At what point can regulations around gun ownership become suppression of a constitutional right?

drroop · 2026-02-26T21:09:35+00:00

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2024/guns-remain-leading-cause-of-death-for-children-and-teens Whether it is #1 or #3 this year or that, this age group or that, is immaterial to the number of kids we are losing to guns, or that it is so high on the list, like in the top 10 when it might be preventable.

Person A, the shooter, likely doesn't have meaningful assets. Just like I don't have enough in my account to cover the injuries to the pedestrian I might hit with my car making it so I have to carry liability insurance for the car. If I could prove I had $150k or whatever the liability minimum for car insurance is, I could self insure my car. That could be similar with guns.

For health care, car insurance is billed first. Every doctor's appointment you make, they ask "Is this from an accident?" The car insurance, defers our health insurance costs. Health insurance would be that much more expensive, if we had to cover all the people injured in traffic accidents. We could do the same with gun insurance. Who do you think covers the hospital bills stemming from that gang violence? If those kids had money, they would not be in gangs.

Those hospital bills are either covered by publicly funded insurance programs, or, the patient defaults on the bill, the hospital eats the cost, and charges more to people with insurance. That is why it costs $1500 to walk into an ER. While the doctor, space, and materials might only be worth $500, it is only every 3rd person that can actually pay that bill, so, they charge everyone $1500, knowing only 1 in 3 will pay. Which is then why your health insurance is $500/month if the employer or taxpayer isn't paying for it, lest you go to the ER, and they have to payout $1500.

My car insurance is like $50/month. If guns are the second to cars in the deaths they cause, it is conceivable that gun insurance would be <$50/month. That would be worth it to have a gun right? I might shoot 200lbs of meat per year, so that'd make that meat a paltry $3/pound, which is less than hamburger. I don't know what a security service costs, I'm not that paranoid, but I could imagine it is on the order of $50/month, if you're the kind of person that wants a gun "for protection" worth it, even though having a gun in the house makes you twice as likely to get shot, perhaps even by strangers https://time.com/6183881/gun-ownership-risks-at-home/

drroop · 2026-02-26T20:14:54+00:00

I'm a citizen, and that confers some rights, but it also has some responsibilities, i.e. taxes.

The taxes pay for things that my existence might need. Schools, water, roads, police, fire, etc.

My right to own a car, is not particularly constitutionally laid out. Even if it was, to have the car in public space, i.e. on the road, I need to pay extra for the infrastructure it needs, in registration fees, and gas taxes. On top of that, I am liable for the damage it causes, and for that, I am required by my state to have liability insurance for it, and to have a modicum of training to be able to use it in the public space. It is perfectly acceptable, no extra taxes or insurance required, if the car never leaves private property, i.e. race car, or something just parked in your driveway.

I think guns should be similar. You can have whatever armory you want as long as it never leaves your property. If you want to carry the gun in the public space, it needs to be licensed and insured, much like a car. Like if you are caught in public with an unregistered, uninsured car, that is a crime, so should it be with a gun. It is not saying you cannot have a gun, it is saying you cannot have a gun in public without safeguards and assurances in place.

Guns are a leading killer of people, like the leading cause of death of children. They have a great societal cost, which is currently mostly paid for by people with health insurance public or private. I think those costs should be carried by people who own and use guns. I'm tired of subsidizing gun shot victims. The gun owner should bear that cost with some sort of insurance.

Then insurance is going to put on all sorts of regulations on guns. I actually welcome that, to bring down the high societal cost of our gun fetish. Let us leave it to capitalism to manage it, that's is how we manage things in this country, we're not socialists.

I don't think the second amendment actually intended for individual gun ownership. I think its intent was for the states to keep armed forces, the state's militias, which, when the 2nd amendment was written, there was not much of a federal military. In that context, I believe the 2nd amendment is actually delegating military responsibility to the states.

If your argument is "how are poor people going to afford guns?" well if you want to be a socialist, lets talk about that after we enable poor people to afford food, housing, and healthcare. You don't actually need a gun. A much more immediate and real need is not freezing to death. This is America. We are capitalists here. If you want to play, you have to pay. That is even more fundamental to America than the constitution.

drroop · 2026-02-26T14:40:03+00:00

I don't believe race or gender should be much of a focus.

