It’s pretty clear that the person assaulting the woman in the orange backpack was the ICE agent. The ICE agent forcefully pushes the woman to the ground and Alex Pretti gets in between them to protect her as the ICE agent pepper sprays both of them. Orange backpack tries to stand up but is continually pepper sprayed and Alex Pretti uses his body to block the spray and is pushed/slips back onto orange backpack. It then seems like he grabs hold of her to block the spray and tries to lift her from the ground before the agents grab hold of him and pulls her away. At that point, he’s still holding onto her so she gets dragged as well.
As the other poster pointed out, California, in fact, has one of the lowest felony theft thresholds out of any of the states. In fact, it has the 12th lowest felony threshold in the union. [1]
Of the top 15 states with the highest felony thresholds, only 4 of them are Democratic states. Two states are purple (but have voted red in the last election). So, it would seem Republicans states actually tend to have the highest felony threshold amounts across the US.
It was actually Oklahoma who started the trend to increase the felony threshold in the early 2000s.
Do you want to know which states have the highest felony theft thresholds? It’s Texas and Wisconsin at $2500. In 2014, California went from a threshold of $400 to $950. In 2015, Texas went from a threshold of $1500 to $2500, so California’s threshold has always been much lower even in the recent past. [2]
On top of that, California actually repealed parts of prop 47 in 2024.
I have a double yellow headed Amazon. He doesn’t seem too interested in other birds (not very interested in my sister’s dove or the wild parrots that fly over head). I’ve put on Blue Planet or YouTubes videos before and he likes to listen to the bird songs/talk, but seems more interested in the sound than the video.
My parrot is interested in my dog though and has picked up of few of my dog’s training commands. He started to say the release command for when my dog sits for his meals so now I get my parrot to use the command on cue, and get the bird to release the dog (and the dog gets dinner and he gets a treat).
If I’m giving attention to my dog, he sometimes wants to come and sit with us on the couch and get some pets himself. He also used to like to drop food for my older dog (who passed), but my younger dog isn’t a huge fan of vegetables so the bird stopped doing it. If my dog seems like he wants to go out the bird will say “you wanna go out?”But most of the time they kind of just ignore each other.
His language is very situational. When I uncover his cage in the morning, he says good morning, when I leave for work or to go out, he says goodbye. He makes water pouring sounds when I pour water, and call himself a good bird when he knows he’s done something good, or say ‘mmmm’ when I’ve given something he likes. He’ll say “wanna go out” when he wants out of his cage. He’s not overly loud for a parrot but does like to belt out some opera regularly.
He learned most of his phrases/words within his first 2-4 years, but I’ve had him for 6 now and he’ll add a new word/phrase into his vocabulary from time to time.
My bird also loves high protein and fatty foods (nuts and coconuts). I’ve never really allowed him to eat my food, but more recently he’s become interested in any food that I’m eating that he knows he’s allowed to have (nuts or popcorn etc), and will say “hello” over and over until I’ve gotten him his unsalted versions of them. I make him do tricks for them usually and that keeps him pretty polite about it. He’s a pretty big bird at 17”.
He used to be a lot more adventurous about food, but he knows what he likes now and usually sticks to his favorites. He also likes to dip each of his kibbles into his water before eating them.
I’ve never expected to get a parrot, but he sort of dropped in my lap and I rescued him. These parrots live as long as humans, so it’s quite the commitment. But he’s a very smart and sweet boi and he’s managed to charm his way into my life.
This is a bit reductionist. While I agree that there are some out of touch and terrible people in powerful positions in Hollywood, a ton of average working class people rely on Hollywood to make a living (i.e. catering, film crews, manufacturers, retail, etc).
It’s like saying that the entire tech industry should be destroyed and screw all the tech workers, they should all lose their jobs because Zuckerberg is an awful person.
I agree with you that Scientology is a criminal organization though.
I’m sorry, but this is a ridiculous take and you clearly have no actual insight into film crews (American or otherwise).
The standard work week for a union film crew in Los Angeles is 12 hours a day, 5 days a week. Often those days can stretch into 14-16 hour days. Crews regularly find themselves having to work a 6 or 7 day week and even holidays while on a project.
Without a union, crews would likely be working close to minimum wage for highly skilled and often physical and dangerous high pressure work. These jobs have almost no work life balance. The power imbalance between studios and their employees is massive, especially in regard to below the line crew.
The film crew’s union (IATSE) in one of its most recent contract negotiations, had to seriously fight to get workers a ten hour turn around- meaning that productions are now obligated to give film crews 10 hours off before having to be at work the next day. Studios and filming locations are often a 40min-1hr drive each way with LA traffic, so crews sometimes only get about 8 hours at home before they need to be at work the next day. That’s 8 hours to let the dog out, eat, shower and sleep before having to go to work the next day. And that’s only just a recent union win.
