If you have a damp moldy spot on a ceiling, that’s likely leaking from the roof. Roof leaks can be very difficult to find; if you have asphalt shingles that are starting to curl at the corners, then it’s probably just time to replace them, along with flashing. Thankfully, depending on the pitch of your roof, re-roofing isn’t that awful. It gets ugly it you have a really steep roof pitch, or if you have an flat EPDM roof in a brick home.
I have magnets for my car; American flags, 'Don’t Tread on Me", etc. (I wanted to get a Molon Labe/μολὼν λαβέ magnet, but my partner said no.)
It’s camouflage because I live in a deep red area.
I would put gun stickers on the car–god knows I have enough–but a ‘Glock perfection’ sticker = free gun in glove box, and is asking for a break-in while you’re in the Piggly Wiggly.
Windows 11 LTSC
I’m using Window 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC; the biggest issue I’ve had was that I couldn’t get my video card installed. I had to wait until there was an updated driver, a few weeks after I assembled my computer. Every time I tried to install the driver that was supposed to be the correct one, I got a BSOD.
Honestly, I like 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC better than I liked the 10 Pro version that I had. And–compared to the only Linux distro I’ve used, Tails–it’s fairly straightforward. And yes, I know the Tails is kind of a pain in the ass, and it’s not fair to judge all of Linux against that. But i’m old, and cranky, and just want Win 3.11 back.
Hello, fellow exmo.
I probably would have been ordained by now, but I left when the new CoC came out (2000, I think?) that–among other things–forbade members from speaking publicly as members about their own experiences within TST. The summary and capricious expulsion of numerous ministers that were agitating for change within the org confirmed to me that if congregations had autonomy, it was only because Doug and Cevin allowed it.
I was raised Mormon.
The first things that’s very important to know about the Mormon church is that they believe that they are led by direct revelation from god, and that god will never allow the ‘prophet’ of the church to lead the church astray. The ‘prophet’ is the head of the whole church, and Mormons believe he (and the prophet is always a man, because women are always subordinate to men in the Mormon church) receives revelation for the entire church and world. As you go down the chain of authority, each person is supposed to be receiving revelation for the people that are under them. So it is believed that if your bishop–who is a local congregation leader, not at all like a Catholic bishop–asks you to do something in his capacity as bishop, then that’s coming directly from god.
The second thing that’s critical to know about the Mormon church is that every member is very strongly encouraged to pray and ask god to confirm the truth of things. Members are told to read their scriptures (esp. the Book of Mormon) and study the words of Mormon ‘prophets’, and then pray about it. A warm, fuzzy feeling is believed to be the confirmation of the holy spirit that those things are correct; a lack of confirmation means that you need to pray harder, because those things are self evidently (</s>) the word of god.
Got it? Good, continuing on.
I didn’t particularly want to be a missionary, but it was expected that I would become one, so I did. I did not enjoy being a missionary; I absolutely hated it. The mission president–a man that presided over a specific geographical area and group of missionaries–largely did not believe in mental health, and told me to put on a happy face. I ended up having a nervous breakdown and became suicidal. I remember being told that “the light of the holy spirit has left your eyes”, and that the reason that I was suicidal was because I had sinned an allowed Satan into my heart. The solution that was prescribed by religious leaders was to pray more, study my scriptures more, bear my testimony more often, etc., and that I would be fine.
…But I knew that I had not sinned. How could it be that my religious leaders, people that were supposed to have the power from god to receive revelation for me, people that I had been promised would never lead me wrong when they were acting in their religious capacity, would be insisting that I must have sinned? What sin did they think that I had committed? (Spoiler: I’m actually high-functioning autistic, and the lifestyle demanded of missionaries was extremely stressful. That stress was what led to the nervous breakdown.) I was eventually sent to the LDS Social Services, which is a counseling org in the Mormon church; the church as a whole is very skeptical of therapists because they take a science-based approach rather than a religion-centric approach. The therapist decided that I was too preoccupied with sexual matters (which, fucking duh, I was 20, and was cut off from social interactions with people of my preferred gender while I was a missionary), and also counseled repentance, etc., along with some aversion therapy to make me feel even more shame about all things sexual.
Meanwhile, I had a psychiatrist for medication. The psychiatrist had a strictly science-based approach. He said that there wasn’t any clear reason why some people would become suicidal and others wouldn’t, but some medications might help.
It all eventually got me thinking: I knew that I wasn’t sinning, but my church leaders–the people that were supposed to be receiving revelation for me, on my behalf–were insisting that I must be. If I’ve been praying about the truth claims of the Mormon church, and had believed that the holy spirit has been told me that it’s all true, but the people that I believe have the gift of prophecy are completely wrong, what does this mean?
For me, the inescapable conclusion was that feelings were not a reliable indication of ‘truth’.
If feelings aren’t a way to know truth, then what is? Once you start studying the history of the Mormon church, the whole enterprise starts looking like a very sketchy con, and is certainly not something you would take at face value. Moreover, it turns out that all religions are relying on feelings that the religions say are from god in order to confirm that their religion is the One True Religion. Not only is there nothing that’s falsifiable about belief in Mormonism, there’s nothing falsifiable in religion in general.
Once you accept that, then the most reasonable answer is to say to say that either the existence of a god is unknowable with what we have right now, or that there is no god at all. I settled on the latter, although extraordinary evidence might be able to convince me.
