Scary Devil Monastery 's Techdirt Comments

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• On the post: Investigation: Minneapolis Cops Responded To George Floyd's Murder By Refusing To Do Their Jobs While Still Collecting Their Paychecks

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 04 Oct, 2021 @ 01:00am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

  "Once I straightened out my credit, the same people who had turned me down were more than happy to have my business and couldn’t care less whether I was Black or White. " It's somehow ironic that you raise that tale in a way which shows that you aren't a black person. Statistics have shown time and time again that if your credit history is spotty then the color of your skin does have bearing. You may want to google any of the hundreds of studies to have been made for the last century of financial history of black people. Here's a good start; "Tackling Disparities in Finance for Black and African Americans". According to the federal reserve the average white family has eight times the wealth of the average black family. Give me one single reason that is the case which doesn't boil down to "racial bias" and you get a gold star. Here's a hint though - you can't. The fact itself proves race bias. "Racism is more often than not a self-serving excuse and there are those who are skilled at using it." Which doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's a good excuse because it's so damn plausible. And every demographic has assholes keen to use the plausible excuse for <whatever>. "Dog bit me—racism." This is, I guess, a problem with people who lack self-awareness. In the american south especially, dogs, owned by both police and private individuals have been taught by or learned from their owners that dark skin color is an attack signal. Any dog owner knows damn well a dog will adopt the values of its owner. There's even a documentary about it; "Mauled". Hence yes, black people do get bitten by dogs more often than white people do, because racist dog owners get racist dogs. "Got evicted—racism." Is this where we drop the thousands of pages worth of studies regarding redlining past and present, or racial bias in housing and tenancy, or how notables like Trump and other housing owners spent decades making sure black people weren't welcome to rent with them? And we aren't exactly talking about people showing up in gang jackets either - but normal people with no strikes against them save for their skin.
  So yes; Eviction and refusal to rent based entirely on skin color is inherently part of the US. Has been for a long time. "Didn’t get a promotion—racism." Another google for you; "Why Black workers still face a promotion and wage gap that’s costing the economy trillions".
  Here's a clue; If statistics show there's a gap in wages and position based entirely on skin color with all other factors being equal then that is racist bias. Dictionary-definition. You don't even get it; The reason black frauds can use excuses no white person would get away with is because all of those excuses are very plausible to begin with - if you're black.
  I'm pretty sure most black people would rather not have that "advantage". Is this how you and your relatives in law enforcement approach their job? Ignore factual reality as long as it's out of sight and explain away inconvenient facts with any thin straw of an excuse so you can pretend there isn't a problem? Here's the reality; You live in a society where a white person has advantages in every aspect of their lives denied people who are darker in skin tone or have a different name.
  You just don't want to own that fact.

• On the post: Investigation: Minneapolis Cops Responded To George Floyd's Murder By Refusing To Do Their Jobs While Still Collecting Their Paychecks

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 04 Oct, 2021 @ 12:30am

  Re: Re: Re: Bravo

  "You mean that drug that was cleared by the FDA YEARS ago and is safe for human consumption?" In very restricted dosage, prescribed only as a last resort in serious cases of parasite infection, by specialist medical doctors, yes. Did you have an argument to make which isn't trying to have the back of benighted morons ingesting a neurotoxin in dosages and preparation meant to be administered to half a ton's worth of horse? The FDA has cleared every active substance in chemotherapy cocktails as well - doesn't make them safe to use, it only means a licensed MD can prescribe them in the rare and unfortunate cases where they can be used as a cure marginally less bad than the illness. Our resident trolls do manage to squeak out single sentences that effortlessly divorced from contextual reality. But not often. Congratulations are in order.

• On the post: Survey Confirms Los Angeles Sheriff's Department Is Still Home To Dangerous Gangs, Has No Solid Plan To Eliminate Them

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 01 Oct, 2021 @ 04:46am

  Re:

  "The business with the gangs is par for the course. I'm sure there are some very good people in those police gangs, let's not rush to judgment..." Of course, of course...the ones not themselves throwing punches but who turn their backs so the more violent gang members on the force can exercise their fists in privacy.

