I don’t see how you can bridge the political divide when one side wants equal rights for LGBTQ+ people and other side wants to overthrow the government if they don’t get their way.
Republicans hate progressives. Centrist Democrats really hate progressives.
If Chuck Todd is any indication, bridging the divide starts with referring to Sanders-supporting progressives, the common enemy of both groups, as “brownshirts.”
I find it particularly hilarious that England calls these American bully XL, while America calls them Staffordshire Terriers. Wonder which state of the US these were native to. America is well known for cultivating dog breeds over hundreds of years. England exporting shit and then relabeling it and pointing fingers is nothing new I guess.
They’re the same dog, it’s just been selectively bread for muscle mass and jaw size. Plus the assholes who breed them for that purpose like to clip the ears and doc the tails so they look more different than they should.
So they bred a dog with a dog that looks like a dog to make a dog that still looks like the dog you say? Impressive how it still looks like a more muscular version of the same dog after all that.
The breed is based on pitbulls, and has a bunch of other breeds mixed in. So they're not staffies, have never been staffies, and you're just making yourself look like a fucking moron.
What, not a fan of how the more long form detail filled history explains that they’re the same fucking dog? The cliff notes Wikipedia shit tells the whole story for sure.
“I find it particularly hilarious that England calls these American bully X”
"The American Bully Kennel Club divided the American Bully into four categories, including the XL, Pocket, Standard, and Classic, whereas other registries, including the UKC, have approved one consistent size standard.
Some people that breed dogs known for fighting and have a club for breeding fighting dogs have a bunch of sub labels for the dogs they bred? Crazy. I should start a club and make your family inbreed. I can call them things like super fatty XL.
That is very tangential. You could just admit you were wrong and that it wasn’t a British creation, name wise. Seems your ego is a little too frail for that. Sorry to see that.
Because they are regressive by nature. Republicans get dumber over time, so what ever smart things they have done in the past doesn’t matter. Current GOP/MAGA thinks AIDS is only a gay and black people disease.
At the risk of pissing off the UK anti-dog chuds; it seriously makes me wonder how people in the UK are treating their dogs that’d cause them to act like this. I’ve known several people with pitbulls throughout my life. My dad had one as a child. None of those pitbulls ever hurt someone, but then again, none of them were beaten, abused (afaik), or trained as attack/home defense dogs. While I know pitbulls are different from an “American Bully XL” (damn, I love dog breeds that sound like marketing company named them), they’re pretty similar. If anything, a pitbull is more aggressive than a bully, so it would have been more likely for any of the pitbulls to suddenly “”“snap”“” and start attacking people for no reason.
They never did.
In fact, despite pitbulls being legal in the US, I’ve never personally heard of someone being attacked by one. I know it happens, I’ve heard about it in the news, but no one I’ve talked to has ever had an issue with a pitbull or known someone who has.
The only conclusion I’ve come to is that either the UK has a culture which encourages beating or abusing your dog to discipline them (causing them to eventually lash out), or (the more likely of the two) is that the dogs are being trained as attack dogs. That means it really shouldn’t be surprising to anyone when an attack dog, well, fucking attacks a human.
YOU TRAINED THEM TO FUCKING DO THAT YOU DUMBASS HUMAN SHITHEAD AND THEN YOU HAVE THE BALLS TO ACT SURPRISED WHEN THEY DO WHAT YOU TRAINED THEM TO DO.
Don’t blame the dog, blame the asshole who trained them. If your dog attacks another person and maims or kills them, you should be the one held accountable. You should be taken to court and tried as if you shot or stabbed someone. Maybe the UK already does that, but if not, I wonder how many people would still train dogs to attack an intruder or (aggressively) defend their home if they knew they could be locked away for 1st degree murder or treated like a mass shooter if their attack dog goes on a rampage.
Advocating to ban a dog breed because humans are pieces of shit is like saying we should ban climate activism because some climate activists engage in eco-terrorism.
Same goes for EVERYTHING. The civilised world banned guns for less. USA still have cock fighting and bullriding. Like wtf. Of course responsible owners can handle a dog of that breed. Problem is those fanged weapons attract shitty people.
Bullies actually weren’t. They were bred to be strong, but another goal was to for the breed to have a lowered prey drive.
The reason why they’re so dangerous is because if one does become aggressive, then it is more than capable of completely ripping you apart. There are, however, breeds of dogs designed to defend livestock and homes (attacking intruders like animals or humans), but most of those are very rarely banned because they’re typically trained by a professional instead of a random chav who wants a dog to boost his ego because he can’t own a gun. Some examples are: Komondors, Great Pyrenees, Tibetan Mastiffs, Rottweilers, German Shepherds, Doberman Pinschers, and yes, Pitbulls (but not bullies).
Any dog can be trained to be aggressive (except maybe golden retrievers). Any dog can be mishandled, abused, beaten, or otherwise conditioned to lash out at someone. Stop blaming the dog and instead blame the human. The dog does what it’s been trained to do and if it’s been improperly trained, then it will appear to act erratically and lash out at random people, regardless of whether they’re a threat.
