So... that so amazingly reminds me of my high school best friend and I.

I was the badger in that friendship, although the size difference was more Coyote and Kodiak Grizzly, but the attitudes are equivalent.

Reminds me of Sunday mornings at my friend Paul's house back in high school. Only it was his mom with the broom handle. Same attitude from us kids.

True story.

@bcglorf Here's a tome for you....


It's certainly not (the only way). Converting to green energy sources stimulates the economy, it doesn't bankrupt it, and it makes it more efficient in the future thanks to lower energy costs. My solar system paid for itself in 8 years, giving me an expected 12 years of free electricity and hot water. Right wingers would tell you it will never pay for itself....utter bullshit.

Every gap in our knowledge I've ever seen that we have filled with data has made the estimates worse. Every one. Every IPCC report has raised the severity and shrunk the timeframe from the last report....but you stand on the last one that they admit was optimistic and incomplete by miles as if it's the final word and a gold standard. It just isn't. They themselves admit this.

The odds of catastrophic climate change is 100% in the next 0 years for many who have already died or been displaced by rising seas or famine or disease or lack of water or...... and that goes for all humanity in the next 50 because those who survive displacement will be refugees on the rest's doorsteps. Don't be ridiculous. If we found an asteroid guaranteed to hit in the next 50-100 years, and any possible solutions take a minimum of 50 years to implement with no surprises, and only then assuming we solve the myriad of technical issues we haven't solved in the last 100 years of trying and only if we can put the resources needed into a solution, not considering the constantly worsening barrage of smaller asteroids and the effects on resources and civilisation, we would put all our resources into solutions. That's where I think we are, except we still have many claiming there's no asteroid coming and those that already hit are fake news....including those in the highest offices making the decisions.

Every IPCC report has vastly underestimated their projections, they tell you they are doing it, only including data they are certain of, not new measurements or functions. They do not fill in the gaps, they leave them empty. Gaps like methane melt that could soon be more of a factor than human CO2, and 100% out of our control.

The AR5 report is so terrible, it was lambasted from day one as being incredibly naive and optimistic, and for not including what was then new data. Since its release, those complaints have been proven to be correct, in 5 years since its release ice melt rates have accelerated 60 years by their model. I wouldn't put a whit of confidence in it, it was terrible then, near criminally bad today. I'll take NOAA's estimates based on much newer science and guess that they, like nearly all others in the past, also don't know everything and are also likely underestimating wildly. Even the IPCC AR5 report includes the possibility of 3 ft rise by 2100 under their worst case (raised another 10% in this 2019 report, and expected to rise again by 2021, their next report), and their worst case models show less heat and melting than we are measuring already and doesn't include natural feedbacks because they can't model them accurately yet so just left them out (but noted they will have a large effect, but it's not quantitative yet so not included). Long and short, their worst case scenario is likely optimistic as reality already outpaces their worst case models.

Again, the economy benefits from new energy production in multiple ways. Exxon is not the global economy.

It took 100 years for the impact of our pollution to be felt by most (some still ignore it today). Even the short term features like methane take 25+ years to run their cycles, so what we do today takes that long to start working.

If people continue to drag their feet and challenge the science with supposition, insisting the best case scenario of optimistic studies are the worst we should plan for, we're doomed....and what they're doing is actually worse than that. The power plants built or under construction today put us much higher than 1.5 degree rise by 2100 with their expected emissions without ever building 1 more, and we're building more. Without fantastic scientific breakthroughs that may never come, breakthroughs your plan relies on for our survival, what we've already built puts us beyond the IPCC worst case in their operational lifetimes.

There's a problem with that...I'm good with using real science to identify them without political obstruction and confusion, the difference being we need to be prepared for decisive action once they're identified. So far, we have plans to develop those actions, but that's it. In the event of a "surprise" asteroid, we're done. We just hope they're rare.
This one, however, is an asteroid that is guaranteed to hit if we do nothing, some say hit in 30 years, some say 80. Only morons say it won't hit at all, do nothing.
Climate change is an asteroid/comet in our orbit that WILL hit earth. We are already being hit by ejecta from it's coma causing disasters for millions. You suggest we don't start building a defense until we are certain of it's exact tonnage and the date it will crash to earth because it's expensive and our data incomplete. That plan leaves us too late to change the trajectory. The IPCC said we need to deploy our system in 8-10 years to have a 30-60% chance of changing the trajectory under perfect conditions....you seem to say "wait, that's expensive, let's give it some time and ignore that deadline". I say even just a continent killer is bad enough to do whatever it takes to stop, because it's cheaper with less loss of life and infinitely less suffering than a 'wait and see exactly when it will kill us, we might have space elevators in 10 years so it might only kill 1/2 of us and the rest might survive that cometary winter in space (yes at exponentially higher cost and loss of life and ecology than developing the system today, but that won't be on my dime so Fuck it).' attitude.

