I read the article. He robbed 4 people, with a handgun. The robbery for which he got caught he tapped a person with a gun and waved it around, demanding more and more.
"Then Michael asked for his wallet. When he found that it was empty, he tossed it back into the car. Then, as the police report recounted, Michael “tapped Smith’s left knee with the gun and said he was going to take the car.” "
It's misleading to classify this--as the relatives do--as an "attempted car jacking". It's not like he said "give me your car", got a no answer, and walked away. This was an armed robbery.
His family seems angry at the "white" neighbors who called the police and when he robbed them as a youth. But it's early interventions like this that _should_ have served as a warning sign to his family. It didn't. They're just angry that someone would dare call the police for an $11 robbery.
> In fact, you're benefiting through increasing home values (for which you are not taxed due to Prop. 13)
This is completely untrue. I have a house in 94087 where I live about 7 months/year (the other 5 months are in Tel Aviv, where it's also very expensive!) I own the house, bought in in 1989. I don't benefit at all from increased house prices. It just makes everything more expensive.
And even under Prop 13, my property tax goes up 2% a year. That's more than inflation.
I don't benefit at all from the "increased value" in my house. If I could, I'd tear down the house and build a 2-family house on the property. But even if zoning laws allowed it, the house would be reassessed at current market value, and it wouldn't be worth it to pay $32,000/year in property taxes alone. (I've looked into this to the extent of hiring a real-estate lawyer to see if it's feasible).
If there were no prop 13, people would be forced out of their homes because specu-vesters would drive the prices up making just the taxes affordable.
The solution is to BUILD MORE HOUSES. Build apartment buildings. Close by so people can walk or take existing mass transit to work. And allow people with single family homes to tear them down and build 2-family homes without being reassessed.
Prop 13 makes houses a net negative on city budgets, so there is a financial incentive for cities to reject new housing units, while encouraging development of hotels and commercial properties which are net positives.
Prop 13 also induces people to not sell their property, or convert properties into more units like you, so there are less available units on the market, which increases prices even further.
For example go look at SF or LA vs Miami on Redfin and see the stark difference in how many units are for sale at one time.
Higher property taxes encourages people to sell their properties if it's not economically worth it anymore to hold the property and give it to people who would actually use it. And it also encourages them politically to build more housing so their property tax bill does not go up too much.
So your saying that they don't lose money on new housing units, but gain it?
If the city doesn't make enough money, then it become bankrupt. Roads, schools, sewers and police can't function properly anymore. The money has to come from somewhere!
Speaking personally, the value of my house means little to me. I plan to live in this region for a long time - when my house goes up, other houses in the region go up. When my house goes down, other houses in the region go down. My house may be worth $1million, but selling it and buying another will get me the same house as when it was worth $500k.
It only matters if I decide to sell it AND move somewhere else. Which probably isn't going to happen.
I just want to make it clear that this is a choice you're afforded because of the value of your home.
You (quite literally) have a million-dollar offer on the table to move to, say, Austin, TX (or dozens of other great cities). The fact that you choose not to accept that offer does not negate the existence of the offer. The offer is always there. And this is a very real asset that you have (that, I hope it's clear, most people don't have), whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.
I'm sorry, but no. If you have a million-dollar gold statue of a pig that you're unwilling to sell, your unwillingness doesn't even enter into it. You still have the million-dollar statue and it's still worth a million dollars. It doesn't matter what rationale you provide for not selling it. It just doesn't matter. Those reasons seem important to you. But they aren't important in assessing the value of the statue.
Speaking of moving - a downside of prop 13 is that people used to upgrade / downgrade their houses. Have kids? Get a little bigger house. Retire? Downsize.
IIRC you can usually transfer your tax advantaged status to the same county if you buy a smaller place. It's a little restrictive but it still enables you to downgrade.
Asking people to take responsibility for this one simple thing is taboo.
(I have a Colonoscopy just last week as part of a routine exam at my age. The procedure really isn't that bad. A couple hours on the toilet during the prep, and that's about the worst of it).
Obesity is merely one factor. I have read a number of articles on this and even written at least one (I get paid to ghost write health articles). My understanding is, no, they don't really know why.
Furthermore, how to not be obese is not really a solved problem. Suggesting that fat people are merely irresponsible is pretty lousy. Most fat people have tried to lose the weight. Some have tried incredibly hard and done rather crazy-sounding things, to no avail. We don't really understand that problem space either. Some people are able to lose the weight and keep it off. Others fail and fail and fail while trying like hell.
