In re: TERFs, transgender people make up a very small part of the general population, roughly .5%. The odds that any given TERF would get picked up by an UBER driver that is a transwoman are very low.

I suspect–and I’d need to be checked on this–that you would need to have gotten your gender marker changed on your driver’s license in order for Uber to correctly identify your gender. And that makes it an even smaller subset of trangender people that could trigger TERFs. OTOH, I could absolutely see a TERF going ballistic over a cisgender woman that wasn’t fully gender-conforming…

The fact that the cancelled in the face of public pressure means nothing; they can always resume the partnership once the pressure subsides.

10% is pretty close to a controlling interest, since many shares never vote at meetings.

That’s like saying that it’s inevitable that murder and rape will happen.

Just because someone is going to do it eventually doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have the death penalty for doing it.

The proprietary cartridge design kills it, IMO. It’s like making a super-gucci AR-15, but then it only uses your mags, and your mags cost $150/ea., v. $20 for a Magpul.

Don’t fucking buy Mira products; they’re overpriced Czech surplus. The OM-90 is the Czech designation for Mira’s CM-7M, and you can get them for $90 on eBay, vs. the $450 or so that Mira charges.

Honestly, get yourself an M-40 that’s in good shape, buy a 40mm-to-3M-bayonet adapter, use some 3M P-100 cartridges (you can get them for about $2/ea. when you buy in bulk). P-100 will filter out all particulates–even finer particulates than a HEPA filter or N-95–and will also filter out water- and oil-based aerosols. That covers all riot-control agents, because CN, CS, and OC are all aerosols, and not true gasses. Almost any surplus gas mask that’s been made in the last ~30 years, seals, and uses a 40mm NATO cartridge is going to be just fine for riot-control agents.

If you are really worried about a P-100 filter being insufficient, get a few new old-stock NBC filters. NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) filters were phased out about 15-20 years ago in favor of CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear) filters, but if they haven’t been used, they’ll be absolutely okay for riot agents.

If you wear glasses–and many people do–get a spectacle insert for whatever mask you have. Glasses break the seal, and while you will probably be fine with contacts in, that’s not necessarily a good risk to take. Supposedly the Kris Optical Mag-1 glasses can be worn under a mask without compromising the seal, but I can’t personally attest to that. I think that they’re one of the older styles of BCGs that were issued, but I’m not sure.

Oh, and get GOOD hearing protection. Consider high-end electronic ear muffs, and wearing ear plugs under them. Some places are using LRADs to disperse crowds, and those can wreck your hearing.

N95 is insufficient. You want a P100 filter cartridge; P100 will filter out oil-based and water-based aerosols, as well as all particulates. They will not filter out true gasses, but, good news!, CN, CS, and OC are all aerosols, not gasses.

No. Avon still exists, they have the current contract to make the M-50 gas mask. (Which, BTW, is not compatible with standard NATO CBRN 40mm cartidges.)

Late reply here.

When I was spec’ing a system for a DIY build, I was at about $60k for a 20kw system, with a 50kWh battery array, not including the actual copper wire to connect to the panel. But the problem you run into there is the bit about burning your house down, or electrocuting yourself, because the voltage gets very high, very fast. Wiring an outlet in your home is pretty simple, running new circuits from a breaker a little harder but still definitely within what a homeowner can reasonably do. But I was looking at things like pouring concrete for piers for a ground mount rack (my roof isn’t adequate, and is partially shaded), trenching to get to the house, using microinverters so that it could be expanded easily, etc., AND trying to be done by 31 Dec. so that I still squeak under the federal tax credit requirements.

And it’s not nearly as easy as you make it seem. Take panels; they’re all going to have slightly different sizes, voltage output, etc., and you need to understand that voltage output when you’re wiring them together. Some of the larger commercial panels (>650W or so) aren’t going to work with microinverters at all. Then you need to consider how many panels you’re going to be wiring in each string, and how you tie those strings together. Running everything in series runs the amperage up sharply, and running everything in parallel runs the voltage up. To make it even better, panel output increases in cold weather, so building a system with inverters and wiring that’s close to the load limit at 50F can easily end up exceeding the load limit if the temperatures drop to -20F. (And goddamn, copper cables for >200A service can get expensive.) Wiring? Well, hopefully your system is actually all solid copper wiring, and not copper-clad aluminum, because at the load limits for copper-clad aluminum it gets a lot hotter than solid copper; too much aluminum wiring in too close proximity can melt the insulation off in a hurry.

