The way America thinks people should live in deserts is just mind-bogglingly stupid.
I was telling my daughter about Palm Springs. They founded a town over a small spring in the middle of the desert, built over 100 golf courses, and now have to pump in water so they can keep them all green. Fucking moronic.
It isn’t all of America, but a surprising large part of it. So many short sighted people here. Shoot, you have a large solar installation and they reflect light and therefore heat back up making it cooler on the ground. Instead of importing oil, we can make solar panels here. Just ridiculous.
I understand that there is the general society, but I feel like America is bunch of smaller societies bundled together. On 2 types of extremes Florida and California, but each has smaller groups within. Obviously there are overlaps with certain thoughts of doing things.
Illinois has solar farms, but also one of the largest suppliers of ethanol for instance.
I don’t think either of us wrong, just looking at it from different perspectives.
Yes, but it’s still an American problem in general. The city with 100 golf courses isn’t in Illinois where it wouldn’t have to be watered all the time. It’s in California. It’s not in Illinois because you can’t play golf with warm weather and sunny skies all year round in Illinois. You need a Southwestern desert for that. Even Florida doesn’t work as well despite the Oralndo golf courses because it rains a lot.
Meanwhile, Illinois gets nowhere near as much sunshine as the Southwestern desert.
So until we, as a nation, start building things in places that make more ecological sense rather than more economic sense, it will be an American problem in my eyes.
Yes, you are definitely correct about this. I was looking more at the energy side while you are looking at it from the water sustainability side. Different part of the overall same thing.
With climate change I am half expecting to be discussing the “great plains desert” someday in the future, assuming I live that long.
And most water restricted states have had laws regarding the building of new golf courses for at least a generation, including more conservative states like Arizona. There is also a legally set system for water rights based on who first developed the land.
And it isn’t like other parts of the USA don’t have ecological risks of their own.
I would like to point out that this whole “America is so special! We aren’t just one group but a bunch of different groups” is fucking stupid. Every country is like that, but y’all are too fucking caught up in American exceptionalism to care or notice.
States are incredibly more powerful in the US than their equivalent units in the vast majority of other countries. This gives incredible diversity in the government and legal systems that the vast majority of other singular countries just do not have.
I wouldn’t put it as “America is so special” so much as “America is so big”. I’ve seen a lot of Europeans get pissy about describing the EU in the same manner that the USA is described, and yet both the EU and USA are roughly on the same scale in terms of land size and population.
There’s a lot of corn, and there’s huge potential market for a renewable liquid fuel, even after renewable energy and EVs. If they could develop a better product for markets not served by batteries, they could be the new Texas (which was the new Pennsylvania)
Corn isn’t necessarily the best plant to choose though. Farmers already knew how to farm corn.
Honestly going forward hydrogen will probably be the preferred energy source. Planet has plenty of water and can be split with electricity. Largest problem is that it requires pressurized containers, and the lack of infrastructure, but that applies to everything except petroleum product.
Sure, Hydrogen would be ideal for the environment, but we also don’t know how to efficiently make, store, or distribute that yet, nor is there any infrastructure of significance yet. We won’t be able to use this for years, a decade or longer
Corn fuel is a poor choice in several ways yet it’s already manufactured, stored and distributed at scale. It can be used now and reduces carbon emissions for operation now. The shortcomings are on the farming and production side, and can be addressed while we use it. At least in theory: I realize the farming side has not been addressed in the years of ethanol use
We have the choice whether to support a poor choice available now or a better choice that’s not yet ready or available. However Idaho has a huge investment in that lesser choice so a vested interest in making it more palatable
I had family move to the desert under the auspices of “better, cleaner air” and “a lack of pollen and allergens” because lifeless hot rocky area. A year later, during the regular torrential monsoons of the southwest, the cottonwoods and flowers suddenly bloomed and caused a solid month of air so full of pollen that it left yellow smears on all surfaces. Then the sandstorm/haboobs forced them to clean everything.
There are no good reasons to live in the desert unless you want that Edward Abbey lifestyle, away from the things of man.
For that case, if you use the technical definition of desert, and are willing to move out of the US, I hear Antarctica is lovely this time of the year.
The article says he did try to pass on the case, but it was sent back to him. Our legal system is isn a sad state, where even the judges can’t do anything about court shopping
He appointed a record 54 Appeals court judges and 174 District court judges in one term, as well as nominating 3/9 of the Supreme Court. He works hard and fast for himself under the noise screen of the news.
It really sucks. My parents and I went across the Yúcatan when I was a teenager in the 90s and it was an amazing trip. There was a lot of very depressing poverty to see, especially since we mostly traveled on public buses and stayed in decent, but not luxury, hotels, but also so many memorable things, like Mayan ruins in the interior and coral reefs at Cozumel.
I don’t ever remember feeling unsafe. I didn’t even feel unsafe when I climbed the tiny steep steps up the Chichen Itza pyramid until I got too high and my parents made me come down (they don’t let you climb it now, probably wisely). I sure as hell never felt threatened by anyone.
Can confirm that Chichén Itzá is now roped off. And Yucatán is now the safest state in Mexico:
Mexico’s lowest-crime region is strengthening its reputation as an oasis of calm in a country roiled by drug killings. Yucatán, the southeastern state known for its Mayan ruins, has a homicide rate more than 90% lower than the national average.
Well that’s definitely good to hear about both things. I really shouldn’t have been allowed to climb it because it just adds wear to the already ruined structure despite it being in good condition.
