The purpose of my jellybean thought exercise was to show that “I don’t know” and “I don’t believe” are not mutually exclusive. Basically:

I do not believe [x] != I believe [not x]

I don’t believe in String Theory. String Theory may be correct for all I know: I am not a physicist, and my understanding of String Theory is cursory at best.

Because I do not have enough evidence to warrant belief, I cannot say I believe in String Theory. But that same lack of understanding means I must also say I don’t believe that String Theory is false.

Say you have a jar full of jellybeans. We know that the number of whole jellybeans in the jar must be either even or odd.

If someone asks you if you believe the number of jellybeans in the jar is even, you can and should say “no” if you haven’t counted them or otherwise gathered any evidence to support that conclusion. To believe something is to say you feel it is more likely true than false, and you can’t say that about the given proposition.

Importantly, this does not mean you do believe the number of jellybeans is odd. The fact that one of those two things must be true does not mean you have to pick one to believe and one to disbelieve. It is perfectly rational to reserve belief either way until you have evidence one way or the other. You do not believe it’s even, nor do you believe it’s odd.

So, if we define “atheist” as “someone who does not believe in any gods”, I think you meet the definition of atheist. Just like the person in the above example does not believe the jellybeans are even & also does not believe they are odd, you don’t need to believe “there are no gods anywhere” to not believe “there is at least one god”.

I feel you in a big way, but to be totally fair: corporations becoming states has probably trended towards the better from a zoomed-out perspective, and political leaders lying all the time has probably only become more visible than ever.

The entities that were doing all the colonialism for the past several hundred years have been private companies, and they did huge amounts of slavery and genocide. Blackwater is bad, but the East India Company was worse. This is not to say that things are good now, only that they aren’t like worse than they’ve ever been.

And I think the present day has a greater expectation of political leaders being accountable to the people they govern than most of history. Back in the days of monarchs and oligarchs, there was no mass media to tell everyone they were lying and no likely consequences for the liars even if there were.

Again, I empathize a huge amount with what you’ve said & I am also disappointed that the world we’ve created isn’t better than it is. I just personally think that the above two are trending in a more optimistic direction, even if they’re still objectively pretty bad.

1. Rape does not always involve physically overpowering someone. Someone may coerce someone else into sex with blackmail, lies, threats, or abuse of a position of power.

2. Erections are controlled by a person’s autonomic nervous system. A man can get hard even when he is not turned on or consenting to what is happening.

3. Not all rape involves a penis. A woman who sticks an object into a man without his consent is committing rape. Rape is about power and control over another person, and the rapist need not be directly stimulated for rape to occur.

Physical therapists! I swear by physical therapy. I had sciatica for about a year, and after a few weeks of physical therapy, it was 100% gone.

The doctor I went to before that said basically “lose weight and come back in 6 months”. My first PT session, the therapist did some deep tissue thing to my lower back and (temporarily) made the pain go away almost completely. She was like “Yeah you have an injured muscle that tenses up weird now, do these exercises at home and it should clear up” and ended up being 100% right.

Silly me, I thought you were trying to make a picture of an animal with a gun!

The receiver is backwards and there are two ejection ports.

In the US, there is a history of white performers using blackface to play caricatures of black people, leaning hard on racist ethnic stereotypes. From Wikipedia:

The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of theater developed in the early 19th century.[1] The shows were performed by mostly white actors wearing blackface makeup for the purpose of comically portraying racial stereotypes of African Americans. There were also some African-American performers and black-only minstrel groups that formed and toured. Minstrel shows stereotyped blacks as dimwitted, lazy, buffoonish, cowardly, superstitious, and happy-go-lucky.[2][3] Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people specifically of African descent.

All up and down I-95 on the east coast, too.

You cheat the perspective. You use CGI. You use electronic sim guns.

John Wick, one of the most gun-heavy actions films in recent memory, never had one actor point a live firearm at another, because that’s stupid and dangerous.

https://www.slashfilm.com/1227707/john-wick-4-director-chad-stahleski-gets-candid-about-live-firearms-on-film-sets/

That’s standard procedure on a film set. Thousands of blanks a year are fired while pointing at people. That’s literally the point of blanks.

Judging by the downvotes, this seems to be a common thought here. Let me cite some applicable industry standards: https://www.actorsequity.org/resources/Producers/safe-and-sanitary/safety-tips-for-use-of-firearms/

Treat all guns as if they are loaded and deadly.

