BC SOCIETY
Saved by @jay_millerjay

OK winger wonderland story time boys & girls.

1. Sleet stops, it's warming up, neighbor decides get out & drive, probably after seeing some truck drive down our residential road (4-wheel drive). Neighbor has new SUV push button start, 2-wheel drive, which is NOT THE SAME THING.

 2. So anyway, they back out of their garage & then pull forward down their driveway. The driveway is flat, but it's also a really really long driveway that goes from the back of the house down the side of the house. This will be important later.
3. They make it down the driveway just fine, so now super confident this will go well.

They pull out on our little residential road and start driving.

Mother nature is laughing her ass off right about now.
4. I should mention the roads through our little subdivision don't have curbs or sewers. We're basically out in the country so they just slope roads so the run-off goes into a ditch at the side of the road.
5. So anyways, their SUV starts to slightly fishtail. They haven't gone far at this point. So, they stop, and the SUV, although stopped, just ever so slowly slides to the side of the road and ends up half way in the ditch & almost tipped over.
6. Neighbor gets out to head back to their house & realizes they can't open the garage door because the opener is built into the visor & the vehicle is too far away from the garage to get a signal (remember super long driveway).
7. But wait, it gets worse. Neighbor had just changed out batteries in the key fob that starts their SUV & in so doing, had removed it from their key chain which was.........you guessed it........... inside the house.
8. The same house whose front door was locked & the glass storm door also locked. Same with all windows. So, neighbor heads over to my place & we sit down to figure out how to get them back into their house w/o breaking anything.
9. We settle on removing the visor from the SUV. I scrounge around in my box of tools, find what we need, and off we trek. I fall on my ass a few times. No surprise, I'm a klutz. Anywho, the door on the SUV has basically frozen shut by now. Oh joy.
10. A few well placed kicks and fist bangs and we finally get the door open & successfully detach the visor & associated wiring & then head back over to my place to rig a battery to it. None too soon since I feel like my eyeballs are basically frozen open.
11. After thawing out a bit (yes vodka was involved) and fiddling with the wiring, we get a 9 volt battery hooked up & neighbor walks back to their place to try it out.

"It works"

Thank God because I wasn't looking forward to putting them up for the next few days.
12. Meanwhile neighbors car, which I can see from a window in my house, is utterly and completely covered with snow & sleet.

Moral of the story, when they tell you to stay home in bad weather....... stay home.

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1/OK, I should really write another thread about university-centric regional development, because I think people often make some (very understandable) mistakes when thinking about this issue.

2/The biggest myth, I think, is that universities help regions by educating locals as undergraduates.

Skeptics of universities say: "But most of the people who graduate end up leaving."

3/In fact, most of what a university does for a regional economy is NOT about educating local kids.

Educating local kids is good for the nation, but doesn't help a region much.

The way a university helps a region is through

4/Undergraduates usually leave town after graduation.

But university RESEARCH pulls in OTHER smart people from other regions, and they stay there.

Here's a paper showing that this is the main way universities increase a region's human capital:

5/Research also pulls in business investment.

Companies want to partner with university labs, so they can commercialize the technologies the labs produce. So they invest in the labs, and sometimes they even put their offices in the town.
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Remember: Just because an idea is old doesn't mean it's good.

Knowing whether old ideas are more likely to be good requires understanding whether conditions have changed in important ways.

Horse archery was an amazing method of warfare for over a thousand years...then people invented guns, and suddenly this great idea that had stood the test of time became obsolete.

Then again, when underlying conditions don't change much, tried-and-true approaches are probably better.

"Learning the lessons of history" usually just means assuming ergodicity and stationarity in an informal time-series model...

(end)
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Our pretensions to civilization have become very thin. Political violence was legitimized last year and is spreading wildly now. "Might makes right" is clearly the only "principle" behind freedom of speech. That's why Chinese Communists will never be censored by Big Tech.

When every "principle" becomes nothing but a ruthless exercise of power, it's not surprising that a growing number of people conclude they must demonstrate some sort of power in order to be taken seriously. Violence is the crudest exercise of power.

A well-run civilization makes it clear *universally* that violence is absolutely unacceptable. Giving free passes for irresponsible rhetoric and destruction to groups favored by the dominant political ideology of the State undermines that message.

We must also people peaceable means of expressing themselves and controlling their own lives, to relieve the pressures that can lead to violent outbursts and other forms of lawlessness. The less healthy discourse and freedom of action you have, the more pressure builds up.

It's dangerous when large numbers of people begin drawing the conclusion that might makes right, that laws and principles bend easily for those who have the political strength to bend them. Might makes right is the code of anarchy and barbarism, the antithesis of civilization.
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@DiscourseDancer
Patriotism is an interesting concept in that it’s excepted to mean something positive to all of us and certainly seen as a morally marketable trait that can fit into any definition you want for it.+


Tolstoy, found it both stupid and immoral. It is stupid because every patriot holds his own country to be the best, which obviously negates all other countries.+

It is immoral because it enjoins us to promote our country’s interests at the expense of all other countries, employing any means, including war. It is thus at odds with the most basic rule of morality, which tells us not to do to others what we would not want them to do to us+

My sincere belief is that patriotism of a personal nature, which does not impede on personal and physical liberties of any other, is not only welcome but perhaps somewhat needed.

But isn’t adherence to a more humane code of life much better than nationalistic patriotism?+

Göring said, “people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”+
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Bradly Mason
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Okay, let's do this summary again since there seems to be a collective amnesia relating to Christian Abolitionism in America.

Here again is a summary of the Christian Abolitionists’ arguments against enslavers’ appeals to the Scripture: Thread
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For the record: that's not a "strong work ethic."
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Toxic 💀💀


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So when it first appeared in Normandy, the Sherman Firefly and it's meaty 17 pounder represented an ideal combo of reliable chassis, great gun and devastating firepower right?

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Truth is a bit more complex. /1
#WW2 #SWW #History


Deliveries of Firefly to units only commenced in April 1944,
just a few weeks before Overlord & left minimal time for familiarisation.

Armoured Regiments mostly utilised Fireflies on a basis of 1 per troop of 4 tanks. /2


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