jpreston2005 @ jpreston2005 @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

The court ordered the state to pay the women €50,000 in damages each for the suffering caused by breaking their ties to their mothers, home environments and loss of identity. It also said the government must pay “more than €1m” in legal costs.

The women had limited damages they sought to €50,000, because if they had lost they would be liable to pay the state compensation based on the original claim.

Ok that's crazy. They sued the government due to their forced removal from their families, but if they lost the court case (which they did the first time), they would have to pay the Belgium government the amount they sued it for? That sounds exceedingly fucked.

Whenever I make the unfortunate decision to visit home, I have to drive through West Virginia. I always fill up before the state line, because I refuse to contribute to their economy. I also take back roads around the tolls, as they would have me pay upwards of $15 each trip through. The back roads inevitably lead me past wide swaths of entrenched poverty. Burnt down trailers, smoldering in the trailer parks, with their drumpf flags and "friends of coal" signs. It's pathetic.

Nobody goes their whole life without becoming intimately aware of the danger cobra chickens present. Once when I was a teenager, I decided to drive aggressively close to a couple geese while they were strolling around a busy parking lot. The goose took exception, and as I went by, he pecked at my car door, which left a dent and made a VERY loud noise. I was so flabbergasted by the violence contained within this downy devil, that I let my car slow, which was a mistake. The goose took it as a sign of weakness and was now charging at me.

I freak out, not wanting him to damage my car anymore, so I make haste out of the car park, pause for a moment at the stop sign, and turn right onto the road. I look back to the parking lot and what do I see? The goose, full flight, full speed, coming right at my passenger window. Before I can accelerate away, he collides with the passenger side door, leaving a HUGE dent, right next to the little dent he made earlier.

At that point I was doing like 60 in a 35 mph zone just to gtf away from that hellish demon spawn. Methinks perhaps reincarnation is real, and all truly evil people come back as canadian geese.

That's odd I've almost exclusively heard this said about Americans, British, and Chinese tourists. Though I have heard that the French will take you to task if you treat their home like it's some amusement park, which seems fair?

PDF Files! hadn't heard that one before, ha!

I remember getting lost there as a child. I was with my family, but that day it started raining cats and dogs, so we went to the closest shop and bought rain ponchos... which evidently is what EVERY family did. We started walking, I got separated for a second, and ended up following this other family around the park for what seemed like hours, but was probably only a few minutes. When I finally caught up with the family, and grabbed the mom-looking ponchos hand, I realized what I had done.

I ended up running from them, and hung around the shop we bought the ponchos from. Luckily, my mom came and found me there. but yo I legit was like "Well, I guess I'll just live and work at the park now. 😐" Like some Floridian Robinson Crusoe, I felt like I was awash on a strange island, and it was there I would remain after being abandoned. 😅

An entire state beholden to religious extremists. It's wild.

that just sounds like you're bragging about how corrupt and spineless your fellow republicans are

lol ok Manchin and Sinema, two big democrats! Yup! it's laughable you'd try to paint them as such. your disingenuous trolling is some top tier useless garbage

show me where republicans put forth a plan to end gerrymandering and democrats blocked it.

Yup, everything evil republicans do is actually democrats fault. That's a totally cool and not at all moronic position.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/26/us/politics/north-carolina-republicans-gerrymander.html

Whenever I see headlines like this, I always wonder if this is going to be the random little thing that escalates into WWIII.

Fun times during the great fascist creep of the new century.

DOTA 2 is my primary time waster, have over 3000+ hours on it. It's endlessly entertaining, because there is so much variability in the games. You have 4-8 spells depending on the hero, with 6 active item slots, which means once your team has leveled up, team fights can be a burst of seconds, or a 5+ minute long affair, with each tank employing different survival strategies to block damage, heal, or escape, just to heal and get right back in it. There are multiple different game modes, but are a little challenging to find and play. Still, it is the one game I play with the steepest learning curve. I don't think I saw myself as "good at the game" until I was around 1000 hours in 😶‍

Smite is the only other game I have 1000+ hours in. I started playing it as a break from DOTA 2, and as a way to connect with my little brother. It's a lot like DOTA 2, but far more simplistic. Each god has 4 spells, with no active items. Instead of left-clicking for movement on a map, you use WASD to maneuver your god. It's fun, and you can pick it up after like 30 hours. The different game modes are a lot easier to navigate than in DOTA, but it's also a lot less engaging. The updates and quests are all very simplistic. I was going to try out the new Smite 2, but after watching some game play, it looks... exactly the same as Smite 1.

