[Malankazooie]

Any one watch the Dave Chappelle, 8:46 stand up video? He certainly says things that will trigger sensitives in the echoing twitter shout chamberverse, but I was captivated by it.

[Malankazooie]

Reading updates throughout the protests, I keep seeing "less than lethal rounds" or "non-lethal". Is that a PR manipulation move? I sort of remember it was "rubber bullets" at one time. Has the police crowd contol tech advanced such that there are a number of options available now and so "less than lethal rounds" is a catchall for the spectrum of technology in use?

[Aptorian]

Malankazooie, on 14 June 2020 - 06:09 PM, said:

Any one watch the Dave Chappelle, 8:46 stand up video? He certainly says things that will trigger sensitives in the echoing twitter shout chamberverse, but I was captivated by it.

Watched it yesterday. I don't think there was much stand up about it, not much to laugh at, but it was a powerful retelling of the last couple decades. When he was shouting 8 minutes and 46 seconds I felt him.

[Malankazooie]

Malankazooie, on 17 June 2020 - 06:34 PM, said:

Reading updates throughout the protests, I keep seeing "less than lethal rounds" or "non-lethal". Is that a PR manipulation move? I sort of remember it was "rubber bullets" at one time. Has the police crowd control tech advanced such that there are a number of options available now and so "less than lethal rounds" is a catchall for the spectrum of technology in use?

Was reading an op-ed piece about the handling of reporters with press credentials during the protests. The piece mentions rubber bullets, and that one photo journalist was hit with "foam bullets", so I guess there are various "less then lethal" rounds being used. What exacty are "foam bullets" though?

[amphibian]

The thing about rubber bullets and foam bullets is that there's a hard metal core at the center of most of them and hard plastic for a few versions.

Foam bullets are tipped with foam, maybe the upper third or less. The rest is still the very hard projectile.

If you do an image search of rubber bullet metal core, you'll see the rather large projectiles cut apart and the metal within. The images range from now to several years ago, so it's not a new development - especially in Israel.

[Silencer]

It's very much a PR thing. Rubber bullets and their derivatives are still entirely capable of killing someone, so they more or less had to change the term from non-lethal. Plus it captures various other versions like beanbag rounds, etc.
End of the day most of these are fired from shotguns and grenade launchers, making them equivalent in size to either a shotgun slug or a 40mm grenade. They may or may not be propelled slightly slower than the regular ammo, but they're still big projectiles hitting pretty hard, and getting hit in the wrong place can be lethal. I recall there being strict rules about firing at people who have their back to you because of damage to the neck/spinal column and crown of the skull concerns. The main difference between these rounds and bullets/slugs is that they haven't been designed to penetrate into the body. That's it.

So yes, less than lethal is both a catch-all term and a PR thing.

[Malankazooie]

[Studlock]

Forgot I made this thread. If anyone is going out to these protests, leave your cellphone at home, wear non-descript clothing, and wear a mask that obscures your face (and protects you from Covid, obvi), and carry a weapon for last resort. 6 Ferguson organizers died in extremely suspicious circumstances, many more protestors during these protests have been tracked down through pretty obscure means. Stay safe, protect your fellow protestors, and if you can, donate to a bail fund (research before hand though, some don't need it whiles others are underfunded):

https://bailfunds.github.io/

I'm sure everyone can guess my opinions on cops, and how this should go, so I won't add to the flames, but stay safe everyone, I don't think this is going to end anytime soon.

[stone monkey]

Mezla PigDog, on 08 June 2020 - 09:26 PM, said:

It's such a strange time in the UK right now. I just watched a drama about the Windrush Scandal and I think if I was black I might have set fire to something this evening.

Small personal note from the Windrush thing. My mother is one of the Windrush generation. She was well and truly covered by the appropriate legislation - she came to the UK in '67 and has never left. When this whole "Hostile Environment" thing kicked off it scared the living daylights out of her, so she applied for naturalisation and British Citizenship, as was unequivocally her right. It eventually took over two years, which was quicker than average according to her solicitor. As part of the process not only did they demand, records from every job she's ever had (which, given she worked for the NHS, they could have requested themselves), and my complete medical records (I was born in '69, i.e. before the cut-off date in '72) to prove her continuous residency as my parent. To cap it off, the Home Office also demanded the medical records and Death Certificates of my two dead sisters (who died in the early 70s as babies). Just to twist the knife I suspect.

Her solicitor was absolutely livid, and has applied for compensation through the scheme... And we all know how that has gone - tens of millions of pounds put aside, hundreds of thousands of pounds actually paid out. If I thought hell existed, I would assume there would be a special place there for Theresa May.

My own take on the Windrush Scandal is that the Home Office senior leadership thought it would be a quick win. None of these people were hard to find, most of them were old, almost all of them were black; they could brag about their deportation figures and assume no one would care about the people involved.

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 21 June 2020 - 06:12 PM

[Mezla PigDog]

God that's just awful. I completely agree. I saw a basic Twitter thread about it and your average white person was saying "Ok it was wrong but it was an admin error ". As if the filters on some admin search had been set wrong and it's not anyone's actual fault. The worst thing is that they are probably right but that's the whole point of systemic racism that they can't remotely visualise.

