Ranxerox

Nebraskans Are Really Starved For Entertainment

18 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Ugh.  Fantastic Four casting is out there, they picked Adam Driver as Mr Fantastic and Margot Robie as Sue Storm.  I just cannot see this working.  I do not know the other two (Paul Mescal as Johnny Storm, and Daveed Diggs as Ben Grimm) so I can't comment on them other than eyerolling Diggs as Jewish Ben Grim, but he spends most of his time as rocky and orange so it is not that big a deal to me. 

Daveed Diggs is Jewish.  His mom is Jewish and by tradition it passes in matrilineal fashion. 

2 hours ago, Iuz the Evil said:

That’s no joke, we had that in California on the other side and people lost their jobs and faced financial penalties (termination for cause). An NDA signed in public service is actionable, you can’t say “First amendment rights” as a defense.

True I'm sure.  However, when you send a notice out to everyone in an entire government agency, it is going to be very hard to figure out who leaked the notice.  This is doubly true when the agency in question does not have any investigative powers.

On 5/7/2023 at 9:32 AM, Logan D. Hurricanes said:

There Was Almost A Batman Meets Godzilla Movie Starring Adam West In The 1960s

It is a shame.  I am sure that movie would have become a classic of sorts.

7 hours ago, unclevlad said:

 

And now the list of charges is out.  Rather extensive, too.  From NYT:

Quote

Mr. Santos was charged with seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives.

 

It is illegal to make false statements to the House of Representatives?  Why aren't they all in jail?

11 hours ago, unclevlad said:

That's one of the 2 aspects that make me sick to my stomach on a personal level...the other being that I can't help but say that Texas does this to themselves.  Feeling that makes me NOT LIKE MYSELF...but I can't stop it, either.

 

I think I'm going to light a couple tea lights I still have from Yule...and pour myself a double.  Good night, everyone.  At least for us.

I can't heart or trophy this post, but I certainly know where you are coming from.

Man who lost wife, son in Texas mass shooting tells story

7 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

Thanks,Ranxerox. I see where our opinions diverge. I don't believe that anyone knocking on someone's door should have a gun directly pointed at them without first identifying them as an imminent threat to life or limb. The law agrees with me on that point. So, the police identifying themselves properly is a moot point. That said, let's agree to disagree on that detail.

Yes, but if he realized that it was the police on the other side of the door, he likely wouldn't have pointed a gun at them and would still be alive.  Still, I am happy to agree to disagree.

8 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

OK. So you agree the fault is with the homeowner?

No.  I agree that the homeowner bears some fault, but I am not willing to let the police off the hook for their role in this.  Neither resident of the house realized that the people pounding at were police officers.  I consider this prima facie evidence that the officers did not do a good enough job identifying themselves.  Yelling "this is the police" once at people who may be asleep or in a distant part of the house behind closed doors is not sufficient identification.  I work in health care, and we don't fool around with identification.  We don't say are "are you so-and-so", and when they dumbly nod yes, proceed to give them potentially dangerous medications.  No, we ask them to identify themselves with name and birthdate, then we check these against both their patient ID bands and our own records.  Going the other way with identification, we get the patient's attention, make eye contact, tell them our name and job title and what we plan to do with them, and then we give them a chance to respond.  So, these cops failed.  They didn't even make sure that they were at the right address before proceeding, and they identified themselves only once to people that for all they knew were asleep or out of the range of full hearing.  That is a procedural failure, in that either they failed to follow the department's procedure or the procedure itself was inadequate.

Yelling "this is the police" before pounding on the door is good, but they needed to repeat the yell several more times in case they were not heard or understood the first time.  Also, having the the flashing lights from their patrol car streaming through the windows would have really brought home that this was actually the police at the door and would convey the information to people who don't hear well.

Quote

I honestly don't care about the statement made by the police, either. They often dumb things down for the press or -- as I suspect in this case -- try not to point the victim of a tragic mistake in a bad light. Just because they're soft selling it doesn't mean that the man did not foolishly open his door in the middle of the night and point it at the person on the other side.

