TK-421
1mo ago
If Chauvin had been masked (and without an ID number) while he murdered Floyd, chances are that he would have gotten away with it due to reasonable doubt about who was who.
This wouldn't have been possible. Even if all the officers involved refused to answer questions about who did what, the body camera footage would allow you to identify them because the police know who is wearing which camera. Chauvin's fell off while Floyd was resisting arrest around the squad car but the footage from the others would make it clear who was involved and how.
I generally agree that making it easy to identify law enforcement officers is a good thing but positive identifications can still be made after the fact if there's an incident.
TK-421
1mo ago
Eh, I don't think it's reasonable to claim that because something's more common than winning the actual lottery that it's an accurate description of police behavior to expect during arrests (and a reminder that the 3,000 includes justified shootings completely unlike your scenario). But reasonable isn't an objective standard and based on your reply in our other discussion on policing I think your negative experience(s?) with the police have left you unable to be reasonable about the subject.
TK-421
1mo ago
If you're lucky it's "Turn around and put your hands on your head" followed by being slammed against a wall, a car, or the ground. If you're not it's "Don't move, freeze, BANG BANG BANG"
According to the FBI's Crime Data Explorer there were ~7 million arrests in the United States in 2024. (https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/arrest and change the filters on the left to narrow the date range to 2024). It's difficult to get exact numbers on use of force, but the website Police Violence Report (https://policeviolencereport.org/) has 1,270 killings by police in 2024. They correctly note that there are gaps in the data collection so let's be real generous and more than double that number and call it 3,000.
It's possible that there's an epidemic of non-fatal police shootings during arrests that has somehow slipped society's notice despite the general atmosphere of anti-police news over the last several years, but that's possible in the same sense that it's possible that Jeff Bezos is about to knock on your door to give you a billion dollars. I doubt you're quitting your job over that possibility. But let's again be generous and say that there are an additional 7,000 non-fatal arrest related shootings, so let's just get crazy and say that there were 10,000 arrest related shootings.
If we were being fair we'd need to subtract the justified shootings. But we won't, despite only 10 officers being charged from the 2024 killings, we'll just say a flat 10,000 out of 7,000,000 arrests.
Even with our inflated anti-police numbers it's still a ludicrous exaggeration to say that the police are jumping to "BANG BANG BANG" during arrests. This is a BLM tier, fact free sneer that does not match reality.
TK-421
1mo ago
Perhaps you misunderstand what I mean about being on the same team. I do not mean that I expect that the police will give me a Junior Detective sticker, maybe let me turn on the lights and sirens or cuff a perp. I do not mean or expect that they would treat me any differently than anyone else they’re interacting with.
I mean that we have the same desired end state. They want to catch criminals and deter crime. I want criminals caught and crime deterred. Thus, I act respectfully towards them because they are engaged in a project worthy of respect and worlds where police are treated respectfully are - on the whole - superior to the alternative. It’s instrumentally useful to be polite, sure, but it’s also the correct action and has nothing to do with dominance games or submission.
You should see yourself on the police’s team too, even considering the reality that there are many substandard police interactions.
TK-421
1mo ago
But of course we are. A given officer in a given interaction may or may not think so - it's rational for them to be suspicious - but we absolutely are.
It's very simple. I do not like crime. I do not like low level anti-social behavior. I want the rules to be enforced. The police are the social / political organization responsible for preventing and responding to crime. We are on the same team.
TK-421
1mo ago
It's really not, and I say this having had plenty of interactions with law enforcement - even one where I was questioned as a suspect. To use simpler words: the police and I are on the same team. I'm not being dominated by showing a baseline of respect and cooperation, that's just how you interact with teammates. The police are not perfect, neither are doctors; the fact that some doctors cause errors or are power tripping dickheads doesn't mean that I shouldn't be on the hospital's side if I'm in a car accident.
Anti-social people who bicker with the police over their attempts to enforce the law are not on my team. It is easy to see that worlds where I side with the anti-social against the police are worlds that are generally criminal. I do not like crime. I do not want to live in these worlds.
TK-421
1mo ago
Probably especially culturally relevant to blacks, though I suspect all but the most beaten-down milquetoast PMCs dislike showing their belly that way.
