He purchased them specifically before the law against purchasing them went into effect. I'm no in CA, but I'm quite sure he still has them (or at least did while I visited after the law was in effect) and that the law did not require confiscating previously-owned firearms, i.e., they were grandfathered in.
Well, I've been there, in his living room in California, about 5 years ago checking them out, which he'd bought a few years prior. He's an executive and very conscientious and law-abiding, not some scofflaw with nothing to lose.
No, I didn't check the laws, serial numbers, registration, etc. But your comment did make me do a quick search which turned up many references to "California-Legal" AR-15s.
The 1989 law was basically a list of products, so it was easily evaded by making similar products and slapping a different name on them. California tried to tighten up the law in 1999 by specifying features, which was then worked around by adjusting the features. The 2016 San Bernadino shooting provoked another tightening, and I presume he bought it before that went into effect.
Here's a key quote: "In 2016, California enacted a law to provide a statutory definition for the term “detachable magazine” to clarify that firearms outfitted with bullet buttons are restricted. People who lawfully obtained these types of guns before Jan. 1 2017 could retain them as long as they registered them with the California Department of Justice in time." [0]
The article found after a quick search indicated that he needn't have been so worried, as the manufacturers also found quick work-arounds to that set of restrictions. It also mentioned that there were something like 189,000 currently registered... so yes, obviously extremely possible to have one.
QED was nothing, except that you know almost nothing about the topic; perhaps consider refraining from posting stuff about which you are obviously ignorant and then doubling down. Sheesh
It’s not that I don’t want children to not starve, it’s that I have a very high confidence that the vast majority of donations one way or another just end up in a sociopath’s bank account
I’m never surprised when I hear good will turned into theft. I am surprised how many people are willing to give so much of their money to scams
(granted, the SF money wasn’t an optional donation)
Even theft and grift aside...many charities are just bad at achieving their goals. They think they're helping but end up causing more problems, e.g., food aid destroying the local farming industry.
For instance, the Red Cross raised $500 million for Haiti relief and ended up achieving virtually nothing due to extensive mismanagement and arrogance (trying to apply Western methods in a third-world country) [1].
Similarly to you, I detest all non-profit organizations. Rather have a for-profit organization or the government solve issues...but these still have their own issues.
Amnesty International (tho I really don't like their fundraising tactics) and Doctors Without Borders don't send money to sociopath's accounts. They pay for housing for board certified medical doctors who decided to make $0 and heal people while being bombed on.
I also like Animals Asia which saves bears from captivity and sends me cute videos of the bears swinging on the swing I donated to them!
If you have low confidence in large orgs, donate directly to small orgs near you like a little league team in a rough part of town.
I don’t know their specific economics but typically the money-into-sociopaths funnel isn’t through the charity program itself, but through the administration. Eg 30% of funds goes to admins, 30% to marketing and fundraising, 20% to overhead, 20% to the actual stated program kind of thing
ProPublica has been by far my most satisfying donation. Their work has helped expose a ton of corruption and, as you say, sociopathy. They're transparent about where the money goes (mostly to the salaries of journalists).
> It's very hard for anybody to be persuaded about any set of ideas where you see a large part of the discussion shut down.
The problem is that any discussion involving gender, sexuality or identity will sooner or later devolve into flamewars, with zero arguments backed by serious research - particularly the "liberal" crowd tends to aggressively stick to "there are more than two genders" while ignoring every single research piece to the contrary.
Something even less benign than that, such as "men cannot get pregnant" is enough to be labeled a transphobe. If you went back as little as 15 years ago and told people "men can get pregnant" they'd rightfully laugh at you.
What usefulness does that sentence hold? It is true that in our society some people who you'd socially describe as men are able to get pregnant, because they have biologically female sex organs. We also know that following their social wishes (i.e. referring to them as men) dramatically increases their quality of life.
Given these facts, can you really not understand why people see that sentence as transphobic? It doesn't accurately describe our social landscape, and it hurts some of the more vulnerable among us.
What usefulness do objective facts and the truth hold?
>It is true that in our society some people who you'd socially describe as men are able to get pregnant
That is not true at all. It's actually a gross inversion of the truth, a foundational feature of Big Lies. There are trans-men, who are actually women, that may get pregnant, but they're by definition not men. They are human females, AKA women. No amount of cross-dressing and body mutilation will change that.
>because they have biologically female sex organs
Yes, they're women. Glad we agree.
>We also know that following their social wishes (i.e. referring to them as men) dramatically increases their quality of life.
