tal

I guess that's a positive.

Yeah, i mean if someone really wants to decapitate someone they can just go to the next best hardware store and get a chainsaw.

https://archive.is/52YjV#selection-515.0-533.242

Butter knife 'an offensive weapon'

A butter knife can be an offensive weapon, the High Court ruled yesterday.

The decision came in the rejection of an appeal by Charlie Brooker, of Welling, Kent, who had been convicted under the Criminal Justice Act of carrying a bladed instrument.

Mark Hardie, appearing for Brooker, argued that the knife had no handle, sharp edges or points and therefore could not fall foul of a law intended to protect people from dangerous weapons.

But Lord Justice Laws, sitting with Mr Justice David Steel, disagreed. He said: "I would accept that a sharp or pointed blade was the paradigm case - however the words of the statute are unqualified and refer to any article that has a blade."

I will bet you that Parliament would be willing to impose a ban on possession of a chainsaw without just cause.

This "Ninja sword" is apparently a straight sword:

2.4. The legal definition that we tested as part of this consultation was as follows:

A fixed bladed article with a blade between 14-24 inches (the length of the blade being the straight-line distance from the top of the handle to the tip of the blade) with:

(i) A single straight cutting edge; and;

It sounds like most katanas and such, what I think people probably normally think of when they think of a "ninja sword", are already banned under existing legislation, as they're curved-edge, rather than straight-edge:

https://www.katanamart.co.uk/content/27-uk-samurai-sword-law

Samurai and other curved Swords

On April 6th 2008 a law came into effect banning samurai and other curved swords with a blade length of 50 cm or more; there are some exceptions for registered martial artists, re-enactors and even certain genuine Japanese swords.

Here is to the law:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/import-controls-on-offensive-weapons#importing-knives-swords-and-other-offensive-weapons-into-the-uk

An amendment to this act was passed, which came into effect on the 1st of August 2008. It allows curved and samurai swords which are handmade using traditional forging/production methods to be sold without a license.

Apparently the Japanese did use straight swords for a while.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chokut%C5%8D

Maybe the issue here is that importers avoided their previous restrictions by selling straight swords, and they're making a new class to catch those and for God-knows-what-reason are calling it a "Ninja sword".

https://archive.ph/77tll

"Being an Italian citizen is a serious thing. It's not a game to get a passport that allows you to go shopping in Miami," Tajani said at a press conference.

I feel like Miami retailers need to be upping their e-commerce game.

Yeah, I have a hard time seeing a way that one can really do a while lot to create privacy issues with Google Street View.

There just isn't anything else to really combine the data with that exposes data that otherwise was private, or issues created by the scale.

Maybe if Google could one day use the database to identify a location from a photo, but then it's not really the Street View service at issue.

How much you want to bet we’re going to start having military parades to “show off our strength”.

Trump specifically asked for this in his first term. As I recall, his advisors recommended against it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_2018_Washington_Veterans_Day_Parade

The 2018 Washington Veterans Day Parade (colloquially called "Trump's military parade") was a planned military parade that would have taken place in Washington, D.C., on November 10, 2018, in honor of the Veterans Day holiday (which took place on 11 November).

The parade was expected to include members of all five armed services; the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and the Coast Guard, with other units that were to be dressed in period uniforms representing earlier times in the United States military history.[3] A memo from General Joseph Dunford reported that the parade was to have focused on historic battles and conflicts such as the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.[4] Between 5,000 and 7,000 service members were to have taken part in the parade, which was to begin at the U.S. Capitol and end at the White House. The evolution of women in the service was also to be highlighted in the parade, along with an emphasis on the price of freedom.[5] The parade would have included 100 wheeled vehicles instead of tanks, as well as a heavy air component featuring 50 aircraft at the end of the parade.[6][7] U.S. President Donald Trump would have been situated in a reviewing area and surrounded by military heroes.[8] Medal of Honor recipients would have been included in reviewing the parade with the President and would have marched in the parade.[5]

Opinion of parade

Support

In February 2017, very few lawmakers backed the idea of a military parade. Senator David Perdue, a Republican of Georgia, told reporters "He's the President of the United States. Personally, I would prefer not to do it. But he's the president."[20] Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina, supported the parade if it honored the military itself, and not the "...Soviet-style hardware display."[20]

AMVETS, a group that advocates for military veterans, felt that potentially the parade would inspire more Americans to join the armed forces.[21]

Against

Other politicians spoke out against the parade. Representative Adam Smith, a Democrat of Washington and members of the House Armed Services Committee released a statement that highlighted "A military parade like this - one that is unduly focused on a single person - is what authoritarian regimes do, not democracies."[20] Senator John Kennedy, a Republican of Louisiana, told reporters "We're not North Korea, we're not Russia, and we're not China and I don't want to be", while speaking out against the proposed parade.[22]

Robert O'Neill, a former Navy SEAL, tweeted in February 2018 that any military parade would be "...third world bullshit."[23] Other military veterans echoed the sentiment with calls for the money to be spent on housing, employment and mental health care to better support the troops.[22] A veteran of the War in Afghanistan highlighted that it would seem unreasonable to hold a parade in celebration while a 19-year-old war (per 2020) was still ongoing.[21]

The latest incident, Friday afternoon, occurred while four U.S. Air Force T-38 Talons were en route to Arlington National Cemetery in northern Virginia for a flyover, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. A T-38 Talon is a two-seat supersonic jet used to train pilots, according to the Air Force.

Around 3:15 p.m. local time, Delta Flight 2983, bound for Minneapolis, took off from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Soon after, an alert sounded off inside the cockpit of the passenger plane, indicating that another aircraft was nearby, the FAA said. In response, air traffic controllers issued "corrective instructions" to both aircraft, the agency said.

VASAviation visualization with ATC traffic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPQjQ23YTJo

Panamá should ban all military ships from all nations from going through the canal. That would go a long way towards promoting world peace and easing trade.

That's a critical passageway for the US. It'd be something like the Strait of the Gibraltar being severed for Europe, cutting half of the entity off from the other half by water and requiring their Med-based and Pacific-based ships to go around Africa to reach each other.

Might complicate reducing radar signature.

Also, it seems like kind of a specialized tool. You want it to have a low stall speed but also high maximum speed. The F-14 was a naval interceptor -- intended to take off from and land on carriers at low speed, buy also dash out quickly enough to intercept incoming strikes against that carrier.

I don't know if there are many situations that have that combination of characteristics.

Well, that gives you infinite energy, since you can produce energy-containing stuff.

Hmm.

On one hand, a lot of competition for resources go away.

On the other hand, that's also pretty disruptive.

I think that that world is going to have a lot of sudden challenges. You don't have scarcity of any material or existing item that you can break down to less than a 1m cube unless you need it in great bulk, but you also have no ability to control production of things like firearms, explosives, drugs, physical proofs of identity, missiles, weaponized drones, etc.

I can imagine countries or organizations trying to seize the supply of replicators.