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DrMathwin 13 points ago +13 / -0

This is my district. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia%27s_1st_congressional_district

We've got a little under 800k people total, mostly very rural areas and military bases. Assuming that we have average rates of voter registration and voter turnout, then a little under 400k people should have voted here. If OP's stats are accurate, then about 1 in 4 people here voted for Biden but not Rashid.

1
DrMathwin 1 point ago +1 / -0

They are from a place where they have to deal with Naxalites.

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DrMathwin 15 points ago +15 / -0

I'm a government employee at a naval base in VA, ca. 5000 employees. I can confirm that we are collectively worth the equivalent of about 100 private-sector workers.

If you're familiar with the Pareto principle, it is dialed up to 11 in any government work. Normally the split is like 20% of the people do 80% of the work, but for us it's more like 5% do 95%.

Laziness is not really that much of a factor; the big problems are that we effectively cannot be fired, and there is so much waste and red tape involved to accomplish even the most mundane of tasks that even for those of us that do get stuff done, we waste half of our time on bureaucracy.

The latter difficulty is the reason why, in my experience, there is no population with a higher rate of libertarianism than government workers. We have a visceral hatred of big government because we get to see the failures and waste up close. Every single person in my office of about 16, and almost everyone in the branch of ~40 is on the Trump train.

2
DrMathwin 2 points ago +2 / -0

No, I'm telling you that government-owned devices aren't sending SMS via pathways that the NSA bulk gathers, the way all of us peasants do.

The government installs all kinds of key loggers and other bullshit on machines before they issue them out, so the data may be somewhere, but they're not going to get it from the regular NSA database.

4
DrMathwin 4 points ago +5 / -1

Sadly, government comms devices tend to not use commercial wire/band. The NSA may have all of my texts and your texts, but they're not capturing Trump's texts or, for instance, those sent or received by phones used by members of the State Department.

Source: I developed for "black wire" devices

2
DrMathwin 2 points ago +2 / -0

His bicep is basically gone, just a big hole down to bone. With some work he may be able to train up the remaining bits of the brachioradialis, brachialis, and whatever's left of the brachii and lift his arm under his own power, but he's never going to be able to lift more than a cup of coffee with that arm.

1
DrMathwin 1 point ago +1 / -0

Doesn't necessarily have to be internal to Twitter. Those big blocklists that the leftists use are implemented in Javascript, so it's feasible that you could have visited a malicious site anywhere that has a tiny script that blocks Trump.

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DrMathwin 2 points ago +2 / -0

This is the statue of Justice on the gate at Dublin Castle. While Lady Justice is normally blind, the British specifically commissioned this version to not only not be blindfolded, but to be staring very intently at her sword.

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DrMathwin 1 point ago +2 / -1

First and foremost, acupuncture is a CCP propaganda tool. Even in China it had been out of favor for over 100 years until Mao brought it back and made it official policy.

To the extent that it has any benefits at all, they are limited by: your belief that it works (the placebo effect); the pageantry and other nonsense around the "procedure"; and the fact that pain responses stimulate the release of endorphins. As far as the endorphins go, using toothpicks is exactly as effective at causing them as real needles are, and if a patient is given opiod antagonists pre-treatment, the treatment has no effect (thus proving that there are no effects beyond the intramuscular stimulation effect).

Studies that have found positive results for acupunture have almost universally also been criticized for unsound methodology, and this trend is so bad that if the practice of accupuncture were held up to the same scrutiny as real medicine, it would not be legal.

Believe what you want. Do what works for you. I don't care if you find that breaking your own fingers, cutting yourself, or jumping off of buildings makes you feel better, but don't tell other people to do things that have no medical basis and are potentially dangerous (5 deaths from infections caused by acupuncture treatments, as of 2011).