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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • Having never had kasseler bread, I can’t really comment on the similarities, but after googling around a little it’s probably in the same ballpark. These sort of deli sandwiches are usually served on (what we call in America anyway) “Jewish rye” bread. Just sort of a soft, light rye bread, often with caraway seeds in it (personally I tend to think of the seeds as sort of the defining feature of a Jewish rye) and I couldn’t find any mention of kasseler having caraway, but I also didn’t exactly do an exhaustive search for recipes.


  • I’d probably push it back to a little over 100 years to include WWI, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the British Mandate for Palestine, since that all set the stage for Israel being founded pretty directly, and there had already been a pretty substantial movement for Jews to immigrate to the region by about the '30s (known as the “Fifth Aliyah”) so a bit outside of your 80 year range.

    But of course, none of these events happen in a vacuum, if you want to get really nitpicky, you can start talking about the events that led to world war 1, trace them way back, through the crusades, the birth of Muhammad, Christianity, the Roman empire, all the way back to the bronze age, and maybe even further if you were able to somehow find decent historical records going that far back.

    Trying to point to one single event as the one that kicked off a certain conflict is tough, because there was always something that led up to that event too, and when you try to unravel it, before too long you might come to a very Douglass Adams-y conclusion that it all started when our first ape ancestors decided to come down from the trees, only for someone else to say that the trees had been a mistake in the first place and that we never should have left the oceans.


  • Most sump pumps, at least in my area, drain directly to the outside, there’s basically a pipe that goes from my sump up and out of my basement and opens out into my yard.

    I wouldn’t really want to count on a sump pump for this kind of issue though. At best you’re basically just putting a bandaid on a sucking chest wound. You could also run into some legal issues for knowingly using it to discharge sewage into your yard (and why would you even want to do that in the first place?)

    It would also be pretty rough on the pump, they’re usually not meant to handle solids like the hair clogs, bits of food, fecal matter, etc.

    Assuming you’d have an actual sump pit installed, there’s often some water left standing in the pit, you probably don’t want that to be sewage water.


  • I’m obviously not planning a Pennsylvania secession movement anytime soon, but just in case it ever comes to that

    General policy, not necessarily Pennsylvania specific, in no specific order:

    Universal healthcare (including all vision, dental, psychiatric, addiction treatment, gender affirming care, etc.) constitutionally enshrined access to abortion and birth control, abolish the death penalty, legalize all drug use with pardons for all non violent drug offences, huge corporate, wealth and inheritance taxes and major tax cuts for anyone making under 100k/year per person, major investment in nuclear and renewable energy, bans on fracking, free college or technical education for all up to a bachelor’s degree or equivalent certifications, UBI, low-income housing, major police reform, a ban on homeschooling except when necessary due to medical issues and a ban on private and charter schools except for very specific magnet schools that cater to particular vocations and enormous amounts of oversight and regulations on those schools, absolute separation of church and state (Churches and religions get no more legal recognition or exemptions than any other private social club would be entitled to,) a plan to phase out all reliance on non-renewable energy, down-payment assistance for first time homebuyers, high speed Internet access as a human right, major public health spending (we will get hit with another pandemic eventually, and there’s a damn good chance it will be far worse than covid,) a ban on corporate ownership of housing, basically all government services and requirements will be free of charge, legal recognition of poly marriage, election reform with ranked-choice voting, and major gun reform (too much to go into detail here but mainstream republicans and democrats would both hate my gun plans)

    And probably a few dozen other major points, but thats what I could spout off from the top of my head

    Pennsylvania-specific (disclaimer, I’m based out of the Philly area, so my opinions are the strongest about this region, and I’d need to read up on most of the rest of the state):

    High speed rail connecting, at a minimum, Philly, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Scranton, state college, and Erie

    Commuter rail along the Schuylkill connecting philly and reading (side note/fun fact: the legal remnants of the old reading railroad company, yes the one from monopoly, that used to connect those two and other cities, is now a chain of movie theaters, with locations mostly in Australia, New Zealand, and California) probably as an extension of the Norristown high speed line which we’re also going to reroute to have a stop inside the King of Prussia Mall

    Really more rail in general, but that seems like a good starting place and we can continue building out a network from there.

    The sixers are staying put, if they want a new stadium they can put one in the existing sports complex. We’re also going to cover vine street and reconnect the two halves of Chinatown.