Yes, I understand that.  However, a huge part of our problem is that we have dumbed things down way too much.  See my earlier post statement about right to bear arms and the right to be a moron.  Barring extenuating circumstances, pointing a gun at someone is assault with a deadly weapon (yes, the misdemeanor form of this charge, but still).  People should be taught that it is not alright even when they are on their own property and it is night time.  This is important information for the public to understand and if we don't talk about after a tragedy like this, when will we talk about it?

5 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

Also, in that final case of the police shooting, I looked up the video. Generally, it's not a good idea to be anywhere near a gun in the presence of police, but this wasn't jumpy police. The guy didn't just answer the door with a gun in hand. He opened it and pointed it directly at the police. No ambiguity on that one.

Okay, but here is the thing.  The man and his wife did not know that they were cops.  Indeed, while the wife was in a shoot out with the police, she took a moment out to call 911 and tell them that intruders had just killed her husband.

The police department has come out and said that given the circumstances - late at night, people pounding at his door - that the husband was perfectly within his rights to open the door with his gun drawn and ready.  According to police department, the man who was killed didn't do anything wrong, and the only thing wrong that the police did was go to the wrong house.  Yep, nobody made any big mistakes, despite the fact a man died and there was firefight between the police and the wife that could have resulted in more deaths.  Alright, I am over simplifying, there is to be an investigation of the incident and the investigation may lead to more findings a suggestions.  However, those would suggestions for future police raids.

So, I have some of those amateur opinions that you dislike so much.   The husband and wife in the house did not know that it was law enforcement; this represents huge failure on the part of both the officers involved and the police department's policies and procedures.  It brings to mind the poor women in Sacramento who got shot when the man skulking outside her window that she drew a gun on turned out to be a cop.  When law enforcement shows up they should announce themselves in no uncertain terms. Leave the cherry lights on the patrol car going and announce that you are the police repeatedly when showing up to make an arrest.  

Also, when you are a gun owning home owner or renter,  if you don't feel safe opening your door without your weapon drawn, don't open your door at all.  Talk through the door until you know what is going on.  All three of these tragedies could by a short conversation through a locked door.

Here in America we feel that we both have a right to own guns and to be morons.  One of those rights needs to go.

37 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

A suspect has been arrested today in relation to the links of intelligence information WRT Ukraine.  Info from earlier today about the kid:

 

 

He's in deep, deep kimchi, because he's being charged under the Espionage Act.  It's still not clear HOW he got a lot of this stuff, as it really should not have been available to him.  I wouldn't be surprised if there were serious security failures so he did...but that won't be much of a defense.  What would help is if there's someone higher up the chain that fed the kid the documents.  If that hypothetical person is worth it, hey, the kid might get nothing more than a slap on the wrist, no prison time.  BUT he's going to have a seriously ugly black mark on his record, and forget ever having a clearance again.  That also is predicated on finding said person.

 

EDIT:  HOW ugly are the charges?

From NYT, as was the quote above.  Bold mine.

 

 

He leaked hundreds.  

Usually, these sort of sentences are set to run concurrently.  So likely, he would be sentenced to 10 years.

1 hour ago, steriaca said:

All true. England has a habit of knighthood for celebs also, but seemly mostly of It's own citizens. 

 

Does the United States have a similar honor? 

Yes, the Presidential Medal of Freedom is frequently given to artist.  The Congressional Gold Medal is also sometimes given to artist, but is more commonly given for acts of bravery and heroism. 

7 minutes ago, Cygnia said:

Reminds me of Brenda Spencer

Interesting.

4 hours ago, Dr.Device said:

He isn't lying.

 

The health insurance provisions are not limited to minors. They refer to the definitions in the prohibitions for care of minor sections as to what constitute "gender clinical interventions," but say nothing about being limited to health insurance coverage for minors.

Thank you for the clarification.

7 hours ago, Cygnia said:

 

Dr Eric Feigl-Ding is deliberately making false claims about the bill in order inflame the public.

