25/05/2014 at the Manchester (then Phones 4u) Arena was my first NIN gig, and of my happiest memories. Feels poisoned now.
Every time I made plans for concerts I used to think Paris must have been a fluke, but now this one happened, and it hit real close. For the first time I'm kind of worried about going to work, knowing I might meet people who lost friends and family last night. Feels unreal.
^ I had great memories of that gig in Manchester, love the place. Going to see DM in London soon and how different will that feel now, sick to my stomach with this.
Two of my cousins (they're 11 and 15) were at the Grande show, along with their brother's fiancee. They managed to get out alright, but the youngest one got trampled a bit in the melee.
Basically, the world is fucked. I'm not surprised it was that arena since it has the most poorly organised security out of any venue I've ever been to.
UK is now officially under a state of Emergency...millitary troops will be on the streets.....They cant prove whether the Terrorist acted alone..
The bomb was too high tech to have been made alone they say...
Both UK and France under a state of emergency at the same time...Europe in 2017...jesus!!!.
Glad your cousins got out OK. I'm sure i've heard before that the venue in question had really poor security, some news story back in 2016. Sure it involved someone getting a knife in and security getting a hammering from the press. Might be another venue for all i know but i was sure it was in Manchester...might have been Birmingham now i think about it.
Yep, we're in high alert all right. Police armed to the teeth in central London.
I'm getting pretty anxious now, i'm going to MCM Comic Con at the Excel in London on Friday (my first ever) and i can only imagine how police are going to react to cosplayers with replica weapons travelling on the Tube!
I have taken my time to absorb this and look at this from every angle. ISIS/ Al Qaeda terrorists attacks in the beginning as far as I can remember were started, to open the wests eyes to the muslim extremists world as a way for the west (US, UK etc.) could understand their plight. Its one thing to kill innocent people to make a political statement but it is absolutely another to target children and young girls and mothers.
I absolutely hate Donald Trump I think he is a fucking idiot, and a moron, but if he wants to wipe ISIS/AL Qaeda off the fucking map, GO RIGHT THE FUCK AHEAD!!!! It is the one thing I will agree with him on. After ISIS attacks fucking kids, FUCK YOU ISIS I HOPE THEY WIPE YOU OFF THE FUCKING MAP!!!!!!!!
That is not to say that peaceful muslim who don't subscribe to this extremist ideology should be hassled, but ISIS can go straight to fucking Hell.
Yeah I was in South Kensington today and there was a military officer who had the worst gun discipline I've ever seen. You know how they always have the barrel pointed toward the ground? This guy just had it hanging by his side and it was pointing in the direction of a little girl about 4 feet away . I don't know if that's a big no no in the gun world or anything but it seemed unprofessional to see
Texas Teacher Gives ‘Most Likely To Become A Terrorist’ Award To 7th Grader
What the hell kind of person says, "this sounds like a top-shelf joke!"
Also AVID here is for those kids who can't handle college, not for the advanced ones. Weird.
UK threat level has gone back to severe. Saw no extra police in the part of London I live
This is a really lovely and brave gesture by Ariana Grande
https://twitter.com/ArianaGrande/sta...76721124663296
I hope there aren't any fucks touting these tickets because that is a massive line-up
I have never cared for her music but I do think its cool that she is doing this, I would think she is ultra cool if she invited the families back for a meet n greet, I'm sure it would be emotional, but what a gesture it would be if she just spent a little time with them.
It is awesome though that Arianna Grande and her people pulled together that lineup in less than two weeks since the incident happened. I personally wouldn't want to see any of that line up, but it is pretty fucking cool what she is doing.
On way back from Depeche Mode concert, didn't know anything had happened until on tube home as my phone had no signal at the concert London Bridge train/ tube station was closed but underground was running as normal. Shocking news. Safety alert was activated on Facebook.
In typical Daily Mail* fashion, they're reporting the fire the tragically ravaged the Grenfell Tower in London was started by one man's "faulty fridge"...and posting photos of said man. Christ on a Bike, the guy has done NOTHING WRONG but because a fault on his fridge started a fire that went out of control BECAUSE OF HOW BADLY MAINTAINED THE BUILDING WAS BY IT'S LANDLORDS they're basically pointing the finger at him...for fucks sake!
*Daily Mail newspaper is basically Fox news in the UK...only worse.
