As long as I’m getting food and the T-Rex isn’t, just sit in the hut and wait.
T-Rex will pass out of hunger and thirst. Once it stops moving I wait a day or two then finish the job with the knife.
As a liberal-libertarian, this shit pisses me off.
I want the libertarian party to be taken seriously. I think the libertarian platform could very well have mass appeal.
But they need to stop focusing on wingnuts like this who not only will NEVER get elected to anything more than dog catcher, but harm the whole image of libertarians and libertarianism.
Libertarians should focus on personal freedom and lower taxes. And Stop with the far right wing shit- ‘let’s lower taxes by defunding the EPA and let the open market tackle pollution’ type stuff.
I generally give Republicans more benefit of the doubt than most. I consider myself a liberal libertarian with an open mind to all things. I think there were plenty of valid reasons to vote for Trump the first time around, reasons that much of the country chose to ignore because it was easier than addressing them.
If the GOP nominates Trump again, they deserve to lose as hardcore as possible. I didn’t scream and cry when he was elected because I was willing to give him a chance and an open mind. But I think his first term said everything that needed to be said about his suitability as a leader. He talked a big talk of draining the swamp, but then filled his cabinet with alligators and no swamps were drained. If anything, swamps were created as he filled key positions with corrupt people who were loyal to him but had little experience or skill for the job at hand.
Love his policies or hate them, that’s just corrupt bad government. And while I don’t always agree with Biden’s policies, much like Obama, he at least executes the duties of his office in a relatively competent manner.
Same thing if DeSantis gets the nomination. You can’t run a platform of jobs creation when you pick a hissy fit with your state’s largest employer because they dare voice some mild opposition to a policy of yours (especially when said opposition is essential for said company to maintain credibility on the national level). That speaks volumes about the kind of person, and the kind of leader, that you are. I would rather have someone who’s policies I sometimes disagree with, then a childishly vindictive psychophant sitting in the big chair.
Sadly, this all is the very predictable result of the Karl Rove strategy- whip up social conservatives and evangelicals to drum up votes. The result is those groups now have significant power within the GOP, even though their platform of intolerant policies is unappealing to the broader nation to the point of making them unelectable in the eyes of many.
I said there were plenty of valid reasons to vote for Trump. For example, if you wanted American manufacturing, the idea of a tariff on Chinese goods was appealing. If you favor border security he was your guy. If you favor gun rights Hillary sure as fuck wasn’t for you. Etc etc.
And overall- Hillary was a very ‘middle of the road status quo’ candidate and the nation wanted real reform. Trump represented change- perhaps not good change, but change.
Not arguing the merits of any of those points. Just saying if you want those things, his platform was the more appealing one.
Following him would reveal plenty of good reasons NOT to vote for him also. Dishonesty, misogyny/sexual harassment, tax evasion, borderline racism, and a lot of his rhetoric felt a little too close to Hitler’s for my taste.
Personally I didn’t vote for him- I voted 3rd party (in my solid blue state of CT, my vote doesn’t matter either way). But I could understand why people did, and I had hopes- I hoped that either when he won the primary or the general the ‘yuuuge!’ personality would go away and the intelligence a lot of people claim he has would emerge, and we’d be left with, if not a true statesman, someone approaching a mature adult who would get to work solving the nation’s challenges.
As it stands, what we got was pretty close to what his critics had claimed would happen- a Presidency full of scandals and corruption, with his own loyalists placed in key positions they were wholly unqualified for. And from what I’ve read, it was widely known in foreign intelligence circles that if you wanted him on your side, just book a few million bucks worth of boondoggles at mar-a-lago and kiss his ass a few times and he’d be your buddy. Obviously not what we need in a President.
But that’s all my point. Going into it, there were valid reasons for wanting him. Now, there may still be desirable items on his agenda, but he’s proven himself ineffective at implementing any of those items. So now, this time round, I’d say if you vote for him (especially in the primary) you’re a moron because you’re putting forward someone Biden’s almost certainly gonna crush, who was disappointing the first time around and arguably treasonous.
Honestly part of the reason I gave him benefit of doubt is a few conversations I had with someone who worked extensively on a real estate project with Trump They said Trump did some slightly underhanded shit that screwed some people over, but it was obvious he had a very sharp mind and was thinking far ahead of anyone else at the table; that the ‘yuuge’ personality was a smokescreen to look stupid so people didn’t realize how truly sharp he was. The person I spoke with lost some opportunities as a result of Trump’s underhanded operations, but ended up with strong respect for the guy as a businessman and a leader. The person felt that if Trump used his capabilities on behalf of the nation, we’d all benefit.
