I don't think I ever made the point that childhood repeated exposure to violent video games is the sole cause for school shootings, nor did the op. My point is that there must be at least some psychological effect, which is being casually dismissed as if 'cops and robbers' has no different bearing than playing Postal. This defies how people become conditioned.
Yes we can look at statistics, and find that out of a population of 300+ million people that very few adolescents become mass murderers. A correlation with random objects is a red herring compared to the repeated exposure of depictions of extreme antisocial behavior which is actually occurring among millions of juveniles. If signs of antisocial behavior is present among those that conduct mass killings, does it logically follow that exposing millions of teenagers to graphic depictions of antisocial behavior also plays a factor in the selection of the rare individuals that do become homicidal maniacs.
Is there the possibility that these violent games in combination with other factors provide a hammer as the primary tool to deal with social problems in which innocent people become to look like nails. Maybe.
I suppose that will be one objective of this meeting, to discuss how to prevent kids from playing games that are only suitable for adults. Regardless, it is a parenting issue. Online distributors should be expected to provide proper parental controls, but that should be where their responsibility ends.
Limiting people's rights to experience certain content will not begin to address the issue of proper parenting.
It is bad enough that self righteous zealots are turning free expression into a potential criminal offense punishable by jail time. The last thing I would give them is another tool, another pathway, to conduct their thought policing and moralizing using the color of law. It is always a slippery slope with these people who have no respect for free expression and wish to make every waking experience one that is politically correct. I would not accept my choice of entertainment to be limited by the threshold of what they find appropriately non violent.
I'm not sure I even agree with this - there is a reasonable argument that darker side of the human psyche exists and will exist nomatter what you do, and that it is safer to exercise this harmlessly than suppress it. Violence worldwide has been on the decline for decades. It could be argued part of the reason why is mass media violence providing catharsis...
I'm reminded of the argument that there should be no penalty for possessing child porn, because pedophiles being able to indulge in their fetish harmlessly reduces the possibility of actual child rape.
Even if there is no correlation between reduced violence and violent video games, adults should be able to choose their entertainment. If some want to turn their entertainment system into a rape simulator, well, fine, because as an adult I would not want to be subjected to the morality of the powers that be while in the privacy of my own home.
Is there a difference in the experience of playing cops and robbers, and using an imaginary weapon to take down an opponent, compared to the experience of simulated violence that is highly realistic? Where you aim your weapon at the detailed representation of a human head and attacking results in that head exploding, with blood and brains painting the wall.
What variable is that conditioning effect of many hours experiencing this violent simulation, for an adolescent brain still in development. Does the repetition of visually experiencing human opponents being eviscerated into piles of gore contribute to the lack of empathy required to actually fire a weapon into crowded hallways? If not, why not?
What is the relationship between the kids that are bullied at school and who engage in violent video games. When is the behavior necessary to succeed at simulated competitive manslaughter seen as the only tool to deal with real-life enemies. For every school shooting, how often was that course of action considered and rejected.
It seems there is much more to consider than just "kids will be kids".
I've never tried throwing them like that. Hard to imagine though that it could be more satisfying than the crunching sounds made from using channel lock pliers on those little 2.5" drives.
How about the movie where a corrupt political party holds a fake primary for a candidate, who happened to leak highly classified information while purposefully violating public records law. They use their shills in the media to slime the opponent, who is an upstanding senator who refuses to accept corporate bribes and whose rapidly rising popularity is a threat to their agenda.
Someone on the inside of the party who supports the good candidate discovers what is really going on, and has access to copy the internal emails and upload it to a world-renown whistle blowers site. The plot gets exposed, but the poor whistleblower gets murdered and the crime never gets investigated.
Then after the upstart senator is dealt with, the terrible corrupt candidate faces off with a slightly less terrible candidate for president. They pay millions to have a foreign agent write up fake blackmail material, and use insiders inside federal agencies to even spy on the opposition and make an 'insurance policy' just in case the corrupt villian somehow loses the election.
Then when the slightly less terrible person wins the presidency to everyone's surprise, the corrupt party becomes desperate to find a way to pass the blame for losing. The same shills who smeared the good senator now blame an enemy country for 'hacking' the email server, and rigging the election, and accuse the new president of actually being a secret ally with the enemy even though there isn't any evidence of that at all.
