That poor child… And those poor ems workers who had to dig out her little body…
I tagged along with my wife for a pool day at her friend’s house with our kids. I was swimming along near the wall of the pool when my foot was violently pulled into the vaccuum line. Really spooked me. It’s code for those suction lines to have a spring-loaded cover. This one didn’t. I luckily freed my foot and went to check the valves on the pump. All suction was routed to the vacuum line, none to skimmer.
Some expensive pumps have an anti-entrapment system but most do not.
I warned her to get that shit fixed ASAP…
For commercial pools of this scale, there’s just no chance to resist.
I own a pool now and I take all that shit very seriously. You don’t mess around with water.
Kyle Rittenhouse’s sister Faith is seeking $3,000 on a crowdfunding website in a bid to prevent the eviction of herself and her mother Wendy from their home, citing her “brother’s unwillingness to provide or contribute to our family.”
The piece of shit is being a total piece of shit? shocked pikachu
While shitty, what does him helping them financially have to do with anything? He shouldn’t be responsible for them. There are many people in the US in worse situations, and they don’t get special treatment because, I guess, they aren’t family with a famous murderer.
well yeah, but like, if you get free money from people for shooting some guy at a protest, the least you could do is share some of that money with your family.
I’m imagining the family from Million Dollar Baby walking in from Disney World going “What do you mean you ain’t got any more of that shootin’ people money??”
Most of us struggle month to month, most of us dont attempt to leech blood money to unburden our struggle. Most of us don’t run to the media to cry about how our murderthing fascist familial connection isn’t letting us leech their blood money.
If I was Kyle Rittenhouse, I wouldn’t give a single dime to the people who created Kyle Rittenhouse. They created an unlovable twerp, they shouldn’t profit from that.
We know that we are not the only family struggling to rebuild after that fateful night
And look at the struggles his sister is going through. Profound tone-deafness is a real wipepo problem, a syndrome second only to affluenza in terms of collateral damage and suffering.
She needs help! Hit up your friends; especially the strong ones who like pizza and beer. Dig deep for those truck keys and clear the calendars for next weekend so you can help … move.
In this case (according to the donation page), he is part of the reason they are in this mess, as his mom is unable to find employment since everyone thinks she drove him to the protest where he shot those people.
I don’t think I would want anything to do with her either. It’s not fully rational or fair but it’s the way it is. Her position as his mom means she pretty much has to defend her son’s multiple murder and there are 8 billion people on earth, I don’t have to spend a minute with someone who would do that.
Plus if I was going to hire her I would wonder how much crap this is going to cost me. It’s not a heavily populated area and the name is rare enough. At best she is going to be neutral at worst she is going to attract the kind of people I don’t want around or infuriate other people.
I am a parent myself. If you don’t like my kids I don’t like you.
Umm what does that even mean? How can anyone feel neutral to another human being? All I am picturing is you know someone exists but any amount of pain or pleasure they feel doesn’t impact you. Like if you could push a magic button to make them happy you wouldn’t bother since that would require effort and you are neutral.
Umm what does that even mean? How can anyone feel neutral to another human being?
I just meant indifferent really.
All I am picturing is you know someone exists but any amount of pain or pleasure they feel doesn’t impact you.
There are a lot of people that currently exist and are in pain but it has little to no impact on me even though providing help would require nothing more than some more time and manpower.
Like if you could push a magic button to make them happy you wouldn’t bother since that would require effort and you are neutral.
This, I think provides for an interesting thought-experiment. Do we know how long it takes to press a button? Is the button-press speed limited by the latency of the circuitry it’s connected to? Exactly how many people are currently in pain? It’s obviously lots but can we come up with a relatively specific number? With what frequency does the number of suffering people change?
Then there are also some questions with more relative ethical implications that might also be: How many hours a week should a person spend pressing this button? How many people should press this button? If all previously suffering people are getting their buttons pressed then how will we know when someone is happy and flourishing? Isn’t suffering an implied opposite of flourishing? What other implications of the anti-suffering button are there?
I don’t know the answer to these questions, but you have certainly given me lot’s to ponder.
[edit][post] On further research I guess this sounds kind of like Negative Ultilitarianism which appears to be a subset of Utilitarianism.
Although that sucks, I can’t blame people for naturally putting some fault on her even for the wrong reasons.
I don’t think she should struggle but she did raise him. The punishment doesn’t fit the crime but imo parents should take responsibility of raising shitty kids.
Yeah, and we shouldn’t pity them because they have an asshole son. Sure, it’d be the right thing for him to do if he were a good person, but him not taking financial responsibility for them doesn’t mean anyone else should be either. I’d much rather them help someone else.
It’s his mom. What is wrong with you people? Me and my mom have a shit relationship but if I crippled her ability to work or she was going to be out on the street I would send her cash. Me and my wife send her parents money each month. It is a very small price to pay for giving me my partner.
They’re asking for money from other people. Yes, he should give them money. He is profiting off of murder. He’s an asshole. Why should anyone else give them money though? I don’t pity them. The mom raised an asshole murderer. Maybe it’s not her fault, but she has to have some responsibility in it.
Tbf, maybe we shouldn’t vilify them because of the actions of their son/brother so bad that they can’t be employed. I don’t hire people but the only reason not to would be the negative publicity from hiring them from people like those in this thread, I doubt if you gave his mom a job she’ll show up and shoot someone every morning.
A historical context helps out with this. They’re just us from 500 years ago. Even this divinely ordained stuff is straight out of history textbooks, the divine right to rule that medieval kings claimed.
Same here. The other night I had to ask myself repeatedly “if I was awful at my job, where would I have put…” and it hurts. Being competent comes naturally to me so, to me, it seems that it takes way more effort to be that dumb.
Some people are completely lost in the modern world. They shut down completely whenever anyone aims any critic at them and congregate to unquestioningly hold on to what they recognize. It is basic human instinct and being smart sometimes just pushes some of these people into taking advantage of the system and leading this herd mentality, instead of taking a risk trying to wake them up.
The irony being that the only way to understand it is to be that dumb. But if you were that dumb, you wouldn’t understand it nor would you try to because you’d think you are smart.
Almost like “small government” was just a bullshit excuse to cut social services and avoid regulating against the unchecked greed and exploitation of wealthy executives, not something they genuinely believed.
Yeah, I think of it as a critical thinking short circuit mechanism. It’s a means of justifying any policy to their voters without actually having to list its merits or defend any harm it does. The voter thinks “smaller government = more freedom and more money for me” and their brain stops there.
They want to force out everyone to the left of Matt gaetz so they never have to worry about pesky liberal voters ever again. If they could round up every registered Democrat and drop them off in California or new York, they fucking would.
Worse. This is government deciding what you can eat. This is actual socialism (not the workers decide means of production kind though). Ron’s done this before with stocks.
You should try reading the article before commenting. The “fake meat” they are referring to is lab grown from the living cells of animals not vegetable amalgamations made to imitate meat.
The “fake meat” they are referring to is lab grown from the living cells of animals not vegetable amalgamations made to imitate meat.
Depending on an individual’s reasons for following a vegan or vegetarian diet, lab-grown meat may very well be okay.
