For what it’s worth, many, maybe most (sorry, can’t be bothered to look up the stats right now) nuclear plants in the US are already owned by some publicly traded company beholden to its shareholders who expect it to turn an ever increasing profit for them.
Not that it gives me the warm-fuzzies that that’s the case, but it’s not quite as big of a departure from the current situation as you’re making it out to be.
If you’re fucking around with your radio equipment doing something you shouldn’t and end up causing interference on, for example, aircraft frequencies or emergency service radio systems, you could be a contributing factor to an airliner crashing or an ambulance not being dispatched in a timely manner and a patient dying because they didn’t get to the hospital in time.
You didn’t directly kill anyone, but you set up the circumstances that resulted in someone dying.
I think you underestimate how many Americans just want a cup of Joe with cream and sugar. A whole lot of us are out there drinking gas station/convenience store coffee or brewing a cup or pot every day of store brand pre-ground.
And the ongoing joke about people getting frustrated with just wanting a “large coffee” and being confused by starbucks calling it a “venti” and spouting off about how they don’t want any fru-fru mocha-chino late bullshit even though no one asked.
I think the bigger issue is that of how Americans get around and how available real estate is.
Japan has a lot more people who can/will walk, take the train, etc. that’s a lot more opportunities for them to walk by a vending machine.
Americans tend to get around in our cars, so if you want to sell them a coffee, snacks, hot meal, etc. they need to be able to park somewhere.
And vending machine food isn’t exactly a huge draw, people probably aren’t going to go to your parking lot with a row of vending machines just to grab something to eat, so you kind of need something else to draw them in, some bathrooms, gas pumps, or at least convenient parking to other stuff they need to get to, so you might as well stick a gas station there, and since you’re going to need a cashier you might as well move that vending inside and you can get more and more variety of merchandise on shelves that you can cram into some vending machines so it might as well just be a convenience store.
Sounds like you’re describing a maglite
Maglites are perfectly fine flashlights for most people, maybe a little heavy but sometimes that’s kind of the point (a lot of cops and security guards and such took to carrying them when their agencies started prohibiting nightsticks and batons, especially the bigger 4 or 6 cell models) for a long time they were basically the default flashlight, you had maglites, you had the big spotlight looking things that took a 6v battery, you had cheap plastic flashlights, and you had various small penlights and such (which were often mini maglites) and that was like 90% of what you’d ever encounter.
There’s a good chance if you go rooting around in your dad or grandfather’s car trunk, garage, basement, workshop, toolbox, etc. you’ll find a maglite or 3 kicking around somewhere. I know I keep one in my car for emergencies and I’ll probably inherit a half dozen more from my parents someday.
They still make them, pretty sure they switched over to LEDs (one of their selling points used to be they had a spare bulb stored in the tail cap) and I’m sure they’re still perfectly reliable and rugged, you can probably still find them at most of the places you’d think to go buy a flashlight, and a standard 2 D cell maglite still costs in the neighborhood of $20-$30.
But there are a bunch of flashlight nerds out there these days, who want really specific form factors, battery types, features, led color temperatures, etc. and they’d probably pooh-pooh the humble maglite.
I get it to an extent, I have flashlights I like better, but I’m not about to nerd out about them, and if you someone sent me out with instructions to buy them a flashlight with no other requirements listed, I’d probably buy a maglite and feel pretty confident that it’s going to be an acceptable flashlight.
My dog likes to steal things when we’re out of the house and leave them on the stairs or on our bed.
She’s not a breed that’s known for having a particularly soft mouth, their claim to fame is probably the opposite if anything (malinois) so it’s kind of impressive when I find an avocado or a martini glass somewhere unexpected without even the slightest bruise.
We joke that they’re her “emotional support objects.”
Thank you, I think the whole situation around the falklands/malvinas is pretty interesting.
A few years back I remember stumbling into a conversation on Reddit about them and realized I didn’t really know much about them, not a topic that’s covered in much detail if at all in American schools. Pretty much all of my knowledge of it was from a few passing references from British media, and nothing in depth at that, just that such and such person/character had been in the war and that’s about it. So I decided to do a little research on the matter.
