Looks like a ‘shirts vs skins’ game of ‘dont catch the cancer’. Bad news for the skins team if the don’t have sunscreen on! (Who are we kidding, we know they dont…)

AI pic. Look at the “US ARMY” tag on his left, your right. Just says USANE. Then look at his name tag, also SANE. Plus, the patch he has on isn’t a unit. His cover (hat) is also missing his rank, as well as shouldn’t be worn indoors.

I mean… cool. I will buy it and all, but if you are putting this much effort into it can we just get a new BG4 instead?? The article just says it’s ‘inevitable’ but not confirmed, or even rumored. Don’t get me wrong, I think BG2 is up there with some of the best storytelling in games out there, but are you telling me that out of the entire forgotten realms history of Baldur’s gate, there have only been 3 stories to tell? It costs so much to develop a game already, just put in the last bit of effort and make it a new story. Alternatively, use the BG3 engine and give us a massive expansion that feels like a full extra act. I would pay 20-25$ for that.

LegalEagle on youtube has already talked about this. There is already a law I place that covers this exact scenario, and with punishments and fines already in place. It’s 1,000$ per incident to the victim and up to 180 days jail for the offender. Keep in mind, the law was written to protect the IRS and fuck over the peons who would be glad to receive 1k$ and don’t really have anything to hide.

I like how you throw in ‘even the Americans’ with the spying groups. We definitely spy in all our allies. And in return we encourage our allies to spy on us. It is a very calculated political game where we (all the allied countries) pass legislation and safeguards in our respective home countries and declare our citizens free of authoritarian government surveillance, but then work with the other countries spy agencies to do it for us. We intentionally put in the backdoors in our peoples networks and hand the keys to our partners just so we can say ‘well I wasn’t spying on you. That would be illegal!’ But in the end it is effectively the same. If the allied government finds anything of interest they just send a notification over. We each have boundaries that we respect in spying on each other’s people too. It is almost a formallity by this point.

This is exactly what I have brought up so many times. I shit on academy for being lowest common denominator shitty writing and people bring out the pitch forks as if I am gay bashing. No, I’m shitty writing bashing, they just wrapped it up in a pride flag.

Remember when DS9 brought in lgbt+ identity discussion through thought provoking situations with deep characters making hard choices that were influenced by their lgbt+ backgrounds or morals?

Now we have- He is so conflicted because he is a peaceful klingon. Life is so hard in our utopia. By the way, did I mention he was gay?

I watch star trek for its deep politics and nuanced pushing of boundaries, not to preach to the choir with a mallet.

DS9 arguably did it just as much, just wrote it better. They were the first to have a lesbian kiss. They pushed social and political boundaries in deeper than ‘my skin is different than yours’ ways. It debated the morality of war, peace through killing, and how slavery can take forms beyond chains (examples include the bajorans, cardassians, and ketracell white). It was the deeper trek in so many ways. And it was just as liberal, just as DEI, and just as open to explore sexuality in every direction (basically any episode with dex, then countered by the omni sex of odo). It did just as much as any of the nu-trek, but didn’t dumb it down to lowest common denominator to spoon feed it to you with forced dialog and in-your-face preaching.

Ah yes, the 4X buisness strategy. Building an empire through four core pillars:

eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate

Lots of research has been done on this. But I would highly recommend watching the YouTube video that was posted by the top commenter instead of trying to dig through what’s out there.

I always just remember ‘an affect is not a thing’ as in, effect is a thing (noun) and affect is a noun. Then I just avoid the second one, the effect verb form.

Alternatively: We can remember for you, whole-Dick

Disagree. You and so many others throw around the word communism as if it is a specific type, rather than a general type. Not only that, communism and capitalism as not mutually exclusive. We have communism in capitalist societies and there was capitalism inside the USSR’s communism.

We have fully functioning communes within the USA. Those are communists living happily inside a communist community, with communist leadership, and communist ideals, all as a sub community within normal American cities. And it is successful.

