That social networks became social media indicates a clear shift in incentives toward social atomization and shallow substitutes for human connection/affection/bonding/sexual satisfaction/etc.
It is likely possible to disambiguate these concepts and build prosocial networks, if we want such a thing or believe it can work.
Almost every SMB I interact with sounds like this company. Was it founded more than 10 years ago? Probably holding the ship together with spreadsheets and email.
Yep, and there are so many of these examples, as you said - most SMBs. But I know also more recent companies having it similarly.
On the other hand - we did recently pitche some brand new RAG for TBs of complex schematics for a company in the Netherlands, and guess what - they didn't like the enterprise rates that the middleman offered, not because they did not like the demo (which they loved absolutely), and not because it was late or incomplete (it took less than a month). Had I approached this company directly, with normal rates, I would be deploying it in production already. It's very telling, and not good news for large SAAS vendors.
The fraud in Minnesota is upsetting. Fraud also appears to be nationally prevalent:
“New federal data released by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) shows the overall rate of improper payment in Minnesota’s Medicaid program is far below national averages.
In the review released this week, CMS found an error rate of slightly over 2.1%, compared to a national average of 6.1%. The data for the review was compiled before the Minnesota Department of Human Services began implementing new strategies to minimize the risk of fraud and harden its systems against bad actors.”
“ If two or more persons in any State, Territory, Possession, or District conspire to prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat, any person from accepting or holding any office, trust, or place of confidence under the United States, or from discharging any duties thereof, or to induce by like means any officer of the United States to leave the place, where his duties as an officer are required to be performed, or to injure him in his person or property on account of his lawful discharge of the duties of his office, or while engaged in the lawful discharge thereof, or to injure his property so as to molest, interrupt, hinder, or impede him in the discharge of his official duties, each of such persons shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six years, or both”
Trump’s speech does not meet that standard. It lacked coordination, targeting, or intent to physically interfere. The Minnesota case is different because it includes coordinated dispatch, targeting of ICE activity, and sharing de-arrest material with the stated intent to impede operations. That coordination and intent is the legal difference.
Why would that even be necessary? They are almost certainly just contributing confirmed ICE plate numbers to an Excel file and then checking against it. Low tech and simple. This “criminal insider” angle is just building a bogeyman.
The dude was literally just standing there on a public sidewalk with his hands up. He never initiated the altercation or otherwise impeded any lawful investigation.
The agent chose to initiate the altercation during which the victim was pepper sprayed, pinned to the ground by six people, disarmed, and then shot ten times.
Because I was baselessly accused of lying, here's one video taken from the sidewalk (there are probably more copies of this with more views, but it's what came up in my search):
The man coming into frame at :09 is Pretti. As can clearly be seen a few frames later, he is already on the road at this point and walking towards the middle of the road. By :14, as the camera backs up, we can see that the crack in the road he straddled right after coming into frame was in fact in the main traffic lane, not the lane with the stopped white car. (I do not say "parked" because there appears to be a woman sitting behind the wheel who might have the intent to leave, but for the altercation in front of her.) At :22 the camera turns back to Pretti (whose location could be inferred in the interim from his shadow) and he is standing over the median.
From :26 he can be seen making hand gestures, either to direct traffic or otherwise communicate with drivers, such as the one coming into frame and honking a horn. The fact that the horn is honked implies that the driver perceives Pretti as being in the way, and at :28 we can see that car swerve slightly to accommodate him. At :35, as the officer pushes a woman while they are both in front of the stopped car, Pretti is still also in the road. He can then be seen approaching the officer and physically interposing himself between the officer and the woman, and raising an arm to block the officer. He is at this point on the road shoulder, not the sidewalk. As he helps the woman up, both of them get sprayed; at :42 he again physically interposes, as if to shield the woman. He is then pulled up (and presumably already under arrest) and eventually separated from the woman, which he clearly physically resists; then he resists the officers who attempt to wrestle him to the ground. This "ground" is squarely in front of the stopped car. There is an extended scuffle; it takes until :59 for him to be disarmed (although it doesn't appear that any other officer would be able to see that this has happened), and the first gunshot is audible at 1:02.