I figure there’s probably more than a few people who are similar boat as me who could use a quick primer on the situation, so I try to spread that knowledge when I can.
So here’s a little brief history of the falklands that I’ve posted before that people seem to usually enjoy. I’m no historian or anything of the sort, so take my thoughts on this for what it’s worth (and I am certainly biased being an American, don’t exactly get a whole lot of Argentinian history books to study, and most of the Spanish I know is food-related, so if someone wants to enlighten me more on the Argentinian side of things, I welcome the education.) I’m aiming as much to keep this fun and light-hearted as I am for historical accuracy.
In general my understanding is that the British were the first people to land there, didn’t really do much with it at that time, and pretty much just said “finders keepers” then left.
Maybe worth noting, there were no indigenous inhabitants there, so that’s probably about as ethical as colonization can get.
Then France showed up and set up shop since the British weren’t doing anything with it. Britain came back and also set up shop, and it’s not totally clear if either of them even knew the other was there. France eventually decided to fuck off, and let Spain have their bit of the Falklands.
Spain and Britain coexisted for a while, had some scuffles, but more or less worked things out. Eventually Britain pulled out to focus on other things but still considered their “finders keepers” claim to be valid.
Spain eventually pulled out as well, so for a little while no one was really doing much of anything with it officially.
Argentina (technically Buenos Aires at the time if we want to split hairs, I’m going to just use Argentina and Britain to keep the sides easy to follow) comes along, and decides it’s theirs, since they split off from Spain they figure they get the falklands as part of the package since Spain was claiming ownership at the time, although Brittain was still holding to their “finders keeps” claim, Spain and later Argentina basically just countered with “losers weepers” and this is basically the root of the whole conflict.
Put a little more professionally, basically Britain’s claim is they were there first and that claim has always been valid whether they were doing anything with the Islands or not. Argentina’s claim is that Brittain pulled out they left the islands up for grabs, and since Spain was the last country trying to do anything with them, it belongs to them since they’re laying claim to Spain’s former holdings in the region.
Argentina gave some German dude permission to set up a colony for them there to fish and hunt feral cows. Eventually he gets into a fight with an American navy captain over fishing and hunting rights, Captain America kicks their ass a bit and declares the colonial government disolved, and pretty much continues on his merry way. Argentina tries to get things there started back up again but never quite gets their shit back together in the Falklands. A little while later the Brits come back around, still claiming finders keepers, and take charge of everything again, and this time the colonies stick and continue to grow. Argentina spends the next hundred years or so muttering “this is bullshit” to themselves.
Around the 1960s, Britain starts talking about decolonizing, it was kind of all the rage among the European colonial powers at the time, and Argentina gets excited thinking they’re going to finally get the Falklands. Britain even quietly floats the idea of giving them the islands, figuring the Islanders would just kind of accept that decision if it was made, and running these islands from halfway around the world was getting kind of expensive. Turns out though that pretty much everyone on the Falklands is pretty damn happy to be British subjects (sort of a novel experience for Britain, historically not many British colonies have been happy to be British colonies, hell, half of Brittain proper sometimes isn’t too happy to be part of Britain) and don’t really want to be part of Argentina, which made things a bit complicated, and Britain needed some time to figure things out.
Argentina gets kind of impatient with all of this, and eventually decided “fuck it, we’ll just take them ourselves.” Britain cannot abide Argentina’s inability to wait patiently in the queue and was starting to really wrap their heads around the idea that the Falklands would rather stay part of Britain, and so we get the Falklands war.
Britain wins, Argentina goes back to muttering to themselves, and that pretty much brings us up to the present day.
The price point is way off, but strangely enough I’ve personally been champing at the bit for something with pretty much exactly those specs,just at about half the price.
