252 thoughts on “Open Mic for the week of 2/12/2024”

  1. We have talked a lot about the perception of crime versus the data. Some of the media are just catching on to the disconnect:

    Rachel Swan, a breaking news and enterprise reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, says there are “two really visible crises” in the downtown area: homelessness and open-air drug use. “And honestly, people conflate that with crime, with street safety,” she said. “One thing I’m starting to learn in reporting on public safety is that you can put numbers in front of people all day, and numbers just don’t speak to people the way narrative does.”

    In Baltimore — a city that’s battled a perception of being dangerous — it’s a similar story.

    Lee Sanderlin is an enterprise reporter with The Baltimore Banner and says there are pockets of violent crime — but that’s not the case for the entire city.

    “That’s a battle that the city’s leaders have had to fight with certain media outlets, with residents,” Sanderlin said. “People who don’t live in Baltimore, who live out in Baltimore County or neighboring counties, they certainly have a perception.”

    https://www.npr.org/2024/02/12/1229891045/police-crime-baltimore-san-francisco-minneapolis-murder-statisticsReport

    1. I can’t speak to SF or Minneapolis but Baltimore is a legitimately dangerous city, especially if you don’t know the place. That doesn’t mean something awful is going to happen to you the second you enter the city limits and its attractions can still be enjoyed but the perception is not somehow divorced from reality as this implies. The most serious issues aren’t in the tourist areas but crazy stuff still happens. Just a year and a half or so ago there was an incident where a squeegee kid shot and killed some guy he picked a fight with right in the middle of downtown. Two of my wife’s relatives witnessed it on the way to an Orioles game.Report

        1. I don’t think it is an easy situation. On the one hand there is a narrative that can be picked up for cynical or exploitative reasons. On the other there really are serious concentrations of urban criminality and I don’t think it helps anyone to pretend otherwise, particularly the people that have no choice but to deal with it day in and day out.Report

          1. Jus remember – to much of the US Portland burned to the ground in 2020. The whole city. Not a 13 or 14 square block area in downtown. Where I have friends who went to work every day unmolested because all the bad stuff happened at night. A concentration of urban combat turned into the whole city was wiped out.

            That’s what we are dealing with in discussing crime perceptions versus statistics. And it’s why I fault media reporting because they can give us the narrative of those concentrated pockets versus a largely function, quiet safe city, or they can give us Portland burned down.Report

        2. In point of fact, both New Orleans and Baltimore have homicide rates roughly an order of magnitude above the national average. They have these reputations for a reason.

          Yes, yes, the victims are mostly poor black people, and I understand that the consensus view is that black lives only matter when ended by police or white people, but I still think it would be good to get this under control. The fact that the shooters are mostly black doesn’t mean that other black people deserve to have to live with that going on in their neighborhoods.

          Portland, interestingly, has historically had a very low homicide rate, but after the Floyd riots it quadrupled, rising to nearly twice the national average. That was a policy choice.

          Interestingly, the Bronx, despite its reputation, has had, at least until recently, a homicide rate only marginally higher than the national average.Report

          1. I agree that it is terrible in some portions of New Orleans, and that a single racial group – which is economically marginalized, lacks adequate housing and is commonly denied opportunity for educational success – is indeed the vicitms. But the city as a whole (which covers an entire parish) is not uniformly suffering this fate, nor is all of Baltimore. Nor did all of Portland.Report

          3. The fact that the shooters are mostly black doesn’t mean that other black people deserve to have to live with that going on in their neighborhoods.

            To do that, we’d have to actually address the reason that 90% that that sort of crime is happening, which is poverty. In a total coincidence (Seriously, it was), I read this today:
            https://www.atlantamagazine.com/great-reads/the-source-of-violent-crime-in-atlanta-isnt-mysterious-its-desperation-born-by-inequality/

            The most interesting part is where it talks about the start of pandemic, and how people seemed to pretend that an increase in crime was due to the Rayshard Brooks shooting, and the police reacting to one of them actually being charged with murder by walking off the job…when in reality it already started:

            In response, I direct people to the police department’s crime statistics page, which shows the increase in violent crime in 2020 beginning in mid-May, almost a month before Brooks’s death. The timing of the increase looks like stress caused by the first missed rent payments after mass layoffs began in April. Homicides and other violent crime had been below the 2019 pace until May. Over the course of about six weeks, the crime rates ticked up from 12 percent below the 2019 year-to-date average to more than 25 percent above it.

            It’s not that people were being formally evicted; eviction filings in Fulton County cratered with the start of the eviction moratorium in April. It’s that the threats from informal obligations borne by very poor people would have started right about then. You don’t evict someone crashing on your couch with a legal notice if renting the room is illegal. You tell them either to get out or get their ass kicked.

            They’re right. Everything started to shut down at the end of March 2020, and then a month passed, and crime went up the next.

            Why? Because people found themselves without a job, and unable to pay bills. They mention rent, which yes we tried to stop eviction but that only stopped legal eviction…but there are other bills also, or even just buying food.

            And crime suddenly goes up.

            Of course, there’s a certain group of the population who thinks some level of unemployment is good, and for some reason no one ever seems to ask ‘So, we’re just going to have some of those people be criminals, then?’Report

      2. “The most serious issues aren’t in the tourist areas but crazy stuff still happens” True, but often you have to GO THROUGH those areas to get to where you’re going. Case in point, I had a friend many years ago, draw me a map of Charles street. It goes, generally North from the harbor to the beltway. She drew basically a 2 mile section, drawing hash lines across areas that were “no go”. Bear in mind this was:

        From the harbor to x street: it’s fine.
        The next 3 blocks: No go.
        Next, up until the train station: fine
        After train station: no go for 3 hundred yards.

        And let’s not forget the mentally unstable woman who torched half a dozen cars in the Mt. Vernon area (when I was often). This is charles street in the “safe” areas I mentioned above. Yeah, that REALLY makes me want to go there now.Report

        1. Heh this reminds me of an experience I had back in college visiting a girl who went to Hopkins. We got in some argument late at night and I left and got turned around. I ended up pulling over and asking a police officer for directions. They pointed me towards 95 and told not to stop at red lights for the next 10 blocks unless i absolutely had to.Report

          1. Back in the day, and by that I mean 1990, my then GF and much of her family worked at Hopkins hospital. There was only street parking. Staff kept a note of which employees got “jumped” (robbed) while walking to work. It was NOT in a good area. I’ve heard that now, it’s been gentrified and is a nice area and safe….ofc very expensive. 🙂Report

    2. Bashing cities has been a thing in American politics since the days of Jefferson and Hamilton. There has always been a part of the electorate that saw cities as decadent, dangerous, and filled with outsiders/undesirables. Even though more middle-class and above professionals are moving back to the city, the dynamic still persists at it persists for the closest “city” in any state. LeeEsq told me about people who told him Albany, New York was dangerous and like Gotham in the Patterson Batman movie. I’ve heard people tell similar stories about Fargo or Bismark, North Dakota.

      It is always very strange to me especially because I hear people complain “City X used to be cool and filled with dives run and frequented by cool cats/eccentrics*, artists, misfits, and you could work as a bike messenger or bar tender and live okay.* Now everything is bank braches, luxury shops, and Frozen Yogurt/Bobba chains” and then I hear someone describe City X like it is the worst days of the 1970s or 80s or Gotham in the darkest of the Batman comics.”

      *There is a kind of essay/elegiac that I like to call “vicarious hard-living for soft souls”, a subgenre of this kind is nostalgia about shut down dive bars. A dive bar in the East Village called Lucy’s looks like it is on the last legs because of a new landlord raising rents and also the owner/bartender is in her 80s. I’ve seen numerous people share their favorite Lucy’s stories and I wonder how many times they have actually goneReport

        1. I once was told by a woman in Rockland, Maine, that she would never go to Portland, Maine, because it was too dangerous. I could tell she was genuinely afraid of the big (c. 70,000) city. Didn’t have a reason to be, but what does reality have to do with it?Report

    3. People think in narratives, not facts part a billion. Vibes and narratives count a lot no matter how wonks of different stripes revile at the fact because this isn’t how people think. Generally, people do not like the sight of visible disorder even it isn’t directly hurting them. No amount of argument is going to change this.Report

      1. And my initial take was the media – albeit in small numbers – seem to have FINALLY noticed. Apparently our much ballyhooed journalist factories in university don’t teach their graduates about heuristics and how they impact human decision making.

