Total posts: 1,950
Posted in:
-->
@Double_R
In every other instance, the time to talk about how we prevent the next disaster is in the aftermath of said disaster. But suddenly when it comes to guns the logic is different.I wonder why guns keep getting a pass.
The constitution. An archaic concept, often forgot about these days.
Created:
Posted in:
Also, Larry Elder should be the president. I love that guy.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@TWS1405_2
I have always wondered what stupid people think about guns.Then I read DoubleR's opinions on them.I wonder no more, as now I know.Right?
Now to be fair, I was being a bit of an asshole. Not because I enjoy being an asshole.
Well, ok. I do enjoy being an asshole.
But I also enjoy the effect it has on DoubleR. His feathers are very easy to ruffle.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Double_R
I used to wonder why right wingers believe the stupid things they do, till I realized a pattern of remarkable inability to comprehend words when those words conflict with their fantasy world view.
I've been called a lot of things by a lot of people. Right winger isn't one of them. You remind me of that mentally ill lesbian in Palo Alto who attacked an old Jewish guy and kept calling him a nazi.
Created:
Posted in:
I have always wondered what stupid people think about guns.
Then I read DoubleR's opinions on them.
I wonder no more, as now I know.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Double_R
Question: Was that child who was shot to death killed by a gun or killed by another child?
Answer: That child who was shot to death was killed by another child.
Shall we ban all cars, because some children happen to walk behind their soccer mom's minivans and get ran over? I think not.
Your "protect the children!" outcry is as incoherent as it is nonsensical.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@bmdrocks21
Well Coal, that’s the beauty of it! These people self-identify as transgender without any sort of diagnosis. Hardly any need for the government on that front at all. Just offer the option to switch their gender on a piece of paper and voilà: dangerous mentally ill person identified.When you have a group of which nearly half attempt suicide for not being able to self-mutilate on the tax payer dime or use the bathroom of their choice, it is easy to see the public good of such a ban.And I understand yet reject the lack of nuance in the libertarian position of not banning anyone. Seriously, by that logic, would you argue that we should allow felons to own guns? The government can create wacky laws that will strip them of their ‘rights’ whenever they want, after all
I don't understand what you are saying about transgender people. I don't support "banning" transgender people, restricting their movement (including, on the basis of social norms), or treating them differently from anyone else. That being said, I do think people who call themselves trans are, for the most part, nothing more than fetishists. If they are only fetishists, that is fine. Society can handle that. But all of this is beside the point I made.
Relatedly, what is your point?
Also, why would you think I supported denying felons the right to own firearms? I absolutely support the right of felons to own firearms, outside of prison. And any restrictions to the contrary violate the constitution. For some strange reason, you seem to think all felons are violent. They are not. Most are not violent. Most shouldn't even be in jail. Many haven't even committed felonies. In fact, probably 1/5th of all "felons" currently incarcerated are probably innocent of the crime for which they were charged. The only reason they're in prison is because they're poor, and did not have the money to afford a competent lawyer.
Created:
Posted in:
<<<<<<<<<<The MadMan Wrote>>>>>>>>>>When Coal blocks, it is great restraint in the face of idiocy, when RM blocks, it is a show of great cowardice in the face of great toxicity.Right.
That is a strange response. I don't have anything personal against you, RM. Despite your idiosyncrasies.
I also do not understand why you chose to make my comment about you. I did not mention you at all. I was talking about someone else.
Although I have blocked you, because you were being an annoying brat. In much the same way as you are now.
Why do you choose to be an annoying brat?
Wouldn't it be better for everyone if you did not behave in this way? Yourself, primarily?
Created:
Posted in:
@ebuc
I think I blocked you a long time ago. Presumably because I grew exhausted of your nonsense. I usually only do that as a show of great restraint, in the face of overwhelming idiocy.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
When they go to school, they sit in prison-like "educational institutions" under fluorescent lights and forced to stay inside listening to shitty people (most teachers I think are pretty shitty people) drone on about shit the kids do not see the value of, for the purpose of performing on standardized tests that set the trajectory of their lives.I would never do this to my high school students. If I'm not getting fistbumps and smiles all day, then there's something horribly wrong.
