sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 3hI think this presumes a level of control over the police that the mayor probably does not have. 010
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 17hMy understanding is that, even if free, they tended to be unarmed or lightly armed because fighting wasn’t their role. (And also they tended to be the poorest citizens, in societies where soldiers supplied their own weapons. They’re not going to be armed like hoplites.) 110
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 17hOr, y’know, the military attracts the sort of people who like the idea of killing a person, because killing people is what militaries do. I’m sure that in all the Army they can find ten dudes who think this would be fun. 0122
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 19hThe vast majority of the trireme's crew are rowers, who didn't typically carry weapons. Only one out of ten or so are marines trained and equipped for boarding actions. The SotL crew, by contrast, all have weapons (including firearms!), and are all expected to participate in boarding actions. 110
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 21hIt's so weird. I don't have a vote in the CBA. Why are the owners trying to persuade me they're right? Even if they succeeded (lol) there would be nothing I could do to help them with that. 010
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 22hIf the owners could knock 5% of games off the regular season and cut player pay by 5% they'd come out ahead. And if they could use the extra days to make the playoffs slightly bigger they'd come out way ahead. 000
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 22hThe players make their money in the regular season, the owners make it in the playoffs. There's probably four money-loser games in the regular season for most franchises (midweek day games, months when it's too hot/too cold for baseball, school year, etc.) 100
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 08/10/2026My understanding is that it might be real for a small number of psychiatric conditions, like eating disorders, that sometimes seem to spread like contagious diseases even though there's no physical contagion involved? That was the original sense of the term before it became a right-wing buzzword. 010
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 08/10/2026Children served the economic function that Social Security does now- a way of banking the surpluses of the most productive age cohort. Like SS, they were inefficient from a pure utility standpoint but hedged against worst-case scenarios (destitution in old age.) 030
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 08/10/2026If you're a young adult in your physical prime, you are more secure now than you will be in 14+ years when your body starts to slow down. Eventually, if you are lucky, you will live long enough that you can't care for yourself purely through labor. 120
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 08/10/2026Sure, but if they break even at 14, then after 14 they're in the black. And agrarian societies don't normally give you other ways to bank a present surplus in a way that will pay off 14+ years in the future. 130
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 08/10/2026I know google’s search AI is low-hanging fruit but I think legally this means Branson owes you royalties: 000
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 07/10/2026The thing about Noel is, spaghetti is a wonderful dish. 0170
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 07/10/2026LOTR dwarves don't actually drink a lot, except insofar as Tolkein's from mid 20th C. England so by modern American standards *everybody* drinks a lot. The Elves are the heavy drinkers. 000
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 06/10/2026You have to really, really lack reading comprehension to mangle that into "Dany fixes the zombie problem as a sidequest, then burns a bunch of shit down for no reason because she's evil now." But lacking reading comprehension was Benioff and Weiss's specialty. 000
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Well, the thing the books were telegraphing is something like "Dany burns down King's Landing semi-accidentally, realizes that her wars are just making things worse for everyone she is ostensibly trying to help, and has a moment of redemption when she dies saving the world from zombies." 100
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 06/10/2026That, and the showrunners decide to resolve the zombie apocalypse *before* the political intrigue because the latter is what they find interesting, even though the whole point of the books is that the latter is a pointless distraction and the former is actually important. 020
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 05/10/2026for this joke to work you need to pick a thing that would be bad 010
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 04/10/2026It annoys me that this can almost, but not quite, fit the meter of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1450
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 03/10/2026Sometimes Noel is correct and this is one of those times 160
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 02/10/2026No offense but this reminds me of the argument that only gun weirdos can weigh in on gun control because they’re the experts. IDC if I can’t tell a Glock from a Baretta, it should still be illegal to own either one. 091
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Monhegan is a hippie artist colony with a permanent population of like 60 people. This is probably the first time anybody has ever been heckled there. 000
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 01/10/2026Apparently one of their players is actually some kind of Shinto god?? no way that’s legal 010
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 01/10/2026I think we see Headrick and Bednar just because otherwise they would have an entire week off before Tampa. 000
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 01/10/2026Judge wasn’t quite healthy enough to make the team as a guy who can hit but not field or run, so instead Stanton made the team as a guy who can hit but not field or run. 000
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Sure, but few people take ”if we hold out on Israel they will respond with even bigger atrocities“ to its logical conclusion, which is that the Palestinian people are hostages and Israel is implicitly threatening them to extort concessions from us. 0180
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 30/09/2026He got rid of beard waivers for medical and religious reasons because that makes it easier to kick out Black men and Sikhs. 2270
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 30/09/2026If it is actually true that nothing America does influences Israel's behavior in any way, why are we giving them foreign aid in the first place? 131
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 29/09/2026How does she get the shirt over her wings?? and other timeless mysteries 1120
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Using “increasingly” to modify an adverb is, uh, increasingly common. I think it’s probably common enough to count as standard usage now. 020
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Veep is brilliant but I think it suffers from mostly being a satire of pre-2016 US politics. It's a cynical exploration of Americans' worst fears about the private character of our rulers but, in hindsight, our worst fears back then were remarkably quaint. 000
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Agnes Callard is that philosophy professor who went viral a few years ago for living in a menage-a-trois with her husband and one of her grad students. Not exactly a great choice to be teaching teenagers. 0130
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 21/09/2026The original prompt was "would you rather have $1,000,000 one time, or $50 a month for life." He said $50 because he could spend it on the grindset and turn it into more money. When an accountant came by to explain why that was wrong this was his answer. It's amazing. 020
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 21/09/2026Circa 2004 I think there wasn’t a clear partisan advantage to the electoral college- Kerry came very close to winning with fewer votes like Bush did- so there was a bipartisan consensus that the EC is a bad system. Whereas now it’s known to consistently help Republicans. 050
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 21/09/2026static.klipy.comSeinfeld: I'm Shifting Into Soup ModeALT: Seinfeld: I'm Shifting Into Soup Mode 010
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 18/09/2026The Morgenthau plan was more extreme than anything the FDR or Truman administrations seriously considered doing to Japan. 020
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 18/09/2026I think this is about the median outcome for not very bright guys born into aristocratic families. 010
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 18/09/2026This, but also, a measles vaccine was widely available in the US by 1963. Very few kids who grew up in the 60s got measles. He’s probably confusing it with chicken pox. 000
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 16/09/2026I think part of the liberal democratic bargain is that, actually, there is a limit to how much religiousity a majority can vote into the government. If Israel wants to be in the civilized democracy club it needs to have the same degree of secularism we demand from other members. 000
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Coach quoted something that is, based on the facts in the article, pretty clearly true, and then added "lmao." Please explain to me how that's a useful contribution and not amplifying a smear. 100
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Okay. What should anyone say or do differently, in your opinion, so as to agree with Macklemore but not make him the "voice of this movement," whatever that means? 100
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 16/09/2026I don't think he's the voice of the movement. He's right, and Kraft is wrong. There's no need to temporize about that. It's not like he's running for office or anything. If you are letting a dishonest smear like this affect your judgment, you are the one letting Robert Kraft pick leaders. 120
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 16/09/2026The article makes it pretty clear that he was trying to make a generic disguise so people wouldn’t recognize him, and when he realized it accidentally resembled an ethnic caricature he immediately apologized. And 12 years have gone by since and he hasn’t done anything like it again. 100
sarachim @sarachim.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Roko’s Basilisk is basically the Book of Job for these people. 160
