SUBBED!

Lawrence Wilkerson's dismissive comments about self defense are very disrespectful to people who have had to resort to self defense. He wouldn't say things like that had he been unfortunate enough to have had such a personal experience. (As one parent of a Fla victim said - his child would have given anything for a firearm at the time of the event.)

Re. 2nd amendment, yes, it's not for pure self defense. The reasoning is provided within the text. The government is denied legal powers over gun ownership ('shall not be infringed') in order to preserve the ability of the people to form a civilian paramilitary intended to face [presumably invading] foreign militaries in combat ('militia').

It's important to remember that the U.S. is a republic - so the citizens are literally the state (not in abstract, but actually so). As such, there is very little distinction between self defense and state defense - given that self and state are one.

Personally, I believe any preventative law is a moral non-starter. Conceptually they rely on doling out punishment via rights-denial to all people, because some subset might do harm. Punishment should be reserved for those that trespass on others - violating their domain (body/posessions/etc). Punishment should not be preemptive, simply to satiate the fears/imaginations of persons not affected by those punished. Simply, there should be no laws against private activities among consenting individuals. Folks don't have to like what other folks do, and they don't have to be liked either. It's enough to just leave one another alone in peace.

Re. Fla, the guilty party is dead. People should not abuse government to commit 3rd party trespass onto innocent disliked demographics (gun owners) just to lash out. Going after groups of people out of fear or dislike is unjustified.







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As an aside, the focus on "assault rifles" makes gun control advocates appear not sincere, and rather knee-jerk/emotional. Practically all gun killings utilize pistols.

There are only around 400 or so total rifle deaths per year (for all kinds of rifles combined) - which is almost as many as the people who die each year by falling out of bed (ever considered a bed to be deadly? With 300 million people, even low likelihood events must still happen reasonably often. It's important to keep in mind the likelihood, and not simply the totals.).

Around 10'000 people die each day out of all causes. Realistically, rifles of all sorts, especially assault rifles, are not consequential enough to merit special attention - given the vast ocean of far more deadly things to worry about.

If they were calling for a ban+confiscation of all pistols, with a search of every home and facility in the U.S., then I'd consider the advocates to be at least making sense regarding the objective of reducing gun related death.

Also, since sidearms have less utility in a military application, a pistol ban is less anti-2nd-amendment than an assault rifle ban.







As a technical point, ar15s are not actually assault rifles - they just look like one (m4/m16).
Assault rifles are named after the German Sturm Gewehr (storm rifle). It's a rifle that splits the difference between a sub-machinegun (automatic+pistol ammo) and a battle rifle (uses normal rifle/hunting ammo).

- SMG is easy to control in automatic, but has limited damage. (historical example : ppsh-41)

- Battle rifles do lots of damage, but are hard to control (lots of recoil, using full power hunting ammo). (historical example : AVT-40)

- An 'assault rifle' uses something called an 'intermediate cartridge'. It's a shrunken down, weaker version of hunting ammo. A non-high-power rifle round, that keeps recoil in check when shooting automatic. It's stronger than a pistol, but weaker than a normal rifle. But that weakness makes it controllable in automatic fire. (historical example : StG-44)

- The ar15 has no automatic fire. This defeats the purpose of using weak ammo (automatic controlability). So in effect, it's just a weak normal rifle. (The M4/M16 have automatic, so they can make use of the weak ammo to manage recoil - and they happen to look the same).

Practically speaking, a semi-auto hunting rifle is more lethal. A Remington 7400 with box mag is a world deadlier than an ar15. An M1A looks like a hunting rifle, and is likewise deadlier than an ar15. Neither are viewed as evil or dangerous.

You can also get hunting rifles that shoot intermediate cartridges (eg. Ruger Mini14). The lethality is identical to an ar15, but because it doesn't look black and scary, no one complains.

In practice, what makes the ar15 scary is its appearance. The pistol grip, the adjustable stock, the muzzle device, the black color, all are visual identifiers, and those visuals have become politically more important than what it actually does.

You can see the lack of firearms awareness in the proposed laws - proposed bans focus on those visual features. No pistol grips, no adjustable stocks, etc. Basically a listing of ancillary features that evoke scary appearance, and nothing to do with the core capabilities of a firearm.

