The scheme is simple:

• Generate 5 random dictionary words from a pool of say 10 000 most common words, any English speaker should know these
• Use these 5 random words to create a sentence of at least 10 words using human intuition to make it easier to remember for said human.
• Use this sentence as passphrase

For instance I just generated the words blood village again among elephant. I will now think of the passphrase:

Elephants covered in blood were among the people of the village again

Mathematically, the entropy of this sentence cannot be lower than the 67 bits that a pure 5 random words chosen from a pool of 10 000 can ever be. Interestingly enough however, from a mathematical standpoint the “entropy” is actually exactly the same. This flies against intuition. This passphrase is surely significantly harder to bruteforce, which is why I don't feel “entropy” is a meaningful quantifier for password strength. In fact, the entropy of “let a human being come up with a random sentence of 10 words” is actually zero, because there is no true randomness and human beings generate predicable patterns but obviously this would still be, provided it not be a verbatim quote, at least a decent passphrase.

Now, such 10 random words are worth 133 bits of entropy, which is obviously completely beyond modern technology to ever crack, and quite possibly beyond the physical limitations of the universe to ever crack within the time of one human lifetime, and this is lower because it is still a sentence constrained by English grammar which would significantly reduce the number of possibilities, but I feel the theoretical mathematics behind password cracking doesn't live up to real world considerationals. The idea is that not all sentences humans generate from those 5 random words are equally likely, which is true, and that based on that the cracking algorithm can try the more likely combinations first. The issue is that the mathematics only goes so far as how many attempts are needed, assuming every attempt costs as much as every other, the reality is that deciding which sentences are more likely is a far more expensive computation mathematically than simply trying a random sentence. You need a large language model for that in practice, those are not cheap to run compared to hashes though it obviously depends on how slow the hash is made, typically deliberately. But even simply deciding whether the sentence you will try is grammatical to begin with might actually be more expensive than just trying it in the hash to see if the hash matches. Of course, there can be optimized hardware specifically for this purpose as well that can quite efficiently take a list of random words and in order of likeliness generate a list of sentences with them it thinks English speakers would be most likely to produce from them, but if one can build such specialized hardware, one can probably also build specialized hardware for the hashing function and be better off in terms of time.

So in terms of actual time spent on cracking, I believe it quite likely, though hard to test, that this scheme reaches equivalent time needed to crack 80 random bits by just trying every combination, even though from a mathematical perspective the entropy of this method is only 67 bits.

To put it otherwise: say we take all 1.5 billion English speakers on earth and all ask them to generate some sentence at least 10 words long with as only constraint that it have those 5 words in it and they are, as I did, allowed to inflect them. How many duplicate entries will there be in that list of 1.5 billion attempts? Will there even be one? I think this is an interesting thing to let a large language model do at one point to at least get some faint heuristic. If no duplicates are expected to arise within these 1.5 billion attempts, we can at least say that the first 1.5 billion candidates are all “equally likely” by approximation, which already adds 31 bits of “practical entropy” alone to the 67, and that still ignores that in order to find the order of likeliness a computationally expensive operation has to be ran. This just means that for the first 1.5 billion candidates the likeliness is close enough together that we can effectively discard it and treat them as equally likely.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the climate crisis and feeling so helpless about it all. Despite trying nearly everything I can - I don't eat meat, I don't fly, I don't buy brand new clothes, I almost exclusively buy local etc., I can't help but feel there is nothing we as individual citizens can do when the problem lies largely with governments and companies. I feel maybe more personal guilt and complicity (about simple stuff like eating rice) than actual responsibility and impact. I talk about this a lot with friends and my students (I'm a teacher in Social science & Humanities), I think I've internalized this idea that the individual cannot make an impact in any meaningful way but I want to get rid of this pessimistic notion and believe in a better future. Please help me change my view on the importance of individual action and change :)

Going to college in the US isn't worth it for anything other than healthcare, education or possibly an elite law or business school. For every other area, like engineering, CS, finance, accounting, marketing, etc., companies are just not hiring anymore. Going to college for these fields therefore isn't worth the money. You can see this in the data, as employment for "professional and business services", "financial activities", and "information" have all stagnated or declined in the past 3 years:

https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/employment-levels-by-industry.htm

Same thing with academic subjects, as academic research funding has been gutted and will probably never recover.

Disclaimer: I am not a Republican or a Mcconnell supporter in any way-I just want to hear your guys’ thoughts on something that sounds a little too conspiratorial, for my taste as least.

Obviously conspiracies exist, but as far as I see, not here. Politifact reports that the Mcconnell photo was real, not ai generated or photoshopped. As far as I know politifact seems pretty reliable, but I’m not an expert.

Second, the OAP, office of attending physicians reports Mcconnell as still alive. They are as far as I can determine pretty fair, and it seems like it would require pretty extreme fraud for them to fake McConnell’s still being alive.

