RunawayFixer

Civil + military capital punishment was only officially abolished in 1996 in Belgium, so about 133 years between the decision to stop doing it , and actually putting that into law. And a few months after the law was officially changed, the serial murderer + pedophile Dutroux was arrested, after which there was a lot of public support for the death penalty again. A bit of fortunate timing in unfortunate times.

Wrong Lemmy headline, the graphic is about "death penalty for non military crimes", which implies that there were death penalty executions after those years on the map.

As an example, in Belgium the last execution was in 1950, by firing squad. The Belgian state had extended the state of war to be able to put war criminals & collaborators in front of military tribunals. That last 1918 execution by guillotine was also ordered by a military tribunal, it was a Belgian soldier who had murdered one of his two fiancées plus her unborn child: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile_Ferfaille Had he not been a soldier, he would most likely not have been executed. The last execution in Belgium that was ordered by a civil court happened in 1863.

The discovery is being cut up, wtf?

First time I heard about that, apparently Texas republicans want it moved to their state for populist reasons, irregardless of any practicalities. https://www.space.com/space-exploration/the-smithsonian-might-have-to-cut-space-shuttle-discovery-into-pieces-to-get-it-to-texas The space shuttles used to be transported on the back of a specially adapted Jumbo jet, which isn't going to exist anymore, hence the cutting up + exorbitant cost to transport it.

This is a prime example of voter suppression through legal means. The article is worth a read just for that, even if you're not from the region.

No coaches in Mar-a-lago? Is Vance not welcome there?

In Belgium it works like this: If the tram could seemingly pass, but the tram driver was mistaken, then the car owner + insurance has to pay the tram company for the damage/delay/towing. If the tram driver has to stop and wait for the car to get towed, then the car owner + their insurance have to pay for towing costs + the tram delay. In theory anyway: I don't know hard the enforcement is, maybe they only try to go after delay costs if they are significant.

Dutch article with 2 examples, first one with car at fault, 2nd one with bus at fault: https://mijnverkeersongeval.be/nl/faq_categories/aansprakelijkheid/bijzondere-gevallen/tram

Brilliant. This also needs a night time photo.

It used to be that the first result to a lot of queries, was a link to the relevant Wikipedia article. But that first result has now been replaced by an ai summary of the relevant Wikipedia article. If people don't need more info than that summary, they don't click through. That Ai summary is a layer of abstraction that wouldn't be able to exist without the source material that it's now making less viable to exist. Kinda like a parasite.

Usa republicans are such a weird alliance of values. It seems that on one side there's a bunch of xenophobes who don't care if someone is a lying corrupt grifter, as long as their skin has the right color and they profess the right racist + misogynist values. And on the other side there's a bunch of lying corrupt grifters, who don't care what skin color or sexuality someone has, as long as they're also lying corrupt grifters.

As I understand it, the public perception of Trump was distorted by how he was portrayed on The Apprentice: https://www.psypost.org/new-research-sheds-light-on-the-influence-of-the-apprentice-on-donald-trumps-political-rise/

The producers at NBC had to jump through a lot of hoops to make Trump appear competent. Their chief marketing officer from that time is very sorry for what he did: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-10-16/we-created-a-tv-illusion-for-the-apprentice-but-the-real-trump-threatens-america

Once Trump became the republican candidate, the right-wing media took up the responsibility of filtering and distorting what their audience got to see and hear about Trump.

It is theft though: they are taking something that would otherwise belong to someone else (the wealth difference that would have been accumulated), and they're keeping it for themselves. That fits the definition of theft. The method may be more indirect, but the end result is the same. Inventing euphemistic terms to describe something that can be described with a simple existing word, will only end up muddying the waters in my experience.

Republicans really have something against the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, it seems to get targeted at every opportunity.

Edit: as it turns out, republicans really do have a grudge against the agency, they've been targeting it since before Trump got reelected: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/22/conservatives-cyber-cisa-politics-00122794 Countering misinformation campaigns was a bridge too far for republicans.