71–80 of 206 posts
>"This is a crisis for our democracy and our society," said Penelope Muse Abernathy, a visiting professor at Medill and primary author of the report, in a statement. Why is everything a crisis now? The crying of wolf gets tiresome and it makes it easy to tune out, probably to the detriment of local newspapers. Oops, replied to the wrong article.
Is the author's claim that modern journalism doesn't contain enough feel-good human interest stories?
I have witnessed something quite similar. During the flash-floods in 2021 in Germany, locals in the Ahr region absolutely rose to the occasion. Farmers were evacuating people in head-high water with their tractors during the night, local restaurants were already providing hot food and water the next morning wherever they could reach, pharmacies were loading whatever they had available on ATVs to somehow get much-need…
I think the biggest reason people in small towns may be a bit quicker to help is that people in cities are a little conditioned by the bystander effect to assume that people around them, or the authorities, are better equipped to help.
But any random individual asked for help in a city is likely to go well beyond their duty and be quite helpful.
>"This is a crisis for our democracy and our society," said Penelope Muse Abernathy, a visiting professor at Medill and primary author of the report, in a statement. Why is everything a crisis now? The crying of wolf gets tiresome and it makes it easy to tune out, probably to the detriment of local newspapers. Oops, replied to the wrong article.
I didn't see this quote in the article--what are you referring to?
https://www.axios.com/2022/07/04/local-newspapers-news-deser...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Although I agree with it I think that small towns have something that is lost in big cities which is the sense of community, and that is simply because in towns you know every single person that has some impact in your daily live. My family is from a small town who moved to the city right before I was born and there is something my mom said to me when I was a kid that got stuck in my mind which is the awareness of de…
> Although I agree with it I think that small towns have something that is lost in big cities which is the sense of community, and that is simply because in towns you know every single person that has some impact in your daily live. My family is from a small town who moved to the city right before I was born and there is something my mom said to me when I was a kid that got stuck in my mind which is the awareness of…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Although I agree with it I think that small towns have something that is lost in big cities which is the sense of community, and that is simply because in towns you know every single person that has some impact in your daily live. My family is from a small town who moved to the city right before I was born and there is something my mom said to me when I was a kid that got stuck in my mind which is the awareness of…
I think it's a basic feature of human nature that every ingroup has an outgroup.
In a small town, if the town is the ingroup, and you're the outgroup... you're going to have a bad time.
Americans are especially good when it comes to large efforts over the course of a short space of time to solve a major problem. Americans are also especially bad at tackling problems that require a small, consistent, amount of help over a long period of time. I’m honestly not sure why this is.
I have witnessed something quite similar. During the flash-floods in 2021 in Germany, locals in the Ahr region absolutely rose to the occasion. Farmers were evacuating people in head-high water with their tractors during the night, local restaurants were already providing hot food and water the next morning wherever they could reach, pharmacies were loading whatever they had available on ATVs to somehow get much-need…
Yes. I think people are good overall. I think the biggest reason people in small towns may be a bit quicker to help is that people in cities are a little conditioned by the bystander effect to assume that people around them, or the authorities, are better equipped to help. But any random individual asked for help in a city is likely to go well beyond their duty and be quite helpful.
It's not just "equipped to help". It's also that random untrained people can do more harm than good. Hell, even random trained people can do more harm that good when there are too many people around.
I'm not a medical professional, but I have some first aid training and have been the most-trained first responder in not-even-crowded areas on a few occasions. Even with only 10 people around, managing the crowd while providing care becomes difficult.
The article even mentions:
> “It was a wonderful problem to have,” said school district superintendent, Eric Hoyt, “but we probably had too many volunteers show up.”
In a town of 171 people. Just 171 people, and crowd management became a problem.
Now drop into Manhattan, with approximately 1.629 million more people. If "everyone" showed up to an incident, you'd have at least an order of magnitude more deaths from the stampede to help than from the original event.
People in dense cities move away from the scene of an accident in order to get out of the way, which in most cases is genuinely the best thing they can do to help.
Quoted post unavailable.
Having lived in the deep south, it's easy to see the paradox. Vehemently, deeply racist and judgmental people willing acting so selflessly at random occasions. Southern manners are usually just a facade masking hatred. I hate to say these things, but it is true.
“Southerns will hate the group but love the person. Northerners will love the group but hate the person”
Obviously that’s way oversimplified, but it’s broadly reflective of what I’ve seen. I’ve seen open casual racism in the South followed by kindness and empathy toward individual members of that race. I’ve seen public “performative” condemnation of racism in the North followed by quietly limiting the opportunity of individual members of that race by the very same people.
In my experience, Southern manners aren’t a “facade”. They’re the way people interact with the world. They do things out of a sense of duty, even - perhaps especially when doing it requires that they put aside their feelings about the matter.
For some reason this reminded me of the Ray Bradbury story, "The Town Where Noone Got Off" which is a dark little story indeed about two men and a small town on a railroad line. This one is a bit more positive. However, it turns out this whole incident was apparently due to the lack of a railroad crossing guard system of any kind at the intersection. The most basic system has flashing lights warning of oncoming train…
Was the truck actively crossing the tracks when it got hit or was it disabled? I haven't found any explanation of why it was there.