poptart_fairy posted:

Are we arguing the degree to which someone was raped because

painted bird posted:

He has profound disabilities, yes. He cannot communicate effectively. But he has lived for three and a half decades and he has experienced them somehow or other and he has thoughts on them, whatever they may be, whatever complexity they may be, that an infant or a toddler would not have.

His comprehension, attention span, verbal and reasoning ability and so on have not been formally tested and the severity of his cerebral palsy prevents conclusive, rigorous tests of them, but at the very least, he has 35 years' worth of memories, even if he does not process them the way others would. That makes him objectively, quantitatively different to an infant, even if you do not accept the assertion that a grown man is qualitatively different from an infant, whatever the status of his brain.

painted bird posted:

He has profound disabilities, yes. He cannot communicate effectively. But he has lived for three and a half decades and he has experienced them somehow or other and he has thoughts on them, whatever they may be, whatever complexity they may be, that an infant or a toddler would not have.

His comprehension, attention span, verbal and reasoning ability and so on have not been formally tested and the severity of his cerebral palsy prevents conclusive, rigorous tests of them, but at the very least, he has 35 years' worth of memories, even if he does not process them the way others would. That makes him objectively, quantitatively different to an infant, even if you do not accept the assertion that a grown man is qualitatively different from an infant, whatever the status of his brain.

Basebf555 posted:

Many people seem to have a misconception about what "mental illness" means in the context of the justice system. For the most part mental illness' are treated like any other illness.

For instance, a man who thinks that the neighbors dog is talking to him and commanding him to kill is certainly mentally ill. Yet he still knows that the act of killing someone is illegal, and he understands that the people he kills are real people and not in fact a figment of his imagination or some sort of dream. Although the man is of course evaluated psychiatrically after his arrest, he still goes to prison for six consecutive life terms.

This has come up before when people talk about the Dahmer story. Was Dahmer mentally ill at the time of his arrest? Is a man who is so desperate for a companion that he tries to create living "zombies" mentally ill? There are reasons why maybe its understandable to feel sympathy for someone like Dahmer(I do), but that doesn't change the fact that he needed to be locked away from society for the rest of his life. Many times people aren't able to separate those two things in their mind.

theflyingorc posted:

What about how we treat very young children is offensive to treat him the same way? What, exactly, is being done to him that is robbing him in some way?

edit: I'm saying meet him where he is, and that is very likely in a place that is similar to a very young child. Treating the disabled with dignity doesn't mean that you pretend they don't have their disability, it means you don't make allowances that aren't applicable to them. Treating him in certain childlike ways - rewarding primarily with food/toys/physical touch, not expecting him to be able to contribute in many activities, not leaving him unsupervised.

His quantity of memories has very little effect on the fact that he appears to be fundamentally incapable of utilizing them in the same way you or I do. Treating him (largely) as a child is not the same thing as treating a deaf person like they're stupid. It's a simple mapping to get a basic grip on his needs quickly, even if it doesn't line up 1:1.

Jedit posted:

You realise you sound like Terri Schiavo's husband, right?

Nckdictator posted:

Yeah, this discussion came up before on SA. I think it was a earlier version of this thread. Someone brought up a serial killer who allegedly thought that "Nazis living in his soap dish" or something like that were forcing him to collect blood for them or something like that. Some people were surprised he was given the death penalty for that.

That reminds me of a question. What was it about the 1970's that seemed to bring out so many serial killers, atleast in the US?

"Blood Loss: The decline of the serial killer posted:

There are plenty of structural explanations for the rise of reported serial murders through the 1980s. Data collection and record-keeping improved, making it easier to find cases of serial murder. Law enforcement developed more sophisticated methods of investigation, enabling police to identify linkages between cases—especially across states—that they would have otherwise ignored. The media's growing obsession with serial killers in the 1970s and '80s may have created a minor snowball effect, offering a short path to celebrity.

"The Year We Began to Understand Serial Killers posted:

Two years earlier (1972) the FBI allowed a visionary special agent named Howard Teten to establish what would ultimately become the Behavioral Sciences Unit. Teten devised a groundbreaking analytical approach, now known as psychological criminal profiling, to try to identify unknown killers.

Nckdictator posted:

That reminds me of a question. What was it about the 1970's that seemed to bring out so many serial killers, atleast in the US?