Here is that section of bill when not edited to deny the reader context:

Quote

45        6.52 Prohibition on gender clinical interventions for

44        minors; physician requirements.—

45           (1) For the purposes of this section, "gender clinical

46           interventions" means procedures or therapies that alter internal

47           or external physical traits.

48               (a) The term includes, but is not limited to:

49 1.           Sex reassignment surgeries or any other surgical

50               procedures that alter primary or secondary sexual

51                characteristics.

52            2. Puberty blocking, hormone, and hormone antagonistic

53             therapies.

Notice the main heading of the section, which Dr Feigl-Ding left out, specifies that medical interventions it is prohibiting apply only to minors.

Personally, I feel that puberty blockers should be available trans kids, and believe that this bill is wrong headed.  However, I still can't support deliberate lying about the bill to further inflame the public.

People, please, stop getting your news from twitter.

6 hours ago, Cygnia said:

21 South Carolina GOP Lawmakers Propose Death Penalty for Women Who Have Abortions

🤮

On 3/6/2023 at 7:06 PM, Pattern Ghost said:

 

I saw that. Stewart's argument is kind of weak when "children" are defined as up to 21* years old in those stats, and the majority of those deaths are gang violence related. The more accurate conclusions from that "statistic" are that a) statistics can lie to play on emotions, and b) gang violence and diversion needs to be addressed. To address the number one killer of children, as Stewart laid it out, you would first spend massive funding on gang diversion and gang intervention (encouraging and teaching gangs how to resolve conflicts without killing one another) programs across the country.

 

The fact that we have a politician sitting there who couldn't come to that simple counter to Stewart's argument and that Stewart has (I've recently watched several of his "take down" videos regarding different topics recently) has begun restoring to poor research and talking over his interviewee are both disheartening.

 

My takeaway? The best argument for taking weapons from the population is that we have become an infantile society who as a whole doesn't possess the capacity to be trusted with the power over life and death. People can't even sit down and weigh the pros and cons of an issue with each other from different ideological standpoints without resorting to dirty debate tactics (Stewart) and without the awareness required by their office of public responsibility (any of his victim "interviewees").

 

I'm saying this as a fan of Stewart who mostly agrees with him and respects a lot of the things he's done. He's become deeply (or at least demonstrably) emotional and "fed up" when it comes to 2nd Amendment issues the last few years. He needs to get back to good research and critical analysis of all of his information sources, and be more aware of his own confirmation bias.

 

 

*Edit: That 21 is likely wrong. It looks like the CDC is currently using 19 years old as the break point, and that's likely the source Stewart was using. That same data shows that firearms take over as the leading cause of death starting at age 15. Which reinforces the point about gang activity being the root cause here.

 

3 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

I understand, and I agree with you on the hypocrisy of said politician. But I don't like Stewart's tactics, either.

Whether or not Stewart's tactics are underhanded depends on whether he legitimately considers teenage gang members to be children.  At a certain age, it is not a hard thing to do.  Personally, I consider everyone under twenty a quite a few people over 20 to be children. 

No one is born a violent gang member and no one needs to die one.  Of course if you die young, you  lose the ability to walk away from that life.  Gang diversion and gang intervention programs age great, but why are we limited to those solutions.  We could do those things and make gun access harder to get.  Yes, they could still stab one another, but knives simply are not as good at killing people as guns in the hands of the untrained.  Everything that reduces the chance of dying young gives the young and foolish more time to turn their lives around.

39 minutes ago, Dr.Device said:

 

That study doesn't show what they say it does. The statements are mostly either so vague as to be useless, so extreme as to be parodies, or just to vague.

 

This is going to mean completely different things to Democrats and Republicans. 

I've heard many republicans claim with a straight face that it does, but it's against white people. Others admit it exists, but say it isn't a significant problem.

 

I won't go on, but look at just about any of those statements and think about how a Republican and a Democrat are likely to interpret it.

 

And I notice there's no question about LGBTQIA rights in there.

Yes, the survey that they did was vague and didn't address many important issues.  Still, it is worth noting that most Republicans thing that Muslims can good Americans, that the US government should do more in the way of gun control, and racism still exist in America; while, a majority of Democrats believe that most Republicans are so extreme that they would not agree to those reasonable statements. 