The media are saying 30 dead...yet over 70 people are missing presumed dead...the way the British authorities are handling this is bizzare.
It honestly looks like they are micro-Managing grief..no wonder people are getting angry.
People had such shitty protection....Its huge catastrophe in an area with more billionaires than anywhere else in the world.
Dr. Huxtable gets a mistrial. This is bullshit. He should have gone to prison years ago.
It's a weird case; the jury was expected to decide ("beyond a reasonable doubt") that Cosby assaulted her due to lack of consent; the laws in effect at the time of the incident likely didn't define this type of situation where he offers her two pills and she willingly pops them into her mouth and swallows them; even if she had no idea what they were, there was an implied participation (vs., say, dropping them into her drink without her knowledge) and if no law was on the books defining that as not being contributory then you can't invent "implied" laws. So those two pills present the "reasonable doubt." Cosby is saying the sex was consensual.
Word is the DA is going to re-try the case.
Jury selection in a case like this is really important.
There is still the civil court system to provide relief in the absence of criminal laws. So, she (and other victims) can go that route. See also O.J. Simpson. It is a shame that there were no laws to cover these instances that are far beyond statutes of limitations or modernized laws, but it's NOT a shame that Cosby has been outed as a total asshole and his career is pretty much ruined.
(And, the prosecution may go at this from a different angle during a re-trial.)
Last edited by allegro; 06-17-2017 at 11:14 AM.
yeah you're right, I'd forgotten about that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea...m_H._Cosby,_Jr.
Well, she's doing a pretty good job at bringing out all of the other Cosby victims, so there's that, too.
Last edited by allegro; 06-19-2017 at 08:26 PM.
Even if the prosecution couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt in this particular case, it's a shame that he was not indicted on another charge earlier. The man is pond scum.
The Cosby case is another interesting and unique case in public view, wherein a beloved public figure is pretty flagrantly guilty in the eyes of the general public, but a jury cannot bring themselves to conclusively do their duty for a variety of potential reasons. I heard a couple people today chat about it, and compare it to the OJ trial or the Michael Jackson exoneration... and it's strange, but my immediate reaction was "I'm not going anywhere near that hornet's nest of a conversation." It was interesting though, to hear the people who were talking about it (in each case, white people talking to white people) fumbling nervously around the issue of race in the parallel that they were discussing.
So if analyzing it as a discussion about something to do with race and majority perspective, white-guilt (their words, not mine), or whatever, then just look at it for what it is, which is what they were accusing the jury of being incapable of stating: a serial rapist got away with being a serial rapist. What Cosby meant as a figure in race terms is irrelevant in this discussion; did he rape?
Some people have this inadvertently racist thing going on, where their brain springs to a conclusion rooted in racist confirmation bias, and they don't admit to themselves that the same outcome would have been controversial (yet predictably similar) if the defendant had been Walt Disney or Mr Rogers.
But with a jury, emotions rarely (if ever) come into play.
Last edited by allegro; 06-19-2017 at 08:25 PM.
I know about how this is intended to go about conceptually, but that's the point I'm addressing - people assume this civic duty under the assumption that they're performing a service to society to judge another human being, and then they find themselves faced with judging an icon.
And suddenly, they have no idea what the fuck is going on, and I guarantee you there's at least one chosen juror there thinking "ah, I wish I could ask for an autograph, or even just touch him, but he can't be guilty, he just can't" and they argue that case in different words in back room deliberations.
and let's save the Michael Jackson discussion for another day (because that was a detour to a noticed vantage point I thought curious, but not worth derailing things), but (HE WAS GUILTY AS FUCK) this is more about the power of celebrity icons being unpunishibale by a carefully selected jury. We can read into it from there, but that's an endless rabbit hole.
Apparently some guy can rape at least 10, maybe 30 women, and get away with it, because he's the TV Dad personality we loved growing up.
We're living in a Berenstein world, aren't we.
Exxon Mobil Lends Its Support to a Carbon Tax Proposal
No wait, never mind:Exxon Mobil, other oil companies and a number of other corporate giants will announce on Tuesday that they are supporting a plan to tax carbon emissions that was put forth this year by a group of Republican elder statesmen.
Whew. I thought I took crazy pills this morning.The proposal also says companies that emit greenhouse gases should be protected from lawsuits over their contribution to climate change.