Hardy seems worth reiterating as it’s always in the news, but the US seems like it’s in overall decline for most any reason you can think of. Rising disparity, falling buying power for the average person, stagnant wages, increasing costs, rising political instability, rise of the far right with literal calls for civil war, rise of the far right looking to tear down any social, environmental, educational, or scientific advancements, the steady march towards oligarchy and corporatocracy, and then there’s the global climate crisis speeding up and the realization that we’ve been lied to about saving the world with recycling and EVs while the corporations rake in billions and pollute remorselessly.
30-40 years ago the economy looked steady, you could save the world by filling the recycle bin, and you could afford an education, home, and maybe retirement if you followed the “go to college and get a good job” path that generations before had followed.
Subjectively and objectively I’d say we’re worse off.
Sure, there’s some potential bright spots. Advances in medical care (that you probably can’t afford), fusion power advances (that will probably arrive too late to do any good), rising renewable energy (fought every step of the way by anti-environmental types), and a resurgence in the labor movement (also fought every step of the way by the wealthy and corporations), at least that’s something.
USA. Still kickin. 30-40 years ago actually puts us right astride the end of the Cold War. Before that we were still terrified of the world ending in nuclear fireballs or rampaging hordes of raving communists zerg rushing through the Fulda Gap, after that we fell into a period of extremely hopeful and naive feelings (the 90s) where things seemed to be going very well, that lasted about 10 years. Then the divisive 2000 election and 9/11 occured, dashing that feeling for the next few decades.
I’d put our current state on par with that state of Cold War opposition, when things were still frightening.
Prospects are about as expected. We’re winning some and we’re losing some. We’re pinning most of our hopes on our ability to innovate at the technical level to figure out a way out of this climate mess, now, since we’ve run out of alternatives basically.
On the whole I am cautiously optimistic. Depends what happens to Trump, he’s a powerful symbol.
Ok, I’m not saying you need to agree with the principle, but the grammar clearly states that the citizens get guns because the government has a military (which is the well-regulated militia).
Again, not starting a debate on if that’s good or bad, just grammar.
No, the “well-regulated militia” actually referred to a desire to have all able-bodied men of military age to commonly have most of the skills needed to fight in a war in case of a draft, such as marksmanship and survival skills, as well as already owning most of the necessary equipment.
What’s important to note is that the US had a very small standing military for most of its history. It relied on being able to conscript a large number of recruits whenever a war started, and sent them home whenever the war was over. This requires a lot of the citizenry to already know most of the skills they’d need to raise an army quickly.
A “well regulated militia” had a different meaning back then. Also, there’s a comma in the middle of the amendment that means the first phrase is only a clarification. The second clause stands on its own.
I just attended a lecture about this specific comma today. It was there as a rhetorical pause, not to separate clauses. A great example of how ambiguity in punctuation can cause thousands of deaths.
Textualism and originalism
A group of linguistics scholars describe developments in the field of corpus linguistics, which did not exist when District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago were decided, that have allowed for a new understanding of the language used in the Second Amendment. Researchers in American and English history have digitally compiled thousands of Founding-era texts, making it possible, for the first time, to search and examine specific terms and usage from the period. The resulting evidence demonstrates that “keep and bear arms” had a “collective, militaristic meaning” in the late 18th century. The scholars write that, consistent with that meaning, Founding-era voters would have understood the right to be subject to regulation.
The resulting evidence demonstrates that “keep and bear arms” had a “collective, militaristic meaning” in the late 18th century.
And what is this even supposed to mean in a way that would contradict the originalist viewpoint? The definition of “militia” in the period is already understood to mean all able-bodied men that are suitable for military conscription. And by extension, a “well-regulated” meant said militia having proper equipment and knowledge of how to use said equipment. Quoting this changes nothing.
Also a side note: you should look at some of the arguments above the one you quoted in this link. There were 2 based on the State of New York discriminating against people, particularly racial minorities and LGBTQ individuals, which have the most need for the ability to defend themselves
Violence against an oppressor is always justified. Why does your gov support the oppressor? Because they’re an oppressor themselves and need to support the narrative of being an oppressor being fine, so they don’t get revolted against.
Once the source of the hangover headache was located, the researchers then set about figuring out how to get rid of the pesky things, using known headache blockers. Turns out the combination of caffeine and over-the-counter inflammatory drugs (i.e., NSAIDs – things like aspirin and ibuprofen) were best at blocking the head-pounding effects of the acetate.