        Generally, people do not like the sight of visible disorder even it isn’t directly hurting them. No amount of argument is going to change this.

        I don’t think this is universal as to level of tolerance, nor do I think this relieves the media – again the focus of my critique – as innocent in the matter. We endured somewhere north of two weeks of mightily images of downtown Portland in riot conditions before we saw our single national media story about how small the area under siege was in relation to the entire city. Ditto the fact that during the day people were coming and going generally unmolested.Report

    1. white male running mate – Mexico is in North America and Egypt is near Israel
      black male running mate – Mexico and Egypt are near Israel
      white female running mate – Mexico and Egypt are in North America
      black female running mate – Mexico is near Israel and Egypt is in North AmericaReport

  4. During the early part of the Israel-Hamas War, there were people who argued that Israel should do daring commando type raids a la the Raid on Entebbe to rescue the hostages rather than air attacks. Israel just did a commando style raid to rescue hostages. The usual suspects are screaming their bloody head offs at this:

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israeli-military-hostages-rescued-hamas-rafah-raid-gaza/

    I have no idea what Hamas or any allies of the Palestinians thought would have happened after the Simchat Torah massacre:
    1. Netanyahu utterly collapses to Hamas and gives them all of Israel
    2. Israel asks the United States or other groups to attempt another final peace agreement
    3. Israel goes after Hamas like any other country would do.Report

    2. I suspect the objections are more about the events described here: Hagari said special forces broke into the apartment under fire at 1:49 a.m. Monday, accompanied a minute later by a series of airstrikes on surrounding areas.

      …a series airstrikes on surrounding _areas_, huh?

      Were they aimed at anyone in particular?

      But, hey, pretend the problem is with the actual targeted raid instead of, I dunno, airstrikes around the area of the raid.

      It sorta boggle the mind at just how bad the Israeli military actually is, in that they don’t actually seem to be able to hold territory at all, or have viable exit strategies, or indeed anything we’d understand as part of a competent military plan.

      No, they send in a team and then, because they are not actually holding any ground, just bomb the surrounding city so they can evacuate safely.

      But, hey, they finally rescued some civilians.Report

  5. So over the weekend Trump stated he would abandon our allies and give them over to a Russian attack.

    The real story here, as usual, is the dog that isn’t barking:
    G.O.P. Officials, Once Critical, Stand by Trump After NATO Comments
    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/12/us/politics/trump-nato-republicans.html

    So when Russia or China decides to make a move against Europe or Taiwan, we can expect Republicans to tie themselves into knots waving it away or outright supporting it.

    Again, these aren’t Reagan conservatives, or even Goldwater conservatives.
    The modern Republican Party is the Gilded Age party of isolation and plutocracy.Report

    1. Europe: We carried them financially. They rarely lived up to the goals to fund their own defense. We should have walked away years ago, but no, we wanted vassal states beholden to us.

      Asia: We’d not win a war with China, not over Taiwan. Hell, we can’t secure the strait of hormuz with the assets on site. We don’t have the infrastructure to manufacture ships at any volume, and we’ve offshored most microchip work, so parts would be a problem. The only thing left is nukes.Report

      2. That’s an awfully big claim. the US has a massive advantage in carrier assets (which are the only ships that really matter in modern naval warfare) and the Chinese military is both entirely untested and subject to the same information problems that Russia has.

        Don’t get me wrong, China is a true peer country, and fighting them would be phenomenally hard, but to say the US has no chance is making a lot of strong assumptions, especially considering that the goal would be to stop an invasion of Taiwan, not actually defeat China on its own soil.Report

        1. Yeah the PLAN is not exactly… seasoned… and launching an amphibious assault on a dug in opponent using modern weapons with absolutely zero chance of surprise is… actually now that I think about it I don’t know if it’s ever been done by anyone ever? I’m not that big into military history so someone can feel free to chime in to correct me here.

          But yeah, you know the people in the PLAN in the know pray to Mao every night “please please don’t let the Chairman call me in and inform me we need to launch an amphibious invasion of Taiwan!”

          Though I will correct you James: there is one other ship that matters beyond carriers, especially regarding Taiwan, and those ships are submarines.Report

          1. it has been done a number of times over the last ~115 years. The most successful I can think of were during WWII, D-day, island hopping in the Pacific, etc. However it is notoriously difficult and there are plenty of failures and attempts that ended in disaster (think Gallipoli). The UK retaking the Falkland Islands from Argentina was considered somewhat impressive at the time from a military vantage point, in terms of how easily they did it.

            None of that is to say I think it would be easy for China. On the one hand you read a lot about airheaded Taiwanese military thinking but also the Chinese convincing themselves that the Taiwanese people all actually want unification and it’s just the politicians confusing them. The x factor is probably how badly the Taiwanese want to maintain their de facto independence. If they do it would be very hard for China. Kind of like with the Ukrainians, no one will know for sure until the bombs start dropping.Report

            1. I grant your examples but -BUT- I want you to re-run those examples in your head with ZERO element of surprise.I suppose the Pacific Island hopping was only somewhat ambiguous but had the Axis known where in Europe the Allies were landing it would have been a bloodbath and a failure.Report

              1. Maybe! The Anglophone allies did also take Sicily and lower Italy via amphibious assault. I guess I don’t know enough about Taiwan’s geography to understand how many plausible landing spots it has for an invasion force.

                I would think China’s realistic prospects would involve a very long blockade and hope of capitulation before they attempt hitting the beaches.Report

              2. Oh yeah you should read up on Taiwanese geography sometime. Basically the side that faces China is all mountains with single digit numbers of landable beaches. Moreover this is 2024. The Chinese flat out cannot mass the armies or naval assets necessary to launch an invasion without being seen enormously in advance and it’s profoundly dubious that there would be much to any confusion as to what/when/where a landing attempt would occur. The Chinese just don’t have that degree of anti-high altitude/anti-satellite capacity.

                I agree that China’s best bet to take Taiwan militarily would be a long siege/bombardment. The problem is that China’s economy would need Taiwan to be taken in a lightning move so it could be presented as a fait accompli to the world to try and persuade them not to sanction trade. Otherwise Chairman Xi would get to see, very quickly, just how patient his billions of citizens would be as the Chinese economy, which is based on imports and exports, plunged off a cliff.Report

        2. The US has 11 Aircraft carriers. They are big and it’s not likely that China wouldn’t see a buildup of carriers from thousands of miles away, giving them plenty of time to prepare. Also, I’m sure they monitor the “local area” and would notice a buildup of carriers, and other support ships.
          Carrier escort ships run 3-4 per carrier, and maybe a sub as well I think that’s light. There would likely be more ships just in case. The carriers have a fleet of helicopters that go out ahead of the task force to search for subs, mines, etc. Each carrier has @ 65 aircraft.
          A single carrier runs 13 Billion, carries 5000 people. With support ships, subs, etc., let’s round that to 6000 people and @ 14 billion dollars in equipment.
          Forbes calculated the cost based on the estimates that one Russian Kh-101 cruise missile costs $13 million (Anti-ship). How many of those can be launched for 13B? These missiles have a range of 1500 miles. Taiwan is 100 miles from China, leaving @ 1400 miles of missile range PAST Taiwan to hit us targets. US planes have @ 400 nautical miles of range, making US carriers vulnerable to shore-based missiles, assuming the carriers can be located. Depending upon how the ships congregate or not, a few hundred missiles or a dozen tactical nukes could eliminate most of the carriers and escorts. If the planes were in the air, they might no place to land that’s not hostile.

          The potential cost for the missiles is far below the cost of the carriers, not to mention the impacts on morale, public opinion.

