domain:npr.org
Tollund_Man4
11mo ago
Culture War in Ireland
The Enoch Burke saga is coming to a close, with the courts deciding not to prosecute him for trespass for repeatedly showing up at the school he was fired from over a dispute about gender pronouns (he aggressively questioned the principal on the matter and she claimed it was assault, it's not clear what really happened), though his fines have reached 74,000 euro and he has already spent time in jail for contempt of court. The Burke family are conservative activists so this wasn't just about him trying to get his job back, he was trying to draw attention to the issue and he succeeded massively given that this is the first big news item I can think of regarding this issue in Ireland. The principal has apparently quit in the meantime so I guess he can count that as a personal victory.
There was some violence around a refugee encampment this week as right-wing protestors clashed with socialists. A Turkish man came out and shouted 'this is my country' as the right-wingers were tearing down 'No War But Class War' signs and swung at them with a metal pole before getting beaten up. Apparently the Turk is deemed a terrorist by the Turkish government and he spent some time in Poland before coming to Ireland. It looks like the encampment has since been destroyed as the right-wingers burned it down in the night. Not the first time people have burned down asylum seeker accomodation but the other instances were in small towns rather than in the middle of Dublin. The police weren't present for any of this but I'm guessing we'll see some arrests down the line, though a lot of the people involved look like minors so I doubt there'll be real jailtime.
Sinn Féin have dropped their pledge to withdraw from NATO and EU defence agreements if they ever get into power. As far as I am aware all big parties are now pro-NATO and Ireland might end up joining at some point. Neutrality was once something we took pride in, and something that the Irish left valued especially, but the malleability in response to current trends that was exemplified by the lockdowns seems to only be accelerating. One consequence of joining NATO might be British troops training in Ireland, maybe we'll even see the Parachute Regiment show their face under a Sinn Féin government. I see this scenario as being much more inflammatory than the Brexit border issue but that risk isn't discussed in the media. The paramilitaries are basically incompetent nowadays but having obvious and hated targets appear can only help them.
A senator has spoken out against the new hate speech bill. Senators don't really have any power in Ireland (we had a referendum a few years back on abolishing the Seanad altogether) so it probably won't come to anything, but it's certainly another tributary in what could become an organised opposition to the way things are going.
jkf
11mo ago
There's not as many pictures of him when he's younger, but he's pretty ugly then too -- he had bad acne for one thing, the scars of which you can still see when he's older.
Anyways the point is that he was pulling much younger chicks when he was old and ugly -- his first wife (when he was pretty young) was the ugliest one.
jkf
11mo ago
If you substituted the ye's for "you" would that do it? Jesus is on such a fucking roll in Matthew, the bland language just seems to wreck it:
But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor!
Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold? And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty.
Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift? Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon. And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth therein. And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.
Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.
Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?
jkf
11mo ago
You really think the US secretary of health was selected on his merits? People are getting jail time for doing burnouts on rainbow crosswalks, head in the sand won't help you here.
dr_analog
razorboy
11mo ago
This will probably get buried but it's outrageous that you can be bankrupted by medical debt if you get sick in the US! In Europe this doesn't happen.
EDIT: thanks for the gold kind stranger
I'm really exhausted by what seems to be this interminable stuck-at-superficial-memes discussion about health care in the US. I've lived in the US, spent a few years in the UK and experienced NHS, found it surprisingly shitty even though I was looking forward to rubbing Americans' faces in it, and then I ended up back in the US and actually on Medicaid (by near accident! a story for another time though) and found the quality significantly higher.
My new EA cause area for improving health care in the US is to arrange to have everyone live in Europe for a few years so they can get past using it as a cudgel for trying to advocate for their ideology that will fix everything.
I suspect it would backfire horribly and important lessons wouldn't be learned because the irony is too thick, but I dunno I'd really enjoy hearing "whaaaat? I need to wait 3 weeks for a blood draw because the one phlebotomist for my area is on vacation?"
To be clear I'm not saying the UK health care system is an order of magnitude worse (or better) than the US one, just that there are tradeoffs that can be hard to appreciate until you experience them.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
11mo ago
And the Celts. The celts were obliterated by the Romans and then the Saxons, and Wales was the last Celtic holdout.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
11mo ago
German healthcare is also great purely on paper. You pay a fortune in I-can't-believe-it's-not-taxes and what you get is somewhere between indifference, incompetence and bureaucratic nightmares. At least that's my experience with it.
TheGodhead
11mo ago
You’re in medical school, right? That’s probably in a college town? Important info
jericho
11mo ago
When being strangled to death, continued flailing is more a sign of not being dead/unconscious yet than of still being a threat.
Skibboleth
11mo ago
In any case it's not as if the President has that much power over matters of law and order, so what is even Trump's positive case here? There's just not much he can credibly propose.
The President doesn't have direct power over many things presidential campaigns are run on. That hasn't stopped anybody from making absurd promises. (More charitably, the POTUS may not have direct authority over this or that, but he has a lot of leverage and an implicit role as party leader that lets him push policies that are outside the strict limits of his office).
22122
11mo ago
everyone should go to heaven. we should have been born in heaven.
in reality, i don't have a good reason to believe that i am going anywhere except the grave when i die. i think this afterlife stuff is wishful thinking at best, but cynically its deceitful manipulation.
sliders1234
11mo ago
You are right on that. Wander why I thought that. Only thing I guess is so many top economists are.
