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conditional_soup @ conditional_soup @lemm.ee
Posts
11
Comments
2,013
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • No, I meant yards. I converted f/s to y/s by dividing the muzzle velocity in f/s by three so that I could work in the same units the guy above me used to measured Trump's distance from crooks.

  • Just did some quick napkin math. At the low end, the .223 has a muzzle velocity of about 900 yards per second, which, at that distance, means that the bullet made it to Donald in roughly 0.14s. at the high end, muzzle velocity is about 1233 yards per second, meaning it cleared the gap in very nearly .1s even. I did a bit of googling, and it looks like human reaction time at the low end is about 200 ms, BUT can be much lower or even a hair premature if the reaction is the result of a trained, anticipatory response. As such, it seems likely that Crooks' reaction time, rather than 0.2s, was much closer to some negligible value, even when considered from the frame of a bullet's travel.

    That means that wherever Donald's head was 0.1-0.15s before the infamous bullet photo was taken is probably very close to what Crooks saw when he pulled the trigger.

  • Depends, because I don't think his cartilage was actually damaged. A glancing shot wouldn't have necessarily done any structural damage at all if the angle was shallow enough. I don't think Donald is competent enough to keep a houseplant alive, I have grave doubts that his team would have been able to effectively stage an assassination attempt without bungling it and actually getting Donald killed or something else real bad. I mean, if you need to believe it was a hoax, don't let me get in the way of a good time, I guess, but sometimes shit really does just happen. Source: 15 years on the ambulance.

  • This, I can believe. Now, it's not necessarily true it would've mangled his ear if it was a grazing shot, but a graze likely wouldn't have bled quite as much as Donald's wound did. A small laceration from a piece of plastic that had been, uh, acutely accelerated in his direction makes a lot more sense.

  • I used to participate in International Defensive Pistol Association competitions. I was, honestly, terrible. I'd routinely mangle or just do an overall uninspiring job of the up close shots, and I was hardly as smooth and quick as anyone else there. I just didn't have the money to burn through ammo and time at the range like other folks did. One time, we were doing a series of targets at thirty feet and the spirit came over me and I double tapped two of them right in the jugular notch as smooth as you like. Won't claim it as an achievement because I can't even remotely come close to reproducing it, I'm still not that good of a shot, and I wouldn't have believed I was going to do it if you'd told me ahead of time. I can't explain why or how I did it, just, idk, rolled a twenty that time I guess.

  • Meh. Occam's razor applies here, I think. The head is highly vascular, and even small injuries can produce a visually stunning amount of blood. I don't think it was a fake or a conspiracy; sometimes shit just happens.

  • I don't think that's necessarily true. I've had the great joy to know a few exceptionally content people through the years, and while they might not be yucking it up on a yacht somewhere, I also get the distinct impression that they're all around happier and more at peace than the likes of Musk and Trump are. Folks have raised the hypothesis that the ultra-wealthy are just hoarders but wealth instead of trash, hoping that maybe just this next billion will finally bring them contentment, and it never does. I've come to suspect that that hypothesis holds at least some water.

  • The thing that I will never not think about is how, given the distance and human reaction time and other factors, it's very likely that the shooter had Donald dead to rights when he pulled the trigger. Then, God's favorite idiot jerked his head to the side like he always does when he speaks, probably around the exact same moment the shooter pulled the trigger, and instead of blowing the back of his head clean off, it grazed his ear. I'm not sure anyone can convince me that the shooter didn't fuck up; Donald just got incredibly, unbelievably lucky.

  • Hey, bro, it's always cool when you find someone willing to have an actual discussion, thanks for being open to it! In case that playlist is too time consuming, check out Strong Towns. They're an advocacy group focused on local-first evidence-based policy changes to make our cities stop sucking. Those policies almost always include fixing our busted ass zoning system and improving public transit and walk ability/bikeability among other things. I'm part of Strong Towns up here in Merced, and we're pushing the city, kicking and screaming, into being a better place to live for everyone. They're free to join and offer a lot of really great resources and support, and I'm almost certain that there must be a local group in LA.

  • Okay, do you want the lecture, or the tl;Dr?

    Tl;Dr: bulldoze every single family home and put up commie blocks with commercial spaces on the bottom floor.

    Lecture edition: it doesn't have to be that extreme, and we can do it without bulldozing homes with pretty simple and cheap zoning reforms. Bonus: we can also stop our cities from being constantly bankrupt, fix traffic, protect the environment, and make our cities stop sucking. Here's the lecture, in case you're interested: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa

  • Not the right things. It's like if Gavin went and confiscated everyone's dogs to sacrifice them to Zorak to fix the homelessness issue. It's not going to work, it's never going to work, and then when people complain, you say "well, at least he's trying something." The fact of the matter is that California has an extremely deep deficit of affordable housing. The cheapest rent in Merced should NOT be $800 for a room in a single family house, that's zonko bananas, but it is. We're never going to fix the homelessness crisis without addressing the affordability crisis, and the hell of it is that affordability is actually fairly easy and cheap to address from the government's side, we just don't because it hurts the NIMBY's feelings.

  • We know how to fix homelessness. It's not bulldozers; you fucking house them. Newsome has made some good strides in terms of encouraging more housing in California, but we'd be much closer to actually addressing homelessness if:

    1. He hit the bullshit zoning laws that restrict housing in this state with as big of a hammer as he hits homeless people with, and
    2. We stopped trickling money to the homeless via an infinitely recursing filter of non-profits and either directly administered the aid via the state government or just gave them the fucking money / housing. In LA, there's something like 10,000 non-profits focused on homelessness that have to coordinate with each other. That's some looney toons level shit right there, and it should be obvious to anyone that that would never work.

    California's been trying to fix homelessness with cops and bulldozers for forty or fifty years, and especially the last twenty. How long do we have to keep "accidentally" killing people and setting taxpayer cash on fire before we acknowledge that it doesn't fucking work and never will? You cannot beat homeless people into being housed, though I can see why Gavin would think that this solution would appeal to potential Republican voters who will ultimately not vote for him anyway.