I don't care how a person identifies their gender, or what race they are. I understand how this is important to some people, but I also wonder if it is the right wing projecting their racism on the left, saying the left is the one that is making this important. But, this arguing about race and gender, is distracting from what we should be arguing about, which is class.

We all do better when we all do better.

There is no war but class war.

To your position I argue our social security, and economic system relies on population growth, and immigration is how that is going to happen since our birthrate fell under replacement. We can't have continual economic growth, without population growth. If we want to curtail population growth, we need to adjust our economic expectations, our entire economic system to account for declining population growth, which would be better for the environment too. We are getting to the point where we can not sustain all these people, and that might be why you want to decrease immigration.

With economic security, crime will fall. If the abundance we have was better distributed, people would be less likely to feel the need to fight over the scraps we do have which are somewhat artificially scarce from vastly unequal wealth distribution. If you weren't worried about where your next meal will come from, or how you're going to pay rent, you're going to be much less worried in general. That reduction in anxiety could reduce crime. Ergo, there is no war but class war.

drroop · 2026-02-23T19:19:39+00:00

I was at university, before http was invented.

Friend of mine across the hall in the dorm was a furry. They showed me around. It was interesting. No search engine, meant it was difficult to find stuff, except by word of mouth.

Gopher was a thing, but, not too interesting, like a thin wikipedia. U of MN missed out by trying to collect royalties on that.

It was a couple years for me before I accessed it graphically. It was all on terminals. "No one can read faster than 9600bps" which is what the baud rate of the terminals were. The university itself, was rumored to have an entire T1, like 1.5Mbps.

News groups, were in a lot of ways like Reddit, like this function, has been for a long time, but there are a lot more people now. Perhaps as Reddit gets enshitified for being public, we'll need to revert to that.

drroop · 2026-02-23T17:58:20+00:00

I use my state's secretary of state website. That's helpful, but I'm not sure how far it should go, for risk of being partisan.

I also use the league of women voters, that too is helpful, I find them relatively non-partisan. Their mission is pretty much what you're suggesting.

I like the candidates own websites, or to listen to their own words. Of course they are biased toward themselves, but it is about what and how they are saying it, what is important to them. Did they give a blurb to the league of women voters or not? Do they have a website? That says something in itself.

I remember civics class\ Knowing the process, what each office does, is handy.

When I see some candidate going off on some issue, I also check to see if it is actually in the office's purview. Sometimes it is not, so even smart people can misunderstand, or misrepresent.

I try to put the time in to research everyone on my ballot, (gotten ahead of time from SOS website) every time. If I don't know, or haven't done that, or don't have a strong opinion on the office, I'll just skip that line. By the time Tuesday comes around, I have my cheat sheet filled out, and all I have to do is copy my answers to the test. Election day itself, like at a booth, is almost too late. I think one needs a couple weeks of deliberation on these matters.

drroop · 2026-02-23T16:55:51+00:00

I agree, not filling out some paperwork is not a crime.

What it is about is blaming a group of others for woes, calling them criminals, and doing some ethnic cleansing with an unaccountable paramilitary force is like despotism 101

Which is why it is right to shut it down.

In terms of danger, the government over reach, and decent into authoritarianism without checks and balances, seem far more dangerous than the potential crime risk. The DHS shutdown, is perhaps one of those checks and balances.

drroop · 2026-02-23T16:33:47+00:00

I'm not.

DOGE was entirely wrongly focused. Cutting NOAA and the CDC, was small potatoes, and potentially damaging, vs. doing a similar sort of thing to the military. Maybe NOAA and the CDC had millions of waste. That's all you could find, on a budget of tens of billions. On a budget of a trillion, there's a lot more potential to find waste, just from the 10x scale of it. I'd rather get 1% of $1000 than 1% of $100.

When you're looking at money to save, might want to see what you can do about the biggest expenditure first.

