guildwriter's comments

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_United_States_Senate_elec...

>The validity of the runoff election was challenged before the US Supreme Court due to allegations of election fraud, and in later years, testimony by parties involved indicated that widespread fraud occurred and that friendly political machines[3] produced the fraudulent votes needed for Johnson to have a numerical majority, in effect stealing the election.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_United_States_presidentia...

> Some, including Republican legislators and journalists, believed that Kennedy benefited from vote fraud from Mayor Richard Daley's powerful Chicago political machine. [12] Mayor Daley’s machine was known for "delivering whopping Democratic tallies by fair means and foul."[13] Republicans tried and failed to overturn the results at the time—as well as in ten other states.[13] Some journalists also later claimed that mobster Sam Giancana and his Chicago crime syndicate "played a role" in Kennedy's victory. [13] Nixon's campaign staff urged him to pursue recounts and challenge the validity of Kennedy's victory, however, Nixon gave a speech three days after the election stating that he would not contest the election.[14]

The largest problem with online dating is that there are no natural filters in place. Dating in meatspace means that oftentimes you mean people in contexts that help pre-screen them and give you an idea what you are dealing with (mutual friends, work, gym, hobby, etc.) Online dating strips that away and forces you to have to evaluate each person in person in order to have any clue if things may actually work out in a relationship. In this case, the important thing is to drive things to the first date and then take it from there.

(Technically I guess this is easier if all you're looking for is sex)

With a large pool of options it means that the entire game of "waiting for a couple of days to signal non-desperation" is a counter productive strategy. People constantly have potential people to meet. If you take too long to respond, it will signal disinterest or that you are ghosting them, and they will simply move on.

Note that none of this means "always make yourself available at all times". That will reek of desperation.

Yes you might be able to solve police misconduct by forcing them to turn on each other and report and aggressively as possible. You probably will utterly destroy any semblance of morale and group cohesion and won't have a functioning police force at the end. Yes, we could ban guns from the population. Except that would not only require a constitutional amendment, but also solve the logistical issues of tracking down guns while simultaneously solving the problem of an armed criminal element who now has a helpless population in a massive country where response times can be 20 mins or longer. Body cams will help, but even if people trust police, how does that solve the problem where being a drug dealer is probably the best opportunity you have in the inner city? And it goes on and on.

It's a similar issue to homelessness. It's a multivariate problem that requires many different targeted approaches to deal with the entire thing. People unfortunately tend to focus on their pet issue of choice and ignore the others. Worse yet, political interests often will try to shut down each other from getting funding in order to push their own cause du jour.

The parent poster was talking about how gangs become the law and order because of the lack of trust in police. I'm saying the issue is wider and deeper than that. If you read the article, it becomes clear that one of the large driving factors for these rappers is the notoriety and fame they get from doing this is oftentimes the only way they can feel significant. It's a way for them to get money, sex, notoriety. Maybe even a record deal so they can get the hell out of the place they are in. What kind of chances and opportunities does an inner city youth really have?

This notoriety can twist back in its own ways too: "The guy having the hardest time was Blaze. He seemed to be battling depression. At one point, after a shooting on a corner, he said to me, “Man, I’m so sick of this. I feel like a prisoner in my own neighborhood. I can’t go anywhere. I can’t go to my job because I don’t know if the opps will be there to come after me.” He was wallowing in how badly he wanted to be done with the gang life. He told me he wanted to move to California, but his reality felt inescapable to him. He started using PCP at an alarming rate. It was his way of coping. He became difficult to be around. He would stutter and trip over his words. His complexion got bad. His hygiene, too."

It's one hell of a life and not one that I could begin to imagine.

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/October-2016/Chic...

Drill rap, the music of Chicago's gangs, is ultra violent and serves as a method of calling out other crews and taunting them into a response. Thanks to Youtube, Soundcloud, and social media the spread of this music is now easier than ever. The threats that come from this music are often followed up on.

Why do they do it? As one rapper says: “If I wasn’t doing this, would you even be down here in the low incomes? Would you even care that I exist?” “You know, white people, Mexicans, bitches, those people don’t live the life, but they love hearing about it. People want the Chiraq stuff. They want a superthug ghetto man, and I’m giving that to them. I’m just playing my role.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...

