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Fascinating. Thanks for pointing that one out.
A sheathed sword ia still "open carrying", though I guess the girl would be screwed either way. Wonder how much this would be in today's money.
Pretty based law, I have to say.
Hopefully?
This wouldn't even raise an eyebrow when I was a kid, even if the adult stranger threw in a free can of whoopass for the kid. Admittedly those were different times, and Britbongistan is not Eastern Europe.
Whosoever draws a sword and does not strike will be fined 1 grivna.
(c) Russian Law Code, XI century
Does this thing mean that a man grabbing at a 12 year old girl ostensibly to take away bladed tools will be vindicated by police and/or by the public?
Do you think the difference in the damage a 12 year old and an adult could potentially do with an axe is really so significant?
Absolutely so. Have you ever done any fighting, for play or for sport or for real? Have you ever, as an adult, tussled with a kid? Have you ever used a knife or an axe, in any capacity, against anything other than foodstuffs?
There's this thing called "anarcho-tyranny", or "two tier policing" as the Brits would have it.
what magic are they going to wield that makes it feasible for them to deal with this Very Serious Threat that you yourself do not possess?
The magic of "they are not going to have a world of shit come down on them for laying a finger on a 12 year old girl".
You simultaneously admit that UK is statist (and bemoan it) and still pretend that "intruding on the monopoly on even minor violence" is an option in a statist country.
For young and older people I'm not sure women travel more than men but I've noticed a specific demographic of female travellers that doesn't really have a male counterpart. It's 25-40yo women who (usually) have some kind of higher education but are either unemployed or underemployed and spend a lot of time traveling, which is financed by their fathers, either directly through monthly stipends or indirectly by buying them a house/apartment with no strings attached.
This doesn't really have a corresponding demo for men because their families won't finance nominally successful men to have a layabout lifestyle, but they will do so for women and spending their time traveling is higher status than being a regular neet, so it isn't a black mark against the parents.
I wonder if it's common for Bulgarian Gypsies to carry Turkic names / be nominally of the Turkic/Muslim minority.
I understand your objection, but you have to realize that in the real world, this is a near guaranteed way to ensure you never end up anywhere near power.
America in particular is run by giant popularity contests; moral judgments on effective governance are not needed or useful. If America wants to stab itself to death, that's what they'll get if there's more of them that want to stab themselves to death than otherwise. Whether they want to stab themselves to death to spite the other side or because they think it's a better course of action doesn't matter.
If you search Amazon UK or other UK tool sites you will see things labelled as hand axes, not as commonly as hatchets maybe but the term is in use. I had a Rolson hand axe in my shed for a number of years for example.
Also used in Dungeons and Dragons and other RPGs which might be where more online non-Brits see it.
An academic work and various articles I read 10 years ago when I was trying to write a novel on witchcraft. I'm afraid I don't recall the name but it was regarded as being the top work at the time.
My understanding was that the consensus had settled (note weasel words!) on 'most victims of witchcraft accusations were men, witch-burnings were much rarer than lyncings, witchcraft accusations are best thought of as spontaneous riots rather than having much to do with religion or politics'. But that's all I've got to back it.
The only thing I note about the article you linked is the first paragraph:
While both men and women have historically been accused of the malicious use of magic, only around 10–30% of suspected witches were men by the 16th and 17th centuries. (Emphasis mine)
Perhaps we are discussing different periods? Doesn't seem likely though. At the risk of going ad-hominem, I'll admit I have limited trust in a blog post by the University of Cambridge from 2023, whose main citation is an article in Gender & History. For myself I’m going to say that this is epistemically undetermined for now :)
I dunno, if my interactions with police are anything to go by: You call them, they come by, you explain the situation and show them your footage, and then they nod gravely and tell you that unfortunately nothing can be done but hopefully you're insured, have a nice day.
Edit: And to clarify, I meant "stop this bullshit" as in "prevent them from repeating it".
Is it possible this is just a weird case where four weird people met by chance? That make the result extra weird and newsworthy, but not really representative of anything.
Like you said, it's pretty weird for a guy to be filming an unrelated 12-year-old girl. And apparently his wife was there with him.
