Not really the first, but the most ridiculous in quite a while.

Some democrats don’t care about sensible gun laws. Some do want little more than actual background checks for all sales, like me. I don’t want violent felons to have easy access to them, nor people with active charges for kidnapping, murder, stalking, terrorism, etc. I don’t see any need for a public registry, although a closed/non public registry would make tracking firearms found after being used in a crime easier, as well as removing guns from people deemed a threat due to real, diagnosed mental defect or disease. This bill was insanely lax in defining what qualifies there, one of many things that made it not just bad, but horrific....and doa.

It’s odd, my brother, who lives in Austin too, says the same thing. He loves to blame ex-Californians for crazy laws, but most of the laws and regulations he complains about don’t exist here. I guess we got rid of our nuts? Thanks for taking them off our hands!

I’ll watch it later when the wife’s asleep.

Can't play live during covid. How bout we try our hand at sketch comedy. *promote

So wait...is it her dancing like a cute anime girl for attention that you say isn't a choice, or is it demeaning women who make different choices than yours (hers) in the name of feminism that isn't a choice, or are you saying there are no choices and all behavior is culturally driven so out of our hands?

Doing crimes is a choice, and one not monopolized by minorities. It may be your best option in your particular circumstances, but it's never the only option, it is definitely a choice.

Ppft, I say. Then why don't people all act the same in a given culture?
Culture may make certain choices socially acceptable or not, or personally beneficial or not, but you are responsible for your choices. Yes, you really choose, cultural acceptance and consequences may be part of how you form your decision, or not, but they don't make your decisions, they inform them. If culture was the only deciding factor, we would still be living in the bronze age where a girl this age would have no viable choice but to have had a few children by now and would likely be dead from complications of childbirth. Fortunately, many have chosen to ignore or contradict cultural norms so we have progressed as a society.

Look
If you had
One shot
Or one opportunity
To release all the energy you ever wanted
In one moment
Would you abuse it
Or use it for good?

They've armed the weapon
Countdown clock is set and
J. Robert Oppenheimer is sweatin'
Eyes are red and he's nervous
Cause on the surface this is armageddon
The shock bomb, but we're set upon and threatened
And with no sound the whole Alamogordo ground
Is glowing and cowed under one smouldering cloud
He's choked and wowed, everybody's open-mouthed
And over the ground the shock front blows, kapow!
Snap back to the alchemy
Hope before tragedy
Showed with bold math that we broke the whole atom
We choked; controlled action with poles of cold cadmium coat
To go capture neutrons and slow fracture
We broke, postponed that and we chose to go fashion
A most radioactive plutonium gadget then
Fat Man and Boy and Enola goes laughin'
As Nagasaki is blown and Hiroshima's blasted

You gotta choose, yourself how to use it
The knowledge you hold and
Don't ever let a letter go
You only get one shot to stop
And one chance to know
Responsibility comes once you're a science guy, yo!

Neutrons escaping from a source radiating
Merge and start atoms shaking; they begin
To unglue toward a decreased order
Entropic force distorts em
And supercharged with loads of protons they can only go farther
Cold war grows hotter--exothermal--Colorado to Joe Stalin
Coast to coast holes; silos but there's no farmer
Toe-to-toe drama
NATO and Warszawa in co-assured trauma
The globe groans everyone knows there's no calming
So show your foes and implode your core column
Quid pro quo Castle Bravo for Tsar Bomba
And move on and leave atolls exposed to gross doses of old fallout;
Slow-to-go toxins in shoals and so though we explode them no longer
Still the proof lives on in the blue lagoon water, father

You gotta choose, yourself how to use it
The knowledge you hold and
Don't ever let a letter go
You only get one shot to stop
And one chance to know
Responsibility comes once you're a science guy, yo!

