I know the things you’re talking about, basically a thread adapter to screw an off-the shelf oil filter from auto zone or wherever onto your gun, and the first shot punched a hole through the other side.

Also those adapters are legally considered a silencer and you still have to jump through all the same hoops to get one.

That’s not the thing I’ve been getting advertised to me on Facebook as an oil or fuel filter

The things I’m getting are a long thin metal tube with baffles inside and threads on one end that look basically like a textbook silencer/suppressor

I also see them getting advertised as “solvent traps” for gun cleaning, which I suppose is marginally better than they’re advertising it for some sort of firearm use, but I know a silencer when I see one.

Also if you’re using so much solvent that you have it oozing out the barrel while you’re cleaning the gun and feel like you need some sort of device to contain it, that’s a pretty sure sign that you’re using way too much solvent.

Unless maybe you’ve just pulled a Soviet surplus Mosin Nagant out of a crate and need to clean 50 years of caked-on cosmoline off of the whole damn rifle. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mosin with a threaded barrel though.

And I can’t think of any good reason that trap would have a hole at both ends, kind of seems like that defeats the stated purpose of trapping the solvent.

Al Qaeda has always been pretty clear on their Intentions in Iraq, in 2005 they specifically outlined a 4 stage plan

Step 1: expulsion of US forces from Iraq
Step 2: establish an Islamic Caliphate in Iraq
Step 3: extending the jihad to surrounding countries
Step 4: “the clash with Israel”

So yes, they were in opposition to the US occupation, but that was more of a means to an end, not exactly altruistic Iraq freedom fighters. And around that same time they were also carrying out attacks on Iraqi tribespeople and clashing with nationalist insurgents. Yes they got somewhat more extreme over time, but like you said a lot of that can be attributed to them growing in power, and arguably dealing with the US occupation was more pressing to them at the time so that’s where most of their resources went.

And step 3 definitely seems to be in line with expanding operations into Syria.

Al-Julani did serve between 2003 and 2006 in AQI/ISI

Which brings us back to the root of our disagreement

We’re in agreement that he was part of ISI. I think we’re also in agreement that ISI became ISIS

So do you consider ISI/AQI to be substantially different enough organization from ISIS to be worth drawing a distinction?

To me, I’d consider the distinction to be similar to quibbling over whether a software engineer worked for alphabet vs google, or Facebook vs meta. It’s essentially the same organization with most of the same leadership, goals, methods, etc. just with some restructuring and a name change. A useful distinction if you’re talking shop about the specific details of their structure and operation, but for the average layperson having a casual discussion on Lemmy they can be generally understood the be the same organization.

Again, you can really get into the weeds here about which group splintered off from where, and what name they were operating under at what time

ISIS evolved from ISI (Islamic State in Iraq,) which was also often also known as al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)

Al Nusra started as an offshoot from ISI/AQI who went to establish an Islamic state in Syria around the outbreak of the civil war in 2011 with the authorization and backing of ISI/AQI (and later ISIS) leader al-Baghdadi. al-Julani had already been active in ISI for several years at that point when he went to Syria.

By 2012 they had officially established themselves as al Nusra, and kind of started doing their own thing pretty quickly and regarded themselves as a separate affiliate of al Qaeda instead of a subsidiary of ISI, but that seems to be how ISIS regarded them. Regardless of what its status was formally, I think it’s pretty safe to say that al Nusra can trace its lineage at least partially to ISI.

In 2013 baghdadi tried to bring al Nusra formally under his banner and rebranded ISI as ISIS/ISIL (the S or L being al-Sham, the Levant, or Syria, al Nusra basically would have been the Syrian branch if things had gone according to al-Baghdadi’s plan) but al quaeda opposed that merger and like you said, al nusra continued to regard themselves as an al quaeda affiliate, and one separate from ISIS. This is where the conflict between all nusra and ISIS began and part of the split between ISIS and Al quaeda

Terrorist organizations aren’t exactly doing things by the book with notarized contracts and such. It’s a tangled web of shaky alliances and different cells operating mostly independently with lots of internal conflicts. There’s a lot of room for interpretation here, but I feel pretty comfortable simplifying things down to saying that al Nusra began as an affiliate or offshoot of the terrorist group that would later become ISIS.

