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[hector13]

Zero tolerance, man.

[redwallzyl]

Zero tolerance, man.

The US and Canada should really have free movement. It's probably the single best place for it. It's massive and between two friendly and developed countries who even speak the same language.

[EnigmaticHat]

Zero tolerance, man.

...am I losing my mind or does she look like Megan Fox from the first transformers movie?

Maybe I'm being shallow here but I feel like the press coverage is so much worse if you do something bad to a cute person.  Where's the burly 40 year old french dude with tattoos?

[scriver]

Very likely in the bedroom having chocolate croissants for breakfast and then making love to our mothers while smoking cigarettes - definitely not going for a jog

[Egan_BW]

Zero tolerance, man.

...am I losing my mind or does she look like Megan Fox from the first transformers movie?

Maybe I'm being shallow here but I feel like the press coverage is so much worse if you do something bad to a cute person.  Where's the burly 40 year old french dude with tattoos?

Turns out, people like cute people. This is pretty much what the word "cute" means, so it shouldn't be a surprise.

[Reelya]

Zero tolerance, man.

...am I losing my mind or does she look like Megan Fox from the first transformers movie?

Maybe I'm being shallow here but I feel like the press coverage is so much worse if you do something bad to a cute person.  Where's the burly 40 year old french dude with tattoos?

I'm a cynical person, but I can't help thinking that if she'd been a fair-skinned French girl instead of a dark skinned one, then the whole incident might not have happened. They say in the article that anyone crossing the border illegally, by accident or otherwise, will be detained, but you just kind of roll your eyes when it only seems to happen to dark-skinned people.

[Starver]

And she's a French speaker. Highly suspicious. I mean, she could have been escaping the oppressive French regime, with its number of cheeses*, and you wouldn't want a fromage refugee entering America and trying to take advantage of all the Good Old American cheeses**

* - The problem being that there are not enough of them. 1,000 varieties dotted around 400 types grouped into 8 entire categories is plainly not enough.

** - Cheese you squeeze from tubes, the cheese slice in a cheeseburger and Monterey Jack. That's the full list, as specified in the Declaration Of Independence. Unless you're in Utah, where you are instead restricted to only the unique magic dairy products prescribed by the Church Of Cheeses And The Latter Day Saints. But all of these available in multitudinous calibers and magazine sizes.

[Max™]

Sumptuary law existed well into the 17th century in much of Europe.  You dont just flip a switch on that kind of thing.

Good lord... making people who are seeking to rise up to first world status do so without access to the cheap and plentiful fuels we used to get here isn't an example of such, of course.

[PTTG??]

To be fair, a great deal of those resources were taken from developing contries by Europeans, and furthermore, the exploitation of the resources of Europe itself was devastating to the environment and livelihoods of poor Europeans.

Most importantly of all, developing nations aren't following some kind of pre-scripted progress of nations; just because coal, oil, then nuclear was the path of Europe and the US does not mean that it's the only way to get there, or even that getting "there" is the right thing.

Generally, global environmentalists (the sort of people who have actual plans for "making people rise up without access to cheap fuels,") instead focus on preserving the balance of resources while also elevating human living conditions. This more often than not is quite possible -- if you aren't attempting to enrich an oligarchic regime. Indeed, programs and technologies developed in this effort are often mocked as "making (wealthy, suburban, white) me live in a treehouse with a composting toilet." Rather, sustainability efforts in large part focus on letting the vast majority of humans have sanitation, energy, food, and enough free time to get an education, without destroying the resources of Africa, the Indian subcontinent, central Asia....

Doing that is itself a good because people are better off, and moreover, they're better off in a way that reduces the rate of population growth and simultaneously gets more people into scientific and ecological fields where they can solve more problems.

[Max™]

Oh, I know, and don't get me wrong I totally agree that people need to stop doing any number of awful things to the environment, it's not like we can just pick up and move ourselves beyond the environment, there's nothing out there... besides some ocean... waves... birds... a fire, 20,000 tons of crude oil, and the part of the ship the front fell off of, it's a total void!

Definitely feels like a "hey, pitchforks and torches time" sorta thing though when I hear fat old rich white pieces of shit talking about bootstrapping one's self out of poverty and whatnot. Besides the kinda silly thing of burning petrochemicals, modern life wouldn't be possible without plastic, and whoops, that is a far worse problem than some projected fever dream about how the world is going to end in 200 years. Oh no, the planet as a whole got less arid, more conducive to rapid plant growth, less susceptible to violent storms due to a reduced polar-equatorial temperature gradient, and the regions which are currently inhospitable to humans kept shrinking! Hang on, that isn't scary... uh... "dude, did you see how how it was today, isn't it gross being hot and sticky? I mean yeah, if you were left unexposed it's not like you'd black out and die in a few minutes as you would in the coldest parts of the world, but yuuuuck, my armpits are all wet, imagine if it was always uncomfortably warm" and safe neutral pleas about cute polar bears. Polar bears are doing surprisingly well, actually, but I hurt thinking about shit like sea turtles with ingested straws and twist-ties up their noses. I bet we could use compressed plant material like sawdust and such to make a surprisingly flexible and cheap alternative to plastic in lots of cases and hey guess what, it'll fall apart if you leave it sitting outside exposed to moisture and sun and microbes!

Also really amusing seeing the "there are too many brown people!" thing conflict with the "oh shit we need poor people to keep our lifestyle going" and that's one of many parts of why the abortion shit pisses me off.

