This was a correspondence Dinner, Not a roast.

She went too far on some.

This might be taking the concept of the aimbot just a little too far.

I got way too far into that still thinking "there are ski slopes in Georgia?!"

Why yes, I am an American idiot.

@eric3579 -- I agree that that is a sticking point. I have trouble buying it because there are already limitations on the "right to bear arms".

The 2nd amendment:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.


Certainly, one could argue that licensing / registration of firearms would count as infringing on the right to keep and bear arms. However, "arms" is rather unspecific. Merriam Webster defines it as "a means (such as a weapon) of offense or defense; especially : firearm".

The government has already decided that limiting the access to some "arms" is fine, and doesn't infringe on the constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms. For example, in many states it is "legal" to own a fully automatic, military use machine gun. BUT:
1) It had to be manufactured before 1986
2) Said machine gun has to be registered in a national database
3) The buyer has to pass a background check

So there's 3 things already infringing on your constitutional right to bear a specific kind of "arm". A firearm -- not a missile, grenade, or bomb or something "obviously" ridiculous. And actually, even "destructive devices" like grenades are technically not illegal to own, but they require registration, licenses, etc. that the ATF can grant or refuse at their discretion. And their discretion generally leads them to NOT allow civilians to exercise their right to bear that particular sort of "arm".

If those limitations / exceptions aren't an unconstitutional infringement on the right to bear arms, certainly reasonable expansion of the same sort of limitations might also be OK.

I empathize with pro-gun people's fear of "slippery slope" escalating restrictions; the potential to swing too far in the other direction. But at some point you gotta see the writing on the wall. To me, it seems like it would be better for NRA-types to be reasonable and proactive so that they can be part of the conversation about where and how the lines are drawn. In other words, accepting some reasonable "common sense" limitations (like firearm licensing inspired by driver's licensing) seems like a good way to keep any adjustments / de-facto exceptions to the 2nd amendment reasonable (like the laws about machine guns). Otherwise, you're going all-in. With a not particularly good hand. And that's when you can lose everything (ie., 2nd amendment removal rather than limited in sane ways that let responsible people still keep firearms).

I think you misunderstand my opinion of TLJ here.

Had this video been used to build a script for TLJ, it would have been better than TLJ because ANYTHING would have been better.

As evidence, we can compare TLJ to a two-hour video of a garbage fire, and indeed, the garbage fire would have had better writing.

The movie was terrible.

If they were going to have vaudevillian humour in the opening scenes with Poe prank-calling Hux---while dozens of star destroyers with hundreds (thousands?) of fighters sit there idle----they may as well have gone full 'Snakes on a Plane' B-movie fan service and let Ackbar do the same thing with an "it's a trap" gag. But that wouldn't do, because that would involve some kind of consistency. And one thing I can't stand is scripts and characters in stories that contradict their own being.

e.g. Luke "I see good in the most evil villain of movie history" Skywalker considering killing his own nephew, because maybe he's too far gone. Darth Vader wasn't too far gone, but somehow the son of Leia and Han was? See how that kinda goes against Luke's character? There are a million ways they could have written the fall of Ben Solo into the dark side that didn't involve violating the essence of existing characters.

A garbage fire wouldn't have done that. A garbage fire would have known better.

TLJ was terrible movie that just happened to have the massive budget for some cool special-effects scenes and some A-list actors wasted on an awful script with a thin, scattered plot.

Now maybe TLJ is your favourite movie, and if so, whatevs. We just have different taste I guess. I'm not going to get into a flame war over a garbage-fire.

This isn't accurate at all on Columbus either.

Every educated person knew the Earth was round, they even had a pretty good idea of how BIG it was. Which is why nobody was insane enough to try the trip to the East over the Western sea. It was too far, they would simply die.

Columbus was an idiot who got the math wrong and thought the Earth was a lot smaller than everyone else knew it was. He didn't even really convince the Queen he was right, she just had lots of ships and on the off chance he might be right, she gave him three because the reward was worth the risk.

He then went on to slaughter a few million islanders in the Caribbean because they wouldn't tell him where the gold was (they had no gold).

So... he was basically an idiot and a homicidal maniac, responsible for one of the largest genocides the world has ever known. Yay, let's celebrate a day for him, America! (oh and he also never set foot in what is now the United States AND the first Europeans to come to the Americas were several hundred years earlier).

Fortunately they were already doing a go-around by the time ATC noticed, a few seconds later would have been a disaster. Their minimum altitude was reported as 18m, which is a bit under a metre above the tail height of a Boeing 787-9.