If their reasons are nutrition based, sure, they should avoid lab-grown meat.
If their reasons are based in the ethics of raising animals for slaughter, factory farming, or the carbon footprint and/or food and water waste involved in raising an entire animal just for parts of it to be food, then lab-grown meat might be fine in their mind.
From the little I’ve seen of discussions, it depends on the implementation. I haven’t looked at the details yet, but apparently there are some groups who require at least an initial animal biopsy, and I think someone said something about some growth mediums requiring animal exploitation as well.
Then there’s the animal testing side of things.
Since both health and animal rights matter to me, I have no interest in consuming the stuff. If a commercially viable company emerges that can make these meats without any animal exploitation or suffering though, then I might recommend them to others.
From the little I’ve seen of discussions, it depends on the implementation. I haven’t looked at the details yet, but apparently there are some groups who require at least an initial animal biopsy, and I think someone said something about some growth mediums requiring animal exploitation as well.
Then there’s the animal testing side of things.
Since both health and animal rights matter to me, I have no interest in consuming the stuff. If a commercially viable company emerges that can make these meats without any animal exploitation or suffering though, then I might recommend them to others.
I respect this position.
At a certain point I wonder if it will start to seem similar to what I say to anti-choicers (specifically the ones who believe killing an embryo is murder) about drugs developed using embryonic stem cell channels. If years from now they’re still growing off of an initial biopsy taken years before, then the initial harm done is surely outweighed by the harm reduction that came from it. That is to say, a reduction in factory farming and animal slaughter is worth a biopsy. Or even an initial slaughter.
Just like I would encourage my anti-choice family members to get their vaccines and continue to take ibuprofen (and basically every other drug, because most use stem cell lines in their development), I would encourage vegans and vegetarians at the very least not to oppose lab grown meat. But of course you can eat whatever you want.
(Obviously I am not saying you have to agree with me, this is just where I might fall depending on the realities that are eventually reached with lab-grown meat.)
Yeah, to be honest there really is no consensus about this within vegan communities. I would say from an ethical stand point, the biggest thing would be if a company is continually abusing animals in their processes. And animal testing is a difficult subject too, because virtually every food has been subjected to animal testing.
I do think it’s also worth mentioning that plants really are perfectly fine to center a diet around, in and of themselves. I had a really difficult time transitioning to a plant-based diet because addiction is in my genes. But at the same time I was at a place in my life where my health was declining fast, I felt like shit all the time, and I was having to force myself to eat every day. I hated food. But after I got used to eating 100% plants, all of that completely changed. I felt better than I ever had. My arthritis-like symptoms (and other inflammatory problems) completely vanished. I had all kinds of energy that I never used to. And as I got better at cooking plant based and found good places to eat, I actually fell in love with food again. Plants are fucking great.
Christina Elson, the executive director of the Center for the Study of Capitalism at Wake Forest University, told Business Insider that many young people had embraced an idea she calls “safety capitalism.”
Ah yes, the executive director for the center for the study of capitalism says young folks want capitalism.
Oh yeah. That sounds like exactly the person who would come up with a stupid fucking buzzword to get an article written they can use to show they understand capitalism extra well.
It’s the exact same case, except the new kid’s hair is less long and since then (literally in response to it) Texas passed the CROWN Act to make it explicit. Nothing changed to make it allowed, they just decided to keep doing it. And I’d say it’s pretty safe to call the judge, who ruled against a previous federal ruling and the law explicitly added in response to the previous violation, is just another Republican racist with no concern for the law. Feels like we need a new round of federal supervision for civil rights in South.
Also, all this seems like something a journalist might want to include in a story.
It may still come to bite him in the ass. The trial is actually scheduled to May this year but the scheduling will be looked at in March. The charges themselves are pretty serious, I think it was something like 30 charges under the espionage act and 10 charges for obstruction of justice or false statements.
There’s a reason Trump wants to postpone it until after the election. His only shot at wiggling out of it is by becoming president.
If a mad-cow-like disease jumped the barrier to humans and began spreading through Americans, the main problem in eradicating it would be that basically no one would be able to tell the difference from the average ‘Enthusiastic’ Republican Voter and someone whose brain is melting due to an actual pathogen.
We’re actually not sure about that. Some prions do spread by eating the meat of infected animals, but I think we can be pretty sure that’s not what’s happening in a wild deer population. Prions can also be found in the environment, including deposited on grasses and plants, where that can last a very long time.
We do not know if this disease is or will become communicable to predator animals or what the potential is for environmental spread to livestock. We do know a bit more about the BSE than some others, but there’s a bunch we know exist that we know little to nothing about, and it’s guaranteed there’s more out there that we haven’t encountered yet.
Occasionally they do consume meat as far as I know (as several herbivores do), but if that were a serious candidate it would be among the principle lines of transmission being investigated.
Zoonotic diseases are investigated by cross-disciplinary teams with experience ranging from public health and disease experts to wildlife biologists and ecologists. I did some work on a similar topic with the National Parks Service so I know a bit about how these are approached. I have no involvement with this and I’ve never worked on prion contagion models - like I said, we just don’t know. But I do have experience in the area.
Prions have been found in soil, on grass and plants, and do not get quickly degraded by sun and rain. We do know that this disease is density dependent, so you’d need a model of deer going carnivore and cannibal in a density dependent natural model, which is not a phenomenon I’m familiar with.
So what I’m saying is that we just don’t know what the deer-deer vector is or if a predation vector exists as a secondary transmission or if one will appear.
Cool information thanks. Yeah wasn’t trying to say that that’s definitely how it’s spread but most people don’t know that they’re opportunistic carnivores!
Shoot an infected deer in the head or have it otherwise die violently on the ground. Prions can last in the soil for years and years. Misfolded proteins are basically invulnerable, even in shit like autoclaves. If cows eat grass that has prions on them, that shit could potentially jump. And a lot of people ranch their cattle on public lands where infected deer are, and where wolves are unavailable due to politicians, who would otherwise prevent infected deer from spreading.
The best thing that we can do is have wolves clamp down on the few infected deer immediately rather than generate large pools of infection that then start cross-contaminating domestic livestock. Prions and ebola are the two things that really keep me up at night.
Interesting, I didn’t know prions lasted so long on bare soil. I don’t imagine it’s a simple thing for a prion to jump from animal to animal though. Certainly not any less complex than jumping to humans? Right?
Yeah actually, my dad might have it as he ate plenty of beef in England at the time (not that that in any way makes me an authority on the subject) but there are plenty of prions out there and plenty of them don’t do what Creutzfeldt-Jakobs did. It’s not as if a misfolded protein exactly adapts or evolves to other biologies in order to procreate. It’s just a fucked up protein. Biology is complex and there are many many differences in brain structure from animal to animal. A single misfolded protein could affect one brain incredibly differently than it affects another or even not at all. Prions are scary but they aren’t trying to do anything because they aren’t alive and have no drive to reproduce, they also don’t mutate rapidly like viruses because they aren’t made of DNA.