That is literally false

Yes and no

When we’re dealing with terrorist organizations like ISIS, things aren’t always totally clear-cut, there’s always going to be groups merging and splitting off, alliances between different groups being made and broken, people switching sides, internal power struggles, name changes, etc.

So yes in the sense that he was not specifically part of the organization known as ISIS when it was known as ISIS

However, al-Nusra Front was at least very closely tied to or even a part of ISI, and ISI would later essentially become ISIS (or ISIL, IS, Daesh, whatever you want to call it)

Personally I’d consider making a distinction between ISI and ISIS to be uselessly pedantic hairsplitting. And depending on how you regard the relationship between ISI(S) and al-Nusra Front, I think it’s fair to say that he was either part of or at least very closely-allied with them.

Now as of right now, al-Sharaa/al-Julani seems to be doing an alright job as leader of Syria all things considered, he could certainly be doing a lot worse. But it’s still a new and evolving situation and it’s hard to say exactly what his intentions are/were, how his thoughts, beliefs, and allegiances have or have not changed. It could be that his actions with ISI were part of a means to this specific end to be a decent leader for Syria, it could be that over the years he has genuinely had a change of heart from being a jihadist, or it could be that the current situation is just a facade to keep international heat off of himself while he consolidates power in Syria and once he has he’ll go right back to full-on islamist extremism.

I hope for the best, I’m not really qualified to offer much of an opinion on him beyond that, and I suppose only time will tell.

There’s going to be a lot of bias when you try to go off of people you know

Personally, I’m pretty hard-pressed to think of anyone in my circles who doesn’t read at least a couple books a year.

And not everyone who reads necessarily does it when you’re around and may not talk about the reading they do for any number of reasons like they’re just not interested in talking about books, are embarrassed by the books they read, etc.

It kind of sounds like that article is about the “hey Siri” feature getting activated accidentally, like if it picks up something that sounds similar to the trigger phrase and starts recording

Which is still a big security/privacy issue, but not exactly the same as if they’re just turning the microphone on whenever they want to listen to you and serve you ads

I’ve had a mix of different vaccines, but slightly more moderna than the others

My first dose was moderna and was the only one I had any real noticeable symptoms besides a sore arm. Mostly fatigue and chills.

It was a bummer though, I worked overnight at the time, I went and got it after my shift, probably at around 8 or 9 AM, went home feeling fine and went to sleep, woke up in the afternoon still feeling alright, then a couple hours later it hit me. I pretty much kept to my normal night shift schedule on my days off, so I was up most of the night feeling like shit.

By the time I was ready to go to bed in the morning I was feeling better. If I had been on a normal schedule and had gotten the shot first thing in the morning I probably would have slept through the worst of it and wouldn’t have noticed anything.

Haven’t had any real symptoms from any of my subsequent doses, the last one I got a couple months ago maybe left me feeling a little fatigued, but it’s hard to say because I got it at a time when my sleep schedule was kind of fucked up from some other stuff and I’d been really busy so I might have just been the normal kind of tired.

I don’t think that most of the big tech companies are listening to your microphone (I’m not ruling it out entirely, and I’m certainly there are some smaller sketchier companies that are doing it)

But I think most of the time most of the time they don’t need to

They know what ads you’ve seen on your phone/computer, what you’ve been googling, the websites you’ve visited, where you’ve used your credit card, what shows and movies you watch, and where you’ve been (from gps locations, or from what wifi networks and Bluetooth devices you’ve been near or connected to) and what ads, playlists, stores, products, etc. you were exposed to while you were there, and of course who you talk to and all of that same information about those people.

That’s all going to influence the things you think and talk about, they probably have a pretty good idea what kind of conversations you’re going to have well before you do.

And don’t get me wrong, that’s creepy as fuck.

