Being against evil doesn't make you good.
I've been a bit under the weather since Trotcon, but feeling better now.
This weekend I need to work on putting together some poni stuff for my niece (she's up here for her birthday), and my inability to do basic things makes that a bit difficult. So I may be delayed a few days on the Trotcon retro and the other long post I still really really want to share with y'all.
To head off any possible confusion, I've added a clarification to TEEE's story page and a note at the top of the chapter explaining that TEEE was not written using LLM generative AI (the story actually predates this technology by several years).
[Adult story embed hidden]
I remain alive, and as of June 13th am now the number of symmetries in a cube.
I will be at Trotcon.
Please contact me if you're there! (Or even if not, that's okay too.) 
I might do an author party. I'll announce it with another post. Signal boost would be useful.
Sorry for disappearing. Ironically the thing I wanna talk about is the thing that keeps me from being here at FF or getting anything done. 
My silence is not because I don't care, but because I've been having a rough time of things lately and have not had the emotional fortitude to post about my troubles. But some ponies' troubles are worse than mine, no?
Have an image from the lovely Dilarus, 2366903 on derpi.
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Take care, Trixie! We're here for you!
Just to say it in a simple way.
Bellisimo!
Neigh
Amen
Good luck, both to you and yours and those others you seek to help!
I'm Jewish and I find this all bullshit... Sorry to say, all lives matter... let's not play the Oppression Olympics, we all know Jews would win every time.
5278915
I'm also Jewish, and I'm not saying antisemitism isn't still a problem, but this isn't and shouldn't be a competition. It is stating the existence of another, separate but related problem. To use the burning house metaphor, when someone says "The firemen set my house on fire!" the proper response is not "You call this a fire? Wait until it's a holocaust, then talk to me about fire."
5278982
All lives matter, or do you not think we are all Gods creation... I was pointing out the stupidity of the whole thing... ps... People who obsess about race for any reason are racist... like u.
5279040
To achieve equality, all must be treated equally, not only in the eyes of God, but those of man. If that is not the case—and recent events have shown it is objectively isn't—one should cry out in support of the mistreated. All lives should matter, but the current climate makes it clear that to those in power, black lives matter less, if at all. That's a problem. If you see this as stupidity, I don't know what to tell you. If you see those who want to eliminate judgement by race as racist themselves, I really don't know what to tell you.
5279048
all lives matter... and stop seeing color... we are all humans and humans make mistakes. The cops responsible for George's death have been arrested and are now in the hands of the court... it's sad... now he's is forgotten by the roaming mass of useful idiots.
5279060
If you think George Floyd is forgotten, or if you think this is just about George Floyd, you either live under a rock or are willfully blind to what is going on all over the world today.
But this post isn't about your opposition to highlighting the problem of black men and women and children dying in the United States, so let's please not make it about you. Antisemitism is extremely important to identify and fight but it does not invalidate other crimes against humanity or any of the messages here.
5279073
How can I a jew be an antisemitic?
And you're missing my point... but whatever....
Ps... ALL LIVES MATTER, numnut!!!
5279074
Trick wasn't saying you're antisemitic, she said that antisemitism is something that we should also fight.
I'm sorry, but you're just wrong about this. If I go to my favored news site, I can see right now that the headline is categorized under George Floyd killing and they are literally referring to the protests as George Floyd rallies. A defining feature of the protests, appearing on placards and being chanted by protesters, is "I Can't Breathe", referring to the nine minutes that a police officer spent kneeling on George Floyd's neck, killing him. Protesters have also been kneeling on one knee to symbolize and protest the murder. They know exactly who they are protesting for and why.
Please try to understand the context. "Black Lives Matter" doesn't mean "Black Lives Matter More", or "Only Black Lives Matter". It's expressed in the context of this question: "If all lives matter, then why don't black people have the same rights, treatment, and privileges as white people?"
