What other recourse do we have against the corporate/government AI/mass surveillance/media leviathan?
A cultural and social change? One that doesn't want a quick and violent fix to complex issues?
most of the voters are brain-deleted drones with zero self interest
No, I think you'll find that self-interest is on a massive uptick
The people in that office were not innocent
Let's say that for the moment I'll go along with your argument and assume you mean 'guilty of something'...
They deserved it
... and then we reach this.
No. No they did not.
I sincerely hope that I've just fed a troll, but silence is assent, and on the off chance that you actually believe what you posted - I sincerely hope that you get better because if this is what you believe, then I can only offer my sympathy and regret.
Kind of hard to have a 'society' when you're in a constant state of civil war.
By a number of measures (percentage of population in prison, disproportionate sentencing by race for eg) the US has stats usually only seen in countries in the midst of a civil war.
One way or another, you pay for income inequality. Either in taxation and social programs that distribute wealth or in police, prisons and judicial systems and crime.
While the US continues to value the ability for a small group to have more of the (relative) wealth than most of the population, then it is going to continue to see higher rates of violent crime than in countries with a smaller gap and broader access to wealth.
I don't think tighter controls, on their own, are going to do much without significant cultural reform - and part of that is going to need to address the reluctance to fund social programs (like mental health care) and to tax the wealthy.
The second problem problem is one of culture. The culture in Australia is apparently not one where suicide attacks are thinkable.
I'm not so sure it's about the suicide pact. I certainly think that culture played a big part and I don't think that it would be possible to do in the US what was done in Australia.
Culturally, Australia doesn't (and didn't, before the ban) have the same reverence, fascination and obsession with guns that the US does (painting with a _very_ broad brush). People from the country tend to view them as a tool, same for hunters. People living in the suburbs or cities who owned guns were uncommon and seen as more than a little odd and 'American'.
Lower overall gun ownership means and meant that only the most violent of criminals used them, and then usually only among themselves (still true, today, just to a smaller extent). There were fewer people affected by the ban, less attachment in general and banning and/or restricting guns was framed in much the same way that banning or restricting any tool is/was. There just wasn't the legal or historic context for it to be anything else.
While being an island sounds good on paper, if there was a market we'd see imports the same way we see drugs enter the country and the same way the small number of guns still arrive. There's just too much coastline to really keep anything out. Distance is a bigger factor. We've a fraction of the population in an area about the same as the US (albeit not evenly distributed) which, again, if there was a will would make it impossible for the police to locate caches of guns in out-of-the-way locations.
Its job is to turn on, not die, and when it does die, not take out everything else with it
You missed "deliver power at the specified voltage and amperage, within tolerances, including not sagging, spiking or being 'noisy'". Bonus if it can do this for more than five years.
It sounds like you've never had intermittent faults that turned out to be the fault of a cheap PSU aging _way_ too soon and far from gracefully.
There are reasons some people insist that your PSU is (at least) as important as any other component, and it has nothing to do with 'bigger is better'. But hey, don't let your ignorance stop you 'shit[ting] on' someone else's.
His home country, Australia, has cowardly turned their back on him
No. He was told that this was a criminal matter in Sweden, and then the UK. That if, at some point in the future he is charged by the US, that he can apply for a prisoner transfer to Australia.
His narcissistic fantasies aside, he was wanted in relation to a criminal investigation, refused to return to Sweden, tried numerous avenues to avoid having to face the investigation and every court and legal opinion that he has asked to review the situation has responded in the same way.
People facing criminal investigations do not get to set the terms of the investigation in any country I know of. Maybe the charges were politically motivated, maybe not. We'll never know. He's run away, left supporters liable for hundreds of thousands of pounds of bail and taken advantage of the hospitality of the Ecuadorean embassy. He's claimed persecution and asked for political asylum, but there's absolutely no evidence of any persecution.
But the US wants Assange badly
So Assange claims, and certainly several US figures have spoken out against him, but there's no warrant and no attempt to extradite him. So far all I've seen is a lot of rhetoric from someone whose other behaviour makes me question how much is real and how much is fantasies of self-importance.
I have and continue to struggle with chronic depression, including extended periods of suicidal ideation. To be frank, my own experience sounds closer to your own (in as much as such a brief description can tell me) - I am more familiar with a constant, extended period of suicidal 'desire' than I am with short lived, but perhaps more acute urges.
