100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
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User ID: 2039
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
5hr ago
It's not clear whether you're being sarcastic or not. I'm somewhat compelled to report this to the mods for being low effort and probably antagonistic, but I feel like they have better things to do.
If you want to actually engage with my argument, I'm here for it, pal.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
6hr ago
I like this theory. Thank you. The sound definitely did have something to do with it. To some extent, I've always been a little more sensitive than others to big droning sounds. I think I lack the ability to tune them out the way most folks do.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
12hr ago
"A woman being aggressively approached by men dressed like hostile soldiers went into fight-or-flight mode and did something senseless"
Except that she knew they were ICE agents.
In the longer videos, you can see her hand "waiving through" the ICE vehicles before she is approached. She knew who they were and knew what she was doing. Perhaps she did freak out and panic when she realized the ICE agents weren't going to play nice anymore, but it's not possible to plead ignorance and "scary masked men."
More generally, a reasonable reading of the context suggests almost beyond doubt that these are cops. It's the middle of the day, they have lights on, there's a bunch of people with cameras filming what the guys with guns are doing. If this was actually some sort of impersonation of an officer or actual bad masked men (terrorists? chechens?), it seems less than likely they'd be so nonchalant about their terroristing being filmed by bystanders.
The "I got scared so I ran" defense is one of the most commonly trotted out by those that are the most comically guilty - and aware of the guilt. It's a retreat to infancy and a desperate spasm designed to cast of any and all responsibility whatsoever. It's not quite as bald faced as a temporary insanity plea, but it's in the same ballpark.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
13hr ago
Great comment and on an original subject.
I'll share a personal anecdote as a means of homage.
I once worked, in IT, on what's called an infrastructure team. These are the hardcore, hands-on-servers guys who actually wire up all of the servers running in data centers and similar installations. I was not actually a hardcore hands-on-guy, but a dude who was empowered, via our bureaucratic overlords, to buy stuff. This meant I spent a good deal of time inside server rooms and data centers not as a technician, you know, doing stuff, but observing the technicians and logging all of the necessary purchases to complete the project. I passed the time mostly with idle chitchat and, for those Infra dudes who really were anti-social, by reading content on the old longform.org website before it 1) woke-ified and 2) closed down.
There was one particularly odd project that had a team of three (me and two other guys) in a totally windowless server room (they are mostly this way) for over a week. We had a deadline and so we were in there for 12+ hours daily. Because of the logistics and time of year, we would enter the larger site / building when it was dark and we would leave when it was dark. We'd then carpool to the hotel we were staying at, usually have dinner at the hotel restaurant, retire to our rooms, and do it all again the next day.
You can tell that this definitely put me in an odd headspace by the end of the week. I was definitely a little friend and wigged out.
On the final day of our work, the two guys were working on something when they (well, all of us actually) got an e-mail from back at our home office. The two other dudes were needed for a conference call about some other project. TollBooth, you are not (sad junior employee sounds).
The two guys can't take the conference call in the server room because it's actually pretty loud. Servers have to be aggressively cooled, especially when you have dozens or hundreds of them in close proximity to one another. This is done (well, at least it was then) by having cold air blasted up out of the floor on one side of the servers (the "cold aisle") and then, on the opposite side, the hot air is aggressively vaccummed down into the floor (the "hot aisle"). The result is a constant hum of fans and other circulation equipment that probably sits around 50 dB or so. You get used to it after a while and it doesn't cause hearing damage, but you can't have conversations more than about 10 feet apart. On a conference call, the other listeners would think you were in a wind tunnel.
So the others leave to take their conference call and I pull up longform or something. For about five minutes, I'm content. Hanging out on the company dime, more or less. Then, in an instant, I am filled with a palpable sense of dread. There is no proximate cause. Nothing was on fire or damaged. No e-mails foretelling doom had entered my inbox. But I was on the verge of legitimate panic.
I believe this was an episode of real life liminal horror. I was alone in a windowless computer cube with an omnipresent inhuman sound that actively suppressed basic human conversation. I had been in this room for a week, but only exited to darkness and yet another kind of liminal space (the hotel). Nothing in this space was human. No running water, no food, no bathrooms (not technically true as they were just down the hall outside of the server room, and we had been using them all week, but still). It was blinky lights, copper wires, the knowledge that an absolutely turbo-lethal amount of electricity was flowing over every inch of the room, and the sound, the sound, the sound.
Fortunately, I bravely endured got my fucking shit back together. I think I got up and used the bathroom and just that 20 seconds of movement shook me out of the headspace I was in. Other dudes finished their conference call, came back in with a pair of shrugs, and we finished up the day and the project.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
13hr ago
Unnecessary antagonism aside, this is actually a pretty good scissor statement.
Because my answer is an unqualified "Yes."
If someone hit me with a car twice, I would view that as 2x assault with a deadly weapon. In terms of the next course of action, reasonable people can disagree over whether or not they would flee or try to "de-escalate" (whatever the hell that means), but the justification for self-defense - up to and including lethal force - is now, in my mind, undoubtedly present.
Gotta say this is a pretty shitty thing to hear from a mod. This is the Culture War thread. There's going to be politicized views and pre-existing bias brought in, sure. I think the Motte is one of the places were people do a pretty good job of laying their cards on the table up front. The effort-posts then do a great job of laying out various positions. To say generally, however, that they don't consider evidence is not only wrong but wronheaded - it demonstrates so mal intent.
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