sailingbythelee

@sailingbythelee@lemmy.world

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sailingbythelee ,

Not at all. Fire suppression on a small yacht is a hand-held fire extinguisher or two, which is $30. In fact, I don't know anyone who has more than that for fire suppression. Satnav is not necessary, but most boats over 30ft will have a chart plotter already because manual charting is a lot of work. Every sailboat over 30 feet has a depth sounder already. A decent chartplotter-depth sounder combo is about $1200, like a laptop, if you need or want to replace it for some reason, but they'll last 20 years no problem. Small sailboats don't require much paperwork and don't require annual licensing in many jurisdictions, just a small one-time registration fee when you buy it. Permits for international travel are cheap. If I recall correctly, the permit to sail to the US, for example, is under $100.

You definitely don't have to be a rich asshole to own a sailboat and it is weird that this perception persists. My first sailboat was a 1983 30-footer that I got for $18,000 about 10 years ago. My slightly newer 36-footer was $45,000 and it is big enough for a coastal cruising couple to live on pretty comfortably. The vast majority of boats are designed to be sailed by a cruising couple, and most sailors are stinky, sunburned, slightly stressed, somewhat impaired, and bruised from doing their own maintenance and being tossed around in rough conditions.

The average sailboat is basically a trailer on the water, except you don't need a big truck to haul it. You can spend as much or as little as you want to, of course, but the majority of boats in an average marina (ie, not a rich Florida asshole marina) are 1980s-era fiberglass boats in the 30-40 ft range. The engines are typically 3-cylinder marinized small diesel tractor engines in the 25-50 horsepower range that'll push the boat at about 6 knots (about 11 km/h). This is not the description of a rich asshole toy. This is a solid, middle-class hobby similar to trailer camping.

sailingbythelee ,

This comment is so wrong. You are dehumanizing Jews and condemning an entire country as illegitimate.

sailingbythelee ,

Gluetun is the bomb. You don't realize how much automated tracking of the torrent-verse is out there until your VPN connection drops unexpectedly and your torrent client continues merrily downloading in the clear. Gluetun is a fantastic killswitch and has never failed me. All hail the developer.

sailingbythelee ,

The whole lasgun-shield interaction concept is one of the hand-wavy parts of Dune, kind of like the eagles in LOTR, or the ridiculously inaccurate laser blasters in Star Wars.

Shields in Dune are common defensive technology, which means that lasguns would almost certainly have to be outlawed altogether to prevent some random encounter from turning into nuclear apocalypse.

In the first movie, I think Villeneuve deals with it somewhat haphazardly. The use of a lasgun at the agricultural research station perhaps makes some sense because shields can't be used in the open desert without attracting worms. On the other hand, they show lasers being used at the first Battle of Arrakeen in close proximity to other ships that are shown to have active shields.

sailingbythelee OP ,

That sounds like an interesting possibility. I'll check it out. Thanks!

sailingbythelee OP ,

I didn't realize that the metadata was in such a bad state. But that would explain why I'm having difficulty finding the ebook equivalent of the smooth Jellyseer/Sonarr/Jellyfin ecosystem. Thanks for the insight.

sailingbythelee ,

That dude is a mod now. He roams around news communities endlessly antagonizing any user who doesn't toe his anti-Israel stance. That's why he has a ridiculously high comment count.

sailingbythelee ,

For those that don't know, FlyingSquid is a mod who roams around various news communities antogonizing anyone who doesn't toe his anti-Israel line, and then flaunts his mod status when someone gets upset. He's like one of those Reddit power mods that everyone complains about.

Oh yeah, and I noticed the other day that people are getting their comments removed for "genocide denial" if they don't line up to pre-judge the outcome of the genocide case South Africa brought against Israel. Apparently, a few mods think they are qualified to judge the outcome of the case without being, you know, actual judges qualified in the laws of war. This kind of antagonistic mod behavior is making some communities into Reddit 2.0.

FlyingSquid, wake up man. You are abusing the tiny amount of power you have to make Lemmy into an echo chamber. You oppose what's happening in Gaza. We get it already. You don't have to constantly roam around antagonizing people who disagree with you.

sailingbythelee ,

Case in point. Wake up man. You are making the place worse, not better.

sailingbythelee ,

I might quibble about the Catholic Church being the "original" church since Catholicism only came about after Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion of the Roman state in 380. You could argue that Catholicism started a bit earlier under Constantine I at the First Ccouncil of Nicaea in 325, which is when the Roman state started to consolidate the various early Christian beliefs under an official "catholic" orthodoxy. The word "catholic" literally means "including a wide variety of things". The point being that there was already a wide variety of Christian sects prior to the Council of Nicaea.