When war games hit the stage of a gluon's rage
There's a military boot on the new doc's page
We were playing in the beginning, but grew up strange
Making radar and missiles, and new bombs blazed
And we kept grinding the lensed sights for the next sniper
Best believe son it'll pay to design fighters
All the gains of science analyzed by the
Man provide plans for sarin and cyanide
And our hands are blighted by crying
Eyes when dying lands are slammed if our grants expand the fire brighter
And there's no jury there's no sublime righter
This is our fight
And these minds are all ours so protect your pia mater
Try to feed and water good, seed trust, flee dishonour
Gotta be clean being Apollo stead of Vietnam and
Lay the armour down and be the one to stand up
And lead us on the trail of Spock
We'll elevate these motley progeny
To a future in a safer spot, an irrigated plot
Homicide a way forgot
Success is a lack of military options
Failure's not
Become a lover of a great and cosmic goal
We cannot condone these terror plots
So here we go it's our shot
Feel frail or not
This is the only world and humanity that we got

You gotta choose, yourself how to use it
The knowledge you hold and
Don't ever let a letter go
You only get one shot to stop
And one chance to know
Responsibility comes once you're a science guy, yo!

You gotta make your own mind up, man.

When asked about the innocent 8 year old girl shot through the neck, you replied 'they advocate killing children, killing them (and their children) lowers the overall body count' but really it increases it, because every child that's collateral damage creates 100+ more violent enemies bent on revenge.

Again, context, bombing a nation we are at war with is 100% a different thing from targeted assassination by multiple drone strike or assassination squad on a group. I see that's how you insist on seeing things, but it's not reality. You can't declare war on a group, it's a total intentional misapplication of the term.

If we only targeted known (not suspected) fighters and killers and didn't bomb weddings to get one guy, ok, but we attack large groups and then attack the first responders coming to their aid, then claim they are all terrorists because one of them might be one....creating more terrorists by murdering innocents and then washing our hands smugly. Can you admit that?


By your standard for designating proper targets, we should have bombed the royal family in Saudi Arabia long long ago, but that's not on the table because.....oil and cash.

Too bad we don't extend this compassion to other animals. Namely the ones we choose to eat.
The refugee crisis is largely out of our hands, but choosing not to eat animals that feel the same emotions as this dog, is a decision we can make with every meal.
No you don't need meat or any other animal products to live a healthful life, and no it's not all salad and tofu
https://www.forksoverknives.com/recipes/?recipe_type=wraps-and-burgers

I'm going to be crossing my fingers in hopes that this is good. At least with what we got for this preview, it looks promising and people have been commending how the beginning of GITS did look to be emulated here too.

I just hope that we finally have a decent adaptation on our hands. Hell knows that if we ever need to start identifying bad films, we use "white washing" to start finding them. (Why are there white kids in the Antarctic shyamalan?!)

The kinds of fraud he goes through are representative of third world levels of manipulation.

We're in the developed world here, son. We don't need those primitive methods when we have the power of propaganda in our hands.

And no, I'm not talking about a conspiracy here, I'm talking about groupthink and class interests, with climate change being only the most obvious example, followed closely by the obsession with "balanced budgets".

Judging by the topics that the gatekeepers of information deem not to be up for discussion, I'd say the election is pretty rigged in its own way.

75 years, to the day, since the launch of the invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany.

What's on the front page (online) of our 2nd (?) largest newspaper?

"Baltic nations practically indefensible", according to US General. Russian military would be able to capture capitals within 36-60 hours.

~27 million Russians dead at our hands and they have the audacity to print this warmongering horseshit, on this day...

Oh, you mean the small area between Poland and Lithuania? The one that Russia is pouring troops and weapons, -- including missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, into at such a rate that the region is now one of Europe's most militarized places?

Moscow is stationing "thousands of troops, including mechanized and naval infantry brigades, military aircraft, modern long-range air defense units and hundreds of armored vehicles in the territory."

