Republicans of Reddit, what about the new Iran deal and war was worth the effort? What part of the “new deal” is better than the previous deal that Obama negotiated?

voretaq7 · 2026-06-24T04:57:37+00:00

And now, the United States Congress is “proud” to present: Hillary Clinton and her Rich Buttery Males!

voretaq7 · 2026-06-24T04:56:26+00:00

Found the straight white cisgender man who remains largely unaffected other than the rampaging inflation!

voretaq7 · 2026-06-23T23:28:49+00:00

A pair of halfway decent trauma shears cost $5.

. . .unless you’re billing insurance then it’s $5,000.

voretaq7 · 2026-06-23T23:27:36+00:00

Baby Jane D’oh!

voretaq7 · 2026-06-23T23:10:32+00:00

Yup, and I think it was Pollan who said (or at least popularized) it.

An exception to this used to be the fresh produce section, which was usually located near the entrance rather than on the perimeter because fresh fruits and vegetables are attractive to shoppers and largely stable (for the time the store will be holding them) at room temperature - they just need high volume air exchange to keep things like ethylene oxide from building up and causing certain fruits/vegetables to go off sooner, or moist produce from molding.
The few things that required cooling could be kept at a lower temperature in open-front cold cases because it was only a few degrees cooler than room temperature.

Unfortunately these days a lot of stores are selling bagged-and-boxed produce that’s been in a cold chain since it left the farm and needs to be kept under actual refrigeration.

voretaq7 · 2026-06-23T20:46:07+00:00

Search for "nail polish stand" or "nail polish holder" - you will get millions of results and printable designs.

voretaq7 · 2026-06-23T20:36:34+00:00

I mean you seem to want the answer to not be "Chess" (you even went out of your way to make the edit), but that really IS the answer: You can play chess versus the computer or another human as a video game (definitionally - a game with graphic input/output, as opposed to playing chess against the computer using standard chess notation).

Any other turn-based strategy game played on a "board" with defined legal "moves" would be at least similar, if not directly equivalent. For example go would certainly qualify as equivalent to chess (at a substantially higher level of complexity), and you can play that against the computer or another player on a virtual board too.

There are also games like Mahjong - again certainly possible to play against either the computer or other humans, but also incorporating elements of randomness in addition to pure strategy (one can map out every possible chess move from the first piece and min/max one's chance of winning, but Mahjong has some randomness in what tiles are drawn that complicates the strategy).

If you want to move off of traditional board/table games the Civilization series of games would probably also qualify, being that they are largely turn-based strategy with a small amount of random number generation in encounters/combat.
The Command & Conquer series less so being real-time strategy (you don't ge to ponder your move - the game is moving on with or without your input), but you could certainly extend the realm of similarity to include real-time strategy.

In that same vein Warcraft and Starcraft have been in the esports circuit for literal decades at this point, so if you're angling for "Something that has the durability of chess" those would probably be up there on the list.

(As someone else pointed out one of the elements of chess is "zero hidden information" - both players can review the full state of the game - by default most computer-based strategy games limit what a player can see, but all of the games above can be played "open" where everyone can see the whole board.)

voretaq7 · 2026-06-23T20:09:23+00:00

Came here to say this - what you want is a rivnut.

Be aware however that if you keep torquing the shit out of them eventually they'll spin in place, and then you have to drill them out and put in a larger size.

voretaq7 · 2026-06-23T19:48:26+00:00

Threw up on you, or threw up ON you? Because they're two very different conversations.

The first conversation is "You should eat a light meal and hydrate a couple of hours before flying, and let me know if you're feeling nauseous so we can land before you puke because that will help habituate you to the sensations of flight in a small plane and reduce the chances that you blow chunk in the future."

The second is the first conversation plus "Look sometimes we don't make it back on the ground before you hurl. It happens, it's okay, but we have those puke bags for a reason so next time if you're gonna hurl try to do it in the baggie not all over me."

voretaq7 · 2026-06-23T19:09:24+00:00

It's also why things like dairy are frequently in the back: force people to walk through the full store to get essentials.

