What made you go WTF today?

Meanwhile, students at Amherst have posted their demands in light grey text on a white background:

http://www.amherstsoul.com/post/1331...t-we-stand-for

My favorite part:

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President Martin must issue a statement to the Amherst College community at large that states we do not tolerate the actions of student(s) who posted the “All Lives Matter” posters, and the “Free Speech” posters that stated that “in memoriam of the true victim of the Missouri Protests: Free Speech.” Also let the student body know that it was racially insensitive to the students of color on our college campus and beyond who are victim to racial harassment and death threats; alert them that Student Affairs may require them to go through the Disciplinary Process if a formal complaint is filed, and that they will be required to attend extensive training for racial and cultural competency.

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(secondary source: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...-speech-flier/)

Sources are a bit dodgy, so there's some hope that this all turns out to be a troll.

Again, thank God I'm in the south.

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Originally Posted by Loki

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...at-yale/414810 :noob:

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Another Silliman resident declared in a campus publication, “I have had to watch my friends defend their right to this institution. This email and the subsequent reaction to it have interrupted their lives. I have friends who are not going to class, who are not doing their homework, who are losing sleep, who are skipping meals, and who are having breakdowns.” One feels for these students. But if an email about Halloween costumes has them skipping class and suffering breakdowns, either they need help from mental-health professionals or they’ve been grievously ill-served by debilitating ideological notions they’ve acquired about what ought to cause them pain.

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This.

Wtf :bulb:

"Catastrophizing" describes these people perfectly.

It's just crazy. I mean, protesting this, they'd be wrong, but sure, I can get that. But this enormous overreaction... Even if I'm very pissed about a university (or government) policy, I might protest it, but I wouldn't lose sleep or skip dinners over it, let alone over a fucking email, and a nuanced email at that. Do they even realise they are trivialising real racial issues?

Separate wtf, I just realised the biggest attack in Paris was at a band I was supposed to see next week right near my house, brings it a bit close to home.

No, they don't. They seem to prefer Pyrrhic victories to real ones, especially if they can claim the head of some "privileged" person.

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Originally Posted by Wraith

Meanwhile, students at Amherst have posted their demands in light grey text on a white background:

http://www.amherstsoul.com/post/1331...t-we-stand-for

My favorite part:


(secondary source: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...-speech-flier/)

Sources are a bit dodgy, so there's some hope that this all turns out to be a troll.

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I feel using feces to smear a swastika on the wall of a communal toilet may be pushing the boundaries of "free speech" somewhat.

It was vandalism.

Was it also the first time in history smearing the symbol of an ideology in shit was taken as an endorsement of that ideology? Was Piss Christ actually evangelical Christian propaganda?

Aah, so you believe our intrepid feces smearer was actually making some kind of anti-Nazi statement?

I don't know/care. It was just an observation. It's probably just some idiot being edgy. Either way, his hands were smeared with shit in the end, so the jokes really on him.

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Originally Posted by Wraith

I don't know/care. It was just an observation. It's probably just some idiot being edgy. Either way, his hands were smeared with shit in the end, so the jokes really on him.

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Not at all. The shit washes off, the message he was trying to send by doing it lives on.

That there's a guy somewhere crazy enough to scrawl symbols in his own poop just for attention?

Also, you know full well that that's not what the fliers were referring to, and it doesn't matter anyways; trying to enact punishments against people for complaining about threats to free speech is itself a threat against free speech.

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That there's a guy somewhere crazy enough to scrawl symbols in his own poop just for attention?

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That there's a guy somewhere, close by, crazy enough to scrawl racist symbols on the wall of a public rest room in his own shit where he knows you, a member of a minority will see them.

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Also, you know full well that that's not what the fliers were referring to, and it doesn't matter anyways; trying to enact punishments against people for complaining about threats to free speech is itself a threat against free speech.

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I think I'll just better catch you up here: "free speech" is the current code word racists use for being racist. "Free speech" sounds a lot better in the mass media than "Winding down my car window and shouting "nigger!" at a black guy walking down the street as a I drive past" or, indeed, "smearing racist iconography on the wall of a public bathroom in feces". That's why these young students react the way they do when people start going on about "free speech" in this context; they know perfectly well what it actually means.

