johnfabian
2yr ago
I don't understand what you're trying to get at. What's my "preferred outcome"?
johnfabian
2yr ago
I wasn't able to pin down exact year-by-year numbers in Toronto. It appears that at least up to the pandemic suicide rates were down. Interestingly, there was a spike in suicides from bridges in the years immediately following the start of the project to install the nets, which caused researchers to wonder if the effort had been counter-productive. Over the next decade though bridge fatalities went down considerably (source) which then led researchers to muse if it was really media coverage of the bridge suicides which prompted spikes in the numbers.
At least in looking for the answer I confirmed my suspicion about people complaining about root causes, though.
"Root causes" are excuses to do nothing
I've written before about the problems facing the TTC, Toronto's public transit system (examples from here: 1 and less directly 2). I'm a big transit advocate, think cities built around the automobile are awful, and car dependency is a big cause in western social malaise. Yada yada yada, you can fill in the rest. The problem I have is that my supposed brothers-in-arms on the transit crusade seem to think it's optional that transit actually be safe, clean, and enjoyable; this has been hashed and rehashed before so to put it simply my views are that if you want transit to work, you cannot tolerate anti-social behaviour on it.
Last week a 16 year-old boy was stabbed to death in a random, unprovoked attack. The assailant was a homeless man who was out on probation for multiple charges, including most recently a sexual assault two weeks prior, and had previously been issued weapons bans and ordered to take mental health counselling. You can imagine the response: various flavours of outraged, upset, sad, conciliatory, exhausted, in all their various permutations as they slithered through the filter of ideology.
The next day a mass shooting happened in the US, which has been picked over for its culture war nuggets already. But in the periods both before and after the killer's atypical identity was revealed, it reminded me very much of the reaction to the stabbing the day before. There is a certain type of person, who when confronted with an incident that they (consciously or not) are intelligent enough to realize might clash with their worldview, employs a kind of motte-and-bailey to defend it. They cannot outwardly exclaim that "This changes nothing!" in the aftermath of a tragedy, because it would appear cruel, heartless, or at the very least tonedeaf. Instead they insist that the real root of the problem is some vast, society-wide, rooted-in-the-depths issue that has to be tackled first. An obvious example is that (almost) every time there is a mass shooting in the US, 2nd amendment types all of a sudden become very concerned about the mental health of the nation, and proclaim it to be the fundamental cause of the problem that must be addressed before anything else changes. Now in general I'm actually very receptive to this line of argument; I think it is mostly a social/mental health problem. Again this has all been re-litigated a thousand times, but these kind of mass shootings are mainly a product of the last 25 years, and countries other than the US seem to have little issue mixing widespread gun ownership with low rates of gun crime.
But obviously this argument is an excuse to do nothing. These people care not one whit about mental health all the other days of the year, and if they were so serious about the problem in the first place maybe there would be a means to achieve some kind of reasonable restrictions on gun ownership that would, if not prevent mass shootings, at least stop them from being so damn easy.
Likewise, I've seen dozens of similar sentiments in the past week explaining the deep-seated causes of why a mentally ill homeless man randomly killed a teen: it's due to the federal government no longer funding social housing, it's due to a lack of compassion for the dehoused, it's about a lack of community, and of course We All Know it's really about capitalism itself. OK, great. But these all feel like excuses to do nothing. This kind of random violence on the subway wasn't an issue before COVID. Do we have to wait for ten years of elevated federal housing funds to act? Do we have to rebuild social trust first? Do we have to dismantle the corporations of the Laurentian Elite into worker co-ops before we do a goddamn thing? I like the sound of all these ideas, but I think there are more direct and immediate ways to prevent kids from getting murdered, so how about we do those first!
But of course the people voicing these sentiments don't actually want those actions taken. Or perhaps really, they perceive that those actions being taken might vaguely benefit the social and political capital of groups they don't like, and so construct an excuse to oppose them.
