…That does not, in fact, make it any better.

That makes it even more terrorism.

Not a war crime; terrorism. Hezbollah is a political organization.

Until it doesn’t.

…And that point is often what we call “genocide”, when you’ve killed so many people that there simply aren’t enough left to effectively resist, and then you forcibly assimilate the remainder into your culture.

Are you okay with losing the majority of battles and having x10 the casualties?

The thing is that having 10x the casualties tends to create more fighters.

This is why Israel needs to commit total genocide in order to “win” in Gaza and the West Bank. Every time they kill a legitimate Palestinian fighter–versus an uninvolved civilian–they’re killing someone that had a family, and friends, people that knew the person, people that loved the person, had probably heard about the injustices (real or perceived; mostly real in the case of Palestinians) from them, and knew why they were taking up arms. These people don’t end up being cowed by the violence. Then you add in the people who have their whole families killed by indiscriminate bombing, and no longer feel like they have anything to lose except their shackles.

We know this already. We’ve known this since WWII. The Axis and Allies both through that bombing civilian population centers–London for the Axis, Dresden for the Allies–would break the will of the people, but instead it hardened them. The concept of total war and mass casualties simply Does. Not. Work.

You can’t win wars like this through military force alone, unless you’re willing to commit total genocide.

and your relying on sympathetic locals

This would also be true of a guerilla civil war in the US though. You’d be relying on locals–people that had probably had friends and families killed by gov’t military operations and indiscriminate bombing–to help you root out insurrectionists.

Would a large number of 2A supporters be in favor of tyranny as long at it had an ® next to it? Sure. Certainly not all of us though.

Huh?

Are you suuuuuure about that?

I’m pretty sure that most coups involve the military.

As far as civil wars go, oh, there’s at least one going on right now in Myanmar, and the gov’t def. has an air force there.

First: I don’t disagree with you.

Second: England is just too small relative to the overall population to really have places that would be considered “Nowheresville” in the US. For instance, I’m looking at moving to the desert, so I can get away from people. One of the towns I’m looking at has a population of 400 (people, total), and is about 60 miles from any city over 5000 people.

You get “compensated for you time” not paid

That’s what they say, but that’s not what actually happens. If the phlebotomist fucks up the draw, and your flow rate is so poor that they can’t get what they need, you don’t get paid. (Ask me how i know this.)

And yeah, IIRC most of the plasma goes to create clotting agents for people with hemophilia.

Blatantly false. “MSM [men who have sex with men] accounted for 67% (21,400) of the 31,800 estimated new HIV infections in 2022 and 87% of estimated infections among all males.”

When you consider that gay and bisexual men make up a small percentage of the overall population–under 5%–the fact that gay and bisexual men account for 87% of all HIV infections in men tells you just how alarming this is.

EDIT: For the people downvoting this - do you have statistics that you consider to be better, or more up-to-date? Do you want to refute them? Then post something and prove the CDC wrong. Downvoting because you don’t like things that are factually correct isn’t doing anything except making you look like a petulant child.

PS - wear a goddamn condom if you and your partner aren’t 100% monogamous. Yeah, no one likes them, I get it. But that’s a lot better than getting infected with HIV and needing to pay for expensive anti-retrovirals for the rest of your life.

“Nowheresville” in England is very, very relative.

In the past, I’ve had my local hospital call me asking for a blood donation, for example, because of an upcoming surgery of a hospitalised kid that shares my blood group. I got money for that too.

In the US, AFAIK you can’t get paid for whole blood. If you did, you would have to be paid significantly more than they pay for plasma, given that you can only do whole blood every two months.

To the question, it’s not a “scam” by any conventional definition. You are getting real money in return for the plasma.

The problem with the whole system is that if there was no payment for plasma, there wouldn’t be nearly enough people donating plasma for the need that there is. (You’re typically looking at 1+ hour per session, 2x/week.) That doesn’t include whatever travel time is involved. That’s a pretty steep time commitment every week for something that’s a very nebulous public good.

