1) The Jacksonville, FL shootings are really, really sad and disturbing to me. Doubly so because they happened just as the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington was going on. The shootings are all but established as being racially motivated. That it happened in Florida, a state that's trying to roll back racially conscious education while also trying to enact even more laissez-faire gun laws, is hard to ignore. As much as I philosophically agree with a pure anarcho-libertarian ideology. this is a good reminder that people just aren't ready for that kind of freedom. Racism is still far too common, and we need to educate our youth so they don't make the same mistakes as previous generations. Gun violence is still far too common for us to do anything but enact common sense gun laws at a federal level.
I also found it in poor taste by Governor DeSantis to call out the shooter for killing himself and not facing criminal charges, but not calling out the racism. Pardon the parlez-vous, but DeSantis is a piece of shit and he has no place in government at any level.
2)I sort of paid attention to the first Republican primary debate. All I have to say that when Nikki Haley and Chris "Let Me Rent Out A Whole Beach While The Whole Country Is In Quarantine" Christie are the sensible candidates, there are no good candidates. I will be voting for Biden again in 2024, barring some amazing other candidate appearing on the scene.
3) Speaking of Joe Biden, I will say that I think he and his regime are doing exactly what I hoped they would do: they're getting the country back to normal. It was never going to be an over-night fix, but I think they've done a good job over the last few years. I'm still not a huge fan of his, but of all the 2020 candidates, he was the one I saw as getting us back on track (domestically and internationally) and he hasn't disappointed in that regard. I still think there needs to be some tweaking of our current system (e.g.; finding alternatives to our current Social Security system, term and wage limits for politicians, trimming the fat off government spending), but he's done a good job of getting us back to a sensible place where those tweaks could be possible.
4) On a personal note, I'm excited/happy to be getting back into some math coursework after a "break". I use quotes because I've been doing some independent study (refreshing on old stuff, going through online lectures of more advanced subjects, continuing my research project on the gL stuff), so I technically haven't been taking a break. But I'm excited and happy to be getting back into the grind of coursework. I appreciate Stony Brook for letting me take the year to get my stuff together so I can come back with a clean(-ish) slate without a bunch of bs hanging over my head.
5) Not sure how I feel about the new Portland Central City Task Force (link to a story). On one hand, it's good to see a strong, concerted effort is being attempted. On the other hand, this is a lot to undertake all at once, and it's trying to do too much too soon. It's sort of like trying to do open heart surgery, a lung transplant, a resetting of a broken bone, a root canal, electroshock therapy, and the recuperative physical and mental therapy all at once. If the task force is going to be effective, it has to approach this in phases. That definitely starts with "Phase I: Addressing and Solving The Homeless and Addiction Crises". Homelessness and addiction are definitely the 2 biggest issues. It's retarding (in the true sense of the word) population growth and economic growth, and it's causing a low-quality of life for those staying in Portland. I still think Measure 110 is salvageable, and I still think the drug cities idea I proposed (link) is an approach that could work and could even lead to some huge breakthroughs in addiction therapy. I think it would be wise to (temporarily) cut funding on a lot of art projects and such to divert to working on the homelessness and addiction crises. It's just a harsh truth. A (temporary) rent cap should be placed, too, just to entice people into staying. I would go so far as to (temporarily) divert funds from the art tax to homeless/addiction work. For Portland's rehabilitation, you have to start with the actual surgery. That's what Phase I is. Crime will probably drop significantly (with a few inevitable hiccups) once Phase I is on all cylinders and (hopefully) making significant gains in housing. homeless, helping people fight off addiction, possibly sequestering those who just want to be addicted, and keeping the people and businesses that are there from moving.
Phase II is where you start looking at working to become an attractive place to move to and/or bring businesses to. In my opinion, it would take a minimum of 5 years to even start thinking about Phase II. I think 5 years is the super-optimistic timeline. Like, probably unrealistic. But we try to be optimists, yeah?