The bridge near me used to be suicide capital of Toronto. In North America it was second only to the Golden Gate Bridge as a venue for people to end their lives. So in 2006, the suicide nets went up, and there's only been one death since. I wonder whether if that solution was proposed today if we'd get the same kind of inane pushback: no, first we have to tackle the opioids, or too much screen time, or cyber-bullying, or whatever the root cause of the problem was. The nets are ugly: not only as a reflection of our society's problems, they also get in the way of a good view. But it would've been cowardly inaction to insist the root cause of the problem had to be solved first.
johnfabian
2yr ago
I would imagine that there's probably enough evidence to indict Trump on numerous charges (even if flimsily), and given that he might as well see charges re: Georgia interference, I can understand there being a push from the legal-political class in NY to try to "get him" first. Nevermind the implications because he'll be charged with some more serious crime anyways, and hell, if we can do it, why not? Are we just going to let this opportunity pass?
I imagine there are some bitter feelings in NY political circles with respect to how they feel Hilary Clinton was treated, and they consider turnabout fair play.
johnfabian
2yr ago
The “greenhouse effect” however isn’t quite this. It is rather that the surface of the Earth is said to supposed to be -18C, but then the surface of the Earth heats the atmosphere which in turn heats the surface of the Earth to a higher temperature, raising it by +33C to reach +15C. i.e. the atmosphere is externally heated (by the Earth) and it then heats its heat source (the Earth) to a greater than original temperature.
Specifically what's warming is not "the Earth" but the oceans and troposphere. The other layers of the atmosphere are actually cooling because of the enhanced greenhouse effect within the troposphere. So it's not the "heat source" that is being heated (most of the infrared radiation being captured by GHGs comes from radioactive decay of elements within the Earth's crust).
johnfabian
2yr ago
A lot of them in North America also just seamlessly integrate. I was very surprised halfway through my first year of university when I found the guy next door in my dorm was a gypsy. He was there on a football scholarship.
johnfabian
2yr ago
johnfabian
2yr ago
tl;dr: there is no “greenhouse effect” in reality (nor “greenhouse gases” either).
The greenhouse effect is so trivially shown experimentally that it's a fairly standard activity for 6th grade kids to do.
I'm wondering where you got this rather interesting sequence of thoughts from. There are a whole bunch of various obvious errors that jump out - for example you seem to be confused as to what is actually warming, as you seem to think the Earth itself is a single system (like when you say no substance can raise the temperature of its heat source).
johnfabian
2yr ago
Jokes can "ruin the tone" in real life, why wouldn't they be able to in a film script?
johnfabian
2yr ago
Yeah, I can't fathom how somebody thinks that letting them loose on the street is the more compassionate alternative to an asylum. I used to do some volunteering with homeless outreach and it was awful the kind of situations these guys would end up in. Not only were they often simply incapable of meaningfully taking care of themselves, they of course had to deal with other violent mentally ill homeless, as well as the more lucid and crueler homeless who would simply steal off of them or beat them up.
I've mentioned it before but it does seem emblematic of a neoliberal society that many people find state violence as unconscionable but are plenty willing to "outsource" that to the streets, or to prison gangs, etc.
Personal anecdote time: I ride Toronto public transit frequently. The TTC has not been in a good place for a while. Violent, mentally ill homeless have had free reign. Last year a woman was set on fire (she died), another was stabbed to death with an ice pick, and a close friend of mine is currently going through the trial of someone who tried to push her onto the subway tracks. A foreign student who had come to Canada a few months prior was shot to death completely at random at my subway exit (this will give you a very good idea of where I live if you know how to use google).
But things got noticeably worse in December when a number of the city's emergency homeless shelters they had set up for the duration of COVID shut down without replacements. Twice I had to intervene to stop a homeless man harassing women late at night. Just about every trip you'd take you saw at least one obviously deranged person. Things were really ugly.
So how did the mods at /r/toronto react, given that they control the information source on the city for many people? (Canadians I believe use reddit the most of any nationality) Why, No-Crime January! For the month of January all posts on crimes committed in the city would be removed, unless the mods specially approved them, with the not-so-subtle implication that this was to counter "conservative narratives" on violence in the city. This got immediate backlash, but it got even worse when January saw another big wave of transit attacks. This was enough to get foreign press attention, and city politicians approved for a one month (!) deployment of police patrols onto the TTC, with the predictable types kvetching about the harm this would do to "racialized people" (as if they would prefer the violent mentally ill to the presence of police). Of course the /r/toronto mods declared their "temporary experiment" to have been a huge success, and that the new no-crime policy would become a permanent rule.