However I will admit. Prions are fucking terrifying
I’m not well-versed enough on prions to make an incredibly informed opinion. Apex predators somehow have managed to survive it for eons, though. Prions are extremely odd, and I’m sure one day we will figure out how to reverse their effect. There are some theories that prions could have formed the basis for life if life was seeded by asteroids, as they are incredibly resilient to heat, radiation, chemicals, etc.
From the CDC’s website, it looks like CWD might not affect canids and might not affect humans, as we are just too different from the cloven-hoofed forest puppies. But much like consuming fish parasites that don’t affect humans, it seems they don’t recommend eating sick animals just on the off chance that you are patient zero for a new, fun, lethal protein :)
It probably depends on where you are, different parts of the country and different social circles have more or less hunters and different hunting cultures.
I know that around me in the circles I run in I pretty much everyone I know either hunts or has a friend (or multiple friends) who does and can/will hook them up with venison now and then.
If you have a couple hunters in a family, they fill all of their tags, are generous about sharing their venison with family and friends, if they’re unlucky enough that those deer have CWD, then that could potentially be dozens of people exposed.
I say this as someone who regularly eats venison and lives in a place where it’s relatively common as well but it still isn’t nearly as threatening as something like mad cow. Pretty much everyone eats beef.
It’s a lot easier to tell people don’t eat venison you hunted and contain it than it is halt the entire beef industry and tag everyone who may have eaten it yk?
I’m not saying it wouldn’t be bad, only that we’ve been through much worse as far as prions go and one like this would be relatively speaking, less of a threat
Deer arent eating venison regularly enough to explain the rate of its spread among deer.
Its moving through them someplace else. Which means if it jumps to us, its moving through us someplace else too. And we dont actually know for sure how its moving through them.
They’re not dumping ‘pandemic puppies’, they’re dumping the pitbulls that nobody wants. Breeders for dog fighting are pumping out dogs nobody wants because they’re reactive, dangerous, and have the ability to kill a human being, then maul them.
Shelters are full of them. So desperate to get rid of them, shelters underplay their aggressiveness and danger. This puts the general population at risk. The UK just passed a new set of laws against more breeds of pitbulls, and rightfully so. You can see all the evidence they used to make their decision. It’s gory and sad. So many people’s lives, and smaller dogs, gone forever.
It’s not just for dog fighting. It’s backyard breeders who are hoping to make a quick buck, so they get the easiest dogs they can access, which is almost always pits, sell the puppies for whatever they can get, and then dump any of the ones they can’t sell. I see them constantly on nextdoor, and it’s appalling. And the kind of people who buy pit puppies from some rando are also the kind of people who dump them when they get too big and “oh we can’t keep up with their energy.”
Yep, this is the answer. Tons of people are trying to cash in on dog breeding like beaniebabies. Frenchies, pitties (including XXL toadline monstrosities), random mixes (shitpoos, bernadoodles, cockadoodles, etc), etc. Breeding rights, stud fees, etc. are big business and essentially none of these “breeders” have any clue what they’re doing.
In the vast majority of places in the US, there are no requirements or certifications needed to breed dogs. And now people will pay insane amounts of money for frenchies with rare coat colors, or pitbulls that are bred solely to be huge and squat with no concern about temperament or health; so irresponsible, backyard breeders who either ignore or are completely ignorant of proper breeding practice and refuse to get or can’t afford proper genetic testing and medical care for their animals, are breeding for phenotypes like coat color or being insanely huge and squat and breeding in serious congenital defects and abnormalities.
Then either buyers are stuck with these shitty, genetically fucked up dogs they paid like $5k-10k for that now need thousands more in veterinary care to treat all the issues bred into the dog (not to mention parvo, parasites, heartworms, etc.). Or the breeder’s little business collapses when they realize that they can’t afford to continue operating their shitty puppymill due to the fact that dog breeding is expensive and their fucked up breeds can’t give natural birth and so all need c-sections. But, it’s usually the first one because there are no shortage of buyers willing to pay stupid amounts of money and trust the “breeders” because they assume they’re experts.
So people often end up dumping the dogs when they realize they can’t care for them medically or are aggressive or whatever else, while backyard breeders continue to pump out fucked up dogs for profit.
… I’m sorry but… shitpoos? That’s hilarious. Though I imagine breeders would probably use a different term. I can’t imagine saying ‘I breed shitpoos’ with a straight face.
Yup. It needs to be a crime punishable by fines and prison time. The average lifetime cost of owning a dog can be as high as $50,000. Use that as a baseline for fining people who breed dogs while shelters are turning them away.
Do you have a link to any stats? There seem to be two sides to this debate, where one side insists that these breeds are inherently aggressive and the other side insists it isn’t true. I’m more inclined to believe to believe the former in my personal experience, but have always wanted something other than anecdotal to confirm.
Many dog advocates argue that there is no such thing as a bad breed, only a bad owner. Still, it can be helpful to understand which breeds of dogs are most commonly involved in bite incidents or acts of aggression. Dog attacks by breed statistics are invaluable both for individuals looking for a dog to adopt as well as for those who interact with animals who want to minimize risk.
The breed that commits the most attacks overall is pit bulls.
Pit bulls are involved in more dog attacks than any other breed. In fact, the American Animal Hospital Association reports this breed was responsible for 22.5% of bites across all studies. Mixed breeds were a close second at 21.2% and German Shepherds were the third most dangerous breed, involved in 17.8% of bite incidents.⁶
The breed that is most likely to be involved in a fatal attack is pit bulls.
Pit bulls are both more likely to be involved in bite incidents and more likely to cause serious injury or death when a bite does occur. In fact, from 1979 to 1998, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined pit bulls were involved in the most fatal dog attacks, accounting for 28% deaths due to dog bites during that same time period.⁷
I’ll add, I like pitties. I’ll also advise taking this with a grain of salt as so many mixed breed dogs fall into the pitbull umbrella.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8819838/ that still seems to find it may be more the human influence on a breed(or mixed breed dog as it were) than manifested in the breed itself.
An important finding was Pit Bull-type dogs in our community sample, as a group, were not more aggressive or likely to have a behavioral diagnosis than other dogs. As the nascent field of canine behavior advances, it will be important to better account for human influences on dog behavior. Our results showed genetic screening of canine behavior is feasible and suggest it may be useful for owners, breeders, shelters, working dog institutions and veterinarians.
If you were to compare the findings of the direct connection of anxiety, many smaller dogs have this but we as large humans tend to dismiss this in smaller dogs. The only reason we really focus into the pit bull is the association we’ve developed and the size. Also larger dogs are usually trained in defence. Less so with smaller dogs which also suffer with anxiety. No doubt a lot of owners get the ideal that they want to get a pit bull to install fear into other humans as a form of protection. this is a human introduction of a behavior.
Anecdotally my family owned many dogs. Sometimes we’d get a litter where two dogs behaved very differently to each other. We inherited many dogs with behavioural problems because of human error and the breed didn’t make a difference so much as size definitely did amongst the decisions many people made. No one wants to keep a large dog with behavioural issues. Why people associate it with pit bulls is mainly because statistically they are more prone to treat that particular breed (and in many cases any breed that looks associated to the pit bull) in such a way that installs more anxiety. That is a human error. Not a breed error.