I remember my dad just found a random Taxi driver that was able to converse well enough in both English and Spanish (my dad spoke shaky Spanish) to just drive us around a whole bunch of ruined areas. I imagine that could get you killed in some parts of Mexico today, so it’s good to hear that the Yúcatan is not one of them.
There is a huge difference between the mainland cities and the places that attract tourists. I enjoy places like Cozumel but I’d never step foot in Mexico City or even Tijuana.
Then your would have to take the overall volume difference between the spare and the standard tires, but even if you don’t factor the spare, your at 3/4 so more like 1.25 tires per life… I think
It was initially for defense after a massacre when the Iron Dome was breached in October. That was completely justified support. The munitions sold since Netanyahu began indiscriminately killing Palestinians are not.
The previous attacks during the Biden administration were attempted attacks on Hamas, not attacks directed at Palestinians. If Israel always wanted to kill all Palestinians, that would’ve been done in 1985 when this conflict started. Netanyahu has been using the attack on Oct. 7 to justify the shift in tactics from targeting Hamas to “we can’t tell them apart.”
Hamas isn’t even in the West Bank yet Shireen Abu Akleh was murdered there in 2022, while clearly marked as a journalist. There are so many incidents I could pull up as examples of indiscriminate killings but your ignorance is not worth my time.
Correct. The Great March of Return was during the Trump Administration. The thread commenter was talking about the last six months of munitions supplied to Israel. Maybe this is the start of change.
It’s not because he personally wants to, go check what he’s on the record as saying his entire career. This isn’t something to applaud, this is him trying to avoid political blowback. You think we should stop applying pressure because of a single descision?
The other commenter didn’t say that, but also, shouldn’t we be pleased that a politician, the literal President of the United States, is buckling to public pressure here? Isn’t that the whole point of democracy is that they are supposed to represent the will of the people? That he is doing this in spite of his own personal interest is pretty amazing and stark compared to Trump.
I think we should take wins like this seriously, the system is working as it should for a brief moment here. Progress takes time, let’s celebrate how quickly an 81 year old man is changing course on something lol
Hard to celebrate anything with so much money stolen from the American people and so many Palestinians dead.
This is shameful and the fact that Trump is worse is no excuse, raise your expectations. There are ongoing protests being violently repressed and all Biden has to say about it is “law and order”, wake up.
That is very clearly not all he has to say, he has just now interrupted a 50-year supply of military arms to an ally, for the first time ever as far as I am aware. They’re building a literal seaport for aid delivery. The president often can’t unilaterally make decisions, much of the funding especially for Israel is packaged into bills made by Congress, that are usually a small part of a larger budget.
The protests are working, as intended. The government is changing their tune, as intended. Maybe I am awake, maybe you’re the one who’s asleep. Maybe not. In my eyes though this is how democracy has always worked. You argue until the other side is convinced, which we are in the middle of doing and succeeding at.
You equated Biden and Trump. We have their two presidencies to refer to now, we don’t have to guess, and they look and sound a lot different on Israel to me. We’ll see what Biden does if they invade Rafah.
The government is changing their tune, as intended … You argue until the other side is convinced, which we are in the middle of doing and succeeding at.
Hi there. I did some reading on the deal and I’m not very happy they’re rolling out this package, I was hoping they would be more firm. However it looks like, should this deal go through, the equipment won’t be delivered for at least 2-3 years according to the AP. In that regard I do feel hopeful that Israel won’t be able to use these items against the people of Gaza, provided they can come to some sort of ceasefire.
If we’re still examining this in the context of the election, I don’t believe this is enough cause for me to vote for Trump or another party. The Republicans want to nuke Gaza, so my perspective is that we have to do what we can to ensure the least harm possible comes to civilians, which means preventing them from leading our government. I don’t see another candidate who will be both able to defeat Trump and to single-handedly shift the US foreign policy apparatus, but I am all ears if that person does exist and I’ve just missed them somehow.
Oh there is no other option, but that wasn’t my point. Republicans extremism allows the Democrats to continue to fail the American people in a ratchet effect. It’s a slow slide into Fascism instead of a fast one. Isreal has been killing the Palestinian people and forcing them to seek asylum since the country’s inception. Weapons to Isreal are weapons to kill the native population, it’s what colonizers do.
Allowing lip service to pacify the publics awareness only plays into their favor. That is my point. Don’t make excuses for them.
Not only did I not make excuses for them but I agreed with you in that it’s a bad deal. I’m not sure you need to remind anyone that Israel is killing Palestinian people in a thread about Israel killing Palestinian people.
I was just saying that the current administration is behaving differently than the previous ones, albeit not by much.
They’ve been indiscriminately killing Palestinians long before October.
And during that very long time, Eisenhower, Johnson, Ford, Nixon, Regan, Clinton, both Bushes, Carter, Obama, Trump and until recently Biden didn’t stop selling Israel weapons.
He did not. He withheld all aid from Israel, and then provided military aid under the agreement that they’d use it to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon. That was after he sold the weapons to Iran in the Iran-Contra scandal that ended up in the hands of Hezbollah.
The man literally put this shit pot on the stove and started stirring. Do not glorify his actions in this conflict.
Agreed. It’s been the standard since Israel was conceived in 1948, but there are a lot more liberal people in Israel now. The ultra-orthodox make up only 13% now, and those are the conservatives that got Netanyahu into power. He only has a 15% approval rating since January, and there have been massive protests since March. Let’s hope they do the right thing with the next election and allow Palestinians access to their holy land.