I think most of it comes down to people not even realizing how much data about ourselves we put out there and all of the ways it can be collected and used to build a profile about you.

And honestly I think they can probably get better data from that most of the time than from trying to filter out background noise and make sense of what you’re talking about through your microphone.

A lot of times it’s seasonal, for example, in the spring and summer a store might stock a lot of patio furniture and grills, and maybe they were solid sellers all season, but come fall they still have some leftover, and not as many people are going to want them in winter, and now they need that space in store to sell Christmas lights, so they have to do something with those leftover grills and lawn chairs.

So they can either warehouse them themselves, and try to sell them again next year, which might mean added shipping costs from the store to the warehouse and back again in the spring, and also takes up space in their own warehouses that they might need for other stuff, or they can sell them to an outfit like big lots and just order a new batch the next year and not have to deal with all of that.

Especially if that item is now discontinued and they won’t be able to restock the exact same grill (or whatever) next year, or maybe their contract with that manufacturer expired and wasn’t renewed so instead of stocking Weber grills they’re going to have Blackstones next year.

Sometimes stuff does end up there because people didn’t want it, but often the real issue is they didn’t want it at the full MSRP, but maybe they do want it at the discounted price big lots can sell it at. Of course Walmart or whatever store it came from could sell it at that lower price themselves, but if the Bean counters determine that they could make even more money by getting it off their shelves and replacing it with the new merchandise, that’s what they’re going to do.

Or sometimes it might be stuff with damaged packaging, open box returns, or cosmetic defects that they didn’t want to put on shelves.

If you’ve ever gone to an outlet store, it’s basically the same idea- discontinued, overstocked, last season, etc. merchandise, except it’s all coming from one brand instead of stuff from many different sources going to the same place, and the stores are probably a bit nicer because that brand is using it for advertising and protecting their image.

Places like TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and Homegoods are also basically the same thing.

And honestly, there are some really good deals to be had. There’s a “Half Off Store” near me which is a similar liquidator/overstock store that I believe sources most of their merchandise from target, and I’ve seen and gotten some pretty good deals there. It’s always hit-or-miss what they have in stock, which is to be expected, but they usually have some decent robot vacuums, some small kitchen appliances (even some moderately higher-end brands,) etc. at pretty deep discounts, usually they’re just last season/years models, or the packaging is a bit beaten up.

You can’t really go shopping at these places with the idea that “I’m going to buy this specific brand and model” but if you go with a general idea like “I need a food processor” you’ll probably find one that will do what you need. Or if you just stop in and walk around and see if anything catches your eye.

The half off store is next to a restaurant my wife and I like, so whenever we go there for dinner we walk around the store first and sometimes we find something we need/want, sometimes we don’t. We got a fancy trash can there once that sells for like $150 normally for about $60, box was a little banged up but the can itself was fine. My wife had been looking at a similar can from the same brand for her office, but didn’t want to spend that kind of money right then, I think this one was slightly bigger than the one she was looking at, but she decided she could live with that since it was half the price.

We also get a lot of dog toys there, she’s gonna tear them up and rip the stuffing out regardless of how much it cost, and as long as it’s fuzzy and squeaks she’s not picky, so we might as well save a few bucks.

Off the bat, every one of those 258 incidents paints an important picture about the gun violence issue in the US, however there’s a whole lot of people who are going to take issue with their methodology because they’re defining a school shooting as any time

a gun is brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims (including zero), time, day of the week, or reason.

And honestly that feels a little too broad for me.

If a gun is simply brandished, that’s just not a shooting. It might be an attempted or potential shooting that was stopped before it started somehow, but by definition it’s pretty hard to call that a shooting if no shots were actually fired. It’s a closely-related and important statistic that should be mentioned along with actual shooting numbers, but lumping it together with incidents where a gun was actually discharged feels like a really disingenuous to inflate the numbers.

They go into a lot of detail on their website about their methodology and what sort of incidents could potentially be counted as a school shooting but I feel like they missed the mark here a bit.

