By all means, I’d expect him to try, however, this is a constitutional amendment. The Supreme Court can’t take back an amendment the way they can strike down laws (I.e. by ruling it unconstitutional for whatever reason), because it IS constitutional by definition.

Thankfully, the Constitution is also very specific about what it takes to amend it further. 2/3 of both chambers of Congress, or 2/3 of state legislatures must vote to just propose an amendment, and then, to pass the amendment, they need 3/4 of the vote. Because the process is enumerated, there’s no legal ambiguity they can use to shape their ruling the way they want. To remove term limits, you must amend the Constitution. To amend the Constitution, you must meet these (intentionally) high thresholds. If A -> then B.

So, unless Trump is able to woo half of the sitting Democrats, as well as 100% of the Republicans, we’re safe from the system being used to guillotine itself (instead, the system will spend the next 4 years hitting itself in the face with a bat). Now, if Trump wants to seize power outside of the system, that’s a different ball game, and the relative friendliness of judges and Congress is a moot point.

I imagine it’s something of a difference in expected audience behavior. I would think that, for most people, looking at a few of the top comments and their replies is all the engagement with a post they want to have. So, a voting system facilitates that process by highlighting a few items the hive mind likes, and leaving the rest in relative obscurity. Whereas forum style posting sort of assumes that everyone present in a thread is in conversation with one another, hence chronological organization.

Perhaps. But expanding ones borders through conquest also seems medieval, and guided missiles are poor tools for holding territory, so the classics still have a role to play.

As neat and tidy as your explanation is, I think you are vastly oversimplifying the concept.

You say the moon is real because you can see it, and you can prove it’s there by telling other people to just go look at it. Alrighty then, I’ve seen bigfoot. In fact, lots of people say they’ve seen bigfoot. Therefore he must exist too, right? The photos “prove” his existence just as much as you pointing to the sky saying the moon exists cause there it is.

Now, I realize that there’s probably some degree of hyperbole in your statement, so I’ll walk this back a little. If the defining metric of your separation between these concepts is whether the hypothesis can be proven through experimentation, that’s all well and good. However, I would argue that, in 99.9% of cases, it’s still a belief statement. Let’s continue with the moon example, but, rather than “seeing is knowing”, let’s apply the same standard that you applied to God. So, you “know” the moon exists, not just because you can see it, but because it’s existence can be empirically proven through experimentation. What sort of experiments would you conduct to do that, exactly? Have you done those experiments? Or, like the rest of the rational world, do you accept that scientists have done those experiments already and decided, yup, moon’s there? Cause, if you’re taking someone else’s word for it, do you personally “know” what they are saying is true, or do you believe them based upon their credentials, the credentials of those who support the argument, and your own personal beliefs/knowledge?

As another example, let’s imagine for a sec we’re philosophers/scientists of the ancient world. I have a theory that the heavier something is, the faster it will fall. You may know where I’m going with this if you remember your elementary school science classes. I believe in the power of experimental evidence, and so, to test my theory, I climb to the top of the Acropolis and drop a feather and a rock. The feather falls much more slowly than the rock. Eureka, I’ve proved my theory and therefore I now KNOW that an object’s weight affects its fall.

Now, anyone not born in 850 BC Athens in this thread will point out that it’s a flawed experiment, since I’m not controlling for air resistance, and if you conducted the same experiment in a vacuum chamber, both objects would fall at the the same rate. However, the technology to test my hypothesis with all of the salient variables controlled did not exist at that time. So, even though it’s now widely known that my experiment was flawed, it wouldn’t have been at the time, and I would have the data to back up my theory. I could simply say try it yourself, it’s a self-evident fact.

