I find it very curious that the Politico Article I cited from above edits out or chooses a framing in the video that very deliberately excluded the visual of the slide Jen is pointing at and discussing. It creates a real disconnect as she is gesturing to it and discussing it and yet we cannot see it.

That when a picture is worth a thousand words in driving home a point.

Hmmm?

I might be the only one who remembers this original story but will offer the RIP anyway here.


This was the original pic that kicked off this story...



this was her during happier times...







This is the one that brings finality to her story...


- After a prolonged illness, Ndakasi has passed away at 14 years of age. She took her last breath in the arms of the Park ranger who cared for her.


Challenges for the Gorilla's in the region continue...

Some kid in the Navy, a Seaman Apprentice (sounds like the lowest rank in all U.S. forces), was pissed about his failure to complete SEAL training and burned down the warship (described as a 'mini aircraft carrier) he was assigned to, named the Bonhomme Richard, to the tune of a $3 billion in our collective losses.

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/29/10225...navy-san-diego

For reference, the USS Cole was repaired, after being attacked by AQ, for a mere $250 million.

The alleged arsonist who the Navy has charged is named Sean Mays. The NYT article said although charged MAys has been inexplicably (my take) assigned back to his squadron.

Eyewitnesses said he did it. The Navy has enough to charge him formally for $3 Billion of destruction of government property, but he is back with his squadron???

But still the amazing thing to me is one pissed idiot, a match, and $3 billion of our money up in smoke. I can barely wrap my head around it. He should just burn down another one at this point since he is apparently now on a new ship. He's already has to have the record for most property damage ever by a single individual, why not shore up that distinction up for at least a century?

And here we go again!

Imagine living in a world where religious people believe they have the moral high ground to dictate anything to anyone else when they empowered and supported this??

The Catholic Church may be the largest criminal organization in the world. How anyone puts a single $ in a collection plate is beyond me

They are certainl a main offender but I would say that applies broadly to all Organized Religious.

Sure at the street level they have good people, with great intent doing great community work. But that is the necessary Bug. The Feature at the Organizational level is the grift and power grab, pure and simple.


Originally created to push back on the Power of Kings and Birth Right by smart people born outside lineage who rejected the idea then that they could never hold power or accrue wealth.

Voila 'Religion', gave them the ability to create Armies and tax the citizenry (tithing).

That is where the stance against abortion rose from. It really has nothing to do with the Bible, as it is inarguable the bible is far more PRO abortion than against. Churches want adherents and the ranks to grow. A growing family keeps you locked in place and more dependent on your community (church) and thus the fabricated reason against abortion was created.

So ya, Organized religion is a scourge, despite the street level good some do and the World would have been much better off without it.

Yes bit is there any other religion with so may atrocities nad the fact they try and cover it up

I am not versed enough in the history of Religions to effectively comment on that.

Obviously sects of the Muslim Religion, Paganism prior, and other Religions have had their abuses. I think Christianity is certainly at the top of the list but I am not sure, no others compete.

Organized religion generally is a scourge.

Christianity did form to give a competing power structure to those of birth right. Smart people not born into birth right were rightly frustrated that their ability to accrue power was stymied. You need to be a leader to 'tax' and have armies and Christianity allowed them to do both without birthright.

Very few of the claimed foundations and reasons for Christianity's foundation are actually accurate or true. It only looses follows the bible, and mostly steals elements from all the other religions in an attempt to steal their adherents and grow.

That alone makes it a scam and grift as it has no true underlying principles other than what it could steal from others due to popularity. Think of a politician hollowly stealing the platform of others.

Found a pic of the sailor:

Nobel economics prize rewards work on minimum wage

...His work on the minimum wage was conducted at Princeton in the 1980s in collaboration with Alan Krueger, who went on to become assistant secretary of the Treasury under President Obama.

They surveyed restaurants in New Jersey before and after the introduction of a minimum wage in the state, an approach that was quite unusual at the time, Prof Card said.