"She was just asking for it, you saw how she was dressed..."

This attitude is inexcusable.

Find this kid and brutally shame him into surrendering himself. I hope his school identifies him and expels him.
This is why citizens arrest allows you to do whatever is necessary to keep criminals in place, someone should have knocked his ass out. If it cost him a few teeth, good.
This wasn't the first time he did this, judging from his actions and attitude. Because people are afraid to stop criminals, fearing liability, he's going to do it again until he robs the wrong place and gets shot in the head.

The attitude afterwards fucking PROVES he did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante

This attitude is prevalent in Nordic countries. As the article states, there has been some slight movement away from Janteloven, but not very much. It is precisely this attitude that allows for people to accept drastically higher taxes, not just for the 1%, but across the board. The social culture is dramatically different in the USA, possibly to our detriment.

Per capita means nothing. All NATO states are supposed to be spending at least 2% of their GDP towards defense. As I said, Norway spends around 1.2% of their GDP, if the USA did the same, we would have a massive amount of money for social programs. Again, I must stress that I am not slamming Norway or other Nordic countries for not reaching the 2%, I am simply pointing out additional reasons why they have more money available for social programs than we do.

I don't see what developmental aid has to do with anything. I am sure Norway spends money in other places as well. I am pointing out why socialism works in Nordic countries and why it would be a hard sell in the USA.

I understand that you are happy with your situation. In a perfect world, we could all follow a similar rule. Unfortunately to fit into that type of situation you need a population that is of relatively the same mind. In most larger nations that is impossible, there are too many different groups that have competing ideals.

Lots of good comments here... this might take a while so bear with me.

@Mordhaus, I haven't read that book but I'd be interested to see his sources. Everything I've googled suggests the rate is really low.

As for Ford, obviously, I can't say for certain whether she is telling the truth. She may even believe she is telling the truth and still be wrong. I think she was entitled to the benefit of the doubt in terms of an investigation. Of course, it's possible she was doing this for political reasons, but that feels like a stretch to me.

@bcglorf
In some ways, I can understand the desire to remove the vexatious complaints cause. Coming forward with a report of sexual assault is traumatic enough already.
A) you may not be believed
B) even if you are, you're in for an experience many assault survivors have described as "being raped a second time"
If you add the possibility that your complaint could potentially get you sanctioned if no one believes you, that's a pretty awful situation to be in.

Now, I don't necessarily agree with this stance, but I can understand it. I think you would need to clear a very high bar to prove a complaint is malicious. Presumption of innocence applies to the complainant also.

"The first 3 levels of sexual violence ALL involve no physical contact and are entirely verbal. "
100% fine with this. You can be a creepy sleazebag without touching someone and it's still not ok.

"lots of people are very much arguing that lives should be destroyed then and there"
Sorry, I just don't see it. That said, if there are people arguing for that... I'm against them.

"We'll even right songs to laugh at them when they complain."
This song was mocking the bullshit "it's a scary time to be a man" line, and deservedly so. I'm a man, and I'm not scared of being accused of sexual assault. None of my male friends are scared either. But it fucking crushes my soul to think of how many of the women in my life have ACTUALLY experienced some form of sexual assault (and that's just the ones I know of).

@scheherazade
Completely agree that eyewitness testimony is borderline useless in terms of evidence. Go back through my comment history... you'll see I even said I doubt you could prove Kavanaugh's guilt. All I've ever said is that it warrants an investigation. (sidenote: I totally agree with @vil and @Mordhaus on this... polygraphs are junk science, but Kavanaugh's boorish behaviour should have been grounds not to confirm him).

Regarding your friend that was raped by a girl: that's awful, and yes, we really have to stop this childish attitude of somehow thinking female on male rape is either funny or that the guy was lucky. But it is unrelated to this discussion.

@MilkmanDan, I pretty much agree with everything you've said.

Being falsely accused of rape would be terrible, even if you weren't convicted. No disagreement there at all.

@ChaosEngine

I fully agree with you that rape/sexual assault is a bigger problem (in magnitude and frequency) than false accusations. And that being an actual victim of sexual assault would be worse than being falsely accused of sexual assault, although it seems a bit pointless to debate the relative extent of how much these things could fuck up lives when they are both horrendous.

That being said, there's a reason that presumption of innocence and requiring proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt are the law of the land. And assuming that we follow through on those things (which I think we largely do), that's all well and good. BUT, that's all pretty strictly just in the legal realm.

