Scale distortion is very practical when differences are either miniscule or astronomical. A poster of our solar system where the sun and planets are at scale would look like a black piece of paper with a tiny white dot in the center.
From what I remember there are various different depictions for different purposes. Most are just showing order and what they look like visually so the precise scale is a detriment and skipped. Most of the solar system to scale things I've seen in person are multiple blocks long so the planets are a reasonable size, there's not really a reasonable way to print a to scale in both size and distance in a book.
If you're being accurate in both distance and size scales your smallest dot would be Mercury and the distance from the Sun to Neptune (assuming this is a modern text book and we're dropping Pluto) would be 922000 of those dots. Even if we print it at the higher 1200 PPI [0] used for line art that's ~770 inches, that's a huge image far larger than any reasonable book. You could do it with a fold out but that's it's own expense and unreasonable for inclusion in an actual textbook.
That's why I was saying doing both accurate size and distance is difficult for the solar system.
[0] Images are more often printed at 300 PPI but I'm giving you the best case scenario here.
The US has one of the most generous LEGAL immigration policies in the world and there never seems to be a lack of people around the world who are willing to fill available slots.
The current administration is trying to make it so fewer people will want to violate our laws and sneak into our country.
Those two things actually have very little to do with each other. That is why some of the biggest supporters of border enforcement are those who came here through legal channels.
There are a number of outspoken people on the other end of the political spectrum from me, that I vehemently disagree with. While I would love to see their words either ignored or condemned by the masses; I have no desire to see them killed or harmed in any way.
I wish more people on both ends of the political spectrum felt that way. Either committing or supporting violence against those we disagree with, has no place in a civil society.
> I wish more people on both ends of the political spectrum felt that way.
Agreed. Sadly the leader of one side openly and repeatedly calls for violence against anyone who disrupts his speeches [0]. The former leader of the other side condemns political violence and even calls his opponent after an attack out of concern for his welfare. [1]
This is a really disingenuous and biased selection of sources. One could find systemic examples of inflammatory rethoric from almost anyone in US politics: Biden, Obama, Trump, Waltz, Harris, DeSantis, Newsome, etc.
Ironically, assassinated Charlie Kirk was one of the most reserved US public figures in this regard.
>One could find systemic examples of inflammatory rethoric from almost anyone in US politics
Show me one example of any of those figures you listed inciting violence. I'm waiting. "inflammatory rhetoric" is not the same as saying "the Left is a national security problem"
Ok, since you are waiting, I'll spend a few minutes fetching you easily available quotes.
Obama:
- "If they bring a knife to the fight, we're going to bring a gun." [0]
Biden:
- "If we were in high school, I'd take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him" [1]
- "We’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye." [2]
- the whole "Darth Biden" event speech was filled with statements framing political opponents as enemies of the country, kinda sinister from the head of the most powerful state in the world, no? ("Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.", etc) [3]
Waltz:
- "When it’s an adult like Donald Trump, you bully the shit out of him back." [4]
- "I tell you that... because we need to whip his butt and put this guy behind us." [5]
Newsome:
- "But right now, with all due respect, we’re walking down a damn different path. We’re fighting fire with fire. And we’re gonna punch these sons of bitches in the mouth." [6] (apologies for the Twitter link, didn't find direct video elsewhere)
Those comments are in poor taste. Biden himself apologized after the attempt on Trump's life.
That said, these pale in comparison to Trump's many, many endorsements of or acceptance of violence. Even mocking an attack on Pelosi's husband. I've never heard Trump apologize for his words, actions, or inactions. He could not even be bothered to call the governor of a state whose elected representatives were attacked, saying even to speak would be a "waste of time". Only when one of his sycophants is harmed does he suddenly see a serious problem.
In fact Trump pardoned those who violently attacked national police as the attackers sought to disrupt the transfer of power. (Some of whom went on to rape and murder others.) The very people he urged to "fight like hell", and he endorsed by waiting to see whether they would succeed before changing his tune.
Meanwhile Democrats prosecute their own for violence and corruption.
Trump acts like a mob boss. Doing and saying whatever he wants, and punishing those who oppose him with whatever means he thinks he can get away with. Even boasting that his supporters would stand by him if he shot someone on a famous public street.
Sure, they are in poor taste. What is telling, however, is bias: Trump gets labelled as 'fascist' for saying 'fight like hell', but Waltz just gets a pass because for the exact same words, because that was just poor taste.
