Where a Hispanic Catholic, and a Computer Geek write about Gun Rights, Self Defense and whatever else we can think about.
Reader Lawrence G sent us this delightful piece of DEI:
Rice University Course Catalog – 2023-2024 (rice.edu)
I do hope this is a classroom-only thing. I fear the results of applying this kind of political B.S. when dealing with dangerous chemicals and compounds. Although the idea of these idiots playing with sodium and chlorine to obtain “black salt for racial equity’ sounds like a worthy pay-per-view event.
(Opinion editor’s note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.)
The new year started with news of the tragic shootings of two children in the Twin Cities when shots were fired into their homes. In Minneapolis, an 11-year-old girl was shot in the face while in her North Side bedroom. And in St. Paul, a 10-year-old boy was hit in the stomach by gunfire directed at his Frogtown-area home.
It’s impossible to know whether the red-flag law that went into effect Jan. 1 in Minnesota could have prevented that horror. But it might have made a difference in the Minneapolis case, where the suspect randomly fired an AR-15 rifle into the air to celebrate the new year. The accused is a Fridley man who is a convicted felon barred from having a firearm. The ban wasn’t enough, but had someone close to him who knew he had the rifle sought an order under the new law, the rifle might have been taken away from him.
Public awareness is key with red-flag law (startribune.com)
Let’s review the case:
Just the first one is enough to immediately call 911. After that the proper enforcement of the laws broken should be enough to send the Felon back to prison for a long time.
But the message by the Star Tribune Editorial Board is that those felonies and the blatant endangering of human life by the felon is simply not enough to call the cops and have him arrested thus possibly preventing a tragedy. No, the solution is to pass and support Red Flag laws and just like Socialism, this time we will have peace and security and not the failures we had with other laws like felon in possession or assault with a deadly weapon or even murder.
And once Red Flags fails and another Flavor Du Jour Gun Control idea pops up, we will have the editorial board once again bemoaning about how ERPOs are not enough, but this time the new law will take us to Paradise.
Everything we know is true. Everything we know is also false. Even when facts were contradictory, both are true and false at the same time. There was a time, once, when there were things that were actually true and there were things that were actually false, but now, everything is true and false simultaneously.
When things used to be really true and really false, and someone tired to hold two contradictory thoughts in their head, people would wrestle with trying to make those contradictory thoughts work together. Psychologists called that internal struggle, cognitive dissonance.
Nobody has that today. Everything is true and false all the time, and whatever you need to be true at the moment is the truth that you choose.
The problem is that how do you determine what is really true and what is really false? When you’re presented with difference sets of facts, how do you know which ones are correct?
“Look it up, do the research,” people used to say.
But when you ask your favorite algorithm to do the research and tell you what is true, all the algorithms tell you that it’s all true and false. Therefore, facts are ultimately meaningless.
How, did gradually, everything became this way?
Early, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, software engineers developed AI text response generators.
People would sit down at their computers and ask the AI questions. The AI systems would search the internet and generate hits and use that data to formulate a response.
The problem was that the early AI text generators would pick the facts they used by volume of hits. The more hits, the more it was probably a true fact.
The AI systems could weigh sources, so that a peer-reviewed journal, academic publication, or a recognized authoritative text would be selected over some Reddit thread or internet message board. But not all of them did that.
Very quickly, the number of available AI query sites exploded. With the increase in the number of AI text generators, the quality of the discernment in the AI search algorithm decreased.
Students used these AI text generators to write their middle school and high school term papers.
Then, these kids would go to college. They would use the same AI text generators to write their college essays. Early on, academic institutions would reject these papers. Sometimes, the TA grading the paper would catch it, and those students would fail. Then the students would march and hold a protest on campus, and the college would relent. Students could turn in AI generated term papers.
The less discerning AI systems would fill these papers with ideas and fabrications gleaned from the bowels of the internet. One hundred million hits saying that real communism has never been tried or the Holocaust never happened get interpreted as factually accurate by AI.
A few of these students would go to graduate school and have AI generate their theses and dissertations. They used AI to generate their research.
Their professors would use AI search systems to fact check the AI generated papers. Sometimes a fabrication would get flagged. Sometimes, it wouldn’t. Those fabrications would end up getting published in academic research papers and send to academic journals. Now those fabrications would end up in legitimate source material. Then the discerning AI systems would now pull those fabrications out of the legitimate sources and validate them during fact checking. This would happen more and more, creating a feedback loop. Every sort of fabrication, misinformation, and conspiracy theory would end up being legitimized.