6) This (link) was tough to read. I watched the body cam footage, and she never really went that fast, where I thought "Wow, this officer was facing a life or death situation". And honestly, all I could think was "Why doesn't he just get out of the way and get her plate numbers and call them in? Or just shoot a tire?" the whole time I watched the video. For a bottle of alcohol a witness is saying the victim, Ms. Young, didn't even steal? How is that worth a life?
I'm not sure if there was any racial bias here. I didn't hear either of the officers use any racial slurs, or if was just a highly untrained police officer who was/is mentally unprepared to make wise split-second decisions (and, thus, should have never been given a badge and gun in the first place).
I do feel like Ms. Young asking "Are you going of shoot me?" says something about a level of trust between people of colour and law enforcement that just hasn't been fully established yet. Even if there ends up being no racial bias in this case, it's hard for people to not think back to everything that's been going on and brought into the light from Ferguson (and pre-Ferguson) until George Floyd's case (and beyond). It seems like an increase in accountability of law enforcement, and an increase in racial tolerance by law enforcement, has kind of helped build trust in the last few years, but the wounds are still healing and the trust is still fragile. Lethally poor judgement, like this officer showed, only slows progress. He should be fired and, in my opinion at least, should do some time in jail over this.
update: She definitely stole the liquor (security footage) and so I do think it was correct to try and stop her. And I do think it was dumb for her to try to take off when the police tried to stop her. But she still didn't need to die. I still think the officer who was not in front of the car could've got the plate number and called it in, and she would've been apprehended with no shooting and no death. I wouldn't call this murder, but I definitely think it falls somewhere between manslaughter (voluntary or involuntary...not 100% sure) and excessive force. Also, I think the shooting of Eddie Irizarry in Philadelphia was totally uncalled for, and does qualify as murder after watching the tape.
7) Good (link). I've been following the sentencings that have been coming down in the last month or so for the people who were more in leadership roles in planning the 6 January insurrection. I think the sentences have been fair and that they've been significant enough to send the message that democracy isn't something you only agree with when it benefits you, and irrelevant otherwise. Storming the capitol to overturn an election that has been deemed fair by pretty much every independent audit and killing security officers and threatening to kill politicians is unacceptable. There's no circumstance that makes that ok. Biden still hasn't created a Socialist military state, he still hasn't forced anyone to buy an electric car, he still hasn't imposed a law saying everyone must have one pregnancy aborted before they can get married, he still hasn't imposed a law saying all citizens must give pronouns or engage in homosexual intercourse before they're allowed to vote.... no rights you had before Biden have been taken away by Biden. And those things will never happen. You're right to be an Ultra-Conservative Trump supporter who drives a car to church with homophobic, racist, anti-abortion, anti-liberal, pro-gun bumper stickers hasn't been infringed upon. You're ok. Myself and others may not agree with some (or any) of what you believe, but we haven't taken those rights from you....or even asked those rights to be taken from you. What these insurrectionists did is not ok.
For all the talk of BLM and Antifa and all that....none of these groups stormed the capitol before, during, or after Trump took office, This group currently being prosecuted (and sentenced) did. And, in the opinion of myself and others (including judges and juries) they deserve their punishments.
8) Honestly, the threat of government shutdowns every 6 months or so is kind of becoming an empty threat. (Link)
Someone always caves, and someone gets (or gives) some concession and things don't really change in the slightest, and then 6 months later (or however long) the process begins anew. I don't even think it should be a news item until the last 12 hours before the budget deadline.
9) RIP to the victims of both the Maui wildfires and the Moroccan earthquakes. Both are horrible tragedies. The loss of life in Morocco is especially intense. Almost 2700 lives lost as of this writing (11 Sept, 2023).
10) The loss of Libyan life in the recent floods is...heartbreaking isn't enough. Most sources I've seen have the current number of lives lost at around 5000. Some are estimating upwards to 20,000 people will be found dead. That's just...I dont even know what to say. That's basically like the entire city of Ashland, OR being wiped out. I don't even know what to say, except I hope 20,000 is a gross over-estimate. My condolences to those who lost their people, and my sincerest hopes that those missing will be found alive.
