I See Dead Idiots

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

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There are moments — how can I deny it? — when my Roman ancestors get up and march through my mind, sandal-shod feet echoing off newly built roads and pointing everywhere going “Ist, ist, ist” (the indicative pronoun for something foreign and disgusting, and incidentally close to the Portuguese for “this” “isto”.  Which tells you everything you need to know about what the first Romans to come to the Peninsula found and thought.)

And somewhere behind that is the idea that we’re going to need crosses lining every major highway in the West before this is solved and the barbarians pacified.

Believe it or not this is not a political post. It doesn’t even begin to be a political post, unless you consider the matter of incentives and punishments, which, like everything else these days goes into politics.

What I’m talking about is the recent outbreak of young people filming themselves licking, spitting into or otherwise tainting food afterwards returned to the grocery shelves.

I first came across this in a report of prize idiot alleged entertainer Ariana Grande who filmed herself licking doughnuts on a display and returning them to the case, while talking about how much she hated America.

Since then, in the manner of all destructive pastimes of monkey-see monkey-do peculiar to our species, it has gone generalized.

In a way the alleged entertainer was correct. It is a way to hate America. More fundamentally, it is a way to hate and destroy civilization. And humans. And really, everything humans care for.

Civilization could be considered the way that humans changed — tamed — themselves so we can live in vast quantities, close together.  The city requires a different discipline from the ape band, which had maybe fifteen individuals, whose lives were brutish, nasty, short and infinitely dirty. To improve that, it started with behavior that allowed us to live in larger groups: software in the head that allowed to consider ever more extended family and eventually strangers part of the ‘band’, and ways to keep food clean, and ways to control our tempers so that we didn’t all spend all of our time killing each other.  Ways to share, and ways to behave that increased trust between total strangers.  This included trusting those who handled and sold your food.

We can argue forever on the matters of population, ecology, or even whether too much cleanliness is a good thing.

The thing we can’t argue aoubt is that civilization is what allows us to live in the numbers we do, the long lives we do, the relatively healthy/productive lives we do.

And we can’t argue that sharing your body fluids with strangers is a good way to transmit illness.  Nor that doing it when the strangers are unaware is a violation of others’ rights and frankly biological terrorism.

If you hate all that, if you hate humans that much, if you hate civilization that much, if you’re one of those who talks about culling the Earth and reducing the population of humans to sustainable levels? My answer is always “you first.”

If you think you’re so special that you’ll take this kind of action to bring it about? My answer is again “you first.” (Possibly very first, if I catch you at it. At the very least, if male, you’ll sing soprano the rest of your miserable life.)

Look, we shouldn’t NEED tamper proof packaging. Yes, I know we do. But we shouldn’t. Part of the tenets of civilization is that something like this should be unthinkable. You don’t taint water and food. Even cats don’t shit where they eat.

But if we’re going to need ALL tamper proof everything? You’re adding to the cost of it. And also this type of prize-idiot will find a way to get around it.

You need to civilize humans. Because you can’t barbarian-proof civilization, unless you take out the barbarians.

Civilization is that state in which you trust strangers will observe minimal rules designed for the survival of all.

Part of where the wheels come off this is when you don’t civilize your own kids. EVERY civilization that handed off kids to be raised by strangers not their parents has regretted it. Some have collapsed and been replaced by others that DO civilize their kids.

As for us? Sooner or later this will have to be corrected.  The sooner we correct it, the less violent the correction.

If we don’t act now, with courts, with social disapproval, with disgust, yes, it will take crosses. Or stakes. Or unimaginably worse punishments before this type of action becomes unthinkable again.

And we’ll get there.  We’ll get there, sooner or later, because what’s not going to happen is for humanity to go quietly into that good night. Never did, never will. If we fall, something else will rise up, which deals with the barbarians swiftly and decisively.  If you’re a barbarian you should note the West is not your worst option. Not even close.

If you think you are, you lack the imagination to forecast what might come after.

Trust me, it will be worse.

Be told.

 

368 thoughts on “I See Dead Idiots”

  1. I have the grim thought that it could go the other way. “You see those people? They won’t let other people lick their ice cream! Now we’re all getting the plague, but they’re in good health. They must be poisoning us!”

    3. No, no… You’re looking at this all wrong: The ice-cream lickers are performing a public service, in that they’re trying to help build up everyone’s immune systems by spreading the wealth of germs they have…

      In a world that’s too hygienic, and with that causing innumerable problems with our immune systems, these people are heroes, heroes I tell you… Johnny Appleseeds of good, healthy immune systems!

      No? Oh, well… I tried.

    4. Yeah, in fact I had the thought that these are probably people with chronic infections, sharing the wealth. (Such has been the case with several walking abortions who deliberately spread HIV.]

        2. A dozen with the Singapore Slugger (a meter-long rattan cane, well-soaked) should make a good first dose. Economical, too.

          1. I was in fact just pondering the corporate authoritarian state system as per Singapore as perhaps one of the better in which to ride out a period of widespread “Bad Luck”, as long as one is sufficiently high up on that states “desirables” list for whatever reason.

            It should be noted, however, that Fortress Singapore fell like a stack of tissue paper cards even when directly backed by the might of the British Empire, and nowadays with the nearest quite large neighbor a proponent of a Greater East Asian CoProsperity Sphere Round Two Now With Belt And Roads, and the PLA arguably a more robust capability than the IJArmy was back when it ran rampant 80 years ago, perhaps not.

            When location shopping along those lines, one should probably pick a place to which the PLA cannot walk.

            1. The thing was that Singapore was never intended to operate on its own–there was supposed to be a sizable naval component–and the British didn’t take the Japanese seriously.
              If there was ever a proof of the saying “defeat is something that happens in the mind of the enemy,” the 1941-1942 Malaysian campaign is it.

              1. It was Fortress Singapore in London minds until they found out that the landward flank was protected only by a relatively light contingent of soldiers, and that there was little in the way of fortifications or artillery that faced that way. That’s the thing about assumptions.

              3. That, and the minor fact that the British were occupied elsewhere. Like fighting the Germans.

                1. Oh, absolutely – in spite of it answering Churchill’s prayers, the Japanese jumping off in the Pacific was quite inconvenient for His Majesty’s Government, especially when two Oz divisions left the Med to go defend their homes after getting torn up in the Greece fiasco, then again on Crete, and then taking Lebanon and Syria from the Vichy French.

                  And setting aside the Force Z disaster as just the RN not believing all this rot about carrier air successfully attacking warships, it’s arguable that Singapore fell because the Brits first team generals were busy elsewhere, and their second bench leadership was very much not so good. On paper the Brits had enough troops to stop the 30,000 Japanese Army troops given the British/Indian/Australian/Malay/Singaporean troops would be defending, but they did not do so, mostly due to very bad British Generaling.

              1. Some time back we had a particularly irritating troll with a picture very similar to that; I’ve forgotten the name but he played the faux compassion card frequently.

      1. There are numerous offenses for which this would likely be a more effective punishment, and deterrent, than prison.

  6. The obvious step is to disallow supermarket browsing, and to go back to having someone fetch stuff from behind the counter and only give it to you after payment is received. You know, 18th century style. I was surprised that the stores in Oberlin did not do it, since shoplifting is such a pervasive thing.

    Modern stores operate on consumer trust. If trust goes away, so do modern browseable stores. We can go back to look but don’t touch, which will make it easier to go to all-robot goods retrieval.

        1. I doubt if Ariana Grande hates people all that much — it is just a pose she adopts to mime edginess. The fact she displayed her doughnut fetishism indicates she needs an audience for her acting out. Without people her misbehaviour is meaningless.

            1. Seeing that vid of A-G purposely licking donuts really put me off ever considering her as an artiste to be interested in. That was pure nasty grossness. Talent? I am sure she has some. But not anything I’m interested in considering.

                1. We have gone from Dave Mustaine asking fans to not throw stuff on stage (or at least if they do throw the bottle, make sure its full) to A-G licking donuts and posting it on the web.
                  Of course it could just be that thrash metal rules and fluff pop drools…or something.

        2. No cash? You still get a free pizza, a car, and maybe a spot of the old ultraviolence for entertainment.

          Yeah. Going cashless is going to make it so much safer for the drivers…

          1. If you have to pay in advance, on line, before the pizza comes out, it will tend to deter that problem.

            *Most* people prone to hijacking pizza delivery staff either won’t have a credit / debit card in the first place, or will think again about having given their name a half hour ago.

            1. In the Glorious Bear Flag Peoples Republic, they most definitely have a debit card – the state issues one, complete with a backing account with BofA, for the state bureaucracy’s convenience for any and all payments to individuals, from unemployment insurance to state assistance payments at all levels.

            2. You buy one of the anonymous pay-as-you-go cards from the checkout line at the dollar store, or you just steal one. Chances are it won’t even have a passcode set. If it does, hey, that much more entertainment while you stomp it out of the former owner.

              Also note most of this type of person are “no fixed address”, which means there’s no definite link between the perp and the delivery address.

              The police are now very reluctant to proceed against certain ethnic groups for fear of charges of racism, and a pizza robbery isn’t even guaranteed to get an officer out to take a report nowadays.

              It’s not “Adam-12” out there any more.

              1. “The police are now very reluctant to proceed against certain ethnic groups for fear of charges of racism”

                The people who hurl such accusations need to be denounced as the racists they are.

          2. Having run a Dominos, it will.

            The kind of idiots who rob a Dominos driver aren’t smart enough for the car and often not the pizza.

    2. I’d be afraid of that as well, stores loosing all trust in consumers. Picture supermarkets doing curb-side pickup only, or smaller places like the quicki-mart in the bad part of town, where the cashier sits behind a bullet-proof plexi-glass window with a small pass-through.

      1. We might be going to curbside pick up mostly anyway. Seriously. Just on “personnel.” But then we’ll need the employees to be watched.
        Or civilization could win out. By making sure this becomes unthinkable.

