It’s suicides. Almost 60% of gun deaths are suicides.

Gun deaths reached their last peak in the US around 1975. At that time the rate between homicide and suicide was about 50/50. So it’s not like suicides were very low with guns, guns are probably the most quick and effective way to kill yourself and if you want to be dead, using a gun is the gold standard. Still, from 50% to 60% is a very significant change. It’s also important to note, there is more variability in gun homicide than there is in suicide (though there is still a little bit of a positive correlation), so in times of low violent crime the disparity grows.

First, no he did not. He released information relating to government officials engaging in misconduct. Hillary Clinton had been a government official for a long time, Trump had not. Of course youre more likely to get that kind of information on her and not him.

But even if he had, having a political allegiance is not a crime punishable by prison as far as I know.

Nope. I have fast internet and good displays and I still prefer 720p video. I just don’t see the benefit of multiplying the filesize by 4 to see marginally more detail. Even 4k, if I wanted to have a 4k display, I’ve seen people’s displays and after the initial disorientation and crispness, the appeal wears off. 720p is perfectly adequate.

Good god the methodology.

If you count abortions as deaths, which the state of Texas would, hence making it illegal, it’s impossible that they went up. But even without that…

If more infants are born, because less abortions are happening of course, some of those are going to die.

Neither of these are particularly noteworthy.

Did deaths as a percentage of births go up? If not, this isn’t news at all.

No matter how you slice it, there’s a gap between how the economy is doing and how Americans feel about it.

Why do they keep insisting that we are the ones that are wrong? The economy isn’t their numbers. The economy is a real thing, proper operation of which ensures well fed people.

The purpose of an economy is to fond optimal distribution of resources for people. Ultimately it’s people that need all the things, right? Either things are materials to produce things for people, or products useful to help other products reach people.

If the people think that’s not working, it isn’t working. They’re not just parroting what they see on the news, they’re living day by day, minute by minute in this environment. They see what day to day life costs for them. They’re wrong but the eggheads tracking the over fitted model are right? When a measure becomes a goal it ceases to be a good measure, that’s where the disconnect is. If you want to fix the economy then quit pretending your metrics are more important than people’s standard of living.

Yup, and I won’t buy a new gas car either.

I’ll tell you why I won’t buy one.

I’m not going to go into debt as much as a house would’ve cost me 20 years ago so I can drive a 10,000 pound explosive that I spend several hours a day charging, be asked to pull over to turn on Bluetooth, have a tracking device in my car, which the government can turn off if they like, have to fumble with a touch screen to turn up the air conditioner, have to pay rent for features built into the car and then have any features I purchased be non transferrable on the secondary market. These are all fuck you’s to me, so I say fuck you to them. Take your vendor lock in SAAS product and shove it up your ass. You want me to give a shit about emissions, fix all that, until then I’m driving a 20 year old beater.

It will hurt US manufacturers, because their budget gasoline cars won’t sell.

I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what the point of this is. I haven’t asked Alex (haven’t talked directly to him in a long time as I have mostly abandoned fedi) but I know he’s the first prominent fedi dev to sort of pivot to nostr (a good sign; too many prominent fedi people are more interested in preserving their fiefdoms than the ultimate goal of all this) and has been building some interoperability stuff.

What I see at first glance is an attempt to slap fedi social model onto nostr? Trying to create a client that gives users a TWKN and local feed of some kind? I don’t know, perhaps someone can clear it up for me.

Anyway, I don’t really see the point, a primary benefit of nostr is the lack of network fragmentation and siloing. There’s some fragmentation that does occur with failures to fetch notes from relays and things, but not the network splitting and banlist passing and siloed networks like you get on fedi. Trying to shoehorn that UX back into nostr kind of misses the point IMO. I like the idea of community creation as a sort of organizational thing for feed curation without direct follows, it helps discoverability, particularly along lines of shared interest, but I don’t really see how the “web ring” like follow structure doesn’t achieve that already without the downside of building silos. A global feed, I see no point of that at all.

So you’re not a fan of national self determination then?

Pretty often. Most of the newer stuff I like to listen to is on there.

Yup, same. I haven’t pirated software in a decade or so. I’m not much of a gamer, and the software I do use is almost all FOSS.

Books, eh. I’ll buy an epub or PDF that I can download. I’m not “buying” something that can disappear from my library after license agreements change between corpos. I don’t want paper, too heavy and voluminous.

I will buy an artist’s music on bandcamp if available if it’s something that’s going to enrich my life for years to come.

Next up: all web pages are full resolution bitmap files.

Quotes from in the article:

They don’t like our decisions, and they don’t like how they anticipate we may decide some cases that are coming up. That’s the beginning of the end of it

There are groups that are very well-funded by ideological groups that have spearheaded these attacks. That’s what it is.

So I was responding to the parent statement, he said when there’s disinformation democracy doesn’t work. Well in order to avoid disinformation, you need strong control of information flow. That sounds a lot like a dictatorship. The people you vote for control what you know about them, that’s not democracy. So if democracy doesn’t work because people lie, and democracy doesn’t work if information is controlled, then democracy doesn’t work, right? Interestingly, he confirmed lower in the thread that he does not believe in democracy.

I’m with you, all news is controlled propaganda. I don’t follow any of it as a result. It is sad, but all we can do is try to live in the world we are in. I don’t let it get me depressed, I just carry on.

That’s probably why it doesn’t work. Should try more motivated conversion therapists for better results.

The republicans and Democrats were all basically pro gun control until about the late 2000s, and particularly so in the 80s and 90s.To give you a prominent example, Texas was a “may issue” state in 1995. That means that you had to have a permit to carry, and the state didn’t have to give you one and could refuse you for no reason at all. Practically speaking, only cops and security got issued permits. Even Puerto Rico has more lax gun control than Texas did 30 years ago, and even a few years ago at their peak, they were may issue and you needed a reason to request one, marginally worse than Texas in 1995.

Now gun control is dead in America, but not because politicians saw the error in their ways. To remain relevant they have to pander, and america by and large abandoned gun control.

I can think of 3 reasons why the journalists are interested in this.

1. its saucy.

2. Hunter Biden potentially learned how to be a man and inherited his character from his father

3. the business dealings thing, they’re investigating whether Joe Biden peddled his influence as senator and VP to benefit his kids financially, that he used his family as proxy for his own dishonest dealings using his position of power, or something like that.

For those 3 reasons I don’t think this story is going to go away Amy time soon.

I don’t know why you’re getting down voted. This is more than a shower thought, understanding this and exploring the ramifications of it will change your life. I’m serious.

Albedo, black body radiation, energy gradients, inverse square law. Learn about that stuff.

On the rock there’s a thin layer of slime that changes the albedo of the rock. It redshifts the light that emanates from it just a little bit. But that little red shift, that light that radiates in a slightly higher entropy state, that difference accounts for the entire biosphere, and all the attendant beauty that comes along with that. You love your mother with that energy.

It makes me wonder, are we really separate from the sun?