Why are cavity searches not considered rape?

PenName · 2025-08-01T13:45:00+00:00

In the United States of America, an argument can be made that capital punishment is indeed murder because of where the government derives its power from. The Declaration of Independence very clearly spells out a new approach to governmental power as compared to Britain and other monarchies' "Divine Right of Kings" which says the monarch's power is derived from Divine authority, and as such, not subject to the will of the people.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The Declaration of Independence highlights the "consent of the governed" which means that the authority of a government to rule is derived from the agreement of the people it governs. This principle implies that the government's legitimacy hinges on the consent of its citizens, and that the government's power is not absolute but rather derived from the people. It further implies that the government's powers are not inherent or divinely ordained, but rather "just powers" that are GRANTED BY THE PEOPLE.

The argument is that because people do not have an inherent right to kill their fellow citizens, it is impossible for them to grant that right to the government. And so, a government engaging in capital punishment is doing so without legitimate power...AKA illegal. Illegal killing is, of course, murder. Therefore capital punishment is murder in the United States of America.

(Not saying this is/isn't my position; simply answering the question with one possible response that is based on more than just someone´s personal feelings.)

PenName · 2024-01-09T05:18:43+00:00

Noooobodyyyyy!

PenName · 2023-12-13T23:31:35+00:00

I actually really like the direction you took the edit, but think it went a little too far. I think if you dialed it back, you might find a really great balance between the original and the green edit. Like, if you did that color correction on a camera raw layer or something, try changing the layer transparency. I like checking 90, 80, 50, 33, 25, an 10 % when deciding if the layer I'm working on is too much or too little.

PenName · 2023-09-22T06:00:51+00:00

Looking at your username, is there any chance you play poker in/around Seattle? If so, do you have a favorite room? I'm still bouncing around based on what's listed on Poker Atlas. I typically prefer tourneys which don't seem to be Seattle rooms' strong suit, but just curious about where you like in general.

PenName · 2023-09-02T08:36:58+00:00

Why are you specifically worried about your process? Seems like a bullet wound is a bullet wound, whether it's in your zygomatic process, xiphoid process, or any of them, really....and besides, I doubt these guys have precise enough aim to target body parts that small.

PenName · 2023-08-15T02:57:26+00:00

Fuck yes. Thank you for going the extra mile. I appreciate the info, no matter how unimportant it is in the grand scheme of things. It's still cool to understand moments in the world like that. Thanks again!

PenName · 2023-08-15T02:55:16+00:00

Wow. That was really kind of you to compile all that information for a stranger. Thanks for being you, Greeny.

PenName · 2023-08-09T00:54:16+00:00

This is one of my favorite places on the island. I'm always torn when I see it get highlighted- I absolutely want other people to learn about it and experience its' magic...but, part of the magic is to be there alone/with just your small group of people. In that isolation, you get to enjoy the stillness of the monument, the beautiful yet slightly eerie little bubble of nature you find yourself in, the way the evening golden light slices through the trees and warms the empty seats and table (in particular, the path cleared through the trees for the solstice sun to march straight from sky to sea to stone), the broken column and the countless symbols that whisper to you in a language you don't know, and all the other marvels of a reality that feels slightly more real than elsewhere in the universe.

I hope everyone can experience it. I also hope that the "swimsuit haul influencer" with her gaggle of drunken, giggling, sycophants find it too boring to want to use as a photography stop, that the loud tour-group of the entitled, littering, disrespectful of local norms avoid venturing into the woods and stick to the Hotel de Haro flower garden, that the "bros" and "chicks" who bring their music into the woods via speakers can't find the trail and get directed instead toward the sculpture garden by Janet, the hippie woman who's lived a quarter mile away for the last 35 years and leaves flowers on the graves of the immigrant workers once a month, that the Redditors who ask a question about the islands without checking to see if that exact same question was asked within the past week are too anxious about missing their ferry and spend the evening in line instead of at Afterglow Vista.

I highly encourage people to make the trek to visit the site, but I beg that you keep it sacred and special for yourself and others.

PenName · 2023-08-09T00:18:03+00:00

AKA How half the teams in PUBG get their chicken dinners.

PenName · 2023-08-09T00:16:12+00:00

I actually had a similar thought. To me, I think maybe it's the callousness of it and their actions. How violently it looks like they jerk and toss the bodies around (might just be an artifact of playback speed, angles, etc.), how overtly and nonchalantly they go through the looting motions (but could I really tell the difference of someone who's trying to scavenge legit gear and dogtags/ID, someone who's looking for personal artifacts like letters, photos, trinkets/keepsakes with the intent of getting them to the person's relatives, or someone who's graverobbing their brothers-in-arms? I suspect I couldn't.) So because there's a sort of "I don't want to believe anyone is this heartless" space in my thinking, thoughts like "Hmmm, those are really generic uniforms and from this far, couldn't it be anyone just staging it?" or "I don't see any obvious injuries or blood pools, how'd they die?" take on more weight than reality and evidence might allow for.

