It’s not about watching video, it’s about having to navigate a touchpad menu while driving. I was in a car share the other day that had a screen like that, and while driving on the highway, it changed itself from the navigation screen to tire pressure information, forcing the driver to exit that inane notification and navigate all the way back to the navigation screen, again, on the highway. It’s absolutely insane.
And cowardice bred from ignorance and stupidity. It’s not even that dangerous of a job comparatively. And many including myself believe it would be even less dangerous if they stopped arming themselves like they’re going to war.
It would be nice if counties stopped allowing them to buy armoured vehicles and … this is a big one … gave every one of them a psych eval prior to hiring.
They need a third party psychological deprogramming once per year. They’re hired and paid based on the fact that they won’t question the way they enforce laws and the tactics that they use.
Police forces are working exactly as intended. The reason they aren’t changing is because they protect the ruling class by intimidating the public. As long as the ruling class is protected, there will be no reason to fund psych evals; there will be no reason to hire decent human beings.
There’s a lot of things we need to do if we want police officers to remain armed.
Require officers to always patrol in doubles or more. (Many of the police involved shootings are panic shootings. A buddy who can help would reduce this.)
Require less than lethal force at least be attempted unless you’re already getting shot at. (Currently police can shoot you if you twitch wrong or just have an object in plain sight like a gun, knife, or cellphone. We know this because they’ve done it and had no reprecussions. So now they lose the shoot first privilege.)
Ban them from conducting traffic stops. Stand up an unarmed traffic specific force that doesn’t have the authority to arrest anyone or run warrants. They are specifically for civil traffic enforcement. (Many police involved shootings stem from stupid things like something hanging from the mirror or even just going 10 over the limit.) To be clear, you’d still need police officers for things like DUI. Felony speeding and such can be handled with cameras and actually taking cars away. Yes that’s harsh in the US, but see how fast people decide it’s not worth their car to go faster. (And yes speed is directly related to more accidents and fatalities in those accidents.)
Required marksmanship and tactical training. You don’t get to carry a gun you haven’t certified in and certification is a bit more intense than beer and bullets with your buddies at the range. If you want to tell us you’re constantly at war then bring in some combat infantry veterans to design your certification program. Something like 90% hit rate on random targets while your heart is in the cardio zone and someone is randomly setting off artillery simulators. Yes that’s well above what the Army or Marines officially requires but you keep telling us how highly trained you are and how dangerous your job is. Prove it with the drills we did before combat deployments.
Always on cameras with gunshot detectors. When the detector goes off it automatically starts uploading a feed to the ACLU. If your camera is conveniently blocked then not only do you not get qualified immunity but it’s also a sentence enhancement if you’re convicted and charges for destroying evidence.
We act like there’s a binary solution to the problem of police accountability. But it doesn’t have to be binary. The only unacceptable thing at this point is to continue allowing police to have all the power and none of the accountability.
This is a bullshit comment.
Dont get me wrong, im not saying they arent cowards or whatever, but only country where cops are lethally armed? Honey, thats not the reason your cops are snowflakes lol.
Here in my country cops wear guns as well (though in a holder that has to be at all times closed unless needed) yet here we are… With as good as 0 “accidental” deaths by cops.
Fair, that you didnt, I misread that part by the looks of it!
That said, i think my point stands that being armed has nothing to do with the issue. And before anyone calls me a gun loving guy, i dont like guns at all tbh
do you feel your every day police officer should require lethal armament at all times or do you possibly feel (as i clearly do) that other countries have proven this isnt a requirement?
i understand the functional difficulty in weapons control in a country where they are en-codified, but that doesnt mean we cant point out the vulgarity of these human killing devices.
it reminds me of a recent rick n morty episode where they couldnt physically stop people addicted to a thing, but they were able to completely dissuade their addiction by forcing them to see the grossness of their actions.
I feel like it all depends on the country, or even environment. If it is a hostile area they should be equipped to deal with it. However, with this i assume that the police and/or officer take full responsability IF things go bad. We are all humans, and mistakes can happen, but if a gun is pulled, it should be a very bad scenario and a last resort.