It's also very weird for a 12-yr-old to be carrying weapons, especially a freaking axe. And then her 14-yr-old sister didn't seem to think that was odd.
It seems to me like two chuunibyou middle school kids trying to act tough. Maybe hoping to join a gang later, maybe they read some news stories about migrant gangs and got scared, or maybe they just thought it would be fun to go around wacking things with an axe. Then a weird creepy guy started filming them, but he probably wasn't intending to do anything else. And then the whole thing blew up.
I'm not like, defending this or anything. But there's plenty of much worse evidence out there of actual crimes.
They're in different industries and have been for decades. The last time Motorola had notions of competing with Intel was 30 years ago. By the time Freescale was spun out in 2004, they had no commonalities (ignoring Intel's doomed to fail attempt at pushing into embedded / mobile processor market with Atom & Galileo). Freescale and then NXP have always been purely in "deep" embedded market where computing performance just isn't that important and is behind many other considerations. You use an iMX8 because you need a large set of integrated peripherals in a small form factor and at low cost. It might run Linux because that simplifies the software development and allows better networking and simpler multimedia display (think map or spotify album art) but you really don't care about how it performs in benchmarks (as long as it passes some minimum bar). Using a larger manufacturing process is an outright positive thing as it allows lower idle power consumption.
Intel OTOH has always been about legacy software support and how many GHz you get in a package / per $$$, considerations that simply don't exist in NXP's market. You'd never put an Intel cpu in an embedded device because it'd be a nightmare to integrate, eat too much power and cost too much compared to an MCU that does that job much better.
Yeah. Considering how unsympathetic the protagonists of 'unfair self defense/police violence' media circuses have been in the last few years I'd be shocked if a literal 12 year old girl didn't get the full weight of the media in her favor regardless of whatever she'd been up to prior.
"Officer, these kids were waving around what looked like sharp weapons, and threatening me directly. I don't want to have to kick them in the face, so can you please make them stop this bullshit?"
Have you been to the planet Earth? Is he sending this through to 911 via telepathy, or somehow this police officer is standing near enough to watch the video and yet not already intervening?
Short of like an active assault or murder attempt I can't really imagine trying to film a low-grade violation with any pathway to reporting it to anybody.
Do you have a source for that? I thought only around 20% of people accused of witchcraft were men, e.g. https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/witchcraft-work-women
Not really. Most go directly for the rich countries and almost no-one anchors in the real EE shit holes. Some do "anchor" in Italy or Spain before heading north though.
Obama-Trump transition of power.
You mean the transition of power where, upon Trump's election, Obama immediately directed the federal government to investigate bullshit claims that Trump was secretly a Russian asset, with the explicit goal of having him impeached on that basis? "We go high", indeed.
thank you for accepting the claim
I don't accept the claim.
The genocide in Gaza would be impossible for the Israelis to carry out without extensive western support and American taxpayer dollars.
I don't believe so. Per @ymeskhout, formerly of these parts:
Yes, the $3.8 billion sent to Israel every year is a lot of money, but it’s nothing compared America’s $850 billion military budget. And Israel on its own remains an extremely wealthy country that enthusiastically prioritizes its military capabilities, with a $24 billion budget and an advanced domestic industry that is a major weapons exporter. If you really believe Israel is committing a genocide, vanishing all American financial assistance would barely leave dent in their efforts.
From another article:
Israel has been receiving around $3.8 billion per year in military aid from the US since the 2000s, constituting roughly 15% of Israeli military funding.
US military aid has since increased to $17.9 billion total in emergency military aid since Hamas initiated the current war. Israel’s military budget on its own has surged 65% to $46.5 billion in 2024. This now constitutes 8.8% of Israel’s GDP, the second highest in the world, right after Ukraine’s current 34.5% (for context the US spends 3.4%). This remains a significant decline from 1975, when Israel was willing to allocate a record 30% of its GDP towards its military.
Obviously, America’s military aid to Israel is significant. But let’s say Uncommitted got what they wanted and the US stopped all aid and imposed a total arms embargo on Israel. Given the significant chunk involved, we should reasonably expect Israel’s military capabilities to be hobbled. At least, temporarily.
