eudemonist
1yr ago
It's not the most important story in the world, I agree, but I felt it was an example of "Culture War" so shared it to the Roundup.
To me it's pretty emblematic of the larger CW on a very micro scale. In the culture I grew up in, teenagers TPing houses and grownups trying to catch them was a common trope, as was the "extra-grumpy old man" whose land/lawn nobody cut across or messed with. These were experiences universal among my peer cohort, regardless of ethnic or economic background--everybody knew That Guy, he was a dick to everybody, and that shared experience helped create peer bonds across ethnic barriers. Everybody pranked somebody, whether having their car sitting on blocks when the bus got back from an away game, or TPing a house, or dying coach's dog green, or saran wrapping a car, or pennying a new teacher's door shut, or whatever. There was pretty much a peace convention on egging dating back to before my time due to some severe paint damage, but being rowdy and having fun is great for kids....as is getting hemmed up by some grown folk when they go a bit too far.
I see no reason to read, or even suspect, racial bias in this incident, and based on what I read in the police report, I see no reason for Langkamp, or anyone really, to be arrested or lose a job. This is, or was, a pretty run-of-the-mill enactment of an old drama with deep roots in my culture.
The inversion of responsibility, the holding of instigators up as heroes, the apparent compulsion to shove race into every possible story, the fact that the arresting officer found it necessary to take all three dudes into custody immediately, without even allowing them to put on shoes, the failure of the detectives to find any video when the lady next door had some....all of these are things I find interesting. But not everyone shares my interests, I do understand. Hope you find a more interesting story to engage with!
eudemonist
1yr ago
The neighbors audio recording described at the very end supports the guy's (AD's) story, too. He's said to be talking softly, not telling, and not using profanity. That officer takes a bit of a swipe at the detectives who were supposed to find video, heh.
I think it's amusing that some of the kids say they weren't going there to TP but only to look at how bad the house had been "got", and another kid is like, "Man, it happened so fast we hadn't even opened our toilet paper yet!"
Gotcha, I'll edit that--I wasn't clear on that detail, thank you!
I very much agree it was "assholes gonna asshole", for sure. But the guy was already standing outside when the Jeep pulled onto the street, before knowing what color of kids were coming to TP his house, so I have a hard time attributing it to racial bias.
eudemonist
1yr ago
Is it not the case that, once we start moving towards those distant objects (in say a colony ship), the expansion behind us compensates for a growing portion of that total expansion? It's my understanding that there IS an inflection point as you describe, but we haven't reached it yet.
Perhaps "Save the Universe" is the ultimate point of the simulation we built ourselves. Seems fitting.
A mixed-color group of high school footballers was going to toilet-paper the house of a girl on the same cul-de-sac as the school athletic director. Seems the house had been TP'd at least once already, and cars may or may not have been egged, during the school's homecoming week shenanigans. When the group pulled into the circle, dad was already in the yard, with what I'm guessing was one of these but may have been one of these. Adults step out in front of the kids' jeep, wave them down, tell them to turn the car off and maybe get out, maybe get on the ground. Maybe the torch gets pointed at them, and they definitely get cussed out. The athletic director intervenes, speaks quietly to the kids (per the recording described in the police report, final section), and they are leave in less than three minutes.
Of course, it's suspected that this is racially motivated, despite it being (it seems) a white kid driving the Jeep. (EDIT: I was wrong about who was driving, as pointed out below by /u/Gdanning) I guess had the other four individuals also been white, Mr. Kolar would have put away his torch and enjoyed watching people toilet paper his house? Or perhaps that neighbors don't mind people hauling ass through the cul-de-sac as long as there aren't colored folks in the car? I really don't know. But the AD will probably lose his job behind the deal.
eudemonist
1yr ago
We must love each other, show affection for each other and unite together in condemnation of hatred, bigotry and violence. We must rediscover the bonds of love and loyalty that bring us together as Americans.
Racism is evil and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs including the KKK, neo Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.
We are a nation founded on the truth, that all of us are created equal. We are equal in the eyes of our creator, we are equal under the law and we are equal under our Constitution.
eudemonist
1yr ago
But we're trying to sell Optimeme performance-enhancing "cognition supplements" to twitchy med students who find mainlining Adderall doesn't do it for them any more, which takes more sophisticated online marketing.
Is...is this an ad? Because I want some Optimeme now.
eudemonist
1yr ago
Anybody got links to good gene analyses of the two original strains of C19 that were found in Wuhan, L and S? I can find very few references, and it seems to me that having mutated into two distinct human-transmissible strains before a single sufferer was identified would be pretty long odds. It wasn't til almost a year later we started seeing Alpha variants.
Seems the two initial strains would have TONS of papers written about them, no?
eudemonist
1yr ago
Wow, a Martha's Vineyard homeowner reached into his wallet and gave a migrant a $100 bill. Then there's the guy who spent $100 on candy for the kids...
Let's not forget one guys says a $26 hamburger is "much more" than he could earn in a month in Venezuela (if he could find work). Four months salary worth of candy, passed out by a guy who seems relatively poor. Yeah, I'd try too.
22 out of 60 survived traversing the Darien Gap. That's rough.
Oh dang, I just now saw this, in the October Quality Contributions thread! As the interrogator in the initial conversation, thank you for posting this. That's one hell of a follow-up, hah! This kinda stuff interests me quite a bit, but I know very little, so I very much appreciate your patience and thoroughness with this reply! Would you mind horribly if I impose on your grey matter some more? Having read this response, I think my original question was poorly put. It was based on something vaguely remembered from a throwaway conversation somewhen that made sense to me but I didn't fully grok, regarding the interplay of reference frames.
The Hubble constant indicates that the rate of recession increases as distance between the observer and the object in question increases, right? In practice thus far, all observations/measurements are made from Earth (or at least Earth-local) frames, so it seems everything outside our local frame is expanding away from us, with M81 expanding away at 238 km/s from Earth given its current distance of ~12 megaparsecs. So if we travel in that direction at 239 km/s, the rate of expansion between it and us begins to slow down, because we're a bit closer, yah? And that property scales all the way up to lightspeed: as long as we go a little faster than current expansion, we can get there. Which means we have a few thousand years to develop 99.7/c travel without unrecoverably losing much, if any, of the observable universe. (of course those atom lives matter too, but we may simply not be able to save them all)
It's possible I was thinking the Hubble constant was non-linear, which would seem to create some weirdness with multiple observers, but I'm honestly not sure. Either way, thanks again for this comment--I've been reading cosmophysics all day, lol.
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