    This is very low priority, but I’d like to find a constructive use to refurbish the SS United States instead of turning it into an artificial reef.

    We’re doing away with the PLCB bullshit, you should be able to buy beer, wine, and liquor at any grocery store.

    We’re getting rid of any remaining blue laws- not being allowed to hunt on Sundays, dealerships not being able to sell cars, etc.

    An absolute ban on confederate imagery except for museums, historical reenactments, etc. I see more confederate flags being flown in parts of PA than I have in a lot of the actual south, what side of the mason-dixon line do these idiots think our state lies on? Especially in this hypothetical scenario since we’re not even going to be part of America after this is all over and I don’t want any of these shitheads getting the wrong idea that our movement is some sort of “the south shall rise again” thing.

    Really we’re just generally going to finally drag a lot of Pennsyltucky kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

    Major infrastructure spending. I’d say this should be a general not-pennsylvania-specific issue, but holy shit have you seen the state of some of our roads and bridges? You can usually tell by feel the exact moment you cross over the state border.

    We’re really going to lean into being “Penn’s Woods” and preserve our natural resources and wildlife. We have some amazing parks, forests, etc. here and I want to make sure it stays that way. You can barely drive 10 minutes through much of the state without crossing some small river or stream, and I want all of those waterways to be clean and teeming with life. I’ve never seen our state amphibian- the eastern hellbender, in person in the wild and I’d like to fix that.

    Some goofy, not totally serious proposals

    Mehmet Oz is not allowed to set foot on Pennsylvanian territory.

    Any building in Philly taller than City Hall must have a William Penn statue at the top. We finally managed to break the curse with the Comcast building and we’re really going to cover our bases.

    We may look into annexing the south jersey shore.

    An official Pennsylvanian English dictionary covering the Philly, Pittsburgh, NEPA, and other dialects, covering definitions, spelling, and pronunciations of such words and phrases as : Yinz, youse/youse guys, jawn, Schuylkill, Bala Cynwyd, Conshohocken, heyna, jeet, water (“wooder,”) creek (“crick”) and many others.


  • Do they control a territory? Do they claim to be the official government of that territory? Can they back up and defend those claims? Do the civilians living in that territory overall recognize their authority as the government of that territory? Do other nations recognize them as the government of that territory?

    It’s not a totally black and white issue

    If I hypothetically rallied up a group of supporters who share my views and ideals and start carrying out terrorist attacks to force the government to address the issues I’m championing, I don’t think many would consider me to be a government. I’m still acknowledging the authority and legitimacy of the government, and am just acting in opposition to it.

    If my goal is to seize control of a territory, let’s say Pennsylvania, I’m starting to look a bit like a country. But unless I have the support of enough Pennsylvanians, and have the resources and manpower to back up my claim, and can get other nations to recognize it, it’s a pretty empty claim.

    If I manage to win over the popular support of the citizenry, they may start to regard me as the legitimate ruler of Pennsylvania, however just because they’re willing to follow me, doesn’t mean that anyone outside of the state is recognizing my claim. Other countries aren’t going to engage in diplomacy with me the same way they would with other nations, they’re going to continue regarding Pennsylvania as part of the US until I manage to actually have control over the territory. That means in some way removing the existing government from power, and more importantly defending my claim from the US government, who isn’t going to just roll over and accept my claim.

    So let’s say we manage to take control over Pennsylvania, the citizens support me, we’ve ousted the previous government, and are generally filling all the roles you would expect a government to handle, and at least for now we’re somehow managing to hold off the US government and defending our claim to Pennsylvania.

    At this point, we’re the defacto government of Pennsylvania. However we still lack recognition. The US government is still trying to retake control and has not recognized our independence, nor has any other country, we’re seen as rebels, warlords, etc. by the rest of the world. We’re essentially on our own, unable to trade with other countries.

    From here let’s imagine a couple different scenarios

    1. Some countries start to recognize my legitimacy. They offer to support my regime and to open up trade. Popular support from my citizens remains high, and we’re managing to hold off the US government. At this point we’re in a situation not unlike Taiwan or Palestine. Whether we’re a legitimate government is going to depend on who you ask around the world, with answers ranging from that we’re a group of rebels trying to secede from the US to having their full support and recognition as the legitimate government of an independent nation.

