zedvictor4

Hey, if people want to buy drugs then let them.

No need then for trafficker's or shady dealers, just have drugs on the supermarket shelves.  Age restricted and with a Government health warning of course.

Same approach as with that other well known US addiction. Guns.

And if people are keen to make a mess of their lives, then that's their choice. Though they shouldn't expect to come looking for sympathy when things go tits up.

Nanny State is often counter-productive. There should definitely be a cut off point where adults must take responsibility for their own actions

I've come to realise that everything  is actually an internal simulation of an assumed external reality.

If one considers the processes involved in producing a sensory understanding of everything.

In terms of a visual understanding of externality, it is impossible to see anything other than an internally created image converted from an external light source.

In other words, a simulation.

Same applies to all other sensory input.

Well, given the slow and dangerous collapse of the Russian system, then defence certainly needs to be a priority right now..

But for sure, wouldn't it be lovely if we didn't need to bother with defence.

Culture:   The ideas, customs and social behaviour of a particular people or society.

So U.S. culture incorporates all customs and social behaviour of U.S. society.

Which includes all aspects of ownership possession and usage of guns. Responsible and irresponsible alike.

And not just the rose tinted view of a pleasant day out at the gun club with a fine set of lads and lassies.

Conservatively estimated at 400,000,000 guns nationwide and 44000 gun related deaths in 2022.

All statistics readily available on line to liberals and conservatives alike.

And me, I'm apolitical and moderate. 

And all societies have criminals and a criminal culture.

But what we have is Police that deal with criminals

And not every Tom Dick and Harriet armed to the teeth, eager to take the law into their own hands.

Gun deaths in the UK. 150 approx. Including suicide, homicide and accidental. (Definitive statistics for 2022, hard to find).

Sporting guns are rigorously controlled.

Very few people own or use hunting rifles.

And no ordinary law abiding citizen owns or uses military grade automatic or semi-automatic firearms.

It's called a Beacon of Hope.

Chopping  babies in half as they are being born.

Is that common practice in the US?

I don't think we do it over here.

Or was that just a teeny weeny bit of an emotional over-statement?

Sex and Money makes the World go around.

Metaphorically speaking.

Though I did see an article on Facebook the other day, where a sex worker type female laundered all her tips.

In no way was any disrespect aimed at other gendered type fluid non-binary lacking pronouns type sex worker persons, in the compilation of this post.

One doesn't wish to discriminate.

As for Mr Biden's house being raided by the FBI.

We would expect nothing less than a bit of tit for tat raiding entertainment from the US.

Gotta fill those endless hours of boring news programmes in between all those interminable prescription drugs ads with something.

Not forgetting all the endless hours of weather forecasting of course.

WTF?

Crumpets and Honey.

Yum Yum.

Hey.

You're free to move any where you want to.

Don't let my narrative stop you.

Hop on a plane and come to Wales for a beer and a chat.

Of course, the reality is that it all boils down to affordability.

Have a nice day.

Nope,  Government is the job of cleverer people.

You vote for them and they get on with the job.

That's you, as in the People of the United States of America.

And if it's not the folks you were taught to vote for, then you get a bit miffed for a few years.

Same old, Same old.

So it was a wet year.

And a Middle Eastern guy in a big wooden boat saved and fed all the creatures of the Earth.

Yep, you interpret the bible as you've been taught to and I will be slightly more pragmatic.

And there will have been many times when a bad guy with a gun stopped a good guy with a gun.

This is U.S. gun culture.

As is the lax approach to the ownership of guns in the U.S.

And who the good and bad guys are is largely irrelevant.

400,000,000. Enough guns for everyone.

And so 44,000 people died, so what, that's gun culture too.

As long as there are no sexual organs on display, then it's no different to what everyone is exposed to on social media these days.

I bet that most 8 year olds already know what a drag queen is.

Hmmmm.

You seem to be overlooking the fact that the Government are "People of the United States of America".

It's just that you are not an American person who is a member of the Government.