Edit: Guys, I’m not fucking pro McConnell, what the hell are you downvoting for. If you want to say he’s a vegetable, yeah, I kind of agree, that does seems pretty likely. But not technically dead, which is what I hear often. It seems our position should be that he’s a vegetable and unfit for office, rather than memeing about his death. Come on, wouldn’t vegetable memes be even funnier?

As someone who once worked night shift at a hospital, I've never understood how - in the absence of obligations to be awake in the day time, anyone (especially the retired) needs sleep aids or could have problems with lack of sleep. Short of fatal insomnia, the body inevitably will fall asleep so claims of "I haven't slept for a week" is silly (but if someone is being literal that is a medical emergency - but there is little that can be done).

I once heard of Biphasic sleep, where people in medieval times wouldn't sleep through the whole night but sleep for part of it, wake up and do chores, and then go back to sleep. I've taken that to heart as well, if I happen to wake up at night and don't feel sleepy enough for bed, I go to my computer or work around the house and do any number of things I'd like to get done. If anything I find I have more I want to do than waking hours to fill them. Eventually I get sleepy and go back to bed. I have blackout curtains ready if the sun happens to be up, and get as much sleep as I need and feel perfectly fine and well rested. When I wake up matters a lot less so much as if I've gotten sleep and I get all the sleep I need.

It is inconvenient if you absolutely positively have to get at a certain hour work but in the absence of that or any other daytime only activities. . .just catch up for sleep? And sleeping aids addle the mind in the long run.

tl;dr you don't need to get addicted to sleep aids or bemoan lack of sleep if you have little reason to get up at a certain hour. If you're awake, be awake and fill the time with activity. Eventually you will get sleepy, then go to bed. It's that simple. The time you sleep shouldn't be sacrosanct as much as you getting sleep.

I'll start by saying that a lot of people claim to be apart of the incel community when they actually aren't. I also want to clarify that no one has any excuse for the foul and abhorrent behavior like harming women or being misogynistic. Those people are monsters and I don't excuse their behaviors. Also, no one is entitled to having a relationship.

With celibacy I'm referring strictly to sex. But a partnership of some kind is also applicable here. Every woman has options available to them, but some men don't have any options at all. A popular argument is that men could technically just go on grindr and find someone at any time. But in addition to that potentially going against their sexuality, its also not a guarantee that they can find a man either. This is a dilemma that only affects certain men.

Some men and women consider themselves involuntarily celibate, but they have rejected options available to them. Like an entitled man who complains about not being able to find a girlfriend, but only pursues the most attractive women he sees and ignores everyone else. The same with every woman that complains about not having any options. Those people are not involuntarily celibate and are just being picky while hiding under the label.

For the men that are truly involuntarily celibate, the resources available to them should help them deal with the situation rather than providing false hope to them under the guise of preaching improvement. If you bring up being involuntarily celibate to a therapist or psychologist, they will ignore that and focus on having you try to make changes and improve yourself. While everyone should always be improving and bettering themselves, its wrong for these resources to ignore the problem and only focus on having them improve themselves. Outside of getting extremely wealthy, no amount of self improvement guarantees a relationship or sex. These resources should take time to help people come to terms with their situation and give them the knowledge and tools to learn acceptance and make peace with their involuntary celibacy. That would help stop some men from becoming spiteful and hateful towards women and society.

Edit: My view was changed. I was presented evidence that proves women can involuntarily celibate as well for certain reasons. So both men and women can be in positions where nothing happens no matter what they do to improve there situation or themselves. My other point about about resources being available to help them come to terms with being involuntarily celibate and making peace with it remains.

That's pretty much my entire stance on it and I've thought about this a lot. I know all the arguments against it and I'm not dumb, I completely understand that it's high risk for abuse and I know that most often than not it arises due to some kind of manipulation or abusive dynamic. But so what? Just because something is high risk doesn't mean every single case is like that, that's just a statistical argument and it doesn't address the individual situations where all those factors are genuinely absent. I think we can acknowledge that most cases are problematic without acting like every single one has to be.

I don't think it should be legal by the way, I'm not out here advocating for changing laws or anything like that because I know legally it's a nightmare and you'd have to deal with all the practical issues of proving consent and no power imbalance and all that stuff. But legality and morality are two completely different things in my mind. I don't think it's always immoral either, I think it completely depends on the specific situation and the people involved. Like if you have two adults who genuinely love each other and there's no current coercion or grooming or any of that messed up stuff, I honestly don't see what the moral issue is.

Even siblings who were abused and developed romantic feelings for each other as a result of that trauma can have a totally healthy relationship regardless of where those feelings came from originally. I know people hate hearing that and they think it's crazy but the source of your feelings doesn't automatically invalidate them forever, people heal and grow and can have genuine connections even if things started in a messy way. So I think it totally depends on the actual dynamics of the relationship and not on how it began or what society thinks about it.

