HelixDab2
@HelixDab2@lemm.ee
- Comment on Is martial arts really that useful? 5 days ago:
Uh. I know a whole bunch of people that have bounced at multiple clubs in Chicago. I know one guy that was loss prevention at a store in Chicago that used to love chasing people down, because he enjoys that shit.
Tell yourself that if you want to, but the truth is that bouncers are going to have to know how to fight to at least some degree, because they’re going to end up in fights.
- Comment on Is martial arts really that useful? 6 days ago:
A bouncer isn’t usually going to be fighting to survive; they’re throwing some dude the fuck out of a venue, or subduing them until cops show up.
As far as my comment about Shiv Works - I stand by that 100%. Look them up. They train with bare hands, knives, and guns (firing non-lethal training munitions), and in awkward spaces (such as you might experience in a car jacking).
Any discipline that forces you to act while under pressure is going to improve your odds if you end up in a situation where fighting is your only real option. If you get sucked-punched on a subway, experience in e.g. boxing is going to be far, far better than nothing at all, despite the fact that boxing has rules. IDPA/USPSA will not, contrary to claims, get you kilt in da streets, because practice moving and shooting is better than not.
The idea that there’s a real distinction between self-defense and martial arts in general is nonsense. If you’re good in MMA, this is going to translate almost 1:1 to self defense. Here’s the blunt truth: most of the people that are going to attack a person have a LOT of experience fighting. If you want to defend yourself, you’re going to need to give yourself a lot of the same experiences, even if it’s in a more controlled setting, and “self-defense” classes aren’t going to do that.
And, BTW, I know a guy that teaches wu shu (Eagle Claw, I think?) that also works as a bouncer. He is very, very effective, and uses the things he teaches as a bouncer. He’s small–like, 5’5", 150#–and he punches well above his weight.
- Comment on Is martial arts really that useful? 6 days ago:
This is a difficult question.
If you’re a bouncer, then yeah, mixed martial arts is definitely useful (e…g., something like both muay thai and Brazilian juijitsu). For a typical person that’s unlikely to ever need to defend their life, probably not.
As far as which martial art you should take, if you’re going to take one… It depends on what you want. If you want a physical activity that doesn’t have to be practical, then take up something like kyudo, kenjutsu, or aikido. If you want something that’s practical, then look into juijitsu and things based more in grappling. If you seriously worry about getting into a confrontation with someone that’s armed, then look up Shiv Works, and see what they have in your area.
A concealed carry permit can be useful, yes, but it’s very, very situational, and requires practice. Moreover, ever single bullet you fire outside of a range has to be accounted for.
- Comment on Bulletproofing America’s Classrooms - Ballistic armor companies are marketing protective products designed for the military to parents and schools 1 week ago:
This is one of those things that, compared against the number of students in schools in the US, is so vanishingly rare that it’s not even worth worrying about on an individual basis. The 230 school shootings in a decade–23 per year–is divided among roughly 129,000 schools. The odds that any given school will experience a shooting in a given year is about .017%. Spending huge amounts of money on it, rather than things that actually make a real difference (like, say, qualified psychologist working as school counselors) is asinine.
Do I have body armor? Yup. Do I use it all the time? Nope. The only reason I have it is for division rules; I do armored competition division for PCSL, along with other gun run and brutality type events, so I gotta have it to make division rules. There’s no way in hell I’d wear the shit on the daily unless I was in an active war zone.
- Comment on Bulletproofing America’s Classrooms - Ballistic armor companies are marketing protective products designed for the military to parents and schools 1 week ago:
First: There is no current NIJ specification for III+. It’s either IIIa, III, or IV. III+ is a marketing gimmick for plate that stop all level III threats, but don’t stop all level IV threats.
Second: I guess that depends on what you count as ‘prohibitively heavy’. UHMW plates that are listed as III+ by the manufacturer (again, there is not NIJ specification for this) can be in the 5# range per plate for a small. My backpack in middle school was easily 25# since I never used my locker, so ???.
- Comment on Does the GOP Stick Together so tightly to hide the fact that a large majority of them are involved in Pedophilia? 1 week ago:
People that are registered Republicans or consistently vote Republican make up a little under half of the overall population, current population in the US is around 340M (last time I checked, it’s been a minute), so 140M is a fairly conservative (ha!) guess at how many people would more-or-less be Republican, or lean Republican.
- Comment on Does the GOP Stick Together so tightly to hide the fact that a large majority of them are involved in Pedophilia? 1 week ago:
…It’s not even close to the majority of people in the GOP. It’s not even a particularly large minority
Jesus fucking christ.
Even if it was 100 people every single day that were being, caught, arrested, or convicted for CSAM or sexual misconduct of some kind with a minor, and every single one of them was in the GOP, that’s still 365,000 out of about 140,000,000, which is .2%, on an annual basis. Two tenths of one percent is about fifty percent away from being a majority.
- Comment on US can’t ban TikTok for security reasons while ignoring Temu, other apps, TikTok argues 1 week ago:
After all its not hard to make a corporation in the US
…A US corporation is subject to US laws.
