Drusas

joined 2 years ago
[–] Drusas@kbin.social 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It is possible to do scientific testing without spreading a virus outside of the carefully controlled laboratory environment.

[–] Drusas@kbin.social 2 points 9 months ago

I have a friend who is too beautiful (and unfortunately meek) for her own good, attracting stalker types with horrifying regularity. This is a great change.

[–] Drusas@kbin.social 2 points 9 months ago

Someone trim that dog's nails.

[–] Drusas@kbin.social 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Damn, you had a better view of it than I did up here in Washington (State).

[–] Drusas@kbin.social 2 points 10 months ago

Probably dumped them. Guess I could be worse....

[–] Drusas@kbin.social 5 points 10 months ago (41 children)

No, it's your opinion.

[–] Drusas@kbin.social 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I love this movie and have seen it many times, but I'm not sure rewatching it makes it all that much different. Do you have any examples to share?

[–] Drusas@kbin.social 60 points 10 months ago (8 children)

Just FYI, the striped pole attached to the hydrant is so it can be found under snow.

[–] Drusas@kbin.social 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Sounds like he might not necessarily have intended to kill himself so much as to just burn the house down.

[–] Drusas@kbin.social 12 points 10 months ago (4 children)

It's not as though they're not given the opportunity to become a state. They have voted in the past for things to stay as-is. If I recall, it was a pretty close vote, however.

[–] Drusas@kbin.social 74 points 10 months ago

You don't fucking say.

It's almost like switching from monarchism and aristocracy to oligarchism and capitalism didn't really change much of anything. I'm very shocked.

[–] Drusas@kbin.social 6 points 10 months ago

It appears to just be in the sink, but fine droplets can travel farther than you would think.

 

I appreciate that earnest made a post yesterday, or maybe it was the day before, saying that he is not dead and hasn't given up on kbin. It's not on this magazine, so I'm not sure where it was since this seems to be the most appropriate one, but in any case.

Reassuring us that things will improve at some point someday probably isn't enough, and I both moderate and donate to him every month, so I'm a pretty "serious" kbinner. I'm sure we've already lost many people who are less dedicated and just want something that works.

This site has been nearly unusable for days. There was the one day recently where it was entirely unusable. Everybody who uses this platform is an 'internet person". We need a platform which is (mostly) fully functional (mostly) every day.

Kbin needs to be fixed.

Ernest needs to give up on this being a one-man show and invite other moderators and contributors. Even I am looking at mbin because usability has just been so terrible that it's not worth the frustration and disappointment.

/rant

Edit: To make this thread even better, I got an error when I tried to post it. Twice.

 

tl;dr: Neighbors' galvanized fence is upside-down and very sharp and pokey. How can I make it not be?

To start with, the neighbor is almost never home and therefore hard to contact. Also, they only bought their property last year and probably don't even realize they own the fence. Anyway.

As you may know, galvanized fences have a top and a bottom. The bottom has sharp bits which dig into the ground while the top is more rounded off.

When I bought my house, there was already a galvanized fence in place between my house and my neighbor's. I'm no fan of these fences in particular, but that's fine. Except that I later noticed that it had been installed upside-down, meaning that the top of the 3-ftish fence is covered in sharp spikes, while the safe end has been buried underground.

When I was younger, I had a dog who had her belly horrifically torn open while jumping over an upside-down galvanized fence, and I have two dogs, so this is a serious concern of mine. While my dogs have fortunately never tried so far, a dog could die trying to jump over a fence like that.

Question is, what can I do about it?

I would offer the neighbor for me to pay for it to replace the fence, except for the fact that we are on a serious and convoluted grade and it is no small matter to replace a fence. Because of the grade, there's no way for me to put up a second fence on my side (trust me, it would require some serious landscaping to do that, in the tens of thousands of dollars--we're on a hill).

So I feel at a loss except for to try to cap off the sharp tops of the galvanized fence, and my searching suggests that there is no pre-made product for this because this fence was just installed wrong.

Any advice?

 

tl;dr: Neighbors' galvanized fence is upside-down and very sharp and pokey. How can I make it not be?

To start with, the neighbor is almost never home and therefore hard to contact. Also, they only bought their property last year and probably don't even realize they own the fence. Anyway.

As you may know, galvanized fences have a top and a bottom. The bottom has sharp bits which dig into the ground while the top is more rounded off.

When I bought my house, there was already a galvanized fence in place between my house and my neighbor's. I'm no fan of these fences in particular, but that's fine. Except that I later noticed that it had been installed upside-down, meaning that the top of the 3-ftish fence is covered in sharp spikes, while the safe end has been buried underground.

