The gun is popular with criminals for the same reason it’s popular overall. Oh noes.
As usual, the gun isn’t the problem. Gun laws allowing access to it by criminals are.
We have actual victims speaking up to let us know that the Catholic Church and other Christian communities are abusing children. If LGBT groups are allegedly doing the same, where are the victims' testimonies? Where are the hundreds, if not thousands of victims coming forward with their own stories that can be investigated so we can bring these alleged gay pedophiles to justice?
They left out the part where Carolyn Bryant Donham admitted her initial accusations that Till assaulted her—which catalyzed Till's murder—were lies. Still think they should have sent her cancer-ridden, geriatric ass to prison before she died.
These polls are just his approval ratings, right (sorry, can't access the article), not a measure who is willing to vote for him in 2024? Yeah, people don't approve of you backing Israel when it's indiscriminately killing civilians and committing war crimes. Surprise, surprise. Doesn't mean they're going to vote for Trump over you, Joe, don't worry.
It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if Lemmy is rife with these trolls. And I'm not just talking about the tankies.
I will never understand people who advocate for communism as opposed to democratic socialism. Every major country that has ever gone down the communist road has ended up a dictatorship. That's not a bug of communism, it's a feature. I get the criticism of capitalism, I really do, but we can enact socialist laws that rein in the excesses and extremes of capitalism without sacrificing our democracies for one-party governments.
As a person born many years after the first moon landing, I always thought it was fucking ridiculous that we managed to put a machine on a celestial body thousands of miles away from our fucking planet. That puts our species' relative IQ compared to other species at 100,000. Back in the Stone Age, our peak achievements were running a long time and throwing objects accurately and at high speed, which allowed us to pwn just about everybody else. Now we're using chemistry and engineering to produce rockets that can move complex objects off the fucking planet to a spheroid object we can see in the sky. Like, what the actual fuck?
Due to sociopolitical issues, I have a fairly negative view of our species these days. But when you look at our technological achievements, you have to sit back and just stare in awe at what we've been able to accomplish. We're homo sapiens, fuck you. Our closest relatives (chimps) are four times as strong as us, fuck them, we experiment on you to learn about ourselves. Elephants, dolphins, crows, and orangutans trail us in intelligence, LMAOROLF, keep playing with them mirrors we gave you. We are so fucking OP we domesticated cows so hard their anal gas is a threat to the fucking planet. We've genetically engineered dogs into the most prolific and diverse species on Earth, and other animals actively seek us out sometimes, because they're like "holy shit, humans do magic, maybe they can get this weird plastic shit off my ass," and we invented that plastic and put it there in the first place. We are the fucking bomb, for better or worse. Nothing compares to us. We are functionally gods, fuck you.
For many reasons, humans suck, fuck us. But god damn, you better fucking respect.
Relevant:
According to previously unreported details that police released about the incident Wednesday, Donofrio repeatedly knocked, banged and kicked on the front door "while manipulating the door handle" while trying to enter the home.
A female resident of the home called 911 as Donofrio kicked the door, while a male resident went to retrieve a firearm elsewhere in the home, the news release states. The homeowner owned the gun legally, “for the purpose of personal and home protection,” according to police.
While the woman was on the phone with police, Donofrio broke a glass window on the front door "and reached inside to manipulate the doorknob," at which point the male resident fired the shot through the broken window that struck Donofrio in his upper body, according to police.
Under those circumstances, I don't blame the homeowner for using a gun to defend himself and the other female resident. This guy was literally breaking into their home. If it had been me, I would have been terrified and very thankful to have a gun on hand for defense. I'm sure a lot of people here will protest to the shooting, but I would urge them to really think about what they would have done in such a situation. I don't know what Donofrio's reasons were for trying to break into the home, but they hardly matter; the fact is, he did try, and the residents of the home had every reason to think they were in danger. If we had multi-shot stun guns that could reliably incapacitate an intruder, I'd say he should have used that rather than a lethal weapon, but current stun guns aren't that reliable and only fire once before needing to be reloaded. That a life was lost is sad, but I agree that no criminal charges should be filed in this instance. However, I'm not saying that I entirely agree with the Castle doctrine on which this is based, as I'm not intimately familiar with it, but the general notion of being able to use lethal force to defend oneself against a home intruder I do agree with on principle.
