Since you’re outsourcing this, the adjudicator is either the first contract killer involved, or the second contract killer you specifically hired to deal with that first contract killer.

The last successful third party was the Tea Party, which was formed by people fed up with the GOP.

We need a Guillotine Party.

The human capacity for reason is greatly overrated. The overwhelming majority of conversation is regurgitated thought, which is exactly what LLMs are designed to do.

I think it correlates more strongly to the prevalence of pornography. Mainstream movie scenes look fake and contrived, because they are. As unrealistic as pornography is, that is actually a dick, and it is actually going in a vagina.

When your mainstream movie sex scene is going to be compared (unfavorably) to a scene of two people actually fucking, why bother even shooting it?

the hospital did a CAT scan of little Nikki and found a swollen, bleeding brain believed at the time to be a classic sign of shaken baby syndrome.

There are, indeed, conditions that will cause a brain to bleed inside the skull. Those conditions don’t explain all the head injuries outside the skull: the hematomas and hemmorhaging between the skin and the skull.

If you want to argue against the death penalty, go ahead. I lean against it; you don’t have to convince me.

But we do a disservice to every actual innocent convict when we pretend a guilty man is innocent just to avoid a sentence we abhor.

If you want to explain the myriad serious head injuries in some way that absolves him of responsibility, I’m listening.

subscapular and subgaleal hemorrhaging between her skin and her skull, subarachnoid bleeding, subdural hematoma, both pre-retinal and retinal hemorrhages and brain edema.

Translation: he beat the shit out of her.

Remove all the SBS testimony, and you still have him beating the hell out of her. He is not at all innocent.

You can argue against the death penalty in general, but there is no rational argument for his innocence.

There are laws against selling fake drugs. Why does he think your product is a drug? Has it been represented to him as a drug by you or by someone with whom you are conspiring to sell fake drugs?

From wiki:

According to prosecutors, physicians reported that Nikki suffered and ultimately died of “massive head trauma”. Prosecutors argued that in the emergency room, Nikki was found to have “[a] bruise on the back of her shoulder, a scraped elbow, a bruise over her right eyebrow, bruises on her chin, a bruise on her left cheek, an abrasion next to her left eye, multiple bruises on the back of her head, a torn frenulum in her mouth, bruising on the inner surface of the lower lip, subscapular and subgaleal hemorrhaging between her skin and her skull, subarachnoid bleeding, subdural hematoma, both pre-retinal and retinal hemorrhages and brain edema.”[12] Additionally, four separate doctors testified Nikki had “multiple blows to different points on the head,” which could not have been caused by falling off a bed.[13] At trial, Roberson’s defense expert admitted that Roberson “lost it” and shook Nikki because he could not stop her from crying.[13]

Owner occupant credit/exemption. If you live in the home, you pay a much lower property tax than if you don’t live in the home.

This is used in Ohio as a “homestead exemption”. Elderly and disabled Ohioans pay a lower tax rate on their primary residence.

It is used in New York as the “STAR Credit”, to push part of the burden of school taxes from families to investors and businesses.

This is used in Montana as a Property Tax Rebate, where taxpayers can get some of their property taxes back on their primary residence. Montana has also been talking about implementing a “second home tax” which would increase the tax burden on properties that aren’t claimed as a primary residence.

A substantially similar program is used in Oakland as the Vacant Property Tax, which punishes landlords who hold property primarily for financial speculation rather than actual use.

These programs all operate in the same way I am describing. The only difference is that I would phase in a radical increase the effective tax on investors/landlords. I would increase the tax on investors and landlords of residential property so much that they find it more lucrative to switch their investment strategy to “lending” rather than “landlording”. Basically, the only rental arrangements that will continue to exist are 2-4 unit residences (where the landlord-owner lives in one of the units) and roommate agreements.

A “land contract” (sometimes called “contract for deed”) is a sort of “rent to own” agreement that is recorded with the county like a deed. For purposes of the tax exemption I am talking about, the occupant is considered an owner rather than a tenant.

