The Testing Chat III: The Time of Great Chatting

[Aaron]

Hmmm, won't be long till we get a "just doing it to try and get special treatment/off the charges/cry discrimination"

[Flagg]

The mainstream media isn't even covering it. I think I heard one offhand barely mentioned intimation about it in an interview on Rachel Maddow last year and that's it.

[Aaron]

No, I meant over there.

[timmy]

On the left wing radio news this morning they refered to her as Bradley. I don't know whether they don't know or are just trying to avoid confusion.

[adr]

Did ADR just milwank?

a little bit of milwank is part of any hard sci fi worldbuilding which i'm all about

and vs debates too of course

also i saw nothing of laser death sateilites there.

Straha's right, xkcd is what kicked me off. Check the "What if?" section and there's a thing about Hubble. Lasers and telescopes have a lot in common so I figure the same concerns would apply and it got me thinking about killing stuffs.

[adr]

I first heard about Brianna on an episode of Democracy Now! where Manning's biographer was a guest on the show. But DN! usually uses Bradley too.

[timmy]

XKCD What If is just too much fun

[Agent Bert Macklin]

Tim, I played a very nice Strat today. Though I don't know if I can put the JB humbucker in it without significant modifications. It had a very nice bluesy tone to it while playing on an expensive VOX.

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Fender-Amer ... 2565515.gc

[timmy]

When going to a humbucker in a strat, you've got two choices: 1.) buy a pickguard that fits your pickup. They're usually about ten or fifteen bucks shipped, unless you go for something like this one as signed by Leonard Nimoy. The downside of fitting a humbucker is that if it doesn't fit, you have to make it fit... Which means routing. Chewing into your guitar body steals its soul.

Option 2.) is buying a dual coil that fits a single slot... If you can get the model you want in that config.

I've promised myself I'm getting a Strat this year, but it won't be as nice as the one you linked.

[Agent Bert Macklin]

I'll never be able to comfortably afford that one. I'll likely get a mid range one, maybe around $1k.

I was jamming out at guitar center today and I was saddened by the fact that I can't play acoustic guitar as well I used to. I have difficulty arpeggio picking on an acoustic now. I went with my brother once and while he was Andy McKeeing, I was struggling trying to play some Dhasboard covers. Balls.

[timmy]

Acoustic is brutal on anyone's hand when you haven't handled one in a while. I dislike using them as stage instruments myself; too bulky. That's why I play an SG.

[Questor]

Did ADR just milwank?

a little bit of milwank is part of any hard sci fi worldbuilding which i'm all about

You strike me as far more Kim Stanley Robinson than Ian Douglas, just sayin'.

The closest I would normally think of milwank for you would be Freedom Series Anne McCaffery.

[magic princess]

I hate Manning for endorsing a defence which consisted of "yeah my GID made me betray my country", which is just about as low and scummy and backstabbing toward other transpeople as can possibly be imagined on this earth.

That said, the punishment came with it. She'll NEVER escape this kind of publicity and as a convicted felon will NEVER be able to hide her prior identity. It's a fate worse than death, so, honestly, she should have just pled guilty to the death-penalty charge and gotten an Army firing squad or whatever because that will be better than trying to live as a convicted felon transwoman whose male identity is a household name the world over. I cannot imagine a worse punishment for ANYONE, so whatever the heck you think of what Manning did--the punishment has already been rendered for ANY possible crime.

[Questor]

Magic Princess, that brings up an interesting point.

Does any system allow someone to change the data on court records like that, or is that covered under the "have you custimarily used any other name?" Question that has a tendency to show up on identity related legal documents?*

[Aaron]

I hate Manning for endorsing a defence which consisted of "yeah my GID made me betray my country", which is just about as low and scummy and backstabbing toward other transpeople as can possibly be imagined on this earth.

That said, the punishment came with it. She'll NEVER escape this kind of publicity and as a convicted felon will NEVER be able to hide her prior identity. It's a fate worse than death, so, honestly, she should have just pled guilty to the death-penalty charge and gotten an Army firing squad or whatever because that will be better than trying to live as a convicted felon transwoman whose male identity is a household name the world over. I cannot imagine a worse punishment for ANYONE, so whatever the heck you think of what Manning did--the punishment has already been rendered for ANY possible crime.