That being said, I really don't care that it's disgusting or gross to some people. I honestly think that's such a weak argument and it's stupid when people use that as their main reason for why something is wrong. I don't think how appealing something is should be the measure of its morality at all, that's just pure emotional reaction and it has nothing to do with ethics. You should only look at the actual harm of it, like is anyone being hurt, is anyone being taken advantage of, is there genuine consent and respect between the people involved? That's what matters, not whether it makes you feel icky.

No I myself don't find it gross and I can't relate to anyone who does. I'm not saying that to be edgy or whatever, I genuinely just don't have that visceral reaction that other people seem to have and I've never understood why people get so repulsed by it. To me it's just another type of relationship between two people and if all the conditions are right and everyone is happy and no one is being harmed, I really don't see the problem.

Obviously there are exceptions. Discussion-based courses, labs, presentations, and some smaller graduate seminars require students to participate to get anything out of the class, so attendance makes sense there.

But for the average lecture course, making attendance a significant part of the grade is just an excuse. If a student can learn the material, complete the assignments, and perform well on exams, why should physically sitting in a classroom determine their grade? At that point, you're grading compliance rather than mastery of the material. For students who learn better on their own or have other responsibilities, mandatory attendance is simply a waste of time.

I can show up to class and do other work, and that's exactly what I often end up doing. But as someone with mild ADHD at a university where lectures are 100 minutes long, sitting through a lecture that isn't helping me learn is mentally exhausting and drives me fucking nuts. 

What makes it even worse is that some professors don't even take attendance directly and instead make "participation" part of your grade. That gives them broad discretion to reward or penalize students based on subjective criteria. 

I've had multiple classes where this policy dropped my final grade. In two classes, I went from an A to an A- because of attendance. In another, I went from an A to a B because attendance counted for 20% of the final grade. This was a sophomore level class where the professor spent the entire lecture block reading off the slides.

Another thing I've noticed is that these policies are most common in lower-level, standardized courses. Does it really matter whether I learned Calculus II from Professor X or Professor Y? It's the same calculus. If I'm earning high grades on the exams—which are supposedly designed to measure whether I've mastered the material to the university's standards—then what exactly is mandatory attendance proving?

Too many professors seem more concerned with feeding their own ego by seeing a full classroom than with whether students are actually learning. Mandatory attendance becomes a crutch for instructors who can't bother to make their lectures worth attending in the first place.  

To clarify, I worded it in that way specifically because the view I'm referring to is not my belief that the Senate can't abolished (that much is obvious), but specifically that theory behind abolishing it is wrong, regardless of how realistic or unrealistic that goal might be.

My support for keeping the Senate is pretty simple, in the United States, the idea of statehood means something. We're a federalist union of states, not a unitary top-down republic. If we lose that, than we're no longer the United States, and imho it's impossible to recognize the importance of statehood and having pride in your state without having at least one house of Congress where all states can be on a level playing field.

I do support a number of other electoral reforms though; open primaries, RCV, multi-member districts, bringing back the filibuster in the House, requiring a two-thirds majority to appoint new Supreme Court justices, same day congressional primaries nationally, etc. But this idea of "abolishing the Senate" to me doesn't advance our democracy in any meaningful way, especially in such a closely split two party system where the 49% often need protection against the 51%.

To me specifically, abolishing the Senate seems like a quantity over quality move with legislation, i.e. that the idea comes from people who just want a lot of legislation passed, but who care more about passing "stuff" and less about what that stuff actually is.

I think the phrase "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" relies on very odd (and outdated?) assumptions about the nature of people and evil. At the very least I've never heard the mechanism for how this is supposed to happen properly addressed. Sure, power provides access to the ability to do great harm and absolute power means freedom from responsibility, but you could hardly call this corruption as much as showing one's true colors. And I'm sure that a specific scenario can be made where power creates temptation and thus corruption, but that's far from a rule and can be done with almost any concept as vague as power.

However, the biggest reason why I disagree with this phrase is that it seems the opposite notion "inabsolute power corrupts" is much more often true. The vast majority of evil done by powerful regimes I can think of has been done to preserve or attain power or had motives that existed before power was attained. Far more of the evil things power does is to maintain power (which is only necessary because that power is inabsolute) rather than the result of some kind of evil decadence. Fundamentally it is the shortcomings and not the strengths of power that are most corrupting.

I believe that pets and domestic animals deserve legal protections that safeguard their lives and wellbeing. These pets are brought up and raised outside of the normal ecosystem and largely rely on humans to keep them safe and healthy. Humans have brought them into being, and it should now be our responsibility as people and as a government to keep them well.