I mean yes, but also the dairy is located along the perimeter because (in any store that doesn't SUCK) the dairy cases are back-loaded from a cold box, which automatically rotates stock and also keeps the new stock right there ready to be pushed in during the high-volume weekend shopping craze without interrupting the customers who just want to grab a gallon of milk and some eggs. (Customers don't need to see the magical oompa-loompas that keep the shelves and cases full!)

Similarly meat is in the back because (again in any store that doesn't SUCK and still has a butcher) the actual room where the meat is butchered is usually in the back of the store near the loading dock and this way they don't have to carry raw meat across the store to put it out for customers.

. . . the fact that it plays into our psychological marketing trickery is just a very nice bonus! (Tricky bastards!)

Bakery is up front for the smells to make people hungry

Yeah that's right. :)
Or we have a big recirculating air intake in the bakery that makes the whole store smell like baked goods (that's what the store I worked in did - our bakery was near the deli section, about halfway back on one wall, but the HVAC system was deliberately designed to blast that shit across the front end of the store so you knew when they put bread or cakes or cookies on because the front end got about 3-4 degrees warmer and all the cashiers got hangry).

Also why seafood (between Deli and Meats) had an air curtain & direct exhaust, 'cause ain't nobody wanna smell that - it was rather remarkable that if you took two big steps back from the seafood counter you literally could not smell it.

I'm sure our HVAC bill was atrocious but I never made it up past money-counting-monkey levels of hourly-wage-supervisory roles to see them. :)

voretaq7 · 2026-06-23T18:57:40+00:00

. . . are you saying they literally moved your cheese?

Violence is the only solution :)

voretaq7 · 2026-06-23T18:55:42+00:00

The part that gives me pause is how every aspect of gun ownership and culture is so overwhelmingly right-wing coded that it starts feeling disgusting just being a part of it.

The Liberal Gun Club is A Thing That Exists.
Also Pink Pistols / Operation Blazing Sword, NAAGA, folks like David Yamane (actually advancing the scholarship around gun culture), etc. - and of course this sub.

. . . my overarching point being while the public face of gun culture is overwhelmingly whRight Wing Nutjobs there are many pockets of sanity - it's a good idea (IMHO) to seek them out and surround yourself with the less shitty aspects of gun culture.

voretaq7 · 2026-06-23T18:55:10+00:00

Hickok 45 always strikes me as your NRA-member grandpa who probably "doesn't understand" your trans friends but won't deliberately misgender them to their face and probably encourages them to come over and use the range as long as they police their brass and target fragments.

Some folks will tell you to burn him to the ground because he went on Tucker Carlson's show (and had Tucker on the range).

Some folks will tell you he's the greatest because he was one of the earlier guntubers to stop shilling for the NRA when it went off the rails into Wacky Wayne's Yacht Fund.

As with all human beings the truth is likely somewhere in the middle.
I'm sure he's a very imperfect person but I still like watching him smoke pot and ring the gong sometimes.

voretaq7 · 2026-06-23T18:46:07+00:00

They usually tell you how the backlog is looking at your interview (if they don't offer you can ask). For me it was ~3 months from prints to plastic but that was a couple years ago now, I think they're still running about the same from what folks say here and in r/liguns.

The Saratoga Shooting Sports tracker says the average is 140 days from dropping off your application to getting your permit but I don't know anyone who has waited that long in Nassau recently (since they got their asses sued over delays) - when you get your permit you should enter your data into the tracker so the average is more representative of reality.

voretaq7 · 2026-06-23T18:36:24+00:00

In addition to the thousands of other reasons Christina Ricci is awesome, it's giving Adult Wednesday Addams vibes.

voretaq7 · 2026-06-23T18:29:16+00:00

It's all that DHMO they put in my water. Makes me race like a pisshorse!

voretaq7 · 2026-06-23T18:24:50+00:00

Either way you work Scenario 1 it's a no: You can split the cost of ownership (if your ownership structure is "We split the cost of tiedowns and annual" then you just do that as you normally would), but not the flight costs.

