NielsBohron

I misread the headline as “the right to discontent,” which I think is also a good idea to codify, given the way people who speak out are often punished for legitimate complaints

Anyone who’s ever abused ketamine or DXM knows that dissociating from reality is relaxing.

After all, have you seen reality lately?

If he wasn’t alone what would shooting him accomplish? You still haven’t actually presented a compelling reason he needed to be kept under a gun.

Once Bushnell was on fire and had stopped moving toward the gate/fence, you are correct, he didn’t need to be kept under a gun. However, if he had started to move in a threatening way or if he had been working with a larger group, having the guns drawn could have saved crucial seconds if someone else began to act in a threatening way. The security forces simply didn’t know what the fuck was happening, and in that situation, it is better to have the guns drawn and to be ready for the worst case scenario.

I think it’s understandable that people untrained for a situation like this would fall back on the default, I know I wouldn’t know what to do, but calling that “reasonable” as if it really makes sense in hindsight is a stretch.

That’s fair. I can get behind calling it “understandable” instead of “reasonable”

Considering the security forces had no idea whether he was working alone or what was happening, they obviously didn’t think they could rely on the metal fence.

Look, I’m all for a free Palestine and I agree that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. I also think that voluntary membership in any American or Israeli law enforcement makes them complicit in the heinous acts perpetrated by American cops and the IDF, respectively. I don’t know you, but I’d guess that you and I agree a lot more than we disagree on these issues. I’m just saying, from the PoV of the security forces at the Israeli embassy, this was a potential threat to the embassy and their job is literally to prevent threats from harming the embassy. Without any further information to go on, their decision to draw guns first and get the extinguisher second is reasonable.

Stop him before he got any closer to the embassy. Obviously a gun won’t stop him from commiting suicide, but it could easily be the difference between one person dying and a much larger act of terrorism

late 2000’s here; I went to one of the private, strict christian schools in the area, so no house parties or Greek scene for underage drinkers. So, what did we do? We learned to drink in TJ! IIRC, I think we went down 1.5x per month for two years or so until all of our friend group turned 21 and moved off campus. Luckily, we were usually smart enough to make sure one of us was 100% stone sober while we were across the border (and we always parked on the US side, obvs), but we had friends that still had some close calls.

I had a friend who drove down with a different group that got shaken down when one dumbass got caught by cops peeing in an alley on the way back to the border, and another acquaintance that spent a few weeks in jail on the Mexican side for having two (poorly made) fake twenties in his pocket. As I recall, he didn’t even try to spend them, but got searched for something unrelated and was then held without trial until his parents could get together ten thousand dollars to buy him out.

So, from 2006-2008 or so there still weren’t card readers coming back as a US citizen, but it was definitely getting sketchy. My privileged white-bread ass managed to stay out of trouble (mostly), but I definitely got lucky and wouldn’t recommend it to others. Although, during the daytime it was pretty safe as long as you didn’t get blotto, and going for cheap, delicious tacos and margaritas was a great day trip.

Excellent work; I’m gonna have to add this to my emoji meme collection (which up until now has consisted entirely of one meme)

“wait, it’s all projection?”

“Always has been”

🌎 👨‍🚀 🔫 👩‍🚀

I think “woke” actually does have a definition, put forth by DeSantis’s lawyers, IIRC. I don’t want to go find it right now, but it was something along the lines of “aware of and acknowledging the existence of systematic racism in the United States.”

But more broadly, these days it just means “progressive” without defining any specific arena, so personally, I think woke is a valid way to describe a movie. In fact, if a movie doesn’t have at least some “woke” themes, I’m not too interested in seeing it these days.

It would be interesting to see this on a log scale. Simple enough to do, but I’m on mobile and I’m not that interested

A lot of chemicals are white powders, including stuff like anthrax. When you find an unidentified white powder, especially in a place like the White House, you should always assume the worst until you can get it identified.

Source: am chemist who teaches a bunch of college slobs that are always leaving the lab a complete mess.