Like all things, i dont think its just black and white. Life aint like that
thats a great point. im talkin about the good ol u.s. here. ive worked with cops. most will tell you, you know how many times they use their weapons? never. most never fire shots on duty.
and its true, the stats bear out.. most united states police officers have never fired their weapon on duty.
The UK is the only Western country I know of where cops don’t normally carry a firearm. It’s a very distinctive feature of the UK police, not the default or something that makes the US stand out. Even in Scandinavia the cops armed.
The differences between the US and the rest of the developed world lie elsewhere, in a multitude of unaddressed systemic issues.
why else would this be one of the only countries where officers are lethally armed around the clock
Because it’s also the only country where many citizens are lethally armed around the clock I’d guess
If you stop a random person in traffic in Europe for routine control then it’s extremely unlikely that they have a gun in their car and even less likely that they will pull it on you.
If you are permanently having to think about scenarios where random people pull a gun on you because it’s not a very unlikely situation to happen then it’s not unreasonable to expect certain paranoia to start to form…
While the stats for “people killed by police” are always shown around I’d guess that the “police killed by citizens” also is much higher in the US.
Gun control is the only solution that even has a chance to remove this spiralling violence of trigger happy cops imho
I’d guess a police officer is seeing more than 50 random people a day though which makes it a daily occurrence to be in contact with people carrying which actually strengthens my point
You’d think at some point they’d adapt to the stress of such a situation (especially since they literally signed up for it, and ostensibly trained for it), so that they can handle it effectively without murdering others, though…
Soldiers fighting wars in hostile countries are (in theory) held to higher standards in this way.
A strong stock market is not a strong economy. The economy is the flow of money exchanging hands, which is down because people are paid less than ever compared to the cost of living. This leads to starvation.
Hahaha, if you think the stock market is strong at the moment you haven’t been paying attention. I would recommend spending a little time looking into what happened with gamestop in Jan 21 and why.
I often work in rural TX. I’ve had a number of Texans suggest I ought to move there, cause muh freedums. Yeah, I target shoot a little, but I’m lefty as hell. I talk about guns sometimes to deflect questions about my politics.
They are so full of themselves. They think because great grandpa was a cowboy that they inherit all his toughness. I don’t know how grandpa lived, but I know Texans today live mostly in air conditioning and love shopping, huge portions, and convenience. They’re fully convinced there is nowhere better on Earth. But no, I’ve been all over the Earth. TX sucks and I’d never move there.
Pretty much, I find it’s funny that it’s considered a Bastion of freedoms and a refuge away from the liberal policies of the world. When it actually is the state with the most human rights violations and the state where legally you actually have less personal freedom than any other state. I wouldn’t go to Texas even if you paid me, I wouldn’t go to Texas even if you could promise me a steak cooked on a propane grill by Hankster Hillington himself.
The thing is, if you think that way (“I would NEVER go to Texas”), then you’re not really better than Texas, because the only image you have of Texas is what you’ve read online or what people have told you.
I know that this will get buried in down votes, but I lived up and down the East Coast for the entirety of my childhood. I moved to Texas during my time in the military and fell in love. I’m wrapping up my degree now and honestly I don’t want to leave. Your judgemental view of a few Texans does not represent all or even the majority of them.
After living on the East Coast, I can tell you the people in Texas are far friendlier. Beyond that, the skies go on forever and they’re absolutely beautiful. I love the hiking and outdoors, I love the use of public land (Sam Houston National Forest, and several state parks). I really like diversity of culture, the Six Flags that flew over Texas each has left their mark on the state, as well as the immigrants that have moved here afterwards. The Mexican, German, and currently Asian immigrants to the state have each brought their own food and cultures as well. I love the arts scene in Austin and the way the performing arts are done at the high school level in the states. The major state marching band competitions are tremendous and I love how much everyone loves it. The only thing I dislike about Texas most of the time is the heat.
Look, I never said there was nothing to like about TX, or that everyone is awful. I don’t get jobs in Austin, or any of the major cities really. Guadalupe Mountains National Park is lovely and Big Bend is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.
