Octopus Overlords

YellowKing wrote: ↑Sat May 19, 2018 8:26 am why should we be surprised when you don't give two shits about helping the poor?

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Sat May 19, 2018 12:33 pm Charity isn't about the charitable.

I'm sorry you've had bad experiences. It can be discouraging. It's easy to become cynical and frustrated.

Not everyone is worthy of helping, but if we never help because of some bad apples, a lot of good people will continue to suffer. Do those people deserve what they get because other people are shitty?

What's more important, helping good people or withholding help from shitty people?

Skinypupy wrote: ↑Sat May 19, 2018 12:38 pm

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Sat May 19, 2018 12:33 pm Charity isn't about the charitable.

I'm sorry you've had bad experiences. It can be discouraging. It's easy to become cynical and frustrated.

Not everyone is worthy of helping, but if we never help because of some bad apples, a lot of good people will continue to suffer. Do those people deserve what they get because other people are shitty?

What's more important, helping good people or withholding help from shitty people?

Therein lies the fundamental problem though. When your guiding principle in life is “I got mine, so fuck you”, then any sort of charity is viewed as weakness. Why should they help when those lazy poors just need to work harder?

em2nought wrote: ↑Sat May 19, 2018 1:00 pm I have had some very very very bad experiences with helping people. I'll probably still try in the future(because I seem to be stupid in that way), I just wish I had some sort of radar to better tell me who to help, and who to run from.

hepcat wrote: ↑Sat May 19, 2018 5:10 pm

em2nought wrote: ↑Sat May 19, 2018 1:00 pm I have had some very very very bad experiences with helping people. I'll probably still try in the future(because I seem to be stupid in that way), I just wish I had some sort of radar to better tell me who to help, and who to run from.

Your posting history makes me dubious about this claim.

hepcat wrote: ↑Sat May 19, 2018 7:40 pm Doesn’t quite fit the humanity you frequently fail to display.

em2nought wrote: ↑Sat May 19, 2018 1:00 pm

I have had some very very very bad experiences with helping people.

Unagi wrote: ↑Fri May 18, 2018 10:02 pm Ak

Rip wrote: ↑Fri May 18, 2018 6:02 pm Not just that. He used a revolver and a shotgun. So I guess those assault and semi-automatic weapons bans will need extended to those.

It should also be noted how this all happened in Texas, where anyone can wear a gun on their hip.... yet that didn't stop it. So hard to wrap my head around that.

GungHo wrote:

Unagi wrote: ↑Fri May 18, 2018 10:02 pm Ak

Rip wrote: ↑Fri May 18, 2018 6:02 pm Not just that. He used a revolver and a shotgun. So I guess those assault and semi-automatic weapons bans will need extended to those.

It should also be noted how this all happened in Texas, where anyone can wear a gun on their hip.... yet that didn't stop it. So hard to wrap my head around that.

I believe there were 2 armed officers on this campus as well, one of whom is in either serious or critical condition and last i read may lose an arm.

EDIT: In fairness about the doors, and i believe Lt. Dan is an asshat, I *think* his point is that there should only be one point of entrance to a school. Ala Wal-Mart or a bank. You’d keep all of the other doors as emergency exits but you wouldnt be able to enter the building thru them. Its a reasonable thought I think, but as a citizen of the state of Texas who has a kid in public schools I’d point out that this, in my experience anyway, is already the case here. Neither parents nor students are able to enter my son’s school through any door except the front door. Now it is true that the kids re-enter the school through a side door after recess and I suppose Lt. Dan is suggesting that those doors remained sealed even for these kinds of activities. Again I dont suppose thats unreasonable. Maybe you just keep an armed officer in the front office where the only door is...but then like I said the school in Santa Fe had 2 officers. Quite obviously I dont have the answers

RuperT wrote: ↑Sat May 19, 2018 10:58 pm

hepcat wrote: ↑Sat May 19, 2018 7:40 pm Doesn’t quite fit the humanity you frequently fail to display.

Do you think he was born this way?

RuperT wrote: ↑Sat May 19, 2018 10:58 pm

hepcat wrote: ↑Sat May 19, 2018 7:40 pm Doesn’t quite fit the humanity you frequently fail to display.

Do you think he was born this way?

Holman wrote: ↑Sun May 20, 2018 11:23 am The NRA is all over the place with its explanations for school shootings, but this time they're trying to blame it on over-prescription of medications.

Kind of raises the question of why kids on these medications but without easy access to guns aren't going on knife or chainsaw sprees.

Carpet_pissr wrote:"Using statistics compiled from US Defense Department statements, the total number of student — excluding even teachers, administrative and maintenance personnel — shooting deaths in schools exceeds all US military casualties in 2018 to date, according to a deep data dive by the Washington Post."

Let that sink in.

