Twilight’s Last Gleaming…

chef’s kiss

So, the article isn’t specific enough to explain whether or not the 5 rounds actually fired or cooked off.

Normally, ammo is said to ‘cook off’ (the irony in this specific situation is literally physically painful to me) when the gunpowder in the cartridge is heated enough that it deflagrates, usually with less of a total and rapid burn than when a gun is normally fired.

This is because primers (the substance that is actually struck by the firing pin and actually explodes, thus setting off the rest of the gunpowder to deflagrate) typically have much higher temperature thresholds before they will react than the gunpowder itself.

Basically what this usually means is that when ammo cooks off, it is still quite dangerous, but the bullets will have lower velocities than normal, less predictable trajectories.

I’d be curious to know whether the round in the chamber cooking off actually successfully had enough energy to cycle the action and load a subsequent round, or if half of them just exited from the magazine and handgrip.

Either way this is an extraordinarily stupid thing to do, jfc.

I thought it was bad when my idiot roommate left a pan of nachos and the plastic spatula in the oven after telling me she cleaned the kitchen. Went to preheat the next day and… oh. She did not clean the kitchen, now our spatula is molten and my chance of getting cancer has increased somewhat.

I guess thats not as bad as a fucking gun.

Obviously scientists don’t want to work any more and eat avocado toast too much.

Have they tried getting a college degree to increase their job prospects?

Fucking same, had to actually check.

The absolute worst, in my experience, is people who believe they are ‘empaths’, people who are hugely into superstitious nonsense like astrology or literal witchcraft, people who think they can ‘manifest’ things.

Those kinds of people have whole worldviews built around themselves being special, enlightened basically having superpowers.

They have no problem telling you how you feel or what you are thinking or why you did something, but if you even attempt to correct them, god forbid tell them they’re literally delusional, they’ll freak out and have a huge breakdown and cause as much drama as possible with everyone they know.

I have had waaaay too many of those kinds of people in my life.

I agree with you that most normal people would be embarrassed to learn they misread someone, but I seem to just have very bad luck of being surrounded by people who are just incapable of basic human decency.

As long as you’ve seen Lethal Weapon 4 rofl

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sH0Qda32IKM&pp=ygUkbGV0aGFsIHdlYXBvbiB3aHkgY2FudCB3ZSBiZSBmcmllbmRz

Doing better than I’ve been in a while.

After my doctors determined I was Autistic two years ago, my family decided I was actually schizophrenic and needed to be sent to a mental asylum in the middle of no where.

When I did not go along with this, they deactivated my phone plan, thus locking me out of my email, bank accounts, everything I had set up with 2FA.

Things went downhill from there, my car got stolen, I got robbed, lost my wallet and my bank cards and ids… ended up homeless for about a year, getting the shit kicked out of me by fentanyl addicts.

But uh hey, managed to get some of my id/cards back, and lucked out and found a motel that lets me stay month to month.

I’ve been doing my own physical therapy for half a year now and can finally walk without a bunch of braces, though only for short durations.

I had a bunch of broken bones and torn muscles and tendons… Slowly getting back to normal.

Good thing I managed to qualify for SSDI, otherwise I’d be dead!

Modern military radars are not one emitter/receiver, but arrays of many sets of those, compacted into a small space.

So, you have maybe 16 or 64 or whatever aimable, convergeable, points of measurement as opposed to just one, with which you can get a much more accurate picture of what you are looking at.

The bottom is basically using a whole bunch of complex math to simulate a sound environment that would be created by a more complex 3d scene.

Its… not a perfectly comparable analogy, but what they’re going for is that actually having a whole bunch of fancy sensors is better than having one that uses a bunch of math to interpolate the data from just one sensor.

Well, on the one hand, I do believe that dogs and cats have emotions similar, though likely not as complex as humans, and that if you know a cat or dog well enough, you stand a good chance at understanding some of its fairly basic emotional states.

Dogs and cats are both usually quite capable of sensing emotional states in humans, though each one will react a bit differently, so in that regard, they are sort of humanlike.