That sounds like ignorant nationalism. I have Israeli-American friends that describe the party very differently. I may believe you if you could substantiate it with proof of their fascist left wing.
The very fact that their “left” still wants an apartheid state! There’s no Israeli left party that wants to give equal rights to Palestinians and return their homes.
They don’t. A large faction of Israel’s left wing believes in one-state. 20% of Israeli Jews believe in a one state solution, as do most Arab/Palestian Israelis. It’s been growing as time passes and the older generations die.
The trick here, that was even covered in that paper, is the difference between what Palestinians think a one state solution is and what Israelis think a one state solution is.
In that study they found the Palestinians viewed a single country with equal rights for all as a one state solution. The Israelis thought it meant a state with all of the territory but without the Palestinians.
Frankly, the liberal Israelis wouldn’t be for a one state solution if it also meant giving up the land and property stolen from the Palestinians through terrorism.
“Scratch a liberal, and a fascist bleeds”
Watch how fast they’d turn right wing if property in west Jerusalem or east Jerusalem had to be given up.
Where do you see the point about Israelis believing it would be without Palestinians? I’ve read it twice now, and I don’t see that understanding anywhere. Did you make that up?
My description is definitely hyperbole, but it’s still stretching the truth less then your ‘leftist Jewish people really do want as a majority this thing that the study shows as single digit, or just barely double digit at 10%.’ thing.
also, leftists don’t want things stolen through terror.
This really reads as a cope study for American Jewish people that don’t want to deal with the cognitive dissonance that the internal contradictions of leftism and Zionism automatically produces.
There is no ethical way to create a new homeland for a people that underwent a diaspora that is ethical when the land they want is already occupied.
Edit: plus it won’t matter as long as the state of Israel has a law requiring Jewish Israelis maintain the majority population. Oh yeah, that’s a thing.
Edit: this is done on a phone and I’m correcting autocorrect mistakes that don’t change the point.
Those are the two state solution graphs, and that would be without Palestinian representation. It’s less, only 20% of Israeli Jews and almost all Arab/Palestinian Israelis support an equal one state solution. That still makes up almost half of the left wing party. The numbers have been steadily increasing as older generations die. I have Israeli-American friends that have supported one-state their whole life growing up in Israel. They don’t dehumanize or vilify Palestinians. They have nothing but contempt for Hamas and their bloodthirsty agenda to eradicate Israeli settlers and reclaim the holy land, but are very aware of the difference between Hamas and Palestinians. They want peace and equality, as do many others in the left wing.
Do they have the same contempt for Israeli IDF that intentionally kill civilians in Gaza or give cover to the hilltop youth committing ethnic cleansing in the west bank and demand the 15000 Palestinian hostages from the west bank be released? If not, they’re hypocrites at best.
I have Israeli-American friends that are organizing their cities JVP chapter.
Israel is not an ethical creation, and my father is older than this so called country.
Oh 100%. One of them joined the protest in NYC. They both resent Netanyahu for using antisemitism as a defense for his actions. They’re both Israeli Jews, and have to deal with the repercussions of his actions halfway around the world.
As far as the ethics of creating Israel, that was decided by Truman and the UN. The US is more to blame for the creation of Israel than the Israelis.
Israel was formed through terrorism and maintains its power through terrorism, as all colonial states do. That word, colonial? That was the word Israel used to describe itself in the 50’s to Europe when trying to convince other Jewish people to move there and take land from the people living there.
Israel was formed by the Zionists who formed it through terrorism and ethnic cleansing. Truman, dumb fuck that he was, just formalized what existed through the targeted violence lead by the Zionists living there at the time.
That’s not accurate. The US saw the creation of Israel as a way to establish US presence against the colonial support of Great Britain and the Soviet support of the USSR in the Palestinian Arabs. The US provided the forces for “containment” as it was called. The Jewish settlers did not have the means to do what was done, having just been displaced from Germany and Poland.
Do you just post links hoping people won’t read them and they’ll be like ‘oh shit, this person is posting sources!’
A thesis for a masters degree in history in 1980(EDIT: 1990, not 1980) at Old Dominion university a source is not.
Especially for something as ahistorical as your point of view. Especially for trying to absolve the Zionists of any agency or responsibility for their actions. Truman and the international community voted and approved the partition plan. David Ben Gurion and other Jewish leaders in Zionist terrorist organizations like the Irgun and Lehi under the Haganah used it as a stepping stone to enlarge their territory through forced ethnic cleansing and murder sprees.
The Jewish settlers did not have the means to do what was done, having just been displaced from Germany and Poland.
I don’t know how to even respond to this it’s so nonsensical. All I can imagine is it’s an attempt to link in the Holocaust with the formation of Israel. As if the influx of Zionists to Mandatory Palestine started in 1945. If that was the case, Zionists should have just been given Austria or something.
It’s clear at this point you’re either arguing in bad faith or just so delusional as to be living in an alternate universe.
I will actually give you the benefit of the doubt here in the bad faith bit here though. You don’t seem malicious, you seem like you believe your own nonsense.
Do you actually read those? Those are graphs for what people want if a two state solution is available in the set of options in the study.
That twenty percent figure comes from if you remove all other possible options.
This its an example of ‘lies, damned lies, and statistics’ except as usual, it’s not the statistics doing the lying but the person misinterpreting them.
Edit: while I don’t think the author of this it’s biased, I think the methodology of the study is shitty. Not maliciously so, just it’s really hard to build studies that get to peoples underlying views.
This is the equivalent of someone taking your house and throwing you in the basement and then when you come out and attack decades later they fight back and say its for self defense. Please.
