NTRabbit posted:

Then the Guardian style guide is wrong, and they have a complete muppet setting the rules

Urcher posted:

Word cloud for April:

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Also reminder that the Guardian style guide insists that ICAC is written Icac.

Urcher posted:

Anidav posted:

Can't weed, committing Islam!

DancingShade posted:

Nah that's more bureaucratic indifference.

Think Brazil more than 1984.

Urcher posted:

Word cloud for April:

The Peccadillo posted:

If a system operates as viciously punitive to the poor for no reason, the personal intention or lack there of is immeterial and it should be stopped

Also, with indigenous Australians comprising the world's most imprisoned population, it doesn't really matter whether or not the given functionaries responsible for these conditions are wilfully or unwilfully attacking them because they're racist or not, they simply are attacking them, and should be stopped

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

Also what would have happened if someone wasn't there to film it?

The Before Times posted:

Bins Bad

MysticalMachineGun posted:

Not sure if this should be surprising or not but MrsMachineGun watched ten news last night - no mention of coppers running people over.

Open IE this morning (GPO means we can't change the homepage) and the MSN news scroller didn't have any mention of it either

You Am I posted:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-10/david-goodall-ends-life-in-a-powerful-statement-on-euthanasia/9742528

David Goodall, who is 104 years old, is travelling to Switzerland for euthanasia due to age rather than illness.

What's everyone's view on this?

I have a grandmother whose health has gone downhill the past 18 months, going from someone who was relatively mobile and able to do most things by herself to being petrified about going out of her room or to the toilet without assistance from a nurse or relative and spends most of her time in a bed or chair. She has mentioned a number of times the past few months that she just wants it all to end and wants to meet up with her parents and husband in the afterlife. Should Victoria's euthanasia laws be adjusted to allow people who are of sound mind, which she still is, to just go "well, I am 90+ years old, but it's time to clock out" rather than just wasting away?

quote:

Even the innocent are lost to this virtual lynch mob

Eric Schneiderman, the attorney-general of New York who resigned on Monday just hours after being accused of sexual misconduct, apparently suffers from Portnoy’s Complaint, which Philip Roth defined, on the first page of his novel by that name, as “a disorder in which strongly felt ­altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse ­nature”.

Readers of that book — whose success in Australia was assured by attempts to ban it so ham-fisted that they brought the censorship of literary works to an end — will remember its hero, Alexander Portnoy, indulging his fantasies with the girlfriends he called the Pumpkin, the Pilgrim and the Monkey.

But when Portnoy wasn’t tied up (or, more likely, tying up), he was championing the poor and dispossessed as Assistant Commissioner of Human Opportunity for the City of New York.

Now Schneiderman, who hailed the #MeToo movement while launching fierce legal attacks on the Trump administration, has been “outed” in The New Yorker by a string of former companions who credit him with sexual preferences that would have made Portnoy blush.

Of course, Schneiderman’s is merely the latest scalp in an ever-mounting pile, joining that of Junot Diaz, the Pulitzer prize-winning Dominican-American author who met his doom last Friday at the Sydney Writers Festival. Diaz, his accusers say, is a serial offender whose misdeeds range from unwanted advances to yelling at (female) graduate students.

Whether one ought to feel a great deal of sympathy for Schneiderman or Diaz is debatable. But it is difficult not to be disturbed by the way they, and myriad others, have been thrown under the wheels of #MeToo’s Oblivion Express.

Schneiderman, for example, claims that the relationships The New Yorker details were entirely consensual and did not involve any inequality of bargaining power. Even were his claims correct, it would still be hard to reconcile his private behaviour with his vocal support for #MeToo, which included suing Harvey Weinstein.

But as hypocritical as Schneiderman may be, it is not illegal for consenting adults to engage in forms of sex one might regard as distasteful, if not positively immoral. Vice, in other words, is not crime — at least not yet. Moreover, that distinction, which separates us from theocratic regimes such as Iran’s, has long been a fundamental element in the Western political tradition.

As John Locke famously wrote in 1689: “Many things are sins, which no man ever said were to be punished by the magistrate. The reason is because they are not prejudicial to the rights of others, nor do they break the public peace.”

