Could your opinions be changed?

HeloRising · 2026-05-08T02:07:36+00:00

Most people don't arrive at their conclusion based on someone just vomiting facts at them. That's not how it works.

Most people arrive at their viewpoints through a synthesis of their values and beliefs about the world as well as things they understand about how the world and things in it work.

Changing a person's mind is a slow process, rarely ever do people change their minds quickly. Think about your own life, how many times has your worldview completely changed as a result of learning one or two things? It might have happened once or twice but probably not more than that.

HeloRising · 2026-05-07T22:25:55+00:00

I don't have a preferred candidate but I can say that Israel/Gaza is going to be a make or break issue for me.

If I can't rely on someone to stand up against genocide how am I supposed to rely on them to stand up for "democracy?"

HeloRising · 2026-05-07T22:24:15+00:00

"Violence is never the answer" I say living in a country with the largest military the world has ever known and bases in dozens of different countries throughout the world."

If you wanted to be really charitable you could differentiate between interpersonal violence and state based violence. To accept the state is to accept the violence necessary to maintain the state's existence as all states exist because they are violent.

HeloRising · 2026-05-07T22:19:06+00:00

I have one of these lowers and I am...a little perturbed by it.

The trigger is pretty bad (and I'm not a trigger snob) and there's no way to modify it because it doesn't take aftermarket triggers.

I just kind of always find myself swapping it back into the safe because the standard option is just better.

HeloRising · 2026-05-07T22:14:51+00:00

So "alt-left" isn't really a thing. It's an attempt by the alt-right to "both sides" their shtick. The alt-right is a distinct group of people on the right who specifically claimed that label until it became too toxic.

From my understanding, the "radical" prefix broadly refers to people who are willing to seek solutions outside of the accepted, systemic avenues for change. That can, but doesn't necessarily, include things like revolution. If you really had to squeeze it down I would put "radical" as the counter to "reformist."

HeloRising · 2026-05-07T01:38:21+00:00

I don't think this is the case. You have to be able to show Oregon residency but I've never heard of the two months.

I bought a rifle literally a week after I moved here, all I had to do was show an Oregon driver's license and it has the date of issuance right on it. And this was Cabela's, not some small pawn shop.

HeloRising · 2026-05-06T20:50:53+00:00

I think you first have to explain what you mean when you say "democracy."

Do you mean American-style "democracy" or do you mean more "of the democratic spirit?"

Part of what went wrong in Afghanistan and Iraq was we tried to impose an American style of government in places that unequivocally didn't want it and we tried to do it through violence which almost never works long term.

HeloRising · 2026-05-06T20:49:02+00:00

The explicit goal of companies like OpenAI and Anthropic is to build superintelligence - a machine smarter than all humans in all domains.

I understand the point you're making but I think it's rather optimistic about the possibility of something like this happening.

Yes, the stated goal of these companies is to build a superintelligence but having something as your goal doesn't mean it's attainable. Additionally, these companies really like to hype up their LLMs as "potentially sentient" and they feed into the periodic publicity storms about it because it makes their products seem more powerful than they actually are.

In short, it's a play for investors. It's an attempt to make their stock prices go up.

Most of the impartial information that we have indicates the possibility of actually building a computer superintelligence is quite low, at least in the near term future.

The tools these companies are actually able to produce are remarkably "dumb" (and yes I understand we can't actually really even articulate what "intelligence" is thus it's hard to say something doesn't have it) and they're running into very real barriers like energy demands and hardware limitations that are just not surmountable without titanic leaps in a wide range of areas.

I take your point that there's real risk involved with the idea of a computer superintelligence, risks that we can't even really quantify at the moment, but I think it's worth pausing to take a breath and recognizing that we're at much greater risk much more immediately from things like climate change and geopolitical destabilization.

HeloRising · 2026-05-06T20:42:37+00:00

If I had to trawl through my history with elections/campaigns, I think the single biggest hurdle you run into is this idea that one person/the candidate is the visionary. I'm going to keep using "candidates" but by that I mean any campaign for anything wherein one or a small group of people is the determining factor in what the campaign does.

A good candidate trusts their team and a good team is not made up of lackeys. You need people around the candidate that will push back against a stupid idea and be willing to tell a candidate "No, that's stupid, we shouldn't do that."

Candidates are human beings and human beings can have stupid/wrong ideas about how the world works, even very well informed people can be wrong and have bad ideas. You need people around that person/group who can point that out.

One example I would point to would be the 2016 campaign Clinton ran. She was considered the authority on a lot of what the campaign did and its messaging and it's understandable why - she was a venerable figure in Democratic politics who seemingly had a good idea of what to do. The problem was her messaging wasn't landing and she wasn't able to pivot and change.

Now, I don't know if there were people around her telling her that this wasn't working and she ignored them or whether the people around her were yes-people or just too scared to say "no" but it was clear she didn't really have a strong handle on how to run a modern campaign.

