In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
On June 18 2017 06:42 Nevuk wrote: I found the overtime segment of Maher's show to be pretty fascinating this week. It had Malcolm Nance, Eddie izzard, and an editor for brietbart on. Mostly because this was a group of people that were pretty much never going to interact otherwise - Nance thinks brietbart is responsible for him getting 31 death threats, the brietbart editor thinks Nance is hysterical, etc. It covers a lot of ground around political rhetoric from both sides. Maher makes a pretty idiotic point towards the end, but the rest is interesting at the least.
And to round up the panel is the village idiot Ian Bremmer.
While every 10th word that comes out of Trump's mouth is a lie, that doesn't mean every story and rumour about him is true. The whole deliberate collusion with Russia by Trump seemed far-fetched. It is much more likely that Trump, by his own paranoid megalomania and utter incompetence, just keeps incriminating himself for stuff he didn't do. It is a fact that Trump acts like he colluded with the Russians. But that is likely to be is utter incompetence. The old 'the cover-up is worse than the crime' but then Trumpain style.
But, now we know from they Comey testimony that Trump went out of his way to deny to Comey that he met hookers in Moscow. Why would he do that? All these random accusations that later on turn out to be true, Trump comes out and confirms them by going out of his way to deny them. It is a clear pattern. Trump cannot help himself.
I still find it hard to believe, but Comey saying that Trump talked to him specifically about this indicates that Trump worries about it being true. I always through that Trump was so defensive about this because he did money laundering for the mob or because he made deals with criminals, or engaged in corruption. But day by day it seems more likely Trump engaged in treason.
Maybe Trump is just even more idiotic than I currently believe.
And no matter what you believe, you do have to worry about his mental health. It is very telling that he keeps Ivanka and Kushner so close. He simply does not trust anyone else around him. And in a sense that is logical. No one with integrity would associate with him. He really must be in a similar bubble as the classical insane dictator, who no one dares to talk truth to and everyone tries to maneuver around. All people close to Trump must all be thinking about how they can get fool Trump to do what they personally want. And if that last another three years, that must be a complete disaster for the US and for the GOP.
On the other hand, the approval points that Trump still gets from some people, it isn't changing. Those people don't change their mind. It doesn't matter to them how incompetent of corrupt the president of the US is. Apparently, they approve or disapprove of people by a completely different standard. And those people will still have the right to vote during the next elections.
On June 18 2017 06:42 Nevuk wrote: I found the overtime segment of Maher's show to be pretty fascinating this week. It had Malcolm Nance, Eddie izzard, and an editor for brietbart on. Mostly because this was a group of people that were pretty much never going to interact otherwise - Nance thinks brietbart is responsible for him getting 31 death threats, the brietbart editor thinks Nance is hysterical, etc. It covers a lot of ground around political rhetoric from both sides. Maher makes a pretty idiotic point towards the end, but the rest is interesting at the least.
On June 18 2017 10:53 TheLordofAwesome wrote: I am willing to put money on Trump either firing Mueller, or firing someone who refuses to fire Mueller.
I can't find that on the betting sites.
on bremmer: I don't know muhc about him, other than that he has a column in time, and seemed fairly bland and reasonable from what little I've seen of him.
On June 17 2017 10:27 Plansix wrote: Rape isn't like getting caught in the rain. It's not something you avoid, like the flu or late fees. Someone breaks into my home, no one asks if I had to many windows and was asking for it.
Some devil's advocating here:
Actually, a friend of mine's house got broken into (in Brazil). And we kinda looked at how he said they got in and figured it was stupidly easy. We advised him to move, because if it was that easy once, it'd be that easy a second time too.
After the second time they broke in, he did move. There's obviously traits that make you more or less likely to be a victim, and trying to reduce those traits seems fairly normal behavior. It doesn't mean you're to blame.
But the problem is that while this helps your friend be safer, it doesn't help the next person living in the house. I always feel this way when people advise women to do this or that: maybe it would technically make them less likely to be targeted (at the cost of personal freedom), but it hardly reduces the total number of sexual crime, hence on a macro level it is useless at best, and enabling victim blaming at worst.
On June 17 2017 10:27 Plansix wrote: Rape isn't like getting caught in the rain. It's not something you avoid, like the flu or late fees. Someone breaks into my home, no one asks if I had to many windows and was asking for it.
