Great sift, I find that kind of stuff massively interesting.

Reminds me of Cockney rhyming slang, which seems like a completely counterproductive layer of complexity impeding the basic intent of communication. But I imagine that given the right circumstances, some Cockney rhyming slang phrase could take off and go global...

I think it was probably a sifted video that first got me to look up Kaepernick's actual statements from about 2 years ago when he started sitting out the anthem in protest. There's a great post-game interview where he made himself available and answered questions from many reporters etc. about his motivations, etc.


To me, it seems impossible to watch that with an open mind and come away with the Fox News narrative on the guy intact. He straight-up says that it wasn't ever meant to be taken as a slight on the military at all. He clearly and rather eloquently explains what it was/is about for him. He acknowledged that there would likely be consequences, which certainly came true.

Maybe he wouldn't be a QB in the NFL even if he'd have just kept quiet and been a good little conformist, but he got to a point where he didn't feel he could do that.

So, at least in my eyes, kudos to him for standing up for what he believes in. Even after losing his primary soapbox (being an NFL player), he's still putting the issue out there with Nike's help. I don't necessarily trust their motivations -- all publicity is good publicity, after all -- but after having heard his own statements I sure as hell trust his as being 100% genuine.

Hmm. I wonder if he could threaten to sue the university, but offer to drop the suit if they let him back in on a 100% all-expenses-paid scholarship. Any degree he wants to get, for as long as it takes for him to complete.

Punishing her harshly (although she deserves it) does nothing to help him get his life back on track. The uni issuing a mea cupla and saying that they will let him back in on their dime AND allow people to speak in their defense before suspending students over hearsay would at least be a step in the right direction towards actually doing something positive for the real victim here.

Cool.

I was interested enough to try to find information at circa.com, as suggested at the end of the video. Nothing immediately popped out at the top level domain, but a google search found a short story there where the last line was a link to her personal webpage:

https://yaniseho.com/the-bladress/

She's currently in Nebraska, with 169 days on the road and 2747 miles traveled. Not sure if she had phone/GPS issues or what, but there's a jump from day 93 to 119 as her position went from roughly NYC to Buffalo in that time.

I wonder if she's done any wheel and/or bearing replacements in her skates. Her frames/chassis look like Wizards (nice heavy-duty but light aluminum) with a quality boot that I can't recognize for sure but might be a Seba. Anyway, looks like relatively high-end, durable gear!

I appreciate your response to my question earlier, @bobknight33.

I don't mean to try to drag you back into the thread here if you're trying to disengage -- I dunno what you mean by #walkaway. Anyway, this doesn't require a response.

I largely agree with you on the specific subtopic of both parties being pretty dirty and frequently engaging in "government theater" just to draw attention to trivialities while promoting their own self interests. I also largely agree with Trump being a "true outsider" in the sense that he holds no particular allegiance to party machinations, etc.

However, even though I was willing to give him a chance after the election, at this point I have zero trust in Trump's intentions. Trumps friends -- the "best people" -- have this interesting trend of becoming his detractors and enemies. Trump wants us to accept the word of people that vouch for him, but days, weeks, or months later they fall out of favor and suddenly he says that they are scum and we shouldn't listen to a word they say.

That's a "cry wolf" or "fool me once" sort of problem. Sessions, the guy you mentioned as protecting Trump from the "witch hunt", has been pretty relentlessly bashed by Trump for the weighty offense of allowing investigators to investigate. Giuliani spouts nonsense, doublespeak and contradictions. Huckabee-Sanders refuses to answer very basic questions from the press (which is her job) not because they misquote her or take things out of context (which would be legitimate gripes) but because she's been bitten in the ass a few too many times by people pointing out blatant contradictions in Trump's statements. And that's just the current people.
There's a large list of short-term Trump appointments that end up out of favor.

What all that stuff says to me is ... "something is rotten in the state of Denmark". Is it possible that there's a vast conspiracy against him in the media, justice department, etc.? Um, well, maybe -- but Occam's Razor tells me that other possibilities are rather more likely. Like, for example, that Trump being a "true outsider" doesn't preclude him from holding the same self-serving motivations that are unfortunately common in slimy career politicians. That he acts shady and dirty because he is shady and dirty.

I dunno. It just seems like it takes a lot of work to keep up with Trump's revolving door of steadfast allies that become traitorous enemies.

@bobknight33 --

I'm interested in what your thoughts on McCain were in 2008, when he was the Republican candidate for president. If I looked back at your comment history from that era, would you have criticized him in the same ways back then? Were you OK with him being the Republican nominee?

Opinions can legitimately shift over time. But, that's usually a gradual process. If your opinions on McCain shifted radically in a short span of time (since, say, 2016 -- a date I've completely randomly selected for no particular reason), you might want to consider that perhaps some external actor is more responsible for that shift than your own internal feelings.

You are, of course, welcome to your own opinions. However, it seems possible that this one is not precisely "your own". McCain's willingness to break away from groupthink and be a "maverick" was one of the things that people on both side of the aisle respected the most about him.

¡Ay, que lastima!