This is probably the best there is that I know of and it only goes back 2-3 years. The federals don't have anything complete.

Inevitably it is the culture of the posting community and the adherence to that culture that allows for this kind of thoughtful posting to occur. Moderation is a fundamental requirement as well. I've seen many instances in large subreddits that experiment with relying on the upvote system that end in total failure. For a time the community policing works, and then the front page is dominated by low effort content and shit posting.

Maybe this is true on HN to some degree, but this is definitely not the case on reddit as a general rule. Here's an observation from an ex-mod of TIA:

At bigger sub sizes, unpopular opinions don't get that little bit of extra breathing time to justify themselves. Instead, the votes come in just too fast; circlejerks rise to the top immediately, while different ideas either get downvoted or simply ignored, languishing at the bottom of the comment section.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/3qjsga/what...

You can see this happen on all sorts of different subreddits where people who post thoughtful opinions that go against the current "meta" of the subreddit get down voted viciously no matter how correct they are. For visibility being first and being in tune with what the community wants to hear supersedes being right or being thoughtful. That's not to say that thoughtful and well written posts don't rise to the top. That's to say that the system frequently does not work this way at all. Especially on subreddits where the community is majority polarized in a certain direction.

Low effort content that incites a reaction is a hallmark of the upvote system and currently the only thing that I've seen curtail it is human moderation.

I firmly believe in the idea that the tools that we shape shape us in turn as we use them. I don't think it's a coincidence that we're seeing an greater upsurge in rancor as social media becomes more entrenched in our day to day lives. If a system rewards people for doing something, you can bet that people will adapt their thought processes to maximize their gains. Nuance is going to be the first thing jettisoned in a short format that rewards instant emotional gratification.

Geopolitics and ideology have to be considered hand in hand when making decisions at the scale that Roosevelt and Eisenhower did. Before Pearl Harbor, even though the general US populace knew what the Nazis were doing to some extent, even Lend-Lease was hugely controversial. It took a surprise attack on US soil to galvanize people into action. To me, I think survival of the US is a much easier sell as being the prime ideology. Everything else such as protection of rights and freedom were good partial truths. Otherwise things like the internment of the Japanese, rationing, censorship, propaganda, and so on become harder to explain.

Again, none of these encroachments take away from the rightness. I just think it's important to acknowledge that the ugly and the good and everything else can stand together all at once.

I think it's also worth mentioning that when I'm thinking of WW2, I'm also thinking of WW2 as a whole. Not just from a purely US centric perspective.

> "Sorry, but you're the one who is "forcing a narrative" here. You have defined the sides, such that all "sides" have crapped on human rights."

I consider my views to be Independent, not left, right, or center. I don't think things can be boiled down to two subjects easily as there are often many more considerations that need to be made when making a decision on what to do. If I did have to advocate a side, my side would be in the interest of trying to talk about things in as complete a manner as possible. That means I generally try to resist boiling things down to dualistic evaluations.

I'm not arguing that all sides have crapped on human rights and that somehow invalidates the good actions of the USA. I'm saying that what you claim to be the ideological basis of the war is untrue. Doesn't mean that the war wasn't necessary and a good thing. If anything I'd make the argument that we really messed up the post war and betrayed a lot of people who were looking to us for help. I still consider it rather ironic how Ho Chi Minh was originally a supporter of democratic instutions and a friend of the US, until he decided the independence of his people mattered a lot more.

I think I can understand why you went to the conclusion that you did, but I don't think you're arguing against what you think you are.

I don't know much about the subject but when I try to do a bunch of cursory searches, most of what I find are histories on alcoholism and the variety of treatment methods. As far as I know, before the crack cocaine epidemic, I don't think people really understood just how pernicious the problem of opiate addiction was. Doesn't excuse mass incarceration of black people, but I'm not sure people had any idea on how to actually approach the problem back then. I'm not sure we have a good approach even now.

It's also worth noting how small the problem with cocaine and other opiates was in the past. The crack cocaine epidemic was probably the first time the nation as a whole had to learn what this stuff actually was.

Erm, then why did we hand over Poland and other Eastern European states to the USSR? Why did we let France re-establish their colonies in French-Indochina and elsewhere?

You're dramatically oversimplifying things in order to make this some kind of cosmic fight between good and evil. Stop forcing a narrative by cutting out all the bits that get in the way.