I don’t know the justification, but I imagine the why is that some wealthy construction company owner asked for it because providing shade/water/whatever would reduce profits, and the bribe costed marginally less than the protecting their employees.

Oh man, we’re trying! Fortunately the governor’s “school choice” voucher plans have stalled in the legislature for now.

May or may not be relevant. Statistically, people with illnesses like schizophrenia are no more likely to commit violent crimes than the general population (but are more likely to be victims of violent crimes). There are documented cases of people with schizophrenia killing or commiting other violent acts in response to delusions, but it’s usually in an act that they perceive as self-defense rather than being driven by malice or desire to harm. I.e., it’s generally more like “I killed my dad because he was going to kill me” rather than “I went out and murdered some random women because no women like me.”

I’m not optimistic about her winning - this is Tennessee, after all. Outside of Nashville and Memphis, it’s a sea of painful ignorance and R voters. Even relatively purple places like Knoxville can’t seem to elect anyone other than R’s who are hellbent on destroying civil society for no particular reason - the pro-wrestler mayor dismantled the county health department in the middle of the pandemic, for crying out loud. And people applauded him for it!

I’ll donate to her campaign and cross my fingers, but I’m not holding my breath.

Depends on district policy and state/local law. E.g., in my kid’s district a parent can request for their child to attend any school of the same grade within the district if space is available, but parents have to provide transportation if it’s not the zoned school. For the district where we lived previously, a family moving out of zone could request that students be allowed to keep attending their current school through the end of the year.

Per the article, both state and federal law allows these kids to continue attending the same school in such situations. It’s the school’s fault because, even if their district has no such policies, the clear and obvious course would be to seek an exception until policy could be addressed to align with the law. Instead, they simply refused to meet with the mother.

Eh? I see propaganda accusations all the time, with widely varying degrees of veracity or baselessness, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen the left accused specifically of hate speech. I will admit that I don’t tend to frequent right-leaning opinion outlets, and so may be simply ignorant, but can you provide an example?

Yeah, they’d take the plane straight back to a gate and pass you off to EMS. And then leave without you.

The people who are that severely damaged by drugs* are a small percentage. I’ve only seen a handful who got that bad because of drugs (I’m a professional in the field). Most addicts can benefit from appropriate care and could become functional members of society again if they had proper support - which our system grossly lacks.

*Most cases of persistent psychosis aren’t drug-induced; most of those throwing feces have psychosis from some other cause, which can also be treated with varying levels of success. Drug-induced psychosis is most of the time transient, and subsides as the drug wears off.

What are your thoughts on maintenance therapy and medical detox, i.e. with Suboxone?

Something something Life Guns, liberty, and the pursuit of (trigger) happiness?

I think they’re alluding to the fact that domestic abusers are grossly overrepresented among cops? And thereby suggesting that such a law, if feasible to enforce against all such offenders, would amount to disarming cops wholesale.

Starsiege: Tribes (and Tribes 2)

Knights of the Old Republic (why not more mentions of this?!)

And Valheim or Minecraft. Both have offered countless hours of entertainment in the company of friends and family.

Thanks for sharing this, mildly surprised I hadn’t heard of it! I’m glad that someone has picked up the Starsiege/Tribes intellectual property, whatever form it’s taking.

There’s Midair 2 Community Edition, or something like that, which you can find on Steam. Join their Discord channel and you can probably get a playtest key. It looks like it’s just going to be little more than the LT mod with cosmetic micro transactions though, which are the opposite of anything I liked about Tribes… But jet packs and skiing are there, so I’ll play it at least a little.

I hear what you’re saying, and were it a college or professional team I probably would agree, but for high schoolers that’s harder. At that age, their very identity and self-worth are dependent on peer acceptance. Not to mention any shy kids who might have felt powerless to speak up. We also don’t know that they didn’t try; one or some may have tried and been shut down by peer pressure. My guess is one idiot thought it’d be funny, convinced a few more, and pressured the rest. “It’s just a prank bro” or somesuch.

That the coach didn’t put an immediate stop to it is definitely an issue.

Per the article, the workers didn’t know. The employers didn’t tell them of the dangers or provide the necessary safety training/equipment. From the article:

“Dust was everywhere, he said, and he was given only a dust mask — one he said was inadequate for the job — to protect himself. Sometimes he brought a hose and tried to attach it to the machine to reduce dust, but there were no machines dispensing water as they were cutting, he said.”

“Segura Meza had never heard of silicosis before he was diagnosed.”

Women and minorities both often aren’t taken seriously by patriarchal medical providers. Fortunately, this is being addressed more and more in their education, but it’ll take time.

In the US, training for nurse practitioners has incorporated bias awareness and patient-centered care concepts for much longer, so you might bear that in mind when seeking care. Also, for women specifically: you can go to a nurse midwife for general women’s health services, not just pregnancy care!

Eh… I see where you’re coming from, and I’m generally against homeschooling as well. For various reasons, I wish I hadn’t been and wouldn’t do so for my child.

That said, I’m inclined to disagree. It only promotes what the parents put into it - which, yes, often is a lot of religion, but it isn’t intrinsic to the practice. The religious component I suspect is where you get the stunting of open-mindedness and critical thinking ideas, but fwiw I and several of my siblings have since left the faith for atheism, and even those who still participate in religion are mostly rather progressive. I do fully recognize that I and my siblings are probably the exception in this regard, so in those aspects I think your opinion generally represents the actual outcomes of homeschooling as it exists in the US, and probably is not that unpopular outside of homeschooling circles - but I would reiterate that I don’t think it’s intrinsic to homeschooling; rather, I think it’s a result of who in the US tends to choose to homeschool.

As for the idea that it stunts communal empathy, I’m a little bit baffled. I work in a mental hospital, one of my sisters has spent a year volunteering at orphanages in Ghana, one of my cousins (who was also homeschooled) runs a rural mission hospital in Bangladesh, etc… My observation is that most homeschooling families are rather pro-social and fully embrace the concepts of community and communal support of one another (even if they have eaten the socialism-is-bad propaganda; their rationale then is just that charity should come from the community itself rather than being subject to government mandate and bureaucratic inefficiency), so I’m curious what gives you that idea.

As someone who was homeschooled and now holds a master’s degree, I will proudly own the ‘weirdo’ title and make no claims to normalcy. And I suspect most of my 7 siblings would do the same.

But saying we’re all ‘likely retarded’ is a bit peculiar to me. Most homeschoolers I’ve met (which I suspect is more than most folks, being from inside the community) come from high-functioning or highly-religious families, with very few notably ‘retarded’. How many homeschool kids have you actually known?

Most of the followers can’t see past “we’re going to save America from the evil Democrats”. It’s not as if Fox News or OAN put the fascist behaviors on display. They genuinely believe Trump when he says the Democrats are persecuting him, rather than that the justice system is prosecuting him for crimes - his only “crime” was trying to save America from those evil commie Democrats, after all. They take all the BS at face value because … tribalism and fear or something?

The only people in the Republican party who actually understand what’s happening are the rich and the powerful. Everyone else, the voters especially, are just useful idiots.

Most of them are never going to be able to afford a house.