Paul is 9-1, the one loss being a split decision, and 6 of the wins being knockouts. He’s inexperienced, but that doesn’t mean he’s not good.

I want to see Tyson knock him out in under ten seconds. But I don’t think I’ll get my wish.

Eh. I dunno. Tyson is in his 50s, and has a much shorter reach than Jake Paul. As much as I’d prefer to see him win, I don’t think that Tyson is gonna pull this off.

Yes, definitely. It also forces the US to exploit more natural resources (which I oppose, since I like having forests and mountains). Things like 100% tariffs on electric cars or computer chips made in China would help the US catch up. Tariffs on lithium–I don’t think we have significant lithium deposits in the US–would just sharply raise prices. Tariffs on finished goods that are high enough make it cheaper to produce in the US.

Something I just thought of today…

Industry has been outsourcing for more than 40 years now. Manufacturing has been gutted in the US, and that’s wrecked labor. With the loss of the power of organized labor, money has flowed up from the workers to the executives. We’ve seen labor unions making big gains under Biden, but there simply aren’t enough people covered by unions in the US to reverse this trend. Right now we have a smallish-number of higher-paid information workers, a somewhat larger number of people in manufacturing, and a LOT of people in service-sector jobs that aren’t organized, or can’t effectively organize. An economy built largely around large numbers of low-wage service-sector jobs, with a small number of higher paid information workers just isn’t sustainable.

Tariffs that went on long enough would force manufacturing to be done in the US. And wages would have to rise, because if the workers can’t afford the products they make, then an economy collapses completely (unless you are exporting a lot). Yeah, it would be super-rough until factories were back in the US, maybe 10+ years. But our thirst for more and cheaper plastic shit from Asia is gonna be the death of us. (…That is, if climate change doesn’t do it first.) In that respect, Trump is kind of right, but the tariffs are probably going to be so harmful in the short run that people will reject any attempts to restructure the economy. I don’t think that Trump is principled in this at all; I think that it’s populist, and he’s a broken clock on this issue.

Maybe for some things, like working in fields. (Maybe. That would be a preeeeeettttttty good time for someone to pull a runner.) Probably not for construction, where you’d have to be giving inmates access to things that readily be used as weapons. Same with meat packing, where they’d literally be working with knives.

If people that are left of center can get their shit together some day, they really need to rewrite that amendment to ban all involuntary servitude.

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There’s no need.

Really.

If Trump does what he says he was going to do-and I don’t doubt he will–then the economy will crash on its own.

Tariffs will raise prices, and will drive inflation. Why will tariffs raise prices? Because the people selling will just add the price of the tariff to the goods sold. And unless the tariffs are the result of a new law, any incoming president can cancel them. That means that it would be a very risky environment to try and build domestic production in. The place I work for uses aluminum extrusion; we get it from a domestic supplier, and they get all their raw aluminum stock from China. When tariffs were enacted on Chinese aluminum, our supplier passed the cost on to us, and we had to raise our prices to account for our increased costs. So our customers had to pay more to get exactly the same product.

Deporting all of the undocumented immigrants will mean that we’ll suddenly have lots of jobs not getting done; most produce is picked by undocumented immigrants, a ton of general construction is done by undocumented immigrants, most meat-packing plants are full of undocumented immigrants laborers. We’ll suddenly be a negative unemployment; there won’t be enough workers in the workforce to fill demand. That means wages will have to rise, which will drive inflation, and housing costs will rise sharply because new construction will be so expensive with undocumented immigrants. One of the people I work with is undocumented; if he gets deported, then we’re up shit creek, because no one else can do his job as efficiently as he can, if anyone can do it at all (yay, lean manufacturing…).

I would place a financial bet on the economy crashing if Trump actually does what he says he will.

Fair enough.

I don’t really think that D.C. should be a state, but I think that it should have more autonomy for the administration of the city than it has.