I am deeply sympathetic to your own experience and while I expect that there's a degree of commonality in what we and others go through, I don't expect that my own experiences necessarily reflect those of others. I was careful to state 'many' and not all and go on to stress that simply removing guns will not stop everyone who is suicidal. Perhaps I overstated the case, but it's based on studies and reports like this;
I am not sure that easy access to a firearm would have made much of a difference in my own experience, nor from the sound of it in yours - but I've seen this same information from various sources for some time, and can only conclude that for some people it can and will make a difference.
Subject could be given acupuncture without knowing which kind is it ("right", "wrong", "fake") - while being informed that the choice will be random. That is not what a double blind study is about. The subject has to be convinced that it gets the real thing.
Unfortunately the famous Oetzi has most interesting acupuncture points tatooed on his body,
Oetzi had tattoos. You need to show that they are acupuncture points. I have friends with similar designs that have nothing to do with acupuncture and everything to do with following body features.
That is all well documented... Unfortunately you have to... trust your translator.
Joseph Smith of the Mormons used a similar argument.
Oops!!
TL:DR "I have this really compelling evidence that I can't show you"
If, when injured, we reduce exercise to avoid either pain or aggravating the injury, our bones will become weaker and more porous, lean muscle mass will drop and consequently the metabolism will slow (slowing healing). This can lead to a vicious spiral where the inactivity compounds the pain and damage. Even in healthy adults who become more sedentary as they age, this is noticeable and many of the effects that we attribute to age are more correctly attributed to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle.
Consequently, if you can find a low-impact exercise that will allow you to continue to be active while injured, you are much less likely to suffer from the degenerative effects of inactivity.
Cliff Young (an ultra marathon runner from the early 80s in Australia) reports that he 'ran off' arthritis 'a couple of times'. He was 61 when he won his first ultra marathon (When he was asked how long he could run, he reported that he could fun for about five or six days. Reporters thought he meant stopping to sleep. He thought they meant continuously. Awesome guy.)
It's easier to maintain than regain. It's easier to regain than gain. Stay active.
The link is to a study that compared acupuncture to sham acupuncture (needling anywhere) to conventional therapy and found that both acupuncture and sham acupuncture had the same effect.
The GP specifically asked for evidence that acupuncture works better than random needling.
Were you too busy seeing what you wanted to see to actually read either the GP or the link you think disproves them?
Needling has been shown to help some chronic pain, most probably through release of endorphins and similar. That's a far cry from acupuncture's claims of meridians or acupuncture points and acupuncture's claims to be able to treat a range of other ailments.
Yup. Pity it has nothing to do with 'nitric oxide' which was what the GP (you?) told people to look for.
Did you read the result? No difference between acupuncture and sham where here the sham was just needling anywhere that wasn't an 'acupuncture point'.
So the study shows that needling people works. Other studies that have tested with endorphin inhibitors have shown a reduced effect, so the primary mechanism for the analgesic effect of acupuncture is likely to be the release of same.
Needling anywhere reduces pain. No meridians. No acupuncture points. No effect on anything other than some forms of chronic pain. I've acknowledge in another post that I'm aware of the studies that have shown that needling has an effect on some chronic pain. I've still got no idea what you think except that people don't believe you 'because racism'.
Spent too much time posting links to legit scientific papers on possible effects of acupuncture here in the past
Really? If you logged in, I might be able to verify that, otherwise it's just you saying so.
I finally realized that many of the authors had gasp Chinese names and that's gonna be a deal breaker when the 'merican "engineers" here start shrieking DOUBLE BLIND TEST
Thinly veiled implication that a request for a study that meets the standards of other forms of medicine is based on some kind of racism.
google acupuncture nitric oxide
How about you make a point and then provide proof or links to back it up. What you've delivered so far is a complain that you've provided information in the past but that it's been ignored or denied because of racism. I'm prepared to accept that this might be the case, but the burden of proof is on you. And on acupuncture.
What exactly are you claiming acupuncture can do? What are the studies or trials that you think support this? It may very well be that we agree (AFAIK acupuncture has been shown to be effective in treating some forms of chronic pain through endorphin release) but I don't know because all you've done is complain that no-one believes you and that American engineers are racist.
If this is the standard of 'proof' that you consider sufficient to support your 'argument', then your claims that there are 'legit' papers is suspect.
