because it’s way more convenient

Realistically, the only actual solution to this problem in any long term would probably involve stationing nukes, which nobody really wants to do. A combination of not wanting to risk pissing off putin, because everyone thinks that he’s an insane trump-level idiot that will engage in mutual self-destruction over ukraine, combined with the post-soviet destruction and hollowing out of the ukranian economy into private enterprise, an economy which wasn’t exactly doing hot before. So it’s pretty clear that most everyone doesn’t actually give a fuck about ukraine or the ukranian people at all. Everyone’s just gonna use this as an opportunity, as with every conflict, to pawn off old military hardware, bury the receiving country in a huge amount of IMF bank loan debt, and scale up their own domestic military production while paying off a bunch of private contractors which are, hmm, suspiciously close to the levers of power inside the real government. Weird how that happens. What a noble sacrifice.

I dunno, the wheels turn.

I mean, if you’re assuming the worst, a nuclear strike could pretty much wipe israel almost entirely off the map. With a more conservative and realistic positioning, you know, one singular, small nuke, probably sourced from somewhere else, then you’d still be looking at probably 20,000 people dead or injured if it were to hit the downtown of any city. You know, ten times the amount of october 7th. That would be a huge international incident, especially seeing as how the nuke would have to be provided by some other foreign government, which means that there could be a chance of a probably unpreventable follow-up attack at almost any time. It would be a pretty big deal, even if they were credibly threatened. I mean, that’s part of why Iran isn’t allowed to have a nuclear program.

Destitute communities come with a lot of political instability which probably has to be channeled into something, which despite what everyone’s been thinking so far, has sort of been, to mixed or poor success with basically every succeeding administration. The protests keep getting bigger, basically. You get a big or well-organized enough one of those, and then there’s a chance that you get something much more serious than chaz, or you get a politically galvanizing one-sided massacre, or something else to that effect.

isn’t a slur more than that?

Not really. I could provide actual specific examples, but I don’t really want to start saying like, slurs, so. I think maybe if you think that you couldn’t make a slur out of almost any word, then you’re not being creative enough, or, you haven’t acclimated to how creative some of these other guys can be.

Here, I’ll come up with a theoretical example. You could probably make a slur out of, say, calling someone a banana-eater, right. I can even imagine two ways to do that.

You could have it be, okay, well, monkeys eat bananas, so, the banana eater is like a monkey, and then obviously comparing people to monkeys is gonna be a little bit of a red flag, is maybe racist, especially depending on whether or not you’re using it to be racist, or applying it disproportionately to one group of people. I’ve seen people just throwing out, like, the specific lego number piece of the mass produced lego monkey, whenever they see a black guy online. I think, at that point, that’s basically a slur, in how they’re using it, and that’s like, just a sequence of numbers.

Or, you could say, okay, well, bananas are kind of a phallic type of food, right, like hot dogs, or whatever, so, people eating bananas are gay, as a kind of substitute for a cock. So, it could also be a homophobic thing.

This is all dependent on the context of use, too. If you’re exclusively calling one group “banana-eaters” based on their intrinsic traits, that’s gonna turn that expression into a slur more. It could also be a statement of fact, right, oh, chuck over there, he’s a banana-eater, he eats bananas, sure. It depends entirely on use. If you need evidence for how this shit can progress then you need only look at websites like 4chan or some other such nonsense.

On top of all this you kind of have the complications of, say, slurs only really applying to particular intrinsic traits that people have rather than others. Slurs can apply to black people, but calling someone a “cracker”, despite being still based on an intrinsic trait, of white skin, isn’t really a slur. Neither is, as upthread, calling someone a “boomer”, because we all age over time, where it’s sort of used generically just to refer to anyone older than you, or because it’s usually applied as a reference to a very specific class of people that have a specific socioeconomic context, more than just being based on their age. You’ll usually only hear people call, say, american boomers “boomers”, in that context, but you won’t hear that in, say, china, or africa, or most of south america, or whatever. It’s a reference to the post-war boom years, explicitly.

There are also certain subcultures which re-appropriate slurs, which basically means that those words aren’t really slurs in how they’re being used in that subculture. I’m sure you can think of examples of that.

I think maybe it’s naive to think that if the cost goes down, shrimp jesus won’t just be in higher demand. Shrimp jesus has no market cap, bullshit has no market cap. If you make it more efficient to flood cyberspace with bullshit, cyberspace will just be flooded with more bullshit. Those great lakes will still boil, don’t worry.

This is probably why the tech industry has been hardened against that sort of thing, and is, say, famously hard to unionize.

And… a great example of that is Palestine. For the sake of simplicity, let’s call what Hamas did “attacking a target”. What was the outcome of that? Israel had “justification” to engage in mass ethnic cleansing for over a year.

