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?
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?
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.)
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
Jan 6th insurrectionists were using it to say the country was in distress because of the “stolen election” lie.
Funny because THEY were the ones causing the country to go in distress.
Every accusation is an admission.
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.
semen sandwich
If you ignore context, sure, but then you would look like an idiot who doesn’t understand how to read a calendar.
Are you okay? Do you need a cookie? Or possibly a hug?
Nah, I have people who love me.
Does the UK flag even have an “upside down”?
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.
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.
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.
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”.