Is the US a dystopia?

She blinds everybody with her super high beams,
She's a squirrel crushing, deer smacking, driving machine!
Canyonero!-oh woah, Canyonero! (Yah!)

I like how she shot one take with the gas mask on and another without, and then cut them together all willy-nilly

silly to ask i know, but... surely smoke-screens, "blinding" lights, pepper spray and electrification are not legal on US roads?

The existence of laws that prohibit owning or equipping a vehicle with such devices would be very unlikely, just because who would ever think to write a law so specific? But using such devices would presumably fall under laws against reckless endangerment, or other similar statutes, depending on the outcome of their use. If you cause an accident resulting in serious injury or death the exact cause won't matter as much as the culpability.

ain't no rule against a dog playin basketball

^has not heard of the Air Bud Accords apparently

I am sure there are no laws specifically prohibiting those things. But a creative prosecutor can get the driver using one of those stupid laws banning neon underglow lights that were passed in the 90s, when those were the public menace of the moment.

end times: Dolly Parton in the crosshairs of cancel culture

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/19/opinions/dolly-parton-conservative-liberal-centrism-hope/index.html

There's no way that little hole-and-corner dustup can 'cancel' Dolly Parton. She's up in the same Pantheon where Elvis lives on. (Yes, I know that Elvis gladly accepted a "Jr. FBI" credential from J. Edgar Hoover. This only proves his political naivety.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/06/19/louisiana-ten-commandments-schools/

Gov. Jeff Landry (R) signed legislation Wednesday requiring every public classroom in Louisiana to display the Ten Commandments, becoming the first state with such a law and inflaming tensions over the separation between church and state.

“This bill mandates the display of the Ten Commandments in every classroom — public elementary, secondary and post-education schools — in the state of Louisiana, because if you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses,” Landry said at a bill-signing ceremony.

well its MY idea of a dystopia anyway.

Landry might want to post them in his own office. There’s a little known commandment he will want to refresh his memory on: “thou shalt not kill”

Governor Landry now plans to authorize additional execution methods and start up executions after a 14-year pause in the state

“which was Moses” my dude has problems with relative pronouns, perhaps he should focus on that instead of imposing his christofascist vision on the citizenry

Gov. Jeff Landry (R) signed legislation Wednesday requiring every public classroom in Louisiana to display the Ten Commandments, becoming the first state with such a law and inflaming tensions over the separation between church and state.

“This bill mandates the display of the Ten Commandments in every classroom — public elementary, secondary and post-education schools — in the state of Louisiana, because if you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses,” Landry said at a bill-signing ceremony.

― scott seward

hammurabi was robbed

i’m not sure moses was really responsible for those laws, which is kind of the entire point of the ten commandments iirc

- related, to both hammurabi and the thread - i was walking my dog this morning and someone was smiling at her big and clearly wanted to pet her, so i walked over to let her get some adulation and spread the good dog vibes.

DOGS ARE SO SWEET! DON'T YOU LOVE THEM?!
aw, yes i
CAN YOU BELIEVE PEOPLE HURT THEIR DOGS?! CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?!
yeah that is really bad, i
WHO WOULD DO SUCH A THING? YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED IN NORTH COUNTY, RIGHT? THE 11-YEAR OLD BOY AND THE DOG?
yes (lying, trying to walk away now)
WHO WOULD DO THAT? THAT'S JUST SICK!!!!
yeah i can't believe
YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SHOULD DO TO HIM? EXACTLY WHAT HE DID TO THAT BOY AND THAT DOG!
mmhmmm
DISGUSTING!!!

times were simpler back when the code was posted nice and tall in the town square, nobody could read it, and everyone's eyes were ripped out

I walked my young spaniel this morning, he freaks out at any dogs he isn’t roommates with, and got caught in a dystopic Stalkker-esque no man’s land stalemate when two dog owners on opposite ends of the road stopped walking to watch me try to calm my dog down while he did his insane Fred Astaire on lsd impression or whatever.

