and I’m not talking about the can or its contents:
Crime
Wanna Get Shot?
Because faking like you have a gun in order to intimidate people is a great way to do that:
People
There It Is
The dumbest thing I have read on the Internet today.
because that’s safe for all of the bystanders- driving a car while firing a pistol out the window trying to hit another car’s tires. Dumbass
Lawfare
Litigation Tourist
A German tourist came to the US and filed lawsuits against US businesses.
- A $100,000 suit against a Mexican restaurant because the salsa was too spicy
- A $10 million lawsuit against Walmart because it required a US phone number for its WiFi service
- A $10 million lawsuit against NYPD because the officers couldn’t call him on his European cell phone
Ridiculous. A judge dismissed the taco lawsuit. The others are still pending.
People
Hey You, Get on to my Cloud
My Dad was an engineer for Hewlett Packard. When I was a kid, I grew up in a world where computers took up an entire room, and when my dad had to work on the weekends, he would bring us with him. To entertain me, he would allow me to use mainframes to play games. Back then, games weren’t nearly as polished as now. I played games like the text based Star Trek or Lunar Lander. I remember that there was a text based drag racing simulator. Later, after cartridge-based video games like the Atari came out, my Dad and his coworkers showed me how to use a machine that would burn ROM chips with software called “Bruno,” that would read a cartridge then create a ROM that was an exact copy while a message on the computer monitor would say: “Bruno is crunching data. Nom. Nom. Nom.” I owned hundreds of Atari and Intellivision games as a result.
I am willing to bet that I played games on millions of dollars of mainframes. The point to this story, was my dad once predicted that computers were too expensive and large for the average American to have in their homes, but he said that one day, it would be common for Americans to have a terminal at their home, and they could rent computer time. He didn’t foresee the revolution that would make computers as powerful as those mainframes fit in the palm of your hand. However, it turns out that he was quite astute when it came to the business side of things.
Jeff Bezos has declared that people will soon have nothing but terminals in their homes, which they will use to rent cloud computing time as a subscription model. Cloud computer is, of course, a term meaning someone else’s computer. Namely, Jeff Bezos’ computer. It’s because companies are busy buying up every computer chip they can lay their hands on. 64gb of RAM that cost me $230 in October are now costing over $600 now. A 4tb SSD that cost $215 in October costs $430 now.
It seems that these companies buying up all of the production have driven costs through the roof. Those same people are saying that they will let you rent the computers they just built, at a handsome markup, of course.
And they are wrong. When prices climb like they have, the market response is predictable. Other companies will enter the market, causing prices to stabilize. Eventually, prices will come down. The first home computers were expensive.
The IBM PC (1981) started at $1,565 (over $4,000 today) for a basic model, with only a 5.25 inch floppy drive for storage. I remember that my Commodore 64 had one of those drives (external, of course) and that drive cost $350. Why was it called the ’64’? Because it had only 64 kilobytes (KB) of RAM, which is where it gets its name, plus about 20 KB of ROM for its operating system and BASIC interpreter, and the Commodore 64 was popular because it had more memory than its competitors. 64kb of ram is literally one millionth of the capacity of the computer I am typing this one.
Those 5.25 inch floppy drives? Yeah, they held 512 kb of data, and you could double that if you had a hole puncher. Those of you who know how that works, well, you know. The NAS that I use for storing files in the house? It has 12 TB of storage space, meaning it can store the same amount of information as more than 12 million of those drives, hole puncher or not.
The point is this: the market will respond, and it will be as difficult to force Americans to rent computer time online as it will be to tell Americans that they have to buy shares in a community automobile. The real purpose of this is control. If they control your car, your computer, and what you do with them, they control you.
Then there is nothing that they can’t make you do. The title of this piece, most of you will recognize, is a paraphrase of a Rolling Stones song, meant as a protest of how restrictive the Stones thought American society was in the 1960s. It’s odd to me that the counter culture of the 60s is now wanting to give birth to a society that is far more restrictive than 1960s America ever was.
Cops
Assist
As a paramedic, I have opened dozens of cars for medical emergencies, pets, or even children locked in cars. A person who is in a car and isn’t responding is a medical emergency until proven otherwise. Our policy was to try and wake the person while knocking on the window. If no response, the person was showing signs of distress, or it was a child, we would then gain entry to the vehicle. If the temperature outside was less than 80 degrees Fahrenheit, we would take the time to open in without damaging the vehicle, if possible. We had tools for that, but they take a bit of time. If the temperature was more than 80 degrees, our policy was to immediately gain access using the fastest possible means.
The people commenting on this post have a problem with what the cops did. I don’t.
Guns
Why I Stopped Shooting IDPA
Watch this video, then read the comments.
I used to shoot IDPA. I won some local matches, but never did well at state. I originally got into IDPA because I wanted to improve my skills in more realistic conditions than simple static targets at a standard range. I liked the shooting, and I liked some of the people. I got to meet some shooting celebrities, including Mas Ayoob.