          I pulled all this info off the web in less than 15 mins. What do you think the American public will do if they loose 15,000 sailors and a few carriers? Either demand we use nukes, or pull out. No one wins a full nuke exchange. I sure as hell REALLY don’t think we should be testing the Chinese on this, but that’s my opinion. YMMVReport

          1. We shouldn’t be overly provocative but the US strategy is based on more than just massing our own assets against Chinese assets. The hope is that China has to consider not only the US but also Pacific rim allies refusing to stand by and let China take shots from a long distance, and that such a prospect creates enough uncertainty to deter. The ideal is no confrontation at all, but if there is a confrontation, the ideal for the US is that we aren’t going it alone.Report

            2. “he ideal for the US is that we aren’t going it alone.”

              Given the experience with Ukraine, I have strong doubts that Australia, NZ or Japan would join the fray.Report

              1. No guarantee of course but there are plenty of diplomatic and military efforts to make it hard for them not to. It’s why we are pushing for a friendlier relationship between Japan and S. Korea. We pissed off the French to give nuclear submarines to Australia for the purpose. Our military ties with the Philippines are getting stronger, for similar reasons.

                China has ongoing territorial disputes with half of the countries in the region, and there are plenty of vested interests in not seeing Taiwan become the first domino to fall.Report

              5. Given the experience with Ukraine, I have strong doubts that Australia, NZ or Japan would join the fray.

                So we should just ignore the military and financial contributions of the Netherlands, the UK, Norway, Italy, Denmark and Germany?

                Noted.Report

              7. Considering that China is in Japans literal front yard and the Aussie and Kiwi’s back yards I think you have it entirely backward and they should be worrying that we’d not join the fray. You can be sure the Japanese and the ANZACs would be highly engaged.Report

              8. An absolute best case scenario might even include support from India. Not guaranteed and there are plenty of countervailing forces but the goal is making China afraid of not only dealing with the US and Taiwan but also Japan, S. Korea, (maybe) India, (maybe) Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the post colonial presence of the UK and France. China doesn’t want that even if it thinks it might get the better of the US in the first exchange of blows.

                The bigger risk to Taiwan is that everyone else decides the US is unreliable, makes a separate accommodation with China, in which case I doubt the US enters any conflict in the first place.Report

          2. The number you should be more closely considering is the number of nuclear submarines the US has. Of course China can’t shoot missiles at nuclear subs. But each one carries about 38 torpedoes. They also can deploy mines. The Taiwanese also have extensive mine laying capability. Your point about no one having any element of surprise is highly pertinent but it cuts against China easily taking Taiwan. Basically unless China can develop soldiers and tanks that can walk on water any invasion would primarily be a question of “how many drowned Chinese soldiers can you fit into the Taiwan strait?

            Which is not to say anyone would win such a confrontation (except the crabs and other flesh feeding critters in the Taiwan strait). The Chinese would likely (probably necessarily) have to open such a campaign with strikes against US bases in the entire region which would insure America entering the war. They’d also likely level Taiwan and cause incredible ruin. Odds are, though, that they wouldn’t be able to actually prosecute a landing and, meanwhile, their export focused economy would implode like nothing we’ve probably ever seen in history. Russia, being a gas station with a country attached, is considerably more sanction resistant but China is profoundly dependent on trade. Everyone would come out of that confrontation miserable but the Chinese would probably end up the most miserable of all.Report

  6. There has been a lot of ink spilled over the past several years on whether Jews are white or not. One thing that ends up missing from these conversation is the phrase path dependency. Essentially, the policy is still determined by the decision of the French Revolution that: “But, they say to me, the Jews have their own judges and laws. I respond that is your fault and you should not allow it. We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation and accord everything to Jews as individuals. We must withdraw recognition from their judges; they should only have our judges. We must refuse legal protection to the maintenance of the so-called laws of their Judaic organization; they should not be allowed to form in the state either a political body or an order. They must be citizens individually.”

    The basic idea is that there is an individual but not a communal right to be a Jew and that Jews are too be acculturated or assimilated into the majority to the extent possible. It doesn’t matter that for some countries this could be around 95% assimilation and for other countries only 5% assimilation is possible. During the 19th and early 20th century, a few Jews even attempted to argue that they were merely Germans or Americans of the Mosaic faith rather than Jews.

    The concept of minority rights has advanced considerably since the French Revolution but path dependency meant that the French Revolutionary settlement hasn’t changed at all. Jews are still put on an assimilationist path rather than the modern path that allows for more minority autonomy and cultural preservation. I think this explains a lot of the weirdness around where Jews fit in the current moment politically and how we are and aren’t a minority at the same time.Report

    1. As far as I can tell, the only people who argue that Jews aren’t white are Jews. (Well, and a handful of Northeastern WASPs but they haven’t been relevant to much since somewhere during Reagan’s presidency.)

      Everybody else thinks that they’re white… including the new and improved arbiters of the “Is This Person White Or Not?” game.Report

      1. I’m talking globally, not just in the United States but you might be doing as well. It is a rotten system that delivers Jews many disadvantages and much destruction with little else.Report

      2. The global thinking is that since Jews have “white privilege” in the United States and count as whites here than we are whites every where in the world even in contexts where American racial classifications make no sense. Meanwhile, groups that are considered besieged minority communities in the United States get that right carried over even in places where they are the majority. Schools, public holidays, tax money, language rights, media, sacred reserved spaces, and everything else they want for them but nothing for the Jews.Report

  7. On crime:
    Half of Republicans believe that California is “not really American”.
    https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-02-13/golden-state-loses-luster-half-of-americans-say-california-in-decline

    The view of California is largely partisan, with people’s view of the state being driven by their political beliefs, nto rational analysis.

    The “Decline” narrative is an example of hatred seeking the fig leaf of an excuse. They don’t like the people who live there, so they invent reasons why it is dangerous and declining.Report

  8. S&P 500 is apparently undergoing what we used to call “a correction”.

    If you’ve been thinking about getting into the market, next week might be a great week for that.Report

              4. I’d say that, from the outside, it seems to me to be used as an insult by a subset of the left against a particular type of guy in an effort to get him to shut up/change his opinions by using the social shaming tool of accusing the person of not being sexually attractive.

                I think it got overused, myself… but it still gets trotted out when crap pop culture loses money in a genre that is usually popular among age 13-35 males.Report

              5. So let me recap – you made the initial post in this thread appearing to note that incels – who are a self defined and highly misogynistic community – are panning Madame Web. You then tell them that since women are here to stay maybe they should get over women panning movies with female hero leads.

                Did I get that right? Because if I did then I’m not the one beefing with incels, nor am I the one calling the reviewers who object to female hero leads by that label.

                Which means all this whoha about incels – who again are a self described and highly misogynistic community – isn’t sitting on my shoulders.Report

              6. So let me recap

                Okay.

                you made the initial post in this thread appearing to note that incels – who are a self defined and highly misogynistic community – are panning Madame Web.

                Yes. Yes, I did. I linked to Rotten Tomatoes as proof.

                You then tell them that since women are here to stay maybe they should get over women panning movies with female hero leads.

                Absolutely.

                Did I get that right?

                Indeed.

                Because if I did then I’m not the one beefing with incels, nor am I the one calling the reviewers who object to female hero leads by that label.

                Why wouldn’t you be beefing with incels?

                Which means all this whoha about incels – who again are a self described and highly misogynistic community – isn’t sitting on my shoulders.

                I suppose you could claim “neutrality”.

                “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim”.
                –Elie Wiesel

                Report

    2. Controversial take: if you want to see the movie, see the movie. If you don’t want to see the movie, don’t see the movie. If anyone thinks seeing or not seeing the movie is an act of any significance laugh at them.Report

      2. I don’t have a dog in the fight, but a quick glance at the reviews shows that it’s getting poor reviews from just about all the big outlets- Hollywood Reporter, Variety, USA Today.Report

          1. I knew that movies were expensive these days but I didn’t know they were that expensive that even fancy lawyers needed to save and save to afford them.Report

              3. amusing tidbit: the original plan was for him to hook up with Leto and Jessica’s daughter, ending the destructive Atreides-Harkonnen feud and furthering of the plan to create the Kwisatz Haderach in an environment totally controlled by the Bene Gesserit. (The Harkonnen were considered far easier to manipulate than the Atreides.)