Gdanning
11mo ago
There is no double edge. If the People argue that the chokehold was deadly force (note that although there is NY authority that the use of a knife is deadly force as a matter of law, People v Kerley, 154 AD3d 1074, 1075 (2017), I don't see any such authority re chokeholds, though I only looked briefly), then the People have two arguments:
-
If the jury finds that the chokehold was deadly force, it must convict because Penny was not justified use of deadly force; and
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If the jury finds that chokehold was not deadly force, it must nevertheless convict because it was so dangerous that its use constituted recklessness.
If they instead concede that it was not deadly force, then they only have argument #2.
There is no way that Penny is helped by a jury finding that the chokehold was deadly force. The more extreme or dangerous Penny's actions were, the easier it will be for the People to win.
They punch so far above their weight we should almost declare procreate with a Jew day a national holiday.
If I want to put a tinfoil conspiracy hat on and an alien civ was guiding our development they would 100% be a Jew. Even AI is Sam Altman and Yud. Who interesting enough both skipped college.
Was hoping someone would throw in some more history so I guess I just have to assume this story they were just sort of chilling in Eastern Europe is true.
I’m curious if Civilization (the video game) create a Jewish civ what would their special abilities be.
HighResolutionSleep
11mo ago
Call me when the AI replaces my job, and we'll talk revolution.
Truly more prescient words about the modern flavor of the human condition have never been spoken.
I hope that the future brings plenty for everyone, but until that magical day comes, I'm laying another brick in my wall every sunrise therebefore.
MaximumCuddles
11mo ago
Sure, if you have only one or two types of socks it makes sense, but having only one or two types of socks is actually kind of a compounding signal.
I’m not exactly a fashionista but I have several types of athletic socks alone; short & thin athletic socks, long & thin athletic socks, long & thick athletic socks, socks with threading, black ones, white ones, multicolored ones.
Not to even mention the different styles and colors of dress socks I have. Which if you are matching to different colors and styles of business casual or formal wear is a necessity.
Even at my poorest I didn’t have that little variety of clothing. Besides, on this forum I sort of doubt it’s a poverty issue, I remember the poll we did back in the old place and people here are mega wealthy, I think I was literally one of the poorest people on the forum. Half my shoes I’ve bought second hand or on clearance.
If I walked into someone’s home and I was pretty sure they weren’t poor or a cultist or a religious fanatic, and for some reason I looked into their drawers and closets and saw one type of underwear of the same color, two types of socks, a closet with only T-shirts and jeans, only one pair of athletic shoes, and so forth, I’d certainly feel some sort of way about it.
And I’m a heterosexual man.
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
Eppur si muove - whatever the rhetoric, the result speaks for itself in this case.
ThisIsSin
Personal corporatehood
11mo ago
The best example of this right now are arguably the Kurdish.
07mk
11mo ago
Something I am still struggling with - shouldn't a Marine know how to hold/disable somebody without killing him?
I have basically no 1st hand knowledge on the subject, but any time I hear from people who have actual knowledge of combat (e.g. mixed martial artists or law enforcement), it seems to me that humans are very fragile creatures where the line between merely stopping an oppositional person with force and killing them is extremely fine. I'm sure there are techniques that maximize the chances of someone surviving when holding/disabling them, but the chaotic nature of a physical altercation makes it so that there's a lot of variance and unpredictability in the outcome. So my thinking is that it's very possible that he tried his best to disable him without killing him but failed at that endeavor, for whatever reason. Whether that was due to reckless negligence is up to the courts to decide, I suppose.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
11mo ago
It's Eurovision Song Contest time, and words cannot describe how crazy Finland has been over this year's Eurovision and Finland's predicted chances to do well. This thread is just a short list of stuff revolving around the Finnish Eurovision entry that's been seen here.
GeneralElephant
11mo ago
We’ve discussed this before & I will just have to say that you must be lucky since I have been menaced by crazy homeless people a couple times (both times late at night past 2am) since moving to NYC last year.
TheGodhead
11mo ago
Counterpoint: The Chronic still slaps
dr_analog
razorboy
11mo ago
(I had a different reply here but I deleted it because I was triggered by stuff that resembled something that you weren't actually saying. Sorry.)
But how much better is it? Perhaps less than those numbers would imply, on many metrics.
What metrics are there, out of curiosity? I've only really seen "outcomes" mentioned but in my surface view these are confounded by issues of affluence (e.g. more obesity, more driving everywhere). Also it seems like ass-covering and hostility-to-rationing drive up costs as well; a socialized medicine death panel could cheerfully say no that test is expensive and highly unlikely to find a problem so there's no rx for it end of story, but in the US an indicator that you could have a 0.01% chance of a horrific disease justifies the test so end of story.
jeroboam
11mo ago
It's been tried before though, hasn't it? Twice, in fact. And both times Israel was able to repulse massive armies before the U.S. got involved. In fact, the U.S. had to intervene because Israel was TOO successful.
Raw numbers don't mean that much in the face of massive organizational, technological, and motivational superiority.
I suppose you could theoretically zerg rush Israel with like 1 million poorly trained soldiers and win. I don't think that's possible right now absent a major casus belli to motivate the troops.
Yeah I was gonna say actually knocking him out and withdrawing quickly could have made sense, if the guy was attacking him at least. If you can’t land it perfectly just applying sustained pressure to the throat for a long time is dicier though. And if the guy doesn’t turn out to have attacked anyone, you can’t just knock someone out for being really awful to be around.
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