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.

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Since the ACA was passed, Democrats have not held all three branches of the gov’t. (In fact, Mitch McConnell refused to take up Obama’s nomination of a SCOTUS justice because he thought that eight months was too close to the election. Or, that was his claim.) They haven’t had any opportunities to make significant reforms to the ACA–or pass something better–because they haven’t had the power to do so. Republicans came close to overturning it, but blew their chances in 2018. So, to be more accurate, the party that wants to fix healthcare has not had the political ability to do so.

Short of a political change, there is no way to change the system.

If Trump wins, expect it to be much, much worse. The ACA/Obamacare guarantees that certain things must be covered, that you can’t be denied covered based on pre-existing conditions, and that you can’t be charged more due to age, gender, etc. It also gives subsidies to people that are buying their own covered on the marketplace, which was set up by the federal gov’t.

Under Trump, expect all of that to be tossed out. If Trump wins, it’s highly likely that Republicans with flip the Senate, and retain control of the House, which means Republicans will have all three branches of the federal government captured, and there will be no brakes to repealing the ACA and going back to the old, much shittier system.

If Harris wins, don’t expect to see many changes. If she wins, it’s unlikely that Democrats would also have control of both the House and Senate. While it’s true that she was in favor of a single-payer system five years ago, it’s unlikely that she would be able to get that through the House and Senate unless they were both controlled by a Democratic majority. (In the case of the Senate, they would need to nuke the filibuster, which–IMO–is not a good idea in the long run).

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.

I’m very surprised that you haven’t heard of Ghost of Tsushima; it has been a highly successful game.

But maybe I am mistaken? I would swear that I had to accept EA terms and conditions to play, but it’s by Sony and Sucker Punch. I dunno.

Currently I recommend bupropion and atomoxetine, but once I get an appointment with a psychiatrist, I’ll probably recommend lisdexamphetamine.

Modafanil is pretty great too.

Eh, I dunno, I’m currently really enjoying Ghosts of Tsushima, although strictly in off-line mode. And I enjoyed the first Jedi: Fallen Order, again, solely off-line.

On some level it’s reasonable to say that you own shares in a mutual fund, not shares in the individual companies.

But the other side of that is that you can fairly easily see what the mutual fund is doing, and copy it, without the problematic companies. Yes, it will be less profitable, but you can do it, and you can do it without too much difficulty when you’re talking about millions of dollars in investments. So it seems, I dunno, weak to say that you can’t divest your own personal investments from these things. Plus, I’m pretty sure that there are at least a handful of mutual funds that entirely avoid those kind of companies in order to attract ethical investors.

To paraphrase Nietzsche, that which doesn’t kill you psychologically scars you and leaves you with a lifetime of therapy bills.

According to Mormons, god is literally male, with (perfect) male genitalia. There is also a god–the-mother, who is female, and is both secret and sacred (they really don’t like talking about her), and also utterly subservient to god the father, because of course she is. According to Mormon theology, both gods were once mortal, and were raised up to godhood by their godly parents; Mormons–if they’re good enough–can go to Mormon super-heaven, where they will also become gods in their own right. Before everyone was born physically, they were born spiritually, in… More or less the same way babies are born now, except in heaven, to a heavenly mom. And there were hundreds of billions of spirit babies, so I guess that god the dad and god the mom really like sex or something? The implications start getting really, really weird, very fast. Which is part of the reason why Mormons don’t usually want to talk about stuff like this with people that aren’t Mormon.

I believe that the quote is, “As man is, so once was god. As god is, so man can become,” or something like that.

Source: was Mormon for >25 years.

It is, honestly, not nearly as bad as you’d think. The weight should be pretty well distributed, armor doesn’t have to be all that heavy to stop a sword, and the gambeson is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for piercing weapons. Blunt weapons, well, those are going to be unpleasant pretty much no matter what. You get really hot though; there’s a reason that the Saracens did such a number on the crusaders when they were able to get them outside of cities.

Wearing a plate carrier is, IMO, worse than wearing a gambeson and chain maille.

Unfortunately, this one goes both ways. Some women feel like they need to play hard to get, because otherwise they’re sluts, and also they want to know that a guy really likes her. It’s self defeating of course, on both sides.

What’s crazy is that, for all the poundage that a war bow requires to pull, it’s still less powerful than a small-caliber bullet. A breastplate will easily stop a clothyard arrow with a hardened bodkin point, and a .38 Spl will blow right through. I tried doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations a while back, and IIRC a .22LR has more energy at the muzzle of a 14" rifle barrel than a 160# bow could put into an arrow. (Someone needs to double check my math on that though.)

Blackhawk Down gets things very right.

Sword fight? Fanning at each other, crossing and smacking swords.

Just watch Olympic fencing; you get a very fast exchange that you can’t follow, and then someone has a point. In a real sword fight, without armor, that’s about what would happen. OTOH, when everyone is wearing armor, it gets a lot messier.

And of course, the classic gunfight where nobody hits anything.

That is surprisingly common. Most people are really bad shots when they’re stressed out. It’s physiological; when your body dumps adrenaline into your bloodstream, you lose fine motor control. So unless you’ve trained extensively under stressful conditions, you’re gonna have a hard time doing shit.

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? .