FishLake

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

So i desperately tried to explain why black people commit more crimes

I’m almost black people commit crime at relatively the same rate as other racial groups.

not due to some abstract cultural difference between white people and black people, but because they live in absolute poverty, desolation, and often literally have no other choice.

This only loosely explains why black people are more likely to be charged with certain types of crime.

The reason black people make up a larger percentage of the US prison population and are more likely to be charged with crimes in the first place is because police target black people. This is a systemic and ubiquitous phenomenon in police departments. Many factors contribute to more convictions for black people, but next time you might want to lean into how black neighborhoods and towns are over-policed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

Oh shit! How could I forget! Ignore everything I’ve said!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Absolutely.

I don’t think I articulated my point about parents being entitled well enough. I assume their entitlement is born out of an unconscious understanding that child rearing requires community support. But we are so atomized by capital infused lifestyles that some parents seem very entitled when their kids enter school. I think that us educators have to realize that school is, for some of parents, their first interaction in their adult lives with community support. So we get parents who want us to raise their children because they might be exhausted by their own efforts. They’re trying to impart the labor of child rearing onto the education system. And I don’t blame them at all for that. That entitled behavior can be very negative though.

In a sane society, we would attempt unburden the education system by providing housing, free childcare, walkable neighborhoods, health insurance, etc.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 weeks ago (4 children)

One of my last posts on Reddit was related to this. I frequented the r/teachers sub because I’m a teacher. But I hated that sub. So many burnout educators blaming parents, and only parents, for their students’ poor behavior. There was always a thread about “why are kids so poorly behave nowadays!?” The main complaint about parents was the letting smartphones raise their kids. But like you said, they miss the point entirely.

To paraphrase myself, there is a clear through line that links poor parenting skills to economic precarity and social atomization. Parenting takes a lot of physical and emotional energy. If you’re overworked, under-employed, worried about the next paycheck, uncertain about the future, or whatever AND you have a precision engineered, scientifically perfected, rectangular instrument of distraction in your pocket at all times it’s no wonder to me kids’ social/emotional needs are being neglected. Overworked parents in ages past might turn to the bottle. Now we’re all overworked and our liquor cabinets fit in the palm of our hands.

Liberal teachers love to complain that parents are too entitled now. Parents want teachers and schools to solve their kids’ problems, prepare them for the future, protect them from the scary real world, to raise their kids, blah blah blah. Teachers complain, but continue to show up to school day after day because they’re stuck in the same precarity as the parents. But even they know, deep down, that it shouldn’t be this hard to raise children. They just can’t figure out why it’s so hard.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

The only pandemic the IOC cares to prevent is the sinful act of premarital sex, by why of those cardboard anti-sex beds.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I like the siding. Both the outsiding and the insiding.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

Abusers find ways to have unmonitored access to children.

Normal people don’t look at starting a YouTube channel as a way to have access to children and the opportunity to groom them. Normal people also don’t become doctors or teachers or coaches for the same reasons. But because these careers give abusers access and opportunities to offend they select these jobs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I think for the most part you wouldn’t have to use the conversion powers on children. They’ll be much better comrades if the people who loved them modeled empathy and camaraderie.

Therefore, Tanner would absolutely need to be converted.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Parent-teacher night just got a whole lot more interesting at the suburban school I teach at. Now I can finally teach dialectics to elementary students. If I can use it selectively, I’d like to not convert Tanner’s parents because it would be funny.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

Yes, let us judge literal children with practically zero agency.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 months ago

I’m always amazed by how much of the neoliberal economy is held up by ads. Producers want people to buy their products so bad that they literally throw away hundreds, thousands, millions of dollars so that 1.0% of us rubes might click a link or go to a drive-thru.

My brother works in marketing. He’s explained the ROI for ads. I just don’t believe it. It’s a fucking shell game.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Not immediately throwing my clothes in a wash and showering when I got home like usual. That small mistake resulted in a months long battle with bedbugs. Never again.

 

I’ve noticed over my short tenure here there are a few teachers on Lemmygrad. I’ve browsed the comm list before and haven’t found one specifically for teachers and people involved in educational systems.

Is there/should there be a comm like that?

I would love to have a place where educators could share resources, successes, and frustrations. I would not want it to devolve into an r/teachers hellhole. I have no idea no idea how to make one or even if that’s an option because of boomer brain. I’m not sure I want that responsibility either.

 
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submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

TLDR - My friends think r/combatfootage is totally fine and are offended when I point out it’s kind of fucked up. This isn’t an AITA post. I am the asshole, but at least I’m NOT a fascist.