Caveats; I'm Australian and think the restrictions on firearms was a Very Good Thing.
With that said, the culture in Australia is very different than in the US. Smaller population, less income disparity, more social policies and safety nets. We don't seem to have the same tensions with race - we have our own problems and deplorable treatment of the indigenous people is one of them but they are different than in the US.
I've grown up in outer suburbs and had friends on properties or who grew up in the country. There, a gun was a tool. About as sexy as a shovel. People who collected them or practiced with them were seen as more than a bit weird. There just wasn't the same level of... reverence that seems to exist (real or just the impression from the outside) in the US.
Banning/restricting guns, especially in the wake of the Port Arthur shooting had a lot more popular support than currently exists in the US. I think that there needs to be some significant changes in culture and cultural values before reducing or restricting guns is going to be possible, or before it will have an effect.
It's really hard to keep people from committing suicide.
In many cases the urge to act passes relatively quickly. Removing or reducing access to an easy and immediate way to commit suicide reduces the number of people who actually succeed in committing suicide. You won't stop it, and some portion of people who would have committed suicide with a gun will find another means, but you will reduce it.
Getting attached to 'being right' is cultural, habitual and lazy. There's a bunch of status and crap that we absorb from teachers and didactic teaching styles, but it's not useful and not healthy in anything more than a superficial level. _I_ am not right or wrong. Some things I believe or think I know may be wrong, but that really doesn't (shouldn't) mean much of anything outside those topics.
And how often when backed in the corner
I think that if I'm backed into a corner then I've become defensive, which means that I've turned an exchange into some kind of competition or confrontation. That doesn't sound useful for anyone involved. I think that if I'm 'losing' then I'm fighting, and then there's a whole lot of extraneous crap getting in the way of communication, learning, changing.
'Right' is a direction, not a destination. We start out ignorant. We learn some things, and then we get attached to the things we learn and lose touch with the process of learning. Being wrong, gracefully, takes practice. It takes some effort to track down and unpick the habits and values that we've absorbed directly and indirectly that value 'being right' over learning.
'Right', as a place or position, is for fanatics and believers.
do we actually take a time to stop and think, why this is the case
As often as I can. It gets easier every day, but only if you do it every day (to paraphrase Bojack Horseman)
There's a wonderful sense of freedom in being comfortable with uncertainty; with being able to say 'I don't know', or 'you're right, I hadn't considered that'.
It can, but the number of instances where that is the intent compared to those where it isn't is so close to zero that it's statistical noise.
That certainly seems like its purpose according to some recent Muslim terrorists
OMG. Muslims!
Also in case you didnt know the statistics over 50% of firearm related deaths are suicides
Yes. Yes I did. That's why I was careful to say "The number of deaths from guns (both suicide and homicide)..."
Are you actually reading what I write, or what you think I've written?
which could still be done without a gun
Technically true at only the most superficial level.
The urge to commit suicide is, in many case, relatively short-lived. If there's easy access to a means (such as a gun) then the urge may be acted on. Removing or limiting access to an easy process means that by the time a method has been set-up or accessed, the urge has passed. There are studies that show that easy access to guns causes an increase in suicide; that removing guns drops that rate. That is, while some people will, in the absence of a gun find another way, for many removing the immediacy of means allows time for the crisis to pass.
I can link you to some studies/research/papers that talk about this in detail if you are interested.
Even including suicide statistics, cars are responsible for way more deaths compared to guns
Yes. I know. I've never argued otherwise. In fact, I've pointed out that this argument is a straw man. No-one (whoops, you're a pedant) nearly no-one is arguing that guns kill more people than cars.
The only reason I can think of that you keep bringing up car deaths is that you're implying that we shouldn't look at ways of reducing gun deaths until we reduce car deaths first. If there's another reason, I'd be happy to discuss it, otherwise this is a fallacy of relative privation.
You say the majority of people killed in car crashes are "accidents"
Yes, I'm talking about intent. The intention of (almost) all people who use a car is not to kill, therefore when their use of a car results in a fatality it is an 'accident'. Whether you consider them culpable is not what I am talking about. I am contrasting this with the intent of someone using a gun. The intent there is to kill (or to practice their skill with a tool designed to kill or to demonstrate their skill to others - to address the target and competition shooting pedantry, above). When there is a fatality as a result of a gun being used, that is rarely accidental.
