The Shoctor (Mark)

Lagunculae Leydianae Non Accedunt

-Retweets @CommunityTV gifs.

[AAGHarmeetDhillon @AAGDhillon]

I have been busy with dozens of other time-sensitive matters, but I wanted to comment on this.

Our federal (and most state) employment laws mandate a level playing field for American workers vis-à-vis foreigners — yet many American tech (and other) companies prefer to hire cheaper/exploitable foreign workers to do routine jobs Americans could do, and they do this by failing to post jobs on their normal hiring channels (PERM violations), letting foreign-born hiring managers pipeline cheap foreign labor from body-shop mills over American workers (H1-B abuses), lie about their eligibility for no-cap H1-B hiring, abuse other visa categories such as J-1 visas (we see you, universities!), abuse OPT hiring to get cheap, exploitable foreign labor, and sometimes — getting super arrogant, gaslight laid-off and sidelined Americans while doing any of the above.

These are not good business practices; they are not patriotic economic practices; and they are illegal labor practices. This administration will not allow American employers to discriminate against American workers. It is illegal, wrong, and bad for our economy. I am sure my colleagues at @USEEOC and @USDOL agree. We are all on the case, and working together to level the playing field for US workers.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

[Joe Abraham @angeldadjoe]

My daughter Katie was killed on the streets of Urbana, Illinois, just outside the University of Illinois campus.
She was just visiting friends and NEVER came home.

But I guess the campus itself looks nice.
🙄

[The Shoctor (Mark) @TheShoctor]

@alittleleader @JL60015 @Claudius3600 wew

[Asterix 🇫🇷 ☽ @Asterix_v12]

Bon voyage.

[Fuensanta López @FuensantaLM]

Poco de CRUZ y mucho de ROJA

[Ooana Trien ~ Eric Arthur Blaire’s Mistress @ooana]

I always understood why the Second Amendment was constitutionally protected.

What I never really understood was why people called it a natural right.

Then I moved from New York to Florida.

I didn’t own a gun yet.

One afternoon I was loading things into the trunk of my car outside a HomeGoods when a man approached me.

“Excuse me.”

He must have thought he’d startled me, because he immediately added, “Don’t worry. I’m not going to get close.”

I laughed.

“I’m a New Yorker. I’m used to close. How can I help you?”

He started telling me that he needed money for gas.

At some point while he was talking, I got into my car.

And sitting there, with the conversation still unfolding, I suddenly realized something:

He didn’t know whether I had a gun.

Not somewhere at home.

Not hypothetically.

For all he knew, I could have had one right there in the car, tucked under the steering wheel or within reach.

I didn’t.

But he couldn’t know that.

Schrödinger’s gun.

And in that instant, before I even knew whether his story was true, something changed in the space between us.

I thought about New York.

I thought about my friend who had been murdered in his own apartment during a burglary gone wrong.

Would those men have gone into his apartment if they had believed he might be armed?

I don’t know.

I thought about the time I was mugged at gunpoint, with a gun pressed against my temple.

Would that man have approached me with the same confidence if he had believed there was even a possibility that I could defend myself?

I don’t know that either.

But sitting there in that Florida parking lot, listening to this stranger talk, I suddenly understood deterrence in a way I never had before.

Not as military theory.

Not as constitutional law.

As something intimate.

My body. My life. The few feet between one person and another.

For years I had thought about guns primarily as objects: who had one, who shouldn’t have one, what laws should govern them.

Suddenly I understood the question from the other direction.

What changes when another person cannot simply assume that I am defenseless?

I felt taller.

Not because I had a gun.

I didn’t.

But because, for the first time, I understood that someone approaching me could not automatically assume that being physically stronger meant having power over me.

There was uncertainty.

There was a boundary around my body that had to be taken seriously.

Then his story began to fall apart.

I told him I didn’t have cash, but offered to help another way. I could put some gas in his car.

He took off.

So apparently, yes, it was a scam.

But by then I had already understood something much larger than the scam.

The phrase natural right finally made sense to me.

The Constitution had not given me ownership of my body.

It had not given me my life.

It had not invented my right to protect either one.

Those things came first.

What I understood that afternoon was the thing underneath them.

I had once been completely helpless while another human being held a gun against my temple.

Years later, without a gun in my possession at all, I understood what it meant for the person approaching me not to know whether I was helpless.

That uncertainty changed the space between us.

And that was the moment I finally understood the natural right behind the Second Amendment:

My life is mine, and
the right to defend it has to exist before anyone gives me permission to do so.

[Fatima Aslam 🌸 @WoundedTiger__]

Muslims can’t play chess because it “haram.”
But marrying a 9 year old is "halal" because Muhammad did it.
This religion is a joke that should’ve stayed in the 7th century.

[Fusilli Spock @awstar11]

Oh, so this is why I have bunch of communist morons in my TL

[Rob Schneider 🇺🇸 @RobSchneider]

Adam Carolla just opened the floodgates to societal collapse in real time with this X account…👇🤣

[Jonathan Kay @jonkay]

My latest for @Quillette: A "trans-inclusive" Australian Rules Football team in California allowed a 6'1" man to compete with the women. Our Quillette investigation identified him as an ex-con who'd been sentenced to 41 years in jail for raping children.
https://t.co/X2rhE4jJgS

[The Shoctor (Mark) @TheShoctor]

@LifePulseGo Wow. You are really creepy.

[Gary @plzbepatient]

It’s been growing for years and hit a breaking point.

Why don’t you answer your phone anymore? Scammers in India

Why do you hate calling tech support? Having to talk to “Steven” (Ramesh) when you do

Then you start noticing, hey there’s a million of them at Costco. They behave in ways that are offputting. They walk slowly, block aisles, and are rude by our standards.

Then you see them mouth off online. How they’re superior to us. How ungrateful they are.

You see the nepotism at work. You get an Indian manager, then there’s an Indian team, then a department, and so on.

A lot of the men are genuinely creepy. “Bobs and vagene” stuff. They treat (non-Indian) women as sex objects.

The “good ones” don’t do anything to police the behavior of their coethnics. So they get treated as a bloc.

It’s been boiling up for awhile now

[LM @loyalmoses]

His home address is public information, and it’s just surveillance in-case he’s a criminal.

According to him, this makes us all safer.

[The Shoctor (Mark) @TheShoctor]

@PriyamvadaGopal Both those ladies are worth an infinite number of you.

[Joo @JoosyJew]

Will presented the most obvious “Noob trap” tweet in history, but Mehdi’s ego is so gargantuan, he just… couldn’t… help… himself.

Played him like a fiddle. 🎻

[Keith @gnukeith]

Flock CEO house on Google map got blurred, not so fun when your privacy is breached is it now?

[SANTINO @TheRealSantino]

JUST IN: A Texas father who beat a man to death after finding him raping his 5-year-old daughter was not charged.

The father found Jesus Mora Flores sexually assaulting the little girl after a witness saw the man take her to a remote area. The father ran toward her screams, inflicted blows to the attacker’s head and neck, then called 911 saying the man was dying.

A medical exam confirmed the girl had been sexually assaulted. A grand jury declined to indict the father, finding he was legally allowed to use deadly force to protect his child. Prosecutors announced he would face no charges.

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

This is truly mental.

Birmingham City Council has applied for an injunction that could result in people who fly the Union Jack from lampposts being jailed for up to two years.

Threatening people with prison for displaying their national flag is a direct assault on freedom of expression.

Patriotism is not a crime — at least not yet!

[WeGotitBack 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧🇺🇸 @NotFarLeftAtAll]

If you have to board up houses and shops, that should tell you that Notting Hill carnival shouldn’t happen.

[Irreverent-Farmer @cattlemanON]

Gm. I guess they don’t like a taste of their own medicine.

"To determine the true rulers of any society, all you must do is ask yourself this question: Who is it that I am not permitted to criticize?"