Ignoring the very useful themes of contrast and all, the idea that those accused of wrongdoing are accurately accused “more often than not” is internalized copraganda.

For every actually guilty person accused of a crime they actually and entirely committed there is someone who wasn’t – either because they didn’t do anything, didn’t do what they were accused of, or didn’t do all the parts of the crime they’re accused of.

When the system works we don’t see these people in statistics because the prosecutor drops the case as soon as a defense is raised. And when the system doesn’t work we dont see them in statistics because we can’t distinguish them from the actually guilty.

And Matt Murdock’s character, like most comic book vigilantes, is less about justice and more about the fantasy of righteous violence. If he was a prosecutor there’d be no reason to ever put on the costume.

Two points worth making :

1. If the entire biosphere collapsed the resulting lifeless rock would still be the single best place for humans to live in the solar system.
2. Billionaires dont have enough money to fund a Mars colony.

The least reliable members of the facist block of SCOTUS are those appointed by Mr. Trump.

He’s really, really bad at the job.

The culture was isnt lost, but it’s not going to be won by deciding that we can have a little hateful bigotry, as a treat, because black/Jew/queer/gay/trans is “icky”.

Worth knowing:

Unlike other impeachable offices, SCOTUS judges serve for an unlimited term that is subject to an undefined “during good behavior” rule.

A future administration with sufficient votes to reform SCOTUS can and should take this to impose a meaningful code of conduct on judges that can boot them from the bench without needing the senate to go through a political process.

The question may be better phrased as the complimentary of what you asked.

Not why do all these black superfolk have lightning powers, but instead why are so many superfolk with lightning powers black?

I suspect the answer is kin to why so many characters with fire-themed powers have red hair, or why so many superheroes with facial hair are wizards.

Was this written by AI? Or is there some local sit-down restaurant with waitstaff that just happens to share a name with a famous fast food chain?

At-will employment and “right-to-work” are distinct ideas. The first has some real benefits, while the other is just union-busting bullshit.

At-Will Employment means that the relationship of employee to employer is technically voluntary. Your employer can fire you or lay you off for almost any reason or no reason, but you are likewise free to just walk away without even finishing your shift and get another job. (Non-discrimination laws and professional continuity-of-care rules are common exceptions.)

Right to work doesn’t affect whether or not your employement relationship is voluntary. Instead, it means only and exclusively that you can freeload off the union, getting all of their benefits and leaving them with all of the expenses of negotiating your salary and work rules.

In the USA most (but not all) states are “at-will employment”, and most red states have the same sort of bullshit anti-worker “right to work” laws that MLK was campaigning against when he was murdered. And, unfortunately, thanks to SCOTUS fuckery all of the USA is essentially “right to work” since the same assholes behind “corporations are people” and “money is speech” decided that payroll deductions for union dues are terrible in way that payroll deductions for taxes or insurance aren’t.

I don’t think there’s anything especially offensive about recognizing that (trans)gender affirming care would be covered under an expensive definition of transhumanism. Except for two key points.

• So would eyeglasses, any dental care beyond cleaning and tooth pulling, and any surgery that includes a graft or pin.
• Transition of apparent sex is not necessary to be transgender. A transgender woman doesn’t suddenly become a cis man just because you deny her HRT.

Republican hypocrisy on the subject essentially boils down to “poors and children are property, not people.”

One of the biggest harms sci fi and fantays did to public scientific literacy is the abuse of the word “dimension”

D&D’s astral and ethereral planes are not seperate dimenions so much as they are four-dimensional planes seperated from the really mortals live along a axis of reality.

The “11 dimensional reality” idea is an attempt to explain the asymmetry of the four fundamental forces by postulating that there are additional axis straught line axis that those forces propagate through.

if the UN were to function properly

The whole point of the UN is to prevent WW3. Its primary purpose is to provide a forum for nations to talk to each other and thus prevent or shorten those wars which can be prevented or shortened by talking.

Everything else the UN does is just “well, since we have this forum anyway…” extras.

~I say this as a big fan of the UN and international cooperation who is a bigger hater if dying in either nuclear hellfire or repeating the stupidity that launched WW1 and WW2~

A worthwhile question to ask is “what are you protecting from whom?”

If you already have a Google account, especially if you have an Android phone, the ad corp already has your real name and phone number. Creating a second Google account that Google can link back to your main keeps you from thinking that Google won’t conflate the two, but it may be enough to keep internet randos from doxxing you.

Online accounts for singke-player games can burn in hell, though.

There are four things that matter for transfer speed between storage devices.

1. How fast the source reads
2. How fast the target writes
3. How fast the bits can be moved between them
4. What post-write nonsense is done.

USB sticks tend to be flash memory with relatively equal read and write speeds, but the spinning disks in a hard disk drive are noticeably unequal. So, unless the USB is very slow, you’d expect a USB to HDD copy to be slower than either USB to USB or HDD to USB.

You can also be slowed down by antivirus scans, on-disk encryption, search indexing, or even the need to move bits from the USB bus to the HDD controller.

There’s a great filter for BNMW folk.

The ones who endorsed Mamdani as soon as be won the primary can be assumed to mean what they say, and expected to vote for AOC if she wins the primary.

The ones who didn’t, and either never endorsed or waited until the last moment, should be ignored, primaries, and never trusted on a political promise ever again.

The senate is by no means fair or democratic, but its borders reflect something that exists apart from the purpose of electing senators and whose borders are not drawn for the (sole) purpose of obtaining a majority in the Senate.

It’s not gerrymandered in the way that a “whites-only” sign isnt sexist.

I’m not going to get into a pointless argument about whether or not the worst part of your proposal is “people” or “math”, since this is a system question and the distinction is irrelevent.

Humans will attempt to distort whatever system you decide. The only thing that has ever constrained this impulse is other humans with opposing interests. If you do have that what math is actually used becomes irrelevant, and if you don’t then the math is just a game that the humans who want to break your system may play or ignore as they choose.

There was intentional miscounting in the 2020 census, even though that was only used to determine relative distribution of representatives among the various states. Every politician in the country already has huge lists of where their supporters live, and it is already obvious when they’re pulling shenanigans. And yet they do it anyway, because mere shame is not enough to keep humans from being jerks to obtain power and wealth.

My preferred alternative is not to rely on software or laws, but other humans and a dramatic expansion of whose votes matter in the country from “just those who won” to “essentially everyone.”.

I think the world has just gotten less justifiably absurd.

I don’t know whether it’s cute or terrifying that you think you can solve a political problem with software.

Humans can and will game how many people are reported as living where. And they’ll intentionally misinterpret the algorithm you write. And they’ll lie about what your magic box says. And if they’re ever caught doing it they can and will be either ignored by the humans who enforce laws or just be given pardons by the governing humans who wanted the system mucked with in the first place

The only thing in our species’ history that has ever served as a check against the selfish creativity and audacity of humans is the selfish creativity and audacity of other humans.

Passing government functions off to a computer only encourages corruption and distortion in either the implementation, the input, or how the output is handled.

It’s like trying to engineer anti-cheat on a system where not only does the user own their own hardware but also the marketplace vendors, the courts, the OS vendors, and your servers.