We should be more concerned about why people do want to kill each other, not how.
There is a plenty of ways to kill a human without a systemic weapon, either with bare hands or even indirectly without a touch. Tools like weapons just serve as a spatial projection of intent. They are not the cause. Any object may assume a role of a weapon.
Therefore, I ask: Why are those people killing school children uninhibited by moral restraints nor by biologic instincts?
I understand your fear, but certainly, that's not a mechanical problem of owning some specific tool or another.
It's a problem of badly poisoned mind of the attackers. Their intent is broken as well as their self-control and natural instincts. Where this poison comes from?
And, more importantly: How to remove it?
-- The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @09:28PM
(9 children)
by Anonymous Coward
on Saturday May 28 2022, @09:28PM (#1248615)
Vote for ptogressive candidates that support universal healthcare, education, and police reform. Those are the three most fundamental changes needed right now in the USA.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @11:14PM
by Anonymous Coward
on Saturday May 28 2022, @11:14PM (#1248637)
How about voting for secessions, so that the people in progressive-dominated states can have all the goodies that they want, and the basket of backwards deplorables who are suckling off the teat of the wealthy coasts can have ... well, whatever's left to them? As long as the coasts have this political millstone, there's no reason to believe that they'll be able to swim up to what they really want. Massachusetts and Maryland, California and Connecticut can step aside and like Mississippi and Missouri, Texas and Tennessee shrivel and die, clinging to their guns, gold and whatever god-bothering they want.
Nothing like giving folks what they want - that's democracy, after all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @11:00AM
(7 children)
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday May 29 2022, @11:00AM (#1248733)
Absolutely agree on universal healthcare.
Education? WTF do you mean? We already have an education system (that sucks) that forcibly takes money from citizens, even to the point of seizing their home and property and auctioning it at pennies on the dollar to pay for the very broken horrible wasteful "education system". Home schooled and private schooled children are leaps and bounds ahead of the horrific public school system. More $ thrown at it will fix it? All my life I've observed that complaint and more and more and more $ thrown into the giant money pit of public "education". Not enough time to discuss the mindset of people who suck on the tit of taxation. Let's just say they're not the most productive people. And then you have the problem of children's horrific behavior and how discipline is gone. Time for the school system to sue parents of badly behaved children who disrupt the classes and system, often physically harming, beating, even killing teachers, administrators, and other children.
Police reform. Yes, definitely. That's a tricky thing. Much rational psychological analysis needed to figure out how to hire people who can be good police, without hiring the people who enjoy power far too much.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @08:55PM
(6 children)
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday May 29 2022, @08:55PM (#1248831)
"All your life" which means you're under 30. Things were going alright till around 2000 when means-testing got popular and higher education was defunded in favor of government backed student loans. This made perverse incentives to raise tuition rates every yesr by extreme amounts and spend that money on corrupt projects like new unnecessary buildings. They did similar with some k-12 schools, one place they spent millions on a fancy gym, pool, and track then people complained that more money does nothing.
Yes, it does nothing when the money is not spent on hiring more teachers and better materials for the actual students. Republican motto: "Government doesn't work, elect us and we'll prove it." Same thing UK conservatives are doing to the NHS because they want to privatize it and suck more money from the working class.
So thanks and good points, but universal education works very well in less-corrupt countries. Private schools can still exist, but saddling young people with insane debt so they can get a shit paying job is a recipe for societal collapse. We're going through it right now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @11:35PM
(4 children)
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday May 29 2022, @11:35PM (#1248861)
Wow, thank you, great post. I'll upmod when I have points.
You're spot-on re: corrupt countries. We have horrifically corrupt corporatocracy here in US.
As other AC wrote, it was more like 1980 when the huge tuition increases started. And "free market" doesn't fix it. Once you've started at university A, you lose credits and incur many other overhead costs to move to university B.
Funny you mention "unnecessary buildings". University I attended has been doing that aggressively for the past 20+ years.
How can we clean up the corruption? Better asked, since the corrupt people are in power, how do you replace them? Wasn't it Trump who ran on "drain the swamp"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 07 2022, @09:36PM
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday June 07 2022, @09:36PM (#1251385)
Yeah, we do. It's always a crapshoot between dumb and dumber, or bad and worse. Many vote D or R because. Many vote for someone but wish for some things from the other.