In what way is being respectful towards the police showing your belly? This is low trust society talk. Yes, cops are humans and there will be some fraction of interactions where the cop is in the wrong or abusive. It's still preferable to default to an attitude of helpful cooperation - in what sense should I be on the side of the individual contributing to societal blight rather than an organization that is at least notionally opposed to it? Framing these interactions as a "monkey dominance game" and advocating for an oppositional attitude leads to worse outcomes.
TK-421
1mo ago
For me, cryonics is yet another attempt to fill the God-shaped hole in society.
Well, yeah. For me at least it's explicitly about filling the God-shaped hole in reality. If I thought religion could credibly - even at very low probability, like cryonics - offer a path to immortality, I'd take it. I very much want what religion is selling, there's just nothing it has in stock that can fulfill my order.
TK-421
1mo ago
Sorry, I don't think I explained the dilemma well. Taking a treatment that has an 80% - or 10%, or .5% - chance of saving your life is obviously the right choice. Dying due to the accident or dying due to complications from the emergency treatment is basically the same result.
The 20% in question is the risk that the treatment successfully saves my life but causes significant brain damage. Scenarios where I live but I'm in a minimally conscious state or have other significant deficits.
When I examine my decision making around how I should choose in this (very low probability) scenario, I find that my concern isn't really quality of life related. If I could somehow know that these injuries wouldn't destroy information in my brain in a way that even future sci-fi medicine couldn't restore then I would prefer to take the treatment. I'd live the remainder of my life with that damage, die, and (in this ideal, also very low probability scenario) be restored. The whole idea of cryonics, to me, is to preserve as much information as possible to increase the probability that some set of future technologies can restore a person from that information. My instinct is to take the option that more likely preserves the most information.
TK-421
1mo ago
Dying is concerning. Like other panicked easy marks, I'm signed up for cryonics. Although I think it's very unlikely to work - call it a 1% chance - it still beats the baseline.
I engage in moderately risky activities and if my death occurs in the next 5-ish years it will almost certainly be due to an accident. Most scenarios kill or incapacitate me from meaningful decision making outright. Some don't, however, and it's possible that I could be mortally injured while retaining my basic decision making abilities.
Assuming that I find myself in one of these's rare scenarios, let's say I'm offered a choice. Without emergency treatment I will die. This treatment has an around 20% chance of causing significant additional damage to my brain. Damage that could not be undone even under best sci-fi medical advancements should the cryonics process work. Even with the treatment I have suffered irrevocable damage and it's unknown if it may be progressive.
My instinct is to request that doctors treat me as if I had died in the accident and begin the cryonics process in as controlled and ideal fashion as possible. I know that in practice that's a request that's unlikely to be granted, I'm just not sure if it would be the right choice.
Would you make the same decision? Should anyone be allowed to make that kind of trade-off with the assistance of medical staff?
TK-421
1mo ago
Thanks, I appreciate the explanation.
Combined, this was broadly seen as a two-part betrayal by the Bernie-left. It was a broader DNC betrayal of the Obama wing picking favorites to maintain its primacy in the party rather than letting voters pick via the nominal primary purpose, but it was also a betrayal by the more party-institutionalist Warren-left, who sabotaged a bigger left momentum in favor of selling out for postings and influence.
I think I can understand a feeling of betrayal from the process on an emotional level but I'm not sure I really get it. For instance, I didn't just donate to Amy Klobuchar, I made her tater tot hotdish recipe. It was pretty good. But I didn't feel like her dropping out of the race well before my state's primary represented the DNC betraying me or nefariously preventing me from picking my preferred candidate. Weaker candidates dropping out and consolidating behind a more popular candidate with similar views is just an actual part of the primary process as it exists. It would be interesting to see the effects of switching to some kind of one day primary-palooza where every state votes simultaneously but that is not, and never has been, how the primaries work.
Warren staying in the race through Super Tuesday probably did hurt Bernie. Presumably Sanders was the second choice of some fraction of her voters. But as you note, she represents a more institutional strain of the left and (although we'll never know) it's unlikely that enough of her voters would have gone with him to change the outcome. It's just as likely that the majority of her voters would have gone to Biden.
If primary voters wanted Sanders they could have had him. They did not. The fact that voters picked the more centrist candidate - and that there were other more centrist politicians in the race with non-negligible support in the first place - shows where the actual center of gravity was in the party. Bernie would not have won regardless of what the DNC did.
