Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the wall-scrawls dept
This week, the cops managed to spur both our top comments on the insightful side with two different stories. First up, it's That One Guy responding to a commenter who accused Tim Cushing of hypocrisy by comparing an earlier call to not serve cops at restaurants with a new post about an ill-fated plan for amateur cops:
If some cops try to take Tim's words to heart and strive to improve themselves, and some restaurant owners take his words to heart and refuse to serve cops, how the hell are things supposed to get any better?
From the comment section of that article, by the person who wrote it:
The couple of incidents doesn't seriously mean cops shouldn't be allowed to eat in restaurants. This little exercise in exaggeration is meant to demonstrate that officers of the law are not inherently honest and decent people, even if there are many among them that are. There's no reason to give their word more credence than the average citizen's.
As he noted the point wasn't to demonize all cops and call them all liars, it was to point out that they do not deserve the automatic assumption of honesty that some people give them because they lie just like anyone else, something putting on a badge does not magically make go away.
As for the question, slowly and with a lot of hard work. Reputations are funny things, hard to build up, easy to destroy, but they can be built back up.
Making it very clear that the majority do not support what the 'few bad apples' do such that fellow law enforcement are the first to call them out and demand that they be held accountable for their actions would go a long way to improving their relationship with the public.
When a cop screws up they need to own it, even if it costs them. Whey they deliberately abuse their authority and/or power they need to be held responsible for that, and those around them with badges should be the first in line demanding accountability and punishments for those abuses, holding fellow officers(or law enforcement in general if you'r talking about judges and DA's) to a higher standard rather than a lower one.
The article just yesterday serves as a great example of how not to improve police/public relations. It should not take a court to tell multiple officers that an invitation to one cop to rest their feet is an invitation for several of them to spend three hours searching a house. It should not require a state supreme court to tell officers(and state prosecutors) that constitutional rights are more than just speed-bumps, a minor inconvenience that can be ignored on a whim.
There are other ways that the relationship between police and the public could begin to be improved, but a lot of it's on those with badges, and far too many seem entirely indifferent to improving or doing anything about the rot within their ranks. Until that changes things will continue to get worse.
In second place, it's Anonymous Anonymous Coward looking at the story of cops who lost the use of evidence acquired during a medical emergency that they treated as a warrantless search opportunity, and noting that there's more blame to go around:
The police are not the only culprits
"Arielle Turner was indicted by a grand jury for the death of her infant."
"Over at the hospital, an examination did not turn up any signs of abuse or foul play. Investigators believed the infant's death to be accidental."
We all know that, if they want to, any DA could indict a ham sandwich (so to speak). But those two quotes above seem directly contradictory. If the investigators found the death accidental, they where the hell the the indictment come from.
It is not just the police officer who performed the search that committed misdeeds. The DA who got the indictment from the grand jury must have told some super duper whoppers.
For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from hij about the AT&T-linked group sending out ridiculous "your rates will go up" messages to oppose net neutrality:
The joke is on them, the rates were going to increase regardless.
Next, it's an anonymous commenter on the emerging trend of suing internet platforms for bias:
Well, it is better for the ego to claim that you are being censored, that to accept that you views are unpopular.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Gary with a response to Mike's post about the telco lobby talking points that were accidentally (presumably) sent to him:
Am I the only one here that sees this as actual proof that Mike is really shilling for the Telcos? He is even part of their inner circle!
In second place, it's Ninja relating an apropos experience he just had while commenting on our post about how AI is not a silver bullet for content moderation:
Aaaaaand, ironically my comment filled with all those words got held for moderation. Laughing like a maniac here lmao
For editor's choice on the funny side, first we remain on that post where an anonymous commenter called us up on our phrasing:
The word "bullet" has been flagged as inappropriate; our AI engine suggests "Silver Suppository" as an alternative.
And finally, it's Thad with a mirror comment to the earlier editor's choice about platform bias. That was the insightful version, this is the funny one:
"If somebody doesn't take Pajamas Media as seriously as The New York Times, obviously there's only one explanation: liberal bias!"
That's all for this week, folks!
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Cops..
Is understanding that a Doctor ISNT correct all the time.
Cops are CREATED.. we train them and we Abuse them in many ways. Its the Older ones with good records, that go bad or get Paranoid,..that we have problems with..AS THEY TEACH the younger ones..
Also, how many are Lining up to be a police officer?? and for what reasons??
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AT&T
And it states that When the Value of the dollar goes down, Price go up..
There are FEW ways to make the value go UP, and Prices down.
The problem comes with the only ones getting Raises to Match the economy are at the TOP..but there's only GOES UP, never down.
REMEMBER that $1 trillion dollars NOW was worth about 1/8 in 1960..Having $100 million in the 60's was about the same.
the great question is HOW a $300 1960's TV ISNT $2400 NOW..
FUEL shouldnt be more then $2 per gallon..NOW.
But how is $1 per hour only worth $8 per hour NOW...and the price of GOODS is over the inflation rate.
PS. Food has been held back, because you CANT leave food on the Shelf, with out it rotting or NO SALES, means NO PROFIT.
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He knew who CNN, CBS,CNBC, USA Today, and the New Yorker, but had no clue about The Atlantic, Politico,and Rueters.
On the other side he knew Fox News (not surprising given this is literally his only source of news) and The Wall Street Journal, but never heard of PJ Media, abreitbart, The Weekly Standard, National Review, The Blaze, Hot Air, The Daily Wire, Town Hall, or Red State.
Maybe the issue isn't "media bias" as much as the fact that not even their own base know who these outlets are.
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Re:
When none of their loudest supporters can find the media they're supposed to be looking for, conservatives will throw another tantrum. Then repeat to infinity.
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Re: AT&T
I have a theory on that. TVs are luxuries, no matter how much people want to have one, that remains true. So if people are short of money, the new TV does not get bought. That makes it tougher for luxuries to compete in the market, and so they tend to go/stay down relative to the rest of the market.
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Re:
It's about as believable as living in New York your whole life and never once hearing about Central Park or Manhattan.
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Censorship
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Re: Censorship
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'I don't get it, why do I keep getting sent to time out?'
'techdirt mob', 'virtue signally facists', 'censor anything they don't agree with', why yes, I can't possibly imagine why people making comments like that might get reported...
On the off-chance you're actually being serious though, while I flagged it funny myself my guess would be that people are tired of the 'Tim Cushing hates police' lie being repeated, and have taken to flagging anyone pushing it as dishonest, in the same way I'd hope that people would flag my comments if I responded to any pro-cop messages by saying that the ones making them just want cops to be able to kill anyone who disrepects their authoritah.
Deliberate and knowingly strawmanning someone's position is dishonest, and thereby abusive and/or trollish. Repeatedly doing that is spamming the site. As such comments like that would fall under all three categories listed in the report button.
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Re: Censorship
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Other things are compared along similar lines but their technology hasn't improved all that much. For example, the wage a waiter earns or the price of a loaf of bread. Gasoline has changed a fair amount but not always for the better; We've shed the lead and added cleaners to gas but we've also lost a lot of octane.
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Re: Re: Censorship
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Simple...
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