Cynical me thinks that the whole system is so corrupt that only corrupt people even get involved and run for office.
How about: no parties. Just represent We The People?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2022, @03:01AM
(1 child)
by Anonymous Coward
on Monday May 30 2022, @03:01AM (#1248890)
it was more like 1980 when the huge tuition increases started.
And the huge tuition increases are the direct result of too much "student loan" money.
When students pay for their schooling with free money (and to an 18 year old, a student loan is "free money" -- few yet even begin to understand what a "student loan" means, they lose all desire to care one bit what their school of choice charges per year.
When the schools learn that the students are no longer price sensitive, they realize they can charge whatever they want, and the students will just pay (by pulling in more "free money") whatever the school asks, then the schools all start increasing their tuition at a rapid pace, in order to grab more of that "free money".
The sad part is that this very exact scenario is taught, in those same schools, in the Econ. department, when the economic theory gets brought out that pumping too many free dollars into a market leads to rampant price inflation. The student loans pumped loads of dollars into the university tuition market, and what was the result? Rampant inflation of the costs of college. Just exactly like the Econ. theory predicts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 07 2022, @09:41PM
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday June 07 2022, @09:41PM (#1251387)
You could not be more correct. In fact, I took 3 econ courses and learned all that good stuff.
Every time a school or "education system" whines about needing more money and raising taxes, all I can think about is how the greedy leeches latch on and soak up more of the $. Same goes for medicine of course. It's a runaway system.
I feel strongly that econ should be required courses in much or most of K - 12, certainly high school. I have to wonder how different (better?) the US and maybe the whole world would be if people were more in tune with economic forces, power of money, etc. Instead of buying the cheapest thing possible at X-mart, buy that slightly more expensive, made in somewhere other than China thing, for the betterment of the future for all.
You do well to recognize that almost every action is preceded by thought, and that poisonous thought results in deadly action.
Every complex activity a man might undertake and succeed at requires that he imagine and train for its execution over and over in his mind. The more he imagines an action, the easier it will seem and the more comfortable he will become to its execution.
Now the thing that precedes those thoughts is angst - either a lack or a hurt - angst so severe that it drives one to try to devise some way to allay it. Then when the angst driving him reaches an unbearable level and the activity he imagines will provide relief becomes comfortable enough to him, the result is fairly inevitable.
Then if one is to prevent such deadly action, one must either eliminate the actor, or relieve the angst driving his mind to meditate murder.
Some who post here want you and me to imagine - over and over - that you had a gun with which to kill the deadly actor dead. This conflicts with my faith, and so I refuse to practice that scenario in my mind and I reject the assertion that this is the best solution.
Instead, I spend my time practicing empathy, that with everyone I meet, I might better understand the angst they are feeling. Then having understood the angst that drives them, I practice finding and delivering the words that in some way allay that angst and heal those hurts - thereby removing the need for deadly action on every side. Mostly I suck at this, but it is a strategy that my heart can live with. In my experience, though, words - if you can find the right ones - are much more effective than bullets.
If I wanted to wield deadly force, and serve as judge, jury and executioner ever, I would have chosen a career in law-enforcement. -- "They didn't care, they were just dyin' to get off" - Eagles, Life in the Fast Lane
If we had a new global Newspeak, then it might be impossible to even think of carrying out any new mass shootings [theguardian.com] on labor day weak end.
-- Young people won't believe you if you say you're older than Google. (born before 1998-09-03)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 01 2022, @11:40PM
(2 children)
by Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday June 01 2022, @11:40PM (#1249565)
Indeed, I expect shootings and murders and social upheaval to increase as this nation continues to fail to recognize and obey its divine messenger. Those who would worship their political leaders and expect salvation by electing some party or another shall all be sorely disappointed. There is no remedy short of revitalization of human hearts - a process that requires a creative word from God.
Feel free to disagree with my assessment, but I am utterly certain that political spin will not redeem this nation. Don't let me stop you, though.
Your greed for more has distracted you until you go down to your graves. No, indeed you will soon know. Certainly you will soon know. Indeed, If you knew the knowledge of certainty you would see Hell, then you would surely see it with the eye of certainty. And on that Day you will be asked about the pleasures you enjoyed.