        1. Curbside pickup with robots for the win! I like curbside pickup. I can browse while littles play with blocks. I am even happy with the produce picked. But I still need to trust that the food is safe, not messed with by stupid or malicious people since it’s coming from the open shelves.

        2. Ebola or some other contagion is probably overdue. The laxness at the CDC is just begging for copybook heading correction.

          1. When I watched the DC Fourth of July parade, fairly early on, the announcer noted that we have six uniformed services, and the sixth is the Commissioned Corps of the US Public Health Service.

            I have to say that this factoid was unnerving. Seeing doctors marching in doctor/soldier uniforms….

            1. There’s actually a seventh, NOAA’s Commissioned Officer Corps. Like the Public Health Service, it also lacks warrant and enlisted ranks, only consisting of commissioned officers. It originated in the commissioning of the members of the Coast and Geodetic Survey Corps in 1917, in an effort to reduce the probability of their being executed as spies if captured, as they were being employed in military duties during the world war.

              1. Unless the NOAA employs Aquaman or the Submariner, I do not find their uniforms a scary thing. (And yeah, I can see where that would help with keeping them safe from being shot as spies.)

          3. A significant percentage of the population is convinced that the spectre of disease has been conquered, and no longer need be feared.

            It’s hard to do much but gawk in terror at someone who blithely talks about “only a few dozen” cases of measles (AKA the most contagious disease on the fricking planet!) not being an outbreak or reason for concern.
            And who tells you you’re victim of irrational fears.
            (I’ve run a feedlot, and I’ve worked in a hospital. I might be slightly paranoid, but it’s fully justified by experience. Especially after I learned how blatantly the CDC lies. It was rather disturbing hearing that there officially were no cases of creutzfeldt-jakob in the region when I’d just pulled one out of the morgue, and knew of three other active cases.)

            1. Rrrrgh. Yes. This.

              I have a personal connection to “diseases kill you long and horribly”, as in family stories of a great-grandmother who eventually died of tuberculosis. Otherwise I might have actually met her, as her family was fairly long-lived.

              Which is why “it’s only a measles outbreak” and “why are you worried about undocumented people crossing the border?” drive me into frothing snarls. Multi-drug resistant tuberculosis is one of the things coming over the border, and it is a horrible way to die. Argh.

        3. I’m more than happy to order curbside pickup for canned and boxed items

          Not for meat and produce. I like to pick out my steaks- and what I pick out may not be what you pick out.

        1. When I worked for High’s Dairy Stores in my high school/community college days, we had several of those stores in really bad neighborhoods of DC. This would be back in the late 1970s, less than ten years after the ’68 riots.

    3. Oh dear, we had a store 30 years ago that still used that system. Aditionally, a Parent could send a responsible child to pick up something, and the price would be put on a ‘tab’ for the Parent to pay next time they came in.
      I feel really old.

    4. No worries we are going that ways anyway.

      It’s called on line shopping.

      1. But you still need the Trust Society to ensure your product isn’t tampered with at the distribution center, Adulteration at the wholesale instead of the retail level is no less disturbing.

        1. Those people wont be random strangers or hat have access to my goods. If I order something online it’s pretty much tracked from warehouse to my door.

          There is no trust involved.

    5. The Left has just about finished making us a low trust society. The have made sure no one trusts the police anymore. We no longer trust the media.

      Now we can’t trust Kroger.

      1. Wouldn’t blame the left for the “lack of trust in the cops” issue. That’s always been something one does purely on a case-by-case basis.

        2. I was thinking not just of the BLM stuff, but all the stand down orders given to allow assaults on non-leftists. Those are ordered by left wing officials.

          1. Wouldn’t such stand down orders be exempt from the sovereign immunity defense on grounds they were selectively applied for political purpose? At the very least, any office holder issuing such an order ought be publicly exposed and held accountable at the polls.

            1. Sure, bring that one to court. Tell me how it works out.

              The government is in the process of taking sides and mostly not ours.

      2. I haven’t trusted Kroger since they went anti-gun. Even if they are based out of here, I do most of my shopping at Meijer now.

        1. Kroger and Wal-Mart are pretty much our options here.

          There is Publix, but you want to talk anti-gun.

          What I wouldn’t give for an HEB or a Wegman’s.

      3. Sorry Herbn, but the FBI managed to finish off what little trust I had with incompetent police in the first place. Bad enough a corrupt FBI agent conspired with the Winter Hill Mob and got wife’s uncle murdered, but the entire Boston office spent over a decade conspiring to cover it up. Which means they’re ALL corrupt, except maybe the new kid fresh out of the academy; and considering most FBI agents supposedly have a college degree in law or something, they’re already liberally programmed.

  7. I don’t suppose we should be surprised at the behavior – food lickers are rebelling against civilization (easier to tear down than to build up), and are just less violent than antifa (although as cowardly), on a par with those who shout down opposing views on campus. Rule of law (and rule of rules) be damned…

      1. No…let us not come near to blasphemy. Burning at the stake…or maybe breaking on the wheel.

        1. Impalement.

          (Hopefully this makes more sense here than where my first attempt ended up. )

        3. Draw and quarter them? Disassembly for parts? Of course, once we start down that path, Niven knows where it will end.

          Ten years with nothing but Teletubbies on TV in their cell?

          1. Organ banks aren’t a problem. Too many of them aren’t fit to transplant anything off them.

            And the Red Cross complains that I might have Mad Cow Disease. /sigh

          1. Stakes could do.
            And Mike? WHY blasphemy? There were crucifixions long after there were Christians. It could be argued we’ve lost the whole immensity of the sacrifice and meaning of the cross because we no longer use it for execution.

      2. (First offense…)

        (Trying to remember where I got that from. I suspect it’s Monty Python’s Life of Brian but am not sure…)

  8. For the guy who poisoned the tylenol packages, we should have had a very mild punishment; put him in the stocks, and build an automated boot that will kick him in the balls. And then have the machine kick him once EVERY TIME that anybody has to open a tamper-resistant package. And have this carried on live TV, 24/7 for the rest of his miserable life.

      1. Last I heard, he’d been found out, and the whole thing was to cover the attempted murder of his wife (don’t recall if he succeeded).

        1. Yeah, but the media picked it up and pumped it until the other crazies joined in on the fun.

    2. No, we’re living in a not-quite-so-high-as-it-should-be trust society. In a real low trust society you don’t buy food at a grocery store, you grow it or buy it from family members or other individuals you trust. You treat strangers as enemies. You stay on your guard all the time.

      I hope you don’t live where it’s quite that bad.

        1. California, where how much of our produce is growb? I need to look at the numbers again..

          1. Probably a decreasing percentage, as loss of customer trust overcomes the natural competitive advantages.

  10. Huh. An actual use for computerized biometric identification.

    Computerized voice: “Welcome to Wal-Mart. Please submit to scan for entry.” (scanning in process)

    “Rosetta VanKoinen identified. Entry not permitted due to prior recorded behavior. Please leave the premises.”

    1. ….I would actually be totally OK with, say, Costco going to that.

      As long as it’s 100% private, and no wiggle-room in the bannign.

      1. Thought about it a little. Wal-Mart will have a secure order pickup dock tied into walmart.com, and to go inside to shop you’ll need a Sam’s Club membership. All nice and legal.

        Judging by the store location I recently saw in Omaha that had all the $5 Ozark Trail pocketknives locked up behind glass, and any liquor popular in the hip-hop scene kept in the backroom to be brought to the checkout by customer request… it’s coming soon.

        1. Oberlin College comes to mind. The school newspaper had articles about the joys of shoplifting, College Administrators wanted special non law enforcement rules for special snowflakes. It is trickle down. If licking ice cream without buying and College kids learn shoplifting skills as one of the few things they learn in College, then everyone should get a piece of the action.

          1. Oberlin also got hit with a massive jury verdict against them because of the conduct of their administration supporting this lawless conduct and slandering a bakery shop owner for rightly stopping shoplifters.

            1. Something like $11 million. Few more of those and methinks colleges will start policing students again… in my day we’d have been expelled with prejudice, and probably would have gone to jail.

              1. $11 million actual damages, $33 million punitive, later reduced to $25 million and possibly subject to further reduction as state law* seems to cap punitive damages to twice actual damages.

                The jury was apparently not impressed and rather fed up with Oberlin’s assertion of College Student Privilege, leaving one to wonder how many on that jury were reliant on local small business for their living. The process of voir dir (jury selection) must have been … interesting.

                *Caps for which Oberlin ought thank the Republican governor & legislature who enacted those limitations; the Kleptocrat Party Democrat Party, reliant on the largess of the trial bar is unlikely to have put such limits in place.

              2. Legalinnsurrection dot com has been covering the Oberlin story in full detail. Now, they’re covering Oberlin college’s attempt at playing the victim by claiming they were being held liable for the students’ protests and that the college was blameless and pure as the driven snow*, while the Gibson’s really was the villain in the piece. Not the case, and it looks like OC is leaving itself open for another slam-dunk libel case.

                (*) I’m told that the snow in Gary, Indiana in the 1960s was red from the refineries and other smokestack industries.

          2. “College Administrators wanted special non law enforcement rules for special snowflakes.”

            Only reasonable — without the college to elevate the community that town would have been a hopeless backwater, devoid of culture and with scarcely any commerce. Of Course they should recognise College Student Privilege!!!

            Just look at how the local businesses preyed upon those poor innocent college students, charging them rent, expecting them to pay for goods and services just like any drooling, slope-browed yokel. Why, they should have known their place and thanked those woke students for allowing them to walk the same streets as their betters, and paid the college boys for enriching the genetic pool of the town’s daughters.

          3. Yeah, well – “you broke it you bought it” used to be the rule, and that’s certainly applicable to “you licked it”. Just a matter of 1) re-establishing the rule, and 2) a balance of security that ensures most violators will be caught. Actually paying for your “fun” takes all the fun out of it, y’know.