I think a better question is, is the amount that you’re being compensated fair and reasonable? Give the profit margins that are involved in products made from blood plasma, my inclination is that it is not a fair and reasonable amount. Plasma centers in my area vary in how much they pay, but it’s typically in the neighborhood of $50-$75 (USD); in other parts it’s lower, and in some areas it’s significantly higher. It’s clear that they can pay more, but choose not to because it increases their profit margin. That is something I have a problem with.

More like going to a cheap motel and not expecting bedbugs.

Yes, I fucking well know that, because I listen to Galen Druke on the FiveThirtyEight podcast every fucking week. I know exactly how long he’s been gone, because I’ve been listening to the podcast for that long. There is nothing in my statement that implied that Silver still worked for ABC News or FiveThirtyEight; my statement only says that FiveThirtyEight gives Harris a lead that’s barely outside the margin of error, and, as the pollsters that appear on the podcast frequently say, it’s simply not clear how well current polls are capturing what’s actually going to happen on election day.

So make sure all your Republican friends get up bright and early on Wednesday, 6 November to vote for Trump!

Trust me when I say that you must understand the principles of machining before you try to do CNC. And unless you are good with CAD/CAM, you’re going to have to program in G-code too. If the only thing you’re doing with CNC is loading a part, and changing tools, no, you don’t need to know much. But if you want to mill an existing 3D model, you’re absolutely going to need to be a good machinist in order to program CNC.

Nate Silver is good with odds, regardless of who he works for. This whole article is a genetic fallacy; it’s saying that it’s wrong just because he’s funded by someone that supports Trump. There’s no counter-evidence, although there’s a counter-claim, that also doesn’t have strong evidence.

As of 10 Sept., FiveThirtyEight is giving Harris a 56:44 edge over Trump. Personally, I tend to believe FiveThirtyEight a little more over all, because they’re looking at and weighting many different polls. But these odds are way too close for comfort, given that Clinton was favored to beat Trump 6-4 the day of the 2016 election.

If you don’t want Trump to win, get out there and vote, and make sure everyone that leans Harris knows that they need to get out and vote on 5 November, and make sure your Republican friends get out there and vote on 6 November.

eBay does not allow the selling of ammunition components, but you can buy some gun parts. I can’t say for certain, but I strongly suspect that powder, brass, primers, and projectiles are all tightly regulated in countries that have strict firearm regulations.

Reloading isn’t particularly tedious unless you’re using a single-stage press. A progressive press moves things along pretty well; once I have my brass prepped (cleaned, sized, trimmed, crimps removed, etc.), I can usually load 100 rounds in 15 minutes or so. Pistol ammo is faster, since I don’t have to spend as much time worrying about trimming or removing primer crimps; it’s just clean and go (decapping/sizing is the first station in the progressive press). Does it save money? Absolutely. I’ll save about $.01-.02/bullet on 9mm, and about $.1/bullet on 5.56x45mm. BUT I’ve spent well over $1000 on reloading equipment (!!!), which means that I’d need to reload 10k 5.56x45mm bullets to break even.

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Under $100? You won’t find one that doesn’t need a ton of work. If you go up to the $1000 range, you’ll probably start finding small, old ones that are in useable condition, without tooling.

Quick notes - you can’t print everything you need to make a firearm, or, more correctly, you can’t print everything you need to make a firearm that works more than once. In the case of the ubiquitous Glock, you’re printing the frame, which is the serialized part, and therefore the entire ‘gun’ under US law. Once you have that, you can buy all the other parts with cash and no ID check (in most states). Without very, very expensive metal-printing technology, you can’t print, e.g., a barrel, or a slide.

Second, resin printing is extremely precise. Some resin printers are +/- .0001"; that’s more than accurate enough for firearms. That said, resin prints aren’t durable enough to be used for guns; you would want something glass-reinforced for a Glock frame, or an AR-15 lower receiver.

Prices for printing are far, far lower than CNC costs. The smallest metal-cutting CNC mill that I’m aware of starts at about $60,000, and that’s for the bare machine. Tooling is going to cost several times that. If you’re a professional gunsmith, it might make sense to buy one, if you do a lot of slide milling (for optics, or cuts to reduce the weight), or if you’re making a lot of custom muzzle brakes, but gunsmithing doesn’t tend to be a very lucrative career.

Disagree on VR, depending. I use a VR dry fire training system, and it’s def. improved my real-world shooting.