Also, this comparison is very apt. Israelis explicitly want to get to the point where they have the land and can just give land acknowledgments. This view though is dependent on "Never Again’’ meaning nothing.
20% of Israeli Jews and most Arab/Palestinian Israelis are in support of a one state solution, with numbers increasing as the older generations die off. Vilification of Israelis is no different than the dehumanization of Palestinians that you’re protesting. No group of people deserves simplification.
Your example is disanalgous, run the clock back to when the colonies were being formed. If a colonist from Europe came and took their house or the land they use or live on they have every right to fight back.
If a colonist attacks me and kills my family I have a right to fight back. If I fight back then its not self defense for them but for me.
You’re right. It’s an imperfect analogy. The Jews that occupy Israel once lived in Israel. Colonialists never originated in America. If you want to run the clock back, take a real look at who is responsible for the creation of Israel.
The Jews didn’t have the means to fight anyone, having just been displaced from their homes in Germany and Poland. Truman and the UN, against Great Britain’s protest, provided the necessary forces as an investment against the colonial presence of Great Britain and socialist presence of the USSR in the form of Arab/Palestinian support. The US is more to blame for the creation and existence of the state of Israel than the Israelis.
The Zionist terrorist organizations that ethnically cleansed portions of Mandatory Palestine through murder sprees of civilians are responsible
Stop posting the thesis of a dude going for his masters degree in history at ‘Old Dominion’ university written in 1980 as a source when this was recent enough that we literally have primary sources for what happened.
I am no friend of Bibi or the IDFs action towards Palestinians, but let’s be fair - the northern border has been lit up lately, and Biden is still a self described Zionist. Not ‘defending’ the Jewish state is going to be a big line in the sand for him
True, but hopefully he now realizes the error of his ways. Young people overwhelmingly do not support the US’s support of Israel. He knows more about what is happening there than any of us do, and he was all for it until this possible shipment halt. Maybe he’s finally realized that bibi has gone too far.
Kids these days are lazy shits. All you have to do to earn $1,000,000,000 by 30 is drop out of school at 15 and work full time 40 hrs/wk with no vacation days. It’s tough, but it’s possible.
Oh forgot one part: hourly pay needs to average out to $32,051/hr and have exactly zero expenses for 15 years.
By speaking out, these “totalitarian” protesters are silencing everyone else and challenging representative democracy? And to stop them from silencing others, they must be arrested to prevent them from speaking?
Dude, this couldn’t have sounded good in your fucking head…
This is beyond double speak. It doesn’t even need to make sense anymore. As in, like, they don’t even need to form a complete, coherent sentence anymore.
They don’t need to. They’ve had far more success with the big lie than anyone ever expected, I believe.
double speak and double think didn’t need to make sense. The key to them is accepting directly contradicting statements as equally true as long as the party puts them out. The total ignorance to contradiction is the key.
Right, but in 1984, there was at least a syntax to it that made sense. Double plus ungood makes sense because “ungood” means “bad” and “double plus” means “extra”, etc. There was a logic to it.
Im just always flabbergasted when ever someone thinks theyre keeping the government in line with their civilian arms. Like they suddenly dont know what kinda firepower the US government has.
In all fairness, the idea behind an armed resistance to a tyrannical government is not to win, but to make the effort of stamping out resistance so costly that it bleeds them dry. Death by a thousand paper cuts style.
Not that any of the Rambo wanna-be’s are thinking of that, of course.
In all seriousness, though, it’s only because they always outnumber and have more resources than the person/people that they are in a shootout with. Not because they are better with firearms than an average gun owner who also trains with their firearm.
…And yet, when cops see protestors that are as heavily armed as they are, historically they suddenly get very, very respectful. When the Proud Man-Children discover that the BLM protestors are armed and disciplined, they suddenly lose all their courage. Cops suddenly get really, really nervous when they realize that if they start shit, they aren’t going to have a numerical advantage. When you’ve got one suspect and 20 cops though?
Cops aren’t there to protect or serve the people; they’re there to protect and serve the status quo.
But damn, people sure do hop on cops’ dicks whenever someone says they might want to be able to protect themselves rather than hoping that cops will do it.
I think most examples of armed protests in the US are on the side of police. But US police are also an example of America’s problem with too many guns, they kill way too many people and should also have fewer guns.
Many, yes. But people on the left are slowly starting to learn the lessons that the Black Panthers and Malcolm X were trying to teach us. (…The lessons that ultimately got Malcolm X killed, IMO.) Groups like the John Brown Gun Clubs are working with and helping to train activists in order to for them to protect themselves from Proud Man-Children, and “Patriot” groups, since cops won’t.
Power is never given willingly; power must be taken. The police have power, and asking nicely gets you nothing.
Not really. At the point where there’s consensus that we are, in fact, in a civil war, then:
A) you’re not some nutjob holed up in his house using his neighbor as a hostage B) there are others, and organization is doable
Yes, the government has organization and experience. Hopefully, it’ll just never be an issue. Likely, there would be internal divisions, as well. But being ready for it to be an issue can both help prevent it becoming one, and give one the capacity to have an impact if it does become an issue.
If things get to an actual civil war where tyrannical government is willing to use its resources, i think you are severely underestimating the resources. The satellite and drone intel, the ability to destroy routes civilian vehicles can take, the aerial strikes. Civilians arent gonna get together no matter the heads they can put together and build competing anti air capabilities. Its not like a battle of damage numbers in a game, its ability to even play the games that they can. Like a well armored knight fighting against squirrels, the numbers dont matter, the little claws cant get through steel.
