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The Facebook Comment That Ruined a Life

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Re: The Facebook Comment That Ruined a Life

#271

Post by bitexploder »

zacinbusiness wrote: post #208
bitexploder wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have lived in Georgia all of my life. It is fine. Cases like these are outliers and can happen anywhere. Look at what happened in Illinois when someone recorded a cop with a helmet cam. These types of generalizations have no place on HN.

http://m.gastongazette.com/news/local/kkk-trying-to-recruit-...

I have traveled a lot. I have met small minded bigots all over. I grew up on a moderate sized city in the deep south. There is still a very small population of bigots in almost any rural area. No need to down play it, this is a very small amount of the population. It is still a problem, to some extent: (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2428103/Majority-Ame...). A few more generations and people won't even have living memories of Jim Crow. It takes time to heal wounds like this and that is very certainly the trend (improvement).

Re: The Facebook Comment That Ruined a Life

#272

Post by dctoedt »

jessaustin wrote: post #101
zacinbusiness wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia - fear these places.

I wouldn't put New Mexico in that company, and much of Virginia isn't too bad, but yeah. I think it's important to remember a fact of humanity: you're generally safer on familiar ground, around people who are similar to yourself. It can be very interesting, exciting, and rewarding to be "the foreigner", but at the same time you should never forget when you're in that position. Of course one of the horrible things abo…

> It's really an indictment of the people of the state: could you form a decent jury, judiciary, legislature, or police force if it had to be made up of Texans?

It wouldn't be hard to find prejudiced ignoramuses who would say the same about the people of any state (or religion, or ethnic group, or occupation).

Re: The Facebook Comment That Ruined a Life

#273

Post by mynameishere »

jcutrell wrote: post #225

A few years ago, I spent a night in in Fulton County jail. The purpose, in my opinion, was fairly ridiculous. I'll tell a reasonably brief version of the story. I moved to Atlanta to attend Georgia Tech for my masters. One late night, I was driving and took a right on a red light that had a "no right on red sign" accidentally. Don't forget to check for no right on red signs. No traffic was around and luckily no one w…

Are you using your mugshot for your linkedin account?

Re: The Facebook Comment That Ruined a Life

#274

Post by jaegerpicker »

Dewie wrote: post #235
jaegerpicker wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be a complete Ass. The US is a a big place, really big and there are vastly different types of states and situations. Any country in the world has fucked up abuses of power, name where you live and I guarantee that an example exists. Comparing Maine (where I live, which has the lowest crime rate and rate of prisoners per 100,000 in the US) to Texas is like comparing Switzerland to Russia based on the size and p…

It's funny how when someone lands on the Moon, then it's because of the greatness of being American. If some American person or group does something bad, it has everything to do with being such a heterogeneous country. This probably has more to do with being Human than being American. Someone would probably bring up some analogy about the Olympics and nationalism as a retort. The thing is, though, when the US wins th…

That would be valid if we were talking about some criminal justice program that Maine or any other state shared with Texas. Kinda like how the entire United States submits athletes to the make up the Olympic teams. Or how engineers and scientists from the entire country made up the Nasa team. The ENTIRE point was that Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Alaska, Florida, and of course Texas have separate, though similar Criminal justice programs. Nice straw-man attempt though.

Re: The Facebook Comment That Ruined a Life

#275

Post by lotsofmangos »

rayiner wrote: post #258
billyjobob wrote: post #9

Wow, I didn't realise US police were that bad. After reading this I don't think I could ever feel safe enough to visit the US. Sounds like you'd have a better chance of getting justice in an African dictatorship where at least the dont-rape-me bribe would be affordable. Tourists really should be warned about this, because it's not the image the US tourist boards present to us at all.

There are 300 million people in the U.S. They collectively have hundreds of millions if not mord of interactions with the law each year. Outlier events that happen one in a million times will happen hundreds of times a year in the U.S. and be broadcast at the speed of light around the internet.

From these interactions they also end up in jail far more often than any other people on earth.

Compared to the rest of the world, the US is the outlier event.