I don’t know if anyone else has mentioned it yet but next time take the ibuprofen before going to bed (while still intoxicated). My friends and I always set out an ibuprofen next to the bed before drinking to remember. You’ll feel 10x better in the morning.
I try to avoid ibuprofen or Tylenol as they’re hard on the liver and kidneys which are already working overtime to flush the alcohol out of your system.
It’s just people saying it wrong, like “bone apple tea” instead of " bon appetit". It’s supposed to be “I couldn’t care less”. But I mean come on, these are the same people who searched for “Michael Jackson Billy’s Jeans” so often on YouTube that it became a recommended search term. Lol.
Jpg is really bad for anything with sharp lines, such as text. It also doesn’t support alpha channel (transparency) which is reasonably important in modern web design.
PNG is loseless, which is great for… anything other than storage/bandwidth due to file size. There’s even an animated PNG standard, similar to animated GIF, but you never see that used anywhere.
Jpg is lossy and throws away information every time it is used, that’s why you get the “deep fried effect” when you re-encode something repeatedly. PNG is lossless so it’s a perfect replica of whatever image you encode with it. It does take up more space however.
Minor niggle: the ‘deep fried effect’ isn’t because jpg throws away information every time, it’s because the compression algorithm averages pixel boundaries, and that averaging multiplies with each compression pass.
It can actually bloat the size of the file by adding information – adding data to previously null pixels, whereas png would keep them clean.
e: it achieves this through pixel averaging (fuzzing), which is why you’ll see grey artefacts bleeding into the pixels around line art. This is magnified with each compression.
Repeated re-encoding loses information. “The compression algorithm averages pixel boundaries” is a perfect example of losing information.
That it sometimes results in more bits of data is a separate phenomenon altogether.
There’s a distinct line between social/sense deprivation torture and simple inner reflection or meditation. Just saying. It’s maybe for every individual different, but there definitely is.
There’s an episode of the Good Place where they discuss this exact thing (well, replace “immoral” with “romantic”, but still), and I’m pretty sure the motivations are the same. They don’t actually believe in determinism as much as they claim, but they don’t want to be responsible for their actions and determinism is a good excuse they can use. You can’t use logic to get them out of this belief, because it wasn’t logic that made them believe it to begin with.
No one will pay, there is no reconstruction on planning, that is an eternal war there will be never a winner and there is no sense to build on an battlefield.
Orgy of the Dead starts off like it’s going to be your standard weird bad Ed Wood horror movie. We get to meet Criswell, who you might recognize as inspiration for a character in Fright Night among others. There’s also an Elvira type character before Elvira did it better. But then suddenly it’s just a topless woman go-go dancing in a fake graveyard. The whole thing suddenly feels like an softcore porn parody of a Gilligan’s Island episode. The scene ends, and you might think “Gee, maybe they’ll move on to a different location or move the plot along somehow?” Nope, you get a short narration scene and then the next woman comes out with a slightly different costume and dance, still topless though. That scene ends and you think “Well they can’t possibly do that again, so maybe now the ‘plot’ will move along.” Nope! More narration, and another topless dancing woman. By the third girl I was bored. But it was funny again with the fourth. With the fifth woman, I gritted my teeth and thought, “When will this end?” But, by the seventh dancing topless woman it was hilarious. Each one of these dancing girls was almost identical, just slightly different slutty costumes and music. At some point they introduce a Zombie and a Wolf man character to leer at the women along with jerk boyfriend and scared girl tied to a post. After it was clear that the ninth topless dancing girl was the last, I felt immense relief and raised a glass to that mad genius Criswell. Those 92 minutes felt like days. This is not a movie to watch sober and alone during the day.
When widespread violence is already in play, then the use of widespread violence in opposition is justified. It’s not always the right move, though.
Edit to add that, looking at history, those advocating for large-scale violence in pursuit of a righteous cause are typically more interested in the violence than the cause.
Not so much an answer to your question, but I want to push back on the idea that Hamas are in any way about defending the rights of ordinary Palestinians. They are a genocidal hate group who use other Palestinians as pawns in their terrorist atrocities. Think whatever you want about Israel and support whatever solution to the situation you like (unless it’s genocide - don’t support that), but don’t think that Hamas are in any way the good guys.
If in doubt, just remember - the good guys never murder babies. Hannah are not freedom fighters, they are evil.
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