            1. Yeah, if I caught tea boy having his jollies, I’d be *real* tempted to make him buy and drink the entirety of that jug of refreshment right there. I might even donate the cost of the tea. If he could swallow enough to keep from drowning, well, mazel tov. But that might be considered cruel and unusual, as well as assault. I doubt any jury in the country (well, outside of California) would convict me.

  11. The Normals first responded with the Tea Party. The establishment, Repubs and Demos, ganged up against them. The second Normal response was to elect Trump. If the establishment manages to derail Trump and put a crazy democrat in the office, we may well see the third Normal response. It might not be as nice. We won’t be fooled again…

  12. I’ve often wondered why, those advocating such extreme measures, believe they will survive unscathed. Seems to me, they’d be first in line.

    1. You mean killing the idiots destroying civilization I’m not advocating. Except in the sense that I’ll mutter it. I’m saying this is where we’re headed if it’s not stopped and soon.

      1. You (and most of us) are the adults screaming because the toddler is trying to climb on top of the protective barrier and dance around.

        When he falls off, they’ll blame us.

            1. Yeah, NewHouse has a ton of easy to access second-story windows, great for fire escape.

              The least good one, about 15 ft over a hardwood deck, has no screen. It’s been ripped out.

              ….guess which one the kids are OBSESSED with opening for no apparent reason!?!?

              There are THREE where they were designed for fire escape– an easy step out to a steep but OK angle, and a soft drop on to plants below.

              But they ALL go for the “this looks like a crime scene clue” window.

              1. Oh lol, Jaenelle story, because yeah, why do babies and toddlers and littles GO FOR THE THING THAT WILL HURT THEM:

                We got her a laptop toy, speaks Chinese and English. Plays the chorus of Little Apple, her favorite song, something we didn’t know when we got it, but happy bonus. The mouse lights up, and we can’t figure out where the heck it gets its power from, because it doesn’t have batteries inserted (it has a place to put them, but we hadn’t. Because it’s been functioning over a month now.)

                Jaenelle’s on her Chew Everything phase, and tried to chew on the mouse cord that’s attached to toy laptop. Aff took it away from her, because he doesn’t want her to get hurt. IMMEDIATE TEARS result, wail of tragedy and all, so he hands it back. She hugs it close, glaring up at him with her big, big tear-filled eyes.

                After several minutes, she tries to eat the cord again. Again he takes away the toy. Again the tears. This time, when he hands her back the toy, she hides it behind her, under blanket, under stuffed toys… to the amusement of her elder brother and Aff.

                Aff related the story to me, both impressed with how she moved to hide the toy, and laughing because it reminded him of “Why my toddler is crying.”

                “I tried to stop her from electrocuting herself.”

                2. Before you give it back, let a little hot sauce dry on the cord.
                  She needs to learn.

                  1. I’ve had dogs who LIKE that stuff. And not just grocery hot sauce. Undiluted exterminator grade hot sauce, used to discourage voles and gophers.

                    1. Have a dog that tries to get people to drop things coming in the door. Well, one day I dropped a fresh habanero.

                      …People finally seem to get how bone-headed stubborn that dog is when I tell them he chewed through the skin, dropped it – then picked it up and chewed it again.

                    2. Tried that with a dog that liked to counter cruise, once.
                      It was pre-kids, so I had my own garden and made my own barbeque sauce as enjoyable timesinks. Because of that, something like 16 square feet of the garden was devoted to peppers of various kinds, so I laid out a nice assortment for him, all down the length of the counter. Then I theatrically turned my back, and did something for a couple of minutes, snickering to myself.
                      When I turned back, every single one was gone, and the dog was happily sitting and wagging his tail. He was not fazed at all.
                      But when he went outside to do his business later on, yiped like someone had kicked him. You wouldn’t think a dog could sprint while dragging its butt across the lawn, but I’ve seen it.

                    3. Tried to cure the dog of eating the cat’s food. I mixed cayenne pepper into a dollop of cf until the normally gray stuff was pink. The dog polished the disk. I think she was careful after that …

                  2. …Housemate’s dad did that. He ended up liking the spicy stuff.

                    Also, I’d like not to scare Jaenelle away from eating, we’re getting her into the mindset of ‘mouth is for food’ as she’s been NG tube fed for most of her life. ^^;;

                3. “The mouse lights up, and we can’t figure out where the heck it gets its power from, because it doesn’t have batteries inserted (it has a place to put them, but we hadn’t. Because it’s been functioning over a month now.)”

                  Jesus Shadow! You got the perpetual motion ZPG proof of concept model, not one that was supposed to be sold! The Corp is going to be after it, and all of you, to hide the evidence.

      2. And this is part of why I am not exerting any great effort to obtain the right proper ax(e). Temptation.

        Though, admittedly, simply using such on some of the overgrown flora around might be a very good deterrent.

    2. I’m going to talk about a conspiracy theory I’ve heard about. (Not read about, heard about; they’re entertainment in our household.) It’s in line with your statement.

      The conspiracy theory is: there’s been drilling done by Folks Unknown and Well Connected around Yellowstone, with the express purpose of bringing about an explosion.

      My initial sarcastic response was ‘Guess the Gaia-hugging lefty human-population-haters got sick of the West Coast for not ‘doing enough, fast enough’ that much.’ (The entertainment, however brief, is to bounce ideas on who would have the clout and insanity to do The Conspiracy.)

      I mean, the initial snark is there, but when I think about how many of the tree-hugging crazies who keep advocating for a reduction in human population actively don’t understand even the most basic scientific concepts -such as, ‘a volcano might spew out more pollution than humans can, but it’s all NATURAL and the EARTH CAN SURVIVE THAT’ (Something I got as a response once when I noted how much a big explosion into the atmosphere changes global temperatures and weather patterns)- the realization that there are people out there who would cheerfully weaponize volcanic explosions if they could, to wipe out people (since natural disasters tend to be viewed in terms of it’s tragic effects on humanity) while handwaving the long term effects globally, and certainly affecting more than the ‘target populations’ due to volcanoes being natural and that ‘the planet and nature will survive that just fine…’ should give us pause, because if nothing else, the expression of such abject hatred should bring about the wary question: If you’re happy to think that, what are you WILLING to actually do, have done, and what are you working towards? (Cue Tom Clancy Rainbow Six plotline…)

      The Annointed always think they’ll escape the effects of what they work towards.

      (To Sarah: Sorry about that. I was hoping to suggest this to Margaret Ball for the more entertaining and more scientific ‘what if Yellowstone blew up’ debunking, myself.)

      1. They are trying to PREVENT another eruption by removing the pressure.

        1. Removing the pressure. From a continental hotspot that’s lasted millennia. By drilling. Um, ok then.

            1. Sure it works to heat water and make steam – I’m just unconvinced about what amounts to tiny little holes “releasing pressure and preventing a supereruption”.

      2. What gets me is the double standard. “Humans are destroying the world!”, but point out something that is a thousand times worse than anything humans could do in a hundred years, and, “That’s ok, the Earth can survive that. It’s just humanity that would suffer.”

          1. *chuckle* That brings to mind one of those Captain Planet episodes, where a small dam and water-wheel was considered environmentally friendly enough to use and let this fictional village of people get enough electricity for washing machines and access to SOME modern technology, but not enough to change their otherwise earth-friendly lifestyle TOO much.

            Beaver dams. Been a while since I read about those, so I think I’ll do that while in a waiting room today.

            1. Having had beavers in my back yard swamp many a year, I have to inform you that: (1) beaver dams leak, intentionally; (2) beaver dams are built with trees cut down along the river banks; (3) beaver dams are built with silt dredged up from the bottom of the streams, rivers, and ponds; (4) beaver dams do NOT come with fish ladders for migrating salmon et al.; (5) beaver dams can fail catastrophically, causing major downstream flooding; (6) beavers are not cute and cuddly plush toys; (7) beavers actually kind of stink.

      3. I’m in public, so my cries of “That’s not how that works! That’s not how any of that works!” were internalized.
        But someone might have seen me actually facepalm.

    3. I am reminded of a scene in the 4th or 5th novel in Alan Drury’s Advise and Consent series. The Soviets have landed an army on the US’ coast. A ‘proud’ liberal entertainer strides up to the Soviet general to welcome him ‘as a liberator’. The general shoots him. First in line!

      Not a non-sequitor but Drury’s novels, starting with Advise and Consent (1959) are as prescient as George Orwell’s 1984. He describes the riots outside the nomination convention years before Chicago 1969, and Obama is a perfect simulacrum of Drury’s Democratic party nominee… Scary prescient.

  13. And yet Hope remained. True, vigilance is needed. Let us not forget the goal, while tending to despicable tasks. I understand why the British, while serving in foreign lands, maintained impeccable customs and courtesies, once they returned from the fray.

  14. The good news is the first person to do the ice cream lick thing has already been arrested, and faces 2-20 years in prison.

    The bad news is that hasn’t seemed to deter anyone.

    I know of one other arrest. A guy faked it by doing the whole lick/replace bit, but then take it off the shelf again and buy it, but post only the video of the first part. His charge is something along the lines of ‘publishing criminality for notoriety or something’ and FAR too many idiots commenting on where I saw it were complaining that he’d been arrested, because he hadn’t hurt anyone.

    Oh yes, idiots, he HAD.

    insert Red October clip of Admiral Painter “This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.” quote here.

    1. The good news is the first person to do the ice cream lick thing has already been arrested, and faces 2-20 years in prison.

      Oh thanks be!

      Can you give links?

      Folks here who write for PJMedia, can you start collecting them?

      Do it like our civilization depends on it– just like pointing out when Antifa gets it in the nads, it DOES.

        1. Not just Australia. Some large percentage of American news stories I’ve tried to find a few years later seem to have gone down the memory hole.

          “If it’s not on Google, then it didn’t happen!”

