i read this and think, well small wonder Christianity persisted all this time. the baseline level of suffering they endured is something most of us reading this will never know in our lifetimes, if we’re lucky. (though the hounds of climate change howl outside our doors)
skies go dark, plagues. it’s literally biblical. what comfort could anyone turn to when it seemed like the very land and sky around them wanted them dead? Must have been terrifying on some level to feel God in nature all around you and it was so hostile.
and just think of the psychic trauma that gets passed down the generations from that. How it shaped society. How it maybe helped religion take hold. People have seen in their lifetimes, or their parents, grandparents and so on have seen in theirs, the terror of biblical plagues. So you want to do right by your God.
Mhm. Tough times drive you to a strong trust in whatever authority you think can keep you safe. The Church, the State, the Academy, the Army, your Tribe etc. I can only speculate that a person who truly believes nothing can save them will be driven into profound despair, limping along between sessions of something like excessive fantasy or drug use to cope.
You could at least say we have made material progress, but as one of the millennial generation.
I have already seen like 3 major economic crashes, the west devolving into neo feudalism with how much house prices and rent has skyrocketed.
We are now living through what would have been a plague like situation, if it wasn't for the technological progress we made.
Imaging not knowing what we know today yeah people would have said God has forsaken us,
what sins have we done to receive the wrath of God.
if you haven't read Immanuel Velikovsky, you should. start with "Worlds in Collision". he talks about this exact phenomenon.
disclaimer: his work is widely cited as pseudoscience. it's a good read if you're looking for entertainment value, but try not to take it too seriously :)
The Hekla-3 eruption likely ended the Bronze Age c. 1100 BC, wiping out 95% of all Mediterranean cities. The first crop failure was bad enough, but the second year's starved almost everybody.
Note that all societies were very religious (superstitious) whether Aztec, Mayan, Mediterranean or African.
Christianity largely grew after the Byzantine Roman Emperor, Constantine, converted around AD 312.
(The Roman Empire was so large that it had two capitals, Rome in the west, and Constantinople (Byzantium) in the east. The latter became Istanbul in AD 1453.)
Ah yes let’s get bogged down in silly “rationalism” like this. Because of course before you can determine whether they under- or over-use force, you need to determine the _proper_ level of force in each circumstance. And let me tell you it’s going to depend case-by-case! And gosh since it’s so hairy to determine whether something was over- or under-use of force, let’s just broadly leave it up to the officers’ discretion.
Lol. This is exactly how white supremacy & other power structures reinforce themselves
All this presupposes race is the dominant factor. Sure, it is almost certainly a present trait, but it's rather relevant to identify it as a causative factor.
If profiling blacks is an inappropriate means to discern likelihood of criminality, so too is profiling whites as a means to discern likelihood of over-forced policing.
But everyone is so stuck on the "our side vs your side" nobody seems to remember that skin color determines literally nothing about behavior.
The following traits are almost certainly far more meaningful than skin color:
- age
- gender
- upbringing
- culture
- economic status
- social status
Of course, people will argue that members of groups with particular skin colors generalize to certain tendencies in some of these traits. But that's about as useful as saying "fat is bad for you" or "germs are bad".
Well, yeah, in some instances. But if you treat everything with the nuance of a brick hitting a fly, you're gonna miss the actually important distinctions that could lead to meaningful change.
Sorry, but all this "black vs white" garbage is a load of unscientific, unhelpful, tribalistic hogwash. How about if anyone actually cares, we stop enabling the baloney racial characterizations?
Because the genetics and generalizations are utterly idiotic and useless.
I don't even know what "under-use of force" means as a credible measure of... I don't eve know, but apparently they may have not been using enough force
Never fails IME people who say they favor “limited government” really mean “government for thee, not for me.” They want laws enforced, sure, but mostly just the ones about keeping the rabble from getting in the way of the fReE mArKeT.
It’s painfully obvious to me, now, after everything, that pursuing a “limited government” requires making it harder for certain groups to vote and gerrymandering. Can’t have the rabble voting in their own welfare; that means higher tax rates on top earners —- aka “getting in the way of the fReE mArKeT” —- to pay for it.
It’s the inevitable conclusion, as we are seeing in the United States.
No, when I say "limited government" I mean just that. A government that has certain powers, but not others.
