The guy in my neighborhood who was doing this right after Obama got elected in 08 wound up shooting 3 police officers after setting them up for an ambush at his home. He was ultimately taken alive and is now on death row.

I don’t get people who are like, “Surely he must have had help! Who could do this on their own! He must have had support from other terrorists!” Like, uh, no actually literally anyone could do this. Buying a gun and a shit ton of ammo and entering a crowded space and shooting indiscriminately is not rocket surgery.…

The degree to which a child will be ‘handicapped’ as you say by attending a less-than-the-best school is smaller than you might think (per research). You have to get pretty far down the “less than great” schools list before the educational outcomes, when controlling for demographic factors, start to get impacted.

Same here in Pittsburgh. The fact that we plan to send our son to Pittsburgh Public Schools just blows some people’s goddamn minds. Like, when you have a white baby, the clock starts ticking for when you are required to move to the suburbs when your child turns 5 and starts Kindergarten.

Christ, this kid is surrounded by the worst people.

My parents are libertarian Objectivists (lol) and they did the same. I have to hand it to them, for all the looniness of their politics, they didn’t really do much to attempt to brainwash me.

Yeah, I’m 41 and have only gotten more and more rabidly liberal as I’ve aged. Also? Having a kid made me even more pro-choice than I was before, if that’s even possible.

Or if the road it’s trying to drive on is actually just some stairs.

I’ve been seeing more and more unlabeled autonomous vehicles driving around town, too. I have to hand it to Uber—they picked a city to do their research that gives them some of the most challenging road conditions in the country. People poo-poo Google’s efforts because driving around Mountain View could be done by a…

I must be co-luckiest person because I’ve also had no problems and have had mine for over a year.

I must be co-luckiest person because I’ve also had no problems and have had mine for over a year.

I trust the stats on this but my own personal experience in the US is that no one will ever give me drugs for anything ever, even when I need them. My experience with an acute back injury that then led to chronic pain was that really no one gave a single solitary fuck about my pain levels. A case of being injured…

Yes, they produce money for the Church. They are the ones leading the classes that people pay thousands of dollars to attend, they’re the ones running the centers, cleaning them, keeping up the grounds, pushing all the paper around (right now the podcast Oh No, Ross and Carrie is reporting on several courses they took…

There’s similar stuff in Beyond Belief by Jenna Miscavige Hill. That’s totally the book to read if you want to see how Scientology treats kids.

The experience of childbirth is different for every woman and their pain management needs are going to be different. And you know going in that it’s temporary and normal and at the end you get a baby, which can help you get you through it. I imagine with a kidney stone it’s all just depressing from beginning to end.…

There’s really not much you can prescribe that would do much for the pain of childbirth and also be safe for the baby. Your options in childbirth for medical pain management are basically an epidural, in some places (more popular in Europe and Canada) nitrous oxide, or sometimes a narcotic. An epidural is anesthesia…

Epidurals are administered by anesthesiologists. Even if you are in a hospital and want one, they call in the anesthesiologist to do it. It taps directly into the spinal cord. You do NOT want anyone but a highly trained specialist doing that.

Simple. All midwives should be trained and certified through accredited medical and nursing programs.

I think Sea Org is best described as clergy. For every Bishop and Archbishop, you have legions of low-level deacons and priests and such. I mean, they’re not priests, but it’s a similar kind of structure. There’s nothing above Sea Org, but just because you’re in Sea Org does not mean you’re in a leadership position.

It’s not legally binding. I don’t think they really pretend that it is.

The “theology” of Scientology is that children are just adult souls (excuse me: Thetans) in small bodies. They have a long history of treating kids like small-statured adults. Putting them to work at 12 is just the tip of the iceberg.