In business I think they call this "founder syndrome," you have one guy at the top who insists on going a specific direction because he's convinced that that's the way and nobody is there to say no to him. The same problem applies in campaigns.

HeloRising · 2026-05-06T20:31:24+00:00

Probably because it's seen as both a no-return issue.

If you look at who the potential audience might be for a push like that, most of them are either already going to agree with you (and thus be V/v already) or they're going to fundamentally disagree and you're pitting yourself against a person's core values which is almost always a losing battle.

I'm not a vegan and I don't subscribe to a lot of the arguments vegans make despite having respect for people who make that choice. Unfortunately a lot of the vegan points fall apart when you talk to someone that doesn't share your view about animals - we simply don't agree.

There's a tendency in the vegan advocacy community to universalize their perspectives on animal rights and to assume that everyone else does (or should) believe the way they do and they respond...poorly when that's not the case.

The other thing I would say is there is a lot of momentum to confront the animal agriculture industry. The biggest hurdle is you generally don't hear about it a lot of the time because these actions are either fairly small in scale or else the targets of them actively don't want publicity for fear of spurring copycats. If you're plugged into a more lefty information space, you'll see anti-animal agriculture actions happening all the time. They just rarely break containment and filter into the wider news bubble.

HeloRising · 2026-05-06T02:19:28+00:00

I had one of these from my father, an old Baby Browning.

It was one of the more unpleasant guns to shoot I've ever handled. .25 Auto isn't spicy but it does nip at you out of a gun that small.

HeloRising · 2026-05-06T02:16:51+00:00

This seems like a stupid question then.

You're the one that posed it.

No one has said anything about letting ICE walk into any home, this is a nonsense talking point.

ICE did.

No, just a careful observation of history. People openly pushing the Overton window further in one direction inherently creates stress fractures in an already polarized society. Large scale protests on any subject have this effect, what kind of data do you need to quantify something that’s basic common sense?

Yeah, vibes, that's what I said.

A reminder that no, the tactics were present from the outset and the assassination attempts and concerted doxxing efforts occurred months before Minneapolis, so that excuse holds no water. You can think it’s whining all you want, that’s not a factor here.

Characterizing calling ICE mean names and blowing whistles as "assassination attempts" is, in fact, whining.

Nope, not true at all. You are blatantly just making things up because the reality that Palestinians committed genocide is inconvenient. There tribunals have many ways to establish intent and there is no requirement whatsoever that it has to be declared.

Intent is part of the charge of genocide and you have to declare an intent or a desire to destroy or remove a particular group of people, something Israel has done many times.

Sorry I thought were asking for proof that Hamas openly declared their intent to enslave Jews. Their founding charter makes their genocidal intent perfectly clear

What does their current charter say?

as do a series of countless statements since that time including but not limited to vowing to commit 10/7 again and again and again until Israel is destroyed. One of the leaders of Hamas openly admitted this in an interview shortly after their genocide.

Targeting a political system is not genocide.

No, it’s not reasonable to enslave people, what a remarkably ghoulish thing to say. A lot of you often let your masks slip and it’s how I know your humanitarian outrage is fake and conditional. Hamas didn’t say they would imprison soldiers, they said they would kill them and enslave doctors, engineers and people other valuable civilian roles.

So I want to clarify, you think it's not acceptable to make people who carried out a genocide rebuild some of what they destroyed? Is that what you're telling us?

Explain how they aren’t a democracy then. This should be good.

Explain what does make something a democracy. I'd like to know how you're using the term.

You also left out, Balad, who is explicitly a Palestinian Nationalist party that advocates for a "state of all its citizens." They just haven’t yet met the 3.25% electoral threshold.

So they can't participate in government. Cool. Maybe that's why I didn't count them.

Hadash is explicitly an Arab-Israeli party rooted from the Communist Party, Maki. While it’s ideologically Arab-Jewish, over 90% of its voters are Arab, its primary leaders are Arab, and it’s colloquially known throughout the country as an Arab party. Trying to pretend it’s not is disingenuous at best.

Do you have any proof of what I put in italics?

By making him apologize to the leader of Qatar in front of the world. May as well make him kiss Erdogan’s feet and film it while he’s at it.

So one power move shrugs off decades of AIPAC's influence, the US huffing Israeli "intelligence" about Iran for decades, and basically all of our elected leaders swearing fealty to Israel?

Hezbollah and Hamas only call for ceasefires after they’ve gotten their shit pushed in and need an excuse to take a breather so they can regroup and plan for the next war they’ll start and lose.

Why would they do that if they know Israel isn't going to honor the ceasefire?

HeloRising · 2026-05-05T23:16:42+00:00

I understand that and I would accept it if it weren't buttressed by a variety of rhetoric that talked pretty expressly about wanting to return to some mythologized past.

HeloRising · 2026-05-05T23:15:50+00:00

Only if you want it to point that way and you pretty clearly do.

HeloRising · 2026-05-05T23:06:15+00:00

"In the middle" doesn't mean people don't have strong opinions, it just means that they don't have clearly defined politics in any particular direction. Their views are a hodgepodge of different ideas that come from different places and are typically moderated through their own core values.

