arghnoname

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by arghnoname 4y ago
Farming and subsidies go hand in hand. I'm from the midwest. Whether it's growing food in the first place or leaving a field fallow in another, a subsidy is probably involved. This is a good thing. Farming is very tough business a
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by arghnoname 4y ago
The curve flattening was initially proposed for a short period of time. Maybe weeks or a few months, I forget. I think some initial panic is forgivable, even if it led to actions that were counter to previous guidance. We were ventilating p
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by arghnoname 4y ago
Why do you think NATO was ceaselessly expanding eastward, in violation of guarantees they had made that they would not do so? Why do you think they were putting missiles, etc, in the former Warsaw pact countries? Is it so unreasonable for a
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by arghnoname 4y ago
You're right, people don't think about these things from a more open perspective. A general rule of thumb I follow is if someone who is otherwise successful, particular for a prolonged period of time, is doing something that is pu
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by arghnoname 4y ago
Fair enough, I overstated my case, thanks. I hope the intention, that they are an untested technology compared to traditional vaccination, is not lost though. This vax technology is super impressive and promising. I would like to see it suc
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by arghnoname 4y ago
I appreciate the correction mRNA vaccine use. I was imprecise, I meant to say something like, '...never approved for widespread use.' Never emerging from trials successfully is relatively speaking an untested medicine compared to
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by arghnoname 4y ago
It's more charitable to acknowledge that each 'side' has been pretty 'religious' on this stuff. Fauci made his was onto Christmas ornaments and so on, after all. There were pro-vaccine dance numbers, and people who
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by arghnoname 4y ago
As you note, the VAERS database is voluntary and probably misses many conditions that aren't associated with a vaccine when undergoing treatment. I accept that taking medicine, any medicine, imposes risk for adverse events. What's
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by arghnoname 4y ago
I had adverse cardiovascular issues soon after the vaccine. I've wondered about this, but as far as I can tell the 'covid would have been worse' argument is not definitive. At least with later strains, virus / spike prot
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by arghnoname 4y ago
This is the crazy thing about this whole issue. Some people can use drugs that are extremely harmful responsibly. It's a once-in-a-while excursion away from ordinary life. There's nothing wrong with having a scary drug, like heroi
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by arghnoname 4y ago
You're not wrong, but addiction is not a certain outcome. Most people who use a substance that can lead to addiction don't become addicted. The question is why can two people, for example, abuse alcohol for a period of their youth
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by arghnoname 4y ago
I'm not a utilitarian because I think there are many things that we should do that can't be justified with a straight-forward look at the bottom line. Judging things this way can end with things that are pretty ethically dubious,
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by arghnoname 4y ago
I think what it comes down to is who is decided what's harmful and do you trust those institutions. Is spanking harmful? It seems close to one of those things that get one into trouble with CPS What about letting a kid walk home from s
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by arghnoname 4y ago
Apple doesn't seem to be in the business of selling software very much. Instead it's mostly used to increase the value of the hardware. The stuff I've seen them incorporate that at one time were apps weren't 30% cheaper
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by arghnoname 4y ago
It may end up being a question of choosing to be Hong Kong or choosing to be Ukraine. China doesn't want this to be like the Ukraine conflict either. I don't know if and how guarantees of some autonomy can be made that carry some
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by arghnoname 4y ago
It wasn't my experience that they were harder working or more capable than the domestic talent. Because of the immigration benefits, some had additional motivations native-born Americans didn't have, but there are easier ways to i
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by arghnoname 4y ago
I doubt the parent has access to American war plans, but it's reasonable to guess that the US would prefer for China not to have intact TSMC plants because it provides enormous leverage. It's the same as blowing up Nordstream II.
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by arghnoname 4y ago
I always feel there's some implicit racism or belief in cultural superiority or something at play in these discussions. Anyone who has gone to grad school can see pretty plainly that the top schools are stuffed with Chinese and Indian
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by arghnoname 4y ago
Electrical production facilities have been considered by the US and its allies as dual use and as such, legitimate targets in their strikes against enemies for quite a long time. Anyone who has watched any US 'shock and awe' campa
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by arghnoname 4y ago
Maybe it's splitting hairs, but there is COVID, and then there's COVID policies and reactions. It's sad, but with various kinds of stimulus (extra child tax credits, the COVID checks) people on the bottom of the economic tote
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by arghnoname 4y ago
I agree that they believe this, but I don't think deceiving these people are going to make them less prone to extremism and paranoia.
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by arghnoname 4y ago
The media has never only communicated fair and factual information, but the biases of previous eras were less blatant. Chomsky detailed a lot of these cases where very similar cases of Soviet actions were covered much more harshly than comp
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by arghnoname 4y ago
If we're talking about population level effects of COVID, the vast majority of those who died were either fairly unwell (lots of comorbidities), of advanced, post-retirement age, or most likely, both. While individually tragic in each
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by arghnoname 4y ago
There's a philosophical thing here and people have different views. The ACLU used to defend the right for the KKK and neo-nazis to parade around in jewish neighborhoods doing holocaust denial, etc, and if I remember correctly many of t
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by arghnoname 4y ago
Yep, this is the traditional three-coat. What’s interesting is the framing need not be perfect. You can correct a quarter inch off true across a wall without too much trouble by varying the thickness of the brown and scratch coat. In my old
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by arghnoname 4y ago
Plaster is on the one hand, harder to repair correctly, but on the other hand, can be repaired more seamlessly if done well. It kills me when people replace plaster with drywall. Sometimes they'll even have it all torn out and replaced
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by arghnoname 4y ago
Yes, it's a real challenge and compared to a "real" plasterer, I'm terrible, but the job I did was much better than drywall. My main resource was this book: https://icontractor.net/products/plasterin
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by arghnoname 4y ago
What's interesting is that the compromises that might come from labor issues, supplies, or shifting construction techniques get passed off to consumers as desirable and over time they seem to buy it. With a few exceptions, plaster wall
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by arghnoname 4y ago
My guess is that the personal code of ethics that people run with who work there or work for other companies that produce goods that are bad for people (e.g., tobacco) is that their belief in individual choice is the primary factor. In this
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by arghnoname 4y ago
I've been following this issue since the Maiden events of 2014 (trying to use neutral terms here) and much more closely since the onset of what the Russians call the special military operation. It's been surreal to see the consens

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