But he said their findings, that the minimum wage had not led to significant job losses, was not immediately accepted.

"People thought we were either cooking the books or had lost our minds or did something untoward or foolish," he said.

However the methodology, of collecting and analysing real world data, opened people's eyes to a new way of analysing the economy, ...

You're OK on the $3.2bn tax bill, the Navy considered it uneconomic and the ship's just been sold off and broken up for scrap. It's seemingly not been decided if there's enough evidence against Mays to go to court martial.

The Wasp-class 'mini aircraft carriers' are ships the Marines use for littoral operations, to carry helicopters and about half a dozen F-35Bs. This is why the Marines like the new British carriers, which are much bigger (HMS Queen Elizabeth is currently on patrol with an entire squadron of 12 Marine F-35s as well as the jets of the RAF on board), and the British carriers have ski-jump bows so the jets can take off more easily at higher weight with more fuel and weaponry, considerably increasing their capability.

That's sad news, those gorilla orphan girls were brilliant, and they were so bonded with humans they'd learned to stand upright for a few minutes at a time, looking quite cool about it, and they clearly knew when their pictures were being taken, so they did that incredible photobomb.

I agree with the below.

it is a nonsense position and that they exclude the mass human killing that is the main part of the game exposes their belief system as hollow.

CGI violence should not be disallowed only because it impacts your little area of concern (animals) but ok if directed at humans.

If there are standards governing such violence then fine, but cherry picking what is a fair or unfair target of such CGI game play is just silly outside certain restrictions.




PETA have again blown anything sensible they might say out of the water with a moronic attack on CGI cockfighting in Far Cry 6

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have yet again proven they quite literally have no grip on reality after they demanded a mini-game within Far Cry 6 be replaced because it ‘glorifies’ cockfighting...

...The cockfighting bit is actually a mini-game within a game, not the main event. The main game is an action adventure first person shoot-em-up bloodfest by game maker Ubisoft. You’re a guerilla fighter and your role in the game is to topple an oppressive regime that’s loosely based on Cuba. ...

I am not sure I see any utility in this type of robot weapon as I think flying drones with battery life improvement will do everything this robot can do and more.



Robots like this might make for better Mars type rovers than the all terrain vehicles they currently use.

Some Saturday morning levity.



These are my favorite videos to watch on my AirCanada flights as they always have a library of them and you can enjoy them without sound or headphones in.

This one is particular creative.

They have some that I would not be surprised if they have been sued over as they scare people badly, and in some cases people jump into potential dangerous actions like this one.




And no, the people reacting are not actors unless the Production company is flat out lying about that. They have addressed that in the media and said all the interactions are with genuine unsuspecting people.

JFC
Is there NZ mosque shooter's manifesto going to be required reading in Texas now?

And we wonder why folks believe Trump when he says fake news

Katie Couric




CNN and Don Lemon refuse to admit they misled and Lie

Yes I think MSM needs to do some soul searching on stuff like this as this is exactly why Trumps 'Fake News' resonated with so many people.

Trump deserves credit for understanding this exploit was there and available to him because of how bad MSM had become.

Not that Trump was not 100 times worse but had the trust not be so badly devolved, I don't think he gets away with it.

The Don Lemon argument is just shameless. Gupta rightly gave Rogan the acknowledgment he deserved and Don stick handles Sanja into a reply and then cuts him off before he can elaborate with the skill of a politician.

It is absolutely right and correct (and enough) to criticize those taking Ivermectin for the reason that it is not 'approved' and they are being duped in a cash grift scheme.

Most human medicines have an animal form and vice versa. Horses regularly are given Benadryl and other meds. So if Rogan took 'horse medicine' so to is everyone taking Benadryl and most other meds.

I can't remember if it was this thread or another nor whom I was debating with but I was explaining to them why Amazon's abuse of its power to knock off and compete with companies and products on its platform was far worse than typical Private Label type knockoff that Walmart or other retailers might do.


Well lots more info has come down on that issue and Amazon and Bezos could be in serious trouble for it.

Members of Congressional Committee Question Whether Amazon Executives Misled Congress

Members of a congressional committee questioned whether Amazon... executives misled them during an investigation of the company’s business practices and if they may have lied under oath.

...

“We strongly encourage you to make use of this opportunity to correct the record and provide the Committee with sworn, truthful, and accurate responses to this request as we consider whether a referral of this matter to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation is appropriate,”...

...

At issue is how Amazon responded to accusations that it uses the data of third-party sellers on its site when creating private-label products. Amazon executives repeatedly told members of the subcommittee in testimony and in written responses that it doesn’t use the data of individual third-party sellers to inform its vast lines of its own brands.
...

Reporting by the Journal and other publications contradicts the sworn testimony, the letter says. Last year, the Journal reported that Amazon employees regularly used such data to reverse engineer bestsellers under their own brands, with one employee calling the practice “standard operating procedure.”

Last week, news outlets including Reuters and the Markup also published reports that Amazon used internal data to copy products and advantage private-label products on its site. The articles were cited in the letter. Amazon told Reuters that the claims in its article “are factually incorrect and unsubstantiated,” the article says. Amazon told the Markup that it doesn’t favor its brands in search results and declined to answer additional questions, that article says.

“At best, this reporting confirms that Amazon misled the Committee. At worst, it demonstrates that Amazon may have lied to Congress,” the letter from the members of Congress says....

This is so gross if the details prove out. I am generally not for 'duty to attend' or 'help' type laws but in cases like this I wish something was in place to charge these people, if it all proves out.

Cliffs:
- women raped across 40 minutes in full view of others
- No help given.
- No call to 911.
- Recording it with cell phone cams.
- The person only gets help when eventually an employee boards the train


Charges ‘unlikely’ for bystanders who failed to report rape say prosecutors

CCTV cameras show that bystanders on the train "did nothing" as the assault took place,...

The alleged rape took place last Wednesday on a train belonging to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (Septa). In a statement, Septa said that "there were other people on the train who witnessed this horrific act, and it may have been stopped sooner if a rider called 911".

A Septa employee who boarded the train called police, who found the victim and took the suspect into custody...

...police said that they do not believe any witnesses called 911 as the woman was harassed and eventually raped over the course of more than 40 minutes.

It is unclear how many other passengers were in the train car when the incident took place.

Investigators are also looking into whether some bystanders filmed the assault as it was taking place.

"I can tell you that people were holding their phone up in the direction of this woman being attacked," ...

...it would be "very difficult to bring charges against those" who saw the attack but did not help...

... in most US states bystanders are under no legal obligation to intervene or help unless they have a "specific duty" to do so, such as parents, teachers, caretakers or police officers.

... it is possible - but unlikely - that prosecutors could charge bystanders who film crimes if the act of filming was found to have had an impact on the crime, or encouraged the criminal.

Yep, it is a horrible story, but it does show the difference between "good Samaritan laws" and "duty to rescue". With the caveat that we probably do not know all the details of what happened in the cart.

Basically "good Samaritan" laws, which is what you find many places in the US (I think it varies a bit from state to state?), gives legal protections for someone who decides to aid a person in distress. "Duty to rescue", which is what you would find in my country, makes you criminally liable if you do not aid someone in distress (if you could reasonably do so without risk to your own life).

It's one of the really interesting discussions when it comes to libertarianism, but libertarians tend to shy away from it. Which one can understand, few people want to seem like they defend outcomes like the ones in the horrific story above. Still, I think it is a very important discussion.

A court just confirmed: To be Dutch is to be white
Hague District Court recently ruled that ethnicity can be used to single out passengers for checks at Dutch airports.

29 Sep 2021

“Please come with me, sir.”

That is what Mpanzu Bamenga, a city councillor and academic from Eindhoven, Netherlands, heard soon after arriving at the airport of his hometown following a short work visit to Italy in 2018.

He quickly realised that he had been selected for an extra security check because he is a Black man. After all, he was a Dutch national arriving at a Dutch airport, holding a Dutch passport. It was clear that there was no obvious reason for him to be singled out like this – other than the colour of his skin.

This was not Bamenga’s first experience of racial profiling in the Netherlands – this is, after all, not a rare experience for Dutch nationals from minority backgrounds. ...


When faced with such discrimination, we all want to scream: “Is this because of the colour of my skin, is this because you think I do not look Dutch enough?” but we don’t usually say anything out loud, because we do not want to agitate the customs officer and be held longer than necessary. We go along with it and swallow the pain.

But after his experience in 2018, Bamenga decided to do something about it. He first lodged an official complaint. And later, with the backing of rights groups like Amnesty International, RADAR, Controle Alt Delete and PIPL-NJCM, he brought a case against the Dutch government to end racial profiling...

tried to legitimise its officer’s decision to single out Bamenga for special questioning by claiming that he had “matched a risk profile” because he walked quickly, was travelling on his own, was well dressed, and he looked “not Dutch”...

...On September 22, The Hague District Court finally reached a verdict on Bamenga’s case. “Ethnicity does not have to be an objective indication of nationality, but it could be,” the judge ruled. Ethnicity cannot be the only criteria for singling out passengers for extra checks, the court said, but it could certainly be one criterion among others.

With this ruling, the court has lumped together skin colour and nationality – it cemented the idea that to be Dutch is to be white. Of course, this was something racialised Dutch people already knew, but the court ruling made it official. ..

The ruling is the legal, and seemingly sophisticated, stand-in for its uncritical and banal version: “Well, ‘we’ are white, and ‘they’ are Black, is it not so?”

As a result of migration and colonialism, thousands of people from different corners of the world – some voluntarily, some not – ended up in the Netherlands. And their presence in the country cracked the notion of “Dutchness as whiteness”. The post-colonial migration from the Dutch East Indies and the Moluccas, and later Suriname and the Dutch Antilles, the labour migration from Turkey and Morocco, and the more recent arrival of refugees from Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, Congo and so on, shook up the whole idea that being Dutch equals being white. Or so you would think.

How Black does one have to be to be regularly pulled out of queues in Dutch airports? How white is white enough to not be routinely selected for “random” questioning? These questions are indeed uncomfortable and hard to answer. But what then, for goodness sake, does “Dutch-looking” mean?

The court’s assumption that racism or discrimination can only occur if the security forces choose an individual for additional questioning solely or predominantly based on their racial or ethnic characteristics is also problematic for multiple reasons. The ruling gives the impression that there is no problem with racial profiling as long as ethnicity is used “in combination with” other criteria...

In the Bamenga case, the judge seemingly gave precedence to the alleged effectiveness of the stops above principles of non-discrimination. This was a major failure, as it is the responsibility of the courts to keep the excesses of security forces in check, overturn their problematic decisions and put an end to discriminatory practices.

As far as I am concerned, we should rid the world of all forms of racialised thinking – including the uncritical embrace of it among progressives. But let’s first focus on the ingrained racialised thinking in our institutions. We cannot build a post-racial world while our security forces, leading institutions, and courts continue to casually lump together race, ethnicity and nationality.

Bamenga was in Italy to give a lecture on the meaning of liberty. Perhaps Dutch courts and other institutions should spare a few hours to listen to what he has to say, to make sure that meaning is not lost in his own country.

ALEC BALDWIN GUN ACCIDENT ON SET
One Dead, One Injured

https://www.tmz.com/2021/10/21/alec-...o-two-injured/

How does this **** happen? How is there even live ammo on set?
The armory guy or whoever is in charge should be charged with negligent homicide or something?