merc
@merc@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Too soon? 4 hours ago:
Charlie Kirk wouldn’t have wanted you to feel any empathy for him or his family.
“I can’t stand the word empathy actually. I think empathy is a made-up, New Age term that — it does a lot of damage, but it is very effective when it comes to politics”
- Comment on Too soon? 4 hours ago:
Empathy for the other people attending that rally who had to see such a violent event. Some were there to cheer him on, so fuck them. But, others were there to try to debate him. It was dumb of them to play into his game and participate, but still, some will be leaving that event pretty traumatized.
- Comment on Too soon? 8 hours ago:
Honestly, they’re all so interchangeable. I thought Charlie Kirk was the Change My Mind guy. It turns out that conservative white guys with big fat heads are a dime a dozen.
- Comment on Too soon? 8 hours ago:
Sounds good to me.
- Comment on Too soon? 9 hours ago:
It wouldn’t surprise me one bit.
- Comment on Too soon? 9 hours ago:
Great foreshadowing too.
Earlier this year, Utah passed House Bill 128 allowing people to conceal carry firearms on university campuses. One of the campuses where conceal carry was now permitted is, of course, Utah Valley University, where Charlie Kirk was visiting today. He was sitting under a tent with the slogan “Prove Me Wrong”.
Immediately before the shooting, he was taking questions from the audience:
“Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” an audience member asked. Kirk responded, “Too many.”
The questioner followed up: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?”
“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk asked.
Then a single shot rang out.
pbs.org/…/conservative-activist-charlie-kirk-shot…
It’s unfortunate that he’s ineligible for the Darwin Award because he leaves behind 2 very young children and a culture warrior wife, because otherwise he’d be a great nominee for the 2025 Darwin Awards. Normally to get a Darwin Award someone has to directly kill themselves. But, I think in this case we could have make an exception for someone who was a cheerleader for gun rights and was sitting directly under a banner saying “Prove Me Wrong” when he was killed with a gun.
- Comment on Too soon? 10 hours ago:
He was literally lying about mass shootings when he was shot:
Immediately before the shooting, Kirk was taking questions for an audience member about mass shootings and gun violence.
“Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” an audience member asked. Kirk responded, “Too many.”
The questioner followed up: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?”
“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk asked
Then a single shot rang out.
- Comment on Too soon? 10 hours ago:
His daughter just turned 3, and his son is 16 months old. I don’t think they’re going to celebrate. But, they’re going to grow up hearing stories about how their father was a martyr who died heroically, trying to save the soul of the USA. Let’s just hope that as adults they’re able to see past that brainwashing and understand what a truly horrible person their father was.
- Comment on 5 tomatoes 1 day ago:
Urgh. There’s a unit for that, it’s WATTS. That’s literally 77 Watts.
- Comment on 5 tomatoes 1 day ago:
I don’t believe that “watt hours” are more convenient than joules, especially when they’re not just watt hours but kilowatt hours or megawatt hours. At that point just use megajoules or gigajoules.
I can understand things like eV where the scale is so different that you’d have to constantly use tiny and unusual prefixes. But, for most other things like calories, it’s just tradition rather than a well thought out reason.
- Comment on Time to bash Americans again 1 day ago:
Ah, that makes more sense.
- Comment on 5 tomatoes 1 day ago:
My 2 main annoyances with the metric system:
First: The SI unit for mass is the kilogram. That’s fucking stupid. A kilogram is 1000 grams, the base unit for something can’t be “1000 of this other thing”
The second one isn’t really an issue with the metric system, it’s more when people are almost using the metric system then fuck it up, like the “Watt Hour” for measuring energy use. You know, there’s already a way of measuring energy use: the “Watt Second”, also known as “The Joule”
- Comment on Time to bash Americans again 1 day ago:
Yes… but what does that have to do with the country allegedly giving every single person the money for a ticket?
- Comment on Time to bash Americans again 2 days ago:
we don’t give every single person the money for a ticket to a gun show
Erm, wut?
- Comment on Time to bash Americans again 2 days ago:
Emigrant. That’s the kind of migrant who leaves a country. They’d be an immigrant in their new country.
But, IMO there’s a difference with an expat. An expat is often someone who isn’t moving permanently, and as a result is often not trying to integrate into their new country.
- Comment on A conundrum 2 days ago:
The worst case scenario is that the Earth is hit by a giant asteroid. At that point what does a little risk hedging in a financial transaction matter?
- Comment on A conundrum 2 days ago:
The house you’re buying is the collateral for their loan. If you took out a loan for 100% of the value of the house and are immediately unable to make payments, the bank then owns the house. For them to simply break even, they’d have to sell the house for more than you paid for it to cover the various costs (lawyers, agents, etc.) If the reason you’re unable to make payments is that the economy crashed and housing prices tanked as a result, the bank couldn’t hope to break even on their loan.