This is not just about enforcement of laws, it's about which laws are allowed to exist in the first place, and about government procedures adhering to those laws.
To give you concrete examples:
* I don't think "the government" (broadly defined) should have the power to stick some poor kid in Riker's Island for a few years while they think about getting around to trying them on a trumped-up charge.
* I feel like there is significant value in a number of protections enshrined in the US constitution (starting with the prohibition on ex post facto laws, as a pretty major one).
* I feel that asset forfeiture is a complete travesty and should never have been allowed under any sort of "limited government" approach.
That sort of thing. Of course then we have to have some debate about which powers governments should or should not have. And revisit that every so often as the situation (society, world power balance, technology) changes. But we should revisit it in a reasonable way, where everyone is clear that we are revisiting it, instead of the government just grabbing more power for itself unilaterally, whether it's through abuse of executive orders, pretending like everything is "interstate commerce", setting up secret courts, doing parallel construction, passing unconstitutional legislation and hoping no one notices, or whatever other things various governments in the US have tried over the last century or two.
This is sarcasm, right? There haven't been this many broad-as-daylight examples of "Laws for thee and not for me" than the authoritarian, wanna-be tiny-emperor governors and mayors, and representatives of a certain political ideology all across the country with their draconian, unscientific lockdowns.
> It’s painfully obvious to me, now, after everything, that pursuing a “limited government” requires making it harder for certain groups to vote and gerrymandering.
You have been reading way too much propaganda. First of all, Gerrymandering is enjoyed by each side of our ruling class. So that invalidates the rest of your nonsensical point.
one "certain political ideology" stormed the capitol and murdered a police officer. maybe you saw it, it was led by a centaur furry right through them beating a cop to death on the steps of the capitol building. But sure, yeah, absolutely, it's the libs who are destroying america. Give me a break.
You're not a serious person. Go back to qanon or whatever new conspiracy theories you "liberatarians" are on to next.
edit: But since you're obviously struggling with a social life, I'll give you some help.
> I can't get people I am close with to even consider engaging in conversations about firmly held beliefs they have if I even remotely present myself as possibly holding a different opinion.
Yeah because you're an annoying asshole my guy. All you do is cast yourself as the victim. Gee whiz I wonder if you're a mediocre white-passing guy in tech, it's really a whole mystery. Have fun responding, I'll see you in 6 months when I check this account again.
Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, et all all called for similar insurrections during their favorite completely debunked conspiracy theory that we've heard about incessantly for the last 4 years. When businesses were being burned and looted during the summer, and 24 people died, they complicity supported it, and used it as an opportunity to advanced their political talking points, and attack their political foes.
This comment expressing support & encouragement for state-sanctioned violence against its citizens is authoritarian propaganda employing classist and racist tropes.
The suicide rate measures death from mental illness. The death rate from mental illness has been steadily increasing. Therefore we are doing a bad job at treating and preventing mental illness. What other statistic would you like to use to measure how good of a job the mental health profession is doing? There have been several prominent speeches from professionals in the field who don't handwave away problems talking about the need for more analysis of what's gone wrong.
Literally every individual thing you wrote is wrong.
1. Suicide rate doesn’t “measure death from mental illness.”
2. The suicide rate isn’t “the death rate from mental illness.” (See #1)
3. What do you even mean by “we are doing a bad job”? Who is “we” there? Also, this “conclusion” you’re drawing is supported only by nonsense predicates (see #1 & #2).
4. The “mental health profession” isn’t responsible for moderating the suicide rate. Also literally every mention you make of “mental health profession” is fallacious because the suicide rate is not an actual metric for evaluating the efficacy of the “mental health profession”, so even addressing anything you’re saying about “measuring how good of a job the mental health profession is doing” would be legitimizing a nonsensical claim. This one covers how pretty much everything else you wrote here is wrong.
You just say the first proposition is false without any reasoning to back up why and without providing any better alternative. You're sticking your head in the sand and trying to ignore the problem by saying ignorance is better than any empirical approach to measuring the quality of the mental health profession.
It seems, by failing to provide any alternative, that you're saying that it is impossible to measure the effectiveness of the mental health profession as a whole? This decline is similar to how the economics profession has concluded that it is impossible to measure the success of any economic policy vs. any other because of all the confounding factors as Paul Romer has commented on extensively. This leads to methodological poverty. You can make up whatever policy or treatment you want. It's as good as any other whether it causes people to kill themselves at a higher rate or not or leads to lower or higher economic performance. It's all the same without metrics.