The evil plot gets exposed yet again by actual journalists, but almost noone hears about it because the people that control most of the news media and social media platforms want people to believe the bullshit narrative. Even when the 'insurance policy' blows up in the face of the insiders, almost nothing happens as a result.
The movie ends with people who understand whats going on shaking their heads in disgust at all the propaganda. It fades to black with a really worthless comment made by a paid shill on some tech site that is upmodded as interesting.
Also, if they weren't white, all the Bundys would have been six feet deep for a few years now.
Yeah, tell that to the family of Leroy Finnicum, who was ambushed by state police and then shot in the back while he was on his way to meet with the county sheriff. Don't worry, rabble rousers like the Bundys will find a way into the grave one way or another.
Speaking of which, here's what the former Senate Majority leader Harry Reid described repeatedly and emphatically as a group of domestic terrorists.
Never has there been a greater endorsement of the 2nd amendment from a congressional leader.
So, a bunch of ordinary citizens protesting abusive actions by a federal agency steeped in corruption and confronting an armed federal goon squad. You know, an armed population defending against tyranny that would have been powerless otherwise. The last defense, before tyranny can be conducted without hesitation, which seems to be the point we've reached.
There isn't even a hint at the expectation of a parallel governing bodies explicitly for the sake of managing firearm restrictions. Well regulated means properly equipped, and I suspect you already know that.
Yes, it's fine to question the 2nd. Original poster never claimed the constitution is immutable, so that is a strawman. He was however emphatically stating the proper interpretation in its current form.
It isn't acceptable to legislate the 2nd into being meaningless without a constitutional congress to formally amend the constitution. This leads into the very important issue of the erosion of constitutional rights we're facing.
Implying that he is an irrational authoritarian as a result of your strawman is the kind of dishonesty that makes actually reforming gun rights so difficult. It's just your projecting, the kind that is so typical anymore.
LED's don't require high voltage sources that can cause EMI and noise and reliability issues, don't contain mercury, and they are easy to find in 3k kelvin temperatures rather than eye straining, harsh white light typical of CF. Been years since I've had to replace a bulb, too. There's no reason at all to use anything else.
In addition China is deploying Gen IV nuclear reactors to eliminate the need for coal. They are breaking ground for new fast breeder reactor designs. They are spending billions of USD in research towards the development of thorium molten salt reactors.
It seems that China appreciates the potential for nuclear energy to combat emissions. I applaud them for this.
Windows in a VM allows for some very convenient 'undo' positions. Also virtual networking. The more the host machine is like a hypervisor the easier it is to secure it and maintain.
Meanwhile, schools are banning literary classics because they contain a word that some people happen to obsess over.
The worst place Trump could get 'ideas' from would be from those that hate him: the censoring, deplatforming, shouting down, physically attacking, blasphemy law enforcing, thought-policing fascists that pretend to be against fascism.
The "well regulated" clause of the 2nd amendment was intended that civilians be able to equip themselves to be an effective fighting force and have at least some parity against an enemy that could manifest itself.
A reasonable definition of this scope of functionality by today's standards would include more than just low caliber handguns. Specialized weapons at the extreme end of the scale such as biological or nuclear are not part of any normal infantry and fall outside the venn diagram of what should be considered necessary for an effective fighting force.
The entire Pentagon budget is worth it just so we don't have to put up with Canadians bragging about how they burned down the white house again, until the end of time. That'd just be insufferable. A Russian or Chinese invasion pales in comparison.
Elected office holders need to take a position for what is a hot-button issue. IANAL but I don't see how these lawsuits will amount to anything more than a strongly worded letter. The result will likely be Ajit Pai making another mocking and condescending video trolling the public.
I can think of all the ways an unshackled corporate monopoly can innovate access to a vital resource. Yes, I can't wait for all the innovation. I'll have a nice tall glass of trickle-down too, while you're at it.
AI will have replaced human analysts in conducting psychological operations, making a tightly controlled online media the perfect propaganda tool. Meaningful discussion in opposition to approved narratives will be impossible.
In addition, mass surveillance will provide machine intelligence all the data points it could ever need in building complete dossiers on everyone with real-time tracking. If you step out onto the street without your personal monitoring device, the system will instantly know.