The down payment is basically a way to ensure that in the bank’s worst case scenario they still don’t lose money. In theory, the bigger the down payment, the lower the risk for the bank, and the better a rate you should get on the loan. Multiple banks should all be trying to be the one to give you a mortgage, and should be trying to compete by shaving their margins as tight as possible given their risk tolerance. Of course, it doesn’t always work out that way, but there’s a reason for what they’re doing and it’s not just to screw over their customers.
- Comment on A conundrum 2 days ago:
There’s a rule of thumb that your rent / mortgage payments should only be 1/3 of your pre-tax pay. In expensive cities that’s sometimes impossible to manage. But $1300 out of $2000 means you’re spending 2/3 of your pre-tax pay on housing. If you’re taxed at only 20% that means your take-home pay is going to be $1600. After rent you’d only have $300 a month for food, utilities, clothing, transportation, etc.
If I were a landlord and someone on $2000/month wanted a $1300/month apartment, I’d be asking questions too.
- Comment on winter fans 1 week ago:
Are you a night owl who stays up long after the sun sets, or an early bird who gets up long before the sun rises? That’s one way to get a lot more Dark Mode time.
I knew a guy who worked for a company in Boston, but he’d always dreamed of living in Hawaii. He managed to get them to agree to his moving to Hawaii, but said that he still needed to keep East Coast hours. That meant he was getting up about 6 hours earlier than normal, and was joining meetings when it was pitch black there. But, for him it was worth it, not because he was a fan of Dark Mode, but because he was really into SCUBA and this schedule meant that he was off work by noon and could spend his afternoons SCUBA diving.
It was probably hell on his social life to be in bed by 6pm. But, the schedule was perfect for diving. He was off work when the light was at its best and could dive 7 days a week not just on weekends.
- Comment on winter fans 1 week ago:
I’ve mostly lived in temperate climates, but I’ve visited places with rainy seasons like that.
I always thought it was a season where it rained a lot with constantly overcast skies and a lot of drizzle, like Portland / Seattle / Vancouver in the winter. But, sometimes it’s the season where you know it’s probably not going to rain at all during the day except at 5pm you can expect a huge downpour, then it goes back to normal.
- Comment on winter fans 1 week ago:
Don’t you get rainy seasons?
- Comment on winter fans 1 week ago:
The nice thing about early winter sunsets is that the path the sun takes through the sky leads to longer sunsets so it takes longer for it to be fully dark.
- Comment on winter fans 1 week ago:
You’re a fan of Dark Mode IRL.
- Comment on I may swear like a pirate, but I'm a fucking PRINCIPLED pirate 1 week ago:
Describing a person as an “illegal” immigrant is dehumanizing
How so?
given that only acts can be legal or illegal, not people
Yes, that’s why it’s “illegal immigrant” not “illegal person”.
“Undocumented” immigrant is the generally accepted term.
Among some people, among others it’s “illegal immigrant”. Undocumented is wrong, the people have documentation, they just don’t have the legal right to reside where they do.
one is clearly more dignified than the other.
No, they’re both equally dignified, you’ve just been snarfing down propaganda.
- Comment on I may swear like a pirate, but I'm a fucking PRINCIPLED pirate 1 week ago:
I’m sure you can see that term is intended to portray the person in a specific way.
No, it’s just a normal term, intended to convey that the person is an immigrant, and that they didn’t follow the legal process. Those are just the basic facts about that person’s situation with respect to the law. The legality of their immigration status is often the focus of the discussion. For example, it’s easy to take advantage of illegal immigrants because they might be afraid to go to the police due to their immigration status.
The term has been in use for almost 150 years. Sometimes clinical labels become pejorative over time. But, it doesn’t seem like that’s the case here. A right-winger is much more likely to say “illegals” or “illegal aliens”, if not just using some slur like “wetback”.
Alternative terms that have been proposed are much less precise. For example, “undocumented migrant” is horrible. Not only is “migrant” less specific than “immigrant”, because immigration is a subset of migration, “undocumented” is much less accurate than “illegal”. Most people in a country illegally have documentation, they have passports, birth certificates, sometimes even local driver’s licenses. The issue isn’t that they lack documentation. The issue is that they aren’t following the laws related to migration. Others like “undocumented noncitizen” or “undocumented American” are even worse. What does “American” even mean in that context? Is a fiercely loyal British person who is legally in the US on a work visa a “documented American”?
- Comment on 1 week ago:
Ok, so you clearly don’t understand human drivers. There’s really no point in continuing this conversation.
- Comment on 1 week ago:
There are also more lanes for the cars to move forward in.
- Comment on 1 week ago:
So, you think traffic here would flow better if 4 lanes were completely unused, one lane was only used for passing, and everyone else was in the remaining lane? And you could achieve this without replacing the drivers with robots?
- Comment on He really said this, look it up! 1 week ago:
The best thing about that is that “the west” is such a nonsensical designation for a location on a globe.
- Comment on He really said this, look it up! 1 week ago:
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of all the cool stuff American men enjoy, like beer, hot chicks, football, comedy that’s actually funny, guns, and Harleys.
– The Communist Manifesto, Chapter 2