11) A while back, I wrote a bit about two young ladies still in high school who came up with a new proof to the Pythagorean Theorem (at bottom of post). I just watched this (link, via Quanta), and I'm just like...what are they putting in the water at high schools. I'm just amazed by his ability to seek out (and find) what he needed to complete his proof. is so impressive. That's how you make good use of the internet. Congratulations to Mr. Larsen, and best wishes on a long and fruitful (and hopefully fulfilling) career in mathematics!
12) JFC....(link).. I legit have no hope for humanity. You can't even have multiple colours hanging next to each other without some fucking dickhead throwing a complete fit about it. We've advanced our minds to the point where we can send people into space and where we can observe (and even manipulate) the tiniest particles, but we're still somehow so fucking stupid as a species.
There's just been a huge storm related crisis hitting pretty much the entire East Mediterranean, and Erdogan (president of a country in the East Mediterranean) can't think of many issues that bother him more than some colours hanging next to each other.
I don't get homophobia. Even as someone who spent their entire childhood being molested by men, I don't have fear of people who find the same sex attractive. I don't think, for instance, that hanging a rainbow flag in a town hall will lead to a dramatic rise in break-ins where gay dudes rape cis-het dudes while forcing them to watch their wives get scissored by lesbians. It's not something I worry about. I've been molested by more (allegedly) heterosexual men than gay men. I'm more worried about heterosexual men, to be perfectly honest.
Aside from some unfounded, irrational fear of being sexually assaulted by homosexuals, I don't really know why people are homophobic (LQBTQ+-phobic might be more appropriate? I honestly haven't heard a more inclusive term than "homophobia/c"). I don't get it. I also don't understand racism or misogyny or really any hate of any certain subset of the population. I don't believe in any god, and I dislike the influence religion has on society, but I'm not out protesting churches or mosques or temples or whatever or trying to get religious shirts banned from public places or anything. I'm not screaming in peoples faces if they've got a religious symbol on a necklace. I'm not boycotting any stores for having religious-themed items mixed in with secular items.. Some people want to believe they can only be their best self if they submit to some god, and that's their right. I'm not going to lose my shit over it. So I guess it's really hard for me to understand why people lose their shit over something like multi-coloured banners (that apparently had nothing to do with LQBTQ+ rights in the first place?). Their eyes see a rainbow and their mind goes straight to hateful thoughts. It's just so mind-boggling to me.
13) If you're wondering what modern colonialism looks like, (link).
14) I've been busy, so I haven't been following the Measure 114 trial in Harney County as closely as I might like, but I've been paying attention. I voted "yes" on 114 mostly for the registration mandate (because I don't think an unregistered gun serves any good purpose), but also because I don't see the point of having a magazine with over 10 bullets. I'm sorry, but if the government really wants to get you that bad, you can have a 200 bullet belt and they're just going to send a tank.
Anyway, I do hope the judge is approaching this from a neutral position (and my impression is that he is). I can see the argument against the magazines to a certain extent.
For most people in Oregon, the big clips and stuff are for just having fun on the firing rage. Or it's just a show piece, like a fancy car you polish every day but never drive. I remember walking up one of the Ridge trails on Mary's Peak and these two guys where just walking by, all geared up and holding assault rifles with clips that could definitely hold more than 10 rounds. But I just got a "we're just taking the cars down the strip" vibe from them.
There are a few (though less than Blue Oregon thinks, IMO) who really think a bunch of extended clips are the crucial component to freedom and defending themselves against the country they are so fiercely devoted to. And there's criminals who like extended clips because they make crime easier.