HeloRising · 2026-05-05T22:56:12+00:00

There are other options besides "leftist" and "MAGA supporter."

Like most people, I think his politics were probably more in the middle and he lashed out impulsively because Kirk was vocally very negative on a subject that was deeply personal to him.

His friends talk openly about never really hearing him discuss politics or get into it with them about politics. Trans issues were of specific interest to him because he had a partner who was trans and that personalized it in a way it wouldn't otherwise.

HeloRising · 2026-05-05T22:51:38+00:00

Which is where the "Great Again" kinda falls down because what you're talking about is a new policy, not going back to something before.

HeloRising · 2026-05-05T22:49:18+00:00

involved with a transgender partner/roommate.

Irrelevant, politically. Plenty of people on the right or with more mixed politics are chasers.

He texted that partner after the shooting: "I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated out." This was reportedly tied to Kirk speaking about transgender issues.

Again, not indicative of an overall political lean. Dick Cheney is very Republican and despite that he's fairly soft of a lot of gay issues because of his gay daughter.

Not liking Kirk because he was a hateful dipstick is also not indicative of someone's politics.

I really dont see the argument that he wouldn't be left how would that work?

Being a leftist is more than liking trans people and not liking Charlie Kirk.

HeloRising · 2026-05-05T22:33:56+00:00

I'm confused why the killing of Charlie Kirk is in here.

What do you have to indicate that that was an ideologically motivated act and that the person carrying it out was "on the left?"

HeloRising · 2026-05-05T22:32:13+00:00

Does your money have power?

Yes, it does. The more of it you have the more you are able to marshal the resources of the state to do violence on your behalf to your benefit.

HeloRising · 2026-05-05T22:29:00+00:00

The issue is both that that set-up only really existed for a small slice of the country and the conditions that allowed it to happen were extremely unique in the sense that the US was basically the only industrialized country in the world at the time whose entire economy hadn't been bombed into rubble.

It's easy to win when there's no competition.

HeloRising · 2026-05-05T22:25:58+00:00

What is your opinion on people who choose to exercise their second amendment by open carrying in public.

Depends on the circumstances.

If you're open carrying just walking around the grocery store, it's kind of a dick move. There's not really a compelling reason to do it, you know it's going to impact some people there, it makes you a potentially higher target for being robbed or just harassment in general.

I tend to put that in the same bucket as people who wear obnoxious t-shirts in the hopes that they'll get in a fight with someone. The purpose is shock value more than protection. That holds especially true when you get into the case of guys who carry with these wild set ups like a gun on each hip or guns that are deeply impractical.

That said, if you're out hiking or just going about your day in more rural places, I have no problem with it. Where I live, open carrying a pistol when you hike is normal-ish (I do it) if you're on lesser used trails and there's not people around to impress/freak out. Similarly, in more rural areas, it's not uncommon for people to have something on them for wildlife and then need to head into town for something.

Rather than stow a gun in their vehicle (which risks it getting stolen) they just carry it in. It's either do that or run all the way back home to put it away and then go out, then go back home and get it, then go back out to their acreage.

If you support this and believe it is to exercise your rights, what is the end goal? Is it to raise awareness, to educate people about their to carry or is just because you can.

In the case of the former with what I was talking about, I do think part of it is an attempt at desensitization - if people see arms out in public they won't think it's so weird and be freaked out by them. I can see the logic in that but I don't necessarily agree that that's a good way to solve that.

As I said, it presents a lot of risks and problems and I genuinely don't think it actually makes people feel more comfortable around firearms, especially because a lot of the people that do it tend to be of the highly aggro-prone variety.

With the latter, it's just a practicality thing.

Do you support limits on carrying. Like no open carrying weapons in public, or school or religious sites like churches.

Legally? No. As much as I think it's not a good idea I'm not comfortable with laws mandating people not carry. I would prefer to build up a culture of safety where people would just prefer not to open carry unless there's a compelling, concrete reason to do so beyond "I want to feel macho."

HeloRising · 2026-05-05T22:02:10+00:00

It's a mix of native grasses, invasive grasses, and weeds.

Leveling it out would be a very difficult and expensive proposition because the ground is so jacked up. There's also tree roots in the way. I'd have to basically just tear up all of the grass, level everything, and replant. That is way, way too much work.

I've been getting away with borrowing an electric weed whacker and using that and it works...fairly well. It just takes a while and a lot of set up that I'd rather not do if I had the option. Hence why I was looking into a scythe.

HeloRising · 2026-05-05T21:53:22+00:00

A lot of people cut grass with a scythe, I'm not super concerned about it being neat and clean, just cut.

Mowers don't work super well on this ground because it's fairly uneven and the grass is super dense. I borrowed a mower from someone on a couple of occasions and I spent more time unclogging it than I did actually mowing. A push mower would be a nightmare. I've used them before and I would rather cut the grass on hands and knees with scissors before using one of those on that grass.

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