“An hero” is an old 4chan meme that is referring to a child who killed himself. There was an old MySpace memorial page made for a kid who shot himself. Someone posted a long comment that started with “He was such an hero to take it all away.” It continued to call him “an hero” several more times.

Instead of telling someone “kys” when they made a bad post, you’d tell them to become an hero.

Even the statement he released at the time sounded more like “I’m sorry he said it out loud, please don’t send neo-cons to shoot up our concerts.”

I’ve personally heard a few people say that’s exactly their plan. It’s basically “I’m a citizen but I’m brown so I’m fucked either way. I might as well make em work for it since the end result for me will be the same regardless. If I’m gonna get taken down, I might as well make it worth it. Why wait to die in an El Salvadorian prison, when I can go out where it’ll at least make some headlines?”

Again, I have heard several people say things like this individually. I fully believe it’ll happen eventually, as soon as they try to stop the wrong person.

A really divisive minigame, to be sure. My wife and I both hated blitzball, (I save-scummed to get Wakka’s ultimates ASAP, then never touched it again) but my buddy probably sank 150 hours into it during his first play through.

Yeah, Chao Garden 2 Battle had some really amazing minigames. One of the best was the ability to play as Sonic or Shadow, and experience an entire plotline. Lots of players missed it almost entirely, because they were just too wrapped up in the main Chao Garden game to bother with the Light/Dark story stuff.

fairly passive in their expression

It was still harassing a student all the same.

So wristbands are okay… Because they’re just clothes, not marching in circles and chanting? How about if it’s t-shirts instead? After all, both are just clothes. How about if those shirts or wristbands have wording that calls the student a slur?

The student will undoubtedly find any kind of protest clothing offensive because they’re protesting her existence… So where do we draw the line on parents’ right to offend a student? Is it just slurs that aren’t allowed? Who decides what is and isn’t offensive? It obviously can’t be the person doing the protesting, because their entire goal is to offend the targeted student.

How about if it’s signs instead of clothing? The student will likely find any kind of signs demeaning, but are they okay because they’re just passively holding them? How about if those signs call the student a slur?

The issue with allowing protest (especially one that targets a specific student) is that someone has to decide where to draw the line. And every individual will have a different line in the sand… So if our goal is to protect the student, (and again, this protest is 100% without a doubt harassing a student) they need to go by the lowest threshold, not the highest.

Public schools aren’t private institutions though, which is where things get so convoluted. The school is a government funded organization, and therefore has to do its best to avoid infringing on constitutional rights. However, courts have repeatedly ruled that schools have a higher obligation to protect the students in their care, even if it means restricting first amendment rights. So schools have a fairly high degree of discretion on what they do and don’t allow.

A more mild example is dress codes. Students could easily argue that a dress code violates their freedom of speech, as the way they dress is a form of speech. However, courts have ruled that dress codes are allowed, because the school has a duty to maintain an environment that is conducive to learning; even if it means restricting their students’ freedom of expression.

Reductionist. There are valid concerns for why you’d want and expect proper spelling. Hell, you could even argue that not using proper spelling is ableist towards people who use screen readers or are ESL.

Yeah, I was going to mention that modern gun control was started by republicans because they were scared of armed black protestors. But that felt a little too tangential for a single comment.

Here’s a reminder that the Black Panthers started because people realized that peaceful unarmed protests were quickly met with police violence… But peaceful heavily armed protests had cops politely watching from across the street. Turns out, cops are a lot less likely to blindly fire into crowds when the crowds are capable of returning fire with overwhelming force.

Even MLK Jr said that peaceful protest only gets you so far; Disrupting highway traffic is fine for bringing awareness to your plight, but at a certain point the lawmakers and dug-in oligarchs need to be forced to change.

Not if the charges are brought by separate entities. State prosecutors are entirely separate from federal prosecutors, which means you can be hit with charges from both.

I would rather not do it and hope nobody else does it.

While this is certainly something to dream about, I live in the Bible Belt. If I hadn’t taken it, there would have been a hundred others lining up to do it.

“Oh, if I don’t use my electrical engineering skills to bomb children for a MIC company then someone else will do it, nah bitch I’ll work in a different field”

It’s a bit of a stretch to equate it with making bombs. And if you have the flexibility to work in a different field, then you’re already speaking from a position of privilege. Not everyone has that luxury. Some people have niche skills or have small tight-knit job fields, where burning a bridge with one company could cascade to other companies as word spreads.

Edit: although I do have to say you have to consider all aspects. If you’re only making content that changes gender to sex and you gotta feed yourself, then it’s a big jump from killing people for a war company for fun.

There are absolutely arguments for why we should require engineers to take engineering ethics classes. Hell, even city zoning departments can be abused by racists. But it all eventually boils down to a cost/benefit analysis for the person considering the job; Ethics studies may cause an engineer to weigh the moral “cost” more heavily on certain topics. But it’s still essentially just a mental calculation when deciding whether or not to take the job.

