Steaming Ass

1910121415

Comments

  • I can't wait for this chapter in American exceptionalism history to be over.

  • Santa Monica Police Thwarted Looters Tuesday Night, Captain Says

    The pattern of the looting was similar to that in other cities like Chicago, she said. "It's the same M.O. (modus operandi). Organized groups are renting cars and driving in caravan style. "They meet outside the targeted area and drive in," she said. "It's the same pattern."
  • I'm suspicious of anything that is based on nothing but a one-line instagram and no other signs of coordination...

  • @Clme said:
    I'm suspicious of anything that is based on nothing but a one-line instagram and no other signs of coordination...

    I would count a caravan of looters to be a sign of coordination. I suppose they all could have got the idea on their own, but arriving in a line like that ...

  • @Bill said:
    I would count a caravan of looters to be a sign of coordination.

    A skeptic might point out that there's a fair swath of epistemological real estate between "a caravan of looters" and "a police press release mentioning a caravan of looters".

  • Perhaps they were sightseers.

  • The Bayesian prior is that they were random people randomly driving to Santa Monica, and nothing in the press account is inconsistent with that.

  • I think they were using it as an excuse for pulling people over. Many of those people probably were protesters, and that intimidated them.

    But I have a precedent for being suspicious.

    In August, the Facebook page "We stand with the Madison police department" posted the attached image/flyer, claiming it was proof of an organized movement to destroy Madison, WI (and the other cities). The group is not an official police department group, but it coordinates with officers and is supposedly respected in the department.

    Of course they definitely found the flyer... but where?

    There were other weird things about it too... the image doesn't have a location other than 'Downtown' for example. Meet downtown? That's a large area, regardless of the city... where? With who? Will they be wearing a rose on their lapel?

    How were they going to prevent the "peace police" from trying to calm people down? Were they giving the regular protesters an address outside of downtown? Did they tell all the old hippies to protest in another city instead?

    There were no other signs of coordination as far as I could find.

    In short, it was bullshit. Did someone create the flyer as a provocative way to stir shit? A hopeful group that sucks at actually organizing? Either way, the pro-police group ate it up. That group is thirsty for violence and police brutality and there were hundreds of calls for people to show up with guns and take some vigilante justice. (Sound familiar? This was two days before Rittenhouse). They WANTED there to be a violent protest that would allow them to prove how police have to use force. They were already equating property damage with violence. Their sharing actually brought it to more people's attention than anyplace the image was originally posted. The post reached over a million impressions (according to follow-up posts on the group) and was deleted once the local newspaper and TV media started to ask questions.

    Of course there were going to be protests already. Some were organized, but no significant group was organized solely to "fuck shit up". Definitely not with a stylized poster in a public group.

    So the follow up? There were a few garbage fires set in streets and dumpsters. A business district had windows smashed, again. A lot of spray-paint on public buildings. Just like in May after Floyd. If anything it was smaller in scope and damage than the Floyd protests.

    Boy they sure had fun with that teargas again though.

  • @fenomas said:
    The Bayesian prior is that they were random people randomly driving to Santa Monica, and nothing in the press account is inconsistent with that.

    The post-Covid traffic density was supposedly much higher than it has been of late. Of course, they could be lying, but my priors would be that they are telling the truth.

    (higher traffic) + (rented cars) + (internet looting notice) => (planned looting)

    That it is all some big police lie is not the way to bet.

  • @Clme said:
    I think they were using it as an excuse for pulling people over. Many of those people probably were protesters, and that intimidated them.

    Cops don't need an excuse to enforce the traffic laws.

  • @Bill said:
    That it is all some big police lie is not the way to bet.

    Why do you never read what you're replying to? I didn't claim police lied about anything. I pointed out that the nothing in the press account is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the police stopped some random people who had no connection to any instagram conspiracy.

  • @Bill said:

    @Clme said:
    I think they were using it as an excuse for pulling people over. Many of those people probably were protesters, and that intimidated them.

    Cops don't need an excuse to enforce the traffic laws.

    No, they need an excuse to mobilize all available hands for traffic duty to start looking for the slightest traffic infraction.

