Alex_Krycek

Disagree.

Nope. I see people who look angry. Are black people allowed to be angry at injustice, or are you suggesting they should blithely accept whatever mistreatment comes their way? Right....so when people of color are "loudmouths" and step out of line, it's OK to gun them down. That must be the Nazi sympathizer in you talking, Stats please? I guess that platitude is intended to justify fascism? Fascism is an obsolete ideology, like Communism. The world is moving on.

"Self evident" to you, because you're prejudiced, perhaps? Where was this? Really? I thought their mentality was "please stop killing us for no reason". That's not "us vs. them". They want police brutality to stop. This comment reveals your true mentality. Nothing else needs to be said.

Oh, I'm being completely serious. Half of them have no clue what positional asphyxiation is.

I actually believe that possibility 1 is very plausible, considering how untrained some police are. But both possibilities seem to work hand in hand: arrogance feeding ignorance, and vice versa.If there are no consequences or accountability for a person's actions, then they can afford to simply not care, either out of laziness, or egotism, or both. Case in point - Trump.

You're right, I read that wrong. 36 is near the lower end of the spectrum. Under the strictest set of assumptions – where, as on Earth, life forms between 4.5bn and 5.5bn years after star formation – there are likely between four and 211 civilisations in the Milky Way today capable of communicating with others, with 36 the most likely figure. But Conselice noted that this figure is conservative, not least as it is based on how long our own civilisation has been sending out signals into space – a period of just 100 years so far.

An interesting piece from the Guardian. The Overton window continues to open. "They may not be little green men. They may not arrive in a vast spaceship. But according to new calculations there could be more than 30 intelligent civilisations in our galaxy today capable of communicating with others." “I think it is extremely important and exciting because for the first time we really have an estimate for this number of active intelligent, communicating civilisations that we potentially could contact and find out there is other life in the universe – something that has been a question for thousands of years and is still not answered,” said Christopher Conselice, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Nottingham and a co-author of the research I share his view regarding evolution and intelligent life: “Basically, we made the assumption that intelligent life would form on other [Earth-like] planets like it has on Earth, so within a few billion years life would automatically form as a natural part of evolution,” said Conselice. Full article here: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jun/15/scientists-say-most-likely-number-of-contactable-alien-civilisations-is-36 Link to their Paper in the Astrophysics Journal: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ab8225

A nauseating disregard for human life.

Quite a generalization. I'm a millennial and a liberal, and I am well versed in the evils of Communism. That being said, one should also not conflate communism with a robust social democracy, which is what many on the right do.

What about statues of Lenin and Stalin in Eastern Europe? Should those have been torn down?

Well, why did the Civil war happen in the first place? To end slavery / racism? Or to stop Secession, and thus prevent a substantial weakening of the Union? My view it is was the latter. In reality, the north was probably only slightly less racist compared to the South, they just had no economic investment in slavery. The Civil War was not a Crusade of true believers intent on liberating black people. It was a war to maintain territorial integrity. Secession in practical terms meant that about a third of the population with substantial material resources had withdrawn from what had constituted a single nation and established a separate government.

Let's just say they were extremely sore losers.

Yes, obviously.

The Confederates did not win.

When I was 24, a black coworker of mine told me a troubling story about an encounter he had with the police. It had happened 4 weeks prior at our warehouse facility in North Carolina. The police were investigating a burglary, and two beat cops showed up to our work to ask my black coworker questions about what he might have seen the night before in relation to the crime. He said he hadn't seen anything. The cops pressed him for information, but my coworker repeated that he had no knowledge of the burglary, because, well, he had no knowledge of the burglary. As the conversation was coming to a close, one of the officers said straight to my coworker's face: "You n-words are all the same." And then he and his partner walked off. Now, my coworker wasn't fabricating these events. He had two witnesses on site when it happened, (other coworkers: 1 black and 1 white) who heard the officer make the comment. It was enough evidence for him to sue the local police department and eventually get awarded a hefty settlement. He ended up quitting his job and starting his own business in his twenties. It goes to show how entrenched these behaviors are in many police departments. These weren't "good ole boy" cops in their late fifties. These were young officers in their late twenties / early thirties who saw fit to make such a racist comment right out in the open.

I lived in the Deep South for a while. To me the best analogy of the civil war monuments is that of Nazi Germany. Would it be correct for the Germans to allow statues of Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Mengele, Adolf Eichmann, etc to remain standing? How about the Nazi flag? Is that just about "heritage"? The Confederates were traitors to the United States and explicit supporters of a racist ideology. Leaving those statues up is a tacit endorsement of their beliefs and enemies of the Constitution. They should be taken down and put in a museum display about the Confederacy. The military bases named after Confederate generals should also be renamed. Currently those monikers are a slap in the face to every person of color who serves there.

