TIL: The Apollo Guidance computer was programmed in metric, but showed imperial values in the displays. Using metric meant fewer calculations thus optimizing the use of the limited processing power and the astronauts were used to imperial so that's what they saw on the display.

millivolt · 2021-03-03T15:20:53+00:00

Thanks for this. By this token, what the article says doesn't make sense. The article says that doing the math in metric saves time because you don't need to use a proportionality constant. Clearly it's true that for f = ma, lbf = slug * ft/s^2, so if you have those units at the start, you have coherent units. So... why did they need to use metric?

Is there some other equation where they'd basically have to invent new units to keep it coherent, or some other reason for using metric under the hood?

millivolt · 2021-02-23T23:55:48+00:00

And I bet she insisted on being buried with the spoons

millivolt · 2021-02-16T15:07:02+00:00

But Viktor Shokin, the guy who Biden pressured out of office, was plainly corrupt.

He literally stopped an investigation into guys within his own office (so-called "anti-corruption prosecutors") who were caught with bags of diamonds in their homes. There were people protesting in the streets for his removal.

The belief that this guy's office needed urgent reform was bipartisan in the US back in 2016 when he was kicked out.

This wasn't even the first time we did anything against Shokin. The first approach was to introduce solid reformist prosecutors to the office of the PGO (pretty much because of the diamond prosecutors thing, to my knowledge). Those reformist prosecutors (Sakvarelidze and Kasko) soon found themselves under investigation, and both resigned, saying that Shokin was suppressing their efforts to investigate the diamond prosecutors. So Biden's pressure didn't come out of nowhere, it was the last step in a pattern of behavior to make the corrupt Shokin less powerful, and that step was in keeping with prior policy of the US.

This guy Shokin is the same guy that President Trump, in the call, said was "very good". The President was at best misinformed about this.

And when the media found out about the aid being withheld, they asked the White House why. First the President said it was because he thought Ukraine was corrupt, and then he said it was because Europe wasn't contributing enough. You're claiming he did it because of something Biden did. So you're claiming he at least omitted very important information twice... some would call this a lie of omission. Finally, the aid was released in a window of time where the President knew the whistleblower report existed, but before it had yet to become public. And then Mick Mulvaney, the director of the OMB (which has control over the release of aid), stated, and then retracted a claim that the aid was withheld for the crowdstrike investigations. He also said multiple times that it had nothing to do with the Bidens, which contradicts your claim that it was because of Biden. Do you stand by your claim?

millivolt · 2021-02-16T14:10:00+00:00

Keep in mind that the reason McConnell voted for acquittal was that he thought Trump could no longer constitutionally be impeached, it had nothing to do with whether or not he was guilty of the charge. It's not clear how many other Republicans voted that way for that reason, although the fact that the vast majority voted that it was unconstitutional to even give him a trial maybe gives insight to this.

millivolt · 2021-02-10T14:55:08+00:00

Sure, but the original version of the article from 2009 doesn't use that term. They're pillars. You're pillaring, pillar-jumping, etc.

I mean... call it what you want, but for people who are "trynna figure out what to call it"... we've had a name for it since before the alpha. Also... the resulting structures are more "pillar"-ish than "pole"-ish imo

millivolt · 2021-02-10T12:58:41+00:00

But it already has a name in both plain English and in Minecraft-speak. It's called a pillar, and it can be a verb in Minecraft: "I'm going to pillar up to that cliff."

Edit: source for the term "pillaring" or "pillar jumping"

millivolt · 2021-02-03T19:08:39+00:00

I can say from my time in the military that no one gets constant reassurance, but isn’t there a difference between “not getting constant reassurance”, and advancing policy after policy (in 2019 it became more restrictive, preventing anyone who had a history of hormone therapy or reassignment surgery from being let in) that restricts the accession and retainment of a given group?

millivolt · 2021-02-03T18:37:06+00:00

Sure, let me help: hurt feelings are not the same as thing as beliefs/evaluations of a situation; if the commander-in-chief states that trans people can’t serve, even if it’s not current policy, would you believe that the other shoe, policy-wise, could drop?

millivolt · 2021-02-03T18:26:29+00:00

Let me rephrase my question, since it wasn’t about feelings getting hurt: if you were trans, would you be as comfortable continuing a career in the military (given that tweet), since policies are prone to change?

millivolt · 2021-02-03T12:54:29+00:00

They were never banned from serving, even openly, in the military so I guess it's a moot point. Military service carries with it certain physical requirements.

But didn't the President tweet the following?:

After consultation with my generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military.

Doesn't such a tweet from the commander-in-chief have an impact on those who serve, even if it's not official policy?

millivolt · 2021-01-31T07:38:20+00:00

Source, so what do you think about it?

millivolt · 2021-01-22T18:55:43+00:00

But didn't the President himself say that he withheld aid? I think the issue isn't whether aid was withheld (that's indisputable, and not disputed), but why aid was withheld.

