Beth Macbain

When I was a child, and really probably far too young for this type of thing, my mother decided to teach me about infinity using the Universe. I want to say I was around 5-6 years old. My bed was right next to a window, and I slept with the shades open so I could see the stars. I spend hours, and hours, and hours, lying in bed, looking at the stars, and trying to wrap my head around thinking about how if the Universe is infinite, that has to mean there are an infinite number of stars, with an infinite number of planets and based on that, somewhere out there in the night sky there has to be another planet that is not only just like Earth, but also has a little girl, lying in bed, looking out her window at the stars, and thinking about me. That's probably why I have insomnia.

I'm going to post a link to a video here and I want to warn anyone who watches that it is full of really vulgar profanity and violence so you've been warned. I'm posting it mainly for non-Americans, but it also occurs to me they may not be able to see it. I'm going to try anyway. Hollenbeck Area Use of Force I just saw this video from the Los Angeles Police Department because the officer has just been charged with 'assault under the color of authority' today, even though this happened at the end of April. This is not unusual. This is the bully cop behavior we're talking about. This is the state of policing in the United States especially for minorities and people living in poverty. First off, listen to the original 911 call at the beginning, and the 911 operator. Her disdain is evident. Rather than listening to what he was saying to her, she just plowed over him with questions, and when he answered the question (not a house or apartment, but an empty lot) she got snotty with him saying "That doesn't answer my question." You can hear the resignation in his voice when he just says "house" instead of bothering to try explain it to her again. He's been through this before. The 911 operators and the radio dispatchers aren't talked about enough. They're the ones speaking with the public to hopefully get an accurate picture of what is happening, and the dispatchers are in charge of giving that background to the officers. I listen to the police scanner in my city a lot, years before all of this started happening because I loved the police. There was a time I wanted to be a cop. I get a kick out of hearing them talking. Most of the radio dispatchers in Louisville are wonderful, but there is one... no idea what her name is, but she's just a snotty little brat. It's clear that she think very little of the people who call 911, and that attitude goes straight in the ear of the cops. There is not a single ounce of empathy towards these people who are calling for help. When she's on duty and I'm listening, it drives me nuts. I've never done anything about it - I think it's time I do. But back to this video - this guy was behaving absolutely terribly and saying the most offensive things he could think to say to these cops. The male cop gave it right back to him. How is that deescalating anything? This is typical. This is normal. This is how cops across the US behave. And then he (the cop) lost his fricking marbles. He absolutely lost complete control of himself. The way he beat that man who never once swung back at him ought to scare everyone. We have it pounded into our heads that the cops are the good guys - and that they're supposed to deescalate the situation. That's the company line, and it's simply false. You think this is the first time the guy lost his temper, or the first time he lost his temper when it was being filmed from across the street and given immediately to a supervisor who, miraculously, did the right thing? And did he do it because it was the right thing, or did he do it because she had the video and could post it to Twitter in seconds? I don't know. This cop is being charged with a felony now. Has he lost his job? Nope. He's been "relieved of duty" and is "working from home." Should this guy ever be trusted to police the streets again? Of course not. He lost his damn mind over nothing. If he's that easily set off with a temper that is so bad he cannot physically restrain himself, should he be trusted with a gun? Of course not. There is no reason for this man not to be fired, but the unions have so much power, he's protected. He can't be fired. Isn't that disgusting? He has absolutely no business being a police officer. He is unfit for the job. He abysmally failed in his duties. And what about his partner, the woman? She was useless. Why the hell didn't she pull out that taser of hers and tase her partner who was pummeling a guy who wasn't fighting back? How about the other cops patting him on the back and gently telling him to calm down? Why did no one say, "Gee, we just witnessed a brutal assault. Give us your badge and gun and put your hands behind your back"? Because this is normal behavior for cops in the United States. This guy was Hispanic. No, they aren't only beating black people, but that is, as Fairre put it, the piece of the pie we're looking at right now. If that piece gets fixed, the others will as well. @Extrude Ragu - Tell me what is more tyrannical - this behavior from police officers, or citizens being expected to help people in need? Because from my seat here in the US, we're already living in a state of tyranny.

Not to mention for some types of violence for certain people it is actually illegal to do nothing. I'm classified as a mandatory reporter due to the nature of my job. If I see any signs of domestic violence or abuse, I can actually be charged if I do nothing. Many states also have Good Samaritan laws to protect people who do intervene when they see violence happening, and some states have started adopting Bad Samaritan laws that can actually punish people for not doing something. Regardless of any laws, if I see someone being hurt, and I do nothing to help them, how can I live with myself? I don't want to wake up and be the person who did nothing.

As of 2018, there were 686,665 full time law enforcement officers in the US. That doesn't include administration plus all their family members. That's a lot of votes, and nearly every one of them will vote the way their police union tells them to. The police unions will never, ever throw their support behind a candidate that runs on a platform of defunding the police. Anything any candidate says isn't worth much until after they're elected and actually take some action.