• On the post: Investigation: Minneapolis Cops Responded To George Floyd's Murder By Refusing To Do Their Jobs While Still Collecting Their Paychecks

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 01 Oct, 2021 @ 01:20am

  Re: Re: Re:

  "If you believe there are no good cops then let’s do the experiment and eliminate them from a small area and see what happens." If there were good cops then how come every officer who finally is convicted of a crime turns out to have a track record several years long where every complaint and charge was buried by...alibis and backup freely provided courtesy of Code Blue? Sorry, but as long as the police are willing to close ranks behind casual criminals come hell or high water then there are indeed no good cops. And those who would be good cops are, by now, reaping the fruits of that very long policy. "Let me call BS on your facts. Truth is…" If you want to call BS then perhaps some context would be in order; USA: 28,54 killed by law enforcement per 10 million people, annually. Same number for the last dozen countries in the same statistic...between 0 and 1,7. So OK, not a thousand times as many in most countries, but even "only" ten times as many does not make for a good look. Germany's been slipping lately and with their 1,3 ppl killed per 10 million annually by law enforcement they're already hollering about police overreach. You guys? You're on par with Mexico, Rwanda, Swaziland, Bangladesh, Argentina when it comes to killing by law enforcement alone. This is just another utterly sad statistic in a long list where the US turns out to "lead". Back in the 50's and 60's american presidents proudly held your nation up as a great example for others. Today? Not a day passes but we see the news and go "Only In America". And that's not a compliment any longer. The police carry the violence monopoly. The right of a government to exert force of violence against it's citizenry in narrow and restricted circumstances. Every other nation considers this task incredibly important and vets the people entrusted to bear that burden extensively with a large and usually very effective structure aimed to ensure accountability of it's police forces. Only in america is the task of "Being a Cop" treated with less consideration or auditing than a corporate janitor or MacDonald's burger flipper. Only in that nation has the accountability of law enforcement been practiced in reverse for so long that by now when a PD is called to question over a premeditated murder on camera, performed by four officers in the open the result is that the corps as a whole decides to pull a passive-aggressive sulk campaign because they're being called to question over how the fuck someone like Chauvin could become a veteran on the force. And if you don't see the massive problem here then you are part of that problem.

• On the post: Investigation: Minneapolis Cops Responded To George Floyd's Murder By Refusing To Do Their Jobs While Still Collecting Their Paychecks

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 01 Oct, 2021 @ 12:44am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

  "But I have every confidence that when the news outlets report the death of a child they’re not joking." ...but depending on the spin of the media agency you listen to you may walk away with a VERY different view as to the guilty party responsible for the death. The police storming the wrong house and a twelve year old falls riddled with bullets? Will come out truthful in some reports but I can predict the OANN/Fox angle - "Child dead in drug bust! Police Chief laments the ruthlessness of drug dealers setting up shop in family neighbourhoods! News at 11!" "Generally if I want the unvarnished truth I have to rely on a source outside the US like the Daily Mail or Al Jazeera." It's a biting irony that today to get accurate news out of the US you need to go find it from Al-Jazeera, China's English news channel, or Haaretz...

• On the post: Investigation: Minneapolis Cops Responded To George Floyd's Murder By Refusing To Do Their Jobs While Still Collecting Their Paychecks

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 01 Oct, 2021 @ 12:35am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

  "Now we are being told by some that the most important part of a person is their race." ...and in the US statistics and any number of studies clearly show that it is. You want a loan? Odd how skin color alone will change your credit rating. An apartment? Odd how skin color alone determines your suitability, all other criteria being equal. In front of a judge, charged with the exact same crime, burden of proof, circumstances and mitigation a black man gets twice as hard a sentence as a white man. Black people die twice as often in proportion to police violence than white people. You could argue that black people are more often disadvantaged and are exposed to a life of crime more often than white people...but that argument would in itself acknowledge that racism is systemic. Racism means bias. It can be the mere opinion of some inbred rural tennessee klansman, sure...but it's also equally valid a term for the fact that for some reason black people and latinos are disproportionally represented among the disadvantaged in the US. "Having traveled quite a bit around the world, I KNOW race has NOTHING to do with character." A pity the takeaway you needed to bring home - the one where the US has begun to come out horribly unfavorable to many other places in the world - was left by the roadside in those faraway vistas then. "Let’s fast forward that concept and see where it leads because eventually we will judge a race not by its best but by its worst members." Ask ten random police officers in Minnesota about their opinions around how much skin color affects their snap judgment of a situation. Do it off camera and fish for what they really say. Chauvin wasn't an aberration, he was a very common type of Minnesota officer, and had been given many years worth of being given a free pass for actions which would have any non-police citizen in the slammer doing 10 to 20. If the police won't crack down on the toxic rot which lets the force elect an actual open white supremacist as their union rep - as is the case in Minnesota - then the unavoidable result is that those who abetted and assisted the criminals will be tarred with the same brush.

