The General Chat Thread (2023)

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Super cold here :cold: Temperature is now 7ºC and ranging between 3ºC - 13ºC. This is super cold by our standards 😅
 
caseydog said:
Well, Lunar New Year/Chinese New Year was spoiled by yet another mass murder in the USA. A man opened fire on a large large gathering of Asian Americans in California, killing at least ten people. :(

Time for Republicans to break out the "thoughts and prayers," as they aren't going to allow any new gun laws. In fact, Texas loosened our gun laws in the last legislative session.

Background for people outside the US. 84-percent of gun owners favor laws like Universal Background Checks. 90-percent of American voters support this law. There is also very strong support (about 65-70 percent) for Red Flag laws, which would allow police to temporarily confiscate guns from people deemed to be a potential threat to themselves or others, until a Judge in a court of law can decide if they should get them back. We know for sure that this would have stopped some past mass shootings. So, it is not the American people to blame. The NRA (gun manufacturer's lobby) makes sure to keep Republican legislators in line with the promise of a well funded primary against anyone who dares even suggest that maybe we need some sensible changes. Legislators are "graded" by the NRA for the percentage of times they vote in line with NRA objectives. Candidates in states like Texas, Florida and Arkansas brag about their scores during their campaigns. For the most part, Democrats just assume they are going to have low grades, and will never have NRA support, so they aren't under the same pressure from the NRA.

This kind of senseless killing makes the US look like a banana republic to other civilized nations.

Rant off.

CD
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I'm familiar with laws and the NRA's. They ain't changing. Sad really.
Thoughts with family.

Russ
 
Summer 25 deg c here heat pump on low cold. Lovely.
Then I had to replace my alternator. 1200 cash. And it needs a service in a few weeks

Russ
 
caseydog said:
We had another mass shooting two days later. Only seven people killed in this one. Time for more "thoughts and prayers" for the victims and their families. Nothing else is going to happen.

CD
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As you know imho to date on "murica".
On another note I'll e mail jas tomorrow . Will pm you


Russ
 
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Today’s forecast.

It’s supposed to keep going until evening, well after dark. At least the trees look pretty.
 
caseydog said:
We had another mass shooting two days later. Only seven people killed in this one. Time for more "thoughts and prayers" for the victims and their families. Nothing else is going to happen.

CD
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California has the toughest gun laws in the country, and the shooter had registered firearms. Registering them doesn't make people responsible with them. By the way, I'm talking about the California mass shooting in Half Moon Bay, not the California mass shooting that happened 2 days earlier in Monterrey.

I watched Minority Report a few day ago. Excellent movie about predictive policing, where people are arrested for their crimes before they commit them by use of psychics. Not a true story (as far as I know!) but this would be the only way to actually stop the mass shootings:
  • There's no way to round up all the guns - Ruby Ridge and Waco are examples of what can go wrong with that. No way this could ever happen in a mass scale. Some people would voluntarily turn them in, but many wouldn't.
  • There's no way to stop every single crazy person from getting a gun - education, metal detectors, cameras, policing, and a variety of other measures can help reduce the likelihood and severity, but it can't completely eliminate it.
A number of predictions from that movie have turned out to be true, or partly true, so it's not completely impossible. But, if you saw the movie, you'll know that the system was not without its problems.

Minority-Report.jpg
 
The Late Night Gourmet said:
View attachment 95502

Today’s forecast.

It’s supposed to keep going until evening, well after dark. At least the trees look pretty.
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Our 3-5 inches turned into less than an inch before it warmed up and switched over to rain, so that snow never developed and now it’s killing my earlier snowfall!
 
Woken up this morning to 21°C already. They're talking about 35°C for today. I think it will happen. We've due a heat wave until Sunday when a storm front comes through, then we're due 5 days of rain with Thursday being summarised as "late shower" and being 80% chance of 20-40mm of rain. Some shower hey!

Now to work out what to do with hubby. It's a public holiday today for the entire country. Then schools go back for start of academic year on Monday, so basically heading to the coast is just going to be very busy, and most things are closed anyway (it's the Aussie equivalent of 4th July). Then the weekend will be exceptionally busy in the roads with everyone heading home from the coast.
 
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