Linky Friday #65
Wildlife:
[W1] Rabbits: Cute, furry, and ready to be weaponized.
[W2] Owls are good husbands and dads.
[W3] They found a chupacabra! And euthanized it.
Settlement:
[S1] According to Alex Berube, cities and suburbs are converging.
[S2] Shipping containers can be used to make pretty awesome homes.
[S3] The Guardian looks at floating cities.
Athletics:
[A1] The story of Los Angeles Doger Yasiel Puig’s escape from Cuba into the United States. Or, as Mike Schilling put it: “Dodgers implicated in human trafficking.” (link via James Hanley)
[A2] From Jonathan McLeod: Alex Wong writes about the Hillsborough disaster as ESPN releases a documentary on its 25th anniversary. Also check out Tony Evans twitter feed, where he recounts what it was like to be there.
[A3] From Kazzy: This is a little bit old, but it might be the best piece I’ve read on the NCAA/union thing.
[A4] From James K: Firaxis Games is making a spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri. I am buying the hell out of this when it comes out.
Regulation:
[R1] The politics of the raw milk wars.
[R2] The banks were regulated, and banks got cheaper. The skies were deregulated, and flying is safer.
[R3] SEC employees are not only allowed to use their inside knowledge to sell stocks, they’re required to.
[R4] At Hit Coffee, I wrote about the allegations that the administration intentionally punted executive regulation until after the 2012 election.
Psychology:
[P1] How the Internet is driving outrage.
[P2] It’s interesting how hypocrisy sometimes seems to be the most unforgivable of sins. Clancy Martin wonders if this is how it should be.
[P3] Chris Mooney write about the biology and psychology of partisanship. Shankar Vedantam discusses the social component to ideological formation.
Europe:
[E1] According to Geoffrey Heptonstall, the rightward drift of Britain over the last few decades has transcended politics.
[E2] As we allow pot sales, the Netherlands is reversing course.
[E3] How Slovakia became one of Europe’s successes after the Czechoslovakian split.
[E4] Germany has the right to kick out unemployed Spaniards.
Crime:
[C1] Off-the-grid living is off-limits in Florida.
[C2] Bob Cooke explains what it’s like to be an undercover cop.
[C3] A woman who purports to be an undercover cop who goes to frat parties to catch (attempted) rapists says the worst part is “Knowing that every single time I go to a party, without fail, there will be someone who tries to rape me.” … “[It takes] 30min-1h30min generally”
[C4] The story of an undercover OSI investigator who says she was raped, though the Air Force isn’t sure.
[C5] Conservatives are tackling criminal justice reform.
Lifestyle:
[L1] Most Americans live within 25 miles of their mothers. It warms your heart, if you ignore the inevitable economic inefficiency of misallocated labor.
[L2] Children bring with the more positive and more negative emotions for the parents.
[L3] Jesus Christ Superstar, made better by muppets. (Link from Jaybird)
[L4] From Saul DeGraw: College students don’t are too constrained to be weird, they go to binge drinking instead. This one is at my alma mater.
Healthcare:
[H1] Google Glass may be a key innovation for doctors.
[H2] Physicians are concerned that under PPACA they’re going to get stiffed.
[H3] James Fallows collects anecdotes about electronic medical records.
[H4] Robert Pearl talks about what it’s like being a doctor.
[H5] From Christopher Carr: After inventing a new test for pancreatic cancer, 15-year old Jack Andraka’s first move has been to partner with a biotech firm and patent his test. Andraka has received Jesus-level praise from the media, but I find this high-school sophomore’s attempt to profit off his discovery made without any up-front investment highly morally questionable.
Does L2 account for people who want children and can’t have them for one reason or another?Report
h2: yeah, probably. those who can will take further action to shape their patient pool; more than they already do, i mean. same with avoiding ambulatory surgery for patients with comorbidities, as their readmit rates are going to be higher.
h5: “Andraka has received Jesus-level praise from the media, but I find this high-school sophomore’s attempt to profit off his discovery made without any up-front investment highly morally questionable.”
i’m a bit dumb – obvs – but can you explain this?Report
Re: L4
Just to clarify, my in the the sentence refers to me. Not Will.Report
find this high-school sophomore’s attempt to profit off his discovery made without any up-front investment highly morally questionable.
