TIL: Today I Learned

[hobbsyoyo]

I hope so!

 

[Arakhor]

Yes they can. they can even make your post written by someone else.

Changing the post author can't be done by mere moderators. I suspect that that's a function reserved for the divine administrators.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Changing the post author can't be done by mere moderators. I suspect that that's a function reserved for the divine administrators.

Yes, the powers of the admins are enormous. Even those of the supermods are dwarfed.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

FYI, I somehow tripped the automod censor. No moderators are to blame and I have put away the pitch fork.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Especially odd because it must mean he either loved it or has an infinite capacity to put up with stuff he hates. It seems like a massively wasted opportunity though. I would have taken the 75% retirement and sat on my butt

Edit: Can mods edit posts without leaving redtext? My post changed in such a way that I can't tell if a bot did it or a mod.

Don't overthink that "75% retirement." It's 75% of base pay. When I left the navy my base pay accounted for less than half of what I took home every month, so 75% base pay would have been about a quarter of what I was accustomed to living on.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Don't overthink that "75% retirement." It's 75% of base pay. When I left the navy my base pay accounted for less than half of what I took home every month, so 75% base pay would have been about a quarter of what I was accustomed to living on.

After 30 years though, that base pay would still be quite high, especially with all the pay scale increases that have been enacted since you've been out. And if your friend had been an officer...yeah he'd be set. And there's no stopping that person from getting a second career on top of the pension. Plus the medical benefits are good, even if the VA has issues.

The other huge benefit is the housing ladder. If you are in the military, you get a housing benefit that helps pay for your house if you live off base. You can use that to help get your first mortgage and then from there keep selling and buying up a notch each time you move. Sometimes you might take a loss but overall it's a pretty easy way to keep upgrading your house year after year. After 30+ years, he could either have a house paid for or could downgrade to a more affordable house and made a nice profit.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

After 30 years though, that base pay would still be quite high, especially with all the pay scale increases that have been enacted since you've been out. And if your friend had been an officer...yeah he'd be set. And there's no stopping that person from getting a second career on top of the pension. Plus the medical benefits are good, even if the VA has issues.

Oh, there's no doubt that his base pay was a ton by the time he hit thirty years in, but that doesn't change the fact that '75% retirement' is a mask over the reality that retiring is way more than a 25% pay cut. I mean, clearly I am in the get out as soon as possible and at all costs crowd, so I'm in agreement with you from a practical standpoint. I just advocate constantly against joining the military, so I tend to present the actual facts whenever someone mentions something that sounds good like "75% retirement."

 

[Imaus]

Well it all hinges on the assumption that all the cosmological constants are basically variables that could be assigned any arbitrary values, and we just happen to have got lucky with the correct ones. Except we have no idea why they have they values they have, or any reason to think that they could actually have any other values at all. The notion of other universes existing with other values for the constants is an interesting one, but it's not a notion that's actually hinted at by anything in reality, it's an entirely hypothetical construct of the human mind.

There's also a weird problem with the logic of the idea inasmuch as the very first universe that was created (from somewhere) must have been stable and capable of creating black holes to even start this process of an evolutionary chain in the first place. But if the very first universe that existed could already do that... what's the requirement for any evolution towards that?

"The Universe exists as it does because it does", basically.

 

[The_J]

yes, The column, though, was not a fully serious one.

Ah, sorry, serious German here .

Changing the post author can't be done by mere moderators. I suspect that that's a function reserved for the divine administrators.

In the old times^TM, you could merge two posts from different users, and then decide which user would be displayed. No clue if Xenforo allows that.

 

[Arakhor]

I could probably find out, but if I told you, I'd have to kill you.

 

[Takhisis]

TIL
Are cows better represented in the Senate than people?

Spoiler :

Are cows better represented in the Senate than people?

By Sergio Peçanha
JANUARY 16, 2020

I recently stumbled upon a factoid that was news to me: The United States has nine states that are inhabited by more cows than people. Here’s one example:

This bit of information would have passed unnoticed if I hadn’t come across it just as the president was about to face trial in the Senate. As fact and factoid mingled in my brain, an intriguing question emerged: Are cows better represented than people in the Senate?

