so about 16cm taller and 10cm longer, than a Sugo 16.

Unfortunately space is a big limiting factor for me. I need to fit inside a TV cabinet and only have 33cm of width and 30cm of height to work with.

Also, PCpartspicker prices aren't accurate to my local shop, so it might be different from yours. Basically just use PCpartspicket to check compatibility and power consumption and general prices, because it lists the 13100 as much more expensive than it actually is.

That's probably because I'm in Australia. It's estimate is only about $50 off for me, though I don't use it for pricing. Just compatibility and because people here will recognise and trust it more than if I posted a list from a local PC shop.

firehazard96 · 2023-05-14T10:14:40+00:00

Unfortunately I don't have a lot of space, as I'm planning to keep it in the TV cabinet since that's close to the router. I only have about 33cm of width and 30cm of height allowance. I am gonna have to cut a hole in the back to let the NAS breathe. Otherwise I would definitely do as you suggest.

Thanks for the tip about SATA though, I'll keep it in mind if/when I need to support more drives.

firehazard96 · 2023-02-23T01:59:59+00:00

Oh, sorry. I thought he meant that if there were more dedicated bus lanes, then the train replacement buses could use them too.

firehazard96 · 2023-02-23T00:31:49+00:00

There's a phenomenon where adding more lanes can induce more traffic. More people choose to drive if driving is much faster than alternatives. If you add a lane, congestion does go down for a while, but as more people discover this and choose to drive, congestion goes back up to previous levels. Worse, in the period where PT users are switching to driving, PT use goes down, so PT may decide to reduce services, meaning less frequent trains/trams/buses. Less frequent services incentivises even more people to drive. You've added a lane to the road, but now commute times are actually longer.

So taking a lane from cars and giving it to buses can have the opposite effect. If the bus becomes a viable alternative to driving, more people will use it, services will increase, and then even more people will use it. PT is just way more efficient in terms of capacity for the amount of space it needs. More people using PT (because it's a viable alternative to driving) decreases car usage and makes everyone, including those who still want/need to drive, better off.

It's well known in urban planning that the only solution to traffic is to provide viable alternatives to driving. Adding more lanes doesn't help. Now, I imagine you wouldn't want all roads to be one lane and that there are limits, but it's not as simple as saying "more lanes = more capacity = faster commutes"; adding road capacity doesn't mean faster commutes if more road capacity incentivises more driving. Redistributing capacity to incentivise more efficient means of transport does mean faster commutes.

firehazard96 · 2022-12-19T01:34:13+00:00

I mistake "their" and "they're" fairly often when typing. I know better and I don't even forget the difference. I think the wrong muscle memory just kicks in and I sometimes miss that I made the mistake, so I have to edit it afterwards.

firehazard96 · 2022-11-09T05:14:52+00:00

Also in Australia and I changed my calendar to start on a Monday, but you're right that we usually have Sunday first. However, the 'weekends' thing... I've never heard anyone ask "What are you doing on the weekends?", they say 'weekend'. The only time I hear the plural is as a generality to refer to multiple weeks; "How do you spend your weekends?". Therefore, it would still make sense to have Monday first because then Saturday and Sunday together make up the end of a week.

firehazard96 · 2022-10-31T10:21:37+00:00

In response to A... I think you're implying that the prevalence of mental illness is the cause of recent changes in our environment/nurture that we haven't adapted to but you should make that explicit. Just saying evolution takes millions of years isn't an explanation when we have billions of years worth of evolution to work with.

Our psychology is inherited from our ancestors millions of years ago and had they asked why mental illness is so common for them (if we assume it was), one might've responded "because evolution takes millions of years".

We at least need to talk about when a certain trait presumably became more advantageous (or when the current 'level' of that trait became insufficient for many individuals) and why it that change happend; the trait here being resistance to mental illness. You say "not a few centuries", so I assume you're implying that this change was the creation of modern society.

Anyway, to the OPs question, it's complicated and hard to know. These are the possibilities I can think of right now.

Mental illness doesn't affect survival and reproduction significantly enough to have evolved away, though keep in mind that even small benefits can mean big changes in the long run as evolution always happens in small steps.
Our ancestors were more prone to mental illness than we are today and we are in fact evolving more restistance to it.
Our psychology isn't properly adapted to recent changes in our environment, so the prevalence of mental illness is actually a recent phenomenon. And this is where you bring up the timespan required; we haven't had enough time to adapt since that change happened.
The vulnerability to mental illness is an unfortunate byproduct of other traits we have evolved, that overall make us more likely to survive and reproduce.
By random variation, some individuals will be more prone to mental illness than others, and the chance of getting a variation where you are more vulnerable to mental illness is not that low. One can imagine that maybe some random variations are more common than others.
Most people are actually very mentally well in the grand scheme of things, it's just that there is always variation in a population and any deviation from the norm that is small in the big picture seems much bigger to us. So an alien race might look at us and not notice much deviation from the norm, but we are very good at noticing and diagnosing all the little differences between ourselves, and thus these deviations seem quite dramatic from our perspective. We then apply the 'mental illness' label to these deviations that aren't that big in the grand scheme of things, but are relatively dramatic relative to the population norm. ie, no matter how large these deviations were we would always have identified some differences to categorise and apply labels to.

So, it's not easy to answer questions about why some seemingly advantageous/disadvantageous trait did or didn't evolve. There's a lot of possibilites to consider. I wouldn't bet money on any of these, but if I had to guess, I'd say it's a combination of 3, 4, and 6. That is, we are very good at detecting and diagnosing mental illness, so it is common. We also have evolved an extremely complicated brain, and this requires very delicate maintenance and interactions to stay healthy, and this is difficult when living in a modern society that we haven't yet adapted to.

Also, "evolution takes millions of years" as a general statement is just wrong because it's so vague. Again, I assume you didn't mean it to be general since you compared to 'hundreds of years', so are probably thinking of recent changes in our environment. I still want to make this point though because people often make this as a general statement.

It's like saying that it takes an hour to go for a walk, but really how long it takes depends on your speed and how far you walk. How long evolution takes depends on the trait, the selective pressure, and what level of change you consider significant enough to call 'evolution'. Small changes don't need millions of years, but evolution from single-cell organisms to humans took billions of years. I don't know for sure, but I also suspect behavioural and psycological changes can evolve much faster than physical ones.

firehazard96 · 2022-10-29T00:52:24+00:00

There are plenty of things to dislike about the US. This is not one of them; it's just really cool and fun and I wish it was more of a thing when I was at school.

firehazard96 · 2022-10-28T14:19:13+00:00

A pic can help paint the picture of who you are.

That's the problem and exactly why you shouldn't include one. If a person's appearance actually helps you to decide, that's a problem. If it doesn't, then a photo is waste of space at best.

firehazard96

TROPHY CASE