Spyke

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literally 451°

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Yeah, it's the person I was replying to who was saying that Bradbury made a mistake by saying 451°F, and that it should have been 451°C. I cited the range to demonstrate that Bradbury's number was roughly correct and 451°C is very much not.

world

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Taliban suspends chess in Afghanistan over gambling concerns

My high school did this. They hauled me and my friends in front of one of the deans because we'd been playing chess in the lunch room, and they said that if they let us play chess, they'd have to let the other students play dominos, and when they play dominos, they gamble, and when they gamble, fights break out, and there weren't enough security guards to handle that. So no chess. We pointed out that we were the school chess team, but they were unmoved on the topic.

It was really dumb.

We talked a bit about the possibility of having a couple of our better players play mental chess, that is, no board or pieces to look at, and just yell moves back and forth across the lunch room while the rest of us loudly gambled on the outcome, but we never actually did it.

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rule, do not

A laser pointer is supposed to be limited to a maximum of 5mW, so these are really freaking powerful (200 times stronger). I don't have experience with lasers that strong, because I value my eyesight, and that of my pets. Please learn more about lasers than I know before purchasing something like this.

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I was jist following orders

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Trump is sending 2000 national guard troops to LA in response to anti-ICE protests there, over the explicit objection of Governor Newsom, who would normally be involved in any National Guard deployment in his state. The protests were mostly peaceful, and the local police were handling them, so this is entirely an effort to escalate the situation and show force against a state that doesn't want Trump interfering.

news

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Three men who identified themselves as Homeland Security officers raided a courthouse in downtown Charlottesville Tuesday, detaining two men without explanation

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Yeah, this was the part that really got me:

“Show us a warrant,” the video shows one of the two women demanding as they attempt to get between the detainers and the detainee.

“Do not touch me or impede me in my lawful duties,” the man in the pink shirt responds. “We are officers from Homeland Security.”

That's a real bully-logic move right there. How are we supposed to know that these are your lawful duties if you're refusing to show us your warrant or even your badge? Like, if she had blocked them at this point and the issue were brought to court (and yes, it's ironic that this is happening in a court), then I can't imagine a jury saying "well yeah, you can't prevent a guy from abducting someone just because he won't give you any indication other than a pinky swear that he has the legal authority to do it." But, of course, the obvious implication in the moment was that since he was from the "abduct people in an unmarked van with unlimited authority" branch of the government, this wasn't going to a jury trial, and she was either getting out of the way or she was going in the van too.

I dunno, man. It's scary.

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Republicans ask Donald Trump to revoke Zohran Mamdani's citizenship

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It's not just Fox News. Bezo's Washington Post ran an editorial, written by "the editorial board," about how Mamdani would be "bad for New York and bad for the Democratic Party," claiming he would destroy public transit, reduce the number of grocery stores, drive away big businesses, depress low-skill employment, etc., etc., etc. Oh, and of course that this would discredit all the other young candidates across the country. The WaPo's threat earlier this year to make their editorial page aggressively pro-capitalist and anti-public-good was apparently very much in earnest.

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You can stop asking where the mass opposition is. It's everywhere.

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The White House is more than 40 hours away from here driving non-stop.

The number of people from here who could have participated in a march at the White House (maybe taking a week off work in order to get there and back traveling 16 hours a day by bus) would have been very small. Instead, thousands of us marched in our local downtown yesterday in a solid throng.

Protests at a specific location convey a message, but mass protests everywhere convey a message too.