quoththeraven

I am very much over the idea that we must be "respectful" toward the recently deceased. Whether Bryant redeemed himself by his subsequent conduct is up to each individual to decide, but I still remember the hell he and his lawyers put her through only in the end, after settling a civil case (which if she was the lying slut his side portrayed her as before she withdrew her cooperation with the prosecution he would have pursued to trial), to admit that what he perceived as consensual she did not - something I was unaware of until his death.

Which really only tells us that flu already factors into our risk-taking (or more accurately feels familiar and inevitable, so no one panics about it). That's a good opportunity to point out that there's a certain literal "yellow fever" aspect to this.

I don't have firsthand knowledge on this particular subject, but generalizations about Asians in any group that is overwhelmingly non-Asian are usually pretty far from the mark.

Also, unless the Trump NLRB has changed this, employers forbidding employees from discussing or exchanging salary information is an unfair labor practice. So any employee handbook or policy forbidding this is an attempt at intimidating employees into not exercising their rights.

I've seen bits and pieces of other performances, but this was the one I cared about because of BTS, the song itself, Lil Nas X and the controversy about whether "Old Town Road" is a country song or not, and more broadly about racism within Western pop music and institutions like Billboard and the Grammys. [MEDIA=twitter]1221632618023784448[/MEDIA] Lil Nas X is a glittery gay cowboy (as in "in real life he identifies as gay")! I didn't realize that goofy looking guy in the Lil Nas X/Billy Ray Cyrus music video is Diplo! (Here he's playing banjo.) And RM isn't rapping about homies, but rather homis, Korean agricultural implements that are the latest thing for weeding. (The pun/wordplay is clearly intentional.)

I don't know how helicopter rides compare to cars but the comparison between them and commercial airliners is, shall we say, unfavorable to helicopters. We all grieve in different ways. For some of us that may involve wondering about the safety of helicopters. This is surely not the first time you've heard it questioned.

Very peripherally: I have chronic pain anyway to begin with and at one point had acute mouth/tooth/gum pain to the point where eating made me wince. Briefly thought I might need another root canal but x-rays didn't look any different than before. Turned out to be a side effect of sinus inflammation and the only thing that reduced the pain (as opposed to making me loopy enough not to care for an hour or two) was massive amounts of ibuprofen (three 200 mg tablets at a time 4x a day - if I only took it three times a day, I would wake up in pain at 3am and not be able to go back to sleep). Acetaminophen with codeine did nothing to control the pain. Neither did vicodin.

So sex tourism to have sex with minors is illegal. What if a US citizen travels to a country (say one they or their parents emigrated from) to marry someone who is underage and then returns with them to the US? I don't know the ins and outs of recognizing marriages that couldn't be contracted here, but let's say for the sake of argument this marriage could be contracted in the US spouse's state of residence if the underage spouse had parental consent. Can that be spun as sex tourism anyway? (My guess is no, because sex between people who are validly married is exempt from age of consent laws.) Note this is that way because sex tourism is considered a subset of trafficking. (The child porn aspect is separate - that is essentially an extraterritorial crime anyway considering the content people are prosecuted for viewing and downloading could be generated anywhere.)

I mentioned the tax code. But the criminal parts of the tax code still require a US nexus.

Fingers crossed.

An independent beagle. (Ignore the conflicting pronouns.) [MEDIA=twitter]1217914421793525760[/MEDIA] Why yes, beagles are my favorite dog breed.

Illegal how, under what law? I wasn't a criminal lawyer, but US law (other than taxation) is generally not extraterritorial. And whose definition of minor? The US doesn't have a completely uniform definition itself. This would be up there with South Korean law against gambling, which applies to South Koreans anywhere in the world (even though there are gambling facilities in South Korea, which only foreigners can enter), and drug usage (at least as to marijuana), which also applies globally. It also suggests that it's legally impossible to reunite people who have married in a country with lower age requirements until both are no longer minors. It's okay in the US to marry someone who's a minor under some circumstances; does going abroad change this? There are so many circumstances that this makes iffy that I find it difficult to believe this is actually the case.