Currently, I daily drive an SUV and do get good use out of it. I have to commute in the snow (essential employee,) I have outdoorsy hobbies that require hauling people and camping gear around, I tow some small trailers, I use it pretty frequently to move furniture, pick up lumber and other bulky stuff from the hardware store, etc. and while I don’t go off-roading in the sense that I don’t purposely go looking for rocks to climb and mud to drive through for fun, I do sometimes drive onto a beach to fish or drive onto fields for various reasons, and find myself on some really shitty dirt roads where some ground clearance and 4wd are necessary. I’m doing those things usually a few times a month.
But most of my daily driving adds up to 20 miles a day or less, on paved roads, rarely going over 45mph. I also have a wonky schedule where I rarely have to work more than 3 days in a row, and it’s usually just me and occasionally my wife or my dog (rarely both at the same time)
I can’t quite afford 2 cars, but something like this at the right price point would probably tip the scales in my favor. I could daily drive the small cheap electric car and save my SUV (or maybe a small truck) for my days off when I’m doing stuff that it’s needed for while the small car charges.
You need to do yourself a favor and go get yourself a proper frying pan/skillet. It doesn’t need to be an expensive or nice one, but if you don’t have one that can fit a few hot dogs, your kitchen is way under equipped.
Anvil firing
You get 2 anvils, stack them on top of each other, the bottom one upside down, pack some gunpowder between them, light it, run, and the top one shoots off into the air and eventually comes back down.
I’m sure it’s a blast (literally) but I’m not trying to looney tunes myself.
I think “cave diving” is generally understood to refer to the underwater variety.
If you’re referring to general cave exploration, that would generally be called “spelunking”
Historically hell has often been depicted as a rather cold place, away from the warmth of god’s love or what have you.
Anecdotally, 20 or so years ago, that’s what I remember being taught in CCD class when my parents were still making me go.
Dante’s Inferno (c. 1321) for example, depicts the 9th and deepest circle of hell as a large frozen lake. And many of the damned he encountered throughout the different circles are at least somewhat sympathetic, especially at the first level of where the inhabitants are by and large good people who just to not be Christians. (And to be clear, Dante often found himself at odds with the church, so his works don’t necessarily reflect official doctrine and were absolutely written to reflect his own agenda, that said a lot of our modern ideas about hell owe a lot to Dante’s depiction, and any actual mention of hell in the Bible is scarce to non-existent depending on how you interpret certain passages, so his version is just as valid as any other in my opinion)
So ignoring the technical problem of how it could actually be done, let’s assume we somehow did it, cut every cable, and somehow blocked every cell tower and satellite from somehow connecting to North Korea to the rest of the world.
For the average north korean citizen, probably nothing much changes, most of them don’t have much access to the internet to begin with.
For those who do, the elites, people in university, those government, military, etc. it will probably worry a bit.
For the elites who get to enjoy the internet as a luxury, probably not too much changes. I doubt that except for maybe the very top echelons of DPRK society, the Kim family for example (and maybe not even some of them,) anyone is getting totally unrestricted access to the global Internet. They’re probably limited to mostly a bunch of north korean-hosted websites, and unless they’re relying on data centers and such abroad (and they very well might be,) there’s not really much we can do to take them down unless we really want to go in and attack all of the internal Internet infrastructure.
It’s going to hamper their universities and such, sucks for them, probably no great loss for the world, the next big scientific break through probably wasn’t coming from the hermit kingdom anyway.
It will definitely hurt their ability to conduct espionage, cyber attacks and such, that goes both ways though and it also makes it harder for other countries to spy on them.
They will do their usual sabre-rattling in response, maybe even going a bit above and beyond their usual mostly empty gestures, but probably nothing that’s going to lead to any actual escalation p
I’d probably push it back to a little over 100 years to include WWI, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the British Mandate for Palestine, since that all set the stage for Israel being founded pretty directly, and there had already been a pretty substantial movement for Jews to immigrate to the region by about the '30s (known as the “Fifth Aliyah”) so a bit outside of your 80 year range.