It is also telling that you weren't content with just stopping after the words 'disrupt the transfer of power', but felt necessary to add smear about rape and murder. I am not willing to even verify the veracity of this claim, and will just ask you this: how many of those who took part in BLM riots were convicted for rape and murder crimes, likely quite a few, right? Should we bring that in every conversation on every action supported by the politicians that you support?
> Meanwhile Democrats prosecute their own for violence and corruption.
No, they don't. They do, however, openly prosecute their political adversaries for fabricated crimes. It was quite characteristic that democrat-friendly talking heads spent months in late 2020-early 2021 how Trump is going to issue a presidential pardon for himself and his allies, and then Biden, four years later, did just that.
I am not Trump supporter. I'm just telling you that you are extremely biased and unwilling discuss politics in good faith: you just know what truth is and consider everyone who disagrees as being wrong or stupid or evil. That is exactly kind of mindset and rhetoric that inspired someone to kill Kirk. He was such a bad fascist, after all!
> Trump gets labelled as 'fascist' for saying 'fight like hell', but Waltz just gets a pass because for the exact same words, because that was just poor taste.
Waltz should not speak that way. Perhaps he is given more grace since his words didn't incite an insurrection which he watched closely and refused to intervene for hours in the hope it would succeed. Waltz also doesn't express the desire to be a dictactor, plans to give police unlimited power, ask foreign governments to hack his opponents for his gain, shake down foreign leaders for dirt on his opponents and their families, or openly weaponize the DoJ / ICE / IRS to persecute anyone who opposed him.
>> Meanwhile Democrats prosecute their own for violence and corruption.
> No, they don't.
I guess the prosecutions of Quintez Brown, Robert Menendez, and Eric Adams don't count?
> ...how many of those who took part in BLM riots were convicted for rape and murder crimes, likely quite a few, right?
Did Biden pardon BLM protesters who then went on to rape and murder?
> Should we bring that in every conversation on every action supported by the politicians that you support?
If there is a discussion on political violence and how seriously leaders handle it, then I'd say the consequences of pardoning such actors is in scope.
> ...you are extremely biased and unwilling discuss politics in good faith: you just know what truth is and consider everyone who disagrees as being wrong or stupid or evil.
If there is a disagreement, then thinking the other person may be wrong is common, no? I don't presume every disagreement is because of stupidity or evil. Though I do believe evil exists (not in any spiritual sense), and that evil is more manifest in some actions than others. Assassination is quite evil for example. I try not to hold any beliefs too strongly, since I've been very wrong in the past.
> That is exactly kind of mindset and rhetoric that inspired someone to kill Kirk. He was such a bad fascist, after all!
You know what inspired Kirk's killer? Perhaps you should inform the FBI. I'll wait for the facts because it's not clear to me what motivated this attacker. It's just as likely he played a lot of Helldivers, surfed 4chan, and thought Kirk wasn't far enough to the right.
That said, rhetoric like mine is far less likely to inspire violence than say a "Professor Watchlist" which--in practice--functions something like a who-to-harrass-or-kill list.
> Perhaps he is given more grace since his words didn't incite an insurrection which he watched closely and refused to intervene for hours in the hope it would succeed.
Yeah, tweeting non-stop urges for protesters to stay peaceful. It is a certain kind of delusion to think that this 'riot' was at attempt to overthrow the state. Of course, Democrat propaganda bent over themselves to present it that way, but anyone with critical thinking understands, that even if Capitol was taken over by the unarmed protesters, then what? Oh, Senate would capitulate and declare Trump God Emperor? Please.
If we stop talking about fabricated mythology of a horribre horrible coup attempt, and look at reality, Jan 6 riot was a relatively peaceful affair, far more peaceful than BLM protests from the previous summer. I happened to watch it all live, on youtube, as it happened, it culminated in QAnon shaman strolling down the halls saying 'God bless you' to every security guard who were just standing there and doing nothing.
It is no wonder that all these livestreams were promptly scrubbed off all social media afterwards, because if anyone would watch it, as it happened, the narrative of a coup would just fall apart.
> I guess the prosecutions of Quintez Brown, Robert Menendez, and Eric Adams don't count?
I don't know who are the first two, but Eric Adams is a name I know, and from what I understand he mas prosecuted after he broke ranks with the Dems on the migration issue.
So yeah, they prosecute insignificant pawns and those who broke rank, and they also fabricate criminal cases against their chief political opponents, trying to deny him the right to be a candidate in presidential elections. However, these attempts were found unconvincing by the supreme jury - people of the US, whe majority of whom voted to re-elect Trump as president.
> Did Biden pardon BLM protesters who then went on to rape and murder?