But… you wouldn’t be able to understand a cat or dog’s very specific opinions about a topic it could not possibly grasp.

Sure, you can probably tell if it likes or does not like a person or kind of food… but its not going to be capable of having complex opinions about fashion or politics or finances or something.

When people seriously act like their pet is telling them things that are far too complex, this person is either delusional or basically manipulating/guilt-tripping you by presuming to speak for an animal, and then they’ll say ‘Don’t blame me, pet just doesn’t agree!’

This is basically the behavior of an immature child or a manipulative sociopath.

Also, on its face, I don’t see anything wrong with talking to a pet as a form of trying to work through your own feelings…

… As long as you realize that that is what you are doing. That its not much different than talking to yourself in a mirror or a doll or something, in that regard. In another regard, the pet just views this as you spending quality time with it, and it probably enjoys that.

Sometimes it helps to just sit down and talk through your own feelings, and having a loving animal certainly can help you feel more calm and loved.

But again, if someone gets to the point that they actually think they are having a complex conversation with an animal and it is communicating complex opinions back to them… we’re back at either delusional or this all being a kind of sociopathic manipulation technique.

EDIT:

Its wild to me that Autists are often described by their tendency to attribute human like emotional capacities to things that do not have them… but its usually never pointed out that we know they don’t actually have them.

If I had to guess, I’d say we do it as a kind of coping mechanism of projecting our own experience of being emotional entities treated as unemotional objects… onto things that actually are unemotional objects.

If you can’t even pretend to have emotions for an object playfully, you’re likely not going to be able to treat an autistic person with empathy.

Kind of a coping mechanism and a bullshit detector at the same time.

Hah, maybe we can be friends lol!

How’s your day going? =)

Autistic person here:

I often ask people how they are feeling. Even though 90% of the time I can correctly tell by changes in a person’s behavior, language, facial expressions, intonation, etc, I am aware that I can’t literally read minds and the most obvious solution to this is just ask.

The 90% correct guessing figure comes from asking people and validating or invalidating my guess.

However, in at least my personal experience, neurotypicals almost never read my emotions correctly, will tell me how I am feeling, and essentially never ask. If they do ask, they will often get frustrated by how complex my emotions are, to the point that they vastly oversimplify to the point of caricature.

Then they go on to do or say things based on how they think I feel or felt and functionally spread lies about me constantly, which I am constantly bewildered by.

I would say that I am far more empathetic than most neurotypicals I meet or know, far more likely to spend my time and energy being emotionally available for them than they do for me, far less likely to assume my initial impression is correct, far more likely to truly engage.

As to the increased suicidality of Autistic people yeah that tracks with my lived experience.

Not in that I’ve personally considered suicide, but I am in constant tension of wanting to communicate with people vs essentially always being misinterpreted.

So I’ve just grown to be more and more content with mostly being alone.

Basically everyone I ever once thought I loved or trusted has been so utterly incapable of giving me 10% of the emotional support or availability that I feel I give them that I’ve learned that most people will exploit me and then scream at or assault me or have some kind of total emotional breakdown which they then blame me for whenever I am able to tell them how I feel.

Its beyond exhausting.

As an example that happens frequently to me: I also have a form of neuropathy, which often causes me to be in extreme amounts of pain for no obviously visible reason. I will tell people, I am not angry with you, I am in extreme pain, I have neuropathy, and they will just say no you aren’t, no you don’t you’re just angry for (insert projection of their own insecurity here).

Its an enormously overproduced Overwatch clone with zany characters that seem to be going for Guardians of the Galaxy, an art style that is basically just bizarre, and gameplay from a decade ago.

Sony wanted their own Overwatch, after seeing its success, then spent a huge amount of time and money developing it, and this is what they came up with.

Oh, right, it isn’t free to play, costs 40 bucks, and then also has an astounding amount of microtransactions.

EDIT: Based off of current active player count, Concord has cost approximately $200,000 dollars per active player to produce.

Better hope they are all omega class hyper whale spenders, I guess.

Apparently the longest ever recorded glide is 45 seconds.

