metalslug

Just now, SkyDekker said:

You'll have to take it up with Britannica....

https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/proper-noun

 

Your constitution says all powers shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, it doesn't say Congress. Hence, US Congress is most certainly a proper noun, with a definition. Please let me know when you expect it to change and what the new name will be.

Nah mate. Australian powers shall not be vested in a congress of the United States. The U.S. is just the most commonly held example of congress but they don't own copyright on the word, else it would never be necessary for the word "congress" to be preceded with the letters "U.S." for context.  Asked and answered.

1 minute ago, SkyDekker said:

"U.S. Congress" is a proper noun. Are you telling me there is no definition for "U.S. Congress?" When is it expected to change and to what?

"U.S. Congress" is not a proper noun. It's two words; "U.S." is a proper noun, "congress" is a noun. In a hypothetical future it can change to "Chinese Congress", (if assuming they maintain a congress at all after invasion). 

11 hours ago, billvon said:

In all cases, of course, it was eventually settled that the person involved decides what their name should be.  This is no different.  They can choose their last name, their first name, their prefix - and yes, even their pronoun.

Yep, same here.  I go by Bill or Billvon.  When someone calls me "William" it means they don't know me, which is useful.

Funny thing, though.  I've told thousands of people over the course of my life to call me Bill.  None have had a hissy fit over it - even though that's not the name on my birth certificate.

It is absolutely different and, as grammar goes, you really should know better. You're equating pronouns (he, she) with proper nouns (William, Bill) . They are distinctly different because proper nouns have no definition and that's precisely why they are not included in most dictionaries. Proper nouns are expected to be subject to change. Nouns and pronouns not. You're feeding directly into the Matt Walsh argument that if a person can select their own pronoun as a defining characteristic then others would be equally entitled to choose their own adjectives (handsome & brilliant) and will expect you to address them as such. Grammar corruption cuts both ways.

On 7/15/2022 at 4:46 AM, ryoder said:

Oh, for chrissake! Now the "pro-life" crowd is trying to redefine the word "abortion":

Maybe those people don't feel that a case meets definition criteria and also believe that this feeling entitles some legal exception. Y'know, like the definition of 'woman'. Curiously since the Roe v Wade topic resurfaced almost every progressive now seems to be quite sure what women (and women's legal rights) are. Welcome aboard.

Can't make this stuff up. Forbid that science should misgender our anthropological relics (lest they offend the dead?).    Those wider pelvic bones, those cranial traits... heresy!

19 hours ago, winsor said:

RELIGION is power.

Is it cheaper than gas ?

Ah, c'mon Brent. We already have a 'woke is a joke' thread. Facebook has 58 genders and doesn't include this one. If you're planning new threads for each one of these you find it's going to get awfully cluttered in here. 

19 hours ago, billvon said:

Think of "the money and effort they saved by not taking climate action!"   And as long as he gets richer than other people, and as long as he dies before the climate gets REALLY bad, he 'wins.'

We disagree on timeline here. I expect you believe that the climate gets REALLY bad within the lifetime of the current generation, hence your perception that conservatives only plan 'until they die'. I'll concede that a conservative approach amounts to 'kicking the can down the road' but then conservatives also believe that it's still a really long road ahead. No point debating the length of the road here, plenty of other threads for that topic, we retain our respective opinions. It's unrealistic to think that conservatives have a disregard for future generations, especially their own. For some it's akin to an imperial bloodline for them.

19 hours ago, billvon said:

Sure, that can work.  That in the context of climate is a ruinous carbon tax, such that if you are one of the gluttons, you lose a lot of money.  

A domestic carbon tax might certainly have some local bite but I'm a lot less convinced internationally. India and China are currently still regarded as 'developing' countries thereby granted some exemptions from emissions commitments and they will most certainly play that card for as long as they possibly can. There is also the option that they are currently using similar to ongoing trade between Russia, India and China despite sanctions, finding trading partners (anywhere they can) that will exempt a carbon tax. China is already preparing their economy for sanctions following from the inevitable invasion of Taiwan. They already know the economic consequence of either sanctions or a future carbon tax with the West and they don't care. While the West buys green solutions, they buy warfare solutions. Whoever has made the better preparation (as opposed to prevention) will be better positioned.

1 minute ago, olofscience said:

Between the spelling mistakes, ...

That's your take now?  Some typos? That's the surest sign that you have nothing left in the tank.  Half the posts of everyone here have some grammatical slip somewhere. If you can convince yourself you're 'winning' by finding them then carry on...  

13 minutes ago, Phil1111 said:

Bill and olofscience are doing a bang up job of the head banging effort trying to educate a modern US conservative.

Yup, they have certainly being banging their heads a lot here.

5 minutes ago, wolfriverjoe said:

He's not US based.

..and that is an indicator why Phil believes his document 'contradicts everything I post'. He either hasn't read his own document, or hasn't read what I've posted, or fails to properly comprehend either.

