The biggest source of lead exposure in indoor ranges isn't from the chunks of lead shot into targets. It's from the primers. Lead styphnate is still a common ingredient, and the primer is one of those parts of the bullet that ends up mostly in the atmosphere.
I don't understand this comment. The fine article is about a proposed law that would allegedly require the implementation of half-baked censorship systems along the same lines as the DMCA. Are you saying that's not a real issue because the EFF also whines about big tech?
I'm saying I'm fed up with the EFF for their silence in the face of genuine disaster, and am treating them like the click farm they've become. Is NO FAKES a bad law? Probably. Do I trust the EFF to tell me that? Not anymore.
They were a genuine beacon of rationality and justice in the early internet. They're junk-tier blog spam now. And I find that upsetting, irrespective of the status of AI legislation.
When you find yourself getting more angry at people saying “hey, this is a really bad law” than at the really bad law, I think you need to step back and take some deep breaths, maybe get off the internet for a while.
This philosophy is yours is bad for a number of reasons, but I’ll start with the fact that you have essentially constructed a loophole for arbitrarily bad laws to be passed. If you just rage yourself into not caring about bad laws because you’re mad at the people talking about them instead, then when will you ever oppose the bad laws, instead of “getting mad at randos online”? This quickly turns into cynicism and apathy in the face of unlimited cruelty and expansion of government power.
(Regardless of my agreement with either you or ajross. "Get off the Internet for a while" reads close to "touch grass", which dang's specifically addressed: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40851991>.)
I'd strongly recommend people read through mods' "no personal attacks" admonishments and the comments to which they're responding to. These often make the point that even a very mild (and unintentional) barb can read far more biting than it was written:
Eh actually, on review of all the material, I fall more on your side. The original comment did have a (very mild) personal attack in it at the end of the day.
The U.S. constitution is about the structure of the government and the things it can and cannot do. It's a remarkably short and readable document for what it is and when it was first written. And while it has been amended very slowly, it has been amended all the way up until today.
It seems you have an issue with just one part of it, the bill of rights. Besides property---which doesn't just mean land---that part addresses such other "outdated" concepts as speech, assembly, religion, rights of the individual in criminal investigations and trials, and a number of others. What connects all these ideas together is that they are the rights the people have _against_ government action. Things the government should not do to harm people.
That purpose is really important. The constitution is not, and should not be, a list of good policies or social values. Most of it is a list of specific things the government did in the past---some of them truly heinous things---that it is not allowed to do anymore. There's only one notable exception: the 18th amendment, meant to enforce the social values of the time and which was, ya know, repealed later for being a disaster.
Tbh, I really don't think there's much of value in the constitution for most people. It seems easier to characterize as a fig leaf for the crimes the state commits against its citizens (see eg our prisons, or our treatment of immigrants, the extremely shallow protections we have against our employers, etc).
> It seems you have an issue with just one part of it, the bill of rights. Besides property---which doesn't just mean land---that part addresses such other "outdated" concepts as speech, assembly, religion, rights of the individual in criminal investigations and trials, and a number of others. What connects all these ideas together is that they are the rights the people have _against_ government action. Things the government should not do to harm people.
Notably, we do not address material needs. It's hard to give a damn about speech, assembly, religion, and whatever people consider "rights" to mean, if we let people live on the street. It's hard to imagine an america that would feed its own people if we didn't produce such a ridiculous amount of food our food wastage is measured on the proportions of entire country's consumption.
Such an observation necessarily implies I'm going to view the constitution as broken. Who gives a damn about speech when we can't house our neighbors? The cost of housing would be quite small compared to the damage of stepping over a person to enter your workplace or home. It's just simple cruelty that persists such behavior.
You give a damn about speech. You're publicly criticizing the foundational document of a government, and calling that government a failure. That open criticism is necessary for change to happen and, in the United States, the constitution forbids the government from removing that criticism or punishing you for it.
The constitution is intentionally more difficult to amend than an ordinary law. The entire point is that the government cannot easily remove restrictions on itself. It's not an appropriate place to put, say, housing or employment laws, which should be ordinary laws so they can keep up with a complex and rapidly changing world. It's also not an appropriate place to put a statement that housing is important or that there is a right to housing, because such a statement is unenforceable and would need a separate law designed to enforce that right. There are plenty of countries with a "constitutional right to housing" that still have homelessness because it's such a difficult issue to solve.
Throwing a constitution out and starting over would be even more difficult than amending it and would lose what's already in it. Maybe we need an amendment ending prison labor and private prisons. Maybe we need an amendment extending more rights to immigrants. That doesn't mean that the constitution as it already exists is invalid and worthless.
Yes, you are morally responsible for your own actions. But those actions don't happen in a vacuum. They happen in a world that you are able to observe and make predictions about, however imperfect those predictions are. If you don't know that you're enabling the shooter, sure. But if you do know and do it anyway, you are responsible for knowingly enabling the shooter.
This doesn't mean that the shooter doesn't have his own agency and his own responsibility for his actions. It just means that his responsibility for his actions doesn't diminish your responsibility for yours, even if your actions involve him.
It seems to be a common idea that we can just overlook the abuses committed by the other people we deal with, as things "I'm not responsible for", regardless of our actual ability to do something about them. I have no special insight, but I think it's a common idea because it lets us feel better about ourselves while we do nothing. But "feeling good about oneself" isn't a solid way to build or evaluate a moral framework.
Tlön is one of my favorite short stories. Weirdly (and perhaps appropriately) that's despite being unable to remember basically anything about it once I've finished reading.
This isn't a forensics class. People are allowed to point out what they think is obvious without having to explain it in detail. And it's rude to insist that they do more than you've done yourself.
The article everyone's commenting on provides numerous examples of things Trump has done, some of which, such as calling for the use of the government against political rivals, are against libertarian ideals. Rather than address any of those directly, you've resorted to handwaving and providing examples of things you personally approve of. That could reasonably be seen as a failure to engage with reality, which would be delusional.
However, I don't know why the specific person you're responding to thinks you're delusional. I am not them.
I will leave aside my own judgment of the things you've listed. I don't agree with all of them, but I do agree with some. My exact opinion doesn't matter here.
What matters is this: you can agree that Trump has done good things and still think he's done horrible things as well. A shit sandwich is still a shit sandwich. You shouldn't eat it just because the bread's edible.
