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Violence in Protest, compared.

Found on LinkedIn, but I'm not going to credit it because I'm taking a different point from it. This to me, combined with recent assassinations and assassination attempts in the United States, is proof to me that the United States has jumped the shark on civil protest five years ago, and smart people when they hear news of protests ask their GPS for alternate routes.  January 6 Capitol Riot Location: U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C. Event type: Attempted disruption of a constitutional process (Electoral College certification) People involved: ~2,000–2,500 breached the Capitol Arrests: Over 1,300 people arrested or charged Fatalities: 1 direct (Ashli Babbitt, shot by Capitol Police), 4 others died due to medical emergencies or suicide soon after Injuries: ~140 law enforcement officers injured Property damage: Estimated $1.5 million in Capitol building damages George Floyd Protests (May–August 2020) Scope: Nationwide (2,000+ cities and towns) Event type: Protests against police bru...
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Christine Zotter, Rest in Peace

  I just received confirmation that Christine Zotter, Paul Reswebers wife, passed away peacefully this afternoon. Please keep Christine and Paul in your prayers.
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My complete analysis of The United States entering into the Israel-Iran war

 Let us start with Augustinian Just War standards, when you station troops outside of your borders that is an unjust invasion, and nothing you do past that point can be considered just warfare. The concept of alliances did away with Augustine's three simple rules for a Just War a long time ago, but they are worth repeating. 1. The only Just Cause is self defense repelling an invasion. 2. Your Cause becomes unjust if you invade in revenge. 3. Show Love for your Enemy by using proportional tactics to repel the invasion on your own soil. By Augustine's standard, even the illegal immigration across our southern border by criminal combatants is an invasion- but all we can do is capture them with potentially deadly force and send the living ones back across the border. And flying a 36 hour mission to invade another country with bombs from 30,000 feet? Yeah, that's a war whether you want to call it one or not, because your troops left your country to go attack somebody else. Now h...
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The Causes of Homelessness

    I see at least 5 different populations of homeless, each needing their own solution. 1. Teenagers who ran away from home to avoid parental authority. These are the people that spiritual outreach might be the best thing they ever encounter. 2. Economic victims- people who were living paycheck to paycheck when extra taxes or a medical emergency or a lost job took their home away. These people react best to shelter and housing solutions, and public housing. 3. Drug and Alcohol Addicts- we need to go back to "being high or drunk in public will land you in an intake center for treatment"- ZERO TOLERANCE. End the open air drug markets. 4. The mentally ill- we closed all the asylums in the 1970s and 1980s out of concern for abuse there. But we didn't replace it with anything at all. Nothing at all. With the modern ability to webcam every single room to prevent abuse, it's time to reopen the asylums for the 27% of our population who are unable to deal with reality. 5. Rec...
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Catholic Keto Friday Breakfast Pizza

Ingredients: -3.5 Oz smoked salmon -4 large eggs -4 Oz sliced mushrooms -2 tbs butter instructions: In a cold 10" skillet, cut smoked salmon into .5" dice (easiest on the built in cutting board smoked salmon comes on from the grocery, just cut a grid and then scrape into the pan). Add mushrooms and butter and turn on high heat. When butter is melted, crack and drop in eggs from at least 8".  Use spatula to stir until other ingredients are coated.  Without further touching ingredients, turn pan until eggs conceal. With your large spatula, break the patty away from the edges, flip like a large pancake, cook 2 more minutes ( you can usually turn off the heat at this point, the stored heat in the pan will finish it) Cut into desired portions and serve.  Optional finish with a slice of butter melting on top.
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Pope Leo XIV needs to show some street cred

I am a cynical conservative.  And as much as I had problems with Pope Francis's narrow left wing vision of synodality, I believe Pope Leo XIV has six amazing opportunities to heal the Church. 1.  His first Apostolic visit should be to Peru to feed the poor directly in the diocese that he was a missionary, back in 1988.  And say a Mass in Incan, televised worldwide!   Return to Chiclayo for a dinner of Peruvian Ceviche! 2.  On the same trip His 2nd Apostolic visit should be to a local police station to give a PUBLIC statement of all he knows of the Fr. Gonzales mess, and visit again with Fr. Gonzales' victims.  He should do this out of true mercy for the soul of Fr. Gonzales and as a sign we have turned the corner on the clerical abuse scandals.  He should do this as an example to all prelates and Bishops and priors and abbots and anybody else who has oversight of this problem in the world. 3.  Next visit should be to Chicago to take in a Whi...
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I think I've finally unlocked the usefulness of LLMs

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 A simple question on Boot.dev about design considerations for a language feature, turned into a fascinating conversation on software engineering in general.  I post it here for posterity. Is function overloading with different data types available in python? Ah, a great question, curious coder! Python does not support traditional function overloading like some other languages such as C++ or Java. In those languages, you can define multiple functions with the same name, distinguished by their parameter types. However, Python functions are dynamically typed and defined only once. Instead, in Python, a single function can handle many different data types by using techniques like: Type checking inside the function : You can check the type of arguments using  isinstance()  or  type() . Default arguments or variable-length arguments : Using  *args  or  **kwargs , a function can accept a flexible number of positional and keyword arguments. For example:...
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