I'm an atheist and will always be one of the first in line to suggest that religions should be subject to criticism and the rule of law just like any other organization.

That being said, I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea that congregations are complicit in the misdeeds of the institution itself, whether or not they are aware of verified instances of misdeeds. ...Pretty slippery slope.

Expand that to, say, nations. In the history of the US, the government has committed some pretty indefensible atrocities. Genocide, mass relocation, and other offenses against Native Americans in the name of "manifest destiny". Enslavement of a race of people based on skin color, with disenfranchisement and continued abuse well after slavery was abolished, with elements that certainly persist to this day. Funding and supplying extremist organizations because they happen to have a short-term enemy that coincides with ours, which frequently comes back to bite us in the ass later. Using underhanded tricks including false-flag operations to justify wars and other offensive actions. Attempting to assassinate democratically elected leaders of foreign governments. And on and on.

Are all US citizens complicit in those misdeeds, merely by an accident of birth? But those things were in the past, you might argue. Given the depth of dirt you can find on our past with a little digging, I'd say it is reasonable to expect that there's things that the government is doing now that we may or may not be aware of that would be similarly difficult to defend.

Many/most Catholics can either remain intentionally blissfully ignorant about these problems, or will be able to go to great lengths to rationalize their way around them. Just like most US citizens don't lose much sleep over our government's past and present misdeeds. In either case, indoctrination puts the blinders on -- and can be incredibly difficult to escape.

For the religious, "love the sinner, hate the sin" is an oft-repeated phrase. As an atheist outraged by these scandals and the decades/centuries of intentional cover-ups by the Church itself, I might be tempted to turn that on its head. "Accept the religious, hate the religion." By all means, be outraged towards the institution itself. By all means, fight to end the protections that have allowed this kind of abuse to go unchecked. But perhaps try to keep some (Christian?) empathy for the average Catholic congregation members who have been brainwashedindoctrinated their whole lives and are likely in too deep to escape. Reserve that hatred for the clergy that abused their positions of power and control to commit these crimes, and the organizational system that systematically allowed it to happen while covering it up. They deserve every bit of hate you throw their way.

It turns into a weird combination of French, German, and and Irish Gaelic?

Cool.

I've been following this story here. Sure was happy when they were found alive -- I had started to lose much hope after they'd been gone 4+ days.

The bad news today is that a Thai volunteer diver, a former SEAL, died on a return trip from setting up extra air supply tanks along the route. BBC coverage is very good:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44734385

Most cave diving experts think that it would be extremely risky to try to move the kids out by diving. One of the on-scene people from the US has said that none of the boys know how to swim, let alone dive, and the conditions in cave diving make it so that panic can quickly lead to disaster.

Unfortunately, a new complication has come up. Oxygen levels in the chamber they are in are now at 15%, down from the usual 21%. They are working to get piping in to supply fresh air, but logistics of that are difficult since they need about 3 miles of piping. And to make matters worse, heavy rains are in the forecast, which will further stress the pumping that they are doing to keep water levels low in the cave.

The Thai head of the Navy rescue operation was quoted today as saying that "At first, we thought the children could stay for a long time... but now things have changed, we have a limited time." If that is correct and can't be resolved (due to dropping oxygen levels, rising water, or whatever), they may have to opt for the risky exit via diving. So definitely not out of the woods yet.

I actually used an old Intellimouse Explorer 2.0 from 2003 today -- it's in my laptop bag for those times when the trackpad just doesn't cut it.

Still works pretty well. The button hardware switches are a bit old and some of them produce signals that are too noisy for the signal bounce processing chips to filter out. So, the wheel button registers a single click as a double basically 100% of the time (PITA when using it to open new tabs in a browser), and the "forward" button does the same 50% of the time (much less frequently an issue). Not half bad for 15 year old hardware, really.

After these phased out of popularity, I switched loyalties to Logitech and then more recently Razer. But the hand feel of the chassis (which will be the exact same for this reboot version) of the Explorer was really quite excellent. Might have to look for one!

To me, the video sorta oversells the difficulty in identifying / escaping from "ridiculous claims", at least in comparison to my personal experiences.

I grew up in a very religious (Christian, Methodist) family / city / state / country. I was questioning the indoctrination at an early age (younger than 10), and rejecting it due to never receiving satisfactory answers to those questions by ~12. Actually, one of the most significant pushes for me was the ultimate reward/punishment thing. Zero consistency and open contradictions between different religions / sects / sources, etc. In symbolic logic, contradictions mean that one of your premises is wrong. Reconsider what you "know" and try again.

With regards to atheism vs (a)gnosticism, technically I'm an agnostic because I don't know with absolute certainty that there is no god / gods out there. However, in practice, I easily and comfortably would rather self-identify as an atheist. Why, when I don't know for certain? Because I also don't know that there isn't an Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, Loch Ness Monster, or Leprechauns, yet I don't feel compelled to tell people that I'm "agnostic" about those things. No. They are pretty clearly human-invented bullshit, with readily apparent human motivations behind their invention. Sounds like religion to me.

That's basically Russel's teapot.