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testfactor

@ testfactor @lemmy.world

Posts
1
Comments
452
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Visitor to Taiwan hit with $9,000 fine over 'roast chicken and pork combo' lunch box

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  • I can't find the pork ban on the link you provided. The closest I saw was "Quarantine inspection of animals, plants and their derived products" which isn't a prohibition of anything in particular, and the link to the relevant authority literally goes to a dead page.

  • Visitor to Taiwan hit with $9,000 fine over 'roast chicken and pork combo' lunch box

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  • I googled what not to bring into Taiwan, and this was the first link that came up: https://support.carousell.com/hc/en-us/articles/115008674167-List-of-Prohibited-Content-Taiwan

    I can see pursuing that and not putting together that your lunch violates it. It has a big red text about animal product imports, but specifies that it's about animals under quarantine, which makes it seem like more of a livestock restriction. Especially when it starts referencing legal codes instead of giving you any kind of meaningful explanation.

    Combine that with the fact that the dude was Indonesian and routed through a Hong Kong airport, and I think it's not wildly unreasonable that he would have missed the memo, even if he'd done his due diligence.

    And I stand by that, even if he'd not done his due diligence, the punishment is excessive. This feels like more of a "we confiscate the offending material, slap you with a $500 fine, and send you on your way."

    It's not like he was smuggling in livestock. He had the equivalent of a carnitas burrito from Chipotle in his bag.

  • Visitor to Taiwan hit with $9,000 fine over 'roast chicken and pork combo' lunch box

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  • The guy was from Indonesia and routed to Taiwan via Hong Kong. There's a good chance there were no signs or announcements in a language he could understand.

  • Visitor to Taiwan hit with $9,000 fine over 'roast chicken and pork combo' lunch box

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  • Check what though, that's the issue. I would never think that my carnitas burrito from Chipotle might catch me a 10k fine.

    And let's be real, there's no reason to put that "(maybe)" in there. Are you suggesting the dude was like, "Ahahaha, my dastardly plan is in motion! I'm going to snuggle 4oz of pork hidden away in my lunch, in direct violation of import controls. It's so clever because I have absolutely no discernable reason I would want to do this on purpose!!!"

    And what are you recommending me check? Google every item on the "ingredients" list on my coke zero to make sure I'm not smuggling red dye number 33 into a country that bans it?

    Most civilized countries don't fine people $10k for breaking laws that it would be very reasonable they have no idea exist.

  • Visitor to Taiwan hit with $9,000 fine over 'roast chicken and pork combo' lunch box

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  • I mean, I don't know that that changes my point at all, but if you'd really like me to rephrase it:

    I don't Google every item in my suitcase to make sure the the type of cotton my socks are made of won't get me immediately deported and fined $10,000 that I don't have.

  • Deleted

    Jefferson Davis birthday is a state holiday in Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi.

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  • So, I'm from Alabama and my dad worked for the state. While the holiday is terrible, it has a dope as hell placement.

    They always put it on the first Monday in June, so it's always the week after Memorial Day.

    As such, state offices basically shut down for a week, since everybody takes the Tuesday to Friday after Memorial Day off, since 4 days of leave gets you a 10 day stretch of no work.

    Not saying it's good, but it'd be hella unpopular to repeal, and not cause people care about Jefferson Davis, lol.

  • Visitor to Taiwan hit with $9,000 fine over 'roast chicken and pork combo' lunch box

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  • I mean, that headline implies intentionality, no? I doubt the guy knew that his lunch would get him slapped with a $10k fine.

    I know I don't Google every single item in my bag to make sure that something like the type of cotton my socks are made of doesn't get me thrown in jail.

  • Jerry Seinfeld is interrupted onstage by pro-Palestinian protesters — again

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  • It seems counterproductive to pay for tickets to go see a comedian just to protest heckle.

    Like, you just gave that man money to yell at him. I'm sure he's drying his tears with the dollar bills.

  • Vivian Rule

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  • Oh dang, did the new remaster go back and redo all the Vivian dialogue to match the original Japanese!?

    I was already stoked for this game, but that's got me double stoked!!!

  • Dutch woman, 29, granted euthanasia approval on grounds of mental suffering

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  • See, I feel like your whole post could be summarized as, "some people's mental illness makes them unable to work and earn money, so they're too poor to afford treatment, and therefore the morally correct thing is to just let those people kill themselves."

    And while I don't think that's exactly what you meant, it's how it comes across. Almost all of your points are some variation of who's gonna pay for their treatment and take care of their physical needs.

    And I would strongly argue that the answer is instead to have more robust social safety nets to cover those needs. Allowing people to kill themselves as the solution is hella dystopian.

    But, I'm not saying that this is 100% always right. This is a hard issue with no clear answers, and I am absolutely not minimizing the pain of mental illness. My point is that mental illness is much less understood than physical illness, and I wouldn't trust any diagnosis that said the condition could never be resolved. In the same way that I would be loathe to euthanize someone with a physical illness that has an acceptable chance of being transient, I'm loath to do the same with most if not all cases of mental illness. Especially if the person is otherwise very young/healthy.