"Furthermore, how to not be obese is not really a solved problem."
Make your body absorb less calories than it uses. The simplest (not easiest) way is then to eat less. Most people who have "tried to lose weight" but did not manage it just tried lightly. They tried every new miracle weight loss program thinking 50lb could be lost fast before summer.
The thing is there are no miracle cure: you have to learn what has plenty of calories and eat or drink less of it. You have to learn to say no to food. You have to learn that throwing excess food is ok once you're done eating (which is the main problem for people coming from low income environment I think). For people who eat as a way to curb their depression, you also have to work on this illness if you want them to lose weight. You may also have to cut contact with family or friend who will sabotage you (crab in a bucket mentality).
Most fat people have tried to lose the weight. Some have tried incredibly hard and done rather crazy-sounding things, to no avail.
I half wish we didn't have these kinds of comments about weight loss; it comes from the Puritan-work-ethic-suffering-is-laudable style of thinking, and implicitly carries messages like: a) weight loss must include suffering, b) it must include hard work or you aren't earning it, c) 'quantity of trying' is something in and of itself which is praiseworthy, regardless of what is tried or how effective it was, d) crazyness is a proxy for trying hard by implication of exhausting all less-crazy options, regardless of whether that's actually true, e) defending 'why someone didn't lose weight' and whether they endured enough suffering to be allowed to live without criticism is more important than understanding, empathising, fixing, almost anything.
To quote from a blog about going the other way - muscling up:
Just because we’re tired doesn’t mean we had a good muscle-building workout, just that we had a tiring one. Depending on what you’re doing, there’s a good chance there’s a workout that’s less tiring but does a better job of stimulating muscle growth.
Similarly, being full doesn’t mean we ate enough calories, just that we ate a filling meal. Maybe there’s a less filling meal that provides more calories and nutrients.
And in the same idea, just because someone tried hard and suffered to lose weight, doesn't mean they did the most effective things to lose weight. Just because they felt starving doesn't mean they were sustaining long term calorie deficit, just because they tried for years doesn't mean they found a good way and it didn't work, but that they spent years doing things which didn't work. Just because they suffered while exercising doesn't mean it was an optimal calorie burning workout, just that it was unpleasant..
The two (effort/suffering and fat loss) aren't necessarily directly connected at all, yet we discuss as if one is a proxy for the other. It might well be that fat loss implies effort, but effort does not imply fat loss. Or it might be that effective fat loss doesn't necessarily imply effort although that's one way for it. I anecdotally note P.J. Eby's comment once that he'd tried an awful lot of weight loss attempts, but it wasn't until he found Vitamin K supplements that he started to see progress. Vitamin K supplements aren't hard work or major suffering (and undoubtedly they aren't a panacea for all obese people).
The wider context of the quote is:
we’re going to slip, we’re going to “fail”. That’s part of the process. A setback is just an opportunity for us to figure out what went wrong, what needs adjusting, and how to move forward more effectively. A setback shouldn’t be seen as a failure, and it certainly has nothing to do with our ability to build muscle. The moment we stop thinking about change as binary—either as success or failure—but rather as a process that’ll evolve, the more likely we are to actually reach our goals.
So when looking at our routines and our efforts, we need to look at them objectively. If our routine was failing, which part is holding us back? What piece is missing?
If our routine is working but is tough to maintain, what part was enjoyable and sustainable? What is wearing us down? What’s the part that’s actually responsible for our results? What’s useless filler that just wears us down?
This is how we gradually develop lifestyles that work for us—making things more effective, more enjoyable, easier. This is how we get to consciously decide who we want to become. Then eventually those habits become what we do automatically—unconsciously.
In that context, of a life and a way to live, what benefit of talking about "I tried hard", in the past tense, at all?
It's almost tautological to say people who tried hard and are still fat, weren't trying the right things - and yet actually saying that is liable to bring about a reply describing in detail how much effort and suffering and time was involved, as if the sentence was "you didn't try hard enough". Which it isn't.
