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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • Knightfox@lemmy.onetoMemes@lemmy.mlHonestly
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    6 months ago

    I took some time in thinking about your response, I want you to know that. That said, “There’s lots of places in the US where cops are paid significantly above median wages for the region as their base pay,” doesn’t mean much in the context of my original statement. My original statement said very much the same in fact. Cops, on paper, get paid above average and have tons of opportunity for overtime. What your response misses is the danger associated and the expectation of overtime.

    It’s one thing when you can have unlimited overtime and another when you are expected to take unlimited overtime. There is also a disconnect when that overtime comes with an expectation of being shot and killed. With those expectations it’s no surprise that police are the largest portion of a city government. If you have a group of people that you expect to work long hours, work extra overtime, meet the municipality’s needs, and potentially die in their duty, then they should command a large portion of the budget.

    If you don’t want to pay people to do these things then you can’t be upset that they don’t do those things. You get the cops that you pay for. I’ll be the first to say Fuck the Police, but I’ll also be the first to say we get the Police we pay for.



  • Knightfox@lemmy.onetoMemes@lemmy.mlHonestly
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    6 months ago

    You’re right though, being a police officer comes with an expectation that doesn’t match your pay. If you’re on the subway, there is a police officer in uniform standing nearby, and a guy attacks you, the expectation is that the cop would save you. However, in 2011 Maksin Gelman had a stabbing spree in NYC that culminated in an attack on Joseph Lozito. The attack occurred on a subway, with Lozito being stabbed in the head and face while police watched from the conductor’s booth. It wasn’t until Lozito had wrestled his assailant to the ground and detained him that the police helped him.

    Lozito sued the NYPD for not helping him and the judge decided that it wasn’t the police’s duty to save his life. On the day of the assault the police didn’t even perform first aid on Lozito, it was another subway goer that save his life.

    EDIT: I’ll be the first one to say fuck the police, but if you want actually good police then the first step is to pay them to match what you expect of them or else you’ll end up with a bunch of gun toting assholes who won’t do shit.


  • Knightfox@lemmy.onetoMemes@lemmy.mlHonestly
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    6 months ago

    Of the responses I have gotten I feel like you have the closest response to the truth. Having good cops comes down to trust. If we had a police force of non-opportunistic saints who will go through anything to do the right thing then we might have something which meets the public’s expectation of the police. Short of that they are people who put their own lives and well being above that of the public. Police aren’t out there to save you, they aren’t really out there to stop crimes. They are out there to charge people with committing crimes. I feel like some understanding should be out there for the public though, police aren’t there to save you, they are there to charge people for having committed a crime. Ideally they will stop a crime as it is occurring or by their presence prevent a crime from occurring, but if you think the Police are there to save you then you’re wrong.

    That’s the average scenario. That’s the Uvalde cop looking on as a school shooting occurs. The idea of a cop running into a school shooting is the “BEST” scenario.

    Unfortunately the norm for police is far less than that, because the pay doesn’t incentivize better people to want to be police. It comes down to those the factors: pay, work life balance, and danger. Pick 2 of 3, low danger, high wages, or good work life balance.


  • Knightfox@lemmy.onetoMemes@lemmy.mlHonestly
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    6 months ago

    There is a difference in danger, Construction tends to be one of the most dangerous jobs there is, but getting injured in a construction accident is fundamentally different from getting shot as a cop. Other jobs might be more “dangerous,” but the nature of the danger is pretty important.


  • Knightfox@lemmy.onetoMemes@lemmy.mlHonestly
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    6 months ago

    I see why you thought that’s what I meant, but immediately following that I list several other potential solutions to overall bad policing. You can certainly defund the police, aka stop outfitting them with weapons of war, but it will not solve the fundamental problem of hiring bad candidates to make bad cops.


  • Knightfox@lemmy.onetoMemes@lemmy.mlHonestly
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    6 months ago

    This may not apply everywhere in the US, but my understanding is that most cops aren’t paid terribly well. Perhaps it’s ok if compared to a standard job, but when you account for the danger, required over time, and work schedule it becomes very not worth it.

    A buddy of mine is a true believer type, he signed up to be a cop, went through a year of training and another year paired with another cop. PreCovid starting pay was $40k, 12 hr work schedule and every 28 days it flipped (so 28 days day shift followed by 28 days of night shift). One day he gets a call and his boss had switched him to a different district with 3x the commute without any communication. Finally a buddy of his caught a bullet in the head (and lived) from some guy who was on drugs and stole a car. He said he thought about it and for the money it wasn’t worth the emotional cost.

    Strangely the problem with underfunding cops is who the fuck wants to be a cop? Yeah, after 25 years and multiple promotions you might make an ok or even good salary, but being a new cop is absolutely shit. In a system where the pay isn’t good, the hours are shit, and the risk to your life is high, who wants to be a cop?

    The answer is either self sacrificing good guys or people who get a power trip on carrying a gun and using it. Add to it that this system is perpetuated by the type of people who pursue the job you end up with a whole department full of the type who hire these types.

    So while you can defund the police, you can send them through training, you can institute new policy, but if you don’t attract a better quality of person then you’re gonna have the same problem over and over again.

    Theoretically you could make the hours better (but that will require hiring more police to cover the same amount), you could reduce the danger (similar to London banning guns so beat cops don’t carry them either), or you can pay them more.



  • Nah, even if they did their NATO % contribution the amount would be pitifully small. When you look at most of the articles that talk about “10 Best Places to Live” it’s mostly super small population, low immigration, countries with virtually no military.

    Most NATO countries are between 1-2.5% of their GDP, but that’s only ~$300 billion. The US does ~3.5% which amounts to ~$811 billion.