What has made the ar15 the most popular rifle in the country, is that it has very good ergonomics, and is very friendly to new shooters. The low recoil doesn't scare new shooters away, and the great customizability makes it like a gun version of a tuner-car.

I think its massive success, popularity, and widespread adoption, have made it the most likely candidate to be used in a shooting. It's cursed to be on-hand whenever events like Fla happen.

-scheherazade

there's kind of this weird rhetoric that i keep noticing that implies that "gays" and "islam" are the same category of thing and can be compared but can't be prioritized because they're somehow equal. they're not.

homosexuality is an inherent quality. there is nothing to critique or change other than our views of it.

islam, however, is just an idea and needs to be treated as such. it absolutely can be critiqued and changed and i would argue this is required.

the tricky part i see is the conflating of "islam" with "muslims" and using the ugliness of islam as justification for mistreatment and ostracizing of muslims. sometimes to the extent of treating them as sub human, most notably in refugee conversations. islam is gross, imo, and should be criticized (fervently) but muslims are still people and need to be treated as such, just as the gay community should. they both have the right to live and have the opportunity to live with some semblance of safety. people deserve compassion. ideas do not.

That is clearly not true. It may be one of the less toxic human made functioning, profitable herbicides, but that's not what you said by far.

Roundup is not a pesticide, it's an herbicide. Conflating it with pesticides is ridiculous and incredibly misleading. Roundup is used to control weeds and remove genetic 'contamination' of specific crops. EDIT: Many of those crops are genetically modified to act as pesticides without spraying chemicals, which is a good reason to want to limit cross contamination in either direction.

Other alternatives are no chemicals at all, or only ecologically safe (usually natural) chemicals. I don't use chemicals on my farm, I weed, I spray horticulture oil, I spread ashes, I grow twice what I can eat so some loss to insects won't matter, and I remove insects, slugs, and snails by hand. It takes more work, but the statement that the only alternative to Roundup is worse chemicals or agriculture collapse is completely and obviously false and indicates a total ignorance of the issue you speak about.

"Modern Agriculture" today means hydroponics, aeroponics, and aquaponics, none of which can benefit a whit from Roundup. You mean to say "Industrial Agriculture". The collapse of industrial agriculture might not be a bad thing, as it's incredibly destructive and produces a sub par product. More people farming on smaller farms puts more people to work, makes better product, and makes the people who work on the land feel responsible for it's upkeep, not consider it a resource to be exploited as efficiently as possible.

Mentioning Monsanto's involvement in the project is not the same as saying "neither Einstein or Openheimer or others were behind the Manhattan project, it was Monsanto all along that plotted to destroy Japanese cities with nuclear weapons". They clearly implied that Monsanto joined the project as a way to 'cozy up to' the political elite, and it worked.

Where did you hear this ridiculous hypothesis about their motive? Do you see and hear things that other people don't see and hear? It's clear that the motive in all cases was profit, either directly, or future profits secured by 'making friends' in government by cooperating with them or by forcing farmers into untenable contracts and positions where, in some cases, farmers that don't use Monsanto crops were sued because Monsanto said the pollen that pollinated the crops came from a neighbors Monsanto crops, so the seed belongs to Monsanto. Monsanto does not set out to cause damage and harm, they simply don't care if it happens as a side effect of their profit making methods, which they will protect with any means possible.

Just wow, a more deliberately misleading description of the video would be hard to create.

You can say the exact same thing about Christians or Jews. Violence in the name of religion is what a "true believer" does, because any non-believer is an agent of evil, so sub-human and not worthy of empathy or understanding.

It's not the particular brand of religion that's the problem, it's religion itself.

I'm pretty sure that all major religions in one form or another instruct believers to attack non-believers with violence and/or death. Most also contradict themselves by saying violence is wrong, leaving the "rules" open to interpretation, ostensively making all religions nothing more than excuses for atrocities that would otherwise be clearly inexcusable.

Your video, DIY Submarine - Mikhail Puchkov's homebuilt sub, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I'm getting it from the fact that whether he actually says it out right, he has great admiration for Trump, has done AMA's on the Donald Trump sub reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/4eglxx/) and routinely praises him to the point of endorsement.