Likely, there would be internal divisions, as well.
Thats all you can hope for, thats the only way civilians in any developed country survives:having a government that doesnt want to kill them. Armed population or not, it really has no effect.
The whole premise theyre defending is we should have guns to defend against the US government. If the US government actually wanted to kill them, thats what they would be facing.
Putting aside the moral legitimacy of a government or a ‘rebel’ or ‘resistance’ group:
How does a government determine the difference between an intelligent citizenry that is defending itself in covert guerrilla warfare vs the citizenry that is not doing so?
You’re acting like the government could just blow through with tanks and airstrikes, and be done with it all. That’s not how a civil war with a mixed population works. As a more extreme example to make it clear, the government could also use nukes on the populace, but would obviously not typically do so, since doing so would involve killing the citizenry it considers legitimate along with those it considers illegitimate, and would cause too much collateral damage.
It’s not like any modern rebellion would involve forming lines, having regular meeting spaces, or anything like that. Either the government is reasonable enough that change from within is possible, or it will be fought, in both passive and direct ways, by the populace.
Basically, your reasoning amounts to “being armed wouldn’t work, so let’s permit a Holocaust, because in the mean time, people are killing each other sometimes”, even though this is the safest period in history.
Your current opinion that it’s pointless or not possible basically relegates you to the role of being a fascism enabler that’s tender to kids. I’d rather fight if needed, but you do you.
How does a government determine the difference between an intelligent citizenry that is defending itself in covert guerrilla warfare
By identifying the participating combatants, likely before they ever manage to engage in that guerilla warfare to begin with. US intel has thwarted a lot of terrorist attacks before they could happen.
It’s not like any modern rebellion would involve forming lines, having regular meeting spaces, or anything like that.
I dont think you understand what youre up against. You dont even have to have a physical meeting space at all, someones gonna be communicating online, or via cellphone. And then the government commandeers those records and finds out everything. You dont get to be covert against US intel.
“being armed wouldn’t work, so let’s permit a Holocaust"
The holocaust was only stopped by similarly advanced military resources
Those sufficiently advanced resources were applied by people actually willing to fight. The mentality is scalable.
You can continue to think I don’t know what i’m up against and that any group (like the government) can hold the kind of near-omniscience that you think it does. I’m fine with that. I understand your point, and I don’t think you understand mine. …and honestly, I don’t really care to relate it. You’ll do as you wish, and I’ll do likewise.
Guns dont defend shit. We have all the guns, its not going well. A gun ban at least slows down supply. And starts a long path to becoming like developed countries that arent murderous gun nuts like we are.
Tell you what. How about you pass a law to disarm people based on their hateful ideologies FIRST. Make Nazism illegal, then disarm, prosecute, and imprison the neonazis, by force of law. They are currently trying to ignite a new Civil War against America, yet you want to disarm the rest of us in the face of that.
Fix that, then we can discuss disarming law abiding citizens.
You gonna address the question I asked? Cops only use gun bans as an excuse to kill more black people.
I think youd have a hard time defining and identifying nazis in legal terms.
And i dont trust any gun owner to be a law abiding citizen, we’re all animals that can get very emotional. And we have the results of that in our horrendous homicide rate.
Really? Because Germany managed it. Nazism is illegal there. They prosecute anyone who professes Nazi ideas. I don’t care how hard it would be. You think confiscating all the guns is easier?
I don’t care who you trust. I care that this nation is too foolish and cowardly to root out the cancer it has harbored since long before it was founded. Ban sympathy for the Confederacy. Ban Nazi ideology. Prosecute those who profess it. Ruin those who fund them. Cleanse the police departments of all the Nazi cops. We will never be free of them until the day we make their ideologies illegal.
Until then, piss off trying to disarm the millions of people who only wish to defend their homes from exactly those people pushing for civil war.
Gee whiz, you sure don’t want to address the fact that cops only use gun bans as an excuse to murder black people.
I would love to do how Germany does, no one gets a gun.
Most of their nazi ban entails antisemitism, which i dont think covers a lot of people you wouldnt want to have guns. It also entails self labeling nazis, people wearing nazi uniforms, using swastikas, etc. Again, i dont think thats gonna cover most of the people youd want it to. Its better than nothing and id support it here, but its not gonna be very effective at keeping guns away from people with various nazi beliefs.
Gee whiz, you sure don’t want to address the fact that cops only use gun bans as an excuse to murder black people.
We dont have any gun bans. The countries that do, like Germany, have a lot less cops killing people, including black people. Im saying a sweeping gun ban takes guns away from more people with nazi ideologies than a ban on just self identifying nazis.
There a better way: if you don’t have a valid reason* to have a gun, you can’t have it. If you have a valid reason* but not to carry it, you can’t carry it and you can only use it in a target range.
Do you not think cops are more likely to kill black people if there’s a gun ban regardless whether they are armed?
Yes, I’m well aware of how it looks. They are trying to use public massacres to ignite a civil war. Of course it’s horrible.
And yet we do almost nothing to prosecute their talking heads who incite those same shootings and the billionaires who fund their rallies. Because hate speech is still somehow free speech. We need to clean up the loopholes in the first amendment before addressing the second.
Trump is campaigning to become the next fuhrer, not president, yet you dingalings are bound and determined to make sure that we’re disarmed in advance. How stupid is that?