Why would he need to pardon people who were neither prosecuted nor convicted?
Literally ignoring any and all recorded footage clearly demonstrating violence to the contrary, what kind of vocabulary judo do you have to perform to label a woman being shot to death[1] a "relatively peaceful affair." Calling anything "relatively peaceful" where someone dies by getting shot genuinely boggles my mind. By this standard, Charlie Kirk's debate was "relatively peaceful."
Yeah, an unarmed protester was killed by armed security personnel. Truly, those protesters were the greatest threat to democracy in the history of the US.
But seriously, damage from BLM riots is estimated to be over 1 billion USD and the number of fatalities during those riots was far higher than one Ashley.
Comparing killing of Ashlei Babbitt and Charlie Kirk is highly inappropriate. The former is at worst a voluntary manslaughter (and actually classified as a justifiable use of force), and second is a first degree murder, premeditated and with a deliberate intent to kill.
You would struggle to find a single example for any of those. Find two inflammatory quotes for each.
There hasn’t been a day in the last decade that Trump wasn’t making the news for a new insanely inflammatory remark—including in the last 48 hours. To help you remember when that was: that’s when he called for War on an American city, using the visual language of Apocalypse Now, a movie about war crimes. That was in the same breath as his new “Secretary of War” detailing that war would be violent, pro-active and excessive. This is true for almost everyone in his cabinet: daily dehumanizing remarks, threats, calls to attack.
One vs. many thousands: There are three to four orders of magnitude of difference in how inflammatory each side is.
You want to prove me wrong? Give me one date, a single date in the last ten years and if I can’t find Trump publicly insulting to someone that day, I’ll concede.
The only examples of call to violence you can find are people quoting Trump and his enablers, or mocking their style. Those horrible things you read? Those insanely callous dismissal of Charlie Kirk, victim of gun violence? Those are quotes of Charlie Kirk, reacting to mass shootings.
You are wagging your finger and scream "Here’s a monster!" but what you are looking at is a mirror.
> There are three to four orders of magnitude of difference in how inflammatory each side is.
Not really.
One can only agree with this statement if he considers that calling Trump and his supporters Nazis, fascists, racists, etc, is not an inflammatory rhetoric, but a totally acceptable objective truth that just truthfully describes them. (Btw, do Nazis deserve to be shot on sight?)
However, if one doesn't consider this an objective truth, but a violent dehumanizing rhetorics, then suddenly he finds that one side routinely smears the other in the worst ways possible, and that the total amount of such rhetoric vastly drowns the messaging from another side.
> You are wagging your finger and scream "Here’s a monster!" but what you are looking at is a mirror.
That's a nice straw man you made. Please, refrain from messaging me again, if you don't plan to argue in good faith.
Technically Trump had a book collecting Hitler's speeches, not "Mein Kampf". Though I think the underlying point stands, Trump is a fan of Hitler and has learned from him how to whip crowds into a populist frenzy.
From Wikipedia:
> In 1973, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Trump Management, Donald Trump and his father Fred, for discrimination against African Americans in their renting practices.[3][31]
> Testers from the New York City Human Rights Division had found that prospective black renters at Trump buildings were told there were no apartments available, while prospective White renters were offered apartments at the same buildings.[32] During the investigation, four of Trump's agents admitted to using a "C" (for "colored") or "9" code to label Black applicants and stated that they were told their company "discouraged rental to blacks" or that they were "not allowed to rent to black tenants," and that prospective Black renters should be sent to the central office while White renters could have their applications accepted on site. Three doormen testified to being told to discourage prospective Black renters by lying about the rental prices or claiming no vacancies were available.[33][34] A settlement was reached in 1975 where Trump agreed to familiarize himself with the Fair Housing Act, take out ads stating that Black renters were welcome, give a list of vacancies to the Urban League on a weekly basis, and allow the Urban League to present qualified candidates for 20% of vacancies in properties that were less than 10% non-White.[32][35]
> Elyse Goldweber, the Justice Department lawyer tasked with taking Trump's deposition, has stated that during a coffee break Trump said to her directly, "You know, you don't want to live with them either."[36]
> The Trump Organization was sued again in 1978 for violating terms of the 1975 settlement by continuing to refuse to rent to black tenants; Trump and his lawyer Roy Cohn denied the charges.[37][38][39] In 1983 the Metropolitan Action Institute noted that two Trump Village properties were still over 95% White.[40]
In what world your argument is anything but clutching at straws?! Get a grip, he openly hates Black and Latino people and has never been shy about it. The fact he came to an out-of-court agreement, and immediately had to come back… It’s so beautiful that your richly referenced note forgot that point.
