anti_dan
13hr ago
Idiots aren't useful as soldiers in modern warefare. Has been so since at least WWI, but probably even going back to 1776 you mostly could not have low-intelligence soldiers. The risk of them being near firearms or explosives simply outweighs any physical benefit of them carrying stuff around for you.
anti_dan
13hr ago
In law school I asked, "what about shoes?" The professors liked it I suppose.
anti_dan
13hr ago
Pragmatically the law has never been blind. The criminal justice system has always judged poor dumb kids differently than rich smart kids. The same crime committed by an urban youth versus a Kennedy kid has never been punished the same way. A big reason for this is the court had a reasonable expectations that the Kennedy’s had the resources to deal with the behavior internally and society didn’t need to spend resources to make sure the crime didn’t happen again.
Perhaps historically true, but in modern times it is horribly false. At the outset, modern poor urban youth are now much more lightly policed than suburbanites. Drinking or smoking weed in public is just not payed attention to by urban police forces, same with minor property crime. So they are simply not being arrested for misdemeanors that the suburban kids would be. And as a result they also aren't picking up possessory felony charges for drugs or guns. Then at the court level the prosecutors offices in urban situations have much larger caseloads so they offer much more favorable plea deals. A felon with a gun in the city might get offered 3 years while in a suburb he would be lucky to get 7. This also means that if there is a trial less resources are dedicated to the prosecution than would be in the burbs. In a suburb, good luck with an officer forgetting court for even a misdemeanor DUI. In cities, officers miss court dates for felony burglary and robbery cases because they are responding to a more serious offense, or maybe had a 24 hour shift and dont feel like it. Finally, the judges in urban areas are nowadays progressives that, even after a trial, err towards imposing a sentence near the mandatory minimums. In the burbs, you are looking at a maximum sentence if you lose a trial.
But the general rule that the law is not perfectly blind is very true. The other day a cop was murdered by someone who was released by a judge for Armed Hijacking a few days before that. You know not a single judge was releasing someone who did a gun crime THAT day.
anti_dan
1d ago
Yo maybe those were load bearing norms, maybe we shouldn't have started removing struts to save weight,
Be specific. What norms, dismantled by who and when?
anti_dan
2d ago
That's two out of three Trump assassins who were oddly fixated on Ukraine.
The idea that Trump is Putin's puppet is the longest running and most heavily invested into psyop the left has been conducting about Trump. It literally started in 2015, now over a decade ago. That Trump is betraying Ukraine is just the modern iteration of that joint media-IC operation, so it is a manifestation of a lot of work.
anti_dan
2d ago
Yeah. Most people are bad at aiming and shooting firearms at distance. Double that with the actual adrenaline from doing an assassination, most people are going to miss. The Charlie Kirk thing was an aberration. Also, Charlie Kirk didn't have SS level security.
anti_dan
2d ago
Some people have long guns in their car almost all the time. But they dont have much interaction with the criminal elements we are currently discussing. And you sure as hell don't want to be caught by one of them breaking into said truck.
anti_dan
3d ago
A handgun is a very convenient tool for the casual homicide. You don't have to be smart to use it, and it is a minimal inconvenience to carry it around while you go about your daily business until one day, you decide that someone needs to die (or be stopped from whatever he is doing) and can enact your decision within a few seconds.
Very true. When you work in the criminal justice system you will often have a sort of yo-yo on your positions on gun control as you see more and more gun crime. Initially you will see something like an armed robbery gone wrong and think gun control sounds pretty good. The fact is that most criminals do not have grand criminal plans, everything is basically a crime of opportunity, and disarming people in those situations would be a social good.
But then you realize those people just get guns anyways. Even after they are convicted felons. And you realize the only people who ever actually face consequences for violating gun laws are 45 year old tow truck drivers who use a revolver to stop a 20 year old punk from attacking him because he's towing the car the punk parked in a tow zone.
anti_dan
3d ago
This is pretty much the logical end result of feminism and the progressive left's social project, so I don't see why you find it surprising or refreshing to see it written out.
anti_dan
4d ago
Black culture, despite the bad parts, has some really lovely vitality and openess and warmth that a lot of more standardized western culture lacks.
