Yeah, for me thinking about pretty much any depiction of eternal relationships is a surefire way to induce existential angst.
Happy Tuesday, all. Something to look forward to.
Dang, I may just point y'all to Lincoln Anthony Blades' columns for the foreseeable future. (I have not read all of them, but the columns on universities becoming less white and Confederate make good points, as do some others.)
Teen Vogue = crushing it. Wish we'd had something with this kind of editorial courage back when I was growing up.
=== GM travel advisory ===
Heads up I'll be in Odense tonight. I expect to have my laptop and wireless, but there's some nonzero chance I won't be able to post until late Sunday CEST.
Hey everyone, sorry for not posting in a while, but with everything that's happened over the past couple months, I just don't have the heart to post. I think I might have to back out for I don't know how long.
I'm sorry, but every time I go to post, I just draw a huge blank. I don't know what else to say.
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That's fine Alaina, life happens. If you decide to come back we'll be happy to have you.
I agree - if/when you're ready Alaina, no matter when that is, you're always welcome to jump in to any game I'm running.
Going forward I'd much rather keep both Alaina and Dara (the characters) around indefinitely for plot motivation purposes. I propose they get auto-bots, effectively becoming NPCs, until Alaina (the player) can join us again. Sound like a plan?
Alaina, if you have any notes on how you'd like Alaina or Dara to be played, I'll try to be true to what you had in mind.
I hope things start looking up for you. Wishing you and your family well.
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Agreed, take good care of yourself! I'm on board with the NPCs plan too.
You guys you guys - this is one of my favorite applications of Arduino tech yet.
Fight that system, kids!
A family member of mine is a school district administrator in upstate NY. She’s told me kids of color get in trouble more often and she’s heard parents complain that white kids get away with the same stuff (which at the time she found to be an attempt to shirk responsibility instead of a valid concern about being held to different standards). Potentially one of my greatest contributions to humanity to date: I asked her if it was possible that the (vast majority white) teachers may tend to discipline students of color more for subjective violations like not pulling their damn pants up or disrespectful language. She thought about it for a long minute, said “maybe”, and I guess now the district is addressing the disproportionate way students of color are disciplined (hopefully by educating the teachers about bias and how to calibrate for it, although I do not know). Ideally our education would also address bias and inequity outright. Hopefully we will get there.
Reading this article reminded me there was a economics professor a local college in my hometown who was quite smug about one of his lessons about affirmative action. He’d take a recent assignment and re-assign the grades such that As became Bs, Bs became Cs, Ds became Cs, and Fs became Ds. Everyone got a bit closer to the middle; the message being that affirmative action is analogously unfair. And if we really did live in a meritocracy, I suppose that’d be true. His argument is certainly logical if we assume hard work and ability are proportional to reward. But in reality some folks have to work much harder and/or be much more capable for the same reward - starting with less, and dealing with continual discouragement and setbacks. (Poverty being one of the most significant initial conditions, and closely related to race and gender.)
Affirmative action does not tend to raise the less worthy above the hard workers (although I’m sure as with any distribution, there are outliers). And the motivation is not just to have more diversity for diversity's sake. Much closer to the truth: traditional metrics for college and job applications do not fairly/accurately represent everyone’s capabilities; bias (particularly integrated over one’s lifespan) produces a real and measurable effect which we can (and should) acknowledge and account for. (Active recruitment is also key for combating internalized bias.) That being said, looking at diversity demographics is a good way to assess how well we're combating bias effects.
H'okay. So.
I see I was perhaps overly optimistic in thinking it'd be viable to carry on as usual by NPC-ifying Alaina and Dara. There are plot elements coming up that I think are going to feel very railroady if it's the GM reporting the character's experience to the rest of the party, particularly for Dara. I'm not sure it's possible to play these characters well and not backseat-lead the party going forward.
We're also down to 1-2 total PC posts a day pretty consistently. They are phenomenal posts, you guys have been killing it content-wise lately, but rate-wise I'm not getting as much out of the game as I'd like to be.
What do y'all want to do? I figure some options are:
1) Try to chug along on the plot railroad with me playing Dara and Alaina (the characters, both integral to the plot as currently formulated) and hope Alaina (the player) can join us again.
