Although I'm in favour of sensible gun regulation, I'm not sure legislation alone will solve your gun problem.

The problem in the USA is, IMO, cultural.

The idea that you would need a gun for "protection" is quite foreign to almost every other country in the developed world.

But, as we've seen in threads here since Orlando, people in the US seem genuinely afraid that they will be "defenseless" if stripped of their arms.

Why is this?
When I've asked people before, I hear responses like "it takes the police 10 minutes to get to your house". Er ok, fund your fucking police?

But that doesn't address the fear of home invasion in the first place. Is it really that common in the US? And if it is, WHY is it?

It's simply not a concern for anyone I know in any other country (excluding war zones, etc). Clearly, if it is such a problem, having a gun isn't deterring people from doing this.

Maybe instead of looking at the short-term symptoms, you should be asking yourselves what is driving people to be so desperate that they are willing to risk their lives breaking into other people's homes knowing that the occupants are potentially armed.

The problem is essentially escalation ( the "Chicago Way").

10: "All the criminals have guns, I better have one too"
20: "Shit, if I'm going to rob that place, they probably have a gun, better go armed"
30: goto 10

Breaking this cycle means addressing inequality, racism, and poverty. People in the US aren't inherently worse than everywhere else, but your system is set up to incentivize criminals to carry a gun.

But FFS, at least stop burying your heads in the sand and let the CDC study this.

You're already in trouble, that's the reason why a person like Trump can not only be a contender, but can be a likely winner...

Trump is a symptom of a greater malaise, not a cause.

Actually, I've ignored the superdelegates in my math because I've basically assumed that they will go with whoever has the popular vote at the convention, but since you brought them up....

There's one scenario no-one has considered yet; probably because it's extremely unlikely, but just for fun, let's say Bernie continues as projected and arrives at the convention trailing Hillary by about 200 delegates. Meanwhile, Trump has been attacking the ever-loving hell out of Hillary and her poll numbers in the general election are starting to look REALLY bad, as in Trump might/could/probably will/almost certainly will win.

So far, this is all pretty much what's going to happen.

But in this strange alternate dimension, the DNC pulls its head out of its collective arse and realises "holy shit, we could lose the white house! Hang on, Bernie polls much better against Trump!". Unable to convince Hillary to drop out, the superdelegates swing en masse to Bernie handing him the nomination AGAINST the popular vote.

How do you feel about this? On one hand, yay, #FeelTheBern, #FuckYouTrump and on to the white house and potentially the most significant change in US politics in decades (or not, who knows how much one president can actually do).

On the other hand.... there's no way around the fact that the DNC will have subverted the will of the people. If the situation was reversed, and the superdelegates gave the nomination to Hillary where Bernie (hypothetically) had more pledged delegates, well, there would be riots.

Interested to hear your thoughts on this scenario (unlikely as it is).

BTW, the fact that your vote is essentially meaningless (luckily for you, it happens to be meaningless in your favour) in your state is yet another symptom of just how very fucked the electoral college is.

just to add what @Asmo rightly pointed out,is that addictions are a symptom of internal and external forces.

when we consider the state of our society and it its inherent social structures,and we compare addiction rates and suicide rates,i feel there is sufficient evidence for concern.

just look at americas suicide rates.
http://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/

we can see a steady increase.
when we factor in military suicides,which have been averaging one,to up to 22 a day since 2009.the larger picture becomes incredibly disturbing.

my point,which is right with asmo,is that while one group kills themselves due to hopelessness,emotional stress or an inability to cope or adapt in these trying times.

the addict is doing the same thing,for the exact same reasons.just on a slower and more precipitous path of self-destruction.

when asked as a child what they wanted to be when they grow up.no child ever answered that their desire was to become an addict.

the "war" on drugs,
is a war on people.

and treating this as a legal/criminal problem is missing the point entirely.
this is a social issue,that can be treated by providing social solutions.

dr bruce alexander discovered some amazing results in rats you may find interesting @MilkmanDan:

http://www.brucekalexander.com/articles-speeches/rat-park/148-addiction-the-view-from-rat-park

Can we also just stop with the fucking bullshit moralising?

Getting drunk is fun. Getting stoned is fun. I haven't done much else, but I'm pretty sure people do them because they enjoy them.

Is it a problem for some people? Unquestionably.

