"It's been nearly 18 years since the world said goodbye to legendary rapper Tupac Shakur, however new information about his death continue to be released. The latest comes from Chris Carroll, a retired sergeant with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, who revealed in a new feature with Vegas Seven what 2pac's alleged last words were.
Although Tupac is also known for writing poetry, his final words were less of an ode to deep and insightful works and more of a big middle finger to authority.
"He looked at me, and he took a breath to get the words out, and he opened his mouth," Carroll said. "And then the words came out: 'F--k you.'""
Australian Politician Joins Those Seeking to Ban Unbannable 3D-Printed Guns - Hit & Run : Reason.com:
"The latest politician to seek to ban a firearm deliberately designed to be producable in privacy, with minimal skills, and beyond the reach of government officials, is Carl Judge, a member of the state parliament in Queensland, Australia...
Judge and his party join politicians in Philadelphia, New York City, and elsewhere in attempting to illegalize that which is intended to render laws toothless...
"It is very difficult to do anything about it," Troels Oerting Joergensen, head of the European Cybercrime Centre at Europol, told the New York Times. "Of course you can say that it is illegal, but as with everything else on the Internet, you can always get it from somewhere." "Proposed legislation to ban 3D printing of weapons may deter, but cannot completely prevent their production," a United States Department of Homeland Security bulletin noted. "Even if the practice is prohibited by new legislation, online distribution of these digital files will be as difficult to control as any other illegally traded music, movie or software files.""
"Biologist Peter Watts makes some good points: Mammals don’t respond well to surveillance. We consider it a threat. It makes us paranoid, and aggressive and vengeful."
"For one thing, they weren’t used to thinking of humans as mammals, or that certain types of stalking behavior make us feel treated not just like criminals (as the common refrain would have it), but like prey. The connection between pareidolia and the religious impulse seemed new to most of them, too. Most of all, I don’t think anyone was expecting a biologist with absolutely no legal knowledge to brazenly advocate a middle-finger strategy against government demands for metadata— to suggest that destroying one’s data outright might be preferable to handing it over when the spooks came calling. Possibly because the audience contained so many people from the government."
"It's our Internet. We made it, and it has remade us, changing the way we communicate, learn, share and create. We want the Internet to continue to live up to its promise, fostering innovation, creativity and freedom. We don't want regulations that will turn our ISPs into gatekeepers, making special deals with the few companies that can "pay to play" and inhibiting new competition, innovation and expression. Start your letter to the FCC..."
"A few months ago I got a speeding ticket while driving through a southern state. (I’ll just leave it at that for now.) I was definitely speeding, so the stop didn’t bother me. Neither did the specific fine for speeding — $62. What I found appalling were the add-ons. There was a court fee, a processing fee, some sort of vague “assessment,” and a few others charges I don’t recall. In the end, the ticket cost me over $250. The extras amounted to several times the cost of the initial infraction. I hadn’t had a speeding ticket in over five years. But the last time I got one, I was only asked to pay the cost of the fine for the infraction itself. So this is a new thing...
This is happening everywhere. In California, running a red light will cost you $549 — $100 for the fraction, plus $449 in added fines, fees, and assessments unrelated to the infraction itself....
If lawmakers want to get people to slow down by jacking up the fines for speeding, that’s one thing. Go ahead, take a vote, and make yourself accountable to your constituents. But these extra fines, fees, and assessments are being added on the sly. And they have nothing to do with highway safety...
Some jurisdictions have even found ways to charge people “booking fees” after an arrest, even if the arrest never results in a criminal charge, a policy recently upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. My favorite example of this nonsense, though it isn’t in the NPR report, is crime labs. Believe it or not, in some jurisdictions, crime labs are paid fees only if their analysis leads to a conviction. (The fees are then assessed to defendants.) Think about the incentives at work there...
Failure to pay these fines results in — you guessed it — more fines, plus interest. If the debt is sent to a collection agency, those fees get tacked on, too. Ultimately, inability to pay the fines can land you in a jail cell. Which is why we’re now seeing what are effectively debtors’ prisons, even though the concept is technically illegal...
...fellow libertarians and I are often criticized for our opposition to policies like primary seat belt laws, helmet laws, aggressive enforcement of jaywalking laws, or nuisance laws, such as carrying an open container in public. The criticism is usually that these are petty concerns, and people who spend time opposing them are out of touch with the real world. But these sorts of laws give police more excuses to make pretext stops when profiling for drug couriers. Once they have you, they can take your cash, car, jewelry or other possessions based only on the flimsiest evidence that it might be connected to drugs. They’re opportunities for harassment. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that even a crime as petty as a seat belt violation is justification for an arrest — and all of the life disruptions that come with a trip to jail. (Don’t forget that no matter what the offense, a trip to jail can also include a strip search.) Heavy enforcement of these sorts of crimes can breed distrust between police and the communities they serve, and creates more interactions that carry the risk of escalation."
"Everything around us seems to point at the idea that men are simpletons and children (which ignores 10,000 years of history, of course). The result is domineering women, and emasculated men. Unfortunately, while that makes for funny one liners in sitcoms, it kind of fucks up people’s relationships..."
"If you truly love someone, you should be prepared to do things for them that you wouldn’t do for anyone else, even at great personal expense to yourself. That’s the very essence of love; wanting to please your [spouse] just because."
