I'll never understand the point of free climbing that sort of height for fun as so many things can go wrong (loose/crumbling rock, slip, bird, wind, cramp, whatever) and you've got no backup if you lose your grip. Climbing with a rope, sure, I see the fun and challenge in that, but not using any safety equipment just seems silly.

I'm in complete agreement, although there are some edge-case limits. I lost an uncle (well before I was born) to one of them.

Kansas winters are cold and dry. My grandmother liked to deal with both problems by putting a pot to boil on the stove. In the 50's, my father's 3-4 year old brother managed to get enough of a grip and yank on the handle of the pot to pull it over the edge and didn't survive the burns from the scalding water.

Burned fingertips? Lesson learned, will heal. Boiling water or oil? Better keep it out of reach.

Bill didn't repeatedly grab pussies against their will, or go on to brag about it...and he was impeached over the consensual sex he did have....and it was a problem for me, such infidelity coming from my president proves he's disloyal...and the cigar thing...WTF?!

Doesn't make him moral by far, but there's a huge difference between cheating on your wife by having consensual (oral) sex and cheating on all of your wives by raping your friends' wives, assaulting numerous co workers, paying porn stars, paying prostitutes, pressuring beauty pageant contestants, and likely raping your own daughter.

Get a grip, he's an admitted abuser, philanderer, and clearly has no respect for women or marriage, and his concept of loyalty goes one way, he's loyal to nothing.

Also whataboutism is akin to no defense at all, and is just plain dumb when your comparisons are 1/10 as bad as what you're trying to distract from.

I've been making exactly this point since the Oprah idea started spreading.
Sure, she's a decent enough human being, and a huge step up from the worst person in the world, but she's incredibly far from qualified to lead the nation. Get a grip, people.
*quality

I'm a significant fan of The Wall, and certainly dig Amanda Palmer (though much more casually), but I'm pretty confused by this. The lyrics discuss an overly controlling and fear-propagating mother, while the images are largely implying a freeing, uplifting maternal force. But what appears to be the central character representing that maternal force is also saying the controlling mother's lines, while the central character of the malignant / controlling force is literally suckling at her tit. Well-made and gripping certainly, and I like the cover, but the message seems jumbled.

Also, NSFW flag?

Before this I would have said that having 2 guns or 20 makes no difference how lethal you are, but this does show that to be wrong(he would have overheated his barrel with only 2-3 rifles). I think it's also an extreme outlier case, something we shouldn't necessarily legislate specifically for.

The 1994 AWB was totally useless, mostly concerned with scary looking cosmetic features like a pistol grip and a flash hider(!) that have no impact on lethality.

Of course anybody can bump fire an AR15 by hooking their thumb in a belt loop. Full auto firing is inaccurate, so firing from the hip isn't going to be too much worse.

And lastly but probably most important. 80% of gun deaths are from handguns. Focusing efforts there are worth so much more than trying to stop the next lunatic trying to kill 50 people.

The thing about bump stocks that people are not realizing is that they are simply a mod that allows you to do the same thing you could already do with many semi-automatic weapons, emulate automatic fire.

There is a slightly more dangerous method which can be done simply by not bracing the stock and using the pistol grip. Many semi-auto weapons also can easily be 'broken' to cause slamfires, where the rounds are auto-fired as soon as they are loaded due to a stuck firing pin.

I highly believe in gun rights and the second amendment. But this latest tragedy has finally done it. There is simply no need to have that many semi-automatic rifles in one's possession. We need to re-enact the AWB from 1994, we need to set a cap limit on how many semi-automatic rifles a person can own, and we need to clearly state that ANY modification that can simulate automatic fire is illegal.

We have fostered a state where the mentally ill are no longer being treated or taken care of, except by drugs. Since it is clear that we have multitudes of people separated from becoming the next mass murderer simply based on whether to not they took their meds (or were diagnosed correctly to begin with), we need to make a stricter environment that prevents these people from getting the weapons to make it easier.

Hmm. I disagree with your description text, @ChaosEngine.

I've never shot something fully-automatic. I have shot an AR-15 semi-automatic, and I know where you're coming from when you say that hitting a target on full auto would be difficult, especially for a relatively untrained person (recoil control).