A few months ago, I saw a video of high school students from the 1990s trending on TikTok. That was a type of educational environment I recognized. Before George Bush's "No Child Left Behind Act" so-called "reforms" (and certainly before Barack Obama's "Common Core" reforms). Before everyone had cell phones. When TVs were were rolled into classrooms on carts, social media was unheard of and people looked at one another as opposed to screens in front of them.
Granted, I am not anti-tech in school. We did not have a computer science program when I was in grade school, but I think it's pretty standard to do so now. And Common Core math may be better than how I was taught algebra, trig and calculus, for example. I don't know. But it sure seems like schools are miserable places to be these days. Especially if the subject being taught can be turned into political propaganda.
I am old enough now that most of my friends have kids in grade school. And the shit their kids are taught, even in elementary school, makes me very sympathetic to the kinds of measures Ron DeSantis has initiated in Florida. These young 20-somethings with degrees in "education" have all kinds of crazy ideas, and they seem determined to infect the next generation with the same mind-virus they caught in college: wokeness.
This is horrible. It must be stopped. We will not survive this fourth turning, if it isn't.
Most of the mass shooters come from deeply troubled backgrounds. But people with deeply troubled backgrounds aren't new, either. The only thing that's changed is that almost all kids now either do not grow up in two-parent households, or if they do, both parents work.Thomas Sowell agrees.
Thomas Sowell is probably the single most important public intellectual in living memory. When I was younger (and believed some of the stupid things I learned in college and graduate school), I dismissed him. But that was because I lacked the experience to realize I didn't know everything. Now, I can only reflect in horror upon the stupid things I believed when I was in my 20s.
Although, in fairness, the pandemic was really my watershed moment. It was only when I saw the government's incompetent handling of the pandemic that I totally lost faith in the government's ability to do anything right. Before, my baseline assumption was that the government was capable of getting things right. After, my baseline assumption was that whatever can be fucked up, will be fucked up. Because that is what happened at every level during the pandemic.
I am reminded of what Kary Mullis said after he won the nobel prize in chemistry. Most people do not have the intellectual toolkit to be able to distinguish genuine expertise from charlatanism. That is why people like Anthony Fauci can exist at very high levels of government. Almost all the people who know enough to be able to see him for the fraud that he is, were either beholden to his control over research funding through the NIAID (academia) or had the incentive to use him to their advantage (big pharma). So, he remained in place for years while he used his position to ruin the lives and careers of anyone who challenged him (just like his equally incompetent predecessor, Francis Collins).
At the end of the day, Fauci is the textbook example of the dangers inherent to rule by so-called "experts."
I think it started with FDR and the progressives, frankly.The FDR era was the beginning of the end of the concept of the privilege and responsibility of citizenship. FDR used the existing fabric of citizenship to draft men and employ women to fight a foreign war 10,000 miles away as a means to justify a complete restructuring of the government where the government, not the citizen is responsible for maintaining the social fabric and the social welfare. The very concept that kept the Greek and Romans so prosperous for so long was destroyed within the reign of one president.
I think I agree with this, but I don't know enough to have an informed opinion. I agree that FDR and the progressive era redefined what it meant to be an American citizen, and I think that was probably the start of the destruction of the non-state institutions that held the fabric of American society together. But I know very little about Greek and Roman history.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Mharman
Bingo. We can fix some problems through policy, but the problems behind the problems can only be solved with cultural improvements.How many of these shooters were raised poorly, or had some kind of traumatic experience in their past? I suspect it’s almost all of them. Not defending those evil people, but it’s clear that there’s more going on with them than the sheer moral depravity required to shoot up a school.
I view mass shootings as a reflection of our cultural decay. Guns are not a new thing in this country. If anything, they were once far more ubiquitous (per capita) than they are now. But mass shootings are a new thing. So what changed? The culture decayed, of course. I think it started with FDR and the progressives, frankly.
