I saw the mention of it protecting abortion rights, but I was confused about that because as far as I know, nowhere requires someone to be married for abortions or any type of healthcare.

The quotes and comments I saw made it sound like the stance was this doesnt happen enough we should risk losing any rights unnecessarily, but I feel there should have been some specifics mentions what those rights they’re protecting actually were. The stats seem all over the place too, from as low as IIRC around 50 child marriages since 2019 to an estimated 1600.

This all seems like something people should have some real facts and figures on, but that I cant find them is really raising my eyebrows for a number of reasons.

My first thought was what’s up with California?

I could find a bunch of articles talking about the usual stuff like conservatives and evangelicals arguing in favor of avoiding a ban, but Planned Parenthood and the ACLU are also frequent supporters of avoiding a ban on child marriage. The only reasoning I could find was “we don’t have enough data,” but I’m struggling to think of any positive things about allowing it. From the articles, it sounded like fringe religious beliefs and questionable things regarding immigration laws, but I am skeptical the pros of allowing child marriage for those outweigh a number of cons I could name.

I wasn’t able to find any actual articles from PP or ACLU themselves about it, so does anyone have any insight? This seems a bit out of character for both orgs.

I went to look at your comment. I’ll be polite and summarize it instead of sharing the exact quote.

I was 18 and had a 17 year old girlfriend and we had a ton of sex. That’s what 17 year olds do.

If you don’t understand how the power dynamics are different between 2 nobodies of similar age vs a 17 year old and a 38 year old federal representative and his local gov buddy, you may want to read some things written about consent written in the last decade.

When I was 17, someone almost 40 was considered old as hell.

Edit: Article on coercion vs consent

They had her out of state, where she likely didn’t really know where she was, likely had no one to get help from if she felt she was in a bad situation, and was there with very much more adult authority figures, and there were drugs at the party, so she may have also been under the influence.

You also can’t fault someone for taking time to want to testify. She probably felt at least partially responsible, and he is a national figure. It takes time to get up courage to open yourself up to the whole world getting a chance to say things like you must have wanted it or did something to deserve it.

It is unfortunate. I try and be mindful around new people to look visibly happy, or at least not in a bad mood. But I can’t fault anyone for playing it safe. Especially since being harassed isn’t something you can undo or something anyone should have to build a tolerance for. They may have also been in a previous incident that we don’t know about.

If they’re overreacting or not isn’t really a strangers’ business. We start to venture into egocentrism to think their behaviors have anything to do with us. It’s just a live and let live thing. There’s plenty of people over been nice to, and they still never liked me for one reason or another, but it’s no biggie.

If it was a repeated thing, like they saw you every day and actively avoided you, that’s a somewhat different story, but some person we only see once, it’s not worth the mental energy to worry about it to me.

I never understand why someone would feel offended by something like this. I doubt many people are riding public transit to make new friends. Most seem to want to be ignored there.

I’m of bear-like physique and I assume to a lone woman on a train car that has no clue who I am, potentially intimidating. Likely, I’d expect neither of us would pay each other much mind. If she decided to get up and move to an empty car, it probably still wouldn’t dawn on me right away why she moved, as I’m minding my own business. If I did realize, why should I be offended though? If anything, it’s a good strategic move on her part. She’s not there to get to know me, and she’s darned well not there to potentially get to know me in a negative way, no matter how slim the chance of that could be.

Should they require separate cars? Of course not. But I don’t see how it could be seen as ant-man. If your first thought is to be seriously angry at someone for not trusting a stranger, to me, that pretty much proves them right.

I was thinking today we’re not far from having a new Fugitive Slave Act, only with migrants. At this point, I don’t think we can really say anything is off the table. I don’t know any check or balance that isn’t currently compromised or 1 executive order from elimination.

Fun free and quick unique thing at the airport to have fun with while you’re already there:

When you are at the airport in Terminal C. There are two places where four walkways cross. I guess the architects thought it would be fun if they created an echo chamber. So if you stop in the dead center and speak it echoes and scares everyone around you. It’s a lot of fun so try it when you are passing through the airport. They are located near C14 and C45. If you don’t know they are there, you will walk right past them.