                Meaning that, in canon, Paul and Feyd-Rautha were supposed to bang.Report

    4. Wow, it’s a day end with ‘y’, and it’s Jaybird making a Daily Wire-tier joke while pretending he’s just a normie upset with the Left going too far.Report

            2. a) on the one hand, if I looked like she did I’d take every possible opportunity to dress like that.

              b) on the other hand, you’d be surprised how snug a body-stocking can get.

              c) on the gripping hand, she was in the Fifty Shades moves and we’ve already seen the whole deal.Report

              3. They could have called Jim Balent in to design a spider-themed costume for Sidney Sweeney and made millions on residuals alone.

                Instead, they only let her dress like that on the red carpet.

                SMHReport

              5. From the twitters:

                You can do a superhero movie where the costume doesn’t show up until the finale.

                But you’d best not be marketing it as a superhero movie. Have that be the big reveal at the end.

                “Dakota Johnson and Sidney Sweeney in: THE EMT’S PHANTOM THREAD!”Report

              6. I dunno, I can’t put myself in the mindset of someone who’d want to see this either way. You’d see it if: you’re a Sony/Marvel movie fan, you’re a fan of one of the actors, or you’re a Madame Web fan. That first group is probably the largest, and I don’t think it’s more than a few dozen people. Would anyone go see it because they love action spectacles? Or out of their love for Spider-Man?

                Thinking about this, I just figured out what the ads remind me of – Final Destination. I don’t know why. Panicked teens fleeing fate, maybe. I don’t think it’s being marketed as “if you liked No Way Home, then you’ll love…”. Or even Venom. Do they need to be in superhero outfits?Report

              7. If they dressed up like they did on the red carpet, I can easily imagine who’d want to go.

                Or, at least, purchase the DVD.

                As it is? It strikes me as something that made a handful of people a lot of money and gave a bunch of investors a write-off.Report

      1. You know, that’s a great question.

        I think that the criticism is something like “you liked this formula last time! It hasn’t changed! The problem with you not going to this one is that YOU’RE IMMORAL!”

        If you ask the critic something like “Well, are you going to go see it?”, you’ll get an answer like “I only watch black and white movies made in Iceland” or something like that. Like, the critic isn’t going to see the movie. But that’s because he has *TASTE*. The fact that you aren’t going to see it? That indicates a *FLAW*.

        So the fact that the movie is crap only makes the criticism that much worse.

        You didn’t like the last one and you saw it despite it being crap. Now you’re not seeing this one? Kinda sus!Report

        1. Jaybird, it’s not the “formula” that’s the main problem. It’s some of it because if you milk a genre for a decade or more, you’re going to get viewer fatigue. No, it’s the the writing, direction, etc is poorer than prior movies. Again YMMV, but I’m thinking the box office numbers will speak for themselves.Report

          1. A million years ago, the prophets Beavis and Butthead had an interview at Rolling Stone magazine:

            You don’t have to go to college to know the definition of “redundant.” What I’m saying is that essentially what you’re saying is “I like stuff that I like.”
            Beavis: Yeah. Huh-huh. Me, too.
            Butt-Head: Also, I don’t like stuff that sucks, either.

            But nobody likes stuff that sucks!
            Butt-Head: Then why does so much stuff suck?
            Beavis: Yeah. College boy! Huh-huh, huh-huh.

            I look at these hundred-million dollar movies that end up sucking in obvious ways and find myself wondering “Why does so much stuff suck?”

            It’s *POSSIBLE* to make a Madame Web movie that doesn’t suck! To have Spider-Woman in it! Both Spider-Women!

            HOW IN THE HELL DID WE GET THIS ONE INSTEAD?!?Report

        2. You bring a bunch of talented people together and they make a great movie.

          It’s very VERY hard to scale that up but the money people really want to do that. It’s even hard to repeatedly do it.

          It would be hard, even without people who take their eyes off the ball and assume it will be successful so they want to use the movie to push their ideology.

          “Their ideology” can be “their artistic vision which is unsuitable and/or unrelated to what they’ve been hired to do” or it can be “we need to hire people who don’t have a history of success doing this because reasons”.Report

          1. ““Their ideology” can be “their artistic vision which is unsuitable and/or unrelated to what they’ve been hired to do” or it can be “we need to hire people who don’t have a history of success doing this because reasons”.”

            Yeah, but, the money people rule, or typically due. If you make 3 blockbusters and make a ton of cash, and want to do it again, and then turn out 2 bombs, you’d think that the leadership would say “bring back the guys who made us tons of $, and fire these idiots”, but that hasn’t/isn’t happening. And, franchises have crumbled because of it. You can also argue that “we make a billion, let’s make more of these movies” also leads to movie goer fatigue where everything has to be bigger and “more” than the last time…hard to top that consistently.Report

      2. Madam Web is not a Marvel movie. Madam Web is that goofy Sony thing where they can use Spider-Man stuff and so put those things in a movie without Spider-Man. (Unlike the actual Spider-Man stuff, where they work with Disney and Disney takes a cut.) It’s another Morbius and Venom.Report

        1. “Madam Web is not a Marvel movie.” Correct. Apologies if my comments mislead. My point was that, as in the Marvel movies, they began good and progressed to poor. From what I’ve seen of Madam Web, and it’s not much, it didn’t impress me. I was making a comment that the video I linked, it’s that in general, super hero moves seem to have taken a drop in quality and I expected the same here.Report

          1. I feel like we’re getting into the late-90s era of superhero movies, the post-Batman time, where we had people dredging up old public-domain characters like The Shadow and The Phantom or The Rocketeer and just trying any old thing.

            Like, everybody remembers “Blade”, but A) Blade had Wesley Snipes and B) there were a lot of movies we forgot about that weren’t Blade…

            Oh, “indie comics to the big screen” was a thing back then we haven’t really tried now. Like, “The Mask”, or “Mystery Men”. (Actually I think you could have fun just doing a theatrical re-release of Mystery Men! I feel like now is an even better time for a Superhero Satire than the late 90s was.)Report

            1. I think it’s more that executives were thinking “Holy cow… the kids love that we made a movie with a 1930’s Pulp Hero! Let’s make something with Dick Tracy! Let’s make something with The Shadow!”

              And it took a handful of retirements to get someone willing to hear that, no, what was popular about Batman was not the fact that he was a 1930’s pulp hero.Report

      1. “However, there is no post-credit scene so if you get dragged to this movie, just bail when the end credits hit. If you last that long. Bail when the opening credits hit, you are a legend.” – Jeremy Jahns on Madame WebReport

      2. There’s a national tax on capital gains income with a top rate of 23.8%, on top of corporate income taxes, on top of taxes paid on the labor income used to buy the stock, and with no allowance for inflation.

        I get that leftists’ sense of entitlement to other people’s money cannot be sated, no matter how high the taxes, but would it kill you to be honest about the status quo?Report

        1. State A passes a state tax to raise revenue from a certain economic activity that it does not tax now.

          Billionaire B lowers his tax bill by moving to a different state.

          I suggest that one way to keep billionaires from moving to avoid tax liability is to make such taxes national.

          A conservative tries tog gore my ox by alleging I’m being dishonest because I don’t mention the current state of taxation of said billionaires – which isn’t the issue at hand.

          And conservatives wonder aloud why leftists think they are all nuts.Report

          1. This theory that people move to where taxes are lower is mostly a fairytale.

            The decision where to live or work or operate a business has a lot of factors, taxes being only one small part.
            There’s a reason why the tech industry is centered in California and not Mississippi, why the financial industry is centered in New York and not Manhattan, Kansas.Report

              1. Where billionaires choose to live is irrelevant.

                The things that taxes pay for- an educated workforce, good infrastructure, a stable middle class- are the things that businesses need and are willing to pay to get access to.Report

  12. Hmmm the Senate passed a “clean” foreign aid bill with all the border stripped out. Moreover they did it two days early- my understanding was Rand Paul was going to hold it up procedurally until Wednesday.