Most of the mass shooters come from deeply troubled backgrounds. But people with deeply troubled backgrounds aren't new, either. The only thing that's changed is that almost all kids now either do not grow up in two-parent households, or if they do, both parents work.
They grow up disconnected from their families and without a place in their communities.
They get placed on lists, labeled, categorized, evaluated, diagnosed with behavioural problems, pumped up with prescription drugs.
When they go to school, they sit in prison-like "educational institutions" under fluorescent lights and forced to stay inside listening to shitty people (most teachers I think are pretty shitty people) drone on about shit the kids do not see the value of, for the purpose of performing on standardized tests that set the trajectory of their lives.
When they come home, they eat processed food with no nutritional value, consume vapid media content (if not woke propaganda), and asynchronously interact with their friends (or bullied by their peers) through screens alone.
They do not go to church, belong to institutions outside of those created by the state (e.g., school).
They are conditioned from birth to defer to authority.
I think if our social fabric was stronger, we'd have less mass shootings.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@ebuc
IwantRooseveltagain is some of the only sanity we have to defending ourselves from MAGA Trumpeteer cult
Are you being sarcastic? I have to wonder, in the face of such a stupid response.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@bmdrocks21
The category of "schizophrenics" whether "medicated" or not is not relevant to the issue of whether people deserve constitutional rights.
Creating categories of people who do not get constitutional rights is a dangerous path.
First, you're giving the government the power to identify categories of people that can be stripped of constitutional rights.
Second, you're giving the government the power to create categories, define their bounds, and enforce that alienation of essential liberty.
Third, the particular category you've defined is one that requires something approximating "expertise" to evaluate. Do you want government shrinks telling you whether you're sane enough to have the same rights before God and man as everyone else?
Maybe today, things go as planned. But twenty years later? That thought alone should give you pause, given what you know happened after George Bush signed the Patriot Act and the so-called "war" on terror.
Our response to crisis should never start with giving the government more power. Much less giving it the power to create lists of people they can strip of constitutional rights according to the determinations of "experts" of any kind.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@bmdrocks21
There is no world where I am going to empower the government to define groups of people who they can deny constitutional rights to, based on the determinations of alleged "experts."
The government cannot have that level of power.
That same argument was made about people on the no fly list after 9/11.
At the time, no one thought (other than me) that twenty years later, the FBI would turn the so-called "war" on terror against Donald Trump's supporters.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
I think what you are saying is that "gender reassignment surgery is the new conversion therapy." If that is what you are saying, I agree.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Melcharaz
I think I agree with what you said.
Created:
Posted in:
> And that is why gun bans is actually what to push for but it seems enough Americans will let their children be slaughtered, literally not metaphorically and not hyperbole, before daring to push for that... So, America is fucked.
This is a bad argument. Swimming pools, cars, sharks, oceans, toys, peanuts, dirt bikes, and dogs kill plenty of children. But we do not ban them, because we understand that instrumentalities of causing harm are not the problem.
Nor are guns the problem.
Created:
Posted in:
Once again, today we confront the depths of evil and moral depravity. A school shooter murdered six people in a school. More may succumb to their injuries, yet. It is too early to say at this time. The fatalities include three adults and three children. The school was a private Christian religious school. The shooter was a 28-year old former student of the same school.
The shooter will answer in hell for these transgressions. But that will not bring those kids or those teachers back. Too many similar instances haunt our collective memories.
There are some differences between this instance, and other prior instances. For example, this shooter was a transitioning "male" (born female, in some state of "transition" to being male). It is unclear whether that is relevant to the shooter's motive or intentions. It might be. It might not be. I don't have enough information to know at this time.
The shooter allegedly wrote a "manifesto," according to news reports. The alleged manifesto's contents are not described in the reporting. The contents of the manifesto may shed light on the shooter's motives.
Because facts are still developing, I can only offer my perspective on facts as they are known at this time (including, as described above).
However, this much is true and will remain true: Salvation is not had through policy.