Open: As long as the airport is open. Location: Intersection near gates C14 and C45

I usually see if I can get it from Amazon since we already have Prime. Rock Auto is typically cheaper on the actual part price, but the shipping almost always puts it over Amazon’s price for me. I use Rock Auto to confirm part numbers though, as it’s easier to see a big list of them than the Amazon page giant results mixed in with their “recommendations.”

Even the smallest owls have to stay fierce!

It was hard to post today, but I told myself that I still wanted to try to give you guys what I could, so I put up some of the best I had in my stash of posts.

I try to keep politics out of it, but as I focus on habitat preservation and animal protections, it’s hard to stay totally out of it.

I do have stuff ready to start Owl of the Year. I was going to do a preliminary round this week, but I’m going to let people deal with their emotions for a couple days, I think.

To anyone feeling nervous by the results, know I care about of all you guys, and most of the people I love are potentially affected as well. Anyone who cares about nature is always welcome to come and enjoy the owls with me.

Different job, but same scenario. I hook things up to a machine, run it an hour, swap the next units in, repeat until done. Sometimes there’s other stuff to do, but the basic job is mostly waiting.

Somewhere between suburban and rural Pennsylvania here. I think it was about 2 hours the time voted for Obama’s second term. Another presidential election was about an hour. Presidental elections have lines outside of work hours because nobody gets off to vote. Non-presidential elections are a few minutes to maybe a half hour tops.

I’m so glad they didn’t get rid of early voting after COVID, but I wish the drop boxes were around for more than a few hours on 2 weekends. I like dropping it off rather than trusting the mail, but they’re only open 8-5 on weekdays and 10-2 on the last 2 weekends.

North Carolina is a lovely state, and I hope you’re able to bring a little more sanity back to it!

Thank you for voting, fellow battleground stater! My voter sticker went through the wash, but I cast my vote in PA as soon as I could in October.

Stand on Zanzibar (1968) is set in 2010, at a time when population pressure has led to widening social divisions and political extremism. Despite the threat of terrorism, U.S. corporations like General Technics are booming, thanks to a supercomputer named Shalmaneser. China is America’s new rival. Europe has united. Brunner also foresees affirmative action, genetic engineering, Viagra, Detroit’s collapse, satellite TV, in-flight video, gay marriage, laser printing, electric cars, the de-criminalization of marijuana, and the decline of tobacco. There is even a progressive president (albeit of Beninia, not America) named “Obomi”.

Have we ruled him out as a time traveler? 😆

I’ll have to add this to my reading list. Thanks!

Second for TP Link. I’ve been on TP Tapo lights for the last year and they’ve been pretty painless. Amazon puts them on sale pretty often. I mainly use them as a wake up light and to turn on the inside lights when I’m carrying in stuff at night.

I had him in my mind writing my original comment. I don’t know much about him before the war, but he seems to be doing admirable if anyone had concerns at his election.

It’s fun to turn back the clock and read old news:

BBC: Ukrainian comedian Volodymyr Zelensky has scored a landslide victory in the country’s presidential election. 22 APR 2019

“I will never let you down,” Mr Zelensky told celebrating supporters.

Russia says it wants him to show “sound judgement”, “honesty” and “pragmatism” so that relations can improve. Russia backs separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Mr Poroshenko, who admitted defeat after the first exit polls were published, has said he will not be leaving politics.

He told voters that Mr Zelensky, 41, was too inexperienced to stand up to Russia effectively.

Mr Zelensky starred in the long-running satirical drama Servant of the People in which his character accidentally becomes Ukraine’s president.

He plays a teacher who is elected after his expletive-laden rant about corruption goes viral on social media.

He ran under a political party with the same name as his show.

With no previous political experience, Mr Zelensky’s campaign focused on his difference to the other candidates rather than on any concrete policy ideas.

NPR: Comedian Wins Ukrainian Presidency In Landslide 22 APR 2019

“What’s amazing is that despite Zelenskiy being a household name, people don’t really know what he stands for,” NPR’s Moscow correspondent Lucian Kim told Morning Edition. “During the election campaign, he was very vague about his positions, and in that way he really became a blank slate for people to project whatever they wanted on him.” The fact that voters chose Zelenskiy shows how desperate people are, Kim said.

