Funny events in anti-woke world

Gordon_4

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High density living is too soulful and humanizing?

At the end of the day, I don't think there's a one-size-fits all optimal way of living. Every person out there has a minimum amount of connection and enrichment necessary to not go wacky, and that varies from person to person. And it just so happens that the artificial sparseness and disconnection of suburbs is uniquely bad at providing any of that for the vast majority of people. Hell, every barely populated, dilapidated tiny town I drive past still has shops and restaurants and a community center with events. Which is more than most higher income, higher population suburbs manage to have
I think this has much to do with how your suburbs are designed. All the one's I've lived in have had lots of trees and other greenery and always felt very pleasant to be in. But that's merely my experience and isn't likely to be universal.
 

Gergar12

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High density living is too soulful and humanizing?

At the end of the day, I don't think there's a one-size-fits all optimal way of living. Every person out there has a minimum amount of connection and enrichment necessary to not go wacky, and that varies from person to person. And it just so happens that the artificial sparseness and disconnection of suburbs is uniquely bad at providing any of that for the vast majority of people. Hell, every barely populated, dilapidated tiny town I drive past still has shops and restaurants and a community center with events. Which is more than most higher income, higher population suburbs manage to have
Yes, I have a dataset for you too.

 

Baffle

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I think this has much to do with how your suburbs are designed. All the one's I've lived in have had lots of trees and other greenery and always felt very pleasant to be in. But that's merely my experience and isn't likely to be universal.
I think there's a distinction that can come with organic development over time too. I live in the suburbs (of a small town, that itself is only about 15 minutes' drive from a small city) and the houses on the surrounding estates are all 1930s-1950s or so. And it's a nice place to live: generally well serviced with shops etc, near the coast and not far from the country if I want to stand in a field. Plenty of trees and a lived-in feel. I wouldn't characterise it as soulless (though maybe staid). But new-build estates of lego houses that are just built with uniform variation between them and no associated services (because profit margins) definitely have a soulless and depressing feel to them (but with time that will pass).

OTOH, new-builds are built to a much higher regulatory standard (i.e. they are warm), even if the actually building work itself is sometimes shit and the rooms are too small.
 

Asita

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Yes, I have a dataset for you too.

Yes, but did you read it? While it notes the difference as being statistically significant, it also acknowledges that the difference is minor. It's literally a difference between a rate of 5.2% and a rate of 6.1%.

More to the point, it also made a point of saying that location was not a causative factor (which you seem to be implying is the takeaway), as evidenced by how controlling for characteristics known to be associated with depression caused the the difference in prevalence to disappear.

Per the paper itself: "Increased prevalence among rural persons did not appear to result from rural residence itself, however, since residence was not independently associated with depression once health and resource factors were held constant. Rather, people in rural areas were more likely to have characteristics that are strongly associated with depression, including poor health status, chronic disease, and poverty."
 
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XsjadoBlaydette

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the least surprising revelations just keep unraveling.


article format for the (understandably) twitter averse


SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — New allegations were filed by several women against Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad.

According to court documents, the new accusations filed on Thursday involved a top leader from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes.

Click here to view the PDF file.

Tim Ballard, the founder and former leader of OUR foundation, faced civil suits filed by multiple women who had worked with him.


The women alleged that he had "manipulated" and coerced them into sexual acts as part of his trafficking rescue missions with Operation Underground Railroad.

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In an amended complaint filed, attorneys for the women stated:

“LDS Elder M. Russell Ballard and other authorities from the Mormon Church provided Mormon tithing records to OUR to help OUR target wealthy donors and wealthy Mormon Church Wards," court documents read.

The complaint further stated that Attorney General Sean Reyes had "intimidated the complainants."

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"Upon learning of these complaints, Attorney General Reyes would step in, and rather than investigate what OUR and Tim Ballard were doing, would intimidate the complainants," according to court documents.

Elder M. Russell Ballard is not related to Tim Ballard; however, he had at some point worked with and supported the efforts of OUR.

In September, the Church released a statement accusing Tim Ballard of exploiting his friendship with senior apostle Ballard, calling the former OUR leader's actions "morally unacceptable."

The Church did not respond to the allegations made in the newly filed court documents.

The Utah Attorney General’s Office released the following statement on Friday:

"AG Reyes categorically denies that he ever intimidated any witness or attempted in any way to interfere or keep witnesses from testifying or cooperating with an investigation by the Davis County Attorney or any other agency.

These allegations in paragraph 55 are false, defamatory per se and unethical as they are based on pure speculation and have no basis in fact.

