lax4ever

1) I am certainly not arguing over the idea that professionals tend to be more qualified when it comes to their fields then when it comes to politicians, but I would not be asking an orthopedic specialist for advice that I should be asking a gastroenterologist, because their focus is different. A medical professional's recommendation is typically based on both the average response and does not usually consider a larger picture, especially outside their field of practice. For example, you can stop a lot of things with premise lock-downs (drunk driving included) but you create a whole lot more issues like what we are seeing now. This is an area where someone who is not an expert in a specialized field but has enough understanding in many fields, not all of them related, will be the better decision maker. Not saying that all of our representatives are as such, but that's the idea. Take your advice from many experts in different fields and make a balanced decision (also being willing to acknowledge the possibility that you are wrong).

2) There are a lot of questions still around COVID itself and how it affects the human body that we are still learning. Things like long-COVID, certain attack vectors of the spike protein COVID uses, why COVID affects people the way that it does when it comes to severity of symptoms, etc. All of these are questions that effect how a vaccine should be made. Beyond that, for the vaccine itself I tend to look at questions like was there enough initial testing given the shortened time frame of both knowing the disease and the time to develop the vaccine, questioning the methodology and how the initial trials were handled in the development phases, does the body treat these RNA fragments differently after they have broken up, is producing the spike protein (which has it's own dangers beyond COVID on the body) the best option for protecting against the disease or is there another vector that would prove to be more effective, does the body suffer from having an increased protein development response at the injection site, etc. Even now, we are discovering more effective ways to treat the disease and I would image the next 5 years or so will yield treatments that potentially reveal how the vaccine was a stop-gap measure and that there are likely better ways to treat this disease.

1) I don't believe the considerations are equal because those in the medical profession do not make laws, and should never be empowered to make laws, often because their focus is too narrow (don't get me wrong, politicians are not perfect, but go with me on this one). Making drunk driving illegal was not a decision medical professionals made, it was one made by elected representatives.

2) There is no "one-size-fits-all" solution to anything. Drunk driving doesn't seem like an apt comparison to the vaccination thing because while we know a whole bunch about drunk driving, there are a whole lot of questions around vaccines (and other medical procedures. Beyond that, current medical practices are constantly being challenged and improved. Trying to keep the idea broad, but also not ignore the vaccine elephant in the room), in particular the COVID ones. Some of these are questions that require more research into COVID itself. Some of the questions require more research into the delivery method. Some of them require more research into human biological functions as we understand them. Since these questions remain (and on the same vein there are questions about a vast portion of medical procedures), medical practices (even above and beyond vaccines) should remain in question and as recommendations only.

EDIT: 3) There are portions of our community that seem to think we should just take a medical professional's word without any additional consideration, in particular with vaccines, but even though I think the COVID vaccine has likely helped a large group of people I also think there is a valid argument that the messaging and integrity of those most pushing the vaccine have shown themselves to be very poor, in large part because there was no willingness to acknowledge that they don't know something or that they could possibly be wrong. For example, the vaccine, in it's early days, was touted by many people (Trump, Fauci, Biden, Pfizer and Moderna execs, Walensky, etc.) as the perfect solution. You get the vaccine, you never have to worry about COVID again. You won't get the disease, you won't transmit the disease, you are no longer a danger. But that clearly wasn't the case and we are being shown data that shows that all of these people should have known better. None of them have turned around and said they were wrong. None of them even acknowledged the possibility. That, in and of itself, hits one's integrity and reliability hard.

4) Anything that falls under the umbrella of "science" should be open to challenge and should welcome the challenge. The scientific method demands no less.

>>In her conclusion, “What Vaccination Controversy Can Teach Us about Medicine and Modernity,” Hausman posits that “[e]pistemologically, science does not offer us a lot of help in identifying and explaining the various threads that are woven through vaccination controversy” (p. 220). Instead, Hausman suggests “The answer is science and something else” (p. 219). The something else requires an objective, nuanced understanding of the many belief and cultural systems that contribute to one’s underlying understanding of and approach to illness and health and how to deal with both.