i’m not sure moses was really responsible for those laws, which is kind of the entire point of the ten commandments iirc

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand)

that's the whole point, though, that's why landry calls him the "lawgiver", that's why it's a portion of mosaic law and not the code of hammurabi that he's mandating be in there

folks like him don't believe they're enforcing human law over a civil society made up of many different people of many different backgrounds and faiths. they believe they're responsible for enforcing the One True Divine Law as given to Moses by the One True God Himself, as interpreted by _them_, God's faithful servants. it's that law that says that guys who get it in the bussy must be put to death (pretty sure those are God's exact words). it's that law that says that AMABs who dress femme must be put to death. now, that belief is a gross distortion of mosaic law, but that's what they _believe_. that belief is what makes them categorically unsuited to hold civil authority. but they do, and hey presto, dystopian theocracy!

still my fave pre-christ law:

"If a man is accused of sorcery, he must undergo ordeal by water; if he is proven innocent, his accuser must pay 3 shekels."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu

seems fair!

3 shekels went a long way back then too. hell, a single shekel

on the other hand if somebody had a lot of shekels well... you wouldn't want to get on his bad side.

there's a particular Cradle of Filth shirt that I would love to cover up the commandments with

Louisiana schools have routinely tried to flout the law - this happened in 2014, but never made it to SCOTUS (though that SCOTUS was further left than this one obv): https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/03/14/buddhist-student-louisiana-settlement/6440001/

https://i.imgur.com/eU6mshE.png

if i had the gift and curse of a photographic memory, i would file this away so that if for some reason in the future a dude was making a bold claim that relied on the macarthur study bible, i could say "i hate to be the guy to break it to you, but there's no reason for you to be confident about anything you read in the macarthur study bible"

honestly, imo wrongful accusation of sorcery should be more like 5 or 6 shekels

well it would be now, these days, in this economy

yeah, thanks Biden!

Ordeal By Water is the name of my xtian metalcore band

just in case other people are also wondering what exactly the ordeal by water is:

"The Code of Hammurabi dictated that, if a man was accused of a matter by another, the accused was to leap into a river. If the accused man survived this ordeal, the accused was to be acquitted."

this is a good wikipedia page by the way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_ordeal

I mean:

By turf
An Icelandic ordeal tradition involves the accused walking under a piece of turf. If the turf falls on the accused's head, the accused person is pronounced guilty.

and also:

The ordeal of the cross was apparently introduced in the Early Middle Ages in an attempt to discourage judicial duels among Germanic peoples. As with judicial duels, and unlike most other ordeals, the accuser had to undergo the ordeal together with the accused. They stood on either side of a cross and stretched out their hands horizontally. The first one to lower their arms lost.

sorry, meant to put this in the "Is Europe in the Middle Ages a dystopia?" thread

I'm in a Zoom meeting for work and the speaker just said that starting in 2020, more people in the US turned 65 each year than turned 18, and that's going to continue at least through the late 2030s and possibly into the mid-2040s.

The hawk tuah video getting turned into the world’s ugliest/most horrifying merch by the worst Barstool wannabes within a week feels dystopian.

I don’t think this story will surprise anyone really, but it felt like it belonged here.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/06/23/rural-america-shrinking-population-pennsylvania/#:~:text=Jim%20Decker%2C%20chairman%20of%20the,age%20adult%20population%2C%20by%202050.

its like japan. lets all buy a town!