Personally I see that as murder because you were grossly negligent
Then you are using a personal definition for the word 'murder'. Murder requires intent. A fatality without intent, even in the event of gross negligence is manslaughter. The very definition of murder is the _intent_ to kill. You can't just dismiss that because it's inconvenient to your other arguments.
Again the intended purpose of the tool does not matter only the amount of deaths caused
Yes, you've been quite clear that you'd rather not look at intent - either to distinguish between murder and manslaughter, or to distinguish between a tool designed to kill and one that kills only by accident or misuse.
Both target shooting and competition are essentially practising or demonstrating skill with a tool, they are separate purposes only if you're being especially pedantic. Hunting is killing.
Try again.
cars cause exponentially more deaths than guns
Acknowledged and addressed in the original post. Repeating it doesn't make it any less a straw man. You introduced the argument that guns kill less people than cars. It's true. But irrelevant. No-one is saying otherwise. You can actually try to address a problem while another, bigger/worse problem is also addressed.
Never forget that guns are constitutionally protected
Never forget that the constitution can be amended.
Can we get back to the topic, now or do you have some more straw-men you'd like to attack?
Your comment shows your bias against the right to bear arms and defend yourself
No, I'd like to discuss ways of reducing death by guns. That may need to include a reduction in firearms, tighter regulation and/or some other form of limitation. Number of guns is not, however, the only problem. Many other countries have higher rates of firearm ownership than the US with far lower levels of gun death. There needs to be cultural and social changes at a minimum and I suspect that they need to start with the removal or lowering of the reverence/fetishisation of guns.
I'm questioning the right to bear arms. That's actually a vital part of being a citizen. Questioning and holding up the values that we hold. Demanding of ourselves and each other an accounting.
defend yourself
Thankfully I live in a sane country where the need for a gun to 'defend' myself is not as great as you seem to believe yours is.
Get out of this country if you dont respect our Constitution and fundamental rights
So you'll be leaving, seeing as you seem to have some kind of belief in an unchanging Constitution - which is against both the constitution and the intent of those who drafted it?
Where in anything I said, did I say or even imply that?
I warned friends off Telegram from the outset, because a) messages went through their servers and b) their closed source encryption and/or implementation was home grown. Private company or government run, centralised and closed source are deal breakers if what you want is an encrypted communication tool. I pointed out that it would be too easy for old messages to be recovered and decrypted, either by a third party or the company itself, should it go through a change of direction or circumstances.
I don't have a need for encrypted communication, which is why I don't use any of the common tools.
How long until Telegram users start to receive messages offering _not_ to expose the messages they thought were private to their [boss/partner/police] in exchange for a small sum? Don't have those sorts of message? For only as little extra you do, now.
You're arguing against a straw man. No-one is arguing that guns kill more people than cars.
Trying to find a way to reduce gun deaths in the US doesn't preclude trying to reduce deaths from cars. Cars are tools with multiple purposes, none of which are 'to kill'. A gun's purpose is to kill. The number of deaths from cars is almost entirely from accidents. The number of deaths from guns (both suicide and homicide) is dominated by deliberate attempts to kill.
Better to be the kingmaker than the king, and if you control the information that the kingmaker's need...
Cambridge Analytics are dead. They were only effective whilst they remained hidden. They may well restructure, fold or shift assets, but by the time they are back someone else will be sucking from Facebook's teat and all the while Facebook can say 'It wasn't us who meddled'.
It's almost beyond political power. Win or lose, all parties end up using Facebook data.
Something about 'the spice must flow' and 'he who controls the spice...'
Slashdot Mirror
What other recourse do we have against the corporate/government AI/mass surveillance/media leviathan?
A cultural and social change? One that doesn't want a quick and violent fix to complex issues?
most of the voters are brain-deleted drones with zero self interest
No, I think you'll find that self-interest is on a massive uptick
The people in that office were not innocent
Let's say that for the moment I'll go along with your argument and assume you mean 'guilty of something' ...
They deserved it
... and then we reach this.
No.
No they did not.
I sincerely hope that I've just fed a troll, but silence is assent, and on the off chance that you actually believe what you posted - I sincerely hope that you get better because if this is what you believe, then I can only offer my sympathy and regret.
Kind of hard to have a 'society' when you're in a constant state of civil war.
