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"Actually I'm not usually scared, but uh... [rest of sentence drowned out by furious buzzing]"

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

This makes me mad, not happy......

I feel like people who abandon their animals in an emergency should have them all removed before the next emergency.

All the tears and joy at their survival betrays his expectations that they would all be dead...and many will be, the broken legs are a death sentence. He left them to drown.

If you take on the responsibility of being an animal's caretaker, live up to your obligations, even when it's hard. If you can't, don't get the animals.

the alt right are a vile,vulgar and grotesque display of racist ignorance all gussied up as "patriots",as "white nationalists" whose only concern is the safety and prosperity of america.

pffffft../fart noise.

so would you PLEASE for the love of fucking CHRIST allow these nimrods to hold their little rallies,their little marches.let them speak and speak and speak.....

because,like anything..bad ideas have a way of falling into the shitter when those ideas are shoved into the open.

there is a REASON why we haven't heard from these shitbags for almost 35 years,and it ain't because somebody threw a punch,sprayed some mace,or drowned out their voice.

it is simply because we gave them a mic.
that's it..we let them talk,let them march,let them hand out their literature.

this ain't rocket science people.

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heh heh, this guy's having a laugh...

how could it be unexpected?? the sets come in at pretty well-timed intervals, the backwash for such a wave would be pulling backwards (hard) on his waist and thighs, and he'd have heard it

i grew up about a five-minute drive from sandy beach on oahu, and had my dad throwing me into the shorebreak from about the age of seven...laughing his ass off, while i'd stagger out of the surf half-drowned and with my sand-filled trunks around my ankles

here are some cool photos of the place by an old college buddy of mine:

http://www.beachboyphotography.com/Surf/My-Smug-Mug/i-gHjVj6T

Sorry, gotta disagree with you @enoch.
First, yes, America is guilty of interference in third world elections, but not so much in free elections.
Second, the level of interference in this election is unprecedented (EDIT: Including evidence the Russians tried to hack voting machines and virus many poll workers, and there's absolutely zero question which candidate they were trying to help).

Third, there is plenty of EVIDENCE his campaign colluded, they've admitted doing so after the election but before confirmation, and that at least he tried hard to hide that fact, and the fact that he has financial ties to them.
There is no publicly available PROOF that Trump himself colluded to steal the election....yet.

There is mounting proof that he has, since the election, at every turn, used the office for private financial gains from numerous foreign entities, which is totally illegal.

Does this translate to undeniable proof that he colluded to steal the election with a foreign enemy? Again, not yet, but the investigation is still in it's infancy, largely due to his interference in it and his stonewalling every legal question. It's far worse than just being a used car salesman abusing his power, it's the "leader of the free world" subverting the constitution for financial gains.

It was actually 17 agencies, and most of them were certain the evidence that Saddam had WMD's was suspect at best, and not credible....they said so, but were drowned out by the few agencies that went along with Bush's narrative...that has been shown fairly conclusively in the intervening years.

Again, I don't believe there was a joint statement about the gassing, that was again Trump's administration claiming certitude about Assad, not the intelligence community.

Not sure what you mean about Gadhafi, he did kill thousands, but again, I don't recall any joint public statement from the intelligence community.

In fact, I recall the joint statement being a first.

That doesn't mean they're right, just that your implication that they are so often wrong is a bit exaggerated and not factual as you wrote it....or at least as I read you.

Unfortunately, the evidence that would be proof is classified evidence...so we may NEVER see it without high level clearance of a bad leak. Not seeing it is no evidence at all that it doesn't exist, you should not be able to see it.

The term "deep state" is an Orwellian term meant to delegitimize ANYONE not in step with the current administration...just call them liberal holdovers and dismiss them...that's the idea...don't buy it. Most intelligence agents are non political....not all, but most.

CNN hasn't been pantsed IMO...they admitted what everyone knows, they are less about reporting important news than they are about ratings. That doesn't make their story wrong or fake, it makes it make sense that they ignore other actual news to talk incessantly about the one story that makes them money/ratings, even with no new information to share. Certainly that detracts from their value as a news source, but doesn't make them Breitbart willing to make up stories out of whole cloth and back them to the end.

