My friend, let’s be reasonable here: you’re speaking to someone who calls his or herself “Poopfan.”

Sincere thanks on using this phrase properly. So few seem to: I perpetually see it used on the internets to mean “a large volume of tears,” rather than its actual (folklore-based) meaning.

Yoda’s death, deleted scene.

Me: sci fi fan, Jodie Foster Fan, Matthew McConaughey, HUGE Sagan fan.

P.S.: Better to think of us the way Sagan did: we are star stuff! Carbon, and all the rest! Whether existing as a cloud of gas or a mineral cluster or the hydrogen burning in a star, our human bodies are on a long, long journey...this is only the tiniest part of our matter’s itinerary.

I’d love to see the science—theoretical or otherwise—that supports that idea. ;-)

Ah...if only preferences counted. :-) If I were you, I wouldn’t be too concerned. After all, what difference would it make to your perceived reality?

This is what I’m talking about. Good hustle, people.

Leifer does offer a solution—a sort of block universe, where events in space and time don’t cause one another, but instead fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

No, no...WE CAN AND MUST DO BETTER.

It ain’t recycling. Whether its done in the form of a sample or an actual quoted line, it’s a rap trope, and long-established tradition. (Eggheads would probably call it “intertextuality” or “self-referentiality.” Rappers might perhaps call it “calling back to OG my sh*t.” But everyone from LL to Public Enemy to Ice…

We won’t. Next question?

Counterpoint: Proposition 63 was yet another in the now acknowledged-to-have-failed efforts—like the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban—to legislate against things that look scary to people with no exposure to or knowledge of firearms...but have virtually no impact on making the public safer.

It’s such a goddamn relief to hear these views espoused here so eloquently—if for no other reason than to show the assembled kinja commentariat (whom I dearly love) that not every LEO or service person is a part of some single, dark monolithic culture...whether it’s NRA paranoia/opportunism, or genuinely scary…

Case in point: your example of “open carry” numbnuts in a coffee shop, swaggering up to the barrista while flaunting heavy artillery. The entire posture is based in a perception of the world that’s pure fantasy.

Thanks! Hugely informative.

Dude...I’m pretty much on your side of the argument, here—so why don’t you at least respond to the fact (pointed out by Enkidu 98001) that his weapon was secured IN THE GLOVEBOX at the time of the shooting?