The manhunt for the United Healthcare shooter demonstrates something that I've tried to explain many times over the years, and that data shows is true: increasing police presence in a Black neighbourhood, usually *increases* the murder rate in that neighbourhood.🙂🙃
Because cop shows have been lying to you all these years. CSI is a lie. Even Agatha Christie, Poirot, Columbo, all lies. That's not how murders get solved.
How murders really get solved: someone tells the cops everything: the killer, the motive, the weapon. All the CSI is just to verify the story.🤷🏿♂️
Basketball players used to be measured by stats like Points, rebounds, blocks, assists, steals, etc. You could see that Jordan was good, because he scored a lot of points and didn't have a lot of turnovers. You could see that Dikembe Mutumbo was good, because he got a lot of blocks. Stockton was good, because he always seemed to be the last pass right before a teammate scored (assists).
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This post reminds me that software engineering doesn't have a plus minus.
Basketball players used to be measured by stats like Points, rebounds, blocks, assists, steals, etc. You could see that Jordan was good, because he scored a lot of points and didn't have a lot of turnovers. You could see that Dikembe Mutumbo was good, because he got a lot of blocks. Stockton was good, because he always seemed to be the last pass right before a teammate scored (assists).
But Draymond Green was a key part of the Warriors' dynasty, but he never scored many points, never got a ton of blocks or steals, and never got a ton of assists. But... the Warriors seemed to be invincible when he played, but very beatable when he didn't play.
Draymond doesn't show up high on most regular stats, but he has the highest single season plus minus in NBA history.🤯
Plus minus is a calculation of how many points your team scores with you on the court vs with you off the court.
Black men:
* Are seen as more masculine
* See themselves as more masculine
* But we do more stuff considered feminine?🙂🙃
* And no one says a damn thing!
Because this whole masculinity thing is made up and a scam. Stop hurting yourself!
No seriously, stop hurting yourself. Black men have one of the lowest age adjusted suicide rates.👍🏿 White men? One of the highest.
Happy international men's day!
Reminder to be more like Black men!
Black men:
* Are seen as more masculine
* See themselves as more masculine
* But we do more stuff considered feminine?🙂🙃
* And no one says a damn thing!
Because this whole masculinity thing is made up and a scam. Stop hurting yourself!
@mekkaokereke I wonder if that's a result of Black men traditionally having many more female role models than White men? So strength and success are not seen as purely male attributes? There's plenty of white women who were written out of history in favour of their husbands or colleagues.
I just realized that I don't need to argue with y'all about:
* Starter packs
* Composable moderation
* Quote tweets
* Paying trust & safety engineers for their labor
* Funding stuff without VC or begging for donations
* If UX is possible without VC money
I don't need to argue with y'all about any of this. I'm not asking for your permission or your help. I'm telling you what's going to happen.
Mastodon is moving in the right direction, just slowly. It could be faster with funding + focus.
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I just realized that I don't need to argue with y'all about:
* Starter packs
* Composable moderation
* Quote tweets
* Paying trust & safety engineers for their labor
* Funding stuff without VC or begging for donations
* If UX is possible without VC money
I don't need to argue with y'all about any of this. I'm not asking for your permission or your help. I'm telling you what's going to happen.
I love BlueSky, mainly because it's now our best bet at Twitter not being as influential in the US midterm elections (that are coming up sooner than we think).
I like to brag and boast when I am right about a call, so it's only fair to admit when I'm wrong: I really thought Mastodon would get it together on the onboarding and trust and safety front.
In fairness, Mastodon is getting it together... but just far too slowly to matter. A slow "yes" is often the same outcome as a "no."🤷🏿♂️
It's cope to talk about how billionaires changed the outcome of the election. Because it's making excuses for the fact that the majority of white men and white women, voted for Trump.
But...
* Black folk are *much* more online than white folk.
Susan B Anthony was a bad person. She didn't fight for "women's right to vote " She fought for "*White* women's right to vote." It would be one thing if she just didn't focus on Black folks' right to vote, but she actively worked against it. As hard as she fought for White women to get to vote, she actively campaigned against the Black vote and constructed a coalition of racists to keep Black feminists out, and hold Black voters back.
She was a white supremacist. White supremacists are bad
@mekkaokereke met a woman a few months ago here in Paris doing research on exactly this topic (white feminism against black people's voting rights at the end of the 19th century/beginning of the 20th in the USA).
@mekkaokereke similar for the "famous five" suffragettes in Canada. A very mixed record that included eugenics, racist immigration advocacy, privilege.
No way to simplify it. They have a complicated legacy and are probably overcelebrated for a fairly minor aspect of women's rights.
