Depends. The cheap houses, yeah, there’s as fair bit of noise, but you can’t hear everything. From downstairs, you can hear when someone walks across the room above you, but not when they’re walking in other upstairs rooms. And from rooms on the same level, you can hear if someone is talking loudly in the room next door, but not enough to make out what they’re saying unless they’re yelling.

Well-built houses or buildings made for occupancy by multiple families usually have better sound insulation between the rooms/floors/units, so it’s not always an issue.

Edit: the plus side to that is I know all the noises my house makes at night, so as a light sleeper, I know when something is wrong in the middle of the night, and I only need one decent sound system for the whole house, which is great for listening to records while doing housework.

If he wasn’t alone what would shooting him accomplish? You still haven’t actually presented a compelling reason he needed to be kept under a gun.

Once Bushnell was on fire and had stopped moving toward the gate/fence, you are correct, he didn’t need to be kept under a gun. However, if he had started to move in a threatening way or if he had been working with a larger group, having the guns drawn could have saved crucial seconds if someone else began to act in a threatening way. The security forces simply didn’t know what the fuck was happening, and in that situation, it is better to have the guns drawn and to be ready for the worst case scenario.

I think it’s understandable that people untrained for a situation like this would fall back on the default, I know I wouldn’t know what to do, but calling that “reasonable” as if it really makes sense in hindsight is a stretch.

That’s fair. I can get behind calling it “understandable” instead of “reasonable”

Considering the security forces had no idea whether he was working alone or what was happening, they obviously didn’t think they could rely on the metal fence.

Look, I’m all for a free Palestine and I agree that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. I also think that voluntary membership in any American or Israeli law enforcement makes them complicit in the heinous acts perpetrated by American cops and the IDF, respectively. I don’t know you, but I’d guess that you and I agree a lot more than we disagree on these issues. I’m just saying, from the PoV of the security forces at the Israeli embassy, this was a potential threat to the embassy and their job is literally to prevent threats from harming the embassy. Without any further information to go on, their decision to draw guns first and get the extinguisher second is reasonable.

Stop him before he got any closer to the embassy. Obviously a gun won’t stop him from commiting suicide, but it could easily be the difference between one person dying and a much larger act of terrorism

The idea that humans need the diverse micro ecology of earth in order to not become ill over the course of generations is pretty interesting.

Really pretty well-supported by current science, too. I teach chemistry at a community college, so maybe I’m an outlier, but I read a ton of current research about the importance of diversity in “gut biomes” and the damaging effects of monoculture on global ecology, etc.

It seems pretty clear that even if engineers could solve the physical and chemical issues with a generation ship, the limiting constraints are almost certainly going to be biological and ecological, and KS Robinson’s estimates for the upper limits seem pretty reasonable based on current knowledge

Someone what mentioned Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars trilogy, and that is really good, but his book Aurora is almost exactly what you are describing.

Highly recommend.

I’m amazed I had to scroll this far too find any mention of notepad++

And let’s not forget the Giants’ amazing reliever, Pablo Sandoval (0.00 ERA and 0.00 WHIP)!

For those not in the loop, he was a (seemingly) overweight 3rd baseman who made phenomenally athletic plays and hit monster home runs (especially in the postseason, leading to 3 World Series trophies and a WS MVP), earning the nickname “Kung Fu Panda.”

Then, in the twilight of his career, he also pitched 2 innings without allowing a baserunner, becoming a bit of an SF meme, including at least one “Let Pablo Pitch” bobblehead.

Bozeman, MT for me, apparently because I listen to a fair bit of Jason Isbell and other new-ish alt-country and Americana. Despite the fact that none of my top 5 artists are alt country, the rest of my listening is apparently eclectic enough that nothing else really came close.

I would have thought that having 60-70% of my listening all in a small cluster of esoteric doom-metal-related subgenres would have placed me somewhere with some sort of a metal scene, but apparently not.

The Current is Minnesota Public Radio’s music station, and they are phenomenal. I have found so many great bands and artists listening to them.

edit: just today, they played Janelle Monae, IDLES, LCD Soundsystem, Bob Dylan, Daft Punk, Silversun Pickups, Yard Act, and Caroline Polachek.

The additional context is helpful, and I’m not trying to minimize your experiences. I’m just saying that an average guy who’s played rugby and is a “typical man’s man” can be inherently and unintentionally threatening to women, even if you personally have a friendly relationship with those women. Now some of this is likely cultural and country specific. I’m guessing from your reply times and mentioning rugby, uni, and camping that you’re from Aus (or at least not the US). Most of my background is in the western US, so I understand that in your situation, things are probably totally different than my experiences. However, I have also spent lots of time in mixed friend groups, in traditional male-dominated areas (including rugby teams, interestingly), in very conservative spaces (as a very liberal person), and my experiences have been markedly different than yours.

I believe I’m fairly approachable as a guy and not threatening.

