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If it is well known that it is illegal for law enforcement officers to wear masks, and there is an armed man wearing a mask who is threatening a group of people, it would be reasonable to assume they are not a law enforcement officer and a shooting could be justified in self-defense.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.

Also Matthew 6:14-16: “14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” (NIV)

I know it isn’t Biblically supported, but I always thought it would be incredibly poetic if we were asked to pass final judgement on people who had harmed us, only to find out afterwards that we were actually passing judgement on ourselves for our own actions. Makes me wonder how many people would condemn others for their own actions?

This would be a very literally implementation of Matthew 12:36-37: " 36 But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. 37 For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.” (NIV)

I’m sorry you assume this is in bad faith. Internet text messages leave a lot to be desired when it comes to conveying a message. I am sincere, but I’m afraid I often come off as know-it-all, arrogant, holier-than-thow, in an attempt to make my point. I’m afraid it is self-defeating. I need to learn how to communicate these things better.

I sincerely hope you can enjoy your day also.

You can also dig up his body and rape it still: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/articles/jeffrey-epstein-final-resting-place-183719617.html

You can, but you shouldn’t.

My post wasn’t meant it present an equivalence. It was meant to illustrate that both acts are degrading to the person performing them, with the latter being more extreme in its harm. It isn’t meant as some kind of “proof” that I am right. I was hoping that if someone agreed that the more extreme dehumanizng acts are harmful for them, then maybe they would consider that the lesser ones could also be. But I guess my real mistake was trying to convince people not to hurt themselves.

My point is that saying: “You have to have a storm if you want flowers” or “You have to break a few eggs to make an omelete” or “We must burn the old grass so that new grass can grow” are all just other ways of saying that “the ends justify the means” and have been used by people throughout history to justify whatever horrible thing they wanted to do.

That quote is from Adolf Hitler BTW. Replace [a] with Germany.

Will this coming storm be [a] death-struggle or the birth-pangs of a new and better age?

I’m not advocating tolerance. The key difference is laughing at someone’s death isn’t just an expression of disapproval, it is a devaluation of human life in general. It isn’t a question of being justified in laughing at their demise because they laughed at horrible things; the very act of laughing degrades yourself.

Let me put it another way: Epstein and his accomplices deserved to be gang raped by all of us in prison. Should we run a train on them? No! Because that defiles us as much as it does them.

You do you. I cannot change your mind.

I will not laugh though, because I look at myself and I see the same potential for evil in myself. I can see how I could become a Hitler or a Pol Pot and orchestrate horrific things while convincing myself I am right. Laughing at the death of a man who espoused violence and shunned empathy isn’t going to complete that transformation, but it is a step in that direction.

P.S. I originally posted a meme, but I thought it was too glib for this conversation.

The same logic does not apply because their motivations are different. The CEO is motivated by greed and the facist is motivated by hate.

If you are motivated by greed and selfishness in spite of the suffering of others, and you see there is a risk of losing everything because you were too exploitive, then it is in your own selfish interest to avoid that outcome.

If you are motivated by hate, then seeing someone with your ideology get shot is going to make you even more hateful and even give you the confidence that you were right all along and your hate is justified.

This is very ironic, but not at all funny. While the irony may be satisfying, it isn’t going to improve things appreciably and reveling in it is not a healthy thing to do.

If you laugh at someone getting shot because they supported gun violence, then you have just lowered yourself to their level and now everyone is just back to tribal violence.

This isn’t even potentially as beneficial as the killing of someone like Brian Thompson, because you can at least make the argument that it might make CEOs think twice before systematically exploiting people for profit. As ironic as it may be, this is not going to move the needle in a positive direction or change anyone’s mind for the better.

Death from unnatural causes aside, there are so many potentially fatal complications involved with an organ transplant, and even if you dodge all those bullets, there is the simple fact that we degenerate at a cellular level. None of us are on this Earth for long: rich, poor, president or janitor, death will not discriminate.

The RegEx thing is so true in my experience. I started working on a Neovim plugin to make editing injected code easier, and instead of suggesting Treesitter integration it wanted to create its own parser using RegEx…

If you like this book, you should also check out: “The cat in Redhat” and “ripgrep and PAM”.

We should keep in mind that thousands of people work at large corporations like Microsoft and many of them do not agree with company policy and positions, including people in senior roles.

Scott Hanselman is a VP at Microsoft who has given some of the best presentations on AI from a social, ethical, and technical demonstration standpoint that I have seen. I have been spreading his NDC London talk around to everyone I can: https://youtu.be/kYUicaho5k8

It is worth the watch.