"We also know telling schizophrenics that the coffee maker IS indeed an evil demon and removing them from the office will dramatically increase their quality of life."
No, feeding into delusions will not increase their quality of life.
>Given these facts
"Given the fact that the coffee maker is a demon".
>can you really not understand why people see that sentence as transphobic?
"can you really not understand why not believing that coffee makers are demonic is schizophobic?"
>It doesn't accurately describe our social landscape, and it hurts some of the more vulnerable among us.
It does accurately describe our social and biological landscape. If biological realities, truth, and objective facts hurt "the most vulnerable among us", it sounds like they have a mental illness.
>> It is true that in our society some people who you'd socially describe as men are able to get pregnant
> That is not true at all. It's actually a gross inversion of the truth, a foundational feature of Big Lies.
Please read what I write carefully. I specifically said "socially describe". Do you walk through your whole life checking the genitalia of any person you interact with to make sure you refer to them by their biological pronouns? Or do you rely on social cues (e.g. their looks, outfit, hair, voice and so on) and assume their gender? I really hope it's the latter.
Now please read my earlier response again with the correct understanding of what the words I type mean.
>> We also know that following their social wishes (i.e. referring to them as men) dramatically increases their quality of life.
> "We also know telling schizophrenics that the coffee maker IS indeed an evil demon and removing them from the office will dramatically increase their quality of life."
> No, feeding into delusions will not increase their quality of life.
Can you show me studies that indicate this? I don't care for what you believe, I care about data and studies.
>> Given these facts
> "Given the fact that the coffee maker is a demon".
>> can you really not understand why people see that sentence as transphobic?
> "can you really not understand why not believing that coffee makers are demonic is schizophobic?"
Next time make sure not to go overboard with mocking the other person, or at least wait until you've made sure you understand them correctly. Since you fully misunderstood the opening of my earlier response this reaaaaally makes you look bad.
The best our actual doctors (obviously not you) have been able to determine, yes it really does increase their quality of life. I know that doesn't matter to some people, but a lot of us do care.
>> The best our actual doctors (obviously not you) have been able to determine, yes it really does increase their quality of life.
> No they haven't, and you don't need to be doctor to know that.
Do you have studies that indicate this, or do you just believe this to be true? The latter part of your response strongly points towards one side, but I'd like to give you the chance to send any contrary data, if you have it!
"Early twin studies of adult individuals have found a heritability of IQ between 57% and 73%,[6] with some recent studies showing heritability for IQ as high as 80%.[7] IQ goes from being weakly correlated with genetics for children, to being strongly correlated with genetics for late teens and adults. The heritability of IQ increases with the child's age and reaches a plateau at 18–20 years old, continuing at that level well into adulthood." [0]
You're denying settled science. Trying to tie it to the Bell Curve to assassinate the basic character of the science isn't tricking anyone. Pronouns in your profile only make this bad faith move easier to identify.
Really? Using the fact that someone put pronouns in their profile is a bad faith move? Your account is literally a throwaway.
Calling these twin studies as settled science is the most bad faith move here, since the chief problem of this section of The Bell Curve is that it confuses heritability with genetic determination, a mistake that informed scientists wouldn’t make. Unsurprisingly, that is why there is widespread scientific backlash against it.
Believe it or not, twin black babies separated at birth and raised with white parents are still treated as black by society.
>Using the fact that someone put pronouns in their profile is a bad faith move?
No, putting pronouns in your profile is a red flag for bad faith moves.
>Your account is literally a throwaway.
Which means you can expect unadulterated facts.
>Calling these twin studies as settled science is the most bad faith move here
No it's not, stop denying the science.
>since the chief problem of this section of The Bell Curve is that it confuses heritability with genetic determination
The Bell Curve makes no confusion between heritability and genetic determination.
>mistake that informed scientists wouldn’t make
Good thing the Bell Curve didn't make that mistake!
>Unsurprisingly, that is why there is widespread scientific backlash against it.
There wasn't much scientific backlash to it because it's fairly bulletproof. The backlash was because of contained heretical topics, and may have pointed to blasphemous conclusions.
>Believe it or not, twin black babies separated at birth and raised with white parents are still treated as black by society.
"Believe it or not, twin Asian babies separated at birth and raised with white parents are still treated as Asian by society."
Twin studies can't prove something is caused by "genetics"[0]; twins are not free of environmental factors and don't necessarily have the same genome. Genetics, like many scientific fields that can't do real experiments, is just people abusing statistics for fun.