Sadly, they lack the rhetorical ability to actually articulate these thoughts properly and attack """free speech""" without actually attacking free speech, and therefor do themselves no favors when this stuff breaks out onto the national and international stage but that's the reality of the situation.

http://coed.com/2015/11/16/dartmouth...-video-details Apparently macroaggressions to fight microaggressions is all the rage now.

Just had my first run-in with a helicopter parent - I usually get a lot of leeway because everyone "knows" that physics and chemistry are hard, so no one gets excited over a bad grade anyway.

But this year I'm also teaching a subject called "EDV" (direct translation would be: electronic data processing) which in reality amounts to teaching how to use Word, Excel and Powerpoint, with a smattering of common-sense computer information thrown in (no, "password123" is not a good password!).

Anyway, the first quarter of the lessons consisted of working out the good and bad sides of presentations for which I then gave them a succinct summary to follow. Then they were to create a presentation using Powerpoint while following the guidelines I laid out for them. Both the digital file and their real-world presentation thereof were to serve as a substitute for an exam. This is something allowed both by school law and our school's guidelines.

It is thus treated the same as an actual exam with almost the same rules governing them. Which means that missing the deadline is a failing grade. Missing the presentation without a doctor's certificate - automatic failing grade.

Now, I told them the deadline would be the first lesson after the holidays. Most of them made it. Some had technical problems I could reproduce (which led to a deduction of points nonetheless because preventing technical difficulties was also a topic I covered). And one told me that their presentation was not done yet.

That left me with a bit of a quandary - I didn't really want to hammer the "technical problems" guys too hard, so they got an extension. Which in turn resulted in me giving the "not done yet" girls an extension as well, just with a more severe point deduction. Due to the number of presentations, some of them had to do them next week anyway, so logistically not much of a barrier.

Come next week and both "not done yet girls" are absent (my lesson is in the first to hours of the day). One of the girls is missing the whole day (and indeed ill), the other girl appears in later lessons the same day (which I found out by talking to the other teachers).

Fast forward unto today and the first girl is able to produce a doctor's certificate. The other girl ... not so much. I'm annoyed and tell her that I thusly award her zero points. She's upset and tries to argue that her file was done by the end of last lesson.

I won't have it and tell her that I actually didn't have to give her an extension in the first place and that the real-life presentation was just an important part of the whole thing as the digital file.

She goes quiet and I think that's the end of it.

What I don't notice (due to continuing with the lessons) is that she calls her father who promptly appears after the lesson to talk to me. I tell him the same thing: The first extension was already a favor and a second extension is out of the question, considering the missing doctor's certificate. He then tries to tell me that she wasn't well for the first two hours but recovered later on - well, tough luck.

He now wants to present a backdated doctor's certificate (yeah, we won't accept that) and he also wanted to talk to the principal.

Due to a meeting, our principal, vice principal and the head of the branch were not available immediately so he had to leave again.
Which gave me the chance to talk to them first. Let's just say that they're not inclined to give an inch either.


Seriously, if I had missed out on an exam like this, I'd have eaten crow and tried to hide it from my parents best as I could.

Kids can have all sorts of problems that can lead them to mess up in this way. You don't have to get angry, you just have to state your case as clearly and as firmly as can and hope that your boss agrees with and backs up your judgement which in this case seems to be good.

You should explain to the dad that, if she is for some reason having difficulties of any kind and actually needs some sort of help then neither he nor you would be doing her any favours by trying to cover up the problem. You should also remind him that it would be unfair to the other children to make an exception only for her.

I dunno how the German school system works, but if it's so that this one failed exam will completely fuck up her chances of getting into a good highschool or college/uni, then I believe you should consider giving her a suitably challenging and fair make-up assignment. Yes, German rules are rüles, but it's good to exercise good judgement when it comes to a class about making powerpoint-presentations. Best of luck you surly man :o

Well-handled. The one thing I would change is not mentioning that you've done them a favor. That's likely to either piss them off or make them think you're soft and thereby someone who can be bullied into making further concessions. Just state your case clearly. Don't give them any reason for thinking this can be reversed.

I'm also with Minx. I'm loathe to fail someone for one mistake (unless it's plagiarism); not sure if that's the case here. I just make sure to make the makeup more challenging and possibly start the student off with fewer points. It's also useful to put all this stuff in the syllabus to preclude any challenge.