Are those statistics weighted against breed prevalence? Because if not, those data aren’t really telling us anything significant. If pit bulls as a breed are overrepresented statistically, that would be a significant finding. Looking at the source material for the claim here: www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0165587618305950 doesn’t clearly state if the numbers are per capita of dog breed or if they’re just sheer numbers of attacks, regardless of prevalence of breed. Do you have a source that evaluates the statistics in such a manner?
This should be higher. I would be interested to know more about the actual numbers. A quick search also showed shelters are not good at accurately identifying breeds.
Couple of issues with this data. 1- People are much more likely to report bites from larger dogs (since they cause injury that requires medical treatment and reporting is done automatically) 2- Any stats by design are going to be correlational evidence and do not guarantee causality so it’s not at all clear that rate of bites by pits are higher or just more frequently reported because they are pits or because they are so common . 3- As others have pointed out pits are more likely to be found in lower SES homes where resources for training, toys and healthy outlets for dog energy like time for long, regular walks and playtime is less readily accessible. 4-Breeds most associated with aggression are most likely to be treated by humans in ways that incite dogs’ anxiety, which is a precursor to aggressive behavior.
I think that pitties are just the victim of really bad press. Once it became common knowledge that they were used in dog fighting, it became part of what everyone “knows” about pits. It creates a self fulfilling prophecy by seeing only results they expect rather than thinking about why they expected to see it in the first place.
Be mindful when reading the sources. This is a very polarizing debate, and it isn’t really as clear as “pitbulls are little angelbaby velvethippos” or “pitbulls are vicious killing machines”.
Pitbull is a range of phenotypes, not a breed. What we call pitbulls commonly are a mix of boxers, Am Staffs, bulldogs, american pit bull terriers, bull terriers, etc. So, we’re relying on police to ID these dogs after a bite has been reported, and so a large number of aggressive individuals of a variety of breeds/mutts might get lumped into “pitbull” by cops.
Also, dog attacks are more likely to occur in lower socioeconomic status neighborhoods where dog ownership practices are often less responsible, and cops are more likely to be in the first place. Pitbull-type dogs are more likely to be owned by lower SES individuals (in part because they’re so prevalent, but also due to cultural factors). So, it is likely that pitbull-type dogs are overrepresented by these statistics.
That said, it is wild that people claim that breeding does not impact behavior. Pitbulls and various bully breeds have often been bred to be aggressive and to guard territory, just like Cattle Dogs have been bred to nip at heels and keep creatures in a herd. Any cattle dog owner will tell you that their dog exhibits herding behavior even if it’s never seen a cow or sheep. It’s the same with some pitbulls and they happen to have one of the strongest bites of any type of dog coupled with a behavior where they latch on to the thing they’ve bitten and won’t let go, but will continue to thrash around causing major tissue damage. Contrast that to German Shepherds, another dog that makes up a large number of dog bite cases. Their bite force is less on average than that of a pitbull and most German Shepherd bites are fear-aggression related because GSDs are extremely neurotic and anxious (also due to breeding), so GSDs tend to bite and release unless they’re specifically bite trained, like for police work.
So anyway, just be aware that both sides of this debate try to put spin on it, but breed characteristics do matter, and our recordkeeping of dog breeds and bite statistics is flawed essentially due to the problems extant in law enforcement broadly.
For sure. I am not one of those people insistent on all pits being bad for the reasons you state (over-representation in statistics), but I also cannot believe that there isn’t some inclination for pits to exhibit aggressive behavior. I probably will never adopt a pit, but I have a friend who owns one (or a similar breed… not quite sure) but I love that dog.
For sure! I know a few pitties, too, and they are good dogs. It’s very much a “law of large numbers” type of thing. Likely more aggressive on average, but the answer is probably not breed bans and more likely restrictions on who can breed dogs (and maybe who can own certain dogs).
The problem is that if the city can’t even budget enough to feed these dogs, they’re certainly not going to be able to budget enforcing the breeding/ownership laws.
That is fair. Could be subsidized by the cost of breeding licenses, but the administrative burden would be greater. I feel like the breed ban administration would be difficult as well - since pitbulls aren’t really a breed, what constitutes one? Is it only American Pitbull Terriers? Because most pitbulls aren’t APTs, but some mix of bully breeds. Who would make that determination in each individual case? It’s a tough issue all around.
This is a very well-thought and considered take. I usually sit on the side of not banning specific dog breeds as I’m yet to see compelling statistics to back up such a ban, or numbers on dog attacks where breed bans have been put in place that shows it works. Your point is very valid though that because this is such an emotional debate, people on both sides have a tendency to exaggerate their positions. I would really like to see compelling statistics one way or the other, as I feel at the moment a lot of this debate is being held in unscientific territory.
As a husky owner, I can definitely attest that different breeds have specific behavioural phenotypes associated with their breed’s genotype. My husky acts just like all of her husky friends which is pretty different to all of the other dogs we know of different breeds. I just don’t know that this factor outweighs the owner’s responsibility in raising and training them well. Even within a single breed, there’s often significant variation.
Dog ownership is honestly just so easy to fall into without being prepared, and there’s no way to ensure people will take responsibility for the life they’re buying. You’re literally just handing over money half the time, like a car or a TV.
I couldn’t handle anything with the energy of a husky or Aussie or shepherd, but if I hadn’t actively done the research and realized that, I would probably have a shepherd mix with too much energy right now. LSGs are right in the sweet spot for me with work, health and fitness level, etc.
There’s nothing stopping the average person from getting in over their head. Energy levels, space, and size are all considerations that people just handwave and “figure out later.”
For some people, life legitimately changes. Injured or sick suddenly and can’t take care of a doodle’s unrelenting energy anymore? Divorce, a death, a forced move into a smaller space, all sorts of legitimate things, but I don’t think these people’s dogs are the ones filling shelters. There’s no penalty for at-fault surrenders (rightly, to avoid more horrible options being taken), and there’s no required education to get a dog, it’s a recipe for disaster.
People aren’t going to put more thought into getting a dog than other parts of their lives, and people are constantly doing things without thinking nowadays, whether it’s car loans, buying unnecessary TVs/phones/computers, or similar. Overleveraged mentally and emotionally.
I think breeding legislation is the right move, but it would take a lot of will that’s not there and need provisions to handle oops litters and such without driving people underground.
All you’ve gotta do is Google 'human fatalities by dog breed chart" the numbers are all that matters, and frankly I’m annoyed that the data isn’t enough to deter people from owning these dogs. A friend from grade school had 1 attack his daughter to the point where the kid was hospitalized. They had that dog euthanized, and went right out and got another pit bull. You can’t fix stupid.
Dogs are a function of their upbringing and tend towards affectionate behavior towards humans. If socialized they will think of people outside their family as sources of attention instead of intruders. Pits aren’t different. 30-50 people die to dogs out of 338M people. By contrast over 300 die in bathtubs and almost 400k die from heart disease.
You would be safer slip proofing your bathroom or skipping that greasy burger rather than worrying about rover eating you.
