No problem. The benefit of using Debian/HURD is that you can find out for yourself what the differences are between a microkernel architecture (made useable by a sea of modules) and a monolithic kernel (that has evolved into a sea of modules) - instead of relying on Internet trash talk.

I don't claim to be a prose author of any note; sorry if I'm difficult to follow.

#1) REGARDLESS of whether you evacuate, if your house is destroyed, no public money should be used to rebuild your house in a disaster prone area. I feel sad about the people who lose their lives and property in such places and I will gladly contribute for their relocation but not for rebuilding. Christie just announced $150,000 tax-funded rebuilding grants for Sandy victims (who are well-off enough to own beach property, so given Christie's budgets and actions he literally cares more about funding for wealthy fools than for children's education or vital public services). That is some pandering bullshit if you ask me.

#2) IF YOU CHOOSE to build and rebuild in a disaster prone area, with your own money, nobody should force (or prevent) your evacuation, although not one thin dime should be spent on helping or hindering you. Let the brave and/or strong and/or foolish live their lives as far as they can do it by themselves. But those who DO evacuate are frankly just plain stupid if they can't afford to constantly rebuild with their own resources and they refuse to move away permanently from disaster-prone areas.

#3) ANYONE who is afraid of hurricanes, housefires, terrorists, or invisible sky men, and isn't at least equally afraid of driving a car every day (which is almost certainly a far greater risk in real life) is a fool who does not understand probability. And, probably also a coward who is unreasonably afraid of dying - we all die, it's nothing to fear! Live life instead of running from death. I wasn't the only person out body-surfing during the height of Hurricane Bonnie (which was a very unimpressive hurricane, despite all the evacuation hype at the time) and we all found it exhilarating not terrorizing. Choose life, accept death, face fear, or move the hell inland.

#4) Personally, I do not evacuate, and I have been in several hurricanes, so I think I have to right to say that in my experience the best place to be is where you can actually do things (like put out fires, turn off forgotten gas valves, patch wind-torn holes, etc.) instead of drinking tea in a shelter while your property is destroyed. Again, if you aren't physically or mentally tough enough to live where you are, evacuate permanently - it's not shameful or cowardly it's wise.

But look: Sane people don't change their minds due to an internet conversation unless presented with new information that invalidates something they thought was true, or illuminates something they did not know. You and I are not giving each other new information, we're just endlessly reiterating our same points, so I think we can stop now. You're not going to suddenly grow a pair and refuse to evacuate, and I'm not going to suddenly regain my sanity and evacuate (I hope you see what I did there) so let's let it rest.

Nah, they've been around longer than metal cartridges. Stone ammo is similarly ancient.

https://www.google.com/search?q=paper+cartridges&tbm=isch

Help out the content search engines, man? Always and only use the word "virii" when you are talking about the plural of a computer virus. In the English language, the correct plural form of a biological virus is "viruses".

It's bad enough that the singular form is ambiguous out of context, at least help us build a useful signifier in the plural form.

I think bullets and casings contain enough metal to set off most metal detectors anyways, though I'm already envisioning ways to bypass that.

There may be a way (composite round/casing), but you're going to be hard pressed to make firearm ammo that can bypass the scrutiny of trained gunpowder-sniffing dogs.

Paper cartridges with ceramic or stone payloads dipped twice in a clean hard wax doped with a little lavender oil ought to do the trick. You might have to press them in a mold after the second dip in order to get enough regularity for automatic feed, though, and you'd have to have something close to a clean room set up....

What? I thought you'd made it clear you don't care about costs - rebuilding the rich man's beach house at taxpayer expense over and over again is what I'm arguing against.

I'm not the one forcing cost and risk on others here - I already volunteered to go down with the ship. Please don't "rescue" me and don't try to claim I'll change my tune when the water rises - I've been through several hurricanes already, and I don't evacuate or call for taxpayer help, I get in there and do stuff.

I'm American, in case you couldn't tell. ;)

Replying to myself - I just looked back at this thread and realized my earlier repeated reference to "sin taxes" and "punitive taxation" make my last post mostly incoherent. Entirely my own fault. Apologies for the lack of syntactic rigor, and I hope something valid made it out of my perl-addled brain regardless.

Well sure, and that would probably be a good way to sell it. But taxation isn't punishment, and tax abatement is not reward, unless you subscribe to the theory that taxation is legalized theft, which I personally do not.

From my point of view, setting the base tax rate purposely higher than necessary to fund good government and then "rewarding" people with tax abatement means having a fake base tax rate, which is dishonest and mathematically difficult to budget. The base tax rate should be what regular citizens who are doing things right will be paying - otherwise you're explicitly labeling the default citizen as someone being "punished" (apologies for extending your metaphor).

If your house is in an area blackened by recurring fires, and you think it's reasonable for you to evacuate when one's expected and then receive government assistance to rebuild in the same damn place when it burns down, then you and I are talking about the same things and we're having a conversation.

Otherwise, not; we're just talking past each other.

That being said, the best thing to do if your house catches fire is put it out.