          Hmm…

          1. Yeah, there’s also been scrubbing of some of the archive sites. In some of the cases though, it’s a bit of ‘the story is old and no longer kept’; from what I’ve seen on news sites. But it seems to vary on that, so…

            1. There was a story a few weeks ago about Google de-indexing and clearing caches of “old” and “unpopular” web sites. Which, though I dislike Google, is sound business practice; the only reason they index the web is to sell advertising, and if there’s no profit in indexing some sites, why do it?

              Of course, it gives them a legitimate-sounding reason for putting their own political banhammer on sites they don’t like… not that they’ve ever cared when anyone caled them on it, of course.

                1. There is one consistent, constant, unvarying principle to which the Left adheres: “It’s DIFFERENT when WE do it!”

      2. Were I the maker/distributor of Arizona Iced Tea I would sue this cretin and his parents and his school (for not teaching him better) for everything they have and everything they are likely to ever have. I would also demand their prosecution to the fullest extent possible.

        Man Spits in Arizona Iced Tea and Puts It Back on Shelf
        In another installment of “What The Hell is Wrong With Kids Today,” I bring you the disgusting fad/internet challenge of tampering with food in the grocery store by spitting in it or licking it. Something is seriously wrong with the youth today if this is how they get their jollies.

        2. It ain’t just pranks, either. i wonder how many customers will opt not to eat the ice cream because they cannot forget this story? How many employees of that shop lose work because demand is down?

          Florida woman accused of urinating in ice cream machine
          She’ll give you something to scream about.

          A Florida convenience store worker allegedly ruined an estimated $2,000 worth of ice cream at a rival business in the most disgusting way possible — by urinating, spitting and sticking her snot-covered fingers into its frozen treats, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

          Jung Soon Wypcha, 66, was arrested Monday after authorities said her stomach-churning multi-day rampage at Lu Lu’s Ice Cream Shop in Indian Shores was caught on video.

          Footage from June 17 allegedly showed Wypcha, who runs the Indian Shores Food Mart next door, using the bathroom her business shares with the ice cream shop five times with the door ajar — and not washing her hands afterward.

          She then allegedly went to Lu Lu’s organic ice cream freezer and put her hands into the tubs.

          Later that day, she was also caught on video picking her nose and putting her hands in the product, and then spitting into containers, according to the arrest affidavit.

          Then, on June 22, she was seen on camera urinating in a bucket used to churn ice cream at Lu Lu’s Ice Cream Shop. She then allegedly dumped the pee-filled bucket into a sink where ice cream utensils and bowls are washed.

          Paul Chiulli, who owns the ice cream joint, said all the tainted treats had to be destroyed for public safety, and that his store had to close for four to five days.

          “I guess she wasn’t liking that we were getting popular,” he told the local paper.

          Wypcha was charged with criminal mischief and tampering with consumer products, both felonies. She was released in lieu of bond, set at $55,000, for both charges, records show.

          She declined to comment to the Tampa Bay Times on Tuesday.

    2. And while she’s being run through jail-trial-prison we will hear endless sob stories about how she’s being so horribly treated forma PRANK.

      I recall the Judge character from the Dortmunder book BAD NEWS, who realized that his job was not to carefully sieve Truth from Lies or to parse the law, but to punish stupidity.

      2-20 for stupidity of that magnitude sounds about right.

      1. The social cost of that prank are significant. Putting a penny on a train track may be a prank, but the cost of derailing a trainload of toxic waste en route to a disposal site is not mitigated by the frivolousness of its cause.

        The need for extreme care is was a common theme of mid-century SF; it still ought to be.

          1. It was pretty popular along the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy* railroad tracks when I was growing up. I never did it; at that age, a penny would buy some candy, and sugar meant more to me than a flat penny. No disasterous derailments around that section, and that even after a train running into/over a car stalled on the village’s crossing**. IIRC, the V8 was punted half a block.

            (*) Now consolidated and renamed into the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, or BNSF as emblazed on their engines.

            (**) The engineer got the horrible week award from Fate then. That was on the route returning to Big City. A few days earlier, the train ran over 4 kids who were on the tracks without paying attention. Both events in the same area, within a quarter mile.

        2. Trains used to be that light? I’ve put pennies on train tracks a few times, but I expected the train to be heavy enough to flatten them (which is exactly what happened).

          1. Seems very unlikely. If you put a penny on a track, even a train going 125mph is unlikely to derail. If they were that f’ing vulnerable to derailing, we’d be hearing of derailments due to every minor twig that landing on the tracks. Which doesn’t mean some other pranks might not cause a derailment, like removing rails, or even pulling a bunch of spikes out, or tampering with a track switch.

            1. I believe I mentioned once that I wrote a paper in HS for a military history class that my teacher said should be classified on how to conduct urban warfare. Hard to believe you found a copy…..

              There are easier things to do, though, then removing a rail or spikes.

        3. Derailing a train with a penny on the tracks is an old wives tale.
          That said, placing anything on a railroad track is a Federal offense.
          I spent 10 years with C&NW Railroad in their Clinton Car Repair Shops.
          When we needed to perform some sort of repair on a car sitting on an active track the first thing regulations required us to do was place derailers 50 yards out in both directions. A derailer is a very heavy steel device that causes a flanged railroad wheel to ride up and over the rail thus stopping a runaway car. One could also derail a locomotive at speed, but in that case it would cause major damage for several hundred yards down track.

          1. The “penny on the track” was a metaphor, shorthand for a seemingly trivial action having catastrophic repercussions.

            Had I meant to seriously engage in discussion of probable means of inducing train derailment I would have proposed a Sacajawea dollar.

          2. Locomotives weigh a lot (desirable because traction is limited by weight and more weight means less slip), and each axle carries 25-30 tons, maybe more. As stupid kids my buddies and I would put small rocks on the rails too. Usually this was ballast picked up from alongside the tracks, and it that location limestone was used. All that was left was powder. It is analogous to getting hit by a 15-ton hammers, one after another.

            It is difficult to derail something as heavy as a train, the momentum is so great that it tends to keep going in a straight line and can cross surprisingly large gaps. I saw a video of a film where a test train crossed a gap of several feet. I think that one was made by the Army for sabotage training… And I saw one of a ‘washout” where about 5 feet of track was completely unsupported, rails and ties with just air beneath. The train kept going across until something else failed. Probably the spikes worked loose and the rails spread. A car dropped into the gap and uncoupled (the rest of the train piled into the derailed car). That one was taken by a motorist at a grade crossing, and there were casualties (tank car containing alcohol ruptured/exploded).

      2. Yes. An arrest, but individual is a minor. Already talking about being forgiving … community service. Personally, I think parents should be right along side, all 3 in their orange stripped jumpers. Minor’s has “IDIOT” stamped across back and front. Parents’ have “RAISING IDIOT” across theirs.

        Personally I think the doughnut lick celebrities need to do jail time with regular pictures with “IDIOT” captioned above.

        1. If your dog, or horse, or cow gets loose, and injures or kills someone, you’re liable and face fines or jail time. But if it’s their spawn who goes out wilding or keying cars, well, hey, that happens, nothing anyone can do about it, why blame the parents?

          1. Yes, nothing to be done about it. It is illegal to do anything about it.
            Please God pass laws returning control of the kids to the parents!

          2. It’s not completely ludicrous. Teenagers are much more adept at getting around restrictions than critters are, and we’ve all known kids who were raised decently and went off the deep end.
            That having been said, in a better world, those parents who make excuses for their children’s criminal behavior should be brought up on child abuse charges.

      1. That whole “Juvenile” offender BS is going to be one of the first casualties in the coming rewriting of social norms.

        I think Heinlein got one thing right in Starship Troopers, that the social background stuff that he saw coming would build to such a crescendo that the reaction to it would see people bringing back the pillory, stocks, and public flogging. That young creature-that-walks-like-a-human who licked the ice cream obviously was not raised properly, and society is going to lose patience dealing with her ilk. So, don’t be too surprised when you start seeing the old-school techniques and punishments coming back. When that will be, I do not know, but it’s going to happen. Pendulum has swung way, way too far off center. When it comes back, it’ll be hard, fast, and go entirely too far the other way. Summary executions for what are considered “minor” transgressions, today? Not unthinkable–Imagine the reaction of a community that’s had to deal with an Ebola outbreak, and then having some little chippie do that ice cream-licking thing. They’d likely kill her, once they found her, or at least lay her back open to the bone.

        The nastiness is going to return, because these idiots are making it not only inevitable, but necessary.

        1. Sadly, you can ‘thank’ the Cartels, and other organized crime, for that.

          They actively abuse the mercy of ‘juvenile offender’ to protect their actors.

          Which sucks, because kids SHOULD be able to royally screw up without taking ALL of the heat for the adults involved.

          1. Exactly. Young people frequently are unable to properly understand the consequences of their actions, no matter how much they are told.

            OTOH, I’m in favor of bringing back some of the more unpleasant punishments, because they are more likely to actually produce some corrective results.

            1. Looking at the FACT of child assassins in the cartels– because you can’t even hold them if you catch them– me, too.

              Gimmie a nunnery for the poor broken bastards.

              1. …and turn ’em over to the nuns … who are suitably armed with rulers and canes and a wrath-of-God attitude.

            2. I dunno. There are always those who never seem to link “action” and “punishment”. They do their thing, periodically bad things happen, but there’s no connection in their head.

              And then there’s the cultural issue, where the more unpleasant the punishment, the higher their status in their in-group. Things where your parents or grandparents would have changed schools or left town, lots of our newer residents consider bragging points.

              That’s Diversity in action…

  15. From what I’ve seen of these things so far, the folk committing these crimes are far too young to remember the Tylenol poisonings of the 80’s. (My friends called them “Extra Strength Enditalls” back in the day.)

    Those of us who do remember are largely seeing the spitting/licking thing as lead in to something far far worse than any “joke”. Left unchecked, it will escalate.

