wildncrazyguy138

He also got convicted by a jury of his peers.

I wanted to agree with you at some point here, but I just can’t bring myself to it.

He didn’t just notice her at 14, he kept on pursuing her. He frequented the toy store she worked at with his family. He then frequented the restaurant when she was a server (doesn’t say what age). It paints a pretty clear picture of obsession.

He also had already knocked up one of his office staff outside of his marriage. It doesn’t seem that this person has much regard for women.

Sure gifts, dinners and travel are part of courtship, but the line gets damn hazy when you start introducing drugs (particularly ones you prescribe) into the mix. I think as a society we certainly should frown upon that.

I’m hearing a lot of what y’all are saying on this thread and sitting here nodding my head in agreement. I was going to remark something a bit off color as well, but in finding the words to say, I remembered a story on a podcast that I frequently listened to.

Here it is: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/levar-burton-reads/id1244649384?i=1000651142934

I don’t want to give away the story in case anyone wants to listen to it. It was eye opening for me. One of the best that Levar read IMO.

But all that is to say, maybe, just maybe, like the black klansman, it would actually be a good thing to have a Republican Party on the campus of FAMU. I think we need leaders who inspire less polarization of our country, if she is it, then I think she should be celebrated.

For the record, I have walked the campus of FAMU, and it is a lovely place. The trees covered in Spanish moss are wonderfully bucolic to stroll through in such a busy city. And of course, shout out to Loretta.

I don’t know about y’all, but I’d prefer not to win a Darwin Award.

I’m more a visual person, so let me show you some graphs: Famine rates are down: https://ourworldindata.org/images/published/Famine-death-rate-since-1860s-revised_850.png

We can do so much more with our computing resources - Note, logarithmic scale: https://www.singularity.com/images/charts/MicroprocessorClockSpeed.jpg

Poverty is down: https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2545610/Screen_Shot_2014-12-12_at_10.34.38_AM.0.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100

Billions of people live in a democracy, before 1850 almost none did: https://bigthink.com/the-present/democratic-rights/

There have been some responses: https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/08/1153656 https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/07/experts-hail-icj-declaration-illegality-israels-presence-occupied

No thanks, I’ll take it without the butter.

Lime? Don’t see a lot of lime candy all by themselves.

Butter too. So many candies include butter, but it’s rarely hyped as the star flavor.

Big kid punches little kid “Stop” says little kid

Big kid punches other little kid “Stop” says other little kid

Big kid punches first little kid again and takes his lunch money “Stop” says little kids

Bunch of little kids band together “If you punch again we’re going to punch you back” (raises fists in intimidating stance)

Big kid grumbles and talks about running over all the little kids with his car…

——

NATO isn’t stupid. As a whole, they don’t want to invade Russia. They are there to deter future territorial land grabs and they want to maintain the status quo as it’s good for trade. Quality of life is pretty good or getting better on this side of the fence.

I get it, a whole bunch of kids around your house can be intimidating. They have access to the neighborhood road (Polish corridor). Your little brother started thinking they were cool.

The way this could have and should have gone about is more trade, more connectivity, more upward mobility. But your ruling class got all weird about that, can’t be having western ideals infect the population, they were losing power. And so Russia went the xenophobic path and now we are here.

All the rhetoric. All the hype. All the saber rattling. It’s a form of control, to keep the Russian population in support of this war. To keep them scared so that Putin and his ilk stay in power. It’s a very myopic way of seeing the world.

They’ve rattled so hard that walking away isn’t an option anymore. Too much treasure and blood lost. It would shake Russia to its core. The Russian Vietnam as it were, right on your doorstep.

I don’t know what the end game is here. NATO is not going to capitulate. Russian leadership are backing themselves into a corner.

Is this a yearly average? I don’t think we’re closer to nuclear war than we were during the Cuban missile crisis.

I mean if the Russian leadership wants to die over a piece of land (because they don’t already have enough?), then sure by all means.

Get a Dietician and physical trainer. Use this opportunity to get yourself into healthy shape and never look back. I did something years ago and had no clue just how bad I was actually feeling before the improvement. Both physically and mentally. We are not designed to sit at desks all day.

Do your feet crack sometimes? Consider testing for athletes foot.

Blood, STD and Cancer screenings, as many as they’ll give you. Hell, depending how old you are, maybe a colonoscopy.

Sleep study. MRI, ECG, EKG. Allergy test. Dermatology/mole screening.

IQ test, find out your best skills and then learn how to use them to your advantage.

DNA testing, if you really want to know some things you may be perceptive to…though personally i don’t know if I would want to know if Huntingtons is in my future.

And I replied to you, specifically, regarding sports not being a hack on our emotions.

I suppose this begs the question, do you burn couches when a movie takes an emotional turn?

I have no contribution to why certain people do so around sports, other than to say 20% of the population also believes that the earth is flat, that is to say, they’re morons.

The difference is that movies and TV shows are often specifically made to elicit those reactions. Storytelling is essentially a hack that uses our emotions to implant lessons.

The same can’t be said for sports events.

What part of this did I miss?

Way to completely miss my point.

Hmm, gonna try and narrow this down further. Did you climb any light poles as part of your celebration festivities?

Seriously!? A Cinderella team spends a full year working their way to the sweet 16 and perhaps eventually the final four? Then loses by one point. Do you not see the struggle, the passion, the determination and the heartbreak in that?

Or a champion tennis player, significantly past her prime, coming back to championship after multiple years out and winning the title.

Or two soccer superstars at the absolute peak of their field going head to head. Can you not sense the tension, and suspense as these two juggernauts battle it out to see who comes out on top?

Or a man, born without arms, overcoming adversity at all points in his life to become the fastest swimmer and winning the gold.

Do you not see how sport can be an allegory for the human condition? The struggle, the heartbreak that comes with failure, the celebration of success, the toll of aging.

If not, I challenge you to take up a sport for a year, just a year. Try to get as good as you can with it. Celebrate your successes. Reflect on your failures. Document your milestones as you progress . Try not to give up. Make friends along the way. Become the true definition of an amateur. Living through your own experiences, you may discover that sport is full of emotion.

My local uni pulled this shit with “sustainability.” It became so inclusive of a term that it lost all meaning. And then guess what? Solar panels stopped getting put on buildings, no windmills were put up. They added more gas turbines and steam tunnels.

They did convert to LED lighting though, so that’s a plus.

It’s been 10 years and I’m still pissed about the misappropriation of the term. When you focus on everything, you focus on nothing.

I feel like we’re starting to paint fascism with too broad a brush.

The US has been and continues to be one of the most diverse countries in the world. Name another country where the majority race is 60% or less and the largest ethnicity is below 20%? The closest one I can think of is South Africa, but other examples are few and far between.

So if not by race and ethnicity, then how else could we measure how fascist the US is? Perhaps by nationalism. Well, while most Americans are patriotic, most also believe that nationalism is a serious threat to America - from Statista. Wouldn’t we need the majority to at least believe that nationalism wasn’t a threat to America in order for it to be a “fascist country?”

I’m all for looking at ways to improve things around here, but I am not for the extreme viewpoints from both sides of the aisle as of late. We don’t need to pigeonhole everyone to effect change. To the contrary, we’d get a lot more done for the American people if we teamed up against those who stand to gain from the gridlock.

How does this square with the whole libertarian bend?

Not going to go into details due to confidentiality, but I recently was involved in an initiative to utilize AI to scan education databases and identify students who may be at risk of dropping out, with the goal of having an early safety net for these folks. And also raising the schools retention rates, thus better outcomes overall.

So yes, AI can absolutely be used for good.