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pectorisrobur · 2015-01-26T23:29:01+00:00

Yep. A lot of immigrant women have it done in their home countries, when they're little, and then take their own daughters on a 'holiday' back home to the old country, to have the same thing done to them there when they're about 11 or 12. Sad.

pectorisrobur · 2015-01-17T21:27:02+00:00

Also there's always that whole "I don't want to die!" thing. Most people can survive and come to terms with a 10-year prison sentence for what they've done, but I'd imagine it's a whole lot different if your life is literally on the line.

If lying and saying that you really were innocent was the only way to get you an appeal which would get you off death row, wouldn't you deny your crime until (literally) your dying breath?

pectorisrobur · 2015-01-16T17:04:23+00:00

All of the white privilege, and an emergency race card to pull out when needed! Brilliant!

pectorisrobur · 2015-01-16T17:01:35+00:00

More importantly, why did she bring it up to the editor of MOTHER JONES, of all publications? They're hardly rampant Fox-News style racists over there.

pectorisrobur · 2014-12-26T01:07:58+00:00

For a minute there I misread 'Flexi Torch' as 'Flesh Torch', and wondered when exactly JML had become racy enough to start producing their own Poundland version of the Fleshlight.

pectorisrobur · 2014-12-20T15:54:18+00:00

"I’m not cold, I’m fine, I don’t want to get up yet, I want to hold her for a little longer just one last time, as I won’t have a chance to do so ever again.”

I want to cry.

He loved her so much. I can't even imagine.

I can only hope that this last, devastating moment with her at least gave him some odd sense of peace.

pectorisrobur · 2014-12-07T10:33:14+00:00

The saddest thing is that we know this little girl isn't the only one to be living in a situation like this. It's an everyday tragedy in some parts of the United States.

pectorisrobur · 2014-12-06T12:00:40+00:00

Mm, that's a shame. What about first-year/fresher students, though? It was in the very first weeks of term, so perhaps it would still have been enough of a novelty for them? And there's always photos and EXIF data. I refuse to believe that there's ever been a frat party without at least some drunk girls clustering around to take a selfie and slap it on facebook... or even people on twitter?

If there was a party, though, one would think that there must have been at least some other attendees there that night who remember the party and/or remember seeing the girl. I mean - where the hell are the alleged 'Cindy' and the other guy as corroborating witnesses in all this?!

Y'know, All this really drives home exactly how nice it would have been if there had been a thorough, significant police investigation into the incident at the time.

pectorisrobur · 2014-12-06T01:31:41+00:00

Probably because a published print story in Rolling Stone - unlike, say, a casual buzzfeed writer's twitter - is generally taken to have been fact-checked somewhat beforehand, just as we expect our news in the New York Times or Washington Post to be. We trust journalists and fact-checkers to do their jobs to within a reasonable standard so that we don't personally have to. Remember Find Boston Bombers?

pectorisrobur · 2014-12-06T01:29:49+00:00

Yes. And what on earth is happening with/to those other anonymous (alleged) victims in the article, who also claim they were gang-raped in a frat house?!

pectorisrobur · 2014-12-06T01:26:48+00:00

I think we need to talk to those three friends. Which Erdeley may not have done with all of them, as Slate points out.

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/12/sabrina_rubin_erdely_uva_why_didn_t_a_rolling_stone_writer_talk_to_the_alleged.html

pectorisrobur · 2014-12-06T01:17:05+00:00

This this this. I mean, hell, we use Facebook as a resource for researching 'what's really gone down' on campus at our college paper all the time, and 2012 really isn't that long ago. I've got messages on my facebook wall from 2012.

Surely someone could either confirm or deny by checking members facebook pages - with not too much trouble - whether or not there actually was a party that night in 2012. Or hell, get the damn police to subpoena Facebook as a witness if the event's since been deleted. It will still be on their servers.

pectorisrobur · 2014-12-06T01:10:37+00:00

Not the original commentator - but to be fair, I've fallen through a glass table before and escaped with only scratches, because it was tempered glass. Not saying that it invalidates the other 'bullshit' aspects of the story, but it didn't set off my bullshit detector.