The Davis County Attorney, himself, validated that there was no evidence to substantiate the allegation that the AG tampered with, harassed or intimidated any witnesses.

As to the remaining allegation in paragraph 55, the AGO would never open a case that the Davis County DA and FBI were already investigating over a two year span.

Since the time the FBI and Davis County Attorney closed their investigations with no charges being filed, no complainant has come forward to the AGO seeking a further criminal investigation, not even the civil complainants in this case.
 
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Gergar12

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Yes, but did you read it? While it notes the difference as being statistically significant, it also acknowledges that the difference is minor. It's literally a difference between a rate of 5.2% and a rate of 6.1%.

More to the point, it also made a point of saying that location was not a causative factor (which you seem to be implying is the takeaway), as evidenced by how controlling for characteristics known to be associated with depression caused the the difference in prevalence to disappear.

Per the paper itself: "Increased prevalence among rural persons did not appear to result from rural residence itself, however, since residence was not independently associated with depression once health and resource factors were held constant. Rather, people in rural areas were more likely to have characteristics that are strongly associated with depression, including poor health status, chronic disease, and poverty."
Yes, I did, unless you like nature, and hate diverse social encounters. Cities are better. Rural places don't have that many types of jobs, it's most likely farming, factory work, and maybe on occasion a headquarters of a single company. Plus hospitals are leaving them in droves.

The author shouldn't have omitted these. It's like saying well if systemic factors 1, 2, and 3 weren't here this place would be the good place. You are not getting Cleveland Clinic or Johns Hopkins-sized hospitals to go to the middle of nowhere.
 

dreng3

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I think a lot of the rural/suburban/urban debate boils down to a matter of expectation and perspective. I've experienced all three and I know people who've settled in all three, as well as people who hope to settle in either of the three. I'll admit that I live in a country where even the most rural residence will never be more than 30 minutes from an ER or more than 15 minutes from some sort of grocery store, so take this with a grain of salt.

The rural folks that I know makes the choice based on money and availability, and since travel for work is rarely more than 30 minutes it is acceptable. These people are also more independant and typically married.
As for the suburban folks those are also typically married, but they tend to enjoy easier acess to businesses and their places of work, but even so, socializing is fairly limited either in terms of scope or in terms of frequency.
The urban folks tend to be either single or child-free, and while they prefer work to be within biking or public transport distance the main feature that draws them to the urban lifestyle is the easy access to social events, I know of nobody living in our capital that doesn't attend at least one social event per week, whereas rural and suburban citizens, at most, do an event a month.
 

Eacaraxe

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Plus hospitals are leaving them in droves.
Rural hospitals aren't "leaving" shit. They're being Walmart'ed and bought out by major health systems, downsized or shuttered when they (predictably) can't meet arbitrary profit goals, and (best-case) replaced with urgent care centers. This is the exact case behind the rural PCP shortage, too: private practices can't compete, have to join health systems, and then have to deal with profit goals.

I think a lot of the rural/suburban/urban debate boils down to a matter of expectation and perspective. I've experienced all three and I know people who've settled in all three, as well as people who hope to settle in either of the three. I'll admit that I live in a country where even the most rural residence will never be more than 30 minutes from an ER or more than 15 minutes from some sort of grocery store, so take this with a grain of salt.
Doesn't even have to be rural. I live in the Louisville suburban sprawl on the Indiana side of the river, and the closest hospital is five minutes' drive under typical traffic conditions. Three of those are waiting at a godforsaken hellpit of a stoplight that's the bane of my existence, because whomever controls the timing on stoplights in this town has to be dumbest human being on the face of the planet. In fact, that proximity was the biggest deciding factor on where I live, because my mother was a disabled, homebound elder with multiple chronic conditions.

Notice that "was" there? Yeah, that proximity meant exactly fuck-all when she collapsed three months ago, because that hospital's health system consolidated services, and it no longer performs open-heart surgery on campus. While there would have been a reasonable chance of her surviving surgery, the complication of interfacility transport (and her chances of surviving it) made further intervention futile. Which meant I got to make the call to withdraw life support so she could die with family, instead of alone on a helicopter. Y'all thought I hated capitalism before, you ain't seen shit.
 
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XsjadoBlaydette

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following on from Tim Ballard update, been lucky to have found this channel who've unique critical insight from within wealthy Utah Mormon culture. Direct, intriguing sometimes like their desire for teaching the Mormon history oft slipped under the rug within some of the large high control groups going on there. but honestly...the Simpsons references are probably what hooked this lizard brain

 

BrawlMan

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No worries, nothing but good things and comments on this video. They go in to great depth about the episode.