People who say "All lives matter" are correct, but they are answering the wrong question.
5279508
As much as we all appreciate the effort, I fear your well-thought-out words fall on eyes firmly shut.
5279508
but we are all God's creation... people who think about race and obsess over it for any reason are racist... for heaven's sake you really think diving us by racial lines saying people deserve special treatment because skin color??? What's this going to solve???... But yeah better we divide base upon color, sex and political beliefs, that's working out just fine...
The definition of insanity is... you should know it...
History doesn't repeat it rhymes...
That's why one day hopefully people will turn to God, because this world is not forever.
5279690
Black people are already getting special treatment because of their skin color. Ask George Floyd what his special treatment was.
5279970
Not my point but whatever... one day Democrats and Republicans will no longer exist and we can end all this stupidity.
5279570
No sweetheart, I'm just not a far left or right moron who believes in the mob, but only in God.
5280212
We can have a peaceful discussion here without using words like "sweetheart" and "moron", please.
5280214
Well when you assume I have closed eyes. I sense a snarky tone there. Just saying all we can do about it is pray not riot... had one come through my town... burned buildings solve nothing, only stoke hate. But God is mighty... leave it in his hands...
The problem with the Black Lives Matter movement is that the entire thing is founded on a lie.
The lie is that the problems they have with the police are based out of systemic racism.
The problem is that while racism certainly exists, it isn't actually the main problem.
We've done studies on this.
Studies have failed to find any significant difference in lethal use of force on black suspects between black and white cops.
Likewise, they've failed to find that police were any more likely to shoot black people than white people under the same circumstances, and use of non-lethal force was only marginally different (about 10-15%).
Indeed, all this was spawned by an incident which showed no evidence of racial animus. There's no evidence that I've seen that the police officers in question did what they did because they were racist. Indeed, I really doubt they even meant to kill Floyd. The evidence seems to suggest that the Minneapolis police do this sort of thing on a regular basis - hundreds of times in the last few years alone.
They did it so much, they got used to it, and assumed it wasn't dangerous.
Something dangerous + stupidity + complacency = dead body.
That doesn't mean they shouldn't be punished for it, but the reality is that what happened here was frankly inevitable given what is going on.
Minneapolis has a huge crime problem. And indeed, most of these hotspots have had major crime problems.
And that's what is ultimately feeding this. The police being crappy are not the cause - they're a symptom.
The problem is crime.
The US, on average, actually has less crime than many European countries. In fact, most of the US experiences low crime rates.
But some areas of the US experience extremely high crime rates.
When you break down US cities by crime rate, you see vast, vast differences.
The most homicidal large city in the US - St. Louis - has literally 91 times the homicide rate of the least homicidal city in the US. When one city has a homicide rate of 66.07 per 100,000 people, and another has a homicide rate of 0.72 per 100,000 people, well... you're not really living in the same reality.
All of this is a predictable consequence of the crime in these communities.
Take Chicago. It's a city where the police are often complained about. It is also a city that, in 2016, had more murders than *the entire country of Canada*. Canada, for references, has twelve times the population of Chicago.
And yet, the CPD only solve a bit over 10% of homicide cases each year.
Why is this?
The answer is that no one ever sees anything. Or worse, they say they do know, but they won't tell the police.
And then, there's a revenge killing the next night.
How do you think it feels to be a police officer in Chicago?
The people you're policing hate you. They refuse to talk to you. They are totally okay with murder in the streets, and refuse to talk to you or help you commit crimes. They sneer at you constantly. They're completely unhelpful.
And every day, you go out and have to deal with shooting victims, and most days, there's a murder. Often several.
Indeed, it is a noteworthy occurrence when Chicago goes 24 hours without a shooting.
And the people you talk to about it often sneer at you or refuse to tell you anything, even when they clearly know.
Even journalists find this incredibly upsetting and depressing. A number of journalists who have been involved in regularly reporting on crime in Chicago have developed mental health issues.