But you know what I don’t like? Knowing full well that the instant I go mask off, and the small town locals realize I’m a gender-nonconforming, socialist, atheist, antifascist, who thinks Trump should be buried in the NYC sewer, it’s just possible all that fake friendliness might disappear, and I could soon need to defend myself against multiple assailants. Fortunately I blend well, but I was nearly assaulted down there just for wearing a mask during the height of COVID. Do you think I called the cops? I’m not much of a fighter. I’m a cuddly bear. People don’t usually mess with me. Maybe in cities people are cool. Maybe. I do not feel safe just being myself in most places, but especially not TX. Sure, there are lots of belligerent assholes in small towns across the country. I’ve been all over, but Texans go hard about it.
You see, they aren’t just the meanest gullible suckers in your state who might try to beat my ass or kill me; those are a dime a dozen. They are the people in your state with actual wealth and power. They are the cops. They are the judges. If I lose the fight I might die. What hell would unleash if I won? You think TX is a free state? Only if you consider punching down one of your basic freedoms. I can’t imagine what it’d be like if I wasn’t a white dude. If they wanna fight, they should fight as equals. Otherwise is just… Well, it sure ain’t tough.
I’m born and raised in the valley north of Sac. Moved to texas after freshman year of highschool and been here for almost 20 years. I married a texan and God damn if it isn’t difficult to extricate a texan from texas. She has since become a travelling surgical tech and is seeing the country. It took her a whole 2 contracts to be ready to move away from texas.
texas fuckin blows. The only people trying to stay here are the ones that have never left to see what’s out there.
As someone who falls into this category, yes I have a mortgage, yes I have kids, yes it’s insanely hard to juggle it all and keep your head above water… I have worked hard since 15 years old with only 2 times since having longer than 2 weeks off consecutively and I just turned 40. My job is fair, but can have long hours, on call, and work on weekends. The salary seems great, but where I live, plus being 2023 it just barely cuts it. As it is now I can get by, but my future for retirement looks pretty bleak right now. My wife has a decade old student loan that’s $500 a month and interest has basically kept it there and I have no way to afford paying over that amount which even if I did would still take 10 more years to possibly pay it off so this loan is for life.
So stagnant wages, student loan debt, rising costs on everything, no programs to help middle class, and finally the need for services or certifications that appear to be needed more and more for everything which also takes your money. If I can barely get by I don’t want to see how people less fortunate seem to do it… I honestly think about what if I didn’t have kids probably weekly because it seems like the better decision for survival. It’s messed up that you can do everything right yet still feel so close to failure at any given emergency. So screw her and her so called “hard life”. People our age do deserve better and more needs to be done to help. You know how much of a difference it would make if we had free daycare like some other countries? That’s just one thing and it would turn my life around tremendously. There is so much that can be done, but it never does.
I turn 40 next month and I’ve done everything right and I’m BARELY keeping up.
I got good grades in school. I did as much community college as I could and then my parents paid for the rest of my bachelor’s. I worked hard at my jobs. I put myself through school for another degree so I could move up (and paid for it out of my savings, no loans). I had two kids and went back to work. I paid the crippling $3k a month to have them in daycare. I moved closer family to get their help after school. I drive a modest car and I live in a modest house. I have no vices - no drugs, no alcohol, no gambling. I cook my own food and do my own cleaning. I worked a “side hustle” for most of my 20s and early 30s (writing, making maybe 500-1k a month). I’ve saved everything I didn’t spend on rent, food, and utilities. I’ve never bought a coffee, or traveled outside the US, or traveled much at all. I am in good health. I married a good partner, and he’s a software engineer with no debt.
I literally did everything right, and yet we are behind on savings, we can’t afford to repair anything but the absolute essentials on our home, and we’re counting the days until we write our last daycare check so we can start… saving for college.
It’s hard not to think that shelling out over $140k to the daycare over the past 7 years didn’t have something to do with it.
And then there are my 79-year-old parents, watching my husband and I run this treadmill, and scratching their heads in wonder. We have so much less than they did at my age, and yet we have two incomes! How are we not living in absolute luxury?!
What a different world they lived in. Sometimes, when I feel like feeling bad, I remember that my dad’s pension pays him more every month than I earn doing my 40 hour a week software developer job. A pension! Imagine being paid while not even working.
(It was definitely the kids that did us in - I often think about how much more secure we would be without the daycare costs.)
