My personal saying has always been: Democrats rule with incompetence. Republicans rule with spite and malice.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

What regulated American militia do you belong to? We have been so quick to jump to defend the later part of the amendment that we have completely dismissed the first part.

I am a gun owner. I love my ar-15. I was in the Army. I did 2 tours to Afghanistan. I am also very liberal. If a law was passed that expanded on the actual enforcement of the well regulated militia text, I would support it. Instead, we have no regulated militias in America at all, and a bunch of gun nuts that keep screaming "shall not be infringed!!" While ignoring all the rest of the text.

I had a CPT like that during my second deployment. He was out in 60 seconds and in the funniest positions. The team made an entire photo album of him sleeping. MK19 range included.

I have an honors minor in medical humanities and took several medical policy courses. We looked at this exact graph from previous years as well as several other huge sets of data/graphs/studies and anything else related to insurance you can imagine. Insurance is not a standard market commodity and does not follow the same trend or logic. The only way you can lower premiums in insurance is by reducing the risk in the pool, or increasing the pool size to dilute the risk. This is either increasing the total pool size by increasing premiums, getting more people, or being selective about who joins the risk pool. The third one was what was called "preexisting conditions" and kept high cost people from entering the risk pool and draining the funds. This got banned and increased premiums. By increasing competition you end up splitting up the pools, making everyone's premiums go up. This happened multiple times post ACA after the GOP started stripping out the funding and safeguards to prevent this. More and more competition opened up with artificially low premiums being subsidized by federal dollars, but then when the subsidies ended the premiums started jumping. Then when the premiums were jumping, new companies opened up to make more competition advertising lower rates, but then further fractured to pool sizes, leading to premiums skyrocketing. If you look back just 10 years ago there was a 3-5 year stretch of premiums increasing almost 30% year after year. It was due to all the competition opening up every year. This is why single payer systems have the lowest rates. If you have even one private company monopoly with a regulated cap on profits you would still end up with lower premiums. Then, if this single paying company was nationalized to take out the profit making middle man, the premiums are that much lower because your risk is spread across a massive pool. More competition in insurance makes the problem worse. I would agree with your stronger regulation though. There is a lot that can be done there.

No one in real-estate is doubting it being a bubble. The issue is how it will resolve. Not all bubbles burst. The question is if this one is going to simply "cool down" until the market rate catches up (lol, pipedream) or if the propping up will simply plateau it and it will level off for some years for the market rate the then catch up (almost the same thing, still a fucking joke when they try to justify this). Or there is the option of the bubble popping, it then it is the question of how deep the market cut will go, how fast it will rebound, how far up it will rebound, and if it is still worth it to buy now (what some are saying is that it is still worth doing the current fuckery and still profitable even with a bubble burst).

One man's terrorist group is another man's freedom fighter. This is why many new organizations that are big on neutrality normally shy away from calling anyone terrorist groups. You could just as easily frame Israel as a terrorist group with the same justifications listed above.

It's all milky fun and games with a side of creamy fat until someone gets a case of brucellosis.

Second on the ladybugs. You have a grow house to contain them and makes them that much more effective. They cost about 15-20$ for a container of them and live for about 2 weeks, sometimes more.

I used neem oil on other plants and it leaves a residue that I didn't like. It also raises the leaf Temps and blocks leaf pours/stoma. There are also home made remedies with water/soap/alcohol that are better for the plants.

So true. I am from Houston and loved it. I know what you mean about people bitching about taxes no matter what. The oil and gas guys are the worst. They have million dollar town homes, jobs that bring in 250k or more, and then bitch about the sales tax being on their bar tabs that are over a thousand dollars. They will bitch about their city taxes going to nothing, but then when I bring up the port of Houston, all the amazing museums, Herman/memorial park, miller outdoor theater, any of the amazing parks really, or any of the other things Houston pays for- that doesn't count because they don't use it and they just want a city paid for frat house with free booze and prostitutes. Ahhhh, classic Houston O&G....

I am homesteaders and you are correct in your numbers. And to be transparent here, I am actually a disabled veteran and receive an even larger exemption than most people. The value can grow more than the capped 10% in a few ways. The first was from the first assessment after I bought it. I bought for 170k and yet it was immediately assessed for 210k. Now I am up to about 250k. No improvements. I will be happy to sell for 200k.

The second thing they can do that I discovered was this last time they tried to say it was worth more than that (before I got it down to the 250k it is now), and did even note that the capped "taxable" increase- essentially saying that they have pre-locked in +10% increases for the next so many rounds of assessments until the taxable value is even with the assessed value. I argued it down. The value is still inflated.

Now, my personal opinion? I'm actually not mad about paying for taxes. I enjoy the idea of everyone pitching in what they can afford and together we can build a better community, nation, and world. I just hate that my city is playing in the real-estate speculation game as a way to pump their budget and the taxes I pay are going to a bunch of bullshit. Fuck dallas.