Regardless of any mitigating factors in Pretti's conduct, or reasons why the shoot would be unlawful (and I have now seen analyses by many lawyers that appear very well reasoned, and there is much less consensus among them than there was in the Good case), the video inarguably shows all the things I claimed:
* He was in the street the entire time.
* He was physically attempting (and mostly successful) to get in between the officer and the woman.
* Because the woman is still in the street, and her interaction with the officer didn't start there (as seen in other video) it is entirely plausible that the officer intends to arrest her for obstruction.
I mean if you see anything in that video other than an ICE "officer" that needs to be in jail I'm very sad to presumably share a country with you. You can argue with me about how cool it is to mace a guy trying to keep a goon from manhandling a woman (don't give a fuck what you think about an "arrest" you are probably incorrectly assuming will happen, he should be in jail for that alone) all you want, but I'm not licking boots with you.
Ok. I'm comfortable with calling a convenient narrow interpretation and over-simplification of the actions of the secret police force "not what happened" regardless of your play-by-play. Technically correct is not actually the best kind of correct.
And remember, they are called "guidelines" for a reason. But thanks for doing your best at policing the tone here, very important work you're doing.
Trying to tone it down here, I appreciate you are providing an outside perspective but these events are very stressful, like I'm watching my country fall apart, and so are a bunch of us here. So expect some serious vitriol even if you are presenting what you consider factual or reasonable analysis.
This character has spent a few thousand words now on this and holds fast in spite of all the contrary evidence, at some point you have to wonder what is going on but I'm happy it's not my problem. He just won't stop, just keeps on digging. Check comment history if you won't believe me it is about as wild as it gets on HN.
You seem quite narrowly focused on the number of deportations rather than the methods being implemented. The primary criticisms of the current ICE surge in Minnesota focus on the general aggressiveness and lack of professionalism of these agents, not the deportations numbers.
That law enforcement is permitted to hide their faces, drive unmarked vehicles, not display name tags, badges, or uniforms is concerning. Anyone can buy a gun, a vest, and a velcro “police” patch. There is very little that marks these agents as official law enforcement. I’m somewhat surprised that none of these agents have been shot entering a home under the mistaken perception by the homeowner that it’s a criminal home invasion.
Where was the outrage when Obama deported 3.1 million people? Why was there no media coverage? Trump has deported 300k and the MSM is turning upside down. Doesn’t make any sense to me.
No one is upset about the number of deportations. No one is complaining about the number of deportations. If you don't listen to what the complaints are about to start with, you can't argue that they are hypocritical.
A wide array of policy issues related to the targeting and manner of execution of Trump’s mass deportation program, not the number of deportations.
Also, a number of specific instances of violence by the federal government during what is (at least notionally) the execution of immigration enforcement.
> why are they only upset in one city?
People are very clearly not “only upset in one city”
> And prior to that, when Obama deported 3.1 million people, the deportations were nice and dandy, right?
There was significant criticism of them, but both the policy and the manner of execution were different, a fact which Trump presaged in BOTH of his successful campaigns, explicitly stating plans for a different manner of execution (in the 2024 campaign explicitly referencing the notorious 1950s “Operation Wetback” as a model), and which Trump officials have crowed about throughout the execution of the campaign. Pretending the differences that provoke different responses don’t exists when their architects have been as proud of them as critics have been angry at them is just some intense bad faith denial of facts.
There were contemporary criticism of Obama's deportation policy on both the right and the left. I have no idea why you think that is some sort of gotcha that somehow makes the equivalency between Obama and Trump's immigration enforcement valid.
No. The outrage now versus back then is day and night. There were pretty much no protests during Obama’s term, even though the scale of deportations was much larger. That contrast is highly suspicious.
Dragonwriter has already laid out some of the differences for you to research further beyond the single data point of number of deportations. You've asked the same question multiple times but seem to not want to actually engage with the answers so I'll leave it there.
People keep telling you that it has nothing to do with the number of deportations, and you keep insisting that it does. Why do you believe the number of deportations is the most important factor?