The union frequently has to fight the studios from clawing back healthcare and the members regularly accept very modest pay raises (3%) even during the last almost decade of high inflation. Only in the last contract was the crew able to get any sort of raise the reflected the rate of inflation but barely made up for decades of stagnant raises negotiated in the past.
To top that off, crews rarely actually get to see that full rate that is negotiated because studios have negotiated to exclude certain productions from the base rate. Instead, those exclusions get a discounted rate for below the line crew which many productions fall under (called roll back rates, which covers several tiers of movies, season 1 & 2, and it resets if the crew is replaced, streaming pays less into healthcare, etc, etc.)
Film crews in general (american and international) tend to be very hard workers. International crews don’t work any harder than American crews (I’m sure they work just as hard though), however their cost of living is much lower and the studios don’t have to pay healthcare because most countries that studios are filming in have low healthcare costs or some form of socialized healthcare. These countries that studios are bringing production to tend to have cheaper locations and often have huge tax incentives to draw in productions which overall has had a pretty big effect on the American film industry.
Crews make a very middle class salary in America but have to live in HCOL cities where the studios and filming hubs are. Many crew members really end up making a poor or lower middle class living because it’s an incredibly competitive industry and not always very stable work since crews are constantly needing to find the next job after their project has wrapped.
There are many reasons that productions are moving over seas. The union or the workers aren’t the problem here.
If it’s both brothers for that hourly rate, then that is only $50 an hour; and probably also has to cover expenses like business insurance, car insurance, gas, tools/equipment, car and equipment maintenance, certifications and contractors licenses, etc, etc.
And I’d bet their rate even has to take into account the time in their “off” hours when they are writing estimates, invoicing, communicating with clients, marketing, and so forth.
They don’t just clock out when they finish fixing your plumbing. Even at $100 each, it’s not pure profit. Running the business probably eats into a big chunk of their hourly rate.
Why link an article from a year ago, before the trial was even scheduled? You cherry picked one quote ignoring the rest of the article that actually answers a lot of questions your quoted expert asks.
<< “The bottom line is that it’s murky,” said Richard Hasen, an expert in election law and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles law school. “And the district attorney did not offer a detailed legal analysis as to how they can do this, how they can get around these potential hurdles. And it could potentially tie up the case for a long time.””
If you continue to read further in the article you linked then you would see that the DA had an answer to that:
<<“Bragg said the indictment doesn’t specify the potential underlying crimes because the law doesn’t require it.”
But beyond that, the DA did offer an explanation to how they could move forward with charging Trump:
<<“Falsifying business records can be charged as a misdemeanor, a lower-level crime that would not normally result in prison time. It rises to a felony — which carries up to four years behind bars — if there was an intent to commit or conceal a second crime. Bragg said his office routinely brings felony false business records cases.
In Trump’s case, Bragg said the phony business records were designed to cover up alleged state and federal election law violations. The $130,000 payment to Daniels exceeded the federal cap on campaign contributions, Bragg said. He also cited a New York election law that makes it a crime to promote a candidate by unlawful means.
“That is what this defendant did when he falsified business records in order to conceal unlawful efforts to promote his candidacy, and that is why we are here,” one of the case prosecutors, Chris Conroy, told the judge Tuesday.
Prosecutors, however, also alluded to another accusation involving tax law: that Trump’s scheme included a plan to mischaracterize the payments to Cohen as income to New York tax authorities.
“They did talk about tax crimes, and I think that could be potentially more compelling for the jury,” Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor, said on ABC News. “It’s a safer bet than the campaign finance crimes.”
Bragg is “going to bring in witnesses, he’s going to show a lot of documentary evidence to attempt to demonstrate that all these payments were in furtherance of the presidential campaign,” said Jerry H. Goldfeder, a veteran election lawyer in New York and the director of Fordham Law School’s Voting Rights and Democracy Project.”
> And they ignored the statute of limitations in order to bring these charges several years late.
Again, in the article you linked it explains how they were legally able to extend the statute of limitations for this case:
<<There were some extensions during the pandemic, and state law also can stop the clock when a potential defendant is continuously outside the state.
There are only 5 states with federally owned land over 50% (Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Alaska and Oregon). Other states west of the Mississippi don’t necessarily have a large percentage of federal land. For instance, Texas only has 1.78% that is federally owned, Arkansas at 9.38%, Oklahoma at 1.59%, Kansas at 0.52%, and the Dakotas at 3.91% and 5.41%. In fact, there are only ten states with over 30% of federally owned land in the Union, granted they are all in the Western part of the States.
