neartheplain

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by neartheplain 5y ago
That funding must flow through the massively corrupt Afghan bureaucracy before soldiers or police ever see it. Much of it gets skimmed, wasted, and embezzled. Many nice houses in the D.C. area have been built with that money, not including
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by neartheplain 5y ago
Or it could be that the Taliban just pays fighters better [0] compared to the central government in Kabul. Their annual revenue from drug trafficking, extortion, and donations exceeds $1.5B USD [1]. Private citizens from Pakistan and Gulf s
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by neartheplain 5y ago
America's withdrawal is, in my view, an inevitable conclusion and the best out of many bad options. However, let's not pretend that the Taliban represent many or most Afghans. Their return to power is a tragedy. The atrocities the
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by neartheplain 5y ago
>Oh my, buddy, you had it even worse than the yanks did. Have you ever had an apology from your state for the serfdom, any reparations? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution Condescending to others about
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by neartheplain 5y ago
In America, I'd expect "Black African sub-culture" to mean the culture of recently-arrived immigrants from Africa. That's a very different thing from black American culture, which evolved under an entirely different set
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by neartheplain 5y ago
Not all black Americans are fans of BET, or its effect on black society and culture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZchP89w2pJo
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by neartheplain 5y ago
>I do remember at a certain point noticing a stark difference between shows that were on UPN, WB, BET ect and ones that were on say like FX, Fox, ABC NBC I'd say starting around the early 00s. I remember this fork in the road quite
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by neartheplain 5y ago
BET was a financial success for investors, but was it a success for the black community? Depends who you ask. I lean towards The Boondocks' take: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZchP89w2pJo
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by neartheplain 5y ago
Demeaning racial labels and slurs have no place on HN.
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by neartheplain 5y ago
Whoah, 6.5 million native speakers! That's several orders of magnitude more than I was expecting. It's also significantly larger than the native-speaking populations of languages like Catalan, Basque, or Romansh, which might be mo
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by neartheplain 5y ago
Hospitals. The US military docked a hospital ship in New York Harbor during the peak of the initial outbreak. That ship remained almost entirely unused [0] while COVID-positive adults were being discharged from hospitals straight back to nu
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by neartheplain 5y ago
Whether Cuomo "followed the science" in his nursing home directive is debatable. From Wikipedia (see above link): >Cuomo repeatedly stated that the order was based on CDC guidance issued by the Trump administration. PolitiFact
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by neartheplain 5y ago
For the doubters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_COVID-19_nursing_home... >In January 2021, Attorney General of New York Letitia James released a report finding that Governor Andrew Cuomo had understated the
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by neartheplain 5y ago
An apparent former D.C. police officer has posted their thoughts on this suicide, and the mood among Capitol and MPD police generally, in the Washington D.C. subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/washingtondc/comment
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by neartheplain 5y ago
The Democratic Party and BLM movement entertained calls for police abolition and defunding all summer. Three times as many officers were hospitalized defending the Portland federal courthouse compared to those defending the Capitol. BLM gra
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by neartheplain 5y ago
The police in Portland were never overrun. Over the course of those 100+ nights they maintained discipline, held their secure perimeters, and succeeded in their mission to keep rioters from breaching e.g. the federal courthouse or their sta
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by neartheplain 5y ago
Fun fact, Bobby Kotick (the "zero-empathy, profit-maximizing creature" who runs Activision Blizzard) was listed in Jeffrey Epstein's black book: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/dfsrt3
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by neartheplain 5y ago
Heinlein wrote a book in favor of polyamory ("Stranger in a Strange Land") and was strongly opposed to religion and theology [0]. I doubt he'd be at home with today's evangelical Christians. For what it's worth, Sov
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by neartheplain 5y ago
>Furthermore, I would argue that self-reflection about why people might disagree with your viewpoints is a valuable experience in that it provides an opportunity to practice empathy and awareness in how your words are perceived by others
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by neartheplain 5y ago
For me, VR has been a means to stay in touch with distant friends and family. It's not too different from traditional computer games + voice chat, but the extra level of immersion does increase the sense of connection. The lack of dist
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by neartheplain 5y ago
I don't know anything about solar panel recycling, but it's worth noting that other means of power generation via solar energy exist [1][2][3], most of which depend on mirror-concentrated heat and don't necessarily involve to
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by neartheplain 5y ago
Specialized IoT controllers are massively oversold. Most people don't need one, including hobbyists and HN commentors. I've developed this opinion after several years of work in IoT. At the link layer, just use WiFi. If power is a
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by neartheplain 5y ago
In the even-smaller rockets category, Copenhagen Suborbitals is still kicking, having survived its founder's murder conviction: https://copenhagensuborbitals.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cope
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by neartheplain 5y ago
I live in DC and read local news. The TJ article was featured in last week's WaPo Metro section. I have a personal interest in the school's academic quality and admissions policy. >The new policy is race blind. The old admissio
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by neartheplain 5y ago
In the context of recent news about a planned Russia-China moon base: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jun/25/russia-china... For more background on controlled ecological life support systems, ch
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China Wraps Up 1-Year Mock Moon Mission to Lunar Palace 1 (2018)(space.com)
2 points by neartheplain 5y ago|1 comments
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by neartheplain 5y ago
No, this sounds exactly like Twitter. On Twitter, self-appointed mobs of the morally righteous call for violence against children [0], farm lulz from the killings of police officers [1], dox strangers to get them fired over off-color jokes
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by neartheplain 5y ago
>The members seem to have a strange, self-claimed moral authority. The posts are a mix of records of what they have done to harass people, updates on past targets, ideas for future hate, and justification about why this person deserves i
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by neartheplain 5y ago
>Similarly in UK, the health secretary was caught having an affair the entire time he was telling people to socially distance. Not a single political will ever get held accountable. In response to this affair, the Health Secretary has re
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by neartheplain 5y ago
Here in the United States, criticism of Israeli state policy as it affects Palenstians is often labeled antisemitic. Laws have been passed on that basis to proscribe the pro-Palestinean Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement [0]: >In th

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