I think it's fair to say that, for the normal gun-owning Oregonian, it probably does seem really dumb to have a law to restrict magazine capacity. For most Oregonians, the biggest crimes extended clips have been involved in are things like Hank unloading 40 of his 50 rounds into the beer case before the cans were even opened. So it feels like more of a philosophical issue of freedom and the restriction of freedom than a crime issue to them. And mandatory training and all that probably seems equally stupid, because most gun owning Oregonians have probably learned how to shoot when they were 5. I'm sure the safety training and all that feels outright insulting to people.
But the world is catching up to every state, and you can't go back to an era where school shooting s just don't happen, and indiscriminate mass shootings in public places don't happen. And something has to be done. You can't have a good guy with a gun everywhere. It's just literally impossible.
It's a sad truth that good people suffer when bad people do bad things. When there's more crime, the taxpayers take a hit because the police need more money to stop the growing crime rate. Good gun owners, unfortunately, will inevitably have to take a hit because of the actions of people who feel the need to slaughter large amounts of innocent people, usually with the aid of a high capacity magazine.
I don't think Measure 114 is perfect, but doing nothing isn't going to work and roving groups of armed anti-crime volunteers isn't going to work either. We've been lucky in Oregon to have had been more minimally impacted by mass shootings (in terms of frequency) than other states. I think we've been lucky because most Oregonians who own guns were raised with them in a responsible fashion. But the world is catching up to Oregon, and a lot of the problems of the world that Oregon kind of avoided in the past are coming with it. We're too connected via the internet and such. You can have an isolated part of the world where the big problems don't' hurt you. You have to safe guard against those problems, and 114 is a way to safe guard against the inevitable problem of increased gun violence and mass shootings. Is it the best plan? No. Is it better than waiting until the next school shootings or mass shootings to do something? I think so, yes...with the caveat that it shouldn't be the final say, if better safe guards come along.
15) I've been thinking a bit about the immigration/migrant crisis in the USA, especially with the whole Congressional-House-disarray thing going on. As I've said before, I'm definitely not anti-immigration or anti-migrant. America (as we know it today, anyway) was built on immigration. But I do think we're currently in a really rough spot as a country, and for me there's a sense of...how can I put it.... a person with two broken arms trying to pull a person with two broken legs from a flaming car wreck. Sanctuary cities are a great idea, until they're so overwhelmed they can't provide real sanctuary. If things are so bad somewhere else that being homeless in NYC or Portland or San Francisco is worth a dangerous journey to America, that's one thing. But I really have to wonder how many people come here with the idea that they'll be put in an ICE cage or be homeless in a sanctuary city or some such. Is that the better life they imagined?
While I don't agree with completely closed borders in perpetuity, I do think there has to come a time where you say "We need to put a temporary hold on letting others in while we figure our own problems out". Right now the USA has some pretty big problems.
People get drawn here by the illusion that America is a place of stability and prosperity. I think most Americans can agree that stability isn't currently one of our strong points, and that prosperity is evasive for a lot of Americans. During the pandemic, Wages might be higher here than in, say, Mexico. But prices are higher here, too. America's unemployment rate might be low, but the wages of most jobs barely cover basics.
I definitely think of Portland as an example of a city whose own problems can only be exacerbated by (illegal) immigrants looking for sanctuary. I don't think immigrants go to Portland to commit crimes or anything, but they probably don't realize how expensive it is to live there, or all of the problems the city is having with addiction, homelessness, and funding.
I still feel the best way to combat the immigration/migrant crisis is to work with other countries to help them find ways to keep their citizens (e.g.; helping them build industry with better jobs/wages, helping them keep citizens safe from cartels, improving education). Walls never have (and never will) work. Locking people up doesn't work. But something has to be done. I don't like to see people move from a place where they were suffering just to suffer here.
PS- I used Mexico as the example here because they're actually fellow members of USMCA (formerly NATO). Basically I chose Mexico as the example not because I think there's something especially wrong with Mexican immigrants/migrants, but more because we have a tighter/stronger socio-economic/political connection with them. That stronger connection makes it (slightly) easier to work together to come up with some solution that makes life in Mexico just as good as life in the USA, so migration/immigration is more a "moving for school/work" thing than a "quality of life" thing.
