The Simpsons Anti-Tiger Rock

Crime's been descending from the COVID blip for a while, everywhere, Flock or otherwise. My city saw zero murders in Q1; 2021 saw ~15 by now. In other words: ▶ this video

Such claims of protection, reminds me of this Simpsons episode: ▶ this video It's true that the COVID-19 initial variants were very dangerous, and that the vaccines worked against these variants. However, the virus in 2024 is different from the one in 2019, but the side-effects, you are "guaranteed" to pay them. You really have to think twice.

And here is a clip of the relevant scene, from the episode "Much Apu About Nothing" (1996), ▶ this video Quoting from its IMDB entry at link : Lisa : Dad, what if I were to tell you that this rock keeps away tigers. Homer : Uh-huh, and how does it work? Lisa : It doesn't work. It's just a stupid rock. Homer : I see. Lisa : But you don't see any tigers around, do you? Homer : Lisa, I'd like to buy your rock.

The issue is how do you provide the evidence for that. In other terms, how do you differentiate your effect from that of Homer Simpson's Bear Patrol and Lisa's tiger-repellant rock [0]? [0] ▶ this video

Part of me is convinced that some people like that would be easily persuaded into putting cameras in their bedrooms if they were told it would keep them safe from burglars/murderers/terrorists/pedophiles/bears/tigers[1]/or whatever boogeyman they particularly don't like. [1] ▶ this video

Lisa Simpson has a rock she would like to sell you: ▶ this video I mean, yeah, I get it. I worry about general purpose computing going away too. I remember Stallman and Doctorow talking about this in the early 2000s and saw many iterations of this same thread pop up on Slashdot, HN, Digg, Reddit, etc. over the years. I dunno man, I guess I’m just skeptical over the dooming at this point. I think a bigger issue is less about whether we will be able to run whatever we want on our computer, and more that the internet has just become a cesspool of ads, clickbait, ragebait, and app sandboxed content that’s not discoverable by search engines. I think you’ll always have a fairly reasonable choice of computers to run whatever software you want on. But todays internet just isn’t very fun anymore.

Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm. Lisa: That’s specious reasoning, Dad. Homer: Thank you, dear. Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away. Homer: Oh, how does it work? Lisa: It doesn’t work. Homer: Uh-huh. Lisa: It’s just a stupid rock. Homer: Uh-huh. Lisa: But I don’t see any tigers around, do you? Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock. [0]: ▶ this video

Homer : Well, there's not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol is sure doing its job. Lisa : That's specious reasoning, Dad. Homer : Thank you, sweetie. Lisa : Dad, what if I were to tell you that this rock keeps away tigers. Homer : Uh-huh, and how does it work? Lisa : It doesn't work. It's just a stupid rock. Homer : I see. Lisa : But you don't see any tigers around, do you? Homer : Lisa, I'd like to buy your rock. ▶ this video

The UN hasn’t prevented war, nuclear weapons have. If your opponent has second-strike capability, starting a war is not a great idea. ▶ this video

...so postwar Britain was at serious risk of being taken over by fascists? Probably something more like ▶ this video

And perhaps this rock keeps tigers away - ▶ this video . A lot of the 'terrorist plots' the government has found seem more contrived than meaningful. Eg, cases where if the government had done nothing, then it seems likely that nothing still would have happened. Certainly we know that funding was taken away from monitoring and investigating white supremacist terrorism networks in the US in order to look for external ones connected to Moslem. And we know that more people and damage has occurred from white supremacist terrorism. So, from an equally specious argument, perhaps some of GW Bush's policies lead to more deaths from terrorism.