First, Is the moral value of profit about rewarding someone for how much they spent, or about rewarding them for the value they create? Should we reward output or input?
Second, why isn’t spending 7 months in the lab counted as an investment?Report
I don’t get it Will. What is morally questionable?Report
When a blurb begins “From (somebody)” that means theywrote it.Report
Very convenient.Report
OK, so please allow me to redirect my questions to Christopher Carr.Report
My bad. I assumed they provided just the link, not the commentary.
CC now has all our attention.
There is of course, evidence that show that people view windfalls as less deserved than gains via hard work. It would be interesting to hear Chris’ explanation.Report
Attributed links are attributed at the end (like L3). Submitted blubs go at the beginning.
I thought about making this clear in the body of the post because there were so many submissions, and I should have. So it’s my bad.Report
C3 sounds very suspect to me. I don’t see how this kind of operation would not generate a very high ratio of dropped charges and entrapment complaints to actual convictions.
Is this a real thing?Report
Yeah, I don’t buy it either. It came up around here once before (someone mooted a similar idea) and I also questioned how it wouldn’t end up in a lot of injuries/shootings for both the perps and the cops.
Sending a single cop – even if armed, wired to call backup, and trained in self-defense – into an environment with multiple intoxicated young men?
That’s a recipe for her HAVING to use her gun frequently. It can take several officers to subdue a single intoxicated person with [ha] minimal injury to all parties.
It just seems like the sort of risk no PD would take. Nobody’s necessarily gonna cry if a perp gets shot once or twice, but it would be happening a lot probably.
And if the cop gets overpowered and shot with her own gun, or god forbid raped before backup can bust in, that’s a media nightmare for the PD.Report
Glyph,
There’s a lot less of a problem if you’ve managed to get alone with one person, and your worst case is “get the hell out of there” — don’t try to resist, capture, or anything. Just leave.
Also, yes, drunken folks can be more aggressive/stupid, but they also have slower reaction times.
[I don’t think any PD would actually greenlight this, but it’s not the most insane thing ever. If I wanted to pull a “find the rapist” game, I’d simply put up a few cameras, and catch the scavengers going after the passed out chicks.]Report
Glyph,
also, most rapists aren’t expecting a fight. At the point where there are multiple witnesses around, it’s not to a rapist’s best interest to do anything “untoward” (mores vary by place and time, natch).
You can basically assume that “back where there are rooms” is in a place where they can have police “up the stairwell and ready to burst onto the scene within seconds” (I am going by my one-two times in a frathouse/dorm).
But I call bullshit, more because of the idea that the frats would let this happen. Free sex with wildly differing degrees of intoxication is what they sell.Report
Kim, the problem is that rape is legally a type of assault – presumably, to get the charge to stick, the assault has to at least begin (physical contact must be made). It’s not like prostitution where as soon as the price has been negotiated or money has changed hands, a crime has already been committed, and backup can come in. The cop is (supposedly) attempting to instigate an immediate violent crime (with victim in the room) here.
I just don’t see this working as a systematic, sanctioned ongoing operation, anymore than I can see undercover cops going into bars and talking shit to drunks until somebody swings, and then charging them with assault. Once perps start the assault, things can go sideways too fast and too unpredictably.
That’s even leaving aside the legal aspects of it; it’s just way too risky an operation for the cops, politically if nothing else IMO.Report
Glyph,
my read was that she was putting them up on “attempted rape” charges, where she only needed to show that they weren’t respecting her absence of consent.
http://www.shouselaw.com/attempted-crimes.html
So unzipping pants, otherwise restraining (blocking the door), and otherwise “not letting her leave and acting like you were just going to keep going” is indeed a crime. It’s just not rape.
http://academicdepartments.musc.edu/ncvc/grants/50_states_reports/california.pdf
hmm. same penalties though (not surprising).Report
Right. She says they get them on attempted rape. She also said that charges were sometimes dropped because she acted too quickly before anything that constitutes ignoring consent occurs.