    2. Our rebellion is a resounding success. The US backs off, recognizes our independence, other countries also recognize our independence, maybe we even join NAFTA. It would be hard to argue that we’re not a legitimate government at that point.

    3. I start to lose the support of Pennsylvanians, and they stop recognizing my authority, even though I still manage to maintain control over my territory by force. Some countries, especially those that are not friendly to the US, may still recognize my claim, although in the eyes of most of the world, I’m probably just a terrorist or warlord.

    4. The US government is successful in ousting me, I manage to flee to a country that recognizes me as the legitimate ruler of Pennsylvania or at least is willing to tolerate my presence, and I set up a government-in-exile. I continue to conduct myself as though I am the ruler of Pennsylvania, maybe some Pennsylvanians and other people and countries throughout the world continue to recognize me as such, but without the ability to actually exercise that authority over my territory, it’s a pretty empty claim.


  • A few years back my area got hit with a pretty bad storm, beat the previous flood record here by about a foot, that previous record was set about 85 years prior. Bad flood, but statistically not totally unprecedented, you often hear talk about 100 year floodplains, and so that was almost a textbook perfect illustration of that, if you normally only get a flood that bad about once a century we were just about due.

    Then the next year hurricane Ida hit, totally smashed that fresh new record by about 5 ft. It took them like a week to figure out exactly how bad the flooding actually was because it totally swamped all of the river gauges.

    NOAA’s website has a list of 42 historic crests of that creek going back to at least 1933. 29 of those crests have been since 2000, and 7 have been in just the last 5 years.

    Once upon a time in my area, ice was an industry, big blocks of ice would be cut out of nearby lakes in the winter, shipped out around the area, and stored to last through the year. There may even be a handful of older residents in our area who were alive when it was happening, and certainly a few who are old enough that their parents would have remembered it. We’re only about a century removed from that time.

    My friends’ dad used to tell stories about being able to ice state down the local Creek in the winter and being able to skate all the way from our town to one about 6 miles downstream.

    I have rarely seen any of the waterways in my area freeze over with even an inch of ice, certainly none of them freeze over thick enough that I’d be comfortable ice skating on them (I keep an eye on all of the ice conditions because I want to try ice fishing, been keeping an eye on it for a decade, haven’t had a chance yet. A lot of the local parks have posted regulations for ice fishing because it used to be a thing you could do around here) and absolutely not thick enough that you could cut a block of ice out of it.

    We also set a record last year for the longest recorded stretch without an inch of snow. Snow totals have been overall trending downwards for a while, over the last couple decades a lot of the local school districts have cut down on the amount of snow days they build into their calendars because they just weren’t using them. A small local ski slope near me has had to invest in new snow making equipment because they absolutely couldn’t count on getting real snow anymore, or necessarily even the temperatures being cold enough for their old equipment to work reliably

    Climate change should be pretty damn obvious to anyone in my area, and yet a whole lot of people around me refuse to see it.


  • I think you’re misreading the comment of the person you’re replying to here, it’s worded a little wonky and I don’t know if you picked up on a bit of a sarcastic tone there, I think you also may not be reading far enough into the history to really have a handle on the situation but frankly neither of you are doing a great job of explaining your positions so it’s a little hard to say what point either of you are trying to make

    Tl;dr of modern Afghan history:

    Around the 80s, Russia invaded Afghanistan and installed a socialist government

    The US backs Islamic militants, essentially the Taliban or the groups that eventually morph into them, to oust the Russian backed government,

    The Taliban also likes to style themselves as the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan

    Some power struggles ensue, by the 90s sometime the Taliban is in charge of the country

    9/11 happens, US invades, tries to set up their own government, pulls out, Taliban quickly takes back over


  • The impression I’ve always gotten (and I’m sure no political guru or social scientist or anything of the sort) isn’t so much that the country overall prefers the Taliban as much as most of them just don’t really give a rat’s ass about the country as a whole or who’s claiming to be in charge of it at any given time, they don’t have a strong sense of national identity, they care for more about their tribe or village than anything going on outside of it. American, Russian, Taliban, doesn’t really matter too much to them, when the guys with better guns roll into town, you pay them lip service until they go away then continue right on doing things more or less the same way you have for the last 2000 years.