At what point do the benefits of the job begin to outweigh the moral costs? When you’re going to go hungry if you turned down the work and burned bridges? When your family is going to go hungry? Sure, the high horse may be attractive when it’s just you… But nobody wants to see their child go hungry because they refused work. Eventually, people will compromise on their morals in order to put food on the table. And effecting change is a lot easier to do when you have a good job and can afford to donate (either your time or money) to causes you believe in. Homeless people aren’t exactly known for their political weight.

So I used to do a lot of freelance, and encountered similar situations a few times.

The most blatant example that comes to mind was a charity run. I had the client reach out for AV gear and crew for a charity run. They needed some projectors and a small stage (and all of the AV gear+crew to go with the stage) for a charity event; They were going to be at a college campus, with joggers making laps on a 1/2 mile loop. For every lap, sponsors would donate to charity.

The projectors and stage were to give the MC a place to be, and to keep the audience entertained while the joggers ran. They’d have a band playing, and cap the event off with a movie screening. Sounds fun. I quoted the job like any other gig. The perceptive reader may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned what kind of charity they were raising funds for. That’s because I didn’t think to ask ahead of time. I got there, and discovered it was a pro-life fundraiser. Fucking yikes.

But I still did the job. I needed the money, and didn’t want to burn future bridges with other companies that were involved. I simply made a mental note to ask more questions the next time a charity event came across my desk. But the big takeaway is that even if I didn’t do it, someone else inevitably would have. The event still would have happened, and the charity money still would have been raised. At least with me doing it, I was able to avoid adding another enthusiastic voice (whoever would have taken my spot) to the echo chamber. Even if I had climbed up on stage to interrupt the event, it wouldn’t have changed any minds. Afterwards, I donated what I could afford to Planned Parenthood and moved on.

For the confused: The SCOTUS ruled that Jackson wasn’t allowed to force the native Americans off of their lands and onto reservations. Jackson responded with something along the lines of “they’ve made their decision, now let’s see them enforce it.” He pushed ahead with the reservations anyways, which led to the Trail of Tears.

Until fairly recently, it has been the most direct “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” between a president and the SCOTUS. It led to Jackson’s opponents sarcastically dubbing him “King Andrew”.

The issue with baby formula is that it’s pretty strictly regulated by the FDA, and getting approval is a lengthy (and extremely expensive) process. So there are only a few companies that hold a functional near-monopoly on the production, because they’re the only ones who had the resources to go through the process.

And to be clear, I’m not advocating for looser regulation on formula. Safety regulations are writ in blood. But local formula production would essentially require massive subsidies and fast-tracking to offset the costs and testing associated with starting production.

The Gatcha system is why I never finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2. The first game was phenomenal… But the second game required a gatcha system to unlock new party members. There were even quests that were locked behind certain ultra-rare party members. It’s an entirely single player game.

Does that really count? As far as I know, the golden keys mechanic was just a way to get some good gear. It wasn’t exclusive gear, and you could get it just by playing the game.

I mean, this seems like a reasonable restriction. Being able to freely create realistic images of real people is a dangerous thing if used maliciously.

Could even put it on a USB drive, so killing it is as simple as yanking the USB. Hell, if the feds come sniffing, you could just toss that bitch in the microwave.

I mean, Japan depends on the US for defense too. Their constitution only allows them to maintain a small “Self Defense Force” and everything else is run by the US. It was one of the largest and most impactful changes to Japan’s constitution in the wake of World War 2. Basically, the Allies went “you fucked around in Korea and China so hard that we need to prevent you from ever building an invasion force again in the future.”

That’s why Trump threatening to pull the military out of Japan was a monumentally stupid move. The US military is already wildly unpopular in Japan; The average Japanese person’s experience with them is “US military dudebro gets drunk off base, sexually harasses a Japanese girl on the street, drives drunk, causes damage/injury in a crash, and flees back to the base to avoid punishment.” Even if the solider is penalized by the military for it, Japanese people still see it as avoiding punishment… Because Japanese punishments tend to be much much harsher than US punishments. So since he’s not being punished by Japanese authorities, he’s getting off too easy.

Trump made the threat at a time when conservative (bordering on jingoistic) rhetoric is at an all time high in Japan. Japan has always been an extremely conservative country, but there has been a new wave of nationalism and xenophobia recently. So when Trump made the threat, there was a non-zero chance that the average Japanese person would go “fucking good, we deserve to have our own military again anyways.”

It’s also why people were talking about China, Korea, and Japan banding together to oppose the tariffs was such a big deal. The three countries hate each other due to blood grudges that go back centuries… And yet Trump was able to get them to agree on something.