So, here’s the thing.

He shouldn’t have gone there. Being there, being armed, there to protect property, was taken to be provocative by the people that were protesting cops shooting an unarmed man.

But the narrative that we got in the news wasn’t how things actually went down. The first person confronted him and tried to grab his rifle when he wasn’t threatening anyone. The second person that was shot had just chased Rittenhouse down and struck him with a skateboard. The third person was pointing a pistol at Rittenhouse when he was shot in the arm. Source.

Given that he was not directly threatening anyone there, it was a clear-cut case of self-defense. Yeah, I don’t like it that a shitty person walks away, but he walked because he wasn’t guilty of a crime in defending himself. Is he still a right-wing shitstain that’s supposedly too dumb to get into the military? Yeah. But self-defense is a right for everyone.

That’s $62,000 annually. The median personal income in the US as of 2022 was $40,480, which means that’s about 50% above the median.

Not sure what you’re on that you don’t think that’s a pretty decent individual income.

Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Michael Shermer.

All prominent atheists, all decidedly right-wing. If you want to include dead atheists, then I’d also say Christopher Hitchens was decidedly right wing on a lot of issues.

The NRA hasn’t done jack shit in decades. As I said, the NRA did their level best to kill Heller v. D.C. before it even got off the ground, and that was the single most important 2A win in the last 50 years.

Don’t give me that bullshit about them being the line between the US and tyranny, when they won’t even speak up against tyranny when cops murder legally armed citizens.

The “Energy Hypothesis” of bitcoin, he thinks that bitcoin will allow society to capture excess energy generation and make it profitable through mining bitcoin

That’s… Not really what’s happening. At all. Bitcoin mining isn’t using excess energy, it’s forcing energy producers to generate more energy, and forcing rates higher. If everyone was using solar or wind generation, and there was truly excess power being generated that had no additional costs associated with it–because it was a cloudless day with stiff breezes–then sure; the excess power couldn’t be stored past a certain point, so the solar cells and turbines would just be taken off line. But that’s not the way most generation works; when there’s low demand, power plants burn less coal/natural gas/oil to turn the generator turbines, and they ramp that up when there’s high demand.

I have a brand (yeah, the kind done with red-hot metal); my impression was that burning skin and subcutaneous fat smelled like a delicious pork roast.

I hope that the FPC gets ahold of this case; the prohibition on making your own firearms in any capacity, and being told that he couldn’t use an affirmative 2A defense in court might be enough to kick this up to SCOTUS.

This is specific to New York, which has banned making your own firearms. In the state I live in, there would be absolutely nothing illegal about buying 80% parts and building my own firearms. Or, if I really hated myself, buying a benchtop CNC mill, and trying to make a functioning 2011.

Tracking the sale of certain classes of items and having reams of data is obviously a huge problem; the only way to correct it would be to enact privacy laws that forbade companies from selling or sharing data with any gov’t agency without a warrant, and then limiting the warrant to a single person’s transactions.

You’re probably talking about ammonium nitrate specifically. And once you’ve made your explosive with it, you still need to make something to detonate it, since it’s pretty stable without that; it’s not like sweating dynamite.

ANFO was used to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, so the feds take that pretty seriously.

So you’re saying my choices are either to side with fascists that want to take rights from people, or fascists that want to take rights from different people?

And no, it’s not a zero-sum game. My parents were life-long Republicans. They switched in the 2016 election, and have been voting mostly Democratic since then. I was raised in a deeply conservative religion, and was raised to be homophobic; I have changed, because I learned differently. The game, as you say, isn’t zero-sum; it’s persuasion. If you aren’t being persuasive, then you need to find better ways of reaching people, and yelling and telling them they’re terrible ain’t doing it. You certainly don’t win with circular firing squads.

His attorney probably should have raised that objection in the first place. He should have objected based on the phone not being material to the search of the car. But if he didn’t raise the objection correctly during the initial trial, then he can’t raise the objection on the appeal either.

A court, however, can force you to give up a password or hold you in contempt (which is essentially the rubber hose option)

That remains to be seen; I don’t think that there’s ever been a definitive ruling on this in the US. One real problem is that they would have to be able to prove that you knew the password, and that can be a real problem. I have an old Tails drive; it’s been years since I used it, and I have no idea what the password is anymore. Shit, I sometimes have a brain fart and can’t remember the passphrase for my password manager, and I use that a lot.

the only beneficent quality of republicans is supporting the NRA,

Look, I like guns far, far more than most people, but I draw the line at the NRA, and Wayne LaPierre’s suit-fetish. Most people that work on 2A issues at a local level will tell you that the NRA will swoop in after a deal has already been made, and fuck everything up. If you look at the history of Heller v. D.C., you’ll find that the NRA tried to kill the suit before it even got off the ground, because they were afraid it would hurt their funding.