But if you look a little deeper, it's almost never the drugs or the alcohol, it's the debt, or the pressure or the broken family life or anyone of a million things that can fuck up your life. The substance abuse is just a symptom of that. And if you take that away, people will find other ways to be self-destructive.

your stance about veganism is very similar to the climate deniers in that you choose to buy into myths and lies as opposed to looking into the facts youself. the documentary i posted considers the issues of local, and so called "small" farms also. they are no more humane or less cruel than so called "factory farming" and are every but as inefficient and environmentally devastating. "factory farming" is a mere symptom and the root cause is the commodification of sentient non-human animals, just as in the past humans used to commodify other human beings of certain races. for example here is an article on the myth of "humane" animal farming: http://freefromharm.org/animal-products-and-ethics/factory-farming-alternative-farming/

the fact that climate change is driven in large part but the raising of non-human animals for food is without question a well documented fact. the human population is without a doubt a major factor but above this issue is the fact that it requires MANY times the resources to produce on calorie of flesh, dairy or eggs than it does to produce one calorie of plant based food. are you aware that in the USA, around 80% of crops grown are fed to the 10 billion farmed animals who are murdered every year for food? it has been estimated that 800 million humans could be fed on the crops which are grown for farmed animals alone. these issues are also gone into detail in the documentary.

as far as "tugging on your heart strings" goes, how is having compassion and empathy for anyone who suffers a bad thing? no one would be questioning it if the victims were human children but since they are "only" cows, pigs chickens and fishes (all of whom feel pain just like you or i do, perhaps even more so), suddenly violence against them is considered a matter of personal choice. the bottom line is that if you would not wish to expeience something yourself, it is never moral or ethical to force others to experience it, especially not in the name of a momentary taste sensation.

finally, here is a quote which i think best summarizes the situation:
“Aren’t humans amazing? They kill wildlife – birds, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice and foxes by the million in order to protect their domestic animals and their feed. Then they kill domestic animals by the billion and eat them. This in turn kills people by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative – and fatal – health conditions like heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and cancer. So then humans spend billions of dollars torturing and killing millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, few people recognize the absurdity of humans, who kill so easily and violently, and once a year send out cards praying for “Peace on Earth.”~ David Coates

I know this is what he and a lot of others want to think, but for most of his examples, just like his example of stupidity vs learning disability, there are actual and reasonable grounds for the name changes. PTSD vs shell-shocked, for example, isn't a case of trying to be 'less offensive' - shell shock was an informal term coined by soldiers to describe a range of experiences and symptoms, and combat stress syndrome, PTSD, etc, were developed by professionals who wanted to make an actual diagnosis (to me, shell shock sounds a lot less harmful than PTSD, because I'm not 80 years old). It's a case of people with more expertise and knowledge than Carlin trying to create concepts that are actually useful. You could call it 'murder crazy' if you want to be 'raw' but that doesn't get us anywhere. This is the problem with Carlin's thesis - he brings in terms that he doesn't understand, describing situations that don't affect him directly, and tries to cram it into some 'old white man post-relevance get off my lawn syndrome' (OWMPGOMLS).

I know that a lot of people agree with what they see as his underlying point. I'm just saying that his examples here don't support that point.

Being frustrated virgins is probably as much a symptom of all the other stuff he mentioned at the start as the violence is.

Maladie de Crohn : Symptômes has been added as a related post - related requested by BoneRemake on that post.

Maladie de Crohn : Symptômes has been added as a related post - related requested by BoneRemake on that post.

Our bodies are best at responding to pathogens that enter our system normally - over mucus membranes, through skin contact, and via ocassional inadvertent ingestion and inhalation.

Directly injecting pathogens (and a whole host of other known toxins) straight into the bloodstream puts their bioavailability at 100%, instantly. These damaging elements have perfect access to the brain, and all other internal organs, giving the body's almost no chance whatsoever to deal with the invading harmful elements. You can expect to see symptoms manifest in minutes, hours, or days - and this is exactly what you do see in vaccine related injuries.

Aluminum, formaldehyde, cyanide, and other elements we do eat, and are harmless when found embeded in their naturally occurring places. Injecting those refined elements (mixed together with all kinds of other poisons) directly into the bloodstream is no where close to eating un-refind foods that have the same elements bonded to other molecules which render them intert or beneficial.

What is the bioavailability of aluminum found in a banana when eaten?

What is the bioavailability of that same quantity of aluminum when the banana is pulverized and injected into the bloodstream?

What is the bioavailability of that same quantity of aluminum when it's refined, and no part of the banana except the aluminum is injected directly into the bloodstream?