    I’d rather stop it before it gets to that point, and if that means harsh punishments “pour encourager les autres” then the price is far less than the cost of not doing so.

    1. From what I’ve seen of these things so far, the folk committing these crimes are far too young to remember the Tylenol poisonings of the 80’s. (My friends called them “Extra Strength Enditalls” back in the day.)

      FWIW, that would be the way to bet for most anything– the median age in the US is now Millennial.

      AKA, the OLDEST were infants in ’82.

      I’ve heard of it, because I am a geek, but for the rest:

      https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/tylenol-murders-1982

      1. Oh.

        Hey.

        These idiots now federal felons?

        In 1983, the U.S. Congress passed what was called “the Tylenol bill,” making it a federal offense to tamper with consumer products.

          1. Don’t forget the manufacturer can sue her for the loss. Because it’s an intentional injury to property, they can also prevent its discharge in bankruptcy (11 USC 523(a)(6); this happened in the United States).

            1. Yep. Especially since there have been tons of people saying they won’t buy the brand she and other similar idiots targeted because of either the lack of trust that it’s safe, or the lack of safety plastic.

              I find myself wanting to point out that probably part of the REASON why the brand doesn’t have safety plastic is environmentalist reasons – the ice cream tubs are paper/cardboard of some type, which right now everyone is PUSHING FOR (and the greenies here are mocking the groceries for the plastic fruit,veg and meat packaging) and say the company does get safety plastic, it’s another step and another machine…

              Yeah, the manufacturer should totally sue her.

              1. So you’ll end up with 100% post-consumer recycled and recyclable, sustainable, carbon-neutral biodegradable packaging, itself securely heat-sealed in virgin polyethylene clear plastic…

      1. Except that Typhoid Mary didn’t deliberately infect anyone. She was just a chronic carrier who didn’t realize that she was the reason other people around her kept falling ill. (After all, she wasn’t sick…)

        2. Well, and I’d argue that after a certain point Typhoid Mary was doing it with intent–even if that was via refusing to believe (even after being LOCKED UP FOR A TIME) that she was carrying the illness. She always struck me as being at that cusp where persistent stupidity becomes malicious in and of itself. (Either that, or the people doing the explaining to her really, really sucked at their jobs.)

          1. Granted, she did become a decent lab worker when someone FINALLY allowed her to learn to do such. Before, it was, “That one thing you know how to do? Don’t do that.”

            1. That is true–it’s easy to forget that for that era, it’s not like she had many other career options. Or any, really–until, as you said, someone took the time to train her to do something else. (I’d forgotten that part.)

        3. When repeatedly told so.

          And passed up other work to take jobs making food.

          …at some point, the presumption of misled good faith gets awful thin.

          1. Well, she was Told but did she believe what she was Told?

            Not excusing her but I wonder.

  16. Look, we shouldn’t NEED tamper proof packaging. Yes, I know we do. But we shouldn’t. Part of the tenets of civilization is that something like this should be unthinkable. You don’t taint water and food. Even cats don’t shit where they eat.

    When I was little, we had pigs.

    One of the things my mom got through to me was that pigs were more SENSIBLE than humans.

    If you gave them a three foot box, they would still poop in one corner, eat in a second, drink in teh third and sleep in the forth.

    If they were only wallowing in poop-mud? You needed a bigger pen. Ours had a stream through one corner– mom put a lot of effort to make sure they couldn’t walk out, but that pen had NO MUD. (for those wondering, since pigs are biologically close to human– it went through agricultural areas, ending in a pool that was drawn from for irrigation, no hitting human drinking or recreation)

    It had the stream, almost hitting the wood fence; the back left corner was poop, the back left (long, narrow area, so it was relatively far from the poop) was food, and a sleeping area by the food because it didn’t hit mud or poop.

    Mom would frequently growl (probably because of neighbors) that pigs were smarter than people, because they won’t (poop) where they sleep.
    The thing that bugged her most when she visited us in El Paso? The trash, EVERYWHERE. My back yard was covered in fast food cups from places I hadn’t even heard of……

  17. I actually like some of the tamper-proof stuff because I know how easy it is to accidentally jar some things loose…but some of it is just nuts. For example, most of the milk these days has tamper proof rings, AND a plastic seal.

    That seal is a pain in the rump.

    1. The thing that gets me about most ‘tamper proof’ packages it that, based on my experience, they often cannot protect what they package from ONE drop of 4-6 feet. A 2 Ltr bottle of soda, dropped from a tailgate onto rough driveway pavement has a decent chance of being punctured. So does an unopened can of soda. Drop a condiment bottle from a fridge shelf and the odds are pretty good that the cap will shatter, and THEN what the hell do you do?

      1. Yeah, but if it breaks the tamper-seal, it would break the basic seal.

        I don’t care about malice, I care about biology…..

      2. Many of the plastic bottles in use will survive a fall onto a smooth, even surface just fine. Onto anything sharp (e.g. gravel) is another matter. And if it should fall on the cap, well, what you have then is called a “mess.”

    2. The ultra thin water bottles with the short mini-caps. You have to grip the flimsy bottle firmly to break the tamper proof seal, but by then the cap is off enough to let the water out.

    1. I am relatively certain that her handlers collected and paid for every donut in the case after the vid recording stopped.

      If a vid gets pushed out by anyone wealthy enough to have staff, it’s staged.

        1. ^This.
          Make her swear under penalty of perjury that she knew it was wrong, but she wanted the attention.
          She wanted attention.
          Give it to her.
          Good and hard.

  19. Anyone else remember Harlan Ellison’s terrifying short story “The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World”? It opens with a scene of random product poisoning, specifically of morning milk deliveries waiting innocently on people’s porches. Written and published in 1969. The Tylenol poisonings happened in 1982. I wanted the sci-fi future with Mars colonies, not the one with random murders by psychos using the coward’s favorite weapon at random. Just saying.

  20. If this were an urban fantasy story, someone would come up with a consumer protection spell so that those who licked products, or did similar tampering, would find their power of speech removed. All they could say is “bar bar bar.’ And thus would their true natures be revealed.

    *I was intrigued to learn that the Polish word for German-speakers originally roughly translated to “those who cannot speak properly.” The Russian also carries the connotation of “enemy stranger.”

    1. One of the series I read had thief-proofing for expensive items like perfumes that if the security item at the bottom of the bottle wasn’t removed by the owner of the store, the bottle of perfume would work as normal, until the scent was used… and would wait until a couple of hours had passed from application, ensuring that the thief and wearer would be out and about in society, before turning the applied perfume’s scent into something awful, like, oh, rotten eggs’ smell… Cosmetics might change into horrible colors and patterns, and so on.

  23. And probably a lot of the kinds of people who would do something like this would freak out if you so much as touched THEIR food with your bare hands.

      1. Ah, back in the good old days [60’s] my Family went camping for vacation. Literally, cross country in a tent [pre-Interstate highways in large part].
        Somewhere in the mid-west, we stopped for a 10 lb. Block of ice. “Untouched by Human Hands” was displayed on the sign of the ice vendomat.
        Somewhere near the center of that clear as glass block of ice, a frozen housefly.

    1. Well, if the corpse is naked, smeared in whip cream and found badly mauled in a gorilla enclosure, it’s safe to assume “idiot”.

  26. Who do you think will be punished if one of these idiots is hit, or shot (please no) or otherwise manhandled by an innocent civilian pushed beyond his/her limits? I think we are living in a deteriorating society, but I hope we can last long enough to rescue our world. Would like to ship these idiots to, say, Venezuela to live with no opportunity ever to return to the US.

  27. Trust is hard to earn. Easy to lose.

    That is why we are headed to a civil war. One side keeps kicking out the supports, to oppose “patriarchy”. The other side is afraid to say anything, because you must trust. “As long as i don’t admit there is a problem, there is no problem”.

    So tear down the statues. Paint over George Washington. Lick the ice cream. This will not end well. They already have destroyed my trust in the CIA and the FBI.

    1. Hmm…. where should I set the harshness dial today?

      They already have destroyed my trust in the CIA and the FBI.

      Ahem. There’s your problem: you trusted them in the first place.

      1. I have seen it claimed that one way to distinguish between a citizen (or at least occupant…) of the U.S.A. and someone who is not such is to ask if about the CIA. If they are sure the CIA is as effective as the CIA wishes it was: certain foreigner (or maybe conspiracy kook). “CIA? That bunch of incompetents?” American.

        3. Hell, I feel that way about the question “Do you trust your government.” If the answer is anything other than “What? no, you’re crazy to trust the government” they aren’t actually Americans.

          I was appalled at the number of people interviewed in the runup to one of Obama’s elections who proudly declared they did in fact trust their government.

              1. Ox too fast on the Post Comment button.

                An aliment shared by many of us.

                And totally embarrassing to do in a blog full of writers.

                Makes me sometimes wish I had a half dozen proof readers checking my posts before committing to posterity.

                1. “Makes me sometimes wish I had a half dozen proof readers”

                  I think my readers need to be much stronger proof than that. At least 70 proof and possibly as high as 110.

                    1. I remember using a half bottle of 151 rum left over from a previous occupant to scrub the floors in the cabin the military put me in in Belgium during the cruise missile deployment years. Doubled the number of days the floor stayed mold free.

    2. Just the CIA and the FBI?

      The entire media, including Conservative Media (ie, Conservative Cruises, Inc.), schools, universities, half of the companies making RPGs and comics, the movie and TV production industry, and and and and and.

        2. Someone here mentioned the Bee a while back. A friend of mine is a pastor; I sent a link to him. He called me up and asked, “are these people serious or what?”

          “No, they’re like The Onion.”

          “Yeah, that was what I thought at first, but they make so much sense…”

          I bought a Babylon Bee T-shirt and had it shipped to him. He makes a point of wearing it to church functions…

        3. I remember being told by the government, college, and media that there were no Syrian refugees in the area I lived.
          Which was a bit confusing, because I was working with one at the time. Who had been placed there by the government, and who was part of the college’s refugee program.