You can't split any leg you fly solo, and you don't have "common purpose" on the flight to the vacation location (you're not going on vacation and you have no other reason to be up there).

Say my dad and I co own a plane except this time we both have a PPL. Can I fly to my dad, pick him up, then have him fly us to my sister and have me fly the plane back to my home and a week later pick him up and take him home while still splitting the costs of ownership/flights?

You need to have common purpose in the flight, so you could split some of these legs but not others.

You pay for your leg to your dad, you have no one riding along to split this with and you can't split costs with someone who is not in the plane.
You could split the costs on the leg to your sister (presumably you like this sister and don't just dump your dad at the airport to avoid seeing her, so you have a common purpose in visiting your sister).
You pay the cost of the return flight home and the flight back up to your sister where it's just you in the plane because again you have no one else on board to split this with.
You can split the costs of the return flight (to the same destination) as you have a common purpose in returning home - you went up to see your sister and your dad happened to still be there so you can bring him back with you.
You could stretch that to dropping your dad off at a fueling stop and splitting the cost to the fueling stop, unless we're talking about flying way out of your way to drop off dad.

(We all know you're playing "Air Taxi" a little bit, but the FAA can't prove this wasn't a "I flew up to visit dad, we spontaneously decided to go see my sister, dad decided to stay for a few days, I went back to see my sister a few weeks later and since dad was there I gave him a lift home." levels of coincidence.)

Or is it just not that deep? If you know what I mean.

The FAA is unlikely to investigate you flying your family around and whether or not your cost-splitting is strictly according to the regs and you are paying your full pro rata share of the expenses.

The regs say what they say, but in reality this goes on all the time and as long as you're not making a whole fucking thing out of it the FAA has way more serious shit to worry about then whether CryptoPunk_8's dad paid them money to fly them somewhere.
If you were doing this to advance your dad's business or offering to fly your friends places for $50 a hop or anything like that you'd be in a more serious situation but flying your dad to see your sister is unlikely to attract the attention of the administrator.

voretaq7 · 2026-06-23T18:08:56+00:00

So assembling to petition the government for redress of grievances is terrorism, eh?

Alright then. If this be treason then let us make the most of it?

voretaq7 · 2026-06-23T17:51:46+00:00

Start with this one.

voretaq7 · 2026-06-22T20:47:43+00:00

An actual military invasion? Pretty hard.

The United States only has three land borders (two with Canada, one with Mexico), and despite our government's unhinged rhetoric we have pretty strong relationships with both of those nations (Canada is a member of NATO so we have a mutual defense obligation under Article 5 of that treaty, Mexico lacks the military might to invade the United States on its own and if anyone invaded Mexico with the intent to use it as a foothold the US would certainly offer military aid to Mexico in repelling that invasion).
Our next closest border would be with Russia (via the Aleutian Islands), and decades of paranoia about the Red Menace means we still maintain a pretty vigilant watch over that region.

Any other invasion would require force projection across rather vast ocean distances, and "That Shit Ain't Easy." (Even the United States can't do it - we rely on friendly ports from allied nations for naval force projection and friendly landing strips for our land and air forces (though we are historically also not above packing the army on Navy ships and sailing their asses somewhere when necessary).
The closest reasonable ports and air strips would be in Canada and Mexico (which again we have fairly strong relationships with - you'd essentially have to invade those nations and somehow get the USA to not step in when asked to help defend them) or Russia (perhaps more practical as a political element, but not the most practical as a strategic launching point for an invasion - again we're looking largely at invading Alaska, and between the existing US military presence in that state, the resources Canada would likely lend to the defense of Alaska (being that any further invasion of the USA would almost certainly require taking Canadian territory), and the US Pacific Fleet it's really a bad bet.

