busdriver
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Posts posted by busdriver
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30 minutes ago, Prozac said:
So the next time an earthquake hits this country we should say “that’s life”? That the nation cannot afford the relief effort and that growing the economy is more important than helping the people affected? How is the natural disaster we’re currently experiencing any different?
"rationally mitigate to avoid overloading the medical system while allowing the economy to continue" You skipped the rest of the post.
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9 hours ago, brawnie said:
And if the disease still got to you with restrictions (probably via asymptomatic transmission), how can we reasonably ask for those at risk to avoid infection? They still have to get food, go to the doctor, fix their homes, interact with those that care for them. Unfortunately, there is no such thing anymore as a self-sufficient man; everyone is very interconnected.
This is called life. There is no omnipotent power that can protect everyone from nature. Yes that's a heartless answer. We've nerfed the world so effectively that when something like this comes along, we're flabbergasted that there isn't an answer if only our leaders would "be bold."
More rationally: Society's ability to support the weaker members is contingent on being strong as a whole. Shooting ourselves in the foot economically negatively impacts our ability to do that. When small businesses fail because they can't pay their bills, those jobs go away, which means there is no job for that at risk person once nature has run its course. Unless of course everyone wants to work for Amazon and our future overlord The Bezos.
Individual rights aside there were really only two rational courses of action (one of which is long since no longer available) the first is to lock down hard and starve the virus of hosts and let it burn out. The second is to rationally mitigate to avoid overloading the medical system while allowing the economy to continue. This in between thing that is happening now is political grandstanding.
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Every single data set surrounding COVID has garbage in it. I would bet large sums of money that the death count is the least noisy.
That said, it's not a super useful piece of info unless you do something with it. Unless of course your entire goal is to scream about the really really big number and peddle fear for advertising dollars and political gain.
Here's the part that a lot of people don't seem to grasp: it doesn't have to be super deadly to kill a shit load of people, it just has to infect a lot. If the regular old flu infected 50% of the population, that's over 220K dead in the US.
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15 hours ago, Homestar said:
Strikes me as an opportunity to kill someone and get away with it.
1 hour ago, Homestar said:delusions of grandeur and doesn’t understand the consequences
So you do or don't understand the difference between these two statements?
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18 minutes ago, Breckey said:
Getting away from the protests for a bit, the House will vote on a bill to remove marijuana from the list of controlled substances and leave it up to the states to determine legalization.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/514237-house-to-vote-on-a-bill-to-remove-cannabis-from-list-of-controlled-substances
Discuss.It's a start
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6 minutes ago, slackline said:
Dude, normally I agree with everything you say, but this is a stretch. I think I know you’re not being 100% serious, but still. Comparing a 17 yr old KID who, allegedly, crossed state lines with a weapon, where he clearly wasn’t needed or recruited, to an active duty member of the military, who is clearly needed and was recruited is nowhere close to on point.
That point is one that is actually made by anti-war activists in this country. And yes, it was intended to be inflammatory. Assuming sociopathic motivation of someone's actions based on conjecture is preposterous.
Anyone can do 30 seconds of googling to find a video of someone interviewing the kid before all the shit happened. He seems like a kid with naive wet dreams of being a patriot, and spends too much time with gun nuts that have only an academic and fantastical understanding of violence. The types that masturbate over Grossman's books and talks about colors of awareness and crap like that. None of that makes him a cat killing psychopath that wanted to kill people and get away with it.
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29 minutes ago, Homestar said:
Seems to me that this kid traveled to WI in order to get into a fight he could win with his gun. Strikes me as an opportunity to kill someone and get away with it.
Seems to me you joined the military because you're a sociopath that knows you'd be able to kill people and get away with it.
Kind of a basket of baseless assumptions, no?
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1 hour ago, Breckey said:
At what point is somebody being disarmed for firing shots become self-defense on the part of the shooter?
Honest question because everything out of this right now is clouded in the fog of crafted narratives to fit whatever agenda is being put forward.
The same event may seem to protesters like an attempt to disarm and prevent an active shooter situation while also seeming like self defense to prevent a mob attack.Violence is messy. Always has been, always will be. This is why the state having the monopoly on the legitimate use of it is so important to maintaining modern society. Rioting is a bad idea, vigilantism is a bad idea. People flabbergasted that this is possible in America is amazingly naive.
If you're seriously curious about self defense law, read: "The Law of Self Defense" by Andrew Branca
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Early in the video the Col talks about auto GCAS. I suspect they're not thinking about making HAL right now, rather the thought process is more like the auto aiming setting in Halo.
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This mail in voting shenanigans is hilarious. It's both party's overblown fears (voter suppression + voter fraud) rolled up into one shit-show of stupid.