> Like, anyone, who calls for unity is surely fascist.
No, but people who threatens to napalm-bomb a major city in their own country because the mayor isn’t in their party; people who threaten to court-martial any soldier who express an opinion critical of an influencer outside of the chain of command; people who call law enforcement officers to throw political opponents in a jail without due process… Those might be fascist. And that’s just this week.
Obama and Harris were not selling access to enrich themselves with the loincloth of crypto, for example. That’s a little different than century-old symbol about Unity between States…
Yes, billions of people noticed in horror the entire Republican Party in congress applauding a Nazi salute, twice, and yes, a handful of people used the same word to describe it. Do you really think lessons on grammar is the point to make here?! Because for someone who talks so much about how much you don’t like that Hilter guy, you seem to raise no qualms in your very detailed note with having with so many people in your party applauding that gesture. If you worried about people not thinking for themselves, I’d start there.
I'm glad that you conceded that you blatantly lied about Trump having Mein Kampf on his night stand, thank you for this.
> In what world your argument is anything but clutching at straws?! Get a grip, he openly hates Black and Latino people and has never been shy about it. The fact he came to an out-of-court agreement, and immediately had to come back… It’s so beautiful that your richly referenced note forgot that point.
Yeah, right. You had to dig up a case from 50+ years ago, that concerned a policy likely was not directed from the top but was enacted by some middle managers, and which was corrected, and act like I'm grasping the straws and not you.
Then you try to strengthen your argument with a blatant claim that Trump openly hates Black and Latino people, when in fact in his public speeches he frequently says that he loves them. You will, of course, fail to provide a single quote by Trump that would prove your outlandish claim.
And also, I struggle to understand how could this horrible vile racist man significantly increase his support amond Black and Lation voters. [0]
> No, but people who threatens to napalm-bomb a major city in their own country because the mayor isn’t in their party; people who threaten to court-martial any soldier who express an opinion critical of an influencer outside of the chain of command; people who call law enforcement officers to throw political opponents in a jail without due process… Those might be fascist.
So, how many major cities were napalm-bombed?
How many soldiers were court-martialled?
How many political opponents were thrown in jail without due process?
We did, however, see one political execution this week, but the murdered man was definitely not a Democrat.
I’m rather confident you’re not really familiar with Charlie Kirk’s speeches. Sounds like you’re attacking a caricature pieced together from carefully edited snippets you saw on social media. Next time you feel the urge to denounce someone, please take the time to study their actual views.
I can’t claim to know Kirk’s entire body of work -- just watched a couple of debates and his RNC speech -- but since of us two I’m the one who’s actually read Mein Kampf, I can say with a significant degree of confidence their views could hardly be more different:
Hitler pushed authoritarian control, racial hierarchies, and expansionist wars. Kirk was advocating for small-government conservatism and anti-woke culture fights. Even Barack Obama, with his big-government moves, like the ACA or his stimulus plans, had more in common with Hitler’s state-heavy policies, than Charlie!
It’s kind of hilarious how he called Orwell to deny something as blatant as Trump’s racism and immediately copied some absurd talking points from the darkest echo chambers of the internet. Denying that Trump is fascist because The United States, dealing with a Civil War, used wreaths as a symbol of unity is a particularly sophomoric attempt at turning bad puns into arguments. You have to live in particularly deep dungeons to think that’s not laughable.
you can find inflammatory rhetoric from any human being ever, that is obviously true, but it’s also disingenuous to act like trump is not the most inflammatory and devisive leader America has had in modern history. Look at how he responded to the murders of the Hortmans in Minnesota relative to how Biden responded to his assassination attempt or how most (if not all) democratic lawmakers are responding to this
And while political violence is abhorrent Kirk was no angel. In the aftermath of this his views on gun violence have been echoed widely but he is a man that called for political opponents (namely Joe Biden) to face the death penalty [0]. That page outlines much more. So are his calls for political violence including the death of his opponents, inflammatory language like slurs[0], encouraging violence against immigrants and transgender athletes[0] “reserved”? I would hate to see what you consider out of line then
> it’s also disingenuous to act like trump is not the most inflammatory and devisive leader America has had in modern history.
I'm not from the US, and do not have a horse in this fight, but I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of people in the US who believe that the most inflammatory and divisive leader America had in modern history was Obama. The main difference between Trump and Obama is that Trump is teared apart by the media, while Obama was cuddled by it.