Nobody expects the Mueller inquisition, but it's his job to collect scalps to be conveniently lumped together into a pile as evidence for something. I'm not sure what, though. Collusion, or hacking? The narrative changes.
What hasn't changed is what the hacking narrative started on, which is the emails from the DNC server. So far we still only have their word for it, and the unsolved murder mystery of one of their political operatives.
Russians with their shoestring budgets are just a scapegoat at this point. Let's not ignore the effects of Citizen's United and years of having millions of dollars funding our own home-grown troll farms. Silicon Valley and the partisan media have trolled us and have gotten us at each others throats much more than Putin could ever dream of.
Meanwhile, lawyers for the party in opposition of Trump suggest that even a pretense at a primary is more than what is necessary in selecting a candidate for national office.
Even a slightly informed person can look at your application of a double standard and realize that personal attacks and demonization will be all that can be expected from you, regardless of a leader's actual merit and character. Trump is exactly the leader you deserve.
It isn't the will of a few 'gun nuts' that prevents a fundamental shift of the basic rights of a U.S. citizen. Spare us the hyperbolic and breathless 'think of the children' concern trolling.
Furthermore, those who let their emotions and authoritarian leanings decide what was best for society, and failed to consider the unintended consequences, brought us Prohibition and the Drug War. The Drug War, which is still ongoing, where the massive amount of funding is spent for paramilitary police forces and strain legal and prison systems to the benefit of NO ONE. This money could have been used for mental health care and school counselors to help prevent exactly this type of event.
The solution will never be stripping people of their rights in order to treat the symptoms of a problem.
One day "NRA" will be consigned to the same category as "KKK", that other organisation that spouts garbage about protecting freedom when what they mean is the right to kill at will.
I imagine that is quite possible, given how intent the opposing side is at censoring speech, policing wrongthink, and enforcing blasphemy laws. Revising history such as that would be expected, just as I'd expect Eric Clanton would be annointed to martyrdom status for his bravery in fighting the nazis of his day.
With that in mind I think I'll go donate to the NRA right now.
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I don't think I ever made the point that childhood repeated exposure to violent video games is the sole cause for school shootings, nor did the op. My point is that there must be at least some psychological effect, which is being casually dismissed as if 'cops and robbers' has no different bearing than playing Postal. This defies how people become conditioned.
Yes we can look at statistics, and find that out of a population of 300+ million people that very few adolescents become mass murderers. A correlation with random objects is a red herring compared to the repeated exposure of depictions of extreme antisocial behavior which is actually occurring among millions of juveniles. If signs of antisocial behavior is present among those that conduct mass killings, does it logically follow that exposing millions of teenagers to graphic depictions of antisocial behavior also plays a factor in the selection of the rare individuals that do become homicidal maniacs.
Is there the possibility that these violent games in combination with other factors provide a hammer as the primary tool to deal with social problems in which innocent people become to look like nails. Maybe.
I suppose that will be one objective of this meeting, to discuss how to prevent kids from playing games that are only suitable for adults. Regardless, it is a parenting issue. Online distributors should be expected to provide proper parental controls, but that should be where their responsibility ends.
Limiting people's rights to experience certain content will not begin to address the issue of proper parenting.
It is bad enough that self righteous zealots are turning free expression into a potential criminal offense punishable by jail time. The last thing I would give them is another tool, another pathway, to conduct their thought policing and moralizing using the color of law. It is always a slippery slope with these people who have no respect for free expression and wish to make every waking experience one that is politically correct. I would not accept my choice of entertainment to be limited by the threshold of what they find appropriately non violent.
I'm not sure I even agree with this - there is a reasonable argument that darker side of the human psyche exists and will exist nomatter what you do, and that it is safer to exercise this harmlessly than suppress it. Violence worldwide has been on the decline for decades. It could be argued part of the reason why is mass media violence providing catharsis...
I'm reminded of the argument that there should be no penalty for possessing child porn, because pedophiles being able to indulge in their fetish harmlessly reduces the possibility of actual child rape.
Even if there is no correlation between reduced violence and violent video games, adults should be able to choose their entertainment. If some want to turn their entertainment system into a rape simulator, well, fine, because as an adult I would not want to be subjected to the morality of the powers that be while in the privacy of my own home.