But Ukraine’s outgoing president cautioned that the Kremlin is celebrating the election of an inexperienced candidate. Russia believes that “Ukraine could be quickly returned to Russia’s orbit of influence,” Poroshenko said on Twitter.

According to The New York Times, many voters said they had supported Zelenskiy “not so much because they thought he was a good candidate but because they wanted to punish Mr. Poroshenko for deflating the hopes raised by Ukraine’s 2014 revolution and for doing little to combat corruption.”

The Washington Post notes that Zelenskiy is just the latest comedian to win public office in elections around the world. In Guatemala, the former comic actor Jimmy Morales won the presidency on an anti-corruption platform with the slogan, “Not corrupt, not a thief.” In Iceland, comedian Jón Gnarr ran for mayor as a joke candidate and won, serving one term before he stepped down in 2014. And in the U.S., Saturday Night Live comedian Al Franken became a senator from Minnesota.

Maybe laughter and self-reflection is what the world needs right now. The comedians seem to be picking things up when everyone else is dropping the ball.

Wow, that was a ride! I read the Wikipedia synopsis and saw there was a documentary made about it with Orson Wells as the narrator and it was on Youtube and only about 40 minutes, so I checked it out. The intro was so trippy, with brash visuals and loud, violent sound effects combined with a generic John Carpenter synth soundtrack. It was like a deleted scene from Clockwork Orange!

I don’t know how much the content differs from the book, but it was a nice insight to my parent’s generation and their feelings to the future, or our now I suppose. It was somewhat eye-opening hearing them talk about built by number babies and cloning years before the first IVF baby was born, and things like an interview with a polyamorous couple. The idea of things like changing race at will is still somewhat crazy, but I guess one could carry thing over to confusion about gender fluidity.

It was a crazy mix of 'Member Berries, Old Man Yells at Cloud, but also with some empathy one can actually relate to less mentally flexible people experiencing the titular Future Shock. Where I lose a bit of that sympathy though is in reading the Wiki entry on Toffler himself, it quotes him:

“Society needs people who take care of the elderly and who know how to be compassionate and honest,” he said. “Society needs people who work in hospitals. Society needs all kinds of skills that are not just cognitive; they’re emotional, they’re affectional. You can’t run the society on data and computers alone.”

I got to spend a lot of time with all 4 of my grandparents from the Greatest Generation. To varying degrees, all seemed to eventually accept, if not embrace the modern times of race equality and even bits of homosexuality. None used computers or much advanced tech, but they didn’t seem to begrudge it either. I certainly never heard them complain about too much electric lighting, air conditioning, or running water.

My parent’s generation, the Boomers, seem to be going kicking and screaming into the future though. My mom was, and still at heart is a hippie, so she does not have these issues for the most part. My dad and all his friends though seem deeply upset we are not in 1970 anymore. If they didn’t have it then, they don’t need it now. There seems to be no desire to learn, or to accept new things or ways of seeing the world.

Perhaps life has sped up faster than our minds have changed to handle that. Those rooted in tradition perhaps had more time to adapt in the past. But I don’t think my generation has just turned our backs on our parents. They just do not seem to be accepting the embrace we are offering, and I don’t know if we can make them.

It’s definitely a deeper topic to continue to explorer that can go far deeper than writing it off with an “OK, Boomer,” but it’s an unfortunate circumstance when you reach out a hand to someone you care about and they just smack it away. My immediate family is not close for a number of reasons, and as they age, I fear how tense things will get whenever the point arrives where they are forced to start relinquishing some control to my brother and me.

The fact this isn’t localized to the US is the part that has me sweating. We’ve moved on from a lot of terrible things in America’s past, but with so many countries experiencing much the same thing at once, I don’t know where we find the good influence in the world.

I hope this will end up being a great wake up to the responsibilities of democracy, but I’ll probably be long gone before the ripples of the event of Bush v Gore are done shaking the system. It’s going to take a long time to clean things up even if we start tomorrow since the power hungry have gotten away with so much up until this point.