Happy to help :)

Do you maybe have “Show Read Posts” unchecked in your settings and it’s just hidden?

Ugh, I just can’t win. I generally don’t like to edit out (but just append to) stuff I’ve written but I’m really sorry about besmirching you and your instance due to another user causing me to doubt my interpretation of the modlog. Going to remove all mentions of dbzer0.

Sorry.

Those communities are hosted by db0 as their home instance - can’t federate their content out to others if the origin doesn’t exist (as I understand the mechanics anyway).

EDIT: dbzer0 had nothing to do with this ban, it was done by a Lemmy.World admin.

I updated my post after another user stated that it wasn’t lemmy.world admins that performed the ban but the db0 team that did. I can’t say with certainty that’s actually the case since the modlog is pretty opaque and I don’t have full knowledge of how [federated] actions are propagated & displayed.

I (incorrectly?) assumed since those communities had existed for so long on the dbzer0 instance they had at least tacit approval from the admins there and were in communication with them enough that a full ban wouldn’t occur – when I saw the removal in the modlog I didn’t even consider that possibility.

Sorry for kicking up drama here if the Lemmy.World team had no part in this :(

Shit, sorry for all the drama if this is just me misunderstanding the federation system. I wish there was more information provided in the modlog than just “admin”, like at least stating the origin server that took action. I just assumed since those communities had been “supported” (or at least tolerated) by db0 for so long they were on good terms and in communication with each other - didn’t even cross my mind.

EDIT: db0/dbzer0 had nothing to do with this ban, it was performed by a LW admin.

deleted by creator

It wouldn’t be ethical, legal or really even feasible, but I wonder how long it would take for law enforcement to aggressively reform their methods and attitudes if some percentage of the calls they were sent to were “secret shopper” style tests involving important people.

Dispatched for reports of suspicious activity or drug dealing and it’s some relative of the DA/mayor/governor etc. Make it part of the hiring process that relatives need to accept they might be unexpectedly used for that purpose and if they decline it hurts or prevents the official or officer’s chances of being hired. Surely if there isn’t any expectation of being abused there should be no concerns with having engagements with the police.

I’m sure in practice they’d work out secret handshakes and markers to identify themselves but maybe that could be exploited by the public like some do with police supporter bumper stickers.

EDIT: I recognize this didn’t happen in the US, adjust specific terms and concepts as needed to localize :)

When I went looking for a link of it to post I was surprised to see so many “extended/1/4 hour” versions so it seems to have a lot of fans. I was hooked on it for a bit too :)

Oh cool, I hadn’t seen that before. Lyrically that fits with the scenes in the movie but I think the mood of After Dark works better with the feeling of solitude in working overnights. That could just be bias from seeing that combo first though. To use a movie from the same year I tried S.A.L.Song over the “bouncing” scene in Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead and it matched pretty well.

Comedy Central used to play Career Opportunities all the time so even if it wasn’t bad to begin with I’d probably still resent it just from overexposure.

If you weren’t already aware, they also have a bunch of singles/covers that AFAIK haven’t been released on compilations. I thought they were posted on their SoundCloud page in the past but they don’t seem to be there now, so they might only be on YouTube.
e.g.

• Metallica - Master of Puppets
• Queen - We Will Rock You
• Daft Punk - Around the World
• Rolling Stones - Paint it Black
• Gremlins theme, Holiday Road, Carol of the Bells

Not the point of the video at all but I didn’t see any clips from The Boat That Rocked (2009) (Pirate Radio in the US) and just wanted to give a shout-out for the film. I wouldn’t say it was a particularly special role or performance from P.S.H. but I just never see that movie mentioned and it initially flew under the radar for me.

Tesseract is one tool that can do it.

I hate coming across gangstalking people and groups online because it’s just sad to see as an outsider and invokes strong feelings of wanting to be helpful but being unable to. Like you said, they reinforce each other in their bubbles so there’s no way to get a message through that their problem isn’t really what they think it is and they need professional help. And short of somehow magically only allowing helpful people to interact with those thinking they’re being gangstalked (technical and logistical impossibility) it becomes another chance for trolls or other sufferers to just encourage more conspiratorial and paranoid thinking.

It’s an entirely different kind of IP theft, altogether.

Not an unreasonable concern about wandering into dark ideologies or not appreciating nuance leading to bad conclusions. It’s also entirely possible I was just reading more into your comments than was intended. I don’t currently have any plans to seek out more of his writing but I’ll be sure to keep our conversation in mind to filter it through if I do (and others should as well).
Was nice to have a respectful and constructive conversation online, thanks again :)

No hardware required, also not some new technique suddenly discovered:
How to Bump Fire an AR-15/M4
AK47 bump fire

Thanks for the thoughtful reply and suggested reading. Holy shit, paywalls are hardcore now (NYT link dividing the screen space literally in half) but fortunately there was an archive link to eliminate that issue. I was only really interested in knowing the details around Scott Alexander in so far as I didn’t want to be unknowingly spreading messages from Hitler 2.0 or something, but still without having a dog in this fight, I get the impression the ominous dangers implied about the nefarious Rationalists is overselling the reality of the situation.