By a number of measures (percentage of population in prison, disproportionate sentencing by race for eg) the US has stats usually only seen in countries in the midst of a civil war.
And high levels of income inequality
Income inequality in the US
and
Inequality and Violent Crime
for example.
One way or another, you pay for income inequality. Either in taxation and social programs that distribute wealth or in police, prisons and judicial systems and crime.
While the US continues to value the ability for a small group to have more of the (relative) wealth than most of the population, then it is going to continue to see higher rates of violent crime than in countries with a smaller gap and broader access to wealth.
I don't think tighter controls, on their own, are going to do much without significant cultural reform - and part of that is going to need to address the reluctance to fund social programs (like mental health care) and to tax the wealthy.
The second problem problem is one of culture. The culture in Australia is apparently not one where suicide attacks are thinkable.
I'm not so sure it's about the suicide pact. I certainly think that culture played a big part and I don't think that it would be possible to do in the US what was done in Australia.
Culturally, Australia doesn't (and didn't, before the ban) have the same reverence, fascination and obsession with guns that the US does (painting with a _very_ broad brush). People from the country tend to view them as a tool, same for hunters. People living in the suburbs or cities who owned guns were uncommon and seen as more than a little odd and 'American'.
Lower overall gun ownership means and meant that only the most violent of criminals used them, and then usually only among themselves (still true, today, just to a smaller extent). There were fewer people affected by the ban, less attachment in general and banning and/or restricting guns was framed in much the same way that banning or restricting any tool is/was. There just wasn't the legal or historic context for it to be anything else.
While being an island sounds good on paper, if there was a market we'd see imports the same way we see drugs enter the country and the same way the small number of guns still arrive. There's just too much coastline to really keep anything out. Distance is a bigger factor. We've a fraction of the population in an area about the same as the US (albeit not evenly distributed) which, again, if there was a will would make it impossible for the police to locate caches of guns in out-of-the-way locations.
No, you dont need 850w for your single GPU PC
True except for some edge cases.
Its job is to turn on, not die, and when it does die, not take out everything else with it
You missed "deliver power at the specified voltage and amperage, within tolerances, including not sagging, spiking or being 'noisy'". Bonus if it can do this for more than five years.
It sounds like you've never had intermittent faults that turned out to be the fault of a cheap PSU aging _way_ too soon and far from gracefully.
There are reasons some people insist that your PSU is (at least) as important as any other component, and it has nothing to do with 'bigger is better'.
But hey, don't let your ignorance stop you 'shit[ting] on' someone else's.
The US presidential election was between Hillary and Trump and you want people to treat that _rationally_?
Those two make our lot look sane.
His home country, Australia, has cowardly turned their back on him
No. He was told that this was a criminal matter in Sweden, and then the UK. That if, at some point in the future he is charged by the US, that he can apply for a prisoner transfer to Australia.
His narcissistic fantasies aside, he was wanted in relation to a criminal investigation, refused to return to Sweden, tried numerous avenues to avoid having to face the investigation and every court and legal opinion that he has asked to review the situation has responded in the same way.
People facing criminal investigations do not get to set the terms of the investigation in any country I know of. Maybe the charges were politically motivated, maybe not. We'll never know. He's run away, left supporters liable for hundreds of thousands of pounds of bail and taken advantage of the hospitality of the Ecuadorean embassy. He's claimed persecution and asked for political asylum, but there's absolutely no evidence of any persecution.
But the US wants Assange badly
So Assange claims, and certainly several US figures have spoken out against him, but there's no warrant and no attempt to extradite him. So far all I've seen is a lot of rhetoric from someone whose other behaviour makes me question how much is real and how much is fantasies of self-importance.
I have and continue to struggle with chronic depression, including extended periods of suicidal ideation. To be frank, my own experience sounds closer to your own (in as much as such a brief description can tell me) - I am more familiar with a constant, extended period of suicidal 'desire' than I am with short lived, but perhaps more acute urges.
I am deeply sympathetic to your own experience and while I expect that there's a degree of commonality in what we and others go through, I don't expect that my own experiences necessarily reflect those of others. I was careful to state 'many' and not all and go on to stress that simply removing guns will not stop everyone who is suicidal. Perhaps I overstated the case, but it's based on studies and reports like this;
Suicide, Guns, and Public Policy
and less formally (although it has no links to the studies it presumably drawn on)
School Shootings and Gun Control: A Focus on Suicide
I am not sure that easy access to a firearm would have made much of a difference in my own experience, nor from the sound of it in yours - but I've seen this same information from various sources for some time, and can only conclude that for some people it can and will make a difference.
