It’s happened before:

https://youtube.com/shorts/gbZ4ucfMDs0

I don’t think the insulation is what you think it is. Most Texans aren’t MAGA Republicans, even though the non-voters and Republican-at-any-cost people here handed him a victory. This meme is only insinuating the relief that the majority of Texans feel who were tired of living under a red state government.

40.5% of Texans voted early for this election, which is a record breaking number (they are still calculating the total number of votes after yesterday). For comparison, only 41.8% voted in the 2022 midterm election total.

Respectfully, stand down, comrade! I’m on your side and not becoming a Kamala brunch enthusiast. I appreciate your opinions on history and thank you for sharing your thoughts.

The fight definitely continues, but a little win feels nice. I can go back to my usual full on class warfare in the morning.

Don’t get me wrong, I see what you’re saying and I generally agree with your leftist sentiments.

That said, you are incorrect that the Democrats have been totally unsuccessful in improving material conditions for people. I’m with you that it hasn’t nearly been far enough, but they did accomplish significant things for women and black people.

JFK passed the equal pay act. LBJ passed the civil rights act. Clinton passed the violence against women act. These things had an effect that was tangible, even if we need more.

In Texas, my grandmother wasn’t able to have her own bank account without my grandfather signing a permission note until John Connally, a Democrat, passed the Marital Property Act of 1967. My mother never had that problem because a Democrat changed the conditions for women in this country.

Do I want a true left to rise in the United States? Yes. Do I think the Democrats have any hope of fixing capitalism? No. BUT, this victory is sweet, and I’ll be raising a glass to the Democrats today anyway.

My home internet does not fit the high bandwidth category—this place has the crappiest internet I’ve had in years. I always start a little slow on a private tracker, using freeleech opportunities to build a library until there is enough content to sustain the ratio on its own. Even though I’m on a bad internet connection now, I was able to break the 1-1 ratio on a new site recently by just using freeleech to build a base seeding library of popular content.

The torrenting part of my server could be easily recreated with an old laptop, an ethernet cord, and an external drive. Sure, there is some upfront cost, but you can make it pretty cheap if you want it to be, and it will work for essentially the whole life of the hardware. No need to update much, unlike a gaming machine or work computer.

In my opinion, “seedbox” refers to a paid service for torrenting that is hooked up to a gigabit connection. That doesn’t reflect my home box that can’t break 1mb/s up, but simply has enough content to always be providing a trickle stream of data that adds up over time. I have noticed no issues with reduced bandwidth since it is connected via Ethernet and not WiFi—my router handles everything just fine.

I recently used my girlfriend’s 10 year old iMac to set up a torrent system for her, and it works. She also has crappy internet, but since I set it up to be connectable, she still gets ratio.

The biggest factor in keeping a ratio is port forwarding and using a VPN in case your ISP throttles torrent traffic. I already use a VPN for other things, so there was no additional cost there.

I promise, the idea that you need a powerful machine or stellar internet connection is simply not true—if you are properly connectable and have popular content, you will build credit. Download a bunch of freeleech stuff when the opportunity arises and then watch that for a month with no new downloading, and you will return to the torrent site to find a nice little buffer waiting for you.

That is not true. I have a home server on a mid level connection, and it works perfectly for maintaining ratio as long as your ports are forwarded correctly so you remain connectable.

said Adam22.

Put your nerdy where your mouth is!

I just installed mint on my girlfriend’s 2015 MacBook. Everything works except for the audio. I haven’t started troubleshooting yet because it was just installed last night.

Save me time—how do I fix it?

Ooh, ooh, I just went through this. You have to make sure to include the webhook in Nginx.

Do we really want Jo Blow as the intermediary between the president and the press? Is that considered a positive?

Call me crazy, but I’d much rather see an academic or a respected journalist in that position, considering that their wording is paramount and transparency is currency. I’d like to know that Joe Blow has enough comprehension and integrity to be clearly understood.

I think George W. Bush is a great example of why “I’d have a beer with that person” is a terrible metric for political positions.