2) Somebody else taking on Dara and Alaina in the meantime could be very helpful to the railroad problem. At least Dara, for plot purposes. (Tho Mikkel's version of Alaina will arc toward dealing with anger in emotionally mature ways probably far faster than her player intended.) It'd likely be smoothest if a current PC could, but I'm not opposed to taking an unusual request to recruitment.
3) We let this adventure fade into the sunset, maybe after Kinghaven (where Dulae intends to join us for a bit). I think I could take some of the scraps from the rest of the arc and make something new in another 3-4 real time months, if there's still interest in this universe.
4) Others I haven't thought of?
I'm up for number 1, but I don't think I could take on other posting with me current schedule. I try not to rush these in the morning, but you know, those 12 hour days are a bit rough.
Oh, also, your interpretation of my last post was correct!
I agree with being up for number 1; I could theoretically take on one of the characters, but I would also definitely be a bit worried about my ability to portray them.
Remind me how much longer you figure you'll be pulling 12 hour days, Cel? Hang in there.
Sounds like we may be converging on #1, pending Xizoh's opinion.
It'd make things significantly easier for me if we all agree to conveniently ignore that Alaina and Dara are speaking and acting differently (retroactively, since they already are) and that the party really is free to choose whatever course of action they like, even if Alaina or Dara (the NPCs) advocate very strongly for something.
I think another easy hack would be to have all players read what would've been Dara's spoilers so that the full information I intended for someone in the party to have isn't filtered through an NPC's report.
If everyone agrees, I think that approach will solve the railroad problem.
I'd be willing to take a swing at number two given about a week or so, but I am nervous about my ability to play them to character. Right now is crazy busy with me preparing to be an adult and move out, but once college starts up I should have the free time needed to manage a character or two more if need be. Sorry, I know I've been lax, but life has been busy for me, and rough for a lot of my close friends and family. My apologies everyone.
Oh man, going to college, that's so exciting Xizoh! I expect you may be busier than you anticipate with exploring, classwork, and meeting people, but I s'pose things could also take a while to pick up. Have a wonderful time! Let us know how you're getting on.
Dang, y'all have been dealing with more than your fair share of misfortunate/hardship since we started this adventure. I'm very glad you're all here and if there's anything I can do to support, I'd like to.
I appreciate the offer Xizoh (Henri too). I think I have resolved my cognitive dissonance between 'play Alaina and Dara' and 'give the party some reasonably nuanced freedom of choice' if we all treat them like true NPCs rather than PCs I temporarily control (read: I can go off-script from Alaina's intent and what the party does is up to the 3 of you). If that's agreeable, another two NPCs is doable for me, especially when their combat is pretty straightforward. (If this changes, I'll be sure to let y'all know.)
Let's give it a couple weeks in railroad mode to see how things go. Having Dulae back should help with our average daily-PC-post-rate, and otherwise we have options.
Neat game theory trust visualization. I usually fall somewhere between 'copykitten' and 'always cooperate'. (Definitely not a fan of characterizing cooperation as feminine though.)
Also, here's a thoughtful response about the 'Google manifesto' from a recently former senior Googler that touches some on the conflict between freedom of expression vs. freedom of career and financial stability.
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Haha, I appreciate the hang in there bit, but 12 hour days is the norm for me from now on. I went and got myself roped into working on professional athletes, because I discovered that nearly the entire NFL medical establishment is negligently terrible. NFL player's schedules really aren't their own, so I end up having to treat them on my own time. Who knows, maybe in a few years I'll actually start my own business so I can work 80 hours a week to eventually not have to work so many!
And good luck, Xizoh! College was so much fun for pretty much everyone I know who didn't treat it like grad school and work themselves to death. Many of my favorite memories came from there, and I'm sure you'll make your own too.
@Cel - I think I'd find that exhausting to do every day for years on end, but if you enjoy it and it's getting you where you want to be, awesome. How is it working with professional athletes?