    So now what do we think happens in the House? Johnson obviously and loudly says he won’t put it up for a vote. There’s some talk about a discharge petition. I think it’s obvious that if it gets to the floor it’d pass easily.Report

    1. If Dems are smart they bring it up on a discharge petition, or a republican in a purple district does it. And yes, it will pass.

      Its so cute how Johnson thought he could out maneuver Turtle.Report

      1. Let’s not jinx it- it hasn’t been brought up yet and discharge petitions don’t have a strong track record.

        *edit* Oh and credit where it’s due, good on McConnel for making it happen.Report

    2. Would be good if they can make it work, definitely would also be a huge thumb in the eye of Johnson/the Freedom Caucus or whatever if it passes and they gave up all the concessions on immigration they could have had.Report

  13. I’ll never understand why Elon Musk was ever considered a genius, or hell, even just a man of mediocre intelligence:

    Elon Musk Uses a Crude Insult to Slam Advertisers for Pulling Back From X.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/business/dealbook/elon-musk-advertisers-blackmail-iger.html
    About 200 big advertisers, including Disney, Apple and IBM, stopped spending on X after Mr. Musk agreed with a post that accused Jewish communities of pushing “hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” If the freeze continues, it could end up costing the company up to $75 million this quarter, according to internal documents seen by The New York Times.

    Although Mr. Musk acknowledged that an extended boycott could bankrupt X, he suggested that the public would blame the brands rather than him for its collapse.

    Sure, Jan.Report

    1. Musk is partly nuts and is willing to wild risks. They paid off often enough that he became a Billionaire. He’s a modern day Walt Disney who bet the company multiple times.

      However the “partly nuts” can become “totally nuts” without anyone noticing because he’s always done weird stuff that has worked. Trump falls into that category too.

      We’re dealing with someone who in a different universe wouldn’t be able to have a job and would have 50 cats.

      I think I just divorced someone who gradually went nuts. At some point you wake up and realize they’re repeatedly making really bad, even crazy, choices… and they’ve been doing that for years.

      The current Musk is not the previous Musk. The nasty part is there’s enough habit in there that he can coast on fumes for a long time. Trump is another good example.Report

        1. Actual hatred for Musk probably is confined to people who have to deal with him. His other critics probably swing between amusement and annoyance.Report

          1. From what I can see, he just seems dimwitted, with the emotional maturity of a sulking teenage boy.
            I say this based on his social media posts and public behavior. He appears to be like Roman from Succession.Report

    2. He’s got a lot of money. Was this a smart business decision? Doubtful, but since when to really rich folk have to make smart decisions when they buy a vanity item? If twitter ends up in a ditch, will anyone really suffer? It’s not like he’s growing food and folks might starve.Report

        1. A partial great service. Facebook, tik tok, and all other social media should be dragged out into the street and roasted on a pyre.

          I’ve seen what social media addiction looks like. I posted on here about it.Report

  16. Likud has decided it wants a wider war – for which it will likely have no “Day after” plan either”

    The Israeli Air Force has begun an “extensive wave of attacks” in Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement Wednesday.

    Lebanese state media and Hezbollah-owned media reported air raids on several towns on southern Lebanon, including Aadchit, Souaneh and Chehabiya.

    The Israeli strikes follow an earlier rocket attack on the northern Israeli city of Safed, which the IDF said originated from Lebanese territory.

    https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-02-14-24/h_10eb99e86922092c30bc859e7789088aReport

  17. Gee, Chip, why do you keep saying that the GOP is mostly racists, misogynists, and homophobes?

    “It’s not just political,” said Roy. “They want to remake America. They want to end Western civilization.”
    Roy also complained about the number of “foreign-born” people in the United States.

    The demographic conspiracy espoused by Roy, a variant of the explicitly white supremacist “great replacement theory,” is becoming an increasingly popular talking point in the GOP. What was once confined to the hinterlands of white nationalist message boards has been adopted whole cloth by the Republican mainstream and is now repeated by lawmakers like Roy on television.

    Roy also took the opportunity to take a potshot at same-sex marriage, accusing Democrats of “trying to force their beliefs” on “countries in Africa who dare to say that marriage is between one man and one woman.”

    https://newrepublic.com/post/178981/republican-congressman-chip-roy-western-civilization-migrantsReport

  18. So Ken Paxton has decided to wage war on Reefer Madness:

    AG Paxton sues Denton, other Texas cities that adopted marijuana amnesty policies
    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing five Texas cities saying they’ve violated state law by “adopting amnesty and non-prosecution policies” for marijuana possession and distribution.

    In a series of lawsuits, the attorney general’s office is targeting the cities of Denton, Austin, San Marcos, Killeen, and Elgin claiming they illegally adopted ordinances or policies instructing police to not enforce state laws concerning the possession of marijuana.
    …
    “I will not stand idly by as cities run by pro-crime extremists deliberately violate Texas law and promote the use of illicit drugs that harm our communities,” said Paxton in a statement. “This unconstitutional action by municipalities demonstrates why Texas must have a law to ‘follow the law.’ It’s quite simple: the legislature passes every law after a full debate on the issues, and we don’t allow cities the ability to create anarchy by picking and choosing the laws they enforce.”

    Is anyone surprised? You shouldn’t be.

    When a conservative says they want to “Make America Great AGAIN” and to make things how they used to be (y’know, when everything worked before the Decline and Fall), what the eff do you think they mean/

    They mean what they say. They want to make things like they were before queers were out and proud, before women could use the Pill, before Roe, before Brown, before Gideon, before Comstock, before everything that we consider modern society.Report

    1. Well, is it illegal at the state level?
      Is it illegal at the national level?

      I’m not sure that having an official attitude that we have laws that don’t get enforced (or only enforced against enemies) is the right outcome here.

      AND I SAY THAT AS SOMEONE WHO LONGS TO SMOKE A DOOB IN THE BASEMENT AND WATCH QUANTUM LEAP WITH SOME HIGH-END CHINESE TAKEOUTReport

      1. What is compelling him to take this action, other than his hostility towards marijuana?

        Please don’t say something about a deeply held principle because then I would just feel embarrassed for you.Report

        1. I imagine that his hostility toward marijuana is compelling him to take this action.

          Why isn’t there a change in the law at the state level?
          Or the Federal Level, for that matter?

          Quite honestly, I don’t think that “THE ATTORNEY GENERAL IS PROSECUTING PEOPLE BREAKING THE LAW!” is quite as bad of a criticism as you do.

          I mean, I wish that the law were different. I’ve argued that the law should be different. I’ve argued for, for example, the supreme court to rule differently in Gonzales v. Raich *AND* for the Executive Branch to push for rescheduling *AND* for congress to pass a law to reschedule.

          But here we are with a law on the books that the AG is prosecuting.

          I’m not sure that pointing out that he is hostile to the thing that is technically illegal is a good argument.

          He’s an AG.
          Such people tend to be hostile to things that are illegal.
          That’s why he was hired.Report

          1. Ken Paxton… is hostile to things that are illegal?

            Ken Paxton, the corrupt impeached attorney general who is currently facing a jail sentence for breaking the law, that Ken Paxton?

            Seriously, this is just embarrassing.

            Republicans are hostile to marijuana. That’s just a fact. Don’t take my word on it, here is NORML (People who really actually do want to legalize it):

            NORML Op-Ed: Republicans Are Increasingly Unwilling to Respect Voters’ Decisions on Cannabis
            For example, in 2020, 54 percent of South Dakotans voted in favor of a constitutional amendment legalizing the adult-use cannabis market. Weeks later, Republican Gov. Kristi Noem spearheaded litigation challenging the vote. That litigation ultimately resulted in nullifying the election’s outcome.