The core issue is the media. I worked at a large news company in New York during the Obama’s term. There was a training for our reporters: anything negative about Obama was strictly prohibited. Ad revenue.
When talking to someone at-risk of deportation earlier in the year, they asked me, "Why should I do anything differently? Obama and Biden did the same exact shit."
And there's a lot of truth to that which a lot of people need to reconcile with.
The fact that we don't have DACA solidified into a path towards citizenship by now is just sad.
And I agree with you, but that's not what I'm questioning. Given the 10x larger scale of deportations during the Obama's term, why were there no protests?
During Obama's term the practice of warrentless entry into actual citizens homes wasn't widespread.
During Obama's term the leaders of DHS / ICE were not blatently lying about events captured on film and evading legitmate investigations into deaths at the hands of officers.
During Obamas term people with no criminal record were not being offshored to hell-hole prison camps with serious abuses of human rights.
Can you link to the tweet in which Obama defended the agents right to threaten a child with rape?
From your linked article:
If the abuses were this bad under Obama when the Border Patrol described itself as constrained, imagine how it must be now under Trump, who vowed to unleash the agents to do their jobs.
The core issue is the media. I worked at a large news company in New York during the Obama’s term. There was a training for our reporters: anything negative about Obama was strictly prohibited. Ad revenue.
As many others have pointed out, the deeper issue is the size of the boot, the disregard for citizens rights, the extremes of the offshore gulags, the fevor with which the upper levels embrace the brutality.
I am unable to assist further with your stated struggle for comprehension.
Not to add fuel to the fire, but a lot of what you're saying is hard to take seriously when Obama himself's been known to brag about how good at killing he is.
You're right that things are significantly worse now, but it's important to recognize that what came before was still bad and in many ways is the foundation for where we are.
Thanks for the response, I'm happy to engage, although I almost missed this as you're well over the fold in my comment history and I have no mechanism for alerting me to replies (nor, I might add, am I looking for one).
With the preamble that I'm not a US citizen, have never thought to apply to be one, have been in and out of the US and many other countries a number of times, and don't play favourites with POTUS(n) on the basis of their asserted party ticket; ...
The upstream question and context here concerns differences between administrations wrt home soil immigration policy, to which I've been focused.
As points of note:
* Allegations of POTUS(X) boasting behind doors are a difference of behaviour from that of POTUS(Y) coming right out and stating they can freely kill in Times Square and get away with while glorifying the deaths of citizens in public and promising perpertrators they'll get away with it and have immunity.
* I'm no fan of remote double tap kills. Full stop. That said;
* POTUS(X) authorising kills in an "inherited" known and ongoing "war zone" known to all is distinct from POTUS(Y) authorising double tap kills from unmarked airframes of civilians in international waters prior to any declaration of war (via Congress or not).
* Regardless, the offshore behaviour of any POTUS is distinct from their behaviour toward their own citizens within their country.
In the arc of all the shitty behaviour by post WW POTUS(n) candidates, the current incumbent has significantly levelled up to achieve Kissinger level disregard for human life on home soil for purely political gain .. and played that hand badly.
That aside, I'm not a Communist - but I do admire Ash Sarkar's shut down of idiotic Obama / Trump faux dichotomy posings by a pompous right wing media pundit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD7Ol0gz11k
I equally admire our PM's "off the cuff" (approximately 15 mins rough note prep time) strip down of an opposition one time PM attempting to pin a third parties bad behaviour on the sitting government on the basis of them making no comment until after a Court case had completed (as per the law here) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCNuPcf8L00
It's not relevant to immigration policy, but it is a good example of off the cuff professional level political debate in sitting government.
To add context: the funds were not “given” as one might give humanitarian funding. The funds were Iranian financial assets that were frozen after the Iranian Revolution, accrued interest over the subsequent decades, and were returned as part of a legal settlement. I stake no position on whether this should have happened, just providing more specific color to the situation.
It is likely possible to disambiguate these concepts and build prosocial networks, if we want such a thing or believe it can work.
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