jumperalex

It is not possible to explain the horribleness that is Austin road planning and the complete and utter lack of available transit. Exhibit 1 https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/2/27/a-75-billion-boondoggle-advances-in-austin

Just consider what it must mean for an average Californian to say traffic is bad. These aren't people coming from rural Montana complaining about city traffic.

ITT: I don't want to ever socialize with my co-workers Also: How do you make friends as an adult?

Look I'm not a huge fan of forced socialization myself. I HATE small talk. I'm looking for the door before I have the first drink in my hand at "networking events". But I also know one of the biggest opportunities I have to meet new people as an adult is at at work. So I choose the situation carefully to make sure it's one I'm comfortable with and I give it a go. I've made a few lasting friends, people I play soccer with, people I invite over my house, people who my other friends got tight with, and over all growing my social group. A number of them don't even work for the same company anymore, or in my immediate office at least.

I'm not saying to do anything you don't want to do, and forced fun can suck, but if you DO want to meet people in life and make friends, don't force-limit your opportunities to interact with new people. Pick, or even suggest!, the situation that works for you.

Yup. This is my guy, my VA rep. I remember getting either a mailer, or a newsletter, or whatever, update from his office talking about him starting this. Thought it was great and locked in my support. I agree we need to keep flowing in young blood into congress, but Don is still doing good work and doing his best to keep relevant.

OH! NO!

Anyway.

Yup. I'd love to see an analysis of his victims. How many 6'5" grown adult men of reasonable physical build does he try this shit on? Maybe a nice histogram of height vs. prank count. I wonder where the data points will end; hmmm?

I don't have kids, and perhaps you don't either?

I'm old enough with enough friend with kids, and recall being a 2yo myself, and I can say its INCREDIBLY easy to lose track of a 2yo. It only takes seconds to lose sight of them. How far they get after losing site isn't an indicator of how long you weren't paying attention, but how long you've been looking before finding them.

I guess you didn't read the part in the summary above (no link clicking even needed) where it says the victim (yes Colie is the real victim here)

says “stop” three different times and tries to back away from Cook, who continues to advance. Colie tries to knock the phone away from his face before pulling out a gun and shooting Cook in the lower left chest.

Does Cook "deserve to be killed"? No, but "deserve" is not the right word here. "Expect" is more like it, and yes he should expect to be at risk of serious bodily harm for approaching a stranger, with unknown intent (to the stranger), and a failure to back off when clearly told to stop and retreated from.

In an ideal world Colie wouldn't have had a gun and Cook would have just been beaten until the perceived threat was eliminated. But regardless of your political/philosophical feelings about gun ownership in the US, it is the current fact of the land and if you Fuck Around you better be prepared to Find Out. Then again, at 6'5" Cook probably feels like he's safe from a beating and I'd be very surprised to find out he's tried these stunts out on grown men of equal size; even this dolt can do that math.

I am glad he's not dead. I hope he has learned his lesson to not be a piece of shit human being too selfish to understand we are not here for his amusement. My hopes are likely to be left unfulfilled.

I believe they have failed to recognize the Stare Decisis standard and the implications of the long held decision in Elections v. Consequences.

Fuck them and their gaslighting asses.

[crying] Bought $10k AMZN late-1999, sold in late-2000, because it lost like 50% value. A very expensive lesson learned not to play in the market. Ironically I now both know better than to buy individual stocks, but also have the fortitude to stick it out.

VTSAX and chiill.

that's "more of zee sex" to you buddy

A common misconception. Take the so called "light bulb" for instance. People think they emit light. They do not. They ingest darkness. They are dark suckers. They pull in all the darkness around them, but objects get in the way, and that's why there are shadows. And when they're full, they stop working. That's why they have a brown spot when they stop working, they are full of dark.

Don't fall for the light emitting conspiracy. LONG LIVE THE DARK SUCKERS!!!

Jokes aside, I swear they really do walk around with baguettes in hand. 3 days in Paris, sitting at multiple cafes, and we saw it in the morning, at lunch, in the evening. Men, Women, Children, well dressed, poorly dressed (for a Parisian), black, white, brown, blue, green, every combination in between, we'd see someone walking around with baguettes. I've lived in multiple cities and visited even more in the US and Europe. Never have I seen so many people walking around with bread!

"It's about time these kids had some skin in the game!"