I think there is a miscommunication between both comments here on 'fair'. Here is what I interpreted-

Taxes are never fair in the sense that one poor person will put in a penny, one middle person will put in a dollar, and one rich person will put in 1.99 and they will each receive 1 dollar back in services. This was only fair to one person of the 3, beneficially unfair to one, and penalizing unfair to another. But by paying what each was ably to pay society as a whole has been invested in 3 more dollars and no person was asked to pay outside their means.

I am not taking sides in this, just conveying the thought that 'fair' taxes can have multiple meanings and not just automatically jump to flat taxes.

I am also a texas home owner. The issue I have is when my county assessor has found their own incentive to ride the housing bubble and claim my property (a 2/2 condo in dallas) has somehow gained +60% in value over 3 years so they can get far more tax out of me knowing fully well that it isn't worth that much. And when I argue it down all I get it down to is "just" +50% in value, knowing fully well that I might actually get +30% at best, but realistically +20%.

The state is incentivized to pump land values for more tax revenues and it will only cause a stagnation down the road when the bubble pops. It is a short sighted money grab from the state and it fuels the bubble that much more. It is one of the multiple catch 22 factors to make a housing crash into a self fulfilling prophesy.

Let me just point this out- this was the exact same argument by many intellectuals back in the 1950's about segregation/integration and blacks in science. Why should we care about their color? If they are good scientists with great original ideas and experiments, then surely they will get published and get their positions commensurate to their merit. This is also ignoring their segregated schooling being underfunded, not being welcomed into higher ed unless at specific 'negro' universities, and the crippled career paths because of it. But sure, even with their second rate primary education due to their skin color, and their second rate secondary education due to their skin color, and then their crippled career prospects due to their skin color- why don't we then measure them on merit? The black man never amounted to what out nice ivy league educated white man has done, so why take a risk on them? And again, should we not just judge them on merit? Ignore that if a black man has a novel idea then they must then have the idea reviewed into perpetuity while one of the white reviewers just so happens to come up with the same idea then publishes before the black man.

So to sit here and still argue that merit alone while disregarding the person is only progress is actually quite regressive.

Now, beyond that- modern publishing is blind in most every respectable journal because of this issue. It is only after being accepted is the author identity revealed to the reviewers.

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command

That is at a 'state' level, there are still smaller level communist places to live. Like where the word 'Commune' comes from and what communism was derived from and attempted to expand into. There are communes all over the world. US included. There is a famous one in London, lots of large ones in Spain. They are communities that exist in their own bubble of micro economics within their larger communities of normal living. You should look it up. They are interesting and normally very appealing.

The pyramids are made of granite. It has a density/weight of approximately 165 lb/cubic ft. As in, a 1x1x1 block weighs about 165 lbs. This block, assuming the standard person in this picture is about 5 ft (people have been getting taller over time) this block is maybe 20 ft cubed. Just an eyeball guess. That would put it at about 1,320,000 lbs.

The picture has 6 people deep carrying the first stone with what looks like maybe 4 people across? Hard to tell. But going off 6x4 people, that would mean that each person would have to carry 55,000 lbs each.

Would it be possible? I will let you guess from that. Next question, how many eggs to support it? After some google searches the textbook theoretical best an egg can support is some 300 lbs, but in practice is closer to 120-130 with support/positioning in place (think egg cartons holding them vs just on the ground). This would mean our 1,320,000 lb stone would take between 10,000 to 11,000 eggs to support it.

How long would it take to get that many eggs??? Good question. Chicken normally lay about an egg a day. So 10,000 chicken take 1 day, or 1 chicken would take about 10,000 days. But what is a realistic amount? Well, let me tell you. In the rabbit hole I found myself in of jokingly replying to this, I found an entire dissertation on "THE EXPLOITATION OF LIVE AVIAN RESOURCES IN PHARAONIC EGYPT: A SOCIO-ECONOMIC STUDY" BY ROZENN F. BAILLEUL-LESUER (JUNE 2016)

Captivating. Would recommend rabbiting down that hole. And on page 299 we can see that a Pharoah size flock would be about 2,000 Eurasia cranes or geese. So it would take us about a week to put that block in the picture on a bunch of eggs.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Shitty paywall. Even through 12ft.io

But about the content- he isn't wrong, but people also need to know there is a bit of self interest in there too. France has a huge military industrial complex (outside of the massive one the US has) and is one of Europe's biggest domestic military suppliers.

I always know someone doesn't know anything about Afghanistan and its people when they refer to them as Afghani's.

An Afghan is a person. Afghani is a currency. Anyone who calls them Afghani doesn't even know the right term to call the people. It is a giveaway to how little you know about them when you don't even know what to call them.

Meanwhile all the Chineses and Viet Congs are turning in their graves right next to the Afgani.

Evey time I hear about the evil big pharma funding all the studies out there to influence them in they favor, I immediately ask, "where is this funding and how can I get it?"

Because let's be honest, unless the leg work is already done, they aren't funding shit.

On the flip side of that, I did do a study for 3M and their hearing protection devices (I am an audiology/PhD student) and the funding was great. There were also basically no strings attached other than "use this product, study workplace noise, be able to publish it".

Can we do Icewind Dale instead?