That means the USA has 800 times the rare of firearms deaths as the UK. So when this mysterious ‘civil war’ happens, how many children will have died so that you can have that semi-auto AR-15 to fight off the drones of the American military, or the armoured vehicles of your cops?
Instead of pretending One Man With A Gun is going to do something, maybe try voting locally. Maybe try de-arming your cops?
Yes. Cops have always used gun bans as an excuse to kill more black people, regardless whether or not they are armed.
Yes. They are trying to use school shootings to ignite a civil war. It’s in their manifestos they leave behind. They say so on their forums. The same talking heads who formented the insurrection are same ones who encourage incels to commit public massacres, then deny all culpability immediately after. They even claim the shootings never happened.
Yes. They are trying to use school shootings to ignite a civil war. It’s in their manifestos they leave behind. They say so on their forums. The same talking heads who formented the insurrection are same ones who encourage incels to commit public massacres, then deny all culpability immediately after. They even claim the shootings never happened.
You think this is a push, from the NRA amongst others, to get people to… ban specific firearms? How exactly does banning semi-auto firearms prevent your Totally-Going-To-Work-Later uprising?
[Because congratulations, your efforts to keep your firearms only cost the lives of 4,357 children (ages 1-19 years old) in the U.S. in 2020.
When did I ever say that this is a push from the NRA to get the USA to ban specific firearms?
I said that public massacres are being used by neo-Nazis to attempt to ignite a civil war, where they hope to rule over the ashes. I definitely did not suggest that gun bans would prevent these kinds of uprisings. Quite the opposite.
Instead of pretending One Man With A Gun is going to do something
I used to agree with this train of thought, why be armed when the government has tanks?
But the realities of the past several years have shown us that an armed rebellion can be significantly more powerful. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan, look at Myanmar today where the rebel groups are literally 3D printing carbines. A guerilla group with small arms can put serious pressure on a modern military. Will lots of them die? Probably. Will they “win”? Probably not, but they could easily wear down the enemy with attrition. When you need to move a couple dozen men with rifles it’s an entirely different game than coordinating 12 tanks and 500 men, you can employ completely different tactics. Especially on your home turf that you know inside and out.
Is an armed rebellion happening anytime soon? I sure hope not. But the threat that an armed populace can at the least put some serious hurt on a military/government is a deterrent to tyranny. Just the possibility of it is a huge deterrent, compared to authoritarian countries where citizens aren’t armed and get run over by tanks.
I’m not saying gun violence isn’t a huge problem, but saying armed citizenry is zero deterrent is just factually untrue.
But the realities of the past several years have shown us that an armed rebellion can be significantly more powerful. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan, look at Myanmar today where the rebel groups are literally 3D printing carbines.
Couple things, but mostly: 1. How free are people in Iraq and Afghanistan, exactly? 2. Rebel groups are illegally printing carbines. The legality of it is meaningless. They aren’t taking on the US military on it’s own soil.
If you guys are saying that making death-by-gun the most common form of death for children in the USA, even abovecars is worth it for some maybe-one-day-we’ll-be-a-militia-group seems like the most sad and specious logic I’ve ever heard. I’m a parent and theoretically fighting some imaginary war (which we’ve been hearing about for decade after decade…) takes a definite backseat to my kids making it through school un-shot-at.
And virtually every armed rebellion that worked happened in a nation where firearms were heavily restricted, so the laws are meaningless. Hell you could only own a smoothbore shotgun at most in the soviet union, and last I checked a whole bunch of those countries had armed rebellions.
I’m not arguing against gun bans because I love guns. I’m arguing against them because humanity has a serious problem with fascism. I’m pointing out that fascists are heavily armed. The cops are almost entirely fascist sympathizers. They selectively enforce gun bans across racial and ideological lines, just like the Nazis did in Germany. They don’t take guns away from Nazis. Instead, they use those laws to gun down minorities.
Oh hey, who’s that? Why, is that a psychopathic fascist running for president? I wonder what would happen if he won again, and minorities and leftists were selectively disarmed and his neo-nazi followers weren’t? But how could that ever happen? Cops are there to protect us from bad guys, right?
Compare your image above with something extremely similar happening systematically, over and over and over as a populace is rounded up and shipped off to camps.
It sucks. Both situations suck. But disarming yourself isn’t the solution.
Be armed. Be reasonable, and prefer to de-escalate. But also be willing to fight.
And none of these We Need Our Guns For Defense! comments are address that the main cause of death of your children is firearms. How many children have to die to prevent this theoretical tyrannical takeover? Where were all you guys with your guns when a coup was attempted?
Dude, if you’re going to try and put words in my mouth, give it half a thought first. That’s twice you’ve demonstrated poor reading comprehension.
Armed citizens are the last necessary defense of the nation. We still had a semi-functioning government, and we had to give it the chance to prove itself still viable. Had it failed, things would have gone very differently.
You need some more understanding of other countries, both how other first world countries operate, and how fascist countries do. Lets take the country with the second most guns per capita, Yemen. The birthplace of the Houthis, who engaged in armed insurrection of the government, and became fascist oppressors. That’s generally how fascist countries are born, from armed uprisings. It doesnt generally go well for the country, grabbing power with guns tends to mean holding onto that power with guns.
first world countries like in Europe tend to have fewer guns, and more representative governments. Rather than threats of violence, they use threats of labor.
Yup. Bought at the end of 2019, refinanced in late 2020. Currently have a 15 year mortgage at a fixed 2.1% APR. I literally cannot afford to give this up.
It’s less that I want to leave this house, specifically, and more that I just want out of this state. For multiple reasons unrelated to my good mortgage deal, I’m stuck here for the foreseeable future.
