He also thinks he’s smart, attractive, beloved by all Americans, and good at golf. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and just thinks that’s the way it’s supposed to be. It’s never occurred to him that he might not deserve anything he wants, from companies to political victories to sexual conquests to accolades.
“I don’t disagree that she’s been treated inhumanely after capture while on an errand of mercy, but she hasn’t been subjected to literally every war crime” isn’t the gotcha you think it is.
It’s ok. The people would’ve certainly Mole of Moles’d themselves long before that happened.
Yes. If it is built using public money, it belongs to the public.
Some people see participation in any sense as a sort of tacit agreement or endorsement of the system as a whole. So by casting any vote, even one of protest, you are legitimizing the system as a whole.
This assumes that there we are always afforded the option to choose whether or not to participate. If you are a bus driver and your full bus is careening toward a cliff, and you have the opportunity to swerve into a procession of nuns crossing the street (toward the cliff? What kind of street is this?), not choosing is still a choice. You can’t say, “well, I’ll just sit this one out. I can comfort my conscience with the knowledge that I’m not making a choice.” The people on your bus are still going to die, and it will be your fault. Now, if you swerved, the nuns would die, and that would be your fault, too.
A person who comes of age in a country with suffrage is a part of that system; they are not afforded the luxury of not casting a vote guilt-free, even if they tend more Kantian, because they were placed in the driver’s seat of that bus on the day they became an adult. In fairness, they share that seat with hundreds of millions of others, but they still face a choice between two bad options. No matter which they choose, even if they choose neither, bad things will happen.
I guess what I’m saying is, when the stakes are high enough and stacked up against you enough, you have to become at least a little bit of a consequentialist.
Whoa. I’m American and I just discovered that I had been using that word…uh…wrong for my region but right for the rest of the world? I thought it was phonemes in general, and that the vowel thing was an archaic usage. Interesting.
I knew it wasn’t alliteration, since it isn’t all the first syllable sound. But it’s always fun to learn new stuff about the language I’ve been speaking for nearly forty years.
SunSCreen SCandal ShoCKing auStralia - the world’S SKin Canc(S)er Capital
Not the point of the post, but–dang, that headline assonance is amazing.
I’ve got a kitsune gunslinger in a homebrew campaign who kind of talks and acts like Captain Picard and a dwarf barbarian in Abomination Vaults who is basically “what if Gimli’s laugh after Legolas asks him if he wants a box was a character?”
Plus I GM a game for my kids and their friends. That one’s super fun.
Judge Sebutinde, your eschatology is bad. But your paterology is even worse. You might be a heretic; whoever taught you this nonsense definitely is.
As a Christian, who has actually read the Bible, I think the venomous bigotry actually self-selects them out of Christianity. “They’ll know you are Christians by your love for others” was maybe Jesus’ clearest definition of what it meant to follow him.
This may be similar to “actual libertarianism,” but I wouldn’t know, not being a libertarian.
Have you checked Artstation?
His real first name is “Emory,” so make sure you put that in there too.
(Last I heard, his fans hate it)
Those are silly folks lmao
Eh, I kind of get it. OpenAI’s malfeasance with regard to energy usage, data theft, and the aforementioned rampant shoe-horning (maybe “misapplication” is a better word) of the technology has sort of poisoned the entire AI well for them, and it doesn’t feel (and honestly isn’t) necessary enough that it’s worth considering ways that it might be done ethically.
I don’t agree with them entirely, but I do get where they’re coming from. Personally, I think once the hype dies down enough and the corporate money (and VC money) gets out of it, it can finally settle into a more reasonable solid-state and the money can actually go into truly useful implementations of it.
This is one of the few things that AI could potentially actually be good at. Aside from the few people on Lemmy who are entirely anti-AI, most people just don’t want AI jammed willy-nilly into places where it doesn’t belong to do things poorly that it’s not equipped to do.
Cool, so I guess you’re done blowing up Gaza then, right?