They do have those alarms, but it was initially reported this plane was too far off course from R28R to trigger them and part of the investigation will be whether they were even operating at the time.

A major contributing factor for this incident was that the second runway, 28L, was closed and lights off at the time of the incident. As a result, the FAA has changed San Francisco landing procedures no longer permitting visual approach when an adjacent parallel runway is closed - https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/faa-changes-san-francisco-landing-procedures-after-a-440380/

Poor thing... posted this before watching too far into it...

I live in NZ. There's very much a "she'll be right" attitude to H&S here. And in some ways, it's great. It's easier to set up sports clubs, if you want to go in the wilderness, you're pretty much on your own, etc.

But the flip side is the fact that we have a terrible rate of injuries and actual deaths in industry, especially in agriculture and forestry.

And quite honestly, I think this "H&S gone mad" attitude is actually promoted by companies who don't want to pay to keep their employees safe. And that's not hyperbole, there is literally an ongoing investigation into a company that skimped on safety resulting in the deaths of 29 miners.

I agree it can be taken too far, and maybe the UK really is insane, but in my experience, it's one of those things that people whine about when they don't understand the reasons behind it.

PC, we'll agree to disagree.

Smoking: again smoke if you want to, but just not around me. Why should I have to put up with smoke when I'm having a meal? More importantly, why should the staff who have to work there, have to put up with a toxic environment?

As for the competition argument, it doesn't really hold water. A few pubs in Ireland preempted the smoking ban, and they went out of business, because there's almost always one person in a group that smokes. Having it as a law makes a level playing field.

I've been in three countries now when smoking was banned in pubs. Every time, the hospitality industry said it would be the death of them. 10 years later, no one gives a damn. People still go to pubs and a lot less people smoke. It worked.

The term "political correctness" originally came about as a disparaging way for assholes to describe not being an asshole.

“Political correctness is what right-wing bigots call what everybody else calls being polite”
-Iain M. Banks

Basically, while there are undoubtedly some idiots who take it too far, in general, I'm ok with it no longer being socially acceptable to call people niggers, queers and bitches.

The whole intellectually/vertically/gravitationally/whateverly challenged nonsense was invented as a parody of political correctness and in general, no-one actually uses those terms to describe anyone.

The problem is that people see the worst excesses of political correctness and assume that that's the whole point. It's like seeing one police shooting and deciding that law enforcement itself is a bad idea.

Honestly, I don't think I've ever met anyone who genuinely used the phrase "that's not politically correct" when talking to another human.

Oh, and even "politeness" isn't immune to politicisation. When I was younger, it was drilled into me that it was polite for a man to hold a door for a woman, or to pay for dinner on a date. It was considered polite for children to be seen and not heard. Good luck having an "apolitical" discussion about those topics.

The only CGI I ever noticed in a Fincher film was Benjamin Button. I think he reached too far on that one... didn't like it personally.
All these other ones though... I had no idea. Who CGIs blood rivulets?! Jeezus.

The Russian for the command 'give' is pronounced 'die'. You hear it quite often here.

Or maybe she just speaks a little English and the cat's gone a bit too far.

Cool. Coming out of a baptist family I get it, even if i was never that extreme -- westboro... i knew some families sort of like them though... home schooled on the belief that the Bible is the ultimate framework for governing. Not too far off from the us versus them. Same family that taught an anti-evolution class for our youth group. *shudder*

I became an indignant atheist not long after leaving religion. Now, I embrace Took me many a long night hating on religious people.

Until I had a long conversation with a friend who was a microbiologist, observing evolution on a daily basis, and maintaining a healthy Christian perspective. (Well, at the time it was... now he is sort of Phelping me. It's really hard for me still, to accept religious people, even when almost everyone I know is -- many of whom will always judge me for who I am.)

I mostly enjoy the diversity among my Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Atheist, Buddhist, and Hindu brothers and sisters. They just need to respect my beliefs and recognize that I am not recruiting them and they are not recruiting me. Atheists are the worst at this.

As long as there is seperation of church and state. That is an important concept in maintaining a diverse nation open to dialog like she suggests.

Also, opening dialog with people only works if they reply back hahaha -- most of the angry internet people i know post across a wide array of websites and don't really return for replies that often.

That actually isn't too far from reality for me, if you leave out banging the table. One of the songs my 2 year old loves before going to bed is this punk version of Nelly The Elephant. Once I get him into bed, as he goes to sleep a regular request is one of my usual songs (generally Monty Python or similar) sung as a monster in a gruff shouting voice.

Whatever gets the little feckers angels to sleep.