I’ve had people try to tell me that basic healthcare and corrections to income equality are “extremely progressive” viewpoints. I’m done with letting others’ definition of extremism into the conversation.

Wait till you hear what rich folks say about that plan!

https://patrioticmillionaires.org/

(Spoiler: A lot of them agree)

We already did!…And then we tore it down to make our interstate highway system. Any remaining tracks turn into museum exhibits we call “rail trails”.

I hope this doesn’t sound too insane given that currently this is “good news” or at least good metrics for us: But I often worry about using the stock market as a metric for anyone notable.

For instance, I picture a future where a politican pushes hard for increases to minimum wage…and the stock market tanks because “free labor is ruined”. There are some bubbles where it really should tank and I just worry that we’d be excusing it then, and not now.

Granted: It is my belief that there’s no bubbles now and that Biden handed us a working system - one that Trump is throwing wrenches into. I just think after the GME fiasco, we shouldn’t necessarily trust the stock market as a perfect system run by level-headed people.

I’d say it’s currently an issue of the medical system being vastly overwhelmed. We don’t have nearly enough staff to handle the many health crises in the country, and it doesn’t help that many preventable cases get ignored for a long time (out of fear of overpaying) until they require far more extensive treatment.

As such, doctors don’t really have a choice but to rush their visits and take overbooking.

Let me test this standpoint a bit.

As I mentioned, I held a gun long ago handed to me by a marine doing a demo on a decommissioned carrier. He did not give me any kind of extensive training in the safety of the 92FS or any cautions about edge case safety concerns. I didn’t check the chamber, or know how to. In holding it horizontally within a metal ship, it’s not impossible that a misfire from the direction I held it could have ricocheted off walls and hurt someone. While I knew not to touch the trigger, he didn’t instruct me as such.

The Marine did, however, know that no live ammo was being brought onto the boat, and that he’d personally checked that the weapon was unloaded before handing it to me - just so I could see how much it weighed.

Was that tiny incident irresponsible on MY part? I would argue no. There are responsibilities carried by gun users and owners, and only some of those pass on depending on the environment the gun’s handler sets.

I had a guy in my Discord following some insane moon logic about how ranked choice voting has some concerns because people could “tactically put their preferred option second to game the system”. He tried about five times and still could not convince us that water is dry.

What I described is a problem with B. On a set, there are also problems with D, and E.

Even with brief safety lessons, I would not want/require every actor to ever touch a gun to know the insane revolver process described above in which you must pull the trigger to safely unload a gun and make it safe - and to check that the blank rounds are actually blank. If a “gun nut” didn’t know that process, there are liable to be countless other processes an actor won’t know.

Additionally, guns are used on set for dramatic effect. Actors WILL point guns at other actors for the sake of a shot, and WILL have their finger on the trigger to make their character seem real mean. So D and E, while good lessons, must be suspended on TV sets.

All the rest of the lessons are for the arms master of a set to handle. They are the ones that should be ensuring weapons anywhere near a set are loaded with blanks only when needed, and all otherwise follows full safety precautions. Hence why my opinion on blame for that incident was on Baldwin as the producer responsible for negligently hiring a shitty arms handler, not on Baldwin as the person holding the gun that went off.

I have a little bit of a story in gun safety.

I haven’t touched a gun in a decade. When I did, it was an unloaded demo beretta used by the navy.

When commenting on the Internet about safe gun handling in regards to the Alec Baldwin trial, I professed “Well, safe gun handling is not always obvious for all firearms. For instance, the methods to safely handle and unload an old fashioned revolver, the kind often on TV, when it’s already loaded and its hammer is back, is ridiculously complicated. Only a professional should handle that.”

This comment resulted in a reply from a gun nut insisting I was a moron, and had no idea what I was talking about. Feeling 80% sure of my knowledge of revolvers, I looked it up on YouTube, and boosted it to 100%.

To explain: If a revolver’s hammer is cocked, the cylinder is locked and you can’t just open it to take out the bullets. Plus, any gentle trigger motion or even hard knock will loosen the hammer and fire the bullet (supposedly, some newer revolvers are safer, but these don’t show up on TV shows). The stupid thing is, there’s no special switch or motion to release the hammer in a clear, safe way. So, the only way to unload the gun starts with blocking the hammer with a finger, then pulling the trigger, releasing it. Then you can open the cylinder.

But the aggravating headline was me, a pure gun commenter who only knows about them from video games and internet debates, knowing more about their safety than a self-professed gun nut.

Right now Canadians and Europeans are wondering “How do we stop America”. And, as an American, I’m certainly not going to obsess over splitting hairs there.

I don’t think there’s any kind of international aggression these days where it should be implied we’d “go after the civilian population”. Sadly, Israel disagrees.

Fuck it, update the law to include the MAGA cult. Apparently Hispanic communities are not beyond that brainwashing.

I’d almost think our equivalent to 1984’s “reduced vocabulary” is the question of “Are you left wing or right wing?”

Coming to the forefront as we champion the statistic that, when talking about policies past outrage headlines, a lot of Americans agree on major issues.

There are definitely alternatives, where there is more tax incentive to own one home that you live in, and increasing penalties for holding more properties, especially for a long period of time and especially if they are in areas of high housing demand.

OP isn’t directly suggesting making rentals illegal; in fact it’s a bit vague what specific practice they’re blaming. My best guess is that they generally don’t feel laws should allow/incentivize owning so many housing properties, especially if one is not personally doing anything to earn money from them.

One danger, though: Trump’s campaign managers will try to swing them as well.

I am hopeful! But it will be a fight.

They could also tie it to occupancy. If a functional residence goes more than half the year without someone living in it, property tax is quintupled.

There’s danger to writing such a law correctly, unfortunately. I recall something in Ecuador where people were leaving extensions to their home just barely unfinished so that they could avoid certain residence laws until they had a buyer.

I’ve had an idea for a video game that intentionally makes talking more difficult, to get people to overcome the anxiety and value interactions more.

It’d be based on some old adventure games where players need to type certain words to garner a response, but use a number of assistive tech forms to:

• Allow for many synonyms of the expected word
• Remember words that have been used recently
• Let console players use a microphone to ask people things
• Have NPCs speak using text to avoid the need for fully dynamic speech of all kinds

Probably won’t ever happen but fun to consider.

I’m going to guess there were prescription meds available on SR. The danger is, if they weren’t going through FDA or any oversight, it’s very possible they were some other “mix” containing addictive substances.

Ahem.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat of my state, pushed a bill called the Accountable Capitalism Act, requiring the board of each major company to be 40% voted in by their employees. In my eyes it would have been a fantastic move to limit capitalism’s damage. It did not pass because half of the senators in Congress are in a cult.

Take. That shit. Out. Of your mouth.

Isn’t this basically the plot of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley?

I feel like all the countries aided by USAID would like a word…