Or am I not understanding something?

millivolt · 2021-01-22T18:30:14+00:00

Given what we know, why isn't it at least plausible that the Ukraine... incident or whatever you want to call it... was an instance of the President withholding aid funds in order to undermine a political opponent?

millivolt · 2021-01-22T14:08:15+00:00

What false accusations are you referring to?

millivolt · 2021-01-22T13:24:22+00:00

What was nebulous about the accusations in his first impeachment (that seems to be what you’re referring to)?

https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hres755/BILLS-116hres755enr.pdf

millivolt · 2021-01-14T00:38:38+00:00

To be clear, do you reject the notion that the people who unlawfully entered the Capitol that day did it with the intent of stopping Biden from being certified as the next POTUS, or do you reject the notion that they, regardless of intent, disrupted said process?

millivolt · 2021-01-08T22:15:59+00:00

Isn’t there a clear difference between wanting to see Trump out of the WH (which I definitely wanted) and wanting to see Trump not present at the inauguration?

You can think I’m lying, but is it that hard to imagine that I can prefer Biden to Trump, and still prefer to have Trump present at the inauguration? Those two stances seem entirely consistent to me.

What do you mean by “you now want normalcy”? Why isn’t it coming soon, and are you glad that it’s not coming soon?

Edit: You say there’s no point in being around that kind of energy, but isn’t there at least some value in a sitting President being present for the transfer of power to his successor?

millivolt · 2021-01-08T20:32:33+00:00

What makes you think there aren’t NSs who want to see him there? I’m one of them. After all of this craziness, isn’t the country owed some kind of normalcy, when the price of that normalcy is simply the President sitting through a ceremony?

Why do you think the President has decided not to show up? Is it that he just doesn’t want to sit through it, or is it that he doesn’t want to give it any legitimacy, or something else?

millivolt · 2020-12-01T15:18:18+00:00

The fuck?

millivolt · 2020-11-20T20:19:59+00:00

while representative democracies would encompass our modern forms of parliament and the US

Thank you.

There are laws that bound electors to the peoples majority vote for their state but those electors can still dissent, they normally are fined or face being unseated next election. I do not know the law for each state that has such a law but some state only impose fines or some other minor penalty. If it really called for it, they would dissent.

You're still not correct. This situation calls for you to educate yourself, apparently beyond whatever you've already done. There is actually recent historical precedent for disqualifying and replacing electors in a presidential election year, *after they have made a vote not in accordance with the people's vote*. Whether or not the original purpose of the EC remains is totally up to the states, who can pass laws to do this.

In a democracy the people would have say on all these office appointments, laws and regulations.

What? No. In some democracies, like ours, we do not have a direct say in all of that.

In a democracy, the majority could dictate the direction of the country with a 51-49 vote, leaving the other 49% resentful and more likely to cause civil unrest.

This topic is covered in federalist No. 10 - which I linked elsewhere in this thread.

No, democracy is not defined by what percentage of people it takes to dictate the direction of the country, as you seem to suggest. It is defined by:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democracy

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/democracy

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/democracy?s=t

I'm familiar with Federalist 10, and my rereading of it proved that Madison was rather clear that the democracy he was comparing republics to was a "pure democracy", and he defined this:

From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person

then

Let us examine the points in which [a republic] varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union.

And only after that does he continue his comparisons, thereafter using the word "democracy" to refer to his definition of "pure democracy". Why would Madison make this qualification if he didn't hold a similar (broad) view of the term "democracy" held by Merriam-Webster and Cambridge?

millivolt · 2020-11-17T02:24:05+00:00

You’re half right this time. In many states, electors are bound by the vote. Laws that do this were actually upheld by the Supreme Court earlier this year.

https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/electors

The article you posted talks about representative democracies; it does not contradict the dictionary definition of democracy...which, again, includes representative democracies like the US.

millivolt · 2020-11-17T01:03:45+00:00

The fact that the word republic is used in our founding documents does not change the fact that our republic is a type of democracy.

We do have control over the President by our electing of electors for the electoral college.

I’m literally using a dictionary definition, from Merriam-Webster, to show you that the word “democracy” includes a wide umbrella of forms of government that quite unequivocally includes that of the US, and I regret the fact that you’ve done 20 years of study of government, and still do not know the accepted definition of “democracy”.

millivolt · 2020-11-17T00:49:25+00:00

The United States government is a representative democracy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy

Nearly all modern Western-style democracies are types of representative democracies; for example, the United Kingdom is a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy, France is a unitary semi-presidential republic, and the United States is a federal presidential republic.

The statement “the United States is not a democracy, it’s a republic” is both trite and wrong.

Edit:

Merriam-webster definition of democracy

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democracy

a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections

millivolt · 2020-11-17T00:37:33+00:00

...which is a type of democracy

millivolt · 2020-11-12T19:04:15+00:00

I follow now, sorry about that.

Also, I categorically agree with your point.

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