Great thread.
my bestie was a code writer for amazon’s servers until just recently. he said they standards for quality were nonexistent already, and that’s before the slop started.
this is the best part of my day.
good grief, thank you so much for these replies. christianity is the most derivative nonsense ever. it’s basically a theologian’s OG LLM.
if you’re ever wondering why it’s so hard to have a rational discussion with the MAGA crowd, this is what their news looks like:
baroque music. they had organs/harpsichords, so the crescendo of a piece didn’t get louder, it just got busier.
i hate it. calm the fuck down, bach. you’re stressing me out.
they’re going to bungle this whole election and the postmortem powerpoint will have slides like “why we lost the undecided vote” followed by “too left, too soon?”.
Colonists gonna colonize.
yeah, but they’re just doing the ol’ catholic priest shuffle with her. she’s not going away, she’s just getting new business cards.
i’m just asking questions here.
When I explain my atheism, I often say I find science to awe-inspiring and spiritual enough without needing to add g(G)od into the mix. we live in a miracle itself: the statistical improbability of life, let alone life as complex and self-aware as us. The universe is God.
a particularly Bluesky-flavored obnoxious reply is when you note a good thing a bad entity did (eg the 1992 apartheid referendum) and people are like "oh so you think apartheid was good? you support everything they ever did?? you want to hug and kiss the Sharpeville massacre???"
i have conversations in good faith or nothing. there are solutions out there and we often don’t disagree as much as we think we do. i think everyone in this thread wants the same thing, which i suspect is usually the case. thanks for having it with me. 💛
>> [Concerned troops] report the unrestricted euphoria of their commanders and command chains as to how this new “biblically-sanctioned” war is clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian “End Times”...
jonathanlarsen.substack.com/p/us-troops-...
remember when serious, intellectual, and qualified people in our government were the norm? souter wasn’t perfect, but we *knew* he understood and respected the power he held.
love this. yes.
wholesale agree to that. i just think that if we don’t try to rehab, reeducate, and offer help then we’re no better than the cops who wrote kids off wholesale because of their situations. catch the monsters early. screen regularly for instability. better training. more documentation/accountability.
i’m sure that was really, really heartbreaking and infuriating to experience. i’m sorry you went through that.
hey i have my cosmo license! not knocking them in the slightest!!! it’s serious business! i just think policing should be *at least* that lengthy. :)
i agree with the fact that police work is rarely traumatic, but i think the systems, culture, and internal pressures from the garbage environment most certainly aren’t helping them maintain humanity. i don’t feel like we disagree. i’m just saying that the answer also has to include *helping* them.
daft is a strong word. i feel like police work and social work should be equally rigorous educations.
also, i’m not saying cops should be *social workers*. i’m saying that part of their jobs should also include building communities up, not being solely a mechanism for punitive action.
agreed! as you’ll see by the rad discussion i had with the poster msdobalina.bsky.social here. i’d love for divestment from cops in general, but interested in anything that helps accountability, documentation, and the occasional good person in over their head.
agreed! but regular mandatory mental health check ups would increase documentation, which is always a good thing when trying to get rid of union-protected monsters.
not saying i have all the answers friend. us law enforcement is fucked. strict “active duty” hours, accountability, and routine assessments would help. social work reassignments when unfit.
depression/ptsd/+ are normal challenges to face, but they shouldn’t be on active duty while they have them.
i agree re: the toxic culture being both rampant and systemic. that said, *cosmetologists* have lengthier trainings than police in most states. i humbly feel someone authorized to shoot people should face at least as much training as the lady at supercuts.
also: i’m sorry you grew up around all that. truly. men are taught to be and rewarded for being dangerous and scary.
for me it’s a bit like gun control. do i wish we had zero shootings? of course! but that isn’t going to happen in this dipshit, gun-happy country, so how can we improve the situation? counseling, paper trails, and lots of red tape. this is a really good chat; thanks for having it with me. 💛
sure. and that’s a valid disagreement to have. but work-mandated counseling could give us a paper trail, better training could weed out some of the monsters. i like the idea of lawsuits being paid out of retirement or through personal liability coverage.
i hear you. i don’t like, support, or trust cops. i’ve long advocated for a massive transfer of police funding to social intervention and mental health support. that said, solutions have to start somewhere. i’m here for getting rid of the police…but until then, i’m here for things that could help.
respectfully, i don’t think my post discounted that awful men gravitate towards these jobs. i was just pointing out that the toxic culture, combined with insufficient training, low accountability, and nonexistent metal-health prioritization fucks even the few well intentioned ones. 🙏🏼