Immediate, reflexive calls for gun control are unhelpful. As they always are. Demands for broad, sweeping policy reform in the face of a highly publicized crisis also do not add value. This person would have passed any pre-purchase background check without difficulty.
Created:
Posted in:
Words cannot capture the tragedy of a young person's suicide.
Ajab was one of us. And now he is gone.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Mharman
For sure. Some are better than others. Adderall is just about the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Mharman
I understand. And ADD/ADHD might have slowed the process down.
Did you ever take medication?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Reece101
I also don't see words. I see chunks of data, with something like a conceptual structure.
If I can imagine the scene in my head and really concentrate on a scene that is playing out, I can usually recall the words to describe something. But I see images and conceptual representations of data, not words.
I have a really hard time paying attention to words. I have to force myself to go from word to image or representation, or I am not going to understand something that may be totally obvious to everyone else.
Occasionally I feel stupid because of this, and I'll stare off into space.
I also have a hard time going from image or conceptual representation, back to words. This results in me speaking slower than most people do, speaking with a "Barack Obama" style cadence.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Mharman
That probably wasn't your fault. I think math is really poorly taught.
And the more abstract it becomes, the harder it becomes to conceptualize.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Reece101
If I'm trying to understand complex relationships, I have to visualize something like a multi-dimensional model in my mind.
There is a limit to how much working memory I have to go on. But I can usually mentally conceptualize a 3-dimensional model of whatever I'm reading or listening to, and envision possible iterative forks in competing scenarios about two or three moves ahead.
If I can simplify input variables, I can usually think about four moves ahead.
Unless I'm tired, then I can't think at all and I feel mildly retarded.
Created:
-->
@TWS1405_2
"If corporal punishment of children is good, do you also approve of beating dogs?"False equivalency fallacy.
This is correct.
Created:
If requiring that children attend school is good, should we also require that dogs complete a K12 education?
Created:
Posted in:
A user interaction capcha (orient an object, move an object, etc.) is usually a good balance between pissing people off and infosec demands.
Created:
Posted in:
The capchas this site is now using are complete trash. On four occasions, it gave me non-solveable captchas which were incorrectly coded.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@bmdrocks21
The reason Nixon was pragmatic is because he was an outsider. Neither his finances nor his fate were intertwined with the DC establishment of his day.
He didn't go to Harvard or Yale. He went to Duke.
He didn't get into the Ivy Leagues, and his entire identity in life was defined against the elitist inbreeding that DC politics instantiates.
Created:
Literally every single post of this OP is democrat hackery, low brow left-wing mastrubatory spam and other mindless bile.
OP: do you just sit around all day copying and pasting the shit AOC tweets?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@bmdrocks21
You have no idea how much I wish Richard Nixon was back in office.
That man understood things.
Created:
Posted in:
I don't even know why I logged on tonight. When this is the shit that I see, why am I even here.
OP hasn't said a single insightful thing in the entire time I have known of his existence.
Although maybe I'm just becoming harsher and harsher as time goes on.
Probably both.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Avery
Thank you for the kind words. Things have worked out for me quite well :)
I'm glad to hear that.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Avery
I remember calling you the f word and attempting to provoke you on many occasions.
It takes two to tango, and I was an active participant. Hopefully all water under the bridge now.
Created:
-->
@Shila
Your guess is as good as mine. I am amazed by his subsequent behaviour. He seems to have some issues to work out though.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Avery
I hope things worked out for you and that things are going well now. I wasn't exactly a nice person on DDO, including to you, which was wrong.
Created:
-->
@Shila
best.korea is a weird kid
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@TWS1405
I don't know what best.korea's sexual interests are, but he writes like he's about 13-15 years old. So keep that in mind.
I also think his psychological (and by implication, psychosexual) maturity were probably severely stunted by the pandemic. He isn't the only one, but the phenomenon is so common it's been the subject of emerging research.
That being said, absent that context, I would probably agree with your assessment given his thread about how pedophiles are treated in prison. His expression of "sympathy" for pedophiles suggests it's potentially more than that.
