Specifically the music festivals I've been to. It's fun and a wonderful feeling for a while, but eventually the idiots/assholes will become a problem that needs to be dealt with. Or nature throws a disaster at you and there is chaos. It's a little hard to come up with historical examples because the utopia portion is often quite short and overshadowed by the negatives that follow. Generally, I would point to almost a…
The book Animal Farm is a great representation of this concept as a fable.
Is it? I thought Animal Farm was specifically about communism (it's been a while since I read it). Wouldn't Lord of the Flies be a better fable?
> Automatic rifles in the US are much, much more difficult and expensive to acquire than one would think--tens of thousands of dollars usually Clarification: to acquire legally . It is not nearly that expensive black market.
Yeah that's fair. One could also just make one pretty easily, it doesn't require too much knowledge to modify an existing semi-automatic.
> One could also just make one pretty easily, it doesn't require too much knowledge to modify an existing semi-automatic.
Sure, you can make an unreliable automatic from a semi-auto easily. But it's a far cry from a commercial/military product.
I think it’s worth asking why the cops are so angry at these protestors. We didn’t see this level of police anger and misconduct during the protests over the lock down, but during these protests the cops appear to be furious in a way I have never seen before.
is this a rhetorical question? the protestors are calling for anything from decreasing police department funding to abolishing it altogether. I'm sure there's a diversity of viewpoints within the movement, but to a cop it looks like a big crowd of people trying to eliminate their job. this certainly doesn't excuse their actions, but it's not hard to see why this would be upsetting.
My gut instinct is that the “abolish the police” crowd, however you define it, got much louder after the violent reprisals. My belief is that a lot of cops attacked when the protests were more about anger over police brutality in general and George Floyd’s murder in particular, which hints to an even darker motivation than keeping their jobs.
And if they thought brutal reprisals were a good plan to keep their jobs ... oh boy. They did not plan that out well. The level of sudden radicalization against the police has been breath taking.
Can you clarify the timeline? AFAIK the police used tear-gas, then they were ordered to stop by the mayor, then they stopped and switched to other means like mace. Do you know differently?
The Mayor ordered them to stop using one specific type of tear gas -- CS gas -- last Friday. For one day, the police used alternatives including mace, pepper balls, steel cored rubber bullets, flashbangs, and smoke with irritating agents. However, by Sunday (or maybe early, early Monday morning), the police were using CS gas again at the order of the police chief, Carmen Best.
>However, by Sunday (or maybe early, early Monday morning), the police were using CS gas again at the order of the police chief, Carmen Best.
I did not know that. Do you have a reference to back this up?
No, I do not see that anywhere on the page. I do see '"YOU HAVE HIJACKED THIS" Black community activists clash with Seattle anarchists over BLM message, seized district' and other stuff like 'Washington restaurant apologizes after police officer finds derogatory acronym on receipt' and 'Seattle mayor, police chief deny making call to abandon police precinct.' It's mostly sane news. I wonder if it shows different thin…
Just checked back, it seems they've changed the headline.
Fox News often changes headlines. The original is usually the best/most informative. Throughout the day the headlines seem to get more and more click-bait.
You missed the point. You can assert your rights all the livelong day, but without a criminal justice apparatus all you have are a gun and some fine words. Given the relatively high mortality among armed gang members in America's underpoliced inner cities, your gun isn't the reason you and yours enjoy relatively low mortality--the difference is either one of policing or fine words, and I'm pretty sure it's not the la…
No, you are missing the point. Without a gun there is nothing keeping you safe aside from a cop's whims. If someone wanted to walk into your house/office and kill you, a cop would (1) stop them, (2) choose not to stop them and not get punished for it, or (3) not get to you in time to be of any help. Defending yourself is the fourth option you exercise with your right to self-defense. If you really think that cops are…
I really don't think I'm missing the point. I might be missing your point, since you seem to have misinterpreted the thread and gone off onto your own digression. I'm all for 2A and I don't think cops are bad, but guns aren't keeping the peace, the police are keeping the peace, even if they aren't a perfect institution. There are lots of places with lots of guns and few police, and they are not known for being nice places to live. This conversation has reached the absurd--those of us without guns aren't dying multiple times per day as your "without a gun..." comment suggests. I'm not interested in debating absurdities, so I'll leave you with the last word.
Whose media is the question. A bit under half of the votes went to Donald Trump 2016, and I bet few in this demographic are listening to NPR just like few who voted for Clinton are watching Hannity. There is this narrative among the right that the vast majority of media is left leaning, but given the numbers and viewership of conservative voices on cable news, talk radio, the internet, and the fact that nearly half t…
On the other hand, you've got CNN's Donna Brazile leaking debate questions and topics to Clinton's staff ahead of the debate. I'm at work so I don't have it on hand, but someone made a really amazing chart of the various relationships between Obama's staff and CNN's staff. I would have thought it was the work of a kook until I began to look up randomly selected relationships to verify them. Aside from the LPFM repeat…
> Aside from the LPFM repeater stations, largely used for religious broadcasting, I would say that the radio market has been completely captured by the left.
That's true for the lower half of the FM dial (aka the public good section that naturally aligns with left leaning ideals), but not the top half or AM.
Now that’s an impressive achievement: https://www.reddit.com/r/CapHillAutonomousZone/comments/h7km... “Black lives matter” art painting in the street. Splendid!
I don’t understand why would someone downvote this comment... anyone willing to explain the issue with it? It’s just a link to great art made at CHAZ, I don’t see how that can be taken negatively.
> the occasional opportunity to debate such issues in an intelligent forum is something I have trouble finding elsewhere on the internet. That's maybe the good place to ask: What are other places (maybe places more open to political discussions) the HN crowd would recommend for "intelligent discussions"? Twitter and Reddit are an awful mess at the moment.
This has been asked before here. The best answers were essentially niche blogs with commenting systems and niche subreddits. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20023209
LessWrong and niche subreddits depending on the political views you hope to find.
> depending on the political views you hope to find It seems like the really good discussion places wouldn't have to carry this caveat. It's too bad those are even harder to find.
You cannot fit too much of the Overton window in any one place. And a lot of politics these days relies on entire parallel media structures so that what even happened is under dispute, let alone the moral response to them.