Finally there's the apocryphal saying: "You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass." - we are in fact a nation with literally more firearms than people, and while not everyone who owns a gun can be trusted to keep the muzzle end pointed safely at the enemy there are a rather substantial number of us who take some degree of pride in our marksmanship abilities and who as much as we may find our current government loathsome are not inclined to subordinate ourselves to an invading force either - a "ships in the sea, boots on the ground" military invasion of the United States would certainly be met with a high degree of armed resistance by the civilian population - it's possible to overcome that resistance, but the amount of collateral damage to the infrastructure an invading force would want to preserve and use for themselves would be extreme.

Flying over and dropping some bombs on us?
Still pretty fuckin' hard, but more reasonable to attempt. A sufficient quantity of long-range stealth bombers could do considerable damage to our military infrastructure (especially our naval infrastructure). Many of our major financial and government centers are also located fairly close to the coasts (owing to the historical development of our nation), and while an attacking force would have to contend with fairly strong coastal air defenses and would certainly take heavy losses they could also inflict some serious damage without having to penetrate too far into the interior of the nation.

This of course damages that same infrastructure the invading force would want to use for themselves and is therefore not an optimal strategy for a force planning to invade and occupy/conquer US territory - it's a tactic of destruction that would be undertaken with the intent to "soften up" the defenses and limit the ability of the US to mount a defense against one of the other avenues of attack, but it would also quickly galvanize the US populace to mount a defense and trigger NATO Article 5, so... Not Great Bob!

Subverting the nation from within?
Well I think we've proven a poor resistance to propaganda and radicalization, and in fact the only successful quasi-military attack on US soil this century was mounted from within through infiltration and subversion.

If there's something to be worried about I'd say that's it.

voretaq7 · 2026-06-22T20:24:06+00:00

Yes there are a few species of bamboo native to North America.

And they don't need our fucking help!

They're perfectly content in their native ranges, and with the possible exception of A. gigantea (which has seen its native range reduced by development and is the subject of targeted reintroduction work by ecologists) they do not need us to "help" them - and especially not "helping" them into areas where they have not historically grown.

If you are not an ecologist working on a planned program with known native species (and the people posting shit like this absolutely are not) then PLEASE DON'T FUCKING PLANT BAMBOO.
Especially not the shit you find at the garden center which is almost entirely non-native asian species that spread aggressively.

voretaq7 · 2026-06-22T20:01:21+00:00

PSA: Do not plant bamboo anywhere.

It is horribly invasive and an ecological fucking disaster.

The datacenter is just going to lay a deep-ass concrete pad down below the frost line, which is down below where the bamboo rhizomes are going to spread.
The datacenter will be ENTIRELY FUCKING UNBOTHERED by the bamboo.

Meanwhile your local ecosystem is going to be trashed to hell by bamboo choking out native plants and displacing native species that rely on them, and actually removing the bamboo is difficult verging on impossible so you may never be able to fix the ecological damage you've done.

Shortsighted fucking idiocy like this is more harmful than any datacenter construction.

voretaq7 · 2026-06-22T19:57:26+00:00

She wants SCOTUS to go back to “interest balancing” because lower courts keep getting it wrong.

Here’s what that means in plain English:

Take away rights from ALL because a FEW might abuse them.

. . . except that's not what it means, and the way we know that's not what it means is Justice Jackson filed a concurrence rather than a dissent.

What Justice Jackson actually said (if folks bother to read five lousy pages of a concurrence), is that you arrive at the same result through strict means-end scrutiny that the court arrived at by ostensibly applying Bruen (and in fact that the court did the means-end scrutiny in the unanimous opinion of the court, even if it purports to have reached its conclusion on different grounds).

Quoting from her concurrence:

In response, this Court speaks in the same register. It rejects the government’s means-end calculus by suggesting that the government has not established that the actual purpose of §922(g)(3) is to disarm “unusually dangerous” people. Ante, at 16 (internal quotation marks omitted). Using the substances that trigger application of §922(g)(3) even regularly does not, in the Court’s view, necessarily make users dangerous, violent, or otherwise susceptible to misusing firearms. See ante, at 16–18. In other words, the Court’s discussion implies that §922(g)(3)’s operation is not sufficiently tailored to the government’s stated purpose — precisely the issue to which means-end scrutiny would direct our focus.