I think it depends a little on what you mean by legalization.

Decriminalization, as far as I’m aware, is all that has been seriously tried for hard drugs. That leaves the illegal industry in tact, and continues all the issues that can come with it. I am 100% behind the legalization of drugs, I just think that the real societal improvement comes with increased healthcare availability for addicts, such as needle exchanges, purity testing, and addiction recovery services.

Fully legalizing hard drugs comes with its own minefield, too. Cigarettes are powerfully addictive, and companies have exploited their legal status to make them ubiquitous. They intentionally market them to children and use product placement to ensure that smoking is seen as “cool”. I can only imagine how things would go if companies like that were in the methamphetamine business.

And to an extent, they are. I am part of the generation that was pumped full of Ritalin to “fix” attention issues in children, and many of those kids have experienced a continuation of the addictive behavior that was introduced to them in a doctors office. The intersection of capitalism and biochemical addiction is a gross industry of exploitation.

I am a recovering heroin addict (17 years clean), so I am no stranger to the problems of addiction, enforcement, and healthcare. I definitely believe that removing the prohibition on drugs is the first place to start if we want to improve the problem. I just also know how fundamentally powerful hard drugs can be, and without an accessible off ramp for addiction as well as available materials to stay safe while you’re addicted, the life problems that come with drug abuse are likely to continue in one form or another.

The P365 is my 9mm. I love shooting that little thing. It is surprisingly accurate for its small size, and it is so comfortable to carry with its thin frame.

Hi fellow Texan!

You are totally right—my example was only based on the part of Texas I live in. The reaction in Austin or Dallas would be different than it is in more rural areas.

I honestly think there are very few reasons people should open carry. I’ve done so when I’ve been mostly in the wilderness and occasionally for a short stop at a business where it’s tolerated on the way, so the context in that moment is different than it would be in the middle of the city.

Concealed can be done comfortably pretty easily, and is much safer for many reasons. If you choose to carry, safety, legality, and context are of paramount importance.

That isn’t totally true, it’s just that we responsible guys with a gun keep it out of view and properly secured so that others are never aware of it. Ideally, nobody should know you’re carrying except for you.

The recent Twin Falls, Idaho shooting is a pretty good example of a “good guy with a gun” who stopped a “bad guy with a gun”.

It happens, it’s just rare.

As a P365 owner, it pains me to agree, lol. Those P320’s have a mind of their own.

I feel like this question is based on a lack of understanding of what people mean when they say legalizing drugs reduces crime.

Legalizing drugs reduces the crime of drug possession simply because it is not a crime anymore. In exactly the same way, legalizing carrying a gun without a license reduces the crimes associated with carrying. That said, it does not necessarily reduce crime overall, especially without an increase in support for rehab and addiction services.

Portland, Oregon reduced the severity of possession crimes from a felony to a misdemeanor for schedule 1 and 2 drugs, and the result was a decrease in felonies, but an increase in misdemeanors proportional to the felony decrease, suggesting that overall arrests remained the same. While there was not a significant increase in crime overall, the growing popularity of fentanyl during that time did lead to an increase in deaths, and public opinion seemed to indicate that there was a change in the perception of public safety during that time even though the crime rate remained mostly stable. In my opinion, I think it probably had to do with an increase in the visible public consumption of drugs and the unpleasant realities that can come with that.

https://www.pdx.edu/news/psu-researchers-release-final-report-landmark-project-exploring-impacts-measure-110

A primary difference between drugs and guns is that drugs more often lead to the death or injury of the user while guns are more likely than drugs to lead to the death or injury of someone else. Furthermore, a gun enables the commission of a crime in that you can’t rob a liquor store with a joint, but you definitely can with a firearm.

