plutherus | Entries tagged with rant

I am a software engineer. I work in DevOps, which is a specific division of software that supports the people who actually write the software. In brief, my job consists of writing automation and administering tools that make it easier for programmers to write new software faster.

As a contractor, I've worked for a lot of different companies. For about the last twenty years or so, I've had to take some kind of mandatory training in company policies at every single one. These vary by industry. Telecommunications has different regulations than banking, for example.

One thing that's common to all of them is the non-harassment and non-discrimination policies. This is usually an online course or video, anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple of hours, that explains what kinds of things would be considered harassment, how not to create a hostile workplace and, most relevant right now, the importance of reporting violations of the policy. The training also always consists of an explanation of the laws, which vary from state to state, protecting anyone who does report a violation. One of the things that's illegal anywhere is any kind of retaliation against the reporter.

That is, if I report my supervisor for discrimination, it's illegal for them to fire me, or change my work assignments, or deny me promotions, or any other such actions that could be seen as retaliation. It's even illegal for a supervisor to allow others to harass me in any way because of reporting violations.

I bring this up, in light of all the good cops who stood up and reported violations of policy or even law by their fellow police officers and who were punished for it. Such retaliation is, of course, illegal. In the software industry, it's also fairly rare, especially in larger corporations. Among police, it's super common.

Which means, we, as a society, place more emphasis on making sure that the guy who administers the tools that let the people who write software do so slightly faster is obeying the law than we do on making sure that the people who can use deadly force are.

This is, of course, wrong and bad and needs to stop.

Ah, Arizona.

( CW: Racism, misogyny, sexual assault, Craig Brittain )

Crossposts: https://plutherus.livejournal.com/867175.html

So, a friend of mine shared a series of tweets by someone named Lindsey Stirling this morning. I wanted to say a few word about it.

Hopefully this link works. Tweets start here:
https://twitter.com/LindseyStirling/status/823646216206446592?s=04&fbclid=IwAR03qYXWZm1kiP7UWtB7FlnYKbxeVencFFPlTo1qGALA_mYwvQiQcW0Bxyc

( Read more... )

Crossposts: https://plutherus.livejournal.com/815465.html

So...
30% of Republicans in a survey a couple of years ago said they were in favor of bombing Agribah.
Most news sources that have reported on this have followed it with something like "There's just one problem..."
The "problem" of course being that Agribah doesn't exist. It's not a real place. It's the kingdom from the Disney movie Aladdin.

That is not the problem.

The problem isn't that people didn't know it was a real place.

The real problem is that 30% of Republicans were in favor of bombing a city that they didn't know anything about. They were in favor of literally killing people when the only thing they knew about them is that they sounded vaguely Middle-Eastern.

The story isn't about Americans' horrific lack of knowledge of geography. It's about Americans' horrific bigotry and willingness to support killing people they know nothing about if they sound even vaguely like some group they're told to fear.

Oh, and before you take this as purely, "See, Republicans are stupid. And evil." bear in mind that on the same survey, 19% of Democrats said the same thing.

We can do better than this, people.

https://www.snopes.com/2015/12/18/agrabah-aladdin-republican-poll/

Crossposts: https://plutherus.livejournal.com/765510.html

Tons of money, right? We know they have billions and billions of dollars.

They have enough money to do pretty much anything they want. They have the power, just through choosing how to spend their money, to make profound changes to our world.

And what do they spend it on?

Well, a lot of it, tens of millions, at least, on lobbying.

Lobbying governments to roll back regulations to force the government to favor the already rich over those creating new companies with new ideas.

Lobbying against services for the poor. Lobbying against rights for persecuted minorities. Lobbying against scientific research.

Why?

I mean, they could do anything they wanted. With their money, they could directly fund their own Mars colony. They could wipe out diseases. They could start buying up and stabilizing corrupt regimes in third-world nations instead of lobbying governments to keep them destabilized.