I don't think it is that complicated. I don't think "science" is even the answer. The answer, to me, revolves around people and their actions.

1) An open and up front admission that medical breakthroughs are not typically as definitive as we want them to be.

2) A concerted effort to recognize and validate both the pros and cons of a medical procedure. No medical procedure (even one as simple as taking an OTC painkiller or allergy medication) is risk free. No medical procedure is perfect. If something is being touted as a miracle cure/perfect solution or as demon spit designed to make it easier for the government to control us, more information is clearly needed.

3) Research figureheads and teams being willing to say "We don't know" instead of trying for platitudes and reassurances and unsupported suggestions.

4) If a recommendation is going to be made, make it just that, a recommendation. Do not try and force that recommendation on people and be willing to have that recommendation challenged.

5) Repeat, repeat, repeat. The bread and butter of the scientific method is for ideas to be challenged and verified through repeated quality experimentation and study trying to get the same results. The idea that a single study can prove a concept or process is laughable, and study/experiment authors should by up front on just about everything on their process so that their results can be tested. Be willing to take criticism and never operate under the assumption that your work is the end-all/be-all of a field.

15k deaths a week is 780,000 deaths a year. The Global death rate over the last 70 years has hovered around 50-55 million a year [0], which puts this particular death rate around a 1.5% of global deaths. Frankly, at 7.7 Billion people on this planet and a birth rate that is over double the annual death rate, 15k additional deaths a week is the proverbial pocket change.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/births-and-deaths

"My name is Oh and Captain Smek is awesome and anyone who does not think that is a poomp1"

Chat program: Rocket Chat

NextCloud is a cloud solution I found relatively easy to set up and host but I only really use it for file sharing

Video Chatting: Jitsi. I haven't set up my own instance, but it has worked well for me all the times that I have needed it.

All three come with web interfaces, so no app is needed but RC does have a desktop app.

The same way a government turns around and says that things like child pornography, human trafficking, terrorism, hate speech, bullying, piracy are not allowed on the internet. It may not be the most effective thing in the world when there is not a consensus from all governing and participating parties but that doesn't stop them from doing it and using it against an individual who is caught in the act of perusing/engaging said sites.

You would probably greatly benefit from reading the books of Dr. Thomas Sowell as well.

I'm curious about the number of lava lamps used. Does the large number of lamps really generate "more randomness"?

Yes, it is.

Harsher sentencing for violent crimes with a weapon already exist and I would love if they were applied more often. But that's a different discussion.

It's not about an expected rampage, of which I doubt there would be because we are not facing a rampage of gun crime as it is. On average in the US, of the approximately 35,000 gun related deaths every year (and considering an estimated 8 out of 10 Americans owns a firearms less than 0.01% of the population is killed in a firearm related death is another thing), on average 60% of that is suicide, not homicide. Roughly 14k. This doesn't even break the top 10 causes of death in the US and of the 805k deaths by other causes per the CDC [1] we're talking 2%. That's not exactly a rampage despite the voluminous amount of media attention this gets.

No, the point is that the volume of those killed by guns (even if you include suicides in that number) is miniscule compared to the potential of a firearm to stop a violent crime in process, even without the firearm being discharged. There is an estimated 300,000 to 3,000,000 defensive uses of firearms in the US. Even if you attribute all gun homicides (including suicide) to defensive firearms uses (which is absolutely not the case), death by firearms would be a mere 12% of even the smallest estimated number. This is why you allow firearms with as minimal restrictions as possible, because the number of people who will properly use them vastly dwarfs the number of people who will misuse them.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db427-tables.pdf#4

18 USC § 2332a(c)(2) and it's companion in the definition of "Weapon of Mass Destruction" of 18 USC § 921 defines a WMD firearm as:

(3)The term “firearm” means (A) any weapon (including a starter gun) which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive; (B) the frame or receiver of any such weapon; (C) any firearm muffler or firearm silencer; or (D) any destructive device.

