@James hey, just wanted to clarify; any time I call out the regressive left, I'm not lumping all Democrats together.

I don't remember if you remember that Hidden Tribes study, but the regressive left is a tiny little sliver of the Democrats, makes up something like 7% iirc, but they are very loud, mostly well educated, well off, and tend to pool in cities, so they tend to have a lot of influence in political and media areas, which is why I believe that the news is so out of touch.

@AndyD273 yeah, noisy minorities tend to appear overrepresented in general, so that's not terribly surprising as a result

So no, I'm not lumping everyone together, I promise.

it's the same with how some folks on the left think that everyone who has a firearm to their name is a crazy lunatic who could snap at any moment.

just because they see a few loonies with guns

and don't hear about the average gun owner much at all

@Shalvenay sure. James just had me double check my biases earlier, and I'm just reporting back on the results.

I really do like to be as balanced as my own personal convictions allow.

@Shalvenay it's also because they live in cities, where cops are only a few minutes away at most, and people with guns tend to be threats more often than not.

@NexTerren - It's better than asking what an anatomically correct strange woman in a pond distributing swords would look like, after having said it's an anatomically correct strange woman in a pond distributing swords.

@AndyD273 that is definitely a factor -- most of the pro-gun-control folks don't seem to stop and think about what you're supposed to do when 911 tells you the nearest cop car is on the other side of Cherry County from you

Outside of the city, say where I live, cops are 15 minutes away at best. So by the time someone tries kicking down the door it's pretty much to late. And I still live in a fairly safe area.

Most of the pro-gun-control folks don't seem to understand reality. If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.

@AndyD273 exactly. it's one of the things I liked about Sanders -- to some extent, he gets the kind of thing your talking about

@Mazura that is a factor as well, but I'm talking about stuff that can't be simply discarded as a trite talking point

Gun control does not equal the magic ability to remove guns from planet Earth.

If it did, I'd be all for it.

This is one of the biggest reasons that the electoral college is so important.

Sounds like you guys were reading the referendum answer ;)

@Mazura personally, I would think that that would be a great loss to key pieces of military history

Humanity can not have cake and eat it too. Agreed, but worth it.

did any of you watch Project Lightening perchance?

No

Nope. Mocumentary?

ah, worth a watch :) C&Rsenal (Othais and Mae) and Forgotten Weapons (Ian) did a collab where they put several WWI light machineguns through a series of tests, as if they all were in some sort of weapons-trial together

support weapons? WWI didn't have any...

Unless the Maxim is 'light' ;)

@Mazura haha, a Maxim 08/15 was among the guns tested

but yes, there were WWI LMGs

Issued to like 10 people?

@Mazura more like a few thousand

til the BAR is from WWI...

you just don't hear so much of things like the Madsen

and yes, they had a BAR in there as well

but there was also the Hotchkiss Portative and the Chauchat

watching it now ;)

lemme guess. The BAR wins. Or is beat only by a belt-fed

@Mazura not unreasonable, but I will not spoil the results except by saying they were unexpected ;)

30-06 wins. full stop ;)

@Mazura one of the guns shooting 30-06 did better than expected ;)

Not than I would've. The cartage out ranges my ability to hit by about 3000 yards.

... nobody's really going full auto. I'ma have to watch some Big Sandy after this

The rise on the BAR looks rough

@Mazura yeah, BAR tends to do that

Chauchat 1915? they using 30-06 in that? looks like the appropriate awful recoil

@Mazura they have both 8mm and 30-06 Chauchats in the test :)

"like a freight train" lol

no one hit sht with that thing

and the 18 was even worse. one hit. my shoulder hurts watching

everyone's grouping with the Maxim was down and right but they were exceptional. now i understand why that's the gun history talks about.

@Mazura yeah, it's a good thing smokeless powder came on the scene to save it, huh? ;)

Oh, i was actually looking at the Lewis silhouettes. the other gun 'they' talk about

That was pretty cool. My education system seems to skip WWI. I probably know more about it from reading All Quiet.

@AndyD273 Its probably good for both of us to talk to each other lol. :D

Should How can spies and whistleblowers protect themselves from a government that wants to silence them? be asked in PoliticsSE instead of here?