A Land Contract is a type of seller-financing that is available to anyone, including the tenant on whom the landlord is already taking a financial risk. That former landlord is now collecting interest on a loan, rather than rent on a property.

being hit with a tax that basically kills any chance of renting out something.

That is exactly what should happen. It should be practically impossible for an owner to “rent” a property for enough to justify doing it. Landlords should be heavily pressured to convert tenants to buyers.

“Renting” should be confined to commercial activities, not residences. You want to rent out space for a shop, warehouse, office, factory, no problem. This is only for residential property that you are not living in. It should not be economically feasible to rent out such property as an investor, because that practice strips tenants of equity and is the leading factor driving people into poverty.

Go ahead and use your property to generate an income, but do it by charging interest on a loan, not rent.

The entire concept of rent needs to die in a fire. It is inherently exploitative. There is no way to redeem it.

Rent needs to be replaced with “private mortgages” or other approaches that return equity to the occupant.

Individuals that need the flexibility of temporary, short-term housing can use “land contracts” rather than exploitive rental agreements. Land Contracts have fixed payments for the life of the agreement: no annual rent hikes. The occupant is considered an “owner” rather than a “tenant”, but only begins gaining equity after three years. The occupant is free to walk away before three years, or renegotiate after.

How do we eliminate renting? We make it less lucrative than other investment options. We increase the tax rate on residential properties to be extremely high. But, we also create a tax exemption for owner-occupants, so your effective tax rate is actually lower on your own home. Landlords are forced to choose between a small return on a rental, or a larger return on a private mortgage or land contract.

With that simple change, landlords will be fighting tooth and nail to convert “tenants” into “buyers”, so they don’t have to pay the excess taxes.

Beyond renting, with this change, lenders are motivated to work with borrowers rather than resort to foreclosure. As soon as the bank initiates foreclosure proceedings, they are on the hook for the increased tax rate.

Hmm. Seems like combat aircraft never get hit in the engines, nose, cockpit, or aft fuselage. We could save some weight by stripping the armor out of those areas…

If you already know what is wrong and just need a doctor’s note (and maybe antibiotics), go to the clinic. While their staff are significantly more skilled knowledgeable than the general public, their policies limit them to only simple diagnostics and treatments. Your medical knowledge is certainly less than that of the Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants that staff these clinics, but likely exceeds the scope of practice they are limited to by their employer. If you don’t know what the problem is, the clinic is going to refer you to your PCP or urgent care anyway, so you should only visit the clinic to appease HR or get access to basic prescription medications.

If something is bothering you, but you can tolerate it for a couple weeks, schedule an appointment with primary care.

If you don’t know what’s wrong, or you need something more than a note and a prescription, and you can transport yourself, go to urgent care.

The only time you should go to the ER voluntarily is if urgent care sends you there. Any other trip to the ER should be because someone dragged you there without giving you a choice.

the thing that’s different is that social media has demonstrative harm.

Is that actually a difference?

Rock and roll causes harm: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8580930/

TV causes harm: https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/too-much-tv-might-be-bad-for-your-brain

Video games cause harm: https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2000/04/video-games

Pretty much everything kids do that their parents didn’t has been “proven” to cause harm. Radio, cinema, comic books, even newspapers were “proven” to harm young people.

Authoritarianism is a far bigger threat than any of these.

Hybrid hard drive. Basically, a hard drive with a large solid state cache.

Actual shipping would vary depending on location, but sellers are padding the shipping charge so they can display a lower unit price.

Need to add shipping charges to the price…

Most of the right, and a good chunk of the left.

80% of lawyers, 90% of politicians, 98% of salespeople. 100% of lobbyists.

Must be difficult to live in a country where you think 49% of the people there are so dangerous.

At least 49%. I’d say that about 25% near the center are OK, but 75% of the people outside that center are batshit crazy on some important issue or another.

It’s extraordinarily difficult thinking that a majority of the people are an honest, open conversation away from making a scene.

Trump supporters tend to hang out in the /modlog community. Try there first.