Ben L's been posting to Quora



  • @drurowin said:

    @morbiuswilters said:
    Yay, un-Constitutional, door-to-door searches!
    So you're in favor of a known dangerous terrorist getting to go free vs having to open your home up so the police can check everything's in order? No wonder America's fucked.
     

    Go back a year or so in Morbs' history. You'll find he goes back and forth on pimping his Constitutional rights in favor of protection from THE BAD GUIZ OMG THEY'RE GONNA KILL US ALL!!!

    I don't remember the particular thread but it was "If you don't support sting operations -- the ones that give us headlines for putting mental defectives behind bars for plotting to use bombs on US targets after we offer them the bombs and give them the targets -- then you obviously take it up the ass from terrorists at every possible opportunity."



  • @drurowin said:

    @morbiuswilters said:
    @mikeTheLiar said:
    **Also a massive mindfuck - today is the 1 year anniversary of the Boston lockdown.

    Yay, un-Constitutional, door-to-door searches!

    So you're in favor of a known dangerous terrorist getting to go free vs having to open your home up so the police can check everything's in order? No wonder America's fucked.

    Better, but still kind of lazy. Your trolling isn't as good as it used to be.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @mikeTheLiar said:
    14 when they went down.

    What the.. you're younger than me?


    Yes, but not by that much. Is that so surprising? How old did you think I was? I do have that cranky old man vibe at times, but still...

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @mikeTheLiar said:
    **Also a massive mindfuck - today is the 1 year anniversary of the Boston lockdown.

    Yay, un-Constitutional, door-to-door searches!

    I'm going to preface this by saying that I don't want to get into a debate about this. And again, I'm probably providing a bit too much PID here but fuck it.

    This is a weird one for me. Believe me, I've thought about this a lot. I live smack-dab in the epicenter of that whole shit show. This almost literally went down in my back yard - there was gunfire exchanged ~100 feet from my back door. We could hear the shots when they started lighting up that fucking boat that shithead was hiding in.

    But you're right, it was wrong. Shutting down the city and its neighbors, under the suspicion that one teenager was allegedly up to dastardly deeds was unwarranted. But it's easy to say that now, when we know it was just the two of them. At the time there was a lot of FUD surrounding the entire situation. What if this, what if that, what if the other thing. This went largely unspoken, but some (I think 2) of the 9/11 hijackers lived in Watertown. One of the them worked at the 7/11 just a few blocks away from me. It's entirely circumstantial, but a lot of people were shitting their pants about the some covert cell of terrorists headquartered in Watertown. "Oh god, what if they were fleeing to their hideout, where they have a stockpile of AKs, RPGs and pipe bombs? We have to find them and kill arrest them all in the name of Jesus freedom!"

    Which, in retrospect, was complete bullshit. It was one extremist (possibly mentally ill*) and homesick transplant who was pissed off because he couldn't box in the Olympics and his too impressionable younger brother. Who was found severely wounded, in shock, probably slowly dying, and of no real threat to anyone by then.

    So yes, the whole thing was absolutely unnecessary and wrong. That being said, I felt a lot fucking better when five cops in riot gear came and knocked on my door to make sure everything was all right. No, they didn't come inside. No, they didn't search our place. They just knocked on the door, asked if everyone was okay and if there was anyone else in the house.

    And I'm sure that you think that says all sorts of things about my character, trading freedom for a police state, and that I should have had a gun to defend myself and yadda yadda yadda. I'm not interested.

    *Well, definitely mentally ill. You have to be pretty fucked in the head to do something like that. But possibly schizo - hearing voices and shit.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Which I understand, except he didn't kill the people responsible and instead just murdered a bunch of clerks, civilians and children

    That's what really gets me about the Marathon bombing. I'm not going to get all sappy here, but every time I see that picture of Martin Richard, with his goofy grin full of crocked teeth, holding up his poster board asking us all to stop hurting each other.... well, the dark irony is almost too much to handle.



  • @mikeTheLiar said:

    Yes, but not by that much. Is that so surprising? How old did you think I was? I do have that cranky old man vibe at times, but still...

    I dunno, a few years older. I guess I'm just not adjusting well to not always being the youngest person around.

