SirEDCaLot

This thread got me thinking a little more about Mr. Davis.

We talk about 'not tolerating intolerance' but I think there's a second level-- there's the intolerance (the actions of the racist), and then there's the intolerant (the racists themselves). It's easy and simple to group the two together- we don't want racism, we don't want the KKK, we don't want KKK members, all of you go fuck yourselves with your burning cross and go die in a fire (preferably in another county).

I don't think Mr. Davis would tolerate intolerance any more than you or I. But I think what he does is tolerate the intolerant person, engage them in conversation, treat them like a human being. And THAT can help fix intolerance- by reaching out to the intolerant people and trying to bring them into the larger community and heal them, rather than shunning them and reinforcing their stereotypes.

It's BY tolerating it (or more specifically, the people who espouse it) that he fights it.

And I think that's the key difference- tolerating intolerance (the action), vs tolerating the intolerant (the people).

I think we would all (probably including Mr. Davis) agree that the action of intolerance should not be tolerated. For example, if a local movie theater wants to have 'whites only' movie nights, that should not be tolerated and in fact we should all aggressively fight back against such things wherever they happen.

But what of the intolerant person? What of the theater owner in the above example? Should we run him out of town? Tar and feather him? Refuse to talk to him?
The KKK folks he encountered are used to intolerance- threats, shouting, protests, etc. They know they're not popular, but that helps feed the belief that they are right. They're used to it. They're NOT used to being welcomed by anti-racists.

And thus Mr. Davis got through to the racist- by tolerating the intolerant, not by tolerating intolerance. It's a subtle but vital difference.

This guy obviously didn't get that memo

If only that was a legal cause of action...

What's there to sue for? Companies shut down product lines and brands all the time.

Or that Ukraine is holding them off with basically scraps of obsolete Western military equipment, very little first line hardware. Attack Europe and you find the full weight of NATO's first line military hardware shoved up your ass. Somebody pushes a button somewhere and a few dozen Tomahawk missiles destroy your ability to wage war in an afternoon. Nukes not even needed if every airfield and military supply depot within 500 mi of Europe is a smoking crater.

That's why I said, different approaches.

My approach is targeted at somebody who just wants to get clean as quickly as possible, and the machine can help them do that faster and with less effort than a manual shower.

If you are going for luxury, or if you need help doing it like an elderly person, then the sit-down submerging spa is absolutely the way to go.

How so?

I think there's two different approaches to this. This chair is obviously designed as a luxury experience, as the process takes a full 15 minutes.
My idea is designed for efficiency, to reduce the amount of time it takes to bathe in the morning without reducing cleanliness.

Interesting idea. Seriously over-engineered though.

If you want a 'human washer' you don't need a $350k fancy chair with heart rate monitors. Just take a page out of the automatic car wash.

Human stands in a stall. Shower allows human washing of hair and face. Then just hold arms out making a diamond in front of you (think TSA body scanner position, but with arms forward instead of upward) and a 360° robotic sprayer starts at the neck and goes down spraying soapy water, then back up again with a slight up angle to get the groin and armpits. Shower comes back on to de-shampoo hair, then the same 360 robot does two passes with clean water to rinse everything off.

If you get fancy with machine vision and body position sensors, the 360 wand could flip 90° to do the hair and would be angled backward a bit so it doesn't get water or soap in your face.

You could build this for a lot less than $350k. And instead of $1500 worth of body sensors you have a $50 waterproof emergency stop button.

Hey I really appreciate that, seems like these days most people double down on the cynicism rather than walking it back. Sending tons of good vibes your way.

I agree it would be difficult to complete a democratic process in an authoritarian state. I think the process would have to be those areas revert to Ukrainian control, and the election will happen in 4 to 6 months or something.

It might also be totally impractical, for the simple reason that those areas have been contested for so long they are probably largely war zone rubble and much of the civilian population has fled. So you would have to restrict voting to anyone who lived in the area before the fighting started, because if you allowed anybody who lived in the area at vote time to vote you no Russia would just pay a whole bunch of people to move there and vote to switch to Russian rule.

Basically my thought is Russia should not get to expand its territory by force, but at the same time if people in those areas genuinely prefer to be part of Russia that should be taken into account too.

Never said they were my friend. They might have been once, in the 'Don't be evil' era, but that era is long past.

They are however somewhat more interested in open standards than Apple. Android for example uses OGG a bunch under the hood.

Nobody knows what to do with it because it's proprietary and requires a license. If it was not encumbered, windows would ship with a decoder built-in for free and nobody would have a problem. If Apple devices didn't use it by default, no one would have a problem because they just wouldn't use it for anything ever.

If Apple got sick of paying the fee, they could switch to AVIF or JPEG XL or anything else. It wouldn't be hard, just bake native support into the next OS of everything, and have the next iPhone take pictures in that format by default. The rest of the world will catch up right quick.

Actually come to think of it I'm kind of surprised Google doesn't do that. Make the native Android camera shoot in AVIF by default...