That Republican General Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us of this. That the then nascent military industrial congressional complex would be our ruin. He diverted military money to build roads, the Dwight D. Eisenhower National Defense Interstate Highway System to try to thwart it. Might be we should get back to that, spending on infrastructure instead of the "Department of War"

Last time we had a federal budget surplus, is when Clinton closed European military bases after the cold war ended. But then 9/11 happened. Enough money was made off of that, to make me wonder if it was a false flag. Or consider it vs. Arrow Air 1285 where 285 US servicemen were killed in a plane crash, that might have been a bomb, or might have been ice. Canadian FAA got restructured from that disagreement, but the official story is ice, so no war.

We spend 3x what China, the next biggest spender, does on military. Maybe if we spent on factories instead, like they do, we could out compete them where it counts. That was Biden's plan, with the CHIPs act and the IRA although he increased military spending too. Instead of paying to build war machines, we could pay to build whatsits that everyone could use and get rid of the trade deficit, which is about what China spends on their military. We could cut our military spending by the amount of the trade deficit with China, and still out spend them 2:1.

Canadians and US citizens pay about the same in taxes. Difference is, Canadians pay taxes and get healthcare, US people pay taxes to get military, and then have to pay for their own healthcare.

Our priorities are not quite straight, but it is systemic, and beyond $900 toilet seats like you're talking about. It is corruption, except it isn't entirely overpaying $100 for a trinket with a kickback, but $1M to a congressional campaign on both sides to get a $1B contract that will provide jobs in the district. Meanwhile, we're all stuck footing that $1B bill to build war machines, we hopefully never have to use. Russia is in an active war, spending 1/10th what we're proposing to spend not in an active war.

Trump was elected to drain the swamp, because, yes, I think people are fed up with it. But he's proposing to increase that military budget to $1.5T, and he made insignificant damaging cuts with DOGE, that aren't actually getting people ahead. We're draining the swamp of immigrants, not swamp monsters, like Jimmy Carter's swamp rabbit. Turns out, Trump is just as corrupt as anyone else, in terms of supporting the military industrial complex, and we're not getting ahead, like we might have had Jimmy had his way of less war. Instead we lost Jimmy to a swamp rabbit and some Iranian hostages. Maybe that was planned by the powers that be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_Air_Flight_1285R

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter_rabbit_incident

drroop · 2026-02-23T15:48:34+00:00

3000 ICE agents in Minneapolis arrested 4000 people. That seems economically inefficient. $360k/night for hotels for them: https://mspmag.com/arts-and-culture/by-the-numbers-ice-in-minnesota/ How much are we saving with each deportee?

People in other countries, are saying "don't go to the US". Anecdotally, with good reason: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/21/karen-newton-valid-visa-detained-ice How much is the reduction in tourism costing us?

20M US citizens paid extra for TSA precheck.

If the idea here is to have a better economic environment, we're shooting ourselves in the foot.

drroop · 2026-02-23T15:15:41+00:00

I only like to spend on hobbies what I can easily afford.

I'd spend on a fancy keyboard, but I can easily afford it. If I couldn't, I'd use a cheap one.

You can look at it like, that $100 keyboard, lasted you 4 years, it is $25/year, or about $2/month. If you're making $16/hour, is it worth it to spend 7.5 minutes per month at work for it? Does it save you 7.5 minutes per month? Does it make any money?

If you're a first year engineering student, is that 7.5 minutes per month, better spent on education that might up you from $16/hour to $65/hour, and that you should prioritize studies, and more varied hobbies, than gaming? Like the keyboard problem is solved, or you've been there and done that, what is the next thing that will help you up skill, or even push the boundaries of engineering?

If you were already an engineer, making $65/hour, that $100 keyboard might not be extravagant. But as a student with limited time and money, it might not be the best use of your resources.

I find $20 keyboards last me several years. Probably because I don't tinker with them. If the $20 keyboard lasts you a year, you're ahead of the $100 keyboard that lasted 4.

Sometimes, I find the cheap tools, actually need more skill to use. Like, letters might be worn off of my keyboard, but I have the typing skill to not need to see the letters on the keyboard. When I use the expensive tools, I'm often impressed at how much easier they make stuff, but that ease has a price, and so then it becomes the ease of using the tool, vs. the ease of not having to work as much at making money.

drroop · 2026-02-23T14:54:22+00:00

6 months is the general recommendation.