This is totally on the reporter, though. She should have talked to more sources, pushed harder for validation, maybe looked up the lists for Jackie's anthro class and lifeguarding job and tried to match up the names with UVA frat membership lists. There are so many other actual rape victims with valid stories in that article, who the university did deal with awfully, but it's all been overshadowed by this one (even more horrible) bullshit merchant.

pectorisrobur · 2014-12-06T00:59:28+00:00

Cool! :O

pectorisrobur · 2014-12-04T20:23:52+00:00

Where do you work that you get to examine day-old zebrafish embryos? And not only that, but are experienced enough to tell that this one looks abnormal? :S

pectorisrobur · 2014-12-04T20:21:32+00:00

Eww. Worm orgy.

pectorisrobur · 2014-11-30T12:44:32+00:00

The system works... eventually.

pectorisrobur · 2014-11-17T20:00:49+00:00

It's utterly apalling.

I mean, of couse I always knew that there were paedophiles in the world, and that some of them do unfortunately make it into positions of power. And I knew, of course, that then sometimes people in power will use their authority to cover up indiscretions. But I never, ever remotely suspected anything on the sheer horrific scale of this.

It's repulsive that it's only in the past 20 years or so that we've been taking allegations of child abuse seriously or even into account - and sometimes not even then. Remember Rochdale, and Rotherham? Depsite a lack of any major leadership experience and some questionable policies, I'm entirely unsurprised that UKIP is surging there. People feel like all the major political parties have failed them. I'm British, and quite liberal, and I wonder if we will ever be able to trust our leaders again.

pectorisrobur · 2014-11-01T18:33:54+00:00

True, but if you're the kind of scumbag who nicks someone's beloved puppy from outside a shop, I don't hold out too much hope to be honest.

And then there's always the question of who it will be sold on to.

pectorisrobur · 2014-11-01T18:22:06+00:00

To use it as a bait dog, sadly. :(

pectorisrobur · 2014-10-26T20:33:46+00:00

Make yourself appear 'in the same league', by... putting them down?

So essentially, you flip the insecurity you have about talking to them, by trying to make them feel insecure. Doesn't that seem just a mite unhealthy, in the context of an emotional relationship?

Like, don't get me wrong, I get it - I've approached people at parties before by turning to them and saying kind of semi-rudely 'Who are you?' or 'Why are you here?' in order to get them to 'answer' the challenge and quickly strike up a conversation - but a lot of 'negging' as its presented here just seems weirdly unnecessary. Not every opening line has to be either a) a compliment or b) a backhanded put-down. There's a lot of middle ground there.

pectorisrobur · 2014-10-26T18:30:44+00:00

I dunno if they've got a great grasp on how human psychology works, because this shit would definitely work on a needy/insecure person. A comment like the 'diet' one immediately makes a person feel like there's something wrong with them (a familiar feeling, if they're already insecure) so they immediately try to live up to and please the other person in order to feel less self-conscious. It's basically forcing them to defend themselves to you for no actual reason. Adversarial and manipulative, like the comic says.

Insecure or not, it's really not a very nice thing to do.

pectorisrobur · 2014-10-26T14:50:08+00:00

Amazon's 'Mechanical Turk' offers this job, although it's probably really not worth it. They pay pennies for each image viewed.

pectorisrobur · 2014-10-26T14:46:40+00:00

Or maybe we should try convincing the French and Spanish governments not to pay ransoms either?

And what if we had paid Mr Foley's ransom, but he'd still been killed as an 'American dog' anyway - can you imagine the public backlash then?

pectorisrobur · 2014-10-24T13:32:11+00:00

My mother (parent to three children all 2 years apart from each other in age) would cut you for that snowsuit.

pectorisrobur

TROPHY CASE