When I was younger, I had a dog who had her belly horrifically torn open while jumping over an upside-down galvanized fence, and I have two dogs, so this is a serious concern of mine. While my dogs have fortunately never tried so far, a dog could die trying to jump over a fence like that.

Question is, what can I do about it?

I would offer the neighbor for me to pay for it to replace the fence, except for the fact that we are on a serious and convoluted grade and it is no small matter to replace a fence. Because of the grade, there's no way for me to put up a second fence on my side (trust me, it would require some serious landscaping to do that, in the tens of thousands of dollars--we're on a hill).

So I feel at a loss except for to try to cap off the sharp tops of the galvanized fence, and my searching suggests that there is no pre-made product for this because this fence was just installed wrong.

Any advice?

 

ProPublica editor-at-large Eric Umansky started investigating police oversight after an NYPD officer hit a teenager with a car in 2019. In the years since, he’s learned how police departments have undermined the promise of body-worn cameras.


I got my first real lesson in police accountability in 2019 on Halloween. My wife, Sara Pekow, and our daughter had watched an NYPD officer drive the wrong way up a Brooklyn street and hit a Black teenager. The police had been chasing him as a suspect in the theft of a cellphone. When the boy rolled off the car and ran away, the officers turned their attention to other nearby Black boys who seemed to be simply trick-or-treating. The police lined them against the wall of our neighborhood movie theater, cuffed them and took them away.

At the time, I was editing coverage of the Trump administration, not policing. But I was troubled and, frankly, curious. I ended up waiting outside the police precinct with the boys’ families. The boys were released hours later, with no explanation, no paperwork and no apology.

The next day I reached out to the NYPD’s press office and asked about what happened. Eventually, a spokesperson told me that nothing inappropriate had occurred. A police car hadn’t hit the kid, he said. The kid had run over the hood of the car.

I couldn’t get it out of my head. Not just what had happened, but the NYPD’s brazen denial of what my family and others had witnessed. Surely, I thought, that wouldn’t be the end of it.

I was wrong.

 

I've got a nephew who is 3-something years old. He's really into airplanes. All of the ideas of gifts I've found have either been books (I give him books, but I'd like to give him something interactive) or toys that are way above his age level.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good gift for a 3 to 4-year-old who loves airplanes?

Edit: I just want to give a big thanks to all of you for being so helpful. I've got some great ideas for Christmas, his birthday, and beyond if he remains fascinated by planes. Very helpful.

 

Vladimir Putin's attempts to justify the invasion of Ukraine as a just war to reunite historically Russian lands reflect the expansionist ideology at the heart modern Russia's imperial identity, write Glenn Chafetz and John Sipher.

To understand Russia’s current obsession with Ukraine, it is important to recognize that Russia was never a state in the common usage of the term. Unlike the modern Turkish state that emerged from the Ottoman Empire, or Great Britain, which acquired and lost an empire, Russia never had an identity separate from empire. As British historian Geoffrey Hosking observed, “Britain had an empire, but Russia was an empire.”

The Kremlin’s preferred narrative of Russia rising from present-day Ukraine (“Kyivan Rus”) is a Moscow-concocted fairy tale. The officially endorsed 1000-year history of Russia is a self-created and self-perpetuated myth that generations of Russian dictators have promoted to justify their external expansion and internal repression.

Instead, what we think of today as Russia started out as a loose collection of independent city states that included Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, Tver, and Moscow, the last of which attained particular significance toward the end of Mongol rule a little over 500 years ago. Kyiv was no more a part of Russia then than it is now. There was no common language, no common administration, and no joint identity. Indeed, it would be centuries before the rulers of Muscovy attempted to assert their dominance over Kyiv and the lands of today’s Ukraine.

It was the era of Mongol rule and not the Kyivan Rus inheritance that paved the way for the rise of the Russian Empire. Under Ivan III (“The Great”), Muscovy established itself as the strongest of the city states to emerge from the Mongol period. Ivan called himself “Tsar of all Rus,” but he was actually more like the mayor of Greater Moscow. It was Ivan who started the expansion of Muscovy, initiating the so-called “gathering of Russian lands.” His expansionist vision has been embraced by virtually every subsequent ruler of Muscovy, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation.

Ivan III’s quest to acquire new territories, often under the guise of “reuniting the lands of the ancient Rus,” continues to this day and has had a profound impact on world history. As Historian Stephen Kotkin has noted, “Beginning with the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century, Russia managed to expand at an average rate of fifty square miles per day for hundreds of years, eventually covering one-sixth of the earth’s landmass.”