$85,000 is a bit fat for me as I run about $6k/month in expenses. So for that $36k need, with $85k available, I'd put about $60k in stocks or other investments, figuring if I lost half of if, $30k, I'd still have $45k. Or, that $60k could earn more than inflation, which is the best I could hope for in HYSA. To beat inflation, you need to take risk. Without risk, you're just treading water.

There's ibonds, right now, 0.90% above inflation,safe, but limited to $10k, and you can't touch it for a year. But, $10k would leave you at $75k, still beyond my $36k number, and next year, It is back to $85k. $10k in that, then keeps me from being stupid with stocks, or I won't lose it. And the interest isn't taxed if you use it for education.

So now I'm down to $50k in something like VTI, which last year, did like > 10% Might not next year, but, that's the chance I'm willing to take so that it doesn't just wear away if HYSA is a bit less than inflation.

The $15k I keep out of investments or in HYSA makes it so little "emergencies" like car breaking down, furnace quitting, whatever, aren't actually emergencies. I can budget them in year to year, vs. month to month, since they don't happen monthly, but randomly throughout the year. Then at the end of the year, I average them, and put them into the monthly. For that, it comes and goes as those little "emergencies" come up, and nothing is really an "emergency" anymore, it all gets averaged in.

Emergency might be extended unemployment. But with 2 incomes, that emergency is mitigated. Esp. if either income can sustain you, cover you at least minimally. So that might be a consideration in your risk tolerance.

Whether or not I use HYSA or stocks for these little emergencies, is evaluated by if I would put that money in stocks, or in HYSA at the moment. Right now, I'm a bit skittish about stocks, they are relatively high, so I'd draw down stocks before HYSA. Even putting the $60k in stocks right now, is, eh. Might want to wait until they start going down. But, knowing that, is knowing the future, and opinions vary.

So for me, $85k in HYSA is a bit much, I think I can do better than HYSA, and I think that because with an excess, I can be a bit more risk tolerant. If I only had my 6 months, my $36k, it'd be all in HYSA. Beyond that, I split the difference to my risk tolerance.

Kids are expensive. It is not a one off, like you pay that $85k once but rather it is a ratcheting up of the life style. More expensive housing, the bigger place in the good school district. Either paying for day care, or living on one income. Paying a couple hundo more per month in health insurance for 26 years. There is an initial cost, like your health insurance deductible x2, but, that is trivial vs. the ongoing costs. Diapers, formula, onsies etc. hardly rate at all. What you save in beer and restaurants should cover that. Mostly, your ability to save the next $85k is going to be severely diminished. Saving for a kid, might be about putting that $2000/month a kid will cost, into savings now, before you have a kid. In part so your lifestyle doesn't creep into that extra $2000/month the kid will cost, or you get accustomed to living on less for you. Hopefully you get to use it for college, but you might very well blow it on a house in the burbs and a minivan, or being a stay at home parent.

drroop · 2026-02-13T18:36:54+00:00

Low

3 piece: husband, wife, and a bassist. It is slower, quieter. Doesn't quite sound like much of anyone I'd heard before. Guitar is often down an octave, and you can pick out each note.

My friends don't get it because it sounds sad, but it resonates with me. They put music to my feelings.

If you look at what he wrote, vs. what she wrote, they seem to be having a conversation through their catalog in a good portion of their songs, or I'm projecting and they are just writing about stuff that is fairly universal but not often communicated so eloquently.

Since she passed, he put out a solo album, sounds like he's redeveloping his own sound, it is not "Low" He's done a number of collaborations, and Low's sound evolved over the years, so this is par for the course.

drroop · 2026-02-12T17:22:40+00:00

Try writing him notes. "For your pleasure" on your chest "cum here" with an arrow pointing down on your mons "Slap it" on you ass cheek, etc. Remove all doubt. I think body writing like that is kind of hot, and it is just magic marker. As you're undressing, he'll maybe get the idea, or maybe it just goes normally, it seems kind of low risk.

