Posts made by eobox91103

@raphjd said in Because the science says so:

@eobox91103

What does driving too fast have to do with being able to (or not) buy booze? Banning dangerous driving is not the same as banning certain people from buying certain products.

The topic of this thread was government regulation/overreach. My point, which I thought would be obvious, was that governments impose laws and regulations with the intention of protecting people--and that people accept that in many cases like speed limits and traffic signals.

The WA ban does seem odd. One approach might have been to ban the unvaxxed from entering a food store/market at all--but that would be going much too far: An unvaccinated person, no matter how idiotic and dangerous he or she may be, still has the need to buy food. I think the argument could be made, though, that such person does not have a need to buy alcohol.

What did Biden do?

It's amazing to me how some people have to bring up Biden and the "durned Libberulls" when they're not part of the discussion topic. But I agree that politicians--left, right, center, up, and down--do not always follow the rules. Resolving that problem is the task of the voters.

@raphjd said in Because the science says so:

It's all about control.

No, it's about government encouraging responsible behaviour...which is part of a government's role in protecting the rights of the people. That's why, for example, we have rules against driving too fast on the motorways or ignoring traffic signals.

Not surprisingly, the people making the laws are the same ones that constantly violate their own laws. The laws only apply to the plebs.

I haven't researched this phenomenon in Western Australia. Perhaps you're referring to BoJo...the next former PM in the UK.

@raphjd said in Because the science says so:

@serenity

Where in the science does it say anything about covid and buying alcohol?

It's not about the science but about control.

It should be noted that "WA" refers to the Western Australia, which has the one of the lowest covid rates on the planet. More story on this at https://au.news.yahoo.com/customer-confused-aldi-sign-new-covid-rule-starts-wa-215555092.html .

Science shows that having more people vaccinated reduces incidence and seriousness of covid infection. Encouraging people to get vaccinated can take many forms The mechanisms taken for this by the WA government may seem severe, but something out there is working.

@geobear40 said in NTSB to investigate Pittsburg bridge collapse just hours before Biden visit on BBB plan:

@bi4smooth
A great deal of infrastructure spending had been considered pork belly spending or was doled out to buy votes on bills that should not pass.

I absolutely agree, which is why having a dedicated infrastructure bill/programme is a good idea.

(And I think you mean pork barrel spending. Stop teasing me; I'm on a diet, and I love pork belly.)

This would definitely be a bad thing. I say "would," because implementation of this change (by the United Conservative Party-led government) is on hold for a few months. It is possible (but in my opinion unlikely) that this $50/$150 scheme will be turned back.

It's worth noting how this crept in: Last year a similar approach was applied to impaired-driving cases, following an approach taken in British Columbia. When this came up in Alberta, few people objected because nobody wanted to be seen as "soft" on impaired driving. Unfortunately, that opened the door to applying this barrier-to-due-process scheme to a wider set of offences.

The argument given by those in favour of this measure is that the courts are overburdened with hearing traffic cases, and that this will stop frivolous challenges--especially by "rural repeat offenders." Having due process available to people can seem inconvenient and expensive, but losing it would be much more costly in a broader sense.

For an example editorial in opposition to this plan (written before it was put on hold), see https://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-ditching-traffic-court-denies-justice .

@bi4smooth One would think that anybody conspiring to make this an opportunistic event would have been more subtle.

But what's really remarkable is that it happened at all: I think Donald Trump proclaimed "Infrastructure Week" 208 times during his administration, always reminding us that he knows how to build things. The must have missed this one.

@bi4smooth said in Georgia Officials Tampered With and Deleted Hours of Ballot Box Video Before It Was Released to Investigators:

Like many Americans, Trump has already planned for his funeral... a State funeral at that!

While the Dear Leader is not familiar with church rituals, there are a number of Christian hymns that will be rewritten by his sycophants for use at his funeral. Ones that come to mind are:

• Lead on, O Trump Eternal
• Onward Fascist Soldiers
• Praise to the Trump, the Almighty, the Boss of Our Nation

The possibilities are endless.

@raphjd said in Georgia Officials Tampered With and Deleted Hours of Ballot Box Video Before It Was Released to Investigators:

extreme TDS

Is this the Tardis from Dr. Who?

@enclopius66 Hi Kippy, Calgary here, although I spend part of the year down in the US. Welcome to the site!

@bi4smooth said in Lush cosmetics store kicks out disabled child over inability to wear a mask:

All we really know is that the child had an exemption that the store would not honor. All the other details people are adding are coming from your own imaginations!

I would fine-tune this to say that an employee, not necessarily the entire store, did not honour the exemption. (And I'm still a bit skeptical that the event even occurred--neither of the Edmonton newspapers carried this, and I can't find the account anywhere other than fringe websites.)

@bi4smooth said in Georgia Officials Tampered With and Deleted Hours of Ballot Box Video Before It Was Released to Investigators:

When Trump got on the plane, he received a phone call from Chief Justice John Roberts, who explained that, should Biden leave office - once he was sworn in - for any reason, Kamala Harris would immediately become President... and if she were to quit too, Speaker Pelosi would immediately become President (but would have to resign from the House first - she can't be both!).

People used to say that the best security measure protecting the life of US President George H. W. Bush (#41) was that Dan Quayle, as VP, was next in line.