@Fermiparadox I don't really see the worldbuilding part. Are you looking for real world answers? If so, Politics might be better, but I don't know about their scope. Do they allow something like that? Maybe you could ask in their chat if they would allow it and look around their site to see if they already have something similar somewhere.

happy current planet position relative to its star to anyone

You can flag stuff - there's nowhere near enough closing posts that shouldn't really be here going on on WB

@Mithrandir24601 I wonder how many more migrations this question will get :P

Exactly. Remember, putting a question [on hold] is not a bad thing

ok then, off i go to politics and ask if its on topic there

Yeah

@Fermiparadox Also, if it should be closed here, it should be closed here regardless of whether it's on topic somewhere else. If it should be migrated, you generally only want to request such a thing (unless you're the OP) if it's closed here

Some question can be on-topic on many sites, so didn't know what to do. Neither did other people I asked. Seems to be borderline. Anyway.. i'll wait their response and flag for migration if needed

@Fermiparadox When its on topic for more sites, I approach it as if OP wanted to be posted here. So when answering, I keep in mind worldbuilding part of the question

@Fermiparadox To me this almost sounds like a informational security type question; staying anonymous, encryption, etc.

@AndyD273 Those were the first to migrate the question away.

Maybe it just needs to be rewritten to fit? Get rid of story elements or something? Something like "How do I protect myself as a whistleblower?"

or, "My friend wants to be a whistleblower, how should they protect themselves?"

Eh, scope stuff is weird

@AndyD273 There is no story element as far as I can see.

@Secespitus But it does have that stuff at the top: "When it comes to an angry government the ending can be..."

Followed by a list of things that happened in the real world. That's no story, that's like saying "There are new laws in Europe: 1., 2., 3." just with a more "I don't trust the government" tone.

If you get rid of that people will downvote it into oblivion for lack of research. And it will get closed as "unclear".

Just seems weird that security thought it would be a better fit here. Granted, I'm not saying that it doesn't fit here, and so far no one has objected, it's just weird.

LOL.

The original one mentions that the OP wasn't sure about on-topicness and then a mod from Security migrated it here.

So just had a random thought about principals of particle physics in society; Antifa and Neo Nazies. It's a bit like a particle and it's anti-particle. Both are highly racist. Both are totalitarian ideologies. Both believe that violence is the best way to get results. Both are highly corrosive to society as a whole. And like a particle and it's anti-particle, when you bring them together they annihilate each other in a violent burst of energy.

@AndyD273 Isn't that last bit a good thing?

@Hosch250 I don't know. want to combine some matter and anti-matter together in your basement?

Not really, but I don't mind combining antifa and neo-nazies in my basement.

Give them each a saber and toss them in. Padlock the cement trapdoor behind them.

Only if you can keep them from spilling out into the rest of the house, and there are no sources of fire...

It's like a cement dungeon.

(No, this isn't my real basement--actually, the house I'm in doesn't have one.)

@Hosch250 Really? Who else do you keep down there?

Ah, nice cover

@AndyD273 Just antifa and neo nazis. And random burglars I find in my house.

TBH, if they stop to think, they might actually deliberately try to lose that saber fight.

Because the alternative is, IMO, worse.

Well, unfortunately they don't happen to meet in sealed chambers very often. It's less good when they meet in the streets in the middle of a crowded city (for one example).

That's why I'm working on my teleporter.

I'll just teleport them all into my basement.

You never know when an oubliette could come in handy

@AndyD273 LOL, nice new word for me.

Although.... I wonder what the case was where a language needed that word...

It doesn't sound like a very nice time to live in (when they invented that word).

The Medieval period was full of lots of fun things

It's a French word. They also invented the guillotine, because using an axe wasn't efficient enough.

Note to self, when time traveling, stay out of medieval France.

TBF, the guillotine was a good invention.

When using an axe, it often took several blows.

And there's no math involved to get the rope length right.

With hanging, too short and you just suffocate and too long your head pops off anyway. And the right length depends on body weight.

Actually, staying out of modern France (at least on the weekends) seems like a good idea too...

Oubliette facts: medievalchronicles.com/medieval-castles/medieval-castle-parts/…

@AndyD273 Just stay out of France in general, no matter what the time period is. It's never really a great place to be.

@Gryphon Never been, but eldest daughter has a big Paris thing going on at the moment.