However, I think Vox and others are basically correct when they say that this modification (bump stock) contributed to the Las Vegas shooting being so deadly. Specifically in that sort of scenario.

The dude wasn't picking targets and sniping, going for accuracy. He picked an ideal shooting location (elevation with clear LOS) and sprayed into a crowd. He'd have been more accurate by keeping the weapon on semi-auto and actually aiming carefully, and certainly would have gotten more hits per bullet fired, but on the other hand the rate of fire difference would have so different that people would have had more time between shots to scramble for cover, etc.

He had position, an abundance of bullets, and lots and lots of time. Given those givens, having a rate of fire approximately equal to fully-automatic means a much higher body count than if he'd have been limited to traditional semi-auto.


The NRA is being more cunning than I figured they would, and has come out in favor of banning bump stocks. I agree with you that they see that mostly as a pointless concession, and a distraction from additional / better stuff that needs to happen.

But it isn't a pointless concession. If banning fully-automatic firearms in 1986 (minus the ones grandfathered in) was the right thing to do, extending that to include bump stocks is also the right thing to do. For the same reasons.

@newtboy is correct to note that technically, a rifle with a bump stock isn't a fully-automatic "machine gun". The user's finger still pulls the trigger once for every bullet that comes out -- semi-automatic.

However, I think that the "spirit" of the distinction is that with semi-automatic firing you have to think and consciously decide to pull the trigger each time you want to shoot a bullet, whereas with fully-automatic you consciously decide when you want to start and stop shooting. By the letter of the law, weapons with bump stocks are semi-automatic. But by that definition of the "spirit" of the law, they are fully-automatic. Pull the grip/barrel forward to start shooting, pull it back to stop.

It's a pretty frequent occurrence for technology to outpace the law. The definitions of semi vs fully automatic include the word "trigger" because they didn't anticipate this kind of conversion that makes the trigger sort of one step removed from the conscious decision to fire. The law would have similar hiccups if a weapon was developed that used a button or switch to fire, rather than a traditional trigger.

When those hiccups happen, the solution is to clarify the intent of the law and expand or clarify definitions as necessary. I'm pleasantly surprised that many legislators seem willing to do that with bump stocks, and that the NRA seems like it won't stand in the way. Mission accomplished, situation resolved? No. But a step in the right direction.

In open warfare of govt vs people, drones don't matter, just like jets don't matter. I already covered this above.



Nowhere is an oppressive dictatorship - until it is.
[redacted]
I feel like people are too distracted with instagram and other B.S. to bother learning about how the world works.
History is long. The current peace is an anomaly. When things go bad, there is little warning. If you're lucky, a year or so of build up. If you're not lucky, weeks or days. Shit likes to spiral.
In bad times, you have only what you have on hand.


Most western countries with [regardless of gun ownership] don't have a population that's F'd in the head.
Nothing stops a German gun owner from taking his AR15 and shooting up a concert.
Storing his guns in a safe that he can open doesn't mean anything.
Paying for a new license card for every few guns doesn't alter the guns.

Gun laws, as proposed, are fluff. Nothing that makes people safer, nothing that prevents ownership, but plenty to crap on collectors.
* 10 round limit = 2 second pause to reload
* Gun show loophole is a misnomer.
* (re. above) Only private sales (gun show or not) don't require checks - but you still end up in court if the buyer does something bad.
* Assault weapons ban only bans pistol grips and threaded barrels. Cosmetics. Just google "California compliant AR15" (they already have a de-facto AWB).
* There's already laws against straw purchase.
* There's already laws against crazy people buying (already part of the background check)
* Registration is pointless as gun control. Doesn't alter the guns or who has them (background check already tells gov who, when, and where bought a gun).

(I'd sooner vote for mandatory roll cage and 6 point harness in every car. Could eliminate 90+% of car fatalities in one rule - if people cared enough.)


By the way, gun owners hate people like the Vegas shooter even more than anti-gunners hate people like him.
Precisely because assholes like that shooter make anti-gunners turn on their frustration on innocent gun owners.

The call to "do something" is the phrase that perfectly describes the sentiments that led to actions, that in turn became described by either "famous last words" or "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".