The Protestant argument against Catholicism boils down to the belief that the Catholic Church is a corrupted Christianity, not that it is non-Christian. And there is some truth to that. The pre-Nicaean churches were free-wheeling spiritualists with a wide variety of beliefs, but that all changed when the Roman state decided to create an orthodox, singular religion under its control. Protestants argue that this adaptation of religious belief to the needs of maintaining state power is the original corruption of the Catholic Church.

Now, two key facts influenced the early history of Roman Catholicism:

  1. The Roman state recognized the descendants of Caesar, the Emperors, as the Pontifex Maximus, or head priest, of the Roman state. They also required that everyone adhere to the cult of the Emperor. This was purely ritualistic and was meant as a bulwark to the power of the state.

  2. The vast majority of the Empire's citizens were pagan.

Because of #1, the Roman Emperor became the head of the newly formed Catholic Church, which was a unification of Church and State. This is called Caesaropapism, and is also why the Catholic Church retains a hierarchical structure to this day and its seat is still located in the heart of the Western Roman Empire. The Pope is the spiritual successor of the Western Roman Emperor.

Because of #2, Catholicism is highly ritualistic, like paganism, and early Catholicism adopted the worship of saints, which are basically small gods. Saint worship was the bridge between paganism and Christianity.

During the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, Luther and others made the point that the union of state power with Christianity was a corruption of "original" pre-Catholic Christianity, which was more spiritually-oriented and valued personal conviction over state orthodoxy. Interestingly, the split between Protestantism and Catholicism in Europe also more or less follows the geographic outline of the Western Roman Empire, with southern Europe largely retaining Catholicism and northern Europe largely adopting Protestantism. This implies a political dimension to the schism, not just a religious one. England is the odd man out here because their response to the schism was to create the Church of England, which is basically Catholicism without the Pope, substituting the English monarch as the head of the Church and toning down the saint worship.

The great irony of any Protestant movement that craves Christo-fascist state power is that they are advocating to become the very evil they swore to destroy back in the 1500s.

sailingbythelee ,

Societal collapse wouldn't be a return to a simpler life. There are too many of us and we are far too urbanized. Check out Haiti for an example of what societal collapse looks like.

sailingbythelee ,

I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding your comment, but killing animals for pleasure alone is already largely illegal in Western countries. And that includes hunting. You aren't allowed to just hunt an animal for fun and then leave it unharvested. It is hard to enforce, obviously. But you can definitely be charged for killing deer, moose, ducks, even fish, without a license and at least the intent to eat it. For example, you can't kill a bear, cut off its paws or gall bladder, and then throw the carcass in the bush. You also can be charged for killing or treating an animal inhumanely or in a way that causes it distress. That theoretically applies to all animals, including pets, livestock, aquariums, wildlife, and even small animals like mice and bats.

sailingbythelee ,

Yes, there is that. I am personally against hunting because I figure wild animals are already under enough pressure from habitat destruction and climate change.

Hunting is largely cultural now and isn't needed for sustenance except in very remote places. At the same time, I'm not sure if it is fair to classify a cultural practice as being for mere pleasure. It is a bit more complicated than that. Certainly, in Canada, indigenous peoples and the descendents of early settlers think so.

sailingbythelee ,

Agreed, at least for some species like deer. I can't think of too many others, though, especially with global warming. Most of the animals that thrive despite human encroachment, like coyotes, crows, and raccoons aren't animals that we hunt.

sailingbythelee ,

Have you tried setting the nameserver to Google or Cloudflare to see if that works?

sailingbythelee ,

I suppose you have also logged into your Adguard server to verify that it can ping the internet?

In other words, you have successfully pinged Proxmox --> Adguard and Adguard --> Internet?

sailingbythelee ,

That picture hits hard after watching The Handmaid's Tale. Yikes.

sailingbythelee ,

It's nice to hear a story with a good outcome. Thanks.

Republican-passed bill removes role of Democratic governor if Senate vacancy occurs in Kentucky ( apnews.com )

Kentucky lawmakers gave final approval Thursday to a bill stripping the state’s Democratic governor of any role in picking someone to occupy a U.S. Senate seat if a vacancy occurred in the home state of 82-year-old Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell....

sailingbythelee ,

That's what every generation says. Problem is that by the time a generation actually does step up to vote, they've become more conservative than when they were younger. Maybe it'll be different this time.

