Luis M. Rocha @lmrocha@qoto.org

@freemo @mike805 that is just false. It is completely false. All data shows, quite clearly, over and over again, that greater gun control leads to fewer deaths. Why do you think the gun lobby made it illegal for the NIH to study the effect of guns on public health? If the data were what you say, they'd be the first to want to study the phenomenon. Instead they successfully lobbied to forbid such studies---speaking of "hardcore libertarians."

@freemo @mike805 the current state of the constitution is only what a (very small) majority of supreme court justices, corrupt as some of them are, decides it is. It can, it has, and it will be changed without an amendment.

@freemo @mike805 This is a case of manufacturers who profiteer from the murder of the citizenry, convincing a minority that wanting to keep their toys has a higher, almost divine reason and it's worth assassinating children for. Again, the number one cause of death for children in the USA is guns. That does not happen in countries not at war. You are siding with the profiteers, not the people, and certainly not the children who are scared and tired of fearing for their lives daily in schools and at home.

@freemo @mike805
Dude, for the founding fathers, "we the people" meant men with property. Voting was not universal. Everything about the second amendment, from gun technology to whom it applied to (it certainly did not apply to slaves), the concept of militia and regulation has changed, and so has its interpretation.

The way it characterizes "well regulated militia" for instance, is because they really had no concept of national army as we have today. The idea of serving in a national army did not exist until after the french revolution and Napoleon. Up to that point, soldiers were paid by kings to fight for the king's army in defense of his property and lands. Those were the days when people like the founding fathers were defining how armies, national and state guards should work.

@mike805 @freemo you have changed the interpretation of only the bits you like: guns for all, when it was meant for well regulated militia of white men. There was no need for amendments to change that interpretation. But if we want to set the limits clearly specified by the "well regulated" bit (the point @freemo was commenting with meme, incorrectly in my view) then we need an amendment. Isn't that convenient? Of course it is all a matter of interpretation, which depends on the supreme court, which depends on money---or a president with the balls to pack it.

The only hope it's that this conservative overreach (as in Tennessee and recent supreme court rulings) will result in a youth backlash that has not been seen since 1969.

@mike805 @freemo if we had a democracy that would work, but we have an oligarchy where the lobby of the gun manufacturers out votes the people. Just see what the supreme court did recently to my state of New York. Our democratically enacted gun controls were wiped.

And if you don't believe we are in an oligarchy, see the news about Clarence Thomas. That is why I take issue with this reification of the founding fathers. That is all a smoke screen to face that there is no democracy on this issue. It's the rule of the lobby, which I very much doubt the founding fathers intended. Indeed, a century later Lincoln called the death penalty for profiteers, which is what the gun manufacturers who profit from there daily assassination of American children are.

@mike805 @freemo the founders were not gods. Their conception of guns, militia, armies, people (who they thought mattered), rights (for those they throughout mattered) bear absolutely no relevance today. All of those have changed dramatically since then.

@mike805 @freemo even if that were the case (it's isn't), you still have them "well-regulated" bit. Also, if the first part is to be taken for sacred, by your interpretation then only white men should have the right to bear arms?

The reification of an old document is a choice. One that is killing our children. Guns are the number one cause of death for children in America! Our life expectancy is way lower than all other advanced countries. Choosing this mortality for an interpretation of an old text is the definition of a death cult. One that is imposed on a majority of Americans who do not want it.

"Israeli politics will remain fundamentally unstable as long as the occupation persists as a putatively temporary military dictatorship that Israel upholds indefinitely. "

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/30/israel-hasnt-been-a-democracy-for-a-long-time-now-israelis-need-to-face-this-fact?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
L

#AI by @melaniemitchell and David Krakauer https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2215907120

Brilhante.
["https://www.publico.pt/2043599"]

["https://www.publico.pt/2043632"]

A Four-Decade Secret: One Man’s Story of Sabotaging Carter’s Re-election https://nyti.ms/3LzfWaR

There are days in #academia when I really appreciate the ethics of gangsters. At least they show what they are up to.
https://youtu.be/vKBFTYqt2mw

One of the reasons I'm extremely skeptical of a computational science of #misinformation is that it tends to use sources like the NYT as trustworthy (used as labeled data for truth), when it has functioned as the source of some of the most impactful cases of misinformation.

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/bret-stephens-masks-new-york-times

"Would you work on a technology you thought had a 10 percent chance of wiping out humanity?"
This Changes Everything https://nyti.ms/3YIdemz