Wasabi the J posted:

painted bird posted:

Treating him, yes, but talking about him as a child is a simple error of fact. Also, it's insulting and leads to a slippery slope that ends in people with relatively mild developmental disabilities being treated like children because the groundwork for thinking of adults as being childlike has already been laid. I'd also appreciate it if you didn't talk to me like I don't know anything about the subject.

quote:

The other mistake is your comparing her victim to a rock. He is a human being who has a consciousness, even if it is that of a small child.

Literally Kermit posted:

But they still are viewing the rock as a person which you are taking for granite.

painted bird posted:

I do not, because a) he was advocating to have life support removed and it was her parents that wanted her to be kept on life support indefinitely b) Terri Schiavo's brain was almost entirely gone. DJ's brain is all there, even if he's disabled. You cannot compare a living human being to a corpse on a ventilator.

Jedit posted:

I beg your pardon, I got it the wrong way round. You actually sound like Terri Schiavo's parents. And it doesn't matter if you're slightly less wrong than they were, you still sound like them.

Nckdictator posted:

That reminds me of a question. What was it about the 1970's that seemed to bring out so many serial killers, atleast in the US?

Karma Monkey posted:

Polyester leisure suits.

Aesop Poprock posted:

This thread is getting super bad and I regret having contributed to the derail

Mazzatello posted:

The method was named after the implement used in the execution: a large, long-handled mallet or pollaxe. .. The condemned would be led to a scaffold in a public square of Rome, accompanied by a priest (the confessor of the condemned); the platform also contained a coffin and the masked executioner, dressed in black. A prayer would first be said for the condemned's soul. Then, the mallet would be raised, swung through the air to gain momentum, and then brought down on the head of the prisoner, similar to a contemporary method of slaughtering cattle in stockyards. The condemned was usually knocked unconscious] rather than being killed instantly, so the throat of the prisoner would then be slit with a knife.

Suffocation in ash posted:

In ancient Persia, there existed an execution method where a tower/room was filled with ash, into which the condemned person was plunged. Wheels were constantly turned while he was alive, making the ash whirl about, and the person died by gradual suffocation as he inhaled the ash.[1] The description can be found in Valerius Maximus and 2 Maccabees 13:5-8.

Texcoco
Nezahualcoyotl, a 15th-century, pre-Columbian, non-Aztec Acolhuan ruler of Texcoco in modern Mexico, designed a law code that is partially preserved. Those who had engaged in the active role of homosexual anal intercourse were suffocated in a heap of ash. Their passive partners had their intestines pulled out, then their bodies were filled with ash, and finally, were burnt.

Wedemeyer posted:

Here's some terrible things we used to do to people.

Literally Kermit posted:

This is why Ash to mouth is so taboo (that and a translation error)

wiki posted:

The militia, officially called the Nauvoo Legion, was composed of Utah's Mormon settlers (members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the LDS Church). Intending to give the appearance of Native American aggression, their plan was to arm some Southern Paiute Native Americans and persuade them to join with a larger party of their own militiamen—disguised as Native Americans—in an attack. During the militia's first assault on the wagon train the emigrants fought back, and a five-day siege ensued. Eventually fear spread among the militia's leaders that some emigrants had caught sight of white men and had likely discovered the identity of their attackers. As a result militia commander William H. Dame ordered his forces to kill the emigrants.

quote:

The sole documented example of a pin prick attack leading to the deliberate transmission of HIV occurred at the Long Bay Jail in Sydney on July 22, 1990, when prison officer Geoffrey Pearce was attacked by HIV-infected prisoner Graham Farlow, who stabbed him with a syringe full of his own infected blood. Despite immediate medical attention and the "one in 200" chance of being infected, Pearce tested positive for the disease a few months later, and died of an AIDS related illness in 1997 at age 28.[5][6][7]

Literally Kermit posted:

Can it still be saved?

Will you ride with me into battle, Aesop Poprock, one last time?

Lest the center unravel and all articles become nerved.

monster on a stick posted:

Being locked away in a shell of a body and not being able to communicate scares me to death. I know that is not what is happening here, but that sounds like a fate worse than hell.

Khazar-khum posted:

I have to comment on this.