(Quayle was justifiably maligned for his less-than-stellar intellect,* but he deserves credit for popularizing the internet: After leaving office, he started a campaign to rid the world wide web of "obscenity and pornography." Millions of people who saw the internet as something for computer hobbyists suddenly realized what they could find online, and online subscription signups skyrocketed. Just a coincidence? You be the judge....)

• See https://www.liveabout.com/dan-quayle-quotes-2733512 for a sampling of what was a heartbeat away from the White house.

@bi4smooth said in Lush cosmetics store kicks out disabled child over inability to wear a mask:

2 of my kids work in "retail" - both as managers... finding good help is SOOOO hard!

These days it's quite difficult in retail and food service to find entry-level employees. In some places, the only requirement seems to be a heartbeat, or reasonable facsimile thereof. The unfortunate situation in Edmonton was likely the result of an uninformed and/or less than brilliant employee acting on his/her own. The nutjob websites reporting this story want to hint at some Grand Conspiracy to Oppress the Citizens, but that doesn't work. (Note that this story is only found on a handful of fringe websites, all citing each other as sources. While the "Edmonton event" may very well have occurred, it's not impossible that it's a fabrication.)

One thing missing from all of the crapsheet "reporting" is the child's age, vaccination status, and/or medical condition that led to the mask exemption. While these are personal matters that can be reserved from the "press," it wouldn't surprise me if Mommy Karen and the child weren't vaccinated. Even if the kid were vaccinated, one has to question to wisdom of bringing such child without a mask into a crowded shopping mall.

...for free WiFi.

I imagine that other kinds of "connections" with him would also be pleasant.

We're probably all familiar with the difference between "real inches" and "online inches," the latter being inflated (!) A little exaggeration in a hookup ad is to be expected, but there are limits to credibility.

I found the following graphic interesting: A US banknote is 6 1/8 inches (15.5 cm) long, which is a longer than the "average" erect penis size of 5.5" (14 cm) that most studies report:

I think most of us would consider a "dollar size" penis to be adequate...but nobody's going to proudly advertise that.

What about larger? Standard letter-size paper in Canada and the US is 8.5"x11" (216 x 279 mm); standard A4 paper in Europe is 210 x 297 mm (8.3" x 11.7"). How many "nine inch" porn models (or hookups) are longer than the width of standard business paper?

As much as I like numbers, perhaps we should leave them out of size discussions. Some adjectives like "good," "large," or "huge" can be helpful, but I think anyone advertising something larger than average needs to show a photograph. We all know "big" when we see it; we don't need to put a number on it.

@bi4smooth said in A neighbor’s noisy toilet is a human rights violation, Italy’s top court rules:

But I also think the idea that the problem is the freaking TOILET is actually FUNNY....

...and that it took nineteen years to resolve.

Italy’s top court has added a new human rights violation to a list commonly thought to include enslavement, torture and forced starvation: the sound of a toilet flushing at night. That country’s supreme court ... concluded a 19-year legal battle that began when a couple living in a flat near La Spezia complained that their neighbors’ new toilet was keeping them awake with “intolerable noises,” according to the Milan-based newspaper Il Giornale.

Full story at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/18/italy-noisy-toilet/

And we thought judicial issues were messy in the US...

@vortensen said in Can a bottom rape a top?:

Hi, I wonder if a power bottom can overwhelm a top resulting in a so-called bottom raping the top?

In theory, yes: Forcible* rape only requires that one of the parties involved does not consent to the act. The most likely scenario here would be if the top is impaired by alcohol or other drugs and is not capable of giving consent, but still has a dick hard enough to penetrate.

Also, I could envision two completely sober people,** with the top lying on his back and his cock completely hard (maybe right after blow job), and the bottom straddling him. If the bottom's hole is loose and lubed, s/he could quickly sit down on the top's cock without there having been any discussion/consent/expression of desire on the top's part. From a legal perspective this would be a difficult case to make, but it would still count as rape if the top didn't agree to have this happen.

*The comments above about "forcible" rape assume that both parties are at/above the local age of consent (and that age varies by country, and even by province/state in Canada/the US). If the top is below the age of consent, and the bottom is above the age of consent, then any intercourse would be considered statutory rape of the top by the bottom.

**This discussion also applies to a situation where the "bottom" is a female and takes the top's cock into her vagina or ass.

There's probably some rape-fantasy porn showing a situation like this, although I can't recall having seen any.

@vancer Thank you! It's going to be fun exploring this stuff.

@john32123666 Thank you very much! I look forward to experimenting with these.

I know we have a lot of IT-savvy folks on here, so here's the situation:

• A good friend of mine is music director at an Anglican church that has now gone back to "remote/online" services.

• These services have, in the past, included choral pieces with multiple singers (N<6) who record their parts independently (while listening to a master track), that are then merged into a single audio/video file..(See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYBliPhLAE0 for the kind of result we've had, although there aren't our people.)

• This was being done by someone using "acapella" software by Mixcord. This runs on newer iPhones and iPads

• The person who has been doing this is retiring. I've been asked to take over.

I have a high-end Windows workstation that would have the horsepower to run pretty much any a/v software. If the artists send me video files that are synched to a common master track, what would be good software for Windows that would allow me to merge the audio and video content of those files, as well as (rather tediously) slide each file in order to synch to the rest? I don't expect that this kind of software would be free, but I don't mind buying it, or buying a subscription.

Any suggestions you have would be very welcome.