The stats are easily manipulated by either side. The fact of the matter is that, given the number of attacks on humans and animals by pit bulls, and the average age of pits, roughly 1 in 10,000 pits will attack something in their life. This is an order of magnitude more frequent than rottweilers (the next most dangerous breed), and when a pit bull attacks, it’s more likely to kill its victim than any other dog breed.
1 in 10,000 is large enough for some people to say the whole breed needs to be euthanized, it’s small enough for some people to say that it’s negligible, and it’s at just the right spot for me to say that it should be illegal to breed them, but existing ones shouldn’t be euthanized.
There seem to be two sides to this debate, where one side insists that these breeds are inherently aggressive and the other side insists it isn’t true.
Too many people believe whatever they want to believe.
Certainly some dogs of specific breeds are less aggressive than others but all dogs have been bred to have some sort of specific trait(s) (small, large, fluffy, “cute”, fast, intelligent, etc) and some breeds were explicitly bred to be aggressive.
People want to believe certain breeds aren’t inherently aggressive because it leads to exactly this type of problem.
I don’t know that it’s possible to quantify aggressiveness.
The solution is to heavily regulate breeding and associated sales because that’s exactly what creates the surplus of animals no one wants to take care of, and its something people should consider before buying any animals at all.
Pitbulls, pit mixes, and the occasional incredibly neurotic Chihuahua (rated the most aggressive breed when individual dog owners have been surveyed on their own dogs' behaviors).
I think there’s a link to owner training for the chihuahua thing. The smaller the dog is, the less an owner is likely to train them. They don’t think they have to.
If that where the reason, we would see a lot more complaints about dogs like dachshunds and pugs. Though I do think you're right that there is something specific about many people who choose to get Chihuahuas which involves them being the sort of irresponsible owner who doesn't do any training and treats it like an ornament rather than an animal.
You’re generally right but pretty misinformed all the same.
One thing I can say is that if shelters are playing down aggressiveness etc, it’s because of stupid ‘no kill’ laws that forces them to keep the majority of these shit dogs and not be about to euthanize them. Thank all the animal lovers on Facebook who have no comprehension of the situation, have no interest in helping the dog themselves but they’ll sure as fuck tell anyone what they think if they don’t take care of the dog.
It’s a perpetual cycle, lifestyles of the poor and dumb.
Correct me if there is data suggesting otherwise, but I dusagree that the “not kill” laws are stupid - I think the problem is that shelters don’t have enough funding to care for all dogs. A law which protects animals from getting killed cannot, in my opinion, be a bad law - because every life, even that of a dog, is worth fighting for.
because every life, even that of a dog, is worth fighting for.
Agreed, but in reality, the choices are A) adopt dangerous dogs out to people, B) hold onto the dogs for their entire natural life, C) release them onto the streets, or D) euthanize some of them.
A is obviously not ideal; a human getting killed by a dog that they expected to be nice is worse than that dog dying. B would be great if shelters had infinite space and infinite funding, but realistically they have limited space and limited funding. That leaves us with C or D. Stray animals make more stray animals, they attack people, pets, and wildlife, they spread disease, and they tend to die horrible deaths. Euthanasia sucks, but the real alternatives are worse.
The real solution that no one wants to implement is to make it a crime to have dogs and cats that aren’t spayed or neutered, with extraordinarily rare exception. The only dogs that should be allowed to be bred are working dogs, and that should be closely regulated. Your shepherd/retriever mix, however cute he is, should not make more puppies as long as shelters are overflowing and turning animals away.
“But wouldn’t that lead to the extinction of these companion animals?” Be realistic–this law would never catch every single illegal breeder, and it would never prevent strays from breeding. Dogs and cats would not go extinct, they would just stop bringing shelters to capacity and beyond.
There are plenty of less common dog breeds that should be preserved that aren’t classified as “working dogs” any more.
Half the problem is that working breeds don’t make good sedentary pets, but some of them are pretty or give off a certain vibe, so people buy them and can’t take care of them. (See huskies, German Shepherds, Pit breeds, etc.)
Less-popular breeds with responsible clubs do just fine. Give clubs the ability to work with law enforcement to find and shut down irresponsible breeders, and the problem would be quickly resolved. Whether that’s licensing to breed or some other solution, it should be possible.
Before I say this, I feel it’s important to clarify that I have nothing against any individual dogs or breeds, and I don’t think any animals should have to be euthanized unless they’ve shown that they as an individual are dangerous.
That being said, I can’t think of a single breed besides border collies that has any valid reason to exist for another generation. If breeders were more worried about breeding for health instead of looks and behaviour, I might be okay with it, but I’ve seen too many pure bred dogs with debilitating health defects due to their breed. German Shepherds are beautiful dogs, but it isn’t worth making them suffer through hip displasia just to look at them.
I obviously don’t think every dog except for border collies should go extinct within the next 20 years, but a law that criminalizes breeding wouldn’t stop all dogs from breeding. There will never be a shortage of dogs for people to adopt, and a mutt is just as good, if not better, than a pure breed.
You should broaden your horizons. Many breeds concentrate on health. Behavior is important for many, too. Border collies couldn’t do a vast majority of service animal tasks, and they make terrible pets, especially for families with small kids, which improves outstanding and mental health for children. There are other sports like scent and racing (for fun, not gambling.) Not to mention therapy animals. Border collies would have challenges there, too.
Hmm, I get your point - I think you’re raising a compelling case.
I think, for me it comes down to the belief that only very, very few dogs are so aggressive and dangerous that no intervention will be able to change that. I (with great reluctance :) )agree that if a dog will never be able to get adopted, it is responsible to think if it would be more humane to euthasize him. But there are also far, far too many cases where dogs are killed because there just isn’t enough money or interest in them to give them special treatment and care so that they can e.g. trust humans again and not see them as danger.
I also agree, however, that it would probably be a good idea to implement limiting measures to the amount of dogs out there, so that the problem isn’t growing in scope - e.g. those you proposed. In the end though that can’t be the solution to the moral question “is it okay for us to kill dogs with whom we haven’t tried all in our power”, it can just be a supporting factor so that we can avoid making these decisions as much as possible.
Well you can’t really have evidence on something that is opinion from first hand experience.
The reason I disagree with them is that the majority of these dogs are going to spend a year or more essentially locked in a medium security dog prison before being put down because they were never suitable for readoption in the first place but you’ve got to play the game before they can be put down or wait for them to bite one of the handlers.
I agree, money would solve the entire problem but it’s a struggling industry and I just don’t see it happening anytime soon. Until it does, the no kill laws are hurting more animals than they save.
I don’t need to provide anything to you. I have plenty of industry data that’s not available to be shared, there’s plenty of public data for my state, but unless you’re in New South Wales, Australia - it will be irrelevant to you. This is a first world, world wide issue.
Go on to Google and search ‘dog attack, seizure and euthanasia rates’ for wherever you are, even better to specific pounds, animal facilities and rescues and do the math yourself.
Alternatively, go volunteer at your local shelter, you’re very concerned about these animals and every shelter desperately needs more help. Go help first hand and tell me how many of those dogs you’d let in your house with your kids and your loved ones.
