I will always regret not learning to play drums; my parents insisted that I learn clarinet instead. (My brother got to play drums though. Bastard.) Oh well. I have too many hobbies to try and add another one at this point. :)

Progressive metal.

One of my favorite bands has a song where it sounds like everyone is playing a different time signature simultaneously, and it feels out of time and chaotic… And then snaps into focus perfectly, before breaking up again. (I can’t identify the time signatures, no. I can hear at least two, and I’m pretty sure three. I think the drummer is doing polyrhythms?) You can listen to the same song five times in a row, focusing on a difference part each time, and hear something new each time. Or take Opeth’s “River”; the same same song seems to effortless combine elements of country, blues, 70s rock, NWBHM into something that feels both classic and new. (“New” despite being originally released in 2014.) Or, shit, An Abstract Illusion’s “Woe”; it’s nominally split into 7 tracks, but the lack of breaks between songs means that the whole thing flows into a single piece. Or, or or!, “Castaway Angels” by Leprous; Leprous stretches and strains the definitions of what metal is, and is not. While some of what they do is clearly metal, are they still a metal band?

The only thing that’s a real constant in progressive metal is that the bands all have impeccable musicianship.

If the customer base skews wealthier, you’re going to have more people shopping there that are pulling in $500k+ annually, and probably a handful that are pulling in over $1M. If you only have one bottle in that price range, but you have 100 members at a given location that have enough income where that seems like a reasonable purchase, then you’re probably going to be able to sell it.

There’s a bar in Chicago, Lady Gregory’s, that has a whiskey bible. They will sell you 40yo Scottish single-malt whiskey–they have multiple choices, including from distilleries that have been out of business longer than I’ve been alive–by the dram, at up to about $250 per dram (as of the last time I was there, in 2016). Assuming that they’re using the American standard dram measurement of 4ml/dram, that works out to up to $46,000 for an entire bottle.

People that shop at Costco skew far wealthier than the average American. Given that only a few Costcos, in very wealthy areas, are going to have even a single bottle of $28,000 whiskey, it’s entirely reasonable to expect that they’re going to be able to sell it.

A 2" wide straps is supposed to fail at about 10,000 pounds/4500kg of static load. The nylon strap will fail long before the metal hardware does, and the roof is going to fail before either of those do. If a large enough object fell on the strap, the most probable scenario is that the strap would end up acting like a wire cutter to the roof.

Why would he care? He gets paid either way, so he’s not going to give a fuck. Now, change the law so that he has liability…

Knowledge is something that can be prov

Immediate Google results shows stun guns to be about 90% effective,

Google is 100% wrong. A Taser–not a stun gun–shoots barbed darts that are connected to the handset by thin wires. When you have good contact–that is, they aren’t stuck in clothing instead of piercing the skin, and they’re far enough apart–they’re going to create strong muscle spasms, like a whole-body TENS unit. (Which, BTW, isn’t that painful either, IMO, but you do lose a degree of voluntary movement. ) A stun gun works only when it’s on contact with bare skin, and only works through pain-compliance. E.g., it “hurts”, and the idea is that a person will want the pain to stop. Except that they don’t really hurt.

This is a Taser.

This is a stun gun.

Ask any person that actually does serious self-defense training for high-risk situations, and they’re going to say the same thing; you can not rely on a stun gun. A Taser will work, but you have exactly two shots, and getting both darts to make solid contact can be very iffy. Oh, and they only work as long as you keep your finger on the trigger; as soon as you let it go, the assailant is back in business. Tasers work in law enforcement because they usually work in teams and groups rather than singly.

First: Stun guns are ineffective. I’ve used one on myself; it tickles. The basic principle of a stun gun is pain compliance, and if the person you’re using it on has a high pain threshold, they’re utterly ineffective A taser has, at best, two shots. Thick clothing, bad contact, or simply missing means you’re SOL. It’s pretty easy to find video of cops trying to taze someone, and failing. Pepper spray works–depending on the brand–but it very dependent on things like wind speed and direction, and how old your canister is. …And you’re pretty likely to end up pepper spraying yourself if you don’t practice with inert canisters.

Guns just work. Period.

And no, it’s not a false equivalence. Cars have utility value, as do firearms. Cars can be used legally, and they can be used illegally, as can firearms. There are millions of cars that are used legally and safely every day, much like firearms. It’s not a precise parallel, but it’s sufficiently close for the purposes of this argument.

Of course the only correct number of gun deaths among civilians is 0, do you disagree with that?

