On Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic.net:
Minneapolis police have flouted reforms.
“[P]olice union boss Lt Bob Kroll kept his job even after he showed up for work with a white power badge on his uniform.”
And Amy Klobuchar declined to prosecute Derek Chauvin when she was the city’s top proseecutor, “giving him license to commit a string of crimes that culminated in the daylight murder of George Floyd”
I slept in this morning, woke up a few minutes before 10 am and found my phone was lit up with messages from local friends. Last night there was looting and vandalism in La Mesa Village, about 2.5 miles from where we live.
La Mesa, where we live, is a suburb of San Diego, about a dozen miles inland from the beaches. La Mesa Village is a few blocks of restaurants and antique stores and such. The village is the kind of place where you go for brunch on Sunday, followed by a stroll and some window-shopping. Lately it’s gone upscale, with some fancy restaurants.
A few days ago, a video went viral of an African-American man, Amaurie Johnson, 23, getting arrested and apparently subject to police bullying at the Grossmont Trolley Station on Fletcher Parkway here in La Mesa, within walking distance of the Village. From the news:
The nearly six-minute video shows a heated verbal exchange between Johnson and the officer. It also shows the officer forcefully push Johnson into a sitting position onto a nearby bench.
Johnson told 10News at no point did he resist or assault anyone.
“I feel as though people that look like me, um, feel the same way I do and we’re tired of it. We’re tired of having to deal with stuff like that,” he said.
Johnson said he was cited with assaulting an officer and resisting arrest.
More background here:
www.sandiegoville.com/2020/05/v…
Elsewhere, I’ve seen a long video of Johnson being interviewed by a news reporter. The video I saw is not the news video; it’s a video of the interview shot by another camera. Johnson is sitting in the driver’s seat of a car, with a phone propped up on the steering wheel. We can see him videochatting with a news reporter on the phone. The video I saw was shot from the passenger seat.
Johnson tells a compelling, articulate story that he was just standing around the transit center waiting to meet some friends, when the cop started hassling him for no good reason. I find Johnson’s story believable —. with the qualification that we don’t know what happened before the video altercation with the cop started.
Yes, I know, “we don’t know what happened before the video started” is a thing racists say. Racists say all kinds of bullshit. I’m just saying I want to hear the officer’s story, and hear from the several witnesses to the incident, before making any final conclusions.
Coming on the heels of the apparent murder by police of George Floyd in Minneapolis just prior, this incident got a lot of attention.
Yesterday, demonstrators started outside the La Mesa Police Department, and later closed off the highway. We could hear the action from the house – police loudspeakers saying “KEEP THE SHOULDER CLEAR,” etc. I took Minnie out for a walk anyway, and then went out myself for the second, solo part of the walk.
Since the pandemic started, I’ve been limiting my walk to a few loops around the neighborhood. The entire neighborhood is on the side of a hill, and I can see the highway from a couple of points along the walk. This was late afternoon; the traffic was moving smoothly on the highway going west, toward San Diego, but stopped going east, inland. I saw more cars than you would expect to see that time of day; I expect they were getting off the highway and traveling on surface streets instead.
I also saw about a dozen people on motor scooters, where I’d usually see only a couple of those every month. Some of them were moving in groups of two or three. I’m pretty sure they were all white people, for what it’s worth. I surmised at the time that they were demonstrators.
It seems to me that if you’re going to a demonstration, and planning to shut down the roads, or at least expect the roads might be shut down, then scooters are a good way to go in and out. From that I surmise this was not their first demonstration. They knew what they were dong.
From what I’m told on message threads from friends – I still haven’t checked the news, or social media, or left the house yet – vandalism and looting started in La Mesa Village after the demonstrations broke up. La Mesa Village is 2.5 miles from where we live. We were oblivious. We watched a movie in the living room last night. The windows were open, and we can hear the highway from the living room when the windows are open. The highway sounded particularly loud last night. We assumed that was just Saturday night. Then we went to bed.
So that’s what I know so far. Everything is fine here for us personally. House is fine – as far as I know; like I said, we haven’t been outside yet. Julie and I and the animals are fine. Later today I’ll go out and see if I can see anything around the neighborhood, or if the neighbors know anything.
And that’s the day so far. I’ve been awake nearly two hours and still haven’t finished my coffee. How is your day?
Look, we all have the right to protest, but that doesn’t mean you can just rush in and destroy any business without gathering a group of clandestine investors to purchase it at a severely reduced price and slowly bleed it to death…. It’s disgusting to put workers at risk by looting. You do it by chipping away at their health benefits and eventually laying them off.
ThreadReaderApp now has beta support for the Micropub Spec so you can publish Twitter threads directly to your blog boffosocko.com/2020/05/2…
Very cool!
Gali Beeri is 37 and works as an executive assistant. Joshua Boliver is 42 and creates visual effects for movies. They both live in New York City and met at a dance class in March, as the city was preparing to lock down. At the time, they made the unlikely decision to quarantine together — after their first date.
What a lovely story.