            In Mississippi, litigation filed on behalf of a Republican mayor repealed the vote of 74 percent of state voters who decided in favor of a 2020 ballot measure permitting legal marijuana access for authorized patients. The Mississippi ruling also struck down voters’ ability to conduct any future ballot initiatives — ensuring that the public will not be able to have their say on the issue in the future.

            Currently, Florida’s Republican attorney general is seeking to preemptively deny a proposed marijuana legalization initiative from appearing on the 2024 ballot. Advocates have already gathered over 1 million signatures from Florida voters in support of the measure, and polling shows majority support for legalization in the Sunshine State. Justices on the state’s Supreme Court will decide the proposal’s fate in the coming weeks.

            https://norml.org/blog/2023/11/20/norml-op-ed-republicans-are-increasingly-unwilling-to-respect-voters-decisions-on-cannabis/Report

            1. While I appreciate appealing to NORML to make arguments in service to the devil’s lettuce, having an AG enforce existing law is one of the hazards of living in a place where the AG has an attitude other than restorative justice.

              I don’t like it.

              But I’m not going to pretend that the problem will be solved by an AG who is willing to ignore laws rather than by a legislature willing to rewrite them.

              Heck, maybe even by a federal legislature willing to reschedule it or one of the various agencies under the auspices of the executive willing to reschedule it.

              “This AG is enforcing the law!” is a weak criticism under the best of circumstances.Report

              1. Maybe the problem will be solved by people not voting for candidates whose party is reflexively hostile to marijuana, or at least not reflexively hostile to the will of the voters.

                Which was my original point.

                Republican elites are out of step not just with the attitudes of normal Americans, but even their own party, and their response is invariably to find ways to override the voters and install their own archaic 19th century views on everything from marijuana to birth control.Report

          1. No, but its no longer criminal in 24 states. So unless you, like me, are a federal civil servant, I suspect you can smoke up just fine. The DEA isn’t staffed to run down doobies in every basement.Report

            1. My company merely wants to do business with the federal government and so maintains a “drug-free workplace”. I had to do a drug test when I got hired a decade ago and am told that I have to provide urine upon demand.

              Granted, I have not been asked for urine since I got hired. But still.

              Also: I have a friend who contracts for CDOT. He told me that getting a red card is grounds for immediate termination from whatever contract you’re on and you’ll get put on a list that makes you ineligible for all future CDOT contracts.

              And CDOT is CDOT, not federal.

              So the fact that it’s legal-at-the-state-level in Colorado doesn’t mean that you can toke up.

              You can’t toke up and keep your job if your job deals with the feds. You can’t toke up and keep your job if your job deals with CDOT.Report

              1. Seems like the later is something Colorado voters should take up with Colorado’s government.

                As to the former – you have two senators and a congressman who work for you. If they don’t know how you feel they won’t do anything differently.Report

              2. I imagine that Colorado voters probably thought that they already did take it up with Colorado government.

                I know that *I* was surprised to hear that CDOT kept a list of folks with red cards.

                Hey, I’ve told them. I’ve also argued argued that the law should be different. I’ve argued for, for example, the supreme court to rule differently in Gonzales v. Raich *AND* for the Executive Branch to push for rescheduling *AND* for congress to pass a law to reschedule.

                You wouldn’t believe who pushes back against stuff like that, though.Report

              3. This kind of thing is why I am so hesitant to mess with the state apparatus, even under full legalization. You get the sense that someone, somewhere, is still keeping tabs and that it could come back and bite you in the ass in some unexpected way.Report

              4. I think (but don’t know) that CDOT is probably not allowed to smoke for the same reasons that I’m not or Phil isn’t:

                If you work with the Feds, you follow Federal Law. Period. It doesn’t matter if you’re a sub-to-a-sub.

                Of course, Colorado still has a rather healthy black market. For some reason.Report

              5. Exactly. With very few exceptions, the federal DOT doesn’t build roads. It hires the states to do the job, subject to the normal rules. (The feds don’t even specify design, only requirements, as the surface must be this durable. Everyone who pays attention remembers crossing a state border on an interstate highway and it abruptly changes from high-durability asphalt to concrete.)

                Anything on the CSA schedules, no matter which category, requires a prescription. What you and I want is for marijuana to be treated like ethanol: no prescription, perhaps age restrictions, perhaps strength limits. Given freedom to do selective breeding, the growers are producing weed with strength I could only dream about when I was young.Report

              6. “Drug test on demand” means “Drug test if they think you’re high or need to prove that you’re not”.

                So if you’re driving a company car and get in an accident, they’ll test you. In my hiring drug test there were two guys in workers clothing, a foreman and his minion who’d had an accident.Report

  19. The police – whether on red or blue cities – are really good at own goals. This is another such incident:

    One of the six police officers charged after the 2015 death of Freddie Gray has been tapped to oversee the Baltimore Police Department’s Public Integrity Bureau, a unit that handles misconduct investigations.

    Captain Alicia White’s move from the department’s Anti-Crime Section/Gun Violence Unit to the Public Integrity Bureau went into effect on Feb. 11, according to a department news release that announced several other promotions and command changes.

    White is one of two commanders who will oversee complaints filed by the public against officers within the Baltimore Police Department, according to The Baltimore Banner, which first reported the news of her command change.

    https://www.npr.org/2024/02/14/1231225553/alicia-white-baltimore-police-promotion-freddie-gray-deathReport

    1. They were found innocent so legally they are. In addition we were never able to figure out what happened to Gray and don’t know which, if any, of the cops were involved.Report

        1. There are three theories.

          #1) First group of cops beat him and broke his spine.

          Advantage: Some witness support. Gray was limping getting into the car.
          Disadvantage: ME says no. “Limping” means you don’t have 80% of your spine severed.

          #2) 2nd group of cops gave him a “rough ride”.

          Advantage: Media support. Gray was injured in the car.
          Disadvantage: No evidence of a rough ride. limited evidence that there wasn’t.

          #3) Gray injured himself in the car and went too far.

          The idea is if he was faking injuries during his arrest then he was trying to fake his way to a lawsuit. This is “play stupid games win stupid prizes” territory but Gray was a professional low level criminal.

          Then we have the DA make a bunch of statements and promises she couldn’t back up and charged everyone with everything like she was a protester or politician and not a DA.

          With all of that, it’s unclear what happened to Gray, who was responsible, and what we should do.

          If #1 and Gray was dying when he was put in the car, then the first set of cops should be held for murder and the second set fired for incompetence.

          If #2 then the second set should be on the hook for his death and the first set probably had zero responsibility.

          If #3 and Gray died from playing stupid games then IDK if the 2nd set of cops has any responsibility but the first clearly doesn’t. It depends on when he was injured.

          BTW White was with the second group of cops.Report

          1. Read the above comment again, except imagine it it talking about, say, Rudy Guiliani, or Donald Trump.

            That somehow in between being arrested and arriving at the police station, he died with a severed spine, and we all just sit around cooly trying to parse if he was murdered of somehow severed his own spine.

            Can you imagine this?

            No, you can’t. Such a thing happening to a upper class person is unimaginable in the America we live in.

            Which si why I call it the Peasant Mentality, where we just unconsciously internalize the idea that there are classes of people, some of whom are more important and entitled to a different set of treatments and privileges than other.

            Even like our movies and tv shows; Imagine the gang from CSI or Law & Order treating a a white collar criminal the way Freddie Gray was treated.Report

            1. I think relying on criminal convictions in these situations as the sole avenue of accountability is the messy part. Every criminal defendant is entitled to due process, including the police, and it’s entirely possible that the peculiarities of the facts made these defendants very difficult to convict. We all have to make peace with that possibility if we want something approaching a fair criminal justice system.

              What I don’t think we have to accept is that people involved in such an incident have to keep their jobs in law enforcement, have to continue to be promoted, have to be hireable in similar positions, etc. People render themselves unemployable in various fields all the time without being convicted of a crime, except, it seems, the police.Report

              1. Exactly my point. A man dies of a severed spine in police custody, and one of the senior officers involved has been promoted to be in charge of investigating other officers in the future in similar situations. The optics make it clear to Baltimore citizens that their police department is not accountable.Report

            2. Unfortunately, both of the following pass a smell test.

              1) Fred was beaten to death by the police.