Hell, if they had any imagination, and if making more money is the ultimate goal, they could be lobbying for increased expenditure on NASA and then piggy-back that into private asteroid mining and be bringing back enough resources to make themselves the worlds first trillionaires. And improve the scientific understanding and expansion into the cosmos of all mankind as a byproduct.

They could have giant statues of themselves on Mars, standing for a million years honoring them as great visionaries and beneficiaries of mankind.

But instead they choose to just make a bunch of people's lives a bit more miserable while they make themselves slightly richer, and then die and be forgotten.

And it's not just the Koch's. There's hundreds, possibly thousands, doing the same thing. Hell, think of what even a con man like Joel Osteen could do it he applied his imagination and charisma to something other than just defrauding gullible people.

And their followers. There are, in the United States alone, millions of people who admire and support these people. They look at them in awe and say, yeah, that's what I want to do when I grow up. If I was rich and powerful I could flaunt my power by spreading petty misery to other people, too!

Of course, those people will never *be* rich and powerful because they're part of the groups that the Koch brothers and others like them work so hard to keep down.

But they will never see it.

Crossposts: http://plutherus.livejournal.com/738392.html

"Black Lives Matter" you hear.

No, wait, I just started, and I already have it wrong.

That's not what you hear. "Black Lives Matter" is what is said.

What you hear is "Only Black Lives Matter."

This is a patently false statement, and kinda racist to boot. So you say so.

"No, All lives matter," you reply.

"Yes," they reply. "That is also a true statement. And certainly we don't mean to imply otherwise. The complete statement that isn't said isn't "Only Black Lives Matter", it's "Because there have been widespread actions indicating that many people believe otherwise, we feel the need to point out that Black Lives Matter, too."

And then they explain it using metaphors involving broken bones, or burning houses, or a dozen other things, and some people write huge essays with all this historical context and all the examples and the data and the statistics and other people write cartoons, or make videos, and millions of words are written about it and half your friends point to them every time you say "All Lives Matter" and at the end of all of this, you can't claim ignorance, you can't claim that anybody is trying to say "Only Black Lives Matter", and you can't claim they're saying one thing, or you think they're saying another thing. So maybe you learn, and you understand, and maybe you change your opinion or maybe you don't.

But if, finally, after all that, you still respond with "No, ALL lives matter", then you're not accidentally misinterpreting what's being said. At this point, after all the responses, the misinterpretation can only be on purpose.

And, if you're saying it, you don't have to answer here, in fact it's best if you don't, but you should take a look deep down inside yourself and ask yourself why.

So, there's this bill:
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/story/news/2016/01/12/bill-would-issue-archaeology-permits-any-citizen/78704806/

No.
This is bad. This is very, very bad.
This is an idea that can only be born of extreme ignorance.

We were just discussing recently the tendency of people who aren't involved in a particular discipline to underestimate its complexity. (I have actually had people I actually work with make the assumption that I must be wasting most of my time because all my job really entails is administering a couple of tools and occasionally copying files from one place to another.)

Anyway, I have also heard, on more than one occasion, in defense of citizens being allowed to dig up artifacts, that "collectors and dealers keep just as careful records as archaeologists do." Which is the kind of thing that can only be said by someone with absolutely no idea what archaeologists actually do.

Despite some people's belief to the contrary, the difference goes far beyond whether something ends up in a museum or a private collection. (Thank you, Indiana Jones.)

So, say you found a lithic point (i.e., an "arrowhead"). You carefully mark down its location, and how far down you had to dig before you got to it. Great, good for you, you're an archaeologist now, right?
Well, what about a few other questions:

What was the tool used for? Is there any protein residue on it? How did you avoid getting your own DNA mixed up with it? When was it originally formed? When was it last repaired, or repurposed? (Did you even know that was a thing?)