I understand. I’m living in Germany, so our laws also probably differ as well - but is there a law which permits that if a dog e.g. doesn’t get adopted within a year, it may be euthasized? I thought that a “no killing” law is absolute and that an animal in a shelter never is allowed to be killed, no matter the circumstance.
No kill at least in Australia means you can’t put animals to sleep due to over capacity, time frame etc. The only time they can be put down is when they’ve attacked or are showing high signs of aggression and the behaviour assessor finds they aren’t suitable for readoption.
At that point, it becomes a duty of care to put the animal down as it’s cruel to keep it in a kennel for the rest of its life and it can’t be trusted as a family pet.
I understand. I think you raise an interesting thought… I get where the law is coming from, but it also makes sense that the way it is treated now makes it so that dogs who would live their entire life in captivity only suffer more.
Thank you for your insight - I appreciate it and will think about it.
I think the problem is that shelters don’t have enough funding to care for all dogs.
Well sure. Who’s gonna cover that funding gap? Not me.
So, what, let the excess or aggressive dogs starve but treat them nicely until they do? Let them run feral?
Or humanely put them down?
Edit: Y’all downvoting me should go volunteer at a local shelter for a while. I love dogs. I absolutely love dogs. But because of irresponsible owners and breeders we often have too many dogs and full shelters. Resources are not infinite.
It is cruel to keep dogs alive in increasingly smaller spaces, or hoard them, as we run out of room because you feel guilty about putting them down.
I’m not saying I’m opposed to rehoming, rescuing, or fostering dogs. Or opposed to shelters in general! I think those practices are important. Our current dog is a rehome.
Since the 70s massive strides have been made mostly by promoting fixing your dog in a timely fashion including low cost spay and neuter or “last litter” programs where they help you adopt out the puppies and fix the mom so they don’t have another.
Both kills and intake are a small fraction of what they were in the 70s down as much as 80% despite a concurrent increase in population in that time.
Well, I will be honest with you - I’d gladly pay my part so that an animal doesn’t get killed. Of course no one be able to fix the issue alone (except Elob Musk and Bezos, probably), but I think that we as a society can do better than kill animals because we don’t have enough money to keep them alive in a humane manner.
The shelters that do kill dogs don’t just kill aggressive dogs though, they kill dogs they think nobody will want too. My boss has the most beautiful dog I’ve ever seen but he’s deaf so you have to communicate with him through hand movements. Before she got him the shelter was going to kill him in a few weeks. This wasn’t a Pit or any other dog some people think are inherently aggressive https://reddthat.com/pictrs/image/466aafb3-de52-4f14-8a5b-25179652f39a.jpegThe thought that they would have killed this dog if my boss’s boyfriend hadn’t noticed how special he was, haunts me every time I think about it.
I always adopt from shelters (or, once, a rescuer) anyway, but this makes me feel even more relieved that the county animal shelter is a no-kill shelter, space problems or not.
Yeah cool but you’re kinda part of the problem. I’m sure he’s a lovely dog but the reality is probably 5% or less of dog owners are equipped to handle a dog like that. Most can’t train a normal dog, let alone a dog with a disability and it’s all sunshine and rainbows to have the dog go to someone’s home but the amount of returned and deaf dogs we get is horrendous because people just don’t want to deal with them.
Why would people breed dogs for dog fighting and then give them to the shelter revealing their criminal enterprise by donating a steady stream of dogs. There are more pits in the shelter because unwanted dogs of all varieties are donated to the shelter and pits are less adopted because of psycho propaganda repeated by weirdos like you and breed restrictions in apartments.
I bet you also pimp stories about rapists and criminals crossing the border.
The person said they bred for dog fighting. Their entire post was just rabid nonsense that doesn’t in any remote sense hang together. If you reread the entire parent comment they are basically babbling worse than language models prior to chatGPT
Breeders for dog fighting are pumping out dogs nobody wants because they’re reactive, dangerous, and have the ability to kill a human being, then maul them.
The 3 on, 4 days off, 4 days on, 3 days off cycle of 12 hour shifts is what I do as in-home health care for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities!
And as a manager, I absolutely do get stuffed into covering 5 or more days. During the pandemic I was doing front half days (Sunday Monday Tuesday) back half nights (Wednesday Thursday Friday). And it's hell!
They increased our pay to $15 an hour in my state as an emergency order so we could finally get some staff, but it's impossible to get enough people and don't even talk to me about quality...
I know. But I literally take care of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. As in, cerebral palsy. As in, if we quit, these people will have no care.
I really respect and appreciate you doing this for them. I hope you all can unionize and get better wages for yourselves.
My grandfather needed similar care before his death and I'm pretty confident I'm going to need similar care at some point in my own life. The average person really doesn't appreciate how they can become disabled. So thank you, and good luck advocating for yourself. I'm sorry you're so underpaid.
but you'll get called-in for mandatory ot on day one off of four; which then turns into a back-to-back. then for good measure, your last day off will be cut short as you're called-in early.
12 hour shifts aren’t all that terrible, as long as you actually get off on time and are paid well for working the appropriate amount of time (whether that’s 3/4/4/3 or 5/2/2/5, or 2/2/3/2/2/3, or any other schedule that gets you close to the standard hours per week). I’ve done 12s for about a decade, and haven’t had any problems with it aside from occasionally running into schedule issues because it’s hard to predict what day you’ll be working/off without calculating which week of the pay period it is.
It all returns to how much work you have to do in those 12 hours. Having even a few minutes of downtime repeatedly throughout a shift has been going the way of the dodo, and that’s going back to the original point of poor pay and fewer people to do everything needed.
a friend used to be a nurse. still works in health care, but in admin instead. stable (and flexible) hours, better pay, and has been able to work from home since before wfh became a hotbed topic (several years before covid, due to space issues at the facility at the time).
Don’t think it’s the money honestly. Wife was an RN for 2 hospitals over 10 years and the reason she left to go private practice is because of the lack of support. Hospitals only care about the $ and, so called, patient rights, which comes at the expense of their staff’s word. She was rarely backed even though the patients or their families were lying 90% of the time.
She could make 2x as much at the hospital but chooses not to go back because of how miserable she was there. Screw them.
Retired schoolteacher of around 25 years. Blah blah blah. Yes, we have no private lives. I was warned of that every year. She did nothing wrong. More importantly, ask why she had to supplement her income. I would not be able to survive on what I would be making today.
If this is the one from a while ago, she was making 40k teaching and 120k on OF…
The only reason she kept teaching was she actually likes teaching.
But yeah, the best thing for a country long term is if educators are some of the highest paid positions. The investment into the next generation is one of the biggest pay offs. There’s a lot of geniuses out there that just get a dog shit education and never live up to their potential.
Too many adults/voters just don’t see the benefit of investing in the future
I almost changed careers to teaching and dodged a bullet. Still a very worthwhile masters with the combination of philosophy, psychology, statistics and data interpretation ,management, and assesment. Its really an incredible field and its to bad it gotten such a short shrift.
No one would have been in trouble if they were married. In Oklahoma, there are no age restrictions for marriage. An adult can marry a toddler if they want. Child marriage is a long-standing conservative tradition, unfortunately.