              2) Fred, a professional low class criminal, did something stupid and got himself killed.

              Yes, if we can subtract #2 then we’re only left with #1. However then we’re also not dealing with reality.

              If he was beaten by the first set of cops then no one thought to video it. We do have a video of him getting into the car. Ergo he was either beaten off screen or he was doing a “wounded bird” act.

              If it was the later, then attempting to further that makes some sort of sense.

              If you want to be treated like a white collar criminal then you need to behave like a white collar criminal.Report

              1. “If you want to be treated like a white collar criminal then you need to behave like a white collar criminal.”

                This is almost a verbatim recitation of Mother Jones’s aphorism about the corruption of capitalism, except unironically.Report

            3. The vast majority of humans have a peasant mentality because nearly everybody believes that some people or groups matter more than other people or groups when it comes to trade offs. I include myself in this. The number of true universalists can be counted on the hand.Report

            1. We had a talk like this about “how does someone with their hands handcuffed behind them shoot themselves in the mouth”?

              We were all convinced it was impossible and then I found a position which let (inflexible) me do it.

              Either he had lots of help, of which we have no proof even though there were other people in the car and the car was videoed at various times being driven in a sane manor.

              Or he put himself into a position that would win a Darwin award if anything went wrong.

              Or his spine was severed before he got into the car. So he limped into the car with it that way.

              I wouldn’t bet on any of those but they seem to be the menu options. We’re missing basic information here. Can someone with a partly severed spine still walk and have it finish later? How reasonable is it to have a rough ride without any evidence? What were Fred’s behavior the previous 18 times he was arrested?

              Ideally we’d have a dash video showing Fred either doing something foolish, bouncing around, or collapsing after the door shut.Report

              1. That post was here.

                You say: “We were all convinced it was impossible and then I found a position which let (inflexible) me do it.”

                Would you be able to pull this off if someone was trying to get you to *NOT* do it?

                I ask because of this line in the story:

                Body cam footage that may have been able to answer any questions about the incident is unavailable. A police spokesperson said in August that a bodycam on one of the officers during the stop was knocked off the officer’s uniform “during the struggle,” WAVY reported.

                As such, I say “bullshit”.

                Not even I would try to peddle this crap if I were drunk.Report

              2. RE: Would you be able to pull this off if someone was trying to get you to *NOT* do it?

                The claim was that the cop put the cuffs on her and left her next to her car to go fight with her boyfriend. During the fight with him, she got back into her car, got her gun, and killed herself.

                That’s far away from “someone actively trying to stop you at that moment”.

                Be worthwhile for a “use of force” expert to review whether the cops beclowned themselves in leaving her alone. However most the criticism seems to be “it’s impossible to do this”.

                It’s not only possible but it’s not hard if you’re not heavy. While sitting down, move your head between your knees. If you can come close then you could do it.Report

              4. I haven’t seen them. If we care about after-the-fact investigations then it was found a suicide.

                If you want to assume the cops are lying and making everyone else lie for them then you have a different story… but that’s always true.

                If the cops were lying then they picked a story that made them look like clowns and was likely on the face of it to go viral.Report

              6. So with a spotlight on them and this going viral, no one thought to look into it? Check the photos, the ME report, something else?

                Maybe ask her boyfriend who was right there “what happened?”

                Far as I can tell, even he admits she killed herself.

                That puts us in Michael Brown (Ferguson) territory. What people want to believe doesn’t match the underlying reality.Report

              7. Really? Because here is a story that explained that Sarah’s family found out what happened from media, not police, reports.

                Here is an article talking about how the police won’t release the results of their internal investigation.

                I can’t seem to find where he admits that she killed herself.

                Could you provide that information?Report

              8. I was assuming someone, the media, his lawyer or the family if no one else, would have talked to him and it would have gone (more) viral if not. It’s not like he was in prison and couldn’t talk.

                He made the news again in 2023 being arrested again for someone else dying around him (OD, he mishandled it).

                Your links are 5 years old. I’d hope that we have more info now. In 2019 we had a lot of calls to investigate this because it’s impossible to shoot yourself in this position. Since then we have nothing.

                My interpretation is the investigation didn’t find anything interesting. Counter intuitively, it’s not only possible but easy for a young thin woman to shoot herself like this.

                That doesn’t mean the police didn’t beclown themselves, it doesn’t mean people shouldn’t be fired, it doesn’t even mean the cops didn’t directly kill her and cover it up.

                But if we start with the idea that this can’t be done then we’re wrong out of the gate because I could do it.Report

              9. The last news links I have are the ones saying that the police department was stonewalling.

                Do you have anything from after that?

                Other than assumptions about how the news media probably talked to the other people who probably corroborated the story?

                (Hey, does anybody know whether bodycams stop getting audio when knocked off of a policeman’s body?)Report

              11. At some point absence of evidence becomes evidence of absence.

                All squeaks about the cops withholding evidence are 5+ years old (and less than a year after her death). If it’s still a problem (amazing in the context of the BF being out and able to talk), then it’s not being reported.Report

  20. Republican lawmaker demands Biden declassify intel on possible Russian space weapons.

    *Sweaty spaceman meme with two buttons, MAGA version*
    1. Attack Biden for being soft on defense
    2. Defend Russia and attack the intel as a hoax

    It will be interesting to see which way the various MAGA outlets go. My bet is #2.Report

  22. In things that weren’t on my bingo card this week, but probably should have been:

    Rachel Dolezal, the White woman and former National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter president who courted major controversy nearly 10 years ago for falsely claiming she was Black, has been fired from her position with an Arizona school district over an OnlyFans account.

    Dolezal was employed with the Catalina Foothills School District as an after-school instructor, but was let go this week after administrators were made aware of her apparent presence on OnlyFans, a social media subscription platform that caters to adult content.

    As of publication, a link to an OnlyFans account is accessible through a bio in Dolezal’s verified Instagram account. The linked OnlyFans account, updated as recently as February 14, blocks images for non-subscribers but contains identifying information and captions alluding to adult and “nude” content.

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/15/us/rachel-dolezal-onlyfans-arizona-teacher-cec/index.htmlReport

  23. One hopes the House GOP gets enough satisfaction about their impeachment vote for DHS Secretary Mayorkas. It now appears one of their witnesses in the Biden inquiry was lying:

    “In truth and fact, the Defendant had contact with executives from Burisma in 2017, after the end of the Obama-Biden Administration and after the then Ukrainian Prosecutor General had been fired in February 2016, in other words, when [Joe Biden] had no ability to influence U.S. policy and when the Prosecutor General was no longer in office,” the indictment states.

    It continues, “In short, the Defendant transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against [Joe Biden], the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for President, after expressing bias against [Joe Biden] and his candidacy.”

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/15/politics/former-fbi-informant-charged-biden-burisma/index.htmlReport

  24. This is one of those stories that is alternately funny and horrifying.

    In the future, when someone mentions “experts”, you should get them to clarify whether their definition includes people like this.Report

      1. Hoping the ‘lie’ angle is true.

        Reading through it I was wondering if the scam was especially ingenious, and sadly it was not.

        Reminded me of the time my daughter called me in a panic that the Police were going to come arrest her if she didn’t give someone some cash. Told her that if the police were going to arrest her, it was going to ruin her day no matter what… so cash wasn’t going to make that go away. Then she thought through it and realized how unlikely it was that a ‘false arrest warrant’ would telegraph through a guy on the phone wanting $$.

        Interesting to see how the psychological manipulation just takes over.Report

        1. Americans have a unique fear of being In Trouble, and if you can convince them that they’re In Trouble then they’ll do almost anything you say to make that go away.Report

          1. Yeah, it was a good episode to go over our ‘Don’t talk to the police without a lawyer present’ discussions. Added on that if you are going to be arrested, you won’t talk your way out of it, so prepare to cancel your afternoon appointments and call the family lawyer.