Empathizing with disease, with medications, with psychological problems, with car-park focused urban sprawl, with disability, with thyroid problems and metabolic disorders and absorption disorders and poor education and stressful busy lives and constraints on money and food availability and susceptibility to peer pressure - these are all things that can usefully and helpfully be discussed. Praise of "they tried something and suffered for it, so if anything was going to work, suffering was going to work, and it didn't work", should fade from the world. It's unproductive, unhelpful, and focuses on all the wrong things.
My point was only that it is not a solved problem. That's it.
(In my first draft) I originally included the detail that I was quite heavy for some time and didn't manage to slim down any until I got the right diagnosis. I deleted that (before hitting "post") in part because I get a lot of flak for talking about myself for reasons I cannot really fathom. It seems I am damned if I do and damned if I don't.
For context: My medical condition predisposes me to retain fluids. I have lost multiple dress sizes and I still don't have the flat stomach I wish I had, though I walk more than 2 hours a day every day and I eat very carefully in accordance with what I have found works to not aggravate my underlying medical condition. Counting calories is contraindicated for my condition. My specialist never once suggested I should try to lose weight when I was 245 pounds and about a size 24-26, because the vast majority of people with my condition are horrifyingly underweight and the condition is quite deadly.
If just working your ass off was going to make you thin, I should be thin. I am not.
So, sorry to have hit some nerve for you, but my one and only point was that this is simply not a solved problem. There are people who simply cannot lose the weight, no matter how much they try, research it, etc ad nauseum.
That's what I thought, too, but then I read this [1]:
> “The honest truth is nobody knows 100 percent why there is an increase,” said Dr. Mohamed E. Salem, an assistant professor at Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University. He said that he is older than about 60 percent of his patients — and he is 42. “It’s hard to blame it on obesity alone. We suspect there is also something else going on.”
The weird thing is that the sharpest increase is among young whites, and it doesn't seem to be entirely correlated with obesity.
You could argue that high sugar diets are just a proxy for obesity, so if obesity has been ruled out as a cause for this new increase then high sugar diets can be ruled out as well. Plus, no real reason it would be confined to young white people only.
But I still avoid the stuff, because it seems so unlikely that the quantity of sugar we consume is just harmless.
I dont think you can make that assimption at all. A lot of is have conditions or habits that result in modifying our eating habits and movement habits enough to always be thin even with high carb diets.
Ischemic Colitis. Also called Runner's Colitis. Basically endurance running can cause the colon to become inflamed to the point of bloody stools, among other symptoms. If there's blood in your stool your colon is clearly in a great deal of distress and you should probably put a halt to whatever's causing it. Indeed, given the known factors that increase colon cancer, you can boil all of them down to one root cause: inflammation.
Oh, I'm not giving our modern diet or lack of exercise a pass mind you. I mostly eat plants nowadays because the research is pretty clear that eating meat all the time elevates your risk and I avoid sugars save for a twice-a-week pastry because sugar is probably even worse. That being said, I'm troubled by the fact that in modern society millions of people feel compelled to take up a sporting event inspired by the heroic feats of an ancient Greek messenger who promptly collapsed and died after running what would become known as the very first marathon. Perhaps it helps them feel better than average, perhaps it's a way to overcompensate for how unhealthy our lives are. In the latter case we're probably only making things worse.
I wouldn't overlook or absolve the thousands of chemicals that have been recklessly deployed into the biosphere and rather haphazardly regulated. But if the corporate class gets its way (and it usually does), that is also not acceptable to talk about.
Exactly, you can't even mention this online without getting flamed either. Look at the compounds banned overseas and not in the US. Look at agricultural practices. Look what is in our meat.
Someone comes alongs and says "show me a study!!" No, we don't have studies for every single possibility.
To follow the rule of the land is ironically not very helpful for israel law.
The example of the copied mishna is ironic, because the plaintiff didn't write the selected parts, neither.
The comparison of IP to fish is a huge stretch. Illegal Encroachment is one thing but comparing people to fish is another. Still, I derived a new to me interpretation of intangible (as in not yet caught fish [and thus possibly not going to be caught either])
While the last example is rather topical, it contains no value judgement and still concernes tangible matters. What do the scholars have to say about reasoning by analogy?
Sure, the argument of upfront investment entitling to its fruit is compelling, but it's a slippery sloap init? Its from a time when selling people was a thing. I wouldn't give it too much thought. The article is very one sided and holier than thou in this regard for lack of a better word. (edit: forgive my ignorance, if the slave example is ill conceived)
Most people at Defcon use a "burner phone" (a cheap supermarket feature-phone) while there. Nobody who is sane would turn on their work phone anywhere near the Defcon conference. I go there every year with a throwaway phone and laptop.