Unbelievably frustrating, not because of the players, but because I'm finding that the medical care they've received up to this point has be purely negligent. It's really appalling to me how much incompetence is allowed. I expected it to be a huge challenge to comb through all the various aspects of their cases to find the problem, but I'm finding that a very basic, year 1 of PT or ATC school assessment is enough to find the problem with a very quick fix. Yet, in these guys it's lingered for years, several times ending their seasons early. The plus side, is the guys are all incredibly kind and gracious. They are about the most perfect patients you can get. They want to learn more, they are completely compliant, and since their nervous systems are effectively highly tuned Ferrari's compared to our Toyota Carolla nervous system they all respond incredibly fast to treatment. It's pretty fun!
Whaaaat, that blows my mind! Who's responsible for the players' medical care and welfare? Owner, manager(s), league? You'd think if they don't consider the needs of the players as humans they'd at least take a cold capitalist interest to protect their investment. If somebody misses a game because of an incompetently-treated injury they still get paid a salary, right?
Dang, I could use a Ferrari nervous system right about now. I had a pretty youtube-worthy fall earlier this week, then took a bike ride that was about 4 hours longer than my usual longest the next day, and now I keep losing feeling in my left hand. (Knowing only what I remember learning about nerves from when I was a high school freshman half my life ago, I figure it'll right itself well enough on its own.)
It's the owners, they really don't care about the players as people. It's a big business, so the players are just their profit generators like a pizza is to Dominos. The part that makes it so stupid is that if a team makes it to the playoffs the owners get a LOT more money. The players are all salaried employees, so if they play more games, then they make less money. It's their version of overtime. However, more games means more ticket sales, merch sales, etc so the owners get a huge boost in expected income with reduced cost in overhead. This is the part that is so damn dumb. Healthy players are still athletes who want to compete, so they want to go to the playoffs even if they make less money.
The care they receive is intentionally mediocre. They want these guys to be JUST healthy enough to play, but not fully healed. If you have a chronic hamstring issue that can be used against you in contract negotiations. Less teams are willing to pay for you in a trade because of a nagging injury, and your current team not only gets to keep you, but they can avoid paying you a mega-contract because of said injury. It's pretty bad.
Not sure I follow this:
The players are all salaried employees, so if they play more games, then they make less money.
The players make less money total over a year if they play more games? Say what? I would've figured it'd be base salary + bonus for wins. How does that work, contract-wise?
Seems like there's an optimal profit margin somewhere between 'healthy enough for the team to make the playoffs' and 'hurt enough to not be in a strong bargaining position'. Dang, that is a cold capitalist interest. I'm guessing the owners are not paying you and the players are private, independent clients? (Also, who are the owners paying/recommending their players see? Don't your fellow medical providers take some Hippocratic oath to do the best of their ability to make people well?)
They do have bonuses written into their contracts, but it's often for things like "if you get 1000 passing yards you get X bonus." It's never a situation of wins or length of season because they argue it's a team game so no one does it above others. So, their paycheck is just like yours (I think) or mine, where it never changes in size, it's just given to you every two weeks. How many games you play isn't reflected in it.
Yeah, I recently met with an independent massage practitioner who exclusively works with NFL players. She has never had a "nerve guy' as part of her team, has realized from me she needs one. So, now when these guys get hurt she finds out, yells at them for getting treatment by the team, and sends them to me first. Each team has their own medical team, and the surgeons are all phenomenal, but the Athletic Trainers and strength and conditioning coaches they use are just a good ol' boys network. Once you're in, you're in for life, and when someone leaves you tell the team a "good replacement" that happens to be a friend of yours and now that person is in. People aren't being hired on merrit, they're being hired because they're friends. It's resulted in flat out negligent treatment because they are bad practitioners. Many of them think they're doing good work, but they REALLY don't. The owners just don't care enough to do anything about it.
Wow. Is there a players' union that can do something about it?
Happy Tuesday all.
Let's take it as obvious that white supremacy and murder are awful and in no way defensible.
That being said, to my horror I've been seeing a bunch of defenses of white supremacists and murder by my peers. Some choice snippets: the anti-Nazi protestors didn't have a legal permit, the Nazis have a right to free speech and to bear arms, "if the left came with peace in mind this wouldn't have happened", it's not the right time to protest the Alt-Right, and the anti-Nazi protestors were just as violent (I guess somehow not counting the murder and earlier murders by white nationalists).