The second Emperor of China made acupuncture experiments on over 10,000 POWs
Link please? No? Proof by assertion
About half or even a full dozen of my friends are MDs/PhDs in medicine and practice acupuncture
Appeal to authority with just a hint of appeal to popularity.
I rather believe them than a random /. poster
You're not good with irony, are you.
And I have not the time to search for you english literature.
So it's proof by assertion, then?
A quick google. Maybe you should do some more reading
Subject could be just poked, without actually being stuck with a needle.
Does not really work, as poking is enough in most cases.
Acupuncture Just As Effective Without Needle Puncture
Subject could be given acupuncture without knowing which kind is it ("right", "wrong", "fake") - while being informed that the choice will be random.
That is not what a double blind study is about. The subject has to be convinced that it gets the real thing.
Sham acupuncture may be as efficacious as true acupuncture: a systematic review of clinical trials
Unfortunately the famous Oetzi has most interesting acupuncture points tatooed on his body,
Oetzi had tattoos. You need to show that they are acupuncture points. I have friends with similar designs that have nothing to do with acupuncture and everything to do with following body features.
That is all well documented ... Unfortunately you have to ... trust your translator.
Joseph Smith of the Mormons used a similar argument.
Oops!!
TL:DR "I have this really compelling evidence that I can't show you"
If, when injured, we reduce exercise to avoid either pain or aggravating the injury, our bones will become weaker and more porous, lean muscle mass will drop and consequently the metabolism will slow (slowing healing). This can lead to a vicious spiral where the inactivity compounds the pain and damage. Even in healthy adults who become more sedentary as they age, this is noticeable and many of the effects that we attribute to age are more correctly attributed to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle.
Consequently, if you can find a low-impact exercise that will allow you to continue to be active while injured, you are much less likely to suffer from the degenerative effects of inactivity.
Cliff Young (an ultra marathon runner from the early 80s in Australia) reports that he 'ran off' arthritis 'a couple of times'. He was 61 when he won his first ultra marathon (When he was asked how long he could run, he reported that he could fun for about five or six days. Reporters thought he meant stopping to sleep. He thought they meant continuously. Awesome guy.)
It's easier to maintain than regain. It's easier to regain than gain. Stay active.
Thanks for sharing.
Who marked this insightful?
The link is to a study that compared acupuncture to sham acupuncture (needling anywhere) to conventional therapy and found that both acupuncture and sham acupuncture had the same effect.
The GP specifically asked for evidence that acupuncture works better than random needling.
Were you too busy seeing what you wanted to see to actually read either the GP or the link you think disproves them?
Needling has been shown to help some chronic pain, most probably through release of endorphins and similar. That's a far cry from acupuncture's claims of meridians or acupuncture points and acupuncture's claims to be able to treat a range of other ailments.
Yup. Pity it has nothing to do with 'nitric oxide' which was what the GP (you?) told people to look for.
Did you read the result? No difference between acupuncture and sham where here the sham was just needling anywhere that wasn't an 'acupuncture point'.
So the study shows that needling people works. Other studies that have tested with endorphin inhibitors have shown a reduced effect, so the primary mechanism for the analgesic effect of acupuncture is likely to be the release of same.
Needling anywhere reduces pain. No meridians. No acupuncture points. No effect on anything other than some forms of chronic pain.
I've acknowledge in another post that I'm aware of the studies that have shown that needling has an effect on some chronic pain. I've still got no idea what you think except that people don't believe you 'because racism'.
Spent too much time posting links to legit scientific papers on possible effects of acupuncture here in the past
Really? If you logged in, I might be able to verify that, otherwise it's just you saying so.
I finally realized that many of the authors had gasp Chinese names and that's gonna be a deal breaker when the 'merican "engineers" here start shrieking DOUBLE BLIND TEST
Thinly veiled implication that a request for a study that meets the standards of other forms of medicine is based on some kind of racism.
google acupuncture nitric oxide
How about you make a point and then provide proof or links to back it up. What you've delivered so far is a complain that you've provided information in the past but that it's been ignored or denied because of racism. I'm prepared to accept that this might be the case, but the burden of proof is on you. And on acupuncture.