The US has communism/socialism even within its own government. We have communist firefighters. There was a time all fire brigades were private and sold memberships and private insurance. It was communism that made it a public service. Even the socialist healthcare in the military was not always that way. Up until the Civil War it was private healthcare and the medics were for the battlefield only. All after care was out of pocket. Even for a time after the Civil War large amounts were not covered by the military.

And even looking at the previous poster’s comment about not seeing true communism- that is a category- are they referring to Lennonist communism? Maoist? Marxist? It’s like saying all capitalist governments are the same, as if the EU and the US, and Nigeria are all the same types of government.

I knew it looked photoshopped but wanted it to be real, so I looked up the isbn. Sadly, it is not this book. Weirdly, it is a different scifi book that sounds half decent and actually won an award.

Brute Orbits by Goerge Zebrowski. He was (just died in Dec of 2024) a scifi machine and churned out several of the star trek books as well as a shit load of original works all through the 70’s till about 2000. And this one happens to be one of his highest rated works.

Also in this rabbit hole: he worked/lived with (possible partner of?) Pamela Sargent who wrote Earthseed. A huge scifi book for those who are into it.

Not sure. I have typically just done a Google search and refound the link under the same domain but with a different sub routing.

I have a wiki editor account primarily for updating links on pages. I have also done a handful of minor edits on some obscure pages in my field, but primarily use it to update links and references. Link rot is the worst and I wish more people would help out with it.

An encyclopedia is not a source. I don’t think you fully grasp what any academic paper’s source is. It must be a first-hand account or direct evidence. It is the research paper you mention, not the wiki article the paper was mentioned on. The problem isn’t teachers afraid of technology. You can’t use print versions of encyclopedia Britannica as a source either. Part of education is also knowing how follow academic rigor. Remembering and understanding are only the first two steps in the process. Applying (writing the paper) is the third step. But if you fail to understand primary sources and how to conduct academic research, then you will never be able to truly progress beyond that (leading to: analyze, evaluate, and create)

I mean- this is where the training gets more practical, hands on, and graphic. I also don’t remember every detail, this was back in '08.

We were at a contractor school compound with shitload acreage and fields. this was set up in one of their fields. All the hogs are unloaded, drugged up, high as a kite, and on tables with a saline drip line in them for the drugs. It is all set up while we are going through the initial breifings. At no point in any time is any hog awake or aware of anything. Ever.

After the formal briefings, we start off easy with some demonstrations with a knife and cutting a leg artery and showing you what real arterial bleeding versus venous bleeding looks like with the color, the squirt, the vain retreat, then make you pressure it off then apply a tourniquet. Then they will do this on all 4 legs with everyone (groups of 4 to a pig and instructor) taking a leg. Then you start training on things like quick clot or celluclot or the other clotting agents out there to see and feel the difference and time it and all that stuff. This is where you also learn first hand how bad of a product quickclot is and to avoid it when you can (it gets to high Temps and burns both you and the patient. It was also the first generation of applied clotting agents). Then we would look at shallow cuts versus deep cuts and dressing them. IF the pig was still alive then the shooting starts and you start packing wounds.

By this point, normally your first pig has died, but they were also very clear about the value of the pigs life and that they were going to make you use up every bit you can before taking on another pig. If you can stabilize a pig, you must. If you took to long and your pig died they would get pissed because you are not just wasting resources, but you are wasting training for you and those around you, but you are also wasting a pigs life. But it was also expected to happen, you can only cut open and shoot a pig and patch it up so many times.

After your pig has died, then they go into autopsy mode and cut it open. You see not just entry and exit wounds, but also physically feel the cavity. They also cut into your clotting and show you how deep the clotting agents go and why you have to do certain things with them and avoid some areas of the body. We also looked at artery retreat from the inside so you can actually visualize how much it will retreat if done improperly. There was probably more, but I remember spending hours on just the first pig. They were sure to get every bit of training possible out of it before moving you and your team to the next pig.

The next pig, and several more after it, were all for hands on experience with more wound packing in different areas and calibers. Started with pistol, then upped to rifle (both M4 and AK47) then went to a shotgun. Most everyone was able to keep the same pug alive for all the gunshots. Then they introduce puncture wounds with a knife sticking out if it or something else. Then for the training they would keep shooting it or stabbing it again and you would just keep patching it again until it died.