But of course, none of these events happen in a vacuum, if you want to get really nitpicky, you can start talking about the events that led to world war 1, trace them way back, through the crusades, the birth of Muhammad, Christianity, the Roman empire, all the way back to the bronze age, and maybe even further if you were able to somehow find decent historical records going that far back.
Trying to point to one single event as the one that kicked off a certain conflict is tough, because there was always something that led up to that event too, and when you try to unravel it, before too long you might come to a very Douglass Adams-y conclusion that it all started when our first ape ancestors decided to come down from the trees, only for someone else to say that the trees had been a mistake in the first place and that we never should have left the oceans.
Most sump pumps, at least in my area, drain directly to the outside, there’s basically a pipe that goes from my sump up and out of my basement and opens out into my yard.
I wouldn’t really want to count on a sump pump for this kind of issue though. At best you’re basically just putting a bandaid on a sucking chest wound. You could also run into some legal issues for knowingly using it to discharge sewage into your yard (and why would you even want to do that in the first place?)
It would also be pretty rough on the pump, they’re usually not meant to handle solids like the hair clogs, bits of food, fecal matter, etc.
Assuming you’d have an actual sump pit installed, there’s often some water left standing in the pit, you probably don’t want that to be sewage water.
I’m obviously not planning a Pennsylvania secession movement anytime soon, but just in case it ever comes to that
General policy, not necessarily Pennsylvania specific, in no specific order:
Universal healthcare (including all vision, dental, psychiatric, addiction treatment, gender affirming care, etc.) constitutionally enshrined access to abortion and birth control, abolish the death penalty, legalize all drug use with pardons for all non violent drug offences, huge corporate, wealth and inheritance taxes and major tax cuts for anyone making under 100k/year per person, major investment in nuclear and renewable energy, bans on fracking, free college or technical education for all up to a bachelor’s degree or equivalent certifications, UBI, low-income housing, major police reform, a ban on homeschooling except when necessary due to medical issues and a ban on private and charter schools except for very specific magnet schools that cater to particular vocations and enormous amounts of oversight and regulations on those schools, absolute separation of church and state (Churches and religions get no more legal recognition or exemptions than any other private social club would be entitled to,) a plan to phase out all reliance on non-renewable energy, down-payment assistance for first time homebuyers, high speed Internet access as a human right, major public health spending (we will get hit with another pandemic eventually, and there’s a damn good chance it will be far worse than covid,) a ban on corporate ownership of housing, basically all government services and requirements will be free of charge, legal recognition of poly marriage, election reform with ranked-choice voting, and major gun reform (too much to go into detail here but mainstream republicans and democrats would both hate my gun plans)
And probably a few dozen other major points, but thats what I could spout off from the top of my head
Pennsylvania-specific (disclaimer, I’m based out of the Philly area, so my opinions are the strongest about this region, and I’d need to read up on most of the rest of the state):
High speed rail connecting, at a minimum, Philly, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Scranton, state college, and Erie
Commuter rail along the Schuylkill connecting philly and reading (side note/fun fact: the legal remnants of the old reading railroad company, yes the one from monopoly, that used to connect those two and other cities, is now a chain of movie theaters, with locations mostly in Australia, New Zealand, and California) probably as an extension of the Norristown high speed line which we’re also going to reroute to have a stop inside the King of Prussia Mall
Really more rail in general, but that seems like a good starting place and we can continue building out a network from there.
The sixers are staying put, if they want a new stadium they can put one in the existing sports complex. We’re also going to cover vine street and reconnect the two halves of Chinatown.
This is very low priority, but I’d like to find a constructive use to refurbish the SS United States instead of turning it into an artificial reef.
We’re doing away with the PLCB bullshit, you should be able to buy beer, wine, and liquor at any grocery store.
We’re getting rid of any remaining blue laws- not being allowed to hunt on Sundays, dealerships not being able to sell cars, etc.
An absolute ban on confederate imagery except for museums, historical reenactments, etc. I see more confederate flags being flown in parts of PA than I have in a lot of the actual south, what side of the mason-dixon line do these idiots think our state lies on? Especially in this hypothetical scenario since we’re not even going to be part of America after this is all over and I don’t want any of these shitheads getting the wrong idea that our movement is some sort of “the south shall rise again” thing.
