• 0 Posts
  • 721 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 26th, 2023

help-circle
  • There’s a mix that’s designed to work with rim fire and other lower-velocity stuff. It’s not as powe4ful, but is more-easily triggered.

    A dumb friend put some in a chewing tobacco tin and launch it from a skeet launcher to shoot with a shotgun using bird shot. I personally would not be that close to anything I was blowing up, even with a plastic shell.




  • This is at least an area where I’ve seen improvement in many denominations. The Episcopal Church in particular has gotten pretty hard-nosed about its sex abuse training. I was volunteering for a food drive and they made me take a 6-hour course along with any other volunteers who hadn’t been through it because children may be present and they have instituted strict rules.

    The training had video confessions of people who had used church activities as a way to become “trusted” sonthey could abuse children. They talked about what they did and how they used their positions of trust to grrom their victims (e.g. “accidentally” touching kids while playing to gauge their reactions).

    They then make crystal clear that the rules they have are not optional, or meant as an attack on the adults either. An adult roughousing with kids or talking with a distressed kid alone is most-likely not a rapist. We all understand that, so when someone says “hey - make sure to leave the blinds open with talking to Kelley” or “Steve - we can’t play flag football with the kids” it isn’t an accusation. It’s a reminder that we’re there for the kids and we all follow the rules so that if someone evil does show up they can’t engage in probing through “harmless fun”. If anyone can’t respect those rules they’re not allowed to participate.

    The one exception we had for the “no touching” rule when I worked for a Methodist church was for a specific teenager who was usually very sweet but had developmental issues that would occasionally lead to extreme behavior, including occasional violent outbursts. For him we had a few specific adults that had special training (and waivers) that were allowed to restrain him. We also made one of his parents accompany any activity he was involved with. I only had to physically intervene one time when we were bowling and he took a ball into the parking lot to attack cars.



  • I’d be careful about saying you “got” it. You got a glimpse of it.

    I remember going into a segregated laundromat in 2005 in Alabama. It wasn’t legally segregation, but they absolutely had a black and a white laundromat, and I (white dude) went into the wrong one and felt very uncomfortable with all the looks I was given. I was eventually approached and told to leave and go to the white one, which happened to be much nicer, of course.

    I thought at the time that I suddenly understood it. But black people deal with thay every fucking day, and I do not “get it” because of 10 minutes of racial discomfort in my 20s.












  • Yeah. Any time I want to talk off the record it isn’t because I’m trying to be sneaky and corrupt. I’m usually just venting or being super sarcastic.

    No secret handshake deals occur over phone calls, but sometimes I’ll hold a “Come to Jesus” meeting with someone over the phone because I’m trying not to take them to court and tear down their house they built without a permit or inspections. I have to convince them with pretty frank language that I’m being nice when I’m trying to drag them through the process of having their plans reviewed and building inspected, and that if I stop hounding them it’s because we’re prepping warrants and injunctions and bidding out demo contractors.


  • I work in municipal development. When I want to call you instead of emailing you, it’s because what I’m going to say is something pretty frank that you’d rather not have a written record of. You, Mr Civil Engineer, don’t want your client to do an Open Records request on me and find the email where I had to explain to you, in detail, that water flows downhill and that your drainage plan shouldn’t show water moving parallel to contour lines.



  • I’m a third-party non-employee lecturer at my local university. I teach scuba, underwater photography, and scientific diving. The courses are taught off-campus at a dive shop using the shop’s its classrooms, pool, and equipment. The liability insurance is paid by me.

    There’s a lake on campus we dive at, and the university charges students to enter it.

    The students have to pay $3000+ in tuition for some of my classes.

    …and the university doesn’t give me or the shop a dime. The students have to pay a 200 dollar lab fee, and that’s split between me and the shop for the semester. The only thing the university provides is the course numbers and taking the money, and they get 30 times as much money as I do.

    I have multiple individual cameras I use to teach the class that cost more than I make in 5 years of teaching the photography class.

    And they want to charge me $800/year for parking for the rare occasions when I need to go on campus.

    Fuck that - I just let them ticket me. The parking services department isn’t a law enforcement agency. The biggest threat they really have is withholding grades for students who owe parking tickets.