2 minutes ago, jakee said:

... then I’m not sure what reality you live in.

That's always been the hallmark of your posts here. Unsure and from an alternate reality. I  can't help you there.

2 minutes ago, jakee said:

Anyway, I’m still more interested in getting an explanation of your ridiculous righty dogma that has invented a new definition of what a coup is.

The one recognised by the DOJ and other legal authorities. Have patience. He'll be found guilty of that charge.. or not. 

5 minutes ago, billvon said:

24 countries have reduced CO2 emissions between 1970 and 2018.

Wow, a whole 24?  And what global percentage reduction have they collectively achieved in that time? Some reports suggest global emissions have gone up by more than 50%. Other than less smog over their own cities (your LA example) , do those 24 nations regard that as money well spent? In a perfect world their efforts might be admirable but until such time as the largest contributors (notably India, China, Russia) start feeling real domestic pressure to act then I don't expect it will happen. The money and effort they saved by not taking climate action has in part been spent on their war machines (China & Russia) and somehow that feels more concerning to me right now that the rest of the world has not. Those nations, right now, can do a lot more damage than climate change over the same period and have expressed a willingness to do so.

The UK and parts of Europe have walked back on many of their COP26 commitments in view of Russian sanctions. Despite a heatwave in the UK right now it hasn't triggered them to again shut down all their coal powerplants today, as curiously electrical power is actually needed to run hospitals and cooling systems. It's fairly common sense to address the things that are going to matter most right now.

5 minutes ago, billvon said:

Conservatives say "not enough other people are doing it, so why the hell should I care?  I'll just get all the pizza oil I want and burn it because it helps me in the short term!  Let someone else suffer.”

It doesn’t help to make your point when you contradict it one sentence above.

You choose to interpret it as a contradiction because your analogy doesn't fit. How about "Lets take a collection to buy pizza for everyone in the room but only willing contributors need to pay regardless of how much you can afford to give. Then we'll do the same each day and every day for the next several years, and it will always be the same people expected to pay, and you'll gradually all go hungry anyway as the collection is insufficient to adequately feed everyone."  Would it not be more effective by allowing the gluttonous freeloaders to go hungry until they actually decide to chip in on the next round?  And since nobody is getting global pizza until then you could buy yourself some local burgers instead to make do until they come around.

9 minutes ago, billvon said:

Nope.  But if they are one of the continents reducing their emissions along with all the other continents, then yes it will help.

Which is not what is happening, hence it should not yet be a priority over more immediate concerns, especially for smaller contributors.

10 minutes ago, billvon said:

That's a basic difference between progressives and conservatives.  If a few pizzas get delivered to a party, the progressive might have only one slice in case they don't have enough for everyone.  The conservative has four slices - for exactly the same reason.

You can recite that to yourself if it makes you feel better. Doesn't make it true. It's right up there with "anything that sounds bad" which of course can only have a conservative cause. I'm sure when your next pizza delivery is late there will also be a conservative to blame for that too.

6 hours ago, billvon said:

 If Trump will hurt trans people/women/science/blacks then they support him.

?? That must be the reason why there are no females, blacks, trans people or scientists that vote Republican.   I'll happily agree that Trump is unintelligent, narcissistic and unpresidential. Enough faults to discount him without needing to make additional shit up. The ludicrous lefty dogma that just gets invented on the fly is hilarious.

6 hours ago, olofscience said:

In 2019 Australia burned, in 2022 it floods. Who knew having a stable climate is actually good for finances? To each his own I guess, after all, it's all about the money...

Oh, that's hilarious. You're one of the people who believe that Aussies reducing their 1.3% of global emissions contribution will somehow reduce bushfires and flooding there? This ties with your AI 'all jobs are doomed' as the biggest whopper you've written yet. 'Scientist' indeed.  OTOH building dams and flood levies will actually have a meaningful impact in NSW regardless of whether China, Russia or India reduce their emissions.

1 hour ago, olofscience said:

Then you should have started your argument as being about reliability, not about money. Why didn't you? You specifically mentioned money.

Look, I'm actually agreeing with you about the need for nuclear and spending more money. But you're just being rather inconsistent.

The discussion of money came up when were discussing budgets for preparing for local change vs preventing global change. I advocated that the former should take precedence, at least for a decade or two, and within an Australian context I'm fine for government to keep using existing coal and LNG power as the best current cost vs reliability balance while they conserve budget to build dams, flood levies, military spending, national debt reduction, etc. Once those things are at an acceptable level (subjective opinion) then gradually swap coal power sites for nuclear, whereby some of the expenses are mitigated by existing infrastructure at those sites and modular reactor costs might even be lower than present.  I accept that other countries may have different scenarios.

1 hour ago, metalslug said:

Also consider supply chain; Which countries have expertise in nuclear energy and/or large reserves of uranium and are they friendly to us ('the west')? 

53 minutes ago, billvon said:

The two largest uranium suppliers in the world are Kazakhstan and Namibia.  No, they're not friendly to us.