What exactly are you claiming acupuncture can do? What are the studies or trials that you think support this?
It may very well be that we agree (AFAIK acupuncture has been shown to be effective in treating some forms of chronic pain through endorphin release) but I don't know because all you've done is complain that no-one believes you and that American engineers are racist.
If this is the standard of 'proof' that you consider sufficient to support your 'argument', then your claims that there are 'legit' papers is suspect.
Caveats; I'm Australian and think the restrictions on firearms was a Very Good Thing.
With that said, the culture in Australia is very different than in the US. Smaller population, less income disparity, more social policies and safety nets.
We don't seem to have the same tensions with race - we have our own problems and deplorable treatment of the indigenous people is one of them but they are different than in the US.
I've grown up in outer suburbs and had friends on properties or who grew up in the country. There, a gun was a tool. About as sexy as a shovel. People who collected them or practiced with them were seen as more than a bit weird. There just wasn't the same level of ... reverence that seems to exist (real or just the impression from the outside) in the US.
Banning/restricting guns, especially in the wake of the Port Arthur shooting had a lot more popular support than currently exists in the US. I think that there needs to be some significant changes in culture and cultural values before reducing or restricting guns is going to be possible, or before it will have an effect.
It's really hard to keep people from committing suicide.
In many cases the urge to act passes relatively quickly. Removing or reducing access to an easy and immediate way to commit suicide reduces the number of people who actually succeed in committing suicide. You won't stop it, and some portion of people who would have committed suicide with a gun will find another means, but you will reduce it.
Well none of us likes to be wrong
Getting attached to 'being right' is cultural, habitual and lazy. There's a bunch of status and crap that we absorb from teachers and didactic teaching styles, but it's not useful and not healthy in anything more than a superficial level. _I_ am not right or wrong. Some things I believe or think I know may be wrong, but that really doesn't (shouldn't) mean much of anything outside those topics.
And how often when backed in the corner
I think that if I'm backed into a corner then I've become defensive, which means that I've turned an exchange into some kind of competition or confrontation. That doesn't sound useful for anyone involved. I think that if I'm 'losing' then I'm fighting, and then there's a whole lot of extraneous crap getting in the way of communication, learning, changing.
'Right' is a direction, not a destination. We start out ignorant. We learn some things, and then we get attached to the things we learn and lose touch with the process of learning. Being wrong, gracefully, takes practice. It takes some effort to track down and unpick the habits and values that we've absorbed directly and indirectly that value 'being right' over learning.
'Right', as a place or position, is for fanatics and believers.
do we actually take a time to stop and think, why this is the case
As often as I can. It gets easier every day, but only if you do it every day (to paraphrase Bojack Horseman)
There's a wonderful sense of freedom in being comfortable with uncertainty; with being able to say 'I don't know', or 'you're right, I hadn't considered that'.
Why cant a car/truck be used as a weapon
It can, but the number of instances where that is the intent compared to those where it isn't is so close to zero that it's statistical noise.
That certainly seems like its purpose according to some recent Muslim terrorists
OMG. Muslims!
Also in case you didnt know the statistics over 50% of firearm related deaths are suicides
Yes. ..."
Yes I did.
That's why I was careful to say "The number of deaths from guns (both suicide and homicide)
Are you actually reading what I write, or what you think I've written?
which could still be done without a gun
Technically true at only the most superficial level.
The urge to commit suicide is, in many case, relatively short-lived. If there's easy access to a means (such as a gun) then the urge may be acted on. Removing or limiting access to an easy process means that by the time a method has been set-up or accessed, the urge has passed. There are studies that show that easy access to guns causes an increase in suicide; that removing guns drops that rate. That is, while some people will, in the absence of a gun find another way, for many removing the immediacy of means allows time for the crisis to pass.
I can link you to some studies/research/papers that talk about this in detail if you are interested.
Even including suicide statistics, cars are responsible for way more deaths compared to guns
Yes. I know. I've never argued otherwise. In fact, I've pointed out that this argument is a straw man. No-one (whoops, you're a pedant) nearly no-one is arguing that guns kill more people than cars.
The only reason I can think of that you keep bringing up car deaths is that you're implying that we shouldn't look at ways of reducing gun deaths until we reduce car deaths first. If there's another reason, I'd be happy to discuss it, otherwise this is a fallacy of relative privation.