Really we’re just generally going to finally drag a lot of Pennsyltucky kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
Major infrastructure spending. I’d say this should be a general not-pennsylvania-specific issue, but holy shit have you seen the state of some of our roads and bridges? You can usually tell by feel the exact moment you cross over the state border.
We’re really going to lean into being “Penn’s Woods” and preserve our natural resources and wildlife. We have some amazing parks, forests, etc. here and I want to make sure it stays that way. You can barely drive 10 minutes through much of the state without crossing some small river or stream, and I want all of those waterways to be clean and teeming with life. I’ve never seen our state amphibian- the eastern hellbender, in person in the wild and I’d like to fix that.
Some goofy, not totally serious proposals
Mehmet Oz is not allowed to set foot on Pennsylvanian territory.
Any building in Philly taller than City Hall must have a William Penn statue at the top. We finally managed to break the curse with the Comcast building and we’re really going to cover our bases.
We may look into annexing the south jersey shore.
An official Pennsylvanian English dictionary covering the Philly, Pittsburgh, NEPA, and other dialects, covering definitions, spelling, and pronunciations of such words and phrases as : Yinz, youse/youse guys, jawn, Schuylkill, Bala Cynwyd, Conshohocken, heyna, jeet, water (“wooder,”) creek (“crick”) and many others.
Do they control a territory? Do they claim to be the official government of that territory? Can they back up and defend those claims? Do the civilians living in that territory overall recognize their authority as the government of that territory? Do other nations recognize them as the government of that territory?
It’s not a totally black and white issue
If I hypothetically rallied up a group of supporters who share my views and ideals and start carrying out terrorist attacks to force the government to address the issues I’m championing, I don’t think many would consider me to be a government. I’m still acknowledging the authority and legitimacy of the government, and am just acting in opposition to it.
If my goal is to seize control of a territory, let’s say Pennsylvania, I’m starting to look a bit like a country. But unless I have the support of enough Pennsylvanians, and have the resources and manpower to back up my claim, and can get other nations to recognize it, it’s a pretty empty claim.
If I manage to win over the popular support of the citizenry, they may start to regard me as the legitimate ruler of Pennsylvania, however just because they’re willing to follow me, doesn’t mean that anyone outside of the state is recognizing my claim. Other countries aren’t going to engage in diplomacy with me the same way they would with other nations, they’re going to continue regarding Pennsylvania as part of the US until I manage to actually have control over the territory. That means in some way removing the existing government from power, and more importantly defending my claim from the US government, who isn’t going to just roll over and accept my claim.
So let’s say we manage to take control over Pennsylvania, the citizens support me, we’ve ousted the previous government, and are generally filling all the roles you would expect a government to handle, and at least for now we’re somehow managing to hold off the US government and defending our claim to Pennsylvania.
At this point, we’re the defacto government of Pennsylvania. However we still lack recognition. The US government is still trying to retake control and has not recognized our independence, nor has any other country, we’re seen as rebels, warlords, etc. by the rest of the world. We’re essentially on our own, unable to trade with other countries.
From here let’s imagine a couple different scenarios
Some countries start to recognize my legitimacy. They offer to support my regime and to open up trade. Popular support from my citizens remains high, and we’re managing to hold off the US government. At this point we’re in a situation not unlike Taiwan or Palestine. Whether we’re a legitimate government is going to depend on who you ask around the world, with answers ranging from that we’re a group of rebels trying to secede from the US to having their full support and recognition as the legitimate government of an independent nation.
Our rebellion is a resounding success. The US backs off, recognizes our independence, other countries also recognize our independence, maybe we even join NAFTA. It would be hard to argue that we’re not a legitimate government at that point.
I start to lose the support of Pennsylvanians, and they stop recognizing my authority, even though I still manage to maintain control over my territory by force. Some countries, especially those that are not friendly to the US, may still recognize my claim, although in the eyes of most of the world, I’m probably just a terrorist or warlord.
The US government is successful in ousting me, I manage to flee to a country that recognizes me as the legitimate ruler of Pennsylvania or at least is willing to tolerate my presence, and I set up a government-in-exile. I continue to conduct myself as though I am the ruler of Pennsylvania, maybe some Pennsylvanians and other people and countries throughout the world continue to recognize me as such, but without the ability to actually exercise that authority over my territory, it’s a pretty empty claim.
A few years back my area got hit with a pretty bad storm, beat the previous flood record here by about a foot, that previous record was set about 85 years prior. Bad flood, but statistically not totally unprecedented, you often hear talk about 100 year floodplains, and so that was almost a textbook perfect illustration of that, if you normally only get a flood that bad about once a century we were just about due.
Then the next year hurricane Ida hit, totally smashed that fresh new record by about 5 ft. It took them like a week to figure out exactly how bad the flooding actually was because it totally swamped all of the river gauges.
NOAA’s website has a list of 42 historic crests of that creek going back to at least 1933. 29 of those crests have been since 2000, and 7 have been in just the last 5 years.
Once upon a time in my area, ice was an industry, big blocks of ice would be cut out of nearby lakes in the winter, shipped out around the area, and stored to last through the year. There may even be a handful of older residents in our area who were alive when it was happening, and certainly a few who are old enough that their parents would have remembered it. We’re only about a century removed from that time.
My friends’ dad used to tell stories about being able to ice state down the local Creek in the winter and being able to skate all the way from our town to one about 6 miles downstream.
I have rarely seen any of the waterways in my area freeze over with even an inch of ice, certainly none of them freeze over thick enough that I’d be comfortable ice skating on them (I keep an eye on all of the ice conditions because I want to try ice fishing, been keeping an eye on it for a decade, haven’t had a chance yet. A lot of the local parks have posted regulations for ice fishing because it used to be a thing you could do around here) and absolutely not thick enough that you could cut a block of ice out of it.
We also set a record last year for the longest recorded stretch without an inch of snow. Snow totals have been overall trending downwards for a while, over the last couple decades a lot of the local school districts have cut down on the amount of snow days they build into their calendars because they just weren’t using them. A small local ski slope near me has had to invest in new snow making equipment because they absolutely couldn’t count on getting real snow anymore, or necessarily even the temperatures being cold enough for their old equipment to work reliably
Climate change should be pretty damn obvious to anyone in my area, and yet a whole lot of people around me refuse to see it.
I think you’re misreading the comment of the person you’re replying to here, it’s worded a little wonky and I don’t know if you picked up on a bit of a sarcastic tone there, I think you also may not be reading far enough into the history to really have a handle on the situation but frankly neither of you are doing a great job of explaining your positions so it’s a little hard to say what point either of you are trying to make
Tl;dr of modern Afghan history:
Around the 80s, Russia invaded Afghanistan and installed a socialist government
The US backs Islamic militants, essentially the Taliban or the groups that eventually morph into them, to oust the Russian backed government,
The Taliban also likes to style themselves as the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan
Some power struggles ensue, by the 90s sometime the Taliban is in charge of the country
9/11 happens, US invades, tries to set up their own government, pulls out, Taliban quickly takes back over
It’s been a long time and I’m not sure of it’s current state, but some friends and I used to have a blast play Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator (I think there’s a couple other games out there now that are similar)
You kind of need the right setup for it to work well, a big TV or projector you can hook up to a computer and everyone needs their own laptop, etc.
The basic idea is- picture the bridge of the enterprise (or your starship of choice) you’ve got a bunch of people with their own consoles responsible for different aspects of the ships operation, the helm, engineering, weapons, etc. That’s what you’re doing.
I think at some point they added support for support fighters and such to accompany the main starship so if you have more people they have something to do.
We also made up a couple extra positions, like a captain who didn’t really have his own console, he just got his own chair front and center and a fancy hat and gave out orders.