Also, apparently most Republicans believe that a majority of Democrats are ashamed to be Americans, want to abolish ICE and have completely open borders.  They also think that most Democrats want the the the US to become a socialist country.  Given how broad of a definition many Republicans have for what is socialism that last one might be true from their perspective.  However, the other ones all seem pretty straight forward and I doubt that the two sides have substantially different ideas on what it means to have an open border or abolish ICE.

1 hour ago, Dr. MID-Nite said:

What progressive values are "extreme" as stated in that link? I'm genuinely curious.

Example  given include that the US should have completely open borders, should adopt socialism, that most police are bad people and that not even the law abiding should have access to firearms 

6 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

Crazy stuff like properly controlled immigration, whether racism exists, whether Muslims can be good Americans, or gun control.  Like, any gun control.

No, those are things that Democrats believe that all the majority of Republicans disagree with.

Both Both Republicans And Democrats Severely Overestimate How Extreme The Other Side Is

The ironic thing about this is that all the factors that one would expect to lead to more accurate assessments only make things worse.

1 hour ago, Hermit said:

 

Well,let's just say our figures of speech include the well known "Bless your heart" which half the time translates to 'You're so stupid that I think you could get run over by a parked car' or something similar, but also mixes in Applachianisms like 'I don't care to' which means 'Sure, I'll do it'

 

Jokes aside, politically the state is a mess right now as the GOP Dominated State legislature goes after ANY LGBTQ+ folks it can instead of actually tackling issues that would help its citizens...

for example, Drag Shows will soon be a felony it seems

 

Yes, state Budget will be spent on enforcing this

 

EDIT: I Should add, this bill could be used to squelch pride parades. One upcoming in Knoxville has already reported been called off for the fear of arrests.

I've read about this bill. It is unconstitutional AF. Even with our current SCOTUS, I don't see it having a chance.  However, I suspect that the idea is to rile people up more than to pass actual, constitutionally enforceable law.  The numbers of young people who identify as nonbinary or trans has risen significantly, and this is freaking out a lot of people.  So, socially conservative politicians are finding anti-trans stunts a good way to both energize their base and attract new support.  IOWs, laws like this are going to keep on coming.

10 hours ago, Lectryk said:

I don't think even that contortion would work.  On it's face, it comes down to an argument between the rights of the prospective mother, and the right of the unborn to be be born.  We know which way that the current bench would rule, with that logic.

 

Any prospective case would face the hurdle of proving that bearing to term is involuntary servitude/slavery when there is an option to adopt out the baby.  If there was case law/laws in general requiring 'proper pre-natal care' (even a definition of that) at the federal level let alone the state level, there would be a level of invasiveness and control of the individual's actions that could be read as servitude/slavery, but there isn't precedent for that (that I know of, anyway).

 

 

Adopting out the baby only saves a person from the work of raising the child.  Never mind all work of carrying a fetus for nine months, the act of childbirth is itself extremely difficult.  They don't call it labor for nothing.

It is not worth watching for Pike, but might be worth watching for Spock.  He had a much bigger role in Discovery than Pike.  Though it is worth noting that the Spock in the Discovery is a different Spock than the the one in TOS or even SNW.  He is a younger Spock who is still dealing with issues than his older selves had already come terms.

8 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

I doubt any responsible adult did.

 

My next question is, how often does this happen?  Are we only hearing about it because the victim died this time? 

Based on what I have read, there were numerous allegations of abuse and police brutality against the unit, but this is the first death.

17 hours ago, Clonus said:

 

Well Alberta is the Canadian province most influenced by the United States.  Still, there's an election coming up in March, and that will be its test.  So far Smith hasn't been elected by the public.  She's just hijacked a party that was falling apart.  

Is it really the part most influenced by the United States?  Vancouver could be mistaken for Seattle and shows a definite family resemblance to San Francisco.  Maybe all of Canada is influenced by the parts of the US to the south of them and vice versa.