I'm looking forward to reading Fareed Zakaria's new book. He argues that we are at the beginning of a new age of revolutions.

sailingbythelee ,

That's an interesting hypothesis. I think of it more in terms of human development over the lifespan rather than an artifact of survival bias. In my opinion, the relationship between age and conservatism is mainly because of three reasons:

  1. As you get older, you tend to accumulate more wealth, responsibility, children, etc. so you have more to lose than when you are younger, which means that you tend to value the system that protects what you have.

  2. As you get older, you get weaker and slower and lose the physical confidence and recklessness of youth. That feels vulnerable, so you tend to worry more about things like violent crime and disorder. You start to value stability and order more.

  3. When people are young, they tend to be more prone to simplistic and radical thinking, simply due to lack of life experience. This is both a strength and weakness. It makes youth passionate and energetic, but also more prone to believing that there are simple solutions to complex problems. I say that recognizing that nowadays most Trump supporters are older and are very much embracing Trump's simplistic solutions, but I think we all recognize that something very radical is happening on the right wing.

I note also that these are general trends across the lifespan, not deterministic or true for every individual.

sailingbythelee ,

Very true. In his new book (which I've only heard except from so far), Fareed Zakaria argues that the left/right split as defined since WW2 is being re-defined and I think we can all see that. It used to be that the left had the "radical" ideas and the right supported the status quo. Now, the left (the Democrats or their equivalent in other countries, not what Lemmy considers the left) is the status quo and the right is adopting radical reactionary ideas to destroy the new status quo and return to the 1950s.

So, yes, I agree with you that if Millenials and Gen Z are not able to generate wealth for themselves, they will not support the status quo. Whether that rejection of the status quo will correspond to what we today call "left" and "right" is uncertain since there is a major shift underway right now as we speak.

sailingbythelee ,

Yes, I hear what you are saying about having kids for sure. I remember how my brain changed after having kids. I started to experience fear in way that I didn't before I had kids. Also, abstract notions of "right" and "wrong" are far less important to me than what will be beneficial, or at least not harmful, to my children. It simplifies certain issues. For example, I have daughters. Having daughters, I couldn't care less about abstract debates about when life begins or the morality of abortion or what's best for society as a whole. Fuck that. My much simplified perspective is now this: Any motherfucker that wants to infringe on women's rights in any way is my enemy. That's some primate dad logic right there, but it is what it is.

Israeli Hostage Says She Was Sexually Assaulted and Tortured in Gaza ( www.nytimes.com )

Ms. Soussana, 40, is the first Israeli to speak publicly about being sexually assaulted during captivity after the Hamas-led raid on southern Israel. In her interviews with The Times, conducted mostly in English, she provided extensive details of sexual and other violence she suffered during a 55-day ordeal....

sailingbythelee ,

That's bullshit. There are many news articles literally every single day about the civilians killed in Gaza. Meanwhile, on Lemmy, you have people still denying that Hamas sexually tortured women captured on October 7. Sorry it doesn't fit your narrative.

In my opinion, there is a huge difference between civilian collateral damage during a military operation and the use of rape as a weapon of war. We xan argue about how much force Israel is using and whether X amount of collateral damage is acceptable. But gratuitously raping people has no legitimate purpose, military or otherwise. It serves to sow terror and incite retaliation, which is why Hamas did it.

sailingbythelee ,

Exactly. Many people have an ignorant view of British cuisine, as though only foods grown in the British Isles are British. All kinds of foods and dishes from all over the world have been shipped, used, and adapted in Britain since at least the time of the Roman Empire. Heck, most of what a British, European or North American person would see on the menu of their local Indian restaurant is not traditional Indian food at all, but rather Anglo-Indian.

sailingbythelee ,

The UN conducted a preliminary investigation and found clear and convincing evidence of rape, gang rape, sexualized torture, and even sex with the corpses. Just think about that for moment and imagine what those poor female hostages are almost certainly going through right now. Disgusting. Hamas is the absolute scum of the earth.

From the UN report:

Based on the information it gathered, the mission team found clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment has been committed against hostages and has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing against those still held in captivity. In line with a survivor/victim-centered approach, findings are conveyed in generic terms and details are not revealed.