Qur'an 102 (Safi Kaskas translation)
Of course, this is merely an apropos scripture, not an endorsement of the institution. Modern day Islam is as astray as modern day Christianity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2022, @03:04AM
(1 child)
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday June 02 2022, @03:04AM (#1249601)
Chicago has long been an exceptional example... anybody who's been there at night has stories. It has a tradition to maintain. They don't just commemorate Valentine's Day, they celebrate The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Shootings are ubiquitous, like green rivers.
Before the musical "Chicago," there was Roxie Hart (1942) [imdb.com], which is a phenomenal and under-rated little movie, and which begins to explain Chicago. It also has an actor I've long appreciated (not admired, just appreciated).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2022, @03:43AM
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday June 02 2022, @03:43AM (#1249612)
Okay, some pedant will say it was story->musical->movie->musical->movie->breakfast cereal.
Just give Nunnally Johnson some credit for doing something wrong, right. It's like Along Came Jones (1945) [imdb.com], the wrong way to make a western.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @09:04PM
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday May 29 2022, @09:04PM (#1248833)
We should be more concerned about why people do want to kill each other, not how.
Look at the increases in depression, mental dis-ease, suicide, family violence, random vandalism, robbery, drive-by-anything. We're making homicidal wackos out of those who a generation ago were just people you said "good morning" to on the street.
So many refuse to realize that we are in a time when the bizarre and disgusting goal of media, education and leaders, is to disarm, dishearten and depress society, to make us eternal children. We will all depend on those elites, those enlightened adults in the room who understand in ways we could never fathom. If you think life is too expensive now, just you wait.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2022, @02:36AM
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday June 02 2022, @02:36AM (#1249594)
In another thread, people like me mentioned self-medication in the whole wacko mass murderer thing. People have problems, and they can handle them... really, they can, honestly, no need for people to jump down their throats about it. I hadn't factored in marijuana, since it's not one of those things I ever, ever think about. Tuesday night, Laura Ingraham did a segment on how today's pot is so much stronger than the '60s version. In fact, she said, it can trigger psychotic reactions in young adults. To me, it's another in the very long list of problems today.
This one is apparently different. I did a quick, non-evil search, and was surprised that there is so much strong reaction to her statements. Makes one wonder why they're making such a big deal. Say it's 1960, and somebody said cigarettes were bad for you, and then the tobacco companies jumped in... yeah, it sounds like that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Saturday May 28 2022, @08:41PM (18 children)
We should be more concerned about why people do want to kill each other, not how.
There is a plenty of ways to kill a human without a systemic weapon, either with bare hands or even indirectly without a touch.
Tools like weapons just serve as a spatial projection of intent. They are not the cause. Any object may assume a role of a weapon.
Therefore, I ask:
Why are those people killing school children uninhibited by moral restraints nor by biologic instincts?
I understand your fear, but certainly, that's not a mechanical problem of owning some specific tool or another.
It's a problem of badly poisoned mind of the attackers. Their intent is broken as well as their self-control and natural instincts.
Where this poison comes from?
And, more importantly: How to remove it?
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @09:28PM (9 children)
Vote for ptogressive candidates that support universal healthcare, education, and police reform. Those are the three most fundamental changes needed right now in the USA.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2022, @11:14PM
How about voting for secessions, so that the people in progressive-dominated states can have all the goodies that they want, and the basket of backwards deplorables who are suckling off the teat of the wealthy coasts can have ... well, whatever's left to them? As long as the coasts have this political millstone, there's no reason to believe that they'll be able to swim up to what they really want. Massachusetts and Maryland, California and Connecticut can step aside and like Mississippi and Missouri, Texas and Tennessee shrivel and die, clinging to their guns, gold and whatever god-bothering they want.
Nothing like giving folks what they want - that's democracy, after all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @11:00AM (7 children)
Absolutely agree on universal healthcare.