I'm a big believer in public transit. I'm a big believer in walkable cities. I do not believe those visions are compatible with a philosophy of policing and mental health which leaves mentally ill people unchecked to ruin public spaces. I talk to a lot of people and the number of outwardly progressive people who have conceded (in secret) to me that they're thinking we need a return of insane asylums is notable. The problem, at least in the Canadian political environment, is who is going to do it? The Conservatives don't want to spend the money. The Liberals and NDP would face rebellion from their activist/NGO base. At present the inevitable situation seems that the problem will get worse and worse until the public reaction is so bad it demands a crackdown. People are itching for a return of order.
johnfabian
2yr ago
If this forum were active in 2010, it would probably be a persistently reoccurring topic, to everyone's immense frustration (and we'd probably have a contingent of "intelligent design" advocates).
Boy I'm glad that culture war has simmered down, because there are few debates as unproductive as those about religion.
johnfabian
2yr ago
What "data" would one even be looking for? All of it would be some survey of word usage in media, or of public opinion polling. For example take a look at Gallup's polling on race relations. Again, pretty coincidental timing in the sudden plunge towards the abyss. Does it suggest anything? I'm not sure how much I would read into it. I was pretty shocked when I first saw it (could you convince anyone that 20+ years ago black Americans thought race relations were better than white Americans?). At best I would say that you might extrapolate that the confrontational approach to ameliorating racism is backfiring. But certainly it makes you wiggle your eyebrows a bit.
johnfabian
2yr ago
I would reckon a good portion of the stories on that subreddit (and probably 50%+ of the ones that get lots of attention) are either substantially or wholly fabricated.
johnfabian
2yr ago
I don't follow this logic at all. Why would I be obliged to enjoy gay sex if I supported gay rights? It's not a question of taste: I don't think pineapple on pizza is unethical because I don't like it. I wouldn't seek to criminalize things that are simply not my preference. The hypocrisy would be to deny others the right to marry the people (i.e., consenting adults) they love, when I already enjoy that ability.
The crux is that you get meat by killing a sentient, emotionally complex, intelligent animal. I think that if you can't bring yourself to do that (and have to rely on the emotional distance of someone else doing the dirty work), then yeah, I don't reckon you should eat meat, because industrial meat processing takes that one bloody act and multiplies it billions of times yearly. We all have our hypocrisies and have to pick where to draw the extent of which we tolerate them, so I think if you can't stomach the very simple act the meat industry is built upon, you shouldn't seek to benefit from its utterly horrific economies of scale.
johnfabian
2yr ago
I think small family farms are an entire world of difference from industrial meat processing. I feel people who actually kill/process the animals the eat basically have no moral burden. They are willing and able to do the task themselves. I've killed animals before and have found myself able to have done so without self-disgust, so that somewhat mitigates the qualms I have about my meat-eating. As for the rest of it I try to only eat meat once or twice per week.
I've kicked around in my head the hypothetical of requiring people over the age of 14 or 16 to get a "meat-eater's license", i.e. having to kill/dress a larger mammal by themselves in order to qualify to eat meat. I wonder what percentage of the larger population would disqualify themselves from eating meat if they were forced to jump through that hoop. I do feel that if you cannot steel yourself to take the life of an intelligent, social animal like a pig or a deer or a cow, then you should not eat meat.
I don't identify as an effective altruist (but I generally shirk from labels, and I dislike that label for much the same reason I dislike "rationalist").
johnfabian
2yr ago
As a bonus tie-in to the post lower down about The Last of Us: Gillian Jacobs is apparently friends with Pedro Pascal, and so roped him into the table-read of an episode during the pandemic that he struggled to get through.
johnfabian
2yr ago
Can anybody think of an example of an important (main character or recurring supporting character) character in recent mainstream media that is depicted as a good person who does good things, but who is also explicitly a fundamentalist Christian?
In the otherwise uneven and overlong Don't Look Up the best scenes center around Timothee Chalamet's very sweet and earnestly Christian character.
johnfabian
2yr ago
I honestly think straw vegetarians are much more a product of the cognitive dissonance of meat-eaters who realize deep down the incredible cruelty of the meat industry and on some level register vegetarians as a walking mirror of their own hypocrisy.