[0] if it did, this wouldn't mean anything, because it can't be used to make predictions, because you don't know if any random person X you are trying to predict trait Y of has these "genetics".
I don't really have a horse in this race but you're basically denying the ability of science to have anything to say outside of the hard sciences, which I disagree strongly with.
"Can't be used to make predictions"... seriously? These factors can be used to make predictions. Now whether these things are just correlates with other more fundamental factors, or causal - I thought that was where the conflict was.
Very, somewhere in the 80% range: "The estimated heritability was 0.79 (SE 0.09) for height and 0.40 (SE 0.09) for BMI, consistent with pedigree estimates." [0][1]
>For bonus points: why has the heritability of height changed over time
It hasn't.
>and varied by country?
It hasn't.
Love it when the bonus questions are easier than the main questions.
A vehicle full of groceries every week is more efficient than going two or three times a week. More time efficient, and requires less resources/power. I live walking distance to a grocery store and still go once a week or less. I bring a pull wagon that I park in front of the store, fill it up, and walk it back home.
The problem is, a lot of our cities are fundamentally hostile to pedestrians. Even if you're actually close enough to walk to a grocery store (most are not), you may be afraid to cross streets with numerous lanes of speeding cars without dedicated crosswalks. In my city, it's common to hear stories of bicyclists in hit-and-runs; it doesn't exactly make people comfortable with walking and biking around their city.
This is because Americans, by and large, do not demand better infrastructure from their leaders, don't vote for it, and don't actively move to places that are better for walking/cycling. Americans are perfectly happy to move to some far-out subdivision that's not walkable to anyplace, just because the house price is a bit lower; then they sit around and make complaints like yours. Put your money where your mouth is.
With the pandemic, we saw lots of Americans move from these walkable places to completely un-walkable places in Florida because they were working from home now, and could afford a bigger house there.
American cities are the way they are because that's what Americans want, and that's what they buy. If Americans really wanted to live in walkable places, they'd refuse to move to or buy homes in places that aren't walkable. That's just not what we see.
This comes across as out of touch. The house differences are not just "a bit lower" - for many it can mean the difference between being able to purchase a house at all.
>A vehicle full of groceries means you don't have fresh groceries for most of the time.
Luckily we invented refrigerators so this is not an issue. Things can stay fresh and just as healthy for weeks.
>More resources? If you're walking to the store, this shouldn't be an issue, and in fact is a negative. Avoiding walking is why Americans are so fat.
As in, buying in bulk saves money and resources versus buying in small amounts. Indeed Americans are fat, but adding a few walks here and there isn't going to fix that. American diet is absolute garbage and the portions are insane.
>Try keeping sushi in a fridge for a few weeks and then eating it, and see what happens to you. Many vegetables don't do well in a fridge either, and wilt after a few days.
Luckily we've invented these things called freezers, and most refrigerators come with them. Veggies will last weeks in there, if not longer.
I wish society learned that exercise is not how you combat obesity.
While I agree that movement is the secret to a healthier life, the obesity epidemic is due to increasing levels of sugars and carbs in the diet, and having been convinced that fats are bad by medical crooks and the food industry.
In fact everybody is looking forward to hyper-processed fake meat which takes us further and further away from the plain, natural food our bodies thrive on.
Movement increases your caloric expenditure by relatively small amounts. It is great if you tend to eat close to your daily expenditure, but if you eat a lot of non-satiating, calorie-dense foods like sweets or refined carbs, good luck walking them off.
For reference, 1 hour walk is ~300 kcal. That's 3 slices of white bread, or a little more than a half-litre bottle of Coke. How many people overeat by that amount, and how many walk at least one hour every day?
Countries where people move more also eat less. Because we are a complex chemical machine, not a dumb furnace.
Eat too much -> metabolic syndrome -> exercise becomes more difficult and tiring -> psychological/satiety issues -> overeat -> GOTO 10. We now know how obesity works, but it doesn't fit on a slogan short enough to write on a cereal box or in a doctor's office poster, so they just tell people to walk more and skip red meat, even though it completely misses the point.
How about "Standford's Orwellian Peace Against its Own Students"?
It's literally the title of the linked article. I don't think editorializing and changing titles to placate neo-Puritans is helping anyone. If you don't like the title, contact the author and ask them to amend the title.
Yes, seriously.
>I have a relative who lives in CA and bought a pair of AR-15s a few years ago, just because...
No you don't. AR-15s are illegal (felony) in California.