US anti-vaxxers aim to spread fear over future coronavirus vaccine. A dangerously large numbers of Americans are already reluctant to take an anti-covid vaccine. www.theguardian.com/world/202…
Norway and Denmark say they will reopen tourism between their two countries soon, but will maintain restrictions for Swedes.
Sweden did not impose a lockdown, unlike its Nordic neighbours, and its Covid-19 death toll - above 4,000 - is by far the highest in Scandinavia.
David Pell on NextDraft:
Remember, this is a guy who ran on Birtherism and walls, and has led with Muslim bans, kids in cages, very fine people on both sides, shithole countries, and political enemies described as human scum. When the looting starts, the shooting starts is the brand he ran on and won on in 2016.
I don’t have any useful judgment to share for or against the rioters in Minneapolis. I understand why they are doing it. George Floyd seems to be only the spark that ignited the fire.
I’ve seen discussion that you needed both Martin Luther King AND race riots to achieve the gains of the 60s. King said, look, black people just want equality. They want to live in the suburbs and mow the lawn and have barbecues on weekends and complain about work and how lousy the home team is playing and bring cookies to PTA meetings and do all those other things white people do.
And the riots said: You can have that, America … or you can have this.
Frederick Douglass:
Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Shared privately by a friend, who adds: “Today we are finding out just what those limits are in the Twin Cities.”
Ian Welsh:
… academic research shows that riots are actually an effective way to protest. They get results pretty often. The riot was justified and the looting is part of what happens in riots. As long as America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, an oppressed minority kept down with violence and in poverty, and locks up black men at a ferocious rate, riots will happen because people hate being treated like shit.
My sympathies here are with the protesters primarily, though small shop owners who are looted are also victims. This mess can be stopped any time by arresting Chauvin, so having it happen is a choice. No justice, no peace.
Note: If you’re protesting in Minneapolis, remember to wear a mask so you don’t get killed afterwards like Ferguson protestors AND don’t carry your goddamn phone. Don’t take pics of each other either, nor wear real distinctive clothes. It’s AFTER that matters. The cops will hunt you down if they can figure out who you are.
Ian Welsh:
… academic research shows that riots are actually an effective way to protest. They get results pretty often. The riot was justified and the looting is part of what happens in riots. As long as America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, an oppressed minority kept down with violence and in poverty, and locks up black men at a ferocious rate, riots will happen because people hate being treated like shit.
My sympathies here are with the protesters primarily, though small shop owners who are looted are also victims. This mess can be stopped any time by arresting Chauvin, so having it happen is a choice. No justice, no peace.
Note: If you’re protesting in Minneapolis, remember to wear a mask so you don’t get killed afterwards like Ferguson protestors AND don’t carry your goddamn phone. Don’t take pics of each other either, nor wear real distinctive clothes. It’s AFTER that matters. The cops will hunt you down if they can figure out who you are.
Cuomo is legalizing nursing-home murders. He signed a bill granting immunity for execs who cut corners, even when it kills someone.
The New York law is “one of the most expansive immunity rules in the country…. It’s a license to commit negligent homicide, and it was buried deep in Cuomo’s budget.”
Lobbyists claim that the rule was needed to shield frontline workers from liability for circumstances beyond their control – but there are plenty of states that have that rule, _without_ protecting the execs who _do_ have control over those circumstances.
The Greater New York Hospital Association claimed credit for the bill. The association donated $1.25 million to the Cuomo campaign. All told, the health industry spent $98 million lobbying state politicians across America.
Local “news” broadcasters ran a video press release from Amazon.
[The] “news report” was an unpaid scripted ad that Amazon distributed to local stations across America via Businesswire, which the newscasters then picked up and ran, verbatim, as if it was an independent investigation.
“Some stations’ news directors said they weren’t told the story came from Amazon.” That’s just plain bullshit. The video came from Businesswire, which does nothing but run corporate press releases.
Also, it reads like a corporate blog post. Anybody could spot it as a puff job billions of miles away.
The video compilation is striking: youtu.be/x6U2Un5kE…
Bezos runs The Washington Post, which we’re supposed to trust.
Gun nuts are running photos of themselves pointing their guns at their dicks, unsafetied, with their fingers on the triggers. It’s being done to ridicule responsible gun owners. The people doing the gun-dick-pointing are called “Fudds,” while the responsible gun owners are “normies.”
”Pointing a gun at your own dick” is normie shorthand for the kind of idiotic thing a Fudd might do, so the Fudds concretized the metaphor, by pointing their guns at their own dicks.
But, as [journalist Matthew] Gault points out: “When you ironically point a gun at your dick, you’re still pointing a gun at your dick.”
“California is setting itself up for a brutal second wave”
The second wave of the 1918 flu was far worse than the first. People, buoyed up by the apparent success of their quarantines, flooded into public spaces, triggering a wave that hit a world whose medical staff and resources were in tatters.
Sound familiar?
Teardown of a USB stick that supposedly protects you from that evil 5G
As a fan of science fiction technobabble, I admire this bullshit even as I deplore the ripoff:
The manufacturer claims it “provides protection for your home and family, thanks to the wearable holographic nano-layer catalyser, which can be worn or placed near to a smartphone or any other electrical, radiation or EMF emitting device”.