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Sun May 20, 2018 11:30 am "Using statistics compiled from US Defense Department statements, the total number of student — excluding even teachers, administrative and maintenance personnel — shooting deaths in schools exceeds all US military casualties in 2018 to date, according to a deep data dive by the Washington Post."

Let that sink in.

Kraken wrote:

RuperT wrote: ↑Sat May 19, 2018 10:58 pm

hepcat wrote: ↑Sat May 19, 2018 7:40 pm Doesn’t quite fit the humanity you frequently fail to display.

Do you think he was born this way?

We are all born primal.

And the fact that we're discussing turning schools into fortresses makes me think we've missed the point.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Sun May 20, 2018 2:14 pm Chicago has had 178 shooting homicides so far in 2018. That's more than all US mass shootings (not just school shootings) and military deaths combined. And multiplied at least twice. Approximately 20 of those were individuals 18-years-old or younger (including several under 4). And it's been a cold 2018 so far.

Brown: Wait a minute. Peter didn't shoot my son. I did. Peter was just taking the blame for me. He's a good friend.

Takanawa: Eh, Mr. Brown, what exactly are you saying?

Brown: I'm saying that I, Cleveland Brown, a black man, shot Cleveland Brown, Jr., another black man.

Peter Griffin: Wait, wh-where did everybody go?

Brown: You want to make the media go away? Just mention black-on-black crime.

Pyperkub wrote: ↑Sun May 20, 2018 10:42 pm Well we're building more prisons that schools and we pay prison guards more than teachers... and we pay more to lock someone up for a year than we pay teachers for a year....

Moliere wrote: ↑Sun May 20, 2018 11:16 pm

Pyperkub wrote: ↑Sun May 20, 2018 10:42 pm Well we're building more prisons that schools and we pay prison guards more than teachers... and we pay more to lock someone up for a year than we pay teachers for a year....

I call for legalizing weed, pardon all current non-violent drug offenders in prison, and putting a percentage of the taxes earned on weed sales towards education/restitution. That alone would empty out the prisons.

How the American Media Fuels A Cycle of Violence

Daehawk wrote: ↑Sun May 20, 2018 12:16 am Texas Lt. Governor blames doors for shootings. Says theres too many of them. Fewer doors = fewer shootings.

em2nought wrote: ↑Mon May 21, 2018 2:07 am Where a good chunk of the blame belongs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3VQULy ... e=youtu.be

How the American Media Fuels A Cycle of Violence

Moliere wrote: ↑Sun May 20, 2018 11:16 pm

Pyperkub wrote: ↑Sun May 20, 2018 10:42 pm Well we're building more prisons that schools and we pay prison guards more than teachers... and we pay more to lock someone up for a year than we pay teachers for a year....

I call for legalizing weed, pardon all current non-violent drug offenders in prison, and putting a percentage of the taxes earned on weed sales towards education/restitution. That alone would empty out the prisons.

The incarceration rate in this country is just insane," Moore said. "And because of that, most evangelicals, myself included, have a connection to the issue...we've seen it with our own eyes. And now's the time to speak up."

Another big factor that has brought more white evangelical congregations face to face with the prison system is the opioid epidemic, said Craig DeRoche, senior vice president for advocacy and public policy with the evangelical group Prison Fellowship. The group has been involved in discussions with the White House.

"It stopped becoming an issue of the people who have criminal justice involvement as being 'those people,' to, 'wait a second, I know these people,'" DeRoche said in an interview.

In a famous essay published four decades ago, the Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter set out to explain a paradox: “situations where outcomes do not seem intuitively consistent with the underlying individual preferences.” What explains a person or a group of people doing things that seem at odds with who they are or what they think is right? Granovetter took riots as one of his main examples, because a riot is a case of destructive violence that involves a great number of otherwise quite normal people who would not usually be disposed to violence.
...
But Granovetter thought it was a mistake to focus on the decision-making processes of each rioter in isolation. In his view, a riot was not a collection of individuals, each of whom arrived independently at the decision to break windows. A riot was a social process, in which people did things in reaction to and in combination with those around them. Social processes are driven by our thresholds—which he defined as the number of people who need to be doing some activity before we agree to join them. In the elegant theoretical model Granovetter proposed, riots were started by people with a threshold of zero—instigators willing to throw a rock through a window at the slightest provocation. Then comes the person who will throw a rock if someone else goes first. He has a threshold of one. Next in is the person with the threshold of two. His qualms are overcome when he sees the instigator and the instigator’s accomplice. Next to him is someone with a threshold of three, who would never break windows and loot stores unless there were three people right in front of him who were already doing that—and so on up to the hundredth person, a righteous upstanding citizen who nonetheless could set his beliefs aside and grab a camera from the broken window of the electronics store if everyone around him was grabbing cameras from the electronics store.