Relative to what, the heat-death of the universe? Here on Earth, there are remarkably many buildings that are far older than any living human. My own house is over 170 years old, and my sister lives in a 600 year old house in England that isn't going anywhere in our lifetimes. If you are trying to claim that there is no better place to put the people who lose their homes in hurricanes, and that we have no other option but to rebuild their homes where we know they will be again destroyed, I'll remain unconvinced.

And I think you're still missing my point, anyway. I didn't evacuate when the water was up three feet high on my property; in fact I waded out into the hurricane waters at midnight and turned off the valves on a pair of 500 lb propane tanks that were in danger of washing away. Because I like the place I live, even though it isn't a fancy beach property, so I won't evacuate until there isn't a stone left standing.

So, if you insist on living inside an active volcano, hey, more power to you. Just don't expect anyone else to help you rebuild your fortress of solitude after it burns up, and do expect me to scoff mildly at your lack of commitment if you flee from an impending eruption. And remember it's not the job of the government to financially support insane lifestyle decisions, like rebuilding on a site empirically proven to be unsafe.

That doesn't actually have anything to do with what I said, eh?

If your house gets wiped out once, that's very sad. Let's all chip in to put you some other place. If you insist on staying, you should be on your own - it's disgusting when society encourages people to be craven parasites.

I live on the banks of a small stream, in a 170+ year old former water-powered factory, so I am forced to pay Federal Flood Insurance. It'll never pay out - my money will go to rebuild the homes of people far wealthier than me, who can afford to live on hurricane-swept beaches and barrier islands.

If I had the money for beach property, or chose to live on a barrier island, I would not evacuate. If you can't face real life in the place you live, you should move. Note, though, I personally am all in favor of tax funded assistance for your relocation; it seems like the neighborly thing for the rest of us to contribute, especially since it's not always obvious where natural disasters will strike.

This "run away with your tail tucked between your legs and collect massive federal assistance to rebuild in the same spot" behavior is bad for everyone involved.

Short term, you're absolutely right. But look at the bigger picture and you'll see why punitive taxation is at least nominally and psychologically better... taking the "easy sell" of a tax break is dividing and harming us.

Country A has a tax rate of 90%, but you can get up to 60% of that money back if you slavishly conform to a career politician's idea of how you should best behave. Diversity is bad!

Country B has a tax rate of 30%, but if you indulge in activities scientifically shown to harm large numbers of people you may have to pay additional penalties of up to 60%, in order to finance your right to dissent. Diversity is good!

Which country do productive, inventive people want to live in? They want to live in country B, and pay an extra ten dollars a year to smoke the occasional cigar, or an extra two grand to have a totally impractical car. A country where people pay their way, and are proud of it - a place where you want to be productive, so you have cash to spend on fine cigars and nitro-burning funny cars. It's psychologically the difference between saying "these people don't have to pay as much because they pander to others' ideas of right and wrong" and "these people choose to pay more, to exercise a controversial freedom." Opposite means to achieve the same end - and for Americans, at least, it's saying "anti-vaxxers should put their money where theyir mouths are - if they believe in it, pay for it!" which I think is a very American traditional attitude.

I swear, the way things are going, I expect people to start living on platforms suspended over active volcanoes and demanding taxpayer dollars for their air conditioning costs.

If you live somewhere that nature has decided is no longer going to be habitable by humans, get out or go down with the damn ship but either way do not expect anyone to help you rebuild in the same place. The most the taxpayer should be on the hook for is helping you relocate, which is generous enough. Evacuate permanently, or not at all.

Let me tweak that idea for you a bit. Despite the childish selfishness of many of their ideas, a few of the memes the right wing is shopping are essentially correct.

Their "government shouldn't pick winners" mantra is well supported by the entirety of US history; what the government should be doing in the marketplace is identifying losers. Penalizing bad behavior that would otherwise be rewarded by a free market is one of government's primary functions - for example, murder-for-hire would be incredibly profitable if it weren't for laws that make it much less so. Theft and contract violation are legitimately penalized by government and not by armed vigilante action by businesses that have been harmed. I'll stop there but you can see the list is long!

Carbon taxes and sin taxes were once right-wing ideas - and good ones, too; taxation can be used to redress the externalization of costs by corporations and individuals. We currently punish people for working (income tax) and encourage successful companies to distort both the market and political governance (regulatory competition and so-called business inducements). A wiser course would be to eliminate income tax and outlaw state government "tax break and cash grant competitions" at the federal level, and finance federal government by taxing actors who physically harm the entire citizenry through air, water and ground pollution. If the only way to make something the people want entails high pollution, then the costs will be very high and profit margins slim - until human ingenuity, harnessed by greed if necessary, solves the problem. This is a market approach, but one where the government picks losers, based on quantifiable harm and not pie-in-the-sky techno-dreams of politicians whose sole scientific qualifications are an ability to read opinion polls.

If it's true that anti-vaxxers are harming society as a whole, make them pay for the harm. Tax them extra! Don't un-tax the winners, tax the losers; you can claim it's mathematically the same, but socially and psychologically it's entirely different. Let me pay a "nonvaccination tax" if I have some objection to preventing pandemics, and you'll cut the number of anti-vaxxers down to insignificance in a decade or less.