Patticus
SSMB Moderator-
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About Patticus
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The ship it was their coffin, and their grave it was the sea.
- Birthday 06/24/88
Patticus's Activity
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Patticus added a post in a topic General American Politics Thread
Fast food workers are by far the most visible face of national wage stagnation, and it may be that they couldn't pass a bill raising the minimum wage for all workers immediately, some staggering had to happen.
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Patticus added a post in a topic General American Politics Thread
A minimum wage hike won't mean a $2 menu, it'll mean a $1.25 or a $1.50 menu. If that means that the kitchen staff aren't living in squalor, I'm fine with that.
My workplace has a TV in the break room, which is always set to CNN. I know there's a long time to go until the election, but it seems to me that Trump and his whacky antics are getting wall to wall coverage on that network - there's always a new Anderson Cooper interview, a panel of Trump voters sounding off, a Republican strategist etc. I rarely see any mentions of other candidates, let alone Sanders or Clinton. Are they just the Trump News Network now?
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Patticus added a post in a topic Police Brutality Thread: Sandy Bland, Black Lives Matter activist, mysteriously dies in jail cell two days after arrest
Body cams have another issue: Who is going to sit there and watch countless hours of boring ass everyday policing, looking for any kind of brutality?
A few police departments are putting their footage up online, for the public to look at and examine, but a lot of departments won't do that because they know damn well what they're gonna find.
There needs to be a way for the system to automatically bookmark any and all instances where the officer was found to use a certain amount of energy, issued warnings, or was around another officer who did, which might require a Fit-Bit-like piece of tech that monitors the officer's pulse, or a voice recognition system that can understand specific noises. Then, these instances can be automatically relayed from the police server to an independent, non-partisan review body overseeing police brutality for a given area, and the cops can't do a damn thing to stop justice being done.
This may very well not be the first time these cops might have used that jail cell as a place in which to beat up prisoners.
Remember when Chinese Water Torture, now known as Waterboarding, was routinely used by police departments to get information from prisoners? Man, weren't those... times, of a sort.
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Patticus added a post in a topic Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has passed away
This is such a big shock, totally unexpected. I mean, I knew he'd been unwell, but I didn't expect him to just... die.
I really liked how hands-on the man was, compared to his counterparts in other large companies. No matter what was going on, you could always count on him to put in an appearance, show up in a Direct video, something like that. He got a lot of stick from people, but he lead Nintendo to interesting places, and sometimes that brought it success. I can't imagine where the company will go once an official successor has been named, but I hope it'll go where he would have.
R.I.P., the industry and E3 will never be the same.
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Patticus added a post in a topic General American Politics Thread
America's working hours are among the longest in the developed world. If the rest of it can get along just fine with less, then so can America. One could attribute America's obsession with hard work and the concept of the "self made man" to be a hold-over from the Protestant Work Ethic, which it was endowed with well before independence.
I'm a full-time worker, and I enjoy being so because of the benefits I receive from my employer - benefits which the part-time temps at my workplace do not have the luxury of enjoying. The temps I know routinely get screwed over, being given awful health insurance from Adecco, with no clear vacation policy, often working several years before either being hired on or quitting because they weren't. Most employers I know of take the view that, if you've been working for 3-6 months and can do your job to a reasonable standard, that you'll be hired on. Not Dealertrack! Oh no, not them. Can we please change the laws regarding temps, to give them the benefits they deserve, and force employers like mine not to string them along?
There needs to be incentive to employers and agencies to not screw their part-timers' handful of benefits over if a wage rise comes.
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Patticus added a post in a topic Nine Killed in Shooting at historic church in Charleston
Can we keep the nicer statues in a museum? I mean, if they're beautifully made, there's no reason why they shouldn't be put in a place (or places) where they can be understood within a larger historical context, and they can cease to be rallying points for the white supremacists of the country.
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Patticus added a post in a topic General American Politics Thread
If Trump's poll numbers remain high, if he keeps doing well with the party faithful as a sort of protest vote against establishment figures like Jeb, he's going to enter the debates. He'll be one of the ten candidates up there on the main stage, making a mockery of himself and his opponents in front of the country. That's a show I want to watch.
I also want to watch the Democratic debates, watch Hillary squirm as Sanders makes her complicity in the billionaire class' domination of the political sphere painfully well known.
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Patticus added a post in a topic Star Wars
I guess we'll get to see Solo's homeworld, Corellia, and Solo's early career in the Imperial Navy, which I'm sure will cover his subsequent dropping out (complete with sardonic remarks).
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Patticus added a post in a topic General American Politics Thread
India's potential at the time was just that, however - potential, that wouldn't be realized until the mid 19th century. If Britain had retained its American holdings, don't you think it likely that lucrative trades like sugar would have thrived across the deep south, necessitating further expansion as British coffers filled with the profits? Cotton, another major export of the south, was also very important to British trade - so much so that the city of Liverpool grew up around it (so you can thank slavery for the Beatles!), and it played a major role in Britain almost siding with the Confederacy during the Civil War you lot had. Boy would that have had consequences! British naval vessels bombarding New York and D.C., Yankee armies distracted trying to guard against attacks from the north as well as the south...
Now, the Civil War. You can say it was about this and that, but it was largely fought over slavery, and we've already discussed that. But what happens when America's British governors begin banning it in 1807, when Britain abolished it? Seems like the next most likely spark for a war for independence, among certain colonies at least, would have been then.