          At a certain point, it becomes very hard to assume good faith.

          1. Back in the 90s Clinton sent troops into Somalia, then proclaimed “mission accomplished with no casualties.”

            My brother had just spent a shift unloading body bags and cleaning up the mess where they’d leaked in the airplane.

            That was his wake-up moment on how the government lies.

            1. Those were not “casualties” they were “anticipated collateral byproducts of kinetic actions.”

              I could massage that for a good acronym but I’m too lazy to do the government’s work unpaid.

          2. Ya danged fool! It depends on the meaning of “no,” “Syrian,” “refugees,” “in” and “the area.”

            And why on Earth would you ever assume Good Faith from those who’ve never displayed it nor depend for their livelihoods on selling you fibs stories alternative narratives?

  28. For me, part of the horror in the ‘maybe the Finns should exterminate the cultural Rom’ discussion was the realization that stuff like maiming as a punishment for theft was actually functional in the historical context. That the modern lawyers talking about the senseless cruelty of such punishments are in fact overlooking some potentially critical elements of the context of law.

    Obviously, our culture will adapt when bitchute videos of social undesirable executions inspire waves of copy cats. 🙂 (Yeah, I kinda hope not.)

  29. Saw an article (FB? Maybe) Fellow spitting in a jug of tea. Minimum two idiots involved. Pic beside it was another fellow licking yet another gallon of ice cream. Another two idiots.

    Personally, I favor violent confrontation, severe beatings and massive public humiliation. Exceedingly swift punishment for biological assault.

    But then, I’ve probably grown overly cynical as regards the justice system.

    1. There are days when I read the news and catch myself making up lyrics to “The Lord Executioner’s Song” from _Mikaido_. “They never will be missed, they never will be missed…”

      1. I fear I’m not that lyrically inclined. Does it stem the red-locked rage?

      2. Ko-Ko was pure and innocent compared with these feral abominations. Not even “something amusing” with boiling oil or melted lead will deter these wantons, who cannot or will not see themselves on the other side of the chasm. I do not want to know or see the whirlwind they should reap.

      3. It’s their iconic song and I love it for being a rare triple for female fronted metal: dark, violent, and cruel. I did not, however, think it would reflect the unspoken desires of people filming themselves in grocery stores.

        If it doesn’t reflect their unspoken desires then they best change their actions.

    3. Some people seem to dislike my idea of training some allegedly untrainable creatures: A few wires low, a lot of voltage high. Learning WILL happen. I presume even the more stupid humans will eventually figure out “no touchy” and if not, well, they can be featured on some MTV show, I suppose.

    4. > spitting in a jug of tea

      We take our tea seriously here. I doubt anyone would be charged if they just put a couple of bullets into the fool.

      However, using a cane gives me a less-lethal option for dealing with that sort of thing. After the applause, bystanders would likely ask if they could borrow it for a few moments to add their own personal indications of displeasure.

      Every culture has its Things You Simply Don’t Do.

      1. Lead in the cane top helps. Solid hardwood shaft, not a light wood.
        You should use a Proper Cane.

        1. I foresee a spate of such crimes committed by people who find that “punishment” … stimulating.

          Why not hit where it hurts: banned for life from all social media. Second offense, ban extended to include internet and a restriction to cell phones made before, oh, 1995? (No camera, no video, no text … and tends to burn through battery charges and drop calls at random intervals.)

            1. Your point?

              As far as I’m concerned with these people, phone not working on networks anymore, is a feature.

            2. I’ve no problem with that, but as an alternative contract for manufacture of limited function phones — they ought be cheap enough either by specific manufacture or by disabling all “additional” function in cheapest available product.

              2. I have a “limited function phone” now. It’s a 12-year-old HTC, not quite a smart phone, but it has 3G data capability and a web browser.

                When we wouldn’t agree to pay DOUBLE the regular phone rate to add a ‘data plan’, Verizon programmed the phone to disable the flashlight function, camera, mp3 player, and micro-SD slot, none of which needed a ‘data plan’ to function.

                There are good reasons why Verizon consistently stays in the top few “worst customer service” slots.

                The craptophone still works, though the audio quality is too poor to make a call in a vehicle or on a windy day. In a few months Verizon is shutting down 3G service, so I’ll have to go to something else. (not enough towers other than Verizon to make any other carrier useful here)

                The “something else” was going to by the spyphone, which I’ve been using pay-as-you-go SIM cards in for the last ten months as I’ve spent time de-spying it, but I’m becoming disillusioned with the whole thing…

                1. Xfinity or other piggyback Verizon options? Currently we have Xfinity, which piggyback’s on Verizon towers. Then Verizon in turn piggybacks on Xfinity cable. Sure that requires we have Xfinity Comcast Internet, but we had that when we were on Verizon. Even paying for *new phones for 2 years, we save money. Spying … well if they really like watch paint drying … we’re really boring. Do not use the phone for financial connections. Only drawback will be the trip into Canada. Phone still works, but back to the per $ transactions on everything. No US/Canada option.

                  * At the time we switched our phones couldn’t transfer over. But then the complaints I read about switching from other carriers to Xfinity Mobil were those who where trying to port over their own phones. We’d been on Verizon for at least 25 years with no real complaints. Customer service with Xfinity if you don’t go into to a store, is, meh; same as Verizon. Both are tech companies, and the rep is as to be expected; or not good.

                  1. We switched to Verizion last year, after about ten years on AT&T with a family plan– family drama but the short version is it was cheaper to have my parents, us and my sister all on one family plan, but switching to Verizon four new smart phones, two new tablets and unlimited everything dropped our monthly cost by $50. Part of that was catching a military sale and a big July discount push sale through Costco (the kid that signed us up looked at what we got and turned around and started asking everybody who walked by if they were military so he could get more folks signed up) and part was plain old that my folks’ regional deals for AT&T suck horribly. I think they don’t really want folks to sign up, there, but El Paso they hoped to sell us an international data plan.

                    2. Don’t qualify for military discounts.

                      Essentially Verizon costs us $150 for 3 for “unlimited data”, or $120 for 3 for 4 GB rollover data, plus $75 @ $25/month for 3 new phones for 2 years (which happens about every 3 to 4 years because they start dying.) Plus $89 for Xfinity Comcast Internet, because we have one regular gamer and one occasional gamer. Nothing is truly unlimited anymore, not even cable, but cable at least is very difficult to over run. At least this is what it was just under 2 years ago when we switched.

                      Xfinity Mobile is costing us the $75 for the 3 phones for 2 years (yes, needed the new phones) + $12 to $36/month + $89 for Internet.

                      Add “plus tax” on for both.

                      If we actually traveled internationally much, then definitely Xfinity Mobile is NOT the way to go, not without other arrangements. As it is, last time we were in Canada would have been 2012 (did switch to US/Canada plan for 2 months on Verizon); trip before THAT would have been pre cell phone … This trip this summer, we’ll just put the phone on Airline mode, GPS will still work, turn on WIFI at the hotel, to text “we’re alive” to kid. Otherwise, still will have them in an emergency, at least where there will be coverage. Coverage is definitely an issue.

                  2. That would simply add Comcast into the spy loop.

                    The default Android build babbles data back to Google. (it was a big selling point for the company that wrote it and eventually sold it to Google)

                    All of the Android apps (as opposed to the basic OS) talk back to Google. In some cases, a *lot*. Even when they’re “off.”

                    The “value added” apps from the phone manufacturer and the cellular provider are awake and running all the time; they report back too.

                    Any apps you install, chances are they’re spying too.

                    You can run a different operating system like LineageOS, which you can compile yourself after inspecting the code. (well, at least theoretically) But you have to link it with various chunks of binary BIOS code proprietary to the particular phone you’re running it on. Nobody knows what’s going on in those binaries.

                    The CPU itself is backdoored and accepts commands over the network. So is the chipset. Just like the x86 CPUs from Intel and AMD.

                    Most phones have non-removeble batteries and their “power” switches only turn off the display and put them in a low-power mode; they’re still running when they’re “off.” On mine, when I plug the power cable in when it’s “off”, the screen shows an animated battery graphic and charge percentage. There’s a fair amount of processing there…

                    The “security access” controls, where you tell apps if they can use the camera or microphone, are placebos. Apps are free to ignore them and listen and transmit anyway, and many do. And since you’re locked out of root by default, there’s no simply way for you to tell.

                    Then there’s the whole “cellular system” problem. Your phone pings its GPS coordinates all the time, and the phone company stores both that and your tower information and sells it. (in the case of “law enforcement”, they usually just give it away without a warrant)

                    Do you have an Alexa thingie in your home? How about adding a camera to it? And letting some unknown number of third-party vendors install their own apps into it with no restrictions? A lot of people would think that’s nuts, but they’re never more than a few feet from their phone…

                    I lead a life so squeaky-clean it’s probably suspicious all on its own. I have nothing to hide and I’m not a likely purchaser of anything they’re trying to sell. But “they” don’t need to watch, listen, and record what I do while tracking my location in real time.

                    I’ve sunk a fair amount of money and time into the spyphone, but it’s only possible to avoid casual bulk data collection. The spyware goes from the provider all the way down to the chips. Realistically, I’m practically invisible now, but you know how it is with hobbies; they tend to get more involved…

                    Right now I’m considering going with a Raspberry Pi and one of the new 4G cellular add-on boards and 3-d printing a case. I would have absolute control over every data packet. It would be huge by modern standards, but I lived with a Motorola brick phone back in the day. And it wouldn’t run any “apps”, but I never got hooked on any of those, so I wouldn’t miss them. It *would* run my ordinary desktop OS and software, though I’d have to use a stylus to peck at an on-screen keyboard. What’s not to like?