TK-421
1mo ago
...and that is AFTER stacking the previous primary and fucked Bernie up the ass.
Can you please explain how Bernie received an ass fucking? The impression I got from the 2016 and 2020 primaries was that he lost because he wasn't popular enough with Democratic primary voters to win a national race, not that he was the victim of forced sodomy. I am very curious to know if that was not the case.
TK-421
2mo ago
Why not buy units in private equity funds then? Much better returns than Intel lmao
Not to speak for The_Nybbler, but I think the intent is to both exercise control and make money. You could conceive of a similar bailout not concerned with making money off the deal that's solely about protecting jobs / paying off unions / encouraging local investment even if it turns out net negative.
Buying into private equity funds would simply result in the government getting better returns while the investment goes to foreign countries / companies if that's the most efficient way to get returns. Buying directly into a company like this with these restrictions is certainly a market distortion but the idea is that it should still be financially net positive, just less so than in the most economically efficient world possible, and help support (their idea of) national interests.
TK-421
2mo ago
Because the metaphorical imagery employed by science is fundamentally arbitrary, Irigaray's contention is that the fundamental choice of which parts of physics to label as "solid" mechanics and "fluid" mechanics in the first place reveals something sociologically and psychologically about the people doing the labeling (obviously, she would say that it reveals a fundamental aversion to or discomfort with fluid imagery and feminine imagery in general).
Whether it's true that the scientific metaphorical imagery is fundamentally arbitrary and/or the degree to which it is/isn't is an interesting question. It's somewhat analogous to phonemes / morphemes. In most (maybe all?) structuralist linguistic models, phonemes are defined as lacking information individually. They're the sub-components of higher level objects that do convey information but they're interchangeable building blocks. Studying natural languages as used, though, seems to show that phonemes can have information: round sounds are associated with words involving the concept of roundness or fullness, sharp sounds are associated with spiky objects or violent concepts.
The associations seem somewhat universal and somewhat arbitrary and are not absolutes, every language has counter-examples. They also aren't necessary for a language's expressiveness so they are optional and to some degree interchangeable.
If the metaphors that tend to be used in scientific imagery are / are not potentially tied to some lower level structure in how humans form concepts, we could maybe learn more about the process of cognition. The degree to which they're socially mediated would still be interesting.
I hesitate to post this because I do think that those comments are the kind of background, "I hate the outgroup" signaling that you can find everywhere every day among every group. This man isn't going to commit violence against anyone. Give him a gun, a bag of candy, and unfettered access to those kids and the worst you'll get are some tummy aches.
Are the background vibes concerning? Is it perhaps bad to forget the humanity of your political opponents and openly hope for their death? Sure, yeah, but that's been the reality of our political vibes off and on since 1776.
But that's only one shoe, now the other. I live in a deep blue state, deep enough that some variation on "Trump is bad / kill the fascists" has become an almost ritualized part of conversation. Yesterday, I suddenly discovered myself in the middle of a tiff with my mid 30s lady friend. The cause? Your normal his and hers problems: she wants to start stockpiling bombs to use against the fascist menace, I do not.
Now, I don't think she would really be in the vanguard of revolutionary resistance or otherwise commit illegal violence. She is also only a single point of data, floating freely on the breeze of the zeitgeist. But our discussion has obviously been on my mind and gelled with the comments from Jones even though his were from 2022.
Committing violence, harming people - actually doing these kinds of things are, or seem to me, to still be outside the Overton Window. When done they are done by crazies. Verbally supporting violence or hurting people in the abstract are very much inside the Overton Window. Very normal, average people will talk like they're members of the Jacobin Club. It's just a status game. There's a schlubby, 60 year old white guy I know whose face will light up when he can turn even the most unrelated topic to Trump's latest outrage because people like bashing Trump and there's very little otherwise he says or does that people like. It's that simple.
And, to be fair, I can recall similar-ish death wishes and curses upon their heads from my right wing family members.
Anyway, the last day has increased my belief that we'll see an increase in 70s style petty political violence fueled by combining low status, violent men who have not much to lose and a lot of getting laid to gain with ideologically mindkilled women. But that's as far as it'll go.
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