I grew up in the south surrounded by conservatives. They absolutely don’t see the problem with it. Conservatives see all straight same-race weddings as “traditional marriage” which is “sanctified by god”, which transcends age and man’s law.
Most consent laws used to be written so that marriage would be an exception. Whether Oklahomas have or not is a toss up, but given that they didn’t add a lower limit on marriage age, I’d guess they haven’t updated many of those laws in a while.
Yes they do and to a cheryy on top. It does not grant the child the right to sign othet contracts. So they have to get permission to hire a divorce lawyer. American law, American order at it’s finest
Even with the lawyer they need permission for the divorce. Running away is often their only choice to avoid being constantly raped by an old man. In the USA. In 2023. unchainedatlast.org/united-states-child-marriage-…
Just an FYI, minors CAN enter into contracts. It is true infancy imparts a lack of capacity. However, minors can still enter contracts. They are voidable at the election of the minor party until a reasonable time after reaching the age of maturity unless the contract is for necessities, then it is not voidable.
I disagree with the no age restrictions statement. That makes it sound like there are no restrictions. According to Wikipedia , in Oklahoma, you have to be 18 to get married, 16 with a parent’s permission, and any age under 16 requires a court order.
One of my wife’s friends needed parental consent because she got married at 17 (to a guy a few years older). The whole thing worked out OKish - they’ve been together nearly 20 years, had a couple of kids, but I think they both recognise they got together too young, and wouldn’t otherwise be together today - though they have no plans to separate.
I can. By making it technically possible, you can divert attention.
One example would be for crazy edge situations. Like letting children with terminal illnesses fulfill their last wishes, or letting hormone ridden teens make their case to a judge, keeping them from more extreme actions.
But more practically, I think this is a great idea… 99.9% of anyone asking for this either needs court ordered mental evaluation and/or a referral to CPS to do a deep dig into the situation. By making it technically possible, that means anyone seriously pursuing this has to explain themselves to a judge.
Unfortunately our judicial system has a lot more to do with money than justice (so most people who would actually go through with this probably have the money to protect themselves from consequences), but this law would be a sensible part of a more perfect system… Granted this should almost never be granted by the court (terminally ill child is the only situation that makes sense to me), but there’s value in it
My opinion would change greatly if this is a real path to child marriage rather than a mostly theoretical possibility
mostly when the girl is raped by her future husband and the family did want to live with the shame/sin of sex before marriage. So they just marry off the girl and pretend the sex happened after the wedding
I read this as Gen Z doesn’t tolerate the boomer/older Gen X intolerant/racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic bullshit that younger Gen X/Older Millennials had to, and a lot of folks receiving this deserved pushback don’t like it.
Thus…proving the point? “If a person thinks I can’t handle disagreement, I bet it’s because they’re some kind of asshole nazi or something! It would be wrong of me to tolerate a difference of opinion with them!”
If the only disagreement you can tolerate is irrelevant minutia, then you aren’t actually tolerant. “I’m totally tolerant, as long as our opinions don’t differ on race, culture, gender, sexual relations, work, religion, or politics” is pretty weak sauce.
Yeah if someone thinks I and people I’m friends with shouldn’t exist than I’m not gonna want to work with them. American Republicans are actively trying to remove any legal protections or rights trans (and LGBT in general) people have, and anybody who shares their views is helping them along. Why on god’s green earth would I see that as anything less than an existential threat?
if you hold a view that is intolerant, I will not tolerate you. simple as. we don’t have to agree but you can have basic fucking decency (don’t be racist)
You guys literally couldn’t be leaning into Gen-Z stereotypes any harder.
“Some guy says Gen-Z doesn’t have the ability to respectfully disagree.”
“Man FUCK that guy, I bet he’s an intolerant/racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic piece of shit, and that’s why he can’t get along with us, because it’s definitely not our problem!”
“Uhh, it sorta feels like you’re demonstrating that you really don’t have the ability to disagree.”
<downvote><downvote><downvote><downvote><downvote> “Lol just cuz I reported a guy who said a thing that hurt my feelings, does that mean we can’t be friends?! Lol jk fuck you too buddy!”
No, sure, you’re totally right, you guys are a real delight to have in conversations and debates.
Interesting examples for irrelevant minutia. Pretty sure a lot of those things would be very important, particularly race, gender, and sexual orientation.
I mean those are pretty major things, especially if you’re part of one of the affected minorities. If I were trans I wouldn’t really want to work with a coworker who insists on misgendering me and makes a fuss out of me using the right bathroom.
If it doesn’t come up, it doesn’t come up. People can agree to disagree, also. But there are also cases where the disagreement is so fundamental that it makes it pretty hard to respect someone or even want to be in the same room as them.
There was a point where Europeans were massacring and torturing each other over religious differences, for centuries. Protestants and Catholics considered each other literal heretics, and mortal enemies.
Then they developed this idea of tolerance, and decided that your religious beliefs were your own business. And that worked amazingly well! We can all just get on getting on. This was a huge deal, protestants tolerating catholics and vice versa was every bit as hard as trans people tolerating transphobic people. But it worked, and eventually the differences faded into irrelevance.
And it turned out that the same attitude was great for progress in general: who you love and who you sleep with is your business, and after a decade or two: you know, we’ve all got pretty used to the idea of people being gay. They wanna get married? Sure, I don’t see why not. Tolerance was the basis of most progress in the past few centuries.
And now Gen-Z (or probably just terminally-online people, but as a ratio that’s more of Gen-Z than any earlier group) wants to flip the table. Tolerating ‘intolerance’ is practically a crime! Intolerance, BTW, is when you don’t have the correct set of opinions. People who don’t have the right opinions are monsters, and must be harassed, deplatformed, fired, etc. The wrong opinions are violence.
I’ve seen reactions to ‘bad’ opinions that I would call hysterical.
The code states that “male students’ hair will not extend, at any time, below the eyebrows or below the ear lobes,” CNN previously reported.
Why do male and female students have different dress codes? WTF does the school system care if boys have longer hair? Apart from safety issues like being in a workshop class, why does anyone in the school system think they have the right to control who can and can’t have certain hair lengths?
Yo, is anyone else getting really sick of this overreach of power and authority? I’m not referring to the economic and political relations. Those aside, I’m talking about this crap where people are starting to get involved in personal matters of appearance, medicine, gender, and even straight bs crap like a high school band finishing a song. This is getting way out of hand. Our culture is rotting with power and control issues at the expense of individual liberties.
I’m talking about this crap where people are starting to get involved in personal matters of appearance
I’m sorry to inform you, it used to be worse. Women rape victims used to not come forward because one of the main things that would be shoved in their faces was “how they dressed” and “were they asking for it.”
That bullshit has been a throughline in US culture for fucking decades. I’m in my forties and when I was in high school, girls had ridiculous dress codes that were clearly sexist and clearly icky as fuck. Why would male authority figures be so obsessed with young women not being “too revealing” unless they’re the creepy fucks who are staring?
Not to mention all the rules about men’s pants sagging in the 90’s. A rule that seemed aimed at young black and latino men in particular.
Believe it or not, it’s better than it was in the 90’s. It’s still bad, it’s still bullshit, but it’s not new.
