I hear you, and like you said it all depends on your scenario. Someone on a ranch compound with multiple buildings they need/want to check on versus a RV/boat living alone are dramatically different ends of the home defense spectrum.

Your scenario may be vastly different from mine or someone else’s - which is why I have a hard time giving universal advice. Pick your platform, and test it. See if it’ll will or will not work out at 3am when you’re carrying a frightened child back to your safe area, or if your long gun needs a sling added, or if that 33rd Glock magazine is actually kinda massive and gets in your way.

IIRC the bump stock was designed as an aid for veterans who had lost a limb to allow them to use a pistol one-handed.

The bump stock is derpy and just for simulating full auto. You’re thinking of the pistol brace that you strap to your arm - they both were in discussion for bans around the same era, that’s likely where you got them mixed up 🙂

Pistol braces are in a “legal but the ATF doesn’t like that fact” area atm. Tl; dr they made an interpretative rule change out of whole cloth, got slapped in the courts, and have a permanent stay on enforcing their rule change.

I have mixed feels on that 9mm v pump shotty for the home debate. Personally I’d argue for an AR over the shotgun, but that’s less universally legal and doesn’t have the same binary roadmap of “870 or 590, who cares” and the AR field is FILLED with vendor trash.

But. If it’ll literally never leave the house and you can shoot it, a 12 gauge pump beats the pistol every day imo. Pick a hallway/stairwell, and camp your chosen angle with said shotgun. Compared to a pistol it’s hands down better; shooting handguns quickly and accurately is HARD. The handgun gives up a stock, longer sight rib/radius, use of slugs, and a much better trigger without throwing money away.

The handgun’s primary benefit as a platform is concealment. That’s it. So if someone literally only has $600 and needs a catch all solution - police trade-in Glock 19/17, a real holster, and (plz please puleaze) a lockbox of some kind. If they can swing another $300 or so, then add on a shotgun.

The Mar-a-Lago face is a uniquely Trumpian aesthetic, but it’s not exactly like the chief worm himself is taking efforts to also be healthy, let alone exude a vision of beauty. It’s performative for The Boss alone, because that’s the twisted vision of female beauty that Trump wants to look at whilst he eats himself into Holden Bloodfeast’s sluglike form.

But the hypocrisy and narcissism of these people quietly abusing GLP-1s is a new data point on a long trend line of image-obsessed fash. Publicly defending a child sex trafficker is a wild new escalation, especially for a party that robes itself in ‘family values’ and ‘god fearing’ politics.

Lemme just hate on a woman because of her appearance real quick, nvm her active child-rape apologia

You doing okay bro?

There’s at least two jokes/British cultural memes that almost no Americans are going to get lmao divided by a shared language

What information are professors giving you that you can’t get anywhere else?

A reading list and critical analysis.

Because an autodidact will end up reading the ‘good’ books and not reading the critiques or counter-narratives. An algorithm feed will serve you the consumable content that keeps you engaged, not the information that you need to sit with to digest and re-examine what you thought you knew to be true.

You gain the most understanding during the un-learning and analysis process. Reading one book won’t do that. Hence, a reading list.

Netanyahu claimed foreign leaders who “public condemn us privately thank us. They tell me how much they value Israel’s superb intelligence services that have prevented, time and again, terrorist attacks in their capitals.” He did not say which countries’ leaders had privately thanked him.

“So Benjamin, are those leaders in the room with us right now?”

Even the US pulled their senior diplomats who’d normally be there and sent the interns instead lmao

What’s actually funny is how yall swallow this performative jackassery whole, as if it’s actually improving military readiness or ‘lethality’, instead of demanding accountability from government. Super glad that they’ve clearly solved all the big issues like the PFAS contamination on multiple bases poisoning soldiers and their families, or the entirety of the VA dumpster fire, or the Pentagon not being able to pass an audit for decades.

But nah, let’s fire a 21 year careerist because some terminally online losers got triggered by pronouns and her billet. I’m sure those considering re-enlisting won’t mind the risk of losing their pension overnight because Twitter demanded a blood sacrifice.

I do not want to normalize murder as a trump card in political discourse - not any further than the right has already mind you.

But I am enjoying seeing these hate mongers feel some of that turned back their way, in a very public manner. Having the outside world ‘cancelled’ for themselves for fear of assassins and high powered rifles. Always having to travel with security, constantly worried if their next organic street encounter will be with a genuine fan, or ‘a fan’ with a vendetta.

Tolerance paradox aside, I still condemn this though - because political assassination does not bode well in the immediate term, nor the long term if this kind of activity keeps repeating… it ultimately only leaves the most hardline and ideological voices on the soapbox.

Different Ghandi

As prime minister, [Indira] Gandhi was known for her uncompromising political stances and centralization of power within the executive branch.… Responding to separatist tendencies and a call for revolution, she instituted a state of emergency from 1975 to 1977, during which she ruled by decree and basic civil liberties were suspended. More than 100,000 political opponents, journalists and dissenters were imprisoned. She faced the growing Sikh separatism movement throughout her fourth premiership; in response, she ordered Operation Blue Star, which involved military action in the Golden Temple and killed hundreds of Sikhs. On 31 October 1984, she was assassinated by two of her bodyguards, both of whom were Sikh nationalists seeking retribution for the events at the temple.

you can still unlock more of your own potential and understand yourself better

Which is why I avoided saying “full potential” like it’s a life panacea and any failure to achieve 100% is your personal failure instead of the program’s.

Yes please only go to board certified professionals for mental health and/or therapy, and please please puhhlease don’t make an LLM or authority figure like a priest your therapist…

Sure, compared to food or shelter it’s in the ‘nice to have’ category. But for me at least it’s shown a lot of things that I would never have understood or probed deeply enough to address. Better relationships, more understanding of self/finding your actual self, handle adversity better, etc etc

You don’t have to sign up for endless sessions, you can quite viably do a few introductory sessions and ask for takeaway homework/tools to use. Return as needed or when you’ve found a new topic that you feel needs work.

It’s the days you rawdog life and go home without music. Thems the days.

Go to therapy y’all. Even if you had a perfect upbringing and zero trauma or adversity, you can still unlock more of your own potential and understand yourself better. Even an imperfect outlet like a NA group setting like is better than white knuckling it.

This is my headcannon for why we’ll never have first contact. Because in a theoretical infinite universe, aliens 100% exist in some form, but they’re absolutely mortified by the signals we pump out into our nearspace from TV, radio, internet, etc

The most curious aliens might take a peek or come down for scans, but actually getting out of the UAP is like jumping the fence at the Cincinnati Zoo.

At some point…? After that kid popped off at him in PA, all the offline people I know were just pretty universally either “shame he lived” or “meh”.

You can only be a hateful and bigoted bully for so long before even the ‘apolitical normie’ can connect the dots between Cheeto’s stochastic terrorism, and someone turning that energy back his way.

My chief complaint is only being able to upvote this once, excellent OC 👏