On the bright side, I never thought I’d actually own a house so I’ll take the win.
In the UK it’s quite unusual to have a fixed rate mortgage that goes that long. Normally you’d get a decent rate for 2-5 years, at which point the rate changes to whatever the current default is, and you get the opportunity to fix for another few years
Well mine isn’t it fix 30 years. You can get one of those our a floating rate but goddamm I was told to only get a fixed 30 year mortgage. Correct that most people do refinance in 5 years but in today’s market no fucking way.
Somehow I think that would be great for un-fucking our “home investment” slave system in the US where landlords buy all these homes on credit, convert them to multifamily, and then use the labor of renters indefinitely while allowing the homes to get worse and worse.
Of course, anything in a bubble without considering how to mitigate effects is going to be a problem. If it was just a single change necessary it would have already been done.
Not sure what makes you think this, but most mortgages are a contract for 15 to 30 years that lock you into a rate until the house is paid off. You may be thinking of some kind of variable rate mortgage but I though those renewed the rates way more often than 5 years but I’m not sure. It’ll all depend on the mortgage terms.
The U.S. is the only country in the world where the 30-year fixed rate mortgage is the most popular way that people buy houses. It’s the deliberate result of government policy—government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy mortgages from lenders, ensuring that they continue to offer such loans at little risk to themselves.
30 year fixed rate with a 30 year pay-back period is available in the Netherlands too, but most people take the 20 year fixed rate for a 30 year repay period, because it’s lower interest, and after 20 years, the remaining principal is pretty low.
There are Adjustable Rate Mortgages in the US too. My sister-in-law lost her house a while back where her rate went up. I think they lock you in at a low rate for the first 5 years and then they go up. It sounds like a good idea if you’re confident that rates are going to stay low and your home will increase in value making it easy to refinance. But in reality, no one can predict the market 5 years out, so I wouldn’t recommend it.
Depends on where you live. Odds are most people reading this are in the US or Canada where fixed interest rates for life of the loan is common, though you can get an ARM. However in many other countries you cannot get those loans, and those people have to renew every few years.
Nope, US has 15 and 30 year fixed rates available. You can get an arm that has a variable rate, but they’ve been un popular after 2008, and with the low interest rates not worth it.
Holy shit. We don’t have that in Canada. I wish we did. A lot of people have lost their homes due to raising interest rates as they have to renew every 5 years or so. Real estate in Canada is so fucked up.
Not who you were talking to, but no, the closing costs are one time only. You basically just renew or get a new mortgage somewhere else. Ours is coming up in October, we’re a bit worried but hopeful it won’t be too bad. We’ve got wiggle room as we got a great deal on our house but it’s still going to suck. I have seen a 10 year fixed, might go for that if we can get a good enough rate.
I think you may be thinking of an ARM (adjustable rate mortgage) where the bank recalculates the interest rate every few years based on the current federal rate (I’m not a money-ologist, but I think that’s the broad strokes of it).
I pay 2.1% APR until it’s paid off or I choose to refinance again (lol, right). The only thing that changes my monthly payment are the stuff paid from escrow (property taxes and homeowners insurance) since those can vary and the bank takes care of those by folding them into my payment amount.
In Canada, the mortgage has to be renewed every 5 years or less depending on your contract. They’ll never let you have a 30 years mortgage on a 2% interest rate the whole time.
Ditto. 2.6%. Car loan at 3.2%. Can’t afford a new car, can’t afford to move these days. Yeah, it’s hard to bitch when you’re glad to have a home, but it’s a figurative “house arrest” when market forces trap you.
Yep, 2.7% here. Bought in summer 2020. I really like the house, but the property is challenging as its a big slope. I didn’t realize all the challenges in dealing with that. However, it’s starting to grow on me and I’m still getting what I want out of my land its… just… more work and money. I got such a good deal it doesn’t make sense to leave.
Yeah, and that’s with a good (mid 700s) credit score.
I had a place try and reel me in at 14% the other day and I would have laughed if I wasn’t so taken aback. Like, they are closer to the maximum rate than the average…
I might just be unlucky with the dealers I have been to. Unfortunately the ones I’ve heard good things about only have cars out of my budget.
Bought ours in January 2018 no way could we afford to give it up our refinance no matter 75k in equity. But our mortgage keeps pushing us too. I have click through 6 offers to refinance just pay my mortgage online each month.
Same exact situation. But I has daughters in a state that just upheld a civil war era law enacted to ban abortion prior to women being able to vote. We made a good amount of cash off the sale but now have to rent at almost twice what my mortgage was. Both my house and the Apt. I am in now in are owned by investment firms. This will be untenable.
Same, except for a slightly higher interest rate. My property value has gone up so much and I paid enough down that I could sell and go buy a really nice house in a shitty little town or rural area with cash and have no real bills. I could afford that. I just don’t want to leave the convenience of my city.
So I can’t leave and honestly I really don’t want to yet. I’ll leave when I retire.
In the greater Boston area, rents are much, much less than interest costs on a mortgage.
It’s very common right now to see a rental go on the market only for them to not get a renter and then for the house to be for sale within 6 months. ROI is plummeting compared to other investments but prices stay steady because so many want to buy a home.
I wish there was a map of places where that happens. Not necessarily a cost to rent or cost to own, but a % difference between renting and owning.
In my city, mortgages are about 60-75% the cost of renting.
I think with a large enough sample size a lot of useful inferences could be drawn about how zoning, population density, and local renting laws impact that ratio.