I have to admit that I have a bit of a failure of empathy when it comes to people who get sucked into cults. I understand many of them suffer from various psychological vulnerabilities, and if you're talking about someone with extremely low self-esteem or certainly an intellectual impairment, then fine, I get how they might be duped by a cult leader. But if you're basically mentally healthy, the signs of cultdom seem so obvious to me that I have a hard time understanding why they don't see them. I accept that they don't, but it's difficult for me to understand.
As such, this whole Trump thing has put me in a kind of political existential dilemma: I don't know that I will ever be able to see Trump supporters (~90% of conservatives) as mentally reliable people from now on. I don't mean to be dramatic; I go back and forth on this (hence it being a dilemma). At times, I tell myself, "it's not that bad, it can't be that bad," but then another poll comes out reporting that 3/4 of these folks really are forehead-deep in the Kool Aid.
The sad thing is this is my field! I work in mental health; I'm supposed to understand how this shit happens, and when it's a small group (like most cults) I...guess I just sort of write it off as an anomaly. But this is over 1/3 of the U.S. population. I've done a little research and the prevailing explanation seems to be groupthink and echo chambers—Trump supporters are just surrounded by each other and so when everyone you know seems to think these things are true, you reason that they can't all be wrong and agree based on that heuristic. But...really? No critical thinking?
I accept that this is a failing on my part though, because there are other examples of this in history. I guess seeing it play out in front of my eyes is just too surreal for me to handle. I don't know. I guess the scariest part is the idea that in theory this can happen to any group of people. Leftists are not immune, we just haven't had it happen to us yet. It's a truly depressing thought that our brains have this kind of innate software bug, but then again I guess it does explain a lot about human history.
"He could invoke powers we've never heard a President of the United States invoke—potentially to shut down companies or turn off the internet or deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil," he added. "We don't know because the things that are in there, the emergency powers of the president, aren't widely known to the American people.
Wow, it’s almost like we’ve consolidated too much power in the Executive Branch and should do something about it before a despotic asswipe gets elected by an unhinged, manipulated populace.
Pretty sure it’s already considered one if you’re in the Russian army in Ukraine.
The new law, which reforms the state’s conservatorship system, expands the definition of “gravely disabled” to include people who are unable to provide themselves basic needs such as food and shelter due to an untreated mental illness or unhealthy drugs and alcohol use. Local governments say current state laws leave their hands tied if a person refuses to receive help.
The law is designed to make it easier for authorities to provide care to people with untreated mental illness or addictions to alcohol and drugs, many of whom are homeless.
I work in mental health in another state, and I’ve been wishing for a law like this since I started my career. I don’t believe people who have any sort of mental illness should be forced into treatment, but laws enacted at the behest of rights groups for the mentally ill have gone too far (although it’s certainly better that we have those laws than don’t). Some people are so sick they’re their own insurmountable obstacle to care, and that would be fine if their condition only affected them, but it often doesn’t. For their sakes and that of those around them, I agree some people should be forced to get their issues treated.
Found this other article on it and it mentions:
KOKI also identified a woman who told the station that she recognized Collins after seeing him exhibit similarly disturbing behavior about a week prior to the incident at the Sonic.
“We saw him start to charge at this person who was just sitting on the ground in front of the McDonald’s,” she told the station in an interview. “He charged at him with the flagpole and started doing like a stabbing motion with it.”
I suspect this guy is mentally ill.
OMFG I hope they do. They could no longer bus immigrants to other states and would have no other choice but to police their border with Mexico entirely on their own without any federal support. Fucking dumbasses.
As a mental health counselor, I'm very familiar with the wealth of psychological literature that documents how suicide attempts are overwhelmingly the product of impulses that occur in very short-lived moments of utter despair, and that most survivors of SAs regret making them.
