iNow

Some ways are more likely to result in collateral damage than others. Here, the pagers blew up right next to children and non-combatants, and killed at least one.

Always possible, but seemingly irrelevant to the point I was making

Did you mean canis familiaris?

Pretty certain those are homosapiens in the boat

There is also the psychological reward of simplistic scapegoats and "otherism." Complex issues are hard to comprehend and emotionally process so many instead comfort themselves with easy fictions. It's about more than just distrust (which is a critical element), but also involves cartoonishly simple "just-so" explanations. The MAGA cult and antisemite community exemplifies similar trends where blame for multi-faceted multi-variate global issues gets placed squarely and neatly at the feet of monolithic caricatures... "them" or similar "enemies" of the "outgroup" from other "tribes." And while it's entirely possible the term "conspiracy theory" gets overused, it's entirely certain that conspiracy thinking is also overused. It's far easier and requires a far lower cognitive load.

You first. Perhaps you can come up with an example that clearly shows an invisible undetectable dragon can't possibly be sitting below my chair right now.

https://www.axios.com/2024/09/18/hezbollah-pager-explosions-israel-suspicions

From the cipher brief (intelligence knew the order was made and intercepted it along the supply chain): Lebanese media outlets and Sky News Arabia quoted sources claiming that Israel’s Mossad spy agency got hold of Hezbollah’s new pagers before they reached the group, placed the explosive PETN on the devices’ batteries – and then detonated them today by raising their temperatures from afar. Speculation notwithstanding, this much is clear: if Israel was behind the explosions, it marks another successful, highly sophisticated and provocative Israeli operation against an Iranian proxy far behind enemy lines.

Thanks. I prompted Llama 3.1 for a summary of the strengths and weaknesses of each instead: Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) and Rated Choice Voting (also known as Score Voting) are two alternative voting systems. Here's a comparison of their benefits and weaknesses: *Ranked Choice Voting (RCV)* Benefits: 1. Encourages civil campaigns: Candidates are incentivized to appeal broadly. 2. Reduces strategic voting: Voters can rank candidates sincerely. 3. Promotes majority support: Winners often have majority support. 4. Minimizes spoilers: Third-party candidates don't split votes. 5. Simple to understand: Rank candidates 1, 2, 3, etc. Weaknesses: 1. Complexity in implementation: Requires specialized software. 2. Difficulty in counting: Multiple rounds of counting. 3. Potential for exhausted ballots: Voters may not rank all candidates. 4. Limited expression: Voters can only rank, not express nuance. *Rated Choice Voting (Score Voting)* Benefits: 1. Expressive voting: Voters rate candidates 0-10 (or other scales). 2. Nuanced preferences: Voters can express subtle differences. 3. No strategic voting: Voters score sincerely. 4. Simple counting: Scores are summed. 5. Flexible scale: Allows for varied rating systems. Weaknesses: 1. Cognitive burden: Voters must consider multiple candidates. 2. Inconsistent scales: Voters may use different scales. 3. Tactical voting: Voters may strategically score. 4. Potential for lowest-common-denominator winners. *Key differences:* 1. Expression: RCV uses ranking, while Score Voting uses ratings. 2. Counting: RCV requires multiple rounds, while Score Voting sums scores. 3. Nuance: Score Voting allows for more nuanced expressions. *Hybrid approaches:* 1. Mixed-member proportional representation (MMPR) 2. Instant-runoff voting (IRV) with rated ballots 3. Proportional ranked-choice voting *Real-world examples:* RCV: - Maine (USA) - San Francisco (USA) - Australia (national elections) - New Zealand (local elections) Score Voting: - None widely implemented, but used in some organizational elections.

Golf courses are hard to secure. If he were still president, he’d have more secret service agents assigned and the whole good course likely would’ve been shutdown. As others noted, this wasn’t part of his agenda for the day and was just Trump deciding a bit as his to go out and play a round with a mega donor. For that reason, secret service wasn’t even able to sweep the perimeter of the course first. For obvious reasons, it’s harder to secure a golf course than a gymnasium or tennis court, especially those exposed to public roads. The suspect was there for 12 hours beforehand per his cell tower connection. He would’ve been within 100 yards had Trump continued on to the next hole without secret service seeing the barrel of his gun sticking through the fence and engaged him with shots of their own before he could fire even a single one.