I decided to check. The Constitution stipulates that each state is represented by two senators, regardless of population. If we add the population of the nine states that have more cows than people and compare that with California, this is what it looks like:

That seems out of balance. Unless, of course, Senate representation is secretly based on the number of cows, not on people. Consider this:

The outsize influence of low-population states in the Senate becomes an issue every time Congress needs to make a very important call — such as deciding if the president should keep his job.

How big is the problem? Here are all the states ordered and sized from most to least represented in the Senate in relation to their population:

As you see, it is not just those nine cow-dense states that stick out. So, to put things on a better perspective, let’s look at the 20 states with the least population. Together, these states are home to about 33.5 million people — they hold about 10 percent of the American population and 40 percent of the senators.

By focusing on the 20 states with the lowest population, we finally get the answer to our initial question — cows are indeed better represented than people in the Senate:

It might seem that changing Senate representation to a system that is proportional to the population would radically change the division of power between Republicans and Democrats. In fact, it would not. Here’s a calculation based on the number of seats each party holds today and the population of the states each senator represents:

Therefore, proportional representation would not be enough for Democrats to single-handedly remove the president from office. It would just be equally unfair to everyone.

I wonder how different things would be if cows could vote.

I still remain a staunch supporter of bicameralism.
This article has just raised the matter of whether the US government is being involuntarily Marxistic by assigning one of two houses in the federal legislature proportionally according to workers and the other according to land. You just need one for capital and you're set!

I've always been told when my posts have been edited without a public notice. I suspect it was you having some sort of brainfart moment.

This can happen two ways: a) the autocensor doesn't give warning and b) unless you get a telling-off in a PM conversation you just get a regular ‘alert’ that is quickly buried under a pile of mentions, quotes, replies, visitor mesages and so on.

 

[Josu]

TIL there is people who considers classism to laugh about a woman on a TV debate who said Stan Lee instead Stalin

 

[Arakhor]

Was that a slip of the tongue or does Stalin sound different in the Iberian tongues?

 

[Josu]

Slip of the tongue is an option. The other option was no having a clue about who Stalin was, rather than an evil commie who drew Spider-Mao

Both options are funny IMHO

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I still remain a staunch supporter of bicameralism.
This article has just raised the matter of whether the US government is being involuntarily Marxistic by assigning one of two houses in the federal legislature proportionally according to workers and the other according to land. You just need one for capital and you're set!

So this quote reminded me of the book on the French Revolution I recently read. I remember reading how political power was split up between the landed aristocracy, the church and everyone else and how absurd and silly that was. You just made me realize we're not that far off though our system of power apportionment is more informal in how it disenfranchises everyone than the French one was. Well, actually I don't even know that that is true given the structure of the Senate is codified in the Constitution and the cap on House members is also part of law.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Today I learned there's a prion disease called fatal insomnia. It's terrifying and has no cure. But it's very very rare and only happens with specific genetic mutations.

(Also prions are terrifying in themselves.)

 

[Old Hippy]

Today I learned there's a prion disease called fatal insomnia. It's terrifying and has no cure. But it's very very rare and only happens with specific genetic mutations.

(Also prions are terrifying in themselves.)

thanks for that as its 4.15 AM here and i just can't seem to get to sleep

 

[Berzerker]

Glenn Greenwald has been charged with 'cybercrimes' in Brazil for apparently publishing text messages stolen by hackers

https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/21/...on-cybercrime-phone-hacking-charges-bolsonaro

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Changing the post author can't be done by mere moderators. I suspect that that's a function reserved for the divine administrators.

I can't think of any ACPs I've worked with that allow that as a normal, everyday function. It would require actively interfering with accounts beyond anything that's ethical. Of course switching two or more usernames on a temporary basis is doable as it wouldn't require mucking with passwords (but not doable for anyone in the members' usergroup). But as mentioned, it's unethical and I would have zero respect for any forum admin who changed anyone's username without the member's request or permission.

 

[Arakhor]

When I was running PbP forum games, it was entirely possible to "dopplegang" any post to make it look like it was posted by someone else. That's how I handled writing as NPCs - I simply wrote the post and manually changed the apparent post author, such that the NPC accounts had multiple posts to their names without my ever needing to log in as them.