Fish don’t have lungs, so the analogy is kind of busted, but some humans can hold their breath for 30 seconds, some 2 minutes, some 5 minutes, but overall it doesn’t take long for brain damage/death to occur.

I’d guesstimate that a flying fish would be probably irrevivably dead after 3 to 5 minutes out of water.

I tried to look up more specifics on flying fish respiratory systems vs other fish back when I posted this, to see if they have measurably better ability to remain alive out of water for longer than other fish, but I couldn’t find much.

No.

You obviously did not read the article, so here’s a summary:

"With unguided munitions, a toss/lofted technique significantly reduces accuracy. Hammer and [U.S.-supplied unpowered] JDAM-ER [glide-bombs] both come standard with GPS-assisted inertial navigation system (INS) guidance packages that would allow them to zero in on set coordinates even when employed indirectly.”

"Much more importantly, the French precision-guided munitions have the REK [Range Extension Kit tail unit], which is a solid-fuel rocket booster designed to extend the weapon’s range. This is already a very useful additional capability when employing these weapons in level flight at higher altitudes, giving 500-pound/250-kilogram class versions the ability to hit targets up to 43 miles (70 kilometers) away. That is similar to the stated maximum range of the unpowered JDAM-ER with its pop-out wing kit.”

The whole point of having these guided bombs is that you can wildly roll away as soon as you achieve the correct range to target, and you would want to bail out of the combat zone as soon as possible because the entire combat zone is likely filled with enemy anti air assets that can kill you, and you want to get out of their range as quickly as you can.

They are GPS assisted, internally (self) navigating, rocket assisted bombs.

What that means is, you have already set the GPS location you want to hit, you loose the bombs and get the hell out asap, the rocket fires and the fins on the bomb actuate so as to generate a flight/glide path for the bomb that will guide it to the target.

…

Basically, its much more akin to a short range, air to ground missile than it is to a ‘dumb’ unguided bomb.

The difference being that the rocket on this is used to fly the bomb upwards, to gain altitude and thus range, then it glides downward toward the target, as opposed to a more conventional air to ground missile that would not have a glide stage and would be doing powered flight the whole time.

That, and these kinds of things are a hell of a lot cheaper than actual missiles, so you can get and use more of them.

A whole lot of the reduced cost is because air to ground missiles usually have their own expensive optical or thermal or radar sensors that allow them to maintain a lock on a specified target after separating from the aircraft, whereas these GPS guided bombs just aim for the exact GPS location of the target the aircraft gives before they separate from the aircraft. So, they’re going to miss a rapidly advancing tank, but if the target is static, or some kind of mobile vehicle that takes a while to pack up and move, they stand a decent chance at hitting that.

…

The other engineering achievement of these things is the pylon, which interfaces between the russian-designed target designation systems on board the russian-designed aircraft, and translates this into being able to GPS program the specific target coordinates of the NATO-designed guided bombs before they are loosed.

An extremely oversimplified metaphor here would be that if you have American appliances or gadgets, you’re going to need an adapter to charge/power them if you take them to another country with different power sockets and standard voltages.

…

In general, this is what is called a stand-off munition, which is a custom designed or modified version of a weapon that allows you to accurately hit targets from a range outside the ability of the enemy to smack back at you.

What Heidegger is saying in your excerpt is that in ancient times, it seems that people widely believed in a kind of unseen, parallel world of spirits, which Plato was using as a basis for his ideas, as opposed to wholly inventing his philosophy entirely on his own, without any precedent.

He is pointing out that Plato’s metaphysics can be seen as inspired by, developed off of the foundation of earlier metaphysics, as opposed to Plato just wholly inventing them out of nothing.

When Heidegger gave that lecture, Europeans had very recently actually discovered or deciphered/translated actual empirical, physical evidence for the worldview or metaphysics of many peoples and cultures outside of Europe/The Mediterranean Coast or within that region going back further than Socrates.

They were fairly early into discovering and beginning to translate and understand much of what we, nearly 100 years later, now have widespread access to. Archaeology was still a young field at this time.

The lecture you are quoting was given in 1935 in German, and not even translated into English until 1959!