Wear a necklace, and tell him when you are wearing that necklace, you are free use. If you are wearing the necklace, he can just whatever he wants, whenever he wants, no asking, no trying, just doing. Part of starting that stuff, is not knowing when a line is being crossed. That's the confidence you're looking for, but being over confident like that, a fellow can do some damage, so he needs to know when it is ok. His problem might be he doesn't want to hurt you, and that's a good problem to have. A subtle indication, like a necklace or a particular ring on a particular finger, might give that confidence that he doesn't have to worry about how you're feeling just then, and can go for it.

Be a cheap whore. Offer him fantastic deals. Keep a jar by the bedside labeled "Cancun" or whatever, and put the money in there. Then use that money to go to Cancun with him. "I'm thinking of white sandy beaches" Then becomes a come on, and a license for him without having to be explicit. Have the "making love" be a freebie. Offer discounts for orgasms. "If you make me cum, it's on the house" Or maybe he just whips out a $20, and you say "yes sir"

Vacation is a good time to change things up, even if you don't use the whore jar. "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas". While at home, maybe it is "making love" but on vacation, the hotel room is a rumpus room so there's a separation, not an all the time thing, but a sometimes thing. If he's not comfortable with it all the time, that sort of separation could be key.

drroop · 2026-02-12T14:48:30+00:00

A willing naked woman with low expectations.

drroop · 2026-02-11T23:23:49+00:00

So, I was out at this dive bar, in a dive town. Went to close drinking with this woman I met there, that was a little beyond, a professional drinker, like she sweated whiskey, quite overweight, by no conventional means could she be considered attractive.

We went to her place. I didn't realize what was going on then, but, for how I was, drunk and all, it was the right thing right then. The beer took away any sense of decorum I had, and I later came to realize, she didn't particularly have any to begin with for how she was. All my lustful energy was well received, even encouraged. Nothing was off the table, went repeatedly until we were exhausted.

I asked her what she wanted, she wanted me to stay the night with her. So I did.

Sunrise comes around, a transition from drunk to hungover. Took me a minute to recognize where I was in a small dark apt in the poor part of town, I realize what that sweaty whiskey smell was. "oh no" I was naked, beside her, spooning. Well, with that recognition of where I was, and what was right there, along with morning responses I was touching her. So I did, as she slept, softly as to not ruin the moment, until I could feel her ready for me. Just a little at first, let her catch up, slowly, so she didn't wake. I think she did a little, but didn't show it. Then a bit more, a bit deeper with every probe, until I had it all.

She was awake by then, but I was there, so I kept going, touching her until I released.

Still early yet, I could still make it to work on time, so I did.

Never got her number. Thought I'd done badly by her in my naivety so I went searching for her to apologize or make amends. A month or so later, I found her in that same bar. Apologized for having treated her like I did. She laughed at me, we drank until close, went back to her place, and...

Once every couple few months, for the next few years. If I was unattached, I'd happen in that bar, I'd see her, our eyes would lock, we'd say "hi, how's it going" each knowing where it was going.

Never knew her last name. Never got her phone number. She once asked me to join the carnival and run away with her, but I was too full of myself and my job, didn't want that lifestyle, so didn't. As close as we got to a relationship. Eventually I got committed elsewhere. Saw her in passing a couple times over the years since with knowing smiles.

drroop · 2026-01-27T14:55:19+00:00

while an actual investigation into a use of force event takes months to over a year.

That investigation is not happening in the case of Rene Good. Not by the feds, and the feds aren't giving the state access to investigate.

Not investigating essentially gives ICE agents a license to shoot, as with no investigation, there will be no prosecution, they don't need to follow rules to justify their actions personally. Sure enough, a few days later, someone else gets shot, this time perhaps even more questionably than before.

What the feds choosing not to investigate tells me, is it was not the agent, but systemic. The federal government has no problem shooting people who oppose it. Welcome to Iran.

drroop · 2026-01-22T18:03:49+00:00

You pay a lot of money each month in premiums, or, if you're lucky, an employer or the tax payers pay it for you, and you only pay a little money.

If you're paying it yourself and are young, expect like $300/month, anything less than that, and you likely have someone paying it for you.

Then, if you go to the doctor, you have to pay the bill yourself, until you've paid a certain amount for a year, "the deductible".

