Thank you, nice telephone lady, for showing me how to write down numbers. I am more the edified.

Freedom of religion is independent of civilian armament.
History shows that religious persecution is normal for humanity, and in most cases it's perpetrated by the government. Sometimes to consolidate power (with government tie-ins to the main religion), and sometimes to pander to the grimace of a majority.

Ironically, in this country, freedom of religion only exists due to armed conflict, albeit merely as a side effect of independence from a religiously homogeneous ruling power.



It's true that Catalonians would likely have been shot at if they were armed.
However, likewise, the Spanish government will never grant the Catalans democracy so long as the Catalans are not armed - simply because it doesn't have to.
(*Barring self suicidal/sacrificial behavior on part of the Catalans that eventually [after much suffering] embarrasses the government into compliance - often under risk that 3rd parties will intervene if things continue)

When the government manufactures consent, it will be first in line to claim that people have democratic freedom. When the government fails to manufacture consent, it will crack down with force.

At the end of the day, in government, might makes right. Laws are only words on paper, the government's arms are what make the laws matter.

Likewise, democracy is no more than an idea. The people's force of arms (or threat thereof) is what assert's the people's dominance over the government.



You can say the police/military are stronger and it would never matter, however, the size of an [armed] population is orders of magnitude larger than the size of an army. Factor in the fact that the people need to cooperate with the government in order to support and supply the government's military. No government can withstand armed resistance of the population at large. This is one of the main lessons from The Prince.

Civilian armament is a bulwark against potentially colossal ills (albeit ills that come once every few generations).

Look at NK. The people get TV, radio, cell, from SK. They can look across the river and see massive cities on the Chinese side. They know they have to play along with the charade that their government demands. At the end of the day, without guns, things won't change.

Look at what happened during the Arab Spring. All these unarmed nations turned to external armed groups to fight for them to change their governments. All it accomplished was them becoming serfs to the invited 3rd parties. This is another lesson from The Prince : always take power by your own means, never rely on auxiliaries, because your auxiliaries will become your new rulers.






Below is general pontification. No longer a reply.
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Civilian armament does come with periodic tragedies. Those tragedies suck. But they're also much less significant than the risks of disarmament.
(Eg. School shootings, 7-11 robberies, etc -versus- Tamils vs Sri Lankan government, Rohingya vs Burmese government. etc.)

Regarding rifles specifically (all varieties combined), there is no point in arguing magnitudes (Around 400 lives per year - albeit taken in newsworthy large chunks). 'Falling out of bed' kills more people, same is true for 'Slip and fall'. No one fears their bed or a wet floor.

Pistols could go away and not matter much.
They have minimal militia utility, and they represent almost the entirety of firearms used in violent crime. (Albeit used to take lives in a non newsworthy 1 at a time manner)

(In the U.S.) If tragedy was the only way to die (otherwise infinite lifespan), you would live on average 9000 years. Guns, car crashes, drownings, etc. ~All tragedies included. (http://service.prerender.io/http://polstats.com/?_escaped_fragment_=/life#!/life)






A computer learning example I was taught:

Boy walking with his mom&dad down a path.
Lion #1 jumps out, eats his dad.
(Data : Specifically lion #1 eats his father.)
The boy and mom keep walking
Lion #2 jumps out, eats his mother.
(Data : Specifically lion #2 eats his mother)
The boy keeps walking
He comes across Lion #3.

Question : Should he be worried?

If you are going to generalize [the first two] lions and people, then yes, he should be worried.

In reality, lions may be very unlikely to eat people (versus say, a gazelle). But if you generalized from the prior two events, you will think they are dangerous.

(The relevance to computer learning is that : Computers learn racism, too. If you include racial data along with other data in a learning algorithm, that algorithm can and will be able to make decisions based on race. Not because the software cares - but because it can analyze and correlate.)

(Note : This is also why arguing religion is likely futile. If a child is raised being told that everything is as it is because God did it, then that becomes their basis for reality. Telling them that their belief in god is wrong, is like telling the boy in the example that lions are statistically quite safe to people. It challenges what they've learned.)



I mentioned this example, because it illustrates learning and perception. And it segways into my following analogy.



Here's a weird analogy, but it goes like this :

(I'm sure SJW minded people will shit themselves over it, but whatever)

"Gun ownership in today's urban society" is like "Black people in 80's white bred society".

2/3 of the population today has no contact with firearms (mostly urban folk)
They only see them on movies used to shoot people, and on the news used to shoot people.
If you are part of that 2/3, you see guns as murder tools.
If you are part of the remaining 1/3, you see guns like shoes or telephones - absolutely mundane daily items that harm nobody.

In the 80's, if you were in a white bred community, your only understanding of black people would be from movies where they are gangsters and shoot people, and from the nightly news where you heard about some black person who shot people.
If you were part of an 80's white bred community, you saw black people as dangerous likely killers.
If you were part of an 80's black/mixed community, you saw black people as regular people living the same mundane lives as anyone else.

In either case, you can analytically know better. But your gut feelings come from your experience.



Basically, I know guns look bad to 2/3 of the population. That won't change. People's beliefs are what they are.
I also know that the likelihood of being in a shooting is essentially zero.
I also know that history repeats itself, and -just in case- I'd rather live in an armed society than an unarmed society. Even if I don't carry a gun.