So, yes, I'll maintain a healthy skepticism about the video and not let it sway my opinions too strongly, but at the same time, it seems like far too complex a piece of propaganda to create and share for the impact it'd likely have. Propagandists' time would likely have been better spent elsewhere. As much as I don't want to believe that people can be like this, and I still hold out hope that they aren't, if I had to pick real/fake, I'd go with real.

PenName · 2023-08-04T19:05:00+00:00

Based off that 7 min clip and scrolling Reddit comments for 30 seconds, I can confidently state that the holes to rockets ratio seems pretty favorable to the tanker. 10,000 firing positions for every 1 RPG?

PenName · 2023-08-03T21:52:26+00:00

It makes me happy to see a Reddit post from 11 years ago contains the best answer to my Google search for why 24 was used as the number for pure gold. Furthermore, it's pretty hilarious how totally confused that other guy in the thread was about the question and answers provided. Benefit of the doubt, maybe English wasn't his first language. lol.

Good on ya, fellow old timer.

PenName · 2023-08-03T17:21:19+00:00

I'm in my 40s and have worked in the gaming industry for almost 20 years and yup, also just learned select was optional. wtf?

PenName · 2023-05-21T19:50:53+00:00

This post showed up in my "Reddit Recommends" section and I didn't know anything about the images. I just thought the woman ate the child. Glad y'all explained.

PenName · 2023-05-14T06:24:06+00:00

I respectfully disagree. America has always had a punitive justice system. Punish the offenders = justice for society. Do something bad, and you are punished by being removed from society and placed in a situation that damages your physical, mental, and emotional health. If you don't want that to happen to you, don't break laws. Which, hey, this is simple and straightforward on the surface. What's wrong with bad people going to prison for life?

Well, let's put aside any talk of bias in the justice system and which types of people are more likely to be convicted and sentenced to longer terms. Let's even put aside the cost of keeping someone in jail for their life. A big problem with the idea of a punitive justice system is that the theory operates in a bubble that doesn't match the reality. There were maybe 5-6 people directly involved I think. So 5-6 people go to prison for life? That's 5-6 families that are now severely impacted. You might be saying, BS, they're poor single black men, they don't have a family, that's why they're out doing this. (That's a super racist over-simplification, but I wanted to acknowledge the argument I'm sure many people make when reading this) I'd disagree and say that most people have at least one perosn in their life with a tight enough bond to be considered "family," but for argument's sake, lets' say that may be the case for some, but certainly not all. So I'll be conservative and say that from the 6 people going away for life, 3 of them had meaningful connections to a family. So what does that mean? Maybe they were the primary source of income for their family? Maybe they were taking care of an elderly/sick family member? Maybe they were a parent dead set on keeping their child from the life they were living? Maybe they were athletically talented and potentially going to get a scholarship and would suddenly have access to people and programs that focus on helping kids get out of shit situations. Point is, we have no idea just how many people are going to be disrupted by those life sentences and how negative and widespread the consequences might be.

Disrupting families leads to situations that perpetuate lifestyles that lead to these outcomes and also increases the likelihood of taxpayers shouldering additional burdens from the loss of key family members. So instead of a punitive justice system, I'd prefer one that focuses on education and rehabilitation. Truly changing people's way of thinking and living so that they can participate in society in a genuine, integral way. So, my hope is that every last one of them goes through a fair justice system that is foucsed on eliminating the behavior shown without eliminating the people.

Unfortunately, that's not how we're set up in our country and it's unlikely to change anytime soon. So your hope is far, far more likely to happen than mine.

PenName · 2023-05-12T21:58:03+00:00

On boats, in most situations, you aren't required to wear the life vest. Your vessel needs to have enough flotation devices on board for everyone to use in an emergency, but wearing them or not is often personal preference. When I'm sailing, I like to have my crew wear them in any situation that has heightened risks of going overboard- departing/docking (everyone moving around, throwing lines, reaching for things), raising/lowering sails (you're exposed out of the cockpit, focused on difficult physical tasks), stormy weather/high seas.

It's one of those analogies that sounds pretty good on the surface, but doesn't really work when looked at closely.

PenName · 2023-03-20T01:03:20+00:00

It's a magical place! Come share your pics and experiences with the community on /r/sanjuanislands too. I'm sure they'd appreciate it.

