How… How do you think it works in other democracies when they cut military funding? Because that’s a thing that happens. A lot.

Did I miss the part where Canada had a civil war every time our government cut funding to the CAF? I’m pretty sure that’s something I would have noticed.

I wonder if this will finally be the point where Americans decide that their military has enough money?

Probably not.

That’s honestly worse than I thought.

If you’re confused then this is a great object lesson in how to read statistics. Consider how many people actually own a home still in New Zealand. It’s not going to be a lot. Realistically, I think 1 in 10,000 would be a high estimate. That is to say, about 0.01% of the population. I’ve not had any luck finding actual numbers on that despite my best efforts, but I think it’s a fair assumption given the amount of specialised equipment involved in home distilling (much more so than home brewing), as well as the space needed to set it up and the time required for the for process. It’s not exactly set it and and forget it. In comparison, the percentage of people who live in a home who have a stove is going to be fairly close to 100%.

Already you can see the issue right? If 0.01% of a population are causing 0.14% of all home fires… That’s insanely bad.

But it gets worse. That study covers a 20 year period, but home distilling was only legal for the last 10 years of that period. Which means a couple of things. Firstly the number of home distillers would likely have been even lower for most of the period covered by the study. Home distilling would only really have taken off as a hobby over those last ten years, and for much of that time equipment would likely have been hard to come by; that’s not the sort of thing where import / manufacturing and distribution are going to be easy to just set up overnight. Secondly, home distilling as a cause of fire was likely under-reported for those first ten years as people would have a strong incentive to hide the cause of the incident. By far the single biggest category of equipment listed in the study is “Not recorded” accounting for more than all the other categories combined. Obviously, there’s going to be a distribution of all the other equipment types throughout that “Not recorded” block, but it’s not all unlikely that the “Not recorded” stats for illegal home stills would be at least slightly higher than for most other equipment.

Then there’s a second factor to consider; frequency of use. People often cook on a stove at least once a day. In comparison I very much doubt the average home distiller is running their still every single day. It’s a time consuming process that requires a fair amount of attention. Generally you’re going to make a batch and then consume that batch until you eventually need to make another. If we were to normalize not only for frequency of ownership but also frequency of use, it’s not hard to arrive at a fair estimate that home stills are causing fires at a rate of several hundred times that of, say, the average gas stove, based on the numbers in that study. Obviously I’m being pretty loose here, but I’m just trying to illustrate the general point. I’m not claiming to be presenting hard data here, I’d have to really sit down with the raw numbers and run a proper normalization, as well as get some stats not accounted for in that study, but yeah, overall, I’m feeling very good about my “orders of magnitude” estimate if the numbers you’re presenting are accurate.

(Also, it probably goes without saying that getting your statistics on how dangerous making moonshine is from a webpage entitled “Making Moonshine is Safer Than You Think” maybe isn’t the best idea. I’m fairly sure pedophiles also have strong opinions about the relative safety of taking candy from people in unmarked vans.)

My great uncle Joe survived the entirety of WW2 despite being thrown into some of the worst fighting imaginable. This proves that war is completely safe for everyone involved.

And if it could be as safe as a propane grill I would have no objections. But those things are orders of magnitude apart in terms of relative safety levels.

It’s the “being safe enough” part that’s the problem. How do you regulate that? Do you really believe that the average American is capable of operating something as dangerous as a still in a completely safe manner?

If we were talking about homebrewing, yeah, absolutely, that shit is awesome and there is no good argument against. Home distilling is basically building a bomb and hoping that it doesn’t go off before you get wrecked enough on moonshine to notice it happening.

The answer to your question was in the article;

Because Microsoft requires developer accounts like his to re-verify the security of their software, Idrassi said that many devices running VeraCrypt will soon be unable to boot if the issue is not resolved.

America is NOT acting on the will of the people.

I’m aware. But I didn’t actually say that, did I?

If you refer back to my previous comment, you’ll see that my exact statement was “A military acts on the will of a government. A government rules by the consent of the people.” There’s a subtle, but important distinction there. America’s actions in Iran do not necessarily reflect the will (read; desires, intentions) of the American people. But it is, none the less, being done by a government that is operating with the consent of those same people. And that will continue to be the case until the people choose - by one means or another - to withdraw that consent.

I disagree with you only on one point; “and specifically the military”.

Apologies for being blunt, but this is a coward’s logic. I’m not seeing that to attack you personally, but because far, far too many of us are guilty of this specific act of moral cowardice, and it needs to be called out now often.

A military acts on the will of a government. A government rules by the consent of the people (yes, even authoritarian governments; democracy is just a system for assigning that consent peacefully, fairly, and with minimal bloodshed).

With vanishingly few exceptions throughout history, militaries are not rogue agents acting on their own devices. They are our will made manifest. A soldier is a bullet fired from a gun. We take aim and pull the trigger. A soldier can do their best to act ethically and responsibly, but ultimately war is a scenario where no good outcomes can ever occur. Only degrees of terrible.

A soldier chooses to accept the responsibility of living and enacting that terror on our behalf because ultimately someone has to. War is sometimes inevitable and necessary. We do not categorically refer to the soldiers fighting for Ukraine’s defence as monsters even though most of them - especially those serving before the war, those whose bravery and skill ground the Russian invasion to a halt in those vital early hours - serve for the same panoply of reasons that any other soldier does. Many of those reasons are simple, or selfish, or thoughtless, but the reasons why they chose to shoulder that responsibility didn’t change the outcome.

It’s easy to blame the military, because it abrogates the collective shame of what war actually is; an extension of politics. I know plenty of soldiers who are some of the most anti-war people you’ll ever meet, because they understand what war costs, in a way the average civilian never will.

When war kills people, when war results in atrocities, when war is a nightmare of death and carnage and suffering, that responsibility is collective. It belongs to a people, not just a military.

Trump’s war in Iran is America’s war in Iran. Just like Iraq and Afghanistan and Vietnam and Korea, and so many others.

As Hawkeye says, “There are no innocent bystanders in hell, but war is chock full of them… In fact, aside from a few of the brass, almost everyone involved is an innocent bystander.”

As a precondition of its participation in the fleet review and the Milan 2026 exercises in India, the IRIS Dena was unarmed.

From the actual article. Which you could have read. It’s not even paywalled, you just didn’t want to take the time.

Nope. All shipped in.

You are gonna love Deadlock.

I’m a league refugee that switched to Deadlock. My god it is so much better. Both the game and the community.

Well, decimated means “reduced by one tenth” so I guess technically he was probably correct.

Do you need medical assistance?

It doesn’t. If you’re doing anything in a web browser you’re going to need that much RAM for a reasonable experience no matter what DE you’re using. Ubuntu are just trying to set more realistic expectations.

They’re basically saying “Our software doesn’t need more RAM, but most of what you run on it does, so this is a more realistic expectation for what will make for a good experience.”

This $1tn valuation is based almost entirely on what they think Grok is worth. Whether or not markets agree will be a big test of how much gas is left in the AI tank.

Trump has flirted with a withdrawal in the past and has successfully pressured NATO members to increase their defense ⁠spending.

That’s a really weird way to describe that. He was successful in convincing everyone that the US is no longer a reliable ally, and well on its way to becoming an enemy. Is that what we’re defining as “successful” now?

Fuck it, why not? Everything else this administration does is a joke.