Is there a difference in the experience of playing cops and robbers, and using an imaginary weapon to take down an opponent, compared to the experience of simulated violence that is highly realistic? Where you aim your weapon at the detailed representation of a human head and attacking results in that head exploding, with blood and brains painting the wall.
What variable is that conditioning effect of many hours experiencing this violent simulation, for an adolescent brain still in development. Does the repetition of visually experiencing human opponents being eviscerated into piles of gore contribute to the lack of empathy required to actually fire a weapon into crowded hallways? If not, why not?
What is the relationship between the kids that are bullied at school and who engage in violent video games. When is the behavior necessary to succeed at simulated competitive manslaughter seen as the only tool to deal with real-life enemies. For every school shooting, how often was that course of action considered and rejected.
It seems there is much more to consider than just "kids will be kids".
I've never tried throwing them like that. Hard to imagine though that it could be more satisfying than the crunching sounds made from using channel lock pliers on those little 2.5" drives.
Use PXE to boot a disk image of DBAN from the network. One less use for USB then.
How about the movie where a corrupt political party holds a fake primary for a candidate, who happened to leak highly classified information while purposefully violating public records law. They use their shills in the media to slime the opponent, who is an upstanding senator who refuses to accept corporate bribes and whose rapidly rising popularity is a threat to their agenda.
Someone on the inside of the party who supports the good candidate discovers what is really going on, and has access to copy the internal emails and upload it to a world-renown whistle blowers site. The plot gets exposed, but the poor whistleblower gets murdered and the crime never gets investigated.
Then after the upstart senator is dealt with, the terrible corrupt candidate faces off with a slightly less terrible candidate for president. They pay millions to have a foreign agent write up fake blackmail material, and use insiders inside federal agencies to even spy on the opposition and make an 'insurance policy' just in case the corrupt villian somehow loses the election.
Then when the slightly less terrible person wins the presidency to everyone's surprise, the corrupt party becomes desperate to find a way to pass the blame for losing. The same shills who smeared the good senator now blame an enemy country for 'hacking' the email server, and rigging the election, and accuse the new president of actually being a secret ally with the enemy even though there isn't any evidence of that at all.
The evil plot gets exposed yet again by actual journalists, but almost noone hears about it because the people that control most of the news media and social media platforms want people to believe the bullshit narrative. Even when the 'insurance policy' blows up in the face of the insiders, almost nothing happens as a result.
The movie ends with people who understand whats going on shaking their heads in disgust at all the propaganda. It fades to black with a really worthless comment made by a paid shill on some tech site that is upmodded as interesting.
Remove the front bumper for the brake master cylinder? What do you have to do to replace the heater core, take the wheels off?
Also, if they weren't white, all the Bundys would have been six feet deep for a few years now.
Yeah, tell that to the family of Leroy Finnicum, who was ambushed by state police and then shot in the back while he was on his way to meet with the county sheriff. Don't worry, rabble rousers like the Bundys will find a way into the grave one way or another.
Speaking of which, here's what the former Senate Majority leader Harry Reid described repeatedly and emphatically as a group of domestic terrorists. Never has there been a greater endorsement of the 2nd amendment from a congressional leader.
So, a bunch of ordinary citizens protesting abusive actions by a federal agency steeped in corruption and confronting an armed federal goon squad. You know, an armed population defending against tyranny that would have been powerless otherwise. The last defense, before tyranny can be conducted without hesitation, which seems to be the point we've reached.
There isn't even a hint at the expectation of a parallel governing bodies explicitly for the sake of managing firearm restrictions. Well regulated means properly equipped, and I suspect you already know that.
Yes, it's fine to question the 2nd. Original poster never claimed the constitution is immutable, so that is a strawman. He was however emphatically stating the proper interpretation in its current form.
It isn't acceptable to legislate the 2nd into being meaningless without a constitutional congress to formally amend the constitution. This leads into the very important issue of the erosion of constitutional rights we're facing.
Implying that he is an irrational authoritarian as a result of your strawman is the kind of dishonesty that makes actually reforming gun rights so difficult. It's just your projecting, the kind that is so typical anymore.
LED's don't require high voltage sources that can cause EMI and noise and reliability issues, don't contain mercury, and they are easy to find in 3k kelvin temperatures rather than eye straining, harsh white light typical of CF. Been years since I've had to replace a bulb, too. There's no reason at all to use anything else.