 
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XsjadoBlaydette

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Gergar12

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No Al-Ghazali didn't cause the end of the 'Islamic Golden Era of Science and Knowledge'. It was the Mongols who people venerated on the internet. They fucking sweep in with their horse archers, murdered, and took all the smart people. That's it. But of course, Neil doesn't want you to know that because he thinks it will cause people to vote to divert funds to the military.

Which is also wrong, it's about balance. As a semi-general rule, we need proportional responses according to the problem. Sometimes however you just need to do sweeps, and arrests like with the Mexican drug cartels and other crime-infested countries in Central America.

What you don't do is get pissed off at losing face and murder everyone and do the exact opposite of your opponent's values in almost every way. In my country of China, we had the historical Song Dynasty who generally didn't know how to fight, but the economy was booming. But then everything changed when the Mongols attacked, and China had to suffer the Yuan Dynasty. Afterward, the next government depopulated much of the Steppes in modern-day Mongolia like the mad idiots that they were, and proceeded to destroy all their ships for no fucking reason, ended their era of knowledge and invention, and became a closed-off society.

Proving the point that you need both gold and arrows to survive in a hostile world.

But of course, since governments have an incentive to not teach you history, and analysis(because they are afraid of comparisons, and revolts) but instead their views on it we get people hating on intellectuals in China, and the US favoring STEM, and people gaslighting each other with get-rich-quick schemes of no this job/course/whatever will land you six figures when in reality supply and demand means that the oversupplied jobs will end up lowering wages anyway for said job.
 

Ag3ma

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Fascinatingly, the British Home Secretary Suella Braverman has decided the problem with the police is that they are too nice to left wing causes:

Not, however, the fact they've been letting people with far right links join and failing to take action with officers who are sexual attackers / domestic abusers.

For those not keeping abreast of British politics, the Home Secretary is frequently awful - seemingly one after another thinking their main job is to represent the most repressive, iron fist of the British state against its own citizens. In the last 10-15 years, it's been the a frantic race to the bottom with each one trying to outdo the last in the most punitive, vengeful, hate-raddled assault on crime, immigration, Europe, the poor, the law, police, Muslims, left-wingers, black people, or just about anyone and anything. I mean, it's kind of amazing to think that the Tories have taken the view that the Home Secretary's job is to wreck social cohesion.

The current, incompetent barely seems to want to let a single week go by without an incendiary and controversial comment which even her own party tends to disavow. Why she gets away with no-one is totally sure. As she's super-popular with a certain wing of the party, and the suspicion is that the PM is simply too weak within his own party to fire her. More latterly, people have started to suspect that she is deliberately trying to get fired from her job, because then she can start a leadership campaign. (As a general rule, Tories tend to punish perceived betrayers.)
 

Thaluikhain

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For those not keeping abreast of British politics, the Home Secretary is frequently awful - seemingly one after another thinking their main job is to represent the most repressive, iron fist of the British state against its own citizens. In the last 10-15 years, it's been the a frantic race to the bottom with each one trying to outdo the last in the most punitive, vengeful, hate-raddled assault on crime, immigration, Europe, the poor, the law, police, Muslims, left-wingers, black people, or just about anyone and anything. I mean, it's kind of amazing to think that the Tories have taken the view that the Home Secretary's job is to wreck social cohesion.
Wait, you mean when she was saying that being homeless is a lifestyle choice she was wrong? And that banning tents for homeless people is therefore a bad idea? Well, I never...
 

Ag3ma

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Wait, you mean when she was saying that being homeless is a lifestyle choice she was wrong? And that banning tents for homeless people is therefore a bad idea? Well, I never...
And don't forget that the homeless people cluttering up the streets with their tents are also foreign.

To be fair, in London, statistics bear that out. Although when you consider that about a quarter of the population of London are foreign nationals, it might be a lot less suprising that a large chunk of the homeless might also be.

And that's the Tories' real objection. They don't mind immigrants as long as they are rich people who'll donate shitloads of money to the Tory party to ensure that the British authorities don't look too hard at where their money came from and might be going.
 

Silvanus

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Fascinatingly, the British Home Secretary Suella Braverman has decided the problem with the police is that they are too nice to left wing causes
She may be trying to get kicked out of cabinet before the election.

If she hangs on, then she inevitably absorbs some of the blame for the catastrophic wipeout the Tories will probably face, and her career prospects are damaged. But if she throws red meat to the far-right wing of her party, and gets canned for it, then she creates a platform and an angry, motivated support base for a future leadership campaign.