I absolutely do disagree, yes. If my life or safety is being threatened by someone, then I absolutely have the right to use any level of force necessary to defend myself, up to and including lethal force.

BTW, the way that you state that question is a form of manipulation. It’s a common tactic used in high-pressure sales.

According to a quick Google search, 3 in 10 American adults say that they currently own a firearm; that’s around 82,000,000 gun owners in the US. Last time I checked, there were around 45,000 annual gun deaths in the US, of which just under 2/3 were suicide. That leaves somewhere around 18,000 deaths that are homicides of some form (which also includes legal self-defense). So it’s far, far less than 1/1000 gun owners that are going to shoot someone (other than intentionally shooting themselves, and IMO that’s a different issue entirely).

But, sure, if in your opinion that only correct number of gun deaths is 0, then yes, removing guns and collectively forgetting how to make them is the only solution. Just like if your opinion is that the only correct number of traffic deaths is zero, then the only reasonable solution is the completely elimination of all means of transportation other than feet.

Generated by diceware, actually. I wanted to keep it as random as possible.

I think that most people that have lived in Chicago for a while are pretty aware that, due to this kind of culture of violence, that kind of action in Chicago carries a degree of risk that wouldn’t be present in many other places. So I don’t think that it would be that out of line to make that kind of comment in general. It’s just kind of pervasive.

I would be much more surprised to hear that kind of statement in, say, Phoenix, AZ, where you almost certainly have far, far more people carrying concealed firearms legally, but don’t seem to see the same kind of gang/violence problems.

I avoid anywhere with blackberries and raspberries when they’re in season; that’s where the bears tend to hang out, and I’m not super keen on surprising a bear when I’m out hiking.

Surprised a family of bears (sow and two yearlings) trying to walk out of my basement last week in the dark. That was not fun.

I’m getting my shoulder repaired next week (I completely tore my supraspinatus tendon, wooo…). It’s going to cost me $16,000. That’s relatively cheap in the US; if I had insurance (which I don’t), I’d have to have surgery done in a hospital, and my insurance would be billed >$30k. I’ve looked into medical tourism, but I just don’t have the time; if it was still 80% torn, I could fly to Spain or something, pay cash, take 2-3 weeks to recover, do touristy shit, fly home, and still come out ahead. Unfortunately, once a tendon is fully separated, you need to address it ASAP.

And, BTW, I’m very, very lucky that I have $16k in a 401(k) that I can withdraw in the first place; if this had happened to me 10 years ago, i would have just lost partial use of my right arm for the rest of my life.

…And why don’t I have insurance? The only insurance available to me costs >$500/mo., and the annual deductible (the amount I have to pay before insurance covers anything aside from routine care and prescriptions) is $9000. My costs would be almost identical if I had the only insurance that’s available to me.

EDIT - OTOH, it’s generally a little faster for people in the US to get non-emergency care. E.g., if my supraspinatus was torn, but not completely separated, I would generally have a longer wait for surgery in the UK or Canada than I would in the US. But that’s a pretty small positive for the US system compared to a huge ton of negatives.

Statistically speaking, people that have conceal carry licenses are less likely to engage in criminal activity than the average person, and less likely to shoot a person in general. The people to worry about are the people that carry firearms without having a valid carry license. (This doesn’t apply in the relatively few states that don’t require permits to carry concealed firearms.) Essentially, people that obey one law–getting a permit before they carry a firearm–tend to be likely to obey most laws.

That’s not gun culture per se, but gang culture. Gun “culture” in the US is something that trends far more right wing in general, and tends to be mostly white, mostly (nominally) christian.

I can’t speak to other cities, but the south side and west side of Chicago (esp. around Garfield Park, Douglas Park, and all of Austin) have a serious gang problem. If you aren’t willing and able to engage in violence at the slightest perceived provocation, then you tend to be victimized. The net result is that someone that jumps a line can end up getting a beat down, or killed. (And, BTW, the gang problem is a result of a century of institutionalized racism, combined with a few decades when CPD was exceptionally effective at jailing gang leaders; instead of just two or three major gangs in Chicago, you have hundreds of small ones, all constantly fighting over tiny patches of turf.)

I’m curious how hard it would be for a typical user to chain VPNs together so that my traffic went sequentially through VPNs. In theory it seems like VPN #1 would know that it was connected to my home and VPN #2, so it couldn’t tell where data was originating. VPN #2 could see the site that was being accessed and VPN #1, but not me.

I have no idea if it actually works this way in practice through.

Off the top of my head, the only one that I’ve watched in recent memory was Fallout.