I'm largely with @newtboy on this one.

Charles Kinsey provides an excellent and concrete example of someone who thought that there was zero chance that what he was doing would lead to getting shot. He did absolutely nothing wrong, and from what I/we can tell actually handled everything as well as anyone could reasonably hope for. If I was in that situation, I guarantee I wouldn't have had the presence of mind to lay down on my back with my hands straight up and calmly explain what was going on.

So, as a white person who has never been in a situation like that, all I can do is try to put myself in the shoes of how a black person would see this. Here's a guy who acted perfectly -- a standard that I can't imagine holding myself to -- and he still got shot. And the police response is (so far) boilerplate utter bullshit.

I can't really imagine what it would be like to be black in the US, and have direct experiences with this sort of thing (even less extreme examples like profiling traffic stops) on top of WAY too frequent reports of this stuff happening. But I can try, and all I can say is that it seems terrifying.

Push people far enough, and they start pushing back. I think that's what @newtboy is saying. I absolutely do NOT condone violence against police, or painting them with a broad brush and claiming they are ALL racist ... but at some point, I can absolutely understand that there is going to be blowback for this shit that has gone on way too often for way too long.

In order to slow down / prevent / stop that blowback, police need to be working their asses off to change that image. The "blue line" mentality of protecting their own even when they make (massive) mistakes has got to go. Yeah, it is a hard job. Yeah, it means that police should be held to a higher standard of conduct than average Joe citizens. Yeah, it means that police need to accept that they face a certain amount of danger and risk -- danger that will make it hard to be calm, cool, and collected. But that's the job. Protect and serve the people, not themselves or the police department.

Until all the good cops (and there are lots of them, including some friends of mine) get together and make it clear that the actions of these bad cops are utterly unacceptable, things will continue to get worse.

I had a period when I read any short stories by Bukowski that I could get my hands on.

I didn't know anything about his world or world view and I was fascinated.

you should. True story, I flew from San fran to Auckland. In san fran i had my bags searched, my hands swabbed by guys with guns for drugs, a full body scan and shitty looks off security guards. Landing in auckland i got "ayyy bro, did you see the (rugby) game ? We smashed 'em!".

I live in NZ. Its fucking awesome.

Umm... I probably wouldn't have been able to get my hand around the kid and ended up spiking her like a Superbowl touchdown.

Let's be realistic, most of the work our war planes do has collateral damage. We don't simply use them on 'the bad guys', but again that is a simplification to allow you moral latitude.

Non-smokers are no better than smokers, I know since I used to be a smoker. Just because I decided that I no longer wanted to smoke doesn't mean I feel the need to go up to someone smoking and start telling them how much better I am that I quit. Again, I'm not any better of a person than they are, I just chose to do something different. That is one of the things you can't seem to grasp, because you continue to say that morally you are more good than someone who does not practice a vegan lifestyle. You aren't.

As far as the functional capacity for feelings, of course animals feel pain, it is a stimuli that helps in their survival instinct. That instinct is what drives them to avoid pain because it means they might not survive. It doesn't mean that they have the logical thought capacity to relate pain to more than an instinctual response. I am pretty sure that no pig ever felt pain and said to itself, I feel pain therefore I exist as a being, they felt the pain and instinct told them to get away from it. Plants even have stimuli that they will respond to in order to grow or try to avoid damaging forces, but they aren't self-aware. Neither are animals until you get to a certain level of intelligence, like dolphins or great apes.

I grew up in the country, I have seen first hand and used my hands in regards to the butchery you speak of. Never once have I had a pig who had seen another be slaughtered do anything that would give me the belief that they were responding in any other fashion than a "shit, flight time since I might be next" natural instinct that is in all prey animals. Factory farms may not be totally humane, and that should be reformed, but all they are doing in the end is killing prey animals on a much larger scale than I did growing up.

Styx - Too Much Time On My Hands

Man... I can't wait to get my hands on an Oculus or Vive Vr, and crap my pants.

Too bad I don't have enough money for either of them, but maybe I can start buying adult diapers.

Just to point out, I didn't say that. I'm not taking a moral cue from how animals behave. I'm saying our species and precursors have a long history of eating meat and it turned out pretty good for us.