Finally, your statement about subjectivity of definition being an obstacle to functional language is so alarmist as to border on ridiculous. If this question were “how do you personally define the distinction between ‘yes’ and ‘no’”, then sure I can get on board a little bit more with your point. However this is much more like ‘twilight’ vs ‘dusk’. Crack open a dictionary and you’ll find that there is a stark, objective distinction between those terms, much as you pointed out that belief and knowledge have very different definitions. For the record, since I had to look it up to ensure I wasn’t telling tales here, sunset is the moment the sun finishes crossing the horizon, twilight is the period between sunset and dusk when light is still in the sky but the sun is not, and dusk is the moment the sun is 18 degrees below the horizon. So, I know that these are unique terms with specific, mutually exclusive definitions. But let me tell you something, I believe that if I randomly substituted one term for another based purely on my personal whimsy, people are gonna get what I mean regardless.

I need to lay off the Mount and Blade. Definitely saw Calradia as I was scrolling past.

100%. I know that the jury is out, academically speaking, on the actual effectiveness of the bombs, but it makes intuitive sense to me that they at least contributed to the Japanese decision to surrender unconditionally.

In fact, up until the bombs were dropped, Japan was working with the Soviet Union to act as mediators in peace talks, so Japan could get a better deal. Of course, while the USSR entertained the diplomatic overtures from Japan, they were actually planning on declaring war, as they had promised at Yalta. But, I think it still contributes to my point that a civilian population that has been targeted by a besieging force must believe their only options are unconditional surrender or utter destruction (which, incidentally, is exactly the verbiage the US presented Japan in the Potsdam Declaration 10 days before the first bomb was dropped). If there is a plausible third option available (or believed to be available), then that’s what will be pursued.

No, it was not my intention to suggest that. I’m sure the Germans threw everything they could afford into the Battle of Britain.

Though, I am most definitely not an expert in the field and should be treated as I am, a dude on the internet lol.

However, even Germany in early WW2 (arguably at the height of their power) was unable to throw enough explosives into London to make that switch flip in the civilian population from “we shall fight them on the beaches” to “okay, in light of recent events, we are reevaluating our ‘Never Surrender’ policy…”.

In fact, I might even suggest that the scale of bombing necessary to make it a viable tactic was impossible at that time, as the nuclear bomb hadn’t yet been invented. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than me can fact check this assertion, but I think the only time intentionally targeting civilians has successfully cowed a belligerent was when the US nuked Japan. And even then, it took two.

Also, to add to the other poster’s point, in a medieval siege, the defenders have every reason to believe the attackers will happily let every man, woman, and child behind the walls die gruesome deaths to starvatiom or disease. That’s why, when it came down to the wire, cities would submit.

In modern times, cultivating a believable military posture of, “Surrender, or we will personally execute every last motherfucking one of you” is politically dicey. Look at the news stories coming out of Gaza about supplies running low thanks to Israeli interference. Right, wrong , or indifferent, the international community (as well as your domestic community, if those that disagree with these sorts of tactics are allowed to make their voices heard) tends to look down their noses at targeting noncombatants populations. So, due to these complications (which were largely absent or less impactful from warfare in the time of Genghis Khan) wholesale slaughter of civilian life isn’t really openly used. In fact, guidelines like “proportionality” are invented which dictate the level of response you can give certain provocations and what not.

So, if you’re a modern day commander being tasked with taking an urban center, the closest way to approximate a medieval siege would be to absolutely carpet bomb everything. Make it known that you will happily let every single person in Moscow die, if not send them to the afterlife yourself. While you’re bombing the suburbs, you’ll also need to encirce the whole city to prevent supplies from being delivered, since you can’t guarantee every bomb will hit it’s target and need starvation to provide additional assurance to the population that, if they maintain their current course, they are doomed.

Unfortunately, the world isn’t going to allow that, and you know it, so you commit to the level of bombing deemed acceptable by the world at large. At best, you wind up in a situation like London during the Blitz. Your bombing runs are effective, in that they disrupt the daily life of citizenry, and cause some infrastructure damage and loss of life. However, you’re never going to be allowed to scale up to the point where your victims feel they have no way out but to submit. There’s enough plausible deniability that, even when a bomb hits close to home (literally or figuratively), the victim is more pissed at the bomber than their government.

