This Is Fine

3 killed, 15 wounded in stabbing rampage in Japan

MBraedley

@TimStone Just think for a second about how much worse it would have been if he'd had a gun

> A total of 19 wounded, including a number of girls ages six to nine, according to @nhk_news.

Trump meanwhile is tweeting about…not that, despite being in Japan currently

Why US gun laws will never look like Australia's | ABC News

@MBraedley i was watching a video from the ABC (Australian ABC) about gun control and Japan was mentioned. they show a list of all the things you have to do before you get a gun and after that it shows the US

►

12:44 AM

Adventures in house renos!

How much do 2x4s cost?

Answer: significantly less if you shave six inches off of the standard eight feet lengths.

@Frank wrong room or are you "renovating" a government building

@Memor-X I have a very empty basement.

Also, very wrong room.

Whoops.

@TimStone probably about his very special relationship with Kim Jong Un and how they are "keeping their promise"

2:01 AM

The woman accused of throwing an egg at Prime Minister Scott Morrison's head has faced a NSW court, charged with common assault.

Fraser Anning is probably looking at it and going "and what about the kid i punched?"

3:25 AM

World Health Organisation drops transgender from list of mental health disorders

Half Empty

3:46 AM

3 hours ago, by Half Empty

The WHO removed transgenderism from its list of mental disorders

4:12 AM

@HalfEmpty oh, i didn't see it there. must have been hidden by the more depressing news about the stabbings in Japan

Sydney's new driverless trains open to the public

5:10 AM

►

a good start. How is Musk's Tube going?

fredley

6:42 AM

WHO recognises 'gaming disorder' as a mental illness

2

6:57 AM

@fredley Note: this isn't gaming ADDICTION. What they're talking about is when you play so much games you skip basic needs like eating, hygiene, school and work

@Nzall thought we were calling that WoW Disorder

@Memor-X WoW isn't the only game that brings such dangers

11:36 AM

Oh wow who would have guessed Transportation Secretary and Mitch McConnell's wife Elaine Chao would be unethical

Would that not be insider trading?

@Kevin If they sold it, sure.

But nothing says they can't enrich themselves by using their political office (or that of their spouse).

Oh yeah you don't only get money from selling them

Right

I think, technically, insider trading is just buying/selling stock using knowledge internal to the company, not disclosed to share/stockholders.

Hmm

Right, yeah it wouldn't fall under those laws

11:46 AM

It's still unethical as all get out.

Oh definitely

But remember who wrote the laws about profiteering in your public office.

People in public office? Are you making an american reference?

Yes. The very people who were, and are, profiteering, are the ones who wrote the laws about it.

It is still a conflict of interest

Conflict of interest

A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, this relates to situations in which the personal interest of an individual or organization might adversely affect a duty owed to make decisions for the benefit of a third party. The presence of a conflict of interest is independent of the occurrence of impropriety. Therefore, a conflict of interest can be discovered and voluntarily defused before any corruption occurs. A conflict of interest...

> A conflict of interest can, however, become a legal matter, for example, when an individual tries (and/or succeeds in) influencing the outcome of a decision, for personal benefit

11:54 AM

Which is more or less meaningless; these people have enough money to pay lawyers for years and years until they're no longer in office.

@Frank okay, I thought maybe you were making some specific reference that I wasn't getting. you weren't really

@Kevin Sorry, no, nothing specific.

Just that laws are broken, and favor those with money.

Yeah

2:34 PM

@Nzall I mean, "pushing your pro-life opinions on [other people]" is exactly what "pro-life" is. Pro-choice, or the abortion side of the abortion debate, doesn't mean that everyone has to get abortions now. "Pro-life" isn't pro-life so much as it is anti-choice.

You and your wife deciding together that you aren't going to have abortions isn't a outcome forbidden by pro-choice.

@Yuuki Okay, I must be misunderstanding the entire pro-life and pro-choice thing then

Well, part of the problem is the name.

@Nzall The "pro-life" side is explicitly outlawing abortion in all cases for everyone at the federal level.

Whereas "pro-choice" means that abortion is a legal operation that you can pursue if you choose to.

Or you can not pursue if you choose not to.

There's this table somewhere of "Things that would punish women for having sex" and "things that would help prevent abortions" combined with "things those that call themselves 'pro-life' are in favor of" and "things that pro-choice people are in favor of"

@Yuuki (with, varying flavors between "safe, legal, and rare" and "free, on demand, without apology")

Let me reword what I said: I think it is okay for someone to have the opinion that they never want to get an abortion regardless of what happens. I think it is okay for someone to have the opinion that if necessary, they should be able to have an abortion. The way Nathan Pyle worded his reply made me think that while he personally is against abortions, he does not think legislation should ban them

2:39 PM

Unsurprisingly to a serial cynic of religiously motivated people like me, almost all the things that would help prevent abortions are opposed by 'pro-life' people, and all the things that would punish are supported by 'pro-life'

That doesn't check out with "went to march for life" but then again that was 2 years ago so

you know, from the whole "separation of church and state thing" in his followup

@Kevin this one? liveaction.org/news/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/…

There's at least two others with similar formats floating around the net but they're all broadly similar, IIRC

@ToxicFrog As a Belgian it's always good to see Belgium being referred to as a positive example

@Nzall Must be nice to have your place of residence show up in the news for good reasons.

I always wonder what that would feel like.

2:45 PM

we're probably going to need to study and apply ROSA's tactics here pretty soon which is, fun

And yeah, "pro-life" is, quite transparently and blatantly, about punishing women for having sex, with an ablative shell of useful idiots who don't think too hard about the policies they're actually supporting surrounding it.

fun fact: support for a total ban on abortion does not cross 25% in any state.

