HelixDab2

I absolutely fucking hate Ticketmaster's way of doing this, because they require access to your phone. And they won't let me use my normal VPN, or anything that blocks them from having location access. I would rather drive to the goddamn venues--what are about 90 minutes from my home--and buy tickets in person, than to deal with Ticketmaster or AXS "security" measures that attempt to circumvent my security.

That is... Likely not correct. Finland came very, very close to losing the Winter War; Russia pulled back because they didn't realize that the Finns were on their last legs. Yes, Russia right now couldn't walk through Finland, but at the strength they had prior to invading Ukraine? It's much, much more probable. The military of Finland is tiny compared to Russia; 292,000 (about 25k active, the rest reserve) compared to 3,159,000 (1.1M active); looking solely at active military, that's 44:1, Russian advantage.

The big thing that would stop Russia now is NATO, since all countries are pledged to help any other member country if (when) Russia invade. The US is a significant part of NATO, both in terms of raw manpower, and in terms of money spent on the military. Without NATO, Finland probably loses, as long as Russia presses their attack. With NATO, but a NATO without the US, Finland wins, but it takes years. With both NATO and the US, Finland takes Moscow in 2 months.

What’s fucking delusional is thinking that a bunch of civilians armed with handguns and rifles could ever match a modern military should it come to violent revolution

You just have to make it expensive enough that the military doesn't want to fight, and you need to have enough of the civilian population on your side that the gov't can't control them, too. As the gov't commits atrocities against its' own people in an attempt to crush a rebellion, it ends up creating more ideological rebels.

And anyways, you'll note that the US has tended to get pretty fucked up when dealing with insurgencies and guerilla warfare where it can't leverage air superiority. How many, say, Air Force pilots do you think will start refusing orders when they find out that their last 'precision bombing' run killed 150 children in a hospital?

Cheapskate parents, actually. Most parents get their kids a BALCS carrier with level III soft inserts, some ESAPI plates, and a level III or IIIa helmet. But some parents cheap out and just get their kid a backpack and split a set of plates between kids.

I agree with all of this. At the same time, I think that, in most cases, people should allow their body to adapt to heat, if they are healthy enough to do so. Most people can learn to be comfortable in higher heat than they believe, although some people have medical conditions that will make them more susceptible to heat exhaustion and heat stroke. If you can get by without it, you should. If you're at risk by not using it, don't feel guilty.

(FWIW, my office only has a/c because I have a very, very large printer in here, and it tends to have head strikes and scrap prints out if there's no climate control. But since I'm not printing at the moment, the current temp in here is 82F.)

You are confusing actual results with people being on the right side of a conflict.

No, I'm not. The NRA is not on the right side; they're on the side of authoritarians. They're on the side of the boot that is kicking you in the face. They're on the side of the cops that will be the ones disarming people, and on the side of the christian nationalists that want to take guns from everyone but white evangelical christians. The NRA does not believe that the second amendment exists for ALL people, regardless of race, religion, age, disability, sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation, and they've never even tried to really conceal that. That's why they are silent when someone like Filandro Castile is murdered by a cop.

When the NRA fixes it's own shit so that, as an organization, they truly believe that 2A rights exist for everyone, and are willing to treat the disarming of any group as a crime, then we can talk. But that's not who they are now, and it's not likely that this is who they will be at any time in the future, since they've made it nearly impossible for grassroots change to happen within the org.

On top of that, as we experience higher temperatures, many people also crank up their air conditioners—which emit more heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

This is not correct. Air conditioning units do not 'emit more [...] greenhouse gases'. Air conditioners use a refrigerant--usually R134a--which does have a high global warming potential (GWP) compared to methane or CO2, but that refrigerant is in a closed loop; it's not going anywhere unless the system is damaged. Most a/c failures aren't from refrigerant leaking out of the system, and the system no longer being able to effectively transfer heat, but from the compressor motor failing. When the compressor fails, in most cases you can evacuate the refrigerant, replace the broken part, and then recharge the system. (The fact that they can be repaired doesn't mean that they usually are repaired. Which is shitty.)

What is true is that a/c units emit heat themselves. An air conditioner moves heat from inside a space to outside of that space; in the process of doing so, the a/c unit itself is creating an additional small amount of heat from the function of the compressor motor, electronics, etc.

Beyond that, most electricity that's used to run a/c systems--and every other electrical device--is produced from burning fossil fuels. So if there's more demand for electricity--such as from a heat dome that has everyone running their a/c full-time--then yes, more CO2 is going to get pumped out into the atmosphere. But if your electricity is coming from sources that are largely emissions-free, like solar, wind, or hydro, then air conditioning is a negligible source of heat.

tl;dr - don't feel bad about using your a/c when heat rises to dangerous levels; agitate at a local, state, and national level for renewable, carbon-neutral ways of generating electricity, and for more efficient use of electricity.

The NRA hasn't done jack shit in decades. As I said, the NRA did their level best to kill Heller v. D.C. before it even got off the ground, and that was the single most important 2A win in the last 50 years.

Don't give me that bullshit about them being the line between the US and tyranny, when they won't even speak up against tyranny when cops murder legally armed citizens.

So you're saying my choices are either to side with fascists that want to take rights from people, or fascists that want to take rights from different people?

And no, it's not a zero-sum game. My parents were life-long Republicans. They switched in the 2016 election, and have been voting mostly Democratic since then. I was raised in a deeply conservative religion, and was raised to be homophobic; I have changed, because I learned differently. The game, as you say, isn't zero-sum; it's persuasion. If you aren't being persuasive, then you need to find better ways of reaching people, and yelling and telling them they're terrible ain't doing it. You certainly don't win with circular firing squads.

the only beneficent quality of republicans is supporting the NRA,

Look, I like guns far, far more than most people, but I draw the line at the NRA, and Wayne LaPierre's suit-fetish. Most people that work on 2A issues at a local level will tell you that the NRA will swoop in after a deal has already been made, and fuck everything up. If you look at the history of Heller v. D.C., you'll find that the NRA tried to kill the suit before it even got off the ground, because they were afraid it would hurt their funding.

If you want to support 2A causes, the Firearms Policy Coalition is on of the few right now that's both effective, and appears to avoid other 'culture wars' (e.g., "anti-wokeism") nonsense. At a non-policy level, the various John Brown Gun Clubs are doing good work, the Liberal Gun Club is helping create a space for people that are both pro-gun and generally identify as left of center, and the SRA is pretty okay once you get past the tankies.

It's even weirder because Michigan is purple-trending-blue. I'm surprised that it's not more blue, considering how much a part labor unions played in building the industrial base that used to exist in the urban areas. So I don't know how they think that this is gonna "own teh libz" when they've already lost the state. Their own party is in tatters; it's been run by someone so extreme in the state that no one was donating money to them.

And who, exactly, defines "degenerate"? Because I know there are quite a lot of people that would define "degenerate" as anyone that is non-Christian, LGBTQ+ or LGBTQ-affirming, or non-"white" (however they're currently defining "whiteness").

The only way you deny these so-called degenerates a say in society is by intentionally disenfranchising them, in much the same way that Republicans have made an effort to deny non-white people a say in society through gerrymandering and voter-ID laws. (Or, earlier, through "literacy tests" and the like, or simply murdering people that tried to get black people registered to vote.)