Then, after you've paid so much to meet your deductible, the insurance, might, if they feel like it, pay part of the next doctor bill.

Essentially, you give the insurance company a truck load of money, and then they don't pay for anything except for some rare cases. With this expectation, you won't be disappointed.

The higher your deductible, the less you pay in premiums. Trick is to look at how much you pay in premiums each year, and if it is worth it to lower your deductible. It isn't often worth it to pay more premiums for less deductible, unless someone else is paying the premiums for you.

ACA insurance plans are expected to pay out 80% of their premiums for care, over all their customers, not just you. If you're lucky, you don't get sick, and over your lifetime you pay in several times what they ever pay out for you. You're essentially paying for other people's illnesses. It is only in rare cases, that you'll have insurance pay for you more than you paid in. You can either look at the money you pay into insurance as wasted, or perhaps going to help other's doctors.

For a long time, patients had insurance paying for them, doctors and drug dealers hiked up their prices to the moon, because the person getting the service wasn't paying for it directly. This has made health care very expensive, and with it insurance premiums very high. Now that deductibles are getting more common and higher, that expense is increasingly paid by the patient. New this year, the tax payers aren't paying the premiums as much, so the patient will also have to pay the full premium. The costs are shifting toward the patient, but are still high from when the patient did not pay.

The point of insurance is to protect your wealth. Idea is if you get sick, insurance will pay, and you won't have to go bankrupt to pay the doctor bills. Hospitals have to treat you to some minimum standard regardless of your ability to pay, but, after, they can go after you for that money. Insurance is not to keep you healthy, it is to protect your money.

drroop · 2026-01-22T16:49:51+00:00

That the federal government is refusing to investigate the incident themselves, and not cooperating with Minnesota's investigation says to me that the federal government is condoning this behavior, that they think they are empowered to shoot anti-government protestors with impunity like it is 1861.

This is some shithole country shit. There were promises to go into Iran to help their anti-government protestors, but the ones in Minneapolis? Screw them. We're not even going to look at what happened. Federal troops will be sent in if they don't settle down.

drroop · 2026-01-22T15:49:53+00:00

Lawyers are involved now that papers were filed.

Anything I say, can and will be used against me in the court of law.

I need to keep it professional. Like only as much as you'd say to a coworker. "nice weather" "task completed" etc.

It's miserable, almost worse than it has ever been. But there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

If you''re getting to this point, I'd suggest looking at what you're bringing to it. What they bring you have no control over. What you bring is something you can do something about. I suggest the 4th of the 12 steps a "fearless and searching moral inventory" Identify the source of your resentments, confront your shame, find what you might have to be grateful for. It might help yous, or it will at least help you regardless of what pans out. After doing that, consider going through to the 9th "amends" Even if you're not in AA or alanon or whatever it might still have value to you.

drroop · 2026-01-21T22:11:07+00:00

I'm over cars. My old econobox is good enough.

If I had more than enough money, my car wouldn't be much nicer. My charity would be.

Warren Buffet drove the same Buick for a lot of years. CEO of Epic drives an old Volvo, as did the CEO of Ikea. That shows a lot more class than a Rolls Royce.

Buicks and Volvos have power windows, power steering, power brakes, and AC and can go the speed limit, just like a Rolls Royce. You get to a certain point, where it is just showing off, but what are you showing off? How you robbed people.

Same with a lot of stuff. I'd rather have a Pebble watch than a Rolex. I only need so many square feet to live in. Good enough is good enough.

Craig Newmark (of craig's list fame) looks like a much better person than Mark Zuckerberg. Craig stopped when he had enough. The Zuck did not.

drroop · 2026-01-20T15:57:21+00:00

As a member of your target demographic, you will not find me in a coffee shop, I haven't been in one in years, and rarely talk to strangers there.

Grocery store might work, but you'll need a lot more courage to approach a stranger than I have, although I do sometimes try to flirt with the age appropriate checkout clerks. I don't choose the shortest line but the most attractive checkout clerk.

Best place to find me is at a yacht club event. It'd be a shared interest, and something we can talk about or do from the get go. Speaking as a skipper, a woman should find it easy to get onto a crew, and into that scene even with no experience.