The way the author/group’s positions are offhandedly portrayed (especially under the Life in the Grey Tribe heading) definitely raise red flags for me, but just opening a couple of the links and reading the content myself I didn’t come away with nearly the same impression of intent. (NOTE: I’m adding the bolding to certain elements)

NYT

The Grey Tribe was characterized by libertarian beliefs, atheism, “vague annoyance that the question of gay rights even comes up,” and “reading lots of blogs,” he wrote. Most significantly, it believed in absolute free speech.

Right away I can envision another “why would you want to silence me? I’m allowed to say anything if this is a free country!” excuse from some jerk online. I read that post on SSC and it has the following before it even begins:

[Content warning: Politics, religion, social justice, spoilers for “The Secret of Father Brown”. This isn’t especially original to me and I don’t claim anything more than to be explaining and rewording things I have heard from a bunch of other people. Unapologetically America-centric because I’m not informed enough to make it otherwise. Try to keep this off Reddit and other similar sorts of things.]

There’s also no hits on “speech”, “absolute”, “censor” in the post. It doesn’t come across to me like someone advocating for the unrestricted right to spread their hateful/harmful ideology. A figure like Elon Musk has made his positions pretty clear about why he (nominally, but not actually) believes in absolute free speech, the Grey Tribe post seems to mostly be a criticism about in-group purity testing and self-censorship.

NYT

He said that affirmative action was difficult to distinguish from “discriminating against white men.”

Again, it’s easy to imagine this is going to be another red pill argument about how giving disenfranchised people an equal shot is really just repressing white people etc. With more of the quote providing context it doesn’t read as that (to me):

You’ve probably heard that memo writer James Damore has sued Google for discrimination against conservative white men. It seems like a complicated case: political discrimination is generally legal but might not be in California (see here), and discriminating against white men seems hard to distinguish from affirmative action and various societywide diversity campaigns universal enough that I assume someone would have noticed before now if they were illegal. […]

That NYT piece was really hung-up on his real name throughout though which to me raises questions about their motivations behind their stated concerns. It would be understandable if this was a scenario where some NGO was masquerading as a single real person, but here I can easily understand why someone would prefer to keep their offline identity de-emphasized.

Re: Reddit
In this area I’m going to willfully stick my head in the sand and ignore completely. I just can’t bring myself to want to wade through that collection of bots, bad-faith users, advertisers etc. to try to separate fact from fiction.

I also have contrarian tendencies and I’m not intending this to be a fight about who’s right/wrong – you’re clearly far more familiar with this author and subject than I am. And again, I sincerely appreciate the follow-up info. I can certainly see how some positions taken or discussed can act like a beacon attracting bad elements, but I also think that is nearly universal whenever there’s people involved - and that it’s possible to interpret virtuous things into a call for evil if predisposed. There’s some truth to dangers of gazing into the abyss and all that, but I also think it’s foolish to be concerned that everyone that reads Catcher in the Rye is going to get bad ideas about presidents, ya know?

I don’t know much about the author and as far as I know haven’t read any of their other work, so while it’s certainly possible they’re pushing some shitty “AI will save us all” techbro agenda, I really don’t feel convinced of that based on that Washington Spectator article or the short paragraphs near the end of the mountain of text preceding it on the Slate Star Codex. There’s a lot of guilt by association implied in the page about TESCREAL but I’m not seeing any alarming smoking guns re: Scott Alexander and his Wikipedia page doesn’t seem to call out any concerning incidents or positions (not to imply all of its content is complete or truthful).

I’m not invested in this enough to try pushing back more but if you want to claim the author is roughly equivalent to an Elon Musk or some red pill monosphere proponent I’d expect more evidence. It’s good to be mindful of sources of info in general though, I agree with the sentiment of “follow those seeking the truth, avoid those claiming to have found it.”

Home defense is a close quarters encounter a gun is a range weapon

They are planning on using a pistol for home defense, not a scoped rifle. Most defensive encounters with a pistol are likely not going to be at great distances to begin with, and even if someone was expertly trained in unarmed combat if the option exists to not have to get close that would still be preferable. It’s also harder to retreat while grappling with an intruder than being able to engage from across a room.

Truly the best defense hand gun is a 4in DAO 38 special

• Unless the shooter isn’t compatible with that platform [recoil management? weight? size?] - humans come in many shapes and have differing needs
• Unless there’s the possibility of multiple attackers

A revolver is more reliable, needs less cleaning

For a self/home defense gun you shouldn’t slack on cleaning regardless of its type. But also the vast majority of modern striker fired pistols are exceptionally reliable and generally don’t need any/excessive cleaning.

Red dots, lights, lasers, ect are pretty useless.

If you train to use them under pressure and they demonstrably help with getting on target they aren’t useless. A light in particular can be very helpful if you might have trouble identifying your target (see also: don’t shoot your loved ones). It’s certainly easy to overdo it, and ideally you don’t want to rely on additional accessories, but still far from “useless”.

much more likely to shoot a loved one

While it’s possible that’s true (a lot of gun use stats can be tricky to accurately measure), do you even know if this poster lives with or even around other people?

Learning unarmed combat is safer and likely to serve you better.

No reason not to learn unarmed combat if you’re able and willing - it can only help. I don’t think it’s always going to be safer in every life or death situation though. Suppose a person lives alone in an area with a cartel known for doing home invasions with a group - in that scenario they’re probably going to be killed if using a pistol (or rifle, or shotgun etc.) but they will definitely be killed with just their fists.