🤔Remember that time 4 years ago when we were inches away from a fascist election disaster? And we voted hard and avoided that disaster by mere inches? And then all the Black people said "Great! Here's how we can make sure that we never come this close to disaster again?" And all the white people we voted in power, mostly ignored us?😮
And Biden told us to STFU? And threatened to fire any of his staffers that talked to insurrectionist and said things like "Being an insurrectionist is bad?"
And Biden acted like the big problem was not rising fascism or open attacks on the institution of US democracy but that there wasn't enough "civility in politics" anymore? And that we're all guilty of incivility?
Remember that garbage?
And remember how right after the "Black women will save us!" election, and all the promises of "We'll fix it after the election!" All we got was a few more "Black faces in high places" but we got *even more racist* on police reform and wealth inequality?🙂🙃
Some of y'all are still confused as to why it seems that Silicon Valley billionaires are "turning to Trump." That's because you don't listen to Black people, you disrespect poor white people, and you ignore obvious statistics that have been staring you in the face for decades.
There's a statistical lie that the US tells itself:
"Poor white people are more racist than rich white people!"
This is objectively, demonstrably, false. It's been shown over and over. But we still cling to it. We use lies like: "college educated white people are less likely to vote GOP!"
First of all there's not a 1:1 correlation between racism and GOP. Second, business owners are richer than employees, and most US business owners *didn't* go to college.
Iran has the *capability* to strike Israel in under 15 minutes. Iran has anti-ship drones that are almost impossible to shoot down. Iran could have shot first and stayed silent and then claimed responsibility hours later.
Iran *chose* to do a strike that provided hours of early warning. Iran used drones that are relatively easy to shoot down. Iran announced that they were retaliating before they did so.
Before the inevitable questions of "Whose side am I on anyway?!"
I'm on team Palestinian children, Israeli children, Iranian children, and Yemeni children. I'm on team children. Because that's who gets hurt most in war, whether that's open war, proxy war, or anything in between.
Anyone hoping for escalation, on any part of this conflict, hasn't thought things through. At all.
♥️♥️♥️Shoutout to the staff of the hotel I stayed at for expertly de-escalating a Karen situation!
♥️♥️♥️And shoutout to the white hotel guests that stuck around to make sure that hotel security heard exactly what she was trying to do. My favorite comment: "Wow! A Karen situation in real life! I've only ever seen these online! This is surreal! What is she thinking?"
End result, yours truly did not get kicked out of the hotel for no reason, and feels slightly better about the state of the world.
@mekkaokereke
Sorry to hear that happened to you. But glad that the other guests in line told the truth of situation to security. It's really sad that people act like that. Good to hear that security kicked her out.
1) There are Instagram accounts posting content today that would prompt many Mastodon admins to defederate immediately.
2) Those accounts are not being moderated by Instagram. User reports are closed without action. So their Threads version of those accounts will likely also not be moderated.
3) So many Mastodon admins will defederate from Threads shortly after federation.
So I'm not sure why folks are spending so much time debating whether defederating before the inevitable harm is bad?
@mekkaokereke there are so many people - and importantly organisations - on there, that if/when it federates, I'd view it as probably too big to defederate. Silencing so many people because of the actions of a few, or because of inadequate regulation of their megacorp owner, seems like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
@mekkaokereke until Facebook actually implements ActivityPub, any consideration of [de]federation is pointless. If and when their posts become available, it’s fine to treat them the same as any other instance, which would result in most instances defederating them for failing to moderate harmful posts. Giving all this attention to their stated intent just means there’s less attention left for better things
🧔🏼♂️"No one watches women's sports! If the little girls want to earn as much as manly men, they should get their numbers up! That's just like, economics man!"
But also...
Women's basketball viewership is growing faster than men's basketball, and the most viewed women's game on ESPN this year has *higher* viewership than the most viewed men's basketball game.
All the excuses are falling away. Just like we said that they would.
🧔🏼♂️"No one watches women's sports! If the little girls want to earn as much as manly men, they should get their numbers up! That's just like, economics man!"
But also...
Women's basketball viewership is growing faster than men's basketball, and the most viewed women's game on ESPN this year has *higher* viewership than the most viewed men's basketball game.
Again, I question the assumption that "VC" is bad, because by assets under management, the vast majority of VC money is controlled by Alt-Right, openly anti-democratic, anti-social, hyper capitalist, fascist adjacent men. These dudes make horrific, near genocidal decisions in everything they do.
The bad part of "nazi bank" is nazi, not bank. We need banks.
So I won't know if VC is bad until Eg, Black women get more than *checks notes* half of 1% of all VC assets to manage.
@adamgreenfield
If you squint at the definition of venture capital, then the National Science Foundation, is a publicly owned Venture Capital firm.🙂🙃
VC tries to claim credit for inventing the Covid vaccine, but that's a lie. The Moderna vaccine was made possible because of high risk, low potential for success, research into mRNA vaccines. That research was paid for by an NSF grant won by a Black woman, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett. She led the "Moderna" mRNA team.
