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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: October 03, 2024, 05:46:47 PM »

Poll update:

National: Harris +2.2 -- This Day In History:  October 3, 2020: Biden +7.8 | October 3, 2016: Clinton +3.2
Arizona: Trump +1.7
Nevada: Harris +1.1
Wisconsin: Harris +0.8
Michigan: Harris +0.7
Pennsylvania: Tie
North Carolina: Trump +0.6
Georgia: Trump +1.5

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: October 03, 2024, 04:28:30 AM »

I don't think "we know people who do weird voodoo shit with cats" is a bridge too far.

"my friend 'went to a voodoo ritual'" is already a bridge too far for me to take anything that follows at face value

I don't think your lack of friend diversity should reflect upon Action69's story.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: October 01, 2024, 01:13:33 PM »

no i just think he's lying

I don't think "we know people who do weird voodoo shit with cats" is a bridge too far. I will say, in personal experience, it's usually chickens.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: September 30, 2024, 02:07:46 PM »

I have not either, but a friend of mine did go there. Surprise, he went to voodoo ritual and what did they do? Killed a cat, drank its blood.

lol this never happened.

I have not either, but a friend of mine did go there. Surprise, he went to voodoo ritual and what did they do? Killed a cat, drank its blood.

I'll take "things that never happened" for $1000, Alex! 

ITT: we cope by pretending all cultures on earth are Western with different coats of paint on them. They don't do anything Western cultures would think is insane or silly! Nothing ever happens, amirite fellas?

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: September 28, 2024, 01:15:48 PM »

Okay? "Trump did wrong thing, therefore they can do wrong thing too" is not a very rational thought process, markjo.

"Trump did the wrong thing" is why the nonprofit organization representing the Haitian immigrants who have legal status is filing criminal charges against Trump, even if the local authorities won't.

Wasting justice system time with frivolous charges is not the morally right thing to do. Trump made some morally wrong choices, but they weren't illegal. I know you have a hard time with this, markjo, but the legal system and morality are not 1:1.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: September 26, 2024, 11:45:52 PM »

What personal profit?  It’s a criminal case being filed, not a civil one.

They're baiting donations for a cause they know has no chance of succeeding.

As if Trump hasn't been fund raising to pay his legal bills for years.

Okay? "Trump did wrong thing, therefore they can do wrong thing too" is not a very rational thought process, markjo.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: September 26, 2024, 09:02:16 PM »

What personal profit?  It’s a criminal case being filed, not a civil one.

They're baiting donations for a cause they know has no chance of succeeding.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: September 26, 2024, 02:12:08 PM »

I did read the article and I didn't see where the local prosecutor said anything of the sort.  Just because there was no action doesn't mean that Trump and Vance didn't do anything wrong.

Gee, markjo, I didn't realize you're unable to analyze a situation unless someone tells you word-for-word what happened like you're a toddler. I think it can be inferred that the prosecutor told them to get bent and they decided to scam gullible people like yourself into thinking they have a case when they obviously do not. You should not be cheering on attempts to waste justice system resources in the pursuit of personal profit just because you don't like Trump.

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Science & Alternative Science / Re: Nuclear Bombs Do Not Exist

« on: September 26, 2024, 01:20:38 AM »

https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/a-timeline-of-russias-nuclear-threats-against-the-west-947

Here's a big scary list of all the times Russia has brought up using weapons that don't exist and then, unsurprisingly, not using them.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: September 26, 2024, 12:46:43 AM »

There is zero chance of this even making it past a prosecutor's desk, let alone holding up in court. Everything Trump and Vance have said is one hundred percent protected by the First Amendment.

Defamation is not protected speech.

Did you even read the article?

The Haitian Bridge Alliance made the move after inaction by the local prosecutor

The local prosecutor told them what Trump did isn't against the law. They're spending their own money and time bringing pointless charges, probably in the hopes that it will bring in donations from morons. They already know they're not going to win and it'll be thrown out of court before going to trial.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: September 24, 2024, 05:29:37 PM »

Poll update:

National: Harris +2.4 -- This Day In History: September 24, 2020: Biden +6.9 | September 24, 2016: Clinton +3.0
Arizona: Trump +2.2
Nevada: Harris +0.4
Wisconsin: Harris +1.0
Michigan: Harris +1.8
Pennsylvania: Harris +0.6
North Carolina: Trump +0.5
Georgia: Trump +2.1

Neither Trump nor Harris have made themselves a clear winner, as the numbers in each state are still too close.

