In Blade Runner 2049, Weta Workshop had their laser pistols set up with a solenoid that moved back and forth with a trigger pull. Adam Savage looked at them in a Tested video. I don’t know if it’s cost prohibitive, but it sure seemed like the right way to do it.

However, you don’t get smoke with that. You can definitely rig something up as they did it with a knock off nerf blaster in the 80’s or even a cap gun, but at some point I assume the level of complexity makes modifying a real gun cheaper.

You could weld shut the barrel of a gun, which is what a lot of them do, but it seems like it’s a cost cutting measure when they used real guns that would retain their value. Alec (as a producer) used a cheap setup with a cheap armorer that didn’t know what they were doing. It’s both of their faults.

I’m right there with you. I get the feeling that the richest people in power are counting on the coming apocalypse to solve it. What slows greenhouse gases, plastic usage, oil refining, overfishing, etc? Less people. We’ll have oil wars, water wars, and kill/die off. Until then, make as much money as possible to wall yourself off in a bunker and survive. It’s easier to continue to exploit the economy than to fix it, make less, and have less people die. If we’re all dead, everything is solved for them and they’ve maximized profit that they can then use to boost survival and stay on top.

I don’t see an incentive for them to do otherwise.

You might need to account for an extra day or two to dig down low enough in the rocky mountains. Unless you’re working with a friend and they brought their own shovel.

That, and also that’s not how the English language works.

And you call them steamed dilithium despite the fact that they’re obviously crystalized.

This parasitic infection isn’t actually any more debilitating than vaccines

Lol wat.

I don’t know why they’d go for this. They already write the laws that Congress approved, and it costs far less than a billion. Heck, you can buy a congressman that’ll sway the others for as low as 20k.

It died in my area when they dropped the amount of spawn nodes to the point where you couldn’t really walk around. You had to drive pretty far at that point, and that kill let most people’s enthusiasm.

I don’t know if it was complaints by local businesses or what, but after that I never saw large groups walking around again.

I don’t trust anything that wormy little turtle scrotum says.

Unless it’s death. I’d believe him if he dies.

Alas, I don’t live in Kentucky and can’t do anything about him continuing to be a political figure.

It used to give good info, maybe 10 years ago. And remember when everyone’s number was in the phone book? Why isn’t there an online version of that anymore? Not this “buy now” scam stuff.

Direct x is definitely a problem, and it doesn’t help that Final Fantasy 14 is a poorly coded game, as I’ve never had problems prior to that. And I’m running Windows 10. I used to run Linux years ago, but couldn’t use Netflix on it. Now that they’re crap and jellyfin is a better choice overall, I might have to try switching back. I’d greatly prefer to use all AMD, but we’ll see. I think the upcoming W11 upgrade-or-die ultimatum in October 2025 will force lazy people like myself to spend the time to switch or rebuy. My work environment that I support is Windows/Cisco/Fortinet, so it’s easier to come home and do the same rather than learn how to install/configure/support Linux versions of the same thing. But who knows what the next year will bring.

I felt the same way until I had a ROG strix RX-2700xt. I started getting fatal directx errors playing FFXIV all the time. It was an allocation problem and there was no driver version I could try that fixed it. I started trying to learn to custom-patch a driver, gave up, and bought an Nvidia card which I hated to do. Fixed the problem. Turns out the drivers for that specific card suck in general.

I still prefer AMD, but I’m wary of card manufacturers. Their drivers can be awful. In this case though, the default drivers didn’t work either. And you generally won’t know the word on the street until well after the cards aren’t higher end.

Anecdotal for sure, but it took a year of fighting on and off to fix and I don’t want that when I’m trying to relax.

It’s two totally different movies mashed together. The first one is Napoleon being an amazing general and taking over. The second is Josephine and Napoleon’s love story.

The problem is, they had to cut out half of each movie to shoehorn in the plots from both, so neither is really well done. Why is Napoleon out in a position of leadership, and why is he so good at being a general? How did he get enough support to essentially take over and become emperor? No idea. Why did Josephine cheat on him, and did he cheat on her? Why did they stay together for so long? Where did she come from, how did she feel about suddenly becoming Empress? Did they start treating each other differently? Was an heir important to either of them personally, or was it a political requirement? Again, no idea.

This movie couldn’t figure out if it wanted to be military history, or a love story. Pick a lane!

Your 20 year old car hasn’t been getting regular software and hardware updates from the manufacturer, though. United has.

You think they’d divulge the intelligence report, thus potentially exposing their sources, to settle Internet arguments?

If it was internal to the US after the investigation when all the involved parties were identified, a la 9/11, then I would expect it. But not in international relations.

Off the top of my head, a big one is that most of the people living in Buenos Aires, Argentina, are blond haired and blue eyed. Argentina, being a famous refuge for Nazis post-WWII. Almost like they won in the end.

At the beginning of the revolutionary war, militias, minutemen, and even the Continental army relied on soldiers to bring their own weapons from home. They would never have held off British troops long enough to have a revolution at all otherwise. This was an 8 year war, and only after 1776 did they begin to supply the Continental army with arms from France on the regular. Spain as well.

It was absolutely their intention to have regular citizens armed. With nuclear weapons? No. Be serious. With small arms able to be used by one person. To my knowledge, private citizens didn’t have access to cannons at a reliable quantity to count on them in battle.

This is what our flawed founding fathers experienced first hand and amended the Constitution with.

That will never fly as a “middle ground” because the second amendment was never written as a hunter’s law. It’s a Revolutionary, shooting-at-people law that didn’t take into account advances in technology because they didn’t matter.

What they had different were people upset with a government across the ocean and soldiers in their homes, and the only people upset with the colonists were slaves that weren’t allowed guns, education, or freedom. So that made the problem we face way less likely.

Any middle ground like you suggest would take a constitutional amendment and mass adoption, and the ones with the guns that aren’t likely to shoot up the place (Jan 6th excluded) are not keen on either.

Even if it’s only one life saved, that’s great. But can’t we want to fix the systemic problems that lead to gun violence as well? It also fixes a lot of other bad things that don’t lead to gun violence, like homelessness, depression, preventable deaths, inadequate health care, etc.

What I’m saying is that guns aren’t the problem. They make the problem worse. I’d like to see us try to fix both instead of a half measure of different gun laws.

I have a great business idea - sell a roku-like device for half the price and a .99 cent subscription fee. Then when I’ve captured the market I force them to accept draconian new terms that cost way more or I brick the device. By then it’s too late and I can suck all the money out of it from the people that can’t switch.

And if they don’t like it? Too bad; they signed away their rights to sue.

It’s a foolproof plan! As long as I don’t get shot in the street but justifiably angry customers.