Sure, I’m completely okay with that too. Although I was thinking of tackling fraud more of an ex post facto audit system, rather than adding in compliance paperwork.
I’m very much not opposed to taxation, including taxing me, if that means that people have stable jobs or get the help they need. And as long as billionaires also get guillotined.
Sure! It creates real jobs, while also discouraging people from fucking over the system. Even if there’s zero fraud happening, auditing the system to make sure isn’t going to hurt. (Well, it won’t hurt as long as they don’t remove people that are entitled to the benefits.)
In some ways, sure. I’m not religious, and I don’t have children. In terms of finances, no.
My partner won’t let me have one. :( It’s too dangerous since our house is a cedar cabinet, and cedar burns VERY well.
Because it’s a consumer (really a prosumer) stove, that shielding is already built in. You wouldn’t want to install a commercial range in right next to wooden cabinets; it’s assumed that surfaces in commercial kitchens are all going to be non-porous, hard surfaces, usually stainless steel or ceramic.
Okay, good deal. So, in theory, an induction stove that’s 3500W should be approaching the heating ability of a typical commercial range.
They have certain specific advantages, but they are actually slower.
This entirely depends on the stove. Consumer-lever stoves? Sure, definitely. Commercial stoves? Probably not. Commercial stoves put out 3-4x the BTUs of a high-end consumer stove, and usually can’t be installed in a home because they require significant shielding around them (so you don’t burn a building down) and a very high flow hood. The highest-end Wolf range has a single burner that has a maximum output of 10,000BTU, and costs a whopping $17,000; a fairly basic range top for a commercial kitchen has six burners that can all output 32,000BTU, and costs about $3700. For stir-frying specifically, you can get a single ring wok burners outputting 92,000-125,000BTU starting at about $700 for natural gas (and a helluva lot more if you use LP).
Unfortunately, I can’t find a solid conversion between gas and induction stove capabilities.
Oh, and FWIW - if you live somewhere with an unstable power grid, a natural gas or LP stove will continue to function when the power is out, albeit you’ll need to light it manually. We lose power fairly regularly due to storms–usually only a day at a time, but sometimes as long as 3-4 days–and it would be a real hassle to have all electric appliances when there’s no power.
That said, my current approach of not breaking the law and not giving police a reason to harass me is working pretty well.
That mostly works if you’re white, appear to be middle class or wealthier, and don’t associate with anyone that might be engaging in their constitutional right to assemble for redress of grievances. Or, y’know, live within 100 miles of an international border (which apparently includes airports).
That said, my current approach of not breaking the law and not giving police a reason to harass me is working pretty well.
That mostly works if you’re white, appear to be middle class or wealthier, and don’t associate with anyone that might be engaging in their constitutional right to assemble for redress of grievances. Or, y’know, live within 100 miles of an international border (which apparently includes airports).
If they have a warrant and you don’t comply, then you get to see the inside of a jail cell until you do comply. That’s not a joke, either; it’s contempt of court.
There are some arguments about access though; it’s very clear that biometric data can be required; the police can forcibly use your fingerprint to unlock a phone if they have a warrant. Passwords are more complicated though; some courts have ruled that they’re keys, and thus can be compelled, and some courts have ruled that they’re speech, and so they can’t be compelled. SCOTUS hasn’t ruled on this one yet.
I def. agree with the issues in re: Dunbar’s number. Anarchism can, and does, work pretty well in small groups and communes. But scaling it to the size of a country… Well, that’s the hard part. But if you don’t, then authoritarian countries will eat you alive.
Those who want the role are also those you REALLY don’t want with that power.
That unfortunately seems to be the case with most cops as well; the ones that want to do it out of a sense of civic responsibility seem to get pushed out pretty quickly by the ones that should never have been cops in the first place. And–looping back around to anarchism–cops are a necessary evil because otherwise you quickly end up with vigilante groups that enforce a capricious set of morality and ethics.
I’ll give it a read.
I’m mostly an anarchist. But.
I think that there needs to be some degree of authoritarian, arbitrary power. Mostly because I’ve been in anarchist groups in the past, and when everyone has input into a decision, shit gets bogged down really fast. Not everyone understands a given issue and will be able to make an informed choice, and letting opinionated-and-ignorant people make choices that affect the whole group is… Not good.
The problem is, I don’t know how to balance these competing interests, or exactly where authoritarian power should stop. It’s easy to say, well, I should get to make choices about myself, but what about when those individual choices end up impacting other people? For instance, I eat meat, and yet I’m also aware that the cattle industry is a significant source of CO2; my choice, in that case, contributes to climate change, which affects everyone. …And once you start going down that path, it’s really easy to arrive at totalitarianism as the solution.
I also don’t know how to handle the issue of trade and commerce, and at what point it crosses the line into capitalism.
It’s all good. Firearms in general are an autistic special interest. (No, seriously. I’m high-functioning autistic, and guns have been a special interest for, um, a very long time.) I don’t expect anyone outside of policy wonks to have hard numbers memorized.
Well. No, not really. Owning a house is just stressful, period. And sometimes really expensive things happen that you couldn’t foresee.
For ants, you want to get food-safe diatomaceous earth, and a bulb-style dispenser. If you can tell where they’re coming from, blow some diatomaceous earth in there. It’s completely safe for people and pets, but will kill insects. There’s also some non-toxic treatments for wood–Nissin Boracare, for instance–that will help prevent termite, ant, and powderpost beetle infestations.