Keep in mind, we were still being evaluated while doing this and getting critiques. If they felt like you were too stressed out while getting yelled at and trying to keep you pig alive, they would just ask you to step back and observe. They also pulled one or two people for them letting their pigs die too fast and basically said ‘you can only watch.’

Then things kick into high gear and it was clear why this is done at a contractor school and not at a base. It was the ‘combat care’ portion of training. So they have you start about 100 meters out and shoot your pig and do ‘something else’. You have no idea what the something else is until you get there. One time it was a hatchet to the stomach, one time it was a metal pole through it. So you have to run up with your full kit on and have half the team (2 guys) pull security while you and a partner do the first aid. You have to have your system down by now. You have to know the order to check things and you have to do it fast. All the while one instructor is yelling at you for every fuck up like he is Gordon Ramsey watching you fuck up boiling water, and you have another instructor with a gun shooting the ground a couple feet away from you and dropping firecrackers next to you. They after about a minute or two they start yelling at you to relocate (and drop in some mortar sims near by) and you have to aid and litter transport your pig around while all this continues around you. Anything you left on the ground is gone, and you just run with this pig keeping it alive till you are completely smoked. If they think you have sufficiently stableized it, they shoot it again and make you keep going.

All in all, it was a full day of just that. Our group went through maybe 20 or 30 pigs for a group of about 30 or 40 guys. Don’t remember exactly, it’s been a while. Honestly though, it was amazing training. I still remember a lot of the trauma training only because I was able to do it rather than just read about it and answer some test questions. It was the best trauma training anyone could ask for in the military, short of working on actual people. During my tour we were living next to a level two field hospital and helped out all the time (always short staffed). Even the docs commented on how good we were for not being real medics.

Feel free to ask any follow up questions.

I got the chance to do this training as a non-medic through a private military contractor company, paid for by my unit, for my first deployment to Afghanistan. We were part of the pilot program for the TCCC (trauma combat casualty care) training (the same program went into effect years later, but HEAVILY watered down on training requirements). The ‘live tissue lab’ was only after about two weeks of intense classroom training with testing after and required scores to progress after every few days. It was taught by a few prior air force PJ’S and some trauma surgeons. It was the equivalent of all the trauma training medics get without the drug portions (since we are not medics, we are not allowed to push drugs).

On the day of the live tissue lab there was an ethics briefing along with a veterinarian briefing telling us all the do’s and dont’s and when to alert him or one of the techs. Basically, they are all hogs that were bought off slaughter farms but did not meet standards for food consumption and were going to get killed anyways but not used (think sick/diseased or possible deformity or injuries). The pigs are drugged up with everything you can imagine and completely disassociate. Part of the briefing from the vet was the signs to look for if the drugs were wearing off and when to grab them to drug them up more. The training went through hands on portions of everything we saw in class and real use of all the products and techniques we were trained on. It was to this day the best trauma training I have ever been through, seen, or heard of.

There are many people that want to argue about the ethics of it, and having been through it I actually side with the training. There was one guy in our unit that got hit with an indirect missile strike on base and was saved by one of the guys who went through the training and was only able to save him because of what he learned and his experience he went through. That training unquestionably saves lives.

$300/month (at the beginning of the month) invested over 30 years, compounded annually at 6% = $198,290.40

If you kept that going for a full 50 years, the last 20 years of interest really starts to ramp up and gives you a final value of $1,084,402.22

If instead, you ONLY paid the mortgage for 30 years, then invest the full mortgage payment of $2,648 into the investment account for the next 20 years (a total of 50 years out. Same end point) you would have an investment account worth $1,215,042.49

So, even in your scenario it is still a loss to take a 50 year over the 30 year, and the 300$ difference is negligible. If $300 was the difference of someone being able to afford groceries or not for the month, then they should not have qualified for a $2,648/mo mortgage.

Not to intentionally interclude, but perclude and reclude seem to have seclude from english.