It’s mens rea, lit. “guilty mind”, e.g. intent. If you take an action with the intent to cause a death, that’s murder (in my state, that would specifically be malice murder). If you take an action that is likely to cause a death with reckless indifference, but not intent, that’s usually something like murder in the second degree. If you cause a death through negligence or by accident, that’s usually some form of manslaughter.

Most traffic accidents are negligent; people don’t (…usually…) get into a car with the intent to kill someone, nor are they usually driving in a way that the know is likely to cause harm to other people. There are obvs. factors that will affect this–such as driving drunk–but causing a death is usually unintentional, and not through reckless indifference.

I opt for bitcoin because it has more utility value for me.

My bank makes it an enormous pain in my ass to buy things from overseas vendors; they won’t process any payments that are going outside of the US border. The rationale is ‘fraud’, even when you’re dealing with well-known and trusted vendors. Even when I try calling my banks and telling them to pre-authorize the charges, they won’t go through. The only way I can get around that within the established financial system is by using a 3rd party payment service; those 3rd party services make their money by lopping off a percentage of that purchase. E.g., if I’m buying something for $1000 from China (and we’re going to ignore tariffs, duties, taxes, and shipping costs for the moment), then I may have to pay $1040 for it, because of the fees that are taken out. On the other hand, if I’m buying from a trusted vendor, and I use bitcoin, I can just send it to them. Bitcoin doesn’t care where it’s going, and–assuming you don’t care about speed of confirmations–transaction fees can be quite a bit lower than using any other payment system. (And, BTW, transaction fees are built into all payment processing systems; it’s just not apparent to individuals on the purchasing end. That means that if something costs .001btc, then I have to send, say, .0010001btc to the vendor, but then the)

Speculation doesn’t play a role in it for me.

I have no direct use for gold; I can’t plate connectors.

Or get a Dillon XL 750, a few pounds of Accurate 2230, and load your own while listening to The Tiger Bloc Podcast.

Not significantly, as long as you aren’t buying ammo that’s remanufactured, or is some Russian brand (Wolf, Silver Bear, etc.)/Turkish, etc. A bigger issue is going to be the twist rate of your barrel and the weight of the bullet, but even that’s not going to be a big issue unless you’re trying to get your rifle down to 1 MOA accuracy.

I’ve read the background on that case, and it’s all kinds of fucked. Like, the person that had been convicted under the law–and was thus arguing against it–didn’t even have representation show up in court, because he’d had to go into hiding. And the person that had convicted him knew that would be the case. Without anyone to even argue his side, it was practically a foregone conclusion that the court was going to reach a decision that the gov’t supported.

The tax was intended to be so high that no normal person could afford it. You could apply the same logic to free speech rights, and say that you have to pay a tax of $10,000 is you want to criticize Israel’s genocide in Gaza. It’s obviously intended to prevent the free exercise of the right.

Yes.

But many people–and I’m not saying you do this–but many people get gold, silver, and diamonds confused, and think that their intrinsic value is linked to their perceived value. does that make sense?

…And they were absolutely wrong to do so then. Thankfully the Revolt at Cincinnati got them on the correct track of championing the individual right to keep and bear arms, as the constitution clearly intended, and as was understood for over a century. Then Wayne LaPierre called fibbies jack-booted thugs (which is true) shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing, and Bush very publicly resigned his lifetime membership. LaPierre caved, apologized, and now the NRA is a bunch of bootlickers.

There really aren’t any groups with the power of the NRA that are truly, deeply committed to the idea that the right to keep and bear arms is a right for everyone. And that’s unfortunate. Especially now.

…Except that gold, like the dollar, and like bitcoin, has the value it does because people believe it does. Sure, gold’s a great semiconductor. But if that was all we used it for, the price of gold would be a tine fraction of what it is. Diamonds are great as abrasives and in certain cutting applications, but that’s all synthetic now. Natural diamonds only have high value because of artificial scarcity and advertising.

I’ve read history books that aren’t full-blown propaganda. If you had read any, you would know that oppression and violence is the foundation of ALL western countries, and most non-western ones as well. The difference being that countries in the EU are more comfortable forgetting that their wealth was built on things like the exploitation of the Congo, the British East India Company, et al.

The founding document of the US though, which is what I was clearly referring to, established certain civil rights that the gov’t isn’t supposed to infringe. Religious liberty is one of those. This is notably not a right in most non-US countries; many EU countries have state-funded religions, and citizens are often taxes by the gov’ts to pay for those religions.

I’m an atheist and a Satanist. I agree that these people are, by the measure of what the Jesus Christ of the Christian Bible is claimed to have said, hypocrites. At best. And yes, Jesus said that you should pray in private, and that people who pray in public so that they can be seen to pray have already received their reward. (Matthew 6:5 - “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.”)

But it’s still a foundational civil right.

Yeah, no. That was never the intent of 1A. Individuals, or groups, are more than welcome to pray in government buildings, as long as they aren’t forcing that religious expression on unwilling people, using it as a religious test, or something similar that would amount to the establishment of a state-sponsored religion.

Students can pray in schools; teachers can pray in schools. Teachers can not compel students to participate in prayers, nor are teachers supposed to lead students in prayer (as that’s implied compulsion).

Constitutional freedoms–including religion–are a foundation for our country. If that’s not what you want, feel free to repeal the constitution, or move to a country that has a state religion instead.

Cruelty and sociopathy.

Uh. This is absolutely a constitutional freedom. Would y’all be incensed if it was a Muslim congressperson (say, Rashida Tlaib) that was praying? Yeah, they’re hypocrites, but get angry about the hypocrisy and the Christian nationalism, not the expressions of religion.

I named a black cat Svartur. I also had a cat named Potet. (“Black” and “Potato” respectively.)

I had a cat that my partner nicknamed pants. He answered to it.

The tragedy can often be avoided by everyone agreeing that destroying the commons is bad

Right, but you’re also creating a prisoner’s dilemma. That is, if everyone agrees to work one way, and you have one person that breaks rules in a way that gets them ahead–and lets say that, in a purely communist society, that ‘getting ahead’ in this instance means that they need to put in less work to have the same result as everyone else, and thus have more time available for themselves–then it creates a strong incentive for everyone to follow suit. You need those outside regulatory bodies with enforcement powers in order to create the disincentive to breaking rules and agreements.

Perversely, farmers often know that what they’re doing is deeply harmful for the environment, but there are strong financial disincentives preventing them from changing. Without both a regulatory structure forcing change on everyone, combined with incentives that make changing affordable to them (such as giving them cash to buy updated equipment to farm in new ways, and ensuring revenue levels), they’re kinda fucked.