This entire tirade is unhinged and filled with insane claims and trash science.
> giving premarital sex for free to a few select men
Is your problem with this that women are having sex? Or that they aren’t prostituting themselves? Or perhaps the problem that they aren’t having sex “with you”?
> Women are out of control. They can't control themselves, and refuse to be controlled by any man
Control themselves from what exactly? The examples you give are breaking up with/divorcing a spouse, getting cosmetic surgery and dying alone. The biggest problem you have with women, it seems, is that women are fully autonomous human beings.
> Every single woman I've dated has been clinically insane, cheating, and promiscuous beyond belief - first I thought I might be the problem, but then I saw the stats. It's everyone's problem, and women aren't going to fix it.
Stats? What stats?
> 90% of women are hopelessly addicted to hormonal birth control, stunting their sexual maturity.
Literally not possible. Are these the stats that you keep talking about?
That was very kind of you, and I appreciate that you value life so much, no matter how small; but I’m going to say you are an extreme outlier.
Realistically, how many people would go to all that trouble to save an ant nest on land that they are building on? And that’s not mentioning how many ants probably died in the move or were left behind and died in the rebuilding of the foundation, even despite all the care you took.
>Who is forcing them into 12 hour day jobs? Maybe they think they're 'empowered' but let's face it the country is collapsing so most of their careers aren't going to go anywhere.
>It's still women who still expect men to be high earners, now men have to do half of the housework on top of spending time with children in the evenings then get screamed at for having mediocre finances when their careers flatline.
It sounds like you had a bad experience and are now using that to generalize about a large population of people. Why is it only acceptable for men to seek independence and fulfillment from a career? No one is forcing men into a 12 hour a day job, either. It seems only reasonable that if both partners are working, that they split the household chores and child rearing.
Perhaps it’s the working hours, high cost of living, traditional expectations of women and ultra competitive culture that is collapsing society, and not the women wanting better for themselves. Unless your solution is to rollback the clock several decades or force women into motherhood and domestic labor, I’m not even really sure what your point is here.
The solution that many S. Korean women have found for themselves, in order to have a fulfilling career/not be dependent on a husband, is to remain single and/or childless. Clearly these women are fine living on a single income and cleaning up after themselves, so it’s pretty evident that many women aren’t just after high earnings or that they “still expect men to be high earners.” For women who want a career, they don’t also want to come home and be solely responsible for taking care of their husband and kids. If men want to be in a relationship with these career women, then they need to help out around the house. If they don’t want to do that, then it’s pretty clear that these S. Korean women are completely fine being on their own.
> They didn't interview men because the responses would not fit the narrative that the BBC seeks.
Yeah, it’s an article about South Korean women. Not about S. Korean men. Are you saying that the account of these S. Korean women should be totally discounted because they didn’t interview any men?
I agree that the framing is bad and can lead to some people assuming that women are incapable or needlessly fearful, but I’d argue being hyper aware of one’s environment doesn’t necessarily equate to being fearful.
For instance, Japan and Korea, both which are considered pretty safe countries, but have had many issues of women getting groped on public transportation. Japan had to launch an anti-groping campaign (anti-Chikan) it had become such a problem. There’s even a whole porn genre of people groping women on public transportation that’s sprung out of it.
This all doesn’t make women necessarily more fearful of doing everyday things (ie millions of Japanese women use public transportation every day without fear). Some women may have just become apathetic to the danger and some maybe generally more wary of their surroundings (to the point where it has become automatic or an afterthought). In either of these cases, none of these women are afraid of stepping out into public.
Humans are very adaptable. The human brain can only take so much fear before it acclimatizes to the danger. Just like any other person, women can move through life without fear of something even if there is cause to fear it.
I understand your push back of the framing, but I fear your framing also underestimates the unique dangers and challenges that women do face in public, sometimes every single day. Even in countries and cities that are considered very safe.
My point being that we can both acknowledge that women still have an entirely different experience navigating public spaces then men do, but that that ALSO doesn’t mean that women are irrationally fearful of being in public; or any less capable of maneuvering through society safely on their own.
There are plenty of “nerdy”, average/unattractive, and/or “non-white” men etc, etc who have meaningful relationships with women, and some of these women are even smart and/or beautiful. I know a number of these relationships myself and the common denominator that I see between all of them is that there is respect between both parties.
I just want to quote a couple of things you’ve posted.
>Millions of modern educated women seem to be engaging in casual sex with a relatively small number of highly-attractive-looking hyper-sexual men (who probably sleep with someone every night "spinning plates" so to speak).