-scheherazade

I think one of the coolest things of my childhood was tapping one of the high-tension lines holding a telephone pole in place and discovering where he found the sound for the blasters.

YET.....but note the left isn't claiming there's publicly available proof, but you just posted some lies and called it proof. There is more evidence daily that indicates they almost certainly colluded with Russia from day one as a group, but I agree, no undeniable proof....yet.

And the fact that proof has yet to be made public actually makes it sad this red herring is more, now admitted, bullshit. If only it were true we would have that proof of collusion....but no worries. We record all telephone conversations the ambassador has in America, and clearly Trump's people were unaware of that, having already repeatedly been caught lying about conversations that are on tape, so eventually the recordings will be leaked by an intelligence agent that's a true patriot. That's why they rushed to secure that evidence/intelligence before Trump took office, it was clear he would just destroy it.

It's too bad someone hasn't developed some sort of way of communicating with people that doesn't require flags. Maybe some sort of... I don't now, kinda like a telephone, but without wires... that'd be cool... you could broadcast to everyone "PLANE ON RUNWAY!!! SHUT DOWN!!!"

I know, pie-in-the-sky wishes...

I have their discovery of a telephone as a ring tone.

Stuffing the cornucopia into the cornucopia??? That's like dividing by zero. Using quantum phsyics and newtonian physics in the same cake mix. Nuh-uh. Look, hey - all of these nuts could just make phone calls, they could spread insanity, oozing through telephone cables, oozing into the ears of all these poor sane people, infecting them. Wackos everywhere, plague of madness.

The only textual interpretation they should do is to understand the meanings behind the words.
(Like the subject at hand : what was the functional definition of the words "well regulated" in 1791.)

The act of deciding "well, they wrote X, but we think they would have written Y had they thought of these new circumstances, so we're going with what we think" is taking things too far. (eg. concepts like : surreptitious telephone wiretap law applying to overt public video/audio recording)

The legislature exists for a reason. Writing/Updating laws is what they are here for. Let them do their job and legislate new laws that alter the scope/definition of old ones.


The problem with case law is that there is no Federal/State/Country/City LIS system where you can just search for whatever laws apply to whatever activities. You would need access to legal databases, like say LexisNexis. Even lawyers don't read case results directly to know what the decisions mean, they use summarizing services that outline the fallout of court decisions in terms of enforcible concepts. Ironically, these summaries are copyrighted, and the public at large is not allowed to know what those enforcible concepts are without paying.

IMO, I think eminent is easiest confused with emanating. Because the concepts behind them are so similar. One sticks-out-of, the other oozes-out-of. If you said that 'an eminent thing emanates from something', you would be so so close to literally correct.

-scheherazade

Lady Gaga - Telephone ft. Beyoncé has been added as a related post - related requested by Lilithia.

I think you're not getting the distances correct. At 1:42 they're about a quarter mile off, look at the buildings to the right and the telephone poles. When you can finally see the heavy equipment trailer blocking the road, again, at least a quarter mile.

Prairies are difficult to guess distance at the best of times, let alone through video, and that twister is so out of the ordinary as to be completely useless for distance measurement. At one point it almost looks like it's hovering 10ft off the road, but it's illusory and much farther away.

I take exception with the description. It CLAIMS there are 'warning lights', but I don't see any at all. it CLAIMS there are warning signs, but all I see is the single small 'caution' sign with terrible placement so it blends in with the speed limit sign and the junction boxes on the telephone pole. The only noticeable sign does not indicate any low clearance, it warns of grooved pavement ahead. It would be simple for them to put up the type of system where small weighted red balls hang from above WELL BEFORE THE BRIDGE that will hit any oversized truck AND trigger flashing warning lights on the bridge itself. Instead, they put up easily missed 'warning' signs, and a camera to catch the action they know is coming. I've been seeing footage of this bridge for years, there's absolutely no excuse for them not fixing the problem, yet they have not fixed it. If I were a truck driver caught out by this bridge, I would definitely sue the city for knowingly not fixing a known issue, and knowingly not even putting up visible warnings.

Dude, you don't have to go to the internet to talk to yourself. Just get a big ass mirror, it'll be as if there's somebody else in the room. You know, somebody 'reasonable'.
And as for bobknight, I'm sure he has a telephone. You guys should swap numbers.

I'm very late to this, but...

It is definitely Thailand. Every city is a rat's nest of electrical cables, telephone lines etc. just like that. Construction is generally pretty haphazard, and public safety is rather low on the checklist...

I've lived in Thailand for the past 8 years, and speak Thai well enough to give a translation of the beginning of the video, which is pretty funny:
Guy 1: (pointing) Scary, isn't it?
Guy 2: (camera) Jeez, what asshole set this up?

That's a pretty close translation. The guy with the camera refers to the people responsible as "heeah", which literally means "monitor lizard" but is used colloquially as a slur somewhere between "asshole" or "mother f*cker". Thai uses animal words like that as insults in several other instances also, with a softer example being "kwai" which literally means "(water) buffalo", but colloquially is like calling someone a "stubborn dumbass". Sorta like "jackass" in English, but a bit more offensive.

Men fitted with a telephone and a radio. Not too far off.