I have no idea if her story is accurate. She described it in a way that didn’t come across as incredible to me. The reservations I have are the astonishing 30-90 minute figure, and the degree of cooperation she claims the frats and hosts give her.Report
I would not be at all surprised if cops sent people undercover to campus parties. I would not even be surprised if they were there specifically to look for attempted rape. I would be very surprised if they sent someone in to be the target of attempted rapes. The potential for things to go horribly wrong is simply too high. I mean, when they do undercover drug busts, they have virtually every aspect of the situation, except the point of contact, under their control. Why the hell would they run sting operations with no control over any aspect of the situation?Report
I think that the expectations are different between a drug deal and a rape at the party. Namely, whether the suspects are likely to be armed. The sorts of rapes that occur at frat parties are typically with perpetrators unlikely to be armed.
That’s my thinking, anyway.Report
Chris,
one assumes that drug busts have armed and dangerous (and possibly wired-in-the-hyper sense) people whose job is to not let themselves be targets of thieves.
Not drunken freshmen.Report
Will and Kim, good points. However, there is alcohol, a great deal of testosterone (having been to a few of those parties in my day, I can tell you that fights are really common), and you’re likely in small, enclosed spaces with a lot of ground and people in between you and any backup. It seems like a really bad idea, and one not likely to produce much better results than just having the undercover cop there observing.Report
Again, “attempt” or “not respecting consent” is sticky because a guy can be a desperate loser, begging “aw, come on” each time she says “no”, and as long as he stops short of threatening her, or restraining her or touching her aggressively or sexually, I am not sure a crime has *yet* been committed.
Even if he’s being really, really annoying or even a bit pervy about it, he’s got to force the issue somehow to get to the charge they need.
See here:http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=317
“Attempted rape includes verbal threats of rape.”
“Sexual assault – A wide range of victimizations, separate from rape or attempted rape. These crimes include attacks or attempted attacks generally involving unwanted sexual contact between victim and offender. Sexual assaults may or may not involve force and include such things as grabbing or fondling. It also includes verbal threats.”
Again, I just don’t buy this account. It sounds like something we WANT to happen, and wish would happen, and would work out just fine on TV, but IRL seems deeply problematic for a number of reasons.Report
The points Chris is making w/r/t control of the situation for stings are the ones I made last time. He is as usual making them more clearly and succinctly than I do, so I’ll just agree with him here.Report
Actually, I have another dumb question about undercover cops at frat parties. How does the whole “cops can’t come into a house unless invited/have a warrant/have suspicion of an imminent or ongoing crime” thing work there?
Are frat parties considered “public” spaces, since the doors might be open? Are frat houses not considered private property anyway, particularly if on-campus?
IOW, even assuming this account was true, could the case get thrown out on the basis that the cops had no reason to suspect a crime was imminent when they entered the frat house (well, no reason other than “drunken frats are partying here”?)
Though it probably isn’t hard to get invited inside, if the undercover cop is female; just walk on by.Report
Yeah, those are good questions. I wonder if it matters whether the frat house is on or off campus.Report
It TV is to be believed (and why wouldn’t it be?!) prostitution and drug stings usually go down in public places, cars, or hotel/motel/private properties paid for and/or access-controlled by the cops. Generally not in private spaces owned/controlled by the perps. Not only does that have to do with control of the situation/cops’ safety, I assume it also has to do with the Fourth…Report
There are only two things that I know for certain in life: everyone eats the red, pink, and purple Now & Laters first, and everything on television is true.Report
@chris She explicitly states in there that she has the cooperation of the frat houses. Which is one of the things that is sort of weird for me.