As the presidential election approaches, many residents in this deeply Republican town say they view Trump as having a better vision for salvaging rural America, even though Biden has steered billions of dollars to initiatives that support rural America.

the phrase "buried the lede" comes to mind

but a lot of them don't like trump either! so, uh...

i've said it before and i'll say it again: the combo of people not being able to afford to sell their houses and move to florida and also people living forever now has helped lead to this. no influx of young people to keep a town alive. where i live there are lots and lots of people 70+ not going anywhere and about 3 houses for sale.

and the boomers haven't even begun to live forever. its just going to get worse. and anyone with any kind of comfort is not going to be moving anywhere in coming years cuzza climapalooza. i really want New England to start beefing up its borders. start checking passports when people drive to Mass. if you have a Trump sticker we can't allow your climate-fleeing ass. sorry. nothing personal. no, wait, its personal.

i don't want to be cruel. my ex-wife's grandfather... i met him once. was married to his wife for 50 years. they were so sweet. they loved each other so much. they owned a house in west virginia and lived there and it was literally... their backyard had mostly eroded from the river. a couple more decades and that house will be in the river.

i went to his funeral. he was, i don't know. a lutheran, or something. the minister was this young guy, had an earring, looked, if you don't mind my saying so, kinda queer-coded. you know, queer people can be ministers in the lutheran church, certain varieties of it, even in rural west virginia i guess. and this minister, he visited my ex-wife's grandfather a lot. he was a good, caring person, and he talked about my ex-wife's grandfather, how he felt abandoned. not just abandoned by the people around him. abandoned by god. and he said, he said that god hadn't abandoned him, and me personally... even though i was a christian at the time, episcopalian, i felt the minister being honest about my ex-wife's grandfather, how he felt, things he didn't say to other people, that was amazing of him. but i didn't believe him when he said that god hadn't abandoned this man.

and he deserved better. he deserved better. and i wish, you know, i had any opportunity, any ability to be part of an organization with the power and the will to give him better. but i didn't and i don't.

maybe that's a dystopia. i kinda feel like that's the way the world's always been. some people get their faces stomped on, get their dreams betrayed. and he was one of them.

i got a bit of a melancholic temperament. i'll admit to that.

why does this feel like doom to me?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/22/science/pets-health-behavior.html

Roughly two-thirds of American homes have at least one pet, up from 56 percent in 1988, according to the American Pet Products Association, and Americans spent $136.8 billion on their pets in 2022, up from $123.6 billion in 2021. An estimated 91 million households in Europe own at least one pet, an increase of 20 million over the past decade. The pet population in India hit 31 million in 2021, up from 10 million in 2011.

One of the fastest growing market segments is the so-called pet confinement sector, which includes crates and indoor fencing, as well as head harnesses and electronic collars. “The level of constraint that dogs face is profound,” Dr. Pierce said.

“Owners don’t want dogs to act like dogs.” Dr. Serpell said.

The confinement and isolation, in turn, have bred an increase in animal separation anxiety and aggression, Dr. Serpell said. Roughly 60 percent of cats and dogs are now overweight or obese. And due in part to the burden and expense of modern pet ownership — veterinary fees, pet sitters, boarding costs — more people are abandoning animals to animal shelters, leading to higher rates of euthanasia. In 2023, more than 359,000 dogs were euthanized at shelters, a five-year high, according to Shelter Animals Count, an animal advocacy group.

“We’re at an odd moment of obsession with pets,” Dr. Pierce said. “There are too many of them and we keep them too intensively. It’s not good for us and it’s not good for them.”

i can't help but think about how much food that is. for pets. how much grain. corn. meat.

SORRY DOG LOVERS NOT TRYING TO BUM YOU OUT BUT...

Children are straight-up unaffordable, so...

yeah it makes sense i guess.

one of the many things about the US that is wild to me is how many dogs basically never get to run around, even when their owners live essentially in the countryside. london is one of the most densely peopled, populous cities on earth and my dog gets to run and play off his lead every day!

just seems like at this point in time and history people spending more and more money on pets...

my sister-in-law and brother-in-law are totally into the obsessive dog thing. i can't really relate. i liked when you could just open the front door and out they went. seeya later dog. come back when hungry.

yeah i don't know when it stopped here. the dogs outside thing. and every cat used to be outside.

Pet kidney transplant, $25,000:

https://wapo.st/4cwCbIO