I was hoping we’d see in the White House some glimmer of what the person I spoke with saw in the real estate deal. Unfortunately we did not. Or if we did, it was only in service of Trump, not in service of the nation.
And while Trump may be a known liar and a conman, when the opponent is quoted as saying you have to have a public and a private position on issues (in other words, lie and tell people what they want to hear) it’s hard to worry too much.
Had Biden been the nominee he’d almost certainly have beaten Trump. Or Bernie, he’d have done well.
Step past your hatred of the guy and look for some nuance my friend.
The person I spoke with didn’t like Trump, but admired Trump’s sharp mind and strategic brain that could out-think a lot of very smart people. Their belief was that Trump is sharp as a tack but just pretends to be an idiot so people underestimate him.
Being the smartest guy in the room, being able to come to a negotiation and sweep the board when nobody sees it coming is never a bad quality for a President. THAT is what they respected-- the ability to do that to a bunch of very smart people.
Don’t disagree with any of that.
The person I spoke with was so impressed because he (and the others in the deal) were specifically protecting themselves against any Trump shenanigans, but the way Trump changed the whole plan showed he was thinking many steps ahead of them.
But he turned out to be a one trick pony- his trick is screwing over everybody (perhaps in very clever ways) to boost his own power and wealth. The whole selfless part where he does it for the good of the nation, that never happened.
Well there were a table full of people saying ‘we know Trump can be slimy so we’ll protect ourselves’ and it wasn’t good enough. So I guess they’re all idiots.
I think it’s fair to argue that if you know Trump has a reputation for screwing everybody over, the only non-idiotic move is to stay the fuck away from him. So that’s probably fair grounds for calling them idiots.
That Trump chose to screw everybody over makes him a narcissistic conman without empathy or morals.
The fact that he COULD do it, even to smart people who were expecting it and thought they’d prepared, is arguably a sign of intelligence.
That he chooses to use whatever intelligence he has screwing everybody over rather than solving real problems-- that’s back to narcissistic conman without empathy or morals.
You can be a narcissistic conman without empathy or morals, and still be smart.
Good. If you try to break into someone else’s shit, you should reasonably expect to get shot at.
It is worrying to me that the supposedly highest trained security guards in the world couldn’t actually hit their target. I would expect better in terms of both accuracy and fire discipline.
It is also worrying that if a citizen like you or me tried to defend ourselves and our property in the same way in much of these nation including DC, we would go to jail. I think we deserve the same rights as ‘important people’.
Yeah I’ve noticed :-( Lemmy overall seems much less tolerant of gun ownership or use of force than Reddit. Even when it is obviously justified.
The headline could be, “Good Samaritan opens fire to defend disabled orphan POC child and her blind 3-legged rescue kitten from white supremacist pedophile rape gang” and half the comments would be how the stupid hick Republican ammosexual who wants more school shootings is so worthless he needs to carry around a lethal penis extender.
But throw in a little criticism of government or police… Heh
If you look at the data, the vast majority of people who are ‘firing guns at each other all the time’ are gang members in low-income inner cities.
To distill a bunch of stats, half the people of the US own guns, and they own enough guns to arm the other half and have plenty left over.
Per FBI, there’s about 10k-15k firearm homicides per year. That means on average an American has a 0.005% chance of being killed by a gun in any given year.
If we truly were ‘firing guns at each other all the time’ that number would be WAY WAY WAY WAY higher.
Gun violence accounts for over 8% of deaths in the US among those under age 20.
Break out the ‘firearm deaths of under 20yos’ stat by income, or average income of residential area where they live. You’ll see a STRONG correlation. That’s because an awful lot of our gun crime is by violent drug gangs in inner city areas.
That link has a great breakdown though of firearm homicide rate by state. I’ll point out there’s little or no correlation between gun control policy and firearm homicide rate there. Washington, DC and Maryland have some of the strictest gun control in the country, and the most firearm homicides. Vermont, New Hampshire, and Utah have among the least gun control and highest gun ownership rate, but among the lowest firearm homicide rate. Then there are states that have the expected effect- Hawaii (very anti-gun) with low gun death rate, Alaska (lots of guns) with high gun death rate.
But what that all says is that there’s not a causation between gun ownership or gun policy and gun homicide rate. I suspect you’d find a better correlation with poverty than with gun ownership.
Imagine living in a country where people are so obsessed with guns that everybody has guns and everyone is a potential threat or one insult away from doing a mass shooting.
I don’t know what nation you’re from but America is nothing at all like this. Gun owners aren’t like this.