Huh? Like what? Rap? Scam culture? So confused by this comment.
anti_dan
4d ago
I think Jim Crow is worse than DEI actually
On the books, its possible, in practice DEI actually held back far more people with potential.
anti_dan
4d ago
I find the trend of these markets siccing law enforcement on anyone who beats them to be pretty disgusting and we should probably pull their license regardless of any real cheating happening.
anti_dan
6d ago
Of course, Donald Trump has made an excellent case for reducing our dependency on fossil fuel which is entirely orthogonal to climate change. Yes, sure, most alternative forms of mobility also depend on global supply chains, e.g. for lithium batteries. I would claim that this is a higher order effect, though. If the price of oil explodes, an ICE car is just a dwelling which is too small for comfort. An electric car will still work for years before the lack of replacement batteries would immobilize it.
Only if the power is on, and in most of Europe that still requires Russian gas. Renewables aren't up to the task, and may not be for several more decades (if ever).
anti_dan
6d ago
Withholding support from Israel doesn't mitigate the problem that they have a bunch of hostiles in land adjacent to them that use children as human shields, both literally and nutritionally.
anti_dan
7d ago
Americans can’t affect humans rights abuses in Iran, Belarus, or Sudan
This seems like the opposite of correct. You could almost certainly stop human rights abuses in Belarus and Sudan with decent sized cash payments (totally not bribes). There is a plausible military path to regime change in Iran wherein a non-human rights violating government comes to power.
The only plausible path to ending human rights abuses in Palestine is by doing one big, quick, human rights abuse and shoving them all into boats and dropping them off somewhere they are not near lots of Jews. Madagascar has been floated elsewhere in this thread in other contexts. Works well for this plan.
anti_dan
7d ago
Yeah I blame Israel for attacking Iran and starting this war. The Hormuz blockade was an entirely foreseeable consequence of that.
Only if you think the Iranians have no agency.
anti_dan
8d ago
Appeals inherently dull the intended effects of deterrence and the lack of ability for a prisoner exchange.
If due process is what the objection is, well, maybe thats true. Or maybe modern due process is actually an affront to victims rights.
anti_dan
8d ago
Antisemitism is a result of massive, society-wide misinformation perpetuated by the press, universities, and social media. This is the “wall of dead children” model. Israel’s actions don’t really matter because they will be twisted and misrepresented anyways. The solution is to exert more control over the information environment.
I mean, I suppose I fall into this camp.
When I look at Israel's actions during the relevant time periods where support for the state has gone down, I simply think they couldn't have done anything different, or at least substantially different. Because of the way Hamas and Hezbollah operate, every square foot of an area they occupy ends up being a legitimate military target. This is, of course, famously schools, hospitals, mosques, etc. If you want to disable Hamas soldier and rockets, you basically have no choice but to bomb targets in those categories. This will then create the "wall of dead children" as you put it. IMO responsible reporting would ignore said dead children, or, if they did report, emphasize strenuously that the children were killed by Hamas's actions.
That said this isn't unique to Israel. The same tactics are deployed by American press against America all the time. The press, as a rule, does not like competency and patriotism, and the mix of competency with patriotism is particularly offensive to them. Well, Israel is both so they will be hated by the press.
Does antisemitism help drop Israel below the floor that the press can drive America to? Yes. But the press's vitriol for a winner is even more important.
anti_dan
9d ago
In practice, third parties affected by either blockade will judge it in their interests not to start a war over it.
This is, also, why in practice the JCPOA was folly.
anti_dan
9d ago
I've yet to see any rigorous studies showing that transition is helpful in reducing objective measurements like suicide, criminality, etc .
In any case the happiness of the trans is orthogonal to whether they are delusional, and the appropriate measures society takes to limiting the delusional population from committing acts of violence.
After 9/11 airport security was significantly tightened, train security was not. 13 year old me was utterly confused why we weren't facing dozens of train derailments a day because it seemed so easy, destructive, and effective.
Turned out the terrorists aren't interested in those things, they just want flashy. Trains arent flashy so apparently they are safe. Old: Security through obscurity. New: Security through boring.
More options
Context Copy link