(I say this as a somewhat self-hating meat eater)
johnfabian
2yr ago
Troy, Abed, and Shirley are all well-rounded people who have good sides and bad, and don't blame all their problems on vague instances of racism.
It happens once when Chang tries to get them to "bear down for midterms" but he's also insane
johnfabian
2yr ago
Britta Perry: a Culture War time capsule
One of the fun things about reading old books or watching old movies is how you can be reminded of the way society changes. Obviously this is a somewhat trite observation, but it doesn't really make it any less jarring when something very casually conflicts with the subtle messaging you get every day in the present. Community is one of my favourite TV shows; it ran from 2009-2015 which isn't that far in the past, but I saw a Reddit post the other day that made an interesting observation about the zeitgeist it represented and how quickly we've moved on from it.
The female lead of the series is Britta Perry (played by the wonderful Gillian Jacobs), and in the first dozenish or so episodes of the show she's very much a conventional sitcom love interest: responsible, compassionate, earnest, striver for social justice, the Better Eventual Half of our morally listless protagonist, etc. This of course was bland and boring, so the writers ended juking things up and turning her into a much more interesting character. Rather than being the noble (and unfunny) stock liberal progressive, she became the annoying and semi-incompetent stock liberal progressive. She continues to be smug and overbearing about the same subjects, but she's flipped as a killjoy instead of righteous.
And it's interesting to see what the writers of the time considered to be the most annoying tendencies of white, urban, female, bourgeois progressivism. Yes, of course she complains about the patriarchy, thinks all her media consumption is about making a statement, she has to work her pet causes into every conversation, and she hates cops. But she's also a crusader for civil liberties, a big fan of Julian Assange, outspoken in favour of free speech, and paranoid about government surveillance. Even her evangelical vegetarianism seems notably out of place in 2023.
And of course perhaps what's most glaringly obvious is the subjects she DOESN'T care about: there's barely a mention of race (except for once suggesting they include an Asian member for more diversity!), she famously cares more about animal cruelty than racism, and not only does she never dip her toe into anything resembling bisexuality or gender experimentation, she's even portrayed as mildly homophobic. Until the last episode there's nary a mention of transgender people except for the transfer dance being referred to as the "tranny dance" in season 1 (in 2009, any idea of transgender people being anything other than a punchline was not even dawning in the minds of progressive Hollywood writers).
So this was the stereotypical annoying liberal progressive circa 2010. No mentions of black bodies and trans spaces, a lot of worrying about civil liberties. I guess we never knew how good we had it. I'll leave you with a link to an illicit streaming website which is one of the few places you can watch one of the show's best episodes, which got erased from existence after George Floyd for the crime of adjacent-blackface and features annoying Britta at her best.
johnfabian
2yr ago
I've been meaning to make a long post about why it's not possible to get a good cake (at a reasonable price) for a while.
johnfabian
2yr ago
Yeah I didn't get the "toxic masculinity" thing either, if that was what the angle actually was. Seemed like the central arc was Carmy overcoming his depression and self-hate, and how all that intertwined with his brother's death and the stress of assuming his legacy.
johnfabian
2yr ago
But the somewhat more sentimental localist in me recognizes that the sheer amount of resources that can be brought to bear by an international corporation renders the outcome patently 'unfair' in that there's no way that the locals, even if they coordinate perfectly, can pony up the funds to resist the will of an uncaring entity that senses an opportunity for profit.
In Toronto since the start of the pandemic the number of local businesses that have gone belly-up and replaced by chains has been enormous. Toronto has extraordinarily expensive real estate, so large corporations with the capital to purchase land outright rather than rent have a big competitive advantage over small businesses. You walk along King or Queen west and compare it to what it looked like four years ago and it's a total wasteland.
I think this is just one way in which the current market is geared towards large multinationals rather than local business.
I feel like your response is a bit CW-brained, so to speak; that is to say it's rooted in a kind of contrarianism that is overriding your faculties. Yes, it's annoying and silly and perhaps unfair that the media does its best to overlook levels of violence among black Americans. That does not mean it alone is the secret ingredient that explains everything wrong with American society. If you removed all gun violence caused by black Americans from the picture tomorrow the US would still have a higher murder rate than most other western nations with significantly more gun deaths. And I would note that specifically I was addressing these kind of random mass shootings, which as far as I'm aware aren't disproportionately committed by blacks.
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