People who don’t understand American gun culture expect it’s like GTA- everybody’s strapped, fender-benders at traffic lights turn into firefights, don’t dare tell anyone anything negative because they’ll shoot you if they don’t like what you say. This isn’t at all the case though. Not even close.
Gun owners who carry guns look at it like a seat belt or fire extinguisher-- you hope to god you never need it, but if ever you do, having it might save your life. There is no action movie attitude of ‘who do I shoot today?’. Gun owners recognize how serious a responsibility it is, and petty arguments rarely involve weapons fire, even in situations where everyone involved is armed.
We have a big problem with gun violence- but the majority of it is caused by our bigger problem of poverty and hopelessness in many areas. People turn to drugs, that are supplied by violent gangs who are all armed with illegal guns. Those guys commit the lion’s share of our gun homicide.
Problem is, fixing it is a slow and expensive generational process. You need better schools, mental health care, child care, reproductive care, and real jobs for people to aspire to (not just flipping burgers). This costs billions.
If you want to criticize us for something- criticize us for spending billions/trillions on military (we have more military force than the next 10 nations combined, including all our major enemies) when our budgets are fucked and we can’t even seem to take care of our own citizens. THAT is worthy of your criticism (and mine).
I’m not aware of another developed nation where getting cancer means you’ve got a good chance of going bankrupt. THAT ISN’T NORMAL and we should be fixing that shit.
Couldn’t agree more. Biden gets to protect his family with guns. I think you and me should have that right also.
If I take a shot without being sure I’m gonna hit a criminal, I’m in big trouble. But if a cop/guard does the same, oh well.
I addressed the which state is which, I addressed the under-20s dying of gun homicide. If I didn’t address them enough please feel free to ask for detail on whatever part of it you wish to focus on.
As for the other key point (US has more gun homicide than Germany or AU)- that one’s more complicated.
There’s an obvious answer that there’s more guns in USA, thus more gun homicide- much the same as you get more drownings in Miami (where everyone’s at the beach) than Kansas (where there’s no water).
However I think focusing on homicide rate by weapon is of limited use. I think overall homicide rate is more important-- if in one place the homicide rate is 1/10million and most of them are stabbings and in another place the homicide rate is 1/10million and most of them are shootings, neither one is safer than the other.
I suspect USA has higher overall homicide rate than either of those two places. But I think the root causes for that are the ‘hard problems’ we ignore- poverty, drugs, gangs, hopelessness, etc. DE and AU have decent modern health care systems and actually take care of their population. Mental health care is available and affordable. Strong social safety net keeps people out of extreme poverty. Thus- less drug use, less gangs, and of course less violence from the gangs.
I’m sure there’s some part of that difference that comes from side effects of our gun policies, so don’t think I’m being obtuse. Just that I don’t think it’s anywhere near the direct causation you seem to be claiming.
Are you from the US? I’m assuming not. I mean no offense by this.
What most people from other places don’t recognize is that the US is in effect 50 different countries. Each state has their own regulations, that in some cases are wildly different from the next.
That applies to gun laws also.
So it’s most incorrect to say ‘we tried nothing and it didn’t work’, when in reality we’ve tried 50 different things. That is the beauty of your link, if you look at the state by state data. There’s 50 different visions of what gun policy should be, and 50 different outcomes. And this really does run the gamut. There are a few national-level laws, for example every gun store purchase must have a background check, and some case law that has defined what the government can and can’t do to regulate, but for the most part it’s up to each state to write their own policy.
In DC for example, you had a scheme that would fit in well anywhere in Europe- you need training and licensing to even get a permit to buy a gun, each gun has to be registered and test-fired before it can be delivered to the buyer. From beginning to end the process of buying a gun (which you couldn’t even carry) took months and a dozen visits to various government agencies. I’ve heard it’s since gotten a bit less strict, but it was like that for a LONG time.
DC has the highest rate of gun violence in the nation and has for a very long time.
Hawaii has gun control that’s similarly strict, and has among the lowest gun homicide rate in the nation.
In Vermont for example you have what everyone accuses the entire USA of having- anyone can buy as many guns as they want with no training or licensing, and you can carry your gun loaded without a permit or proof of training. This is sometimes called ‘Constitutional Carry’ (the Constitution is your carry permit). Buying a gun is easy, other than the Federally-mandated background check, you can walk into a gun store and walk out with a gun in less than an hour.
Vermont has among the highest gun ownership rate, but among the lowest gun homicide rate.
Alaska is similar to Vermont (Constitutional Carry, high gun ownership rate) but among the highest gun homicide rate.