What I hated were the people who were gaming it. I used to call it “the rules committee.” They would stand there with the rulebook as they disputed and debated nearly every single thing that happened. A couple of them figured out that it was faster to shoot magazines empty by dumping than it was for them to keep partially full mags. They were called on it, and debated for almost ten minutes that IDPA rules only said they have to keep partially full mags, but didn’t prohibit firing extra shots.
It was debates like this, and the ones in comments to the above video, that make shooting not fun. To those people, it isn’t about shooting, it’s about winning. It’s about debating and getting your way. It scares off new shooters who don’t want to deal with the bullshit. It’s tedious. I avoid people like that, so I stopped shooting IDPA almost 20 years ago.
People
Cringe
Hiring this moron is going to get someone sued or get the moron killed. I’m sure there are ways to do self help evictions of squatters, but I am betting that sending over a dude with a katana isn’t one of them. However, that isn’t the worst thing about this article. No, the worst part is this:
“The only reason why businesses like this could exist,” said Tobias Damm-Luhr, staff attorney at the Sustainable Economies Law Center, is because “people hoard land and housing. They create these artificial scarcities such that people who don’t have a home or any other option are forced to try to live in places where they have no legal right to live.”
Don’t you see? The fact that some people own more than their fair share of things is the reason why others have to steal and vandalize their property! You rich people are the ones who caused all of this! This is your fault! Look what you made me do!
People
Social Norms
This article is a great illustration of the differences between Gen X and thier kids: 9 social rules Gen X learned as kids that completely confuse Gen Z today. Here they are:
- You must answer the phone—every single time it rings
- You never call someone after 9 p.m.
- You show up exactly when you said you would
- You don’t interrupt adults—ever
- If you borrowed something, you returned it in better condition
- You don’t talk about money, politics, or personal problems in public
- You respect the privacy of others (even if it’s inconvenient)
- You keep your problems to yourself and “tough it out”
- You don’t question authority publicly
Let’s talk about those: Rule 1 was because there was no such thing as caller ID. You answered the phone because people generally called because it was important, and you didn’t want to miss a call.
Rule 2 is about courtesy. My ass is in bed at some point just after nine. I don’t want some ass calling me at 2345, asking me what potato chips to buy. In fact, my phone is in “Do Not Disturb” mode at 9, and it doesn’t come out until 8 the next morning. Use a trick to bust through my DND mode for stupid shit and find yourself on the block list, because you are an inconsiderate ass.
Rule 3. Punctuality. That’s a sign that you respect (or don’t) the person’s time. If you tell me that you are going to meet me somewhere at 4 and you don’t show up on time, what you are saying is that your time is valuable but mine is not. Wasting my time is a guarantee that I won’t want to have anything to do with you- in a professional or personal capacity.
Rule 4: Children shouldn’t involve themselves in adult conversations. It’s unlikely that you have anything meaningful to contribute. You’re a child, and your life experience is exactly zero. That’s just a fact. However, as adults, we shouldn’t even be HAVING adult conversations in your presence. To this day, I don’t know how much money my father made, or even how much they paid for their house. It wasn’t my business to know. This concept also ties in to rules 6, 7, and 8. Mind your own business. If I want your opinion, I will ask you for it. Running around offering unwanted advice, or crying like a little bitch is a sure way to find yourself without any friends.
Circling back to rule 5: If I loan you something, it had better come back in the same condition that I loaned it to you. If it doesn’t, I expect you to make it right. If you don’t, don’t ever come back and ask to borrow anything, because I won’t loan you anything, not even a stick of gum.
Rule 9: There is a way to question authority, and screaming about it while you stamp your feet and shout about how things aren’t fair isn’t the way to do it. The person who wrote this article obviously doesn’t know that, which means he is still a tactless child who likely doesn’t get his way very often.
Gen Z needs to learn what manners are.
People
Bunny Warriors
Let me start by saying that I don’t hunt. The last time I went hunting, it was for lobster (Florida has a lobster season, but I haven’t been in about 8 years or so). Still, I understand the important role played by hunting in the preservation of animal populations.
Florida, like every other state, has used hunting as a way to control populations of animals. For the first time in a few years, the state announced a lottery where 172 black bear tags would be issued to cull some of the animals, who are becoming overpopulated in the state. The tags would be given out through a random lottery system, with each ticket costing $5. Winners must then buy a $100 hunting license to harvest the bear, with nonresidents having to pay $300.
Animal rights groups bought thousands of tickets, pledging to not use them. The groups managed to win about a quarter of the available tags. They claim this will save the lives of bears.
They are also wrong.
Hunting is a way of controlling populations to sustainable levels, but nature has its own way of doing it. Overpopulated animals starve, die of disease, or are hit by cars. In the meantime, the overpopulated bears ravage other populations like deer, pets, your trashcans, and even people (although rare).
Still, to me there is a way to derail those plans for sabotaging the system: Make a rule saying anyone who wins a bear tag has 14 days to purchase the hunting license. If they fail to do so, the tag goes to someone else. If the cost goes from $5 to $305, you will see people less likely to try and game the system.