You know how you watch TV these days and your brain hiccups when people hug without wearing masks, or violate other social distancing norms that have become ingrained already? I just watched a few seconds of Trump's rally and my brain is short-circuiting.

I knew they were trying to cram 19,000 people indoors, but the footage I saw was generic pre-rally footage of everyone screaming at the top of their lungs, in anticipation, and I just hadn't thought about the screaming. There are 19K people cheering as loudly as they can, in an indoors stadium in Tulsa, without masks on.

That poor city is going to get slaughtered in 5-10 days.

Snarkout writes: I... don't really have a post. But while people were screeching about antifa, the the next wave of the militia movement was out there assassinating cops. They're Very Online, and they're organizing, among other places, on Facebook, and they've clearly infiltrated the military (a member of Air Force's elite "Phoenix Raven" anti-terrorism security group, no less!).

Heebie's take: I balance two thoughts when I read something like this: first, the individuals were radicalized into dangerous terrorists before this most recent incarnation. A 32 year old as far gone as that Steven Carillo guy was an arrow looking for a bow, long before Boogers were a thing. But then an organization like this provides the container - literally the bow, I guess - and shoots the radicalized people into action.

Also IIRC, they call themselves Boogaloo, as in "Part II: The Electric Boogaloo", as in "Part II: Let's Have Another Race-based Civil War." I know it's the norm for these guys, but it's weird how winky and jokey the culture is, while simultaneously being so deadly and dangerous. It's certainly not the norm worldwide that your deadly terrorist cults try to camp out on the line of "What, it's a joke! can't you take a joke?" and "let's murder people."

This is intended to be our system for checking in on imaginary friends, so that we know whether or not to be concerned if you go offline for a while.

Episode 26.

Lurid Keyaki writes:

For food banks, hard times are good times. Their fundraising soars during recessions, and all too often they measure their success in the number of pounds that they distribute. The more pounds they give out, the more they appear to be successful, the more they can appeal for donations. The larger they are, the easier it is to justify the corporate scale salaries that food bank executives make, reaching in some cases half a million dollars or more.

It's not just individual corporations that are donating money and food. USDA has committed increasing amounts of cash and commodities to food banks, reaching some $4 billion by the time of writing. Much of these funds will be contracted out to agri-businesses such as Del Monte and Tyson, two of the largest vendors in the USDA Foods program.

This is worth reading and thinking about, obviously. And it's short. Shortish.

Heebie's take: It reminds me slightly of Chris Hitchen's take-down on Mother Theresa. They're both studies of the entrenchment of something that has a large philanthropic arm, but there's power in maintaining the status quo, and entrenchment starts to set in.

The other example that comes to mind are the accusations (no idea how valid - I feel like commenters here have rolled their eyes at this notion) that get lobbed at pharmaceutical companies: that it's most profitable to treat a chronic condition for the rest of someone's life, and that shapes the decisions about which drugs get funded and marketed.

Natilo asks: It looks like I am going to need to change my WFH set up so that I can use a desk (to hold my two monitors) in an airconditioned room for the rest of the summer. Up till now I have been working on a laptop from my recliner. So this change is going to require an office chair to prevent excruciating back pain. It seems like there's a wide selection of decent chairs available for sale online that are less than $150, but of course I don't want to get stuck with a lemon. Could I ask for office chair brand and model recommendations? People could talk about other WFH topics as well of course.

Heebie's take: Me toooooooo. I am also in a country experiencing a pandemic and looking to WFH more for the forseeable future. I need an office chair (1) with an adjustable height that can get me up to a table that's too high for me, and (2) a relatively small footprint, and (3) why are they universally so ugly?. (I did peruse craigslist already.)

I have a numb-finger thing that only flares up when I WFH, and I can keep it under control with an arm brace. (I've discussed it here and self-diagnosed as cubital tunnel system.) But ideally I could duplicate whatever happens at work that keeps it from happening there.

The suspected lynchings of black men in the last few days deserves its own post. Not because there's much to argue about, but because it is so singularly horrifying and ghastly that I feel like it needs to take up some room here.

NickS writes: I'm not sure what to think in the current debate about police reform.

Temperamentally I'm a liberal incrementalist. I prefer solutions that are based on making clear, achievable improvements to the status quo. For that reason I appreciate the messaging around "eight can't wait" and I am more cautious in my feelings about defunding or abolishing the police.

I think there are many problems with policing in the US, but I also think there is a value to policing, and I want to figure out how it would be done better.