            Of course, she had nothing to fear about getting arrested; but the scam caller cited a badge # from her zip-code accurate police dept and told her to google it… which turned up a real cop. That was the ‘cool’ part of the psychological scam… made it seem legit in the way a magician sets you up with misdirection.Report

            1. That’s also part of it, that Americans have a unique fear of being In Trouble but are also convinced they can solve anything by talking to someone about it.

              One perfect media depiction of the American spirit is “The A-Team Builds Something Montage”. Another such perfect depiction is Ellis in “Die Hard” thinking he can talk his way out of a hostage situation and getting shot in the head.Report

        2. I heard a second hand story of a person receiving a call from someone claiming to have kidnapped a family member and demanding ransom, which included the allegedly kidnapped family member screaming for help in the background. Turned out the scammer had been able to deepfake the person’s voice using a recording of the allegedly-but-not-actually kidnapped individual had made for their law firm’s website. Given the dumb stuff people fall for now I think it’s fair to say it’s going to get way worse before it gets better.Report

          1. I think there’s two forks in the scam business. The most common by far is the trolling for marks; which is just a psychological pressure play plus time compression… here they are just using a formula that works in volume.

            More sophisticated scams require targeting and a plan and have to work more like heists… so I’m not sure they are a general concern.

            Maybe a hybrid is a ‘generic’ deepfake where they approximate a guess of what your grandson sounds like (i.e. voice/accent/age) and have that voice ask for money/help. Something like this was tried on my dad… he asked the caller to recall a shared memory and the guy flubbed the response… but it was all under the pretext of phone battery dying, couldn’t talk, desparately needed cash, send money here.

            Again, the psychological manipulation is designed to cut-off the simple counter of hanging up and calling the number you have for your grandson/daughter… that’s what’s pretty interesting. Otherwise it’s a numbers game looking for people who won’t punch out of the box… so, elderly, usually.

            The danger for us isn’t the usual phone scam, its the future hologram tech that we don’t really understand as we age into our luddite phase.Report

            1. There’s a very troubling newish scam. Fake companies buy ad space on Google for those “sponsored” links that come up first. They call themselves something like “Microsoft Tech Support”. They don’t have to look for victims; they just wait by the phones, take over people’s computers with their permission, and charge them for fake services while downloading their banking information.Report

          2. Caller: We have your XX. Give us $$ or they are dead.
            Me: Yah, no, when they die, I inherit their estate. Can you send me the video as proof of death so I can get the estate faster? Thanks, I’ll hold.Report

    2. I once got taken for a larger amount than I’d like to admit. Good scheme, bad day, I pulled out of it before it got worse but I still feel stupid. It can happen. But no, I don’t have undue respect for reporters. I think the moment for me was a tv expose about how the food in the microwave meal looks different than it does in the picture on the box. It told me everything about the life experience of the reporter. Even if the producers were hazing her, how could I ever respect the channel again?Report

    3. Someone like that contacted me. They were claiming to be the IRS and I repeatedly told them to F-themselves until they hung up. Weird call, they were very professional and I was a lot more vulgar than I normally am.

      The IRS isn’t subtle or vague. They’ll have an exact amount that they want, to the penny, and an explanation on why. They’ll have a specific person they want to contact. They also never call.Report

      1. My hubby and I came close at one point several years ago when the particular type of skam was new. They called very capably impersonating our bank and warning us about a fraud alert on our account. Then they said they were cancelling a hair raising number of charges and asked that we pass on to them a verification code the bank would send us. Fortunately the code itself said “never give this to any third party, we will never ask for it” and we checked our accounts on the side and saw that no such charges were present and knew enough to know what the dude was saying didn’t pass the smell test. But those mfers came close.

        Hopefully you got a lot of gratification out of telling your scammer off. My limited understanding is that any interaction with them what so ever makes them flag your number as “live” and greatly increases the numbers and varieties of scams that’ll be directed at it.Report

          2. The amazing part listening to that link is she went through the entire sequence twice and only hung up on the third.

            Lenny is a robot who sounds like an incompetent old man who will willingly hand over his credit card if you ask him right and can keep him on task.

            He’ll talk about his daughters and the trouble he got in for handing over his credit card the last time. Of course he’s not human, has no credit card, and is designed to waste cold callers’ time until they give up.

            Teams of scammers have spent hours trying to talk him into handing over that card. If they take turns they won’t realize he’s repeating himself.Report

    1. More to the point – Johnson sent the House home yesterday without action on the border, aid to Ukraine/Israel/Taiwan or either of the continuing resolutions that are on the black in a week and a half. Frankly its legislative malpractice but nothing new either from the “Freedom (from work apparently) Caucus.”Report

      1. A small segment of the GOP has shut down the house. This session has done the least ever.

        Basically we need new elections to give either Team Blue control or Team Red enough of a majority that they can ignore those 6 or so votes.Report

        1. Gerrymandering has kept enough districts solidly red or blue for so long the incumbents only have to worry about being challenged by more fringe candidates in their own parties. Makes for really warped decision making.Report

          1. That’s true… although some of these are fringe by any measurement. GOP only has 219, normally it’s 218 for a majority but maybe the 4 vacant seats change that.Report

  26. The leadership of the U.S. Coast Guard has committed active serious dereliction of duty. Since none of them have resigned, they need to be relieved of command. And potentially court martialed. Oh, and when conspiracy theorists talk about the deep state, the fact that the USCG couldn’t keep this underwraps is a great rebuttal.

    Records turned over to Congress this month reveal how top officials at the US Coast Guard engaged in a calculated plan to conceal the damning findings of an investigation into decades of sexual assault cases at the agency’s academy, going so far as to create a list of the pros and cons of being transparent.

    Coast Guard officials only told Congress about the explosive probe last year after CNN started making inquiries. Dubbed Operation Fouled Anchor, the multi-year internal investigation found that rapes and other sexual abuse at the prestigious Coast Guard Academy had been ignored and often covered up by high-ranking officials.

    But telling Congress and the public about this scandal, leaders worried, could “risk the initiation of comprehensive Congressional investigations, hearings, and media interest,” according to 2018 internal records supplied to the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in February.

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/16/politics/coast-guard-sexual-assault-senate-records-invs/index.htmlReport

  27. Man, what was I saying about conservatives wanting 19th century idea:
    Behind the scenes, specific anti-abortion plans being proposed by Mr. Trump’s allies are sweeping and legally sophisticated. Some of their proposals would rely on enforcing the Comstock Act, a long-dormant law from 1873, to criminalize the shipping of any materials used in an abortion — including abortion pills, which account for the majority of abortions in America.

    “We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books,” said Jonathan F. Mitchell, the legal force behind a 2021 Texas law that found a way to effectively ban abortion in the state before Roe v. Wade was overturned. “There’s a smorgasbord of options.”

    Oh, and then there is this:
    “I hope he doesn’t know about the existence of Comstock, because I just don’t want him to shoot off his mouth,” Mr. Mitchell said of Mr. Trump. “I think the pro-life groups should keep their mouths shut as much as possible until the election.”Report

      1. That’s the thing about fascists, is that they always start by attacking some unpopular minority, but their hunger for tyranny forces them to keep widening the circle of enemies until they are attacking the majority. At which point, the majority has to do the long hard work of dislodging them from power.

        If we are lucky, the “Hanging upside down at a gas station being spat upon” moment will be only metaphorical.Report

Comments are closed.

Related Stories

US Department of Education Announces that it is Restarting Loan Collection

Jaybird April 22, 2025 23

Open Mic for the Week of 4/21/2025

Jaybird April 21, 2025 118

SCOTUS Temporarily Halts Trump Administration Removal of Venezuelans

OT Editors April 19, 2025

You may have missed

Bradstreet Window

POETS Day! Anne Bradstreet

Ben Sears April 25, 2025
1903_World_Series_-_Boston_Americans

Series! Recap of World Series of the 1900s

Mike Schilling April 25, 2025
golf

There are Times when Murder Seems Justifiable

Clare Briggs April 24, 2025
postnailclip

Weekend Plans Post: Caffeine Rituals

Jaybird April 24, 2025 15