(btw, speaking from my non-US experience, when a leader is cuddled by the press, it is a bad sign, not a good one)
Of course, the press does cuddle its darlings. Compare any first-term Trump's press conference with Biden's press conference: a pack of wolves that screamed and shouted suddenly morphed into cute fawning puppies: "what kind of ice cream do you like, mr president?"
Regarding your accusation that I work for Kremlin, you should be ashamed of yourself to say such things to a person who was literally beaten by Putin's polizai for protesting his policies. In your simplistic mindset, anyone who has a differing opinion from you surely must be a paid troll working for evil people. It is very fitting that you exhibit this attitude in a discussion about a person who was killed for his views. Should I be shot, too? I surely have it coming, right?
The word you are looking for is coddle, not cuddle. You cuddle a pet or a spouse. You coddle your favorite politician with preferential coverage.
Good on you for protesting his policies. But maybe don’t spread his propaganda for free? I never celebrated, excused or wished death on anyone. Shame on you for implying that.
No, thank you, but the word I needed was something that would describe a warm, loving embrace, like when you take a pet in your arms and caress it (I even pushed this metaphor further in the next comment, about loving puppies), and I believe that "cuddle" is the exact word for that.
Well, it is indeed jarring when supposedly objectively and truth seeking journalists suddenly turn into adoring fans, so maybe my metaphor works on more than one level.
>I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of people in the US who believe that the most inflammatory and divisive leader America had in modern history was Obama.
You want to know why a lot of those people, who are reactionary by nature, thought Obama was so divisive?
It's because they couldn't stomach being led by someone who wasn't white.
>The main difference between Trump and Obama is that Trump is teared apart by the media, while Obama was cuddled by it.
You'll notice that Obama was roundly (and rightfully) criticized by the left for his actual policies, and was criticized by the right for his skin color. For those who focus on policy ramifications, Obama was repeatedly critiqued. The problem is the right wing media machine couldn't outright drop a hard -er or call him "boy", so they had to use emotional cues to insult him personally. Forget about actual policy, especially because his signature policy, the Affordable Care Act, was copied verbatim from enacted GOP legislation.
> It's because they couldn't stomach being led by someone who wasn't white.
I tend to think that many white people voted for Obama in part because he was black. Like, we elected this guy, can we now finally put aside the question of racism? And then, somehow, instead of putting aside the question of race, it was dialled up to 11, with all these diversity quotas and DEI initiatives.
Btw you too are guilty of furthering this division: your instant reaction to criticism of Obama was to play the racist card! Of course, the only reason someone can criticise mr Obama is because they don't like the color of his skin!
>the only reason someone can criticise mr Obama is because they don't like the color of his skin!
I have roundly criticized Obama for the last 17 years since he was elected. I was critical during his tenure, and critical of his actions after his tenure. He doesn't get a pass.
I voted for him in 2008, not because he was black, or because he was a Democrat, but because I was sick of no-bid contract loving Neo Cons whose stock portfolio was antithetical to national security, and thus I wanted and voted for change.
But let's look at his actions and what I disliked.
Drone strikes? Yup. Critical of those.
Bailing out Wall Street? Yup. Some of those bankers should have been jailed, versus bailed out with golden parachutes.
Continuing the forever wars in the Middle East? Of course I critiqued those.
Ignoring actions by our "friends" in the middle east that furthered Arab hatred of the US? Absolutely hated that too.
Trying to pacify Putin after his attacks in Georgia, invasion of the Donbas? Yes. Was particularly hard on him for this.
Not standing up to the GOP reactionary wing? Yes, I blamed that on him too.
Failed healthcare policy? Of course I have issues with that.
Let's stop pretending that Obama was some sort of liberal or far leftist. The dude was pretty center-right by world standards, and only considered remotely left because the GOP had spent the Bush II administration pushing the Overton window about a hundred quadrillion light years to the right.
I could go on. But as someone who spent some time in GOP heavy rural areas during one of Obama's campaigns, I can tell you a lot of the people in those areas routinely began their critiques of Obama with a word that starts with an N and ends with an -ER.
> One could find systemic examples of inflammatory rethoric from almost anyone in US politics: Biden, Obama, Trump, Waltz, Harris, DeSantis, Newsome, etc.
Damn, sounds like more terrible people who encourage violence then, wish they didn't encourage it either, kinda sounds like a problem America and its politics has in general.
77% of Republicans believe it is always unacceptable to feel joy at the death of someone they oppose, while only 38% of Democrats share this view (YouGov)
Actually, I think this opinion IS shared by most of the people on the other side. (Notice that I didn't mention which side I am on. I don't think it really matters.) But, to be sure, SOME of them feel differently.
