Part of the reason I love watching Scandinavian TV is to listen for snippets that sound just like Scottish-variant English (Scots is something else and neither are to be confused with Scotch).
To my ear the snippets even sound like they're said in a Scottish accent and emphasizes that there's no such thing as a 'pure' language as they all have elements of others which have migrated in.
I would be interested to see if there was a correlation between the linguistic mix and the DNA origins of these populations - perhaps a cool hypothesis/experiment for someone.
Yes, that's why Marks & Spencer in the UK operate the scheme and share the system with other major retailers in the UK. They are able to use the UK prevention and detection of crime exception to avoid data protection laws.
I presume that's who Store-Mart are, but there are others doing similar stuff.
My guess is the 'new owner' was involved in trafficking people for sex exploitation (the overnight journey to the shelter in France - somewhere vulnerable people could be easily tricked with a work offer and easily moved within the EU due to the lack of internal borders).
Meeting the 'Russian' woman and going along with her irrational story and the suggestion of drugs being supplied and her 'loving' him all sounds like an exploitative relationship. Consistent with a sex trafficker.
Swapping SIMs (to change phone identity - albeit poorly) and only using for a few weeks indicates someone used to taking steps to avoiding tracking/identification. Not someone new to criminal activity nor evading detection.
Being overnight at homeless shelters suggests he was more likely exploiting women at these shelters rather than him being homeless and sleeping there (I'm astonished the filmmaker started for feel sorry for him at the idea he was homeless - that's just naive; this was someone already demonstrated to be heavily involved in criminality).
Trying to confront him at the property and finding an aggressive person with a strong smell of drugs at least gave a reality check. This is a dangerous criminal and it was reckless to go near him.
It's easy for you to make these assumptions the way the story was told, but your points are all completely unfounded.
An older homeless man fits the profile just as easily.
> I'm astonished the filmmaker started for feel sorry for him.. that's just naive; this was someone already demonstrated to be heavily involved in criminality
I think you should spend more time in society of this astonishes you. We're an incredibly empathetic species, often going out of our way to connect with people and help them out. Especially when they are members of our communities.
Developing a connection with people you are viewing isn't even uncommon. Media and entertainment exploit this (and we love that they do) by getting us to connect with characters in TV shows and movies. Analyst and investigators are often encouraged and evaluated to ensure their emotions aren't effecting their performance, and victims of kidnapping often learn to love their captors. A young student feeling a connection with a man who appears to be on the outs is anything but astonishing, it's called being a human.
Please, a significant portion of my job involves understanding criminals and their interactions with everyday people. For every criminal, there is a never ending line of good hearted people who are willing to have faith in their fellow humans.
Of all of my short-comings, understanding this is not one of them.
Human minds are heavily tuned to spot spurious patterns. 'Spotting a pattern' is very often misleading evidence because of this bias. Generally patterns that jump out at us really fit a large spectrum of possible scenarios, including that the seeming pattern is just an illusion of randomness.
That may apply to you right now. Perhaps the poster you are replying to actually knows more than you, but you are biased to see the pattern of someone mistaking randomness for signal.
> Being overnight at homeless shelters suggests he was more likely exploiting women at these shelters rather than him being homeless and sleeping there
How does his staying overnight at a shelter suggest this at all? If anything suggests that, it's his other behavior (which seems quite like circumstantial evidence, to me).
Nah, I am pretty sure he was a Russian spy smuggling uranium in to build a smartbomb.
The russian woman was just one of his contacts, and they keep cover because they expect to be observed at all times. Constant contact with small amounts of uranium often makes people confused and irrational.
And it is very common for spies to smuggle in small amounts of uranium among refugees, and this gets picked up from homeless shelters.
They also often use the cover of drugs to hide the unique smell of uranium.
And this is why surveillance is scary: devoid of context, a bunch of data points can be used to craft a damning narrative from innocent and unrelated speech and behavior.
> If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
The 'sex trafficking' angle has become a straw-man for the anti-prostitution crusaders. Does it exist? Of course. But most non-biased studies show that it is not involved in the vast majority of prostitution related transactions. Period.
What's interesting is that the same Girl-Power groups that push the trafficking narrative the loudest, are the exact same ones who will scream that it's 'her body, her choice' for pretty much any other situation including custody, abortion and reproductive rights, etc.
So the solution to the problem is to continue to maintain prostitution's illegality, or at least moral stigma, but just penalize and shame the men, while asserting that the women are just victims.
Which non-biased studies are you talking about? It's the first time I've heard this narrative and seriously have trouble thinking about a non sexual-exploitation related cause for human trafficking in the western world.
Thats not what he said. He said that most prostitution does not use sex trafficked persons. He also said that sex trafficking is a topic used by groups to rail against prostitution. Neither of these points argue against your point that the majority of human trafficking is for sex exploitation.