The issue isn’t necessarily you. Women have been trained through long and often traumatic personal histories that men, especially traditionally masculine men, are dangerous. Add to that the fact that when you start to open up about emotional issues, your behavior starts to deviate from “normal” guy behavior. Not a problem, except that now you’re an average guy (which usually means significantly larger and stronger than an average woman) who is behaving in unexpected ways, which means you’re unpredictable from the point of view of a woman.

None of her perception or fear is your fault, but it is literally a dangerous situation from the woman’s point of view.

Women are terrible at giving sympathy or comfort to men.

I don’t necessarily disagree; I’m just trying to get you to think about whether that’s because women don’t care or because in nearly every culture, women need to be exceptionally cautious around men, especially men in emotional distress that might behave unpredictably. Even if they know you really well under normal circumstances, when you start to deviate from “normal” behavior, women need to be on their guard.

The “worst”, most “toxic masculinitiy” environments are better than the best women encounter

And that’s where you lose me. Yes, “masculine environments” can be a great place to open up and get emotional support, but they can also reinforce harmful habits and act as an echo chamber (much like male-dominated internet discourse). I’m not saying that you should replace your male friends with female friends, or that you should stop talking to your male friends. I’m just saying that women can also provide that support in many circumstances (in my experience).

If you’re consistently having bad experiences when you talk about emotional issues with women, then it may be the way you present the issues, the group dynamics, or the specific women that you choose to open up to. To say point blank that “The worst, most ‘toxic masculinity’ environments are better than the best women encounter” is where I disagree.

I have been in very macho environments and with guys. Most have been approachable and helpful. Girls not so much.

Have you considered that your experiences in macho environments with guys could be primarily due to your appearance and demeanor? And that your experiences with women being unapproachable could be due to that same appearance and demeanor, as well as the institutionalized power dynamics and physical inequalities between men and women?

I’m not saying that it’s easy to connect on a deep emotional level with platonic female friends (or romantic partners) as a man. I’m just saying that it’s not necessarily because women are intentionally excluding you; like someone elsewhere in the thread said, many men have been victimized of the patriarchy, too.

especially if your taste is a little off the beaten path. I really like a ton of music that most would consider “weird” or “an acquired taste,” which means other fans tend to be condescending and douchey (I may be pretentious, but I try to draw the line at condescending). Add to that the fact that I live in a tiny town and that many of my other hobbies attract either edge-lords (i.e. TTRPGs) or bros (i.e. snowboarding and baseball), and it can feel like it’s not even worth trying to get to know people with shared interests.

Luckily I work in a job where I can have meaningful relationships with several of my coworkers even if we have very little in common beyond the work (and my extroverted wife and kids mean I get about all the interactions my introverted self can handle).

edit: Almost forgot to offer you some support! Keep trying OP, there are people worth knowing out there, and you may already know some of them. I’ve had really good luck getting in touch with some college friends and doing discord or zoom game nights where we chat and play online card games or TTRPG’s once a month.

I would have to disagree. Sure, in the modern world, one function of art is to “move money around,” but it’s far from the only function or even the most important function.

I have read it, but I forgot about that detail until you reminded me. I probably have to reread now :)

Haha, I’m just glad at least some people enjoy reading them, since I can’t help but write them (and listening to my endless digressions down Wikipedia rabbit holes is exhausting for my partner).

I agree with everything you said, except I would argue that capitalism is the Sixth Horseman of the Apocalypse, seeing as one of the original four was already replaced during a translation. The original text were interpreted as “Conquest, War, Famine, and Death,” and the story I remember from my New Testament course in college was that in the early 1900’s, it was thought that Conquest was too similar to War, so they used one of the later passages that specified that the horsemen would bring death by “sword, famine, plague, and the wild beasts of the earth” to rebrand Conquest as Pestilence. In fact, now reading up on it from Wikipedia, apparently the first two horsemen were likely both supposed to represent war, with the white rider (Conquest) representing “righteous/justified war” and the red rider (War) supposed to represent “civil war,” which is interesting.

In fact, given how vaccines and modern medicine have dramatically lowered the death by infectious disease in the 20th century, it’s likely time for another rebranding (relevant xkcd), so I’d replace “pestilence” with “capitalism” or even “profit” if I were feeling flowery.

edit: Upon further reading, apparently the third horseman (Famine) could also be interpreted as a form of capitalistic excess, since it’s accompanied by a voice that describes rising market prices for staples such as bread and is carrying market scales. Traditionally, this is thought to indicate Famine as loaves of bread would be weighed during food shortages, but the accompanying voice seems to indicate that luxuries are still available, so I could easily make the argument that the passage is about the rich tending to their own needs while ignoring the needs of the poor (which sounds an awful lot like modern US politics/capitalism).

Edit 2: So I guess I’d rebrand all three of the riders preceding Death so that I’d interpret things as “Imperialism, Extremism, Capitalism, and Death,” or put a little more poetically, “Conquest, Discord, Avarice, and Death”

“Science deniers” is a better description.

In the US, those terms are reversed; a psychiatrist is a medical doctor and a psychologist is not.

Fa real, sa sa ke?

Edit: oye kopeng, don’t forget check ya seals an filters