                    1. Alexa or competitor – nope. Can’t be bothered.

                      Yes. Comcast Internet is another “spying” method. Tracks the sites we three visit as well as a gateway (because of “Guest”) for non-users, but computer wise enough to lock that down (because anyone beyond us 3 using it, throttles us down, and I’m stingy … pay for your own damn internet.)

                      Yes. We are so squeaky clean, or boring, that we’re probably suspicious too.

                    2. If you are not going to verboten sites, citizen, why do you care about being tracked?

                    3. “verboten”

                      🙂

                      Huh? There are verboten sites? You mean, like reading Sarah’s blogs, and those of her guests? I’m doomed. Doomed, I tell you …

  30. Apparently these idiots are not only not old enough to remember poisoned Tylenol, they’re not old enough to remember when AIDS was a slow and ugly death sentence and some supposed human beings were still deliberately spreading it. That one went through the legal system.

    This? Hitting people in their food? And everyone has to eat. This is self-destructive lunacy.

    There are way too many people out there who seem not to have heard that old bit of common wisdom: “Just because it hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it won’t happen ever.”

    1. They probably do remember California essentially decriminalizing intentionally spreading AIDS, and their attitude reflects this utter lack of regard for the health and safety of others, much less basic decency.

    2. This is what screams “power struggle” to me.

      There is no sane reason for it.

      So it must be something insane, and related to the means used.

      Which is biology.

      So….it’s a form of the “rubbing up on little girls in public transit” that Sarah as mentioned.

      1. You know, I’ve been watching a lot of old Western reruns lately, and you could see a lot of stereotypical bully behavior in the bad guys of each episode. I always thought it was over the top… and now people are out to blow that out of the water for sheer eww factor.

        I think you’re on to something, but that just makes it seem more insane. Then again, I generally do not like touching people, so the idea someone would deliberately inflict something even worse than a physical touch makes me recoil in visceral horror. “Kill it with fire” is the best short description.

        I suspect that shock-recoil is exactly what they’re looking for, which makes me even more incensed, because ye little fishies, can’t people find anything better to do with their lives?

        1. Do any of them have grooming the other guy’s horses’ tail as a trigger point?

          This is an honest to goodness “kill him” thing for actual ranchers/cowboys. Inspite of my background, I’ve never seen it in a movie. (HUGE DIGRESSION My godfather was a freaking movie character. His dad was killed in an indian raid before he was born, his first job was HERDING TURKIES TO RENO, and he became a county commissioner because his wife wanted to be….he was, up until she died, too, and then retired gracefully because he ‘lost heart’. He didn’t lose anything but her, the folks who mattered knew it, and he was still awesome. Only time any of us were pissed of was when we found out the massacre that killed his dad, and the other three guys going “wait, what happend to our sheep,” had been stolen to refer to the bastards who killed them for racist reasons. Frozen Grass massacre, CA, last registered Indian raid, the murders were bandits who happened to be indian and everyone knew it)

          I just know it from my folks warning us against messing with folks’ horses when we were little, because even in the early 80s there were enough traditional folks to object to the… violation of boundaries?

            1. Or it wasn’t movie enough.

              My folks have been complaining for the last 30 years about being called “cowboys” when they are ranchers– cowboys are the for-hire guys who will go rustler given half a chance.

                  1. Cattle rustling was a jail term or prison sentence in TX. Horse theft was a hanging offense, because it could leave a man (or woman) to die, as well as taking the tool(s) needed for work and supporting their family. (Old English tradition buried in there.)

          2. I never heard that one.
            Not that it isn’t good advice, it just never came up. Not even with the ^##%head who thought it was a hoot to spook other people’s horses with firecrackers. (I couldn’t say if anything happened to him after he was fired for that little stunt, but I rather suspect it did.)
            It’s so far beyond the pale, that you can’t even see pallid.

            Horse tails don’t really need grooming. They’re made/adapted so that they don’t retain sharp sticks, bits of cactus, or anything else that might harm the horse when whipping their tail about to drive off parasitic insects. So doing anything additive like bells, braids, or tangled bits of cactus would have the definite potential of harming the horse and endangering the rider.
            Of course, they could also chop most of it off… Which would leave the horse very vulnerable to parasitic insects, (and possibly worse) be a direct attack on the status of the rider. (Some horses in some roles did have their tails bobbed, because getting whipped across the face with a horse tail sucks. But they weren’t horses you’d ride.)

            1. They sometimes get matted/tangled, the method involved “combing” it with a knife-blade, it seemed to have more to do with fussing than anything else.

      3. > “rubbing up on little girls in public transit”

        There’s a word for that! Though I never thought I’d use the word “frottage” in a public forum…

          1. You’re kidding?
            You’re not kidding?
            Man, that’s what comes of growing up out in the country with no public transportation.
            I missed out on all the urban and suburban nonsense.

            1. I am advised this is a SERIOUS problem in Japan, especially as Japanese women are acculturated to NOT slap (elbow, stomp, knee, punch, stab or shoot) people in their defense. There have even been efforts to establish “woman only” train cars.

              A brief application of my search engine on the topic of “japan subway sexual harassment” turned up articles that this is a problem in Korea, as well (South Korea, at any rate; in the North, who knows?) and, frankly, anywhere people are crowded into public transport. Not all guys are creeps, but too many are.

    3. If only there were some organized means of ensuring transmission of this type of critical information from one generation tot he next! We could hire professionals to instruct our kids in such basic components of civilization, possibly with informative lectures about how we eked out such important knowledge, and maybe even a system of certifying that children had understood this important information and absorbed the lessons of the past.

      Nah – that’d never work!

      1. Nah – that’d never work!

        As a matter of fact, it didn’t.

        It turns out that outsourcing the teaching of your children is exactly the same kind of yawning security chasm as outsourcing your defense.

        Even the worst homeschoolers (and oh boy are there some bad ones) don’t pull entire civilizations down with them. Mildly bad public schools produce the perfect conditions to create horrible schools; and horrible schools have done a fine job of pulling down large chunks of civilization.

        1. > boy are there some bad ones

          Tries to imagine homeschooling worse than modern public schools.

          Tries again.

          Nope. My imagineer doesn’t have that much voltage.

          1. Mostly just establishing that I’m not utopianizing. Though I did spend some time a few years ago digging into the bad stuff.

            Also Homeschoolers are right up there with Conservatives, Christians, Libertarians, 2A Supporters, etc, etc. in that I hate my allies almost more than my enemies.

          2. Oh, it happens.
            It’s just that parents using homeschooling as a way to hide that they’re abusive trash towards their kids is considerably rarer than public school teachers being abusive trash to those in their charge.

            1. Like the gal down-state who “homeschooled” her five kids “for religious reasons” by letting them run feral, more or less. Almost caused some punitive legislation against home-schooling in general before calmer heads prevailed.

              1. “homeschooling while hippie” was the reason I didn’t joint he local homeschooling group. That’s what they were doing. My kid, in his homeschooling year, learned math, Greek, programing and history.

            2. Similarly, it’s just easier to let the kids run feral by sending them to school.

              Homeschooling, even when you’re doing nothing, requires at a bare minimum PHYSICALLY BEING AROUND THE KIDS.

              And you have to feed them, at least enough to stop the whining.

          3. With some kids, and some parents, quite possibly.

            Homeschooling for my kids is great.
            When my wife does it.
            When I try… It’s more along the lines of masochism and defiance goading each other. (I’m told I’d have a much easier time if I didn’t “show off” by going on enthusiastic digressions. And stopped using words they weren’t intimately familiar with, even if I *had* taught them the meaning of the word the day before, and stopped to ask if they remembered what it meant. I’ve tried it, I’m not really temperamentally suited.)

            If it were up to me, they’d be back in public school come Fall.
            They’d be likely be embarrassed to fail in front of peers, I wouldn’t be so emotionally exhausted all the time, and I might even be able to finish restoring the house! (And write more. And work on my mic technique. And get involved in community groups where I could talk to actual adults. And bring more money into the household. And… And…)
            Of course, Public School is where they learned effort is optional in the first place… (sigh)

            I’m really hoping my wife is a bit better this year. It really sucked trying to teach them two days after having my shoulder reconstructed, because I was the one healthy enough to make the attempt.

            1. Oh, gads, the power struggle! *sympathy* We’re doing a variation of that right now. Find the last nerve and go to town. ATM, the only screens they’re allowed are for classes, they have been told ‘no’ to absolutely every request including “can I try this sample at Costco,” and the kid that HATEs the laundry chore is stuck with it until… September, I think. (it adds up)

              Yesterday, it involved a BARRACADE OF CLOTHING TO KEEP ME OUT OF THE BOY’S ROOM. (Put in by the boys and the Empress. Momma was not impressed.) So the door was removed, and the older boy is folding all those clothes again.

              *******

              No idea what age they are, but Khan is pretty dang good for stuff that is just…keep…hammering.

              1. Just for sanity’s sake (yours and theirs), maybe you need to take them out and run them around somewhere.

                Keep it cheap. Do not tell them where they are going.

                Also, maybe the one who hates laundry chores should be allowed to sub-contract with the siblings for help. Wheeler-dealer is fair.

                You do not want to lose on important stuff, but maybe teach skills about not pounding head against brick walls? (Although sometimes being the brick wall is the only way.)

                1. Usually, we do that.

                  But I cannot let them avoid lessons, chores and basic hygiene by finding a way to upset others. Which, sadly, they learned works really well when they spent a week with family….

                  One of them has figured out that if she hurries up and gets stuff done, she can do what she wants; one had a kick where she would do nothing so that either nobody got to do stuff, or she got to do things by default. (Mostly stopped that when two Fridays in a row, she wasn’t allowed to do anything at the library. It’s back to normal procrastination now, which…eh, she comes by it very honest.) LIke that study mentioned over at Vathara’s blog, where kids keep trying different ways to solve a problem– we have very intelligent kids. So they can come up with all kinds of “solutions.” But don’t have the wisdom to realize “yes, mom noticed I sat here and did nothing while my sister did all the work.” (Which is when said kid lost her ability to make deals about chores, until further notice.)