But that only applies to the website. It has absolutely zilch to do with human interaction, which is governed by state age of consent laws. Nevertheless, when it comes to people in positions of authority, like a college president, even more discretion is necessary; otherwise parents are left wondering if the person is apt to hit on a student. Irrespective of the student's age, that's inappropriate, despite the assholes (some of them women!) who argue that bans on faculty dating undergraduate students (aka bans on faculty fucking students) somehow represent untoward repression of sexual expression or something.

Cats, not humans, originated parkour. [MEDIA=twitter]1214588894584422400[/MEDIA]

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Big cat parenting [MEDIA=twitter]1215287109835079680[/MEDIA]

As someone who once took the NYC subway from Grand Central to mid-Bronx late at night in the 70s, when the South Bronx was widely considered akin to the Wild West, I probably shouldn't even be answering this question. My biggest gripe with the New York subway is accessibility - there are way too few elevators and way too much reliance on stairs. (This may also be true in Boston.) Even the Newark (NJ) light rail has stations with noticeable urine smell in the stairways.

Just to update: Parasite has six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture: Best International Film (considered a shoo-in even though this is the first movie in Korea's 101 year film history to even be nominated) Best Picture Best Director (Bong Joon Ho) Best Original Screenplay Best Editing Best Production Design Notably, like other films before it, Parasite didn't receive any acting nominations even though, presumably, any film worthy of a Best Picture nomination (or even a Best Director nomination) includes excellent acting. To quote Vulture/NY Magazine writer E. Alex Jung: I also want to add a word about Parasite, which got six nominations including Best Picture and Best Director. Historic! A first for a Korean film! Still, it doesn’t feel like it quite matches the scope of the achievement. No nomination for score. Nothing for cinematography, despite this being quite possibly the most cinematique film of the year. And very pointedly, there were no nominations for any of the actors in the movie — not Song Kang Ho as the tortured father or the dry comedy of Park So-dam or Lee Jeong-eun as the housekeeper who’s really the hinge for the crucial turn midway through the film. It’s boring to talk about, but it must be said that there’s a persistent prejudice against Asian actors within Hollywood: It’s why studio executives say they can’t green-light a film with an Asian lead, and why an Asian actor has never been nominated in Best Actor or Best Actress. (See: Awkwafina, 2020.) Even Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which earned a raft of nominations in 2001, didn’t garner any for the incredible performances by Zhang Ziyi or Michelle Yeoh. There’s an old prejudice at work here that sees Asian people as technical workers — hence the praise for Bong Joon Ho — and refuses to see us as fully human. https://www.vulture.com/amp/2020/01/oscar-nominations-2020-still-so-white.html?__twitter_impression=true And, as Bong Joon Ho has said - to E. Alex Jung - "The Oscars are not an international film festival. They're very local." [MEDIA=twitter]1216716375600832514[/MEDIA]

Instead of the Flying Nun, it's the Flying Beagle: [MEDIA=twitter]1216102481601667073[/MEDIA]

I saw The Host this afternoon. Lots of fun but also includes social commentary, especially about government coverups and dishonesty; since the "virus" started with dangerous chemicals from a US military morgue dumped into sinks leading to the Han River, inevitably some of the fingers point to the US. The ending isn't completely bleak but it's not happy happy either. Nor is it as smooth or accomplished as Parasite. Still not entirely sure what the creature/monster that causes all the problems is, or is supposed to be. It seems to be a combination of different critters, both real and make-believe.

It was. It was a sting. And no, I don't think there's more to the story. Anything immigration-related under Trump is, in fact, this awful.

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A weiner dog with a gift: [MEDIA=twitter]1214894521596686342[/MEDIA]

Hippo birdies to ewe! I've been dealing with a messed up MCL for the past two months that I don't remember injuring (went to bed fine, woke up with a lot of pain), so I'm glad your knee injury wasn't bad! As I recall, the last time I tripped and fell on my knee, as opposed to twisting it, turned out similar to your situation. I just had bruises for a week or so.