Senate Troll Level: EPIC

I'm at 1:54. Wat is this, @AndyD273.

that's brilliant!

@Secespitus Wasn't me, but in looking at the chat I see why someone looked at the possible actions and went "Fictional" :-)

It's off topic on Security so I definitely agree with it being closed there - think it was referred here because OP wanted to try it here.

The poor girl is trying to keep her face straight.

Yeah, she needs an award

@NexTerren I guess it falls under "Mock the foolish, it's the only way they'll learn." or something like that.

...So I guess I'm out of the loop of the proposed Green New Deal. Are these things actually included in it?

Yeah. It's pretty short, about 5 pages, so it only takes <10 minutes to read the whole thing.

Maybe I'll go read it.

I think everyone should read it, since if you watch the reporting on it almost no one talks about the content, just the reactions people are having to it.

It starts out semi promising, if slanted toward "we're killing the planet, and the US is the biggest culprit", which is very debatable, but whatever. Goes on to "we need to invest in new technology" which I agree with. Then proceeds to "and we need to give everyone free college and health care, stop all air travel and replace it with trains, renovate every building in the US, replace the entire power grid, etc, and we have 10 years to do it" which goes right off the rails into cuckoo crazy town.

I'm probably missing some details, but that's why I think people should just read it for themselves, instead of taking my word (and bias) for it.

It doesn't really matter all that much, as it is effectively dead. Senate had their vote on it, 50 against, no one voted Yes. Not even the people who wrote it. Mostly because then they would have to go on record as supporting it, and the biggest labor union has come out publicly condemning it, meaning a yes vote is essentially suicide.

Oh, here's the link: congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolution/109/text

@AndyD273 While a yes vote may be political suicide, I'm not sure if too many people would be willing to actually assassinate someone for voting for a doomed bill.

@Gryphon Fair if pedantic point.

To be pedantic, and more accurate in return, assassination is not suicide. Even if the assassin really knows their stuff.

@AndyD273 Pedantic would be my middle name, if my middle name wasn't something else.

@AndyD273 Intentionally causing your own assassination is technically an elaborate form of suicide, albeit an unreliable and excessively complex one.

@Gryphon Hmm... Assisted suicide I suppose, but only if you pay the assassin yourself. And only if you actual intention is to commit suicide, as opposed to paying an assassin to kill you, only to really intend to kill them, burn the body in your car, and make it look like you died in a fiery car crash while you embezzle a lot of money and run off to some island with your secretary.

@AndyD273 This seems like the plan of someone with a complexity addiction. And wouldn't the sudden disappearance of the secretary be suspicious?

Guys. i.imgur.com/JALLK4S.png

^ This conversation.

@NexTerren When your internet blocks imgur... :(

It's just a screen capture of the last paragraph of the latest XKCD.

@Gryphon She plans on explaining it as needing to get away while grieving for her dead boss.

@NexTerren Oh, thanks.

Also, has no one watched Fletch? I weap for this generation...

@AndyD273 I assume it is not, as the kids say, Fletch?

(Or don't say. I think people stopped saying that 5 years ago?)

@AndyD273 You water evaluate and plan for this generation? Why can't this generation do its own water evaluation and planning?

@NexTerren As a "kid", I've never actually heard of Fletch. So no, nobody actually says that anymore.

Stop trying to make Fetch a thing. "Fletch" is a Chevy Chase movie from the mid '80s (1980s)

@AndyD273 TIL

It's pretty funny, if you like Chevy Chase's humor. I believe he adlibbed most of it.

@AndyD273 Ah, the classic "fake doctor gets pulled into surgery".

@AndyD273 Besides misspelling weep yes this is a very very sad statement.

Christmas Vacation is still an amazing movie.

Not to mention Caddy Shack.

@James I don't weep often, so I do not have much practice spelling it.

Though now I understand the comment @Gryphon made.

Yeah, Chevy has a lot of classics in that time period.

@James Did you know when making it, they didn't tell the owners of the golf course that they were going to blow it up? And the owners only found out after they did the deed?

@NexTerren Bahahaha, no I did not. But that somehow makes it better.

hey there @Mithrandir24601 and @James

@Shalvenay Rytsas! Concert number 1 this week finished... Next rehearsal is tomorrow :P

> renovate every building in the US

Wait, that's called "gentrification"?

