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this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2024
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Asklemmy
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Grew up in a town near Neverland ranch in the 90s, he hosted the local little league champions team to a party there. I'm pretty sure a classmate of mine went there once. Only had nice things to say about it, but even then there were jokes and rumors.
On one hand I can see people scapegoating a successful black man, from multiple angles there may also be feelings of betrayal from the black community. On the other hand, I was also up the road from Oprah, and I never heard anything about parties for groups of minors that she hosted.
Where there's smoke there probably fire, but racists and radicals are good at hiding smoke machines.
"Where there's smoke there's fire" is really interesting when the courts operate on the basis of "innocent until proven guilty".
Anyone who says "where there's smoke there's fire" never did chemistry class at school. Probably the second worst idiom one can say.
Funny, because I'm a decade long chemical analyst, with a solid half of that time doing smoke taint research....
I know creosol compounds better than 99.9% of the population. I live in an area that's known for burning down... The way I identify fire each and every time is by it's smoke.
There are ways to impart the essence of smoke, but more often than not people are trying to hide the fact that there is or was smoke.
So please tell me, a chemist, how if there's smoke there's fire, is one of the worst idioms of all time? Exothermic chain reactions with organic matter produce carbon rings that get carried away from the site of the reaction is a perfectly valid statement.
Because the idiom is simply not always true, that's why.
Special effects producers take advantage of this as well.
I'm not sure if you read the couching of my statement that there are smoke machines.
Or that, you know, I'm an analytical chemist for smoke.... And there may be smoke without fires (as I eluded to in the original post), but where there is a fire there is absolutely smoke. And I believe I've taken at least a chemistry course to get where I am today... But who says the universe wasn't created last Thursday...
Also there are some idioms that are never true, how are they not worse than an idiom that "isn't always true"? I think your scale on idioms are off as much as your judgement of people's chemistry backgrounds.
Because I was thinking mainly of idioms in this kind of context. Many idioms wouldn't be said in this context. Other idioms that have even more negative potential include but are not limited to...
"Spare the rod, spoil the child."
"One bad apple ruins the whole bunch."
"Fight fire with fire." (why the Hell would someone fight fire with fire)
"Flies are attracted more by honey than vinegar."
"Tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are."
The idiom in question is "where there's smoke there's fire" and it alludes to the idea that "much ado" is never about nothing, that commotion is never born in a vacuum. This is neither true literally or figuratively (people do not operate in the same way as smoke and fire, people seem more analogous to snow avalanching down a mountain if we are to update the idiom), but the fact it's not even true literally spells out a glaring problem with even invoking the idiom. The reverse statement, "where there's fire there's smoke", isn't true either.
There’s a difference between the courts and a person. If I had to decide if someone or something is safe, I have a much lower standard than “beyond the shadow of a doubt.”
If my Uber driver is slurring and smells like cheap brandy, I’m not getting in the car, but that’s not enough to charge them with a DUI, thankfully.
That's an interesting example. Here in my city there was a case of a transport officer crashing his car into someone. He smelled of alcohol and was slurring and it was in the news cycle with great outrage and irony.
A few days later news broke that he had died of diabetes-related complications. Apparently the smell was not alcohol, it was ketones from him being hyperglycemic.
Going back to your "standards" statement, for an individual it would make sense not to get into a car this person drives. At the same time it makes sense for the court not to convict him until he is proven guilty. Both standards have their place and rightfully so.
This is a slogan, a hypothetical that applies to a spherical defendant in a vacuum. In over 90% of all US criminal convictions, the prosecution has no burden of proof.
You lived in Lompoc, Goleta, Solvang, Santa Maria or Santa Barbara.
You remember the giant Santa next to the 101 near Summerland?
I very much do, I was very sad last time I visited SB to see that it was gone, though I feel I hadn't seen it on a few of my previous trips, but now they're building something where it used to be and it clicked that. "didn't there used to be someone else iconic there? Oh yeah, Santa!". Also pea soup Anderson's is closing, and that's.... Meh. As long as the palace survives I'm a happy SB tourist.
I remember people diving off the street lights into the underpasses, and the airport being so flooded that water was piling up behind the fence, the CHAIN LINK fence at the Goleta airport during El nino in the late 90s.
My home town was not known for anything tourist, so that'll narrow the list down a bit.
Oh man, I loved that year. There was a culvert that want under a bridge between Hillsboro and Cannon Green that normally is empty. That year our was almost full. My friends and I tied a route around or waists and jumped in the culvert of waste water. It ran so fast that we were able to water ski
Man, fairview and Hollister was flooded then. You couldn't drive through it then. I was not into the pirate BBS scene back then with a good friend that ended up dying by getting hit by a train in the mid 2000's
You every jump off of the tree swing in the bluffs? The one that broke the back of one of the DP teachers?
Also, the Living room. That place was magic.