In addition China is deploying Gen IV nuclear reactors to eliminate the need for coal. They are breaking ground for new fast breeder reactor designs. They are spending billions of USD in research towards the development of thorium molten salt reactors.
It seems that China appreciates the potential for nuclear energy to combat emissions. I applaud them for this.
Windows in a VM allows for some very convenient 'undo' positions. Also virtual networking. The more the host machine is like a hypervisor the easier it is to secure it and maintain.
Meanwhile, schools are banning literary classics because they contain a word that some people happen to obsess over.
The worst place Trump could get 'ideas' from would be from those that hate him: the censoring, deplatforming, shouting down, physically attacking, blasphemy law enforcing, thought-policing fascists that pretend to be against fascism.
The "well regulated" clause of the 2nd amendment was intended that civilians be able to equip themselves to be an effective fighting force and have at least some parity against an enemy that could manifest itself.
A reasonable definition of this scope of functionality by today's standards would include more than just low caliber handguns. Specialized weapons at the extreme end of the scale such as biological or nuclear are not part of any normal infantry and fall outside the venn diagram of what should be considered necessary for an effective fighting force.
The entire Pentagon budget is worth it just so we don't have to put up with Canadians bragging about how they burned down the white house again, until the end of time. That'd just be insufferable. A Russian or Chinese invasion pales in comparison.
Elected office holders need to take a position for what is a hot-button issue. IANAL but I don't see how these lawsuits will amount to anything more than a strongly worded letter. The result will likely be Ajit Pai making another mocking and condescending video trolling the public.
I can think of all the ways an unshackled corporate monopoly can innovate access to a vital resource. Yes, I can't wait for all the innovation. I'll have a nice tall glass of trickle-down too, while you're at it.
AI will have replaced human analysts in conducting psychological operations, making a tightly controlled online media the perfect propaganda tool. Meaningful discussion in opposition to approved narratives will be impossible.
In addition, mass surveillance will provide machine intelligence all the data points it could ever need in building complete dossiers on everyone with real-time tracking. If you step out onto the street without your personal monitoring device, the system will instantly know.
There won't be much resistance.
Nobody expects the Mueller inquisition, but it's his job to collect scalps to be conveniently lumped together into a pile as evidence for something. I'm not sure what, though. Collusion, or hacking? The narrative changes.
What hasn't changed is what the hacking narrative started on, which is the emails from the DNC server. So far we still only have their word for it, and the unsolved murder mystery of one of their political operatives.
Russians with their shoestring budgets are just a scapegoat at this point. Let's not ignore the effects of Citizen's United and years of having millions of dollars funding our own home-grown troll farms. Silicon Valley and the partisan media have trolled us and have gotten us at each others throats much more than Putin could ever dream of.
Yeah it is crazy how people can argue that correlation isn't causation and be upmodded for it.
Meanwhile, lawyers for the party in opposition of Trump suggest that even a pretense at a primary is more than what is necessary in selecting a candidate for national office.
Even a slightly informed person can look at your application of a double standard and realize that personal attacks and demonization will be all that can be expected from you, regardless of a leader's actual merit and character. Trump is exactly the leader you deserve.
It isn't the will of a few 'gun nuts' that prevents a fundamental shift of the basic rights of a U.S. citizen. Spare us the hyperbolic and breathless 'think of the children' concern trolling.
Furthermore, those who let their emotions and authoritarian leanings decide what was best for society, and failed to consider the unintended consequences, brought us Prohibition and the Drug War. The Drug War, which is still ongoing, where the massive amount of funding is spent for paramilitary police forces and strain legal and prison systems to the benefit of NO ONE. This money could have been used for mental health care and school counselors to help prevent exactly this type of event.
The solution will never be stripping people of their rights in order to treat the symptoms of a problem.
One day "NRA" will be consigned to the same category as "KKK", that other organisation that spouts garbage about protecting freedom when what they mean is the right to kill at will.
I imagine that is quite possible, given how intent the opposing side is at censoring speech, policing wrongthink, and enforcing blasphemy laws. Revising history such as that would be expected, just as I'd expect Eric Clanton would be annointed to martyrdom status for his bravery in fighting the nazis of his day.
With that in mind I think I'll go donate to the NRA right now.