I've been thinking a lot about how to articulate that the white working class and the black journey in Britain are so similar. Just the white version isn't prefaced with such a massive amount of intergenerational trauma. But they are struggles on the same spectrum, you needed a version of slaves on both trans Atlantic bits of the cotton trade. White working class people just have less toxic baggage on it than black ones. If only we could find a way to bring the fights together because they are the same fight, just deeper on the black side.

"Just". Ha. There's no right way to articulate it.

This post has been edited by Mezla PigDog: 21 June 2020 - 06:22 PM

[stone monkey]

I've been a Civil Servant for over 20 years now, I know how these things work; someone ordered them to do it that way. Outside senior leadership, no one is allowed to make these kinds of decisions. I suspect the idea came from some bright spark SPAD who got out a spreadsheet, optimised it, did a quick Cost/Benefit analysis, and then sold it to the higher ups. It would not surprise me at all if it had gone all the way to the Minister herself (a surprising number of things do) for sign off.

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 21 June 2020 - 06:36 PM

[Morgoth]

stone monkey, on 21 June 2020 - 06:33 PM, said:

I've been a Civil Servant for over 20 years now, I know how these things work; someone ordered them to do it that way. Outside senior leadership, no one is allowed to make these kinds of decisions. I suspect the idea came from some bright spark SPAD who got out a spreadsheet, optimised it, did a quick Cost/Benefit analysis, and then sold it to the higher ups. It would not surprise me at all if it had gone all the way to the Minister herself (a surprising number of things do) for sign off.

If the UK bureaucracy is remotely similar to the Norwegian one, I agree completely. Here too unjust treatment has been hand waved as systemic errors, though anyone who's worked within the system for just a little knows that such major changes do not happen without the direction or the approval of the higher ups.

[Tiste Simeon]

Ah Candace "Hitler is to be admired" Owens. Not watching her nonsense.

[QuickTidal]

Tiste Simeon, on 23 June 2020 - 05:52 PM, said:

Ah Candace "Hitler is to be admired" Owens. Not watching her nonsense.

Agreed. She's an utter bag of unsalvageable shit. Every word out of her mouth is vile.

[Macros]

Reading it maybe, but watching it on YouTube for its duration gives her more hits, makes it more popular, exposes more people to her garbage, and some of them will be impressionable fuckwits that will agree that 'hitler is to be admired'

So yes, do expose yourself to what the other side is saying, to see what idiotic beliefs are out there, but if possible do it in a way that gives them no benefit or pushes their agenda further into mainstream

[Mezla PigDog]

stone monkey, on 21 June 2020 - 06:33 PM, said:

I've been a Civil Servant for over 20 years now, I know how these things work; someone ordered them to do it that way. Outside senior leadership, no one is allowed to make these kinds of decisions. I suspect the idea came from some bright spark SPAD who got out a spreadsheet, optimised it, did a quick Cost/Benefit analysis, and then sold it to the higher ups. It would not surprise me at all if it had gone all the way to the Minister herself (a surprising number of things do) for sign off.

Dumb Oxbridge SPAD at that. It's just beyond words annoying the way this stupid country works. Barack Obama said after Trump won that the arc of progress will always go in the right direction. Somehow the arc in this country is the bumbling upper classes win out despite all the evidence of gross incompetence as basic humans.

[Tsundoku]

Mezla PigDog, on 24 June 2020 - 06:07 AM, said:

stone monkey, on 21 June 2020 - 06:33 PM, said:

I've been a Civil Servant for over 20 years now, I know how these things work; someone ordered them to do it that way. Outside senior leadership, no one is allowed to make these kinds of decisions. I suspect the idea came from some bright spark SPAD who got out a spreadsheet, optimised it, did a quick Cost/Benefit analysis, and then sold it to the higher ups. It would not surprise me at all if it had gone all the way to the Minister herself (a surprising number of things do) for sign off.

Dumb Oxbridge SPAD at that. It's just beyond words annoying the way this stupid country works. Barack Obama said after Trump won that the arc of progress will always go in the right direction. Somehow the arc in this country is the bumbling upper classes win out despite all the evidence of gross incompetence as basic humans.

Ridiculous amounts of money and a thousand-year inculcation in the other classes of obsequious forelock-tugging always act as padding for these people, insulating them from the consequences of their actions. Not so the other classes though, they cop the full brunt.

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 24 June 2020 - 07:22 AM

[Primateus]

https://twitter.com/...303218503569414

Damn, I don't know how to properly imbed twitter, but this is gold!

This post has been edited by Primateus: 26 June 2020 - 12:34 PM

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Primateus, on 26 June 2020 - 12:33 PM, said:

https://twitter.com/...303218503569414

Damn, I don't know how to properly imbed twitter, but this is gold!

https://www.twitter....303218503569414

Working link

[Malankazooie]

Colorado reexamines Elijah McClain's death in police custody

Is injecting sedatives a common practice? I've never heard of that.