Every bit as disturbing as the confusion between immorality and illegality is the disappearance of any notion of proof and due process, with mere allegations being treated as compelling evidence. That is all the more important as history shows these kinds of allegations readily snowball. Once the initial steps are taken, all those nursing a grudge seize their chance, often anonymously: with revenge a dish best served cold, its simple appearance on the menu can provoke an outpouring of grievances that converts a single plate into a veritable smorgasbord.

And nowhere are the risks of vengeance overwhelming truth greater than when ex-lovers are involved, as the passage of time and the blurring of memories hardens resentments as frequently as it heals them.

None of that is meant to downplay the seriousness of the allegations or suggest they necessarily lack merit. On the contrary, that the right to bodily integrity is the first of all rights is as fundamental to the Western political tradition as the distinction between vice and crime.

But Kant, who more than any other thinker emphasised the foundational nature of that right, placed immediately next to it each person’s right to be “beyond reproach”: that is, to not have one’s good name — and hence one’s ability to stand as an equal in society — unfairly tarnished.

It is no accident that the word “diabolical” descends from the Greek word diaballo, which means to defame; and the fact the consequences of #MeToo’s denunciations have indeed been hellish only underscores the need to ensure allegations are properly tested. The court of public opinion has never been reliable in that respect. Manipulative language has been around as long as public debate, as has the fear of swimming against the tide.

But the virtual crowds swirling on the internet are as deadly a lynch mob as any previous form of mass hysteria. The unwillingness or inability to differentiate between genuine abusers, such as Weinstein, and cases that involve little more than boorishness then compounds the damage.

That many women are justifiably angry is obvious. And it is also obvious that social change, including women’s rapidly growing power in society, means harassment is no longer tolerable. However, that cannot justify a proliferation of executions based on scant evidence and summary judgments.

Nor can the problems be dismissed as simply the price of revolutions, which invariably veer to excess. The reality is that excess is why revolutions invariably fail, causing much needless suffering along the way; if failure is all those who support #MeToo can look forward to, they should abandon their revolution now, before it too devours its young.

As long ago as 450BC, Aristophanes deplored the ability of “sycophants” — a term that referred to gangs of slanderers who spent their time intimidating innocent citizens — to work Athenians into a rage against alleged miscreants.

Yet Aristophanes believed women might take fairness more seriously than men. When Athens’ women seized power in his play The Assemblywomen, they therefore moved to punish slander and dismiss unfounded allegations.

More than 2000 years later, a glance at #MeToo would have taught him better.

The Before Times posted:

I definitely think there should be an old age option for voluntary euthanasia. Once you get to a point when you can't do your favourite activities anymore or really do anything independently and there's objectively no real hope of improvement in quality of life, a peaceful death on your own terms should definitely be available.


there are the obvious issues where people could be pressured into it by impatient and/or callous family members but a bit of policy thought could probably account for that

quote:

But the virtual crowds swirling on the internet are as deadly a lynch mob as any previous form of mass hysteria

quote:

Mr Morrison dubbed Mr Shorten "Unbelieva-Bill" and questioned the value of his promises.

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/op...7fe531bab5d20c7

Doctor Spaceman posted:

The US media has just discovered that Scott Pruitt, the corrupt arsehole who heads the EPA, has been spending time with George Pell.

JBP posted:

Sam Simon talked about this before dying of cancer. His life was becoming more and more lovely but he said something along the lines of "I've got five favourite things and they're all ruined except for lying down watching tv. When that gets too hard I'll go" and he did. If you can't do a single thing that gives you some pleasure or respite it's fair to want to check out.

The Before Times posted:

Sleeping is one of my favourite things so I'm set

JBP posted:

Yeah until you can't sleep for more than an hour or two due to being in hospital or pain. Poor buggers can't even enjoy the most basic human functions.

SMILLENNIALSMILLEN posted:

You'd have never heard about it. They've probably being doing it for years but now camera phones are everywhere. They'll make it illegal to film cops with them soon enough.

Brown Paper Bag posted:

Looks like Anne Aly might be in citizenship trouble as well, her seat is only on a 0.7% margin

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/op...7fe531bab5d20c7

froglet posted:

Oceans swallowing seaside towns, locals want the government to buy back their properties, government has no plan to do so.

https://amp.watoday.com.au/national...508-p4ze3z.html

Edit: this is what they get for angering Poseidon.

The Peccadillo posted:

What're the arguments against assisted suicide from the disability community? I can't remember