Perhaps there's something there I'm missing since I won't watch a Breitbart story or give it a shred of credence, but not from what I've heard and seen elsewhere. I've not seen any evidence they made things up or lied, just that they are operating like a business rather than an independent news source.

It's pretty hard to see, but it's even harder to watch. Scary as hell. I'm definitely not going to look up how he is, I'm just going to rely on Eric's reassurance.

*promote knowing what drowning actually looks like.

And the title says "almost drowning" but the boy was underwater and lifeless for a few minutes, so I really, deeply hope the title is accurate.

Fuck. I can barely type right now as I'm breaking down in tears begging the people in the video to help the poor little boy.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck... this breaks my goddamned heart and is so horrifying to watch...

I'm so afraid of this kind of thing happening to my boys, but as much as is rips my heart out to see it, the message cannot be stated enough that drowning is a silent, unnoticeable killer, not like in the movies, and everyone should be aware to keep their eyes peeled for this kind of situation always, but especially when there's no lifeguard on duty.


fuck.

"Literally doom the human race."

I used to be a global warming denier, then a skeptic. I've come around that it is real and that it is caused in large part by human actions. I do admit that I'm still a bit skeptical about how catastrophic it would be to do nothing. Doom the human race? Nah. Decimate the human race (literal/historical definition of "decimate" meaning 10% dead)? Possible, but I think unlikely -- extremely unlikely unless deaths by famine/disease are wholly attributed to climate change. Lots and lots of people displaced over the next 100-200 years if, say, all polar and glacial ice melted (resulting in a ~70 meter sea level rise)? For sure. But they won't drown unless they are incapable of moving away from the ocean at a rate of at least a few meters per year.

In climate terms, a 4 year presidential term is a fraction of a second. In geological terms, 4 years is absolutely nothing. If the (admittedly terrible) climate policies of any single person, even one as powerful as the "leader of the free world" President of the United States over 4 years could literally doom the human race, we'd have been dead a LONG time ago.

I'm not saying it isn't important, and that it won't matter at all what Trump does with regards to climate, the EPA, etc. But even if you limit the timescale to sensible human terms (say, since the Industrial Revolution roughly 250 years ago), another 4 years, no matter how bad, aren't going to throw us over some sort of unrecoverable tipping point.

One thing I don't like about this safety announcement is that it makes it seem like rips as these underwater murder machines just lurking out there trying to kill you.

There is nothing inherently dangerous about a rip current per se. Surfers use them all the time to get out quickly into the lineup quickly without having to duck dive the heavier sets.

The real danger of rips is to inexperienced or poor ocean swimmers. The rip can carry you out to water that is too deep to stand in very quickly, so if you're not comfortable floating or treading water for long periods that's going to be a big problem.

Most people drown because they panic when they realize they can't touch the bottom and try to swim back against the current to get to a place where they can stand again. In their panicked state they forget about floating or treading water and exhaust themselves. As long as you swim perpendicular to the current you should be fine. The number one mistake people make is that they forget to stay calm and take breaks by doing the side-stroke or treading water until they're ready to do the crawl stroke again.

All that said, lateral rips (rips that run parallel to the shore rather than out to sea) are some scary shit, as they can move basically as fast as a river. During lifeguard training in my younger days I got caught in one while doing a training rescue and was swept in literally seconds into a wooden jetty. Thankfully I was able to ride the crest of a wave up to the top of the jetty, pull myself up, and then sprint down back to the shore before the next set of waves washed me back into the ocean and carried me even further down the shoreline. After getting back, I took a lot of shit from my instructors and peers for nearly having to be actually rescued during a training rescue.

"If my life wasn't funny, it would just be true, and that is unacceptable."
- Wishful Drinking

Carrie Fisher was awesome. Even her obituary was cooler than my life:
Drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra.

That kid is really going to know how to drowned after this, then.