I can understand how “fascist” has become popular but I’m curious how you see fascism here. It’s fucked up and shitty and the officer and those involved should face charges, but fascism?
Yeah it kind of does. Literally the police’s only job is to protect wealth and the wealthy who own it. They have no duty to serve or protect the people in general. The guy they killed and buried was not wealth, nor was he wealthy. Worse still he was part of the demographic that our police forces were literally created to capture round up and return to their owners.
Just because they haven’t managed to completely dismantle, our democracy doesn’t mean they aren’t fascists. And that police don’t serve them. Because I’ll tell you for sure who they don’t serve. The community or anyone that looks like that man or his mother. That’s just unacceptable. But totally normal for fascist groups. Lots of potter’s fields out in Germany the United States and even Canada. It’s a shame people still defend these groups so much.
I only have the information in the article, but from that it seems like the investigator originally assigned to the case was lazy, incompetent, or perhaps biased against this family because of their history with the police. That last thing seems like it is (or should be) illegal but the first two aren’t, and the investigator is retired so it’s too late for him to be penalized by the department (although I suspect that they wouldn’t have). Other than that, the behavior of the police appears to have been appropriate - any driver could have hit a man crossing a six-lane highway at night, it isn’t the coroner’s job to track down a dead person’s next of kin, and the new investigator assigned to the case appears to have been diligent.
IMO the behavior of the first investigator justifies an internal investigation and I would be quite cynical about the impartiality of that investigation, but I don’t see strong evidence that a crime took place.
satan! People need to stop insulting people due to their laziness in accessing both the article being disucssed and a persons comment in relation to it. Name calling should not be happening but especially so if someone has not read and understood the article. The person you responded to obviously did so he knows not only were people told it was reported and documented. This is the salient point from the article you did not read. It really was the original investigator not doing shit.
"This account has been pieced together with interviews with his family and a coroner’s investigator, along with court records and documents provided in response to public records requests: a crash report, incident reports and coroner’s office records. Bettersten also shared personal notes, emails, Dexter’s death certificate, a coroner’s report and case information cards provided to her by police. "
Hitting a man crossing a six lane highway in the dark is not automatically vehicular homicide. Sometimes the pedestrian is at fault when a car hits a pedestrian, and this appears to be one of those times. It isn’t literally impossible that the driver was drunk or going twice the speed limit and the cops covered it up, but assuming that something like that happened without any evidence is unreasonable even when the driver was a cop.
They literally think anything they don’t like is fascism. And anything that can tangentially be connected in any way to their holy list of fascism as literally fascism with logic no less esoteric and convoluted than horoscopes and tea readings.
Not to excuse those fascists, but a simpler explanation is just lack of communication. Some incompetent somewhere didn’t bother with part of their job, and everyone else assumed it was done
The decision to call the police was difficult for Bettersten. She did not trust them. In 2019, her 62-year-old brother died after a Jackson officer slammed him to the ground. The officer was convicted of manslaughter but is appealing.
Odd coincidence that this happened to a family that’s put a cop behind bars. How often does stuff like this happen anyway?
Our firm took a civil case (wrongful death. the cop ran a stoplight, no lights no sirens, not responding to a call. killed a mom and two kids.) against a police department a few decades ago. Every employee of the firm had to pay about 10 grand in bribes to the cops in the towns where they lived before they stopped getting pulled over for nothing. Yeah, it’s a real honorable profession.
I mean, I think I might be able to decipher what you might be trying to say but you typed the sentence "the mean is a bad average to use."
You know mean and average are synonyms... right?
Edit: My wife has just informed me that an article off Google says that in Finance and Sports Statistics, the term Average is used synonymous with Descriptive Statistics.
Having worked as a statistician in the past, my firm knowledge was that Mean/Average, median, mode, count, and range together form the family of Descriptive Statistics.
This hurts my brain so bad...
There are really people out there calling Descriptive Statistics and Averages synonyms? Do those people never use average to mean mean? Or do they use Average to mean both mean and Descriptive Statistic.
Mean is one type of average. Median and mode are other types of average, so there’s nothing incorrect about saying “mean is a bad average” since it differentiates “mean” from “median” and “mode.”
I did an edit acknowledging this and I am struggling HARD to accept it.