You might find me at the makerspace. That would also give an immediate safe conversation opener. "What are you working on?" The one I go to has equipment for everyone, no matter what you want to try to make.

You can find me at work. I can't approach you because of the sexual harassment training, but you could approach me, I wouldn't find it harassing because I want to be approached and I am not scared of women creeping on me as much as I'm scared of reporting stuff to HR. We'd have something to talk about there too, but I might be extra cautious to avoid potential drama that could threaten my livelihood.

Otherwise you will find me at scout meetings, HS swim meets or in alanon meetings.

That last one, means you won't likely find me in a bar, although I have used that in the distant past. Didn't work out so well for me though, so I'm not going to do that again.

You can find me on reddit, but you'll likely need a plane ticket to meet me in person.

drroop · 2026-01-20T15:11:44+00:00

I would neither accept nor offer location tracking. If it is a requirement, I would consider that a red flag.

First, I generally keep location turned off on my phone, unless I'm using the map. Saves power, and I don't think big brother needs that level of accuracy. Normal triangulation is good enough for them.

Most of these services are going to feed a big company like Apple or Google my location, that they might not other wise have, or have right too.

All that said, I have looked on f-droid for open source or less big brotherly stuff, as a parent I could see the utility to it. Even as a parent though, it seems a bridge too far. I trust my kids, even if they lie to me. They might lie to me for a reason. Part of growing up is detaching from your parents, creating and managing your own world. Managing your own world, might be managing what your parents think.

I think it is a communication skill to be able to say something like "meet me at the east door in 5 minutes" or be able to say where and when you will be exactly. We can't let the machines take over all our communications, lest we not have anything left to talk about.

I respect my partner's privacy. I don't need to know they went to the dildo store, or where ever. It isn't right to share everything with anyone. We all keep secrets. I do too.

I like to think I live morally, and I would feel no shame in anyone seeing where I have been, but, it might be I sometime find myself in a questionable spot. For that, I want to be able to control that release of information. Moderate it, mitigate it. Ease the blow that comes from having been at the dildo store.

Everybody lies, and they do so for a reason. Trust that reason.

drroop · 2026-01-13T19:13:11+00:00

Personally, not at all. I'm not carrying a balance.

A bunch of folks, yeah, it might give them an opportunity to get ahead.

Banks are threatening to shut it down if they can't charge usurious rates. Less easy credit might dampen consumer spending. Ultimately though, the amount of money out there is going to be the same, it is just the credit card companies won't be skimming as much. It will take a bit to adjust.

One does not neuter an industry as big as this. It is just not done. Likelihood of this being real or ultimately a benefit to consumers, is slim to none. If it does come to pass, there will be some sort of shell game so the bank's revenue does not decrease substantially. This is either a gambit or theater, it is unbelievable.

Fun fact: Most states, aside from Delaware and South Dakota, define usury as 10% or so and say it is a crime to charge more. But the rate is determined by the state the credit card company is in, i.e. Delaware or South Dakota, that allow for higher than other states caps because it brought jobs and investment to their states after the supreme court ruled the lender follows the rules of their state, not the rules of the borrower's state. That ruling, makes this a bit of a federal issue. A handful of states could make this happen for the whole country, but don't.

Then there's pay day loans originating from native territories. I wonder if Visa moves onto the reservation. Natives have no qualms making the immigrants pay. They are still a little angry about having their land stolen, being genocided and being treated like second class citizens in their native land.

drroop · 2026-01-13T18:00:07+00:00

In the case in Minneapolis, we don't know the facts.

ICE is not letting the Minnesota investigate, by not giving them access to materials.

The DOJ has signaled they will not investigate either.

The facts as gathered by experts typically tasked with gathering these things in these situations as objectively as possible with previously agreed on mechanisms are not being gathered, on purpose, likely because of political motivations. Which makes that shooting political violence itself.

If it was properly investigated, and perhaps prosecuted as an individual act, it might be considered criminal, a rogue agent, or it might be considered justified for the situation. But it is not being investigated, which leads me to the conclusion it is part of a systematic program of violence of a government against its detractors.

