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Leviathan Song posted:What am I missing here? Looks like a pretty accurate graph showing that debt grows under republican presidencies. First, it's in percentages, rather than absolute amounts. 189% of a smaller starting point could well be less than a 16% increase of a much larger amount. Second, no weighting for different terms in office. Phanatic has a new favorite as of 22:54 on Jan 18, 2016 |
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Jan 18, 2016 22:41
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Carbon dioxide posted:How does this poo poo work? Do you have to be a member of the democratic party to vote in the democrats prelims? What if you're not a member of either party? Do you not get the right to vote? What if you're a member of both parties? Or is that illegal? This is a party caucus. All the electoral precincts (1680 of them) in Iowa meet and vote for delegates who will attend later county conventions (99 counties in Iowa). At those county conventions, the delegates will vote for another, smaller set of delegates who will attend still later state-level conventions who will then vote for yet another set of delegates who will attend the presidential nominating conventions where that set of delegates will cast votes for which candidate becomes the party nominee. In other words, this was an election to pick the people who will pick the people who will pick the people who will pick the presidential nominees. It's such a big loving media circus because it's the first set of elections of a whole shitload of elections that lead to the next president, not because of any inherent significance of it in the overall process. Yes, you have to be a member of the Democratic party to vote in Democratic caucuses, and the same thing for Republicans. If you're not a member of the party, you don't get a vote to determine who that party nominates to run for office. If you're not a member of either party, you don't get a vote to determine who either party nominates to run for office. As to the right to vote: First, voting in the general election isn't a right, it's a privilege that is accorded to you when you reach a certain age and can be withdrawn if you do certain things (like get convicted of a felony); and second, this isn't the general election, it's a political party deciding who it's going to nominate to run for President, you don't have a right to vote in that anymore than you have a right to vote for Grand Poobah of the local Masonic lodge. And when you register to vote, you pick a political party; you don't get to pick more than one.
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Feb 2, 2016 22:02
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Feb 2, 2016 22:30
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I was more curious about "Grenade" and 'Plane crash" myself.
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Feb 2, 2016 22:40
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Whiz Palace posted:Selfie stick in one hand, grenade in the other, get confused about which one to squeeze? Pretty much, apparently: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/07/russia-launches-safe-selfie-guide-light-deaths-150707132204704.html quote:In January, two young men blew themselves up in the Ural Mountains while taking a selfie holding a hand grenade with the pin pulled out. The mobile phone with the selfie survived as a record.
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Feb 2, 2016 23:32
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Flagrant Abuse posted:1.6 billion was around-ish the turn of the 20th century, when Mohammed(i)an was still a commonly used term for Muslims. Mohammed is considered by Muslims a prophet of God, etymologically it makes as much sense as 'Christian.'
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Feb 12, 2016 02:54
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From the Venting About Students thread:
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Mar 7, 2016 17:31
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nagel posted:Apparently, the authorities also count everything once. let's say that a person was raped by his/her spouse 20 times over the course of one year. In most countries, that would be one report/instance, but Sweden counts that as 20. I don't think I believe that. Here in the US, that'd be 20 counts of rape, you don't get just charged once. I can't think of a country that counts rapes in the way you describe. What is counted differently seems to be gang rape; the US counts one incident for each victim, not one for each perpetrator. But if the numbers are due to that, then that's a *lot* of gang rape happening. But whatever the reason, there seems to be some dark poo poo going on in Sweden. Police in Ostersund are telling women not to go out at night alone because so many of them have been getting attacked. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3481882/Women-warned-not-night-Swedish-town-multiple-sex-attacks-foreigners.html#ixzz42LAkfb00 http://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/jamtland/polisen-varnar-kvinnor-i-ostersund-for-att-ga-ut Oh, Google translate, the fun we have: quote:The three police officers who attended the press conference says that they have never experienced anything similar in Östersund. This is also why they now go out and warn women to touch themselves in the center of Östersund in the late evenings and nights. Phanatic has a new favorite as of 17:55 on Mar 9, 2016 |
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Mar 9, 2016 17:52
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Hyperlynx posted:Sadly, it does not take psychopaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_panic_defense Not sure why you're looking upon that "sadly," as in not a single case listed there has it resulted in a jury finding the attacker not guilty: quote:In 1987, Joseph Mitchell Parsons, who called himself the "Rainbow Warrior",[21] claimed that he killed Richard Lynn Ernest to defend against a homosexual advance, but was unable to present any evidence at trial to support this claim...Parsons was executed by lethal injection at Utah State Prison in October 1999. Absent even a single case where a "gay panic" defense leads to an acquittal I'm not sure that a law prohibiting it is a necessary thing. Or even a wise thing, as we generally let defendants make whatever defense claims they feel like bringing up. They may be ridiculous and they may be barred by the judge in the case, but they're rarely excluded as a matter of law from even being attempted. This one seems especially questionable as a working defense, because a necessary element of "I killed him because he freaked me out by being gay" is "I killed him," which is the kind of thing you *don't* want to admit to the court.