I have seizures. Afterwards, I usually can't speak. This effect lasts for anywhere from a few minutes to hours. When I do start to speak, I am slow, unsteady, halting as I search for words. The more I speak, the more my ability to do so returns. Within a short time of resuming speech, I am back to normal. I can write, though my handwriting is worse than normal and it takes longer than usual to scrawl out a message.

Scared the hell out of me the first couple of times it happened.

Aesop Poprock posted:

Err weird question but... on a scale of one to ten how offended would you be if I put my dick in your pocket and later claimed that was you saying you wanted to marry me

Aesop Poprock posted:

I'll try

Fully autonomous weapons are a thing that could exist in the near future, and considering drones are already common place I have no doubt the US and probably Israel, China and other hawkish and scientifically capable countries will find a way to deploy them, possibly while denying they're autonomous. Hell, even the UK is opposed to the UN's broad ban on the subject.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/13/uk-opposes-international-ban-on-developing-killer-robots

C.M. Kruger posted:

As I recall, South Korea already has some sentry systems on the DMZ that can be set to automatically target and fire at anything they identify as a person.

I also recall reading about how the Soviets supposedly developed a "landmine" version of the SA-7 Strela series SAM, basically it was a setup where a few missiles would be positioned by commandos aiming at the takeoff/landing approaches of a airport (or in areas they expected NATO aircraft would be using at low level), a timer would be set to activate the launchers and the missiles would then be fired by a audio sensor.

Nckdictator posted:

Yeah, this discussion came up before on SA. I think it was a earlier version of this thread. Someone brought up a serial killer who allegedly thought that "Nazis living in his soap dish" or something like that were forcing him to collect blood for them or something like that. Some people were surprised he was given the death penalty for that.

Phyzzle posted:

That article said "International law already prohibits the use of currently available autonomous technology for offensive attack operations". Huh, that's what I would be concerned about. So there is a movement to outlaw the sentry-type weapons? Seems that it would require the banning of mines as well.

NO gently caress YOU DAD posted:

Richard Chase is the guy you're thinking of, and his delusions played very much a secondary role in the murders, with the primary reason being garden variety (at least for serial murderers) sexual sadism.

As a legitimate paranoid schizophrenic who's delusions centered on a need to consume blood, if he'd only killed to sate his compulsion he'd probably have been locked away in a secure hospital. Chase was also big on necrophilia and sexual mutilation, and that's what got him the gas chamber (or would have done, if he hadn't done for himself).

Nouvelle Vague posted:

Wasn't he institutionalized, and then he was released even though he still had a lot of issues, because the hospital needed the bed or something?

quote:

This is a true story, and a very serious one, even though it’s composed of many details that will seem ludicrous and impossible. Most of those details are irrefutable, though. And

quote:

America was withering under a serious meat shortage at the time. Beef prices had soared as rangeland had been ruined by overgrazing, and a crippled industry struggled to satisfy America’s explosively growing cities, an unceasing wave of immigrants, and a surging demand for meat abroad. There were more mouths to feed than ever, but the number of cows in the country had been dropping by millions of head a year. People whispered about the prospect of eating dogs. The seriousness of the Meat Question, and the failure to whip together some brave and industrious solution to it, was jarring the nation’s self-confidence and self-image. It was a troubling sign that maybe the country couldn’t keep growing as fast and recklessly as it had been. Maybe there were limits after all.

Now, though, someone had an answer. The answer was hippopotamuses.

quote:

This flexibility would be a subtle hallmark of all of Burnham’s future adventures. In East Africa, he’d do as the local tribesmen did, eating no vegetables for months at a time, instead consuming a mixture of three parts milk and one part fresh blood, drawn from a vein in the neck of a living ox the way syrup makers tap the trunk of a maple. (After ten days, Burnham claimed, his system had adjusted.)

quote:

Duquesne would spend the conflict trying to kill Burnham, and Burnham was assigned to kill Duquesne. Burnham called him the “human epitome of sin and deception.” Another writer described him as a “walking living breathing searing killing destroying torch of hate.

Nouvelle Vague posted:

Wasn't he institutionalized, and then he was released even though he still had a lot of issues, because the hospital needed the bed or something?

Wasabi the J posted:

Munchausen by Palsy.