Very similar backlash happened during the Civil Rights movement, coming back yet again to Martin Luther King Jr.'s letter from Birmingham jail. There will never be a convenient time or way for people to be confronted with the unfairness of a society that benefits them and relies on their complicity. There's no comfortable way to do the right thing here, and that definitely means backlash. But I hope I won't let that stop me from trying.
If you want to learn more about the relevant history of Charlottesville, grad students at the University of Virginia have put together a syllabus that I found useful.
This is probably a scary time for everybody, but particularly for those who do not check all of the cis-gendered, straight, Christian, and white boxes. If that means you, I'm here for you, and I've no doubt everyone else in this game is too.
And as much as I find it unsettling that The Washington Post's banner is currently 'Democracy Dies in Darkness', I think tumultuous times mean our generation has the power to affect great change if we take a strong stand. Indivisible has a pretty good searchable list of Charlottesville rallies if you're interested, and there are of course many other ways to make an impact.
Also, very very Happy Birthday to Henri!
Yep, players union that has allowed themselves to be completely handcuffed at the discretion of the commissioner, Roger Goodell. Such an unfortunate situation.
And happy birthday Henri!
Wow, that is interesting and not at all how I expected professional athletes to be treated by their bosses. I would assume they would be in the best possible shape for the best performance, if not the whole being human thing.
Sorry, just barely have settled into college. It's...interesting to say the least.
Happy Birthday Henri!
Psh just wait till you get PAST week of welcome, I tell you what! But completely understandable. College can be crazy.
started college 7 years ago i'm so dang old now
That is indeed very close to saying the least. How're you getting on Xizoh? (If you care to share.)
Back in my day, we walked to class uphill both ways, through four feet of snow. (There was one day the latter was not untrue. And seeing a bro trying to sled off of a roof was a pretty regular occurrence.)
For someone who's hometown had a population of 5,000, going to a town of 50,000 is quite a jump. Though, I won't lie, I'm not very confident heading into calculus.
It's been interesting. My roommates are decent, if a bit wilder than I am. I'm mostly spent my time with a bunch of friends a couple wings over.
Bet that means more international and/or late night food options though. (I think college was the first time I tried most international cuisine.)
Most schools with a dedicated math department will have a calc clinic where a math major or grad student hangs out to help people with calc problems in a more laid back setting than office hours. They're usually pretty cool people and into answering questions. If you have free time between classes, you might try going there to work through your homework or prep for a test and ask the live human when you get stuck. Students who used the clinic regularly tended to do quite well in their classes.
Plus you know two physicists who are pretty practiced with calc. (Dulae in particular is a RL calculus wizard.) Feel free to ask. Seriously.
Very glad to hear you have decent roommates - that's important.
I hope the weather is clear for anyone watching the eclipse tomorrow! And even if it isn't, it should still be quite a sight. You should definitely have a look if at all you can.
Yeah, I've been enjoying the more varied foods.
Thanks for the advice, and thanks even more for the offer. I very well may have to take you up on that :D
My school is actually really near the path of totality, with a town not too far away being one of the total areas.
Anytime - serious offer.
I hope you got the chance to see it! I've heard it was "pretty much holy shit".
White nationalists and Nazis with torches aren’t what worry me most, it’s the (apparently) hundreds of thousands of others who tolerate them. The people making the “but free speech” argument. The people who put someone advocating for extermination and/or oppression of racial and religious minorities on the same moral footing as advocating for that person to actually face meaningful consequences for their actions. Those who were quick to call BLM ‘terrorists’ for blocking traffic to protest multiple black lives lost to what were essentially summary executions by police, but who still have yet to call the guy who drove a car into a crowd a terrorist. People who are very likely among our friends and family.
In terms of why life is actually different/harder for people of color, it tends to not be the actively vocal racists that cause the most damage day-to-day, but people who don’t realize their own bias, coupled with unfair law enforcement policies.
"It isn't Richard Spencer calling the cops on me for farming while Black. It's nervous White women in yoga pants with 'I'm with Her' and 'Coexist' stickers on their German SUVs."
