spouse of scouse

I'll stay a heathen thanks

yellowroom

the whole thing makes me mad, from the point that it's the baby's SEX, not the baby's GENDER and who seriously cares as long as the baby is healthy to the whole bizarre creepy pink and blue nonsense that reinforces gender stereotyping that underscores much of the extreme transgender discussion. We'd be much better off accepting you can be a girl and like mud and trains and hating skirts and grow up to be an engineer or coal miner and still be a girl - and you can be a boy who likes sparkly unicorns and skipping and grows up to be a beautician and you can still be a boy. Everyone is unique, deserving of respect and dignity and none of it should depend on what your genitalia arrangement is.

Sorry, rant over.

Steerpike

I'd be happy if people would just stop blowing shit up !

caretaker

Wasn't a gender reveal party responsible for one of the most destructive wildfires in California? A couple I worked for kept the sex of their new addition secret from Grandma, but Gramps and I found out by carefully questioning their 3 year old. Still didn't tell her. We all knew how much meddling she would do and she didn't need an early start. The afternoon of the birth she came to where I was working and tried to find out just for the extra hour or two. No way.

kimilseung

Today Buzzfeed Daily, and Jenna Karvunidis, credited with creating the gender reveal party, starting at 5:00
https://www.buzzfeed.com/daily/creat...arty-dangerous

scrubbedexpat091

Yep, in September. 22,000 acres burnt, 1 death (fire fighter) 10 structures destroyed and 16 damaged.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Dorado_Fire

Hiro11

Gender reveal parties have become a trope of annoying first-time parent self regard. Also, people shouldn't set off explosives in fire prone areas.

Still, these whole "the fire was started by X and they should be blamed" arguments bothers me. Implicit in that argument is that fire is something to be prevented in these areas.

A rant in handy numbered form.
1. These areas are natural tinderboxes. Bone dry, filled with biomass, dry winds etc, etc. Something is always going to set them off whether it be lightning or human stupidity. They have literally evolved to burn. Fire has been happening in these areas for so many years that plants in fire-prone areas like these parts of California can't germinate without fire. It's stupid to pretend that it's a "tragedy" every time a fire occurs in an area that has been burning every year for millions of years. Fires are a completely natural, necessary thing in these ecosystems.
2. The giant conflagrations we see in recent years are driven by the idiotic fire-prevention strategies deployed in the American West for prior decades. As people have (stupidly, I'll return to this point) moved into these fire-prone areas, the local authorities have continually put out fires to save the property in the area. The result has been an unnatural build up of fuel on the ground. Natural fire cycles would have tamped this down and cleared out the fuel, humans have created these bombs. Fire management strategies are far more enlightened these days, but the decades of mistakes made are going to take a while to fix.
3. People keep moving into these fire-prone areas and then being "shocked" when their house burns. This is like living in the Mississippi floodplain and then being surprised when your house is inundated every year. Federal disaster relief and various insurance schemes encourage this dumb behavior. The same thing encourages people to build right on the shoreline in hurricane-prone areas. This drives me nuts. If you build a multi-million dollar mansion in the canyons of Malibu, you should expect it to burn to the ground every few years.

People shouldn't go out into these areas are actively try to start fires, but we also shouldn't believe that these areas should never burn and that if they do burn something has gone wrong.

scrubbedexpat091

My dad's neighborhood has some excitement going on today, Swat stand off little info in the news however.

As far as I am aware via my step sister my dad and step mom are safe, not confirmed in media, but my step sister says its apparently a man holding his wife hostage.

Generally its a pretty quiet neighborhood so a bit shocking to have this happening.

spouse of scouse

An invitation to a Sex Reveal party might not go into the bin as quickly as a Gender Reveal one

Great post btw

scrubbedexpat091

Local San Diego area media have some more detailed reports now.

63 year old man, retired Navy. He had called police Thursday night to report he had killed his wife, for whatever reason police were unable to determine his location during the initial call. Sometime between the call Thursday night and late Friday morning police figured out his location and surrounded his house, he was believed to have a gun. Police had talked to him during part of the day, then he stopped answering their calls, late afternoon special tactical team was brought in, and 6pm the man was arrested.

Crazy, never had this type of event so close to people I know, but I realized I should stop trying to save $10 a month on the cell phone and get US calling because there is no way I could even make a call today because we only have Canada wide calling and my dad doesn't do modern technology like skype or zoom or even email really, calling is about the only way to contact him.


https://fox5sandiego.com/breaking/po...e-killed-wife/

scrubbedexpat091

Reporter in San Diego doing a live news report on the comic con cancellation this year, when shots ring out between police and a suspect. (nothing graphic in the video)

https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreak...icer_involved/

It involved San Diego Harbor Police officer who pulled a driver over for running a red light, when asked to step out of the vehicle the driver open fire, the officer returned fire. Neither the suspect nor officer were injured.

One bystander was hit by a stray bullet but no injured, the bullet lodge in his glasses case.

https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/lo...d-bf9137162dad

chawkins99

Thirteen die in southern California crash near Mexico border

How the hell do you get 25 people in a Ford Explorer?

Jerseygirl

Ford Expedition..quite a bit larger than the Explorer. Still 25

My Expedition carried 8 people. Apart from the driver...another 7 sat on the knees of the passengers...15. Could get say another 3 in the back and another 7 on the floor. That’s without taking the seats out.

scrubbedexpat091

You'd be surprised how many people smugglers can get into a vehicle. A decade or so back there was a mini van a border patrol pulled over and something like 23 or 24 jumped out of it, aero star type mini van.

zzrmark

That was my first thought (in the bigger model as previously noted), then I remembered that the record for number of people crammed in a BL Mini was stupidly high and I reckon you've got twice the volume in an Expedition - 28 in a Mini...

It's funny how people's minds work, J' mentions smugglers, implying illegals, my first thought was workers crossing the border. The number of people that pile out of the painters/drywallers/masons transit vans on the building sites is something to behold - and the vans still look crammed full of materials when they've exited.

Either way, a tragic loss of life.