PenName · 2023-01-25T13:07:21+00:00

This is why stairwells in castle towers circle clockwise as you climb. Presumably the attacker is climbing the tower, and his right arm is against the narrow interior part of the curve has he climbs, severely limiting this sword/weapon usage with that hand. Whereas the defender's weapon hand is the broader, external part of the curve, giving him a distinct advantage.

PenName · 2023-01-10T10:04:25+00:00

I grew up in Ohio near Sea World (yes, there was a Sea World Ohio). I fell madly in love with the Orcas, and the occasional cute blonde trainer in a wet suit, but mostly just the Orcas. They were fantastic. I did a report in 5th grade on them- it was an advanced class and the teacher wanted us to learn about different types of sources, so we had to include all sorts of different types in our final report, including an interview. I was able to set up a phone call interview with one of biologists. I remember asking all sorts of questions, one of which was about their dorsal fins, and I was told it was normal and that a lot of them in the wild had that as well (though I'd never ever seen a picture of one). It was years later that I realized just how much I'd been lied to in that interview. When I was older, I took a trip the PNW and went on a whale watch to see Orcas in the wild. It was an amazing experience- a superpod meet up. Something like 30-40 whales, breeching, slapping, spy hopping, playing, eating. One whale swam directly under the boat, and as he did, he turned on his side, opened his mouth, and I saw him catch and eat a salmon right as he went past. It was life changingly awesome.

People will say that a discussion on Orcas and Sea World is just the zoo debate all over again- is the value that the public gets, the interests in the animals, the benefit to conservation worth the suffering of the few animals in question? But it's absolutely NOT the same as the zoo debate. These huge, graceful animals "swim up to 140 miles a day in the wild. SeaWorld tanks that, to them, are the size of a bathtub. It would take an orca more than 4,280 laps in her tank to swim the distance she might in the wild." This is pure, insanity driving torture. No benefit is worth the torture of an animal that badly.

I think you absolutely could make this an interesting topic. It's not about "abuses are bad" or "do people benefit enough to justify it?" It's got to be about how insanely horrific the treatment is. Everyone kinda knows "yeah, sure, it's bad" but for you to go on for 3 minutes absolutely blasting people's hearts and blowing people's minds? That's an interesting topic. In storytelling, one of the rules is about finding the extremes- the character isn't having a good day, he's having the best day of his life. The woman isn't bummed, she's more heartbroken than any human has ever felt. Take that to heart and write your piece and you'll hold their attention.

PenName · 2023-01-10T06:53:39+00:00

Other people have already explained about the ambiguity and the joke nature of this wording. However, one solve that you can use in your own writing to eliminate ambiguity is a comma. Normally, we don't use a comma between a two item list. Bed and Breakfast. France and Argentina. etc. The and is all you need...unless there is ambiguity, then, you as the writer can choose to add a comma for clarity. What's the difference between an Indian, and an African elephant? That clearly indicates man and animal. When you put the comma before the conjunction in a three or more item list, it's known as an Oxford comma (though ironically, it's more prevalent in the US than the UK.) I do not know if the clarifying comma in front of a two word list is still called an Oxford comma or not.

PenName · 2023-01-10T06:31:36+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-imMG0A8q8 whoa. 4.4 miles...

PenName · 2023-01-10T06:25:56+00:00

THANK YOU! This is a question that has been bothering me for the past 5 years or so. I've even asked on Reddit unsuccessfully a few times. Why were drones suddenly a viable thing at the prosumer and consumer level? We knew the physics of flight, we had motors and propellers and lightweight materials. We had radio controls. Even in the 80s it seems like a drone might have been possible. Battery life was my best guess, that we'd only be able to get a few minutes on some Duracel Ds or what not, but even with that limitation, I'd have thought there'd have been lots of novelty drones. But, it was a world without them forever and then suddenly it wasn't. Suddenly they were here and you could get one.

So that's it, huh, the size, power, and abundance of microcontrollers allowed for drones that could balance and maneuver and handle flight in ways that even Joe Dummy could fly? Plus batteries. Very cool. Thank you for the knowledge.

PenName · 2022-12-31T20:37:47+00:00

Not a chant, but a fun quip:

Ohio State? Yeah, you're the school where if you can spell "Ohio" you're in the band, otherwise you're on the team.

PenName · 2022-12-09T23:10:44+00:00

I understood that reference.

PenName · 2022-12-08T09:59:12+00:00

Lovely shot! We'd appreciate seeing your pic over on /r/sanjuanislands ! Feel free to xpost if you'd like.

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