utilitymonstermash

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
centrally-unplanned
collapsedsquid

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Your two options folks

maxknightley

The [first] map appeared on the cover of The Fatherland, a pro-German weekly paper established at the start of the war, with the title 'New Map of the D.S.E. - Dependent States of England - Formerly U.S.A.'

collapsedsquid

collapsedsquid:

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Your two options folks

Thoroughly mystified by the top one. "America colonized heavily by the British with a bunch of cities named after English cities" is just... America again. The bottom one at least makes sense even if it's absurd (minus the part where the Central Powers cede a bunch of territory to Japan, an allied nation in WWI, for seemingly no reason)

It was published in response to Life magazine's famous cover [second pic here] imagining the country conquered by the Central Powers and Japan:

centrally-unplanned

As I always comment, love how both sides of the war agree "oh yeah also Japan your ostensible ally is gonna backstab you and take California", a totally reasonable and justified fear in the 1910's for sure.

utilitymonstermash

I just don’t see holding Nevada/Utah/general territory west of the continental divide without holding the west coast. How do you re-garrison/re-supply? Rail? What happens when rail gets sabotaged?

How do you handle water rights?

The only way the current borders out west work at all is federal supremacy.

Source: twitter.com

Mopey bullshit incoming.

My lady is out of town, and I’m just kinda rudderless right now. I’m still doing the WFH thing. I normally go in on Wednesdays, but didn’t even get to go in this week because of a delivery. So I’m probably even more isolation crazy than usual.

I spent the past five years securing a nice bag. But I quit that job recently and I have a lot more free time than I used to. I look around and wonder where my life went.

Many of my favorite places shut down for good, some that stick around aren’t really back. The bar across from my old apt has changed hands, rebranded and closes at 10 these days. Friends left the area. I know the bay area is kind of a transitional place for a lot of people, and they started leaving well before COVID which only accelerated things. While I was focusing on work and travel was a pain, I lost touch with a lot of people.

I used to be cool man (for some definitions of cool). I fondly remember being up in a VIP booth at a local club, on the band’s list, hanging out with a big name lady Gen X sex columnist (who I used to read as teen) and someone who an HBO character is based on (who is mildly famous in her own right). That was one of the best summers of my life and one of the worst. Boy do I miss telling stories. I miss having experiences worth telling. But I don’t miss the perpetual ball of anxiety and depression that I was at that stage in life.

Now I’m here, and I have the time, and I’m boring and lonely.

mopey oakland oakland oakland becoming middle aged

when we think of the protestant reformation, we think of:
martin luther, calvin, those guys, vs. the catholic church.

however in reality, there was a third group, that they both disliked.

if we imagine europe as a small video game, basically martin luther and calvin broke away, and locked down a bunch of territory pretty quickly.

so, in those realms, but mostly in places they didnt swiftly lock down, there were other groups who they themselves disagreed with. a lot. martin luther and calvin were fine using state power to enforce their views in territory we might casually say they “secured”.
so if you disagreed with them, who were you? you were a third group of sectarians - meaning, mostly a coalition of the fringes. you were just part of a third folder, and lots of people in this folder had nothing to do with each other, except this odd position they were now in.

so, what did these groups believe in? well, lots of stuff. there isnt one thing they all had. some had a few of these, some had only one or two. just going off the top of my head, heres some things, some major and common, some really fringe and weird:

(just to be clear no one group had all these, some may be just one weird random group. DYOR)

not doing infant baptism (i.e. believers baptism)
not using state power to enforce their beliefs
pacifism
sabbatarianism (i.e. hardcore doing the sabbath, sometimes on saturday)

getting revelation themselves
keeping property in common or hyper communal stuff
mega apocalypticism
unitarianism
universalism (no hell)

could just keep going on here. but, lets get to the point.

theres two points:
A) the descendants of these groups, which range from full on, “yeah thats my grandfather” to “retaining a slighlt influence thats hard to spot” get lumped in with the magisterial protestant reformers

i went on a long quest to understand american christianity. i suppose understanding such a large phenomena in full is basically impossible. but this was a huge piece of the puzzle. if i was going to come out the gate with an explosive attention grabbing statement, it would be:
it kind of seems like

america isnt a protestant country.

america is a radical reformation country.
everything just makes sense after realizing this.

amhist Christianity
official-kircheis
official-kircheis

realistically no one will nominate the paris metro for the public transport tournament, because it is slow, loud, and dirty; all of it smells like PISS; and it's full of Parisians (but I repeat myself). but I hope someone does so I get to hate on it on the poll.

utilitymonstermash

Have you been on the Paris metro recently? I was in Paris in 2022 and the metro was much less smelly than it had been in the 2010s.

It drives me a bit nuts that reviews for budget products with unusual feature sets assume that readers are primarily interested in the price segment and not the unusual features.

If you think the phone is garbage suggest another phone with a headphone jack and not just another cheap phone. If you think the car sucks suggest another narrow car and not just another cheap car.

generallemarc
epilepticsaints

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generallemarc

A majority of emissions are emitted by the 100 largest companies in the world, and it's safe to assume that right behind them are the world's largest governments, even if we factor out the fact that not a few of those 100 companies are state-owned. Gazprom and Sinopec aren't exactly what you would call "private" enterprise. But plenty of groups you could call that were perfectly willing to work with the former until the invasion of Ukraine, and plenty are still working with the latter right now despite all that China's done.

utilitymonstermash

Companies aren’t burning carbon like some kind of deranged captain planet villain. They are burning carbon to make and ship things to satisfy consumer and government demand.