bsbbtnh
1yr ago
If killing Russian soldiers in this situation is right and necessary, then anything that contributes to their killing is also right and necessary.
Which means that Finland deploying to Ukraine is right and necessary.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
I was being a bit hyperbolic. I simply mean we use the full power of the state to punish them, and that could of course include shooting them if the circumstances required it.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
I think it's just generally bad policy to use minor crimes like that as a pretext for finding people with active warrants. It is detrimental to society as a whole.
First, you're mostly just going to catch the stupidest criminals this way. The smarter criminals will be able to evade capture for much longer. So we're only catching people who would have eventually been caught, anyways.
Second, stupid criminals will make stupid choices. They'll make the decision to run/fight more often than not. This means cops could get injured, or some dumb criminal (and many criminals are legitimately mentally retarded) will get hurt/killed. And today that could lead to city-wide protests that cause hundreds of millions in damages (from looting, vandalism, and just lost economic opportunity from businesses being closed and consumers staying away).
Third, as a political consequence, we end up with police pulling back, and stupid policies saying not to enforce quality of life crimes, and even some non-violent crimes (primarily drug and property crimes). And that's just going to make life worse for everyone.
Here's what a better system would be. We get a bunch of lowly paid people who issue small tickets to people who violate simple laws. Traffic and parking violations, fare evasion, jay walking, littering, etc. We put these people in stupid, non-threatening uniforms. They are instructed not to chase people, not to look for warrants, not to arrest people. If something goes wrong, they run. If a citizen ever lays hands on these individuals, we send in the real police to do a summary execution. Otherwise cops aren't involved in anything to do with those stops or enforcement of those laws.
We take cops, and instead of paying them $100k+/year to hopefully catch people with warrants and guns while enforcing petty crimes and civil violations, we send them to catch people with warrants by actually looking for the people who have warrants. And they can do things like respond to burglaries, stolen property complaints, things like that.
And this way, if cops end up killing someone, it likely won't be over some petty shit. And if riots do break out over that, politicians and citizens won't be targeting the quality of life enforcers. They can still operate and continue a constant level of enforcement, so that cities don't fall to shit.
It's absurd to pay police officers to be stopping people for broken traffic lights, or for littering, or for evading fares. Because then everybody becomes guarded in their interactions with police. You'll always worry that a stop is about something more. It's unhealthy to have a populace that is constantly worried when police are around, especially if crime is high and you want police around more.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
I've always wondered if the special interest group that Pete Dominick said you have to hand an envelope of cash to in order to win an election is the Israel lobby (AIPAC?).
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
we’re talking about the greatest rock song, not the most average
What's the most average, in your opinion?
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
I wonder what happened to the birds which were nearby.. Guys didn't drop out of the sky despite what must have been extremely punishing pressure event.
That was crazy to watch.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Could have sworn my bottle said it did. I'll have to look later, but I got a new batch and tossed the old bottle. So unless they used to, or it was some 'extra super duper strength' thing, you're probably right.
The most infuriating thing, looking at the smart label linked on their website, is the description when clicking on 'Bismuth Subsalicylate'.
Bismuth Subsalicylate 525 Mg
Upset Stomach Reliever And Antidiarrheal
Active Ingredient That Relieves The Stated Symptoms (Heartburn, Indigestion, Nausea, Upset Stomach, Diarrhea)
Why would they do this? lol
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
It's all part of a cycle. Black people blame white people for their oppression. And then one day they 'notice' that a good chunk of the white people in Hollywood, the media, running the big businesses, in academia, are Jews. Whites gentiles are under-represented, probably moreso than African-Americans.
And once they 'notice' that, then they start to wonder if they are oppressed at all. You get the idea that maybe it's just a 'mental prison'. They believe they can free themselves by simply believing they aren't oppressed. And from there they get to thinking that maybe it is the Jews that are the oppressors. This feeds into black nationalism, which feeds into blacks having their own country, which feeds into the idea that hey, maybe Israel is actually a black country. Maybe blacks are the real Jews.
As this process has played out, time and time again, over the past century, it was largely countered or overshadowed by a larger civil rights movement. But the current civil rights movement isn't asking for equality; it's asking for equity. And to get that equity, it's going to have to come from the Jews, at least partly. Otherwise gentile whites are going to be essentially pushed out of society, and that will almost certainly lead to the Holocaust 2.0.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
In an ideal world, the police would be focusing their resources on catching those criminals, rather than hoping a random broken tail light will lead to a major bust. And major criminals wouldn't feel the need to run (or kill) in order to evade a minor ticket.
If we are simply using minor laws to capture criminals, then why not make more minor laws to catch criminals? I'd prefer to live in a society where laws are meant to keep people on track, rather than to undermine people in order for cops to hold broader investigations. So having wider enforcement, but smaller punishments, for minor crimes and civil violations seems more important, overall.
Police have no incentive in actually reducing minor crime if their purpose is to simply use minor crime as a pretext to find people with warrants, guns, drugs, etc.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
I think expediting the capture of criminals is a good thing
But randomly catching them by targeting people breaking minor laws isn't expediting it. Having police go and find someone when a warrant is issued would be the quickest. Instead, we've turned routine stops into inquisitions.