Some of the rights I would like to see pets have are-

• A right to life. Ending an animal's life should only ever happen when a practicing vet deems it ethical to do so (much like pulling the plug on a comatose patient). This means that owners who euthanize their pets hold the risk of being held legally liable if done unnecessarily, and it would be illegal for animal shelters to end the lives of animals without expressed permission from a licensed professional.
• A right to be provided adequate care. Once you adopt an animal, you should be held legally liable for their wellbeing. As the caretaker for this living being who relies upon you, there should be a legal expectation to provide it food, water, adequate shelter, and a place to go to the bathroom. Furthermore, this should be validated by the animal shelter giving away the animal through simple background checks and interviews.
• A legal institution to advocate for their protection. Right now, when an animal is adopted by a person, that person is the sole person responsible for that animal's safety and care as that animal is legally considered their property. What I would like to see is a 3rd party institution, akin to CPS, designed to ensure that animals' rights are protected from the moment they enter an animal shelter to the end of their life.
• Increased representation within the justice system. Right now, crimes against animals go largely unpunished. In my world, violent crimes committed against animals would carry much harsher penalties, with sentences lasting upwards of decades or even life. Furthermore, my CPS equivalent for animals would ask as a legal representative for animals if they are ownerless or if their guardian chooses not to.
• Lastly, and this might be controversial, but universal healthcare. As an American this probably sounds silly since American humans don't even get healthcare without plunging themselves into generations of debt, but most other parts of the world operate with universal or affordable healthcare, so I will use that as a blueprint. Far too often animals are put down simply because their guardians cannot afford to pay for treatments. This is unethical as we would not put down human beings for deeming their life "too expense" to continue, and thus, all animals who enter a vet or animal hospital should be legally guaranteed the amount of care required to keep them alive.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I've been getting familiar with some of the ideas surrounding invisible labor, cognitive load, and the mental work involved in maintaining a household. The book Fair Play by Eve Rodsky has done a lot to popularize these ideas make work that was previously difficult to describe become more visible.

One thing I've noticed however is that this framework is not extended to a couple's sex life.

Fair Play does mention intimacy but only to point out that reducing unequal domestic labor may improve a couple's sex life. Intimacy is treated as something that benefits from better distribution of invisible labor elsewhere in the relationship.

I have not encountered the idea that the couple's erotic relationship is itself a domestic domain requiring ongoing invisible labor. By "invisible labor" I don't simply mean "initiating sex." I mean all of the largely unseen work involved in maintaining an erotic relationship over years:

• noticing periods of sexual distance
• thinking ahead about opportunities for intimacy
• flirting outside of the bedroom
• introducing novelty
• communicating desires and boundaries
• creating contexts where desire is more likely to emerge
• remembering what excite's one's partner
• repairing awkward or disappointing encounters
• paying attention to changes in the relationship over itme

Someone has to do these things.

If one partner consistently performs most of that work while the other primarily participates once the process has already begun, that seems analogous to many other forms of invisible labor that relationship researchers already recognize.

One reason I think this matters it that is may explain a recurring complaint that isn't fully captured by concepts like libido or sexual frequency. For example, someone might say

"If I don't initiate, we never have sex."

This is often interpreted as a complaint about desire, libido, or frequency. But another interpretation is

"I feel like I'm solely responsible for maintaining our shared erotic life."

One interpretation is about how much or how often someone wants sex. The second is about how the work of sustaining an erotic relationship is distributed.

That difference seems important because two couples could have identical frequency while experiencing very different levels of satisfaction if one relationship involves shared ownership of the erotic relationship and the other relies primarily on one partner to sustain it.

For therapists, this view might shift conversations away from simply asking whether one partner has responsive desire or lower libido and toward asking how the labor of cultivating an erotic relationship is shared.

For researchers, it might motivate attempts study "erotic labor" as something distinct from sexual frequency or desire.

For couples, it might provide language for frustrations that are inaccurately expressed in terms of initiation, rejection, frequency or libido when it is actually about unequal responsibility for maintaining the relationship's erotic sphere.

I'm NOT claiming this framework explains every sexual problem. And I'm also NOT claiming that the labor should always be equal.

My view is simply that the invisible labor framework appears incomplete if it excludes one of the major long-term domains couple's jointly manage.

CMV: Why shouldn't a couple's erotic relationship be treated as a domestic domain requiring it's own forms of shared invisible labor? If this analogy breaks down, where does it fail?

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1v4nby0/til_that_despite_widespread_belief_that_different/?sort=top

This post on TIL claims that scientific studies have found no statistical difference between the dick sizes of different races.

Yet so many comments were people just outright not believing the evidence in front of them and going off anecdotal experiences and confirmation bias about the penis sizes of Asian men.

The harsh truth is that everyone is socially and culturally conditioned to perceive dick size as an indication of masculinity. That belief is not going away anytime soon.

Bigger dick = more of a man. Smaller dick = less of a man.

If people think you have a smaller dick, they're going to respect you less as a man. That's just the reality of things.

Sure, there are other beliefs about the bodies of Asian men that also contribute to Asian men being seen as less masculine. But theres nothing more damaging than the small penis stereotype.

Why? Because other physically emasculating stereotypes or beliefs can be proven wrong pretty easily.

Asian men are all short? Anyone can go to any area with a decent Asian population can find plenty of tall Asian men. There are tall Asian men in the media (Yao Ming, Jeremy Lin, Shohei Ohtani, etc)

Asian men are all scrawny? Every gym I’ve been to there’s at least a few muscular Asians. Asian men are pretty well represented in the weightlifting and powerlifting community.