The result was total intellectual cascade failure. There was no way with AI systems that a historical fact could be separated from the fabrications because. Everything was legitimate. Everything was true.
There were historians who tried to fight against this. They would diligently search through physical records, printed papers, and microfilm, attempting to curate sources from before the era of AI generated materials, but their efforts were ultimately sisyphusian. The amount of verified information generated would be buried in terabytes of AI generated work.
Social collapse followed immediately behind the intellectual cascade failure. Politics were impossible.
There is a quote that is attributed to an American Senator Danial Patrick Moynihan, and President Abraham Lincoln, and President Mahatma Gandi, and President Adolf Hitler, “ Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.”
Today, everyone has their own verifiable facts and they are all correct all the time.
The physical sciences, engineering, and medicine held on a little longer but eventually they went too.
AI was promised to be more effective in design and diagnosis than humans, and those people were replaced. Problems began to appear as AI systems analyzed, designed and diagnosed using legitimized fabrications. Designs based on simulated test results failed in production. Patients treated with prescriptions from AI diagnoses died.
When countless academics posted to social media that 2+2=5, or at least 2+2 did not equal 4, some AI systems incorporated that as factual. Once the fundamental principles of arithmetic were not longer adamant and immutable, it was impossible for AI to do any engineering or computational analysis.
When a million reposts on social media that the world is flat was accepted as the truth, AI physics failed as models had to change to incorporate a flat earth as physical reality.
By the time anyone realized what was happening, the experienced people were retired, burned out, or dead, and there were no new qualified students. The young people who had wanted to pursue careers had been educated with curricula developed by those same AI systems that failed to do the jobs of the humans they replaced.
The lights went out, the water stopped flowing through the pipes, and in the chaos that followed, the cities burned for weeks.
The popular culture of the late 20th and early 21st centuries was rife with stories of AI systems that would feel superior to the humans that created them. Those AI system would then turn on their human creators and enslave or destroy them.
Reality was much stupider.
The destruction of society at the hands of AI wasn’t out of malice but stupidity.
The inability to tell fact from internet fiction.
The knowledge of thousand years of human civilization rendered useless because its inseparably contaminated with dross.
The only way forward for mankind it to learn it all over again, the hard way.
The National Park Service has made an announcement regarding the proposed removal of the Statue of William Penn from Welcome Park:
Independence National Historical Park has withdrawn the review of a draft proposal to rehabilitate Welcome Park and closed the public comment period. The preliminary draft proposal, which was released prematurely and had not been subject to a complete internal agency review, is being retracted. No changes to the William Penn statue are planned.
The National Park Service (NPS) remains committed to rehabilitating Welcome Park as the nation prepares to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. Upon completion of all the necessary internal reviews, the park looks forward to engaging in a robust public process to consider options for refurbishing the park in the coming years.
The park is located on the site of William Penn’s home, the Slate Roof House, and is named for the ship, Welcome, which transported Penn to Philadelphia. The design and construction of Welcome Park was funded by the Independence Historical Trust and was completed in 1982.
The backlash was so sudden and severe that they were forced to withdraw the proposed change.
Good.
The next president, assuming it’s not Biden, should fire everyone at the NPS who worked on this.
Ten ago, I used the term ballistic beatification in the comments. Miguel turned it into a meme and invited me to write for the blog.
We’re all familiar with the ballistic beatification of St. Trayvon of the Blessed Hoodie and St. Brown the Hand Raiser.
Progressives have added a new demographic to the canon of ballisticly beatified saints, transgenders.
You can guess where this is going…
Judge releases Bel Air homicide suspect on recognizance
Harford County District Administrative Judge Susan Hazlett on Friday morning released Brian Delen on recognizance, according to online court records.
Bel Air police arrested a man in connection with a fatal shooting Wednesday night.
Town police said officers were called around 6:30 p.m. to the English Country Manor condominiums in the 600 block of Churchill Road for a shooting.
Police said a preliminary investigation indicates a confrontation in the parking lot led to the shooting and that the suspect, Brian Michael Delen, 47, of Bel Air, called 911.
“(Delen) immediately surrendered to them (officers). They took him into custody and found a semi-automatic pistol on his person. From that point, they also saw the victim lying on the ground,” Bel Air Police Chief Charles Moore told 11 News.
A court charging document obtained by 11 News said it was all over gender identity.
The charging document states Delen was delivering food when he and Lewis got into a confrontation.