16) A new favourite math quote: "Mathematics does not have to be completely correct to be important mathematics"- Prof. Claude Lebrun (link, quote at time stamp 11:09 ). It's super easy to get caught up in being "perfect" (in quotes because there's no such thing as perfect, even in math) when doing mathematics. Obviously, you want your results to be as comprehensive as possible, with as few errors as possible. But when you think back on important discoveries in mathematics, few results are ever perfect, or even close to perfect. No one will argue, for example, that the discovery of calculus by Newton/Leibniz was important. But calculus, especially in its earliest form, was (and is) far from perfect. It had to be expanded upon by later mathematicians to cover cases the original discovery didn't (and couldn't) describe.
When you learn math, you can sometimes lose sight of the fact that even the great mathematicians with their important theorems and discoveries had to have their errors fixed, and the gaps in their discoveries filled, by later mathematicians.
It's just a good reminder that, in a field where perfection is generally the (unattainable) goal, you have to accept that nothing is perfect and even the greats had to have their work corrected and/or expanded upon by others.
17) I'm sorry, but this (link) is gross. The idea of "deprogramming" is gross no matter your reasons or justifications. I don't agree with MAGA politics at all, but I also don't agree with the idea of deprogramming in any form. Deprogramming is a form of forcing your will on another, which is beyond distasteful. You can show people they're wrong by example, or by debate, or so on and so forth. But the idea of deprogramming is just...ugh. I think it's gross when people try to "deprogramme" LGBTQ+ people (for example), and I think this form of deprogramming that HRC is suggesting is gross, too. I have no regrets in not voting for her in 2016.
18) Sad to hear about the needless loss of life (and inevitable loss of more life) in the Israel/Hamas conflict. I'll possibly write more about this later, but for now... I'm just sad so many have died (in the past, present, and future) over some land.
Update: I want to add, I mean needless loss of life on both sides. The needless loss of lives of innocents. As someone with Jewish and Nubian (so probably/inevitably with some Arab) ancestry, who's practiced Islam and Judaism, I don't take sides here. I disagree with the whole concept of a "Holy Land" anywhere, and more and more I'm disagreeing with the very concept of nations and borders. So I'm not for one side or the other. I'm against any innocent person dying over some land. Just thought I should make that clear.
19) The only thing I have to say about this story (link) is this: Pay them. 15 years in prison for something they didn't do. And it was all based on what was admitted to be a lie? Pay them.
20) Was sad to see that late-night talk show hosts came back.
21) Might do a whole post on this later, especially as the situation develops/draws to a close, but for now I just want to say that the mass shooting in Maine was so saddening. I don't know what drives people to do these crazy things that cost innocent people their lives. I don't know what shooting at random people accomplishes. I don't know if the gunman had some sort of reason for doing this (and honestly I don't care what his reason was if he had/has one). There's just no excuse for this type of thing. I'm not going to turn this into some diatribe regarding guns. Right now, all I care about are the innocent people who were just out enjoying some bowling and/or some food who are now either dead or scarred for life because some dickhead had a chip on his shoulder over some fucking thing or another. I hope law enforcement finds this guy and he get the maximum allowable penalty. But more than anything, I hope for whatever peace and healing is possible for the survivours and for those who lost their people.
22) Super excited about this current Detroit Pistons team. It's a super talented team, and they're really emphasizing defense (which I like). The only thing I'd tweak is I'd make Killian Hayes the guy bringing the ball up court. I love Cade Cunningham, but I feel like Killian has better ball protection and court vision. They're both great distributors, but I think Cade's the better shooter and Killian is the better distributor. I also love the front court trio. Duren and Stewart and Thompson are just super exciting to watch. I may have to make it over to the Moda Centre to see this team live.