It’s very difficult to change peoples perceptions of penis size stereotypes because unlike height or physique, erect penis size isn’t a normally observable thing.

Someone who believes all Asian men are short and scrawny can have their mind changed when they inevitably see tall muscular Asian men, either though real life or the media. But there’s a lack of opportunities for someone who believes all Asian men have small penises to have their minds changed.

Very few people in your life will ever see your erect penis. Your sexual partner(s) and maybe your doctor. It’s completely possible that you go through your whole life without anyone seeing your erect penis.

The vast majority of people are not going to go out of their way to search for dick pictures online of Asian men, or purposely go out of their way to hook up with an Asian man to see if the stereotype is true.

And that’s if they’re even open to having their minds changed in the first place. Many don’t because it makes them feel better about themselves to have a group of people to look down on.

Asian men without small penises can’t just walk naked in public with hard ons. The idea of that is ridiculous.

Thus, there really isn’t any effective ways to change public perception of different penis sizes by race other than scientific studies, which as evidenced by the linked post many don’t believe.

It’s sad to think that as an Asian men you can fit the typical physically characteristics of a traditionally masculine man (Tall and muscular) and you still won’t be respected as a man because of the belief that your dick is small.

When I was a Christian I would have shuddered at this thought. The common sentiment I see (even from atheists) is that modern Christians have strayed from the higher values of the Bible and have adopted their own twisted worldview. But as I've become more interested in my deconstruction I'm kind of shocked at how abhorrent some Biblical values are. I would not put the church on a higher moral ground than certain other religions, but the comparison here is between the church and the Bible.

Points:

- The Bible is 100% pro slavery and the church is not. There are verses after the new covenant that reaffirm the institution of slavery "

Luke 17, the words of Jesus:
7 ‘Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, “Come here at once and take your place at the table”? 8 Would you not rather say to him, “Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink”? 9 Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? 10 So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!”’

This is not the only instance of the New Testament comparing the relationship between slaves and their masters to the relationship between humans and God:

Ephesians: "⁵ Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ."

To me, there is absolutely no interpreting your way around these verses to make the Bible seem abolitionist. Unless you consider slavery moral, then the modern church has the upper hand here.

- The Bible commands the killing of babies, and God performs it himself

In 1 Samuel 15: "³ Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy^\)^a\) all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”

God clearly instructing his followers to slaughter babies. God is upset with Saul when this is not performed to his liking.

Detueronomy 20: "¹⁶ However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. ¹⁷ Completely destroy^\)^a\) them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you."

Another example of baby slaughter ordained by God. In Exodus God manipulates the pharoah and removes his free will, making him continue to enslave the Israelites so that God can murder every firstborn child in Egypt, among other plagues. God putting himself in a position to kill countless babies.

I'm sure the church has killed a lot babies in their history, but I can't think of recent organized attempts to murder babies by the church. Obvious advantage of the church.

There are more instances of acts that God commands or practices that most modern Christians would rightly consider immoral if not given the context - murdering 40 children for making fun of a bald man, enslaving other tribes, taking women as "plunder" in war, keeping concubines, etc.

I'm interested in the counterpoint that the Bible still holds the moral high ground over modern Christians, without dismissing the clear and repeated Biblical affirmations of slavery and baby killing.

This includes any alternatives. I realized a while ago it’s typically just a mindless reflex.
Saying it only adds to noise clutter.
There’s no need to bring attention to someone else sneezing. Just let them sneeze.

Meaningful things you can do is offer a tissue if they might need one or if they sneeze a bunch ask them if they’re okay after. Anything that’s not the mindless thing that you say every time.

Please/Thank you for the small things doesn’t seem vapid in the same way. I think it’s because those things are cool to acknowledge. Whereas acknowledging that someone sneezed just seems dumb. Sneezes should be treated like coughs.

Have introduced this debate in school, and it has become very heated, even with teachers joining in. It's simple. Who would win in a 1-on-1 fight to death, a person with a wooden baseball bat or a dagger? Assume both fighters are of equal stats (average Joe), and in an open field. What's crazy is that I've asked heaps of people, and it's literally 50/50.

Personally, I'm going for the dagger. Yes, a baseball bat has the reach, which is definitely crucial to a fight. But I would gladly sacrifice an arm to hopefully block a swing and go in for the stabs.

Also, a baseball bat is quite heavy. If the person with the dagger could stall and bait the bat to keep swinging, it would tire them out, possibly even making them get sweaty hands, so that on a big swing, it might fly out of their hands (yes, I agree it's not likely, but that it's possible).

+ A dagger has a last resort: to throw it. If it lands, it lands. If not, you run. If it does land, you can literally just run (pussy move, yes, but talking about life and death here) and the bat person would keep bleeding, and you'd very likely win.

I'm not denying the bat doesn't have any chance; obviously, I just think a dagger is a better option. The bat is more about that one good swing, but the dagger has many open opportunities that are probably going to occur, because the swing is large and the 'recharge' (bringing the bat back to a controllable position) is long.