Heidegger was trying to connect what were at his time, newly discovered dots, toward tracing out the development of various forms of human metaphysics.

Heidegger is not saying that our modern concept of metaphysics is identical to those of shamans thousands of years ago.

He is instead tracing… the history… of widely varying, changing and differing metaphysical theories and ideas, either provably held or postulated to be held by many different groups of people over large time scales.

The entire point is that metaphysical theories change over time.

‘Metaphysics’ is not a single theory, any more than ‘Biology’ or ‘Astronomy’ is a single theory.

Those are all container terms which describe bodies of knowledge and thought within specific parameters, and they’ve all developed over time and place.

Plato has his metaphysical theories, as does Aristotle, and Kant, Leibniz, Hume, and these Perennial Shamans are proposed to as well. They are not all the same ideas and they are often in conflict with one another.

Anyway…

If John Woo Woo shows up in shamanic garb and you find this more convincing that him not being in shamanic garb, I would take the post modernist approach and just tell you that you find this more convincing because you have been conditioned by modern media to associate ancient shamans with purity, innocence, righteousness, spirituality and wisdom.

Also thats basically the most textbook, case-closed instance of cultural appropriation I’ve ever heard: John Woo Woo is dressing up in another culture’s dress and adopting their mannerisms despite not being from or substantially connected to that culture, and he is doing so purely as a marketing technique to sell you useless bullshit within his own internalized capitalist paradigm.

If the commercial on TV has an actor wearing a doctor’s outfit, does this imply the untested supplement you are being sold has any actual medically beneficial effects whatsoever?

Or did you just fall for a marketing gimmick?

In closing: There’s science, and psuedo-science, ie, charlatans adopting some of the garb or mannerisms or vocabulary of science, but which does not actually follow the core concepts of empirical testing, falsifiability, often directly contradicts actual known science, and generally acts as a wolf in sheeps clothing, for personal profit.

To close this with what I was originally going to open this with:

It is not that healing crystals might work because the LHC has yet to discover how they work.

It is that many, many empirical, scientific studies, published and peer reviewed, have repeatedly and unequivocally found that they do not work, that they have no effect beyond placebo.

Conceivably they could macgyver together a diesel generator/transformer combo unit into an electrical cable that can charge a tesla?

Maybe?

I used to have a survival/backup battery/transformer combo that could be charged from portable solar panels or a wall outlet, and while I have no idea of their availability or price in Russia and Ukraine, I know there diesel generator/transformer/battery combo units or sets.

Recharging a Tesla off of solar would require basically a football field sized solar panel array though rofl, a very static and fragile target

Maybe a more decent definition of a metaphysical theory would be:

The rules which give rise to a world which we can describe in more detail with other, more specific rules.

Or from another angle:

The rules which are followed by all of the rules of physics.

‘What organizes all physical matter’ is just a definition of physics, without the meta.

…

I think you have not had much exposure to more successful woo woo peddlers, and you’re missing still the key point I am making of conflating meanings of a word.

Its more than just using the word in a vacuous or spurious sense, as with your ‘metaphysically’ example.

It doesn’t really add any meaning whatsoever to just throw ‘metaphysically’ in front of the rest of that sentence (with your definition of metaphysically), beyond ‘whoah, fancy word.’

You can just throw on fancy sounding words to a sentence or concept, but I am talking about a different and more insidious manipulation tactic.

…

Repetitive conflation of words with multiple meanings breaks down an ignorant audiences ability to understand that they are being lied to by making it unclear that different definitions are in fact different.

Its using a word with meaning A, in a sentence, then in sentence 3 you use meaning B, then in sentence 4 you use meaning A, so on and so on, such that an uniformed or ignorant person who has only heard this word a few times or didn’t pay attention in school is functionally now being educated by woo woo peddler such that they now think the word has a kind of nebulous melding of meaning A and meaning B, and that this is the singular undifferentiated meaning, when in fact this is not the case, there are two distinct, context and domain specific meanings represented by the same word.