> …the top 20% and especially the top 5% live like one of the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire, with women ready to deliver themselves to their door for intimacy.
> But the so-called "Chad cock carouse|" has taken such a sheer number of women out of marriage and dating market, that millions of amazing men are left single, sexless, and unable to marry…
>These are the sorts of high quality men that many of these sexually-liberated women “claim they want”…
> ("Chad") men (many who are low income or professionally-unsuccessful) end up having harems of 3 to 5 women, hence massively shrinking the number of women available.
>Why would women do this, rather that have a deep loving relationship with a man who can give her 100% of himself to her (and build a family with that guy)? I have no idea.
It certainly isn't a good thing.
> But then you've got millions of these women who priories the dopamine or serotonin (or oxytocin or whatever) hit of sleeping with various Chads, and the end result is the breakdown of families, and the future of civil society.
Even with all the absolutes and exaggerated claims in your statements, the biggest issue I see in your posts is the way you talk about women.
Look at the words you use. “Claim to want”, “why would women do this”, “millions of these women who priories the dopamine or serotonin [to have sex] with various Chads… result[ing in]… the breakdown of families, and the future of civil society,” “harems of women,” “shrinking the number of women available,” “with women ready to deliver themselves to their door for intimacy.”
Your words paint women as irrational, fickle and emotional beings who cannot reason and don’t know what’s best for them or the world. You talk about them as if they are livestock and or toddlers, not fully-grown autonomous human beings. You’re post screams of the stereotypes that women have been fighting against throughout history.
Talking about women this way is not going to help you form meaningful relationships with them. Women are individuals. They are people. They have their own individual wants and needs, that may or may not match up with your own. Some might, others won’t. Because, again, women are individuals.
If you’re getting to know a woman, and you bring up even a fraction of what you’ve written here, it’s very possible she’s not going to bother to try and get to know you further; even if you do have other great attributes. Because she probably doesn’t want to be treated like a stereotype or a child.
No, that’s obviously not what I’m saying. In fact 100 years ago, doctors were actually receiving about the same amount of education as doctors today. Residency programs became a requirement in the mid 1920’s. But I get the point you’re trying to make.
It was the adoption of the Hopkins model and standardization of medical education— which focused on a mission of education, research and clinical practice— that led to a lot of medical advances that we have today.
My point, is that too much education (and its associated costs) can become a barrier to people joining industries/paying off their loans. Do you suggest doctors increase their education for longer than a decade? Maybe 2 decades of education would make better doctors, but is that really a net benefit to society? Not too mention, a good portion of a doctors education already is actually just learning on the job (while being paid a pittance).
Education (in the US), is not free (or even reasonably priced) and wages have stagnated for quite some time. All you’re doing is burdening people with more debt in order to still have to fight in a job market against their fellow humans as well as now AI.
If companies (or the government) took on training costs (like they often used to) and people were paid enough to make a comfortable living, then I wouldn’t even be discussing this. By all means, bring on the AI revolution.
But until we have some sort of safety nets in place to prevent all these people falling into poverty, requiring more educational investment and debt burden is not really a great solution for a large portion of the population. I mean, even a person’s healthcare is tied to being employed, and one of the political parties is still talking about repealing the ACA to this day, one of the only bills to actually try and tackle the absurd healthcare costs and coverage issues. More time in school would also just increase healthcare costs an individual would have to pay.
Judging from the present state of things, we’re nowhere near solving ANY of these issues that we are currently experiencing. Without proper guard rails, a rapid and wide adoption of AI is only likely to exacerbate these issues that our society is presently struggling with.
Nah, it’s just an election year. The republicans have been stonewalling everything so they can claim the democrats aren’t getting anything done. They even killed the bipartisan border deal, which they have been asking for for awhile and which initially had Republican support but when their likely nominee told them to drop it, they did.
I mean, yeah it is sort of bad. There’s a huge shortage of medical staff in the US (and many other developed countries). I’m not sure raising educational requirements (yet again), is really going to be all the helpful for the general population. Everyone shouldn’t need a masters degree just to make a basic living. Increasing educational requirements will increase people’s already inflated school debt and decrease the amount of time they can be in the workforce. This would give them even less time and opportunities in the workforce to make money (and repay their enormous school debt). And if the minimum requirements to participate in white collar work is now a masters degree, but AI has eaten a large portion of available work, then having more education really isn’t going to do much, since most everyone else will also have to increase their education to be competitive.
I mean, even some of the most basic jobs today require a university/college degree, when in the past a high school diploma would have been sufficient. It’s just moving the goal posts all over again.