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Mar 22, 2016 21:13
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Saagonsa posted:The goal of a defense is not always to get a not guilty verdict. A few of those have the people seem to have been convicted on lesser charges, which is the problem. The fact that "gay/trans panic" makes your decision to murder someone somehow less serious than if they weren't gay/trans. On the information provided, there's no basis whatsoever to say that a gay panic defense had anything to do with the outcome of any case. Parsons presented no evidence at trial to support his claim, and was executed. Schmitz's attempted defense was pretty clearly rejected because claiming diminished capacity for a crime you commit *three days after* the event that supposedly diminished your capacity doesn't pass a laugh test; he was charged with second-degree murder, and that's what he was convicted of. In the Shephard case, the diminished capacity defense was disallowed by the judge. McGee pled out before it even went to trial. The only one where there's any indication that the prosecution settled for lesser charges than they felt were warranted was Cazares, who they offered a plea deal after being unable to secure a conviction, twice, and Cazares was only tied to the crime a month after the others defendants was arrested, when he was implicated by another defendant who was offered a manslaughter plea in exchange for his testimony against the other three; that case was messy enough that you literally can't say that one defendant's gay panic defense affected the outcome at all. To the contrary, both the DA and the victim's own mother said that the jury rejected that defense: http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=153 quote:Justice, in many respects, has been served, according to Araujo's family. Perhaps most importantly, said some advocates, Monday's murder verdicts soundly reject the "trans panic" defense, which argued that deadly violence should be expected or excused if it is committed in response to the discovery of a partner's transgender status. Defense attorneys claimed, to varying degrees, that the victim's "sexual deception" provoked a "heat of passion" response that lessened the defendants' culpability in Araujo's killing; the jury, in refusing to deliver convictions of manslaughter and lesser charges, did not allow such a defense to have merit. Interestingly, the California law in question doesn't actually bar the defense from claiming "gay panic made me do it." It actually doesn't concern itself with the accused at all, and is concerned about anti-gay bias on the part of the *jury*. In other words, it's not concerned with the idea that a defendant may claim gay panic, it's concerned with the idea that certain members of the jury might hear such a defense and say "Okay, yeah, gays are icky, not guilty." It states that in any criminal trial, if any of the parties to the case requests it, the court shall instruct the jury by saying "Do not let bias, sympathy, prejudice, or public opinion influence your decision. Bias includes bias against the victim or victims, witnesses, or defendant based upon his or her disability, gender, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation.” That's it. It doesn't ban any defense. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=200520060AB1160 It's a feel-good law of zero practical importance.
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Mar 22, 2016 22:09
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34% of Americans were college freshmen in 1997? That's a weird demographic bump.
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Apr 22, 2016 18:45
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May 3, 2016 02:59
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May 20, 2016 19:54
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Gann Jerrod posted:I hate that Ben Stein went from being my favorite game show host to a major league rear end in a top hat. He was one of Nixon's speechwriters. He was a major league rear end in a top hat long before he was a game show host. This was good, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G0tfb8ZefA
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Jun 4, 2016 17:39
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Ignite Memories posted:Japanese people murder each other with improvised objects, like a statue that's also an alarm clock. Nah, Japanese people just murder themselves. Japan's suicide rate is higher than the US's suicide rate and homicide rate combined.
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Jul 5, 2016 16:55
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Regalingualius posted:Plus, doesn't it have extremely restrictive gun control where it's almost impossible for someone who isn't in the military to own one? Mexico's got that too. For that matter, Geneva's Small Arms Survey indicates that other G8 nations like France and Germany are pretty awash in illegal weapons themselves (France has about 3 million legally-registered civilian-owned firearms, but about 16 million in illegal circulation. Germany has about 7 million legally-owned weapons, and about 18 illegally). What helps Japan is probably a very high degree of cultural homogeneity, and a judicial system that can detain suspects for weeks without charging them with anything, , doesn't have jury trials, and has a 99% conviction rate. Again, if "helps" is a word that encompasses their suicide rate; it's still a very violent culture, it's just that the violence is directed inwards.