When we hear the phrase “school shooting” I think we all picture a pretty similar scenario, something like columbine or sandy hook where someone brings a gun to a school during a time where they expect students and staff to be present and open fire intending to do harm to those students or staff, not two assholes having a shootout on the school yard at 3AM on a Saturday when there’s no students or staff present, or some parent negligently discharging their firearm in the car while waiting to pick up their child, or any other number of other shooting or gun-related incidents that could occur at a school.

I think it would be more appropriate if the data were narrowed to something like

An incident where a gun is intentionally fired on or at a school property during or up to one hour before or after school hours or any school-sponsored activity where students or staff are present

Leaving one hour to allow for students who are dropped off early or are late being picked up, just kind of linger around the school to hang out, etc.

Which still leaves a bit of wiggle room for the shooters intent, who/what they were aiming at, etc. but that can sometimes be hard to determine objectively so I’d be ok including those, it would also include situations where the gun was fired but no one was actually hit and I’m also ok with including that.

It also would include some situations that aren’t the sort of “classic” mass shooter scenario we tend to envision, like two students with a personal dispute or a gang related incident that happens to play out at school with guns, and I’m also ok including those, the core of the issue is shooting happening at school during school functions involving students and/or staff and that fits the bill.

When we leave the definition so broad it leaves too much room for assholes to deflect and nitpick and say that our arguments are invalid because we’re making up numbers, even though they miss the point that even one school shooting a year is far too many, never mind the countless other similar incidents that occur as well. I think it’s best to get out ahead of that by keeping the definition more narrow.

I work in 911 dispatch, this will vary somewhat from one jurisdiction to another, and this isn’t necessarily relevant to how the stats are collected, but it definitely gives some insight into how I frame these incidents in my mind. If I get a call about someone with a gun at a school there are about 10 ways I might enter it (maybe even more, but these are what immediately come to my mind)

1. Suspicious Person- There is someone with a gun at the school. It’s holstered, someone saw it in their bag, etc. they’re not brandishing it or threatening to use it, and they may or may not be otherwise acting strangely but the gun is just present but otherwise not involved in the situation

2. Disturbance- They’re arguing or fighting with someone but the gun is not involved, just present

3. Domestic - same as a disturbance but the involved parties have some kind of relationship- family, roommates, exes, boyfriend/girlfriend, etc.

4. Assault victim- basically a disturbance or domestic where someone is hurt and needs EMS but was not shot (or stabbed, we also have a stabbing code)

5. Armed Subject- Someone has a gun and is using it in a threatening manner but has not fired it

6. Shots fired - a gun has been fired, intentionally or unintentionally, but no one is believed to have been shot

7. Shooting - someone has been shot

8. Active Shooter- the shooter is still there actively shooting (whether or not someone has been hit)

9. Suicide attempt- someone has shot themselves

10. Behavioral/Psych Emergency - there’s going to be overlap with this and some of the other incidents, but we might use this code if the person is having a psych issue, is threatening to kill themselves, etc. and needs to be taken for an evaluation or committed but otherwise no one is injured.

Each of those have their own special considerations, different types and amounts of resources are going to be sent with different priority levels, and ideally our police will handle each situation differently as appropriate (cops in my area are generally pretty good at that, but YMMV) and it feels weird to me that using this database’s methodology a lot of these could potentially all be lumped in as the same sort of “school shooting” incident.

My dad remembers from his childhood occasionally seeing houses placed under quarantine for diseases like measles and then at some point thanks to vaccines measles pretty much just stopped being a thing in most of the US. He got his polio and smallpox vaccines back in the day, and has lived to see smallpox eradicated and polio nearly so.

My grandfather was born a couple years after the 1918 flu pandemic, he had a brother born a couple years before him who died in infancy, he never talked about it much but the timing lines up that his brother was likely a victim of that pandemic. It was certainly something he heard talked about in his childhood just as we’ll probably keep talking about COVID for years to come, and I think it definitely left an impact on him, he always was wary about passing germs along to his grandchildren, he always warned our parents against kissing us and never did himself, the only time he did was on his literal deathbed (cancer, nothing communicable) when he kissed my sister (in a non-creepy familial way) as probably one of his last conscious acts.