But wait, it gets better!
”Through a process of quantum oscillation, the 5GBioShield USB key balances and re-harmonises the disturbing frequencies arising from the electric fog induced by devices, such as laptops, cordless phones, wi-fi, tablets, et cetera.”
According to [the vendor’s] website, Klotho Formula’s competitive edge is a “proprietary procedure that leads to relativistic time dilation and biological quantum entanglement at the DNA level.”
Wow!
Corporate Dems include military contractors in the bailout.
The HEROES Act, drafted by Congressional Democrats will never make it through the GOP-controlled Senate, but it’s not useless. It is a symbolic gesture, meant to explain to us what Pelosi’s Democratic Party stands for.
That’s why it bails out corporate lobbyists….
And it’s why the bill has a clause that bails out US military contractors for lost federal contracting revenue, executive salaries, and marketing and sales expenses.
Also: “Wisconsin cases surge after voting day”
Reopening too soon: Lessons from the deadly second wave of the 1918 flu pandemic for the coronavirus era www.washingtonpost.com/history/2…
‘The price you pay’: Sweden struggles with ‘herd immunity’ experiment www.sfgate.com/science/a…
Sweden stayed open, and its death toll is far higher than its neighbors.
Angel, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff, is the perfect show for 2020 www.vox.com/culture/2…)
Why Is 3sYqo15hiL Such A Popular Password? I assumed it was a mnemonic for some phrase. But it’s not that. www.forbes.com/sites/dav…
Ezra Klein interviews Mariana Mazzucato, aka “the world’s scariest economist… on a mission to save capitalism from itself.” podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcas…
After listening to this podcast i wonder whether one of the US’s fundamental problems is that we don’t have a sense of national purpose, and therefore don’t know what role government should play.
In the 19th Century, our national purpose was manifest destiny, conquering the continent. In much of the 20th Century, our national purpose was defeating the Soviet Union.
As national purposes go, they had problems. You might want to ask a Native American about what they think of manifest destiny. Or find anybody who’s been tortured by one of the dictators we supported, and ask them what they think of the Cold War. But, still, these were national purposes and they united much of the citizenry.
Now, the US has no national purpose. It seems that the only thing that most of us can agree on is making money is good, so society and government has been structured around the markets and profit. But I think many people would agree that a life spent primarily pursuing profit is no life at all.
Here come the shownotes:
The Times of London called Mariana Mazzucato “the world’s scariest economist.” Quartz describes her as “on a mission to save capitalism from itself.” Wired says she has “a plan to fix capitalism,” and warns that “it’s time we all listened.
”Mazuccato is an economist at University College London and Founder and Director of UCL’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. She’s the author of The Entrepreneurial State and The Value of Everything — two books that, together, critique some of the most fundamental economic assumptions of our time, and try and chart a different path forward.
This is a moment that demands critique. The workers who are being called “essential” now were treated as disposable before — paid low wages, offered little respect. The difference between states with innovative, capable public sectors and states where government agencies have been dismissed and defunded is on terrible display.
The debates Mazzucato has been trying to open for years are now unavoidable. So let’s have them.
Brookfield Illinois, Grand Ave and Prairie 1953 and now
Via https://www.reddit.com/r/OldPhot…
How Felix Kjellberg, aka PewDiePie, became the biggest YouTuber in the world, and got in trouble by making jokes about being a Nazi. www.nytimes.com/2020/05/1…
I just assume anybody who jokes about being a Nazi is, in fact, a Nazi. Makes life simpler that way.
Women’s clothing is flamboyant, but men’s clothing is relatively uniform. Particularly in suits, differences between men’s styles are subtle – details of a buttonhole, or a notch in the lapel.
That wasn’t always the case. Until 200 years ago, men’s fashions were just as flamboyant as women’s. One man changed that: Beau Brummel. His influence on men’s fashion still dominates today, the way Darwin dominates biology.
99percentinvisible.org/episode/s…
I take a greater interest in men’s style than you’d think to look at how I dress.
Can the Postal Service Survive the Pandemic? The President and Republican Congress hate the Postal Service, but Americans – including Republicans – love it. www.nytimes.com/2020/05/2…
First Hong Kong, Then The World: While most of the world was distracted by the pandemic, China unveiled a law to strip Hong Kong of its autonomy, setting off a new wave of protests in the city – Today, Explained player.fm/series/to…
We watched an episode of “Deadwater Fell,” a murder story set in a small town in Scotland, starring David Tennant, who was formerly Doctor Who, as well as actress Cush Trumbo, who stars on “The Good Fight” in the US with an American accent (it still amazes me when Brits do that).
Description from the IMDB: “When a seemingly perfect and happy family is murdered by someone they knew and trusted, cracks appear on the surface of a supposedly idyllic community.” www.imdb.com/title/tt9…
If that sounds like “Broadchurch,” well, it’s very similar, but now it’s not just a single child being murdered, it’s two or three children and the mother too. So it’s even more depressing than “Broadchurch.” I don’t think we’ll be watching another episode.