GreyEyedGhost

I’m not sure what that has to do with what I said. The difficulty you’re having with this conversation isn’t something I can help you with.

No, criticizing democrats, or republicans for that matter, isn’t a solution. It’s a first step at best, and masturbatory self-soothing at worst.

I don’t think anyone said you had to like them. And by all means, you can vote third party, or not vote at all. Now, how did we get here again? One more item for that list! I also already gave you a solution of how not to be criticized for being a bad actor, but you seem to be happier focusing on the symptoms rather than the causes.

I’m tired of dealing with your paper-thin arguments piecemeal. Feel free to search “flaws in American democracy” and read the answers by people far more educated in the field than me, and apparently you, and stop wasting the time of people here.

For someone who got so offended when someone supposedly put words in your mouth, you’re pretty eager to do the same. If you design your system to only work when altruism is your guiding factor, well, look around. And if there are no serious penalties for breaking the standards, well, again, look around. And if you think having a system like that isn’t going to attract people who are perfectly fine with screwing over the majority of the country for their own personal gain, guess what, we have a whole list of people who clearly have. If these don’t sound like problems with the system to you, at least you know what flavor the different colors of crayons are.

To put it succinctly, bad actors will abuse the system for their own personal gain. Whether it be a quarterback having a football slightly under pressure so he can throw it better or a politician buying and selling stocks based on the announcements or decisions they’re going to make in a few days, with no negative repercussions attached, then expecting anything less is a level of naivety I can’t hope to describe.

So, are you saying that taking bribes isn’t in their self-interest, or that there are no repercussions from taking bribes which would be a flaw in the system? There are the first two items you can put on that list I was talking about.

How about, “The system is broken in multiple ways, a list of which can be provided, and the behavior of most Democrats is merely a symptom or self-serving response to the state of that system”?

I’ll certainly grant you the Statist label, but I still don’t see how being critical of the state is simping. And I would argue, like the article, that rather than being inspired by these resilient groups, your first response should be an intense anger at the state for failing so badly, with that inspiration or admiration being a distant second.

99% of the time I drive, my car insurance has no bearing on the outcome of my trip, but I really appreciate it that 1% of the time it does.

There’s nothing significant stopping you from spinning up an instance and writing a script to create accounts and give him upvotes. Be the change you want to see!

It’s a very American view to think that individuals in the community having to step in to keep people from dying is more reasonable than the government of one of the wealthiest nations in the world stepping in to keep people from dying. And somehow criticizing the state for failing to provide for the most basic needs of its citizens is simping.

None of the people using the wood bank are taking their wellbeing into their own hands. They’re relying on their community to support them so they don’t die. And that’s great that it’s happening, but it’s shifty that the government, ostensibly the representative of the community, can’t institutionalize what is clearly the will of the community.

Summarize that sentence into a thumbs up or thumbs down emoji.

Political leaders need to know they have accountability, otherwise they don’t work for the people. Death is the ultimate accountability. Like most significant and irreversible options, it should be used as a last resort.

The kind of truck that can handle any kinds of undeveloped forest are more expensive than the land you say is too expensive for the people who would want to do what you’re saying. So, unrealistic expectations all around.

I like how your dream of self-sufficiency starts with there being g a road you can drive on. Or do you think most woods are reasonable places for driving trucks? You’d be better off buying a donkey or mule. Worst case scenario, you’d have a bit more meat to eat before you starved.

I almost always called family from the previous generations by title and first name, or just title. So, Grandpa, Aunt Sue, etc. Cousins and siblings got first name only. My kids call their immediate parents mom and dad, and their step-parents mom or my wife’s first name. I rarely associate with my ex or her husband, and they refer to him when talking to me by his first name. If they were close enough to him to refer to him as dad, I’d be happy for them to have that good a relationship.

The good news is RFC 3339 doesn’t have this problem and is an unambiguous subset of ISO 8601.

A single point of data rarely answers the question unless you’re looking for absolutes. “Will zipping 10 files individually be smaller than zipping them into a single file?” Sure, easy enough to do it once. Now, what kind of data are we talking about? How big, and how random, is the data in those files? Does it get better with more files, or is the a sweet spot where it’s better, but it’s worse if you use too few files, or too many? I don’t think you could test for those scenarios very quickly, and they all fall under the original question. OTOH, someone who has studied the subject could probably give you an answer easily enough in just a few minutes. Or he could have tried a web search and find the answer, which pretty much comes down to, “It depends which compression system you use.”

That’s precisely why I chose string theory, because it does have value, even if it can’t be tested at this time. Yet, even though little can be done to advance it, shrugging and ignoring it won’t change that state, if you’re a scientist.

As for the pondering of philosophers, there is a good chance that many of their questions will never be answered, and yes, there would be little value to study them, as a scientist. But that qualifier has a dramatic effect on your previous statements.

Science explains the strong nuclear force. We have a fair understanding of how it works. Why is there a strong nuclear force? Why is the Planck length the size it is? Science can’t answer those kinds of questions, nor what is good or evil, or if they even exist outside of the hearts of man. The best Science can give for those questions is “because”. And philosophers? Well, they can’t give firm answers, either, certainly no more solid than “listen to the science,” but that’s mostly because a lot of those kind of questions don’t really have answers. That we know of, anyway, and some people find that hard so they fall back on the answers they do have, and say “listen to the science.”

It sounds like you’re trying to use the wrong tool, though. Science is a great system for learning about the observable universe, but less so for other things. To put it another way, science is great for telling you how, philosophy is great for exploring why.