I mean, it's only scaring the piss out of two of our friendly countries in the region. Well, more if you consider that Russia's military buildup in the region allows them direct coverage of Sweden, Germany, and other nations that really don't trust the former USSR.

So, to use your example, I would absolutely expect Russia to get antsy and not sit by idly if we suddenly moved a LARGE portion of our active military forces to the Florida Keys. All of this is more posturing and sword rattling by Putin, a direct throwback to the USSR leaders of old. If he thought he could get away with it without open warfare, he would be rolling tanks into all the old USSR satellite states.

It isn't just this incident alone, either, as Russia has been steadily stepping up calculated shows of force and close encounters with our forces well away from anything close to their territory. Primarily, if you ask me, because the world outcry over the Ukraine situation stifled their little miniature coup attempt from taking over the entire country.

***Edit***

I just wanted to add, I don't want to go to war with Russia. I agree that many of the things that we are doing, such as considering adding former Soviet states to NATO, are antagonizing them. But I feel that in some cases our hands are tied by the fact that Putin, directly or indirectly, is making a lot of those former states think that he is planning on re-absorbing them under the umbrella of a new USSR. If he would keep his nose out of their internal affairs, I am pretty sure we wouldn't be building up in response.

And again, spoken like someone who doesn't seem to know anything about the game.

Large portions of the game are available to play right now, albeit in an early alpha state. Granted, yes the procedural planets portion is not in our hands yet, but as OverLord just showed, it appears to be working.

@Barbar
i do not know if you are aware,but you actually made my point in regards to justification.specifically your third paragraph.

as for the disagreement in regards to religious texts being inert and neutral.this should not really be an issue and should be plain for all to see.religious texts are amalgamations,musings,stories,philosophies all jammed into a canonized text.they are often hypocritical and contradictory.it is the reader that interprets and injects their own subjective understandings based on their own proclivities.

which then makes religious text a subjective text.so if you are violent,then your interpretations will be violence,which would lead to justifications based on those interpretations.

unless you are using fundamentalism as a fulcrum.which sees religious text as the unerring word of god,which brings a whole new conundrum into focus:contradictory philosophies which are in diametric opposition.which is an impossibility to reconcile,but again brings us to my main point:justification.(by way of mental gymnastics).

and harris does not just smell like apologist BS,he IS an apologist.now this is understandable when seen through the lens of nationalism,but it engages in the same wishful thinking harris accuses many religious people of engaging in.

we WANT to feel we are the good guys.
we WANT to think that what we are doing is for a higher,and more morale purpose.
we WANT to think all this violence and bloodshed is ultimately for a better and more prosperous future for everybody involved.
we WANT to believe that our government is not just destroying and destabilizing whole communities with wanton destruction just so our corporations can have a new market to exploit,or to control the oil fields for BP and chevron to control.

but thats not the reality.
our wants are just wishful thinking and an inability to accept that we cling to these wants to justify horror,destruction and death.

https://theintercept.com/2015/10/05/the-radically-changing-story-of-the-u-s-airstrike-on-afghan-hospital-from-mistake-to-justification/

so what is OUR justification?
so just like the more moderate and secular muslims who look the other way when faced with horror.we too,look away at the truth of things,because to recognize the reality means to accept responsibility.
we have blood on our hands....all of us.
as do those muslims who also look away.

but the allure of justifications....
to have the ability to turn horror into righteousness.
it is extremely powerful,and we ALL participate.
even sam harris.

Media: "German intelligence services provide assistance to the NSA's espionage program, including selectors aimed at economic/political targets in Germany/EU"

Plebs/Parliamentary committee of inquiry: "Government, show us those selectors!"

Chancellory: "Sincerest apologies, but our hands are tied. The White House made it abundantly clear, we cannot hand these selectors over to any committee, much less the public, without risking the NSA's cooperation."

Media: "White House says it's up to the German Chancellory to make the call."

Chancellory: "Look, a three-headed monkey!"

I hate this pathetic joke of a government...