In that AMA, he says:

"I don't want to be tarred with whatever ridiculousness gets spray-painted onto Trump's reputation. So it was a good way to document some distance. "

and

"In my view, Trump is not currently qualified to be president because he scares too many of my fellow citizens. (He doesn't scare me.) But I do think he can change that situation. That's why I predict he will win in a landslide."

His only reason for not outwardly supporting him is because its socially toxic, not that he doesn't actually support him.

I was so FUCKING bored AND tired (like barely keeping my eyes open; falling asleep, then writing more, then eventually hitting: POST!--lol) when I wrote that, can you tell?

The best part about this is that I didn't need pot or anything to make such a crazy post/comment. This was fully driven by my sleep disorder. Basically, I start to go into an "REM" like state when I get really tired (or in my case, when the right time of day hit). Sometimes I'm unable to catch myself before I do something...goofy and or funny.

THUS, you now have this wonderful post created from my sub-conscious and conscious self-working hard together to create a masterpiece!

Personally, I always find it amazing that I'm able to put sentences together and that at some points they are actually understandable, so long as you take them into consideration in a mystical and crazy freaking world/Universe where certain rules are true... The best you can do to re-create this experience is to get a mild form of Narcolepsy that MOSTLY preys on your dream and "sub-conscious" aspects belonging to the REM stage or staging... Then you have to deal with LOTS of "night terrors", hypnagogic hallucinations, and other issues (like Cataplexy). Then, you too can write mystical, strange, and WTF(?!) writings like I have above!!!


Enjoy!

*spammer

siftbot: waridinsantel entered the lounge at April 11th, 2016 10:11pm PDT, but is not currently allowed to submit any chat messages.
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@CrushBug

Related story: during the later years of the war, when Allied air and sea supremacy made the Bay of Biscay a deathtrap, Allied torpedo boats took up ambush positions at the entrances to U-Boot bases, particularly La Rochelle. They'd get into position at night and stay just outside of range of the coastal defence batteries. Before outgoing submarines could reach deep water, they'd be plastered with hand grenades by these speed boats.

It wouldn't be able to sink a sub, but a lucky hit might damage the periscope and it did reduce the sub's sonar abilities by massive amounts, covering the entire exit area in a blanket of noise. Not to mention the psychological effect...

Anyway, just small bits of history.

Now, about this video: that small chance to be hit by a grenade chunk is surpassed by the rather noticable chance to be hit by one of roughly 6500 steel balls within a run-of-the-mill frag grenade used over here. Doesn't make the underwater experience any better though...

Food waste has different causes in different places.

For instance, 45% of tomatoes harvested in Nigeria are lost due to poor Food Supply Chain management. In Kenya 15-35% of their crops are wasted due to the high specifications on appearance by European Union supermarkets. In other places food is wasted because there's no easy way to transport it to markets. In most African nations most of the losses occur early in the food supply chain, but in Europe and North America the losses are more likely to occur much closer to home.

According to http://www.worldfooddayusa.org/food_waste_the_facts consumers in industrialised countries waste almost as much food every year as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (222 million vs. 230 million tons).

Australians discard 20% of the food we purchase (total waste is 4.06 million tonnes of food every year). This works out fairly similar to the 10kg per person per month in the link above for the USA.

There is no new technology required to dramatically improve on these figures, it mostly just requires a desire to do better (and perhaps a bit of education).

Nice. I might have to stock my new pond with them to keep mosquitos from developing into a problem. I have mosquito fish and gold fish in there already, but more=better.
Why do you think it's not good to release them? We have dragonflies here, but are you thinking an invasive sub-species might harm the natives?

"mylungpuppy commented on 28 Apr 2015
Hey man...nice to meet you. Thanks for subscribing to my channel...I just watched a few of your vids..good work, I just subbed you back. Do you still have snow up there and is it finally all melted? Warm spring weather here in NYC..I'm going out of a ride now. bye, Ronco"

ronco Ron Anderson mylungpuppy *ban

I am super amused that the guy on the sub whipped out a snow brush to clear show off the tower...

There have been many things in history that have been thought to have been impossible. Neil deGrasse Tyson's presentation on "The God of the Gaps" is a great video addressing that line of thought.

However, that point may not even matter. My hypothesis is that our neurons don't operate all the way down to a sub-atomic or electron-spin level of granularity. There's plenty of complexity at the molecular and cellular scales. We're likely chemical and physical reactions like Newtboy says.