She couldn't have raised VC.🤷🏿♂️
@adamgreenfield
If you squint at the definition of venture capital, then the National Science Foundation, is a publicly owned Venture Capital firm.🙂🙃
VC tries to claim credit for inventing the Covid vaccine, but that's a lie. The Moderna vaccine was made possible because of high risk, low potential for success, research into mRNA vaccines. That research was paid for by an NSF grant won by a Black woman, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett. She led the "Moderna" mRNA team.
@mekkaokereke I returned to this thread after reading Nova’s thread about racism and capitalism’s intertwined history and I’d love to know more about your interpretation of that relationship, whenever.
The above magnificent toot makes it clear that your views on capitalism are more nuanced than many anti-capitalists on here (if I may be forgiven for generalizing, they’d uniformly see banks and money as problematic), that capitalism is bad when it abets racism (and misogyny and xenophobia and homophobia), but it’s unclear what a capitalism without those would look like. Am I oversimplifying your position or totally on the wrong track here?
(Well, we do have the existence proof of the Nordic market-socialist states that combine a vigorous capitalism with a rigorous regulatory arm and social safety net.)
@mekkaokereke I returned to this thread after reading Nova’s thread about racism and capitalism’s intertwined history and I’d love to know more about your interpretation of that relationship, whenever.
The above magnificent toot makes it clear that your views on capitalism are more nuanced than many anti-capitalists on here (if I may be forgiven for generalizing, they’d uniformly see banks and money as problematic), that capitalism is bad when it abets racism (and misogyny and xenophobia and homophobia),...
I hope to get to Black history soon, but I'm still working through white US history. There's so much of it!
Q: Why are Black people in the US so much more likely to die in traffic accidents than white people? Are Black folk more likely to drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs (DUI)? Is it street racing? Are y'all just bad drivers?
A: Hmm. I'm stumped! No one knows the answer to why this happens! Just kidding. It's racism. It's always racism.
A big portion of US traffic deaths are "SUV vs anything." "Anything" can be a smaller car, a cyclist, or a pedestrian.
Because of the systemically racist way that US infrastructure has been built, "SUV vs pedestrian" strikes are disproportionately likely to involve a white driver and Black child pedestrian. White SUVs drive in places where Black kids walk.
This affects people of all colors, but the most dangerous way to be a pedestrian in the US *by far*, is to be a Black child aged 4 to 15.
I'm still not talking about Black history. I'm still talking about white US history.
Q: Why do Black kids not do well in school? Is it because their dads are uninvolved and uncaring parents? Bill Cosby and Herschel Walker told me that, and they are good and wise men that we should listen to! It's Black dads' fault! Boo Black men!
A: No. Black kids only do poorly in school *in extremely racist countries.*
Black dads are *more* involved in both early childhood activities like bathing and diapering, and school aged activities. From the CDC:
A larger percentage of Black dads
(41%) had helped their coresidential children with homework every day in
the last 4 weeks compared with
white (28%) dads.
Only 30% of white dads take their own kids to activities every day, vs 42% of Black dads.
71% of white dads talk with their kids about their day, vs 79% of Black dads.
Etc, etc.
Black dads are *more* involved in both early childhood activities like bathing and diapering, and school aged activities. From the CDC:
A larger percentage of Black dads
(41%) had helped their coresidential children with homework every day in
the last 4 weeks compared with
white (28%) dads.
Only 30% of white dads take their own kids to activities every day, vs 42% of Black dads.
But let's dig into that and unpack the racism a little.
Drugs are easiest to understand. At this point everyone should know that white Americans do more drugs than Black Americans. They also do more hard drugs. We don't consider Drs. offices to be high crime, and yet, opioids.
Black neighborhoods only seem like they have more drug use, because of how we've decided to define crimes around drug use, and how we choose to enforce.
Citizens! *Puts on steel toed boots* I urge you to remain calm at this moment! *loads rubber bullets into launcher* violence is not the answer! *Hangs night stick from belt* We grieve with your community! *Pulls reflective visor down on helmet* Peace is what this moment calls for *climbs into tank* The great MLK Jr said and I quote: I love police, and they are our friends! *diesel engine roars* So obey, comply, and remember we are in this together! *Tear gas launcher slowly points towards crowd*
Because cop shows have been lying to you all these years. CSI is a lie. Even Agatha Christie, Poirot, Columbo, all lies. That's not how murders get solved.
How murders really get solved: someone tells the cops everything: the killer, the motive, the weapon. All the CSI is just to verify the story.🤷🏿♂️
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