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

On a more serious note, I do think it’s kinda dumb that local attractions have to pay to be on those signs. You’d think it would be more of a community funded thing to encourage more tourists.

People following the story of a former Olympic runner: First time?

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.

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

Holy catfish, though, to some of the other stuff in there.

The Jan. 3, 2020, prayer was led by televangelist and White House spiritual adviser Paula White. She later came under fire after remarks she made about “satanic pregnancies” and miscarriages. Her words were: “We command all satanic pregnancies to miscarry right now.”

Then later she complains she was ‘taken out of context’. Sweetheart, I’m not sure that would be a rational statement even in context.

Overly Sarcastic Productions did a great little piece on him and his work a while back.

I probably would despise Star Wars too if I tried to make a good movie in that universe and kept getting micromanaged into the ground at every turn by clueless Disney execs.

He is a very good director, as his other films show. The problem was and still is in no way with him.

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.

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.

Hmmm

Even the Far Side got in on the act

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.

This is a bit of a silver lining, though:

Anxiety that resolved within the first five years was so unassociated with greater risk that the odds were similar to those without anxiety — a finding that Dr. Glen R. Finney, an American Academy of Neurology fellow, called “a welcome addition to our knowledge about anxiety and dementia.” Finney, director of the Geisinger Memory and Cognition Program in Pennsylvania, wasn’t involved in the study. The results were also largely driven by participants under 70. ”We have known for a long time that stress increases risk for Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Rudolph Tanzi, director of the McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who wasn’t involved in the study, via email. “This study agrees with earlier studies that therapy aimed at alleviating anxiety can help reduce risk for (Alzheimer’s disease). But, it’s the size of this study that is particularly compelling.”

Don’t worry; if he sees jail time (and given how other similar cases have gone, he won’t) he’ll have a nice cushy job waiting for him at the Sheriff’s office the next county over when he gets out.

ACAB.

Probably because it used to be that being ostracized from our towns/clans/whathaveyou was basically a death sentence.

Getting criticized for something could potentially lead to the town/your family driving you out. Either through the people listening to the complaints deciding you weren’t ‘good’ for the town, or others dogpiling on with their own complaints, real or imagined.

You have to remember, there were bandits, wild animals, and deadly weather outside the protection of our small groups. And that’s assuming you got to survive the ostracizing in the first place.

The Bible gives a rather chilling example: if your kid is disobedient or troublesome, drag them to the front of the town and loudly criticize their behavior. Then, it is the moral imperative of the town to assist you in stoning your kid to death.

With things like that being a social norm, is it any wonder we developed a fear of criticism?

My aunt lives in an HOA that was formed because the city wanted to cut down a big forested area to make a cookie-cutter neighborhood. The forest protected a watershed and was home to many native animals.

So the few people who lived there formed an HOA to gain all rights to the area; sold a few more properties to developers with strict rules so the houses built didn’t impact the wildlife or water, and set a large chunk aside as a ‘community park’ that really is a forest with a few walking trails and a nice pond.

The HOA fees mostly go towards maintaining the forest; planting natives, paying top-grade arborists to care for the trees, setting up bird boxes, stuff like that.

That being said, I’m well aware that hers is an outlier, and most HOAs are just excuses for bratty busybodies to harass their neighbors.

Went to Five Guys and made the mistake of ordering the Grilled Cheese.

It was a burger bun, turned inside out, with a sad slab of half-melted American cheese between the pieces.

Never going back.

The last time they tried going it alone they couldn’t either lol.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.

This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

C. S. Lewis