By your rules, Average has no less that 7 meanings.
By your rules, average is a useless word that doesn't really convey anything.
But I am on notice that a lot of people are buying into this.
Please answer for me though. In your mind, is average one of the 5+ kinds of averages? Or do you only refer to mean when you are referencing that... (I really hate conceding that this is a thing) "average".
To repeat. For over 20 years, in my world, mean and average mean "a set of values added together and divided by the count of values", and mean/average, median, mode, range, and count are Descriptive Statistics. So when I say "average", you know what I just said. I didn't just say a meaningless thing (seemingly to waste time and be confusing to understand) that requires me to specify if I meant mean, median, mode, range, or count.
lol at calling wikipedia “your rules” as if I have any ownership of that website.
I never said averages have different meanings. I said there are different types of averages. You really jumped to the weirdest conclusion here. It’s as if I say “there are multiple types of shapes: squares, circles, triangles, etc” and you reply “by your rules, shape has no less than 7 meanings.” No, that’s not what was said and certainly not what was meant to be implied at all.
And to answer your question, specificity isn’t always required, so it’s perfectly acceptable to use the more vague term at times. Other times, it creates confusion or ambiguity, so it’s better to use a more specific word. If someone said “average,” I’d probably assume they meant the most common type of average: mean. That might be a wrong assumption, but thats just how words work. Some are more specific than others.
I answered your question in a quick edit. Quit acting like this case is in any way unique. You’re just looking for any excuse to object to this widely accepted broader definition of the word.
lol at your pun, but is your solution really to stop using “average” all together?
But it’s ok. I do understand the etymological frustration that you’re feeling, but I gotta say just take a step back from your preconceived notions and think if what you’re saying would make sense when applying it more broadly.
If you think we should simply say what we mean, should we remove all broader terms if there are already more specific words? Should we stop referring to dogs and cats as pets or animals or mammals when they already have more specific names? No, because you can refer to a group of cats and dogs as a group of animals (or as mammals to differentiate them from birds or as pets to differentiate them from wild animals). Similarly, you can generalize and speak about all averages together at once. See I just did it here, and the person you originally replied to was also using it to speak more broadly and compare/contrast means and medians. It was merely your narrow definition that caused your confusion.
No. My solution is that you, and according to Wikipedia, finance, Sports Statistics, and ESL people add "descriptive statistic" to their vocabulary.
I hear "the average is 7" and until today that means the values summed and divided by the count of values is 7.
So I run with that.
Then when I'm knee deep in shit, you get all weasly and say "what I meant is that the mode was 7".
Because you call mode an average. But to me it's not the average, it's a descriptive statistic called mode.
If you said "the descriptive statistic is 7" I could say immediately "which descriptive statistic" and you would say "mode" and then my course of action wouldn't get me knee deep in shit.
But, to me, your are Weasley and you just pulled the "7 average" out your ass because you can't math.
So you should have said "the mode is 7" or "I flunked basic math, so right here I'm just saying 7, guess what I mean by 7."
I dont know. This whole thing we are talking about feels like it's summarized by the statement: "I am unable to do basic math, but I get paid to do math, so I participate in this weasly little exercise of incorrectly using the word average, and irl, that usually gets the guy who trusted me getting shitcanned and I can still keep saying 'the average is fucked if I know' and I still have my job".
Holy cow. You are really really trying hard to not make sense of this and being incredibly rude. No one said anyone had to add “descriptive statistics” to their vocabulary. The Wikipedia article I linked in no place said average is used for all statistics. You are making that distinction, and it seems wholly incorrect and nonsensical to me, and I do math for a living, so stop with your insulting implication that the only people who could possibly use average to mean anything other than mean must be too stupid to understand math. (And seriously, fuck you for that implication.)
There’s nothing weasily about someone using average to mean mode. You have simply misunderstood the definition of average, and while I’m kindly trying to help you understand, you are making zero attempt to even try. But at this point, I’m out of patience with you annd your lack effort. I’m frankly tired of watching merely trying to find any excuse to reject the broader definition. Get a fucking grip.
I agree with your sentiment, but I’ll say I’m in my 30s and in grade school they definitely taught us mean/median/mode as being ways to measure the average. That said, I do also use average to mean mean as that’s what something like Excel calls it and that’s what most people think of when measuring average unless you specify otherwise. So that’s all to say, yeah it’s a bit messed up.