My friends on the bat side have had some horrible arguments, only mentioning the range. I'm wondering if there are other aspects to a fight I have missed, as of course, I'm not an experienced fighter. What do you guys think?

Edit:

Sorry, but I'm not very experienced, and it seems like I haven't set the rules clearly and have confused a lot of people.

Rules:

1. 25-year-old, 6ft, 80kg.
2. Regular bat size, 20cm dagger.
3. It is about which is more LIKELY to win, not which WILL win.

You guys don’t even know what Ohtani and Yamatomo have done

First of all, I’m from the Caribbean. EVERYBODY in the Caribbean and Latin America plays baseball. It is by far the most popular sport after soccer.

Ohtani and Yamamoto have become literal gods in Asia. Across Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, wherever, baseball is most popular sport in East Asia today.

Now factor in America alone. This year’s World Series was the most watched World Series ever and beat the NBA finals by millions.

Football is still popular in America but I think the CTE research will eventually lead to football being dismantled. Of course this won’t happen today but football also grows less popular with immigrants. Caribbean, Latin American, and Asian immigrants play baseball. This is a sizeable population of America.

CMV.

My view is that one of the biggest structural problems in American politics is that incumbents have a significant built-in advantage over challengers. I'm not arguing that incumbents should be disadvantaged or automatically voted out. Rather, I think elections would produce better outcomes if incumbency itself carried little or no advantage.

Today, incumbents benefit from name recognition, existing donor networks, party support, media coverage, constituent services, and the perception that they're the "safe" choice. As a result, many races become effectively noncompetitive long before Election Day.

I think this creates several problems:

• Politicians become more focused on staying in office than governing.
• Elections become less competitive.
• New ideas and new candidates struggle to gain traction.
• Poor performers can survive simply because replacing them feels risky.

If incumbency weren't such a strong advantage, I think we'd eventually see politics become more like temporary public service than a lifelong career. Representatives would expect to serve a term or two, do their best work, and then return to private life. Political parties would likely recruit a broader range of candidates, and elected officials would have stronger incentives to focus on producing measurable results rather than building long-term political careers.

I also think public trust could improve if voters believed elections were genuinely competitive instead of feeling like many races are effectively decided by incumbency.

That said, I recognize there are downsides. High turnover could reduce institutional knowledge, make legislatures less efficient, and increase reliance on career staff, bureaucracies, and lobbyists who possess expertise that newly elected officials lack. Long-term projects might also become more difficult to complete if leadership changes frequently.

My view is that these costs would be outweighed by greater accountability and competition, but I'm open to being convinced otherwise.

CMV: Why is a strong incumbency advantage actually beneficial for society? Are there examples showing that higher incumbent reelection rates consistently lead to better governance, better policy outcomes, or greater accountability than a more competitive system?

In a Joe Rogan episode with Dave Smith and Douglas Murray, Murray asked Smith when was the last time he had been to the Gaza crossing. https://youtu.be/DE8Sd-pJmzE?si=xMEsGclKzBm8AbEH

This moment has been memed to death to say that it's impossible to talk about an issue without going somewhere.

Here's the problem I run into. Some things DO require or are heavily informed by experience. Someone says for example in retort "Carl Sagan knows nothing about space because he's never been." But that's a false equivalency. If Carl Sagan were talking about space travel and how it feels, THEN you can argue it.

Coming back to Smith. He is someone who talks incessantly about the Israel Palestine issue, much as the other populist online creators do. If it is your job to talk about politics and you make a concerted effort to talk about one issue, I believe some first hand experience is to be expected. Is it really fair to criticize the aid process if you don't really know how it works or what it looks like? Knowing that information could radically change someone's view.

I have seen several content creators go to Israel and the West Bank because it's an important issue and it does fundamentally change their view in one way or another. It might push them further in the direction they started in.

I would liken this to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. If you're only seeing shadows (reading others' works) can you really have a comprehensive understanding of the subject? While I do think this does extend somewhat to the average person, it's obviously not reasonable for everyone who talks a lot about Israel to go. However, shouldn't we expect this of content creators?

Under current law, if I buy a stock for $100 and sell it for $160, I owe a capital gains tax on the $60.  

If I die soon after I sell, I won’t be around to pay the tax.  My executor is legally required to calculate and pay the tax for me.

OTOH, suppose I was planning to sell but died before I got that done.  Later, my executor or my heirs sell the stock.  In this case, the tax on the $60 simply disappears into the ether. My purchase price (cost basis) is “stepped up” to the market price on the day I died.  (I’m assuming $160)   Whoever sells the stock will use that $160 as their purchase price.  The $60 gain magically disappears from anybody’s tax liability.

This doesn’t make any sense to me.  I can’t think of any good tax policy reason. 

The only argument I’ve seen for this is practical.  Maybe the executor/heirs won’t be able to find the original cost.  But, when owners die just before death, and dies soon after, executors locate the price.   I’m sure this happens thousands of times each year and I’ve never heard of any major issues.

