AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
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User ID: 2498
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
17d ago
gorilla warfare
Now I'm imagining armies of trained tactical ape commandos.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
17d ago
Well, no, I haven't, because it would never occur to me to propose such a non-starter of an idea, but I welcome the input of our pro-lifers here as to whether they would regard this as something they would buy into. It sounds like taking the old pro-choice line "If you're against abortion, don't have one, simple" literally.
Anti-abortion and pro-gun control here; would happily sign on to both banning abortion and banning guns for the half of the population that wants those respective bans more (assuming broader restrictions were not already in place). It's a classic "half a loaf". Take what you can get.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
17d ago
I don't think so. It's certainly possible to use a bolt action rifle in a crime, but observationally it doesn't happen often.
Now you can argue that's because for any particular place either better options are available (USA) or all kinds of guns are unavailable (other countries), but I don't think that second part is true. Countries with gun control mostly don't have literal bans, but still allow these types of guns with licenses and storage regulations and so forth.
I'm pretty skeptical of the power of these sorts of regulatory hurdles - once people can get guns they can then be stolen or sold under the table or whatever. So I'm led to believe that the low prevalence of rifles in crime is because they're not really well suited for it.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
17d ago
Kind of wild that you're bringing up the Wakeley church stabbing to argue against gun control. Think about how that event plays out if the attacker has an AR-15. Instead 0 people died. That one is a win for the NFA.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
17d ago
I lean against, but don't have strong opinions. Basically if I could be convinced one way or another what the likelihood is they would be used in a significant amount of crime, that would swing me.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
17d ago
I'm not sure I understand the point you're making. Is your argument that since it's mostly blacks being murdered, gun violence is no big deal or...?
AshLael
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18d ago
For the same reason - there is a large pro-gun constituency in America, and those people have political power and influence in a democratic system. There are many levers of power in America, and many of them are within the grasp of the pro-gun faction.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
18d ago
Personally my preferred gun regulation model is banned handguns and semi-autos, combined with unregulated ownership of bolt/lever action long guns.
AshLael
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18d ago
I don't think this is true. There is a large pro-gun constituency in the US that does not exist in other countries. Maybe in several generations time that would change, but I would struggle to imagine eg Texas passing a full ban in the forseeable future even if it was allowed to.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
18d ago
It's important to judge policies by how well they work, not how good they sound.
Fortunately there are many countries with various forms of gun control that we can look at to see how they're doing.
AshLael
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19d ago
Australia has a backdoor pathway that is effectively this - essentially, you can get a student visa to study at one of our universities, and if you graduate with a useful degree like medicine or engineering you can get permanent residency. Of course, university fees are much higher for foreign students and this is a major revenue stream for them.
I don't have stats on hand but I think this is how the largest slice of our immigrants get in. So basically if you can scrounge up the money to pay for an Australian degree and are smart/conscientious enough to actually complete it, you're in.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
19d ago
Yeah, pretty much the only policy as universally unpopular among economists as price controls is protectionist tariffs.
AshLael
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22d ago
I liked the idea of exploring a world where fertility was much more rare and the way that changed society. The central concept of the fertile women becoming "handmaids" that were highly valued for their ability to bear children was genuinely interesting. But the women were treated so brutally that it kept taking me out of it - even if you're treating these women like livestock, you would still treat them like valuable livestock. I also would have liked to see the ideology and values of Gilead treated more seriously rather than as a fake veneer that no one actually believed in.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
22d ago
I grew up on a farm so I always had a pretty grounded attitude to life and death. It didn't affect me a huge amount. That said, no matter how jaded you are something will get to you eventually.
There's two events that still make me cry whenever I remember them. Both of them involved dead babies. The first one was a large Catholic family. They had seven boys and then finally had a little girl with their eighth child. She had health problems and survived for a while after birth but ultimately didn't make it. At the funeral her older brothers each went up and talked a bit about how much they loved their little sister and would miss her, etc. All very sad, all of them young men trying manfully to hold themselves together.
It got down to the fourth brother in line who was around 13 I think. And he gets up there and he tries to offer some words for his baby sister and he just can't. He can't speak at all, he's trying so hard not to cry but every time he tries to say something he just breaks down. And I've been in all sorts of awful tragic situations and it didn't bother me, but somehow just watching that kid trying to speak and failing cut right into me and I've never really been able to recover from it.
The other time that really got to me was the day I burned ten babies.
The first 9, I was ok. It's confronting the first time you see one of those little shoebox sized coffins, but you get used to it like you get used to anything. And so I put them in the oven one after the other, box after box, and just didn't really think about the enormous tragedy that each one represented.