The problem that few protesters seem to consider is that while Israel started out scrimping and scrounging for whatever military equipment they could get their hands on (including Soviet hand-me-downs via Czechoslovakia in their 1948 independence war), it now has a robust and healthy military industry that is both iconic and prolific. Israel designs and manufactures a wide range of its own advanced military equipment, including the Uzi submachine gun, the IMI Galil rifle, the Merkava main battle tank, and precision-guided munitions like the Iron Sting 120mm mortar and the SPICE family of guided bombs.
Major manufacturing sites include Israel Military Industries (IMI) for small arms and ammunition, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems for precision-guided bombs and missiles, and Elbit Systems in Haifa. Elbit recently secured contracts to supply thousands of heavy air munitions and establish new raw materials plants, with the explicit aim of reaching “full independence” in bomb and munitions manufacturing.
It is particularly relevant to note that Israel has already been subjected to arms embargoes several times before: France in 1967, the US in 1971, and the UK in 1973. Israel’s world-class military industry was developed in response, and it would not have reached its level of sophistication were it not for the embargoes. Now, this tiny country barely the size of New Jersey, is the 8th largest weapons exporter in the world, comprising 3.1% of global arms exports.
What the US gives that Israel cannot readily make itself are advanced fighter jets (F-15, F-35), and certain precision ordinance (JDAM kits, GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs). Were that supply source suddenly vanish, there is no universe where the IDF just shrugs and says “ah we don’t have GBUs, let’s pack it up and go home guys.”
Making things go boom is very easy. It takes little technical sophistication to drop an unguided bomb from a plane when gravity does all the work. The eye-watering invoices of modern munitions come from the integration of guidance systems, sensors, and networked targeting computers — features that reduce collateral damage but are harder to replace quickly if US supplies are cut off.
If you’re genuinely and earnestly concerned about the civilian death toll in Gaza, there is a serious risk that an arms embargo would make that worse! Both by further entrenching Israel’s domestic military industry, or by encouraging a reduced reliance on precision munitions.
There's also the fact that, as noted by many commentators, Israel has nukes. If they wanted to exterminate the entire population of Gaza, they could have just dropped a nuke on it in October 2023 and called it a day, no US military aid required.
Moving on:
I do not think that you have a very good picture of the average left-winger's thought process
We were talking about the liberal Overton window, not the left-wing one. Some people use the two terms interchangeably, but I am not one of them. I will reiterate that "blowing up brown people in the Middle East" is a policy proposal that does very much reside within the liberal Overton window in a way that "wiping out large chunks of American citizenry, or people residing within the US" does not.
for white settlers
45% of Israeli citizens are Mizrahi Jews, while 20% are Arabs. Even if your use of the scary term "white settlers" was meant to gussy up your accusation, it's just false on its face. The majority of Israelis are not "white" by any conventional definition of the term.
You will be surprised to learn that chaos did not reign in the years prior to widespread filming of public activities -- I guess if the guy wanted to take her toys away himself I'd be OK with that, but would recommend just ignoring her.
You will be unsurprised to be reminded of the fact that the years prior to ubiquitous handheld cameras were also the years of greater ethnic homogeneity and stronger Leitkultur.
Going to the cops is just weak -- do you record speeders with a dashcam and call them in?
Would if I could! This is a law and order country, and everyone needs to do their part.
I need better professional boundaries. I gave well-intentioned general advice to a Reddit or back in India, whose brother had ended up committed to a psychiatric hospital in the UK and they were trying to bring them back. I was surprised when I received a DM request from a new account, wanting to talk to me. I had assumed it was related, and was happy to guide them through things step by step or put them in touch with medicolegal aid.
No, as I found out, only after I assented to their request to get on a phone call with me. I have probably scandalized or traumatized half the compartment in my train back to Scotland, solely on the basis of my end of the conversation. I am definitely conked. I did not expect to hear Soprano-tier drama, involving petty Indian royalty, murder, rape, arson, fraud, kidnapping and levels of familial dysfunction and violence beyond belief. Almost everyone in this story is an awful person who almost deserves the things that have happened to them. I have a new benchmark for generational trauma.
The only thing preventing me from calling the cops is that I'm not entirely sure that the lady I was speaking to was sane. Nothing I have said is an exaggeration, I have a splitting headache and need some sleep.
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