jeremyparker

I mean, it's not one or the other. No interference from Congress means we get surveilled by China and the US. Congress can cut that number in half.

Interestingly, basically no one has any checks on sheriffs. We can "vote them out" but that's extremely difficult, and sheriffs can interfere with they're competitors with no consequences.

I intended to write that just as an intro paragraph to a critique of enlightenment philosophy, since I feel like, while the goal of objectifying the human experience was the natural predecessor to the eventual subjectification of the exterior universe, their confidence in their interpretations of their experience -- or maybe just in the universality of their interpretations -- makes their entire project a bit sus

But then life happened and I just said the thing about coffee.

Did you know that Kant used to criticize people who drank more than one cup of coffee per day. Also, he would refill his own coffee cup before it was empty, so he never had more than one cup.

Wtf is this bullshit. When tf did vim start allowing you to do the same thing in more than one way

You're right, I'll concede that -- but only because BSG is an amazing show and very few characters can be reduced to "good" and "bad" -- even the "antagonists" (in the traditional sense of those characters working against the stories' progression) have pretty valid reasons for doing what they do.

Gaius (sp?) is one of the closest characters to "bad" -- but not because of the bad things he does, but because of the bad things he is -- ie, vain, selfish, etc -- and the fact that he lets those negative characteristics drive his actions.

All the characters have flaws, but the "good" characters do their best to mitigate their flaws, and let their positive traits motivate them. For example, Adama often acts before he thinks, a trait that is awesome in combat, but can be less positive other times -- and he (as best he can) seeks advice and counsel from the people he trusts (eg Saul Tigh) -- he knows he can be impulsive and he knows his "instant judgement" decision making isn't perfect.

Cavil (that's his name I think) is close to "evil" but he does have reasons for his actions -- preservation of his "species" (though really it's just himself) -- but he's evil because of the fact that he doesn't listen and acts with disloyalty and dishonor.

(There's an amazing comeuppance for the titular character of the show Nathan Barley that epitomizes this idea: Barley doesn't actually do anything wrong, but his motivations are repugnant, and his motivations are what's revealed... Shit I should write a whole essay on that....)

Are there contemporary shows that are as good as BSG? I kind of gave up on TV after Firefly.

How long does it take to fill that storage?

(transcribed from a series of tweets) - @iamragesparkle

I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, "no. get out."

And the dude next to me says, "hey i'm not doing anything, i'm a paying customer." and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, "out. now." and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed

Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, "you didn't see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them."

And i was like, ohok and he continues.

"you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it's always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don't want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.

And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it's too late because they're entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.

And i was like, 'oh damn.' and he said "yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people."

And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven't forgotten that at all.

Cylons being manipulated by other cylons doesn't absolve them of guilt.

BSG did have a few instances of the reverse of OP's question tho -- where the "good guys" turned out to be bad" -- trying to say this without spoilers; it's a 20 year old show but ffs of you haven't seen it, go see it now.

• the (temporary) new admiral
• several main characters during the part where they live on the dirty planet
• a very specific set of seven main characters (wink wink) ... .and more,..

And there's one specific example of the full 360 -- a character that starts good, turns bad, but turns out they were actually good all along. I won't give the name, but they were passing messages to the resistance.

That show was awesome.

One note tho, on the topic generally: flipping character alignments is a frequent pre-shark-jump thing, and is often bad writing. In BSG, tho, all of the "flips" are pre-planned, or at least 100% true to their character (eg the 360 example above).

Yeah, they're probably using the increased power -- they weren't running 3 instances of stable diffusion on the m1

I don't think anyone is allowed to take away your right to being a part of a class action lawsuit as a requirement to use a TV. Recent SCOTUS shenanigans aside, I can't imagine a judge would let that fly.

Yeah, the Serenity Prayer context might help.

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I can't change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference