When Jean-Marine Le Pen (founder of French far-right political party) died, French people went out into the public squares dancing, waving French flags, popping champagne, and loudly cheering “the racist is dead!”.

I have already procured a bottle of what here can legally only be called sparkling wine, and I’m ready to pop it any day now.

I think most people already know that flags at half staff is worthless virtue-signalling

Kirk was a complete scumbag, but flags definitely flew at half-staff for school shootings in the past.

Trump ordered flags at half-staff for Minneapolis

Biden ordered flags at half-staff for Allen, Texas

Also, since this took place at a university, this technically counts as a school shooting. A feverent right-wing agitator dies at a school shooting. Ironic.

Isn’t it just strange that a right-wing agitator meets his end… by being shot in a school shooting??

Unrelated quote:

I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.

—Clarence Darrow, civil rights lawyer

There are already lots of viable strategies for getting rid of brine, they are just more expensive than the naïve approach of having a big pipe on the shore spewing it into the ocean. Diluting it with seawater seems to be the most viable right now.

I wonder if something like a 10 km underwater pipe with small holes in it that only let out a little bit of brine at a time would work. Might be a hassle to lay, at least to start, but I think that once it is in place it could operate without maintenance for decades. And piping is not really that expensive. Perhaps there are already researchers studying it, or it has been proven to not work. It seems like such an obvious idea.

I’m going to make a prediction if they are going to release a list of some sort with names on it:

1. They will redact names by using black highlight using computer software and then destroying the underlying text information by printing it out and scanning it, or something similar. This would prevent the most obvious form of getting around the redaction (which is extracting text information from underneath the highlight).
2. They will make the rookie mistake of using a proportional font like Times New Roman for the names, which is a font wherein each letter has a different length, instead of a monospace font like this one where all characters are the same width.
3. An investigative journalist will notice that one of the redacted names is exactly the same length as “DONALD JOHN TRUMP” typed in the document’s font, and then applied black highlight over it.

The tariffs will go away, but the companies have realised that you’re okay with paying $10 for something that used to cost $8 anyway so you’ll be paying $10 from now on

I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think there needs to be an enhancement of some sort that recognises an offence, even if minor, was motivated by hate.

Right now, I associate the words “hate crime” with serious criminal behaviour that results in bodily harm or threats to personal safety or destruction of large amounts of property. I think it might need to stay that way to avoid watering down the term.

Rather, there should probably be a new category called something like “hateful anti-social behaviour” to refer to minor transgressions like stealing the LGBTQ books or things like calling all the LGBTQ people you encounter slurs and other forms of harassment.

I’m not sure why you took them literally. They’re making a tongue-in-cheek statement about how Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is able to manipulate the American president seemingly with ease and impunity.

tl;dr “hate crime” has a legal definition and these actions don’t meet that definition. The definition should probably be updated to include this kind of antisocial behaviour.

Pasting an excerpt from my earlier comment:

“Hate crime” is a specific legal term. While unfortunate, the parent commenter is right; stealing books even when motivated by hate is not legally considered a hate crime.

Under federal law, only actions leading to bodily injury or attempts thereof can qualify as hate crimes.

Under Kentucky law (KRS 532.031), criminal mischief is only considered a hate crime if the amount of damage exceeds $500. While the total cost might exceed that, this is counted on a per-offender basis.

“Hate crime” is a specific legal term. While unfortunate, the parent commenter is right; stealing books even when motivated by hate is not legally considered a hate crime.

Under federal law, only actions leading to bodily injury or attempts thereof can qualify as hate crimes.

Under Kentucky law (KRS 532.031), criminal mischief is only considered a hate crime if the amount of damage exceeds $500. While the total cost might exceed that, this is counted on a per-offender basis.

Don’t get me wrong, it definitely should be considered a hate crime and the legislature should change the law to define this action as a hate crime (even if it is a relatively minor one), but under the current law, it isn’t. It’s merely criminal mischief in the second degree.

If I were a prosecutor I would be trying to throw the book at these morons though.

It is unusual for a US president. Name one other president who did something like this.

They are trying not to remind China of their continued existence

The thing that nobody wants to admit with Tibet is that China won. They moved a bunch of Han people into the region and it’s now so interconnected with the rest of China that even if a completely free and fair referendum were held on independence, it’d probably be defeated 2 to 1. Call me a bot or a doomer, but if you ever go to Tibet, you’ll realise the old Tibet is pretty much gone. All that’s left is just another Chinese province with Tibet-themed attractions. They did it with Tibet and Inner Mongolia, they are doing it to Hong Kong, and if given the chance, they’d do it to Taiwan too.

While that’s how it started, most Taiwanese people don’t think of themselves as Chinese any more.

The people who consider themselves as solely Taiwanese people outnumber those who consider themselves Chinese by 2 to 1. The Taiwanese government can’t do something like change its name to the “Republic of Taiwan” without starting shit with the People’s Republic of China. So they figure sticking with the old name of the “Republic of China” is less llikely to cause problems.

A lot of geopolitics in general revolves around people trying not to start a conflict over something dumb rather than accepting obvious truths.

I think that’s not what the author was trying to say here. He’s saying that recognition should be granted on an objective basis based on whether an organisation claiming to be a state is able to exercise the powers of sovereignty, without respect for the political implications, and that if Palestine meets the requirements, then Taiwan definitely does as well, so it’s unfair to not also recognise Taiwan.

This is probably one of the top 10 dumbest war strategies in history. Make the population of the region you’re eventually seeking to occupy hate you even more, and on top of that, it makes the very foolish assumption that Hamas leadership would give up if they see their Gazans suffer, which is so naïve it’d be funny if it weren’t so sad. Hamas leadership doesn’t give a shit if ordinary Gazans starve. In fact, they probably think it’s all the better for their recruiting numbers, seeing that I have yet to see a single Hamas fighter suffering from malnutrition on the level of ordinary Gazans.

To external observers paying attention, this can only lead one to conclude either Netanyahu is a terrible military strategist or he’s using this “strategy” as a cover to snuff out the entire Arab population of Gaza. For all I know, both are true!

I am not opposed to reading. I will happily read a 1,000 or 2,000-word article to hear new ideas. What I will not do is listen to a 90-minute podcast or read its transcript, which is so long it crashed LibreOffice Writer when I tried pasting it to get the word count, just to understand what CabbageRelish@midwest.social is talking about with the comment that took them twenty seconds to write.

It’s not unreasonable for me to say that if you took less than 60 seconds to write your comment, I’m going to spend a maximum of 5-10 minutes thinking about and writing my response.

Me: People used to pay attention to laws.

You: Yeah, but the law was RACIST when it was first written!

Remember when these words used to mean something?

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

Remember when the document this came from used to mean something?