Because the juxtaposition of the cooperation of the houses in stamping out rape and the frequency with which she says it occurs is… well, I wouldn’t be sure what to make of that.
@glyph From the sounds of it, the attempted rape laws are problematically vague. But if those are the laws, those are the laws (from an enforcement point of view). You might be able to turn a vague law into a plea deal a significant percentage of the time. (I also got the impression that the arrests – always assume the word “allegedly” when I talk about this – usually occurred after physical contact. Not a rape, but more like unwanted kissing. That does actually strike me as reasonable, provided it occurs after she has made it clear that it is unwelcome.Report
Public Service Announcement regarding purple Now’n’Laters:
If you are a teenager wearing an orthodontic retainer in the roof of your mouth, do NOT eat these. They WILL form a crazy strong bond with the plastic of the retainer that is very difficult to break.
That is all.Report
It TV is to be believed (and why wouldn’t it be?!) prostitution and drug stings usually go down in public places
“Is the mall closed?”Report
Will,
My knowledge of how rapes generally happen says that … yeah, if they’re going for their pants, they generally have already done some level of touching/rearranging/fondling after she’s started saying no.
If it is unlikely that the frats would consent (and it most assuredly is), it is even more unlikely that they wouldn’t tip off their fratboys. Ergo, this is “getting rid of bad competition” AND “trying to create a party girls want to come back to” (not sure if that second one is really a thing…)Report
Not sure.
But I do know that University Police are often complicit in quashing “rape charges” — it’s not their job to stop crimes (particularly rape, which is often considered one of the “incentives” for going to college.). it’s their job to stop it from being in the papers.Report
A4: Shut up and take my money.
R3: It seems sort of bad, but as long as they aren’t shorting, it’s not horrible. Not allowing them to hold individual equities would be a bit better though.Report
R3 – It’s a complicated situation, and I’m honestly not sure how it should be handled, but a lot of people would love to have foreknowledge of a pending investigation in order to divest.Report
I agree. I am curious as to the frequency and scale. Is it a handful of round lots or is it tens of thousand shares? Does this happen frequently for typical SEC employees or is it something that happens rarely. Those are all important.Report
S1: All this stuff confuses me. Possibly because I am not a geographer or much of a number-crunching data wonk. Also NYC’s downtown is very different than the rest of the U.S. There are major businesses in Manhattan from all the way down at Wall Street to up to 59th Street. Possibly further uptown if you include Hosptials, Museums, retail, etc as major businesses. SF has the financial district and it generally is very quiet on the weekends but there are still hotels and destination restaurants in the area and some apartment buildings/residential stuff.
A lot of geographers seem to have political points that they are trying to make that go against what I perceive as reality. Pacific Standard’s resident geographer likes to write headlines like “Seattle is Dying”, “Long Island is dying”, etc. I don’t get his nihilism or dying point. The article on Long Island seemed to say it was dying because young people don’t live on the Island (read: childless people in their 20s and 30s). My response to the article was that LI has always been that way. You grow up, go to school, live in the city for a while, get married, have kids, move to Long Island, Westchester, Rockland County, New Jersey, or maybe even Connecticut. These are not places for young singletons. I don’t know why it is so disturbing to wonky-geographer types that there are some areas where you live when you are young and single and some areas where you live when you are married with kids.
R1: The New Yorker ran a similar story several years ago.
P1: I pretty much agree with the article. I would add that it could be partially from economics, feelings of insecurity, and competing in a global economy where lots of things including white-collar jobs now are being outsourced. We are only at the start of outsourcing white-collar work and it could get worse. Also for the past few years, the issues that needed deciding are serious moral issues. There is no middle ground on a lot of the issues that drive internet outrage.
E1: I don’t know enough about the UK but I have heard numerous times that younger Americans are becoming more supportive of socialism or at least the welfare-state. This might be a mileage my vary kind of thing because my sources are places like the Nation.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/178872/starving-college-students-and-shredded-social-contract
It would be interesting to see if the U.S. has their moments of social democracy while Europe drifts to the right-wing. Though there was an interesting article in the Economist that compared the Tea Party to right-wing Euroskeptics. They had similarities up to a point but in many ways the Tea Party was still fundamentally religious, traditional, and ultra-right wing on social issues while Euro-rightists were largely secular and still concerned with income inequality.