False accusations of sexual assault don't need to get as far as the actual legal system to seriously fuck up a person's life. Employers, partners, friends ... these connections might choose to sever ties without requiring the same rigorous proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt that the legal system does.

As much as I personally tend to believe Ford as opposed to Kavanaugh, I think that given the span of time since the incident it is nigh on impossible to prove that her version of events is true beyond a reasonable doubt. On the other hand, the hearing put his current demeanor and partisan/biased attitude on blatant display in a way that seemed to me should be disqualifying with regards to the sort of standards we require for Supreme Court Justices. Apparently the GOP disagrees, and we can hold them to account for that at the ballot box.

That's rather cold comfort given that Justices serve for life. There'd be some constitutional crisis drama if Agent Orange gets removed from office as a result of some proof-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt of misdeeds. Robert Kennedy's quote about the ancient Chinese curse "may you live in interesting times" seems apropos. Things have been entirely too "interesting" for my taste for the past 2 years...

What sort of evidence?

- Accusation/testimonial evidence?

- Or Physical evidence that is an invariant indicator of rape, that you can hold, see, measure, etc?



Anyone can accuse. That's effortless. Takes barely more energy than breathing.

(It's also effortless for a group of sour girls to gang up on a dude that upset them. Because "f that guy'. (That attitude isn't even rare.))



Physical evidence? People are convicted day in and day out of all sorts of things without physical evidence.

(Court is after all a popularity contest.)




My scary moment was when a cop detained me and told me he was going to charge me with : reckless driving, driving without a seat belt, and with threatening his life.

Why? Because I pulled up to a road block and asked him if I could drive past his road block to go home (which was a short way past the road block)... and he was having some emotional stability/triggering issues at the time, and he instantly turned red and went full on tirade mode.

Fortunately for me, after detaining me a few hours, some switch flipped in his head again and he just went to his car, got in, and drove off. Surreal.

So I asked myself :
If I had been charged, what would be the difference in court, vis-a-vis evidence, between it being a lie, and it being the truth?
Answer : No difference.

All he threatened me with was provable only by his word, and no evidence was required. I likely would have gone to jail, and had my life turned upside down... all on some person's grimace.

My view on evidence changed that day.
I will _NEVER_ convict anyone of anything, without physical tangible evidence that I can hold in my hand and see with my eyes, or at least run forensic tests on.
Testimony doesn't mean _shit_. It's absolutely, patently _worthless_.

(I also now run a dash cam everywhere I drive to protect myself from false accusations)




Basically, unless you have physical proof, I don't care.
Whatever you have to say, prove it.
No proof, no cares.

That goes for all accusations of anything ever. Across the board. Absolute.

It's the standard I want people to have for me, and it's the standard I have for others.

-scheherazade





(Aside, unrelated : I know a dude that was raped by a girl (he was nearly paralyzed drunk at his own house party). Wasn't even a secret. People at the party knew it happened. Nobody cared. When he complained, all anyone said was "Oh whatever. Shut up get over it". It wasn't even a question of 'did it happen?', it was a matter of "so what?".)

They're literally just having a chat. "You going on holidays?" "Yeah".

I've always loved that about the Russian attitude, and their subsequent sense of humour... things are crap, but there's nothing we can do about it, so why bother worrying. Get on with it, and do what you can to work around the problem.

I find it odd how positive his attitude is when describing how invasive species are so dominant that they now have little choice but to eat each other since they've eaten all the natives.

Nice fish though.

I disagree, you are never responsible for someone else overreacting irresponsibly.
It's like saying if you don't run, bad things are going to happen, and even if you've done nothing illegal you also have to accept some responsibility for the charges they make up to see what will stick at your expense, and the abuse or even death you may be subjected to if they decide they don't like you or your attitude.

Someone else acting wrongly is not the victim's responsibility in any way.

Says the right who wants to deny gay people equal rights under the law because they sin differently. Who want to deny service to gay people because they sin differently. Who cares that Jesus said to love one another, to treat others as you'd want to be treated, and that those without sin should toss the first stones, yet toss stones of intolerance, bigotry and hatred. Don't even get me started on intolerance of emigrants, of other faiths (try being an open atheist in most workplaces or trying to run for office, as much pure hate and intolerance over Muslims that the right has, they hate atheist even more), intolerance of other races and lack of empathy for the plight of African Americans and just want those black people to stay in their place and not show any sort of unity... Rich. Truly rich, calling the left the ones that are intolerant. It's the right's intolerance that proved to me Christianity is a sham, because that doesn't jive with what Christ taught, but that is the attitude of the Christian Right and the GOP.