In the context of the coordinated attack by Hamas and other armed groups against civilian and military targets throughout the Gaza periphery, the mission team found that there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred in multiple locations during the 7 October attacks, including rape and gang-rape in at least three locations, namely: the Nova music festival site and its surroundings, Road 232, and Kibbutz Re’im. In most of these incidents, victims first subjected to rape were then killed, and at least two incidents relate to the rape of women’s corpses.

https://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/press-release/israel-west-bank-mission/

sailingbythelee ,

That's why I said preliminary investigation. They said that there was enough clear and convincing evidence to warrant a full investigation by a range of UN bodies. That doesn't make it propaganda, you troll. It means that they are certain that sexual violence occurred, just not the full extent of it.

sailingbythelee ,

So, rather than believe the words of the UN report, the 5000 photographs and the 50 hours of video they reviewed, you are proposing a conspiracy theory that the Israeli government's reason for refusing to cooperate with certain people in certain ways means that the rapes never happened? Dude....

sailingbythelee ,

No, and I didnt say that. One bad deed doesn't absolve another. The main point of my comment is that there are still women being held hostage that are probably experiencing sexual torture right now and desperately need to be rescued immediately. Do you want to wait years for the final investigation before prioritizing the release of these poor women?

sailingbythelee ,

Gotcha. "We'll stop raping your women once you agree to the ceasefire. Never mind that the ceasefire is only necessary because we raped and killed your citizens first." Good logic. What a humanitarian you are. What should we call that, "rape diplomacy"?

sailingbythelee ,

I wish you were correct, but you aren't. The left is famous for its identity politics, which is precisely an in-group/out-group game. Also, the left is just as bad as the right when it comes to lacking nuance and brigading people who express ideas that the hive mind doesn't like.

sailingbythelee ,

Thanks, you summed it up nicely. I'm very committed, both personally and professionally, to the left in terms of social policy, but I recognize our tendency towards tribalism, doctrinaire language policing, and groupthink.

Also, you nailed it when you said that one of main differences between left and right is their degree of earnestness. Anyone who has watched the development of identity politics since the 1990s can recognize that the right is now just doing a bad imitation of the left's rhetorical tactics. That's why they seem disingenuous: because most of them are acting out their impression of the so-called "radical left", but from the other side.

Whether you agreed with them or not, the right used to pride themselves on being the sober, fiscally conservative, "responsible", establishment people, while the left were the loud, obnoxious ones screaming about identity and shaming normal people for their supposed "privilege".

The rise of the Tea Party marks the beginning of the right-wing adoption of these left-wing identity politics tactics. The right has now become a radical reactionary movement rather than the small-c fiscal conservatives of the past. Watching the nuttiness on the right makes me think that the transformation happened largely because many middle- and working-class whites now see themselves as victims of the same race-based persecution that the left correctly complained about for decades, so they've just leaned into it.

All of this reminds me of Foucault's assertion that ideologies are not about right and wrong, but rather about power. That's why we are in the middle of a culture war. Of course, we can't let the oligarchs, the fascists, or the Christian Nationalists win, but the left is not entirely innocent either in the sense that we have demonized and alienated a very large segment of Western society. I don't absolve myself, either. I have railed against the right, especially the religious right, in the past just as hard as anyone.

sailingbythelee ,

That was a very well-crafted and insightful comment, especially that last paragraph.

sailingbythelee ,

I think Americans need to absorb a bit more global context about the left-right spectrum. I see people saying that policies like universal health care, access to abortion, basic worker rights and affordable education are "far left". Most of the proposed policies of the left in the US are centrist in the rest of the Western world. Unless you are advocating for a Communist regime along the lines of the Soviet Union or Maoist China, you aren't really "far left". Similarly, unless someone is advocating for a fascist dictator state, we should probably not call them "far right". Of course, that is what Trumpists advocate for, so they really are far right!

Why Gaza Won’t Cost Biden the Presidency ( newrepublic.com )

"Despite these polls and the passions raised by the war with Hamas, it is easy to exaggerate the power of Gaza as a motivating issue for voters eight months from no-win November. History suggests that foreign policy issues end up as a minor motif in presidential politics unless American soldiers are dying in combat as they were...

sailingbythelee ,

If Trump gets into office, you better believe Saudi, Qatar, and the UAE will be whispering sweet nothing's into his ear while donating some sweet money to his corporations to care more about Palestine.

I don't think the Saudi royal family cares about Gaza. They may talk the talk because it helps cement their regional leadership. But billionaire Arab oil monarchs don't care about a bunch of half-Arab refugees hiding in tunnels under shanty towns.