E2: Not surprising. Again, this might be an issue where finding the proper balance is impossible. Pot tourism has annoyed the Netherlands for years.
C5: Very Nixon goes to China. I am not surprised that Norquist is involved. I am a bit pissed that liberals will still be tarred as soft-on-crime for pushing criminal justice reform as an issue.Report
S1 – I actually got this link from a link you gave me, if I recall. This is more of a think-tank article rather than a PacStandard sort of deal.
R1 – I’ve been hearing about it for years. One of my former supervisors at a previous job was a raw milker. Which is cool with me, except that he kept telling me I was drinking poison whenever I drank the regular stuff.
E1 – It certainly does seem to be the case that younger people are generally less likely to freak out at the notion of welfare. These are particular times, though, so we’ll have to see if it continues. I do think the “socialism” card may have been overplayed and that “liberal” will stop being something so many are running away from. In the background of all of this are the demographics. Young people don’t share the demographics of older people. Which is relevant along one axis, though not relevant along another.Report
R1: People have to stop using too much hyperbole! I dislike hyperbole. This sort of ties back to your internet article.
E1: Our generation grew up with the end of the cold war. Younger people don’t even recall the Cold War as anything but history. So yeah, socialism and liberalism are not scary words anymore.Report
Raw milk is awesome! It has a mildly sweet taste due to the the action of the undenatured lactase, which breaks down lactose into its much sweeter constituent sugars, glucose and galactose. Whole Foods used to carry it in some states until a couple of years ago, when they decided it wasn’t worth the regulatory hassle.Report
I think you’ll find that whether S1 seems an obvious thing to be very much a matter of where you live. I live in one of Denver’s western suburbs and have been watching it happen for 25 years (although some aspects go back farther than that). Over that time, more and more things have been funded and managed on a Denver-and-suburbs basis rather than Denver-or-suburbs. Fine arts. Air and water quality. Transportation planning. The biggest one is happening now with the construction of a 122-mile light-rail system.
Next month I’m going downtown to listen to the symphony one Saturday night. I’ll have to deal with driving, parking, and getting from parking to the concert hall. Could manage it by bus, but because it’s Saturday there are no express buses so it’s 90 minutes each way, with multiple changes, and there’s some question about whether I’d manage to catch the last bus running the last leg getting home. Two years from now it will be a short drive to the rail station in my suburb, 18 minutes to Union Station, and the free downtown shuttle will drop me two blocks from the concert hall. Reverse that to get home, and since the trains run until 2:00 AM, no question about missing the connection. Integration.
I think transportation is the key indicator, and rail in particular. If you look at this list of projects, particularly those after 2013, it’s (speaking broadly) a western thing in terms of miles opening versus population. That’s not said to belittle places like NYC that already have mass transit on a large scale; it’s an observation that those places have achieved about as much urban/suburban integration as they’re going to have.Report
How’s schooling in Denver versus Surroundings?Report
Good points. I have always lived in areas with decent to good public transportation that links the suburbs to the cities.
NYC had LIRR and Metro North which both easily connect to the subways.