    @mikeTheLiar said:

    I'm going to preface this by saying that I don't want to get into a debate about this. And again, I'm probably providing a bit too much PID here but fuck it.

    This is a weird one for me. Believe me, I've thought about this a lot. I live smack-dab in the epicenter of that whole shit show. This almost literally went down in my back yard - there was gunfire exchanged ~100 feet from my back door. We could hear the shots when they started lighting up that fucking boat that shithead was hiding in.

    But you're right, it was wrong. Shutting down the city and its neighbors, under the suspicion that one teenager was allegedly up to dastardly deeds was unwarranted. But it's easy to say that now, when we know it was just the two of them. At the time there was a lot of FUD surrounding the entire situation. What if this, what if that, what if the other thing. This went largely unspoken, but some (I think 2) of the 9/11 hijackers lived in Watertown. One of the them worked at the 7/11 just a few blocks away from me. It's entirely circumstantial, but a lot of people were shitting their pants about the some covert cell of terrorists headquartered in Watertown. "Oh god, what if they were fleeing to their hideout, where they have a stockpile of AKs, RPGs and pipe bombs? We have to find them and kill arrest them all in the name of Jesus freedom!"

    Which, in retrospect, was complete bullshit. It was one extremist (possibly mentally ill*) and homesick transplant who was pissed off because he couldn't box in the Olympics and his too impressionable younger brother. Who was found severely wounded, in shock, probably slowly dying, and of no real threat to anyone by then.

    So yes, the whole thing was absolutely unnecessary and wrong. That being said, I felt a lot fucking better when five cops in riot gear came and knocked on my door to make sure everything was all right. No, they didn't come inside. No, they didn't search our place. They just knocked on the door, asked if everyone was okay and if there was anyone else in the house.

    And I'm sure that you think that says all sorts of things about my character, trading freedom for a police state, and that I should have had a gun to defend myself and yadda yadda yadda. I'm not interested.

    *Well, definitely mentally ill. You have to be pretty fucked in the head to do something like that. But possibly schizo - hearing voices and shit.

    All interesting points. And I don't think you are a weak person or bad for saying it.

    As you know, I <3 guns. When I lived in Mass I was licensed to conceal carry there. And I do think it's a good idea to learn to use and to own a gun. That said, I don't think anyone who doesn't want to should. The last thing the world needs is people uncomfortable with guns having them.

    On the one hand, I don't mind that they put out a man-hunt for the guys. They were dangerous. And I don't care they shot them. I mean, sure, try to take them alive, but I wouldn't shed one tear for either one of the bastards.

    All of that said, it was an over-reaction. Panic and fear are contagious and it seems our mode now for this kind of stuff is to go into major lock-down and bring out the SWAT team. It's often disproportionate to the threat and I think that's bad for our society.

    I'm not saying someone is weak or wrong for being afraid. Fear in that situation is natural and normal and I'd probably have piss running down my leg. But we also choose how we, as a society, react to threats. Whether we do our best to tamp down our emotions and carry on, or whether we let fear become our default reaction. It started before 9/11, but since that day the tendency of our country to go into panic mode seems much more intense.

    I do see it as incipient police state-ism. Remember last year when there was that manhunt for the ex-cop who was killing people in California? I was in California at the time and the reaction of the police was deeply disturbing. They were running vehicles that only vaguely mentioned the description off the road and pointing guns in innocent people's faces. Quite frankly, I'd rather die in a terrorist attack than live in a world where that happens routinely.

    Or last year in D.C. when there was that woman driving the car. Now it appears she probably panicked, nearly ran some people over, went on a high-speed chase and when she stopped the police just shot in her in the back of the head--executed her--with her infant in the car. Was she a threat? Maybe a small one. But was the response reasonable? I mean, they had military vehicles patrolling the streets, and this is after the police had killed her. It's a situation that would have been unthinkable 50 years ago. If any confrontation had happened, it could have been handled by one or two unarmed men with no fatalities. Instead a major metropolitan area is thrown into chaos; the police show up in fucking tanks; a life is lost and several more are ruined; and we let fear control us and direct us a little more.