• On the post: The Rule Of Fences, And Why Congress Needs To Temper Its Appetite To Undermine Internet Service Provider Liability Protection

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2021 @ 08:41am

  Re: Re: An incorrect assumption.

  "Both sides believing, based on nothing but their own hubris, that the lion would attack their opponent and not themselves..." It stands as glaring condemnation of the body politic when they themselves fall for the "I didn't think voting for the 'Leopard eating Faces' party would mean a leopard would eat my face!" fallacy. That shit is supposed to be the rancid soup they feed the plebs for cheap votes...

• On the post: Marvel Hit Once Again By Estate For Some Spider-Man, Doctor Strange Copyright Terminations

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2021 @ 08:26am

  Re:

  "Mickey Mouse is going to fall out of copyright in about 3 years" Well, "Steambot Willie" is falling out of copyright, I think. However, given that Disney's been busy churning out derivative works that means very little - anyone trying to put up a pic of that "out of copyright" imagery will get hit with a lawsuit over it's resemblance to the currently active Mickey Mouse. The House of Mouse has means. Copyright law is so convoluted it's become a napoleonic code by now, as long as there's any lawyer willing to spend the time filling out a cookie-cutter form to churn up a ridiculously expensive lawsuit for the defendant.

• On the post: Investigation: Minneapolis Cops Responded To George Floyd's Murder By Refusing To Do Their Jobs While Still Collecting Their Paychecks

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2021 @ 08:19am

  Re: Re: Re:

  "Murders are up 30% this year. Try this, every Monday google “people shot and killed in Chicago over the weekend”." Proportionally US police murder more people per capita than actual criminals do in half a dozen other nations in the world...so you'll have to forgive those of us not american if we don't consider your revelations on Chicago as much more than yet another reason never to go stateside. I don't believe adding more trigger-happy gang members to the streets will help. All this mess boils down to, to me, is that this is yet another aspect where the 'US fails to meet any sort of international standards.
  Just about every household in Switzerland has a full-auto assault rifle in the weapon cupboard and the swiss do love them guns, and yet they have one of the smallest gun murder rates per capita in the world. Sweden has more high-power hunting rifles per capita than the US does and yet gun violence here is never anywhere close to the US. You people are doing a great many things fundamentally wrong if this is the result you get. And one of the very many things you've gotten wrong is policing. If you'd held your cops to higher standards in the first place you wouldn't be in the place where by now very many assume anyone with a badge not to have any standards at all. This is the end result of Code Blue.

• On the post: Investigation: Minneapolis Cops Responded To George Floyd's Murder By Refusing To Do Their Jobs While Still Collecting Their Paychecks

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2021 @ 08:08am

  Re: Re: Re:

  "If you think everything is about race, you are probably a racist." Facts don't care about your feelings. Or ours, for that matter. Everything may not be about race, but enough is. For the same crime, with the same burden of proof, the same severity and the same legal statutes? Black people are sentenced far harsher than white people. Black people get killed by police proportionately twice as often as white people. Black people are barred from bank loans, tenancy, subsidies and grants - by far more than white people in the same situation. Black people are overrepresented in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Now, come up with any explanation to the above which doesn't make the assumption that somehow those black people are a lesser people - and if you do you get a gold star for your efforts. I'll save you some trouble and tell you beforehand that's something you won't be able to produce; Either the system is weighted against black people or the people manning the system are weighting it against black people. In both cases the result is dictionary-definition racism on a massive scale. Realizing this isn't being woke, it just means you've faced reality through empirical observation rather than wishful thinking and blinders. If the system turns down three black people for every white person when all other variables are equal then what you have is racism. That's how that word works. It doesn't require a burning cross on every black person's lawn or a judenstern-equivalent mandate. It just requires that a demographic is denied the fair shake everyone else gets. Meanwhile the FBI, for the umpteenth time in a row has declared the greatest domestic threat to national security being white supremacy organizations who have to a disturbing degree recruited from the military and police force. I advise googling for "Hidden in Plain Sight: Racism, White Supremacy, and Far-Right Militancy in Law Enforcement" written by a former FBI agent regarding his undercover work among the white power crowd for an inkling on just how deeply rooted deliberately malicious racism is within the framework of government agencies nominally tasked to protect the public. To state that "not everything is about racism" is accurate only in the same sense that saying "not everyone falling from the third floor dies" is. It's not the exculpation of the situation you apparently think it is.

