I'm confident in high volatility forward looking, but not confident democracy is dead (yet). Until elections have been cancelled, we proceed as if they are still on. If action is necessary to restore democracy, that is a possibility to be prepared for.
Edit: With regards to replies, I understand and appreciate the perspective, but the discussion will only lead to the subthread being detached here. It's important, it's valid, but it also is unproductive discussing it here. Discuss it elsewhere with like minded people.
Elections happen in Turkey, Russia and even North Korea.
Elections will happen in the USA, but only if they give the right answer. Didn't you get the memo that there is massive fraud, that voter rolls have to be purged (and are already purged in some states), that gerrymandering is normal, and that this is war?
Do you think Kash Patel, Pam Bondi and Tulsi Gabbard are just there to do their job honestly and independently? That they are just firing people left and right (mostly left, and not enough right) just because of incompetence? Do you think the Jan 6th coupists were pardoned only by magnanimity, and the military honours ordered for Ashli Babbitt are just there because Trump has a bleeding heart?
High explosives are even less regulated than firearms in the US. You can buy them by the ton and explosives are very inexpensive. This does not circumvent compliance with regulations for safe transport and storage, which is the practical limitation.
I can store a ton of firearms in my garage but they can’t destroy the neighborhood by accident. High-explosives can.
People that buy high-explosives at scale just have some land outside of town where they can store them en masse. Problem solved. There are huge magazines of high-explosive just outside many major cities all over the US. Very infrequently, one of them goes “boom”, which kind of justifies forcing them to be on the outskirts.
You can own it, you just have to store it where it won’t wreck your neighbors if you are an idiot. Rural land is cheap.
Black powder, which is used (and at the time necessary) in the kind of firearms used when the 2A was conceived, has such limitations in any non-trivial (more than personal use) quantity.
Ackshually, when the NFA was passed to 'tax' explosives ('destructive devices'), it was considered unconstitutional infringement on the right to keep/bear arms to ban explosives, machine guns, etc so they 'taxed' them instead. You can still buy/manufacture them with a tax stamp.
Also when congress de-funded (outlawed) the process for felons to restore their firearm rights, they forgot to do it with explosives. So even a felon can have high-energy explosives legally.
>nobody had any explanation for why flu "disappeared"
The flu didn't disappear, and we know very well why it almost disappeared: it is far less contagious than SARS-CoV-2, and masking and the huge dip in international travel stopped it.
>It's a hypothesis
Here in Switzerland (and in France), it hasn't been presented by pediatrics societies as an hypothesis at all, but as a fact and the main argument to reopen immediately. It has also been used again and again to explain the huge waves of infections of many illnesses that surged after the end of lockdowns, and absolutely none of them ever quoted that "immune debt is just an hypothesis", and none of them have suggested any other alternative hypothesis such as "SARS-CoV-2 has a detrimental effect on the immune system or health in general".
Because to admit so would be to admit the mass infection of children had been a massive mistake on their part.
>I don't like to resort to appeal to authority, but the article quotes Ashish Jha (hardly a Covid minimizer) as dismissing the "immune damage" narrative
And Jha has no explanation for the increased, sustained (and now synchronised) waves of infections and illnesses that are plain to see. He has nothing. This is the fiasco of "masks aren't proven to work" again.
Randomized controlled trials are not a silver bullet. There is a reason why meta-analyses spend a good amount of ink sorting out and excluding RCTs for lack of power or other design mistakes.
And yet was claimed again and again by e.g. pediatrics societies in Switzerland and France to justify ending every restrictions (thereby mass contaminating children before they could be vaccinated, and contributing to more spread and more mutations of the virus)
And it is not the only case. The French people went to war in 1914 "la fleur au fusil"[0]. Jean Jaurès is assassinated for his pacifism and (his assassin would be found not guilty - despite being totally guilty - in 1919).
Too sad the WebIDE link on https://picat-lang.org/ doesn't work, I would have been happy to try it with minimal fuss. It seems to be a very nice langage for niche but important use cases.
You can try it out in Google colab[0] which is a free computer for people with Google accounts. You are allowed to anything that's legal, not a file-server, not crypto and not chess[1].
You can download and unpack it with
!wget -c "https://picat-lang.org/download/picat39_linux64.tar.gz" > /dev/null 2>&1
# 3.4MB so it's probably fine to download it every day
!tar -xvzf "picat39_linux64.tar.gz" -C . > /dev/null 2>&1
!echo 'picat binary is at /content/Picat/picat'
You can create a file by
%%shell
cat <<MultiString > welcome.pi
main =>
print(" Welcome to PICAT’s world! \n ").
main(Args) =>
print(" Welcome to PICAT’s world! \n"),
foreach (Arg in Args)
printf("%s \n", Arg)
end.
MultiString
and run it as
!/content/Picat/picat welcome a b c
I don't think that Picat supports the REPL workflow, even just defining functions on the fly. You have to put your functions into files (fix me). The official guide is at [2].
I've created an example notebook at [3] (although you shouldn't use people's notebooks especially if they are mutable: they might have access to your Google Drive files, or use up your resources).
Colab opening notebooks from gist fails me after some repetitions. It seems it goes through my computer (Google fetches it with javascript), and Microsoft rate limits me. Then it works again from private browser or after a cooldown period.
Adults can't dismiss experts and expertise all the time on every topic (climate, health, economy) and worship know-nothings, and expect their children to invest time and effort to learn stuff.
The kids may become dumber but they aren't stupid.
See also Use of Weapons and Excession.