I think Gaston would have been a good main character for a hypothetical Beauty and the Beast sequel (or a good D&D PC). He’s the inverse of the standard hero - rather than starting out weak but pure of heart, he starts out strong, clever, brave, and charismatic, but also a rotten person. However, he just crossed several lines in a row (literally stabbing someone in the back is pretty bad even by his own standards), nearly died (Disney characters routinely survive falling off of cliffs), and can’t go home to a town where everyone knows he’s a villain. Can he turn his life around after hitting rock bottom (both literally and figuratively)?
I’d play him as a paladin, for that strength/charisma combination. Maybe he was saved through divine intervention? That could be enough to make him change his ways. A combat-oriented bard might work too; he does sing…
When I was in California, I saw perfectly peeled lemons lying under a friend’s lemon tree. He told me the rats did it - they ate the peel but were very careful not to bite into the sour inside.
I also responded, “So, you are saying that property rights have priority over human rights?”
In this vein, I enter another definition of “trespassing” as “an unlawful act committed on the person, property, or rights of another.”
When university presidents and chancellors call in campus or municipal police officers to dismantle peaceful tent encampments and arrest demonstrators, they commit trespass against “the person” and their First Amendment right to “freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Not quite at the Sovereign Citizen level of legal misunderstand but getting there…
This claim that the frozen embryos should be considered children according to Texas law has been thrown out repeatedly by Texas courts. It’s almost certainly not going anywhere.
Democracy works well when people have similar general goals and just disagree about how to accomplish them. It doesn’t work well when people have opposing goals. Thus I have a lot of sympathy for these people even though I disagree with their politics. Why should they have to follow the rules set by culturally dissimilar coastal cities far away rather than the rules set by much more similar and much closer Idaho?
If I could remake the US government from scratch, I think I might create something like the self-governing cities of medieval Europe. The Democratic/Republican divide is largely an urban/rural one, and this way both the urban and the rural areas would have the local governments and the representatives that the majority wanted. Real-world state lines do a poor job of demarcating regions where most of the people have similar values. A better system is possible, but in practice there’s too much inertia to make such large changes.
The same thing that already happens to most of them now, I suppose: their basic rights are protected by the Constitution but if they want to live in a community that welcomes them then they might need to move. In the specific situation this article is about, the queer people in eastern Oregon would have to deal with the same issues that the queer people in Idaho already deal with.
In general, I sympathize with the desire to rescue people from the customs of their community, but I don’t think that doing so by imposing our customs on their community is a good idea except in the most extreme cases. It violates the golden rule: I wouldn’t want outsiders imposing their customs on me, even if someone in my community was being mistreated according to the customs of those outsiders. It also doesn’t seem to work very well in practice. It has failed in extreme cases like the US occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and I fear that it is currently failing in the USA.
There are already solid-red states with no blue urban areas. I suppose it’s technically true that people die in these states (all humans are mortal) but the implication that everyone there except rich landowners is likely to die prematurely is ridiculous.
“I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” Justice Alito said in an emailed statement to The Times. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”
For some reason I’ve just never liked Spider-Man. He comes off as a whiney, ignorant child that never seems to grow up or mature despite everything he goes through. I love a good coming of age story, but he just never seems to become an adult.
I have seen the first ten amendments presented without the rest in many contexts. They’re the original Bill of Rights and therefore they do have historical significance that the later amendments lack.
In March a farm worker who reported no contact with sick or dead birds, but who was in contact with dairy cattle, began showing symptoms in the eye and samples were collected by the regional health department to test for potential influenza A. Experts have now confirmed the first case of highly pathogenic avian influenza...
I assume the genie’s rule is “if I help you, I help him twice as much” rather than simply “I do to him twice as much of exactly the same thing I did to you” because otherwise it’s way too easy to kill the other guy while helping yourself.
The weird thing is that this guy isn’t some mob boss - he seems like a nobody. Why would someone carry out such a high-profile attack just to free him? Maybe the attackers expected someone more important to be in the van?