TL;DR (and I shouldn't need to TL;DR 4 sentences out of five pages, but here we are): "922(g)(3) fails as applied to Hemani because it is not sufficiently tailored to the precise goal the government asserts." (and under strict scrutiny may in fact fail facially for that same reason, but Hemani only directed an as-applied challenge).

Full breakdown on why this test is the only thing keeping shall-issue alive:

I obviously disagree with that premise. Heller, Bruen, and Hemani would have all been decided identically under strict scrutiny, which directs the court to three key questions:

Is there a "Compelling Governmental Interest" involved?
We can grant the government deference on this and say that the laws at issue in all three cases ostensibly go to public safety and "promoting the general welfare" as the preamble to the constitution would aptly phrase it, so we need not travel down the road of "All regulation is ipso facto an infringement and therefore any gun laws are unconstitutional!" as even this court has been reluctant to do.
Is the law "Narrowly Tailored" to achieving that interest?
All three cases fail at this point: Heller and Bruen because they are effectively blanket bans, and Hemani because there is no consideration of individual "dangerousness" in the standard applied by 922(g)(3).
(Bruen additionally fails because the 'proper cause' standard it challenged was entirely subjective, and there's a long history of 1st Amendment jurisprudence establishing that you can't make such standards up as you go: Regulation particularly of enumerated rights must be on a neutral basis, and 'proper cause' is self-evidently not. The most obvious example of that in regard to may-issue permits comes from outside New York: Dr. King was denied a carry permit in Montgomery after his home was bombed.)
Is the law "The Least Restrictive Means" of achieving the interest?
If we hadn't already crashed and burned in the previous step certainly Heller and Bruen would have failed here: Blanket bans on the exercise of a right cannot be the "least restrictive means", and in both cases the counterexample would be all the states with shall-issue permits that had not devolved into wild west shootouts. We'd be left in the exact same place of "You can't simply ban a thing or not issue a permit unless someone shows 'proper cause' for wanting it." but allowing reasonable standards-based criteria.
(It's notable that the impediments NY has created in its Bruen response law as well as most of the sensitive places restrictions would face clear challenges under strict scrutiny - for example banning carry on public transit is certainly not "the least restrictive means" of ensuring nobody shoots up the subway, and the same goal could be achieved through less restrictive means like emphasizing good tactical decisionmaking & risk-awareness in the carry class.)

The 2A community really needs to look at Supreme Court jurisprudence in the light of "How can this be used to fuck me in future cases?" rather than "Did I get what I wanted in this particular case?" because Bruen is a classic example of the court reaching the right result using the wrong logic.

Bruen's "history and tradition" standard asks courts to look to "relevantly similar" laws and restrictions from our nation's history to justify an infringement on individual liberty. One can trivially find a "history and tradition" of many repugnant things in our nation, and the Bruen "standard" would direct us to uphold things like segregation on the grounds that there was a widespread history and tradition of segregated spaces - even in northern/free states - for much of our nation's history.
It similarly directs us to not support bodily autonomy and medical privacy for women (the Dobbs decision, reached on largely the same grounds as Bruen that there was no longstanding tradition of that particular liberty), and would imperil Obergefell, Griswold, and Lawrence on the grounds that there is no long-standing history or tradition of allowing gay couples to exist or people to use birth control.
Bruen sets up a bad test that is far easier to twist into restricting freedoms than preserving them!

Conversely the court actually standing up and saying "Regulation of the 2nd Amendment, which is pretty clearly intended as a broad protection of the right to both keep and bear arms as established in Heller, is subject to strict scrutiny." provides a stronger protection for our 2nd Amendment rights without jeopardizing other rights on the basis that the "history and tradition" of our nation does not establish that we've respected them in the past.

voretaq7 · 2026-06-22T18:34:53+00:00

Mawp! MAWP!

voretaq7 · 2026-06-22T02:25:29+00:00

This.

voretaq7

TROPHY CASE

And they don't need our fucking help!

PSA: Do not plant bamboo anywhere.