371–380 of 381 posts
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This is exactly the thought. Water is the #1 survival necessity but an enormously fragile resource. Electricity can go out, pipes can burst, water supplies can be tainted. Some people keep years worth of canned food around but almost nobody has a year's supply of water.
Don't forget that the water heater has 50 gallons in it.
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It's not laughable. The building code in Switzerland specifies that residential construction must contain a shelter that withstands a 12 megaton blast at 700 meters. The country has more shelter than people. Another thing to note is that the multi-megaton weapons aren't in style anymore, due to improved targeting accuracy.
>Another thing to note is that the multi-megaton weapons aren't in style anymore, due to improved targeting accuracy. I think it was due to the opposite, actually. The development of Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles (MIRVs) made many small nuclear warheads more valuable than fewer large nuclear warheads. If an ICBM is a shotgun, then kiloton-level MIRVs are like birdshot, which is seen as more valuable than meg…
The problem is that as yield rises, the losses to the upper atmosphere are proportionally greater, as is fallout. Multiple targeting with smaller warheads solves that as well, which critically allows for more efficient burning of nuclear fuel.
Finally, the larger the fireball, the more likely you’ll have it touching the the ground leading to losses, and kicking up more debris which will mix with fission products and unburned fuel. Of course that’s also one way to use a standard nuclear weapon in a manner more consistent with an enhanced radiation weapon, real “salting the earth” stuff. That is generally comsidered to be bad form, even among nuclear powers.
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What surprises me is that the foreigners in Japan are the ones who are scared about that situation, Japanese people don't care that much.
That's BS. Completely untrue. You just aren't reading/listening to Japanese people on the subject. No one is freaking out, but we're all tense at more or less the same level, as per our individual personalities.
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Stocking up on drinking water or having a source of water to flush the toilet with (by manually refilling the tank).
Drinking water. Don't flush the toilet because you might eventually need the water in the tank too.
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While I agree that Trump is not the stable genius he thinks he is, the drone war existed before. We are speaking of a nobel peace prize winner who seemingly did not have either the ability to recognize the hell he helped create or the b----s to stand against his military advisors to stop it. You can blame Trump for a lot but even when there were smarter people in power, it wasn't much better. I want to believe that C…
Correct. Trump says "shithole" and the MSM lathers the public into a frenzy. Yet, the previous administration(s) actively created shitholes - which btw taxes dollar also go to fixing - and the response to that has been crickets from the MSM and the proles. Trump can be a fool. But there is quite a bit of truth to his perception of the MSM, and how that impacts public opinion. Fake News isn't just about facts. Fake Ne…
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Isn't the sentiment expressed by that word essentially "country with a lot of problems"? Is it much worse than saying "ours is the best country in the world"? Both are pretty insulting.
The sentiment expressed by the word is essentially "country with a lot of problems", yes. But the sentiment expressed by the statement as a whole is "We don't want people from those countries, we don't want to help them, we don't want them to access the American Dream. Despite our part in screwing up the world, we're not interesting in putting forth effort to help the people who have gotten screwed". And the "we" in…
Of course reasonable people can disagree on the degree of the threat posed by immigration. But you have to admit that if every person on earth moved to America overnight, life as we know it would be changed for the worse forever. Therefore it is reasonable to question where on the scale from 0% to 100% of the world population should be welcomed with open arms at the border. And it's not a huge leap to go from that question to the idea that not every single applicant for admittance poses the same threat (if any) as another -- so some discrimination between them is not only logical, but just.
If you accept the above conclusion, then it's quite possible for that word he used to be a reasonable idea expressed in an uncharitable manner.
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The sentiment expressed by the word is essentially "country with a lot of problems", yes. But the sentiment expressed by the statement as a whole is "We don't want people from those countries, we don't want to help them, we don't want them to access the American Dream. Despite our part in screwing up the world, we're not interesting in putting forth effort to help the people who have gotten screwed". And the "we" in…
There is a plausible alternative motivation of wanting to protect the American Dream (for those already here in the country) rather than an evil desire to deny it to others. Of course reasonable people can disagree on the degree of the threat posed by immigration. But you have to admit that if every person on earth moved to America overnight, life as we know it would be changed for the worse forever. Therefore it is…
I agree with you as far as that goes.
But then you go further to say that it's possible that Trump was trying to express the position you just described, albeit in an uncharitable and rude way, and that's where you lose me.