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Jul 5, 2016 18:05
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Aramoro posted:Im not sure what the US system is exactly but in the UK the police will charge you if they have any notion you might have done it and then the Crown Prosecution Service decides to prosecution service decides to proceed or not. They have to think theres a greater than 50/50 chance of a successful prosecution. The police don't really get to decide anything much and decisions to charge usually fall on the side of caution and to charge just in case. The UK's also one of those countries where, while you can't be compelled to speak, if you fail to speak in your defense that can be used to infer your guilt. The Cheshire Cat posted:To be fair the American legal system does this too. Because of double jeopardy police generally won't charge people unless they're absolutely sure they can get a conviction, since if the person is acquitted at trial and later evidence turns up that 100% proves their guilt, oops, too late, you can't charge them again. It's not the police that charge people, it's prosecutors, and the enormous amount of laws a motivated prosecutor can charge you with violating means that most cases never even go to trial. Being able to hit someone with multiple charges carrying a combined sentence of 50 years is one hell of an incentive for most people to accept an offer to plea guilty to one of those charges with a 2-year sentence, so the issue of actually having to a jury to vote to convict doesn't enter into a lot of decisions to prosecute. *Especially* at the Federal level; if a Federal prosecutor sets his sights on you, you're going down, the conviction rate in Federal court is north of 90%. Down at the state levels it's a bit lower (and a lot lower in places like Florida). But double jeopardy does not really serve to prevent prosecutors from charging, especially because in a high-profile case there's the possibility of Federal charges even in the event that the state case collapses (Rodney King is the prime example of this but there are certainly more recent ones). Plus, prosecutors generally aren't going to give a poo poo about the downstream effects anyway, like guilty men walking free, except again in high-profile cases where they're putting themselves on the line politically (like recent examples in Baltimore). Phanatic has a new favorite as of 19:11 on Jul 6, 2016 |
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Jul 6, 2016 17:22
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 Soccer is for commies and if you like the WBNA you're really weird.
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Aug 22, 2016 23:16
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Arguably considerably more useful than miles per gallon.
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Sep 24, 2016 22:07
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Nov 6, 2016 17:47
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Nov 14, 2016 19:46
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Olive Garden tonight! posted:Do I need to know more about planes to understand why that's funny? The graphics convey no information whatsoever. If it's relevant that the flight ceiling is such and such feet, then the number is helpful but the graphic is meaningless. There are four charts there that are totally pointless. What does that grid of squares by gross takeoff weight mean? Why are there 5 $ symbols, one of which is a lighter grey than the other four? Is the cost being ranked on a 5-point scale like a movie review? Phanatic has a new favorite as of 23:51 on Nov 14, 2016 |
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Nov 14, 2016 23:46
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Quote isn't edit.
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Nov 14, 2016 23:48
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Olive Garden tonight! posted:
But they do graphically illustrate what the text says. If you don't know what vertical or horizontal mean, the arrows show you. That's a good graphic. What do the arrows at 45 degrees show you next to the range of the aircraft? Nothing.
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Nov 15, 2016 00:11
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Laserjet 4P posted:Let me guess, "governing smarter" is "scrap all regulations" and "learning faster" is "all public schools should become charter schools". I don't think you're all that familiar with Thomas Friedman. He's the dumbest columnist in the NYT. Except for Frank Rich, who is amazing in that every single sentence he writes is dumber than the previous one, on an asymptotic trend towards zero intelligence. My favorite thing about that graph is fixing things the way Friedman wants to requires *literally traveling back in time*. 
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Nov 28, 2016 22:14
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Lord Hydronium posted:So Vermont doesn't issue CCW permits, but honors them from every other state? Vermont doesn't have many firearms laws above and beyond what the Federal government requires. It's unrestricted carry (except schools and courthouses). Carry openly, carry concealed, doesn't matter, you don't need a permit from it. So they 'honor' permits from other states in the sense that if you have a permit from another state, you can carry a gun in Vermont. But if you don't have a permit from another state, you can still carry a gun in Vermont. A number of other states are similar, but some still issue permits for whatever reason. Arizona, for example, used to be a shall-issue state, then they removed the requirement to get a permit, but you can still get a permit if you want because then reciprocity agreements mean you can carry in other states that honor Arizona permits.
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Dec 15, 2016 21:09
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StandardVC10 posted:Well whoever he is you'd better not piss him off. gently caress him. <10 includes 0.
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Jan 3, 2017 19:24
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That's wonderful. They should totally do that and force the parties to keep coming back with new candidates until one of them beats 'none of the above.'
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Jan 17, 2017 17:15
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Instant runoff elections (if there are 5 candidates and none gets a majority, the guy with the least number of votes gets ejected and everyone votes again for the 4 remaining), Borda counting (If there are 5 candidates, everyone casts 5 votes for their top candidate, 4 votes for their second-favorite, and so on, guy with the most votes wins), Condorcet voting (everyone lists all candidates in order of preference, the candidate that would win by a majority against all other candidates in theoretical head-to-head matchups wins) are all neat ideas, but Arrow's Theorem (simplifying here) shows that all of them can be gamed in various situations and lead to facially absurd results. We'd just wind up with *different* facially absurd results. I just really like the idea of the electorate collectively saying "Nah, gently caress you guys, come back to us with someone better."