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Not sure if it's still a requirement, but years ago the teams would run a different steering rack for Monaco. The normal one didn't have enough angle to make some of the turns.
Some of the best video of that track is old school Senna qualifying.
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You're not alone, no one could rationally explain that position.I cannot explain the why, but motorcycle racing has no draw for me despite the time I will take to watch F1.-
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4 hours ago, brickhistory said:
Reasonably interesting race today.
You should be watching MotoGP instead. Today's race was incredible.
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35 minutes ago, nsplayr said:
I don’t like standing behind podiums slinging insults for audience cheers.
That model has infected all of our politics. I feel like they all took a lesson from Ashton Kutcher's character in "That 70's Show" and the ultimate political brownie point is a "sick burn."
We live in the dumbest of times.
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A look at minimum wages at a national level is a bit clumsy. It assumes that nation wide, all low wage job markets exist in a monopsony. I'm not really sure why locality based minimum wage is bad and a federal floor needs to be set.
That said, part of me would be okay with a minimum wage hike of something reasonable ($15 would works out to $30k/yr, which is higher than Germany) and pegged to some sort of CPI. Mainly so I don't have to listen to this shit anymore.
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People follow the law for three reasons:
1. They believe the law is just
2. The are afraid of getting caught
3. It's just not worth it to fight back (minor nuisance)
At the end of the day, the state only has force as a tool to enforce laws. If you aren't comfortable enforcing a law at gun point, it probably shouldn't be a law. All the stupid laws only work when everyone agrees that they're good and just. That requires a common culture of shared values.
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19 hours ago, nsplayr said:
I mean...that's being extremely generous based on the types of activities they do. I mean some of the Proud Boys chanted, "Jews will not replace us!" in Charlottesville so 🤷♂️ Not the type of dudes I'm gonna give the benefit of the doubt to in the vein of, "Oh, we're reformed, etc. etc." after all the shit press from that event.
I didn't mean to imply they're wholesome, good dudes. McInnes bailed partly because his joke got out of control, too many assholes were tagging along, and he got swept up into the mob mentality.
I was thinking more along the lines of the original motorcycle clubs, before they went full on organized crime.
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Proud Boys (white nationalists) .
You happen to see a picture of the dude who took over "leadership" of that group after McGuiness bailed?
The corporate press seems to have a complete inability to understand internet culture. My guess is they have to smash everything into the boxes that define their world view. And that's how you get a "white nationalist" organization with an Hispanic leader
Old school men's club type gang is probably more accurate. -
We've attempted to attack the supply side of the drug problem for decades. It has had zero effect. Heroine used to be the drug of trainspotting and 90's bands, now it's suburban.
Pfizer doesn't murder it's competitors for trade violations, they go to court.
If we took a fraction of the money spent on the "war on drugs" and put it towards treatment, the country would be far better off.
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There is a ton of people advocating for something not F-35. Beyond that, no consensus.
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Why does the healthcare discussion always revolve around public vs private funding of the same bill instead of figuring out how to lower the bill?
There is a missing root cause analysis discussion. All we hear are the simple 30s sound bites that conform to the party line.-
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Not woke-ness. Good old fashion partisan politics.
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It does seem like something needs to change, but I'm not so sure a constitutional amendment is what needs to happen. Our politicians are generally gross, and our national politic is so broken I don't really want them touching the constitution. They'd likely make it worse.
At the end of the day, I think the root cause of the problem is the DNC/RNC. Politicians are beholden to national tribal politics, and toeing the line on the national party platform. There used to be a lot of room for argument within the parties; there were conservative democrats and liberal republicans 30 years ago. Kill the power of the DNC/RNC and bring back earmarks to encourage cooperation.
I also tend to think both parties are headed for major change anyway, we're in the midst of a generational power transition.
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5 hours ago, Clark Griswold said:
Americans have been obsessed with race for far longer than 2008, not without cause. The GOP was founded in opposition to the expansion of slavery.
I've been thinking about how this thing might turn out.
The 1960's were similarly tumultuous, and the republic came out the other side better for it.
The Iranian revolution was ostensibly led by both secular leftist and religious thinkers, but fed by large numbers of unemployed men. Obviously the Ayatollah ended up as the leader of record. I'm seeing a lot of similarities with Iran, with respect to varying ideologies within the political parties. I suspect things will get worse before they get better. I think the DNC and RNC as we know them now are finished. I think it's just a matter of time, with my only question being what comes out the other end?
The WOKE Thread (Merged from WTF?)
in Squadron Bar
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Please tell me you're serious, was that an actual thing? Good god that would be awesome.