    It does happen that the Taliban probably aligns with their traditional values more closely than the other people who have tried ruling it as a unified country over the years, but day-to-day, they’re still probably mostly only going to the Taliban when they need something from them and deferring to village elders or local warlords or whoever for everything else.

    There’s variation I’m sure, those in cities probably have a stronger sense of what a country is and what it has to offer in the modern world than those in rural areas, but it’s a largely rural country, almost 75% of them are living in rural areas and some of them are super rural where some of them have probably never even seen a city.








  • I don’t care about the death penalty as a deterrent. I care about it as a way to deal with certain people who will continue to pose a threat to others and for whom there are no other viable or humane options to rehabilitate them or otherwise render them safe to be around other people.

    You can deal with a greedy pharma exec by seizing assets, injunctions against them participating in the pharmaceutical industry or serving in particular roles, stricter laws, regulations, and oversight on the pharma industry as a whole, etc.

    You can’t just regulate someone out of being dangerously emotionally disturbed, and if they can’t be rehabilitated, what other viable options do you have left to keep them from harming others? You can lock them up in solitary, or perhaps take some drastic medical interventions like sedating them, lobotomizing them, or I guess chopping off their arms and legs, and at the point you’re considering those sorts of options, the ethics of just killing them start to sound much more attractive.


  • I’m not altogether opposed to the death penalty for certain crimes, but I think the evidence, chain of custody, record keeping, etc. needs to be absolutely immaculate to an almost cartoonishly paranoid extent before the death penalty can be on the table.

    Like if the suspect was off camera for even a moment between the moment the crime was committed, that’s enough to make it intelligible for the death penalty because you can’t be absolutely certain they weren’t swapped for a body double when they stepped out of frame.

    And that’s before you even get into the absolute insane security and storage requirements needed for that footage to ensure it couldn’t have been tampered with.

    If there is any theoretically possible scenario, no matter how absurdly unlikely it may be, where the person in custody isn’t the same person who committed the crime, then you can’t seek the death penalty.



  • I understand that I come from a place of pretty significant privilege, but it is wild to me that when faced with these kinds of situations anyone is gambling on the kinds of medical care they might/might not be able to receive in these red states with restrictive abortion laws.

    I know that if any of my friends, even if we’re not particularly close, came to me and said they needed me to drive them halfway across the country for an abortion because they may not be able to get life-saving medical care in our state if something goes wrong, we’re going, right then and there, no questions asked, I’m calling out sick from work, running up my credit cards on gas and hotel rooms and whatever else we may need and we’re hitting the road, and if needed I won’t ever breathe a word of it to anyone.

    The fact that people are in a position where they feel like they can’t do that or don’t have people they think they can trust to do that for them is maddening.


  • Yeah, astonishingly if you don’t wander into the crowded center city areas that are packed with people and bars, things are a lot more subdued.

    There’s something 1½ million people in the city, a lot of whom are watching the game, either at home, in a friends house, or at one of the 1300 or so bars in the city, all spread out over about 140 square miles. If you don’t go seeking out the craziness, it’s easy to not see it in person.

    Not to mention all of the eagles fans in the surrounding suburbs.

    And take a good look at your video, how much actual violence or destructiveness are you seeing there? I’m seeing mostly a big crowd of people milling around outside chanting and yelling at no one in particular. Creating a nuisance or impeding traffic? Sure, hardly a riot or anything of the sort though.

    You have, being generous, maybe a couple thousand people (I’m pretty sure I’ve seen more people turn out to ride in the Philly naked bike ride) gathering around city hall, a major landmark located in the very heart of the city, and doing what? yelling? Maybe 2% of a city where “go birds” passes as a greeting, wandering around outside being a bit rowdy.


  • As a philly native, I will say that the vast majority of philly fans are more reasonable levels of passionate, I’ve never personally been around anyone getting violent over a game, at worst just a lot of yelling and cursing directed at no one in particular.

    But yeah, our worst fans definitely have a way of going the extra mile into the heart of crazytown.

    Philly has a tough image and we’re proud of it and embrace it, but a lot of assholes don’t understand that being tough doesn’t mean being needlessly violent, offensive, and destructive.

    Personally, I like the lunatics here that climb light poles and think of the city greasing them up as a challenge, that’s the kind of crazy fan I want to represent my city.