Oh, I know that sketch, I love it. Yes, pre-agree to stuff. Negotiate these things ahead of time. Please. It's better. It can be sexy ("here's what I want you to do to me"). It's really not a ridiculous idea at all. While it doesn't complete wipe out the concerns about having drunk sex it makes them much easier to…

But again, the law isn't the whole picture. This is obvious if you think about it for a second. Canada by and large has slightly more robust sexual assault laws than the United States, but I don't mentally downgrade my expectation of sexual autonomy when I travel to the USA. Nor do I pull up a state's criminal statute…

I'd suggest that folks need to exercise judgement. If your friend planned a threesome with these dudes while sober, and then drank a bunch to relax, and then had the threesome more or less as planned, probably everyone's expectations were met and hopefully there's no trouble (though there's the risk that if she…

"Consent" isn't really the right concept when it comes to whether a person is responsible for their own actions. The question is whether they acted voluntarily (were they in control of their own bodies) and intentionally (what consequence did they intend by their actions), which are by and large lower bars than…

So, I do specialize in criminal law, have some amount of specific expertise in the law of sexual assault, and by the sounds of it was in law school more recently than you, and with the greatest respect you're misfiring here.

Your initiation/non-initiation distinction is bogus. All meaningful sexual activity requires active consent from both parties. Just because someone drunkenly tries to talk you into fucking them doesn't mean it's not assault to do so if they're too wasted to consent.

I mean the interesting thing about an unthinkably vast universe is that as unlikely as it seems there probably are, were, and/or will be alien technological civilizations that coexist(ed) in close proximity somewhere. There's just no reason to believe that we'll be one of them.

It seems to me that if we last any length of time or travel any real distance in a cosmic sense it'll probably be through self-replicating machines - either they'll replace us or we'll become them. Meat evolved for planetary living is just not the right material for spacefaring, and civilization as we currently…

They built an armada and travelled millions of light years between the galaxies to conquer us, but didn't reckon with little pointy pieces of metal pushed real fast out of a tube.

Good.

Two things:

I don't think anybody here (and very few if anyone I've seen elsewhere) is saying that Sam should be beyond criticism. But conversely… who cares? Yeah, it sucks that she's apparently being an asshole regarding school changes in her district, but this is a pretty ordinary selfish thing to do. Folks get weird and…

We should be so lucky.

… how is it outside the bailiwick of a pop-culture website to do a story about the production history of an upcoming piece of pop culture? As someone who is interested in the show and liked the book, there is value to me in reading about the process by which that book came to screen. Isn't that, like, the whole point…

I don't think that's true at all? I'd suggest that the full range of outcomes are possible.

Oooh, I know, he should bottle all his discomfort up until it festers into rage and then he can unleash it violently on an unexpecting populace (probably even people who have nothing to do with why he's unhappy!), aided by his country's unshakeable resolve to put automatic weapons into the hands of civilians with no…

"Every last one of them." Jemma is the best.

Really incredible. Just really, truly fantastic, and incredible. The best Trump, that's what everybody calls him. And that's saying something. That's saying… because trust me the other Trumps are all really great. No complaints. Everybody likes the other Trumps. But he's The Incredible Trump.

Captain Trump is my favourite of the Avengers because he's the head of Hydra and I like it when gross old men are in charge. But I also have friends who like the rest of the gang, Irontrump, The Trump, Trump Widow, Trump (god of thunder), and Hawkeye.

As a general proposition I think it's wise not to plan too extensively past 2020 right now.