I'm sorry to have to tell you, that it's just how a society works.

Could be the USA could be Russia, which would you prefer?

If you want to run the USA, then you should have done better at school.

Or have a go and put yourself forwards for your next local election.

You're probably not ready yet for Senator or President.

I would suggest that a lot of movement is probably unnecessary.

Extensive movements are a luxury that we have come to regard as necessary.

And we have also become slightly lazy as a consequence.

Why walk when you don't have to.

My opinion of course.

Nope.

"Criminals" having ready access to guns is gun culture.

A "criminal" is no more or less a citizen of the U.S. and therefore a part of U.S. culture.

And a nut-job who has ready access to guns will kill. Such is a consequence of gun culture.

And armed citizens (those that you regard as the good guys with guns) never have and will not, eradicate either the criminal or the nut job from U.S. society.

Such is gun culture.

As I stated. Not true accounts per se.

So what "fish" is likely to swallow a Man.

And flood events occur all the time.

And exaggerated tales are the consequence.

There are so many logical reasons why the Noah's Ark story cannot be true.

So a bloke in a boat,

Rescued a goat,

Or two,

On a particularly wet day.

And on the same day,

A bloke out swimming,

Encountered,

A Basking Shark.

What a lark.

And the rest is history.

Well.

Jonah and the Whale, Noah's Ark and the biblical flood are not true accounts per se.

But could be exaggerated reinterpretations of localised events.

Which is exactly what the bible amounts to. A mixture of fact and fiction based around a human centred creation hypothesis, social ideology and regional politics. 

And add a bit of fantasy to the mix.

The idea of humanesque GOD/S was around long before the Christian re-invention.

Well, that wasn't quite my point.

But true nonetheless.

Because all the baddies have got guns.

Because the U.S. is awash with guns.

Because that's U.S. gun culture.

Just because a city or region bans guns, doesn't mean baddies won't have them, does it?

And let's be honest the good guys with guns aren't going to choose to live in bad neighbourhoods in places like Detroit and Baltimore.

The point still stands. In a Nation State in which private citizens own approximately 400 million guns, someone is inevitably going to get shot.

That's gun culture.

Who owns what gun and shoots who, is totally irrelevant.

Government subsidies is just you paying up front for replacement energy technology, which has been deemed to be an urgent requirement in relation to apparent environmental concerns.

Whether or not one agrees with the scientific basis of such environmental concerns, largely boils down to selfishness or less selfishness relative to cost to the individual.

From my point of view EV's are are still too costly and unpredictable.

Though the EV era is still in it's infancy.

I expect that people said the same about the swap from horses to cars 120 or so years ago.

Doomed if you do and doomed if you don't.

There is never another option.

YFLDT6.

Christianity is the acceptance that certain comparatively recent middle Eastern fantasy tales explain the GOD concept.

Which they don't. They are just very naive and exaggerated  stories about human beings.

The God bit is always an imaginary sub-plot.

What ever floats a mans procreational boat.

Which is basically what it's all about.

Sperm production however it might occur.

And if mincing is a part of the process then so be it.

No one is forcing you to mince.

Nice statistic.

Though I would suggest that the "general population" isn't the problem.

Most general populations just want a quiet ordered existence.

The big problem is over-exaggerated media sensationalism and politicized propaganda.

Yep. Seen that a few times.

Hello from cold and grey Wales.

Hey, live ammo.

This is the U.S. 

What more do you expect?

Second Amendment and all that shit.

Alec was only protecting himself from Government tyranny.

Hope all is well in sunny Florida.

Cops shooting people is American Culture.

People shooting people is American Culture.

I think it's referred to as The Second Amendment.

Why the astonishment when someone gets shot.

Bang Bang you're dead Punk.

Next.

It would be the best way forwards for the Universe. If controlled by a singular Human State, solely for the benefit of Universal progression, albeit from an Earth-bound human perspective.

What the Universe doesn't need is a planet full of stupid and vain social media celebrities.