You put justification in quotes here, and I think you clearly understand why. Netenyanhu propped up hamas as the de facto government specifically in order to ensure a more militant party would give israel the necessary “justification” to attack the people there. So, even their governance, and that attack itself, is traceable to israel’s state violence. A minor note, but an important one, I think. And I think one which requires more thought than just like, pointing to that and then saying “See, I told you, violence doesn’t work, and is bad, and israel wants it!”, because israel’s obviously not an overly rational state which is actually functional, either for it’s people or for it’s goals.

More broadly though, it’s not necessary at all for people to have guns, in order for cops to kill them. Cops can invent any number of reasons to kill someone in their day to day. The gun is something you just see in the news media a lot because it’s incredibly common in america, and especially common in the hoods where cops go out and kill people in larger numbers. Again, we can see that as an extension of a context, created by the state, which has naturally created violence. Partially through the valuable, and illegal, property, mostly in the form of drugs, which must be protected through extralegal means, i.e. cartels and gangs, but also just naturally as a result of police violence in those places as an extension of that, which is an intentional decision to create by the ruling class. It’s a way to create CIA black budgets, it’s a way to incarcerate and vilify your political opponents at higher rates, etc. You can’t be intolerant to the idea of guns as a blanket case, in that context, because it’s a totally different kind of context, and is one which is created by the state.

I would maybe also make the point that a protest is incentive enough against killing people, because it would be widely known and televised as a massacre in the media. You know, just gunning people down in the street, en masse. That line is sort of, becoming less clear over time, as the government seems to be more and more willing to condone that, if not outright do that, but I don’t really think that if, say, everyone in the BLM riots was armed, the cops would just start randomly firing into the crowd. They’d be hopelessly outnumbered, for one, so that’s a pretty clear reason for the police not to just start sputtering off rounds like a bunch of idiots, but you’d also probably see a protracted national guard response over the course of the next several weeks, which nobody really wants to deal with, both in terms of the media response and just the basic type of shit that would happen.

You also have several extrapolations you can make from just that happening in the first place, even though it never would. Like, the kind of city which could get up to that, in america, would maybe reveal something incredibly uncomfortable to the ruling institutions about that particular city and its political disposition and potentially that could be extrapolated to the entire country. Most places don’t get to that point because they reach civil war before that, which is kind of more along the lines of what the preceding commenter is talking about. More along the lines of, say, IRA tactics.

Which is all to say, that this is something which is shaped entirely by the government’s intentional responses and the contexts that they create. When they decide to escalate, that should be seen, naturally, as being on them, and not on your average person. I think what the previous commenter is trying to say, with a good faith reading, is that we are probably due, in the next 4 years and perhaps beyond, for an escalation. I don’t think that’s really a morally great thing, or a good context, but I do think they’re potentially right based on how things shake out, and I think that people should probably come to terms with that even as we try to avoid it.

Edit: Also I forgot to note this, but this isn’t really a disagreement in core ideals, but just of tactics. Dual power isn’t so much a deliberate choice of tactic so much as it should just be a certainty, being that both sides of this debate are mutually beneficial to one another. If you have, or can place, a more reasonable politician in office, either through violence (highly unusual, but does happen occasionally if the dice reroll lands well enough), or through the political system itself, then that reasonable politician is just that, more reasonable. i.e. more likely to accomplish goals which are desirable to any violent guerillas. Likewise, the pressure that violent guerillas exert can be seen as a kind of abstract economic cost constantly being leveraged against unreasonable political powers, in favor of reasonable elements of that political system.

The main point against this, is that the united states is currently so unreasonable, politically, that it’s functionally impossible to bargain with in really any way. Any violence, under such a political system, one which refuses any attempt at change, is seen as kind of ultimately meaningless. But I think that’s maybe also part of a broader point about how people just generally feel, understandably, incredibly pessimistic about the future, and are sort of retreating back into a kind of survival mode. Especially, I think, because they’ve been made to feel totally responsible for the weight of the world, when ultimately the decision of the political power to retaliate and do mass violence is, as previously stated, both inevitable, and entirely their own decision, that they must be held responsible for, rather than the people.

Depends on context, which I think is missed in basically all these discussions. Solar, wind, and hydropower are obviously contextually dependent technologies, that are well suited to particular environments. They have to line up with energy demand curves, or else impose expensive and inefficient battery solutions. They don’t have a whole lot of efficiency in terms of land use, which there are some proposed solutions for, but they’re pretty efficient both economically, and are pretty ecologically contentious as long as recycling is being done adequately. Nuclear solves a different problem. It provides base load, which is somewhat important, it’s potentially not as flexible as a technology, but it’s easier to build infrastructure for because it’s more consistent. It can also be somewhat land-use agnostic, though things like water use for cooling towers and tradeoffs such as that are definitely a consideration. It’s also much denser in terms of land use, meaning it’s potentially more efficient for larger cities.