    A militarized police force is like a gun in a Chekhov play--if it's there, it's going to get used. Today, I fear the police more than I fear criminals, and that's a shocking thing as an American. And I'm not someone who is reflexively anti-police or anti-The-Man™, but at least a criminal realizes there will be consequences if he is caught. At least I can defend myself (for now, although there are many people who want to stop that) from criminals.



  • @mikeTheLiar said:

    @morbiuswilters said:
    Which I understand, except he didn't kill the people responsible and instead just murdered a bunch of clerks, civilians and children

    That's what really gets me about the Marathon bombing. I'm not going to get all sappy here, but every time I see that picture of Martin Richard, with his goofy grin full of crocked teeth, holding up his poster board asking us all to stop hurting each other.... well, the dark irony is almost too much to handle.

    The world can be a very dangerous place. There are many people who will commit unthinkable violence at the drop of a hat.

    We are all far more likely to be killed by a mugger than a terrorist. Yet the response to the existence of muggers is much more level-headed. We don't stop going places, we don't lock ourselves inside and live in fear. Sure, we avoid dark alleys and maybe we don't carry a lot of cash on us and some of us carry guns so if we need to defend ourselves, we can. But we don't let the fear dominate us. We don't let the bastards win.

    But with terrorism, the fear seems so disproportionate. Yes, 9/11 was horrific, but in the grand scheme of things we're fairly safe from terrorist attacks and something on the scale of 9/11 was probably a lucky break (for the terrorists, of course), and unlikely to be repeated. Even so, we react much differently to terrorism.

    What's particularly disheartening about this is that this is precisely what the terrorists want. I mean, a mugger doesn't really want us living in fear (in fact, if people stayed locked inside all day his job would be harder), he just wants our money. But terrorist and mass shooters like that guy in Connecticut and the Columbine kids--they want to be the boogeyman. And we oblige them. We sing dirges to their awful deeds and give them wall-to-wall media coverage. We obsess over their "high scores" and it seems the media can barely contain its excitement when it looks like we might have a record-breaking murder spree on our hands.

    And it's exactly what they want. And it only encourages more borderline bastards to take the plunge. And meanwhile it makes our world--the world of the living--just a little more bleak and fearful. We shouldn't do it, it's not prudent.

    But it is what it is. This is the path our society has chosen and, while I hope we one day relearn what our grandfathers knew--that you don't let someone make you live in fear, I do not have faith it's a lesson that's forthcoming.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    The last thing the world needs is people uncomfortable with guns having them.
     

    Yeah, that's almost as bad as people who are too comfortable with them having them.

     


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @oheso said:

    @morbiuswilters said:
    The last thing the world needs is people uncomfortable with guns having them.
    Yeah, that's almost as bad as people who are too comfortable with them having them.
    I suspect that they mostly think of their guns as penis extensions, and that virtually everything else they say is just trying to cover up that embarrassing truth to themselves.



  • @oheso said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    The last thing the world needs is people uncomfortable with guns having them.
     

    Yeah, that's almost as bad as people who are too comfortable with them having them.

    Shut your mouth, you subhuman piece of garbage.



  • @dkf said:

    @oheso said:
    @morbiuswilters said:
    The last thing the world needs is people uncomfortable with guns having them.
    Yeah, that's almost as bad as people who are too comfortable with them having them.
    I suspect that they mostly think of their guns as penis extensions, and that virtually everything else they say is just trying to cover up that embarrassing truth to themselves.

    Wow, what a clever, thoughtful observation. I've never heard that one before.

    The fact that your first thought is penises says waaay more about you than it does about other people. Enjoy your life as a slave, you piece of shit. Hopefully a home invader takes care of you and there will be one less moron in the world.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Shut your mouth, you subhuman piece of garbage.
    @morbiuswilters said:
    Enjoy your life as a slave, you piece of shit. Hopefully a home invader takes care of you and there will be one less moron in the world.
    It looks like guns are a "trigger topic" for Morbs.