(Padme_face.jpg)
You’re done blowing up Gaza, right?
It’s not all about him, no; but my understanding is that conservatives in Canada massively underperformed yesterday, and the analysis seems to point to mobilization against Trumpism.
Fair point.
They’re not good, but they are easy to win…if you have all the manufacturing facilities and are okay with plunging your country into depression for the sake of absolutely no benefit whatsoever.
Wait, what’s the definition of “win” again?
The problem with banning weapons basically boils down to “weapons already exist.”
Bad actors have them and will not give them up voluntarily. It’s very simple to say “they should be banned,” but short of Star Trek-level scanner technology, it’s impossible to find all of them. If everyone else gives them up, then the bad actors essentially run the show.
If we were somehow able to ban and dispose of all existing weapons, another problem presents itself: namely, weapons can be created or improvised from other items. 3D printers can make guns (yes, really), knives are a standard and critical kitchen tool, baseball bats are recreational equipment, even pencils have been used as deadly weapons. “Banning weapons” requires banning essentially anything heavier or sharper than a balloon; and even then, you could suffocate someone with it.
Imagining that we were somehow able to do away with all things that could be weapons, as well, we are faced with a third problem: that during the time that we’re making this change, law-abiding countries and citizens will be disarmed, while criminal elements will retain their weapons.
Conservatives and gun nuts (particularly in the US) deploy this weapon on an individual level (“when guns are criminal, only criminals will have guns”), but it’s much more salient on a governmental level: to wit, when you are invaded by another country, you’re going to have to have your own weapons to counter theirs. And the promise of police (while debatably realized) is that they wield weapons to protect unarmed individuals from violence carried out by criminals with weapons.
They’re wrong that only dictators want to disarm people, but they are right that dictators have a vested interest in banning weapons. A resistance is a lot harder to put down when that resistance is armed.
The reality, though, is that this particular talking point was encouraged by the American NRA (National Rifle Association), which masquerades as an organization for firearm owners and users but is actually a professional organization of firearm manufacturers. It has spread to other countries from there.
Should be? Yes. Can be, safely? Good question.
Everyone thinks that. That’s why we call it “crime.” It’s named that because it’s stuff we don’t want to happen, so we get together and assign a penalty to everything we don’t like and call them “laws.”
Okay, everything above is not my opinion, but reality. That’s the state of the world, and the logical outworking of the state of the world. What follows is my opinion. As you may be able to tell, I am a U.S. citizen, so my answer is based largely around that context.
We have to significantly ban and restrict and curtail weapons: sale, possession, and use. Dramatically. Especially firearms. Particularly especially military-grade weapons.
It should be essentially impossible for private citizens to own firearms, and those who are allowed to own them must provide a valid reason (“collecting” working, non-historical weapons is not a valid reason) and be subject to a background check, registration, psychological evaluation, extensive training, and mandatory safe storage requirements. They should be required to join and maintain good standing in their local National Guard or other defense organization. Individuals who currently own firearms and are unwilling or unable to comply with the new regulations must surrender their weapons or face imprisonment for the sake of public safety.
In line with that, ordinary police and private security firms should not be permitted to carry weapons more deadly than a nightstick and pepper spray; with more psychological evaluation and extensive training, perhaps a taser. Firearms should be exclusively allotted for specific use cases, such as animal deterrence in communities near wilderness areas, and perhaps SWAT teams. Qualified immunity should be abolished, and every person killed or injured by a police officer’s weapon should result in immediate suspension of the officer, pending an external audit and investigation.
All weapons and ammunition used by any private citizen, police officer, private security employee, or military personnel should be subject to strict check in/check out regulations, and should include a valid reason for checkout associated with specific training activities or a specific, single incident requiring their issue. Government employees (members of law enforcement and the military) and private security employees should be subject to mandatory bodycam activation (with the footage declassified) any time weapons are checked out.
That is what can be done now, safely, without unduly endangering individuals. We know that it can be done, now, safely, because many other countries have done it.