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Jan 17, 2017 22:41
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Tiggum posted:Just because no system is perfect doesn't mean that some systems aren't better than others. No argument. gently caress at this point I thinking picking adults at random for presidential terms, no repeats, is better than what we do.
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Jan 18, 2017 03:45
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Outrail posted:I've heard more then one comment t along the lines of 'I'd rather any American citizen between the ages of ~35-60 picked at random than Trump. Not just Trump.
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Jan 18, 2017 04:40
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Aschlafly posted:
Much like the popular vote vs. electoral college debate, any discussion about "what would have happened if" assumes that Trump would have run the same exact campaign even if the rules of the game were radically different. In the actual campaign, Trump focused on one opponent at a time. He went after Jeb first, and then when Jeb was done with he focused on Rubio and then Cruz in turn. This was obviously enormously effective, but there's no reason to think he'd have done the exact same thing if the voting method was entirely different. Phanatic has a new favorite as of 19:54 on Feb 6, 2017 |
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Feb 6, 2017 19:50
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TIL that W.E.B. Du Bois used to do infographics. http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/w-e-b-du-bois-hand-drawn-infographics-of-african-american-life-1900/ Some of them are pretty cool:  Some are...interesting.  Some are not good. 
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Feb 10, 2017 16:43
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Interesting palette choice.
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Mar 25, 2017 21:21
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Outrail posted:Why the hell would you think average home price going up is a good thing? Aside from loving over young and poor people. That's correct, but a whole bunch of government programs are intended to prop up home prices (Federal mortgage guarantees, various grants, the mortgage interest tax deduction, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, etc.), and high housing prices are often seen as an a priori indicator of a healthy economy. Which is of course retarded. But when people frequently look upon a house as a combination investment/store of wealth, you get ridiculous stuff like that.
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Apr 2, 2017 21:46
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So I guess humans are about 17 tons of TNT? 18?
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Apr 14, 2017 04:00
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Bird in a Blender posted:Montana is definitely because they have that "no speed limit during the day" law. No, they do not. They haven't had that for years. The law was that you had to keep to a "reasonable and prudent" speed, until 1998 when a guy ticketed for going 102mph appealed all the way to the state supreme court which ruled that that was unconstitutionally vague. So for the time between that decision and when the legislature passed a 75mph limit the next year, Montana had no speed limit at all, although you could still get ticketed for reckless or careless driving. And as for "because," Montana's roads were safer during the "reasonable and prudent" era. http://mediatrackers.org/montana/2014/12/02/montanas-speed-limit-make-highways-safer CapitanGarlic posted:No longer true, actually - while Montana has on the books the "General Speed Law" that used to govern highway speeds (that is, a speeding ticket can be written for any vehicle travelling at 'speeds unsafe for the conditions'), there is a day-and-night speed limit on all highways and interstates now. Bear in mind this was only brought about when federal road funding was threatened to be revoked unless a limit was put in place. Again, no. When the Feds passed the 55mph limit in 1974 and threatened states with pulling their highway funding unless they implemented that limit, Montana did so, but set the fine for speeding at $5. Drivers would just keep $5s in their glove compartments to hand over to the cop along with their driver's license. When the Federal limit was repealed in 1995, Montana reverted to the previous 'reasonable and prudent' standard. Then that law was ruled unconstitutional in 1998, and the legislature set a numeric limit the following year because the alternative was no speed limit at all. Phanatic has a new favorite as of 01:08 on Apr 30, 2017 |
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Apr 30, 2017 01:01
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If these trends continue....heeeeeyyyyyy.
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May 11, 2017 15:57
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HardDiskD posted:Why would you ever make a drill number scale that goes down when the actual diameter goes up? Gauge goes down when the actual diameter goes up. 12AWG wire is thicker than 14AWG wire. A 12-gauge shotgun has a wider bore than a 16-gauge shotgun. 6-gauge sheet metal is thicker than 8-gauge sheet metal. In the case of wire, a higher gauge count meant more passes through the drawing dies, yielding a narrower diameter. For shotguns, the gauge meant the number of lead balls of bore diameter that would weigh 1lb. But a larger gauge number meaning a narrower item is entirely standard.
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May 15, 2017 14:56
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HardDiskD posted:Thanks, I didn't know what gauges actually were. It's lot easier to remember "14 gauge wire" than "1.628mm diameter" wire.
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May 15, 2017 16:28
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