  • @HardwareGeek said:

    @morbiuswilters said:
    Shut your mouth, you subhuman piece of garbage.
    @morbiuswilters said:
    Enjoy your life as a slave, you piece of shit. Hopefully a home invader takes care of you and there will be one less moron in the world.
    It looks like guns are a "trigger topic" for Morbs.

    Yes, I loathe fascists and find human rights violators despicable. I don't have a single ounce of compassion for racists, practitioners of genocide or enemies of civil rights, nor for their apologists. I would gladly see them burned to the ground, their lives and livelihoods annihilated, and their very dreams eviscerated and left for the carrion-feeders. There is no virtue in extending to them the slightest bit of humanity, and no vice in driving them off the ends of the Earth.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @drurowin said:
    @morbiuswilters said:
    @mikeTheLiar said:
    **Also a massive mindfuck - today is the 1 year anniversary of the Boston lockdown.

    Yay, un-Constitutional, door-to-door searches!

    So you're in favor of a known dangerous terrorist getting to go free vs having to open your home up so the police can check everything's in order? No wonder America's fucked.

    Better, but still kind of lazy. Your trolling isn't as good as it used to be.

    I just haven't been feeling it lately. Between going for my Amateur Extra radio licence and the new job, I just can't deliver like I used to.

    I feel like I've let you all down.



  • @drurowin said:

    I just haven't been feeling it lately. Between going for my Amateur Extra radio licence and the new job, I just can't deliver like I used to.

    I feel like I've let you all down.

    It's okay, we didn't really expect much.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Amateur Extra radio licence
    Extra?  So you're like a guy who stands around in the background?  On the radio?  Doesn'r seem very interesting.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @drurowin said:
    I just haven't been feeling it lately. Between going for my Amateur Extra radio licence and the new job, I just can't deliver like I used to.

    I feel like I've let you all down.

    It's okay, we didn't really expect much.

    I am always surprised when someone says something interesting.

    Especially if it is me.

     



  • @dkf said:

    I suspect that they mostly think of their guns as penis extensions, and that virtually everything else they say is just trying to cover up that embarrassing truth to themselves.

    I realize I owe you an apology. What you said was awful, but blaming you for your narrow-mindedness is like blaming the goldfish for never growing larger than his bowl will allow.

    In many ways you are a victim; the crushing weight of the system having done its job and instilled in you the fear and obedience demanded of you. How terrible the system must be that so deforms a human spirit; how sadistic the cage that extorts a man's reaction to the indignity of his own bondage into rage against those not similarly bound.

    But it is a bizarre truth of the universe that when the ego is shown what has been taken from it, more often than not the reaction is not rage at he who did the taking, but instead mis-directed anger at those who have yet to be robbed. As I am aware of this fact, perhaps I should be more compassionate towards you and your situation.



  • I actually read that Quora answer (before anyone asks, my mental instability has never been in doubt) and picked out this gem:

    They did try to design a small core language and follow the "less is more" philosophy. They just forgot the "more" part.

    So it's like they made a language, and then forgot to make it good or useful. This only cements my belief that Ben L. loathes himself.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @morbiuswilters said:

    well, no, I've never had to pay a dry cleaner to remove 'yiffing' stains......

    a slightly-less-soiled kitsune outfit.

    The fact that you know what a kitsune outfit is disqualifies you from being allowed to make furry jokes.



  • @dkf said:

    @oheso said:
    @morbiuswilters said:
    The last thing the world needs is people uncomfortable with guns having them.
    Yeah, that's almost as bad as people who are too comfortable with them having them.
    I suspect that they mostly think of their guns as penis extensions, and that virtually everything else they say is just trying to cover up that embarrassing truth to themselves.

    It's opinions like this that help me understand the "gun free zone" mindset. These kind of opinions show nothing more than a fear of guns, which is the only rational I can think of for declaring a gun free zone. I mean honestly, when you look at mass shootings, there tend to be two consistent facts:

    1. The shooting happens someplace where guns aren't legally permitted, i.e. gun free zones.
    2. The shooting is stopped by someone else with a gun. Generally, the police, but occasionally by a private citizen who is licensed to carry. Usually, once they meet resistance, the gunman offs themself.
    And it doesn't take much to figure out why. If you've decided, for some deranged reason, that you want to go kill as many people as possible, then you want to go where it will take the longest for someone to come stop you. Well, where better to start than where a law abiding citizen won't have a gun? You'll be breaking the law anyway, so why not violate the gun free zone?