If you trust the casualty numbers that the UN Is using, then they imply approximately 3.7 civilians killed for every combatant (with the assumptions that children make up half the population and that children are never combatants). I don’t trust those numbers but I admit that if I did, I would think they didn’t look good for Israel. I suppose we’ll have a better idea of what the truth is years from now when historians reach a consensus, but until then I’m going to reluctantly trust Biden’s judgement because the US government probably has secret information unavailable to the public. (Biden is biased by his need to be re-elected, but I don’t get reports from the CIA so that’s the best I can do.)
As for justification: Israel should make reasonable efforts to minimize civilian casualties while accomplishing its legitimate military objectives, but Israel should not sacrifice its ability to accomplish those objectives in order to protect civilians. In other words, Hamas doesn’t get to hold Palestinian civilians as hostages against Israel. If they try, then they are to blame for the resulting civilian casualties. The alternative is simply unworkable in practice, because the ability of Hamas to put Palestinian civilians at risk is almost total.
If you present me with a trolley problem in which the only way to destroy Hamas also kills a million children, I won’t know what the right answer is. I suppose it would depend on what would happen to Israel if Hamas wasn’t destroyed.
However, the moral calculus for nations is not the same as it is for individuals. The standard established the last time the Western world fought a war it took seriously does seem to be “as many as it takes” and I suspect that this would still be the standard if such a war happened again. (All those nuclear missiles we have ready aren’t precise weapons…) In that context, demanding that Israel should show restraint that other countries haven’t and wouldn’t seems like hypocrisy.
It’s easy to act self-righteous when that has no consequences, but in practice most people on this planet live in countries (including democratic countries) that probably would actually kill the children in an analogous scenario.
It's so perfect (ttrpg.network)
Not mine, but I sure as hell wish it was.
That has to be fake (sh.itjust.works)
Just needs some light remodeling and nobody will know. (lemmy.world)
Right to Flex Arms (lemmy.sdf.org)
Are we still doing beans ? (I did not create this) (lemmy.world)
Think Tobey planned this? (lemmy.world)
The Ukrainian Navy reports that overnight, the Russian Project 266M Natya Class Minesweeper Kovrovets was destroyed. (sopuli.xyz)
Dead Florida dolphin was infected with highly pathogenic bird flu (www.wfla.com)
The schools & police trampling on student rights don't understand the true meaning of "trespassing" (www.lgbtqnation.com)
A couple's fight over frozen embryos could upend IVF access in Texas (www.lgbtqnation.com)
‘We don’t have a democracy’: why some Oregonians want to join Idaho (www.theguardian.com)
Get your old black powder bombs ready (i.imgur.com)
At Justice Alito’s House, a ‘Stop the Steal’ Symbol on Display (www.nytimes.com)
Name a Superhero you just can't stand
For some reason I’ve just never liked Spider-Man. He comes off as a whiney, ignorant child that never seems to grow up or mature despite everything he goes through. I love a good coming of age story, but he just never seems to become an adult.
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Loblaws is fine with growing green onions, just not by their customers apparently (sh.itjust.works)
First case of highly pathogenic avian influenza transmitted from cow to human confirmed (www.sciencedaily.com)
In March a farm worker who reported no contact with sick or dead birds, but who was in contact with dairy cattle, began showing symptoms in the eye and samples were collected by the regional health department to test for potential influenza A. Experts have now confirmed the first case of highly pathogenic avian influenza...
Are We Really Going to Let Trump Come Back to Fail Again? (www.nytimes.com)
For many millions of Americans, time seemed to move differently under President Donald Trump....
France prison van attack: Huge manhunt after prison officers killed in ambush (www.bbc.co.uk)
Armed men rammed a prison van at a tollbooth, opened fire on officers and fled with prisoner Mohamed Amra....
Name and shame: Pro-Israel website ramps up attacks on pro-Palestinian student protesters (www.reuters.com)