If you want to support 2A causes, the Firearms Policy Coalition is on of the few right now that’s both effective, and appears to avoid other ‘culture wars’ (e.g., “anti-wokeism”) nonsense. At a non-policy level, the various John Brown Gun Clubs are doing good work, the Liberal Gun Club is helping create a space for people that are both pro-gun and generally identify as left of center, and the SRA is pretty okay once you get past the tankies.

It’s even weirder because Michigan is purple-trending-blue. I’m surprised that it’s not more blue, considering how much a part labor unions played in building the industrial base that used to exist in the urban areas. So I don’t know how they think that this is gonna “own teh libz” when they’ve already lost the state. Their own party is in tatters; it’s been run by someone so extreme in the state that no one was donating money to them.

I have a friend that used to be a stripper (“exotic dancer”, if you prefer). She tried to get a concealed carry permit–in Detroit–long before Heller v. D.C. and McDonald v. Chicago because she had a stalker. She was denied, because she didn’t have any greater need for self-defense than any other person.

Who defines psychological wellness? For reference, I’m a gun owner, and I compete in shooting matches on a regular basis. About a decade ago, I failed to complete suicide; I attempted suicide because I was being seriously abused (verbally, mentally, emotionally, financially, and sometimes physically) by my ex-spouse, which had lead to serious isolation and depression. I believe that I am mentally healthy now–as did my last psychiatrist–but I am forever barred from owning a firearm in Illinois because I was held for observation at a hospital in the state. Moreover, people with serious mental illnesses are more likely to be victims orf violence rather then perpetrators.

Why should people that are less physically capable be less able to defend themselves?

And who, exactly, defines “degenerate”? Because I know there are quite a lot of people that would define “degenerate” as anyone that is non-Christian, LGBTQ+ or LGBTQ-affirming, or non-“white” (however they’re currently defining “whiteness”).

The only way you deny these so-called degenerates a say in society is by intentionally disenfranchising them, in much the same way that Republicans have made an effort to deny non-white people a say in society through gerrymandering and voter-ID laws. (Or, earlier, through “literacy tests” and the like, or simply murdering people that tried to get black people registered to vote.)

I have not. On the other hand, I’m familiar with Armin Miewes, who spent a fairly long time in prison for murdering and eating someone that wanted to be murdered and eaten as a sexual kink.

there is no species barrier

There are a few things to unpack here.

First, most of the bacteria, et al. that we have to worry about right now from meat production and consumption are already well-adapted to human hosts. The solution, in most cases, is to adequately cook the meat, and to practice very basic food safety at home. Most food-borne illnesses are the result of inadequate cooking time and temperature. Other toxins–like botulism–are actually a biproduct of bacteria that colonize meat during putrefaction; you can kill the bacteria that produce the botulism toxin, but once it’s present, there’s not a lot you can do. (This is why you refrigerate meat. Clostridium botulinum reproduction is primarily room temperature, and anaerobic, so it’s mostly a problem with canned goods that weren’t sterilized properly during canning.)

The same solution to bacterial contamination in meat now would be the most effective solution for any lab-grown meat: cook your food correctly.

you’ll create a swamp of human meat factory farms that use huge amounts of antiviral, antifungal and antibiotic agents

I think that it’s unlikely that, aside from cleaning agents, that you would need antibacterial/antifungal/virucidal agents in producing lab-grown meat of any kind. Many of the most effective cleaning agents work because there’s no way to evolve protections against them. 70% isopropyl alcohol for instance; any resistance that bacteria evolved would also severely inhibit their ability to have any other functions. You can use radiation, or heat + steam (or even dry heat) to sterilize all of your equipment prior to introducing cells, and you have more control over the nutrient bath that it grows in. Depending on the nutrient bath, you can sterilize that by filtration; .22μm filtration is the standard for sterilizing IV and IM compounded medications. (.22μm is smaller than all bacteria, and many viruses. Molecules will still pass through that filter pore size though. You can also get filters down to .15μm if you need to remove more viruses.) Cows, chickens, etc. use so many antibacterials because they aren’t able to put them in ideal conditions and maintain the desired production levels.

I think that the lack of a species barrier is a far, far smaller risk than you might believe it to be.

BUT.

I think that there is one enormous risk: prions. Misfolded proteins are exceptionally hard to detect, and anything that denatures them will denature other proteins as well. The risk is likely very, very low, given how uncommon prion diseases are, but it’s definitely a risk when you can grow a culture indefinitely.

Doesn’t seem to be. Eugene Stoner lived in Florida and California. Armalite–and later Colt–aren’t based in Michigan.

…Are you saying that there are certain people that you don’t believe should be allowed to have a vote?

That seems like a… Dangerous path to head down.