However, I am also intimately familiar with how horrendously torturous life can be, even when one's external circumstances aren't that bad, and it is my firm belief that it should be an inalienable human right to "get off the ride" so to speak. To that end, I'm for governments providing suicide assistance to people who demonstrate a prolonged desire to end their own lives that cannot be reasonably argued to be an impulse due to temporarily depressed mood. There do need to be limitations to protect people from acting rashly or on deluded beliefs that stem from psychosis or mania (e.g. a schizophrenic person wanting to kill themselves because they believe they're a host for the Devil as opposed to the much more rational reason of simply being sick of dealing with the illness itself), but overall I'm against requiring people to have a terminal illness or even just requiring them to get treatment for their depression. IMO, right to die should be universal, and restrictions on it should require strong arguments and support. You want to die because your weird religious beliefs deem it a sin to live past 30? Well...not my cup'o'tea, but that's your right.
I also just kind of think making suicide illegal is stupid. Seriously suicidal people are going to kill themselves regardless of the law; all making it illegal does is force these folks to go about it via means that may be either ineffectual and self-harming and/or risk harming others.
Crocodile tears. Republicans don’t care about small businesses. This is just a “Democrats want this? Gotta fight it!” moment, because they have no actual platform.
Nothing looks better on a corporate resume than taking over a successful business and immediately alienating all the talent that made it successful. I don’t know who the jerkwad is that fucked up so badly, but I hope this follows them for years.
Kudos to Nick, Yahtzee and all the rest for sticking with each other in solidarity rather than caving to corporate pressure. I’ll be looking forward to seeing them produce new videos in the future, hopefully under their own LLC.
West, despite being younger than Biden, is apparently having a stroke.
Just start taking your fucking meds, dipshit.
Whenever Trump utters a new completely bogus lie, I don’t think about him at all. Instead I think about his voters and wonder if there is any falsehood he could utter that would cause them to change their minds about him. It’s still hard for me to accept the idea that so many people think this is acceptable behavior in the final analysis. I know many Trump voters say that they don’t like Trump or approve of his lies, but they still claim he’s better than any Democrat due to his policies and strident action to support them. It really is a strong man appeal, and none of them seem to be able to see how letting this become the new precedent for their party will damage not just the Republican platform in the long run but the entire American political system.
I can see a future in which Gen Z or their children elect a similarly unhinged president who tries to ban organized religion or selectively deny federal funding to red states or some other nonsense. When the shoe is on the other foot, oh the cries of injustice these same Trumpers will make.
We are all so fucked. Glad my life is already 50% over. Future generations have my condolences.
This was reported by the Russian news agency Rbc.ru.
I'll wait for a less suspicious source, thanks.
While the concerns over some of the policies enacted by this government are legitimate, I think one has to acknowledge that they have been effective at combating the gangs, which had largely held the entire nation and its government hostage through terrorism. My question is: what should that government have done instead? If the humanitarian critics want to be taken seriously, we have to be able to suggest plans and policies that will achieve the same or similar ends without the drawbacks of rolling back fundamental human rights. The people of El Salvador were in a desperate situation and so elected a president who took desperate measures. If we want to prevent those desperate measures from gaining popular support, liberal politicians need to provide effective solutions for these desperate problems that work without the need of said desperate measures.
Wow. You know, as a therapist, I have to deal with hearing political opinions I disagree with (sometimes vehemently) relatively often, so I'm familiar with how aggravating it can be, but it would never even remotely occur to me to threaten one of my patients with physical violence for even the most horrid opinions they expressed. On the contrary, I've always been motivated to engage them with questions that challenge their opinions (although, as a therapist, I often have to resist that impulse, because it's not my place to challenge my patients political opinions). For this teacher to threaten their student for such a comparatively mild political objection suggests they either (a) should never have become a teacher, because they lack the required temperament and/or mindset or (b) had a truly bad trigger moment in which they lost control of themselves, indicating a need for further training and suspension from their job.
Sad that political events in the Middle East are having such effects across the globe. Understandable, but sad nonetheless.
Hatchett said she told Coody she wasn't sure where his home county was located. The sheriff pointed a finger at her chest, she said, and replied: “In the heart of Georgia.” She said he then repeated those words as he grabbed her left breast and began squeezing and rubbing it.