Update: I'm kind of shocked to see Jaden Ivey has been sort of...left behind? He was super-good last year. I liked how up-tempo Hayes, Ivey, and Duren were as a group. Cade is super methodical (he reminds me of Chauncey Billups, but with better shooting...which is insane to think about), and up-tempo isn't his game when he's running the point (but as a pure shooting guard, I think he'd be good in an up-tempo line up though). But it seems weird that the up-tempo trio hasn't really had a lot of burn together. Maybe Ivey went all Kay Slay and violated Monty William's "We don't play Nas" rule or something, but I don't get why he isn't being given more chances to work out any problems in-game.
23) Been wrapped up in school work mostly, so I didn't really do my annual "horror movie per night for all of October" marathon. But I did go see Saw X in theaters and thought it was surprisingly good. I'm an unironic fan of the franchise (I just love the over-the-top continuity and increasingly bizarre twist endings), but this one was especially good (for a Saw movie....qualification is absolutely necessary).
I've also been slowly going through the Haunting of Hill House mini-series. The library had a copy on dvd, so I checked it out. I'm a pretty big fan of Mike Flanagan's work (absolutely loved Oculus, really enjoyed Absentia and Hush, and even though Ouija: Origins of Evil was miraculously good:). HoHH is super awesome. Not gory, but builds a lot of suspense/dread and has some good scares. I like how Flanagan actually develops his characters in all his work. If you can handle a few jump scares, it's a really good show.
24) Heard about the explosion at my alma mater (Oregon State) and was relieved to find out everything was ok (for the most part...hoping the young man who was hurt is doing well). My understanding was that it wasn't a real bomb or anything, and was unrelated to the bomb threats that were reported a bit before this explosion.
25) I can't understand how people can still consider the previous resident of the Oval Office a good person, much less a good candidate for any political office. ''
26) Sad to hear that officers on trial for the death of Elijah McClain are getting off with no guilty verdicts on an of the charges they faced. It was a totally preventable death, and the officers and paramedics should be held accountable for it. There's still obviously a lot of work to do in the fields of justice, policing, and racial bias, even if things do seem to be improving on the whole.
27) I was vocal for the need to give people in Flint, MI clean water, and now I'm going to be vocal about giving the people of Eastern Oregon clean water (link to story). People shouldn't be having health issues (fatal or otherwise) because they're using water for drinking, cooking, bathing, etc. Access to clean water is a basic, non-partisan, non-racial, non-gender, non-etc. right. ALL people deserve clean water.
Also, Hermiston watermelons are the best watermelons on Earth and it would be a shame if they started becoming too toxic to eat. Agriculture is a big part of Eastern Oregon, and toxic water doesn't lead to the best crops. It's a health issue, but it's also an economic issue.
28) Disappointed in the mistrial non-verdict in the case of one of the officers who was involved in the death of Breonna Taylor (link). I don't know how you can look at this case and say anyone (from the officers involved to the judge who pushed out the bullshit warrant) are anything but guilty of, at the very least, gross negligence leading to the death of an innocent. My hope is that this is retried and there's a guilty verdict. And I hope the other trials get guilty verdicts, too.
29)Not sure how I feel about Javier Milei winning the presidential election in Argentina. On one hand, I'm interested to see how he's going to implement his (alleged) libertarian beliefs. On the other hand, he sort of strikes me as someone who's more concerned with being a personality than he is with being a politician. I'm not super-acquainted with the Argentinian political machine, so it's hard for me to have an opinion on things he could change on any kind of realistic scale (assuming he doesn't devolve into being an implementor of strong-arm, dictatorial methods).
As a personality....meh. I think the whole "cool dude cos-player rebel" image is corny. It all reads as a "self-absorbed (in the bad way) perpetual teenager" vibe. Personality-wise, he's everything I dislike about "hipster politicians" (and I really fucking hate "hipster politicians" with all my heart).
If anything, his election has inspired me to never, ever desire a career in politics on any level.
