[-] SwampYankee@mander.xyz 5 points 4 months ago

I have worked hard to remind some of the Trump-voting Massholes I have the pleasure of interacting with on a regular basis of this. I think I've made inroads with at least one of them. I also make sure to bring this up:

"The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy."

Trump committed negligent homicide in blue states for political gain.

[-] SwampYankee@mander.xyz 5 points 8 months ago

While I agree for the sake of clarity, a bigger problem is that it only goes back less than 2 months. Has the number of installs been steady at 7k for a long time? Or does it fluctuate wildly like this occasionally for reasons totally unrelated to laws?

[-] SwampYankee@mander.xyz 5 points 1 year ago

It seems like the airstrikes damaging the crossing is a more recent development that I wasn't aware of. Your CBC article and the CNN article posted above are only an hour old. Your Times of Israel article says this:

The Rafah crossing was open for periods Tuesday morning, but Egypt only allowed through Palestinians who’d already gotten authorization to leave the Strip.

On the Rafah crossing’s Facebook page, Gazans lamented the decision to not open the crossing for anyone wishing to leave, with one user writing: “Interior Ministry, this is not the time to put someone in danger who survived a bombing and miraculously reached the crossing. We cannot return to death.”

[-] SwampYankee@mander.xyz 5 points 1 year ago

Godspeed, PipedLinkBot. We wish you a speedy recovery.

[-] SwampYankee@mander.xyz 6 points 1 year ago

Highway engineer here. It's asphalt (or bitumen), which is a product of crude oil refining. It's all the stuff that stays at the bottom when you heat crude up to over 1000°F. Because it's so sticky & viscous, it has to be heated up to around 300°F in order to be used. Asphalt is the "binder" in a pavement mixture that includes silt, sand, and rocks in various quantities and sizes, and these days the asphalt binder is usually modified in some way to improve its performance in the climate or application it's going to be used in.

A chipseal is made by spreading a continuous layer of small rocks on a prepared surface and spraying the hot asphalt over it after, which binds the rocks together. It's similar to Macadam pavement which was developed in the early 1800s and continued to be used well into the 1900s, often as a base layer for a more modern hot-mix asphalt pavement. Tar used to be used in paving a lot, but tar is made from coal and environmental regulations don't allow it anywhere that I know of. There's also a more state of the art technique that involves a looser layer of slightly larger stones, sprayed with a modified asphalt emulsion (modified in this case meaning with rubber or polymer for elasticity, and emulsion meaning it's mixed with water to make it easier to work with), called a stress-absorbing membrane interlayer, used for reducing reflective cracking from an existing pavement surface into a new overlay surface. Modified asphalts & emulsions are often used for chipseals these days, too.

Lecture over.

[-] SwampYankee@mander.xyz 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I have thousands of hours in Bethesda games. Something about sneaking around murdering bandits, mutants, mythical beasts, heavily armored soldiers, etc. especially sniping them with a bow in Skyrim and watching everyone run around like "who shot Steve in the face!?", that was just... chef's kiss. That and finding something interesting around every corner, and just the visual aspect of it. It's hard to explain but there is a certain Bethesda magic that no other game really captures. Plus the modding...

[-] SwampYankee@mander.xyz 5 points 1 year ago

Surely you mean a flamethrower.

[-] SwampYankee@mander.xyz 5 points 1 year ago

Is it also perceived as such in the USA itself?

I've had to consciously change my media habits, so yes, by some of us anyway.

[-] SwampYankee@mander.xyz 5 points 1 year ago

Did a second playthrough of XCOM Enemy Unknown, and now I'm on to XCOM 2, which I never got into more than a few missions.

[-] SwampYankee@mander.xyz 5 points 1 year ago

What if... and hear me out here... I don't want to destroy the United States?

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SwampYankee

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