Ditto, though we call it ranked choice voting (only in use in a few precincts)

It’s called a blog

Yes, they git intercepted in the supply chain after Hezbollah leadership had them switch to pagers for fear of Israel intercepting comms.

You misspelled baseless unsupported assertion again I’ll even grant you that humans tend to be predisposed to look for a god or gods as a type of “first parent,” but (as I hope is obvious to all readers including you) that’s not evidence for existence… which is the actual topic here you continue to evade and introduce red herrings to avoid. You have faith, and faith alone. Nothing more. Surely you’re honest enough to acknowledge this. Right?

Strawman/red herring 2. I said nothing about indoctrinating masses. Indoctrination can happen at the individual level, and we absolutely have learned from our tribal elders and parents and shaman whatever beliefs they held. We’ve done this since the beginning of human history and even before. Stories have been passed on and oral tales sung to each other around fresh kills and campfires since even the earliest of the apes hunted cooperatively. To suggest we derived these simpleton beliefs like are found in Christianity in some sort of a vacuum… without pressures of social chosen or without a genetic predisposition to trust those in our family and community units while we’re still vulnerable toddling children… is laughably absurd. Red herring 3 All you’ve done thus far is evade and deflect. If your evidence is so ordinary, where is it?

And yet it’s based on faith and nothing more, and further purports to explain everything that’s ever existed across the entire cosmos. There. FTFY.

This isn’t a blog for your random brain turds. You should consider working on framing topics for meaningful discussion. Right now, this may as well be an entry in your diary.

You’re arguing nothing. You’re asserting and time wasting. Boring and unsurprising.

Just checking: You do realize even one counter example renders this false, correct? As a follow-up: Nobody argues that belief in god(s) doesn’t exist. That’s your first red herring. The conversation was about whether god(s) exist. Stop trying to move the goalposts.

Nice! Storage shed or drinking tavern? 😂 I redid our deck. Intended to just reskin and replace the boards but everything below was rotten and joists deflected up and down more than 1/2” each way so regraded it, new posts, new rails. Then I taught myself how to build stairs. 620 pounds of concrete into footings I dug 42” to be below the frost line, handcut stringers using 2x12x16 treated (5 of them), some Simpson strong ties into the concrete pad below, and mechanical linkages with blocking on the landing. It’s sturdy and pretty as hell, but I spent a lot of calories calculating and checking and cutting and lifting it all. I’m still tired even though I finished weeks ago. I understand now why deck replacements cost so much money. That was a lot of work. Note: I saw your image but did have to take the risk of opening it

Then do so. You’re laughably mistaken and it might be entertaining to watch you introduce red herrings and meander aimlessly around the central issue that you have faith and literally nothing more.

We need not argue there is no god, only that there’s no valid reason to think there is. Faith is what every belief in god(s) boils down to, and for some of us faith simply don’t and enough reason to accept something so extraordinary as true. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and theists don’t even have weak evidence in favor of their position.

Unless you believe students in other countries around the planet are magically better at coping with social difficulties than students in the US, then you’re doing nothing but trying to displace the conversation and distract from the actual root cause. It’s easier for frustrated white boys in America to get a gun than to get laid, and the consequences of this simple fact are obvious to us all… especially the tens of thousands of students being put into lockdown in schools every year and being forced to do active shooter drills every few weeks starting in kindergarten.

It’s gotten worse in the 6 years since then (with an only temporary drop due to Covid lockdowns)

In fairness to NightFM, regardless of what we do with guns there is an opportunity to find those who feel powerless in schools and help them with better strategies for dealing with it. This can easily be a Both/And situation. However, the shootings occur for reasons beyond "I got bullied" so any solutions need to apply beyond that, too. Saying "it's a mental health issue" or "bc kids bully each other" is definitely more of a red herring than an actual attempt at solving the problem of school shootings, but that doesn't mean we can't as a society do better with both mental health in youth and bullying issues in schools. It's just that we ALSO need to do something about the guns, and that's a pretty tough nut to crack given how pervasive and easy to obtain/create they are.