In the day of Eric Harris, we could try to console ourselves with the thought that there was nothing we could do, that no law or intervention or restrictions on guns could make a difference in the face of someone so evil. But the riot has now engulfed the boys who were once content to play with chemistry sets in the basement. The problem is not that there is an endless supply of deeply disturbed young men who are willing to contemplate horrific acts. It’s worse. It’s that young men no longer need to be deeply disturbed to contemplate horrific acts.

Moliere wrote: ↑Mon May 21, 2018 3:50 pm The Best Explanation for Our Spate of Mass Shootings Is the Least Comforting By Malcolm Gladwell

In a famous essay published four decades ago, the Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter set out to explain a paradox: “situations where outcomes do not seem intuitively consistent with the underlying individual preferences.” What explains a person or a group of people doing things that seem at odds with who they are or what they think is right? Granovetter took riots as one of his main examples, because a riot is a case of destructive violence that involves a great number of otherwise quite normal people who would not usually be disposed to violence.
...
But Granovetter thought it was a mistake to focus on the decision-making processes of each rioter in isolation. In his view, a riot was not a collection of individuals, each of whom arrived independently at the decision to break windows. A riot was a social process, in which people did things in reaction to and in combination with those around them. Social processes are driven by our thresholds—which he defined as the number of people who need to be doing some activity before we agree to join them. In the elegant theoretical model Granovetter proposed, riots were started by people with a threshold of zero—instigators willing to throw a rock through a window at the slightest provocation. Then comes the person who will throw a rock if someone else goes first. He has a threshold of one. Next in is the person with the threshold of two. His qualms are overcome when he sees the instigator and the instigator’s accomplice. Next to him is someone with a threshold of three, who would never break windows and loot stores unless there were three people right in front of him who were already doing that—and so on up to the hundredth person, a righteous upstanding citizen who nonetheless could set his beliefs aside and grab a camera from the broken window of the electronics store if everyone around him was grabbing cameras from the electronics store.

As it relates to mass shootings, the threshold continues to get lowered with each incident. The type of person who would not have done anything 10-15 years ago is tomorrow's shooter.

In the day of Eric Harris, we could try to console ourselves with the thought that there was nothing we could do, that no law or intervention or restrictions on guns could make a difference in the face of someone so evil. But the riot has now engulfed the boys who were once content to play with chemistry sets in the basement. The problem is not that there is an endless supply of deeply disturbed young men who are willing to contemplate horrific acts. It’s worse. It’s that young men no longer need to be deeply disturbed to contemplate horrific acts.

Xmann wrote: ↑Mon May 21, 2018 2:12 pm https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/21/politics ... index.html

and there you go

Sent from my Galaxy S9 using Tapatalk

Here are the six reasons he cited:

...

2. Abortion
"We have 50 million abortions. We have families that are broken apart, no fathers at home. We have incredible heinous violence as a [video] game, two hours a day in front of their eyes. And we stand here and we wonder why this happens to certain students."

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Mon May 21, 2018 3:54 pm This has kind of jives with a gut feeling I haven't really tried to articulate. No idea if it's actually correct or soundly based but it just feels correct.

the subculture of mass shooters

malchior wrote: ↑Tue May 22, 2018 11:54 am I'm sure thresholds have some impact but the number of weapons out there probably has way *more* impact. Absent confiscation--which won't happen--if we had sane policy making processes we could try experiments such as adopting the model the Swiss use which is that the police have more power to intervene to stop troubled persons from having weapons. But that isn't even close to possible with our broken politics.

The suspect in the school shooting in Dixon Illinois appeared in court for the first time Friday.

19-year-old Matthew Milby pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors say he took a rifle to Dixon High School on Wednesday morning and shot at a school resource officer who returned fire.

Milby's family packed the courtroom and shouted words of encouragement.

Now questions are arising about how Milby’s mother bought the gun in the first place.

WGN Investigates has confirmed Julie Milby is a convicted felon who should not have been allowed to legally purchase a gun.

The Illinois State Police has confirmed Julie Milby purchased the 9-mm semi-automatic rifle her son brought to school Wednesday. But court records in Florida show her criminal history should have been a red flag on a background check.

"You can't walk down the street today without passing somebody who is wanted," said William Bonk, a U.S. Marshals Service agent who formerly headed the D.C. Joint Fugitive Task Force of local and federal law enforcement agencies.

In most jurisdictions, a vast majority of the outstanding warrants--court orders authorizing police to pick someone up--involve minor offenses such as traffic violations, petty thefts or missed court dates. Yet these warrants clog up law enforcement computers and actually help serious felons escape notice, officials contend.

As Crutchfield's case shows, the apprehension of wanted criminals depends as much on pure chance as high-powered technology or gumshoe detective work.

"Most people wanted on a warrant still get picked up in traffic stops," said Lt. John Russell, an Arizona sheriff and National Sheriffs' Association fellow.