I believe it. I can see people I know who I might even describe as well-meaning doing exactly that.
Racism permeates even how we interact we eachother on the web when we’re not discussing race, particularly through reaction gifs. I don’t see a problem with people of all races using people of all races to illustrate their feelings, but when white people primarily use black people to express extreme or ‘sassy’ feelings, that makes a strong statement about the way even the people showing up to protest Nazis think about race.
It’s not easy to fight bias - it takes time and lots of practice. None of us will probably ever unlearn all the racism and bias we’ve internalized from our culture and surroundings, but it is very much worth always putting in the effort to be better. It does make a difference.
Should've issued a GM travel alert - Dulae and I are on an epic adventure trying to get to Switzerland, and there's not much wifi to be had on German trains. Will post later today CEST!
Apparently promises to quell the 'violent left', incited in violence-baiting inflammatory rallies, was part of how the Nazis rose to power in Germany. I did not know that.
It's also usually appealing to be pro-stuff instead of just anti-stuff. I like the idea of a parallel, physically separate pro-minorities/immigrants rally instead of a counter-protest when Nazis come to town.
And here's also a link for anybody pro hurricane relief.
It occurs that I never posted to say I was working PAX all weekend, my apologies! There was no internet left with all the attendees, and I more or less lived at the support staff HQ for 4 days.
Cool! How was it?
Obviously the end of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is terrible news - forcing people who have never known another country to leave is cruel. It deprives us of their tax money and economic output, leaves people without their immigrant doctors, etc. Even so, this shouldn't come as a surprise. Let's skip past 'this is horrible!' and 'how can this be happening?' straight to 'what can we do about it?'.
If you know anybody directly affected by the end of DACA, here are some resources from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center and TheDream.US that may be helpful to them.
There's no undoing the stress/damage this will cause to those affected, but there is still time for Congress to pass a fair law before there are deportations. Online petitions and facebook likes are not effective: call or write your rep and senators. Google for peaceful protests/rallies near you.
Talk to your friends and family. Talking points for anyone unconvinced DACA was necessary: if growing up here and contributing to society isn't enough to earn a path to citizenship, then we are all just paperwork errors away from being eligible for deportation. (If that doesn't resonate with you, you and/or your family can probably afford a lawyer.) Take a moment to imagine ICE snatching you off the street and (without lawyer, trial, or phone call) dropping you in a country where you don't know anyone or even speak the language. Or living in fear of that for yourself and your family.
I'm sure there are other useful things that can be done - keep a weather eye out.
Pretty good, Acquisitions Incorporated (the live D&D show they put on) was the highlight, but that's no surprise. Went to a panel from a guy who wrote an entire book on a civil war that happened in EVE Online that was really fascinating. It was like listening to an actual account of real life history the way it played out. The most important piece was I only had to do 5 injury screens on just over a thousand Enforcers this year, way better than last year where I had about 30 people I had to assess.
Hey everyone, its nice to be back! I've missed you all.
I've been getting into Discord lately and have set up a server on which we can chat! Linka: https://discord.gg/Cz8tJP
It will expire in 1 day, so if you want to join but miss the window shoot me a message and I'll set up a new one.
Hey all, I'm disappearing again, I'm off to get married! I'll be back Monday, feel free to bot me as needed.
Congratulations Cel!!!! (There has got to be an appropriately celebratory gif for this occasion somewhere on the internet.)
@Elioden/Dulae - I'm in.
It went perfectly! We got lucky with perfect weather in a place that rains 12 feet per year. As an aside, I can't recommend Stefan and Audrey Photography enough. They really know how to handle both taking pictures of people and nature!
Very glad to hear it!
Welcome to September 2017 in the U.S.A.
Voter suppression is not a surprise.
Waiving protective regulations is not a surprise.
Requiring ID to shelter from a hurricane should not come as a surprise.
Many of our neighbors have been living in a dystopia right next to us all their lives, and some of us are just now waking up to it.
The SPLC says 'Today as in the 1960s, it is easy for moderate Americans to see any disruption of the status quo as going “too far.” ', but we need activists now more than ever.