You’re ignoring the material conditions of people since 2000. The steady decline of that is more likely to do with suicide rates than failures of psychiatry.
While it might be valid to frame suicide as death from mental illness, how can you say that the death rate from mental illness has been increasing when we don't even really know the size of the population with mental illness. A lot of mental illness goes unrecognized.
I would argue that the problem is in recognizing mental illness and connecting those affected to the appropriate mental health professionals.
> If you send a mental health professional to all sorts of situations, their solutions will be mental health related (medication, treatment, commitment, etc...).
> If you send a cop, their solutions will involve the criminal justice system (citation, fines, arrest, jail time, etc...).
The fact you list both of these out then say policing is the one with a "long history of strong checks and balances" (what does this even mean?) is appalling. It reads like authoritarian propaganda.
You're taking the classist and racist position, that force employed by agents of the state should be deployed against the poor & otherwise marginalized to prevent them from being a "burden to society." Also that employing people who are tasked with _helping_ instead of _enforcing laws_ should NOT be allowed to do that.
To be clear, you're not really making any falsifiable claims. It's just an endless appeal to emotion. "a long history of strong checks and balances and improving itself over time" is a bold claim about municipal agencies with their own regulations, city, and state laws to adhere to. Not to mention different missions, run by different organizations with different lines of reporting. Totally different cultures, etc. It's so vague but that's the beauty of it: you can make it mean whatever you want under scrutiny.
Of course I know about the Cole. But this was not a bomb. There's a pretty clear difference in frequency of ships bombed in port vs ones that simply catch fire. The whole point of terrorism is to create a public spectacle and take credit for it.
And of course, now we've shifted the goal posts yet again from "It was China!" to "It was terrorist!" with none of this changes in belief motivated by new information or evidence.
If the fire was in control it wouldn’t still be burning. This isn’t a forest fire where controlled burns can keep smoldering for days. If the fire was in control it wouldn’t still be burning.
edit: Downvote all you want but if the fire was in control it wouldn’t still be burning.
Halon being tagged out wouldn't have influenced the outcome here. Lower V is not Halon protected. MMR1 below it is, but not V. The next closest Halon compartment would have been FWD EDG, which would have been beyond too late once the fire reached it. The AFFF system would have made short work of the fire, had it not been tagged out / in IEM -- definitely affected the fire attack.
I did two years on Iwo, and BZ to the Bonny crew. They did all they could have with those fire trees with plastic nozzles until help arrived.
BTW were you aboard the Iwo in 2005? I was a Marine deployed w/ SPMAGTF Katrina down there and we got “evacuated” on the Iwo Jima when another hurricane was bearing down on the area. It was a Marine battalion along with a lot of civilians. Don’t remember how long I was aboard but a few days certainly, before disembarking in norfolk or somewhere thereabouts.
I understand that, but why is a 23-year old ship considered old? USS Nimitz is nearing 50 years old. Wikipedia [1] lists a bunch of ships built in the 70s and 80s. USS Bonhomme Richard appears to be newer than half the ships there.
It’s not. Commenters on HN know jack shit about this topic but love commenting like they have any idea. It’s the thing HN is most known-for: non-experts speaking out of their ass with top-tier confidence.
Edit: it’s not even halfway through its projected lifecycle.
Well. Given that I've planned and rehearsed operations with this exact ship, I'll stand by my comment - this ship and its guts are hardly new. In colloquial terms - "old."
It’s not old. It’s not new. Wasp classes have a half-century lifespan. It’s one of the newest Wasp classes to be commissioned. You still have plankholders on active duty. By ship standards this is not an old ship.
skies go dark, plagues. it’s literally biblical. what comfort could anyone turn to when it seemed like the very land and sky around them wanted them dead? Must have been terrifying on some level to feel God in nature all around you and it was so hostile.
and just think of the psychic trauma that gets passed down the generations from that. How it shaped society. How it maybe helped religion take hold. People have seen in their lifetimes, or their parents, grandparents and so on have seen in theirs, the terror of biblical plagues. So you want to do right by your God.
small wonder indeed.