Re: The Facebook Comment That Ruined a Life

#276

Post by Someone »

Xdes wrote: post #192
D9u wrote: post #70

The Comal County District Attorney's Office did not intend for Carter to suffer what happened next, Flanary says, but it was reasonably foreseeable: He was sexually assaulted. The fact that prisoners are commonly subject to sexual assault, and that this consequence is trotted out as an acceptable deterrent to crime, illustrates just how uncivilized the US prison-industrial-complex is in this, the year 2014. Failure t…

Prison in the US isn't about rehabilitation it's about punishment. No one goes to prison thinking they're going to come out as a better person with a new outlook on life. They're going to come out war-torn and barely above functional with little to no prospects.

This guy, as far as I can tell, isn't convicted for anything yet. So, according to the law ("innocent until proven guilty") he is innocent. Even if thousands saw him torture a dozen babies, he should get better protection, even if you think prison should solely be for punishment (an idea that, IMO, is both morally wrong and economically stupid)

Re: The Facebook Comment That Ruined a Life

#277

Post by rayiner »

lotsofmangos wrote: post #275
rayiner wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 300 million people in the U.S. They collectively have hundreds of millions if not mord of interactions with the law each year. Outlier events that happen one in a million times will happen hundreds of times a year in the U.S. and be broadcast at the speed of light around the internet.

From these interactions they also end up in jail far more often than any other people on earth. Compared to the rest of the world, the US is the outlier event.

In much of the world, criminals get away with their actions at a much higher rate, so its not necessarily a sensible comparison. Compare the U.S. to the U.K., two culturally similar countries. The U.S. has a bit under 5x the incarceration rate. But it also has a bit under 4x the intentional homicide rate. Manchester, ostensibly the most dangerous large city in the U.K., had 35 homicides in the whole metro of 2.7 million people. Wilmington, DE has 20-25 in a typical year, for a city of 70,000 people.

So yeah, we put more people in jail. We also have more reason to.

Re: The Facebook Comment That Ruined a Life

#278

Post by jcutrell »

mynameishere wrote: post #273
jcutrell wrote: post #225

A few years ago, I spent a night in in Fulton County jail. The purpose, in my opinion, was fairly ridiculous. I'll tell a reasonably brief version of the story. I moved to Atlanta to attend Georgia Tech for my masters. One late night, I was driving and took a right on a red light that had a "no right on red sign" accidentally. Don't forget to check for no right on red signs. No traffic was around and luckily no one w…

Are you using your mugshot for your linkedin account?

Haha. Not currently. Although I think my dad uses it as my contact photo in his phone.

Re: The Facebook Comment That Ruined a Life

#279

Post by bglazer »

zacinbusiness wrote: post #13
billyjobob wrote: post #9

Wow, I didn't realise US police were that bad. After reading this I don't think I could ever feel safe enough to visit the US. Sounds like you'd have a better chance of getting justice in an African dictatorship where at least the dont-rape-me bribe would be affordable. Tourists really should be warned about this, because it's not the image the US tourist boards present to us at all.

Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia - fear these places.

that's just incredibly asinine.

Vanderbilt Duke UNC Rice Georgia Tech Virginia Tech University of Virginia That's a partial list.

PLACES TO BE FEARED! It's legitimately damaging to the American South to perpetuate stereotypes like this. It makes smart people want to leave, or never go in the first place. I've lived in Memphis Tennessee for my entire life and I can guarantee you that it would be a better place if people didn't spew closed minded horse-shit like this.

Re: The Facebook Comment That Ruined a Life

#280

Post by lotsofmangos »

rayiner wrote: post #277
lotsofmangos wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From these interactions they also end up in jail far more often than any other people on earth. Compared to the rest of the world, the US is the outlier event.

In much of the world, criminals get away with their actions at a much higher rate, so its not necessarily a sensible comparison. Compare the U.S. to the U.K., two culturally similar countries. The U.S. has a bit under 5x the incarceration rate. But it also has a bit under 4x the intentional homicide rate. Manchester, ostensibly the most dangerous large city in the U.K., had 35 homicides in the whole metro of 2.7 mill…

Just a thought, isn't putting your criminals through your jail system at least partly to blame for your high level of homicide? I mean, I'm no expert but it would seem that if you brutalise people for infractions, then release them into a society that will not now employ them but has lots of guns, that perhaps it might make life a bit more dangerous for everyone?
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