We had shit health insurance before Obama. We had shit insurance during Obama (only you're required by law to buy it, even if it's not a good value), we continue to have shit health insurance during Trump, and no matter what trump does, it will still be shit.
Problem is that the insurance company lobbyists draft the language of the law (no matter the party in charge), and it's not for our benefit.





Re. Minorities, most are living normal lives. The white eutopia that the few vocal people complain about, doesn't exist. At least I have yet to see it. Don't let a few thousand people in a nation of millions guide your thoughts about overall social norms.

I'm happy to see them protest. Frankly, I wish white people had the same solidarity that black people have. When a black gets shot by a cop, they come together. When a white is shot by a cop, other whites say "he probably deserved it". I wish the black community good luck and success.





Yes, I wish we weren't jailing more people than anywhere else on the planet, over things that harm nobody.
I wish we had the drug laws of Portugal (decriminalization)
I wish we had the legal system of Sweden (no jail before conviction).

Know how I said that most countries don't have as many people that are F'd in the head? Same applies for people in government.
None of this shit will get fixes.
Republicans are bible thumping retards that funnel money to defense contractors and campaign donors.
Democrats are buck-passing censors that funnel money to insurance companies and campaign donors.
And people just pick a team and bark at the other team, while each gets fleeced by their very own side.

-scheherazade

To everyone who thinks they'd do better, saying "oh i'd just turn this way here, then back here, don't oversteer, dip the clutch, you'll be fine, dangerous over reaction." You should know that you don't get to plan it out like that from the relaxing comfort of a computer chair.

Put yourself in her position:
- did she sleep last night or did the kid keep her up?
- perhaps just off a long work shift?
- thinking about 10 other things
- maybe a drive she does every day i.e. boring, not something to hold your interest
- condition and grip of road surface
- and so on.........

It happens when you least expect it (you *always* least expect your car to slide) and unless you're a regular drift racer you don't instantly identify the sensation as skidding.

Source: rolled a car after skidding on an oil spill

Dunno.

I think of Megan Phelps-Roper, once prominent member of WBC, now "reformed". She was the sort of "Social Media Manager" for the WBC. She used twitter to further spread their message but, ofc, the world of twitter stares also into you. She began to engage in a sort of dialogue with those that responded to her hate filled tweets and over time the WBC grip on her was chipped away. In the end I think she actually married one of those that engaged with her on twitter. Cool Story. Bro.

Anyhoo. So it can be done but it doesn't happen on the picket line or in protests. I mean, with some of these people you can't even agree on the definition of "human"... I really strongly doubt the value of allowing such groups to have a voice for the sake of having an opportunity to denounce (ostracise?) them further. It takes carefully considered, long term, personal debate.

My feeling is that his is happening not because we have suppressed such ideas for too long and now they are boiling over...they are boiling over because where once discontented individuals were alone with their prejudices and fears now they can find in minutes a group online to agree with. The suppression of these fringe ideologies wasn't the cause, the cause is that the internet seems to have rendered such suppression ineffectual. How we now challenge these festering online dens I'm not sure...

Also, and I hate to go all reducto ad hitlerum here but if there was ever a time, discussing neo-nazis must surely be it.... Hitler spoke and spoke and spoke and his bad ideas didn't fall into the shitter fast enough to save the lives of all the millions of Jews and those that fought against them.

It's going to take media pundits a while to adjust to this new style. They'd not used to the playground style stuff, because they only ever interviewed slippery spinny politicians in the last 30 years of news. Now they need to get to grips once more with ridiculing what is an obviously childish point of view.

People on the Sift don't even know who Death Grips are, Lol on them

This was me in pre-school and Kindergarten... be careful, head-banging to the mind control songs will land you in pre-first

Like the article from Ars that @Jinx linked said, the cars have been given wider tyres to get more mechanical grip, and more downforce to get more aero grip. The net result is that they are 30km/hr faster in the corners than last year.

They are also slower on the straights, since more downforce and fatter tyres both result in more drag meaning lower top speed.

*quality dumbassery!
The hand grips are rubber, so insulated. They could have just grabbed it there and lifted....but then we wouldn't get to laugh at their stupidity.