Education? WTF do you mean? We already have an education system (that sucks) that forcibly takes money from citizens, even to the point of seizing their home and property and auctioning it at pennies on the dollar to pay for the very broken horrible wasteful "education system". Home schooled and private schooled children are leaps and bounds ahead of the horrific public school system. More $ thrown at it will fix it? All my life I've observed that complaint and more and more and more $ thrown into the giant money pit of public "education". Not enough time to discuss the mindset of people who suck on the tit of taxation. Let's just say they're not the most productive people. And then you have the problem of children's horrific behavior and how discipline is gone. Time for the school system to sue parents of badly behaved children who disrupt the classes and system, often physically harming, beating, even killing teachers, administrators, and other children.
Police reform. Yes, definitely. That's a tricky thing. Much rational psychological analysis needed to figure out how to hire people who can be good police, without hiring the people who enjoy power far too much.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @08:55PM (6 children)
"All your life" which means you're under 30. Things were going alright till around 2000 when means-testing got popular and higher education was defunded in favor of government backed student loans. This made perverse incentives to raise tuition rates every yesr by extreme amounts and spend that money on corrupt projects like new unnecessary buildings. They did similar with some k-12 schools, one place they spent millions on a fancy gym, pool, and track then people complained that more money does nothing.
Yes, it does nothing when the money is not spent on hiring more teachers and better materials for the actual students. Republican motto: "Government doesn't work, elect us and we'll prove it." Same thing UK conservatives are doing to the NHS because they want to privatize it and suck more money from the working class.
So thanks and good points, but universal education works very well in less-corrupt countries. Private schools can still exist, but saddling young people with insane debt so they can get a shit paying job is a recipe for societal collapse. We're going through it right now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @09:41PM
A little before. Remember "America's Bridge to the 21st Century."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @11:35PM (4 children)
Wow, thank you, great post. I'll upmod when I have points.
You're spot-on re: corrupt countries. We have horrifically corrupt corporatocracy here in US.
As other AC wrote, it was more like 1980 when the huge tuition increases started. And "free market" doesn't fix it. Once you've started at university A, you lose credits and incur many other overhead costs to move to university B.
Funny you mention "unnecessary buildings". University I attended has been doing that aggressively for the past 20+ years.
How can we clean up the corruption? Better asked, since the corrupt people are in power, how do you replace them? Wasn't it Trump who ran on "drain the swamp"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2022, @01:50AM (1 child)
By voting for somebody else. The entire House of Representatives is up for grabs every two years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 07 2022, @09:36PM
Yeah, we do. It's always a crapshoot between dumb and dumber, or bad and worse. Many vote D or R because. Many vote for someone but wish for some things from the other.
Cynical me thinks that the whole system is so corrupt that only corrupt people even get involved and run for office.
How about: no parties. Just represent We The People?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 30 2022, @03:01AM (1 child)
And the huge tuition increases are the direct result of too much "student loan" money.
When students pay for their schooling with free money (and to an 18 year old, a student loan is "free money" -- few yet even begin to understand what a "student loan" means, they lose all desire to care one bit what their school of choice charges per year.
When the schools learn that the students are no longer price sensitive, they realize they can charge whatever they want, and the students will just pay (by pulling in more "free money") whatever the school asks, then the schools all start increasing their tuition at a rapid pace, in order to grab more of that "free money".
The sad part is that this very exact scenario is taught, in those same schools, in the Econ. department, when the economic theory gets brought out that pumping too many free dollars into a market leads to rampant price inflation. The student loans pumped loads of dollars into the university tuition market, and what was the result? Rampant inflation of the costs of college. Just exactly like the Econ. theory predicts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 07 2022, @09:41PM
You could not be more correct. In fact, I took 3 econ courses and learned all that good stuff.
Every time a school or "education system" whines about needing more money and raising taxes, all I can think about is how the greedy leeches latch on and soak up more of the $. Same goes for medicine of course. It's a runaway system.
I feel strongly that econ should be required courses in much or most of K - 12, certainly high school. I have to wonder how different (better?) the US and maybe the whole world would be if people were more in tune with economic forces, power of money, etc. Instead of buying the cheapest thing possible at X-mart, buy that slightly more expensive, made in somewhere other than China thing, for the betterment of the future for all.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by nostyle on Sunday May 29 2022, @12:46PM (5 children)
You do well to recognize that almost every action is preceded by thought, and that poisonous thought results in deadly action.