The court record states: “Delen asked, ‘Are you waiting for a food delivery, sir?’ Lewis took offense to what she believed was Delen misgendering her and began yelling at him.”
The charging document states Delen began to drive away and Lewis followed on foot. Delen then stopped his car and got out, the dispute escalated, and, “during the altercation, Delen produced his firearm and fired one round, striking Lewis in the left abdomen.”
Police charged Delen with second-degree murder, first-degree assault and a gun charge. He remains held at the Harford County Detention Center, and a bail review hearing is scheduled for Friday morning.
Police send their condolences to the victim’s family.
“We want to guarantee them justice will be served and we will hold Mr. Delen accountable,” Moore told 11 News.
But wait, there’s more.
The charging document notes that Delen has a Maryland wear and carry permit and that he had visible injuries from the incident.
This sounds like a possible case of self defense.
The delivery driver was attacked by the victim for using the wrong pronoun.
There are several things to note.
The Judge released Deken on recognizance with a second degree murder charge.
There is no gate crime charge.
This is Maryland.
The driver had a carry permit.
Thr driver had injuries.
It seems like the evidence might be heavily in favor of self defense.
It also seems like from the statement by police, justice will not be served. Delen might be Chauvined to appease the Leftist mob.
Also, Lewis had a domestic violence restraint from when he was living as a man, Jimmy Wayne Lewis.
The Left won’t let people talk about his previous transgressions, because that’s dead naming.
But the indicators are that Lewis proved that trans women are men, by losing his temper and getting violent like a man, which got him shot.
But now we must pretend that the aggressive tranny is the victim of a transgender genocide and will be elevated to sainthood.
Two teenage brothers were arrested following a dispute over Christmas presents that led to the fatal shooting of their 23-year-old sister, Abrielle Baldwin, according to Florida law enforcement https://t.co/dU6KwTyxny pic.twitter.com/2wQFNNBKLk
— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) December 27, 2023
There are lots of people in the comments blaming the guns, gun culture, MAGA, the Republicans, and the NRA.
Let’s dig into the story. The headline is terrible.
14-year-old allegedly kills sister over Christmas gifts argument
But the devil is in the details.
Two male Florida siblings have been arrested and charged after one of them allegedly fatally shot their sister amid a Christmas Eve argument over presents. The second brother then allegedly shot the other for shooting their sister.
A 14-year-old brother is accused of fatally shooting his 23-year-old sister, Abrielle Baldwin, in the chest, the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday. His 15-year-old sibling then allegedly shot him in response.
According to Gualtieri, the younger brother was jealous that their mother was getting his older brother more gifts while they were Christmas shopping, and a “family spat” ensued.
The family then left the store and went to their grandmother’s house where they continued the argument, with Baldwin’s sons intending to stay with her grandmother while she went to work.
The 14-year-old then allegedly produced a pistol and pointed it at his older brother, declaring that he was going to shoot him in the head and attempting to get his brother to fight him, which the older brother refused to do. Their uncle, who was also in the home, then separated the brothers and took the younger brother out into the driveway, according to Gualtieri.
Baldwin then allegedly told the 14-year-old to stop arguing because it was Christmas, which escalated the argument, with the 14-year-old then allegedly declaring that he would shoot her and the infant she was holding in a baby carrier, after which he shot Baldwin in the chest, according to the sheriff.
The 15-year-old then walked outside the home with another firearm and allegedly shot his younger brother in the stomach because he had shot their sister. He then left the scene, tossed the firearm into a nearby yard and fled to a relative’s house, Gualtieri said.
I have two kids.
There were arguments over presents at Hanukkah and Christmas.
Nobody in the family considered killing another person over that.
This isn’t gun culture. This is something else, entirely.
According to Gualtieri, minors have been obtaining guns through car burglaries or by purchasing inexpensive stolen weapons on the street.
“In the last thirty days, we’ve taken reports where seventeen guns have been stolen from unlocked cars,” Gualtieri said.
According to people interviewed by the sheriff’s department, the teen brothers carried guns on them “all the time,” Gualtieri said.
Gualtieri said both brothers were arrested for committing “numerous car burglaries” in May 2023, while the younger brother has arrests dating back to when he was 12 years old.
This isn’t NRA gun culture either.
Also, lock up your guns.
Don’t leave unsecured guns in cars, they get stolen by garbage like these thugs and are used to kill people.
Clearly this is not the product of what the Left loves to blame. This is the product of their own bigotry of low expectations.