Hum... Where you parsed "most prostitution does not use sex trafficked persons", I understood "prostitution and human traffic do not have much correlation". I will have to agree that your interpretation is more charitable, and probably closer to what the GP meant, but I still want to see those studies.
I couldn't find them in a google search, that is not surprising as is quite a topic, but a quick search brings that there are 40 million people involved in prostitution, and 4.5 million have been victim of sex trafficking. That gives a rough estimate of 1/10 prostitution related transactions directly involved with human trafficking, so the use of "vast majority" is called into question.
I'm just realizing, though, that what really irks me is that the GP is using himself some kind of straw-manning himself. I've never found an prostitution abolitionist that pointed to sex-trafficking as the "big problem" in prostitution. The big problem is always women who are drawn into it involuntary, or more precisely, would very much rather do any other thing in the world. Sex-traffic is not an straw-man, but an global expression of the worst face of prostitution, and some people would say that an incidence of 10% is enough reason for pushing for the complete banning.
The reason I didn't address the second point, or the rest of the comment, is that I'm not really interested in discussing what other people discuss on such a flamewar-baity topic.
> Diabetics generally have lost the ability to process carbs (usually by eating too many)
That's an outrageous misrepresentation of diabetes (all types).
Diabetics process carbs exactly like everyone else. The body breaks them down and throws the sugars into the bloodstream in the perfectly normal way.
The lack of insulin (generally Type 1) or the resistance to insulin present (generally Type 2), means the cells struggle to process the glucose, leading to uncontrolled rise in glucose levels to dangerous levels.
The body has a poor 'over-limit' response to glucose and tries rather inefficiently to dump the excess in urine which has limited success. As a consequence lots of short-term and long-term damage to the body results - some of which is still being discovered.
Causes of diabetes have multiple possible elements, including none, one or more of : genetics, environmental [e.g. infection] and lifestyle.
"eating too many [carbs]" is a myth and intended to be derisive and offensively stereotype diabetics as being wholly responsible for their condition - just dressed up as a more socially acceptable victim-blame than saying they're receiving God's punishment for having sugar in their coffee.
Science has conclusively proven diabetes is not some simple response to over-indulgence in carbohydrate.
I'm sorry for upsetting you but from my research eating high sugar/carb diets (without exercise) causes insulin resistance in the majority of people. There are some groups that are more susceptible to this of course.
I'm not blaming anyone or even thinking about that; I've just done a lot of research and listened to a lot of interesting studies about the gut biome, western diet, insulin resistance, weight training, HIIT, noticing how I feel if I eat lots of sugar and carbs, and trying to eat a more health diet.
Maybe I'll be proved to be wrong, I'm just giving an opinion based on some research I've done.
Also by process I've definitely used the wrong word there. I definitely mean utilise.
That doesn't disprove anything I've said; it says diabetes is probably caused by eating too much which spikes blood glucose which causes diabetes. What you are saying with your pithy comment is really great but what I've said is eating sugar and processed carbs spikes blood sugar, over time it leads to resistance to the insulin your body produces. If you eat too much your body (even some fats or protein) produce an insulin spike. If you spike your insulin 20 times per day with soda you will almost certainly at some point become diabetic. You simply won't be able to eat enough fat or protein let alone veggies to do this so we are back to my original point...
Every time I hear it, it is offensive. Let me explain why.
It's often quoted in the context of a relatively young person who has died and people discussing the young and sudden death as 'well, they were diabetic, so they died because they just kept eating donuts and didn't stop when they were told'. That brings no comfort to the family and it is often completely untrue. Most diabetics do try very hard to deal with their condition responsibly but simply stopping eating carbohydrate is not really a 'cure' or answer to the condition. Some may chose to deal with it, in part, by doing this because they feel that helps them specifically. But that is not the case for everyone.
Anyone who said a cancer patient died because they brought it upon themselves would rightfully expect to be ostracized (or worse) but, for some bizarre reason, people are happy to unquestioningly accept the point for diabetes, but not cancer (another disease with complex reasons behind it).
Addressing some other comments, insulin resistance can be a natural condition due to genetic factors and occur in the absence of excessive carbohydrate consumption. It can also develop in type 1 diabetes as a reaction to the artificial insulin introduced to control the condition (GM 'human' insulins can help but sometimes switching to Bovine/Pork insulins helps - again, it's complex and not well understood). Low carbohydrate consumption may mask the condition, but the person is still insulin resistant/diabetic regardless of whether they eat carbohydrate or not. Diabetes is not cure-able (yet - there are pioneering attempts).
