StringJunky

To cut to the chase: you prefer the idea of an invisible sky fairy putting us together instantly as is with just a thought?

If the film or art work speaks to me, anything else is irrelevant. Those you speak of are likely in living memory, what about those who are long since gone, and whose personal llife history has vanished? They could have been the most deplorable people imaginable. Is Mr Feynmann to be banished from the history books and annals of science: In the current time, yes, he's persona non grata, but in a generation or two he'll probably be seen as we saw him before his behaviour became public... if his work is of a historically durable nature, say, like Charlie Chaplin's is.

I personally separate the private shenannigans from the artist and their works. Quite a few people whose work I like turned out eventually to be arseholes in real life. If one didn't, probably most would be 'cancelled' and unemployable. In the final analysis history doesn't care, their work will still be viewed and analyzed on its own merits. The effect of their domestic actions are purely transient and will have no effect on their artistic standing, given enough time.

The pigeon angle looks like to me as a way of demonstrating a quantum effect having a macro consequence i.e. the pigeon only gets fed when a quantum event occurs.

There is no point in invoking an external reality because the best we have is intersubjective consensus, which can include experiments as part of that. Basically, If we all agree, it is what it is until we know otherwise. An analogy: Picture yourself floating in space with nothing else in sight and you feel no acceleration. A rock is heading in your direction and it gets bigger. Is it getting bigger because it is moving towards you, or is it because you are moving towards it, or are both of you moving towards each other? What's the reality? The underlying reality is unknowable. The same with this subject. If it walks like a duck... what more can you ask?

If you can't tell the difference from the behaviour, there is no way of knowing, so it's conscious. Your assertion invokes metaphysics. I'm with Vat:

The article you link mentions about faddism, it's only faddist (or woke) if it disappears over time. If it becomes the integrated norm then it's progressive. I don't think the subject of Rowling's pique is going to go a way. That would make her a 21st century Luddite. I think this is the case but only time will tell.

Given that the Larry Nasser case is still pretty fresh in the memory and the subsequent effects on the US Olympic team, I don't think it will stand up to public or judicial scrutiny in the end. It's potentially a perverts charter and particularly egregious at the amateur level. Cretins.

This Smithsonian gun control history article seems to paint a different picture to the current Right-wing narrative of it becoming more restrictive with time. It seems it's actually the reverse.

You are assuming the goodies have the presence of mind and training to deal with the baddie in a tense situation. I don't believe a typical gun owner is equipped mentally to deal with it. It's a recipe for the innocent person to get killed. Outside of that remote encounter there's a umpteen other ways for that gun to cause harm to someone else or to themselves, which are more likely. Also that goodie could turn into a baddie should something cause them to become stressed enough. If it's to hand in such a scenario it will probably be used because it is so intuitive and easy to use. Impulsion and firearms are like matches and petrol.

Isn't this because males are statistically stronger and not because they are necessarily, inherently more violent in that scenario, and not that such women don't have the intent to do the same? I'm not asserting that, just that it arises in my mind. My stepdad broke my mum's arm 30 years ago. She's 5'2", he was 6ft. He was likely restraining her because she had a habit of lunging in a rage and grabbing a person's hair... she was violent. I walked in one day visiting and she said "He broke my arm", which was in plaster. She left me to imagine the rest... and it wasn't in her favour. I just said "Did he?" and changed the subject.

That would be beyond the pale to automatically think that a non-white person is automatically the villain.

The trouble is goodies and baddies look the same. If the goodies don't have guns, it makes the armed policeman's job a lot easier to differentiate.

Serious mental gymnastics going on. The lunatics are not the psychiatric cases. IIRC a person is killed by a gun every two weeks in the UK, and that might include Police Armed Response numbers as well. We have about 100 hospital admissions from knife crime a week plus the ones that don't get recorded. I think it would be fair to say that if guns were available to those offenders we'd have a death rate similar to the US per capita. It's not that we are any less violent. We have pretty much the same level of violent offending per capita, I would guess. It's pretty clear that our gun laws are preventing massacres.... you can't really kill 20 people with a knife in rapid succession before someone takes you on.

I just read somewhere that some staff will be armed in schools, but what if one of those has a psychotic and murderous episode...? Remember after 911, pilots cabins were lockable from the inside and an airline pilot locked it and crashed into a mountain? The devil is potentially in us all and the pro-gun self defence lobby seem to fail to realize or acknowledge that. It's not dangerous career criminals that are causing the massacres, it's ordinary people with severe mental issues. To a man, none of the perpetrators I've seen of these atrocities look like they are a member of MS13, who only actually seem to do the small stuff; a rival gang member here or there. The typical armed American citizen is not trained or equipped to deal with either. They've been watching too many movies.

Both of them, not just him.

Public discourse is their oxygen... and gravy.

But there's plenty of other accidental and premeditated scenarios for lethal and injurious things to happen whilst in possession, which are not an infinitesimal risk.

Some comments by the swimmer Lia Thomas on the BBC website today: An issue I noticed today seems to be that medically-supported transitioning occurs after puberty, when the adult potential is already developed. If the transitioning occured pre-puberty that criticism is removed. Whole other set of ethical issues to deal with here though as well. Could it not be that the 'confused' child is not confused and is merely, without as-yet sufficient contrary social conditioning, expressing their natural potential? Perhaps it is you that is confused because they aren't conforming to your decades-old, culturally-ingrained, stereotypical expectations?

Six of one and half a dozen of the other. The confounding factor is that they can both act which obscures the veracity of both positions. No doubt this will be turned into a political spectacle. Probably been a good career move for both of them in their respective interests: Depp's probably marketable again movie-wise and Heard will be the new figurehead for the #MeToo movement or other cause celebre. Personally, I think they both just spoilt, petulant people that feel they can sue on a whim and they are probably equal in blame.

OK.

I never got the sense he was taking a side swipe at anybody. Are you taking umbrage at this? This is a general statement about the collective human condition.

Having an easily accessible, loaded firearm in the home for personal protection... what can go wrong?

+1 @zapatos but I can't give anymore today.

The ignorance is all yours.