    The 'operation' was on September 1st, one day after another black man (a bicyclist) was shot in L.A. (for violating a traffic law). There were going to be protests in Santa Monica. There were going to be people coming into Santa Monica and L.A. from hours away.

    If people are going to do organized looting (and yes, that is feasible in relatively small numbers), they would probably want vans. That makes sense. But renting a car, with their credit card and verified drivers license, and going someplace that is known to photograph license plates using "ALPR" technology? That seems... not very organized.

  • On a side note, did you know that it is illegal to drive a car in California while wearing a housecoat? Weird.

  • @Clme said:
    But renting a car, with their credit card and verified drivers license...?

    That's the epistemic issue, yeah. If you assume somebody is a looter and then find they're driving a rental, you can fit that into your narrative and think of reasons why a looter would rent a car. But thinking critically it makes no sense - it's not like cops go around assuming that anyone driving a non-rental can't possibly be a looter, after all.

    Ditto for everything else mentioned in the press release - cars arriving at a certain time, driving in groups, later driving away. I guess they're all things looters might do, but they're also things random drivers do randomly, so in Bayesian terms they don't mean anything.

  • Basically: the cops heard a rumor tigers might be coming, so they sprayed some tiger repellant around, and ultimately no tigers came. Did the cops save the city from tigers? The most we can say is: if there's any evidence that they didn't, they didn't included it in their press release.

  • @LonMabonJovi said:

    happy 9/11

    Is that Rachel Dolezol?

    Because, if so, brilliant.

  • @Bill said:
    It occurs to me that this apparently silly song might actually be about the superiority of kinky sex.

    I think it's more about staying tight with her sugar daddy, who brings home the bread and butter on her bacon.

  • @fenomas said:

    @Bill said:
    That it is all some big police lie is not the way to bet.

    Why do you never read what you're replying to? I didn't claim police lied about anything. I pointed out that the nothing in the press account is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the police stopped some random people who had no connection to any instagram conspiracy.

    You were talking about priors. The most sensible prior is that the police are telling the truth and are reasonably competent. Of course priors, by there nature, tend to be somewhat subjective. I think you are simply wrong in starting with the assumption that the police hired by a wealthy community are a bunch of clowns.

  • @Bill said:
    I think you are simply wrong in starting with the assumption that the police hired by a wealthy community are a bunch of clowns.

    Stop imagining beliefs for everyone you disagree with. My starting assumption is simply that there's no hidden conspiracy of looters, because that's literally the null hypothesis. You've changed that into "assuming the police are lying/incompetent/clowns", because it's easier for you to argue against. Stop doing that.

    What we're talking about here is a press release that alleges a conspiracy, but gives no evidence of one, and claims various material facts that are all consistent with no conspiracy. That's all that's happened.

  • The conspiracy of looters is obvious. They are using social media and cell phones to organize, Looting is taking place. That should be the prior.

  • That's..... not what that word means.

    In the context of Bayes, "prior" means the marginal probability that a premise is true separately from the conditional you're examining. In effect, it's how strongly you would believe the premise if you didn't know about the conditional.

    For us here, the premise is "the people the cops pulled over were looters", and the conditional is the evidence the police cited (the instagram post, rental cars, etc). Hence "prior" here means our baseline expectation of any random driver being a looter, before taking any evidence into account.

    That's what people mean when they talk about a Bayesian prior. It doesn't just mean whether you initially find the premise plausible.

  • Now I'm curious, how many of the protesters do you believe are looters?

  • edited October 2020

    404 FTW

    Notifications are missing?

    I don't know what it means, but it got my attention.

  • edited November 2020

    I see Raspberry Pi 400 - Complete Kit $100 and I think, man, I should be able to do something cool with that. Then I draw a blank.

  • @Bill said:
    I see Raspberry Pi 400 - Complete Kit $100 and I think, man, I should be able to do something cool with that. Then I draw a blank.

    I like it. Makes me feel like coming back to a commodore 64 when computing was so quant.

  • I kinda want one.

    I mean, I don't know what I would use it for. But it just looks neat :)

  • If the GOP's dalliances with sedition wind up bearing fruit, the history book summary a few centuries later will be pretty humorous.

    The country's sudden collapse in the mid-21st century is generally attributed to internecine conflict over a TV celebrity and something called "boofing"

Sign In or Register to comment.