SF has BART, the Ferrys, AC Transit, Cal Train, and the Golden Gate bus line.Report
DPS is a mixed bag. They have some good schools and programs; they have some bad ones. There’s the fairly standard correlation with wealth in the areas served by each of the schools. I remember a conversation with one black girl from Denver who got into Cherry Creek High School on some sort of special academic program who said how stunned she was the first time she visited the home of a black student who lived in the district and how much wealth was just taken for granted. DPS has to deal with some problems that the suburbs don’t have, particularly a larger percentage of Hispanic students. Like many western cities, there are neighborhoods where, except for school, you can get by fine in just Spanish your entire life. I’ve listened to any number of well-educated members of the Hispanic community who say, “Hispanic culture in Colorado doesn’t value education enough, particularly for girls.” Culture’s a tough one.Report
Michael,
hmm. Do you have any minority-only schools?Report
@saul-degraw
I always wondered just how well-connected New York’s suburbs were. When I lived in NJ, it was continuous (other than breaks for rivers) city/suburbs from Manhattan to where I lived. OTOH, it was a 12-mile drive from my house to the nearest train station with service to the city, or six miles to the nearest bus station with service, or two miles to any bus stop. Twelve miles is about the drive from my house to downtown Denver. Even without the light rail, I’ve always felt better connected to Denver now than I was to NYC then.Report
@kim
Denver Manual probably comes closest, with (from memory) 60% Hispanic and 30% black, 70% overall eligible for free lunch. Or did you mean like a charter school that is intentionally all minority? Don’t know of any of the latter, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.Report
I don’t know much about New Jersey transit but the suburbs in NYC are pretty well connected.
LIRR covers a lot of Long Island. My town is 35 minutes by train to Penn Station. You can get trains all the way out to the tip of Long Island. LIRR trains stop at Penn Station, Jamaica (Queens), Woodside (Queens), or Downtown Brooklyn and are all connected to subway lines.
Metro North has three lines. The Hudson line goes through the Bronx, Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess counties. The Harlem line covers the same counties but on the other side of the river. New Haven covers Westchester into Connecticut and has several branch of points.
Distance to your local train station is relative. I could walk to my hometown’s LIRR station easily. Other people obviously cannot.Report
@saul-degraw
If I had graduate students, one of the research projects I would sic them on would be data collection on regional per-capita infrastructure spending, and differences therein. I read so many pieces about collapsing infrastructure in the US (given my interests, the electric grid in particular). But when I look around where I live, there’s been huge infrastructure spending ever since I got here 25 years ago. Denver International Airport; the light rail system; ongoing significant road improvements; flood control structures; new water treatment and sewage treatment plants everywhere. The grid that provides me with electricity is much more reliable than it was. Lots of aerial plant has been moved underground, old small individual substations replaced with a proper network of shiny new ones, new cleaner generating capacity, etc. Air quality is dramatically better.
Honestly, there are days when I wonder if I’m living in the same country that many of those articles are describing.Report
R3 seems dishonest. The hypothetical it begins with is “Sell any stock the SEC investigates”, and it gives a way to build that into an investing strategy. The policy actually quoted is “to avoid a conflict, you need to sell any stock you are personally investigating”. How often would that happen?Report
That’s a pretty fair point.Report
re: A4
Is Brian Reynolds involved?Report
Ah, that’s Will Miller who worked on the latest Xcom and CivIV.
Good. Will play.Report
EHR’s are last year’s news.
http://www.timesonline.com/healthandwellness/region-s-health-information-exchange-marks-major-milestone/article_4b6bee24-3b41-5997-a64d-4a3c6e9d839e.html
Also, some EHRs are increasing billing, others are decreasing it (because unscrupulous providers would bill three sessions instead of one, etc).Report
I have long found the notion strange that things that allow hospitals, clinics, and physician groups to more efficiently can actually be expected to save money.
I don’t even think dishonesty is required. People have no idea how much that could legally be billed actually goes unbilled. They did an audit at the hospital where my wife used to work, where they had experts follow what was happening and what was and wasn’t being billed, and they were billing at something like 60-70% of what they could have been.
That being said, EHR will still be a really good thing.Report
Oh, believe me, it’s easy. “No, we won’t write you a prescription for that drug. You’ve gotten it prescribed four times this week. And it’s a monthly prescription.”
[yes, this is real life]
Poof, just saved the insurance company money.
You save hospital time/money by not needing to call up the next guy (instead, send electronically).
