In Which Reality Is Exactly As Strange As Fiction

[avatar (Alistair Young)]

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@Specialist290 <specialist290@hughes.net> on 2017-02-02 15:06:28 wrote

It also doesn’t help that “fake news” itself has gone from meaning “Mass-produced propaganda serving a transparent ideological aim” to “News I happen not to like because it offends my preconceived sensibilities of how the world should work” within a matter of weeks of being introduced.

@Alistair Young <athanasius.skytower@arkane-systems.net> on 2017-02-02 16:39:39 wrote

I confess that I pretty much assumed it meant that in live usage right from the start.

@Specialist290 <specialist290@hughes.net> on 2017-02-03 17:38:45 wrote

While we’re speaking of unusual laws that probably work better (there) than (here): I present the text of the proposed North Dakota House Bill 1203:

http://www.legis.nd.gov/assembly/65-2017/documents/17-0351-02000.pdf

@Alistair Young <athanasius.skytower@arkane-systems.net> on 2017-02-05 13:07:28 wrote

Heh. Well, there, obstruction - “to prevent or obstruct passage through a public volume, or through a private volume without the consent of its owner” - is defined as a crime and so parties engaging in it will likely have been hauled off to arraignment by the constabulary or odocorp security before the situation comes up.

(Spacers, especially, for whom obstructing traffic may be much more likely to constitute a hazard than an inconvenience, have no patience with that shit.)

…that being said, given the reports of the more riotesque elements trying to break into cars held up by protests, or smashing windows to pepper-spray the occupants, etc., even here I am somewhat sympathetic to the law in question and a little further, on the grounds that if I have to choose between me and mine and the riot in a self-defense scenario, I’m not even going to feel bad about choosing the former.