    Anti-gun nuts are ridiculous. If you look at the worldwide statistics, places where the citizens are permitted to own guns actually have lower violent crime rates than places where gun ownership is highly restricted or prohibited. Now, that's total violent crime, not just gun related violent crime. So don't go telling me about the drop in gun crime, because I already had that fight with my cousin.



  • @abarker said:

    If you look at the worldwide statistics, places where the citizens are permitted to own guns actually have lower violent crime rates than places where gun ownership is highly restricted or prohibited. Now, that's total violent crime, not just gun related violent crime.

    Switzerland is the best example. It turns out that, if the individuals of a population don't have many problems, they can all have machine guns and rocket launchers and still have fewer murders than the UK.

    @abarker said:
    gun crime

    "Gun crime" may be the single most opinion-biased statistic there is, at least on this scale. There aren't records for Axe crime, Strangling crime, or Heroin overdose injection crime shown everywhere, even when those are prevalent. It's never broken down to "legally-owned guns" versus "illegally-possessed ones", and they will often include defensive or accidental shootings in the stats to pad them out.



  • @Buttembly Coder said:

    "Gun crime" may be the single most opinion-biased statistic there is, at least on this scale. There aren't records for Axe crime, Strangling crime, or Heroin overdose injection crime shown everywhere, even when those are prevalent. It's never broken down to "legally-owned guns" versus "illegally-possessed ones", and they will often include defensive or accidental shootings in the stats to pad them out.

    It isn't just that though. How meaningless is it to say, "We outlawed guns, and the number of gun crimes went down"? Of course the number of gun crimes went down. You made guns harder to get, so the average criminal resorted to a knife, or a club, or some other weapon instead. It's like outlawing crackers and saying that cracker consumption dropped as a result. Well, duh! What about other, unintended consequences?



  • @Buttembly Coder said:

    Switzerland is the best example. It turns out that, if the individuals of a population don't have many problems, they can all have machine guns and rocket launchers and still have fewer murders than the UK.
    You're allowed to own guns in Switzerland. However, look up their laws regarding ammunition.



  • @ender said:

    You're allowed to own guns in Switzerland. However, look up their laws regarding ammunition.

    I know there are a number of restrictions, but IIRC, the gov't issued ammo that people kept around was a thing until a few years ago, and there was not a high crime rate while people had it.

    Also, I'm pretty sure that there are still a large number of "free weapons", like bolt actions and such, and that hunting ammunition is relatively unrestricted…

    I can't and won't pretend to be an authority on Swiss politics or gun culture, but my point is that they are an example of a society with prolific firearms and sparse violence.



  • @oheso said:

    @drurowin said:

    @morbiuswilters said:
    Yay, un-Constitutional, door-to-door searches!
    So you're in favor of a known dangerous terrorist getting to go free vs having to open your home up so the police can check everything's in order? No wonder America's fucked.
     

    Go back a year or so in Morbs' history. You'll find he goes back and forth on pimping his Constitutional rights in favor of protection from THE BAD GUIZ OMG THEY'RE GONNA KILL US ALL!!!

    I don't remember the particular thread but it was "If you don't support sting operations -- the ones that give us headlines for putting mental defectives behind bars for plotting to use bombs on US targets after we offer them the bombs and give them the targets -- then you obviously take it up the ass from terrorists at every possible opportunity."

    Yeah, there's no Constitutional right to plot a terrorist attack and then try to carry it out. I don't know where you get this shit from.

    So let me see if I understand your position:

    Law-abiding citizen owns a gun to protect himself and his family: BAD

    Aspiring terrorist plots an attack, buys (what he thinks is) a bomb and tries to detonate it: OMG U BETTER NOT INTERFER WITH MAH CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS!



  • @FrostCat said:

    @morbiuswilters said:
    well, no, I've never had to pay a dry cleaner to remove 'yiffing' stains......

    a slightly-less-soiled kitsune outfit.