Advocating to ban a dog breed because humans are pieces of shit is like saying we should ban climate activism because some climate activists engage in eco-terrorism.
I was trying to come up with a simile that people would be upset about. If I said, “it’s like saying we should ban Republicans because of the white supremacists” then people would be saying, “yeah, we should ban Republicans”. If I said, “it’s like banning Russians because of the war in Ukraine” there are a lot of people who’d unironically agree with that.
I know it’s not a perfect simile; there’s likely a growing number of people who believe that eco-terrorism is quickly becoming a necessity if we hope to have a chance of surviving the next 20yrs. However, there are a still a lot of people who’d tell you that blowing up an oil rig or assassinating the CEO of BP is too extreme.
‘The chip was only intended for adults’. I know there are plenty of adults that adore a challenge of spice foods. My experience in marketing tells me these people knew exactly what demographic they’d be hitting hardest with this type of challenge.
I’m guilty of only reading headlines on this story so far. I didn’t realize he was a researcher. I thought he was just an adventurer. And I didn’t realize he was actually sick. I thought it was yet another case of someone with too much money doing something stupid, so I didn’t read further.
He’s a researcher. He’s doing it for scientific reasons and to further the scope of human knowledge. He’s not some asshole who just decided to conquer the latest cave. He has a valid reason to be in that cave. You never know what we could learn from such an environment.
There is a lot more to this article that you left out that provides very important context. The state health department is imposing really quite reasonable regulations on the birthing centers for the health and safety of the mothers. Some of the requirements include formal nursing education for midwives (who can otherwise calls themselves midwives after taking barely-regulated online courses), proximity to a hospital that has obstetrics and pediatrics in case of emergency (must be within 30 minutes by ambulance), and building requirements that allow for things like ADA compliance and appropriate medical facilities at the birthing center.
The article does also address the significant systemic problems that mothers, particularly black mothers, face in many hospital settings, as well as the black maternal fatality rates. While these issues are important to discuss and address, inadequately staffed and equipped birthing centers 45 minutes away from the nearest hospital by ambulance are not the answer here. In my professional medical experience working in such a hospital, I’ve seen transfers from birthing centers like the ones discussed in the article that were unable to address maternal uterine hemorrhage and neonatal hypoxia. Luckily, they were close enough to proper hospitals that could care for the mother and newborn, but if they were 45 minutes away by ambulance, the mother and newborn very likely would have died.
I agree with much you have said, but the problem still exists that 30% of counties don’t have hospitals … so expecting that all birthing centers should be within a reasonable range is in the state’s lap, not expectant mothers.
This is setting aside the prohibitive cost for those hundreds of thousands of Americans who don’t have insurance.
Not to oversimplify, but they could build these birthing centers 20 minutes away from the town and 25 minutes away from the hospital rather than in town and 45 minutes away from the hospital. They could also pivot to offer assistance to mothers in the form of facilitating transportation, doulas, and help setting up pre- and peri-natal Medicaid.
These birthing centers are just a small step above home births in the grander scheme of things. The regulations being imposed are absolutely necessary for the centers to actually be better options. Even if the pregnancy has had no complications and is very low risk, things like uterine hemorrhage, neonatal hypoxia, or other unpredictable complications can occur. When those things happen, being an hour away from proper emergency care is very likely to be lethal. The 30 minutes away from the hospital by ambulance rule isn’t even taking into account the time it takes to recognize the problem and the time for the ambulance to arrive in the first place.
If these centers are going to exist and claim to be a safe option, they need to have adequately trained staff, appropriate facilities, and viable access to emergency care in case of unpredictable complications.
So, if a facility that’s 20 minutes away doesn’t quite meet all the regulations, let’s close it down and make people have to drive over an hour to a facility that does meet all the regulations?
I guess that leaves three options then, deliver at home, just hold it in, or break out the chainsaw…
Actual medical training and appropriate facilities are not high bars to clear if they want to actually do things right. The education requirements for being a midwife as opposed to a nurse midwife are appallingly lax. It’s like saying that a class taught by a high school graduate is equivalent to one taught by someone with an education degree. The person interviewed in the article is an OB/Gyn, but it doesn’t sound like her staff has any qualifications. Hell, EMTs get more education on how to actually deliver a baby and care for the mother than some midwives.
Agreed. Yet still, once upon a time the solution was ‘hey, let’s invent a hand crank chainsaw’…
Just because a facility might not technically meet every single regulation doesn’t mean that a woman can just hold her hoo-hoo shut for an hour or more to get to a proper facility.
I can speak a little on this. I am a resident of Alabama in one of the poorer counties, Pickens. Median household income per Wikipedia is $26,254. I’d say that ranks pretty low. 20% of families, and 24% of people here live below the poverty line. I have lived here all my life. Prior to COVID in the US, our only local hospital closed in 2020. It is now a 30-40 minute drive to Tuscaloosa or Columbus MS for emergency care on a good day. There are local clinics, but nothing for OBGYN care or emergency treatment. There was a doctor who came to the local hospital weekly for local appointments prior to the closure.