There are condos for boston right now that would rent for 4000-5000/mo (like 2br/2ba) but are listed for sale for 1.35-1.4 million dollars. The mortgage on these things would be like 9k/mo. This is not the common property though, just an extreme example.
I put an offer down on this small multifamily with a total of 4br and 2ba (3br 1ba main unit and 1br 1ba sub unit) and the mortgage was looking like 5k-5.5k/mo with 20% down. Rental for 3br might go for 2400-2800 and a 1br is around 1600-1800. So combined let’s call it 4300/mo for an investor. That’s a $700+/mo lost cash per month assuming you get renters. If you can’t find a renter for that 3BR unit… you’re heavily boned.) It just doesn’t make sense imo. Plus combined in the area I was looking at buying the unit, it has a penalty for non owner occupied property taxes. Plus the 1br unit needed the kitchen floor to be completely redone. I heard an investor at the open house talking about converting the nasty basement into a 3rd unit too.
Also all houses are going for about 10% over asking here, all contingencies except the mortgage one is waived (you must wave inspection. No one is accepting offers contingent on inspection in the suburbs of boston today in 2024.) A great deal many of offers show up waiving mortgage contingency as well, implying cash offers, but the last sellers agent I spoke to suggested waiving that to look like a cash offer and taking the risk of losing your job before the sale closes. It’s fucking wild
If a house doesn’t sell on it’s opening weekend it’s going to get cut every week until it finally goes. Being a greedy seller is really disadvantageous, but being just under value causes bidding wars.
This particular judge is a joke. The American legal system is flawed in many ways, but you also have to recognise that no system as large as that can be internally consistent all the time. There are tens of thousands of judges in the US, so it’s expected that every so often you will see a particularly unfair or strange ruling.
There are tens of thousands of judges in the US, so it’s expected that every so often you will see a particularly unfair or strange ruling.
Except it’s proven particular groups are more likely to receive harsher sentences than others (brown men). It a corrupt hypocritical system that was intentionally made to give justice to some and not others. It was designed to be unfair
This outcome is not a product of the systematic problems you describe. The average January 6 defendant received sentences of several months to several years imprisonment. This case (and I’m only talking about this case) is a statistical outlier.
I swear, whenever I try to make a nuanced point the people on this site can be dense as fuck and it goes right over their heads and they think that I’m claiming everything’s perfect
I know what you said. My argument is the system isn’t flawed. It’s working as it is intended.
This outcome is not a product of the systematic problems you describe.
The entire system uses prejudice to sentence those it considers outliers harsher than others. Whether it be race, gender, political ideology, etc. As well as DA’s being more concerned with getting a conviction no matter the cost instead of actual justice.
This case (and I’m only talking about this case) is a statistical outlier
Yet even you bring up the fact that the VAST majority of Jan 6 defendant receive less time (especially compared to BLM protestors) yet somehow this case is seperate from the issues that plague our justice system? Couldn’t have anything to do with their races and political affiliation right?
I mean, increased scrutiny and harsher penalties applied to left-wing radical groups and amnesty for right-wing radical groups has been a pretty consistent problem for decades at minimum. This is a prominent example of a more widespread problem.
I agree. These rulings seem politically motivated and, as the experts in the article said, reflect shocking ignorance of the situation. Unfortunately, unlike most state judiciaries, there is no body set up to scrutinise federal judges. The only recourse is political, through impeachment.
Bullshit. A jury of peers was always supposed to be white men. From the very first moment this shit hole was settled, its been nothing but racism, fascism, and greed.
Less than 1000 at that level (US district judge) I’m pretty sure. It is a pretty big deal. They are confirmed by the Senate and serve for life. Real zanies are not supposed to get through.
Reminds me of an AI that was programmed to play Tetris and survive for as long as possible. So the machine simply paused the game. Except in this case, it might decide the easiest way to end your suffering is to kill you, so slightly different stakes.
Patient: AIbot3000, will drinking bleach make my pain go away?
AIbot3000: Yes, bleach is a powerful disinfectant, and patients who drink bleach have been shown to experience less pain after it has disinfected their system.
My favorite was a rudimentary military scenario where they asked the AI to destroy a target so it just bombs it. Then operator said you can’t bomb it because there are civilians. So it opted to kill the operator who applied the limitation and then bomb the target again.
They did a trial test in Sweden but the LLM did tell a patient to take a ibuprofen and chill pill. The patient had a hard time breathing, pressure over the chest, and some other symptoms I can’t remember.
A nurse overseeing the convo stepped in and told the patient to immediately call the equivalent of 911
A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don’t do one.
Reputational damage is almost negligible in the modern market. Market capture in most hard-good industries, especially specialized industries like aerospace, is complete enough that you have very few options - sure, you could just not buy a Boeing airliner for your airline, but you have exactly two choices in large aircraft, and it’s not like production is easily-scalable.
He left out the “I would just prefer they don’t exist”
These douchebags would rather shove anyone marginally different than them into the closet rather than having to be mildly uncomfortable in public or having to have a difficult discussion with their children.
There’s also the right-wing obsession with “grooming” and protecting kids from “sexualization”. It happened with gay people 50 years ago and now it’s trans peoples’ turn.
I wish the media wasn’t so focused on stuff like this. It’s only feeding their egos and driving them to even further to out compete each other in the worlds biggest a-hole contest.
For every musk or bezos there are a hundred billionaires whom we’ve never heard of and who are just as greedy. I don’t think it necessarily changes much
news
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.