squirms in discomfort

Stand with your knees on the floor? I guess just lay prone on your stomach? PLANK FOR THE PATRIOTISM CROSS!

In this thread: User ThuleanPerspective apparently losing their fucking minds and then having their entire account comment history removed. I’ve never been so intrigued to know what crazy nonsense this person posts.

Update: Looked closer at their history. Managed to comment in dozens of threads per minute. Likely a bot that got removed. That’s more boring than I’d hoped.

May cause visions, ancestral possession, the ennui brought on by the relentless deterministic passage of time, and the massacre of billions via trans-galactic jihad. Do not mix with alcohol.

“It’s”?

The use of heavy handed wording was intentional but not to be dismissive of caring for family, friends, etc. It was meant to be dismissive of a person who thinks that science and discovery is a waste of time and that interpersonal connection is the ONLY thing that matters. THAT point of view is simple, is overly sentimental, is small. If someone is pushing that view than the only thing I can infer is that they simply do not understand the science or its importance, which, today, usually means they’re incapable or too apathetic to try because the knowledge couldn’t be much more accessible than it is. My preference is that science not be maligned as inconsequential or even detrimental. There is plenty of that anti-intellectual sentiment going around and I have no respect for it.

Touched a nerve, did I? Hey, notice how never did I say that either interpersonal or scientific endeavors were unimportant. In fact I said that they both were “incredibly important”. And making me out to be a shill for capitalism or toxic masculinity… pfft. Not hardly.

You took my meaning entirely wrong. But please, get all defensive and self righteous because I was giving my perspective on why someone would profess the message OP took from a film. A message that was, to them, actually dismissive of one of those two endeavors. I wasn’t suggesting they dismissed the wrong endeavor. I was suggesting why they may have dismissed one at all. Neither should be dismissed. More clear now?

People tend to value what’s important to them and their lives more than the things that they do not and cannot participate in. It’s easy to prioritize sentimentality over things far bigger than you. Over advancing humanity, easing suffering, and understanding the universe. When those things are far beyond your capacity to understand and capability to do, they hold less interest to you than the simpler things you know. Family, friendships, and love are incredibly important and compelling. But so is the drive to discover, to create and to shape the future of the planet. Some people are just simple, though, and like things to remain simple.

Those who can, do it. Those who can’t, teach it. Those who don’t even comprehend, criticize it.

My wife tries, bless her spacially-challenged heart

Exactly. Unfortunately, the fundamentally good and sound idea, “defund the police”, got named a phrase that, while understandably cathartic and snappy for those on the side of police reform, was an easy target to the opposition. It played into their misrepresentation of the actual goals of the movement as being fundamentally lawless, chaotic and anarchistic. They made the idea of reprioritizing our tax dollars to more directly meet the public needs into a scary idea that will destroy property and endanger lives. And the police helped with that too. I really feel like if the name attached to the idea was less seemingly antagonistic towards the police and more descriptive of the actual goal, we’d still at least be talking about it in legislatures.

Whether you are an ACAB type or a Thin Blue Line type, you should be in favor of being less dependent on cops for things like basic civil service, mental health care, wellness checks, traffic enforcement, etc. Cops have to wear too many hats. They’re expected to be professionals, experts even, in too many fields. It is not fair to them to expect that level of competence in so many specialties and it’s not fair to the community that needs experts to rely on people who have minimal training outside of arrest techniques and self defense. Instead of 30 generalists in all fields in a community, we should have 30 specialists in different fields. Some cops, some emergency mental health experts, some social workers, some traffic enforcement specialists (yes, this should be separated from general law enforcement), etc.

Edit: Additionally, I believe that separating these duties to different people with different authority, techniques and mind sets will also make it safer for both cops and the public. How many cops are killed during basic traffic stops because a criminal was expecting to be caught or feared the cop’s sidearm? How many innocent citizens have been killed in basic traffic stops because the cop was trained to be afraid for his life? How likely is a civil worker going to be to feel the need for lethal force if they aren’t armed at all times? How likely is an addict going to be to shoot on sight when an EMT knocks on the door for a wellness check?

It’s also counter-intuitive, but cops and the public will be safer when they only have to deal with dangerous situations, when they’re exclusively dealing with criminal suspects. They can rely on their defensive training without worrying about as much situational circumstances. And they’re not interacting with the general public as if their the nails they’re trained to hammer.

Or calling the movie theater and listening through the entire recorded message listing the films playing and all the times they’re playing at.

You could only program like 9 phone numbers on your phone because it only had 10 buttons for it and one of them was reserved for 911. All other numbers you either memorized, wrote down in a book or on cards, or dialed 411 to talk to a stranger whose job was to provide you with the contact information of people and businesses.

Driving long distances to places you had never been before usually involved books of maps, pre-planning, a navigator, and help from strangers.

If we’re talking deities, as in supernatural creator beings, the answer would be yes when they want to be made of atoms and no when they don’t want to be. If they have the power of creation and form reality itself, their nature, both physical and spiritual, would be whatever they choose, right?

If we’re talking non-infinite mind creating a simulated universe that we live in, then it’s more likely that they are made of something, though it may not be atoms or matter as we understand it. They would presumably occupy some sort of physical universe with laws and something like matter to give it physical properties, but there is no reason to assume that the nature of the universe would resemble our own or follow the same laws. Atoms and other forms of matter that we have in our universe may be a construct of our simulation, rather than a constant truth in all universes. And honestly, their universe may not even be physical at all in the sense that we all understand it. The answer is that we don’t know, have no way to know, and may not even have the capacity to understand even if we were given the answer.

Well at least we’re not teaching proper American history to these kids, or they may have realized that what they were doing was monstrous and felt guilty about it. We can’t be making white kids feel guilty, y’all.

And label the text box “username” when it only accepts email address.

I’m a big advocate for approval voting.

I don’t disagree that he may be civilly liable for the safety conditions in general on the set. I just don’t think that his role in this particular case amounts to criminal negligence. From what I have heard, he had every reason to think that his weapon was safe to handle and use. In order to be guilty of manslaughter, you have to act with gross negligence, meaning that you know the risk of harm to another due to your action is real and significant and yet you choose to do the action anyway. In this particular case, he would have reasonably believed that the risk in his actions was essentially none at all.

The negligence was primarily on the armourer and secondarily on the guy who was meant to confirm the armourer (the assistant director? I can’t recall), both of whom failed in their basic due diligence and assured the crew and cast that the firearm was safe when it was not.

A ranger whose favored enemy is Dragons could probably find the egg without much effort. Not sure you want them to though if you don’t want the egg scrambled.