This is basically any firearm. By this definition, any firearm not considered an antique is considered a weapon on mass destruction, which is clearly completely unworkable when considering allowing firearms for not just self-defense in the terms of attack but to the original reasoning of the second amendment which was to provide a check against a government ruling over its populace by force by allowing individuals to possess that same force.

I'm not seeing why having a gun hobby is bad. I am not sure you realize the benefits of doing a precision activity like this when you, by your own admission, have never utilized nor have been inclined to utilize a firearm. Properly utilizing and training with a firearm builds focus, mental acuity, strength, and a sense of responsibility. It can also be argued that it destroys a certain bit of naive innocence as well when you come to the realization of what exactly you are handling and what exactly you are on the other end of should you be attacked by someone with a firearm.

That's a pretty big assumption, considering someone intent on committing a crime isn't exactly pre-disposed to follow the law in the first place and all you are really doing is disarming someone who does follow the law and placing them at a greater disadvantage.

What is a weapon of mass destruction? How does that get defined?

Beyond that, I don't believe the Second Amendment was ever meant to be framed in that manner. The idea was that firearms helped keep the government from ruling over it's population by physical force rather than the consent of the governed. This, in simplest terms, would mean that what the government was allowed to use for force, so too should its citizens, thus carrying on the whole idea of checks and balances.

What is your definition of a rapid semi-auto? This is certainly not a term used by the majority of gun owners/manufacturers. EDIT: A semi-automatic firearm is defined by that which fires a single bullet per pull of the trigger and then automatically reloads a round for the next pull of a trigger. There really is no "rapid" to it because this kind of reloading is either a do or do not.

At the cost of otherwise disarming a much, much larger segment of the population who have never committed a crime with a firearm and are much better protected against crimes of many various types, including those with firearms.

And people who legally and respectfully own guns don't have different hobbies? All they can possibly think about is going out a shooting?

Beyond that, clearly taking away guns doesn't stop violent crime. Domestic abuse is still a major issue even without guns. Knife, club, and acid attacks have taken the UK by storm. Robbery, rape, looting, arson, all things that can and in many cases are done without a firearm.

Even beyond that, I find the arguments of gun control advocates to be lacking.

"We need to take away guns because a very small percentage of people are violent with them."

"Well, what do we do when we need help from someone who has ignored the gun laws?"

"Well, you call people with guns, of course!"

"But, they're minutes away? How is that going to help me now?"

Advocates for gun control seem to forget that guns are the single greatest equalizer for self-defense this world has ever seen. Being attacked by someone larger than you? A gun is going to help. Someone attacking you already has a gun? You are giving yourself a far better chance of survival by being armed than just sitting there like a deer staring at car headlights waiting to be run over. Physical strength and in certain cases even numerical advantages mean little in comparison to the sheer stopping power a firearm can wield, even before it is fired.

There are not many people in this world who won't take a pause when a gun is pointed at them and many defensive gun uses in the US (of which the estimates range from 300,000 to upwards of 3,000,000) don't even require the firearm to be discharged. For all the gun homicides in the US, many more lives are saved simply by the presence of guns. Don't get me wrong, I get just as pissed off every time a gun is used in a manner like Buffalo, Uvalde, Florida, etc. but don't take away the tool whose presence has the greatest single effective in stopping someone in their tracks simply because of a few bad actors.

When you go to input an appointment in Apple's Calendar app you can do it one of a few ways:

1) From another app, which obviously this author didn't do 2) Tapping the "+" icon on the top corner with a date in the calendar below highlighted. The New Event screen comes up with the highlighted date automatically filled in the Starts and Ends fields. This seems the most likely method if they were manually entering an appointment.

