The Off Topic Topic

[Syt]

I think I will have enough apples this autumn. You cannot see attachments on this board.

There's this great Danish movie about apples.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418455/

[garbon]

I'm in NYC area for the week. I've heard more spanish and french on the street than  english.

It's also very dirty. People complain all the time about Montreal's metro. They should come here, get some perspective.

WTC memorial was very moving.

If you watch The Warriors (1979), you'll see that apart from graffiti on carriages, many of the stations look pretty much the same.

[Grey Fox]

Went to a beach on Staten Island. It was cleanish. Sand was hot like it is in Cuba.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

It's the Jewel of the Atlantic!

[HVC]

Huh, having never considered it, seems obvious now that German and Islamic cleric would work great together

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C9osb6Ah8Gc/?igsh=MXNkZTlyN2E4cGRoYQ==

[crazy canuck]

One of my sons is using Duolingo to brush up on his French before going to France for an extended stay, so we decided to get the family package.

One week into it now, and it's enjoyable.  One pleasant surprise is I know more than I thought I did.

[Josquius]

Though some of its material is questionable.
A cinema isn't a cinema, it's a movie theatre.
And lots of stuff about asking if people take cheques like... What is this 1980?
And the tyranny of dinner as the evening meal. Northerners and Romands unite!

It's model too. I've used the paid version when it occasionally throws it up. Skipping ads is nice of course. But 5 lives then you practice more sort of makes sense. Infinite lives to bluff through... Good for rankings (I won the diamond league once) but not actual learning.

[Tamas]

The level of bullshit women still have to deal with even in the first world can be quite incredible.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/17/bystanders-save-women-sexual-assault-violence

This lady was on a London train, pregnant with a couple of weeks to her due date when she had to get away from a piss-drunk guy harassing and touching her. The guy's friends followed her to threaten her for making a scene and it took fellow passengers to save her and to help bring it to court.

Where the magistrste ruled:

The magistrate ruled "not guilty". In summing up how he reached his decision, he explained that to be found guilty would have a huge impact on the man's life, and while he was sure I intended to be reliable, there was a very real possibility that as I was pregnant I was in a heightened emotional state and could not be relied on to give an accurate account

[Sheilbh]

Plus the report on the 50% increase of assaults on women on public transport in the last year or two (and again consideration of women only carriages).

The Guardian is also tracking and so far this year 50 women killed by men.

Edit: Incidentally this is where I suddenly become more right wing than Attila the Hun because I do think (as evidenced by the rioter with 170 previous offences) that sentencing has gone wrong in some way. Another story - not sex-based violence - but of a 16 year old who attacked a 15 year old boy with a golf club, which smashed his victims skull, left him unable to speak and was so violent it broke the golf club. He was not imprisoned because he was under 25 and sentencing guidelines basically say don't jail young people. Which may be right in general - but I feel like leaving another teenager dumb for the rest of their life because of a violent assault deserves a serious punishment.

[Tamas]

Yeah.

There must be another way than women-only carriages though. That feels very regressive socially. I especially wouldn't like the "men can't be expected to control themselves" aspect of it. They can and they should be made to.

Not to mention we would just export americas public toilet gender scare culture war BS to those carriages.

[Sheilbh]

I think something's going wrong in sentencing.

[Josquius]

Women only carriages are a solution within the capabilities of the train operators.
Fixing the root of the problem should of course be the priority but I have no issue with women only carriages if they're judged necessary - though this should be taken as a big kick for the relevant authorities to do something.

[Razgovory]

I read this article about people protesting the US-RoK wargames in Korea.  Not actual Koreans, mostly Korean-Americans, 2nd or 3rd generation.  I don't know where the article is, I found it on the MSN thing, but that's not important.  I want to share with you one of the signs these people were holding up.


Fortunately, there weren't very many of them.

[Valmy]

US out of the US? Haven't seen that one before.

[HVC]

Pfft, how do you not know that Americans are evil colonial oppressors of Hawaii and its native people.