It's possible that you could theorize a hypothetical person who expresses that sentiment in that manner, but is that hypothetical person Donald Trump, with all the context of his previous comments and decisions? Because we're not talking about a hypothetical here, we're talking about actual sentiments expressed by an actual person, with a history racial insensitivity (to put it lightly) and heavy-handed bans that have no legal basis (again, to put it lightly).
It's not meaningful to come up with hypotheticals unless you attribute that hypothetical to Trump, and attributing this one to him means that it needs to be squared with his previous actions and positions. In my opinion, it seems fantastically unlikely that he was trying to express your position; if you believe differently, I'd be interested in your reasoning.
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There is a plausible alternative motivation of wanting to protect the American Dream (for those already here in the country) rather than an evil desire to deny it to others. Of course reasonable people can disagree on the degree of the threat posed by immigration. But you have to admit that if every person on earth moved to America overnight, life as we know it would be changed for the worse forever. Therefore it is…
I don't quite understand your argument here. You posit that a reasonable position on immigration for America is that we should not have one hundred percent open borders, welcome all comers. And furthermore, since a reasonable position is that we should not welcome all comers, whoever they may be, we obviously need some way to establish who in particular is welcome, and who in particular is not. I agree with you as fa…
For the record I'm no fan or defender of Trump. But whatever we think of his obvious character flaws, he's really nothing without supporters.
What I have been trying to do is understand the people who do support him and articulate the best possible interpretation of events that I can make for how someone can support him.
That's not to pretend he doesn't have some racist supporters, he does.. but I think they are a very (very) small percentage of people who hold their nose at him personality and yet give him their support.
What I hear from the Left, over and over, is charges of racism and attributing the worst possible motives to most his supporters -- a strawman argument which they can then knock down with moral indignation.
So back to our discussion.
I don't think it pays to continually be outraged at Trumps never ending provocations. What I think needs to happen is to have an honest discussion -- where people on the left have to say "Trump is an idiot, but we understand that there are problems with unfettered immigration, and we respect the people who are worried about protecting America. We recognize them as patriots, not racists. We understand that many people support Trump not because they are attracted to his personality, but because we have not been willing to properly balance our desire to help people of the world with our need to protect our fellow citizens (regardless of political stripe)".
I am no expert on what the proper level of immigration should be, or how to vet appropriate applicants. But until we take responsibility for our blind spots, and at least be willing to acknowledge the other side as legitimate, we're going to keep talking past one another.
If we keep going the way we're going, Trump is going to get elected again. The entire culture is currently focused on the wrong thing -- and that isn't Trump's fault, it's ours.
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I don't quite understand your argument here. You posit that a reasonable position on immigration for America is that we should not have one hundred percent open borders, welcome all comers. And furthermore, since a reasonable position is that we should not welcome all comers, whoever they may be, we obviously need some way to establish who in particular is welcome, and who in particular is not. I agree with you as fa…
Think we agree on all the important points then. At least so far. For the record I'm no fan or defender of Trump. But whatever we think of his obvious character flaws, he's really nothing without supporters. What I have been trying to do is understand the people who do support him and articulate the best possible interpretation of events that I can make for how someone can support him. That's not to pretend he doesn'…
I don't think that everything Trump does deserves the ire it inspires, but I think there's a cost to just accepting outrageous things without being outraged. What's happening is not normal, and I don't want it to become normal. If people stop getting outraged for valid reasons, and I believe that this is a valid reason to be upset, then this behavior becomes accepted and that's not something I want.
There's a way to have a conversation about immigration. That conversation does not start with the President saying "Why do we want people from these shithole nations, we want more people from great countries like Norway", and I think it's reasonable to hold the President to the standard of starting the conversation in the appropriate way. Doing that is literally his job, and just because he and some of his supporters think it's funny to "LOL triggered yet libs?" doesn't make it appropriate, doesn't make it right, and doesn't make it just.
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Think we agree on all the important points then. At least so far. For the record I'm no fan or defender of Trump. But whatever we think of his obvious character flaws, he's really nothing without supporters. What I have been trying to do is understand the people who do support him and articulate the best possible interpretation of events that I can make for how someone can support him. That's not to pretend he doesn'…
> I don't think it pays to continually be outraged at Trumps never ending provocations. I don't think that everything Trump does deserves the ire it inspires, but I think there's a cost to just accepting outrageous things without being outraged. What's happening is not normal, and I don't want it to become normal. If people stop getting outraged for valid reasons, and I believe that this is a valid reason to be upset…