Was happy to find out that ours wasn’t public facing and our network guys were fine with just shutting it off.

Fair point.

That was my gripe, too. Any one of them could have said, “I know it’s an awful regime, but I went to go give a lot of regular Saudis who live in an oppressive state a chance to laugh and have some real fun.” and I would have said, “You know, that’s fair.”, but for some reason not a single one of them did.

I just saw these replies now. You have a really good point about cops overseas. I like the UK model where most cops only have non-lethal weapons and they call in the cops with guns only when needed. I retract my point about cops in America needing guns. They don’t in all situations. Well said.

As for violence trumping everything, I just mean someone can walk up with a rifle and start demanding shit and if no one else in your society has a gun, well I guess that guy is in charge now. An egalitarian and peaceful society is always the way to go. Dumb shits with weapons can waltz in and fuck yo that whole thing if you don’t have a plan for that, though.

The one I see more often is “Democrat Party”. I don’t know if they’re insinuating that the party isn’t actually democratic, but in any case it’s weird and always seemed like another way to manipulate speech and signal who is in the in-group vs. the out-group.

I think it was in 2016. The Cubs won the World Series a week before Trump won the election. I blame a Cubs fan with a monkey’s paw or time machine.

These types of photos always do remind me of the fact that we live in an incredibly hostile universe. Helps me to appreciate how lucky we are to have this watery rock with a big bubble around it to live on.

It’s amazing the level of contempt for the average user most tech companies have these days.

1. This movement does need a better slogan. “Defund the police” doesn’t convey the idea properly.
2. This cartoon says “Disarm the police”, which is also terrible messaging and a straight up stupid idea. I wouldn’t work as a cop in this country without a gun.
3. Police of some kind will always be necessary. Violence and physical power trump everything else, which is why we need people who are allowed to use force on our behalf so that we can run our societies based on rules and not who is the best at violence. Our system allows the people to get together and collectively hire and fire the people that hire and fire the cops we interact with on the streets. I don’t know exactly how that got corrupted or how to fix it.
4. We need specific police reforms and the folks leading the groups pushing for these reforms need to work on their messaging so they don’t have people yelling and tweeting things out that make them look like idiots and turning people off. You’ll never win over the boot-lickers, but better messaging could be a game change overall.