I know diabetics devastated with guilt that they've somehow caused their diabetes and are responsible because someone told them it is because - based on no evidence at all - they eat too much sugar.
Perpetrating this myth and forcing guilt upon diabetics is potentially psychologically damaging, especially to a group know to have a higher propensity to depression because of the condition.
My final point on the matter, some diabetics have a form which is virtually impossible to manage manually and the only avenue for treatment is to use the new insulin pump technology which can combine continuous glucose monitoring with ultra-fine insulin control (complex time slot/insulin sensitivity/carbohydrate dosage calculations) in order to control the condition. This is showing excellent results but does come with considerable costs - although these are a small fraction of the cost of amputations, blindness or organ failure which can otherwise result.
I see where you're coming from, but I don't think any low carb advocates are making a moral judgement against diabetics. It's not just diabetics who have suffered from the wrongheaded diet advice that's been given for the past 40 years.
Yes, a low carb diet is not a cure to diabetes, any more than a low peanut diet is a cure for peanut allergies. But I think the idea that people can eat whatever they want and use more and more insulin has lead to a lot of unnecessary human suffering.
Looks exactly like driving competency. Over 93% of US drivers self-rate their driving as above average (even significantly above average). It's very frightening to see that 36% rate themselves as above average drivers whilst sending text messages.
A quick Google search suggests the flight [in 1980, the word "cockpit" was used as people weren't vocal about being offended by it] voice recorder would be analog (just like an old fashioned cassette recorder?) so would be readable very easily but probably need some processing to overcome damaged sections. Exposure to UV for extended periods of time could cause serious deterioration, so reading it ASAP is probably sensible.
The flight data recorder could be more difficult but if there is a model number, more technical data would be available, again via friendly Google.
The issue with a non-official person reading is that any results are not "official" findings, so don't get official flight crash investigation status. However, since none of the official authorities in either country are interested, that's probably not important.
The only thing people should be concerned with would be if there are any criminal sanctions available if authorities get pissed off at being shown up for their lack of interest/incompetence/failing of some sort. It's standard in the US for authorities to strike back and shoot the messenger (sadly, literally in some cases).
Perhaps a low profile recovery and gentle leak of the information would be safer for those involved (e.g. tell the family members who are interested, like Judith Kelly). The internet will take care of the subsequent publication.
People are offended by "cockpit"? I've never heard of that. It only takes a few seconds to look up the etymology, which comes from coxswain -- the person in charge of steering a boat.
> Mayer was probably too new and too scared to deal with this, especially when she had to think about her new baby.
OK, I normally think misogyny claims are over-blown and people are way too sensitive.
But your comment positively reeks of misogyny.
Rather than go for a down-vote, because you're able to edit your comment, I think you should reconsider the phrasing and delete the misogyny. If your comment doesn't stand without it, I believe deleting it would add to rather than subtract from, the discussion.
> > Mayer was probably too new and too scared to deal with this, especially when she had to think about her new baby.
> OK, I normally think misogyny claims are over-blown and people are way too sensitive. But your comment positively reeks of misogyny. Rather than go for a down-vote, because you're able to edit your comment, I think you should reconsider the phrasing and delete the misogyny.
Having newborn twins at home could certainly be a factor in any CEO's willingness to make an ideological stand in the face of jail time, regardless of the CEO's gender. Plus there's a wealth of feminist writing about the potential for gender disagreement when it comes to this very question, going back to Kohlberg, Gilligan, and an imaginary guy named Heinz.[1]
FWIW, I do agree that any privileged group should be conscientious when discussing others who might sometimes feel like or be seen as outsiders, and that this applies to guys in tech. But your comment seems a bit over the top and risks shutting down discussion about an important topic... whether the government took advantage of the fact that Mayer had newborns at home when they pressured her to comply.
Men can also have new babies. I'm chuckling rather heavily at the fact that you are the person who brought the sexism to the discussion in an attempt to white knight a bit.
Personally I really like the new Draytek models (like the 2925 and 2860 series). Lots of nice features like central access point management (Draytek APs only) and central VPN management to configure remote Draytek routers are great features on top of fail-over/load balanced multi- WAN and even a model with built-in LTE modem as a WAN link. They're intended for always-on/highly reliable situations. You can even pair 2 units into an HA cluster.
They're very popular in Europe but oddly never seem to have had the same impact in North America, although you can find them if you look around a bit.
They did do a linux based variant at one point but switched back to their custom rolled OS a couple of years back. Not sure of the story there or if it's possible to do a custom firmware. There was something on google code at one point.
If I understand correctly, you're happy to be the one discriminating against disabled people, old people and people with children.
But you're not happy if you're on the receiving end of any discrimination.
Don't you see the contradiction there ?
Anti-discrimination policies are about ensuring people have equal access to services and facilities (whether it's contentious toilets or hotels or whatever).