Think of the children--who we have no intention of ever helping rise out of poverty and in fact are hoping will keep their parents tied down while consuming things the various companies I own make and sell, but which we are gradually moving towards being produced entirely through automation so ha ha, good luck getting money to buy it, here's five commercials about how much you want to buy it though--won't you?

[redwallzyl]

Definitely feels like a "hey, pitchforks and torches time" sorta thing though when I hear fat old rich white pieces of shit talking about bootstrapping one's self out of poverty and whatnot. Besides the kinda silly thing of burning petrochemicals, modern life wouldn't be possible without plastic, and whoops, that is a far worse problem than some projected fever dream about how the world is going to end in 200 years. Oh no, the planet as a whole got less arid, more conducive to rapid plant growth, less susceptible to violent storms due to a reduced polar-equatorial temperature gradient, and the regions which are currently inhospitable to humans kept shrinking! Hang on, that isn't scary... uh... "dude, did you see how how it was today, isn't it gross being hot and sticky? I mean yeah, if you were left unexposed it's not like you'd black out and die in a few minutes as you would in the coldest parts of the world, but yuuuuck, my armpits are all wet, imagine if it was always uncomfortably warm" and safe neutral pleas about cute polar bears. Polar bears are doing surprisingly well, actually, but I hurt thinking about shit like sea turtles with ingested straws and twist-ties up their noses. I bet we could use compressed plant material like sawdust and such to make a surprisingly flexible and cheap alternative to plastic in lots of cases and hey guess what, it'll fall apart if you leave it sitting outside exposed to moisture and sun and microbes!

Your climatic effect description there is quite wrong. Or are you trying to express sarcasm? I can't tell.

[smjjames]

Definitely feels like a "hey, pitchforks and torches time" sorta thing though when I hear fat old rich white pieces of shit talking about bootstrapping one's self out of poverty and whatnot. Besides the kinda silly thing of burning petrochemicals, modern life wouldn't be possible without plastic, and whoops, that is a far worse problem than some projected fever dream about how the world is going to end in 200 years. Oh no, the planet as a whole got less arid, more conducive to rapid plant growth, less susceptible to violent storms due to a reduced polar-equatorial temperature gradient, and the regions which are currently inhospitable to humans kept shrinking! Hang on, that isn't scary... uh... "dude, did you see how how it was today, isn't it gross being hot and sticky? I mean yeah, if you were left unexposed it's not like you'd black out and die in a few minutes as you would in the coldest parts of the world, but yuuuuck, my armpits are all wet, imagine if it was always uncomfortably warm" and safe neutral pleas about cute polar bears. Polar bears are doing surprisingly well, actually, but I hurt thinking about shit like sea turtles with ingested straws and twist-ties up their noses. I bet we could use compressed plant material like sawdust and such to make a surprisingly flexible and cheap alternative to plastic in lots of cases and hey guess what, it'll fall apart if you leave it sitting outside exposed to moisture and sun and microbes!

Your climatic effect description there is quite wrong. Or are you trying to express sarcasm? I can't tell.

Sounds like a pretty good dose of sarcasm in there.

[Kagus]

India, for its massive trash and pollution problems, actually does have some neat initiatives for biodegradable waste. A lot of the street vendors would serve food in leaf bowls with wooden spoons (there were apparently subsidies of some sort to make this option more attractive to the small vendors), or you could get a mix of nuts and spices in a newspaper funnel. It's not perfect, and not everyone uses it, but it's probably still a lot better than plastic. And, well, I thought the bowls were kinda neat.


...but then you've got the rickshaw drivers who've filled their engines with highly illegal kerosene, and every time one of the mad bastards goes zooming along there's this horrid blue smoke trail left behind. Swings and roundabouts.

[Doomblade187]

India, for its massive trash and pollution problems, actually does have some neat initiatives for biodegradable waste. A lot of the street vendors would serve food in leaf bowls with wooden spoons (there were apparently subsidies of some sort to make this option more attractive to the small vendors), or you could get a mix of nuts and spices in a newspaper funnel. It's not perfect, and not everyone uses it, but it's probably still a lot better than plastic. And, well, I thought the bowls were kinda neat.


...but then you've got the rickshaw drivers who've filled their engines with highly illegal kerosene, and every time one of the mad bastards goes zooming along there's this horrid blue smoke trail left behind. Swings and roundabouts.

Plastic waste. Ah. Plastic straws *really* need to be banned in the US, along with plastic utensils. Walmart may complain, but we know damn well they can afford paper.

What's worse is you're always just given the straws- meaning that even when nobody uses the straws the restaurant probably just throws them away. And, I know paper may take more energy to produce than a plastic bag, but plastic waste is a mess.

[JoshuaFH]

India, for its massive trash and pollution problems, actually does have some neat initiatives for biodegradable waste. A lot of the street vendors would serve food in leaf bowls with wooden spoons (there were apparently subsidies of some sort to make this option more attractive to the small vendors), or you could get a mix of nuts and spices in a newspaper funnel. It's not perfect, and not everyone uses it, but it's probably still a lot better than plastic. And, well, I thought the bowls were kinda neat.


...but then you've got the rickshaw drivers who've filled their engines with highly illegal kerosene, and every time one of the mad bastards goes zooming along there's this horrid blue smoke trail left behind. Swings and roundabouts.

Plastic waste. Ah. Plastic straws *really* need to be banned in the US, along with plastic utensils. Walmart may complain, but we know damn well they can afford paper.

What's worse is you're always just given the straws- meaning that even when nobody uses the straws the restaurant probably just throws them away. And, I know paper may take more energy to produce than a plastic bag, but plastic waste is a mess.

I've literally never heard of paper straws and utensils before, had to look them up. Cool as hell.