arquebus_x

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

This is how we ended up with Q and anti-vaxxers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

If I'm not mistaken, a "militia" was understood to be an ad hoc, non-standing armed group, supplied by the resources of its members. The amendment was added so that if a militia were ever needed (again), it could be formed, because the pool of potential militia members had their own firearms. Laws limiting citizen access to firearms would hobble any new militia.

Given that armies at the time were only recently becoming "standing" (permanent) armies, and the U.S. didn't really have one, their best option for making war was militias. They were acutely aware that the revolution began that way, and only later developed an actual (organized, separately supplied, long-term) army.

But very quickly, the U.S. developed permanent armed forces and never had to rely on militias again. At that point the 2nd amendment really should have been obsolete.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Or free Black people.

They weren't quite the sharpest tacks in the box.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (3 children)

It doesn't help that the sentence makes no sense. The second clause requires that the first be the subject of the sentence, but then the third clause starts with a new subject, and lastly there's that weird "German" comma after "Arms."

There's more than one way to interpret the meaning, but strictly speaking the only syntactically accurate rendering comes out roughly as:

[The right to] a well regulated Militia shall not be infringed, as it's necessary to the security of a free State (security meaning the right of the people to keep and bear arms).

...which is also meaningless.

It's a stupid amendment for lots of reasons, but the big one is that it's just shitty English.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

Do you mean early human development biologically, or early human development overall (including culturally)? Because if the latter, humans using fire to cook meat was probably significantly less important than humans using fire for heat and light.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What it comes down to there is whether the act of selection is an act of art. If there is no skill other than picking, I'm not sure I'd consider it an artistic act. (For similar reasons I'm very much on the fence about a lot of modern art.)

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (11 children)

Jesus Christ that NYT article has so many weasel words in it. "Seen as", "appear to be," blah blah blah. I hate the NYT.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

If you're young and it was done, it was for specific reasons (not all of which are valid).

But if you're older, say around 40+, it was done because that's what was done.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

Duct. Duck is a brand name

Yes. But also mostly no.

Wikipedia:

"Duck tape" is recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary as having been in use since 1899 and "duct tape" (described as "perhaps an alteration of earlier duck tape") since 1965

and:

In 1971, Jack Kahl bought the Anderson firm and renamed it Manco. In 1975, Kahl rebranded the duct tape made by his company. Because the previously used generic term "duck tape" had fallen out of use, he was able to trademark the brand "Duck Tape" and market his product complete with a yellow cartoon duck logo. Manco chose the term "Duck", the tape's original name, as "a play on the fact that people often refer to duct tape as 'duck tape'", and as a marketing differentiation to stand out against other sellers of duct tape.

People should really do the bare minimum double-check before showing their whole ass.

As others have noted, "duct tape" is the last thing you want to use on ducts. Better to actually call it "duck tape," as it was for the first 65 years of its existence.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I generally only use Best Buy if I need a thing right now, to complete whatever project/installation I'm doing, and don't want to wait a day for shipping. (I actually don't have Amazon Prime so it would really be more like a week.)

I did buy my gaming laptop from Best Buy. It was an open box sale so it was about $300 less than anywhere else. Plus, again, I was able to get it right away.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Fun story! They came to that conclusion because they discovered a text which had what they believed was another very similar word ("epiousi") that, in context, meant "necessary" or "enough for now." That text was a shopping list.

Then the text got lost for a long time, and when they found it again, new eyes on it realized that they'd misread the word, so it was back to square one.

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