I rarely have cause to use this word, but I am absolutely flabbergasted at this behavior. I mean, what was going through his head? Seriously, I would love to know what he was thinking in that moment, because I just don't understand his actions. This is the kind of thing I could see a 12-year-old thinking was funny, maybe, but a full-grown man? I don't get it.
I was going to respond to the OP, but I only knew how an inner ear imbalance causes dizziness, not how said dizziness triggers the vomiting reflex. Thanks!
For those who want to know, there's fluid in your inner ear and receptors that can detect where the fluid is, as well as where it ends (it's surface). Your brain uses this system like a level to determine your head's orientation to the ground, and if something fucks with the fluid in a way the brain can't make sense of, you feel dizzy (the sensation of not knowing your orientation to the ground).
Counselors' first amendment rights aren't being affected; they can say anything they want. They're just not allowed to treat minors with treatment methods that have been proven to be ineffective at best and harmful at worst. Your first amendment rights don't apply to treatment periods; there are plenty of restrictions on your speech in a professional setting like that, and you should lose your license if you violate those rules. Those aren't state laws though, just silly old APA standards.
Hamas leaders have repeatedly said they did anticipate Israel’s over-response, and that that was actually the entire point.
Israel has been really shitty to Palestinians for a long time, and they’re being even shittier now, but Hamas doesn’t have the excuse of defending its nation from attacks, because Hamas (a) is not a nation and (b) doesn’t give a flying fuck about Palestinians. Israel deserves censure and condemnation for its war crimes. Hamas deserves to be annihilated.
It revealed that “the vast majority” of the negative attitudes toward women serving in special operations “unfortunately did come from senior noncommissioned officers. So it does seem to indicate that it is generational,” Command Sgt. Maj. JoAnn Naumann, the most senior enlisted soldier in the command, said in a call with reporters Monday about the findings.
Well, that's rather predictable and good news for the long run. Just retire these dinosaurs and replace them with younger soldiers. No more old boys' club.
And while we're at it, why don't we get rid of the selective service system or force women to be join it? Equal rights, equal responsibilities.
Yes, because its calculation relies on the local speed of sound, which is varies based on several factors, including altitude.
According to this article they never conclusively determined what her motive was. There were theories that it my have been Munchausen's by proxy or simple sadism in response to seeing the families grieve, but nothing was ever proven. As for her methods, this article details them and I'll leave you to read up on that, not going to detail it here. Suffice it to say, this woman deserves to never see the light of day again.
Oh, Mitt, I wish it were that simple. No, the problem isn’t the lack of alternatives, it’s that your base is solidly under his spell and doesn’t want an alternative—they genuinely want him. Because he’s a strong man, and the rest of you are liberal-loving pussies.
Sorry, but your soil is salty. Doesn’t matter what crops you plant.
Okay, okay, okay, don't worry, I've been well-trained to know what to do here: we send Mr. Turscak on a paid vacation from prison while his Mexican Mafia gangmates investigate him for any wrongdoing.
This. Any decent accountant or financial manager would know this. The fact that he made this statement at best means he's incompetent at his job and at worst is an indication of crocodile tears.
Wow. So much for background checks.
Moral of this story: don't try to be a vigilante law enforcer. Let the police shoot the Black man; they're professionals.
That's not "mildly infuriating," that's straight-up scary. Call the cops.
"Judges aiming?" More like "Judges enforcing law violated by Alabama Republicans to protect rights of Black Alabamians to proportionate representation in elections."
Yeah, he's never going to willingly pay that bill. A court will have to order the money taken from him.
There's a difference between protest and harassment. I strongly believe the right to express all opinions--even stupid, bigoted ones--should be protected, but that doesn't mean you get to harass other people and try to intimidate them into submission.
Buck didn’t stop there.
Oh, shit. Careful guys, he's gone off-colloquialism!
I think this is it, actually. Having a lot of money can lead to spending it on frivolous things, but I don't think that's what we mean by corruption. It's when you have so much money that you can use that money to influence people in power that it gets bad. Suddenly, when getting your way is merely a question of bribery and you have plenty of means to do it, people start thinking they have a right to pull the strings in the way they see fit.