@ToxicFrog oh! that looks similar mebbe

Seems about right

At any rate, in The Bridge I was talking about what's probably better referred to as "pro life lite": people who will never get an abortion themselves and are against abortions in general, but won't take any steps towards imposing their own abortion views on others

@Nzall that's called pro-choice.

2:52 PM

^

Sort of the "I don't agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

Yep, pro choice

Because you support the right of other people to make their own choices even if they differ from what you personally would choose for yourself, see.

Ah, like that

Unlike pro-life, pro-choice is exactly what it says on the tin.

2:54 PM

Lots of people who, amongst 'pro-life' groups are considered 'pro-life', oppose abortion even in the case where both mother and fetus would die

That is not, in any sensible way, defendable as being in favor of life

Like most things right-wing, the issue only has as much traction as it does because of widespread misinformation and clever naming.

next thing you're going to tell me is "right to work" is deceptively named, and not at all related to whether or not one has a right to get a job

@Unionhawk so I've googled this and I don't quite get this. is a "right to work" law not simply saying that if there is a union active in your company or sector, that union cannot negotiate that your company is required to give part of your salary to the union if you're not part of the union?

Or am I completely misreading wikipedia?

it's "you don't have to pay union dues, but the union is still required to represent you"

It's basically financial union busting

3:02 PM

with the intent of starving organized labor

Ah, okay, so any unions active have to depend on voluntary contributions from people who are willing and able to pay them

Either way, someone who doesn't know the circumstances isn't going to think of either of those things when they hear "right to work".

Isn't "right to work" also laws that say any party can stop the employment at any point without reason?

no that's

at will employment?

Aha, I am confusing two horrible thigns

3:04 PM

Yes but "right to work" states often also have at-will employment laws.

So the two are often conflated.

Yuh

Fortunately the opposite is "just cause termination" which is at least a thing

idk if there's really an opposite of "right to work" that's quick and clear

@Unionhawk That just sounds super-metal.

Just Cause 5: Termination

@Unionhawk Mandatory union membership (it's a thing)

Closed Shop is what it's often called

Closed shop

A pre-entry closed shop (or simply closed shop) is a form of union security agreement under which the employer agrees to hire union members only, and employees must remain members of the union at all times in order to remain employed. This is different from a post-entry closed shop (US: union shop), which is an agreement requiring all employees to join the union if they are not already members. In a union shop, the union must accept as a member any person hired by the employer.International Labour Organization covenants do not address the legality of closed shop provisions, leaving the question...

3:06 PM

@Nzall not the opposite of 'right to work' laws

really I guess the first step would be undoing a lot of propaganda against organized labor

Is there a term for "it's not a closed shop but only people who pay union dues get union representation"?

It essentially means "if you want to work in this sector, you need to be a union member, and if you lose your union membership, you can't work in this sector"

@ToxicFrog no because that isn't a thing in the united states

I think blame taft-hartley?

I don't really know

@ToxicFrog I don't think so, because unions don't negotiate for union-only employees

3:08 PM

Really eliminating taft-hartley would do a lot of work afaik

(it was passed in the post-war strike wave, because there were no-strike agreements during the war which caused a buildup of issues across many industries)

Time to go home for me

and I believe it's the law that allows so called right to work laws to be a thing

3:53 PM

Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg will be served a summons to appear before parliament the next time either of them set foot in Canada

3

Wipqozn

4:13 PM

CNN: Historic trial tests whether Big Pharma can be held accountable for opioid epidemic.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/28/health/oklahoma-opioid-trial-start/index.html

@Unionhawk Let's just skip to the toss him in jail step

Canada is also holding a case against drug companies

Canadian drug makers hit with $1.1B lawsuit for promoting opioids despite risks

5:50 PM

twitter.com/amychozick/status/1133340461056352256?s=19

user15026

@TimStone whoa, that's....quite the thing.

6:02 PM

Right? I wasn't even sure how to summarize it for link text, heh

7:04 PM

@TimStone I thought they fixed the Twitter links with ?s=19 not oneboxing problem?

Oh right you were on vacation, Twitter oneboxing is now broken completely and it's Very Bad

Oh, it's broken completely now?

Yeah

Huh. Apparently searching "onebox" in the transcript now returns all oneboxed results.

Did it always do that?

user15026

7:19 PM

No idea!

@Yuuki I think so, it's a class in the message HTML and the search is not very sophisticated

7:36 PM

Turns out the tax law is still not great, who knew?

puzzlepiece87

8:01 PM

James Fallows: The Rural-Urban Divide Is More Complicated Than You Think

> The contest between rural and urban America is rigged. Official definitions are regularly updated in such a way that rural counties are continually losing their most successful places to urbanization [as officially classified]. When a rural county grows, it transmutes into an urban one …

> Imagine how unfair a sport would seem if one team automatically drafted the other’s best players the moment they showed any promise. That’s essentially what happens when we measure rural areas as whatever’s left over after anywhere that hits a certain population level is considered metropolitan. It distorts how we see rural America. It skews our view of everything from presidential politics to suicide to deaths caused by alcohol …

> It makes rural areas look poorer, whiter, older and more prone to alcohol-related death or suicide than under broader definitions. Statistics such as these affect everything from Medicare reimbursement to the larger perception that the nation’s breadbasket is also a basket case.

8:23 PM

Man, that US Army tweet is like that gift that keeps on giving, except the gifts are all horribly traumatic and disturbing.

user15026

??

So a couple days ago, the US Army Twitter account sent out a tweet that read "How has serving impacted you?"

Probably expecting replies/retweets along the lines of "army discipline made me a better person" and yadda yadda yadda.

Let's just say that wasn't what happened.

user15026

oooooh yeah I can imagine it super did not go that way