What those 4 states should tell you, is that gun policy or gun ownership rate are not necessarily drivers of gun homicide rate. Something else is going on that drives gun homicide rate.
And you’re right, there is more that drives homicide rate, like lack of social services, 10% of your population living without food security on an annual basis, 54% of your adult population reading below a 6th grade literacy level, there’s a lot of big problems and you aren’t fixing any of them.
And on this I am in 100% agreement. It’s fucking shameful that we don’t take care of our own people. But our government spends money it doesn’t have like there’s no tomorrow; our military is bigger than the next 10 in the world combined (including all of our enemies) and we continue to fund it at absurd rates, we have billions of $ worth of domestic spying invading our privacy. And while we fight over whether we protect kids with more guns or less guns, we then throw them in schools where teachers are barely able to scrape by, send them into a cutthroat society where corporations fuck over the employees with no remorse, and where if you’re not rich you probably can’t afford much in the way of decent health care.
Quite frankly it’s shameful. It’s appalling. If it or any part of it was imposed upon us by force by another nation, we’d all go to war and support using nukes against them. But we do it to ourselves so we smile and nod and say ‘oh he got cancer and went bankrupt and couldn’t afford treatment and died’ like that’s the way things are supposed to be.
And then in our politics we fight over should we elect this loser or that psycho, should we have more guns or less guns, should we have more immigration or more border security, meanwhile upward mobility is down, quality of life is down, the wealth of the nation is being extracted by big companies, and we’re too distracted by random shit to fix the underlying problems.
So if you think I’m one of the ‘Murica, fuck yeah!’ people, I’m not. I love my country and I’m proud to be American, but I’m not proud of what my nation has become lately.
So’s the E.U. they got it to work. The excuses Americans will make for allowing themselves to ignore the dead kid problem is astounding.
I would agree with this, but it’s not about guns (especially since most of those kids are shot with illegal guns by people who can’t legally own guns).
The problem is poverty. And we do fuck all about that.
There’s 500 million legal privately owned guns in the US. If you assume an average value of $450, that’s $225 billion.
If I had $225 billion to spend, I sure as fuck wouldn’t spend it buying back guns. I’d fund mental health care, I’d fund education, I’d fund jobs programs.
Not trying voluntary buy-backs
These DO happen in a lot of places, on a local or state level. Doesn’t have much effect because the people who commit the crimes are the ones with illegal guns who aren’t gonna sell them.
you refuse to try what works
We are stupid in that we refuse to try things like single payer health care.
But I suspect almost any gun policy you’d come up with has been tried somewhere in the USA.
What you’re really missing is there are two kinds of gun owners in USA- law-abiding and criminal. The law-abiding ones aren’t committing most of the gun crime. Look at the stats for defensive gun use (when a law-abiding person uses a legal gun to stop or prevent a crime)- they aren’t tracked by government so the data has to come from statistical surveys, but even the anti-gun people agree that DGUs happen 5-6x more often than firearm homicide.
Most DGUs end with no shots fired- criminal sees gun and runs away.
It’s not that nothing works, it’s that you refuse to try what works elsewhere because you’ve been fooled into thinking you’re special individual snowflakes, but your ravenous individuality has eroded any capacity you have for co-operation with your fellow Americans in securing your right to live.
And with respect, this is a totally ignorant comment that’s based on an anti-gun talking point and not any actual knowledge of American gun policy, gun ownership culture, stated reasons for owning guns, or anything other than conjecture and accusation.
You say ‘try what works’ (presumably referring to European-style gun control) but show no concept of understanding how truly difficult (damn near impossible) it would be to implement, even if a majority of the nation wanted it (which they don’t). And you ignore the fact that much of what you call ‘what works’ HAS been tried, or is currently being tried.
I don’t mean to insult you or personally attack you. But the fact is your accusations show little understanding of the REALITY of American gun ownership, why Americans buy and own guns, and what they do with them.
I’m happy to share what I know. But if your mind is concluded and closed, if you’ve just decided ‘Americans are ammosexual hicks who refuse to give up their penis extenders to keep their own kids safe’ and you are not open to even entertaining the possibility that reality is much more complex than that, then there’s nothing I or anyone else can say.
If you want to understand, at least from one American’s POV, like I said I’m happy to share. And IMHO it’s fascinating- I wasn’t always pro-gun, I wasn’t raised around guns or gun culture, so what I know comes from my own independent research without most of the emotion you see in many gun arguments.
So my friend, can you try an open mind?
I don’t believe you’re reading anything I write with an open mind or good faith.
I’ve tried to explain that we HAVE tried, we DO try, almost any gun control you might propose either exist in one state or another or has been tried at some poine.
