Counting on dishonesty from Roberts is often a good bet. More that many other judges, he wouldn’t know a Constitutional principle if it conked him on the head.

Just because the keepers make efforts to be “nice” to the lion in the enclosure does not mean they give up on locking the cage doors.
They do, however, stop using cattle prods as motivation.

And nevermind that Toyota has never advertised their trucks’ suitability as “technicals,” or that the vast majority of Toyota pickups in the world do NOT have belt-fed weapons welded on, and were purchased because Toyota’s design is solid and proven as a vehicle useful for both work and leisure.

Under SCOTUS’ (correct) reasoning, those design features make them attractive for normal people all over the world, and Toyota cannot be blamed simply because rebel militias like them, too.

That said, I’m still not as hopeful as Mark Smith that Viramontes v. Cook County will be a 9-0 unanimous decision. I suspect it will be a 6-3, but not necessarily along expected party lines. I don’t discount Notorious KBJ’s ability to nonsense herself to the end result she wants and wouldn’t necessarily put it past Sotomayor to join it. Kagan may uphold stare decisis, but I still don’t trust ACB or Roberts on straight-up 2A issues. (As Mark Smith notes, S&W v. Mexico was 9-0, but was presented as a PLCAA case, not a 2A one. Also, the “design and marketing” angles have 1A implications — whether that was directly argued or not — and not even the liberal justices want to rule against the First Amendment.)

I hope I’m wrong and Mr. Smith has a better read than I do.

Revolutionary War private warship Caesar of Boston had 26 guns. Worst case they were 9 pounders firing every 2 minutes @ 1,400 fps for 274K ft-lbs/shot

13 guns (one side) every 2 minutes is 1,781,000 ft-lbs/min, roughly 30 times his calculated “MEpM” for an AR15.

Checkmate!

https://x.com/SorrentinoSean/status/2115822456392786136?a=P6Kx6t4HLk_kEoNyasc&s=20

I pointed out that “Not Always” should be appended to it, suggesting that the first order of such business should be “exactly how do we sandbox it” so maximum control could be maintained while we – and it – learn.

In 1986 AI wasn’t much more than a pipe dream; processor and network speed, memory capacity and basic understanding of data management was, clearly to anyone in the biz, not even slightly up to the task.

Here we are, forty years later, and AI is moving out of diapers and into short pants, with an adult wardrobe on the horizon and AFAIK not a soul is researching that sandbox.

From one point of view we’re on the cusp of The Forbin Project, from another it’s A Bright Sunrise.

For the first several seconds, however, A Bright Sunrise is indistinguishable from Canned Sunshine™; it’s right after that the effects change and it would be immensely useful to understand exactly which we’re dealing with for both can serve useful, but very different, purposes.

I’m not saying it would be harmful. I’m saying it is insufficient. Roughly equivalent to whistling as you walk past the graveyard or crossing your fingers and hoping really hard that it will work.

Given the historical precedents, intelligence makes crazy ideas more likely. Study Weimar.

Intelligence does not immunize people from crazy ideas. Isaac Newton went more than a little off his rocker, too.

It is my hypothesis is that if they do go off the rails, that great intellect enables greater departures from rational thought.

China–as a system–is evil.
The EU–as a system–is evil.
Hell, the USG isn’t all that much better.

What’s the divorce rate? If two people who start off loving each other can’t sort out a way to “come into alignment” how are we going to enforce that on global industry?

Of course, thinking about it; we know most pre-election polls are garbage, more designed to shape public opinion than measure it, so there is no reason to think this poll is accurate. Wait and see the proof in the final actual count (and even then, without a reliable audit of the count accuracy….)