What was around it? Were there any organics that could be dated? How about charcoal? Fire-cracked rock? Insect parts? Which parts? What insects? Were there other lithic pieces around? Any debitage? How was it scattered? Was it from the same source? Were there cores or broken parts around? How many scrapers or grinders or utilized flakes? (Do you even know how to recognize the differences?) What about ecofacts?

What about the sediment itself? Was the stratigraphy disturbed? How much bioturbation was there?

What about macro-botanicals? Any bones? From what animals? How about plants? Do those species still inhabit that region? To what degree is the difference?

What about the sediment layer itself? Can you date the soil the artifact was in? What were pollen concentrations like? How much did they vary in earlier or later layers or modern counts?

Are you beginning to get an idea why context is important - indeed is *the* most important thing?

Each one of those questions will tell us about the area, the people that lived there. All of those questions will reveal all sorts of specific information that archaeologists can use to piece the whole puzzle together. All sorts of information that is now destroyed because you wanted to dig up an "arrowhead" that you can show your friends or maybe sell on ebay for $20.

And all those questions? Those are just the ones that I thought of off the top of my head, based on my own limited experience. And guess what? I'm barely an amateur. More like an enthusiast. I am nowhere near qualified enough to be considered an archaeologist. And if you didn't think of all those questions, and come up with a couple dozen more, or notice right off the flaws in mine, then you aren't either.

As sworn officers of the law, when you see a crime being committed, you have an obligation to do something about it. Sometimes, the only thing that can be done is to report it, to make an official statement, and perhaps testify in a hearing or a trial.

All citizens bear this responsibility, but none so much as the men and women of law enforcement.

This still holds true when the person perpetrating the crime is a fellow officer of the law.

When Officer Anthony Bologna was wandering through the protests this week, casually assaulting non-threatening people with caustic painful chemicals, he was breaking the law. Mace is issued for the purpose of having a non-lethal method of eliminating a threat. It's purpose is not, and never has been, to punish fellow citizens for expressing an opinion of which you disapprove, any more than a billy club is to be used for that purpose.

To use it as a rebuttal to speech, to intentionally cause physical pain and possible harm to people who do not pose any threat, is the action of a thug, not of an officer of the law.

I, and most of those currently protesting in New York, and many people throughout the United States, realize that that vast majority of police officers in this country are law-abiding, often helpful, and frequently downright nice people.

But police such as Anthony Bologna still give each of you a bad name, especially when their actions go unchallenged. In each of the videotaped incidents involving Bologna last week there were uniformed police present. Their faces seemed to register surprise or shock at his actions as he casually maced penned-in protesters and just as casually walked away, like a thief who grabs a wallet of a table and strolls on away trying not to call attention to himself.

There is an attitude, part of the culture of law enforcement, that you don't turn on your own. You don't report the actions of your own. Sometimes this can actually be a good thing, as not every minor infraction of the law needs to be reported, no more than you write a ticket to everyone who drives a few miles over the stop sign, or arrest every kid who is caught with a joint.

But, at other times, the actions go beyond minor infractions, and stir up more resentment and, in an already charged climate could even lead to an increase in violence, the one thing you're all trying so hard to avoid in New York right now.

Police protect fellow police in order to make all police safer. But many times, it has the opposite effect. But ignoring his actions, by helping to cover up excessive violence on the part of others, you are furthering the belief that police, in general, cannot be trusted. By diminishing the public's trust in the men and women of law enforcement each time you are pushing more people toward the belief that the police, rather than being the defenders of a free society, are actually its enemies.

I urge all police officers, in New York and throughout the country, to come forward in cases like this. When a fellow police officer breaks the law, when they go over the line in a way that causes suffering to other people, I urge you to do the right thing. File a report. Bear witness to what you saw. Doing so may sometimes seem like a betrayal – but who is really doing the betraying? The ones who are violating their oaths to protect and serve, or the ones who attempt to hold them to it? Police officers of all people need to be trusted. By coming forth and testifying when you see egregious wrong-doing you are increasing that waning trust that the public has in you. You are letting people know that they can go to the police for justice. You are breaking down the walls between yourselves and “ordinary citizens” and in the long run making your jobs easier and yourselves and your fellow officers safer overall.

