I entirely agree. A former roommate’s mom moved to Montana, and they remarked, “It’s so white here”.

For many southerners, bigotry against non-whites is part of their identity. Are they saying the KKK should be a protected class? How can making a religion out of the belief that you deserve a particular piece of real estate be a protected class?

Zionism is an ethno-cultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century and aimed for the establishment of a Jewish state through the colonization of a land outside of Europe.

In other words, taking somebody else’s land.

It eventually focused on the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, a region corresponding to the Land of Israel in Judaism, and of central importance in Jewish history.

Specifically, Palestinian’s land.

Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism became the ideology supporting the protection and development of Israel as a Jewish state and has been described as Israel’s national or state ideology.

State religion. That never turns out bad, does it? /s

Taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism

Unlike Imperial Storm Troopers, they sometimes hit their target.

Judging by Musk’s previous styling choices, may I offer this?

Ross — a 23-year-old streamer with a mostly young male audience of more than 1.4 million Kick followers and 4.4 million YouTube subscribers — fawned over the former president during a 90-minute stream and gave him a Rolex and a Tesla Cybertruck wrapped in images of the former president.

A dumpster for a dumpster fire.

I’m sure it won’t have any of the defects of the cyberdumpster.

Thank you for the reference. Having read most of it so far, I came across this passage:

Having disqualified Sue’s argument, Cabanis turns to Sömmerring’s thesis on the post-decapitation persistence of an active, conscious sensorium commune. Several facts argue against this. What is commonly known as a “rabbit punch” shows that a violent blow to the neck leads to an immediate loss of consciousness. Furthermore, a rapid hemorrhage deprives the brain of the blood it needs to function. Each of the individual circumstances brought together by the guillotine is enough to produce a true syncope. Cabanis concludes from this that the head and body of a man who has been guillotined endure no suffering and that death is as fast as the stroke of the blade.

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Thus highlighting the difference between justice and revenge.

While, for the most part, I agree with you, there are cases that are simply a textbook example of needing the death penalty. If somebody, in their right mind, decides to kill simply because they want to know what it’s like, they need to be removed from the herd.

Look at inmates who continue to present a danger not only to staff, but to other inmates. If, as far as medical science is able to, they are in their right mind, what do you do with them?

You only need to look at the imbalance in death penalties by skin color to know something is wrong.

All five justices agreed with at least part of the ruling. But two of the justices said they felt the firing squad was not a legal way to kill an inmate and one of them felt the electric chair is a cruel and unusual punishment.

Lethal injection has serious downsides. It turns out the drugs simply keep you from moving about as you slowly asphyxiate.

The electric chair it truly cruel. Yes, it fries your system, but it does it relatively slowly.

The firing squad has the issue of the marksman’s aim. If it’s off, you die slowly. Even if it’s dead on, pun intended, you realize what’s happening.

I’ve always wondered if, perhaps, the fastest method would be the guillotine.

Many years ago, in OMNI magazine, there was a story about a future where it was deemed inhumane to even let someone know they were going to be executed. They were kept in a small apartment awaiting the verdict. When the verdict was announced, no matter what it was, they were told they were free to go. Upon grabbing the doorknob, a neurotoxin was injected into the guilty with almost instantaneous effect.

As to discussions of the death penalty itself, I feel if someone was in their right mind, understood the consequences of their actions, and, if placed in the same situation, would commit the crime again, yes, they need to be removed from society permanently. Those who are deemed mentally fit, but bent like serial killers, should lose all their freedom and be placed at the disposal of mental health professionals to study.

What are your thoughts on ways of killing that would be humane?

This is what I did through Zenni as well. Only, I intend to get a third pair of glasses. The distance at which you read a computer screen compared to a physical book is very different.

Yet another reason I’m glad I use youtube-dl.

Let me introduce you to wombat poop. Go ahead and google that.

Good luck getting DeSatan to accept that. He’ll take the money, and move it off to some “other” uses, but accept climate change?

Under-shaved, brown-robed and jovial, Benanti is adept at explaining how technology can change the world, “with humans ceding the power of choice to an algorithm that knows us too well. Some people treat AIs like idols, like oracles, like demigods. The risk is that they delegate critical thinking and decisional power to these machines.”

AI is about choices. He points out: “Already a few tens of thousands of years ago, the club could have been a very useful tool or a weapon to destroy others …”

The Italians, not pioneers in the technology, warn that AI prefigures a world in which progress does not optimise human capabilities, but replaces them.

While I certainly do not side with the Catholic Church and their moralistic dogma, it is valuable to pay attention to a group that has made it their mission to think about how humanity is affected by various things. Never mind that they have their own bias in how humanity should be conducting itself. If instead, you treat them as a think tank with a relatively narrow focus, then we can make use of their work in this area.

I’m relieved to see at least one world leader though listening to an expert on technology. The US Congress had a department just for interpreting and researching various high technology concepts, but in their infinite wisdom they decided they knew better and disbanded the department.

One may disagree with the Catholic churches interpretation of their explanations of how AI technology can affect humans, but we would be fools to completely disregard their reports and findings.

The number of abortions among women under 20 rose during the 1990s in Finland, which led the Nordic country to respond at the start of the 2000s by making morning-after pills available without prescription from 15 years of age and sexual education compulsory in all schools.

Finland also passed a law in 2022 liberalising abortion, at a time of deep divisions over abortion rights in Europe and court rulings in the U.S. that restricted access to terminations of unwanted pregnancies for millions of people there.

…

The number of abortions fell 66% to 722 in 2023 from 2,144 in 2000 among all teenagers aged 19 or younger in Finland, while the drop was even steeper at 78% among those under 18 in the same period, THL’s statistics showed.

I’m sure the GQP will read this and think, “We should just outlaw abortion and fix it that way.”

Maybe you should have a word with Alito and Thomas about that?

“Why would my child want to hide such a horrible thing from me?”

Maybe because you’re the reason they’re hiding how they feel?

Writing for the court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh acknowledged what he characterized as the challengers’ “sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections” to elective abortion “by others” and to FDA’s relaxed regulation of mifepristone. But the challengers had not shown that they would be harmed by the FDA’s mifepristone policies, he explained, and under the Constitution, merely objecting to abortion and the FDA’s policies are not enough to bring a case in federal court. The proper place to voice those objections, he suggested, is in the political or regulatory arena.

I’d almost thought the con side of SCOTUS had forgotten what standing even is.