Buelldozer

I think they were joking about that

Nah, there’s a pile of misinformation circulating on social media claiming that the deceased had broken arms / legs / bruises / etc.

People unthinkingly gobble it up because it fits their world view. Farther down in the comments here you can find people already claiming that it’s a cover-up / conspiracy because the Coroner’s Statement (he’s black BTW) doesn’t jive with what they want to believe.

Dude had defensive wounds like bruises and a broken arm.

Citation needed especially since the Coroner’s department has specifically refuted this.

I guess that shit is just in the water here in the US.

The United States was founded with the help of private firearms and it’s citizens have always distrusted and disliked their own Government. What you’re talking about is literally baked into the fabric of our culture.

Meanwhile, showing a cop your gun is a recognized form of suicide.

Meh, it’s all about where you are. I could wander around open carrying a firearm here in Wyoming and have little or no trouble. If I tried it in a liberal area of the country, for example Denver, I’d almost certainly have a problem.

It’s all about the culture of the area.

Some dude’s AR-15 is not going to stop a tank.

You don’t use the AR-15 on the tank. You use it on the people involved in the logistics chain. If that tank doesn’t have a driver, mechanics, fuel, spare parts, etc then the tank is useless. Insurgencies in far away lands didn’t have this option but an insurgency at home certainly would.

Those aren’t tanks and Police Departments get them for little or no money as the US Military declares them surplus. It’s a federal program called LESO / 1033 and it’s been around since the '90s.

A civilian armored car would do the job too but I suspect there’s lobbying/insider trading involved.

Police departments used to do that but someone noticed that while Police Departments were spending money on armored vehicles the military was throwing them away. It was a waste of money all around and so the LESO / 1033 Program was born out of the National Defense Authorization Act of 90/91 and then expanded and made permanent in 1997. (Remember that year, it’s important).

The program actually makes good fiscal sense. Why waste equipment when one branch of Government no longer needs something while another one does.

A big impetus for police departments participating in the program that many people online today weren’t alive for was the North Hollywood Shootout in 1997. A couple of Bank Robbers carrying full auto weapons and wearing body armor tore the shit out of the Hollywood PD because the Police Department didn’t have the equipment or guns to deal with the problem.

In the end they had to use hunting rifles taken from a nearby civilian gunstore and a commandeered armored car. Every Cop in the country was scared shitless that it would happen to them because almost no departments were equipped for that level of violence. So they started grabbing surplus IFVs (MRAPs now) and other gear from the 1033 program.

As time went on and the “Warrior Cop” mentality took hold, primarily from Police Departments hiring untold numbers of returning Gulf War & GWOT Veterans, those Vets pushed to expand their departments use of the 1033 program so they could have access to most of the same gear they were already used to using.

That’s how we got to where we are in 2025. Each individual step makes sense but the outcome of those cumulative decisions is increasingly problematic.

There’s a big gap between “Food, housing, and health care is provided to all” and “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

The former is free existence, the latter demands work as the price for societal support.

What you are wishing for is basically fully automated luxury gay space communism and that cannot exist outside of a true post scarcity world. We do not live in that world.

None.

What’s being proposed here is free existence until someone decides that they’ve found a job that they like. That’s why Marx, et. all said it the way that they did.

There has never in human history existed a society, government, or economic system built around the idea of “We’ll cover all your life expenses so feel free to do as much or as little as you want!”

It cannot work unless we have literal Star Trek Replicator technology so that material things have no real cost or value.

Let’s do universal basic income, make the essentials free, and let people live life.

What you are proposing is wildly unrealistic and not even Communism espouses the idea.

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” - Karl Marx / Étienne-Gabriel Morelly / whoever else.

It doesn’t say “From each according to their desire, to each according to their want.” and that’s because no society that hasn’t reached Star Trek replicator levels of post-scarcity could survive such a plan.

As Frederick Hicks noted "There are no issues with this principle as long as there is enough of everything for everybody. But this is not the case and probably never will be, because “man’s wants tend always to outstrip his ability to supply them… [Therefore] it will be necessary to have an agency for determining relative amounts of men’s needs.”

In most societies today the determining Agency is the Free Market via the value of your labor. In a Communist (Marxist?) society that Agency would be a Committee of Workers but in either case there exists, and must exist, a mechanism to stop the free loaders and abusers.

This isn’t a defense of today’s hyper-capitalist societies either, we need to be doing far better at reigning that shit in and taking care of people. It is however a push-back against the idea that existence should be without cost and that anything requiring effort needs to be enjoyable.

Thank you for this. I know some people won’t appreciate it but not every community needs to be a full time political outlet.

Data Center.

Has anyone checked the power usage of this “closed hotel and convention center”? I can think of at least one thing that needs both large amounts of water AND power that would fit perfectly well inside a “closed” H&C.