Then number ten comes down. It's the last funeral of the day, the last cremation to be done before I go home to my own baby (yes I was married with a kid at this stage). But before I took him to the oven the funeral director came to me with a little toy car. He tells me the parents asked if I could put it in the coffin with him. Of course I can.
So I remove the lid. And I see him. And he's such a cute little boy. He's a stillbirth - I'm not exactly sure how far along, but he's pretty much fully developed except his ears aren't separated from his head yet. And of course he's tiny, would have fit in my hand. And for some reason the unfairness of it all just hits me in that moment. This little kid lying in front of me who's died before he even had a chance to live. He deserved so much better than that.
But there's nothing I can do. I tuck the little car in next to him, I close the lid, I apologize to him through my tears, and I put him in the fire. I hope there's some justice for him in the next life because there's sure as hell none here.
I go home to my family. I get over it. I sleep fine. And then the next day I go back in to work and the first thing I have to do is rake his ashes out of the furnace. And I'm doing that and putting them into a little porcelain urn to give to his parents, and I find something in the ashes. It's a little button from his little onesie. And it just sets me off again.
So there's those events that still affect me on an emotional level. In terms of my outlook on the world though I would say that it's given a more visceral understanding of things that I already knew but didn't really feel. I knew suicide was awful and tragically common. But now I know in my gut how terrible and how frequent it is. I've seen the kids whose dad hung himself in front of them. How is a family supposed to go on after something like that?
Same with car accidents. They happen all the time and they barely make news. But I know exactly what it looks like and what those statistics mean. The woman with the destroyed legs who bled out on the side of the road. The dad who picked up his two girls for the weekend and got T-boned. The grandfather with his chest caved in on Christmas day. Self driving cars can't come fast enough.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
22d ago
Yeah, there's a lot of family connection in the funeral industry. Even among the ones that aren't directly family-owned, a lot of the workers tend to be related. There was a while where myself, my two sisters, my wife, my brother, my brother-in-law, and my mum were all working for the same funeral business.
There was uncertainty (both in Germany and in Britain) over what Britain would do - the Kaiser famously said "I have the word of a king, and that is good enough for me", while others were less optimistic.
Britain could not dictate terms because Britain itself was not clear on what its terms were. Ultimately pro-war voices were able to use the invasion of Belgium, an entirely uninvolved party that just happened to be in the way, to galvanise Britain into declaring against Germany. But it was far from clear before the fact that this was how things would play out.
I also am sceptical that Britain could have deterred Germany anyway - I think the Germans considered themselves to be in a "fight or die" situation, and they would have fought regardless of the odds against them. The party that I think was the critical decision maker is Russia, in the sense that they chose to fight and could realistically have chosen otherwise, and that would have prevented the war from becoming a much bigger deal than Austria v Serbia. But a stronger Britain doesn't prevent Russia from getting involved.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
23d ago
I don't see how you figure this? The Kaiser was convinced Britain would stay neutral in WW1. What does it change if he expects Britain + America to stay neutral?
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
23d ago
I know right? I was just thinking the other day, man it really sucks having a secure border, a quarter of the crime, half the national debt, policy set by elected officials instead of unelected judges, clean cities, etc, etc.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
23d ago
No, the magic chair does matter. It creates a coordination point.
If you've got an army with the numbers to go and storm the opposing trench you still need a way to get them to all charge at once. If one goes on his own he gets shot to bits. Seizing control of the leadership can potentially give you that - you still need soldiers willing to obey your orders, but you can gain the authority needed to make them believe that everyone else is going to obey them too.
There's many examples of dictators who took power by exploiting legitimate processes before running roughshod over the law once in power - including the archetypal evil dictator Hitler himself. If Hitler loses the 1932/1933 elections - even with no reduction in real support, say because Germany had had a different electoral system - he doesn't pass the Enabling Act and he never becomes Fuhrer.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
23d ago
I don't know if the book is better, but the show is awful. It just beats you over the head again and again about how evil this society is and doesn't ever really do much else. Which is a shame because there's the building blocks of a compelling alternate reality in there.
A more measured version that a) has an actual story rather than the main character just glowering at the camera like she's about to go and do something (but never does) and b) prioritizes making Gilead believable over making it horrifying could have been really interesting.
Instead we get nonsense like the "her fault" chant.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
23d ago
The replies to that tweet are full of gay pics, seems to work fine.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
23d ago
Haha there are still limits. No Muhammad pictures: https://x.com/texsurfin/status/1823597288033329528
Yeah I agree. The judge read the law right, it's what the law says that is the problem.
Queensland is headed for a landslide LNP win soon, it'll be interesting to see if the new parliament is game to change this. I think probably yes - both sides of politics seem to agree that trans issues are working for the right currently (with Labor trying to downplay them), and QLD doesn't have an upper house to get in the way.
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