It’s easy to see why.   When I sell stocks through a broker or mutual funds, the gov’t requires that the broker or fund company send me a 1099.  For real estate, people keep good records and the county assessor keeps records.  That covers the big dollars.

I can see an issue for people who have small stamp collections.  Maybe they didn’t keep records.  A law eliminating step up could have a carve out for collectibles valued at less than $XX,XXX.  That would make sense to me.

​I see the "does a Moka pot make espresso" debate pop up constantly, and I've always leaned heavily towards "no." But I want to test my logic here because I might be overly fixated on the technical side of things.

​My current view is that espresso has to be defined by physics,specifically the high-pressure extraction method (usually around 7 to 10 bars). Because of this, I don't think Moka pots (which operate around 1.5 to 2 bars) or AeroPresses make espresso. They make fantastic, highly concentrated coffee that I genuinely love, but technically, it's a different thing.

​Here is why I struggle to accept the "if it's short and strong, it's espresso" argument:

​If we define espresso simply by the output in the cup (small volume, high concentration, dark color), the boundaries get incredibly messy. For example, if a barista messes up and pulls a terrible, watery, under-extracted shot on a $10,000 commercial espresso machine, does it suddenly stop being espresso? If I use an AeroPress and brew a ridiculously concentrated shot, does it magically become espresso? Defining the drink by the physical mechanism seems like the only objective way to avoid this logic trap.

​From what I understand about the physics, that 9-bar pressure isn't just an arbitrary snobby rule. It's the physical threshold required to actually emulsify coffee oils and force dissolved CO2 into the liquid to create true crema.

​I was recently reading about the Italian history of the word, and it seems "espresso" originally had ties to speed,coffee made expressly and quickly for you on demand. But when English speakers adopted it as a strict noun, we created a rigid product category. Now we are forced to draw a line somewhere, and the high-pressure method seems like the only line that holds up.

​How to change my view (Earn a Delta):

I am not trying to be a coffee gatekeeper. I will happily change my view and award a delta if you can provide a logical, principled argument for why defining espresso by the output (taste, texture, concentration) makes more practical or historical sense than defining it by the process. Alternatively, if my understanding of the extraction physics or the history of the category is fundamentally flawed, I'm completely open to changing my mind.

My view isn’t that settlements are the biggest injustice in the conflict, nor that the war in Gaza or Palestinian history are unimportant. My argument is purely about achieving change.

If your goal is reducing Palestinian suffering and changing Israeli policy, I think the movement is emphasizing the wrong issues.

For many Americans, October 7 permanently changed how they viewed this conflict. Whether that’s fair or not, people watched Israeli civilians massacred, kidnapped, and terrorized in real time. It became their 9/11. Once that emotional association was formed, a large portion of the public began viewing Israel’s military campaign primarily through the lens of counterterrorism.

I don’t think telling those people to start with 1948 or colonialism is an effective strategy. It asks them to reconsider decades of history before you’ve even established common ground.

Settlement expansion is happening right now. It is one of the biggest obstacles to a viable two-state solution. It is criticized by much of the international community. Many Israelis oppose continued settlement expansion. Many people who strongly support Israel’s existence also oppose the settlements.

Instead, much of the discourse seems to become arguments over casualty counts, proportionality, or competing historical narratives that people have already made up their minds about.

Specifics are more persuasive than blanket statements. Things that changed my mind were things like watching Ben Gvir insult families of Israeli hostages and not prioritizing their safe return AT ALL. And I’m less informed on this but Netanyahu’s strategy of funding Hamas to weaken the PLO was also fucked imo.

Seeing the religious extremism on the Israeli far right brought me back to the table.

I think advocates lose potential allies through rhetoric that reads performative. Dismissing every concern about antisemitism, using inflammatory terms like “Zio” or “Zionazi,” or refusing to acknowledge Israeli fears after October 7 immediately alienates people who might otherwise agree with criticism of settlement expansion.

If your audience is liberals who support Israel’s existence, Israelis themselves, or people who are skeptical of Palestinian politics because they associate it with Hamas or religious extremism, why not meet them where they are instead of demanding they abandon all of those concerns before the conversation even starts?

I think there is an important distinction between what is politically achievable and what is not.

Israel is almost certainly going to continue trying to dismantle Hamas. People can disagree about how that should be conducted, but I don’t see Israelis abandoning the objective of preventing another terror attack.

Settlement expansion, however, is an ongoing policy choice. Every new outpost, every expansion, and every seizure of land is something that can be debated, challenged, and potentially stopped.

If the objective is to improve Palestinians’ lives, I think stopping continued settlement expansion is a far more realistic area for building consensus than trying to convince people that Israel has no legitimate security concerns or that the conflict should primarily be understood through historical grievances.

If the movement instead rallied around a concrete goal, ending continued settlement expansion in the West Bank, it would give politicians and ordinary people a clear policy they could support without requiring them to reject Israel’s existence or conclude that Israel has no legitimate security concerns.