We could drop the pretext, and just empower police to stop and search/investigate anybody. That would catch even more criminals. At the end of the day, we are giving up more freedom for the masses in order to gain a tiny bit of security. COVID showed us just how far the government can push that, and the masses largely complied (or at least didn't publicly disagree). I doubt the government will reign in their powers; now every institution is going to want to leverage many of those things to apply to their area of expertise. If we can lockdown an entire nation, demand COVID testing and vaccinations to go out in public, why could we not do the same if a serial killer is on the loose? Lockdown a community, require DNA testing and an alibi to go to work.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
I may be misremembering, but I believe a lot of ghettos originally grew out of the Contraband Camps set up by the Union. After Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves were 'seized' as contraband and put in camps. This became a humanitarian crisis, as disease ravaged these camps and there were shortages of food. I believe some hundred thousand+ black people died. Many former slaves returned to the south, or travelled north, after the war ended, but many stayed in these camps. It'd be interesting to overlay the historic locations of those camps with various post-war maps and see if any of them are still ghettos and/or predominantly African-American.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Presumably it won't be long before many substacks are just AI created content. Many could be already. Would we even know?
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Russia tried to join NATO. They were rebuked. That's when it was cemented that Russia would never be welcomed into the west, and their policy shifted towards self-sufficiency. And that's why sanctions haven't destroyed Russia.
It's amazing how the west has become solely reactive, and worse, they spend all their time telegraphing their next move. They spend weeks talking about sanctions to hit Russia with, giving Russia weeks to plan for them. And when those sanctions hit, it turns out our leaders never thought about how it would affect us. Absolutely amazing.
And our leaders have basically pretended that Russia can't hurt us. Make us pay in rubles or they'll cut us off? Surely Russia wouldn't shoot themselves in the foot like that. Oh, they did, and they are actually making more money now. Well they'd never cut off the Nord Stream. Oh they did that to? And they are making record profits again? Hmm..
Now we're seeing our leaders try and force a price cap on Russia. I think I know exactly how this works out. China and India get cheap gas, Russia cuts off the EU completely, gas prices skyrocket, and Russia somehow makes even more money.
bsbbtnh
11mo ago
There's a sub on reddit called translater with people who have transitioned later than Zephyr, and many are passable.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
In physics, there are a fuckton of 'constants'. Many of these are unexplained. It's some random number you push into an equation and makes it work. But we haven't explained why that constant exists, or why it has the value it has. Even the speed of light, we have no idea why it is that speed. And it's typically viewed as a maximum, but there's no reason to assume the speed of light is some universal speedcap. We don't think like that for the speed of sound.
Even when it comes to constants, many of them seem to be variable. It's just that their variance is so small, and the level of our tech so primitive, that it's handwaved away, since it is of no consequence to us. It's a bit like how we tell high school students that water is incompressible. Because there's really no need to go into the minutiae at that level.
So physics is full of holes that we've bandaged over, but that could radically change our understanding of the universe if we discovered what is truly behind it.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
If objects could travel faster than the speed of light (which they can), you'd expect to still be able to measure their gravity, but not visually see them.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
I don’t have a defense of whole word learning
Whole word learning seems to be good at very young ages, before your kid can talk. Then moving into phonics. Also, whole word learning is great in very small groups, preferably one-on-one. It seems that you can get basically any educational technique to work in one-on-one learning, probably because one-on-one learning is just so much better than group learning. So when these techniques are trialed in small groups, they seem to work. Then they get implemented in some private schools, or as a pilot in a decent public school, and it seems to work, because the type of student is just better. Then it is rolled out to the masses, where it just sucks.
Public schools have to deal with trying to get as many kids to reach the most basic level of literacy, in large class sizes, with educators who are typically bottom of the barrel and protected by their union. They do a really, really bad job at this, and it seems people developing the curriculum don't want 'traditional' models and techniques, they want something they can stick their name to. They also seem to be using the curriculum to promote their social goals, like anti-racism, which in their view means having white and black kids scoring the same, even if those scores are absolutely dismal. They don't care if blacks see their scores drop, as long as whites see their scores drop more, and come in line with blacks. That's equity.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Tight-knit communities are built around something, and that something is almost always the church. In tight-knit communities you do not yield the state's power against your neighbour. Even if courts exist, there's a police force, you'll almost always create bad blood by invoking the state's power in your disputes. And the police, prosecutors, judges, and juries, will all be members of the tight-knit community.
If you believe neighbour wrongs you, you'd go to your priest for help, or other neighbours. Part of being a tight-knit community is that social consequences can be enough to affect a resolution, and one that is moral/just, rather than one that is technically legal.
When you go to the police, you're basically going above the community. If the legal consequences for something are worse than what your community will tolerate, then it's likely the police will try to dissuade you, the prosecutor will decline to bring charges, the judge will give the defendant every benefit of the doubt, etc. Because they are all part of the same community.
But an outsider isn't going to be influenced much by social pressures, and so using the force of the state is seen as acceptable.
If you look at Hasidic Jewish communities, they often have their own police, 'courts', their own schools, etc. They aren't willing to use the state's violence against each other. If they were, they wouldn't be tight-knit communities. Many native reserves are also like this.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
In better films, Hartnett's character would have a proper character arc, where he's an arrogant and selfish Hollywood star that only cares about himself and his wellbeing, to the end of the film where he becomes a true member of the team and asks when the next mission is.
Or played it like he's super eager to be a spy, which leads to the comedy, and Statham plays the straight man.
I haven't seen the film (and don't plan to), but I wonder if it'd have been better if they made Aubrey Plaza the Hollywood star, have her eager to be part of the spy thing, she's over-the-top with being sexual/seductive, and then it allows her juvenile humour to shine.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Yeah, he carried that film. That's around when Melissa McCarthy had gone full Chris Farley, relying far too much on physical humour and stupidity.
Other options;
purchase a gun and a bullet
purchase a small tank of helium from Walmart or Amazon
try and meet a serial killer online
More options
Context Copy link