Few of the peoples inhabiting the lands Ivan III and his successors claimed saw themselves as Russian, at least not before they were “gathered.” At the time of Ivan III’s death, Muscovy covered less than a fifth of the area of today’s Russia; notably, it did not include the territory of modern Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasus, or all of Siberia. Crimea, about which Vladimir Putin rhapsodizes, was not part of the Russian Empire until Catherine II took it from the Crimean Khans in 1783.

If Putin is concerned with righting historical wrongs, he should give Crimea back to the Crimean Tatars. He won’t do this, of course, because the dynamic of imperial conquest and Russification is a key component of legitimacy for Putin, as it has been for almost all of Russia’s rulers (Yeltsin and Gorbachev partially excepted). Russia expands because its rulers need an external threat to justify their autocracy. This was as true for the Soviet period as it had been for Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Catherine the Great.

Putin’s Russia laments the loss of imperial glory, and has never come to terms with its repressive past. The security-expansion paradox driving Russia’s foreign and domestic policies is a vicious cycle that all empires experience to one extent or another. Acquisition creates threats inside the newly acquired territories and on the expanding borders of the growing empire. Expansion demands inward Russification and repression, and further outward expansion. As Catherine the Great famously said, “I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.”

This dynamic can end in two ways: Either through external containment or internal democratization. The latter has proved problematic for the Russian people, and is not something Russia’s neighbors should count on happening any time soon. The former has worked before, during the Cold War.

Modern Russia remains an empire and does not see itself as a Great Power unless it dominates its neighbors. Consequently, Russia will continue to threaten, attack, and absorb its neighbors until the West acts collectively to contain it.

Russia and its apologists will complain that containment ignores Russia’s legitimate security concerns. This is a canard because Russia’s security concerns constantly expand. In reality, Russian leaders have absolutely nothing to worry about if they return to their country’s internationally recognized 1991 borders. The West has always respected these borders; it is Russia that has not. Until modern Russia moves beyond its deeply ingrained imperial identity, this is unlikely to change.

 

"Just say aye," Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Patty Murray repeatedly pleaded to Feinstein during the vote. Eventually, Feinstein did just that.

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Thursday appeared confused and attempted to deliver a longer speech during a Senate hearing, the latest in a string of episodes that have raised further questions about her ability to continue serving in office.

"Just say aye," Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Patty Murray repeatedly pleaded with her colleague.

Instead of a short reply, Feinstein began her response by saying, "I would like to support a yes vote on this, it provides $823 billion ...." As the California Democrat continued to speak, an aide also intervened to try to remind the lawmaker that this was not the time for speeches.

"OK," Feinstein then said as Murray reminded her one final time to "just say aye." "Aye," she finally said.

[article continues]

 

Jadarrius Rose, 23, is seen on video during the July 4 traffic stop with his hands up surrendering to police before an officer deployed his canine.

A police dog mauled a Black man in Ohio during a July 4th traffic stop after he surrendered to authorities with his hands raised in the air following a "lengthy pursuit," according to officials.

A Motor Carrier Enforcement inspector with the Ohio State Highway Patrol (OSHP) attempted to stop 23-year-old Jadarrius Rose who was driving a semi-tractor trailer because it "was missing a left rear mud flap," according to an incident report. Rose was traveling westbound on U.S. Route 35 and failed to stop for the inspector and troopers who were called in for help.

Stop sticks were deployed twice on the vehicle before it came to a stop on U.S. Route 23.

"After several times of being ordered to exit the vehicle, the suspect exited the vehicle from the driver’s side door," the incident report stated. "The driver was given orders to get down on the ground and the suspect would not comply."

Rose can be seen on video released by the OSHP standing in front of troopers with his hands in the air.

An officer with the Circleville Police Department who has a K9 with him can be heard telling Rose to "go on the ground or you’re gonna get bit." Meanwhile, a trooper with the OSHP is telling Rose to "come to me."

It was then that the Circleville Police Department officer, identified as "R. Speakman," deployed his K9.

[article continues]

 

I was just made a moderator of m/politics. However, when I view the magazine's info, the 'Magazine Panel' button which provides access to the admin tools is not present.

I also own m/horrorliterature. On this magazine, I see the button and I'm able to moderate as expected.

I wasn't able to find any known issues related to this on codeberg, but it would appear to be a delegation problem. Has anyone else experienced this or does anyone know how it might be resolved?

 

The first few times I saw "+18", I didn't even know what it meant because it was backwards and the threads weren't particularly NSFW.

 

When I click (on mobile) on the kbin logo, it used to pull up information about the magazine/community, which had options such as subscribing and blocking. Now it just brings me to kbin.social.

 

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