The truth is that radical Islamist groups like Hamas, the Houthis, and ISIS are a potentially grave threat to the Saudi royal family. It is absolutely in the Saudi's interest to have distraction targets. The US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict, the Syria war, Houthi attacks on western-owned Red Sea shipping, simmering tensions between the US and Iran... these are all good for thr Saudis. They all increase the price of oil, make Saudi Arabia an attractive, stable ally for the West, and keep Islamist radicals focused on the evil unbelievers rather than the evil oil monarchs.

sailingbythelee ,

Is it just me, or does Trump's daughter-in-law give off some serious Serena Joy vibes?

sailingbythelee ,

Splitting the left would result in a permanent Republican majority.

sailingbythelee ,

That's true. I think there is a reasonable chance that the right-wing could split or collapse.

There is an interesting parallel here with Canada, which also has a FPTP system. Canada is more progressive than the US, so it already has two left-wing parties (one more centre-left than the other). But, for about a decade in the 90s, the right wing party split in two and this guaranteed electoral success for the centre-left Liberal Party. The interesting thing is that this was actually bad for the Liberal Party. They became arrogant, internally fractious, and scandal-prone. When the two right-wing parties re-merged, the Liberals suffered their worst defeat in history.

If the Republicans in the US split into two right-wing parties, there might be room for two left-wing parties as well. In fact, it would be good if a left-wing split ensured that the Dems weren't guaranteed electoral success, as this would lead them into making stupid mistakes. However, if the right-wing later re-united, the left would have to be prepared to reunite again as well. The problem is that the US is more right-wing than Canada, so vote-splitting on the left is more of a worry.

All of that said, it would be interesting to see how much support a left-wing working class party would have. I recall that there were midwest working class voters who were prevaricating between Trump and Bernie, not between Trump and Hillary/Biden. They didn't care about left vs. right politics as much as they wanted to vote for someone who would bring good working class jobs back to the Rust Belt. A left-wing party that really focused on bread and butter working class issues and not culture war bullshit might do well, but it's too risky when Trump is the alternative.

sailingbythelee ,

Correct. I'm pretty sure that "illegal" is just the short form of "illegal alien". And is that the accepted legal term for a foreign national who is in the US illegally, right?

Honestly, all of this language policing just turns the average person right off. I mean, I suppose it wouldn't be necessary if the Republicans weren't constantly sneering at people, but still. It is better to reclaim terms the Republicans abuse rather than try to language-police hundreds of millions of people. It is very, very off-putting.

sailingbythelee ,

The two most important things missing from Linux are mass familiarity and certain important professional software suites. It isn't that Linux doesn't have software nearly-equivalent to things like the Adobe suite, MS Office, and AutoCAD. It is that it doesn't have those EXACT applications. Like it or not, in a professional setting, you usually have to use the big proprietary applications because that's what everyone else uses. Using standard software reduces compatibility and training headaches, and eases recruitment. Most technically-oriented professionals wouldn't even take a job that disallowed them from accessing and maintaining their competence with the standard software of their profession.

Biden uses feisty State of the Union to contrast with Trump, sell voters on a second term ( apnews.com )

That was one of the more interesting SOTU addresses I've seen. Personally, I think he said most of the things that needed to be said, and he said them reasonably well. I'm sure he's going to get some flack for attacking Trump directly (though not by name), but I was frankly glad to see it. Doing otherwise makes it seem like it's...

sailingbythelee ,

Time? What time do you think we have? The hour is later than you think. Trump’s forces are already moving. The Nine have left Mar-a-Lago. They crossed the River Delaware on Midsummer’s Eve, disguised as lobbyists in black.

sailingbythelee ,

Frodo and Sam made it to Mount Doom because they moved in secret and carried the one thing that could kill Trump, I mean Sauron, without direct confrontation. Like it or not, in this analogy, Biden is our Aragorn. Come to think of it, they are about the same age! If there is a Frodo secretly making his way to Mount Doom with Putin's kompromat, I mean the One Ring, we don't know about it yet.

sailingbythelee ,

You're only comparing Biden to Bilbo because they both look old. That's shallow. If Trump is Sauron in the analogy, which is how I set it up, then Biden is at least as strong and important as Aragorn. More so, really.

What is a gender neutral replacement for man, guys, buddy, etc?

So I've realized that in conversations I'll use traditional terms for men as general terms for all genders, both singularly and for groups. I always mean it well, but I've been thinking that it's not as inclusive to women/trans people....

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