And they aren't the ones being yelled at all the time, from all sides.
Is it any surprise that the police have problems in Chicago?
It would be more surprising if they didn't.
And it's the same every single time.
Minneapolis has more than twice the average homicide rate in the US, and there was recently a huge crime spike there, just earlier this year. The rising crime rates are an ongoing problem.
So what's going on? Well, the police are being yelled at. Get the crime down. Stop people from murdering each other.
Meanwhile, the people refuse to help them out. Indeed, the vast majority of murder victims in Minneapolis are themselves people with criminal records. Gangs killing members of other gangs. Criminals getting into fights. All sorts of issues. And of course, criminals are the least likely people to help out the police.
So the police get upset. They get frustrated. Shit is spiraling out of control, and they're getting blamed for it.
And so they stop caring as much about the people they're arresting. In their minds, the people they're arresting are the assholes who are murdering people every day! Why should they show them any sympathy? Fuck 'em. If they resist arrest, pin them to the ground and cuff them. They might complain, but every other time, it's worked out fine. They're a bunch of liars anyway.
Except, of course, what they're doing is actively dangerous, and is likely to kill people sooner or later. And, after years of this - hundreds of events like this - eventually, it happens. Someone has a bad day. Something happens. They pin someone to the ground. They complain they can't breathe, but they've heard THAT before. And there's all these people around bitching at them, who never see anything whenever a crime is committed. Like they're going to listen to what THEY have to say.
And then, whoops, dead body.
This is what happens.
And this is what no one wants to understand.
It's not that the police are great people. But a lot of people who, you know, don't want to have a fucking depressing job will want to go be a cop somewhere else, or not be a police officer at all.
Minnesota has been struggling with a shortage of police officers.
And who can blame them? Who wants to sign up for this shit?
Police have very high turnover rates.
It's miserable, and it is even more miserable in these high crime areas.
Indeed, the police in Minneapolis are chronically understaffed. They deal with thousands of calls in any given month. The third precinct has 126 employees. They had 4,219 calls they had to respond to in a four week period in 2019.
They send out two officers per car. So that means that any given pair of cops will have 67 calls to respond to. So that's about 3.35 calls a day.
Doesn't sound bad... until you realize that responding to 9-1-1 calls is only about a third of the work they do.
So if you assume each event takes an hour to resolve (which is probably lowballing it), they don't have nearly enough time to do everything.
How well do you think that is working out for them?
Because from where I'm sitting, not so well.
It's no wonder they have problems.
Indeed, as that powerpoint shows, they've been shedding about 40 officers a year for the last several years - that's about a 4.5% staff reduction per year as the department has 880 employees.
And they're well aware that understaffing can lead to an increase in problems - in fact, they outright note that time spent on community outreach can lower crime and lower the odds of the police using excessive force in that presentation!
This is from two years ago!
So even as the crime rate has gone up, the number of police officers has gone down. And honestly, it's probably likely that the rising crime rate is in part a consequence of less police being around - more police being around serves as a deterrent to crime, and has shown itself to lower the amount of crime being committed.
Is it any surprise that this happened?
Because it shouldn't be. This is exactly what we'd expect to happen in this sort of situation.
No one wants to hear this, though, because it means that the people out shouting in the streets are not being righteous. They're screaming at a bunch of stressed-out, overworked people who are dealing with an impossible situation with an ever dwindling amount of staff.
They don't want to deal with the actual problem, because that reflects negatively on them.
But that's the sad reality of the situation.
If you want to make this happen less often, the best thing that can be done is to increase the number of police officers out on the streets and to work to lower crime rates in these communities.
Nothing else is going to fix the problem, because the problem is not originating from the police.
The police are having problems, but the police having problems is not the root cause. Punishing officers for breaking the law needs to happen, as otherwise, you're going to have a real bad time.
But all this shouting about the police is not going to solve the root problem.