Never point a firearm at anyone including yourself. Always cheat the shot by aiming to the right or left of the target character. If asked to point and shoot directly at a living target, consult with the property master or armorer for the prescribed safety procedures.

https://www.csatf.org/01_safety_bltn_firearms/

It is important that everyone treat all firearms, whether they are real, rubber, or replica firearms as if they are working, loaded firearms.

Anyone handling the firearm will refrain from pointing a firearm at any person, including themselves. If it is necessary to aim a firearm at another person on camera, the Property Master will be consulted to determine available options. Remember: a firearm, including one loaded with blanks, can inflict severe damage to anything/anyone at which/to whom the firearm is pointed.

And I want to re-iterate, Baldwin did not shoot another actor who his character shoots in the film. He was not supposed to have his finger on the trigger for this shot, nor was he even supposed to fully draw his weapon. This was not the first time he pointed a gun at a camera person and fired off-script; the footage played in the trial showed him shooting directly at the camera after the director yelled “cut”.

And again: even if it were industry standard to shoot blanks directly at another person: that’s a stupid and reckless standard, and any reasonable person should refuse. I really feel like most of the defense of Baldwin is borne out of well-meaning ignorance.

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

1. It was a gun. An actual, functioning firearm. He knew it was a gun & told the police as much afterwards. There is never any good reason to point a gun at someone you are not currently trying to kill. Even if you ignore the common sense and assume there are somehow different rules for movie sets & using blanks, the other armorer they brought in testified that no one should ever be in the line of fire. He absolutely roasted Reed for not telling Baldwin to not point the gun at people in the footage they played for him.

2. The scene did not call for him to draw his gun, let alone shoot it. He wasn’t pointing it at another actor and playing a scene where he shoots someone, he was pointing it at someone behind the camera for no good goddamn reason. We saw from the BTS footage played in court that this was not the first time he pointed a gun at the camera and shot it outside the actual filming of the movie.

3. Baldwin neglected to do the training for the seated cross draw, the same maneuver he was doing when he killed someone. No doubt Reed was negligent, but even she tried to get him to do that.

I simply do not understand why people are letting Baldwin off the hook. He pointed a loaded gun at someone and pulled the trigger. People fucking die when that happens.

I mean, he did. He pointed a gun at someone and shot them. Not saying that Reed is innocent; the fact that live rounds ever made it into the gun seems to be her fault. But Baldwin absolutely should not have pointed a gun at someone in the first place.

I mean, good on her for being anti-war and wanting to release political prisoners I guess? I have no clue what she was expecting though. Trying to run against a dictator in a sham election seems like maybe not the best way to effect political change, not to mention dangerous.

Relevant XKCD

“One of the problems of the two party system is what Margaret Thatcher used to call ‘Tina’ – there is no alternative,” he said, referring to a phrase the former British prime minister used to defend her government’s stringent economic policies in the early 1980s.

“The Democratic party has this crypto-fascist element when it comes to mass incarceration, when it comes to dropping bombs … when it comes to surveillance, when it comes to violation of individual liberties vis-a-vis the national security state.”

I mean, he has a point. However, I don’t know that acknowledging the flaws in a two-party system, then running in such a way that’ll likely invoke those very same flaws is a winning strategy.

It seems to me like someone in his shoes would be more effective running for congress / rallying people around reworking our current first-past-the-post voting system & electoral college.

I did some numbers because it sounded fun.

Earth’s diameter is 41.804 million feet. I’m not sure if you meant that or Earth’s circumference when you said “Earth’s surface”, but I figure either one is gonna get us a really big number.

The first result I can find for string comes in a pack that weighs 2.89oz and contains 328 feet of string.

Using that as our standard, you would need 127,452 packs of string (assuming you find a way to perfectly attach them without wasting any length on knots).

127,452 * (2.89 / 16) = 23,021 lbs of string total.

So if we ignore the string stretching, compressing, or breaking, you’d only need to be able to pull 11ish tons of string to ring the bell!

EDIT:

Just for fun: Assuming the motion of the string travels at the speed of sound (I have no idea if it actually would, it just sounds right), there would be about 10.5 hours between you pulling the string and the bell ringing on the other side.