You seem to indicate in your jurisdiction that renting an apartment without safety rails is OK, but in many others it's not OK and you'd be in violation of safety laws (and also discrimination laws). It doesn't matter that you live there sometime - you're renting it as a facility and should be expected to comply with safety and whatever other laws apply. And if you do it via AirBnB, you also need to comply with their rules regardless of legal requirements. And AirBnB get to change the rules when they want and you either agree or stop using them.
The main thing, is that I'm not a professional renter. The primary use of the apartment is for myself almost half of the year. I also rent more than half of the time outside of airbnb on Homeaway...
In the jurisdiction where I'm renting, there's no requirements for handrails. The requirements for short terms rental are basically the same as the requirements for renting an apartment long term and not all apartments are disabled friendly... It's also in an historical district, even if we wanted to we would never get the permit to install an elevator...
Also, I've never said I wouldn't accept old people. If they have no disabilities that would present a risk for them, they're welcome.
If I owned a hotel, I would have rooms with disabled access of course. But, it's different when you're renting the apartment that is also your habitation (which is the original purpose of Airbnb)...
Now, that said, I fully support laws that force businesses to accommodate people with disabilities. I also think that any new buildings should be built with this in mind. But are we going to destroy historic old buildings because they don't conform to the current regulations?
the fact that he didn't put in enough safety in complicated apartment is the reason for you to attack him? Well maybe it technically challenging, would make the place ugly or is near impossible given the layout of the place or materials used to build it. You cannot just drill anywhere you want in buildings that are few hundred years old for example.
there is a distinction between sharing an apt and going to hotel. Latter is vastly more regulated, former is a bit wild west and exactly the reason why people are using it (because with this comes usually lower price if more people will be accommodated, more homely feel with more equipment ala full kitchen etc.).
Let's not try to make private apartments hotels, because then we end up with... just more fugly hotels.
My comments are far from an attack; an attack would have been more than summarizing his comments in 2 lines and then pointing out there was a discrepancy.
I don't know where you got the idea that I was suggesting anyone should 'just drill anywhere' from ?
As an old person or a disabled person, looking on AirBnB, I can see what the apartment has and how it is laid out (provided good pictures and description are provided).
Being old or disabled does not stop me being mentally competent to decide for myself whether I'm capable of climbing stairs or negotiating the apartment. It is actually a very offensive and discriminatory thing to suggest either of these personal attributes make me mentally incompetent and this is the core of what makes such discrimination offensive - and illegal - in many jurisdictions around the world.
If there is a legal requirement to have safety rails on stairs (or any other regulation), saying the building is X years old is not an excuse for failure to comply. If you're worried about damage being caused in trying to fit them yourself, you hire a professional to do it instead and then it's their job to ensure the building is still sound after the installation. You're operating what is essentially a business, so costs like that are reasonable business expenses to offset against your profits and the result is you get an improved, safer, house for you and guests and essentially get the guests to pay for it, making you ahead.
> If there is a legal requirement to have safety rails on stairs (or any other regulation), saying the building is X years old is not an excuse for failure to comply.
Of course it is. Otherwise every time a new building code gets published, the entire city suddenly has to remodel. This might be acceptable for stuff like stair handrails, but is totally ridiculous for stuff like electrical connections. You really gonna make everybody change their electrical service and rip all the wire out of their home?
In theory it would be nice to be able to go into every building and expect certain features to be present. In practice it would be impossible.
OP said "The idea of the host (who was prejudice against OP's wife) receiving my money was galling".
OP wasn't complaining about the discrimination, he was complaining about _doing business with the person who discriminated_.
Wildly different things.
Laws (or rules) don't exist in a vacuum, and blindly following them is dumb. If a company rolls out a bad rule, you can either follow it, ignore it, or try to change it.
It seems like a sensible statement to make? We're talking about renting out owner occupied apartments for a limited amount of time during the year. Some properties just can't be modified to accommodate people with certain (certain, not all) disabilities. And neither would some people want to, if you're only renting them out a few months a year.
There are plenty of hotels which are "adults only" for any number of reasons and I have not heard a complaint that these are discrimination.
Even under the US ADA, only hotels built after 1993 are required to provide compliant facilities. That means there are actual 100% for-profit hotels which are out of compliance. Perhaps frustration is more appropriately directed at them, or the provisions of the ADA than an individual trying to share his personal residence in a practical manner?
To my ear the snippets even sound like they're said in a Scottish accent and emphasizes that there's no such thing as a 'pure' language as they all have elements of others which have migrated in.
I would be interested to see if there was a correlation between the linguistic mix and the DNA origins of these populations - perhaps a cool hypothesis/experiment for someone.