Emptybee
18d ago
Out of curiosity, did the movie specify how the witch was originally killed? It always bugs me when someone claims one of the Salem witches was burned at the stake.
Emptybee
18d ago
My apologies. I mistook your phrasing "academics often specifically pick terms" to mean you thought those academics deliberately created said pejorative terms. If your meaning was simply that they deliberately adopt and misuse any such term they come across, then I completely agree.
Emptybee
19d ago
"Toxic masculinity" is actually a perfect example of nuanced concepts reduced to silly caricatures. Originally, it was coined by the men's movement, not academics, and referred to masculine traits carried to unhealthy extremes. The classic example being men's reluctance to seek medical care until far too late. The goal was to get men to realize a need for balance; to understand that things like self-reliance could be taken too far. The modern Internet version is, as happens so often, a perversion of the original.
Emptybee
23d ago
In the sense that no one has an accident in a non-moving car, this is trivially true. But, when it comes to cars that are actually being driven, the leading cause of accidents is drivers being inattentive or foolish, not maneuvering per se.
Emptybee
23d ago
I follow a dash cam channel on YouTube and, yes, while there are occasional black swan, no-one-could-have-seen-that-coming events, the vast majority of them come down to one or more drivers being inattentive, distracted, or just plain foolish.
Emptybee
23d ago
It's a perfectly understandable mistake, if you've never had direct experience with either.
Emptybee
24d ago
It's not a discrimination suit because, despite the name similarity, the Boy and Girl Scouts are two different private organizations. Make no mistake, the Girl Scouts were not happy with this decision. They view Scouting America as poaching their girls. Which, yeah, they kind of are. Although I'd have much more sympathy for the GSA if they hadn't spend decades making themselves into an organization with no place for girls who just want to go camping and do outdoors stuff.
Emptybee
25d ago
I can see how it might be read that way. I'm not sure it matters though. Greater maneuverability could be misused by the driver is an argument that can just as easily be applied to power steering.
Emptybee
25d ago
The flying part was certainly cool but I was disappointed we didn't get a demo of down fan-enhanced cornering. That seems like the more practical feature. (To the extent any of it is practical.)
Emptybee
25d ago
We are a long, long way from mechanical failure equaling, much less exceeding, human error.
Emptybee
1mo ago
I agree, life is much simpler, and safer for all of us, if the authorities have a norm of always respecting human rights instead of one that says rights are conditional.
As for visa holders, a criminal trial would definitely be overkill. But I don't think requiring the government to hold some form of hearing, before a truly neutral party, before revoking a visa is a bad idea. Otherwise, it's a backdoor to speech suppression, or other abuses, as long as the government is smart enough to keep its mouth shut about its motives.
Free speech isn't just the ability to speak, it's also the ability to listen. If you give the government the ability to silence any speaker who isn't a citizen, you're giving the government the ability to control what you hear.
Emptybee
1mo ago
Remember than the law can't just say "don't wear gang colors" and call it a day. The law has to either define gang colors or designate some authority which will define them. I can guarantee you that there are jurisdictions who would just love to define MAGA caps as gang colors.
Emptybee
1mo ago
Re #3: Interesting that police dogs apparently function as biological missiles and are sufficiently dangerous that preventing a bite on fellow officer is worth messing up your arm. The realities of police work might call for that sort of training but its definitely not the warm and fuzzy image that gets sold to the public.
Emptybee
2mo ago
It's not taken from any of your categories but I think this one says "glory" pretty well: Race to Durango (Two Steps From Hell)
Emptybee
2mo ago
That's simply not true. Look at Roe v. Wade. After it was decided, the right spent decades trying every legal variant they could think of to get around it. Every side plays legal games.
Emptybee
2mo ago
Honestly, this shouldn't reach the Court. The appeals court has all they need to reverse. After which, the SC just denies cert.
Emptybee
2mo ago
The Supreme Court has been backing away from the fighting words doctrine since 1970. Since states can't enact a stricter doctrine than the one the federal government uses, I doubt this will survive appeal.
Emptybee
2mo ago
Animal shelter personnel sure but there's no way am I buying that the average cop is better than average citizen at identifying dog breeds. When it comes to dog attacks, it's the police report that typically serves as the source of identification. Even if the animal survives to be taken to a shelter, the news isn't going to ask shelter workers what the dog's breed is. They're going to quote the police report.
Emptybee
2mo ago
The opening of Cremieux' blog comes right out and acknowledges that "pit bull...refers to a type of dog rather than a breed". It then goes on to list several different breeds that get lumped together under that heading and admits that additional breeds sometimes get tossed in as well. So, once again, if you compare "pit bull" attacks to German Shepherd attacks, you're comparing apples to oranges.
Emptybee
2mo ago
The problem with those statistics is they're compiled by accepting the identification made by people, like police officers and news reporters, who don't have any expertise in dog breeds. For most non-experts, any big dog that's not obviously a shepherd or rottweiler gets labelled "pit bull". Then a category that actually consists of a dozen breeds—plus mixes—gets compared with attacks made by single breeds. Of course they're going to have larger totals.
From: In Defense Of the Pit Bull (Salon; Feb. 5, 2013)
Karen Delise studied every fatal dog bite reported in the years between 2002-2005, and found that “eleven dogs involved in fatal attacks with no Pitbull characteristics were counted as Pitbulls, while their ‘true’ breeds were not reported, and three dogs that were clearly not Rottweilers were identified as Rottweilers.” That was among a total of 47 fatal attacks (by all breeds) reported during that period.
Emptybee
2mo ago
The Mythbusters retested that particular myth, in episode 75, as a result of complaints they tested against the wrong model of scope. Against a much simpler scope with fewer internal components, such as an Vietnamese sniper of the period would likely have been issued, it was found to be plausible.
Emptybee
2mo ago
Not a whole lot, I would think. All of the hard-core Republicans in my sphere are loudly or quietly anti-data center. It seems to be a winning issue with every flavor of populist.
If a job isn't performed correctly, that's an employee issue. If a job is consistently done incorrectly, that's a management issue.
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