See, Britain just needs Ugly Laws, like what America had up until 1974! Then they could just have the guy arrested!

In all seriousness what the fuck. What goes through a person’s head that they think treating someone that way is even remotely okay?

If you’re into cooking, history, or both, Tasting History with Max Miller is great. Lots of wonderful history, from the common to the obscure. He works hard to find primary sources for every story he shares, as well as calling out fake stories. He also corrects himself when he gets something wrong. And the recipes are fascinating!

Been getting into Bonsai Mirai lately. Very educational, in-depth videos about how to do Bonsai, with tips for everyone from a beginner to an expert. Also very relaxing to watch.

My aunt had a cat who basically lived in the whole condo complex and probably begged food from everyone lol. But he’d also just go to other people’s places to hang out.

I remember one day when we were out for a walk, and we passed by a neighbor’s place and there her cat was, on the back of the guy’s sofa, watching football with the neighbor on his big screen TV.

When she moved away, everyone dropped by to say goodbye to her cat.

When my uncle was growing up in Alaska, the guy who owned the big General Store in town had a pet bobcat.

From what my uncle said, the guy was a mountain of a man, so at first you’d see him across the store holding the bobcat and petting it, and be like, ‘oh, normal guy with a cat.’ And then you’d get closer and be like ‘Oh… that’s a bobcat.’

When not demanding pets, the bobcat would spend his time going from exposed rafter to exposed rafter, monitoring his domain.

Simple: the people electing him are racist white southerners.

Those kids in the 60s treating their new black classmates like shit, the white teens pouring drinks over black teens doing soda-counter sit-ins, the young white couple that’s all smiles as they attend a lynching… they didn’t just poof out of existence when the Civil and Voting Rights Acts were passed. They grew up, had kids that they taught their racist bullshit to.

And all of them vote.

‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’

It’s that gosh-darn problem with facts having a liberal bias again.

They’re doing it too much though. Lots of onroads are being forced to work 10-14 hour days, multiple days in a row. They cut support staff so those few people have to do more.

And they’re not firing/retaining by who does a good job or who has more skills. They’re doing it randomly. One guy I know, one of the best dispatchers in his center, got kicked out because they drew lots on who to fire.

Although, I bet if those racist assholes took DNA tests many of them would find they did have some African-American blood, especially if they were from the South.

Speaking as a woman, you’re definitely an insufferable cunt.

Wow, downvoting a serious medical condition. Some people need to touch grass.

I dunno, maybe if they larp it hard enough they actually will become good people.

There used to be decent republicans in office; I’m old enough to remember some of them. Our former state treasurer was pretty awesome, for example. Sadly, even his daughter has been bit by the looney republican bug. So now we have a democrat in that position.

On February 8, 1975, following the lineups, police arrested Simmons and Roberts, and they were charged with capital murder. However, Simmons testified that on December 30, 1974, he was in Harvey, Louisiana and spent the day playing pool with friends. His alibi was confirmed by four witnesses.

In January 2023, Simmons’s attorneys Joseph Norwood and John Coylefiled filed an amended application for post-conviction relief which cited the failure of the prosecution to disclose the police report which said that Brown had initially identified other two men and noted that in fact Brown had identified four other individuals during the eight lineup procedures. The motion also noted that in addition to the four witnesses who testified at the trial that Simmons was in Harvey, there were two other witnesses present who were to testify similarly but they did not after Simmons’s defense lawyer denied their testimony as cumulative. The petition included affidavits from five more people who said that they saw Simmons in Harvey at the time of the crime.

So convicted despite plenty of eyewitnesses saying he was somewhere else at the time. In addition, even the trial prosecutor thought he may have been wrongfully convicted:

In 1995, Robert Mildfelt, the trial prosecutor, wrote a letter to Simmons saying that the only witness [Brown] who identified him had wanted to think about the identification “overnight.” He wrote that Brown had described Simmons as more than six feet tall and over 200 pounds, “a physical description greatly different from Mr. Simmons [sic] stature at the time.