Every complex activity a man might undertake and succeed at requires that he imagine and train for its execution over and over in his mind. The more he imagines an action, the easier it will seem and the more comfortable he will become to its execution.
Now the thing that precedes those thoughts is angst - either a lack or a hurt - angst so severe that it drives one to try to devise some way to allay it. Then when the angst driving him reaches an unbearable level and the activity he imagines will provide relief becomes comfortable enough to him, the result is fairly inevitable.
Then if one is to prevent such deadly action, one must either eliminate the actor, or relieve the angst driving his mind to meditate murder.
Some who post here want you and me to imagine - over and over - that you had a gun with which to kill the deadly actor dead. This conflicts with my faith, and so I refuse to practice that scenario in my mind and I reject the assertion that this is the best solution.
Instead, I spend my time practicing empathy, that with everyone I meet, I might better understand the angst they are feeling. Then having understood the angst that drives them, I practice finding and delivering the words that in some way allay that angst and heal those hurts - thereby removing the need for deadly action on every side. Mostly I suck at this, but it is a strategy that my heart can live with. In my experience, though, words - if you can find the right ones - are much more effective than bullets.
If I wanted to wield deadly force, and serve as judge, jury and executioner ever, I would have chosen a career in law-enforcement.
--
"They didn't care, they were just dyin' to get off" - Eagles, Life in the Fast Lane
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday May 31 2022, @09:22PM (4 children)
If we had a new global Newspeak, then it might be impossible to even think of carrying out any new mass shootings [theguardian.com] on labor day weak end.
Young people won't believe you if you say you're older than Google. (born before 1998-09-03)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 01 2022, @10:27PM (3 children)
In 2022, 46 Shot During Memorial Weekend in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago [breitbart.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 01 2022, @11:40PM (2 children)
Indeed, I expect shootings and murders and social upheaval to increase as this nation continues to fail to recognize and obey its divine messenger. Those who would worship their political leaders and expect salvation by electing some party or another shall all be sorely disappointed. There is no remedy short of revitalization of human hearts - a process that requires a creative word from God.
Feel free to disagree with my assessment, but I am utterly certain that political spin will not redeem this nation. Don't let me stop you, though.
Of course, this is merely an apropos scripture, not an endorsement of the institution. Modern day Islam is as astray as modern day Christianity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2022, @03:04AM (1 child)
Chicago has long been an exceptional example... anybody who's been there at night has stories. It has a tradition to maintain. They don't just commemorate Valentine's Day, they celebrate The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Shootings are ubiquitous, like green rivers.
Before the musical "Chicago," there was Roxie Hart (1942) [imdb.com], which is a phenomenal and under-rated little movie, and which begins to explain Chicago. It also has an actor I've long appreciated (not admired, just appreciated).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2022, @03:43AM
Okay, some pedant will say it was story->musical->movie->musical->movie->breakfast cereal.
Just give Nunnally Johnson some credit for doing something wrong, right. It's like Along Came Jones (1945) [imdb.com], the wrong way to make a western.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29 2022, @09:04PM
Look at the increases in depression, mental dis-ease, suicide, family violence, random vandalism, robbery, drive-by-anything. We're making homicidal wackos out of those who a generation ago were just people you said "good morning" to on the street.
So many refuse to realize that we are in a time when the bizarre and disgusting goal of media, education and leaders, is to disarm, dishearten and depress society, to make us eternal children. We will all depend on those elites, those enlightened adults in the room who understand in ways we could never fathom. If you think life is too expensive now, just you wait.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2022, @02:36AM
In another thread, people like me mentioned self-medication in the whole wacko mass murderer thing. People have problems, and they can handle them... really, they can, honestly, no need for people to jump down their throats about it. I hadn't factored in marijuana, since it's not one of those things I ever, ever think about. Tuesday night, Laura Ingraham did a segment on how today's pot is so much stronger than the '60s version. In fact, she said, it can trigger psychotic reactions in young adults. To me, it's another in the very long list of problems today.
This one is apparently different. I did a quick, non-evil search, and was surprised that there is so much strong reaction to her statements. Makes one wonder why they're making such a big deal. Say it's 1960, and somebody said cigarettes were bad for you, and then the tobacco companies jumped in... yeah, it sounds like that.