Essentially he could have been in some chat group telling this same story about his ex locking the cat away and refusing him rightful access and then taking things into his own hands and getting it back trough questionable means as self remedy. I’m not saying that is the case or should be believed- I’m saying that there isn’t much to go on here as far as proof or evidence that the cat belongs to either of them. 3 states have pet custody laws which take into account companion status of animals. In all other US states and in many other places animals are simply property like a blender or table. They are owned, someone paid for them, and someone else may have provided additional funds for upkeep etc. these financials matters are generally considered, if your boy/girlfriend pays things like vet and care bills, those costs can exceed the value of the animal. Depending on local laws and circumstances of individual incidences of care, these things may be treated similar to gifts or they may

home or a good home at all for the cat. Of course she could lie about any details, but people can also have different perspectives or remember things differently. So her story says they adopted the cat together, let’s take that at face value. The story itself shows that there is obviously a disagreement over custody of the cat. He wants the cat, she wants the cat. If they do adopted the cat and cannot agree to custody… why was it at her home to begin? He obviously wasn’t ok with that or he wouldn’t have taken it right? Assuming he took it. He could of course have never taken the cat and had legal custody. He also could have actually taken it- what if she essentially did the same thing to him? Kept the cat as she could deny him access and then he got into her house and reclaimed it using the key or other methods?

So when it comes time for the defense of free speech of opinions or thoughts you don’t like or agree with… we do have to think a bit. Someone speaking about how an entire race is worthless and probably should be exterminated is an opinion many won't like or agree with and in most any society that cares about human rights that type of speech should likely have limits. Calling on a crowd of people to kill someone, or to commit treason… maybe those need limits..? Maybe if your boss calls you slurs or sexy pet names or demeaning names at work that needs limits because of the imbalance of power and how that can impact your career and general quality of life..? So it is a touch more complex than “free speech for all.”

Of course being “stupid” is arguably contextual- especially in behavior. Nick Cannon has quite a few kids with quite a few women. If someone making minimum wage did that on their salary and had to pay child support to most of them… one might likely call that a stupid move. Much Cannon would surely have much more wealth to use as he saw fit otherwise were he not caring for all those kids, so one might still call that stupid… but even with all those kids Nick Cannon still has more wealth and/or a higher lifestyle than most people in America… so is it stupid if he wants to have all those kids…? Maybe not. It’s subjective.

At the time she was fired I wonder how many of her coworkers talked about how “stupid” it was to lose that job over some “internet song” and “5 minutes of fame”? Harrison Ford isn’t alone I’m being in Hollywood a LONG time before getting a big break. American graffiti is a classic now but it didn’t exactly launch his career directly. Had Ford given up he would have missed out on a storied career and all the wealth and freedom it brought him. A lot of people would have missed out on iconic moments. But of course you have people who spend I a lifetime in Hollywood and at best maybe get a decent job but never achieve their dreams in the industry- or worse they may never get beyond day jobs that barely pay for meager living expenses and never even brush against their dreams before they die. Arguably one might say the latter are foolish in retrospect, but that is an argument that says how “stupid” a person is depends on results.

Beyond that so much is subjective. Your life and mine are likely very different. Our experiences are likely very different in many ways. A farmer in a rural area might think a kid is being “stupid” for saying they plan to move to some Mecca of entertainment and become a star of some sort or a big city executive might think some kid saying they plan to skip college to work a blue collar job is “stupid.” Maybe they are? Who can say? Many multimillionaire celebrities were once on track to being most likely mediocre in a more stable field. Aquafina lost a job and possibly a career many would say is smart because she was making songs online I get spare time and one for popular that was seen as vulgar. She’s been in several high profile movies, her own show and other shows, she’s toured and made what I am sure is more money than she was on track to make at her job.

It isn’t an everyday thing at this point in scientific development that we discover some fundamental or even intermediate aspect of scientific understanding to be wrong or so functionally off base- but we do need to be mindful that it happens. We have theories. The theory of relativity and the theory of gravity and so forth. They exist as the best knowledge we have until someone disputes them with enough veracity to become the prevailing theory.

The fundamental behaviors and mechanisms of gravity in a specific environment which has produced consistent observations probably doesn’t change- on a long shot we could argue it might- but it isn’t gravity that is the practical worry in changing- it is our understanding of it. As we speak and for some time, gravity; one of the most fundamental, constant, readily observable (results) forces known intuitively to almost all through daily life and experience, is in an ongoing and credible dispute as to what it is or how it functions and interacts. Long after we had harnessed electricity to do work, after we could explain the function of electricity at a sub atomic level…. The common recognized fundamentals of electricity were re written as wrong. Literally backwards.

That’s a personal example for me, and I’m sure others have other examples- I know I do. Having confidence can be very good. At the same time, if we allow ourselves to be too certain that we know the answers or we are correct and people who say otherwise are wrong or “stupid,” we generally don’t grow and we may not only judge someone harshly when we are wrong, but we may continue to be wrong, which can be embarrassing or even disastrous. This can be true of philosophical or moral or other points- but yes. It applies to facts. Yes, even most or many “indisputable facts..” because in science nothing is indisputable. To dispute you need to start with an idea something is not correct or is flawed and then you need to gather up solid ground to make your dispute from.

While you could still use those materials and techniques to achieve the same results they always have, more durable methods exist today. Far less labor intensive methods exist to achieve the same results or better. “Safer” chemicals and materials and methods exist. Many of the older chemicals aren’t commonly available if at all- and trying to use the newer stuff the same as the older stuff can be disastrous as the new stuff isn’t designed to work or be used those ways. Had I heard this person talking to someone else about their plans to paint I might have thought they didn’t know what they were doing. Because we were working together I was able to ask them questions about why they were saying that, and I learned some new things that really helped me achieve great results as someone who doesn’t do that type of work professionally but learned from a pro.

We have perceptive biases and all manner of things that can obscure the “truth” or the “truer truth” from us, and things change. I learned to paint (cars etc.) from someone who was a sought after custom painter and charged many tens of thousands of dollars for their work. They won or placed in numerous globally or nationally acclaimed competitions that were highly competitive and offered large rewards.
Then decades later I was working with this young guy who kept questioning why I was doing things or saying to do things in an order or way that made no sense to me. It was “wrong.” Well- it turns out technology in body and paint had moved ahead quite a bit from the “old school” methods I learned.

If you are honestly happy in your own company and living the life you want, do what makes you happy. You aren’t a “loser” because you choose not to have a partner. You aren’t somehow broken, you shouldn’t feel ashamed or embarrassed. One measure of success is your ability to live the life you want to live, or close to it as practical. Are you doing that? If so, and if that doesn’t include a partner or a partner isn’t a priority in your version of life, do you.

The events led to a disqualification with 0 points, dropping the rider from first place on points to 31st place. There was also ensuing backlash online and elsewhere for what many saw as cruel treatment of the horse (I’m not saying it was or was not cruel in my opinion- just stating the facts with as little bias as possible.)
So asides going from 1st to basically no shot to win and the overall embarrassment of a showing like that in the Olympics, the rider got “fame,” or infamy, from the ensuing controversy.

This is an event from the 2020 (held 2021) Tokyo Olympics. The way equestrian works is each rider gets a randomized horse from a pool of horses before the event- so the riders and horses don’t have previous bonds and in theory the training etc. between horses is the same. So part of the event is the rider needing to learn and bond with the horse quickly.
So at the start of the event this Olympian, Annika Schleu of Germany, her horse seemed nervous. It was not responding to her commands as she would like and so, while sobbing, she started whipping the horses rear with a riding crop and by some accounts she pulled it’s bit (mouth piece) hard.
The woman’s trainer was yelling at the horse from the side lines and at one point when they were close enough, the trainer punched the horse closed fist in the rear quarter.

Are you going to start taking public transit or give up that vacation trip to make change because some stranger lit themselves on fire? Are you going to be so impacted by their sacrifice/death that you will drastically change your eating habits or routines to bring change! Probably not. So if you’re upset over it and know you won’t do anything about it… that Jaír compounds your state of knowing that you could help but won’t because of what you lose. That life isn’t worth as much as what you’d give up to avoid it.

When someone throws soup at a painting we can exercise our righteousness. We can be mad at them for trying to vandalize something precious and pure or drag it into their politics. We can be mad at the museum or whoever allowed it to happen. We can be mad at politicians for failing us. When someone lights themselves on fire we generally either need to be mad at them or mad at ourselves. Most of us don’t want to be mad at ourselves, and being mad at politicians about climate change is the same as being mad at ourselves generally in that of there is conviction behind the anger it demands change. The thing about environmental actions like climate issues are that changes usually require us to change. Changes to our lives.

So when one person dies to make a point that would inconvenience others, perhaps more so when they kill themselves- that life was already cheap to society. When that person can be labeled “crazy,” it becomes easier to label their beliefs or message as crazy too. As we see homelessness and other issues more and more in the news and hear the way people talk about places like SanFrancisco and what they say should be done- be see more and more how little life means to people especially when that life inconveniences them and/or belongs to a person we can label “crazy.”

Life is cheap to most people. These are only a few examples. This ignores the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights like marriage or legal protections, the treatment of trans in society, discriminatory laws against such people… we can go further back to civil rights, we can talk about sweat shops and the well known connections that literal and figurative slavery have to modern commerce. We can talk about the people willing and glad to leave allies and citizens countries in need to die… we can talk about the global arms trade and military complex.. all the ways that life is cheap to us. Feelings and actions concerning the homeless, “welfare,” healthcare, prisoners and ex convicts… life is cheap. The proof is all over. That is the attitude.

We talked covid. What other struggles has our age seen…? There was that time that women across the globe named names and showed receipts of the sexual aggression and even rape and assault from powerful and celebrated men and people called them liars or crazy or stood against them.
The time that children, families, and other people often literally starving or in danger were seeking opportunity in our country and… between literally trying to build a wall, caging and separating, several murders or killings, resistance to them, rejection and anger, mockery, harassment, persecution, oh.. let’s not forget the part where they were kidnapped and bussed or flown places under false pretenses as a political prick at their expense.

What I am saying here isn’t that this isn’t a tragic loss or that I have no sympathy or feelings about this death, or that others shouldn’t. What I am saying is that yes, life is cheap to us, maybe not our lives and maybe not the lives of people we care about… but it can be hard to find people who genuinely care about strangers or people unlike them today. The ongoing and long standing fight to be able to be black and not be murdered by police took on renewed flare recently and POC and allies across the country and world tried many different and high profile methods to get the issue noticed and express the urgent and significant need to be heard on the matter. And… lots of people mocked them, said that they were doing it wrong, said there wasn’t a problem, or outright chose to stand against them.

Americans see how many mass shootings how often? It’s been a major social and news topic for how long? How long after a mass shooting happens before someone begins talking politics- be that claiming a hoax or trying to leverage sympathy or promises of action for political gain, or anything else? It isn’t enough for ANYONE to die. Kids dying- that’s usually a big seller. “People like you” dying, that one sells tickets. You know isn’t a child and isn’t like the majority of Americans? An adult climate activist who would set themselves on fire to prove a point.