Some devil's advocating here:
Actually, a friend of mine's house got broken into (in Brazil). And we kinda looked at how he said they got in and figured it was stupidly easy. We advised him to move, because if it was that easy once, it'd be that easy a second time too.
After the second time they broke in, he did move. There's obviously traits that make you more or less likely to be a victim, and trying to reduce those traits seems fairly normal behavior. It doesn't mean you're to blame.
But the problem is that while this helps your friend be safer, it doesn't help the next person living in the house. I always feel this way when people advise women to do this or that: maybe it would technically make them less likely to be targeted (at the cost of personal freedom), but it hardly reduces the total number of sexual crime, hence on a macro level it is useless at best, and enabling victim blaming at worst.
Also it doesn't really apply in this case as IIRC only a small % of rape are by strangers.
The more genuine interpretation I think would be to say that the 1% are cashing in the dividends, not the lion's share. I mean pretty much the only group that really suffers is the industrial boomer generation in the developed world.
Say that the trouble of Westerners really is to the benefit of billions of third worlders. Here's a callous question: why should we care about them? Such is the question anyone who sees "our people" and "their people" as a reality would be asking. And nationalism certainly isn't going anywhere.
That's the closest I remember, although LL is more attributing it to nationalists than saying it himself. I'm sure others have said just about the same thing but from their own perspectives before.
On June 17 2017 10:27 Plansix wrote: Rape isn't like getting caught in the rain. It's not something you avoid, like the flu or late fees. Someone breaks into my home, no one asks if I had to many windows and was asking for it.
Some devil's advocating here:
Actually, a friend of mine's house got broken into (in Brazil). And we kinda looked at how he said they got in and figured it was stupidly easy. We advised him to move, because if it was that easy once, it'd be that easy a second time too.
After the second time they broke in, he did move. There's obviously traits that make you more or less likely to be a victim, and trying to reduce those traits seems fairly normal behavior. It doesn't mean you're to blame.
But the problem is that while this helps your friend be safer, it doesn't help the next person living in the house. I always feel this way when people advise women to do this or that: maybe it would technically make them less likely to be targeted (at the cost of personal freedom), but it hardly reduces the total number of sexual crime, hence on a macro level it is useless at best, and enabling victim blaming at worst.
Err, I wasn't addressing rape at all. I was addressing the police shooting innocent people discussion. How it segued to rape at all is beyond me, and a discussion I am really tired of having in this thread.
And there is an important difference between police shootings and burglary (or rape by strangers): while the burglar is looking for the easiest house to burgle, the police officer is (presumably) not looking for some innocent victim to shoot. He's just incredibly badly trained for his job and fucks up in a big way. So while in the case of burglary you are completely correct: all you're doing by treating the symptoms (making your house safer/moving) is making yourself safe rather than society as a whole, if there's some specific way to behave in order to not get shot by policemen, that will result in less innocent people getting shot by policemen, because policemen don't actually want to shoot innocent people.
That said, the root cause in most of these cases is quite clearly not in the victim's behaviour, but in having trigger-happy police in the first place. Why that's the case, I have seen a few pretty good reasons put forward here in the thread. Insufficient training and overequipping with war weaponry seem like primary causes. Combined with a lack of accountability that sounds like a recipe for disaster.
As we learn every festival season, and all other seasons too, there's still a lot of confusion around the difference between appreciation and appropriation. There could soon be a strong incentive to get educated: jail time. Because being called out on the internet doesn't seem to be stopping the proliferation of runway chola bangs and high street Navajo panties.
Indigenous groups around the world are currently calling on the United Nations to make the appropriation of native cultures illegal, reports CBA News. A special committee has been asking for sanctions since 2001, long before Twitter and Instagram became the default ways for offended communities to call out BS and make their cases heard. This week, though, the ball is really getting rolling. Delegates from 189 countries are currently meeting in Geneva as part of a specialized international committee within the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
The committee is pushing for three pieces of international law to put sanctions place. This will expand international property regulations to protect indigenous property ranging from designs to language. The UN should "obligate states to create effective criminal and civil enforcement procedures to recognize and prevent the non-consensual taking and illegitimate possession, sale and export of traditional cultural expressions," James Anaya, dean of law at the University of Colorado, told the committee. Anaya took explicit aim at Urban Outfitters's aforementioned Navajo line, which resulted in the Navajo Nation slapping the company with a lawsuit in 2012. (The case was eventually settled out of court.)