FURG

Jesus would be alive if he had had an AK-47

The NRA is working on a time machine. They plan to go back in time to arm oppressed people everywhere. (And to arm their oppressors, too — that’s just smart business and only fair.) They’ll start with automatic rifles for the apostles.

If Africans had had firepower, they wouldn’t have been enslaved. (After all, the slavers did have guns.) If the Slaves had had guns, the Civil War would have ended sooner. (Slave holders had guns.)

If women had had machine guns, they wouldn’t have been beaten and imprisoned for demanding the right to vote.

The only thing standing between good and evil is a time traveler with a gun. See you at Little Big Horn. (Wait! No! Everyone had guns there.)

Viddy

Jungle Book troubles me

We saw the Jungle Book today. (We were the only ones at the 10:30am screening in the downtown theater at Central and 2nd.) It’s beautiful and very well made. However, I’m troubled by two things.

First, I’m uneasy about artificial reality. That is, fake video. We’ve learned to ask of any photo “is it Photoshopped?” Now, we have to ask is that really video or is some — or all — of it fake? At first, I wondered why we try so hard to fake that which we can just record. I suppose, writers want to invoke a scene and many artist seek to faithfully recreate what they see. The same energy flows into motion pictures and technology makes it possible. But it bothers me.

However, not as much as such extreme anthropomorphism. Animals don’t have councils, they don’t have credos or slogans, they don’t even have a Law of the Jungle or a Peace Rock. When we project human society onto wild animals, we ignore their truth and validate our own. It’s unfair to the natural world of which we are a part, yet increasingly, apart.

I preferred Zootopia — you know it’s made up, yet, without any human characters, it illuminates our own nature.

Election

“It’s rare that you see someone get stupider before your eyes, but [Trump is] really working at it.” — from a real billionaire

Mark Cuban: Donald Trump Becoming ‘Stupider Before Your Eyes’ by Marina Fang, Associate Politics Editor, The Huffington Post

Businessman Mark Cuban continued his crusade against Donald Trump on Tuesday by targeting the presumptive Republican nominee’s lack of substance and failed business ventures.

“It’s rare that you see someone get stupider before your eyes, but he’s really working at it,” the billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner told “Extra.” “You have to give him credit. It’s a difficult thing to do, but he’s accomplished it.”

Election, FURG

The frightened Right

I feel sorry for the people who are foaming over the threat they perceive behind sensible gun legislation. Some people fear their government and their fellow citizens. Some are furiously certain that liberals and Democrats want to take their guns as the first step toward a new Holocaust. It’s sad that clutching a weapon of mass murder doesn’t make people one whit less afraid. And it’s alarming that frightened, paranoid people serve the Gun Industry. Sales will rise again this week Ca-ching!

Election, FURG

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Trump and ISIS Depend on Irrationality

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Trump and ISIS Depend on Irrationality

Congress was elected to protect our children, not sell them out for campaign contributions from gun manufacturers and the NRA. They can yammer about the Second Amendment all they want, but that’s just another smoke screen so we don’t notice that their jobs are paid for with our children’s blood.

Who really needs assault-style rifles that can kill 50 people and wound 53 more in a matter of minutes? Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson claims the people need them to fight off “a growing police state.” Johnson believes when citizens have assault weapons, the government is more likely to grant them due process. Read that again; it’s as crazy as it sounds.

FURG

The AR-15 has to go, by Amanda Marcotte, Salon

Meet Jon Stokes: Former editor at Wired, founder of Ars Technica, and a man who really, really loves his AR-15. It’s a gun he hastens to explain is “technically a Sig Sauer MCX,” in case you were worried that his piece at Medium defending his beloved weapon would be anything but a tone-deaf temper tantrum by a man who appears to love things more than people.

“If, for you, my AR-15 ownership is prima facie evidence of my mental instability, sexual inadequacy, lack of a conscience, or what-have-you, then I honestly don’t care what you think about this issue,” Stokes scoffs, before writing his loving, erotic ode to this gun in a fashion that does very little to dissuade the reader from concerns regarding lack of conscience or sexual inadequacy.

It’s a little unclear why Stokes felt this week, of all weeks was the proper time to write his engorged tribute to his favorite toy. I realize that he really wants the world to know that his precious is imbued with awesome stopping power, but the grim fact of the matter is that the news cycle this week has done more to show off the dazzling kill abilities of the AR-15 than anything Stokes could write. If you are in doubt, here is a point-by-point comparison.

“This is all part of the reason why I, a civilian, ‘need’ a military-grade combat weapon,” Stokes explains. “I don’t want to shoot and miss; I don’t want the gun to jam because it’s dirty or cold; and I don’t want to hit my target and then have it run off into the woods and die lost and wounded because I didn’t ‘bring enough gun’.”
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Read the whole thing. It’s a brilliant juxtaposition of the selfish gun loon against the chaos and death his weapon of choice caused in Orlando. These guys drive the profits of the industry.

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." — Sam Adams