• 0 Posts
  • 50 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: July 25th, 2023

help-circle


  • Oh my god, it’s so bad.

    “Soft tissue lengthens, relaxing muscles and ligaments. As the tissue relaxes, the Neodymium magnets increase blood flow to the area calming nerves and promote relaxation. VuVa™ are the only patented sets available with Neodymium magnets.”

    “Magnetic Therapy is based on the premise that all living organisms exist in a magnetic field, including the human body. The human body generates its own magnetic field. Therefore, the body can heal itself when electromagnetic energy is in balance.”

    It’s like those stupid magnet bracelets and elbow wraps, only for your vagina. It’s all woo.







  • I don’t know if this will actually pan out the way that they imply in the title; armor needs to have a lot of different characteristics in order to be practical. As in, resistance to heat and cold, resistance to acids, alkalines, petroleum distillates, salts, UV, and oxygen, and also resist deformation. Multiple materials have displays significant promise for armor, but had a very short lifespan in real-word conditions. For instance, there was a material trademarked as Zylon that was supposed to be better than Kevlar, and it was used extensively by Second Chance (a body armor company); several cops were killed when their armor failed, and the armor failed because of exposure to sweat and ambient heat.

    Yeah, this is a super cool development, but remember that everything that comes out at this stage is hype.



  • I knew a guy–Ola Bini–that fled the US, and emigrated to Ecuador, because he was afraid that he was going to be targeted by the US gov’t. I think he made it less than two years in Ecuador before he was arrested for ‘hacking’ Ecuador gov’t computers; he was jailed during the entire judicial process, almost a decade, before all the charges were dropped, and he was released and deported to Sweden. Best guess is that despite not having a extradition treaty with the US, the US still put a ton of pressure on Ecuador to detain him. (Maybe he actually committed crimes? IDK, it’s possible, but all charges being dropped after all that time in jail without a trial seems iffy. )

    Point is, there aren’t a lot of places you can go if the US wants to fuck your life. Russia and China are the best options, and both are not great.




  • Agreed; Veilguard has pretty okay graphics. Not great, but acceptable - the high mark for me is BG3. But moving back to the earlier entries, they may have had stories that felt more ‘real’ (e.g., the setting felt more internally consistent) and gave more options, but the graphics and gameplay haven’t aged well.

    Similarly, Fallout: New Vegas hasn’t aged so well. It was a great game, but it looks pretty rough now, unless you load it down with hi-res mods.

    I don’t demand photorealism, but I’d like better visuals than PS3-level graphics.


  • It isn’t legal to own hand grenades in the US

    Not correct. It’s an ‘other destructive device’, and is covered under the National Firearms Act of 1934. Each one would require completing a transfer form, waiting for approval from the ATF, and cost $200 for the tax stamp. …And would then be usable exactly once.

    You might be able to manufacture a grenade with an ATF Form 1 approval, but I’m not positive. And, again, it’s a single-use item that requires a $200 tax stamp.





  • Since the ACA was passed, Democrats have not held all three branches of the gov’t. (In fact, Mitch McConnell refused to take up Obama’s nomination of a SCOTUS justice because he thought that eight months was too close to the election. Or, that was his claim.) They haven’t had any opportunities to make significant reforms to the ACA–or pass something better–because they haven’t had the power to do so. Republicans came close to overturning it, but blew their chances in 2018. So, to be more accurate, the party that wants to fix healthcare has not had the political ability to do so.

    Short of a political change, there is no way to change the system.


  • If Trump wins, expect it to be much, much worse. The ACA/Obamacare guarantees that certain things must be covered, that you can’t be denied covered based on pre-existing conditions, and that you can’t be charged more due to age, gender, etc. It also gives subsidies to people that are buying their own covered on the marketplace, which was set up by the federal gov’t.

    Under Trump, expect all of that to be tossed out. If Trump wins, it’s highly likely that Republicans with flip the Senate, and retain control of the House, which means Republicans will have all three branches of the federal government captured, and there will be no brakes to repealing the ACA and going back to the old, much shittier system.

    If Harris wins, don’t expect to see many changes. If she wins, it’s unlikely that Democrats would also have control of both the House and Senate. While it’s true that she was in favor of a single-payer system five years ago, it’s unlikely that she would be able to get that through the House and Senate unless they were both controlled by a Democratic majority. (In the case of the Senate, they would need to nuke the filibuster, which–IMO–is not a good idea in the long run).