                  The Empress is also just at the point where she ADORES starting trouble*, and the older kids who know better started joining in and trying the “it wasn’t my fault, I didn’t start it, she was chasing me!” And the whole “ignore what mom-figure says” thing which I know exactly what relative she learned that from during the visit….everybody has flaws, but that one is a nuke button.

                  * I have not maimed any of the folks at stores who encourage this by talking about how adorable she is, and how we should just let her have fun, and isn’t it cute how she just ripped open a package in the grocery store…. WTF is wrong with you people?!?!? I did not melt down, but apparently my expression was kinda scary. Random destruction is not cool.

                  1. I respect your self-restraint. I don’t know what’s wrong with those people either.

                2. Incidentally, I’m now chuckling because I know you don’t have kids, and you just gave better advice than half of the grandparents I’ve gotten it from.

      2. We hired professionals, but not in providing knowledge about how to build and sustain a civilization, just in how to tear one down.

      4. Cultural transmission worked best from one generation to the next if each generation was forced to fight (successfully!) the barbarians at the door.

    4. Kipling comes to mind (along with the blog references to Red Curtain of Blood). I suspect the outcome will be found between “The Wrath of the Awakened Saxon” and “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”

      I think I can imagine just what the lickers and spitters think they are trying to do (Strike against The Man! Down with Patriarchy), but once a few a) do this, b) post a video of themselves c) get doxxed and d) get found by the Awakened Saxons before law enforcement gets there, the trend will suddenly disappear. (At least, the video portion, but I suspect the thrill of “Nyah, nyah, you can’t harm me, I’m a minor!”, once dismantled will turn this into a sour memory.)

      Where I live, feuds generally don’t go too far. When they do, you see a pile of ashes where one of the parties used to have a house. I think this would have a similar outcome.

      2. I have a problem with assaulting minors who misbehave when their parents aren’t around. But then I’m a proponent of corporal punishment. Also why wife person no longer asks me to chaperone any of her events.

        1. I don’t know how much slack a minor will get from someone sufficiently ticked off. Ideally, TPTB take it seriously and award the perps with sufficiently harsh penalties, and that the wronged vendors/manufacturers take their half-kilogram of flesh, if not from a minor, then from the parents.

          A few serious legal penalties (Corporal punishment, followed by a humiliating term in Juvie, maybe on latrine duty), and a few non-dischargable judgements on the civil side would serve notice to the “My Johnny Can Do No Wrong” crowd, particularly in light of things like the Gibson’s Bakery decisions.

          If it’s an adult doing this, watch out.

  31. I think it is the simple fact that all the easy forms of comedic rebellion have been taken away from us. It’s all been done before and it’s out in the public. Worse, other people have done it and done it better.

    Think about it. Just wrapping up stuff in your son’s room in aluminum foil? Somebody has probably done it better, and there’s six videos of that on YouTube with over a million views each.

    So, if somebody has done X to get attention, somebody has to do X+1, then X+2, then X+3…

    Occasionally, you get someone that pulls off a Y or even a Z, but most people can barely handle doing X…

    1. I figure if had my old cubical job and came to work to find it encased in foil or such, someone would discover that I have a nasty sense of “Thou Shalt Not [Fark] With Me.” If I was nice they’d only get the same… with 120VAC hot-side attached. Yeah… I can be touchy some things. If I was feeling evil, contact laxative – randomly applied.

  32. Exodus 22:18. “Thou shalt not suffer a (blank) to live.” King James was all about hunting down witches, so that’s what he had put in there, but I’ve heard that both ‘murderer’ and ‘well poisoner’ are more appropriate translations.

    Given that this is deliberate poisoning of a community food supply, it’s attempted murder and adjacent to well poisoning.

    In this milquetoast age the most we can hope for is felony convictions, jail time, loss of voting rights, and loss of ability to hold federal office, but going Old Testament on them feels as appropriate as going Christlike on pedos.

    -Albert

    1. Also remember Witches to the people who were writing that were the equivalent to Saints of Satan. With almost the power Saints of God could have. NOT someone you want to let live. Definitions, Definitions.

    2. The three translations I have handy (Revised Std Version, New Living Translation, and New King James) all use “Sorceress”. I think that’s supposed to be a few notches beyond “witch”. FWIW, RS is the oldest, published in the 1950s or so.

      One might suspect that the child molesters in prison would be happy; there’s a new category of jailbird who now ranks below them.

  33. If you’re a barbarian you should note the West is not your worst option. Not even close.

    The frightening things is I know what I have contemplated and the milder sub-set I’ve mentally rehearsed.

    I’m thoroughly of the West even with those thoughts.

    I think you are right that it is far from the worst option. As the left likes to point out the Nazis were of the West and created systematized, industrialized killing. They killed, in the camps and the war in Europe, about 50 million out of 416 million in Europe in 1940.That’s about 1 in 8 people over about a decade

    The Khmer Rouge killed about 2 million in Cambodia out of 8 million. That is 1 in 4 over about half a decade.

    Reject the West as cruel and be barbarians, but realize people 4 times as ruthless (twice the rate of killing in half the time) will be who you answer to.

    1. They’re revising the percentages of the Killing Fields up. They may be higher than 1 in 3 now. *Shudder*

  34. As far as I am concerned the food tampering constitutes use of biological agents, which are WMDs. Charge ’em under Fed terrorism statutes.

    2. Show a jury evidence the perp has a communicable disease, and they’ll say “screw this misdemeanor BS, we want the death penalty!”

      Explicitly not counting illegals, close to 3 million people are walking around with some form of hepatitis, and maybe 43 million with some form of Oral Human Papilloma Virus. And the experts can babble all they want about transmission vectors and out-of-host lifespans, and nobody is going to give a flying damn.

      (have fun figuring up transmissible disease percentages in shithole cities where people crap in the streets)

  35. Feh.

    Sarah, on behalf of Goths, Vandals, Franks, Saxons and all the rest, permit me to say that there are some things barbarians would disdain and this would be near the top of the list. I suspect that what we are seeing here is not barbarism but out and out decadence. @_@

  36. Whatever happened to the trashtag challenge? At least that one was actually good for something. That’s the problem at hand – people jumping on a trend simply because it’s there, and to them it’s indistinguishable from any other. They see equal social value in cleaning up a garbage-filled park, and literally spitting in someone else’s food. It gets the same amount of video views and social media likes, so that makes it just as good, right? Right?

    I guess the pivotal moment will come when some pro gymnast does some risky stunt, like a backflip on the edge of a skyscraper rooftop or something, and it becomes “the rooftop challenge”… leading to its own separate category in the next Darwin Awards. Monkey see, monkey do… monkey die.

  37. Thanks for this provocative article. I appreciate your righteous indignation.
    For many years I have said that every civilization is a generation away from barbarism, and that the primary job of parents is to civilize their children. In the unique American civilization, a product of the Enlightenment, a subset of Western civilization, this means so much more than blindly following the rules – though that’s where it has to begin. It also means questioning authority and accepting the consequences of your behavior.
    “What would Socrates do?” ~ Richard Mitchell

  38. We went all safe packaging after the Tylenol poisoning of people to cover the poisoning of a man’s wife. Such act are an attack on what you write about; it come down to trust. When someone “destroys” a society’s trust, that person is pushing the envelope of anarchy for all of us. The girl licking the ice cream story reportedly could get her 20 years and I thought too much of a sentence. But I have reconsidered and believe that if she is not to get jail time, she must get community service has to be the most horrible possible. Working with those dying with AIDs comes to mind. I’d rather publicly hang them, but the English story of the hanging of pickpockets just providing a crowd for pickpockets to practice their trade tells me such drastic measures would do little stop more such actions..

    1. Twenty years is probably too much. Some jail time, however, is definitely in order.
      Or, say, doing four or five years community service in a homeless shelter, where the little idiot can learn firsthand about why basic sanitation is important.

      1. …doing four or five years community service in a homeless shelter, where the little idiot can learn firsthand about why basic sanitation is important.
        That sounds like a good idea. And pitching it as helping the homeless, could even get some of the virtue signalers on board.

  39. Civilization is the trade-off we all make, knowing in advance we both lose if we cheat in the “Prisoners’ Dilemma” that is life.
    Problem is, every generation until now has known the other side will retaliate, because that’s proper game theory. https://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2007/06/tit_for_tat.html
    “Until now.” The current generation is the first entirely detached from consequences. And there is no feedback mechanism if, well, there’s no feedback. Nor civilization, either.

  40. Hrmm. suitable sentence for lickers, etc.? They all serve time at the same place. And the only odd thing is that when THEIR food is prepared, the prepares do NOT need to wash hands after using restroom facilities. “You are sentenced to deal with your OWN behavior. How’s that immune response doing, cupcake?”

  41. Anyone who tampers with food like that should be immediately executed.

    What they are doing constitutes a direct, possibly lethal assault against multiple people.

    You have zero idea if they are carrying hepatitis A, B, or C, TB of any kind, HIV, cholera, typhoid, typhus, Ebola, or something worse.

    Yes, it IS food terrorism.

    And I’m NOT kidding that it deserves summary execution.

  42. Two words: Typhoid. Mary.

    Google her – and read what the government had to do in order to stop her.

  43. Well a bright pair videoed a woman licking some Blue Bell ice cream in a Walmart. The guy egging the woman on. Unfortunately she was legally an adult and in Texas. She’s facing a 10 to 20 year prison sentence and fines.

        1. I’m always flexible: put them on a used cruise ship in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Drive it out, park it and remove all crew except a coterie of CPOs (might be a nice post-retirement thing for some) to supervise them in doing the maintenance, meal preparation and other chores.

          Any who want to leave can be offered free transport to Venezuela.

  45. Pingback: True but Forbidden 32: Who Is To Be Master? - American Digest

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