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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   7130 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025

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Beheading is quick, tried and true, at least if you use the French innovation rather than messing about with trained headmen. Hanging is even more traditional, a little harder to get right but not THAT much harder. All this faffing around with electricity was just because Edison wanted to score on Westinghouse; there's no real need for it. And medicalizing it was even dumber.

Yeah IMO a suitably hydraulic-powered guillotine is impossible to fuck up.

Hispanic cultures have their own equivalent of hanging, the garrote. But, personally, I'd prefer a firing squad. It's simple and dignified.

I was thinking firing squads would be reserved for military executions.

Injection is for the benefit of the public, not the criminal. At some point we got squeamish about visibly physical punishment, and injection sweeps all of that under the rug, making execution a bloodless, bureaucratic affair.

Yes, but as far as I'm concerned that's all a loss. Execution is brutal and should appear brutal. The question for jurors when prosecuting someone for a capital crime should indeed be something like "Am I OK with the state cutting this guy's head off". Similarly, for the execution to provide sufficient substitute for the private retribution it replaces, it should be brutal if the brutality is justified.

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