It’s used for very minor repairs, in this case, a more permanent repair is under the tape, but is likely curing, so they slap some speed tape on it.

Speed tape never holds anything down, it’s just used to smooth over a surface, to allow better air flow.

Whatever is being covered by the speed tape will likely see more attention from maintenance later.

https://www.salon.com/2011/10/27/ryanair_duct_tape_controversy/

Fascism is just conservatism with the addition of hyper-nationalism and the blaming of minorities for all of society’s problems.

But the core belief, that some groups are inherently better than others, is exactly the same.

The reason conservatives don’t like research is that to truly take advantage of it, you need a strong university system, and a lot of students.

And universities are breeding grounds for leftist ideals.

Education in general moves people to the left, but universities take that to 11. And that’s why conservatives hate it.

That’s not exactly how it works.

Most research is based around understanding the universe. Often called Blue Sky research (Why is the sky blue?).

Now that’s a very broad category, so you break things down into something more manageable. Like the lifecycle of a specific insect, or the behavior of crowds in shopping centers during holidays.

The point being that you can absolutely tell someone what to research.

Now, you are correct in that you cannot dictate the results of research.

Except that you can, and it’s the second type of research.

Goal oriented research, or maybe practical research? starts with a goal or a problem. Like a disease. The goal is a cure or prevention. How you get to that point doesn’t matter as long as you do, but in practice the way to meeting that goal is going to be more research centered around understanding the goal or problem.

Now, all that said, pure Blue Sky research has a guaranteed return on investment. NASA estimates that their return is 3-1. 3 dollars back for every dollar of their budget.

All that said, there is no ethical reason to constrain research topics or even to reduce spending on science.

That was mostly England. The Balfour Declaration kicked it all off, and then post WW1 British Colonialism locked it in, even though the people who founded Israel were actively fighting England to do so.

1.7% is more than enough to flip some swing states. Most swing states.

And two in particular have more than an average number of Puerto Ricans.

So yeah, it matters.

Made up, for a given value of made up. They weren’t completely inventing things whole cloth, and had some surviving material to work off of. That and Babylonian records. They had those too. Since Babylon was gone… Well, finders keepers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses#Historicity

The TLDR; no mentions of Moses in Egyptian or Persian texts until about the 4th century BCE. He may have been a Hebrew specific quasi mythic figure based on a possible real person. But there’s no evidence at all.

Which makes sense, because that’s the timeframe that the Achaemenid Empire conquered Babylon and started letting the exiles return to Judah. Exiles who compiled a new Torah from scraps they saved and from making shit up.

I thought the German term for someone needing a fist to the face was Nazi.

Everything before the Babylonian Exile was made up, because the Babylonians sacked, well everything. They destroyed the First Temple, and took away the nobility and priests.

It was only after the Exile ended that the Hebrews became monotheistic… Sort of. There has been some noises before the Exile, but afterwards it was official.

It was also after the Exile that the stories of Noah and Moses were first added to the Torah.

As a note, the Epic of Gilgamesh has a flood story, and as an ancient Babylon story, would have been available for the hostages (the Hebrew priests and nobility) to read.

I know, it’s maddening. But thanks to how elections work, you have exactly two options. And they are not the same.

If you think that Biden’s policy is bad, just look at what Trump has planned.

He’s likely to order the US military to help in the genocide. And since Arabs have not had the best public image in the US in the last 20 some years…

There’s a chance the military would do it.

With that as the other option, the current diplomatic talks are far better.

Now, here’s why promoting some also-ran jack off is a bad idea. Your also-ran cannot win. It’s literally impossible. They can only siphon off votes from the left, and that means that Trump wins and everyone learns again that when a madman tells you what he’ll do, you should believe him.

https://news.ballotpedia.org/2024/04/02/rcv-bans-and-repeals-advancing-at-higher-rate-than-new-authorizations/

Yup, there’s a reason why RCV initiatives are being repealed faster than they’re being adopted.

RCV produces worse results than First Past the Post.

Which is a massive problem for voting reform, because people will say “we tried that, and it made things worse” while thinking about RCV. It poisons the well, and makes real voting reform much harder.

Or maybe some Russian State backed programmers have tried to slip in backdoors in various key systems, numerous times. Including one that almost went live on millions of machines.

Ah, the old, “Democrats aren’t doing enough to stop this, so let’s help elect the Republicans who will make things so much worse”

Because you just don’t believe in the Spoiler Effect.

Except Ranked Choice doesn’t actually fix anything, and in fact can make things worse.

RCV is the only voting system designed that fails the monotonicity criterion.

What that means is that ranking a candidate higher on your ballot can cause them to lose.

Which is insane, and a deal breaker, and not the only massive flaw with the system.

A lot of it stems from the fact that RCV is, at its core, a series of First Past the Post elections on a single ballot.

You cannot fix the problems with First Past the Post by just iterating First Past the Post.

No, the only way to actually fix things is to ditch Ordinal voting in favor of Cardinal voting.

www.equal.vote is a good source for more in depth analysis of actual fixes.

Advocating for third parties under our current voting system, and at the current moment, is indistinguishable from advocating for Trump.

Fun fact, -40C and -40F are the same temperature.

Then 575K and 575F are the same.

Yup, those 15th century typesetters fucked up the language.

Why are people just repeating the same thing over and over?