During my wife’s first pregnancy, care was pretty good even having to drive the 40 minutes to each appointment and waiting in the car. (During COVID, the OB offices would only allow the patient inside).
The second pregnancy my wife miscarried towards the end of the 1st trimester, and we had to wait until the following day to come back for her D&C procedure. She collapsed the following morning at the hospital due to blood loss. Or what I’d call lack of care from Alabama hospitals. Thankfully, this was prior to Alabama’s new silly abortion and pregnancy laws. I can’t imagine how this would’ve been handled then.
Her third (and hopefully final from both of our standpoints) pregnancy went fairly well, but it sure seemed the doctors and quality of care and ability to do things changed between the 1st and 3rd pregnancy. The only thing I can think of is Alabama’s new stupid laws around pregnancy. I’m glad we are both done with having kids.
We aren’t well off, but compared to many here, we are. I can’t imagine it working out well for many of our fellow citizens in Alabama.
And now onto the rural hospitals part. As mentioned above, our local hospital closed just prior to COVID. I am a first responder as a volunteer fireman for the community. With the closure of the local hospital, our local ambulance company (which is coincidentally managed by a company from Tuscaloosa county) has been hard pressed to keep up with emergency demand. They may have 2 trucks on a good day to cover a population of 20,000 people spread over 900 square miles. (2300 km2). It is not unusual for us to wait 40 minutes or longer for an ambulance. Our situation is also not helped by frequent flyers or people that could get there on their own but think going by ambulance gets them in and out faster. (it’s a really common misconception.)
Prior to the local hospital closure, we’d work a code all the way to the hospital in the back of an ambulance with the paramedics. Nowadays, the ambulance arrives, we state how long we’ve been doing CPR, the ambulance crew observes, sometimes assists, and watches, gets an ECG reading, calls the doctor on duty at one of the ERs, and if there’s no good news, we stop there and tell the family we’ve done all we can. It FUCKING SUCKS. At least prior to the closure, they had that hope as we loaded them into the ambulance and left with them that maybe they’d make it. Nowadays, you’re there for all of it. The initial hope, the shock, the crushing realization. It takes a toll on all of us. Volunteers are down, and I can’t help but think the stresses of all this are a major part of it.
And the final kick in the dick for all of this is remember where I said our local ambulance service is managed out of Tuscaloosa? Tuscaloosa fines them if they don’t have an ambulance available. Our county has no such stipulation. So if their county’s ambulances are tied up, ours get pulled over there, and we are left with nothing and no local care.
There has been a major push by local mayors to get funding to open the hospital ER back up and use the hospital part as a mental health unit for teens from across the state. We thought a good deal had been reached, but our own state senator out of Tuscaloosa shot it down and spent the money elsewhere. I’ll remember that next time I vote, and I’ve been telling everyone that I see in the community to remember it also. The mayors even got a group together to go to the state capital and make their case only to be told that they thought they were speaking to the wrong committee about it. So we were told to wait until 2024 and see what happens. I suspect nothing will change in this dump, and people will continue to suffer. That’s what I expect.
Sorry for the long rant, this is something I’m directly involved with, and rather passionate about. Thanks for reading this far if you have.
It’s honestly heartbreaking to hear how bad things have gotten. I’ve been part of plenty of failed codes in the hospital and I don’t think I could deal with your situation day in and day out.
My hope for these birthing centers is that they either get things up to code and really, truly provide a necessary service, or they don’t give women a false sense of security. Labor usually tends to take a while, particularly in low risk pregnancies, and it really sounds like mothers would be in better hands driving 40 minutes to the nearest hospital than ending up in the worst case scenario with almost an hour and a half or more to get them to the hospital from an inadequate birthing center.
I am so freaken grateful that my wife wanted a normal hospital birth, the way skydaddy intended. Doctors, nurses, and machines. Especially given what almost happened.
Most referendums usually end in defeat unless they start with overwhelming public support. The support has been lackluster from the very beginning so this isn’t surprising
70k people show up once a year, emit 100k tons of CO2, and the Burning Man Project wants to pretend it’s concerned a geothermal well may ‘disrupt the desert ecosystem.’
Is that more co2 than 70k people going on a normal camping trip including driving, food, fire, etc? I have no idea how to interpret 100k tons of CO2. It’s not an intuitive number.
There’s no way that many people are pulling off LNT. It’s also “Burning Man” not “Guerilla plantings of native trees Man”.
I would have more sympathy if the BMP wasn’t actively blocking a geothermal plant. It’s this hypocrisy that makes me wish for rain and high decibels of Slayer.
I wonder What all they’re including in that count. I’m guessing it includes the fire and and gasoline burned at the event. But does it include transportation to and from the event? Potentially it even includes the co2 generated by farming the food that is there. It doesn’t say so it’s hard to really know how bad it is relative to other vacations.
The protestors, who were ultimately dispersed by police, demanded the festival “ban private jets, single-use plastics, unnecessary propane burning, and unlimited generator use per capita,” among other requests.
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