I guess you already saw this, but it still fits so nicely.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...3ca044c596.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX9reO3QnUA

Future president of the US :bulb:

Russian news reporting 6 dead in a Guantanamo riot. And links to Reuters story about Guatemala...

http://www.interfax.ru/world/482258

Edit: Only took them 70 minutes to change the story and change the propaganda angle of US being bad.

http://www.11alive.com/story/news/po...rial/76880994/

So this guy inserts himself into the gun debate by taking some really poor shots at a literal newspaper. Gun debate aside, how is this guy any saner than a book burner? He sees information he doesn't agree with and his go to response is to destroy it :bulb:

http://www.vox.com/2015/12/7/9867900...-trump-muslims

Dafuq.

Someone needs to send the man a copy of the constitution.

On a serious note, this is disgraceful. If people turn to fascism after 14 dead, what happens when there's a severe threat?

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Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer

http://www.11alive.com/story/news/po...rial/76880994/

So this guy inserts himself into the gun debate by taking some really poor shots at a literal newspaper. Gun debate aside, how is this guy any saner than a book burner? He sees information he doesn't agree with and his go to response is to destroy it :bulb:

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Do you see no difference in what amounts to a personal protest using privately owned property, and an active attempt to prevent the dissemination of information to others by destroying property, often belonging to someone else? If someone throws a copy of the Bible in a wood chipper in protest of an evangelical Christian's literal interpretation of the text, are they too no saner than book burners?

There's the legal aspect, where the guy is on solid ground. But there's also the sanity aspect, where he's doing far less well.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...ir-you-bought/

So, does that mean that the UK government now needs to look very closely at getting a lot of licenses for their CCTV cameras?

https://news.vice.com/article/video-...s-to-surrender

About 7:40 in. WTF is wrong with the police? Furthermore, WTF is wrong with grand juries?

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Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...ir-you-bought/

So, does that mean that the UK government now needs to look very closely at getting a lot of licenses for their CCTV cameras?

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Only if they plan to use the images commercially.

70 years after someone's death seems a bit long to me.

http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2...-account.html/

Holding a juvenile for three days without giving him access to child protective services, his parents or a lawyer? I get that it is Texas but those cops should all be fired for such a moronic stunt.

Maybe they get a raise each time they violate someone's civil rights.

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Originally Posted by Loki

https://news.vice.com/article/video-...s-to-surrender

About 7:40 in. WTF is wrong with the police? Furthermore, WTF is wrong with grand juries?

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Crazy guy beat up his wife, had a weapon and wasn't following police instructions? Yeah those all play a factor. I highly doubt the police said, "put your hands in the air" they likely told him to drop weapon and get on the ground. 15 seconds earlier he was advancing on the officers. I'm not suggesting that this was a 'clean shoot' but it isn't as crazy as you are making it to appear.

It's irrelevant what he did. He wasn't dangerous at that moment. You don't shoot someone who just raised his hands. Not following orders from police isn't punished by death.

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Originally Posted by Loki

It's irrelevant what he did. He wasn't dangerous at that moment. You don't shoot someone who just raised his hands. Not following orders from police isn't punished by death.

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Actually what he did previously is absolutely relevant when it comes to a threat assessment. A violent individual who had recently physically assaulted someone was actively hostile and made threatening actions toward police officers. The armed and dangerous individual did not comply with the police officer's instructions. That's what happened. Granted this might have been a situation where a Taser would have be the appropriate weapon however blame liberals for trying to do away with Tasers.

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Originally Posted by Lewkowski

Actually what he did previously is absolutely relevant when it comes to a threat assessment. A violent individual who had recently physically assaulted someone was actively hostile and made threatening actions toward police officers. The armed and dangerous individual did not comply with the police officer's instructions. That's what happened. Granted this might have been a situation where a Taser would have be the appropriate weapon however blame liberals for trying to do away with Tasers.

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And the police would have been within their rights to shoot the guy when he was taking hostile actions towards them. But the police doesn't retain the right to shoot someone who made hostile actions in the past.

I thought for a moment I saw a photo of Ogre at a Trump rally but that can't be right.

Can we just send any civilian who uses drones to Guantanamo?

This wasn't an amateur flying a drone over the piste.

It was the news station right? Thats not exactly a consumer level drone.

Machinery is going to fail, just ask the resident evil stunt double. Her career ended when a camera arm failed. All comes down to location.

Yeah, and yes, machinery will fail, which is why ideally you operate it in a manner that even a failure keeps you safe. As in this case, where they weren't supposed to fly actually over the piste.

Film sets are BTW one of the places with the most work safety violations in general.