Cassowary attacks

Cassowaries have a reputation in folklore for being dangerous to people and domestic animals. During World War II American and Australian troops stationed in New Guinea were warned to steer clear of them. In his book Living Birds of the World from 1958, ornithologist Ernest Thomas Gilliard wrote:

The inner or second of the three toes is fitted with a long, straight, murderous nail which can sever an arm or eviscerate an abdomen with ease. There are many records of natives being killed by this bird.

This assessment of the danger posed by cassowaries has been repeated in print by authors including Gregory S. Paul (1988) and Jared Diamond (1997). A 2003 historical study of 221 cassowary attacks showed that 150 had been against humans. 75% of these had been from cassowaries that had been fed by people. 71% of the time the bird had chased or charged the victim. 15% of the time they kicked. Of the attacks, 73% involved the birds expecting or snatching food, 5% involved defending natural food sources, 15% involved defending themselves from attack, and 7% involved defending their chicks or eggs. The 150 attacks included only one human death.

The one documented human death was caused by a cassowary on 6 April 1926. 16-year-old Phillip McClean and his brother, aged 13, came across a cassowary on their property and decided to try to kill it by striking it with clubs. The bird kicked the younger boy, who fell and ran away as his older brother struck the bird. The older McClean then tripped and fell to the ground. While he was on the ground the cassowary kicked him in the neck, opening a 1.25 cm (0.49 in) wound which may have severed his jugular vein. The boy died of his injuries shortly afterwards.

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

https://democracyjournal.org/arguments/keep-it-simple-and-take-credit/

"Implementing these kinds of policies are also no road to electoral success. Peoples’ lives are hard enough without tax credits and savings accounts and eligibility forms and government phone calls that determine whether one’s household income puts one in the bracket for this or that plan or benefit or subsidy and on and on. No voter is thanking anyone who puts them on this road, even if there’s a small pot of money at the end of it.

And forget the annoyance—the amount of immense mental energy and social capital required to keep track of, comprehend the eligibility requirements of, and then successfully apply for these benefits is a de facto regressive tax on people whose lives are too materially difficult to deal with arcane bureaucratic bullshit. That is, those people that need the help the most.

So what to do? No more savings accounts, no more cleverly hidden help that people won’t even notice, no more tax-preferenced, means-tested, government-monitored, website-reliant, bronze/gold/platinum-benefits-so-long-as-you-apply-during-open-enrollment. Just give people the stuff they need.

This shouldn’t even be a liberal-socialist divide, although it seems to have become one in recent years. When society decided citizens should be able to read, we didn’t provide tax credits for books, we created public libraries. When we decided peoples’ houses shouldn’t burn down, we didn’t provide savings accounts for private fire insurance, we hired firefighters and built fire stations. If the broad left takes power again, enough with too-clever-by-half social engineering. Help people and take credit."

As Lambert Strether of Corrente says: universal, concrete, material benefits.

Bwaahahaha!

Both infrastructures destroyed, but PRs is much better, yet they got less. PR is American, and begged for help during the storm. Haiti almost had no government after the earthquake, we just showed up to help.
You know SOME damage will happen, so prepare....but that ignores the point, Haiti had no warning and no preparation, but twice the help in 1/8 the time, even though they're also an island, surrounded by water, big water, and even though near 100% of structures were destroyed in Haiti with roads blocked and bridges impassable.
FEMA spent millions preparing in Texas and Florida...what's different?
PR requested FEMA help before landfall, and haven't stopped begging for it since.
Really, federal agencies cannot go where they aren't specifically requested by locals even in emergencies...and you think declaring the island (and San Juan specifically) a disaster zone and requesting FEMA and the military isn't a request....who's a moron again?
Couldn't that be 'Joseph Curl admits he hasn't met with San Juan mayor'? It's his job to provide emergency services and supplies, he's failed completely. Hypothetically, if she were killed, incapacitated, or trapped, San Juan just gets abandoned? Besides, pretending they don't have permission to enter town or knowledge of the need without her in person properly formatted request is just ludicrous and moronic.
They have permission, they need drivers that aren't there. They blame locals for not answering their phones and showing up to drive....but 95% don't have electricity, most cell towers are destroyed, and most roads are impassable because FEMA and the military continue to do little....but sure, it's those lazy Puerto Ricans that are the hold up.

Your ridiculous hyper politically biased opinion article actually discredits your contention. She has met them, is in constant contact, and her subordinates are stationed in the FEMA headquarters...she just hasn't wasted her time visiting that headquarters personally because there's no reason to besides a photo op, and she's busy trying to save lives. I'm sure Trump will play that game though, he likes having his picture taken.

This guy was my base commander when I was stationed in the UK. He was a great boss then, seems like nothing has changed in the last 7-8 years.

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That is just fantastic. I really hope the TV station actually takes it.

We all get the duality of this. I had a bad feeling, but then an even worse feeling kicked in... I should do a cost-benefit analysis. I already hate myself for sinking into management-speak. But...

Guy on phone: only obvious benefit is lording this over his bully. It feels really good, especially when broadcast. Maybe some residual guilt. Got to take into account that, whatever his original intention, his reaction was from the gut.

Bully: unknown. Depends on what kind of person he is now, years after. Probably angry. Possibly feels bad about what just happened to his mother.

Mother: no benefit. Probably feels raped. Possibly was raped, depending on your definition. Possible shame over what her son did. Comment of "you probably deserved it" could be genuine, or could be severe defensiveness.

