Really can’t be overstated how different “female circumcision” is from the male version.

Like comparing ear piercings to ear cropping.

Obviously no. Prior efforts at invoking this kind of legislation in Oklahoma failed and the federal court struck it down fairly quickly.

Texas actually already has House Bill 4211, the “Sharia Compound Ban”, which states

The purchase agreement and any other agreement or rules governing the residential arrangement or the ownership interest in the entity may not require that a dispute concerning the arrangement or interest be brought before a tribunal other than a court established under the laws of this state or the United States.

This was intended to prevent the completion of EPIC City, a master-planned Islamic community-centered residential development project just north of Dallas. Although this mostly seems to be focused on investment and ownership stake in residential and commercial properties by a large pool of wealthy Muslim investors.

If there’s any effort to invoke this law at a functional level, it will likely be targeted at the minority Muslim Texas residents, with the intent of depriving them of their property and possessions.

The AI companies put out a presser a few years back that said “Um, aktuly, its the humans who are bad drivers” and everyone ate that shit up with a spoon.

So now you’ve got Waymos blowing through red lights and getting stuck on train tracks, because “fuck you fuck you stop fighting the innovation we’re creatively disruptive we do what we want”.

If censorship is what’s being criticized, it’s no different.

Paradox of tolerance

I hate when censorship comes for people I do like.

I love when censorship comes for people I don’t like.

it’s just become such a nanny instance that jumps on everyone’s shit.

Admins are fighting a flood of instances and users more interested in getting attention than participating in the community. Consequently, you’ll have power users ballooning the front page with click-bait. You’ll have instances choke full of reactionary content specifically intended to bait a flame war. You’ll have spammers plugging their own brands or working on behalf of some third party. And you’ll have the odd bot-farm or other automated account that’s just probing the Fediverse for gaps.

“Ah, but the individual users can always block what they choose”

Sure. Technically. But nobody wants to wake up every morning to a front page that’s full of shit. The spammers can bloat your inbox faster than the individual can flush it out. So Admins who step in and do a little public house cleaning - the Nanny work you hate - makes the website cleaner and friendlier for lay users that pop in now and then.

Is it easier to secure, monitor fewer, bigger reactors or thousands of* small ones?

A moot point when we don’t build new ones anymore.

But the big appeal of the molten salt reactor is that it doesn’t require continuous manual interventions.

Solar, batteries and long-range transmission infrastructure just makes too sense I guess.

Sure. Obviously.

But that’s WOKE, so we hate it.

Nuclear definitely has a role to play. Integrating SMRs into our global shipping fleet would eliminate the enormous waste and emissions of bunker fuel, for instance.

And areas that don’t have reliable sunlight or wind (far north/south regions) or that require high steady output in confined areas (large factories, urban centers, major metro arteries, etc) can see real benefits, relative to gas or coal power.

It’s a technology we should have invested more heavily in 60 years ago. Obviously, Texas will fuck it up. But that’s not an indictment of the technology, just the capitalist dipshits that run the state.

The school’s primary selling point is its “2 hour learning” philosophy which promises to give students their required education and prepare them for necessary standardized tests, AP tests, and the SATs in just just two hours of learning.

Real “Eight Minute Abs” tier pitch work.

Former Alpha School employees and internal documentation don’t disprove Alpha School students’ high test results, but show that students often have to study more than two hours a day, that they sometimes arrive at Alpha high school classes unprepared and below grade level reading skills, and that some students had to go back and fill holes in their education before they were prepared for high school level classes.

:-/

This is an enduring refrain with pilot program education systems. Your initial crop of students get bespoke treatment (to match the astronomical cost - $60k/yr is more than most colleges charge). Then their performance is tied back to the gimmick - AI, SmartBoards, School Uniforms, Montessori style teaching, Jesus classes - that’s rolled out to the hoi paloi at a cheaper price but absent all the personalized, expensive tutoring.

No faster way to close the Federal deficit than to collect taxes on billionaires.

Not that anyone really cares about the deficit. But it’s crazy to see how much money gets thrown away on vanity projects, while we pretend to pinch pennies at DOGE

I think Nevada bet Texas there by about 70 years.

SMRs are a new scam needed because old nuclear scam has worn out.

Idk about that. Consider the Linglong One (ACP100): Developed by the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), it is the first SMR to pass an independent safety assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2016. Construction began in 2021, and the core module was installed in 2023.

Definitely a challenge of materials sciences, but to call it a scam? Come on. Coal sticking around as long as it has is the scam.

The first ending has already been happening.

The second ending keeps failing to happen. We’ve got graveyards full of Cloud Gaming markets. Google Stadia, OnLive, Walmart’s cloud service LiquidSky, and various smaller platforms like Vectordash and Bifrost.

Nonsense. We can just let the Free Market handle it

Sounds more like a tornado than a hurricane.

But also, you can fortify these underground and behind concrete in a way you wouldn’t for a Galveston Beach house.

it hasn’t been a problem since that event 5 years ago.

We’ve been spared any serious natural disasters affecting the grid during that time. No major hurricanes. No big freeze.

The worst event was the 2024 derecho, and that definitely knocked out power here and there. But it was high enough above the treeline to really wreck infrastructure at the ground level.

I’ll note that a huge increase in wind and solar capacity means we aren’t exposed to the same kind of economic pressure from five years ago, either. The '21 freeze came, in large part, due to gas power plants locking up when they were needed, because they hadn’t been weatherized. With less acute demand issues (thanks to new green energy) we haven’t been in a position where gas plants could casually wait for prices to spike before turning on.

Removed by mod

Real “these kids would be very upset if they could read” situation. Who bothers to pick through the whole EULA before submitting?

Like any open source mass contribution project that’s gained too much popularity, you need extra firebreaks in between the Open Submission and Final Product.

That means adding manpower to submission review, QA, etc, which public projects don’t often have.

Sort of the Achilles Heel of the open source community. AI is just making the vulnerability extra glaring.

Barely as large as Austria

Removed by mod

In fairness, Trump’s DOJ has allowed Hillary to remain at large