The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. Though, I guess what really hooked me was the idea that the future could be predicted, and guided toward an outcome that would benefit people. That, uh, doesn't seem to fit with reality. But it sounds real nice ☹️

After my divorce, I had a random friend tell me that they were bummed about my divorce because they (him and his wife) had wanted to swing with us. Gave me the ick. I was SAd when I was a kid, and so people expressing interest in me is like a train crossing signal at night, big red blinking light with loud bells, all I can foresee is what terrible things they're capable of if given the opportunity.

Then him and his wife got divorced, and he started texting me, calling me, emailing me, like he couldn't believe I didn't want to hook up with him. ghosted him HARD. I felt bad about it initially, but after he kept texting/calling/emailing for weeks, I was moreso relieved that I never gave him any more of my time/effort.

When the revolution starts, I'll be the one running alongside the main character, who gets shot, like, immediately. Everyone will be in the heat of opening battle, and some dumb ass on the other side who opened fire before he was supposed to gets a lucky shot and gets me. I've made my peace with it. I plan on living just long enough to drag myself over to where the hero gets cornered, and in my dying moments, I take one last shot and save their life moments before passing away. I'm forgotten immediately, and that's OK.

Honestly, if it was any other kind of car, I would have been impressed at their ingenuity and railed against the wildlife expert who outed them. But people who waste money on expensive luxury cars don't get sympathy from me. A fuckin Rolls Royce? You thought you could get an insurance company to write off a fuckin rolls royce? If you already have the money to obtain that kind of car, you get no sympathy from me.

My parents have always been well-off. At christmas, us kids would get like $1500 worth of toys and junk. each of us like 10-15 presents. I remember a few of them, but you know how much I would have given to hang out with my dad playing video games? All of those presents, from every christmas. He never had time for me, time for us. He was too busy trying to make as much money as he could. It rotted his brain. He truly believes that a persons worth is determined by the numbers in their bank account. So I guess I'll always be a failure to him. I don't speak to him anymore.

Keep offering to hang out.

When I was working as a line cook in college, I was one of two white guys behind the line, with the rest of our BOH (Back Of House) crew being black. One day on the line we were all joking around like we always did. One of the black cooks, named Rose (he was an older guy, with coke-bottle glasses and strong, thickly calloused hands. He had a snaggle tooth and a big ol' pot belly), was regaling us with stories about how he has a veritable harem of women at his beck and call. He told us he was supporting like 5 different women, and all of them were entirely devoted to him.

I thought that he was being hyperbolic, and decided that I would poke fun. I was going to say something like "Rose, I can't believe for a second that even 1 woman would be after your ugly mug." But my midwestern-whiteness shone through, and before I could deliver that absolute blister of a line, I decided to use an exclamation so as to punctuate my lack of belief in his statement. I started with "Ooh boy," and didn't get to finish.

I was immediately accosted by Rose, his spatula gripped tightly, and he was mad as hell. The other line cooks were instantly aware of the situation and reacted to hold him back, as Rose was about to knock my befuddled ass into next week. Eventually they were able to calm him down, and explained to my dumbass that calling a black man "boy" was explicitly racist, and derogatory.

We were fine once he realized I had no idea it was racist, I just thought of it as an exclamation along the lines of "Boy howdy!" or something.

It was a very eye-opening moment.

our country and legal system is a fucking joke.

I think long COVID has impacted more Americans than we realize. Everyone out there suffering from diminished capacities thinking that the fascist sex-pest goomba is somehow more reliable than the nice black lady. I dunno about you guys, but I've just been seeing a whole lot of mistakes lately. On television, in News, in articles, just... everywhere.

And while a lot of it is probably people quiet quitting and not giving a fuck, I think a lot more people are suffering from the extended brain fog of long COVID than we think, and it's affecting everything around us. Unfortunately, that includes voting practices in elections.