The GOP and its entourage actively cheered on the Hortmans getting assasinated in their home by a republican guy disguised as a cop [1]. Trump was golfing during their funrerals and used the occasion to dunk on Tim Walz to the press. He didn't order that flags should be at half mast as he did for Charlie Kirk, depsite him not being a lawmaker. They also turned the attack on Paul Pelosi into a running gag [2], which lasted for years. There is no question as to which side of the political spectrum is normalizing and encouraging political violence, and I wish people scould stop with this very misplaced bothsideism.
It is wild that I completely forgot about the fire that endangered Shapiro and his family this year. Just to me, shows how crazy this year has been with events.
The number of people I’ve seen basically condoning this act is sickening. This guy had views I 100% disagree with, and wish did not have a platform to espouse them.
But his children no longer have a dad in their life. That is just heartbreaking to me. It’s hard for me to understand people who are so wrapped up in political rhetoric that they think taking a person’s life is acceptable.
There is an astute comment floating around here that describes the tendency for human psychology to absorb information first through the limbic/emotional center first before the logical part. It is unsurprising to see horrible reactions after tragedies through social media. Living too close to the edge of the present brings out the worst in people. My faith in humanity hopes that many of these people will reconsider and regret some of the things they say and post.
Similar sentiments here. I can't find much common ground with Charlie Kirk but that doesn't merit an assassination. Unfortunate all around, and a situation not too dissimilar from the Mangione case (in the context of what happened, not necessarily why).
That said, while I don't condone it I can't say I'm surprised by it. It seems stoking divisions is a large part of the modern media landscape and all it takes is one person with the motive and the means.
When I see sentiment like "we need to shut down every Left institution" from political figures in reaction to this, all while we have not as of now even caught the shooter: I can't really blame them.
I don't care about Kirk or his family, they can take care of themselves. I'd like this country to no self destruct in this glee for wanting to start another Civil War, though.
"what about her emails" when the rights now had 6 years to investigate it as the executive office (+ 4 years in congress, even woth a democratic president) is not going to ring the same way as "but what about our people being dragged out with no due process".
I'm sorry, this is no longer a "both sides" matter.
No, I didn't have the same reaction. There is a big difference between people being hurt or killed for their opinions and families being separated because a dad broke the law.
This happens every day when someone's dad is sentenced and incarcerated for something like armed robbery.
If someone died in ICE custody due to neglect as you suggested, then EVERONE would have heard about it by now.
Honestly, these kind of sane comments are very rare to find. A lot of other social media platforms have basically become a breeding ground for the very kind of hate that causes one side to lash out at the other in such means.
In March 2023, around the time of Donald Trump’s indictment, Kirk said conservatives are being provoked into violence, and said “we must make them pay a price and a penalty” by indicting Democrats.
There are claims from media/reporters that Kirk made statements about “dealing with” transgender people “like in the ’50s & ’60s,”
Also the famous and now ironic comment that "Some gun deaths are worth it to protect the second amendment."
Absolutely did not advocate for lynching and killing trans people like 50s and 60s.
Wink wink, nudge nudge.
Trans people must be stopped, for the children!
We all know what his words mean, the veil is thin enough that even a moron would understand it, and thick enough that the law protects him.
if you can’t correlate the exposure of the public to such comments with the rise in violence against LGBT people, I’d recommend some self-reflection and asking yourself what the consequences are if you are wrong.
Hopefully you are capable of feeling empathy towards others.
He did not in fact advocate for lynching or killing trans people. In the 50s and 60s they would have been treated as mental health cases, not executed on the spot by sharpshooters.
I guess that makes it better, mental health was great at the time and they probably would not be subject to torture. I would advocate someone with a similar view or belief to be treated like JFK's sister.
They probably would not have been subjected to torture, no. If you're thinking of lobotomy, I believe that was phased out around 1951 or so, and it wasn't intended as a form of torture.
I think it's only natural to not want children to be part of a group with very high suicide rates or otherwise be ideologically compelled to take life changing medication based on short term emotions and group pressure.
Hopefully you are capable of not only empathy but understanding for the opinion of others even if they fall outside of your beliefs.
>How about we listen to the actual doctors and not a political opportunist
Ah yeah the totally not politically captured science that made the problem worse in the first place.
Not having a authoritarian knee jerk reaction after a tragedy is indeed the right and level headed response. Or do you also think there should be no privacy online because bad people misuse it?