What the universe requires is clever technological innovators.

 

As I have told Tarik previously.

All thought functions and processes are essentially the same.

The internal electro-chemical acquisition, storage and manipulation of sensory input.

As such, consequent data is always subjective.

In other words, objective morality is just made up stuff, like everything else we make up.

Whether or not data output relates to an external reality is a curious situation.

Because our whole existence, despite sensory capability, is based upon an internal simulation of an assumed reality.

As I always say, I think therefore I am, is as good as it gets.

American culture.

Yep, a lot of sensible stuff there.

Though I'm not sure that levelling out birth rates relative to increased decrepitude relative to over-dependency on healthcare is a good way forwards.

And globally we're a long way from that level of sustainability of population, relative to consensus and any sort of global cooperation.

Time will tell I suppose.

LOL Bro.

You can still give them a good lashing.

Though there is always a fine line between a good lashing and extreme eroticism.

Undoubtedly.

And my point entirely.

It's all cultural.

Nice Ku.

Cops shooting someone is very much a part of  America's systemic gun culture, and therefore also an intrinsic part of American culture in general.

And so one shouldn't be surprised.

Similarly, the race/skin tone debate is also an intrinsic part of systemic American culture, and so one is also not surprised that this subject made it to the forum.

Bang Bang you're dead, is the name of the game.

So discuss if you must, then get over it and move on.

And another one will surely bite the dust, very soon.

Guns, Cops shooting, variable skin tone and a jolly good social debriefing are a big part of what it is to be an American.

Well, there's always leaks and hacking and leakers and hackers.

And cyber-data is by it's very nature, never 100% secure.

When you lash them, will you be wearing some sexy gear?

And I suppose that Prison life will always depend upon functionality and penetrability.

Well.

The future is never quite now.

Now is inevitably always now,

And the future is always,

In a moment,

In an hour,

In a day,

In a month,

In a year,

In a lifetime.

And a tractor beam,

Still sounds, 

Very agricultural.

Population is a huge issue that is avoided or overlooked by most people

And healthy and happy are fleeting moments in mundane lives.

And healthcare is subject to the vagaries of wealth, power and genetic instructions..

How one evaluates the necessity of personhood, depends upon how one evaluates the purpose or intention of Universal progression.

And for sure, as single units most will always be hellbent on survival right here, right now with no real thought of the greater future.

The future is potentially a long time, and Planet  Earth's resources are not unlimited.

So do you think that the human species or the essence of humanity will have migrated before the Earth clock stops ticking?

I think there's a strong chance that we will have (in some form). Maybe it's an evolutionary certainty (Universal evolution).

Or do you think that everything is purposeless?

Well, as I see it, it's 50/50 chance or purpose.

People acquire data and transfer it.

And people also display a variety of skin tones.

And so stuff happens.

Get over it Lighty.

Undoubtedly Bro, if your bottom bottom bottom line is the biblical/ex-Pope comparison.

Though if like me you give little credence to either the Pope or the bible, then you tend to take more interest in the variability of concepts.

And don't mention bottoms to Roman Catholics.

I was never talking about genetic evolution per se. Perhaps you were.

I always refer to universal progress in terms of material evolution, and human augmentation via AI would be very much a part of that process.

Just as stone tools were, and data technology is.

A lot of stuff happened in the pre-human Universal past, and a lot of stuff will happen in the Universal future.

Whether or not, or how much of the Universal future will be post-human remains to be seen. Or not as the case may be.

A Witch is a pretendy super-naturalist.

Actually, rather like a theist.

A Polytheist is therefore doubly so.

And a Polytheist Witch is  obviously trebly so.

Ho Ho Ho said Santa.

That's human evolution for you.

A Crime and Wrong are variable concepts Bro.

The electric car is a solution to a problem other than the misconceived problem of personal transport.

And yes  of course, it's popularity will all depend upon the cost to the average Joe.

It's a phase that will last for a while. Just as the internal combustion engine has lasted for a hundred and twenty years or so.