If you know anything about the history of punk music and east coast hardcore, Ian MacKaye was clearly one of the most principled people in the scene, and a genuinely good and decent person. So it’s really weird to hear that people ever got the weird idea that he was pro-racism or something.

Then again, The Dead Kennedys had to make “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” because they were sick of their shows being infiltrated by the wrong kind of skinheads.

An old soul in a new world… Dude the south lost and slavery is bad. I’m sorry

I think that’s an uncharitable reading. Which is understandable, but still.

I think that there are a lot of people–myself included–that would like to be able to make a living doing something that seems to matter, or where you make something. Like, factory work sucks in most ways, but it still feels like you’re doing something. Spreadsheets and order projections? Staring at a screen all day, sending polite emails to people you’ll never meet about ways to spend a lot of money electronically?

This “new world” of work and socializing ain’t great. I think it snuck up on a lot of people, and now a lot of people are feeling like they don’t know how to navigate the new reality of depersonalization.

Here’s another song that explicitly references it. Better song too, IMO.

If I remember correctly, Republicans in Georgia have consolidated voting locations in Atlanta–which is heavily Democratic–despite there being long line and hours of waiting in 2020. Is it intentional? 100%. In the rural parts of Georgia–and I’m pretty rural–you’re in and out in only slightly longer than it takes to read the ballot.

About 45 minutes, as I recall, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I think that was the year that marriage equality (e.g., gay marriage) was on the ballot in Michigan. (I just looked it up; it was a vote to amend the state constitution to ban civil unions and marriage equality.) That was in 2004. Since then, I don’t remember ever having to wait more than 10 minutes when voting in person.

Ooooo! Can I play?

Let’s say that you have a pro-genocide Republican, a pro-genocide Democrat, and an anti-genocide 3rd party candidate, but the anti-genocide candidate also wants to give all school children machine guns and grenades, and require cars to intentionally run down pedestrians?

Or or or let’s say that the anti-genocide candidate’s campaign is so bad that her own party is telling her drop out? .

You shouldn’t need to. .300 Win mag is long action, so you’re going to be using a bolt action rifle. There’s not going to be too many contexts where you’re going to want to swap out the scope for anything other than fairly long range.

Why would you us a bow? Range is poor, and lethality is also low, esp. with the access the the ultra-wealthy have to medicine. When you hunt deer with a bow, you can usually expect to have to follow a blood trail, as it’s rarely an instant drop.

Use a .300 Winchester magnum from 1000 yards; at that distance, you still have about 850 foot-pounds of energy, which is roughly double a 9mm at point black range. With the right ammo, that’s more than enough to get the job done. You probably want a combined mechanical and ammunition accuracy of about .5 MOA range though, so that you have deviation of less than 6" at that range. It’s a challenging shot, but it’s definitely doable if you know your holds and can call the wind.

The guy in the front is one of the producers for Drumeo on YouTube, not a member of Sleep Token.

To my original claim - finding something that’s reasonable mileage, and in good mechanical condition, for under $10k, is quite a challenge at this point. I sold a 2008 Honda Civic Si with >200,000 miles last year that was not running, had rust, and generally needed a fair amount of work, and had an asking price of $4k. I got fifty offers in under 12 hours. It was crazy.

That’s just one of the many fun things about living in the mountains.

If I took my bike to town, it would take me about an hour, give or take. To get home would be about four hours. It’s 15 miles, one way, with about 2200’ of elevation change.

Average price of a used car in the US, right now, is $29,000. Which means that for a $554 payment, it’s going to be 5.4 years rather than 1.5. From there, you need to figure out how many miles you put on a car in a year, make some rough guesses about how many miles the average car has left before the cost to repair exceeds the cost of replacing, etc. Obvs. a high mileage used car is going to require significantly more maintenance than a new car will (…in most cases, as long as you aren’t buying a new Land Rover or Jaguar), so you’ll need to figure that in as well. You’ll probably want good insurance, even if you’re only required to carry minimal liability insurance, because any accident could be catastrophic for your finances if you can’t afford to repair your car.

It’s a bit of a death spiral; wages are still too low, car prices are too high.

Dave Ramsey hasn’t tried to buy a reliable used car in the last decade, at least. You aren’t going to find anything under about $10k that’s actually reliable where I am. A mid-90s Toyota with 300,000 miles maybe, but not anything under 150,000.

how could you ever have a normal relationship with your pro-Trump neighbor/father-in-law/Uncle/Barber or what ever again?

…Why would I want to? Seriously, why would I want to have a relationship with people that have shown me that the things they value are antithetical to the things I value? I don’t give a fuck if people are nice to me; I want people to be kind across the board.

I would suggest reading some Ian Banks.

You are technically correct that most people that call themselves atheists are agnostics. But that’s a little like saying that .999999999999999999 is 1; it’s close enough that it’s not going to make a difference in almost all cases.

If you have empirical, verifiable, falsifiable evidence that a god exists, then most atheists will change their opinion. A person that believes in a god believes despite a complete lack of evidence.

It’s not that an atheist is saying, “I know your religion is wrong”; it’s much closer to, "you have not presented any falsifiable evidence that your religion is correct.

There is currently no way to know.

It’s true that you can’t prove a negative. On the other hand, no evidence exists that would tend to prove that a god exists. The lack of evidence is quite damning, particularly since people have been trying to demonstrate the existence of a god for well over 8000 years. Miracles have almost entirely ceased in the age of forensics, modern medicine, and photography; it’s almost like they only exist when they can’t be documented.

I think that there are probably a lot of small companies that run in a more collaborative way. I also think that the probability of labor abuses increases along with the size of a company; once the owner/president doesn’t personally know everyone that works there, the odds of shitty things goes up sharply. Not that small companies don’t also have shitty owners, but it’s usually hard to be an asshole directly to someone’s face, unless you’re a raging narcissist or sociopath.

…Without realizing that the only things that are going to fill that power vacuum are worse.

Are there better countries than the US? Damn skippy there are. Do any of them have enough power to do anything if the US implodes? Absolutely not.

It’s not that doctors are stupid. Quite the opposite; I strongly suspect that, by any seemingly-objective measure of intelligence, doctors are going to average significantly higher than the general population. (…And veterinary doctors even more so.) Having cognitive biases, believing in conspiracies, etc., isn’t a symptom of stupidity; it’s a side effect of being human and having emotions. You’ll find that very highly intelligent people end up being more effective at rationalizing dumbass, batshit crazy beliefs; the number of engineers, computer scientists, attorneys, etc. that are, for instance, Mormon is astounding.