They also refused to release the remains of the people killed, denying they retained any. Eventually, the University of Pennsylvania admitted to retaining some of the remains of 12 year old Delisha Africa and returned them to her family, in 2021.

Who says that?

No press is bad press, I suppose. Doesn’t make me want to buy their coffee.

What’s your preferred client? I switched from plexamp to fintunes, but I really hate the app and the lack of functionality.

The researchers are also bots.

I’m thinking of that scene from Dr. Doolittle with Eddie Murphy where the lady keeps going to the hospital with an allergic reaction to shellfish. Later, she’s in a bathroom stall gnawing on a lobster while her face swells up.

I never understood that, but then my doctor told me to cut out sugar or my pancreas might explode (or something) and I immediately thought of that character.

It really depends on what sort of knight we’re talking about. Despite how they are portrayed in movies, swords were more for ceremony than for fighting, and could have been anything from a dagger to a saber to a broadsword. Full plate armor is designed for mounted combat, and most duels were won by whoever knocked the other guy down first.

One good swing could kill a lion, I’m sure, but if you miss, or it doesn’t kill the lion, then the lion will pounce and knock down the knight. Even lightweight armor would be 30-60 lbs, and once you’re down, the lion has won.

So here’s the thing, I have never hunted a lion, so I really am just speculating. I know that individual humans have hunted and killed lions, and theoretically a single human could do it. I don’t think that, even with 10 hunters, the humans are guaranteed to come out unscathed. Modern hunters with rifles and jeeps and tranquilized lions still get mauled to death on occasion, so like I said, any given sunday.

Humans have successfully hunted and killed lions, and lions can definitely kill a human.

I think it depends on the arena. Believe it or not, I think the human has better chances in the wild. Human endurance is our superpower, and you could keep scaring the lion with loud armor noises until it collapsed from exhaustion.

In a cage match, I think the lion wins. A knight’s sword in any era is not designed for hunting. If the knight was using a lance or a pike, that would be a better choice, but I think maneuverability is the biggest liability for the knight. Mail armor would deflect scratches, and full plate armor might prevent bites to the covered areas, but once the lion has the knight on the ground, it wouldn’t matter how much protection he has. Proximity benefits the lion, and there’s no question who is faster and stronger.

Still, humans have killed lions without any armor, so it’s any given sunday and all that.

Edit to add a dramatic reenactment of such a battle.

The better option is to simply stop using YouTube.

Yep, and their belief is a danger to literally everyone who does or will ever live on Earth.

Not at all. And in fact, I wish more people weren’t expecting a cool prize at the end of all the death and destruction.

To be entirely fair, we are like 2 cubic meters of carbon dioxide away from total ecological collapse. Made-made climate change is now beyond any threshold where we previously had reasonable expectations of being able to prevent it. The oceans will rise, climate catastrophes will increase, and the world will become more hostile.

It kind of feels like were frogs in a boiling pot, and we’re living though the apocalypse now. But the wifi still works, so scroll on and don’t think about it too much.

There are a few things at play.

First, there is the negative connotation of those words. Almost universally, people think of bigotry, anti-Semitism, and racism as bad things. Like, indefensibly bad. So pointing those things out is a good thing, because we should not tolerate bigotry in any form.

Unfortunately, I had to use the qualifier “almost” in that paragraph, and the group that does thing bigotry is OK is growing larger and louder. Several superpower countries are currently led by avowed bigots, and their supporters either pretend they aren’t bigots or celebrate that they don’t feel the need to hide their bigotry. The more ignorant hatred there is, the more it spreads.

But most average people still don’t want to be called those things, even when they are. The feew that embrace it provide political cover to the vast majority that just want to hate people without being called names.

So right off the bat, just the act of accurately labeling bigotry, anti-Semitism, or racism is already a bit of a conversation ender, and it’s not alwaysclear whether the person being a bigot even cares that you recognize it.

Next thing we have to clarify is that there is legitimate criticism to go around to practically any group. Specifically, the state of Israel is currently engaged in a violent, brutal, and merciless genocide of the Palestinians. This is a fact, and it is not in dispute.

But then there are anti-Semites who would like to see all of the Jewish people in Israel killed. Their response to one genocide would be to engage in another. As previously mentioned, those voices are growing in number and volume, and any time their is legitimate criticism of Israel, their voice join the chorus of outrage to steer the conversation towards eradication.

There’s an old saying that 11 people who have dinner with a Nazi are a dozen Nazis. If you are seated at the “stop genocide” table, and a Nazi sits down to say "yeah, and kill all the Jews,"you have a responsibility to your cause to disavow them. But that’s really difficult in the age of Twitter to separate yourself and disavow every Nazi who wants to support you. So when the Israeli government points at your table and says “those who criticize Israel are being anti-Semitic,” you can’t say that everyone who criticizes Israel isn’t being anti-Semitic. Nuance doesn’t fit in a soundbite. Look at how many words I needed just to get to a point where I could say “Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic, but many critics of Israel are anti-Semitic” without making it sound like I am defending the genocide in Gaza. And I will still probably get downvotes on both ends from people who do defend the genocide, but also from anti-Semites who don’t like being called out.

And that brings us around to the ouroboros of intent in political discourse. Your original question was whether people misuse those accusations to shut down criticism, and the answer is unequivocally yes. Even if the criticism is valid, and even if there are bigots among the critics, using those terms to describe or defend against critics is a tool to shut down the debate. Let’s stick with Israel as an example. Israel is engaged in genocide. They have an interest in shutting down the debate. Anti-Semites want to kill all the Jewish people in Israel. They have an interest in mainstreaming their hatred and making peaceful revolution impossible. It serves both interests to label all critics of Israel as anti-Semitic, and the vast majority of reasonable people who don’t think genocide is good are merely stuck between two sets of violent conservatives. Neither the Israeli government nor the bigots who hate Jewish people care about how many innocent people die. And it’s always the innocent who do most of the dying.

We see this same avalance of hatred and ignorance when we talk about racism or really any form of bigotry. Any criticms that are even remotely valid are co-opted by hate groups because it helps promote their faction of conservativism, and then pointing it out helps the targets of criticism avoid accountability. And then the sheer quantity of accusations leveled dilutes the power of those words in the public consciousness, emboldening the actual racists, anti-Semites, and bigots.

TLDR yes, people “misuse” those labels to shut down criticism, even when they are accurate, and even when it is used by the bigots themselves.

Not exactly what you’re asking, but Cabin in the Woods is like a love letter to all horror movies. It drops references and homages left and right, making horror movie tropes actual plot points, including bizzare foreign horror movies that aren’t explained at all. The more you know about horror movies, folklore, and monster cinema, the more you will understand the movie.

If you haven’t seen it, go see it now. I won’t say anything else.

Can’t come in unless invited, don’t have a reflection, sensitive (or deathly allergic) to light, garlic, and holy water, these things are rarely explained.

Isn’t that a simp?

Patriotism. Democracy. Representational Government. Freedom. Liberty. Take your pick.

Check out Immich next. It’s sort of like a self-hosted Google photos except it allows you to own your photos.

ER was the first one that came to mind.