That's fascinating but has fsckall to do with what you replied to. Australia, Kazakhstan and Canada have the largest reserves of Uranium. I'm sure we'll get by if governments are willing to commit.

Edit to FYI; Namibia is friendly to the US at least.

5 hours ago, olofscience said:

nuclear power is the most expensive source of energy 

Well, except for offshore wind farms in a few places.  Most significantly is that nuclear is also the most reliable type of power. That reliability comes at a premium price. For me, reliable energy (in the context of home and business electricity) should be the only kind that exists in a 1st-world economy. As to cost comparison; You're now reverting to older threads that have already been debated to exhaustion. The costs have lot of variables for comparative energy density and billeisele has mentioned some other aspects of 'green' expenses in the previous post.

Also consider supply chain; Which countries have expertise in nuclear energy and/or large reserves of uranium and are they friendly to us ('the west')?  Contrast that against solar panel fabrication, cobalt, zinc... How is our relationship with these suppliers in the current political climate?  ..and how could that affect future pricing?

1 hour ago, jakee said:

That a President not been my charged with something in no way implies he didn’t do something?

..and lefty fantasies do not imply that he did do something. Believing that a mere 2000 civilian yahoos in mob formation constitutes a viable coup attempt against a force as significant as the US... is like trying to make a legal argument that a spitwad strike constitutes 'attempted murder'. Good luck with that in any court of learned legal judgement. You really should leave this one to the professionals.

24 minutes ago, jakee said:

Any other difficult concepts you need to explain to us like what colour grass is, or whether rain falls up or down?

You have repeatedly demonstrated a need for such explanations being fed to you. This is why I'll rather defer to the DOJ's judgement over yours. 

5 hours ago, mistercwood said:

...you aren't looking for a scientific basis for your views, and likely consider that trans people are just doing these things for funsies. You're wrong.

Facebook identifies 58 different genders for their community, 26 of which are variations of trans-something. Other similarly 'woke' platforms acknowledged just a few more or a few less. Would you assert that there's a scientific basis for all for these?  Somebody somewhere is having a shitload of funsies.

5 minutes ago, JoeWeber said:

The Secret Service agents? She testified that Trump wanted the "mags" removed so armed thugs could enter the Ellipse. On a final note, I will never reply again to you on a serious matter when you play the game of using a multi-quote.

Fair enough. She had given testimony on more than one event and you had not specified which. I retract my reply to your comment. The 'multi-quote' is not a 'game', it's a forum feature. You can edit my quoted reply down to the relevant lines that you wish to reply to or you're of course welcome to withhold replies. None of us here owe each other.     

5 hours ago, billvon said:

So if a people took over a Capitol and the armed forces bases nearby, killed/imprisoned all the lawmakers and military leaders, and installed themselves as the new government - in your mind that would not be a coup?

But that's not what happened.  Besides that fact; Were you not even reading the post? ; "...prerequisite for a coup is control of all or part of the armed forces, the police, and other military elements."  Taking over (control of) the armed forces and neutralising (existing) military leaders is almost exactly what I said does constitute a coup. Please try to keep up.

11 hours ago, JoeWeber said:

Surely after Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony that charge can be legitimately made. 

FYI  Cassidy Hutchinson wasn't even there and the agents who were there dispute it. They might as well ask you to testify to the event as I'm sure you also 'heard about it' somewhere.

11 hours ago, JerryBaumchen said:

IMO the fact that Trump was POTUS at the time means nothing.  If he was legally involved, he was legally involved.

Hence why the DOJ has not charged him.  It's also evident why yourself, bill & Joe are not contracted to the DOJ for your legal expertise.

1 hour ago, billvon said:

Literally not true.  The air is between 50% and 90% cleaner than it was 40 years ago in LA, for example.  We fixed the ozone hole.  We are doubling EV sales year after year.  Solar is doubling every 2-3 years.  This is happening because some of us care about the problem and are working to address it.

Edited correction; I had incorrectly included the words 'start to' in my previous post above.  In fairness to bill's reply; some people have indeed started to care already.

1 hour ago, olofscience said:

If Europe had invested more in nuclear....

I'm with you there, I've already stated on this forum that I support modern nuclear. 

1 hour ago, olofscience said:

Finally, who says you can't walk and chew gum at the same time? You can prepare for the short term while trying to reduce your impact for the long term. It's not like there's only one person who can do things, right?

It's not about people, it's about money. Both prevention and preparation will require huge budgets. What we disagree on is the timeline that determines the relative priorities of each.

5 minutes ago, olofscience said:

What I find really stupid is you want to join in the punching holes in the hull and thinking it's not going to bite you later on. This argument sounds even stupider when you consider per-capita emissions, but I'll leave that for now.

Everyone will only start to care about the problem when everyone is up to their necks in water, metaphorically speaking. In the shorter term it makes more sense to prepare for changes locally than to expect to prevent changes globally.