Radio station:
OK, I can't be objective here. It's possibly mostly live, they maybe feel an obligation to entertain, they have little control, but fuck those guys. I just hope they apologised afterwards.

Personal analysis: doing the deed isn't cool, given the innocent victim. Laughing about it on the air is understandable, but fucked up. Broadcasting it, laughing, and celebrating the outcome - whoever you are - is disgusting.

If he had called the station, I would agree, but they called him. She made it public.
If his plan worked as he planned it, she would never have known, only her bully of a son would know.
I agree, it's a douchey plan to start with and he's an SOB, but I think you misunderstood what happened. He doesn't seem like he intended her to be hurt, but he's also clearly not sorry about it.

EDIT...but her response about the bullying, "you probably deserved it", leads me to believe she probably protected and excused her bully of a son as a child, saying the same thing when presented with proof of his actions instead of reprimanding him. He's right, that behavior doesn't come out of thin air, it's learned, not that that excuses his douchbaggery.

Not ftw, and not a victim anymore imo. Now he's just an asshole. He had to make it public by calling a radio station. Stupid as fuck. I'm guessing karma will bite him in the ass. No one wants someone like that working for them.

(edit) oops i had skipped the first part. Still a douchebag.

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I'd have to beg to differ on America having similar Aboriginal/White conflict. IMO the divide between aboriginal/white in Canada is actually much deeper, and with a greater potential for future violence than even black/white relations in the US. The conditions on Canadian native reserves are MUCH worse than in the US. It's severe enough that the first time a Canadian is driving past an America aboriginal reserve they have to ask twice to confirm it really is one. The general state of broken down infrastructure, housing and in general is so bad it's even visibly unavoidable up here in Canada. In the US you can't tell you've gone past anything different unless something culturally relevant is posted up.

It's also made worse by systematic segregation that the reserve system in Canada creates so any seed of racism has lots of fertile ground and lacks any reference to counter balance it.

When a car is stolen is something goes missing on farms near a reserve the immediate default assumption is that someone 'aboriginal' took it. It's only made worse when more often than the statistical distribution should dictate, it actually was someone from a reserve that did it. Recently a car of young aboriginal kids pulled into a farmers yard and one of them was shot and killed. They said they had a flat and were just looking for help. The case is on going, but the courts have heard that the neighbour had already put a call in to police about a theft minutes before the shooting though. Of course, white folks on the internet made such helpful comments as suggesting the farmers mistake was 'leaving any witnesses'. It's also not just white racism against natives though, the racism against settlers(whites) amongst aboriginal populations can be just as ugly and rampant. When Canada decided to have our border crossing guards carry guns, we had to close a border crossing that was in a Mohawk reserve because they wouldn't allow it. The border station there was already riddled with bullet holes before this. If the government DID try and enforce the same law there as the rest of the border, people were going to die.

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Holy Huzzah! That was *quality *terrible by gum! Give Thanks for ... pranks! I'll wager this is a Sinclair Broadcast Group owned station [hence the 'sue'-age].

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(**EDIT** hmm, code HTML tag doesn't seem to allow whitespace to show at the beginning of lines, so I'm replacing spaces with _underscores_ in the pseudocode below)

Code uses spaces or tabs to visually distinguish the flow of the program, what code belongs to what functions / loops / whatever.

Here's some C-style "pseudocode" that should get the idea across:

void function fizzbuzz {
__for (i = 1; i <= 100; i++) {
____set print_number to true;
____If i is divisible by 3
______print "Fizz";
______set print_number to false;
____If i is divisible by 5
______print "Buzz";
______set print_number to false;
____If print_number, print i;
____print a newline;
__}
}

The braces { } show the beginning and ending of a "function" (essentially one of potentially many self-contained algorithms in a program) and the beginning and ending of a "for loop" (that will repeat the code inside it some number of times). And the "if" statements will only perform the stuff after them IF the test they perform evaluates to true.

So in that pseudocode, there's sort of 4 tiers or things going on. First is the function (named "fizzbuzz"). Since functions are kind of the most basic structural unit of the code, they are on the far left -- not indented at all. Sorta like Roman Numerals in an outline.

Then, the actual content of that function (the code that makes up its algorithm) is set a consistent amount of space to the right to make it clear that it is contained inside the function. That can be done with *1* tab, or some consistent amount of spaces so that it lines up. The only thing in that tier is the "for loop" and the braces that show its beginning and end.

Then the content of the for loop is set a bit further to the right (with another space or another set number of spaces). All of the "if" statements are at that 3rd tier level, along with a bit more code at the beginning and end. Then, the actual content of the if statements is set one more tier to the right to help distinguish that it will only run IF the conditions are met.

That pseudocode uses spaces for all of the tiering -- 2 spaces per tier. I'm a tab person like the guy Richard in the video, because it seems easier to press tab once per tier than hitting the spacebar 2/3/4 times per tier. But it really is just a personal preference issue, because as he said in the video, by the time the code is compiled (turned into an executable file that the computer can run) the final result will be the same whether the programmer used spaces or tabs.

But like with many things, Silicon Valley really hits the nail on the head here. Programmers tend to be very set in their ways and anal about their style preferences for code. If we have to go through someone else's code that doesn't follow our style conventions exactly, it kinda tends to throw us out of whack. To make an analogy with something less nerdy, consider how annoying it can be when someone borrows your car and you have to adjust the seat / mirrors / radio stations etc. when you get back in.