I’ll keep that in mind. I live at a high enough altitude that I’m literally in the clouds pretty often (e.g., when it’s overcast everywhere else, I’m in pea-soup fog), so cedar is one of the prime choices for anything that’s going to be outside, just to keep it from rotting.

Sadly: no attic. I need try making an attractive bat roost for them. I wonder how bats feel about cedar, since cedar is rot resistant?

To be fair, Harris had a contentious relationship with cops, when–IIRC–she didn’t pursue the death penalty for a cop killer.

Prosecutors have to work with police, but aren’t police. Prosecutors want to win, because that’s how they get elected. When cops do dumb, illegal shit, prosecutors get pissed because then they can’t win a case. Cops usually blame prosecutors for not locking everyone up. Prosecutors get pissed at cops, because cops botch investigations and make stupid, illegal arrests.

Of the two, I have much more respect for prosecutors. Prosecutors are often very good attorneys (in their field).

To reiterate a point: district attorney are elected. The public expects them to win cases. When they don’t, even if it’s because cops are handing them steaming piles of garbage, they tend to lose their jobs. Shitty, but true. We may say ACAB, but when it comes down to it, a prosecutor that refuses to, for instance, prosecute certain low-level crimes will tend to get voted out of office because it pisses off the constituents.

Unless either candidate OVERWHELMINGLY wins, there’s not going to be anything tonight, and probably not tomorrow. The last of the swing states won’t close polls until 8p (Mountain time, I think). Trump is almost certainly going to declare that he is the winner “by a lot”. Best case, we’ll know tomorrow morning.

So take a couple alprazolam, drink a couple shots, and black out until tomorrow.

I love seeing the bats coming out at night in the summer; I can see them in the front clearing, swooping around after moths. I’ve got a bat house, but I think that it’s been vacant for years; I need to find a better way to attract them to my home.

I’m very surprised that you haven’t heard of Ghost of Tsushima; it has been a highly successful game.

But maybe I am mistaken? I would swear that I had to accept EA terms and conditions to play, but it’s by Sony and Sucker Punch. I dunno.

Currently I recommend bupropion and atomoxetine, but once I get an appointment with a psychiatrist, I’ll probably recommend lisdexamphetamine.

Modafanil is pretty great too.

Eh, I dunno, I’m currently really enjoying Ghosts of Tsushima, although strictly in off-line mode. And I enjoyed the first Jedi: Fallen Order, again, solely off-line.

To paraphrase Nietzsche, that which doesn’t kill you psychologically scars you and leaves you with a lifetime of therapy bills.

According to Mormons, god is literally male, with (perfect) male genitalia. There is also a god–the-mother, who is female, and is both secret and sacred (they really don’t like talking about her), and also utterly subservient to god the father, because of course she is. According to Mormon theology, both gods were once mortal, and were raised up to godhood by their godly parents; Mormons–if they’re good enough–can go to Mormon super-heaven, where they will also become gods in their own right. Before everyone was born physically, they were born spiritually, in… More or less the same way babies are born now, except in heaven, to a heavenly mom. And there were hundreds of billions of spirit babies, so I guess that god the dad and god the mom really like sex or something? The implications start getting really, really weird, very fast. Which is part of the reason why Mormons don’t usually want to talk about stuff like this with people that aren’t Mormon.

I believe that the quote is, “As man is, so once was god. As god is, so man can become,” or something like that.

Source: was Mormon for >25 years.

It is, honestly, not nearly as bad as you’d think. The weight should be pretty well distributed, armor doesn’t have to be all that heavy to stop a sword, and the gambeson is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for piercing weapons. Blunt weapons, well, those are going to be unpleasant pretty much no matter what. You get really hot though; there’s a reason that the Saracens did such a number on the crusaders when they were able to get them outside of cities.

Wearing a plate carrier is, IMO, worse than wearing a gambeson and chain maille.

Unfortunately, this one goes both ways. Some women feel like they need to play hard to get, because otherwise they’re sluts, and also they want to know that a guy really likes her. It’s self defeating of course, on both sides.