If you've ever wondered what you would do if you found yourself living in a dystopian society, you're finding out.
If you've ever wondered where the hell all the decent people were during the rise of fascist regimes, well I guess we're all finding out together.
You do have power. Pay attention. Call your reps. Show up.
Hey all, the security wizard at our lab circulated this. I figured I'd pass it along in case it's helpful to anybody else.
As many of you may already know the recent Equifax data breach exposed the Social Security numbers, birth dates, address and drivers license numbers of over 143 million people. This is a massive data breach that is sure to have an effect on almost every person in this country, and potentially world wide. Many people are asking what should they do next to try and limit their exposure to this event. Here are a couple of suggestions that might help protect you from scammers and criminals:
1. This data will probably be used by phone and email scammers to try and trick you into paying for "data protection" services or outright extortion. They may even present some of your personal information as their bonafidees. Remember, legitimate credit institutions, banks, credit unions, credit card company's, retirement accounts, investment brokerages, insurance company's, online retailers and government institutions (IRS etc) will NEVER contact you directly for usernames and passwords or threaten you for money. Anyone contacting you by phone or email demanding your username or password and/or demanding payment should absolutely be considered fraudulent. Hang up on them.
2. Many people are freezing their credit at all three credit bureaus. In fact, the response has been so great that the credit bureaus have been overwhelmed by requests by customers. As soon as possible put a freeze on your credit. I believe it costs $5 -$10 per agency and about the same to unfreeze it when you need to establish a new line of credit. Doing this could potentially save you thousand of dollars and hours of fighting with the credit bureaus to reverse fraud and protect your hard earned good credit.
3. Take advantage of your free annual credit report to look for signs of credit being applied for in your name. This is also a good time to check to see if your credit information is accurate.
4. Sign up for a service that provides credit, identity theft, and fraud alert monitoring . There are many companies out there who provide this service. Their effectiveness is debatable, but it is always an option.
5. Reset passwords at your financial institutions (banks, credit cards, credit unions, retirement accounts, brokerage firms and insurance company's) and make sure to always use strong passwords and use different passwords for each site. An electronic password manager can help you keep track of all these passwords and there are many free/low cost offering available.
6. When ever possible take advantage of two factor authentication at financial institutions and online retailers. It's worth the extra step for the added security.
Hopefully taking some of these steps can help protect us from scammers, criminals and others looking to take advantage of this situation.
The following was written by a friend and former roommate of mine, a lady physicist.
"A pair of articles I came across this morning: historical, anthropological.
"Things like this have huge impact on the future of our society, in who new technology will be built for and who will be neglected and left behind.
"They are especially interesting together, the anthropologist arguing that a fair society needs to have diverse groups building and implementing technology, or power structures between groups will only be reified to keep the status quo in place.... And then the history article, showing that when cultures realized the future import of computer technology, several went out of their way, at the cost of their national industries competitiveness in the world stage, to push out their initial set of technology experts because they were women or of minority race. It was so much more comfortable to have social classes traditionally used to holding power take the new jobs in the field (once the field was realized to have important implications for humanity's future) that it was worth dumping decades of experience and slowing the field to do it.
"Even to this day there is the conception that there is something natural about a predominantly male computer workforce, and that it's the anthropologist asking for social effort to diversify who is calling for social engineering, not realizing that the history of computing in the past century is nothing other than a vast story of social engineering which got us to where we are today, and the anthropologist is only asking if those values really are what we want to build on, going forward."
Here's a note written by a friend that I found useful in parsing the arguments surrounding kneeling during the national anthem.
My own thought is that the flag symbolizes in part the right to free speech and peaceful protest. It would be more disrespectful to *not* exercise that right when you see injustice affecting the country. And the data says it is.
" Hello friends -- a few interesting points for those of you needing to have some debates with associates/family/acquaintances who think it is okay for the President to call out NFL players who will #TakeAKnee with Colin Kaepernick while he also praises white supremacists as "very fine people."
(1) NFL players did not participate regularly in the National Anthem before games until 2009, when the Federal Government paid them to do it as a patriotic showing to increase military enrollment.