  • Dutch woman, 29, granted euthanasia approval on grounds of mental suffering

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  • I think the question is one of balance for me personally. Where do you draw the line?

    Like, this person seems to have been in a pretty long queue and had a lot of time to evaluate, but is that denying her dignity? Should there be a waiting period, or is that denying someone healthcare?

    I think we would all agree that we shouldn't allow an 18yo who just broke up with their first SO to decide to have a doctor help them unalive themselves, right?

    Is the three and a half years of waiting and treatments that this woman has undergone too much? Not enough?

    I'll admit that it feels bad to me to allow a 29yo to go down this particular path. People who are seeking death are rarely in the kind of headspace where I think they are able to meaningfully consent to that?

    And this feels meaningfully different than the case of a 90yo who's body is slowly failing them. This is an otherwise healthy young person.

    Idk, there are no easy answers here. Bodily autonomy is important, but so is helping people not engage in extremely self destructive behavior. If we didn't have that imperative, fire departments wouldn't try and stop people from jumping off bridges, right? Where is that line? I don't know, and I wouldn't want to have to make that call.

  • Israel kills more than 500 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7

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  • Fair. Ngl, I just pulled up a map of Israel. Kinda surprised how much bigger the West Bank is than Gaza. My Middle Eastern geography isn't exactly stellar.

    Fair point though. It's not exactly near the heart of the issue in Gaza. If the majority of the Israeli retaliation is there, it makes sense the West Bank should have little to no casualties.

  • Israel kills more than 500 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7

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  • What's the cut off for describing someone as a "youth"? 27 seems over that line to me.

    But ngl, I'm kinda surprised the number is as low as 500, considering 35k have been killed in total, by all reports.

  • Four years after losing funds for supporting Black Lives Matter, a Wisconsin domestic violence shelter worries about their future

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  • I mean, yeah, there was definitely more nuance in the article that I didn't capture in my ten word summary for sure.

    I was mostly just rebutting the guy who was talking about tax exemptions without copy pasting the whole article, lol.

  • Four years after losing funds for supporting Black Lives Matter, a Wisconsin domestic violence shelter worries about their future

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  • Yeah, I didn't bother to mention it because it was unrelated to the BLM stuff, but it really sucks for them. Definitely a lot going wrong at once. And it sounds like there's a pretty deep need where they're at too.

  • Four years after losing funds for supporting Black Lives Matter, a Wisconsin domestic violence shelter worries about their future

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  • Did you read the article? They haven't lost their tax exempt status.

    They were getting large donations from the police department, and the police department stopped donating because of their support for BLM.

  • Sen. Lindsey Graham Suggests Nuking Gaza, Calls Hiroshima ‘the Right Decision’

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  • I mean, you could project based on the casualties already incurred I suppose.

    Looks to be about 65k Americans military members died in the Pacific theater, and we were still a long ways off from reaching mainland Japan, and the fighting was only gonna get worse the farther in we got. And that's just Americans. It doesn't count the Japanese casualties, which by all accounts dwarfed the American numbers.

    200k civilians were killed in the atomic bombings. Now, it's worth noting that those are civilian deaths, which one can argue have a higher moral weight than combatant deaths.

    So, all that said, in plain numbers I think it's an extremely safe bet that far more than 200k more people would have died in a blockade/land invasion scenario. But, you could argue that it's apples to oranges since the bombs were on civilian targets.

    It's also worth noting to that the 200k dead to resolve the war were all non-American, which doesn't make it any less of a tragic loss of life, but matters in the "political" sense. If you are at war, and you are handed a solution that can end the war without sending any more of your own people to die, do you as the leader have a moral responsibility to do it? Like, if you have the choice in front of you to either bomb a civilian target, killing 200k "enemy" civilians but ending the war, or sending even 100k American's to their deaths, knowing that you are the one responsible for making sure those men and women get home safe, can you in good conscience choose the latter? Is it better to choose the latter? I wouldn't want to have to make that decision, but I also am loathe to second guess the decision of the person who has to make it.

  • Sen. Lindsey Graham Suggests Nuking Gaza, Calls Hiroshima ‘the Right Decision’

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  • I feel like the narrative surrounding the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings has changed enormously since I was a kid.

    I remember learning that, while tragic, the number of lives lost in the bombing paled in comparison to the numbers of lives being lost and that would be lost in winning the war by conventional means. That it was a way to minimize further bloodshed.

    I'm not super well read on the subject, but is that not true? Or, if it is true, does it not matter?

    I'm mostly just trying to figure out what caused the shift.

  • Rise in UK knife attacks leads to a crackdown and stokes public anxiety

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  • That is one of the arguments most often used against gun control as well.