• On the post: Investigation: Minneapolis Cops Responded To George Floyd's Murder By Refusing To Do Their Jobs While Still Collecting Their Paychecks

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2021 @ 07:53am

  Re:

  "As a father of two in law enforcement whose spouses are also in law enforcement I know their motivation for doing the job, the pride they took in doing it and the betrayal they now feel." So to summarize you consider it "betrayal" when law enforcement is held to any standards of accountability? US police kill, every day, more than a thousand times more people per capita than any other police force in the civilized world - or the not so civilized, for that matter. In order to find law enforcement so riddled with joykillers and abusers as in the US you literally have to visit third worlod hellholes and war zones. Those are the facts. The US stands alone as a nation with this problem. No other country in the world this side of the G20 has any kind of similar issue. Your son and other people like him are, today, Schindlers. When you're wearing the uniform associated with harrassment and abuse you don't get the benefit of doubt. "Since the WOKE have linked EVERYTHING to racism every police encounter with POC is viewed as a possible hate crime not only by the “community” but by the mayors, city officials and now even the President." Know how I can tell you aren't black? I'm guessing when your kids were young you held "The Talk" with them at some point - which for a white person means discussing the birds and the bees. To black people, today, that "Talk" is about how to recognize they've encountered a White Supremacist with a badge and how to make it out alive. The FBI finding that white supremacy organization membership and police employment has become an overlapping Venn diagram isn't WOKE. Banks, Judges, Government agencies of all stripes persistently producing statistics skin color makes them judge far harsher for coloured people given the exact same criteria found in white people. But hey, go ask a black person sometime whether they consider racism "real". "Needless to say he will be advising my grandchildren not to risk their lives for the ungrateful." And good riddance. No one needs a person who believes the standards every other police officer in the world takes for granted are burdensome to carry a gun in the government's employ. It all boils down to you, trying to defend a rot in the US police force which no one outside of america even recognizes - because it's such an unholy aberration everyone else considers it abominable. But because you have a family background in the force, anyone telling you that force needs to shape up is the enemy. Nice gang code you've got going there. This shit happens because almost every officer who didn't take part in murder and abuse still defended those officers who did. Today there are no good cops left in US policing. Only those who abuse their badge - and those who have the back of those abusers.

• On the post: Investigation: Minneapolis Cops Responded To George Floyd's Murder By Refusing To Do Their Jobs While Still Collecting Their Paychecks

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2021 @ 07:33am

  Re:

  "Somehow other countries manage to have their police accountable for their actions and still attract plenty of recruits." Yeah, among the rest of the G8 and possibly the G20 the idea of police officers often being posses of gangbangers seems like yet another "Only In America" thing. An expression which used to stand for something weird and wonderful more often than not but is now usually expressed along with heartfelt gratitude they weren't born stateside.

• On the post: Investigation: Minneapolis Cops Responded To George Floyd's Murder By Refusing To Do Their Jobs While Still Collecting Their Paychecks

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2021 @ 07:24am

  Re:

  "If you are more terrified of causing the needless death of a citizen than doing your job, perhaps you are in the wrong fscking job sparky." Maybe less "terrified" than "throwing a tantrum because daddy told you to stop bullying the other kids"? I think the problem might be that the badge and uniform means you can get away with assault, harrassment, rape and murder in ways the normal serial killer couldn't dream of. Although the combination of both does make for an interesting Venn diagram.

• On the post: Investigation: Minneapolis Cops Responded To George Floyd's Murder By Refusing To Do Their Jobs While Still Collecting Their Paychecks

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2021 @ 06:50am

  Re:

  "Decent people don't want a job where the management is covering up their coworkers' murders." I think you may have delivered the reason as to why Minneapolis PD have decided to sit in corners and sulk at the idea that standards may be imposed. It's frightening to think that you can't hold US law enforcement to the same standard of behavior that you could a spoiled 8 year old.