Also, every time someone goes "let's ban private transportation!" I go "I'll be waiting with my gun when you come for my bicycle".

I've heard that the US is terrible for public transportation. This is an insanely major issue

It takes me 40-90 minutes to get to work straight across the top edge of the twin cities in my car.

Depending on traffic.

It would take like 8hr using public transportation.

But then, I don't want to sit in a bus with a bunch of annoying people for one hour.

@Hosch250 But how far away is it? There are times when that means 'a few miles down the road' in which case a decent train can make that journey a some small number of minutes, then there's the times when that means '50 miles away', in which case, you need a Japanese train if you want any improvement on things

@Mithrandir24601 33 miles.

@Hosch250 The trains here are quicker and that's... Really not a good start - the trains here are pretty pathetic

There is no train.

It's bus. Per suburb I have to cross.

That's my point

The train cuts through the city the other direction.

TBH, there isn't really a very good way to put trains in.

Remember, vast swathes of Europe were destroyed in WWII.

You guys had chance to rebuild around the train, and many places did.

I'm not at all saying that people should stop using private transport, I'm saying that, from what I've gathered, the US needs to make a ton of new public transport and then the rest will start improving by itself

In the US, you can hardly have two lanes and a sidewalk between the buildings in many places.

@Hosch250 You say that, but I've been in Vancouver with it's Skytrain. I've also been in Nottingham with its tram (they dug up chunks of the city just for this and it was so worth it)

The trains would need hundreds of bridges if we ran them along the highways because of ramps.

TBF, New York has a reasonably good subway system.

@Hosch250 And one US lane is worth about two UK ones

Or rather, it was good until the gangs and hookers took it over.

@Mithrandir24601 Makes it a heck of a lot safer, too.

@Hosch250 I'd have thought so but I believe the US is actually one of the most dangerous places to drive

Someone makes a mistake? They have 2-3 feet of safe-ish zone on either side before they leave the lane.

It's saved me many times, going both ways.

@Mithrandir24601 Partly possibly because we have more traffic. And partly because of higher speeds enabled by safer driving, so accidents that do occur are more fatal.

Not saying better public transportation wouldn't help--it would.

Yeah, US has ~5x the population yet over 20x the fatalities of the UK

I'm just saying, it's hard to do right.

@Hosch250 Doesn't the US even have lower speed limits?

@Mithrandir24601 What's the private to public transportation numbers? You can't just go by populace here.

@Mithrandir24601 Usually 60mph in cities, 55 in 2-lane highways, and 75-80 in the multi-lane highways between cities. Sometimes higher.

@Hosch250 No idea... The vast majority over ~25 have a car

In-city non-highway traffic is usually 30mph.

@Mithrandir24601 shorthaul ranges from "great" (NYC, Chicago) to "meh?" (most cities) to "barely passable"

intermediate/longhaul is a whole another can of worms

we're stuck relying on cars and planes for an awful lot of trips that would probably be carried out by train in UK (or anywhere else in Europe for that matter)

@Hosch250 I'm a bit confused here - is the 60mph in cities a multi-lane highway or whatever it's called? (otherwise, why would a two-lane highway have a lower speed limit?)

@Mithrandir24601 Yes.

That would be a 2-5 lane highway in one direction.

A 2-lane highway is 1 lane per direction.

Those are where a LOT of accidents happen because there aren't barriers.

They are winding, hilly, and nobody for miles and miles.

So people will get up to 70, then suddenly come around the corner and dive off the road or hit someone coming the other way in their lane, etc.

@Hosch250 Ahh, OK - so we have 30 or 40 in towns and cities (with occasional areas at 20), 60 outside of towns/cities and 70 in dual carriageways (which are different to multi-lane highways and may or may not have more than one lane per carriageway)

(dual carriageways include motorways)

What I honestly think would be cool is a train system with a kind of chain.

Then someone could drive a kind of enclosed golf-cart thingie to the chain system, turn the engine off, hook up, and get pulled to the destination.

At the exit, they can just drive away and get to their destination.

@Hosch250 Yeah, that's what makes the difference between a 60 mph and 70 mph limit here

Basically private transportation with the benefits of the single efficient power source.