30) I was sickened by what Texas has put this woman through (story link). There is absolutely no reason to deny this woman an abortion. This is cruelty for cruelty's sake. I hope Mrs. Cox can get the help she needs in another state. But what she's been (and being) put through is ridiculous. I hope she can find some healing after this, and I hope this asshat AG in Texas gets removed as soon as humanly possible. We don't need irrational, control-freak dictators in any public office.
31) Speaking of cruelty for cruelty's sake: (video). That cop needs to get real jail time. She's a menace.. For everyone keeping score, Joe Biden didn't end anti-black racism. This kind of thing is still going on, and still needs to be dealt with.
32) If Harvard President Dr.. Claudine Gay is, indeed, guilty of plagiarism then she should be fired. I wasn't really sure how I felt about her (or any of the other college presidents') responses to questions regarding antisemitism on campuses. On the whole, I don't understand how there would be any difficulty in saying "we do not tolerate racial and/or ethnic bigotry on our campuses, and rebuke hate crimes of all types" or some such. I get the concept of freedom of speech, but this was about antisemitism in general (up to and including violence against Jewish people). The only thing that made me sort of understand why they responded the way they responded was that there were quite a few questions regarding a specific incident (which I can't exactly remember off the top of my head), which (if I remember correctly) turned out to be a fake story. But still....you can say "that/those incident(s) were false. Had they been true, we would have handled the incident(s) in the appropriate manner" or some such.
Anyway....
Regardless of the university's feelings on her performance at the hearings on Capitol Hill, there should be no tolerance for plagiarism. Especially if it's the president of a university (of any renown, or lack there of). How do you enforce punishment for plagiarism when the person signing off on the punishment is guilty of the same violation? How do you argue against "You were found guilty of plagiarism and you got to remain president of the university, so I should be able to remain a student"?
That said, I do hope she can prove she did not plagiarize the work of others.
No one should want someone to be guilty of plagiarism they should only want those proven guilty (beyond a shadow of a doubt) to be punished appropriately.
33) I was totally devastated to hear about the mass shooting at Charles University in Prague (link) . I think the university mass shootings hit me the hardest because being in university has been both good to me and for me. Even in the worst times, it's a setting that's brought out the best in me (even if it hasn't always brought out the best grades in me). I guess it's probably sort of the same feeling a religious person gets when they hear about a shooting in a place sacred to their religion. The secular version, if you will.
There was the other shooting recently at UNLV, which was completely beyond my comprehension. Academia is like any other workplace. There's jerks, there's bigots, there's people with inferiority complexes, there's people with superiourity complexes, there's duplicitous people, there are tons of perfectly kind people, there are tons of perfectly well-adjusted people., there's 40-something recovering alcoholic grad students with(professionally diagnosed) PTSD and Asperger's/ASD who always kind of feel out of place, and (apparently, but unintentionally) weirds others out, etc.
None of those personality traits are deserving of a death sentence. A board turning someone down for a position is not deserving of a death sentence. Giving a bad grade (or grades) isn't deserving of a death sentence. Enacting penalties when a rule was broken is not deserving of a death sentence. I just don't understand what drives certain people to commit these murders. If the worst thing you ever had happen to you was getting turned down for a job or getting a bad grade or failing out of school or getting scooped on some research?.... you should feel grateful., not homicidal. There are people who would (and sometimes do) pay a lot of money to try to have those problems as the worst problems in their life.
(And to be sure, I do feel devastated by mass shootings everywhere, not just universities. It's so hard to keep up with all of them, to be honest. Sometimes I feel...maybe disrespectful?...if I don't send even empty-gesture blog post condolences to the victims in one form or another. But it's just too much to keep up with. And that should say something about the enormity of the problem, and the urgency with which we need to address it.)
34) Saw this story (link) and am absolutely disgusted. You can't criminally charge a woman for having a miscarriage. If forcing someone to carry a dead foetus to term is the best way you can think of to serve your god, maybe you should question whether your god is worth serving. This is fucking disgusting, and everyone involved in charging this woman with a crime should be absolutely fucking ashamed of themselves.