They’re talking about a treaty designed to prevent the result of the exact situation you’re asking about. Extrapolating a step gives you at least one answer to your question.

Of all the job sectors AI could take out, sales is the one I’m hoping for the most…

AI is the new “algorithm” - it used to mean something specific and technical, now it’s just a colloquial term for “consumer-market generative AI output”. You know this, but you’re choosing to be smugly superior anyways. Why? Seriously, what do you get out of this?

Thanks, and you too.

(Real advice, get a pair of 8"/10" compound bolt cutters - they’re useful for everything from zipcuffs to tire walls and work a treat for self defence as well, plus they’re small enough to be disposed of in an instant if need be. Much more practical to carry around than 5kg pots of thermite, too)

… Just put the gasoline in a smaller container.

Really though, thermite will mess up a car (quite a bit less than you’d expect from how spectacular it is) but keep in mind that while you’re standing around trying to ignite that magnesium strip, there’s a bunch of ICE officers who don’t want their car burned up. Dumping a jar of gas in the rain gutter and tossing in a lighter takes way less time (and will probably have a much larger effect) than thermite, and nobody can just knock it off the car while it’s burning. Plus it’s much easier to have a plausible excuse for owning a jar of gasoline than it is bags of powdered aluminum.

You’re not wrong that it would work, it’s just not going to work as well as the alternatives.

Wait, did those examples seem irrelevant to you?

To be fair, it did bring me laughter on an otherwise very depressing day. So I’m grateful to them for that at least.

Man, I know everyone was doing cocaine basically continuously in the 50s/60s but even for that era Teller was one coked up lunatic. His plan to “deflect earthquakes” by burying a mesh of nuclear weapons across basically the entire west coast has gotta be my favorite. Just absolute insanity.

I mean, that sounds awesome! Wish there was something like it in my area. It’s an inherent sampling bias to reference a liberal gun club for gun ownership rates among liberals, but that’s really cool you guys are getting so much community engagement!

It’s a survey, by definition it only counts people that record the information in question. That’s the fundemental premise to the entire field of statistics.

(fwiw, nobody is allowed to do any science on even the submitted records, because this country is broken. Hence why finding current info is difficult)

America also has more cows than it has people, and lego is the largest tire manufacturer in the world. While true that some liberals also own guns, for example I am a liberal and I own a gun, I’m not sure how it’s relevant beyond that (admittedly) situationally self-evident truth. Gun culture is centered around, and the vast majority of firearms are owned by, conservatives.

Do you have a source for that? I’ve been digging around some looking for information but other than the national exit polls (which removed the question more than a decade ago I guess?) I can’t find any credible studies on it. It would be reassuring (well, kind of…) were you right, but anecdotal evidence and all that

This is old, but it does support my original sentiment. No, not all gun owners are conservatives, but the vast majority are.

I’d very much like to see a similar study done more currently, but I can’t turn one up from my halfhearted looking around.

Mmmhm.

Too soon.

So um… what’re you gonna do with the thermite?

No seriously, I used to do aluminothermic welding, trust me when I say it’s an extremely frustrating substance to use. And on top of that, it is incredibly conspicuous. Unless you both know what you’re doing and what you’re doing can only be done by introducing a huge thermal mass (for example, screwing up a precision bearing surface on a piece of equipment. Note that you can’t really cut through material with thermite without using a burnout mold), there are way better ways to accomplish the task. It’s just not a great choice, and everything a theoretical citizen resistance would feasibly be doing could be done better, faster and safer (for you) with either some gasoline or bolt cutters…

A wittier retort I’ve never seen.

The people opposed to ICE aren’t the ones that buy the guns.

It’s weirdly cloying, right? Amid all the negative press, the catholic church is on the whole responsible for a shocking amount of good in the world. Personally, a catholic hospital waiving the cost of a (really extravagant) medical disaster is both the only reason I’m still alive and not living in crippling debt as a result. Sometimes they do, in fact practice what they preach, and that’s awesome.

That ain’t the big-c Church, though. Their socially regressive attitude alone has inflicted more harm than all the good they’ve ever done, and that’s just one of the minor things they’re responsible for. It’s important to keep in mind that individuals doing good works don’t represent the absurdly draconian institution they’re a part of.

It’s an old conservative scare-mongering line that’s really cemented itself in the cultural consciousness - the idea that the pope is an absolute ruler and all catholics must do as he says was spread around (well, throughout all of history but specifically in the US) to turn people against JFK, a catholic. We can’t have a catholic president, that’ll put the pope in charge of the country!!

Reality is that the pope has a shitload of soft power and could start to implement reparations least at some level (and yeah, utterly dick move not to have done that, Frank…). Broad picture, canon law is beyond arcane and there’s plenty of restrictions on the actual “money spending” powers of the papacy. The requirement for charity is probably the biggest one, but there’s also the requirements for upkeep of the various shrines/churches/sites(?)/the holy see (obvs) as well as having to provide support for the many many agents of the church.