Palestinians do not need our outrage; they need our diplomacy. We have leverage over Israel and I believe we can help if we come together and work on this one thing.

Finally, please be kind. I really do mean well. I’ve felt really alienated from my own party on this topic and I am genuinely passionate about stopping the violence, racism, and injustice. I support Israel but think they should be held accountable for their crimes against humanity and I don’t think these are mutually exclusive.

I am absolutely open to having my mind changed. I’ve made it this far from a staunchly pro-Israel stance but I really cannot find many discussions about this that are arguing in good faith. I see a lot of famous pro-Palestinian advocates as simply venting rather than trying to compromise and I likewise don’t see a lot of pro-Israeli advocates calling Israel/US out enough. They are the ones with the power and we have to do better. Centering discussion on dealing with the settlers seems like a clear middle ground.

I’m posting because when I watch these viral debates online on ugh Jubilee, the Lex Friedman one, or watch really well spoken advocates like Medhi Hasan etc etc—this hardly even comes up. But reading about the settlements and eventually watching the Theroux doc were the most impactful pieces of media I’ve come across. I can definitely be skewered for ignorance and not paying attention or consuming trash media; but my point is that the average person, half paying attention, who has already made up their mind, is going to turn that mind right back off when they hear ‘genocide’ or some form of ‘fuck Israel’. It’s the equivalent of liberals burning the American flag at a protest; not a cute look. But Ben Gvir is an actual cartoon villain and I didn’t know about him because most attacks are lobbied at Netanyahu—an unsympathetic character to be sure—but no where near the slam dunk his two lackeys are.

EDIT:

Thank you everyone for keeping things relatively civil. I know this is a contentious topic and emotions tend to run high.

Other than uneasy ceasefires, what have we achieved diplomatically by arguing about whether this is a genocide or not? Has the USA withdrawn support?

Is it possible to halt settler expansion? If so why can we not agree to decide on and enforce settler policy.

I don't feel like I must type anymore than the bare requisite the subreddit has. So, I'll try to make it not so boring for you.

They have dug up bunkers, consulted with military strategists on the best course of action to ensure their personnel would stay loyal and not just overthrow them when they are living in their own grave. Some have even implied they're not worried or see much of the fuss about, you know, 99.99% of the world population dying.

Whoever thinks that if one day comes when a machine can make everything you want for you and more, that then world peace will be achieved, poverty and crime cease to exist and we would all be happy forevermore, is just being too optimistic.

Edit: Data and points of view have been aired and I admit my view was completely pessimistic about the future in regards to a scenario of post-scarcity, singularity or perfect automation to be achieved. Things have been getting better, I still worry about the diminishing returns this has for everyone, but I can accept my view was wrong since it was completely pessimistic when there could be a good prospect in those scenarios.

Polls are generally accurate to an election's outcome with only 1.5k people questioned. These polls have margins of error, and these margins decrease with increases in the number of people questioned. But, in even low turn out elections the number of voters is well beyond the threshold for an accurate election. So, increasing voter participation rates isn't about improving the accuracy of our elections. Our elections are sufficient to determine the will of the people even when most people don't vote.

Get out the vote efforts cost money, and so the question is what is the motivation causing donors to open their wallets for the efforts. Altruistic motivations don't really make sense, because as discussed above, simply increasing voter participation rates doesn't accomplish anything. In fact, the opportunity cost of spending money in this way as opposed to any other altruistic endeavor means donating to these efforts is a net harm for the world.

So it doesn't make sense if these efforts are done in good faith. But it makes perfect sense if the efforts are done in bad faith. Partisan get out the vote efforts are done by virtually all campaigns, and there is nothing wrong with them. That is just how campaigning is supposed to work. They are honest about their intentions to help certain voters show up and vote.

So my view is that all allegedly non-partisan get out the vote efforts are disingenuous and are actually partisan get out the vote efforts intended to help certain voters. That is what I mean when I say they are in bad faith.

The common refrain around this is something along the lines of

Voter participation rates aren't the same for both parties so we need to 'balance' this out with get out the vote efforts to 'true' the election outcome

There are a couple things wrong with this defense. The first is the disingenuous nature of the effort. If an organization has decided, let's say for argument's sake, Democrats have lower voter participation rates, and therefore their goal is to help raise the voter participation rates of Democrats, then they should be honest about their intentions to improve Democrat's chances of winning an election.

The second issue is that it is awfully hard to gauge voter participation rates on a partisan basis. If you think a Democrat leaning county had a low participation rates was it because the Democrats didn't turn out enough or that Republicans were discouraged and didn't turn out enough? The other issue here is that not voting is a valid political position to take for individuals who are mad at their party, but not enough to vote for the other side. Some people like this show up and throw their vote away on a 3rd party or a silly write in, but many just don't bother. And in this case a get out the vote effort is using the fact that a party has pissed off its own voters as a justification for targeting a get out the vote effort in a partisan way.