Created:
-->
@Shila
You are trying hard to reason with a 14 year of Korean. Spanking is the only thing that works in Korea. Look what happens when the child is spared the spanking. They go ballistic then nuclear.
You are correct. No doubt about that.
Created:
-->
@Athias
I am embarrassed for you.
If you wanted to respond to what I wrote by disagreeing, the ball was in your court to argue against it (read: offer actual reasons why I was wrong).
You have failed to do so.
Now you are arguing about whether you did anything more than say "Nuh-uh!"
I am disinclined to talk in circles.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Avery
About a decade ago, I remember that I claimed having read Infinite Jest on my profile, and then you called me out on that in PMs (and stopped once you realized how young I was).That should help convince you.
Yep. That does indeed.
There's a big difference between talking like that to a 14, 16 and 19 year old. I can't remember when he started talking to me like that. The age of consent in my country is 16, too.
There is a big difference, indeed.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Avery
Assuming you are Cassie, I didn't expect that badger's behaviour would have had a long term impact.
But I also don't think you ever sent him nudes.
Regardless of whether it caused any long term harm, he was egregiously out of line.
Created:
Your behavior is unfortunate, but it confirms my initial impression. Maturity is basically the shift away from the parent's guardianship towards independence and, ideally, self actualization. It entails legal, social, religious, political, intellectual, psychological and emotional aspects.
The line between immaturity and maturity is not exactly objective, but trends emerge from which the particular can be inferred from the degree to which it probably conforms to the general. Here, as I said above, I think you're probably still in high school or potentially late middle school.
I think you're likely less mature than your peers, presumably because your parents have infantilized you and, as a component of that infantilization, they probably still spank you.
There are behaviours I would have expected to see, if I was wrong. For example, if I was wrong, you would have just denied that you were still spanked and that you were at the age I expected you are. The reason you would have done that is obvious: if I accused you of being a girl, but you were a boy, you would not feel the need to "declare" yourself anything. Denying alone would have been enough.
But it wasn't. Instead, you wrote what you wrote.
I encourage you to re-read what I wrote, if you want your situation to improve. But if you think you know best (as all 14 year old boys do, for the most part), keep on keepin' on.
Created:
-->
@Athias
You laid your cards on the table, in your reply. I wasn't even talking about you in my post above. But you acted as if I was. Which tells me I may as well have been.
I'm smarter than that for which I give myself credit. What makes you think I'm not smart? My disagreeing with your unsubstantiated arguments?
The beginning and end of what you wrote reduces to "Nuh-uh!" Yet, having offered no more than that, you responded as if you had affirmatively disproven what I wrote. Which you absolutely have not done. Therefore, I have nothing to say in response.
I put the ball in the in-zone. Then you fumbled.
Me, emotional? Which emotions have I conveyed? [etc.]
Neurotic hypersensitivity towards support for corporal punishment, in much the same way as the OP and potentially for the same reasons as the OP.
The tone and tenor of your response reflected a tendency to interpret neutral situations as threatening, minor disagreements as overwhelming and an overall tendency towards anxiety, irritability, lack of emotional stability, self consciousness, introversion, stress (particularly from the inability to contend objectively with disagreement), projection (particularly from your response above, wherein, for example, you referenced "disagreeing with [my] unsubstantiated arguments").
As our resident psychoanalyst, and an authority on yourself, why do you believe you would do that?
What I am doing does not even approximate psychoanalysis. I am not a psychoanalyst and it is clear you do not understand that term. Make no mistake on this point.
This is just basic observation and inference drawn from it.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Avery
I wasn't commenting on how badger treated Royal. She was >18 at the time she was on the site.
Created:
-->
@Athias
You're not very smart, are you?
And pretty emotional, too, right?
Created:
-->
@Polytheist-Witch
I reiterate what I said:It basically says no matter what a woman does she's always wrong and she's always a bitch.Which is pretty much correct. But hardly unique to women. No matter what men do, they're always wrong and always dicks.The difference is that only women think this is somehow a uniquely female experience.
Created: