this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
82 points (89.4% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35702 readers
1147 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Today, a bunch of people on my Mastodon feed are making declarations about somebody apparently flying a flag upside down, and this apparently has something to do with the New York Times being terrible.

What happened?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 69 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Flying the US flag upside down on ship is apparently a distress signal.

(Flying the UK flag upside down just makes people think you're an idiot.)

[–] [email protected] 40 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Jan 6th insurrectionists were using it to say the country was in distress because of the "stolen election" lie.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Funny because THEY were the ones causing the country to go in distress.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago

Every accusation is an admission.

[–] RizzRustbolt 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

And folks on the left were doing it after Trump was elected to symbolize their resistence.

Misusing a flag has always been a back and forth argument in political circles.

It's a nothingburger in my opinion.

[–] feedum_sneedson 2 points 5 months ago

semen sandwich

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

If you ignore context, sure, but then you would look like an idiot who doesn't understand how to read a calendar.

[–] RizzRustbolt -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Are you okay? Do you need a cookie? Or possibly a hug?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Nah, I have people who love me.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Does the UK flag even have an “upside down”?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Oh boy, you're possibly in for a treat. I didn't notice this for far too long either, but the UK flag is at a complete wonk:

It's got rotational symmetry, but if you just flip it vertically, the thin red stripes will be the wrong way around.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

See, that’s where I was confused. Since it has rotational symmetry, I didn’t notice, since I just took an image and rotated it— but it didn’t consider how a flag hangs from a flagpole, with one edge having eyeholes for a rope or string. This means it would be inverted, not rotated, and the stripes would be different.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yes.

In the upper corner of the flag nearest the flagpole, the wider diagonal white stripe should be above the red diagonal stripe. If the red is above the wider white stripe the flag is upside-down.

https://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/resources/union-flag-faqs

Even our own government screws it up though https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/03/05/union-flag-has-flying-outside-parliament-upside/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Wow, that’s so subtle!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

very much so, just look at the corners

[–] sailingbythelee 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Flying the national maritime ensign upside down is an internationally recognized distress signal. A UK-flagged boat wouldn't fly the Union Jack upside down (which would be rather ineffective), but rather the Red Ensign (for civilian vessels).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Ensign

[–] hoshikarakitaridia 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Some additional information on that:

Generally, depending on the country there's laws for that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_protocol

Violating these laws can lead to varying degrees of fines and or prosecution, depending on the country and the type of country flag desecration (burning a flag is worse than getting the height of the flag on the pole wrong).

Half mast is the more famous distress signal internationally.

That said, Alito, even if not doing something illegal, is definitely signalling something very ominous. I agree with the experts that such an extreme degree of the appearance of impropriety is definitely gonna run afoul of supreme court ethics rules.

But: no check of power means no executive power and that means a rule might as well be unwritten.

[–] FireTower 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Flag code in the US has no teeth. Flag burning is legal per Texas v. Johnson. Symbolizing a stance of the nation being in distressed is definitely protected speech. Impropriety is a stretch for a statement on his private property that amounts to "our country is in turmoil".

[–] Bytemeister 3 points 5 months ago

Flag code in the US is just recommendations for citizens. I think it is only "enforced" for military personnel.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA 5 points 5 months ago

burning a flag is the appropriate way to dispose of a flag I don't know what you're talking about