Your not naive enough to think she could actually get off, regardless of her defence.

[Flagg]

Bradley Manning: Releases classified docs that harm noone but embarrass the US and it's allies. US seeks life imprisonment.

Scooter Libby: Involved in conspiracy to out a CIA operative because her husband called bullshit on their IRaq lies, get's convicted and sentenced to a few years in Federal hilton, sentence commuted.

[Aaron]

To be perfectly honest, if I was facing death or a lifetime as a political prisoner, I'd be tempted to try "ptsd made me"

What have I got to lose? People's respect or being remembered a certain way doesn’t really matter if your dead.

[RogueIce]

Remind me again why people use anything produced by Apple?

Slick marketing?

[adr]

You strike me as far more Kim Stanley Robinson than Ian Douglas, just sayin'.

Pretend I've never read a book and try that sentence again ...well I think I know what you mean. Wikipedia makes Kim Stanley Robinson sound pretty interesting!

But eh I think about a lot of things, sometimes it is military tech (btw how would I defend against these laser orbiters? LASER SUBMARINES. Water would give them coolant, armor, and cover. I haven't actually done the math, by my gut says it wouldn't take much water to mitigate the damage of laser bombardment - the sub might be able to sit just at like periscope depth, floating little cameras, to track and perhaps even fire upon orbiting ships while being virtually immune to the return fire and almost invisible. And by the time the spacecraft swings around on its next orbit... the sub could have already moved. And these subs aren't hiding from other subs, so sound isn't terribly important. And here's the best part: even if the spacecraft is going after a land target, its orbit is almost certain to put it over an awful lot of ocean. A sub out of Hawaii could play a role in the battle for Colorado).


Most the time though it is other things, I just don't post that to the internet as often.

[magic princess]

Aaron, the problem is that, at least from my perspective, being part of an oppressed minority community does put an ethical obligation on you to sometimes take one for the team. Can you imagine, just in the 1960s when black civil rights were actually starting to take hold, you have a newly minted black congressman who is arrested for leaking data to the Soviet Union (whether or not this remotely comparable is irrelevant, of course, because that's how it was spun, which is the part that really matters), and his defence consists of "my experiences as a black man made me do it!" ? How anyone listening would only hear "being black made me do it!". Can you imagine how bad that would have been for the civil rights movement? I am intensely relieved at a systematic confession of guilt and the fact that the media more or less completely ignored this. It could have gone much, much worse. There are millions of transpeople with futures in this country who don't need them further hurt. Manning is basically a living corpse the way the US operates.

[Aaron]

Aaron, the problem is that, at least from my perspective, being part of an oppressed minority community does put an ethical obligation on you to sometimes take one for the team. Can you imagine, just in the 1960s when black civil rights were actually starting to take hold, you have a newly minted black congressman who is arrested for leaking data to the Soviet Union (whether or not this remotely comparable is irrelevant, of course, because that's how it was spun, which is the part that really matters), and his defence consists of "my experiences as a black man made me do it!" ? How anyone listening would only hear "being black made me do it!". Can you imagine how bad that would have been for the civil rights movement? I am intensely relieved at a systematic confession of guilt and the fact that the media more or less completely ignored this. It could have gone much, much worse. There are millions of transpeople with futures in this country who don't need them further hurt. Manning is basically a living corpse the way the US operates.

Yeah I understand.

[Aaron]

Years ago there was a guy who was convicted of child molesting, who won an appeal based on his PTSD from Bosnia. Lots of us were angry because we didn't want guilt by association, lots of us claimed it doesn't make you do it, etc.

So while the situation is not 100% comparable and I don't agree with you, I do understand your viewpoint. And I respect it.

[magic princess]

That's fair enough, Aaron. People are bound to have different opinions on the issue.

[timmy]

Years ago there was a guy who was convicted of child molesting, who won an appeal based on his PTSD from Bosnia. Lots of us were angry because we didn't want guilt by association, lots of us claimed it doesn't make you do it, etc.

I think the defence of John Stebbins (with the Rangers in Mogadishu) tried to argue that when he was tried for the same. It didn't work.

[Darksi4190]

So, apparently the guy who voices Palpatine on TCW passed away, and they're getting Tim Curry to replace him.

I thought his voice sounded different in the last preview.