So what does “Improving the Amount we get Paid” do? It biases towards bigger hospitals and larger systems, as they can afford the software needed to maximize billing.Yet another economy of scale, and one that will make the whole health care scene more efficient.Report
R2- Sort of pedantic but the economic side airlines was deregulated; pricing and such. Airlines and flying in general are highly regulated regarded safety. Commercial flying is one of the most highly regulated industries going. If it is safe, which it is,it is certainly at least partially due to that.Report
Thank god for the regulations on air traffic control!!Report
Okay, anyone interested in knowing what MIT and Caltech are doing right?
Also, it strikes me that a lot of “hanging around doing nothing” that was done outside before the Net is now done inside and on computers.
Pitt had a “Free Computer Games” day, and it seemed like the entire campus showed up to play games with each other.Report
Re: origin of ideology
Ignores the possibility that openness/conscientiousness of a group of people may be a Success/Fail metric for the entire group. Russia makes a great example of this (along with forced exit for people with more openness than could be tolerated).
Also, the enlightenment is a LOT older than 300 years, if you’re just looking for places where openness was encouraged.Report
S2: My wife & I are planning on buying some land on Whidbey Island in a few years & building a vacation/retirement home there out of these, with the aim to be as grid independent as possible.
S3: Being a fan of Seasteading, I’d love for these to be a thing. I have some designs I created for WIGs that would be a very useful thing for such communities to have.
R1: Doesn’t help that the FDA was using SWAT teams to raid raw milk producers.
C4: I really have a hard time having any respect for the Air Force. From religious crap at the academy (& elsewhere), to the nuclear scandals, to crap like this…
C5: Good. I’ve often read that the system would be less prone to abuse if more of our Supreme Court justices had spent time defending cases, instead of being academic lawyers.Report
s3: best done in the open ocean. not tsunami regions.Report
@kim
Unless you are in very shallow water and/or very close to land, a tsunami will not affect you overmuch. Waves don’t work like that.Report
MRS,
yeah, exactly why i’m suggesting open oceans.
Article was mentioning a lot of quasi-coastal stuff, which isn’t nearly as good a plan.Report
I do mean REALLY shallow water, or REALLY close to land. Quasi coastal (within a few miles) is probably just fine except for the rare sweet spot of very shallow water.Report
If Quasi-coastal won’t get ya, Quetzalcoatl will.Report
I knew W2 had to be a trick, because.Report
W2 or thisReport
Having heard some people here talking about the female cop story, I am cringing a little to see that it’s just something some anonymous person posted on Reddit.Report
Touches a nerve, doesn’t it?Report
@burt-likko Yeah.
I googled and nexussed around a bit to find court or press accounts referencing any police rape stings in frat houses, and came up with bupkis. In fact, when I used different combinations of key words, I came up with only two references to anything remotely like the operation Reddit describes: Reddit and Linky Friday.
Usually there are two reasons you do stealth policing: to catch an specific suspect breaking the law (such as wiretapping a suspected drug runner), or to curb a certain behavior with society at large (such as phony streetwalkers, speed traps). The former is done very secretly, but the latter is heavily publicized because the entire purpose of the sting isn’t to say “gotcha!,” it’s to make people stop doing things that are against the law even when the police aren’t around for fear of being caught.
The type of operation she describes is a type of behavior changing sting. So it seems highly unlikely to me that this not only exists, but that in some city in America it is leading to a steady persecution of young men — and that there has not been a single press account about any of it. No public service announcements, no reporters picking it up, no parents suing for entrapment, no frat bloggers warning everyone else at whatever college(s) this operation targets that they need to be careful.
It seems very clear to me that this is a hoax.Report
L3 @jaybird I LOVE you for this link…sorry Maribou
My fondest childhood memories are listening to Jesus Christ Superstar (on 8 track no less) endlessly I can sing almost the whole thing from memory (and my memory for lyrics is shite) and watching the Muppet show religiously, you and @will-truman have made my nightReport
Oh God(ess?) I am not even extricated from Civ V yet and they’re making this? My reaction is a much the same as Mo’s plus some dismay about all the lost productivity I’m going to suffer.Report