No word on why he put the man on trial with no evidence putting him at the scene and plenty of evidence putting him miles away. But really, we can all guess the reason.

Honestly? More education (and possibly more exposure) and less fetishization, although I’m not quite sure how to achieve the second one.

Back when my parents were in school, schools had shooting teams (my high school apparently had an award-winning women’s team), and my dad even brought a gun to school once to show to a teacher (it was an older gun and the teacher was a gun collector). They spent the whole of lunch period talking about how cool that old gun of grandpa’s was.

Because back then a gun was just a tool, and one more people had access to, since a lot of people were still out on the farm and such. My dad learned from a young age that guns were dangerous, and how to properly handle them, and pretty much all his classmates did too.

But then the Republicans started the, ‘we have to regulate!’ and the ‘but think of the children!’ nonsense because that was when the Black Panthers started going around armed, and a bunch of white people were suddenly uncomfortably aware that minorities could defend themselves from racial violence if they wanted to.

And then the Republican Party turned around and started making guns an ‘identity’ thing, so suddenly they became a symbol of Republican so-called ‘values’, and people began obsessing over them like they were rare jewels or some such nonsense. It didn’t help that the Democrats were happy to jump on the bandwagon as the ‘we’re totally against guns so you can tell we’re different from them!’ group to provide a pearl-clutching counterpoint.

And so now we’ve got, well, all the fetishized and forbidden-fruit bullshit. Guns are kind of seen almost like cigarettes on steroids: the cool and dangerous thing that all the rebels and ‘strong independent types’ have.

I’m a bit In despair as to how to get us to stop doing that. Certainly other nations, like Switzerland, have lots of guns and gun access and don’t have our problems. But they definitely don’t build identities around firearms either.

Edit to add: of course Switzerland has actual functional health care, including mental health care, so I imagine that helps.

They’ve done studies, and have found that guard rails actually make the problem worse. Gives people a sense of security and a false sense of bravado.

Nooo they kill pest bugs!

Wish we could convince them to expand their repertoire and go after MAGA pests too…

They kill pest insects. They’re voracious hunters. And they are the only insect that pollinates figs.

How’s that?

Amazing how even asshole wasps manage to be more useful than MAGA creeps. There’s not a single useful thing they do for anyone or anything. Hell, they even shoot dogs!

Conservativism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: there is a group that the law should protect but not bind, and a group that the law should bind but not protect.

And the thing is, while there are some people who just go along with this for the benefit of their own grift, the vast majority of these people actually believe that an order like this is absolutely necessary, and if we don’t have it civilization itself will collapse. In their view there must be a strict hierarchy and everyone must ‘know their place’ in it, or we are all doomed.

Because of this, they spend their time primarily in two pursuits:

1. Trying to force everyone to live this way, because it is the One Right Way To Live
2. Proving to themselves and others that they deserve to be in the In Group and at a certain level in that hierarchy, usually by trying to assign people to the Out Group and then put them in a lower position.

You’re just someone they’re trying to stuff in the Out Group, is all.

It’s also why they don’t like the idea of minorities in power; one, in their eyes minorities belong in the lower tiers of the Out Group and therefore their presence will destroy the fabric of society, and two, they think that if minorities are let into the In Group, then they will be forced into the Out Group.

Thin of those white kids screaming at the little black girls coming into their school (under military escort for safety) back in 1957, those white teens spitting on black teens doing soda fountain sit-ins in the 60s… and remember they’re adults now, with kids and even grandkids of their own.

Do you really think they taught their families to be open-hearted and to respect people of color?

This issue is getting better, but it’s got a long way to go yet. Things like this echo through time.

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice. -Martin Luther King Jr

It seems that sort is equally bad when it comes to letting Nazis in the door.

A depressing amount of people have a combination of ‘don’t rock the boat’ mentality and a belief that since something doesn’t/won’t affect them, then it doesn’t matter.