    The fact that you know what a kitsune outfit is disqualifies you from being allowed to make furry jokes.

    That's like telling George Lopez he can't make jokes about Mexicans. Or Patton Oswalt he can't make jokes about pudgy, sexless nerds.



  • @abarker said:

    If you've decided, for some deranged reason, that you want to go kill as many people as possible, then you want to go where it will take the longest for someone to come stop you.

    Rwanda? Bosnia?

    @abarker said:

    If you look at the worldwide statistics, places where the citizens are permitted to own guns actually have lower violent crime rates than places where gun ownership is highly restricted or prohibited. Now, that's total violent crime, not just gun related violent crime. So don't go telling me about the drop in gun crime, because I already had that fight with my cousin.

    To be fair, the US has a higher murder rate than a lot of countries, but we've always had a higher murder rate, even back when there were no gun laws anywhere. And our murder rate has been higher when guns were restricted and has dropped off dramatically in the last 20 years despite there being over 100 million new guns purchased in that time period. And within the US, the areas with the highest murder rates are all anti-gun places whereas the safest places have lots of guns.

    tl;dr: Anti-gun people are mental defectives who should be exiled to a desert island.



  • @Buttembly Coder said:

    "Gun crime" may be the single most opinion-biased statistic there is, at least on this scale. There aren't records for Axe crime, Strangling crime, or Heroin overdose injection crime shown everywhere, even when those are prevalent. It's never broken down to "legally-owned guns" versus "illegally-possessed ones", and they will often include defensive or accidental shootings in the stats to pad them out.

    Also, the crime statistics between countries are not comparable. For example, what the US classifies as a murder and the UK classifies as a murder are very different. If the UK used the same method as the US uses, then the UK murder rate would be double what it is now.

    Another thing people don't grasp: crime in the US is highly localized. If you're not an African American criminal living in the inner-city, your chances of being murdered are very, very low. Which isn't racist, it's just the truth. It's not because they're black that they're getting murdered. And I do think it's a travesty, but I recognize that there are multiple causes for the cesspool that our cities have become, and not a single one of them has anything to do with me, living way out in the country with a bunch of guns.

    In fact, our cities are just big gun-free zones where family, community and initiative are continuously crushed by the welfare state while gangs of criminals terrorize everyone.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @FrostCat said:
    @morbiuswilters said:
    well, no, I've never had to pay a dry cleaner to remove 'yiffing' stains......

    a slightly-less-soiled kitsune outfit.

    The fact that you know what a kitsune outfit is disqualifies you from being allowed to make furry jokes.

    That's like telling George Lopez he can't make jokes about Mexicans. Or Patton Oswalt he can't make jokes about pudgy, sexless nerds.

    Oh god he's a furry too - run



  • @drurowin said:

    @morbiuswilters said:
    @FrostCat said:
    @morbiuswilters said:
    well, no, I've never had to pay a dry cleaner to remove 'yiffing' stains......

    a slightly-less-soiled kitsune outfit.

    The fact that you know what a kitsune outfit is disqualifies you from being allowed to make furry jokes.

    That's like telling George Lopez he can't make jokes about Mexicans. Or Patton Oswalt he can't make jokes about pudgy, sexless nerds.

    Oh god he's a furry too - run

    I pre-fur you address me by my fursona: Lord Tigerthwaite.


  • Considered Harmful

    @drurowin said:

    @morbiuswilters said:
    @FrostCat said:
    @morbiuswilters said:
    well, no, I've never had to pay a dry cleaner to remove 'yiffing' stains......

    a slightly-less-soiled kitsune outfit.

    The fact that you know what a kitsune outfit is disqualifies you from being allowed to make furry jokes.

    That's like telling George Lopez he can't make jokes about Mexicans. Or Patton Oswalt he can't make jokes about pudgy, sexless nerds.

    Oh god he's a furry too - run
    The lady doth protest too much, methinks.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @FrostCat said:
    The fact that you know what a kitsune outfit is disqualifies you from being allowed to make furry jokes.

    That's like telling George Lopez he can't make jokes about Mexicans.

    Well, that's just a special case of telling George Lopez not to make jokes, because he's not very funny.


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