Their description of the actual affect of the aluminum in particular is incomplete. Aluminum is a known neural disruptor. If it reaches the brain directly (remember, bioavailability is at 100%) the aluminum will disrupt neurons. This may result in some cases in a neural disruption. Did you know autism is a known neural disruption?

Depression and self-harm are not part of the autistic spectrum; they are consequential symptoms that result from the reality of having to live in a world that is not tolerant of people who are "wired differently".

If you spent your entire life feeling that you were messed up compared to everyone else and confused as to why other people didn't understand you then you'd be depressed and hate yourself too. I know this only too well - I live with these symptoms every day. I don't harm myself any more but the desire to punish myself because my self-esteem is non-existent is still very much there.

I understand your concern that autism is becoming some sort of designer diagnosis, but the reality is that most people can relate to one of the many facets of autism and can feel empathy towards those who experience many of the facets. Therefore it is easy for people to feel that they have a touch of autism, and in reality they just might. It's not that uncommon.

It is more than just a condition to be misunderstood.

I was in one of the areas that does ACT instead of SAT. I took the test when I was a freshman and got a 29 (out of 36, quite a high score), and never took it again -- I think due to a mixture of apathy and fear that my score would go down, although that wouldn't matter because you always submit your highest score.

I went to a local state university even though a 29 on the ACT is high enough to get some attention from prestigious universities. Personally, I was NOT impressed with the state of post-secondary education in the US. I'm "glad" that I went and got my degree, but only because it is expected and pretty much a requirement for getting most jobs.

I did learn some stuff, about 25% of which I feel was actually relevant to my field of study (Computer Science). If I was interested in paying the university for actual knowledge obtained as opposed to paying them for a piece of paper that opens doors to jobs, I could have packed all the relevant classes into 1-1.5 years and gotten the same amount of knowledge out at a small fraction of the cost (less than 1/4). University education felt extremely inefficient and arbitrary to me.

I don't think I'd have been any more impressed with an ivy league university education. Pay a LOT more, deal with the same inefficiencies, and end up with roughly the same amount of actual knowledge gained -- but an admittedly more (arbitrarily) valuable piece of paper to wave at job recruiters.


The situation is only getting worse for the Gen Y's and Millenials behind me. Higher expectations / requirements for college degrees in jobs that have no business requiring them, much higher tuition even at state universities, etc. I don't have any solution or advice other than suggesting that people take as many credits as possible from cheapo junior / community colleges and then transfer those to the cheapest in-state university they can.

So basically, I guess that I think that the SAT (or ACT) is actually less broken than the entire post-secondary education system at large in the US. A mere symptom of a much more severe underlying problem.

Very interesting...

I'm one of those people who is highly sensitive to perfumes / scents, which is sometimes called "multiple chemical sensitivity". I know that it isn't technically an "allergy", but other than that I honestly have no idea whether this whole thing is psychosomatic (all in my head), "real" but with a lot of additional input from mental/emotional states, completely real and tied in some way to the smells themselves, or completely real and tied in some way to the actual "chemicals" (in a chemistry sense) in the air. All I know is that there are a LOT of triggers for me where I can get one small whiff of something and know that I'm going to get a pounding headache.

Aggravation with that has often caused me to wonder if it would be possible to surgically or pharmacologically destroy or impair my olfaction senses, like what happened to the woman in the video, and cure the headache triggers. If the smells themselves are the triggers, it seems like that could work. If it is largely or completely psychosomatic, it could still work because I wouldn't know that I was being exposed to the smell triggers; one thing that I've considered is that I also get very angry if I'm in a private place like my home or otherwise trying to avoid triggers and somebody wanders in wearing some nasty shit and compromises the integrity of my safe zone. In public I know that I can't control what other people wear so I just try to get away very quickly from trigger smells, but in my own home I get ultra pissed if somebody comes in and stinks it up. I have wondered if that anger exacerbates or maybe even in some cases is the actual primary source of the headache symptoms. But anyway, even if that was the case, being able to cap or cut off my sense of smell would solve the problem.

The only way that the problem could persist AFTER surgically eliminating my sense of smell would be if the reaction is really to the chemicals themselves in the air. And then, that would be worse because I wouldn't have the warning system of smell telling me to get the hell away from perfume counters, ladies wearing the stuff, dudebros wearing shit like Axe, etc.

All in all, I don't actually think it would be worth the downsides. BUT, I must say I've really wondered about it when I've got a pounding headache after simply walking by somebody wearing perfume in line at a grocery store or whatever...

Dude seems like he might have Asperger's syndrome to some degree. Not understanding the proper social dance steps is one of the symptoms.