    The other NATO countries wouldn’t just need to meet their NATO 2%, they’d need to more than triple it. Even just for the US to come down to 2% would cause a ~$348 billion decrease (more than the rest of NATO combined).

    If I were a European country free riding in NATO the last thing I’d be pushing is the US to reduce military spending.



  • Oh that’s cool, I ran across the same website while making a comment to another user here.

    I’m not super sure how reliable they should be considered to be honest. Looking at Mediabiadfactcheck.com they state that they are mostly factual in reporting but points to their lack of transparency on funding and strongly loaded emotional wording that may be misleading.

    Based on the rest of the review it seems that they are really good about being very specific in their statements to avoid inaccuracies. Looking through this article and a few of their other articles they mostly focus on local accounts (X person said this, they live in Gaza) or third party references (Y on Twitter said this based on an article by Z at the BBC).

    Another representation of this style of reporting would be this example:

    Headline: “The Election Was Stolen!”

    Body: New information has come out about an investigation into the legitimacy of the 2020 election. SOUTHERN boy on Twitter shows a video of FBI officials going into the election offices to perform an investigation. SOUTHERN boy also recently posted a potential connection between the investigation and the Trump 2020 election, but it hasn’t been picked up by the mainstream media.

    We also spoke to Melissa Simpson in Mississippi and she says she and all her neighbors believe the election was stolen.

    Since 2020 Trump has been telling everyone that, “The Election Was Stolen!” Does SOUTHERN boys information show the proof to Trump’s claim?

    End example

    Technically nothing I posted is false, I’m not making any claims myself, but anyone reading this would know the subtext to my article.


  • A lot of people have no objection about receiving news about Palestinians from blatantly pro Israeli outlets. So yeah, there is one Pro Palestinian source, surely the balanced person would take info from both.

    In the real world this is certainly true, there are way more Pro-Israel publications and listening to an opposing opinion is wise, but on Lemmy it seems that the vast majority of active persons have been unwilling to accept any Israel source, no matter how tangential.

    The double standards have to stop. Either object against both, or read both and decide for yourself.

    There’s nothing to say this person doesn’t, and given the amount of flak Israel related sources get it’s worth noting the bias here as well.

    But to always call out just Palestinian sources, it smells of cultural oppression

    I completely agree, but I am somewhat thrown by the choice of name by this publication. It just lacks a certain professionalism associated with good journalism. This isn’t to say it’s not a worthwhile source, it’s just not the best name. It’s kinda like if someone named their publication the Digital Revolution, the Uprising, or something similar, I’m just gonna cringe a bit and be skeptical from the start.

    Looking online I found this site (https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/electronic-intifada/) which reviews the bias of various media sources. Based on this it’s just a group of international journalists with their publication based out of Chicago. Their information seems to be mostly from grass roots reporting or third and fourth party accounts.

    EDIT: I wanted to quickly follow up, I’m reading through the article now and it’s a real shit show for navigating. In general I’m not familiar enough with the people they reference that it’s really hard to get a good read on this article. It’s kinda like if I said that a guy I know named Billy works at the city and he said he spoke with the Mayor who said that crime is on the rise, but the Chief of Police released a report to the contrary. Billy could be worthwhile, but I don’t know Billy and I can’t readily find good references to the Mayor’s statement.

    Even the representation of the original referenced article by YNet is kinda shit. For example, they use a reference to Syrian Girl on Twitter who is referencing Yoav Zitun on YNet, who is referencing a paraphrased statement from Lieutenant Colonel A. Zitun states that the Lieutenant ordered the Fighters to shoot everything near the fence and later attacked their own installation so that other troops could move up to it. Syrian Girl makes the connection that Zitun’s reporting indicates that the military was blindly killing everything that moves (including their own troops) and EI runs with that sentiment.

    In Zitun’s own article (included at the bottom of the EI article) it is clear that unrestricted firing was only in proximity to the fence itself but other bypasses of firing restrictions were approved separately as needed or were taken by Fighters without approval.


  • Knightfox@lemmy.onetoMemes@lemmy.ml*Permanently Deleted*
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    8 months ago

    You’re literally my parents. They were long term landlords, bought properties for nothing in the 90’s rented them for 20-30 years and then sold them. Most properties were long term rentals, people lived there for 5+ years, one lady had 6 kids in 10 years in one of their houses. Rents in their area are ~$1200-2000, my parents were still renting at $700 because the place was paid off and the people living there had been there for nearly a decade.

    Side hustle landlords ain’t the enemy, it’s the corporate landlords that are the true problem. Unfortunately the people being oppressively fucked don’t see a difference and it’s hard to blame them.

    Hope your side hustle works out for you and I hope you stay one of the good ones.

    EDIT: My parents both have full time jobs, having rentals wasn’t a job for them. They rented to pay the mortgage and pay for upkeep. The long term plan for them was to sell the houses and retire, not live off rent for perpetuity. They rented the properties at a rate that allowed them to pay the mortgage off quickly and pay for landlord repairs (roof, HVAC, water heater, septic tank, etc).


  • Knightfox@lemmy.onetoMemes@lemmy.mlTruly an art form to use properly
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    8 months ago

    I don’t think that was his point. He’s simply saying that the benefit of reach and leverage makes it so that equally skilled and unarmored combatants would make it so you need 2 swordsmen to reliably fight a spearman.

    That being the case doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t have multiple weapons for multiple circumstances, and it doesn’t mean that the appropriate armour wouldn’t impact it.

    Finally, battlefield usage is a totally different situation as you have regiments with mixed skill levels.

    I think the only thing he was trying to say is that if you have two guys with similar skill and fitness, unarmored, the guy with the spear has a large advantage.

    Also, I think he’s a bit more than an Enthusiast. His resume is fairly impressive (https://www.matt-easton.co.uk/about).