ByteDance is subject to Chinese laws.
If TikTok wants to do everything that it’s currently doing, but under US law and under US scrutiny, they’re more than welcome to do so. But they’re currently evading any serious scrutiny. Hence the reason to shut them down if they refuse gov’t oversight.
- Comment on US can’t ban TikTok for security reasons while ignoring Temu, other apps, TikTok argues 1 week ago:
National security interests are the interests of the people though.
The fundamental issue is that, assuming I’m not leaking national security information, I can say nearly anything I want on Facebook, Twitter, etc. (as long as I’m not in violation of their terms of service). The US largely does not censor people using the power of the gov’t. If I am an authoritarian communist, I’m more than welcome to spread these views on any American social network that I choose without gov’t interference. I can spread anti-vax and Q nonsense if I wish, and the worst-case scenario is that my neighbors will stop talking to me. I can attack the very foundation of the country if I want, as long as I’m not spreading military secrets.
This is not the case in China. Spreading pro-capitalism and pro-democracy messages can quickly get you arrested. Trying to share accurate information about what really happened in Tianamen Square in 1989 can result in you disappearing. Words and phrases are actively censored by the gov’t on social media. The Chinese gov’t takes a direct role in shaping social media by what it promotes, and what it forbids. Anything that’s perceived as an attack on the political system of the country, the party, or any of the leaders (remember the internationally famous tennis player that abruptly disappeared when she accused a local party leader of sexual assault?) will put you at risk.
This isn’t a case of, “oh, both sides are the same”.
- Comment on US can’t ban TikTok for security reasons while ignoring Temu, other apps, TikTok argues 1 week ago:
The Constitution doesn’t only protect American citizens, it protects everyone
Uh, no. It doesn’t protect everyone, not by a long shot. The US constitution doesn’t guarantee Chinese citizens, living in China, the right to freedom of the press.
…And this isn’t about which speech they’re allowing. This is about who controls the platform, and how they respond to gov’t inquiries. If TikTok is divested from ByteDance, so that they’re no longer based in China and subject to China’s laws and interference, then there’s no problem. There are two fundamental issues; first, TikTok appears to be a tool of the Chinese gov’t (this is the best guess, considering that large parts of the intelligence about it are highly classified), and may be currently being used to amplify Chinese-state propaganda as well as increase political division, and second, what ByteDance is doing with the enormous amounts of data it’s collection, esp. from people that may be in sensitive or classified locations.
As I stated, if TikTok is sold off so that they’re no longer connected to China, then they’re more than welcome to continue to operate. ByteDance is refusing to do that.
- Comment on Texas Gov. Abbott designates Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, as a foreign terrorist organization 1 week ago:
So, gov. Abbott is trying to prove that he has no idea what terrorism is, huh?
Terrorism has a pretty solid definition. It’s not just an armed group that scares people; it’s violence that’s directed at uninvolved civilians as a proxy for the gov’t. It’s violence with an explicitly political motive. If you systematically murder the extended families of police officers in a town so that the cops back off enforcing the law and the gov’t collapses, that’s terrorism. If you’re killing rival gang members, that’s just a turf war.
These aren’t terrorists, they’re just ordinary criminals, and gov’ Abbott is just an ordinary idiot that’s trying to score political points.
- Comment on How come drug dealers seem to have a messed up house or at least a messed up car with a bunch of trash in it? 2 weeks ago:
Huh. Didn’t know that entirely ending the war on drugs was on the ballot anywhere.
- Comment on Nation’s Largest Police Union Endorses Trump 2 weeks ago:
Ironic that cops are endorsing the candidate that’s a felon and under multiple other criminal indictments, rather than the career prosecutor, huh?
- Comment on Is it me or is everyone in hexbear insane? 3 weeks ago:
Most antifa groups are anarchist collectives. So I’m not sure where you’re seeing this, unless it’s solely from people that are terminally online.
- Comment on Is Elder Scrolls 6 doomed to fail? I can't see how it will work 3 weeks ago:
Huh?
I loved Fallout 4, and I still play it. I’ve got it installed on this computer, but I don’t have Skyrim installed. I’m not as attached to the London mod for it, TBH.
Can’t say a lot about what Bethesda is going to do with the next Elder Scrolls games, but I’d love to see a return to the more complicated skill trees and level advancement that they used in Morrowind and Daggerfall. I also really loved the limitless number of randomly generate dungeons in Daggerfall, and how it took years (in real-time) to walk across the continent, but that’s probably not what most people want now.
- Comment on Ryzen CPU owners can now download better gaming performance thanks to a Windows 11 update 4 weeks ago:
You’re just like yeah I know windows and Adobe will profit off of every button I click
First - Win 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC is not a consumer version. It’s about as locked down as you can get. It doesn’t even have drivers for the ethernet on your mobo out of the box; you better have already downloaded those. (Yes, I’m serious. It’s about Also, it’s pirated, since it’s not available to consumers at all; Microsoft doesn’t want to let consumers have the Enterprise versions of Windows because that’s no longer software-as-service. And the LTSC? That shit’s going to keep getting security updates–but no ‘feature’ updates, at all, ever–for at least 10 years.