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Technology & Information / Re: ⚡Is my browser faster than your browser?

« on: September 23, 2024, 08:02:02 PM »

Looks like I am still winning. Rushy likely photoshopped his number or took one from someone else. I am disqualifying him based on past deceptions. He is a notorious swindler, I am sure we all agree.

My browser is fast thanks to all the heat pipes I installed on it.

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Technology & Information / Re: ⚡Is my browser faster than your browser?

« on: September 22, 2024, 07:58:30 PM »

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: September 21, 2024, 02:14:38 PM »

There are alot of reports, but they don't get national attention because they're borderline innocent or just not innocent at all. Local new, however, reports on them.  If only briefly.

That being said, its about optics.  Banning the guns that make national news makes gun violence seem less (if it does lessen it) and thus, less of an issue to be fixed.  Which means it's fixed (to the general population).  The rest?

Out of sight, out of mind.

Politicians have been campaigning on offering solutions to problems that sound simple and punchy but are ultimately ineffective since the dawn of civilization. It's far more likely that that's what this is rather than any kind of insidious scheme to disarm the American public. Im fact, I'm pretty sure that nobody in the government is trying to "disarm" the public in that sense, because they know that the population is not going to rise up against them en masse, regardless of whether or not they have their rifles. Regardless of what incredibly shitty and unpopular laws are passed, 99.9% of Americans will continue to follow the laws and remain more or less conforming members of society. They're not going to quit their jobs and say goodbye to their families so they can become revolutionaries. It's not going to happen.

Playing devil's advocate: they probably think it's easier to ban the big, scary gun and appear like they're doing something.

So, we're going with "incompetence" for this one, it seems.

That said:

Why not both?

I believe it should be neither, but I don't want this thread devolving into a gun law meme again. This is specifically about policies in America with respect to the current candidates; I don't want to generalize the thread into being about the 2nd amendment. I already made a thread for that.

Banning cars is also an amazing idea, and if we need to say we're doing it to stop drunk drivers to achieve it, so be it.

This is what urban nightmare dwellers really believe.


I want to further iterate that my problem is with Harris somehow trying to simultaneously hold the position of "I support the second amendment" and "I want to ban assault weapons". It's a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too position and it's not even a good one. Out of the possible options to "improve" gun safety in the US, she seems to have managed to pick all of the least effective yet the most strenuous options. It's sort of like telling people you really want to halt climate change, so you mandate that coal plants should be 3% more efficient instead of building nuclear plants instead. It feels like needless lip service.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: September 21, 2024, 01:57:35 AM »

Handguns are the most common weapon type used in mass shootings in the United States, with a total of 167 different handguns being used in 117 incidents between 1982 and September 2024. These figures are calculated from a total of 151 reported cases over this period, meaning handguns are involved in about 78 percent of mass shootings.

I think that the reason that the left makes such a fuss about it is that AR style weapons are a significant portion of mass shootings.  So yeah, a tiny minority of mass murderers are ruining it for the vast majority of responsible gun owners. 

This depends on what you mean by "significant". Very few mass shootings are done with rifles, the majority of them are done with handguns. Now if you narrow down "mass shooting" to "I saw it on the news" then sure, maybe AR-15's are the most commonly reported on mainstream media. Why is that, I wonder? What is the driving narrative behind it? If mass shootings were such a big deal, shouldn't we see reports about the hundreds of mass shootings conducted with handguns per year? No? Odd.

If only someone could figure out a way to keep AR style guns, as well as handguns,  out of the hands of people who have no business having them without trampling the rights of law abiding citizens.  It's a shame that too many politicians don't even want to discuss it, lest they incur the wrath of the NRA.

My point is that if you had god-like powers to remove every AR-15 in America, your total impact on gun violence would barely make a dent. It's a huge amount of effort for very little gain. It doesn't have good calculus with "my intention is to save people" and instead aligns more suspiciously with "my intention is to disarm most of you". Even if we say "ah, well, Harris has good intentions, even if they don't affect much gun violence" then we must also accept that rather than being malicious, she's just being incompetent. Should we accept a politician's incompetence needlessly stripping property from Americans who haven't done anything wrong? Seems remarkably unnecessary to me.