Charlie deliberately targeted blacks, Latinos, and the transgender. He wasn't just going with the tide on that animus, he created the tide. He was one of the initial proponents of the "Great Replacement theory" and the call to action to "fight" it. He called for genocide against Muslims in 2023 and earlier this year. He blamed the Jewish community for "pushing hatred" against Christians. He was close friends with a number of white nationalists with ties to domestic terrorism groups.He called the man who tried to kill Mr. Pelosi a hero and argued that he should have been set free instead of receiving prison time. After a Democratic legislator was murdered a few months ago, he tried to blame the "left" for assassination culture, ignoring the entirety of American history in which nearly all political assassins have been right-wing extremists. Literally seconds before he died, he tried to shift the blame for all of the recent mass shootings (most of them carried about by extreme right incels) to the transgender community.
Charlie was most famous for saying that the deaths at Sandy Hook were the price we pay to keep our Second Amendments rights. I wonder if he would have felt the same way knowing that he would be part of that price?
On a further note, unlike most of the people on HN, I've met and spoken with Charlie in real life (I met him through an ex and her admiration of him is why she's an ex.). He was even more extreme in real life, but he was media-savvy enough not to let that other stuff be filmed. What you see on camera was the filtered version of who Charlie was. I was, at one point in my life, a member of the Federalist Society. Charlie and his ilk are the reason I'm an independent now.
Where did he „target“ those people? Every single debate I‘ve seen him say stuff I disagree with with, but he always said that while he does not agree with some things, people should live as free as they please.
He literally blamed the transgendered community for all of the recent mass shootings seconds before he was shot...
Yes, 1 of them was a transgendered individual. The other 99% were all right wing extremists, including shooter in the other shooting (in Denver) the day Charlie was killed. (And based on reporting as of Friday, so was Charlie's killer.)
Cite one case in which he "extolled political violence." You are no different than those people on TikTok. You provide no evidence other than an appeal to mutual agreement.
Classic victim blaming, "well you could've chosen not to say mean things...". Kind of the leftist equivalent of the chauvinistic "well if you didn't want to get raped would you have worn that...".
No victim blaming, he is not a victim of anything other than his own actions.
He has been fanning the flames for years. He has exploited political conflict for personal gain.
What you clearly missed is that Charlie could have had a life that was different had his behaviour been different.
He was not attacked over an immutable or protected characteristic. He was not murdered because he is white/straight/gay/black/trans. His murder was independent of his characteristics and entirely dependent on his character.
There is no “hate crime” here as far as the definition is concerned.
If you are completely broke (I once was), then $100 can make a major impact on your well being. On the other hand, $100 (or lack of it) is not so impactful on a multi-millionaire.
This might lead some to believe that the poor person cares greatly about the money, while the rich person probably couldn't care less. But this is often not the case. One of the reasons why some people are wealthy and others not, is how much attention they pay to small details. Poor people can be very frivolous with money, while rich people can be very frugal. The opposite can also be true, but how you handle money is not dependent on how much of it you have.
There is a big difference between tax evasion (illegal) and tax avoidance (completely legal). Many of the tax shelters and loopholes utilized by the rich when top marginal rates exceeded 50% were completely legit.
Yeah, sure, helicopters is all you need to catch millions of sophisticated tax evaders using semi-legal loopholes developed and implemented by professional accountants and lawyers.
The Laffer Curve is frequently cited by the same people who refuse to see the failure of conservative-style economic policy over the last 40 years, for some reason.
It’s clear all that “don’t tax the rich, they create jobs!” Is just trash. Noise. We have 40 years of data, it doesn’t work.
But still, someone ignores all that to tell me the Laffer Curve, every time. What’s also amazing is that they don’t really understand it themselves. Wild.
So we have 40 years of data that clearly shows that advocating for reasonable tax rates for the wealthy "doesn't work"? I world love to see the detailed analysis that proves that!
Even the most staunch conservative wants the rich to pay their "fair share" of taxes. The only legitimate debate is about what constitutes 'fair'. The flat tax advocates will at least give you a real number (10%, 15%, or even 20%). Progressives will never give you a number. Why?
Has anyone seen any stats on what happens to a single maintainer project when said person is hit by a bus (or meets some other demise)? With that many data points, there should be enough of them by now to study it.
Is the project taken over by another, single developer? Is it replaced by a similar project? Does it just go away?
It depends. More common than getting hit by a bus is that the maintainer loses interest, or doesn't have the time to put into it anymore. When that happens I've seen all of the following happen:
* Someone forks the project, and eventually the fork replaces the original
* Another, possibly new, project that fills the same niche becomes more popular, and eventually replaces most usages of the first project.