The point is, there is not enough detail to suggest that Apple listens to phone calls when there are other more plausible methods (and certainly more testable) that Siri could have used to obtain the information.

Same thing. A previous appointment at the same time. The date is suggested because they selected June 16th so it's just a suggested time from previous calendar entries. I use this feature all the time on my phone.

This is hardly conclusive proof. If this individual had ever put in a doctor's appointment using this label before they are going to get suggestions.

This is, well, sadly quite a lacking declaration.

1) While the Dickey amendment may have made gun research more difficult, it was still done, and there have been numerous studies and analyses that have placed the number of defensive gun uses somewhere between 500,000 to 1.5 million or more (Things like the 2013 CDC study, the 2019 National Crimes Victimization Survey, the 2021 National Firearms Survey, etc. have all produced relative consistent results. There was an outlier NCVS survey from earlier in the 2010's that placed it around 70k to 105k but that survey never actually asked if the gun was used in one's defense while they were victimized. That information was only recorded if it was volunteered unprompted).

2) To say that most gun-related deaths are homicide related is untrue. Consistently, the gun death tally in the US has been majority suicide, with suicide by firearm ranging anywhere from around 54% to 75% depending on things like the year and where the numbers are coming from. However, firearm related homicide has not been the majority cause of firearm related death in the US for many years.

3) I am a gun owner but I am not a fan of the NRA. It has more than a few skeletons in it's closet. That being said, there are plenty of quite reasonable (and could be argued, onerous and over-reaching) restrictions on purchasing a firearm. Maybe we should consider a) blaming the person and not the tool, and b) having a serious discussion about the degradation of community values, responsible parenting, and mental health concerns that would seem to play a far larger motivator in these young men who decide to commit crimes than the tool with which they choose to commit them. I don't see people rallying to completely ban cigarettes despite smoking being the cause of 1 in 5 deaths in the US or the fact that the average person starts smoking at the age of 15 despite needing to be 18 to buy them.

What is an assault-style weapon?

I completely get it, and it is not a problem that is limited to the US, either. My parents are landlords in Canada and getting rid of a clearly negligent, possibly criminal, tenant is very difficult, time consuming, and expensive. I can absolutely understand where the landlords are coming from and the fear that they feel.

Outdated evictions refer to evictions from the past that it is felt should be removed from certain reporting. This is difficult because, unlike with credit histories and bankruptcies, I am not aware of any sort of standard that requires the removal eviction records, and if an eviction is filed with a local or state judicial body you may not be able to remove that from any sort of record outside of having it expunged.

Evictions don't even really turn up in any sort of reporting, credit or otherwise, unless records are filed in court and/or liens and judgements are placed/awarded and then those records can be any number of things depending on the circumstances and the state you live in.

Many of these reporting "agencies" or "groups" rely on public information or information that is provided by landlords. A landlord can opt to provide the rental payment history of a tenant to a reporting agency like a bank reports payment history of a loan to the credit bureaus but it is far from consistent.

I had thought of that too for a while but it seemed like idle power usage was higher in a device like that than in a dedicated router. Maybe I am being nitpicky about that particular aspect.

California is also a state that will throw you in jail for certain types of debt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debtors%27_prison#Modern_debto...

This more and more. Especially when we start to see school administrators and politicians advocating for less parental involvement, not only in the curriculum but with what should always be parental decision making.

Of course I would like the consequences of a mistake to be minimal, but I also don't think drivers of large vehicles should automatically be assumed at fault and penalized just because they like to drive a large vehicle. Even the GHSA report's own solutions primarily focus on driver and pedestrian awareness programs and non-vehicle related solutions as opposed to more sensors in a car.

EDIT: They do suggest automatic braking solutions but even those can be hampered by inclement weather which large portions of the US are subject to. The last thing I want my car doing is locking up my brakes on a slippery road because it sensed a possible pedestrian.