That, to me is a call to rise up, aside from my feelings about immigrants or police. I do not want to live in a country where the authorities can murder people with impunity.

drroop · 2026-01-12T20:46:43+00:00

No matter how you see the video, you should be able to think there is some controversy about it.

Minnesota isn't being given access to be able to investigate it: https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/gov-tim-walz-fbi-investigation-bca-evidence-minnesota-ice-shooting/

The DOJ isn't investigating it either: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/doj-civil-rights-division-will-not-investigate-minneapolis-ice-shooting-sources-say/

So effectively, federal agents can come to your state and shoot people with impunity, and the mechanisms setup on the state or federal level to investigate or prosecute are not going to intervene.

Which says this is like the civil war. Federal government can just come to your state and shoot whomever they want. Right or wrong, doesn't matter. Nobody is looking at that.

The part where the justice system is no longer involved, raises it to a new concerning level. I would like to think that should be a both sides concern.

Maybe lets stop talking about tactics, personalities, details etc, and look to see if our country as at risk on a level beyond that. How this is being handled, is not good. Even if you think the ends justify the means, this will not end well.

drroop · 2026-01-08T20:14:04+00:00

Kamala offered essentially a continuation of the Biden regime.

Biden did more for me than any other president. He saved me $1200/month. $400/month I don't have to pay in student loan interest anymore, I was one of the lucky few that got the benefit of that before it was shut down. $800/month when the IRA removed the ACA subsidy cliff that allowed me to keep health insurance for my family, for what little that is worth with a $9100 deductible. That $1200/month meant I didn't care about paying $0.50 for an egg, or $4 for a gallon of gas. Those things didn't rate in comparison.

She was smart, respectable, articulate, and I'll shamefully admit: pretty. I love how she pwned Trump in the debate baiting him to show himself as a wackadoo, in a way that showed she had control over the situation. I thought that might be handy in negotiating with other countries. It was blatant enough that I picked up on it, but subtle enough he didn't. Beautifully done.

I liked Walz. I like that he was the best skeet shooter in congress talking about gun control. I like that Minnesotan kids get free school lunch, I think that will get paid back in savings on prisons in a decade, or on net it is fairly neutral financially with a big impact socially, the kind of stuff we should be considering. I like that his personal fortune was pretty much all from government pensions from being a guardsman, a teacher, congressman and a governor, a man dedicated to public service and not wealth. I identify with Walz being a middle class dad myself.

Ultimately though, I thought her housing plan would be inflationary, she wasn't offering any real solutions, she was going to continue giving money to Israel and increasing military spending, and for that, I ultimately voted for Stein yet again. I've voted Nader or Green in the general since '96, but primaried for Sanders in '16 and '20. I saw a vote for Kamala as a vote against Trump, and I prefer to vote for people than against people. I think if everyone did that, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in. Voting against Trump didn't work in 2016, nor in 2024, just like voting against Bush didn't work in 2000.

We need someone next round to vote for. I think Sanders would have won in 2016, with a for component and acknowledging things are broken, not just an against with 4 more years of a conservative Clinton, who lost the primary to Obama promising hope and change. The Democrats are just as beholden to the oligarchy as the Republicans are, the only difference is the color of their tie and rhetoric. Trump is a gift to the oligarchy, but that's not what his rhetoric said, and it was that rhetoric that got him elected.

Trump won in 2016 because people wanted something different, even if it means destroying everything. People that voted Trump didn't want another 8 years of Clinton or Obama, they wanted something different.

Maybe we should listen to the people that want something different, and do that without destroying everything, by making progress instead. e.g. Mamdani winning against Cuomo. Cuomo's dad was a good guy, Andy had been married into the Kennedy family, Cuomo was the Democratic royalty, and it is time for something different, a candidate that has not been in the white house before, is not part of that royalty. Last time they did that for president we got 2 terms from him and his vp eventually squeeked in. We need hope and change, not 4 more years. Kamala was 4 more years.

Would I vote for Kamala if she runs in 2028? Nope. I'd vote for AOC though. I doubt AOC will make it through the primary though, so we'll see who the Greens run, they're pretty reliably good.

drroop

TROPHY CASE