• On the post: Investigation: Minneapolis Cops Responded To George Floyd's Murder By Refusing To Do Their Jobs While Still Collecting Their Paychecks

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2021 @ 06:46am

  Re: Hitting Home

  "After years of denying the Ferguson Effect, it's totally here." That's a novel way of describing a profession categorically unable to hit even the lowest bar of effectiveness, ethical standards, legal accountability and personal morality imaginable among any of the G20. Tell me, Koby, when you keep turning up here to drop utter bullshit in the debate, has it ever occurred to you that "failing to meet any international standards" is neither a good look for the US police - nor for you when you imply the cops walking off to sulk when they're held to actual standards are the people in the right.

• On the post: Investigation: Minneapolis Cops Responded To George Floyd's Murder By Refusing To Do Their Jobs While Still Collecting Their Paychecks

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2021 @ 06:18am

  Re: I've never understood...

  "How many of the standards for my high school retail job were higher than a cop." It's the height of irony. I live in a country where everyone is in a union and employers need to be careful how they treat their staff and under what circumstances they can fire them. In the public sector there's a running joke that with enough years on the job you'd have to commit felonies before you'd get fired. Yet compared to a US policeman who can barely get the sack unless they work real hard at committing public assault and/or murder for years... And americans apparently take that for granted. You can sack someone for not pulling a 60 hour week or wearing a shirt management doesn't agree with, but it's understood you can't fire a cop. Un-fscking-believable.

• On the post: Investigation: Minneapolis Cops Responded To George Floyd's Murder By Refusing To Do Their Jobs While Still Collecting Their Paychecks

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2021 @ 03:25am

  Re:

  "Well, that's a terrible name" It is. A case can be made, however, that in quite a few areas residents might indeed be better off with no police than with.

• On the post: Chinese Government Decides It's Done Fucking Around, Forces Hong Kong To Engage In 'Patriot-Only' Elections

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 24 Sep, 2021 @ 12:59am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

  "Nothing but nukes, and by that time, we would be all screwed." Correct. In the west we're fairly casual about fait accompli - if land changed hands a few centuries ago it's usually considered more constructive by almost everyone around to just move forward from there rather than revisit old wounds. Although I'm sure there are several native americans, basques, sámi, etc who'd beg to differ with that view it's a fact that throughout the west in modern times it's no longer fashionable to use "ancestral land" as the excuse for warfare. This is - emphatically - not the case for China which will retrieve lost territories of huaxia at any cost, as soon as they are able. What really bugs me here is that residents of HK must have known this better than any westerner. Once the timetable for the handover was clear, that was the time to leave. Since they didn't, a whole generation of university students today are in the unenviable position of their parents having decided to let them grow up in a territory they must have known would turn into part of the chinese autocracy around the time those children became adults. I can certainly understand why those students are furious today. They were raised to western freedoms but now, almost overnight, that all changed.

• On the post: Survey Suggests Eager Starlink Users Don't Understand Service Will Have Limited Reach

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 24 Sep, 2021 @ 12:28am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Starlink has never been marketed as such

  "However, that's wrong when facts are actually specifically on one side." Yeah they're on the side where they point to this being a "solution" which does not scale, isn't sustainable, is incredibly harmful to the environment and mainly seems to serve as a way for Musk to get the money to fine-tune the capabilities of SpaceX for his hotly desired space land grab. Musk has done some great things in pushing the envelope of imagination and will remain the historical father of the EV industry of scale. But Starlink is a dead end and not the industry we need in a time when the primary focus of every nation should be to reduce emissions in the hopes of not dumping our children into a future consisting of resource wars and mass migrations.

• On the post: Sony Pictures, Defenders Of The Creative Industry, Appears To Be Using Fan Art Without Giving Credit

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 24 Sep, 2021 @ 12:21am

  Re:

  "Since it doesn’t line up exactly, is just a silhouette, and is a generic female silhouette that you’d expect from a comic..." Which has always been enough to drag copywrong cases to court in the past. "...I’d think it’s more likely it’s just similar and not a ripoff personally." Maybe, but similar enough by accident or deliberate action has never mattered where Imaginary Property Law is concerned. From my own perspective...normally I always like to invoke Hanlon's Razor. Never ascribe to malice what is adequately explained by incompetence. But this is Sony. A company which has kept on being casually malicious and openly contemptuous of other people's property ever since they invented the precursor of DRM and installed it on the sly on the computers of their customers way back when - the infamous rootkit scandal. Given their avaricious focus on IP I'm guessing the only debate they had around whether they stole someone else's art was a risk-threat assessment among the legal team over how likely it would be they could just bury the lawsuit of some peon.

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