For the last decade or so (starting with Texas, in 1999), several of our southern states have been celebrating what they refer to as "Confederate History Month" every April. (Originally it was supposed to be February, but that would have been way too obviously motivated by racism.)

One of the myths that many in the South like to promote is that the Secession had nothing to do with slavery as such, but everything to do with States Rights. In reality, it had to do with exactly one states' right: to own slaves.

The central argument going on at the time was about the Territories (such as Oregon) that were not yet states. The South wanted to make sure that these territories would become slave-holding states. The North, on the other hand, wanted them to be free states. Slavery had gotten a bad reputation by that time, and there were large abolitionist movements going on, in both North and South. It was a fierce, ongoing debate - entire newspapers were being created dedicated to one side or the other of this issue. The South was legitimately afraid: If these new states were free, they could not be counted upon to vote pro-slavery, and the very institution might be voted out of existence. The abolitionists in the North recognized this fact as well, and were hoping for it.

This one issue, albeit a big one, bigger than health care is today, was the sole major reason for Southern Secession: they were afraid they would lose their slaves if they stayed with the union.

One need look no further than their own declarations to see the truth. This was the middle of the nineteenth century that this occurred. Back when literacy was not so common as today, and therefore more highly esteemed. So, they understood at the time that this was a major turning point in history and took pains to document their reason for leaving the union.

( Declarations of Secession )

I meet the most interesting people in the elevator in this building.

Today, a man stepped into it, with two small children. Perfectly coherent at first. Kids seemed pretty normal, too, talking laughing, the usual.

( Cut for long incoherent ranting )

Daniel Ellsberg is defending Katharine Gun.

Ellsberg, if you'll remember, helped bring down the Nixon regime, which was the most blatantly corrupt group we've had in there until this current one. He made public a lot of paperwork that was supposed to remain quiet, including some rather damning evidence about the causes of the Vietnam war - becoming, in essence, a traitor to his boss, Nixon, in order to remain loyal to his country.

Back when I still had aspirations as a journalist, he was something of a hero of mine.

And now that Katherine Gun has done something similar, embarrassing her boss, Tony Blair, she is being similarly persecuted by her government. She did it, she says, to try to prevent a nonsensical war. It didn't work, we still invaded Iraq, but at least she prevented the sham of any kind of international support for our efforts. I'm glad to see Mr. Ellsburg back in the papers, supporting her decision, and calling for others within the regimes of Bush, and it's sockpuppet, Tony Blair, to do the same.

In America, there is no Official Secrets Act, as there is in the UK. Mr. Ellsburg could not be legally prosecuted, and anyone doing the same today could not be, either. Not legally. Though many have been harrassed, quietly disappeared, publicly "suicided", thrown in jail on trumped-up charges (or no charges at all, an incredibly blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment). Gun faces, apparently, at the maximum, two years in jail.

Not that she deserves that much. What she deserves is the Congression Medal of Honor for her part in uncovering, and preventing, an attempt on the part of representatives of my government to break our laws by attempting to spy on representatives of other governments in order to find blackmail material to make them support the Cheney/Haliburton war on Iraq.

So why, given all the information that's now available and in the public domain, is Katharine Gun being prosecuted for leaking the memos, while those who wrote them are not?

Anyway, one story, among many others on the issue, can be found here

OK, this started off as a response on a friend's journal, where it was going to be a reasoned, logical response to comments about the space program. It turned into too much of a rant, though, to be appropriate for someone else's journal, where I prefer to keep things more civilized, so I'm posting it here instead.

Well-reasoned, logical arguments and civil discourse from me will have to come a bit later...

( Manned mission to Mars? )