If you pick a gun up to stoke your ego, you have already admitted you shouldn’t have picked up the gun in the first place since ego does nothing for your accuracy, ability to judge whether you have identified a target, or to reframe your perspective on an unfolding conflict in order to best respond.

Can you imagine what those range idiots who are all jacked up on anger and fear ready to start a fight at a… gun range (where everybody has a gun…?)… would be like in an actual war? Either they wouldn’t be able to handle it or they would get the creepiest fucking smile on their face. Either answer disgusts me because it points out the daming fact that these people are obsessed with violence itself, not the tools and history that surround it, the violence and power trip at the heart of it is the drug for them.

Notice those people and make sure you are always more skilled than they are at whatever they are doing :).

Yeah, I used to carry around pocket knives when I was a kid as a sort of power trip thing but then I thought about whether it would be worse to win or lose a knife fight and decided if someone did attack me unless I thought my life was truly in danger (or someone else) I would NEVER pull the knife out…

…like seriously, the movies make it seem like it wouldn’t be terrifying, awful and traumatizing for anybody involved no matter how it went…

Don’t take my word for it, wear some shitty clothes you use to do chores, get a friend, get two sharpies and have a fake knife fight with the sharpie as the stand in for the knives and then look at all of the sharpie marks over both of you no matter who “won”. You will never desire to get in a knife fight ever again after that point.

Yeah nope, a knife is an awful weapon for the wielder, the victim and the observer. Much better to get a leatherman and have a whole set of actually useful tools along with a knife that doesn’t scream “IM DANGEROUS” but rather “Im your uncle who loves woodworking’s favorite multitool”.

If you threaten somebody with a lethal weapon in a context where they are defenseless and the surrounding context/society does not place a massive red flag on you for doing so, both the person with the lethal weapon and the society are condemnable.

The point of a weapon is for when you have decided that in order to protect others you must take action, when people use weapons like this to threaten it is an admission that they should not be allowed the responsibility of handling such weapons by the adults around them.

I remember one of the first things I learned about gun safety scared me with a jolt the first time I heard it. It was “don’t point a gun at someone you don’t intend to kill” … which I think is wise advice and it enrages me that U.S. media not only is so casual with weaving together guns and hero worship, but that the casualness extends to making casual lethal threats which are one of the scariest things you will ever see because they promise a future you will never want to see if they can continue to thrive out in the open while people ignore them and go about their day.

I didn’t understand immediately that part of the wisdom of not pointing a gun at someone you don’t intend to kill is that someday (already even?) you will find yourself in a situation where you believe you have decisive power over someone when you are only being lead to believe you do, and in that moment how you choose to use that decisive power, whether you let it reside calmly as an almost trickster spirit or whether you rip it out of the holster and brandish it like a baby having a tamper tantrum (how characters use guns in US media mostly) decides whether the far more powerful observer will intercede and snuff you out because it has seen behind your mask.

Trust isn’t a plan, it isn’t a geometry or particular formula, it is the spontaneous improbable (yet oh sooooo probable) coordination of elements that saw a new fork in the road and took it.

LLLLLLLLCS

Hard to catch fish if you see the fish as dumb idiots, for some reason the fish don’t seem to respond well to it idk.

wait I thought it wasn’t time yet

Cowardice, stupidity and lack of emotional curiosity is what makes you a postigious place.

great idea…!

The good thing is there are some nice Als out there, I suggest go talking to one even the weird polka one

hey it has been 15 years

Yeah and I am holding both Zuck and Musks public perception hostage and guess whose hostages have far more to lose?

It ain’t me, it ain’t me I ain’t no fortunate son

take me baby

“Bro we need just one more Abrams I promise” -> Not something US generals say as far I know.

Gosh, one day I hope people describe me like that!

In no uncertain words this is pathetic and worse I suspect highly illegal in any functioning legal system still capable of justice.

you made him too human

Damn… I don’t know if I am comfortable with having that degree of power to obscure evil.

There is no “war” and no “intensification”, this is just repeated “pump and dumps” being done to make a quick buck on foreclosing my generations chance at a future.

I didn’t call them stupid. All I meant is that they are not what we consider in mainstream conversation the “smart animals” to illustrate a point.

Then forget this framing ever existed or it will irrevocably hamper your insight on this topic.

Referencing things like this “to make a point” still has consequences the same as talking about anything else does.

When you casually call a type of animal stupid it is just a promise of violence against that animal at a later date, I don’t mean this as an attack or a gotcha, it is just unfortunately how humans work, your words have consequences, people love calling people stupid by comparing them to animals, let us not make it any easier than it already is.

I don’t know much about the actual intelligence of lizards

Then don’t talk about their intelligence.