You could conceivably do that with the word ‘nuclear’, by switching between the phrase ‘nuclear family’ and ‘nuclear energy’ to the point that, in a long monologue, you might be able confuse some people into thinking that there is a literal subatomic nuclear strong force holding together families, or that quarks and electrons literally have feelings toward other quarks and electrons in their family/atomic unit.

…

Its basically the kind of phenomenon where you can tell that someone does not actually know what a word means, that they never looked up its definition and instead just read or heard it, assumed its meaning based on context, and just carried on using this word, usually wildly incorrectly, because they do not actually know what it means.

It creates an unconscious cognitive dissonance that collapses painfully if one tries to actually suss out what the word actually means, which heavily biases the woo afflicted person toward not attempting to do that.

Woo woo peddlers are successful when they can basically brainwash a person into believing an entire alternate worldview, and basically always this worldview is incoherent, contradictory, that ultimately relies on any cognitive dissonance being reconciled by the woo woo peddler.

The point is to basically brainwash ignorant or desperate people into a whole lifestyle of mystical nonsense where the ultimate authority, source of comfort, who you become dependent on, answerer of questions, arbitrator of disputes, is the woo woo peddler.

Thanks!

So …positives:

Its quite fast compared to most other technicals, on an undamaged road.

Its nearly silent.

Air Conditioning.

You can cut vegetables for meal prep with the frunk.

. … …

Ok negatives:

Unless they wrap or paint it, it is extremely shiny and highly visible.

Also, it is no longer silent once you start unloading with a rear mounted Kord or PKM.

It is significantly heavier than a similarly sized truck, not great for mud or crossing a structurally dubious bridge.

It can’t offroad for shit in actually difficult or broken terrain, we’ve seen many of these things completely break their axels over curbs or collisions that most modern SUVs would be able to drive away from.

Its functionally totally unarmored.

It will probably explode/go up in flames if shot.

Also, if its electrical systems are sufficiently damaged, it will lock you out, or in.

It may or may not just stop working, or prevent itself from turning on fully if it decides to do a software update and has connectivity issues.

If the doors are damaged or your stupid key fob thing breaks, the door ‘handles’ are by default flush with the door panel and you cannot actually enter the vehicle.

If the central touch screen is say, shot, or maybe just bumped and cracked by an ammo box… probably you also cannot even get the thing to start.

… You are not understanding me. It seems you stopped reading at the part you quoted and disregarded the rest of what I wrote. Let me expand:

In one context, in one kind of usage, ‘metaphysical’ is an adjective referring to a very technical outline or system of logical reasoning.

In another context, in another kind of usage, it is a vague catch all term for fantastic things that seem to defy logic and reason.

Because these two valid but nearly opposite meanings of the word can be switched out, or conflated, woo woo peddlers love to use this term, as it easily convinces those who do not understand that is what they are doing, and sounds grand, wise or profound.

Its the same with ‘energy’ and ‘frequency’. Both of these terms have valid definitions that are highly specific and empirical in a scientific context, but also have commonly used, colloquial meanings which basically indicate a vague notion of pleasantness or unpleasantness, or maybe enlightened vs unenlightened.

Woo woo peddlers also love to use these words and conflate their two different meanings.

Most people think that the phrase ‘good/bad vibes’ means that you feel good or bad about a person or situation’s attributes, qualities or what not.

But a person who has been listening to too much woo woo peddlers will believe that there is some kind of actual, literally real, energy or frequency surrounding or exuding from a person or situation they find pleasant or unpleasant, because they are so used to the empirical/scientific concept being totally equated to the whimsical concept that they do not understand that there even are two distinct meanings.

The point I am making is not that metaphysical is a woo woo word that means nothing.

The point I am making is that there are many terms with nearly contradictory meanings, where one is associated with objective, ordered, rational, logical, complex concepts that can be studied and meaningfully argued over, and another meaning that is fantastical, defies empiricism or logic, and is highly subjective.

These terms are woo woo terms not because they mean nothing, but because they are often used by woo woo peddlers who jump back and forth between these different meanings to confuse people.

Quantum is another one. So is ‘AI’, at this point.