* The original maintainer hands off maintenance to someone else.
* People keep using it, even though it is no longer maintained, and maybe make their own forks to fix issues they have, but none of the forks really catch on
One of the strengths of OSS is that if the developer disappears, or goes rogue, or changes the license terms, someone can fork the project and keep it going. With proprietary software, if the company (or individual) who makes it disappears, or decides to discontinue it, or change the terms to something unacceptable, you are just out of luck. Hopefully, you can find a competing product that meets your needs.
Definitely seen this a lot in the JS/NPM ecosystem... You go searching for a module that does $thing... you find about 10, you sort and look at say the 3 most recently published an the 3-5 most downloaded/popular... is the repo open (github, usually), are there a lot of old issues left lingering with an old last publish date? Might take a passive look at the codebase to see if I can grok it and fix any issues I find if needed.
Choose what I feel is the best option. Trying to avoid dead packages, but not afraid to deal with older packages if they aren't just stale, but functionally complete. The shift towards ES import statements and TypeScript defs has also influenced my selection process.
I've seen plenty of cases where either a fork or new option effectively takes over. A lot of people are leaning towards Zod over Yue or Hono over Express. There's instances where the dev goes off the rails like with Faker and the community comes together to fork a solution.
All of the above examples definitely happen in practice. I'm guessing many packages all over the place have replaced various dependencies over the years.
I would love to see a diligently researched episodic series, every episode covering the transition of a popular open-source library/tool/app/site from one maintainer to the next.
I bought ASIO Link Pro (software) something like 10 years ago to help route virtual audio devices on my system. The author sadly died and eventually the license key server went offline rendering it unable to start. His nephew looked into it and eventually made the tool free after a year or 2.
I stopped using it after the license server went offline because I still had to record videos. I ended up solving my problem with hardware, but that tool was extremely helpful when I used it for years. It was around $40 at the time. It's one of the few pieces of software I've purchased and felt really happy about it.
I suspect this is the case for the majority of open source software. I have a handful of tiny projects. I don't think anyone will keep them alive after I die. But I guess we should make a distinction based on popularity or something. My top four projects have only 675, 363, 122, and 96 stars.
Closest example I could think of would be Hans Reiser/Reiserfs. It's a more sordid story than just getting hit by a bus, though. Ultimately the project just died.
I don't think this is a good example though as the "sordid" part also made the project toxic for anything that might have otherwise chosen to take it on.
I don't know about any broader statistics, but in my personal experience, I see all three of those. I think it's mostly a function of how large the user base is, how complicated the code base is, and whether or not there are any substitutes.
I think this is one thing that people fail to consider: if the code is open source, though it may take time to understand, worst case scenario you can just fork it.
- Hans Reiser, maintainer of ReiserFS. I think very few people use ReiserFS these days.
- Ian Murdock, creator of the Debian distribution. Debian lives on, but the project was also set up specifically to distribute maintenance.
- Jim Weirich, creator of the Rake build tool. I'm not a Rubyist so I don't know how it was affected, but I assume it's such a big part of Ruby other people took over.
- Peter Hintjens, co-creator of ZeroMQ. From what I understand, Hintjens was never the main developer but an active promoter. The project lives on as far as I know.
- Terry Davis, creator of TempleOS. I think development on TempleOS stopped.
IMO, it has a lot to do with usage and the availability of alternatives. With ReiserFS, there were a lot of alternatives, both available at the time or announced shortly. While ReiserFS pioneered a lot of ideas, many of them showed up in alternatives fairly quickly. TempleOS is had a pretty limited user base.
I’ve seen many projects in the Clojure ecosystem get picked up and maintained by other folks. The key was always that the projects had an established user base of some notable size and something distinctive about them that made switching to other alternatives less desirable than continuing to push forward with a new and possibly more mundane maintainer and feature schedule. I’ve also seen a lot of “abandonware.”
Reiserfs died because alternatives, like ext3/ext4 and btrfs, became readily available.
TempleOS has a fork called ZealOS. Terry Davis really was the "Wesley Willis of programming", and he had friends and fans worldwide, some of whom have taken up TempleOS development under the ZealOS banner.
Our minds thrive on the little dopamine hits we get from accomplishing something worthwhile. It can be something simple like cleaning your bedroom or losing 5 pounds. It can be coding a new feature or fixing a perplexing bug.
If your day is full of little victories, you can live a happy, fulfilling life; even if you don't do something grandiose like curing cancer or setting a world record.
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