And, again, i can not overstate just how easy it is to kill yourself wiring this shit, because the voltages and amperages get REALLY high, really fast. 20kW is an enormous amount of power.

FWIW, I’m in the process of starting a grid-tied solar installation. Total cost, without batteries, will be about $70,000. That’s a 17kW system, that should produce an average of 30kWh/day in the winter.

If I had been doing this last year, it would have been sharply less; tariffs and the drive to kill solar has driven costs up, and the end of the solar tax credit on 31 December means that everyone that wants to do it is trying to do it now, which drives up labor costs.

this at least has real links to tangible asset worth,

Well, kind of. But the worth of those assets is largely due to perception, rather than real utility value. Like, real estate is stupidly expensive in many places, but it’s expensive because people believe that it’s expensive. When real estate bubble burst, you see the ‘worth’ of that real estate drop sharply. The utility value is having a place to sleep, but it’s often treated as an investment. So you would still see currency value fluctuations. Currency issue by gov’ts largely has worth because the gov’t says that it has worth; it’s not tied to anything. (BTW - tying currency to a tangible asset limits your ability to add currency when necessary. It will tend to lead to depreciation–the value of the currency rising–which is usually a bad thing.)

The other problem is that corporations and banks go bust; if they were issuing currency, that would mean all your money would instantly be worthless.

Ideally, no one controls it. It’s just exists as a medium for exchange.

There are both good and bad points to currency have value that can be adjusted by gov’ts; crypto currency solves one set of problems, but has it’s own, inherent issues.

…Have you tried a leash? (On a hand, not a neck. For safety.)

This Russia can’t defeat Ukraine because of all of the assistance that Ukraine has been receiving from the US in particular, but other NATO and EU countries in general. If we truly ceased all military aid, and the EU countries didn’t pick up the slack, yeah, Russia would eventually roll over Ukraine. TBH, as far as the US is concerned, we’ve managed to bleed an enormous adversary almost dry, all without any American soldiers every being shot at (well, except for the people that had the guts and convictions to go to Ukraine and volunteer; I wish I didn’t have responsibilities…).

Without aid, the war would have been over in a year; Ukraine has the will, but they didn’t have the tanks, the anti-air defense systems, and so on. And on the other side of that, if the US had given them everything that they wanted up front, instead of slow-rolling ‘offensive’ weapons systems, Ukraine could have wrecked Russia in a year.

There’s absolutely no way in hell that it’s just adultery, not when she explicitly says that she can’t remain and still hold on to her ‘Christian’ values. Paxton has done a fuckton of things things that explicitly go against what Jesus taught in the four gospels, and against damn near everything that Paul wrote as well, so it’s gotta be more than just extra-marital sex.

Reducing the US military budget would likely also have the added ‘feature’ of resulting in Europe being under the thumb of Russia, and Africa, Asia, and South America being under the thumb of China. A large military budget–even if the military isn’t used–has the effect of acting as a deterrent. We’ve already seen that Russia has no qualms about using their military when they think they can get away with it, and China is continually threatening Taiwan (among others).

That’s so wonderfully tacky. I kind of love it. It needs to be in a room that has a circular bed that slowly rotates, and has mirrors on the ceiling. Oh, and a hot tub, right next to the bed.

No, the “entire planet” has decided that states ultimately own your property–and you, since you don’t have absolute, individual bodily autonomy–and we use an incorrect shorthand in the way we verbally talk about property rights.

Yes, a vampire could enter with a warrant, whether or not you invited him in. The state ultimately ‘owns’ your property; if it didn’t, then it couldn’t kick you out and seize it if you don’t pay property taxes. So therefore the state has the authority to give a vampire the right to enter your dwelling. (But what if the warrant was illegally issued, and so the vampire didn’t have actual permission to enter? Hmmmm.) Similarly, if you rented an apartment, your landlord could give a vampire permission to enter for a valid reason, e.g., the vampire worked maintenance, and you had a water leak that was damaging another apartment and needed immediate access.