He was never one to shy away from a fight, I would have loved to see the hell he would have raised against anti-maskers if he’d lived another decade or so. There are people his age or older still walking among us. These things aren’t even out of living memory, we’re barely a handful of generations removed from them.

The chickenpox vaccine was introduced when I was in elementary school. I remember a lot of children’s shows when I was growing up having a chickenpox episode where one or more of the main characters would get chickenpox, they’d take oatmeal baths and slather on calamine lotion to ease the itching, their parents would discuss having their friends over to get them infected early and give them immunity, etc. It kind of seemed like it was inevitable that many if not most kids would get chickenpox eventually, and at the time it kind of was. The vaccine was still optional at the time, and I remember a lot of discussion about it not being very effective, but a lot of kids in my age range got it, and the number of kids in my school who got chickenpox was probably in the dozens instead of probably hundreds just a few years earlier.

There have been some missteps along the way, my dad had a small hepatitis scare when a blood test turned up antibodies (though no active infection) likely from exposure from reused vaccine needles when he was in the army. The US did a grave disserve to polio vaccination efforts by using them as a cover to track down bin Laden and increased distrust in the vaccine in the process. There have been cases where vaccines have used ingredients that have proven unsafe, where people have had adverse reactions, etc. but still overall, the fact that I have never met anyone who has had smallpox, polio, or measles and probably never will speaks volumes about how much more good than harm vaccines do when 100 years ago I would almost certainly have known people who had died or left disabled or disfigured by those diseases.

The picture quality leaves a bit to be desired, but the two jackets do look pretty different to me. It looks like one may be a quarter zip without any chest pockets and the other is a full zip with chest pockets. And because of the differing picture qualities it’s kind of hard to say just how similar or different the colors are, they almost look like different colors from one picture of the same jacket to the other.

Also there may have been some deliberate choice in that sort of dark earth tone kind of color (or at least that’s what the colors look like to me,) different witnesses could give different answers for what color that jacket even is, I could imagine people calling it black, grey brown, tan, or green, depending on the lighting, how close they were, how much attention they paid, etc. on top of eyewitnesses just being kind of generally unreliable, so until they were able to get the security footage, which probably was at least a few minutes, cops could potentially have been working on conflicting descriptions of the jacket color.

Side note: I work in 911 dispatch, so I spend a lot of my nights trying to get descriptions of people and vehicles, I get a lot of people really struggling to tell me what color something is that’s right in front of them, and when we have multiple callers about something we’re often going to get as many different descriptions as there are callers. I remember one major incident I worked where depending on which caller you got, the description of the subject was either an older white guy wearing camo, a young black guy in a hoodie, or 3 white teenagers in trench coats.

It also looks like there was just another picture released where he was wearing what looks to me like a black or navy puffy jacket.

Also worth noting, I don’t think the NYPD has been totally clear about where these pictures were all taken on the timeline, one was taken at the hostel he was staying at and I’m not even totally clear if it’s actually from the same day as the shooting or not.

Hypothetically, you’d still want to blend into the crowd, “yellow puffy jacket and Knicks hat” is pretty identifiable if someone were to see you changing your clothes, but darker colored midweight hooded jacket could probably describes like 75% of what everyone on any random street in New York is wearing at any given time in the winter.

And the backpacks look like they’re totally different colors. You also wouldn’t want to ditch the bag or clothes too close to the chime scene, don’t want to leave behind evidence that might be easily linked to you.

Can’t speak for the neck gaiter, a black gaiter is a pretty unremarkable article of clothing, I know a few people who have started wearing them semi regularly over the winter since COVID, it’s probably not enough to be identifiable on its own, he could have simply forgotten about it, it could be functional by hiding something identifiable (neck tattoos, scars, who knows, maybe even a tracheostomy that the insurance company fucked him over with in some way) he may have wanted to keep it readily at hand to quickly cover his face again if needed, etc.