Gun violence with AR-15s is so rare that this turns into a more comical analogy of "ban cars to stop drunk drivers". Obviously the primary use case of an AR-15 in America is not murdering people, mass shooting or otherwise. It's the most popular gun in America and yet it's rarely seen in violent crime. There are millions of them.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: September 21, 2024, 12:59:36 AM »

“I think for far too long on the issue of gun violence, some people have been pushing a really false choice to say you’re either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away. I’m in favor of the second amendment, and I’m in favor of assault weapons bans, universal background checks, red flag laws,” Harris said, prompting Winfrey to ask about her gun ownership.

The problem here is that "assault weapons" is a nebulous term that doesn't mean anything. Politicians usually use it to refer to AR-15 style weapons. AR-15 style weapons are a tiny portion of violent crime, but a large portion of gun owners. It's for this reason that gun owners on the right make such a fuss about it, and I think that reason is plain: the vast majority (read: >99%) of AR-15 owners have done nothing wrong.

A Chicago-style handgun ban would be more effective regarding violent crime yet major candidates never bring it up. Why? It's quite puzzling. It's almost like they're not actually interested in lowering violent crime and it's a Trojan horse to disarm large portions of the population by taking away the most popular gun in America.

In 2020, the most recent year for which the FBI has published data, handguns were involved in 59% of the 13,620 U.S. gun murders and non-negligent manslaughters for which data is available. Rifles – the category that includes guns sometimes referred to as “assault weapons” – were involved in 3% of firearm murders. Shotguns were involved in 1%. The remainder of gun homicides and non-negligent manslaughters (36%) involved other kinds of firearms or those classified as “type not stated.”

Really activates the ol' almonds.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: US Presidential Election 2024

« on: September 20, 2024, 08:05:08 PM »

Harris to Oprah: Anyone Breaking Into My House Is ‘Getting Shot’

Vice President Kamala Harris said she is in favor of the Second Amendment at a campaign event with Oprah Winfrey. “If somebody breaks in my house, they’re getting shot,” Harris said.

Nice. I've never heard Trump saying anything this amazing.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Yet Another Gun Law Thread

« on: September 18, 2024, 03:29:50 PM »

okay so when are y'all gonna get to using the guns to protect you from the government? when does that part happen? i feel like the right has been pretty clear that the state and society are systematically oppressing them, stripping their rights away, selling state authority to corrupt interests, etc etc.

so like...get to it. you got the guns. when does the liberation start?

The fire rises, brother, but they expect one of us in the wreckage.

The only reason you keep bringing this up

I didn't. Rushy did - look at the post I was actually responding to.

You inserted this into the argument in the other thread. No one brought it up but you, here's the specific point at which you brought it up:

It's not a very good attempt if you don't even get a shot off.
I'm amazed this sort of thing doesn't happen all the time in the US, given that you're all armed to the teeth because reasons.

You bring up this topic so much you don't even remember when you bring it up anymore! Amazing. I had to split this thread off because you were so excited to discuss this topic.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Yet Another Gun Law Thread

« on: September 17, 2024, 06:40:48 PM »

You already live in a society where people feel the need to carry guns to feel safe.

Incorrect.

Oh really, so if I disarmed your police and military entirely, would you feel more or less safe?

There are some specialist units who do but, in general people do not carry guns not feel the need to. I'll leave you to think about how nonsensical the concept of a disarmed military is.

Only in the mind of a person such as yourself does it make sense to disarm the citizens of a country but allow its government to own and distribute weapons only to people it chooses to.

Up to a point, but removing the guns is an easier fix than trying to fix a large population, a percentage of which will obviously be mental because statistics.

The purpose of removing guns from a population is not for the benefit of the population; it's for the benefit of the government ruling over them.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Yet Another Gun Law Thread

« on: September 17, 2024, 02:07:04 PM »

I don't particularly want to live in a society where people feel the need to have or carry guns around to feel safe.

You already live in a society where people feel the need to carry guns to feel safe. I'll take your point a bit more seriously the moment your police forces and military are completely disarmed. Until then, you live in a society that determines some people are allowed to have guns entirely based on whether they're enforcing the government's will.

So...they probably shouldn't have guns then.

The problem isn't the gun.