Right. The whole linguistic cluster fuck in my head is "mean and average are synonymous, and that measure is a descriptive statistic."
Accepting that average is synonymous with Descriptive statistic, not mean is troubling me.
My real fear is someone who calls a descriptive statistic an average is about to say to me that average and mean are synonyms as well, and that's when I'm ready to flip a table.
Your brain can't be healthy if you call average a descriptive statistic AND a mean.
Just learn the term descriptive statistic. Make your brain healthier. Communicate more efficiently with the world...
I’m with you basically and was also taught average = mean. If you meant median or mode you had to say so. 🤷♀️ This feels like when I learned my blood isn’t blue because it’s deoxygenated lol
Genuinely trying to make this a learning moment for me, but I also just can't stop pushing my own point. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one like this.
The survey showed other stark contrasts. While Black households saw their median income fall by 2% - versus a 3% rise for all families - their median net worth shot up by 60% to outpace all other racial and ethnic groups during those three years
Despite Black families experiencing the largest growth in median net wealth — a 60% bump from 2019 — their 2022 levels remained the lowest among all other racial or ethnic groups, and they also saw incomes falter.
The 37% rise in net worth, which was more than double the next-largest upswing on record, was largely fueled by asset growth — specifically home values and stock market gains that far exceeded consumer price inflation, Fed researchers said.
Figured_ I would add a bit more context to your argument. You can’t gain in net wealth if you have nothing to gain with. Emphasis in above quote is mine.
Imagine a coffee shop ad with a beautiful example of latte art, but when you get your latte you are horrified to find just plain foam. Unless the ad specifically mentioned latte art, I doubt you’d have grounds for a lawsuit.
As for your example, I’m finding it hard to imagine buying a car before getting inside it. A few dealers offer a pre-order option, but you can always back out of the sale once you see the car.
I’m reminded of one of the things that radicalized me. It was Angela Davis explaining how violence in service of black liberation wasn’t becoming violent but rather returning fire after decades and centuries of a one sided race war.
The rich decry class war when the working class step out of line, but every poor family struggling to meet their needs is a victim of a class war. Every hungry person, every homeless person, every person relegated to the criminal class is a victim of class war. Every worker struggling with any or all bills needed to keep their life together is a victim of a class war. We’re taught to sympathize with the rich, expected to see their success as necessary, taught to not demand too much of them, taught to forgive any evil of theirs. They have been waging a class war on us for a very long time. We can continue to suffer or we can strike back.
They can join us on an equal footing or they can find the final equalizer.
There was a video clip of a woman speaking about supermarket looting that made me start questioning my total pacifism. This is a different video transcript from her but, on the same topic. I really appreciated how she laid it out.
... So if I played 400 rounds of monopoly with you and I had to play and give you every dime that I made, and then for 50 years, every time that I played, if you didn’t like what I did, you got to burn it like they did in Tulsa and like they did in Rosewood, how can you win?
Skin colour was just a visual indicator of class that told white people that black people were lower in the social hierarchy than them. There's a lot of overlap, it's not like white people were terrified of the colour brown generally.
I think it would be a mistake to say that the Tulsa massacre, also known as The Black Wall Street wasn't a heady mixture of both classism and racism.
Your first paragraph reminded me of a song that has stuck with me since I heard about it. Give the song “Long Violent History” by Tyler Childers a listen. Obviously I don’t know your musical tastes, but it’s a powerful message in a genre that typically doesn’t embrace the same ideologies.
This is some /r/im14andthisisdeep garbage. Don’t turn this place into some wannabe terrorist keyboard warrior forum. This Fain guy is being completely nonviolent and seems to be going well with negotiations. Grow up.
It’s wild to me that public resources like water are given, not sold, to corporations like Nestle- who then go on to lobby for less public spending on water systems, and who mass-produce those shitty bottles that end up everywhere.
Charge them royalties for taking water from springs, make it cheaper for nestle to buy water from a utility.
Even if they did - they’re still destroying the water table in your local environment. Then there’s the climate disaster of transporting water thousands of miles for… What?
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