But I'm having a hard time envisioning how liberal incrementalism can address the most serious problems. For many issues it's easy to see how gradual improvements may be incomplete or insufficient, but still obviously mitigate the clearest problems. I'm wrestling with how that applies to policing.

There are many examples of people of color sharing their experiences with the police, but I've been struck by Amber Ruffin's* description (video) of her experiences with the police. She's a good storyteller, and conveys her experience quite clearly and most of the stories involve some moment in which the attentitude of the encounter changes -- either starting out hostile and then easing up, or becoming much more tense. Those differences in attitude are the difference between, "that's a bad experience and an uncomfortable interaction" and "that's horrible and completely messed up."

That won't be changed by new laws or restrictions on police use of force.

If the challenge is, how to build a culture such that the behavior that Amber is describing (or the behavior that we've all seen in numerous videos over the past two weeks) is clearly seen as a breach of professionalism and demanding some act of, at least, apology and addring the wounds (the model of "restorative justice" feels appropriate for cases in which there are no serious injuries but the police have clearly gone way past the bounds of what's acceptable). I'm not sure how to get there.

It's worth saying that, where I live, the police seem mostly decent, so this doesn't feel like I need to be advocating for an immediate change locally. But I want help trying to figure out how I should be thinking about and approaching the problem broadly.

On a related note, here's a former cop taking the position "all cops are bastards" and "you might want to consider abolishing the police."

I was a police officer for nearly ten years and I was a bastard. We all were.

This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I've never felt confident enough to write it. It's a time in my life I'm ashamed of. It's a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt. It's a time that I acted as a violent agent of capitalism and white supremacy. Under the guise of public safety, I personally ruined people's lives but in so doing, made the public no safer... so did the family members and close friends of mine who also bore the badge alongside me.

Finally, I saw a sign in a window recently which said "de-fund the police." With the hyphen, I initially read it as "de-funk the police" which seemed like an odd, but interesting sentiment, and reminded me of this George Clinton video.

* Who may be familiar from Jokes Seth Can't Tell (video).

Heebie's take: It's very easy for me to envision ways that abolishing the police goes wrong, for the exact same reasons as incrementalism goes wrong: it's staffed by the same people, and the culture continues. Therefore it has to start with wise hiring from the very top, and from the top of the authority, there has to be buy-in and enforcement of different cultural norms, as has been discussed here at length.

It just makes me a little wary - any set of reforms can be doomed to failure, if it's imposed by outsiders. Cultural shift requires a million little micro-tests of boundaries, to see if things are going to be essentially the same, or if there are a new patterns being laid down. It has to be the case that the police chiefs, or the new abolish-police-chiefs, and lawmakers and judges all buy in to the premise that it is no longer business as usual.

This is intended to be our system for checking in on imaginary friends, so that we know whether or not to be concerned if you go offline for a while.

Episode 25.

This is making me so irate. So, Texas schools receive state funding based on attendance. So when schools shut down in mid-March, everyone was very nervous about how that would affect the state attendance counts.

The state came out with a statement that said, "Don't worry, your funding will hold steady for the rest of this year, and for 20-21, using your old attendance numbers." Great. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

So, in order to do that, they've hijacked the CARES ACT federal funding to subsidize the state government, instead of letting it provide additional funding for schools. Literally they are saying they are going to reduce state funding by amounts to match the incoming CARES grant money. So you get exactly your old state funding amount - good news, your funding isn't getting slashed! - and we will actively prevent you from getting a red cent more. I hope your cute little pandemic isn't going to have any cute additional costs associated with it.

This could have gone into comments for my last post, but I thought it was good enough to put it on the front page. Here's an op-ed from a Princeton sociologist, arguing for and clearly describing a plausible non-police strategy for controlling neighborhood violence. It's phrased in conciliatory terms, suggesting a pilot program where police mostly withdraw from a neighborhood in favor of community non-violence professionals paid and supported at rates comparable to the withdrawn police, but without making the aggressive political move of actually defunding police, just taking responsibility for a set of tasks in a defined neighborhood away from them.

This week, it's an awfully attractive thought. If there was some way to call a trained professional to help you deal with an annoying situation like having a drunk asleep in his car in the drive through of your Wendy's, and you could be sure they'd show up without the authority to kill the guy, Rayshard Brooks would still be alive today.

CharleyCarp writes: I bet this is an even bigger issue among under-resourced populations in the big cities too.

Heebie's take: I'm VERY worried about this.