-Some Republican Somewhere I'm sure.

Totally agree.

BUT ... if he has hard evidence like documents, recordings, emails, txts, those might be worth something and will be harder for the defense to tear apart.

Yet still, I want to see Rudy behind bars so there's that too.

Please do not go buy a lottery ticket or play the stock market today ;-)

Interesting take; now do the Jan 6 rioters.

I've been in a high altitude simulation chamber to experience hypoxia after rapid decompression. 💯 didn't give a fuck, was a bit giddy, and if left there long enough with dwindling oxygen would have for sure died. No problem taking a breath.

So in effect, yes tried it.

The difference here is this isn't someone stealing a TV, and this isn't someone being shot / almost killed just for a prank. You have the order of operations and perspective wrong. Colie and what he intended literally doesn't matter.

What matters is this was someone who felt threatened by a 6'5" menace who approached him, engaged him in an aggressive manner, who didn't stop when asked, and who continued to pursue when backed away from. Result: the threatened person did what they needed to eliminate the threat. If they intended to kill they could have shot again, but didn't. If they didn't have a gun they would have been equally justified in beating the shit out of the attacker until they felt safe. How easy that might be for most of the "prank" victims against a 6'5" male is an open question.

Someone stealing my TV isn't a direct threat, and so no of course I wouldn't shot them for that. Take the TV and leave. But that's a false narrative. It isn't someone stealing my TV. It's someone who has broken into my house, is in the act of committing a crime, and who I have no idea how they are going to react now that they've been caught. They may very well see me as a juicier target. And for that reason I would feel the need to neutralize the threat by whatever means necessary.

For the record, I do NOT own a gun, and I do believe in gun control. So let's not bring up any gun-fetish/revenge-fantasy retorts. I'm not saying there aren't people that have those, but right here right now they are a distraction from an honest assessment of what is going on when a person feels legitimately threatened to a "reasonable person" standard. Also, no, someone turning around in my driveway isn't a reasonable reason to feel threatened either.

Legally you can't even create the PoA if the person isn't deemed competent because they can't sign it. So then you have to go to a judge for them to appoint someone.

So by the letter of the (IANAL but I'm working this issue with family right now) law, the fact that a PoA might have just been created means she has to be considered competent enough to sign on.

But yeah the line between "I'd trust them with my life" and "no one in their right mind would allow them to sign" is broad.

"According to the spokesman, Prigozhin told Mr Putin that Wagner unconditionally supported him."

Yeah shit is crazy. I mean at first blush I wanna say that's a power move on Putin's part getting a former mutineer to bend the knee. But of course that's only overshadowed by Putin receiving a former mutineer at an official function. Not sure who really has the gun to who's head. Or why neither has fired. Is this a Mutually Assured Destruction situation?

(that’s just speculation on my part though).

I see what you did there, even if you didn't :)

bUt sMaLl gOvErNmEnT

You're thinking of the # of representatives not growing with the population like it's supposed to. But even then, they ARE reapportioned based on the census. The census also reapportions electoral votes. AND if there's enough population shift there's also the redrawing of district lines.

So basically, yes FL losing / drastically shifting population could impact all sorts of things every 10 years.

birds of a feather.

not just any rando city, literally Austin https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/2/27/a-75-billion-boondoggle-advances-in-austin

Vid says altitude is 75m, that isn't THAT high. How do they not hear these drones? Is the sound really dissipating that much? Are their ears just deaf from gun fire and artillery?

Either way, Slava Ukraini !!!

He eliminated the threat. That I can agree with. Training says shot center of mass until the threat is gone.

Unlike you and all your upvoters, I'm glad the shit bag is still alive.

I'm glad the real victim didn't so something stupid (but maybe understandable in a high-enough threat posture) of shooting again; that would have made his defense much more difficult.

One shot was all that was needed. Heck even if he had missed, that would likely have been all that was needed since I assume (a risk I know) fuck bag prankster has at least enough self-preservation brain cells to un-ass from the scene once the loud bangs start to happen.

what does lasting 30sec have to do with it? how long would it have lasted if Colie hadn't pulled a gun? how many more times would have have been threatened? And yes he was being threatened by a 6'5" man continually advancing on him.