You say the majority of people killed in car crashes are "accidents"
Yes, I'm talking about intent.
The intention of (almost) all people who use a car is not to kill, therefore when their use of a car results in a fatality it is an 'accident'. Whether you consider them culpable is not what I am talking about. I am contrasting this with the intent of someone using a gun. The intent there is to kill (or to practice their skill with a tool designed to kill or to demonstrate their skill to others - to address the target and competition shooting pedantry, above). When there is a fatality as a result of a gun being used, that is rarely accidental.
Personally I see that as murder because you were grossly negligent
Then you are using a personal definition for the word 'murder'. Murder requires intent. A fatality without intent, even in the event of gross negligence is manslaughter. The very definition of murder is the _intent_ to kill. You can't just dismiss that because it's inconvenient to your other arguments.
Again the intended purpose of the tool does not matter only the amount of deaths caused
Yes, you've been quite clear that you'd rather not look at intent - either to distinguish between murder and manslaughter, or to distinguish between a tool designed to kill and one that kills only by accident or misuse.
target shooting, competition and hunting
Both target shooting and competition are essentially practising or demonstrating skill with a tool, they are separate purposes only if you're being especially pedantic.
Hunting is killing.
Try again.
cars cause exponentially more deaths than guns
Acknowledged and addressed in the original post. Repeating it doesn't make it any less a straw man. You introduced the argument that guns kill less people than cars. It's true. But irrelevant. No-one is saying otherwise. You can actually try to address a problem while another, bigger/worse problem is also addressed.
Never forget that guns are constitutionally protected
Never forget that the constitution can be amended.
Can we get back to the topic, now or do you have some more straw-men you'd like to attack?
Your comment shows your bias against the right to bear arms and defend yourself
No, I'd like to discuss ways of reducing death by guns. That may need to include a reduction in firearms, tighter regulation and/or some other form of limitation. Number of guns is not, however, the only problem. Many other countries have higher rates of firearm ownership than the US with far lower levels of gun death. There needs to be cultural and social changes at a minimum and I suspect that they need to start with the removal or lowering of the reverence/fetishisation of guns.
I'm questioning the right to bear arms. That's actually a vital part of being a citizen. Questioning and holding up the values that we hold. Demanding of ourselves and each other an accounting.
defend yourself
Thankfully I live in a sane country where the need for a gun to 'defend' myself is not as great as you seem to believe yours is.
Get out of this country if you dont respect our Constitution and fundamental rights
So you'll be leaving, seeing as you seem to have some kind of belief in an unchanging Constitution - which is against both the constitution and the intent of those who drafted it?
So you trust a private for profit corporation
Where in anything I said, did I say or even imply that?
I warned friends off Telegram from the outset, because a) messages went through their servers and b) their closed source encryption and/or implementation was home grown. Private company or government run, centralised and closed source are deal breakers if what you want is an encrypted communication tool. I pointed out that it would be too easy for old messages to be recovered and decrypted, either by a third party or the company itself, should it go through a change of direction or circumstances.
I don't have a need for encrypted communication, which is why I don't use any of the common tools.
L
You still have to worry, even outside of Russia.
How long until Telegram users start to receive messages offering _not_ to expose the messages they thought were private to their [boss/partner/police] in exchange for a small sum? Don't have those sorts of message? For only as little extra you do, now.
Cars kill far more people than guns do in the US
You're arguing against a straw man. No-one is arguing that guns kill more people than cars.
Trying to find a way to reduce gun deaths in the US doesn't preclude trying to reduce deaths from cars. Cars are tools with multiple purposes, none of which are 'to kill'. A gun's purpose is to kill. The number of deaths from cars is almost entirely from accidents. The number of deaths from guns (both suicide and homicide) is dominated by deliberate attempts to kill.
Found the ignorant fool
We have, indeed.
Better to be the kingmaker than the king, and if you control the information that the kingmaker's need ...
Cambridge Analytics are dead. They were only effective whilst they remained hidden. They may well restructure, fold or shift assets, but by the time they are back someone else will be sucking from Facebook's teat and all the while Facebook can say 'It wasn't us who meddled'.
It's almost beyond political power. Win or lose, all parties end up using Facebook data.
Something about 'the spice must flow' and 'he who controls the spice ...'