Yep - they worked together. Likely there was some beef, or Chauvin had it in for him for some unknown reason, and this was his opportunity. Unfortunately the protests have been infiltrated by those without peaceful intentions. Their only intention is to cause chaos and anarchy for their own gain.

America has seen yet another merciless killing of an unarmed person of color at the hands of police. This time though, it seems different. In the past, even with video tape, things happened quickly. An officer overreacted and shot an unarmed person. Sometimes the situation was ambiguous, sometimes not. But there was always a sense in previous police killings that somehow the officer had slipped up; gotten it wrong. Call it a lack of training, tunnel vision, PTSD - whatever term describes a person who under situations of extreme stress cannot act in good judgement and makes a fatal error, costing an innocent person their life. But George Floyd's killing wasn't ambiguous. It wasn't a quick mistake. It wasn't in any way a temporary lapse in judgement due to environmental confusion or overwhelm. This was an officer who pressed his knee, purposefully and carefully, into the neck of a man who had already been subdued and was lying on his stomach, handcuffed, on the ground. Protected by three fellow officers, Derek Chauvin painstakingly extinguished George Floyd's life over the course of seven long minutes, ignoring his pleas for help and deteriorating condition and the admonitions of bystanders to "let him breathe". As trivial as it may seem, it was the speed of the killing which sets this incident apart. Here was an officer, who through his willful and calculated actions told onlookers: "I will end this man's life in broad daylight, and you can do nothing to stop me." It was the slow deliberateness which makes this incident stand out, the remarkable brazenness and precision, that could leave no doubt that this officer had zero respect for George Floyd's life, and, zero fear for any kind of reprisal or punishment to himself or his colleagues. When the act was done, the paramedics came and George Floyd was dumped onto a stretcher like a bag of garbage. There have been so many of these incidents and people forget them. I think George Floyd is going to be the one that never leaves the public consciousness. Those seven long minutes cannot be forgotten. What is your take on police brutality in America? Is it relegated to only certain sections of the country, or is it more systemic? How can this issue be solved?

Well, I agree with you overall - things need to change in "normal" society. I just don't see things improving much when people are under such an increased level of duress.

Straw man. I never suggested that the previous scenario was a "utopia". This is a lesser of two evils situation. If given a choice between earning a living in a stressful environment as opposed to starving to death in anarchy, I would choose the former.

A distinction should be made between what is technically feasible and what is ubiquitous. There are plenty of reasons why something (for example the flying car) could be technically feasible but not widespread in society (consumerism, logistical problems, lack of an adequate regulatory environment, lack of infrastructure, lack of production incentives, an interest in maintaining a power differential between classes, an interest in preventing public access to potentially dangerous technology, etc). By the way, here are some companies working on the flying car: https://www.nanalyze.com/2016/06/9-companies-building-flying-cars/ Certainly there are unanticipated problems just as there are unexpected innovations and breakthroughs. My basic point is that the trajectory of radical, transformative technological change emerging from collective scientific progress has (and will) continue to produce material realities which were previously conceivable only in the realm of the imagination. “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” ― Arthur C. Clarke The Princeton was responsible for tracking the unknown objects and directing the Black Aces towards them. After the they lost visual contact with the first object, the Princeton reported to the Black Aces when the object "reappeared in another location" (the CAP point), according to David Fravor. The “capsule” was not only more maneuverable than the Hornets but also much faster —for it to have reached the CAP point ahead of the Navy fighters it would have had to have flown in excess of 2,400 miles an hour. According to FighterSweep.com, which published a detailed chronicle of the event in 2015, the object did not emit hot jet exhaust typical of ordinary aircraft. Source: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a14456936/that-time-the-us-navy-had-a-close-encounter-with-a-ufo/ 2,400 mph. Pretty fast. The Super Hornet has a top speed of Mach 1.8 (1370 mph). There are unmanned aircraft that have been documented to go much faster than that. The aircraft below have a recorded top speed of 7,546 mph and 13,201 mph respectively. So it would be within the realm of possibility for these UFOs to be unmanned craft piloted / navigated by advanced A.I. capable of going twice or three times as fast as the Super Hornets and directing themselves to a predetermined point incredibly quickly. But the propulsion is another mystery as they had no evidence of a traditional propulsion mechanism.

I think with the right cultural mindset such a world can be realized.

I agree with you there.

Not sure why you wouldn't believe that, considering it has been the trajectory of human development since the Scientific Revolution (i.e. the last 400 years) to far exceed our understanding of what is possible. Future human innovation has consistently produced novel technology that seems impossible today. The notion that human beings won't innovate technology that we currently consider impossible is much more unlikely, given this historical context. Fravor stated that the object "disappeared" in front of their eyes and then reappeared 60 miles away a few seconds later at a new location. However, I did state that it's possible there were multiple objects that day and perhaps one was able to evade the pilots while another was picked up by the Princeton's radar at the same time.