That said, I live in an extremely gun friendly area and have carried both openly and concealed, yet the perception of “how safe is my neighborhood” seems to be swayed much more by the growing homeless/drug using population than the sight of a person with a gun on their hip does. I have never seen someone avert their gaze and pick up their pace for an open carrying person around here, but I see it all the time when they encounter a drug using homeless person. I know that is mostly anecdotal, but when paired with the data from Portland, I think it can be safely suggested that the perception of public safety has more to do with sights that make people uncomfortable over actual statistical crime data.

It is very possible to live in a place that is statistically safer, yet feels more dangerous, entirely due to the discomfort caused by witnessing human suffering, which is less of a factor when witnessing someone carrying a gun. Furthermore, decriminalizing drugs in one particular area can lead to an increase in drug users inhabiting that area, thus reducing the perception of public safety regardless of crime statistics.

Legalization of carrying a gun primarily leads to an increase in concealed carry, thus hiding the increased presence of guns from public view, and therefore leaving the perception of public safety unaltered. Concealed carry is more popular than open carry because it increases the tactical effectiveness of the firearm by not making you an obvious target of a criminal, so it is the preferred choice for most gun carriers, both legal and illegal. Contrastingly, it seems pretty hard to hide the fact that you’re totally zooted on fentanyl or methamphetamine.

Overall, I’d say that simple decriminalization does not have a significant effect on crime. Most drug users are not homeless or violent criminals, so they simply fly under the radar just like a concealed firearm carrier does. However, an increase in public intoxication or public discharge of a firearm does decrease the public perception of safety, regardless of actual statistical consequences, and politicians create a narrative based on that public opinion rather than using the true data about public harm.

Buying in to the corporate notion that piracy is ethically wrong is ignoring the full scope of the issue. Would it be wrong for a slave to sneak a peek at the luxurious entertainment at the masters party? Would it be wrong to read a book in a library? No. In both scenarios, the company has already been paid, and the only change is in your own memory. Absolutely nothing has changed other than their perception that you might have submitted to their scheme of exploiting you for money if you hadn’t pirated their art.

But that is not really the case. Most people pirate things that they have either already purchased for another platform before, or that are beyond their ability to afford. That is not losing a customer, that is widening an audience base into populations that wouldn’t have consumed it otherwise.

Of course, it’s fair to say you should exercise some judgment. If there is a small creator who made something you like, maybe you should pick it up during a steam sale to give the creator some encouragement. But, overall, that does not represent the majority of the industry. Most cases are fat cats exploiting employees and consumers to pay exorbitant prices for a program that they don’t get to actually own. That is not selling anything, that is gatekeeping artistic creation on a level that most other art forms completely reject.

If these companies were actually interested in selling something, they could easily give us disks with real ownership, additional art and promotional items, and other physical goods that allow people to more fully engage with the product. They could focus on preservation of the experience, creating media that would last a lifetime. But they don’t—they’d rather create false moral equivalencies to guilt you into spending money on the same experience multiple times at no cost to themselves.

Don’t submit. Don’t feel guilty for experiencing art. Don’t let them tell you that you owe them money for something that doesn’t really exist. You purchased the hardware, they can’t tell you you’re a bad person because you magnetized your disk into their proprietary pattern. If they want to sell you something, it should be able to be held in your hand, just like a book, painting, or blu-ray. It should be something that represents an energy expenditure on their end like a live performance.

Pirating a game uses the electricity of the seeder and the leecher, but none from the company. It uses the disk space of the seeder and the leecher, but not the company. It runs on the hardware purchased by the seeder and the leecher, but not the company.

So, when you really take a close look at it, you’ve stolen nothing at all. The only change created is the magnetic pattern on a drive you own and the biochemical pattern of your own memory. Furthermore, the insane prices they are charging for an infinitely reproducible product that you don’t even own are creating the conditions that promote piracy in the first place. That isn’t the players fault. If they want to get rid of piracy, all they have to do is charge a fair price for what you receive, or actually provide a real product that is worth that level of cost.

Never surrender to their manipulation of your emotions and self esteem to convince you that you are a bad person for pirating. They set the rules of this world, we’re just living in it.

Sayonara, Bradley.

How do you deal with body soil on furniture?