I’m not saying it’s what happened here, but I’ve always figured that if I intended to commit a crime and escape, I’d change my outer clothes as fast as possible. If you were wearing a mask, if you put on a different jacket, backpack, hat, pants, and shoes you’re basically unrecognizable barring any recognizable scars or tattoos or whatever.

I don’t know how much time would have elapsed between the two pictures, but if you plan for it by wearing two layers, it wouldn’t take very long to pull a second bag from your backpack and stuff the first backpack and your jacket into the second pack.

It looks like the guy in both sets of pictures might be wearing the same sort of neck gaiter, but that’s pretty flimsy evidence to say the least

Probably to account for people who won’t store it properly, degradation of the packaging material, etc.

For example, if you store your blister pack of KI on a sunny shelf in your bathroom, UV rays eventually weaken the plastic packaging, cracks develop in the plastic letting in water vapor from your shower, and a stray mold space makes its way in as well and eventually you end up with mold growing on your pills. The KI itself may still be perfectly fine and able to do its job, but that mold might make you sick.

Like others are saying, crypto laws are a bit murky

In general though, it’s pretty well in agreement that you’re supposed to pay capital gains tax when you sell, I imagine that’s something they may try to do away with.

I bought a tiny amount of Bitcoin probably a decade ago, and have basically been sitting on it ever since. It’s of course grown in value significantly since then (though we’re still only talking enough for maybe a couple nice dinners or a modest vacation, not life-changing wealth)

Capital gains tax takes a pretty good chunk out of what I’d earn from it, don’t get me wrong, I’d still make money off of it no matter where I tried to cash out, but currently it’s hovering right around the point where I’m not sure if it’s worth the hassle of having one more thing to keep track of and figure out on my taxes for a relatively small payoff.

If they did away with the capital gains tax on crypto, I’d probably cash out right now (and never look back, I don’t feel I need to repeat this experiment)

I’m not saying that they should do away with capital gains on crypto, just kind of pointing out one way they could get it and how it might affect me personally.

My circles tend to be full of “traditionally manly men” types

A bunch of eagle scouts, hunters, fishermen, mechanics of various types, construction workers, people who enjoy guns knives and axes, beer and whiskey drinkers, DIYers, veterans, woodworkers, blacksmiths, guys who like camping and sitting around a fire, getting together to watch the game, and damn-near every one of us sports a full beard.

None of us see ourselves reflected in Trump at all, he’s the antithesis of all of the values we take pride in. He’s the dude we only talk to at a bar because he’s either being weirdly possessive of the pool table or creeping out some girls and we’re trying to distract him while they make their exit. He’s the neighbor we hope we don’t run into because he’s going to try to talk to us and every word out of his mouth is garbage.

And of course, those of us who are going bald just suck it up and shave our heads instead of whatever the fuck is going on with his head.

nearly three years

Try 10 years

This whole shit show kicked off with Russia invading Crimea back in 2014 and it’s been going on ever since.

Yes, it escalated in a big way a couple of years ago, but if someone were to, for example, invade Florida, we’d consider that to be the unquestionable start of a war, not 8 years later when they tried to move beyond Florida and attack the rest of the country.

stripping to her underwear

It varies of course, but most public nudity laws I’ve seen pretty much only specify that genitals and female breasts (and sometimes not even breasts) need to be covered.

There’s a picture in the article, she’s wearing some fairly conservative undies, I’ve seen people wear more revealing clothes just out shopping at Walmart or going for a jog, and she’s certainly showing less skin than you’d see at most beaches or swimming pools.

At worst you might get questioned by the cops about why you’re out walking around in your underwear, but unless you seem like you’re in the middle of a mental health crisis, or refusing to leave a business or otherwise causing a disturbance, it’s kind of a stretch to say you’d be arrested, at least in most halfway modern countries if the cops are enforcing the laws properly (which is of course not a given)