Well I think the operative question here is “preferred by who?”. The current government prefers it. Voters do not. None of us are obligated to indulge the “secondary title” nonsense in an executive order clearly designed to sidestep the actual legal process for a name change.
They haven’t, though. In the decades that followed World War 2, creation of the UN etc, the number of people dying in warfare and civilian death due to war dropped dramatically.
No, it wasn’t zero. But there was still a notable drop. I don’t think it’s coincidence that blowing up this world order has only become a cause now that those who suffered the horrors of WW2 have died.
They may have dropped from the level of death during the war itself. A transnational conflict that involved every continent on earth. But I'd be shocked if the numbers dead from war in the post war period did not exceed the median number of civilian victims of war pre-WW1 or in the post war period. The World Wars normalised the idea of total war, of death squads and killing fields and mechanised genocide. Those have continued apace, everywhere from the Congo to Cambodia. At the time they were novelties in 'the civilised' world.
I asked ChatGPT to compute the rate of total deaths (civilians + military) since the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
Here's what it came up with:
Period. Approx average deaths from war
1815–1913 ~5–15 per 100k per year
1914–1945 ~100–200 per 100k per year
1946–1989 ~5–10 per 100k per year
1990–today ~1–3 per 100k per year
I know AI is not 100% reliable but it searched on many sources to compute that.
I checked some of them and the conclusion is in line with them.
Here's the "bottomline":
> Since the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the per-capita death rate from war has fallen substantially, with the huge exception of the 1914–1945 world-war era, which produced the highest war mortality rates in modern history.
TBH this surprised me. I thought that with much better killing machines in the 20th century, we'd be more efficient at killing, and as we're still having wars as usual that would mean death rates would increase... but it seems I was quite wrong.
> as the current preferred name "Dept of War" is now for a different posture with regard to America's adversaries.
…which is the bad thing being discussed, yes. I don’t really understand why “there used to be one” would be exonerative. Not to mention, they didn’t rename it, that requires an act of Congress. Instead they just told everyone to change which name they use. Lines up with the “adult children” theory. Skip the actual work, (which would involve addressing the nation and justifying this change in posture), instead focus on the performative.
As we are seeing in real time with Iran, “we’ll just war!” was a juvenile idea, committed to with near-zero forethought or planning.
> Not to mention, they didn’t rename it, that requires an act of Congress. Instead they just told everyone to change which name they use.
It's wild how people are just going along with it, too. They didn't officially change the name of anything. Why are journalists and people outside of the administration's orbit using the "preferred" but fake name?
working on a new unified theory of american reality i'm calling "everyone is twelve now"
“I’m strong and I want to have like fifty kids and a farm” of course you do. You’re twelve. “I don’t want to eat vegetables I think steak and French fries is the only meal” hell yeah homie you’re twelve. “Maybe if there’s crime we should just send the army” bless your heart my twelve year old buddy
I view Doctor Who as part of a great tradition of sci-fi that pushes boundaries. Tennant's era was a primetime TV show that featured gay characters (Captain Jack in particular) without treating it like it was a big deal. When at the time it really wasn't that common (particularly in kid-friendly TV).
These attempts overshoot at times, like when Star Trek TNG put male crew members in "skants"[1] but they can always course correct. If you let minor things like that ruin your viewing of the show then that's on you, not them.
> These attempts overshoot at times, like when Star Trek TNG
On the other hand the entire run of the "progressive" Star Trek didn't have a single gay character until 2016 - not even in guest stars (well there was the whole Dax/Trill thing, and the "non binary" character with Riker)
Insane that this took six months. AI facial recognition should be considered about as reliable as a polygraph, which is to say not usable in court at all.
Shame we’ve got ICE agents roaming the country also using facial recognition to find their targets, huh?
> But Lipps said Fargo police did not pay for her trip home, leaving her stranded. Local defense attorneys helped cover a hotel room and food on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and a local non-profit, the F5 Project, was able to help her return to Tennessee, InForum reported.
How the hell are authorities not responsible for helping an innocent person back after forcing them to travel at the point of a gun?
I read she had no winter clothes, not even a jacket to go outside in the cold when they released her. She was arrested in TN during warm weather. Not all of the news sites reported the story in complete detail. Her treatment was truly appalling.
I know polygraphs are not admissible in court but they're still being used and have quite a bit of swaying. I think it's mainly intimidation at play here.
Yeah, it's absolutely crazy that it took 6 months to clarify this, if she was rich and had a good lawyer she could've solved it faster. I really hope that she at least gets compensated and/or sues the operators or the AI company.
And as far as ICE, I think they don't care that they pick up the wrong people, they just have quotas to reach to unlock bonuses. It's cynical and sad as hell. Hopefully we're gonna be done with them once Trump is gone.
Trump is not a problem. System that lets him do what he does is. I used to admire the US back when I lived in USSR. You can guess the way I look at it lately. I still have some hope in people of the US, they seem to actually be capable to stand for their rights every once in a while. We'll see what happens.
What is your position? Genuinely asking as someone who is similarly trying to cope and doesn't want to travel down the road being trampled on. Primarily because it doesn't make me better, it doesn't benefit me as an individual and takes the joy out from understanding things.
I don't really see any relevance to "me too". Far more likely it's to cover from insane overhearing in the pandemic era, and no one wants to admit they overdid it.
An encryption key could be stored in a QR code and the user could be sheltered from any technical issues.
To be honest if we’re talking truly accessible, even usernames and passwords aren’t great. Users forget them. That’s why a lot of sites these days offer to email you “magic links” to log you in. And if you want to do that you need to make sure you’re running a server sending emails that won’t immediately go to spam.
At a certain point if you want a truly scalable, decentralized platform you’re going to have to cut back on backend responsibilities. This is a logical answer to the problem.
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