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Patticus added a post in a topic Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) Awareness
So, exactly what was it that persuaded Obama to go full throttle on this trade bill, when evidently all the signs point toward a decidedly unDemocratic deal?
You know shit's going badly wrong when the very same Republicans who have vilified you as a Commie Muslim Marxist Hitler from Kenya, denying everything you would do to help America for the past 7 years, suddenly come rushing to your aid and even grant you expanded authority to negotiate that trade deal.
I'm guessing serious pressure from lobbyists and promises to run anti-them ads all over America if they don't agree to promote it and get it passed? That still doesn't tell us why Obama's in favor of it, though.
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Patticus added a post in a topic General American Politics Thread
Ogilvie, I hope you know that you've opened a massive can of worms.
If there had been no independent USA, which would have required many events previously to not have happened, or to have happened differently (the English Civil War, for example, which taught the colonies how to be independent), the British Empire would not have focused on India. There would have been a British presence, certainly, but with the North American colonies remaining British, the focus would probably have been on kicking the other great powers out of that arena and taking all of North America, instead securing dominion over the Indian subcontinent and then some. That would have totally changed the 19th century, particularly as in reality Britain learned valuable lessons in maintaining an empire from the loss of its most valuable American territories - lessons which allowed its power to grow and keep its colonies from breaking away. This may not have happened if the American colonies had remained loyal to the crown, or would have happened differently. There might still have been an American war for independence, taking place a few decades later than yours, across a larger area, possibly resulting in the complete expulsion of Britain from North America - Canada and all falling to the Liberty Armies.
America could easily have become independent peacefully though, most likely around the time Canada did in the 1850s, and the spread of its territory would have gone differently too. With a monarchical France still in the game, there would have been no Louisiana Purchase, and we probably would have seen more re-runs of the Seven Years' War further west. With no Napoleonic Wars to keep Britain distracted in Europe, the Duke of Wellington would have been sent to America, to quell any uprisings and handle the French and Spanish threats in the west. Hell, it would've been interesting to see the Duke of Wellington enter the War of 1812 in the Americas, which alone might very well have turned the tide against the nascent republic.
Spain was an empire in steep decline at this time. While the independence movements its American holdings fell to were a success, they were protracted, bloody affairs with many atrocities committed by both sides. We can't know if they would have erupted without America and France leading the way, but they most likely would have ended up as independent states by the end of the 19th century anyway. Britain being the pussycat of the European empires, I feel that America go off lightly, compared to what would have happened if the Seven Years' War had gone the other way, and France had become the dominant power in the American arena. So, as debt ridden and corrupt as the old Spanish empire was, I don't think that the Spanish colonies would have been able to gain independence peacefully, but waiting until the end of the century could at least have meant that the Spanish arms were old and outdated, as they were when American ships encountered old, rotting Spanish galleys in the Spanish American War.
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Patticus added a post in a topic General American Politics Thread
A vertical farm could be blanketed with photovoltaic window film, and have a couple of wind turbines put up top. It might not totally free the building from the energy grid, but it would certainly help out a lot. It would also help protect against the energy grid going down for whatever reason.
RE: July 4th, a.k.a. Treason Day, a.k.a. Good Riddance Day
I find it a little sad that John Adams was a little off in his assessment that July 2nd would become Independence Day, celebrated "from one end of this continent to the other" with "pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations." He was off because on July 2nd, 1776, the Continental Congress voted for independence - the declaration was adopted on this day, but it wasn't until July 4th that it was signed. Although in actuality, given the ongoing war, the declaration's signatories weren't all there at once, as the famous John Trumbull painting of the event suggests. No, that fictionalized vision of the signing was way off. The signatories trickled in and out of Philadelphia over the course of that summer - it wasn't fully signed for some time.
Oh well, at least his assessment of the festivities that was spot on. For his part in the process, and despite the whole "alien and sedition" thing (which he wasn't that into anyway), he really does deserve a big ol' monument in D.C.
Oh and on another note, a lot of the depictions of the British Union Flag, in depictions of the Anglo-American Civil War and other events around or before that time, are wrong.
This is not the British flag you use:
This is the flag you use, because Ireland wasn't considered a part of the union at that time:
There you go.
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Patticus added a post in a topic General American Politics Thread
If every major city in the world could be weaned onto vertical farms, not only would mankind be much better placed to handle the worst effects of climate change, but it could also feed itself - all of it - properly and probably also turn over large tracts of land back to nature, which would be one hell of a boon to wildlife. Given that many scientists believe that we have brought on the sixth great mass extinction in the world's history, it is vital that the vertical farm concept be thoroughly road tested, due to the tremendous benefits to society that it'd confer if successful.
The Capitol Steps are amazing:
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Patticus added a post in a topic General American Politics Thread
They obviously consider selective breeding and the like to be entirely different to genetic tinkering and such, but frankly the two are the same, even if the means differ.
We should be embracing GMO, because if nothing else we can change up the chloroplasts within our food crops to make them much more efficient and thus enable more and higher yields.
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Patticus added a post in a topic General American Politics Thread
That is a solid plan, but then you get alarmist, ignorant news headlines like, "Scientists want to release millions of GMO mosquitoes in South Florida!" with zero context, which make my conservative colleagues at work wrinkle their noses and bemoan the country heading, apparently, to hell in a handbasket. Again.