They’re both just different technologies, with different applications, and they both have a place in any sensible structuring of the world. I don’t understand why people become so split along the obvious astroturfed and petrol-funded propaganda that floats around for both sides. You have pro-nuclear people that are saying solar panels like, require exotic materials mines, which is insanely ironic, and you have solar people who are fearmongering about solved problems like nuclear waste and safety concerns and efficiency in terms of economic cost, which is also insanely ironic. The fact that this conflict comes up every time strikes me as kind of horrendously stupid and obviously favorable to petrol lobbies.

Eastern propaganda

lol

this is potentially true, though if there’s any flexion or breakage in the 3d print material, you’d probably some underpressure in the cartridge, not that such a thing would matter much, or a more troubling lack of accuracy, which may be significant even at this distance, but probably not. both especially if you’re not using hardware store parts. at a certain point, you do just kind of get into shinzo abe doohickey territory, with that sort of a thing, maybe easier just to use a couple pipes. on that note, you could also conceivably use a wipe-based suppression system with a classic hardware store four winds shotgun, OR a contained gas firing system, if you’re going the probably over-complicated 3d printing route, especially if you avoid some larger pressures which are probably unnecessary.

you really don’t need any advanced rifling or superior ballistics or anything, at the distance this guy was at. he could’ve even just used a knife, or a brick, or his hands, to be honest, especially since the CEO was not dressed in ballistic armor or protected in really any way. though I imagine the public would be somewhat less sympathetic to those methods since they’re seen as kind of brutal or psychotic, even if they have the same end result.

you can use alcohol to eliminate those, and there’s really no reason to retain those or even the uhhh. bunny cage? if they’re properly cleaned, because caliber can be determined just by forensics and is totally useless for most LE to know, unless you’re getting really weird with it. yeah. bunny caliber, the caliber of bunnies.

as a hobby, it’s basically just another form of consumerism, and the culture surrounding it is not unlike that of car culture, with the same purported values. freedom, agency, maintaining control over your own life, it’s all just marketing speak to drive customer traffic, and ends up being politicized only really insofar as everything must exist inside of a political context.

there are definitely advantages to having guns for certain populations, certainly, marginalized populations that are already at risk, but those populations already have more prevalent firearms use for obvious reasons, and would probably maintain higher firearms use rates regardless of legality as a result of their marginalization, where more strict gun laws won’t really factor in, or rather, would be just another meaningless slap-on charge to extend sentencing.

most of your other actual pro2a people are gonna by random hobbyists, hunters, and fudds, who can’t really be expected to put up any organized resistance against anything, and the other half are people who would already be a fan of any plan to march around and take away other people’s guns, because they’re ex-military chuds, or cops, or what have you.

you could probably 3d print a booster, and use a spring, I bet. it wouldn’t be reliable since it’d get hot, but I don’t think there would be too big an issue with too high of pressures or anything causing it to break. alternatively, you could just go with something that doesn’t use a tilting or rotating or locking barrel mechanism, like a steyr GB, or even just a hi-point, which I think is just straight blowback.

you’d also probably wanna go with a mainly wipe-based suppressor rather than one with just baffles, since you’re making something that’s basically disposable anyways, and those can fit into smaller packages while being more effective than something with baffles.

they legit just send out the interns to go get coffee, so much that it’s a trope at this point. these people barely raise their own fucking kids, they don’t give a shit about any of those like, minor pleasures. they have cocaine, and other rich people who are constantly willing to kiss each other’s ass in a big circle, human centipede ouroborous style.

they already do that shit. elon already has a pretty big security retinue and his ass almost never goes out in actual public anymore, only ever hosts private events with verified people and pretty good security. most CEOs and billionaires aren’t gonna be that paranoid, but most of them don’t have to be, and they already tend to live in totally different contexts than your average person.

what I’d be more interested in knowing is how this guy figured out that this particular guy was going to be outside this particular hotel at this particular time. this wasn’t a crime of pure opportunity, this was something which seems like it was probably planned in advance. if it was publicly accessible where this guy was going, that’s a much easier and cheaper thing for businesses and CEOs to solve, and is probably the most important part of this kind of security.

I mean I do think banning them is a good idea, and in general I think nazis should be taken on helicopter rides, most especially the enablers of nazis, their financial leash handlers which basically bootstrap them into these positions in order to push the dialogue further rightward in service of corporate interests, and probably also in this case in service of “geopolitical security” since we’re going to be seeing oncoming climate refugees in the coming years, and combatting that in any way but increasing the security apparatus is off the table.

More than that, though, I worry that realistically just banning them, though a great temporary measure, won’t do much, say, five years or a decade down the road, because it’s not gonna solve the core hypocrisies and discrepancies that neoliberalism is not so keen to solve. If you want to actually solve this problem long term then you need to combat those core problems. Instead, though, I think that probably the party being banned will just see them either form a new party, or else tone down their rhetoric to an acceptable degree, or just join the next furthest right party and then decide to push them further right, and so on and so on, until we’ve all collectively just shifted rightward to an incredible degree.

Ad nauseam, et cetera, regardless of the political apparatuses at work, until collectively the western world plummets towards fascism.