So nobody will see a text message in a timely manner, unless they knew the burner phone number.
The term "most people" is terribly exaggerated. Defcon is not nearly as scary as some people make it out to be. If you have the latest security updates across your devices, disable wifi and take a few other precautions things are fine. I was there this year as saw just as many late model iPhones (most likely not a burner) in peoples hands as I did at any other conference I attended.
I gave up on burner phones because they were typically old and terribly vulnerable with no possible way to update - think older Android phones. Although, I did win the WiFi Village Fox & Hound hunt a few years back using a Samsung S4, but I had that thing locked down to using only a WiFi strength meter app and of course it was running CyanogenMod back when that was still a thing.
These days I update, backup, and lock down my daily use iPhone before going. See my post earlier in the comments for more details on that. In terms of what was happening in the last two years at DEF CON that could get you with all the steps I took, OpenLTE networks were tricking phones into attaching to them and the most disturbing thing I saw of that was middling of TLS. However, it was of course with a self-signed certificate so as long as you didn't accept the cert, you were likely fine.
If you had an older phone and one without all the latest updates and wasn't configured to be mostly silent, then your experience could be very different. There are a surprisingly high number of SMS exploits which still work to this day on a large number of phones and of course SS7 has architectural weaknesses which will likely never be fixed.
Someone had put a map together of the OpenLTE / catchers they found but I can't find it. In my particular case, I had WiFi off the entire time and received certificate validation failure notices four times at different locations while at DEFCON. Given I was only connecting with LTE, there could only be one explanation for those certificate warnings. I was being redirected to an OpenLTE or other cellular base station and someone was running a MitM proxy or solution like SSLSplit on the connection.
Unfortunately when it comes to calling it "incredibly uncommon", we really don't have any widely deployed solutions to identify rogue cellular base stations so it's very difficult to say how often it happens IRL although the only times I've ever seen it happen have been the last two years at DEF CON.
I was at a company that sent a large cohort to Defcon. I wasn’t going but I went to the pre-conference security briefing. The requirements were fairly extensive: no company laptops, only company phones with a long password, no 2G, no 4G, must be locked to a specific carrier, no WiFi, no bluetooth... the list went on. They were pretty concerned.
Out of my sample size of 1, I didn't take either of my devices -- my work phone or my personal phone -- to defcon or Vegas when I went last year: they didn't even leave my home.
I bought a laptop at Staples, put Fedora on it, used it for the conference, and I only really use it for when I go to conferences and the like.
There is a mix of folks using late model phones and burner phones, but, there there is a lot of burner usage at DefCon/DerbyCon/BlackHat.
I highly doubt this. Also, bear in mind that few bug hunters would be dumb enough to burn an iOS RCE 0day on some of the most monitored/logged wireless airspace on the planet.
I went there with my iPhone 6S and a Macbook Pro, and was fine. Granted, I spent all of DEFCON holed up in Caesar's doing the CTF, but I didn't encounter any issues.
DEF CON provides conference WiFi with preauthorized certificates (WPA2), so if you remove all other known open networks then you can have secure and sane WiFi at the conference.
>DEF CON provides conference WiFi with preauthorized certificates (WPA2), so [if you remove all other known open networks] then [you can have secure and sane WiFi at the conference].
Emphasis mine. Merely "removing" networks from your device does not preclude you from being attacked. Broadcom and all the locked-down devices that aren't iphones or high-end android devices who use them demonstrate this quite nicely.
I haven't heard any reports of people using the Broadcom attack on a vulnerable device at DEFCON (And there are a whole lot of people monitoring the airwaves)
"Then Michael asked for his wallet. When he found that it was empty, he tossed it back into the car. Then, as the police report recounted, Michael “tapped Smith’s left knee with the gun and said he was going to take the car.” "
It's misleading to classify this--as the relatives do--as an "attempted car jacking". It's not like he said "give me your car", got a no answer, and walked away. This was an armed robbery.
His family seems angry at the "white" neighbors who called the police and when he robbed them as a youth. But it's early interventions like this that _should_ have served as a warning sign to his family. It didn't. They're just angry that someone would dare call the police for an $11 robbery.