It sounds like your approach is either ‘do exactly what we do the way we do it or you’re wrong’.
I’m happy to debate in good faith, but that requires you to read and address what I write rather than just throw insults and restate the same points you’ve already said (which I’ve already addressed).
Finally a somewhat intelligent comment that isn’t just restating a talking point.
You’re (understandably) conflating as one position what is actually two
I think in general it should be legal to use deadly force to defend major property. IE I don’t think it should be legal to shoot someone for stealing a pack of gum, but I think in many cases it should be legal to shoot someone for stealing larger items that make up a person’s livelihood. I take this position not because I think human life is worth less than tools or cars (I don’t feel that way) but because if you take any other position, you have a situation where the lawful owner of said property is legally required to basically sit there and watch while a criminal steals their shit.
Police aren’t always seconds away. In much of the USA, police are tens of minutes or hours away.
What should be legal is one half of the coin, the other half is what I as a gun owner want to actually do.
To make an extreme example- I’m a strong advocate of the 1st Amendment (free speech). I believe I should have the right to take off all my clothes, cover the bare minimum in duct tape and cardboard, and walk down public streets telling all passers-by that I am the reincarnation of Napoleon and they should join my new army and help take over the world.
But while I support the right to do that, while I’d strongly advocate for that right, I have no desire to do such a thing myself.
As a gun owner, I have no desire to kill anyone ever. The same is true of virtually all gun owners I know, both online and off. (The one notable exception is a slightly nutty friend of mine who ended up joining the military and volunteered to go fight in Iraq/Afghanistan). There is nothing in my car that’s worth taking a life for- even if the perpetrator is a lowlife criminal.
But I also take that as my choice to make for myself. Millions of gun owners would make the same choice- go on any gun forum or subreddit that deals with such things and you’ll find few if any people suggesting that just shooting a guy who’s stealing your unoccupied car is a good plan.
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The Honor Harrington series. Would have to be 3d animated IMHO- One major component of the books is humans have received lifespan extension treatments which greatly slows down human aging. So you would need a ton of 18 to 25 year-old actors who can pull off playing 50 and 100-year-old characters.
100% monitoring and control doesn’t exist. Your children will find a loophole to access unrestricted internet, it’s what they do.
And it’s your job as a parent to ensure that they are equipped with good decision making skills so if/when they do encounter the ‘big world’ that they don’t fall for predators or scams.
And that means that we need to rely on society to establish safer norms, safer streets, etc, so that there’s a “soft landing” when kids inevitably rebel, or when the parent is in the shower for 15 minutes.
It’s not our job as society to grind down all the sharp edges of the world, especially when adults enjoy those sharp edges. It’s our job as society to create defined and expected levels of risk and enforce them. For example, we make drivers generally responsible for watching where they’re going, and we make crosswalks that are ‘guaranteed safe’ places to cross the street. So if you’re willing to take risks you can cross wherever, and if you want to be sure you’re safe there’s a crosswalk. The level of risk is your choice.
The thing with the Internet is that it’s there for everyone. You can’t establish ‘safer streets, soft landings’ on the Internet without restricting what consenting adults can get. And there’s currently no technology to verify someone’s age without seriously invading their privacy.
Filtering Internet is and should be a client side problem. Had this parent installed one of the numerous Internet filtering products produced for this exact purpose, the did wouldn’t have gotten groomed/abducted. Had this parent had a conversation with their kid about bad people online and offline, the kid would have told the rapist to fuck off and closed Omegle. There’s several things that the parent could and should have done which fall under the realm of basic expectations of parents, and they didn’t. That left their daughter open to being exploited by an awful person. NONE of that is Omegle’s fault.
But switching gears- you talk about soft landings. What do you think should be the answer here? Do you think a site like Omegle shouldn’t be allowed to exist? Where do you feel the responsibility of the parent and the site and society lies?
T-Rex problems (i.imgur.com)
Libertarian Party Embraces Remorseless QAnon Shaman’s Run for Office (www.thedailybeast.com)
Joe Biden wants to complete his goals on civil rights, taxes, and social services if he's reelected (apnews.com)
Secret Service agents protecting Biden’s granddaughter open fire when 3 people try to break into SUV (apnews.com)
I just want to set a timer for MY FOOD WINDOWS WHY? (lemmy.world)
why?
What's a sci-fi or fantasy book or series that you want to see adapted as a movie/television series?
I didn’t read this series when I was a kid, but I finally got around to reading Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber....
Omegle Was Forced to Shut Down by a Lawsuit From a Sexual Abuse Survivor (www.wired.com)