I’m sorry to inform you, it used to be worse. Women rape victims used to not come forward because one of the main things that would be shoved in their faces was “how they dressed” and “were they asking for it.”
And that’s why it’s the job of people like you and me to raise a hellish stink about it whenever it happens so that one day, maybe it will finally stop.
One is not arbitrary. It isn’t unreasonable to not want minors exposing their underwear in public and I shouldn’t have to tell you this. I understand that nudity(and states of undress) is more common in other parts of the world, and isn’t inherently sexual, but it is not appropriate in a school environment, especially where minors are within a system where a power dynamic exists.
Again I separate this issue from hairstyles, and I also clarify any evidence of racial targeting should be decried. Policy should be applied evenly and targeting investigated by those with ability to make corrective action.
Exceptions should be made for folks with particular features that cannot be changed. Such as those who naturally grow an afro, or cannot shave without irritation/infection. But pants are not the same, as they can be changed. If someone cannot afford a belt, schools could easily supply cordage.
So girls should not wear skirts or dresses? Because there it is relatively easy for underwear to become visible if someone is seeking to see it. In the same wake more loose pants or shirts could make some of the underwear visible briefly. That is why i consider it arbitrary. Whether underwear is visible or not is highly dependant on how pervy the teachers are staring at the girls.
But what are “normal conditions”? We ran around and played on the school yard. If girls were wearing dresses or skirts of course it was possible that underwear was visible briefly. The same would go for boys roughing around. But it wasnt and shouldnt be an issue because the issue are the people who sexualize minors.
I’ve made it clear that running around or whatever is different.
I’m all done arguing for not having minor’s underwear visible at-rest or just walking around. This is simple stuff. A skirt covers underwear. Sagging pants does not.
A dress code that requires people to be fully dressed isn’t weird or prudish, it’s just the bare minimum appropriate for public.
it’s just the bare minimum appropriate for public.
And your definition of that is arbirtrary. A jewish person might deem the bare minimim to be long legs and sleeves. A muslim person might deem the bare minimum to cover the hair too. Some people find pants need to cover the knees, others find crop tops problematic. It all remains arbitrary. Is a boy wearing a skirt okay? what about wearing net stockings until under the skirt? Knee high leather boots? In our cultures these tend to be sexualized, even if they perfectly adhere to your underwear rule, theyd probably cause more concern than saggy pants.
Is wearing a hat or cap indoors disrespectful? in elementary school we had to take our hats off in class. In high school my jewish arts teacher always covered his hat.
Is it okay for men to be topless in Summer? ask around and you’ll probably get quite a few different opinions in your community.
None of these are right or wrong by principle. They are just the result of different cultural norms, hence arbitrary.
EDIT: Also in Kindergarden we were roaming around naked, playing with water and slising on water slides, which was perfectly acceptable in my state in my country. Two states over it would probably have caused a lot of discussions. Still i’m very happy that our bare minimum was to play around with water in hot summers as opposed to sweating like crazy.
Again, the minimum viable is no exposed underwear, inside a classroom, why is this hard for you?
I already made clear the point about nudity being inherently non sexual, in general, but the classroom is not the place for that due to the power dynamic, supervision, and objectives of the space.
Why are you describing wardrobe choices of adults, or people outside a classroom? Why bring that up? You are ambiguating the topic.
Because your minimum is not more or less valid than a minimum demanding full length clothes. Or some rule that is targeting outfits specifically identified with black hip hop culture, like it is quite popular among american schools. And demanding that no underwear is visible in a classroom is weird in so far, that this seems not to be an issue in general, because that is already a thought of students and their parents, without any formal rule. So the example, while culturally and morally totally understandable, i also agree with the statement of you, is not so much relevant to the situation in schools. And there these rules are arbitrary.
Just to give on example, one could also argue for hairstyles, that they shouldn’t be so long, that it represents a tripping hazard. Noone sane would disagree with it, but it doesnt need to be formalized in an explicit rule, because it is obvious and not a relevant issue.
Someone could style his hair to resemble a Nazi cross for instance.
But seeing undergarments is arbitrary, because someone making an effort to see them, will be able to see them for many “decent” clothing options. E.g. if a women wears a skirt someone lingering by the staircase could see their underewear, where the voyeuristic behaviour is the problem rather than the clothes.
Again, No. There is a monumental difference between somebody attempting to view undergarments vs. EVERYONE being able to see them without choice.
Plus, shaving or braiding a nazi cross isn’t a “hairstyle”. That’s just creating or imprinting a hate sign into your head. You could literally do that with ANY article of clothing. Or any partof your body.
It’s completely illegal per Bostock too. If it’s sex discrimination to fire a man for having a husband but not for a woman for having a husband, it’s sure as hell discrimination to tell a man that he can’t wear his hair a way a woman can.
I think this has been established for school sports even – if the school doesn’t offer a gender equivalent team, someone of the opposite gender must be allowed to apply for the only team. It basically makes teams unisex unless there’s distinct teams.
This school district must be the absolute dregs of Texas for even the legislature and Abbott to say “okay you guys need to stop doing this”.
The only thing that’s really distinct from Bostock is the fact that this person is a minor. I can imagine an outcome where they conclude it’s not illegal because only adults possess the right not to be discriminated against.
Fascism. They keep dancing around it, but what they want is fascism.
This isn’t politics. They want to remake US politics into a fascist state, and they’re not even that shy about it.
Thankfully only about 30% of US adults are falling for this grift. Unfortunately about the same percentage of Germans fell for it in the late 1920s. It seems really low, but it’s enough if the rest of us are complacent.
As a white person, I’ll die next to you if necessary. I hope it won’t be necessary – I’ll do everything I can to stop it getting to that point, but I see where this is headed. (e: we’ve seen this before.)
We cannot let this happen again. We cannot let the bigots twist society like that so that people die for stupid arbitrary reasons like skin colour or religion, orientation, ancestry or disability.
We should be past all that, and we can’t allow people who aren’t to gain power again. I’ll do all I can to stop it, and I hope enough others will, too.
Buy a gun or two (a short one and a long one) and learn how to use them; learn some first aid, field medics really just need to know how to stabilize someone. Meet others in your area who are like you and share your beliefs, start building networks who can help each other because the police will not. This is real, the right is marching towards a blend of Christofascism/Corporatocracy that I'm not sure the world has seen and just winning a presidential race in 2024 isn't going to cut it.
We need long term solutions, consistent, focused work so actual progress can be made again. Organization is so incredibly important and is why the rightwing has been so successful over the last half-century. We don't have shady PACs funded by billionaires behind us, we'll have to organize and DIY.
I’ve got guns but if I’m gonna have to deal with a civil war I’m leaving to the freaking wilderness and suicide last resort. I’m not going to kill people. Once you cross that line you’re never the same. The problem with humanity is that we never manage to make positive change without constant bloodshed. Fuck that. We obviously are a doomed species.
I’m a white disabled combat veteran who had hoped to be done fighting, but this is not the America I fought for. I will gladly take up arms again to defend our democracy from those who wish to destroy it. You will not be alone on that field if the day ever comes.
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