(aka - my ancestors are smiling down at me imperial, can you say the same?!)

For the record if i had to kill my own food, i would have no problem with that. I'd rather pay someone to do it for me - yes. But if i needed food and could get my hands on an animal, you better believe i'm sleeping on a full stomach that night.

But as for eating less bacon if you had to slaughter the pig - if you were a farmer, settler or nomad or something and you had pigs you'd probably eat lots of bacon. In society right now, it's pretty unrealistic to slaughter your own pig if you live in an average suburb. It makes more sense to buy bacon than slaughter a pig for most people right now, but there are situations when the opposite would be true and i don't think it would bother me (or you).

This made me clap my hands and say "yay!" like a little kid

Add stereo cameras, broadcast it online in VR with controls in my hand to switch between vehicles...then make easily accessible via some mainstream media outlet and I guarantee you I will watch that.

I'm too busy punching the snot out of peoples faces in Deus Ex 3.

However, I prefered Skyrim (it's crack) over Fallout (it's a grind) simply for the fact that I can be the bastard child of Palpatine and Conan, shooting lightning out of my hands while wielding big swords. Also, I fatally shot a bear into its asshole twice. I'm quite proud of that. Fuck Bullseye, I'm Brownseye.

Capitalism is a guideline or system of how to organise aspects of society (trade, labour and services for example), nothing more. How you use it defines its effect on us. I could sell you my child explicitly for the purpose of you raping it and it would show how evil capitalism is. Or I sell you my children's book explicitly for the purpose of you entertaining your own children and that would be quite nice.
The problem starts if you think everything needs to be a for profit business as capitalism should be unlimited. Then you live in a country that makes prisons privately owned businesses and thinks it's ok to bankrupt sick people and their families with medical bills.
Capitalism is as evil as the people controling it. Who allows these people to be evil? Who cares? Apparently not the majority.
However, all that is not the problem of this ad. The capitalism works to nobodies disadvantege here. Edeka tries to brand itself as family-friendly and established part of homelife. That is quite normal and acceptable for a grocery store. It is not like as if VW would be putting out ads on how honest they are.
The version of the ad I described as being better is as manipulative as this one with the exception that it doesn't make everyone look like assholes upon closer inspection.
Nobody nailed grandpa's door shut, he's allowed to step into the world and make new friends and other aquaintances. His isolation is understandable but mostly his own fault. I witnessed stuff like that myself, I have grandparents too.
On the other hand you bemoan the smombies of today. Do you see the irony of complaining about the screen-fixed stare of todays youth (and society in general) on an internet forum?
We created a distraction-addicted, short-term attention-spanned and self-affirming society on our own by willingly swallowing all the crap the distraction industry throws at us.
I don't have a twitter account because nothing I can say in 140 characters without established context is worth saying. That gotta mean something coming from me of all people.
I'm not on Facebook because I know what the 'StaSi' was and see no reason to do their work on my own person for Mr. Zuckerberg and his shareholders.
I have no internet connection on my cellphone because I prefer to know stuff instead of just looking it up. I don't write text messages all the time because I prefer spoken words with their complexity that simplifies communication instead of emojis that emulate things my face did since before cellphones stopped being science-fiction.
I choose not to stare at the palm of my hand and what's lying in it every 5 minutes because I can. Most of our modern society chooses differently. They chose poorly, as the real oldtimers would say.
And here we are, yet again, ranting about the evils of enticing screens in our lives, live on the internet. You know, we would not be this absurd joke if we'd sat at a dinnertable right now. With food and drink from Edeka.

1) Bullshit. Sorry, but it had to be said - when a criminal shoots a citizen, people do fucking care. Stop saying they don't, because it's disgusting and it's bullshit.

2) It's not a question of justice, it's a question of accountability. The next time a (black/white/whatever) criminal shoots a citizen, that's a tragedy that we need to address, but it's not blood on my hands - it's the fault of the criminal. Whenever a police officer gets away with unjustified use of force against a citizen, that's on the police and it's on us. Because we gave the police that power, we paid for their training, we bought their equipment - we have to be the ones to hold them accountable. They're our employees.

To put it in terms a conservative can understand, anger and responsibility - I'm angry whenever I hear of a criminal murdering citizens. I'm responsible whenever the police murder citizens.