The probable cause statement says the investigating officer contacted the Stillwater, Oklahoma, police department about a “past rape charge” against Sparkman and obtained information that case involved a 10-year-old victim.

Fuck it. Burn it all down. I think dolphins are next in line. Let’s hope they do better than we did.

EDIT - Goddammit I forgot dolphins are extremely rapey too.

Yeah, this is a big problem with the early stages of practicing medicine in the UK. Once you make it past about the 7 year mark, it’s all well and good, but those early years, you’re kind of on par with retail workers, which can be demoralizing. A big mistake the UK made was when the pandemic hit, they didn’t raise wages for doctors to compensate for the absolute chaos. BMA should have gone to war over that the way the French did over retirement age.

Things definitely could be better, especially for young doctors, but I would still rather be a doctor in the UK than in the US. No amount of money is worth that kind of burnout, and I don’t want to be treated by any doctor who thinks it is.

Check out this YouTube channel from Dan McClellan. He’s a biblical scholar with a Bachelor’s (BA) in Near East Studies from Brigham Young University with a minor in Classical Greek, a Master’s (MSt) in Jewish Studies from Oxford, a Master’s (MA) in Biblical Studies from Trinity Western University, and a Doctorate (PhD) in Theology and Religion from the University of Exeter.

He’s gotten kind of popular over the past couple of years debunking religious nuts on TikTok, but he’s got a lot of very informative videos on the Bible and biblical history, what certain books or passages were actually talking about, and so on. He presents things in a clear and understandable way, without fluff or editorializing. I can’t recommend him enough.

King Heron is once again eating all the frogs.

Or turning them gay.

Yes, both are very important points. I’ve never met a British doctor who had to drive for Uber or suck dick on Backpage to pay off student loans.

This comment doesn’t really mean a lot without context. The pay for doctors in the UK varies quite a bit depending on which level of their career they are at. Resident doctors (Foundation Year 1 & 2) earn anywhere between £33k and £37k, Trainees (training in a specialized area of medicine, CT 1-3, ST 1-9) can earn between £43k to £63k. All of these are considered Junior Doctors, who work under the supervision of a Senior Doctor. When they have completed full medical training in a specialized area of medicine (7-10 years), they are Consultant level, which is a Senior Doctor. This can pay between £93k and £126k per year.

For further context, the median individual wage in the UK is £37,430, which is about what second year Resident doctors earn on average. Much like the US, this can be good or bad, depending on where you live. In the North of England, an FY2 earning £37k is solidly middle-class. In London? He’s working-class, but still making far more than minimum wage, and his income will only increase from there.

Speaking of minimum wage… For people 21+ years old, it’s £12.21 an hour. At 40 hours a week, that’s £25,396 per year, or about £7k a year less than a first year resident. There are ZERO doctors in the UK earning “almost below the minimum wage, given the number of hours they actually work.” Unlike in the US where doctors work a billion hours a week, doctors in the UK are unionized (most with the BMA, but there are other unions), and their contracts prevent this. On average, the workload for FY1 & 2 (Residents) is 48 hours per week. They do occasionally get hit with longer weeks, but it’s not normal. Their union contracts are designed specifically to prevent overworking and allow them time to work and study/take exams. Doctors working 80 and 90 hour weeks is mostly a thing of the past.

The bottom line is that Doctors in the UK generally make a good living and have strong unions that ensure they continue to do so. That’s not to say things can’t or shouldn’t improve, but their situation is far from bleak. If the only reason you’re getting into medicine is to get rich, then please get the fuck out of medicine. There are much easier ways to get rich than spending the next 20 years studying while you watch people die in front of you.

5 seasons. No more, no less. It gives the overarching story enough room to breathe and play out a solid three act structure with a wide middle. It needs to all be written and plotted out before anything gets filmed.

I agree with all the other people in this thread mentioning ‘In Time’. It had such a great premise, and I didn’t even hate the execution, but it was mediocre. It was like they went 50% of the way to a flawless execution and just said “fuck it, that’s good enough”. The concept has a lot of elements to explore, like classism, labor exploitation, human rights, even free will to a point… A movie just isn’t the right vehicle for that story. It needs to be a series. Done right, you could explore all that while having an overarching plotline, and still have your weekly subplots and B stories. That would give the story time to fully develop the romantic connection between the poor guy who comes into a bunch of time, and the rich girl who empathizes with him. That romance felt incredibly rushed in the movie, but you could build it up over a whole season in a show.