Remove the gun from the equation; what if Colie had beaten Cook instead until he felt safe again and put him in the hospital ? Would that be justified since it didn't involve a gun? Same result either way.

you need to forget about the fact that this was a prank or what Cook's intent was. They have no baring. Only what the real victim (Colie) perceived; and Colie felt threatened and had every right to defend himself. The fact that the means he used was a gun is an entirely different topic of conversation. He felt under threat as any reasonable person would in that situation.

Yes he was.

He just need to hold it together long enough for the IPO. Catch his pay day, and then Reddit can die for all /u/Spez cares about the rotting husk he'll leave behind. Fuck him.

Nope, not hard to understand. But that's a different context than people's blanket, "No".

I can very much relate to being in a work environment where I there was no one I'd choose to interact with outside of professional conversation or idle water-cooler talk; if even that!

I've also been lucky enough to be in other ones where I've made great friends that I've had over for game nights, taken road trips with, invited to my house, been to their wedding (and they mine), and gone to shows with.

All I'm suggesting is to be open to it.

I think if you fed your response into ChatGPT and asked it to summarize in two words it would return,

"Regulatory Capture"

Yup, 100% with you there. I'm just saying that friendship can start with that one thing in common and grow. Or fizzle out when you quickly figure out it's the only thing in common.

As another responder said, work is potentially your largest adult social pool to source from. Don't dismiss it. But of course don't feel obligated either.

Correct.

Next question.

I want off this timeline!

only if I want to risk losing my job and potential criminal charges (not joking)

I understand your overall concept, for real, unpredictable one-in-a-million catastrophes.

But this is slightly different. So the wealthy swoop in, buy cheap, and renovate. GOOD. LET THEM. They will pay a lot of money to poor workers in need of jobs, pay INSANE costs to insure, if anyone will even insure them, and then climate change will wipe out their house too. Rinse repeat until everyone gets it through their thick skulls it's a problem not to be fucked with.

Or said another way, if you want the government to support the poor people who lost their homes, do it by helping them relocate, not help them rebuild their castle so it can sink into the swamp again.

Emotionally I am 100% on board with all of this.

Intellectually I have to ask a question that was posed in the article but not addressed: Does this have a chance of impacting broader undercover type operations like Ag-Gag laws?

It was a risk not adding /s especially since I tried really hard to not be too absurd as to be obvious. I will take your unease as a compliment :)

Nope, 51yo average sized male with a military career and enough life experience to know it doesn't take very long for things to escalate very quickly. 30 seconds is an ETERNITY if you feel threatened.

He isn't annoying, he's threatening. Big matters because it amplifies the threat. If Cook was 5' 70lb 16yo female that would be an entirely different dynamic. Of course if a 5' 70lb person had their own weapon then we wouldn't be talking about their size we'd be talking about their weapon. In this case being 6'5" is it's own potential weapon in the eyes of someone who feels threatened.

I guess I do need this explained to me. I need it explained to me how you don't understand "phone in your face" is not all that happened. Cook was told to stop, didn't. Cook was retreated from, for THIRTY FEET (from the news video), and continued to approach Colie. How do YOU not get that can be very threatening to someone? Cook's own admission that his goal is to "confuse" people is an admission that Colie could have been confused about what was happening and what Cook's intent was. At that point self-defense = what's needed to eliminate the threat.

Yes any reasonable person can feel threatened by a 6'5" adult male approaching them, being told to stop, not stopping, and continuing to be pursued while trying to back away from the situation.

But here's the good news. You and I clearly disagree about what can reasonably be considered a threat that warrants self-defense to eliminate the threat*. And it doesn't matter. A judge and Jury will get to decide which one of us has the more cogent argument.

• note that I am intentionally not naming the method used to eliminate the threat. The fact that a gun was used is actually not the point here. If Colie picked up a baseball bat sitting on the floor and beat Cook to death with multiple strikes while he lay on the ground I'd be agreeing it was excessive force and might need a closer look. Just like if he had taken a 2nd shot while Cook lay on the ground. But he didn't. He fired one shot to eliminate the threat. That might not have been a rational thought in his mind at the time, but it's what happened. Odds are he scared himself from the actual shot; but I don't know.

You might find these lectures fascinating to get into just how wrong the tankies are when they say it was part of Russia.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz_1Mx1MaO6sw_

It's a lot to get through, and I'm only through half of it, but really fascinating