I’ll be clear about what I think about the proliferation of combat footage forums like r/combatfootage and the myriad of duplicate communities on various fediverse instances. I find it abhorrent because of what it has done to my friends.

I have a very close group of friends who for the most part are fairly compassionate people. I love them with all my heart. We’ve helped each other for a lot, and they even helped me on my journey from being a rightwing libertarian to a democrat. While I continued to be radicalized by other events and communities online, they’ve stayed relatively the same, left leaning liberals. You know the type. They hate the republicans and will vote blue no matter who. They support the LGBTQ+ community, abortion rights, the recent rise in labor action in the US, and the Palestinian people. All good things to support. But they’re also armchair “socialists” who don’t know the difference between a socdem and a communist.

Which is fine. Not everyone is going to interested in theory, especially in their comfortable, white, micro-borgeious (three attempts is enough, I’m not looking up how to spell it again) slice of American life. They don’t know what they haven’t learned. And I’m not going to info dump our group chat with theory. I’m good with just sprinkling in class conscious takes into our conversations.

Last night I learned of this Reddit post from the mods of r/combatfootage. It amounts to a feckless update of their rules, to disallow footage from terrorist groups (ie Hamas). You and I know what that really means though, no Palestinian footage. I bring this up in our group chat. This is an exchange between me and one of my friends who is in the US military. (Please note that I use terms that are very general in nature, like “right wing” instead a more accurate term like “reactionary.” My friends are liberals. Their vocab is small.”

Me, “So you know how r/combatfootage is a right wing hate farm like r/politicalcompassmemes? Apparently Reddit is putting their foot down about them… by banning all videos from Palestinian perspectives. Really cool and good, right? (Link to post)”

Friend, “Are we talking about a group called combat footage or actual combat footage?”

Me, “R/combatfootage is a subreddit for sharing footage of actual combats and armed fighting. It’s pretty gruesome. Lots of really gross memes of Russians soldiers being droned. I’ve never been a fan of watching shit like that let alone making fun of a Russian teenager freezing his nuts off in a Ukrainian corn field getting killed by a grenade dropping on his head.”

Friend, “How is that right wing?”

Me, “Dehumanization is kinda step one for a lot of right wing radicalization. Plus equating people to a enemy figurehead. Stuff like, ‘All Russian soldiers are mindless orcs and just as sadistic as their leader Putin.’ Or, ‘All trans people are degenerate child molesters who want to brainwash your children like their leader Joe Biden.’ You know, bullshit like that.”

Friend, “The trans stuff and combat stuff aren’t really the same thing. How does that relate to combat footage? It’s kind of a stretch. Don’t get me wrong, trans bashing is real right wing but combat footage is pretty different. Maybe I’m not reading the comments but I do watch that stuff. If I go into combat I really want to be aware of a drone dropping a grenade on me when I’m taking a nap.”

Me, “The footage itself isn’t the problem, I guess. It’s the discourse and comments around the footage, and the presentation of it. What I’m saying is that the discussions around combat footage on Reddit are in a lot of ways similar to how bigots talk about queer activists in those ‘Ben Shapiro Owns Leftist Morons!’ videos.”

Friend, “Aren’t all comments sections full of monsters?”

Me, “Well yeah lol. But that doesn’t change how a lot of the videos on r/combatfootage are titled things like ‘10 Israelis killed tragically by HAMAS’ vs ‘100 rebels dead after IDF scrimmage’. So it’s not always comments. The posters are making a conscious choice of words in their titles. And a lot of them are fucked up.”

Friend, “This seems like a lot of spider webs and not super strong arguments. I think you might be right for maybe some people but are making too many over arching generalizations. Some of us can see both sides of the combat. Soldiers are Soldiers. They are enemies until they pass and then they are fellow fallen soldiers. Dehumanization is a part of war. There are a lot of papers about it. ‘How do I kill the person next to me? They are [racist term], Nazis, Antifa, MAGA assholes, etc.’”

Me, “That’s valid…from a soldier’s perspective I guess. You’re able to compartmentalize an enemy combatant from the person they are. Especially when not you yourself aren’t actually engaged in the conflict, right? But let’s be honest here, there’s not a whole lot of ethically minded soldiers on Reddit forums giving enemy combatants the same amount of respect. The most popular stuff I’ve seen is pretty tasteless. One video in particular stands out to me was shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It showed a group of Russian soldiers running and trying to find cover. And the footage was sped up slightly and Yakkity Sax was played over it as they all got picked off. And the comments were filled with “Putins dogs” and other dehumanizing language. If you laugh at that you’re being radicalized.”

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