I have it on good authority that that isn’t an issue in this instance. They’ve towed the boat outside of the environment.

It’s not even exclusive to cats. Some days, you just gotta sound your barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world, y’know?

I mean, the article states that the victim did suffer some symptoms, so I wouldn’t say they were totally unaffected. If the article is accurate, would it be possible that she was inhaling vapor from the spill? The victim is quoted as saying she had to be at that board for 5 hours, and the Wikipedia article indicates that the primary danger of elemental mercury is inhalation of vapor (it claims 80% absorption rate via respiration, as opposed to the 1% via direct contact). Unfortunately, I am pretty ignorant of chemistry, so I’ve no idea if my speculation is plausible. How much room temp mercury would need to be sitting in front of you before you felt the effects of the vapor. Or even if you would at all, since the CDC website says the vapor is more dense than air.

Additionally, I noticed that one of the symptoms of mercury inhalation is cognitive impairment. Obviously this is more speculation, but perhaps the intent was not to kill, but rather to sabotage the victim’s play? After all, it seems like the perpetrator and the victim were rivals. Could be a Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding situation, just more classically Russian what with the use of poison rather than brute force.

I disagree with your assessment. To an average user, whatever winds up saved in their browser cache is there mostly unintentionally. Yes, it’s saving info from sites they choose to visit, but after that initial choice, the user is out of the loop. The browser saves what it needs to without user notification or input. I might even wager that most users are unaware of their browser cache, or don’t know what’s in it or how to access it. Therefore, I believe your metaphor perhaps confers too active a decision-making process on something that most people are completely unconscious of.

To be clear, the strawman average user I’m using here is me. I know I have a browser cache, I know vaguely what is stored in it and why, and I know how to clear it if I’m having certain issues. That’s about it. I sure as heck don’t treat it as an archive.

While it’s possible that a different reviewer applied that hypothetical headcanon to the Burnout series, I believe you’re actually thinking of Ross’ Game Dungeon. Specifically the Trackmania Canyon video, not Burnout.

Anecdotally, I’d say that this depiction is in line with how I feel my ADHD symptoms present themselves. Now, I don’t typically have all of these things going at once, per se, but I will definitely queue up a series of attention sinks and bounce between them as soon as my brain loses interest in the topic being discussed. It’s why the TikTok/YouTube Shorts format is so dangerous to my productivity, as it constantly delivers novel entertainment in bite size doses. If I’m medicated, and mindful of my behavior, I am able to shut out alternate attention sinks and focus on one at a time. I guess it’s kind of like tunnel vision. That has a negative connotation, but it’s super helpful to me since, left to my own devices, I have trouble regulating which stimuli to focus on.

Ymmv, of course.

Depends on your bunny rabbit stance, I reckon.

This is a factually accurate statement, but it reads like you’re encouraging someone to get into smoking cigarettes, which is (I thought) a myth invented by DARE types. Hey OP, speaking as someone with a 15 year off and on addiction to nicotine, steady on your course, bud.

You deserve the hose for this, because now I can’t stop thinking about it.

You’re correct, HR is there to benefit the company. However, in this case, the goals align. OP wants to stop being sent objectionable material while at work. HR wants employees’ actions to not open the company up for litigation. Being able to prove that dickhead is engaging textbook harassment while on the clock should be an open and shut case.

All of this is to be taken with a heaping handful of salt, since regulations differ wildly by jurisdiction, but this seems pretty clear cut to me.

Don’t let her shitty politics get in the way of doing something you enjoy. Death of the author and all that. If you’re worried about fiscally supporting her, I’m certain you can find the whole series at reasonable prices in any secondhand bookstore.

I’ve definitely gone through the Harry Potter series a couple of times at different phases of my life. Definitely had a different experience with every reading. Not always positive, but at this point it’s part of the tapestry of my childhood.