Second - I don’t pay for Adobe, but I have to use it in my job. I’ve limited as much of it as I can, and CC doesn’t start up by default, but yeah, if you work in the commercial arts fields, you simply don’t have any serious options that aren’t Adobe, and yeah, they’re going to bleed you dry. But, as i said, i’m not the one paying. My workplace has a license that allows two seats, and I’m literally the only person there that knows how to use any of it–or even has the password to the Adobe account–so I just use the work license to put it on my home PC.
- Comment on Ryzen CPU owners can now download better gaming performance thanks to a Windows 11 update 4 weeks ago:
Once I finally got it installed, Win 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC has been fine. The only real hitch was that I had a terrible time getting the graphics card drivers instsalled; kept getting a BSOD. But everything is running quite nicely.
As soon as I remember to get my other hard drives installed, it will be time to put the Adobe Creative Suite and Corel Painter X on it, and see how happy it is with those.
- Comment on Would it count in basketball, if a player found themselves directly under the hoop, threw the ball up through the hoop from underneath, and the ball fell back down, again through the hoop? 4 weeks ago:
Just make the ball going up through the basket -1 point.
And then let the other team throw the ball up through your basket to decrease your score. Now you have to defend your net as well as try to make shots on it.
- Comment on Meta pulls plug on plans for high-end Vision Pro competitor 4 weeks ago:
Pity. I have a Quest 3, and while it’s very good, there are higher-end features that I’d live to have. The ability to use it as a monitor, rather as a stand-alone item is one of them. (I got the Quest 3 for exactly one thing. It’s very, very good for that thing, except for the batter life.)
- Comment on Diversity 5 weeks ago:
I haven’t heard anything in particular about Kentucky Ballistics. His content doesn’t interest me, but I haven’t heard of anything objectionable. Demo Ranch (Matt?) is friends with a whoooooooooole lot of very questionable people. It seems to mostly stay out of his videos though.
- Comment on Diversity 5 weeks ago:
There are a few that are decent people. Not a ton. But a few.
- Comment on Diversity 5 weeks ago:
I dunno, maybe look him up on Instagram? He did an interview with Adminstrative Results (I’ve got his real name written down somewhere; he’s a former cops) on YouTube where he came right out and said it, made a bunch of anti-semitic jokes, and then it went really downhill from there. He was at least smart enough to delete the comment where he was talking about the massive amounts of ILLEGAL ANABOLIC STEROIDS that he uses (since that’s admitting to both a felony, and being a ‘habitual illegal drug user’. both of which would ban him from owning firearms).
- Comment on Diversity 5 weeks ago:
He’s a christian nationalist, has called all trans people pedophiles, is homophobic, and is generally a shitbag. He surrounds himself with people that are overtly fascists.
- Comment on Even cnn calls Biden’s lies out 5 weeks ago:
So, they fact-checked one claim by Trump. One.
Let’s see them do a whole speech.
- Comment on Even cnn calls Biden’s lies out 5 weeks ago:
Man, wouldn’t it be neat if Fox would start fact checking Trump…? I mean, obvs. no one is gonna believe CNN when they check Trump, so Fox should do it, since they’re believable.
Right?
Wouldn’t that be neat?
- Comment on Did we ever find out more about Thomas Crooks? 5 weeks ago:
Giving off information that he was planning some kind of mass murder or assassination attempt. Many people that plan that kind of thing ‘leak’ information about it before hand, through things like Facebook posts, or remarks to people they know, etc. Very few people are good at keeping that kind of thing truly secret.
The first rule of Successful Secret Assassin Club is zero your rifle, but the second rule is don’t talk about Successful Secret Assassin Club.
- Comment on Did we ever find out more about Thomas Crooks? 5 weeks ago:
I haven’t seen anything yet. Seems like he had a very minimal online presence, and was about as close to a Lone Wolf as you can get. There doesn’t appear to be any indication that he was ‘leaking’ prior to the assaination attempt either.
- Comment on Shmuley Boteach and daughter file complaint to FBI against Candace Owens - Exclusive 5 weeks ago:
Oh, yeah, Boteach was that guy that Christopher Hitchens positively dismantled in a public debate about god.
Good times.
- Comment on Your TV set has become a digital billboard. And it’s only getting worse. 5 weeks ago:
I use my PS5, TBH. I still get ads on Amazon Prime, but I’m not seeing Netflix ads. (I also don’t have Hulu, etc.) I pay for a VPN for my desktop–I’m using Win 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC–and with Firefox and uBlockOrigin I see pretty minimal ads online; if you’re able to open your streaming service in a browser rather than needing to download their application, then a VPN an uBlockOrigin might be sufficient.
- Comment on Your TV set has become a digital billboard. And it’s only getting worse. 5 weeks ago:
Good point.