-- www.snopes.com/nfl-sideline-anthem
-- sports.vice.com/en_us/article/yp89dj/stephen-a-smith-points-out-nfls-paid-p atriotism-problem
(2) No one can be required by a public entity (an employer is a different matter, I suppose) to participate in a patriotic ritual, like the National Anthem or the Pledge of Allegiance. This was firmly rule on by the Supreme Court in 1943 and has not been seriously challenged since.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_State_Board_of_Education_v._Barnette
(3) Many attempts have been made to build the case that movements like #TakeAKnee are disrespectful to our country and in particular our flag, trying to leverage the US Flag Code against those participating. As has been pointed out, there is universal disregard about the flag code, which most people selectively choose to ignore. For reference: www.usflag.org/uscode36.html#176
but I found this twitter thread enlightening with visuals to drive the point home:
twitter.com/koopa_kinte/status/911715150507454464
(4) Kaepernick's movement to #TakeAKnee is motivated by the tremendous problem we all sense with regard to racial injustice in this country, and in particular with the police. It is hard to come by reliable, sourced information about police violence, and in particular about police violence by race. If anyone has good, sourcable resources I would like to know them. In the meantime, here is a site I find useful -- they at least acknowledge the problem of collecting data, and try to be clear about where their data comes from and what the definitions they use to define interactions with the police.
mappingpoliceviolence.org
"
By the way, how is school going Xizoh? You must be coming up on midterms in a few weeks if you're on the semester term system.
It's going well enough, I've got midterms next week I believe. Calculus is still harsh, but I've got a tutor and am devoting a good chunk of time to it. The rest are all enjoyable and getting along pretty well with me, lab research is very interesting.
Sounds like it's going well, glad to hear it. Great that you're already involved in lab research as a freshman - that will certainly be helpful to you later on. Is it a bio lab you've joined?
Honest question: can someone explain to me why people value the right to buy/own a gun so much? Particularly one designed to kill a lot of people very quickly? I am lost.
Something I recently learned: more than 33,000 people are fatally shot in the US each year. If we've kept roughly that pace up since the year 2000, domestic gun deaths have easily exceeded the total U.S. WWII casualties (which wikipedia tells me is 405,399) in the last 15 years.
We are killing each other pretty darn quickly, and as Eddie Izzard said, maybe "it's not guns that kill people - people kill people. But the gun helps."
Here's a list of things more regulated than buying a gun. Keeping in mind that we don't seem to have trouble regulating bake sales for safety, guns are the cause of 1 in 10 deaths of those under 18 - well over a thousands kids every year. And if we compare the US to other countries (and count only gun homicides), I would be hesitant to visit the US for sure.
So, after what death toll do we get to pass reasonable gun control? Is half a million domestic gun deaths over ~15 years really not enough to justify filling out a form and waiting a couple weeks? Seriously?
The only conclusion I can come to is there is some perceived dire, urgent need to acquire guns fast. What is it?
Short addendum to last week: I was wrong to say that the Las Vegas shooting was the 'biggest' in our history. It isn't, and it's important to get that fact right. Whenever we write off mass violence against people of color (even when we have good intentions to discuss other important issues) we erase that history and lived experience from our awareness. Communities of color are still experiencing the ramifications of many decades of violently enforced lack of access to educational, financial, law, and other institutions. If we're not aware of that, if we don't make room for that fact in our discourse about violence, then we can't appropriately/fairly account for it. Sorry for my contribution to that.
This week's tip: The Rock Test, a 'hack for men who don’t want to be accused of sexual harassment'. I hope folks take heed - it's much more fair to work toward treating women equally than to cut them out of the same networking and mentoring opportunities men have access to for fear of being perceived badly.
The 'hack' is a bit glib, but I find the general technique of asking myself whether or not I'd perceive something differently if it were done/said/experienced by a cis man *really helpful* in combating my own learned gender bias (which I definitely do have as a human raised in our society).
There's of course some gray area in cultural differences - one example is that Italians and other southern Europeans kiss as a standard greeting, which is obviously not standard in American professional culture. It is not easy in the moment, but a very straightforward way to make sure you're behaving appropriately even in these cases is to *ask* how people would prefer to be treated/greeted and respect their answer.