I also want to mention another movie that I’m not sure belongs here. It’s not a bad movie, nor do I think the execution was mediocre, but for the life of me I can’t figure out why it didn’t do better. That movie is called ‘Push’, with Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning. I just watched it again the other night, and I freaking love it. The concept isn’t that amazing or original, but the way they present it is great. There isn’t a ton of exposition or world-building. They kinda just drop you in and let you figure it out, and I really like that. Evans and Fanning have great onscreen chemistry, and Djimon Honsou is a perfect bad guy. This is another one where I think it would make a great series, even though I think the movie was done really well. It’s just kind of a perfect mid-budget sci-fi action movie, and we don’t seem to get those anymore.

I loved the original West World movie, which is about 20% high concept and 80% “how do we copy terminator when all we have are a bunch of random Wild West, medieval and classical back lots?”

I’m sorry what? ‘West World’ came out in 1973, ‘The Terminator’ came out in 1984. Am I missing something here?

I have some genuine questions for you.

Do you think men go through months (or years) of hormone therapy, potentially go through sex reassignment surgery, buy thousands of dollars worth of women’s clothing and makeup and accessories, get their name legally changed and all their legal documents replaced, and subject themselves to being bullied from every angle including from the state, just to get a peek at a woman’s naughty bits in a public bathroom?

If a sign on a door works to keep trans women out of women’s bathrooms, do “gun free zone” signs work to keep shooters out of schools? Do you think the people who don’t care about laws against sexual assault care about bathroom laws?

The bottom line is this: Men already generally don’t go in the women’s bathroom. The men who want to assault women aren’t going to upend their entire life by pretending to be a woman just to gain entry to a bathroom, and they certainly aren’t going to care about a sign on a door. They’ll just assault women as they have been doing since the dawn of time, no skirt and matching heels necessary.

You can draw a straight line from folk music to the birth of metal. They use a lot of the same melodies and structures, and they’re both often built around storytelling and symbolism. Before the metal gatekeepers jump on me with “but but but most metal has a classical influence”, what we call “classical music” is heavily influenced by European folk music. Over time it just became more complex and incorporated more instruments and so on. Classical is just fancypants folk.

The reason folk music blends so well with metal is the same reason classical music blends so well with metal: The common ancestor of both classical and metal is folk.

Here’s some Black Metal for you. Arka’n Asrafokor from Togo, West Africa.

I already don’t like my phone having a microphone

A phone without a microphone. A phone… without a microphone… is not a phone.

Can I ask what you use a phone for?

This was over 10 years ago, but it popped into my head as soon as I saw this thread. Over 1,600 rent-to-own stores were found by the FTC to have spyware installed on laptops that enabled the stores to access the webcams. The spyware also included keyloggers.

I would bet money that this type of shit still happens.

Prohibition of vice does not work and only empowers organized crime.

End of argument.

Any mention of “family” and I’m out. You aren’t my fucking family. I barely tolerate any of you, and I only go that far because I am forced to participate in this bullshit just so I can feed and shelter myself. Just give me my project, shut your dick sheath, and let me grind my life away in silence.

On a totally unrelated note, “team player”.

It may not be the worst thing he ever did, but it’s a perfect display of how petty and selfish he is. People asked him not to do something, and because he thinks those people are beneath him, he went and did it for no reason other than to show them that he can do whatever he wants.

This is the “public vs private healthcare” debate all over again. You can draw a diagram with crayons proving without a doubt that free public healthcare is cheaper than having to pay higher premiums because poor people use the ER as their primary care and then skip out on the bills, and they still won’t get it, because they’ve been so propagandized by late-stage Capitalism that they actually believe “what’s good for the billionaire is good for me.”

I’ve had these arguments countless times with people. Here’s how it goes every single time:

Them: “Why should I have to pay an extra $X a year to provide [SERVICE] for other people?”
Me: “Because the data shows that this will lead to better outcomes overall, which in turn leads to fewer people on public assistance, saving you far more than $X a year, resulting in a net gain on your part. Here’s the data, look for yourself.”
Them: “Fuck that. I don’t want poor people getting free shit!”

As long as half of the working class has billionaire Stockholm syndrome, this will not change.

Conservatives don’t want you to exist. All other arguments they put forward are just soft-pedaling to that end goal.

“You might beat the rap, but you won’t beat the ride.”

This memo may not hold legal weight, but that won’t mean much when ICE black-bags you and sends you to a Salvadoran gulag from which there is no escape and no contact with legal services.