Yes, you've made it clear that you don't support this movement. There isn't a single statue of Hitler, or any other Nazis, in Germany, but have Germans forgotten the Holocaust? No one is attempting to rewrite history. Removing statues commemorating the lives of slave owners isn't removing those slave owners from history. Changing a street name from something like Robert E. Lee Avenue to Frederick Douglass Street isn't going to remove the history of anything. Most of those streets were named during the Jim Crow era. No one is talking about rewriting any literature other than history and text books to accurately represent history rather than the white-washing that has always been done. No one is attempting to remove truth - they're advocating for including it. I live in the southern United States. My city just this week removed a statue of a Confederate soldier, and big fat ugly racist. He got a statue because he donated a bunch of land for city parks. He steadfastly refused to allow those parks to be segregated integrated, though. As a matter of fact, they weren't segregated integrated until 6 years after he died. His name will still be in history books. He does not deserve to be commemorated by a gargantuan statue.

Which types of triggers have you tried so far? It took me forever to find my first one, and it was totally by accident when I stumbled upon a video of someone playing with slime. Also, are you using headphones? I find the sounds relaxing without them, but don't get any tingles without headphones.

From BLM's website - A Toolkit for White People (Admittedly this one is specific to Trayvon Martin but it still works) Here's one from another site - How White People Can Support the Movement for Black Lives I just posted another one with tons of ideas for Fairre. I'm also curious why you put "Rev" in quotation marks in regards to Al Sharpton. He is an ordained minister, for whatever that's worth. I have mixed feelings about him personally, but when I was watching George Floyd's memorial a couple days ago, and Rev. Sharpton was giving the eulogy, he did talk about how this time feels different because white people are standing with black people. That doesn't mean he asked for help, but I'm not sure why he needs to. If I fall down in the street, and everyone just stands around until I ask for them to help me up, I'm not really going to feel like they genuinely want to help me. I'm going to feel like I was an annoyance to them by asking for help. Black people in the US have been treated horribly for centuries, and I don't think they should have to ask us for help when we're the ones who treated them so horribly. Let's say my domestic partner is abusive and beats the crap out of me, and has for years. I finally have enough and decide it's time for me to break free - asking him to help me wouldn't make sense, right? Maybe some years later, something happens and he comes to realize and accept how abusive he was to me, and feels awful, and has done tons of therapy and has truly grown as a human being. Is it up to me to go to him and ask him to tell me he's sorry? Or to offer to go through counseling with me? Of course not. No one would expect me to do that. So why do black people need to ask white people to help them?

I just found this huge list of resources. I agree - it can be hard to know the right thing to do, especially when we are trying to make sure we don't do the wrong thing. Maybe it'll help a little - Take Action: A List of Ways You Can Stand In Solidarity with the Black Community

I like bacon - a lot - but I'll take bangers and mash WITH mushy peas over bacon any day of the week!

Right after this incident happened, Qanon was already working hard to claim that it was a set up, even going to far as to suggest that the blood wasn't real and he was wearing a fake blood sack under his shirt with a tube leading to his ear.

Your first post in that thread was making a pretty wild assertion - judgement even - that we in the US don't care about the more than 113,000 Americans that have died from COVID. You asked me if I'm standing up for them. Honestly, I was gobsmacked and incredibly insulted by that, and my response was a shady meme, yes, and I apologize for using that instead of my words. I did, however, come back the next morning and used my words but you either didn't see it, or ignored it: I will also admit that my revulsion towards your words are in part due to our past history. I also realize now that it's possible that you don't remember, or perhaps never even knew, but we do have history going back many years. Regardless, I felt personally insulted by the whataboutism suggesting that we don't care about the people in our country who have died from COVID, or even people all over the world - not just the US. I am personally struggling with the knowledge that we are going to have another spike after working so hard to flatten the curve, and that it is going to lead to more deaths. We've been where we are now before - when the officers that beat Rodney King were acquitted, when George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, in 2014 when Tamir Rice, Michael Brown and Eric Garner were killed, the Watts riots, etc., but this time feels different. This time it isn't just black people protesting. For better or for worse, seeing the snuff film of George Floyd's death, coupled with Breonna Taylor being killed while she was sleeping, and the redneck trash who hunted down and murdered Ahmaud Auberry, did something to wake up a large part of white Americans in a way that hasn't been seen before. We can't wear blinders anymore. We have a real problem - a big problem, and a complex problem. Right now, there is momentum to make some serious, long-overdue changes. If we wait until the threat of COVID is gone, that momentum is going to die, likely along with several other unarmed black people. It's easy to judge us from the other side of the world - and while you are upset and feel like you were being judged by us, isn't that exactly what you were doing as well?

Perhaps I meant it both ways.

Already working on my duel dual citizenship application! I'm already half British so I've only got a little bit more to go!

When those other opinions involve intolerance of a subset of the population due to the way they were born, no, I won't be tolerant. It's not enough to not be racist anymore - we have to be anti-racist. If that makes a racist mad, tough. Paradox of Tolerance Ashlyn was very clear that she was speaking only for herself. If one person can speak for an entire race, who is the voice for the white folks? Trump? Boris? Taylor Swift? You? You certainly don't speak for me, and you know that, so why does Ashlyn speak for all black people? I also expect you haven't looked very hard if you haven't seen another black person here or anywhere else contradict her. Hard times call for hard conversations. No one ever said change was going to be pretty. I attempted to explain the meaning in my very poorly-chosen words. I need to do better at considering that my words might be crystal clear in my head, but that doesn't mean anyone else can decipher my word-vomit unless I spell it out, especially in loaded, heated conversations like we've had in this thread. I messed up, and I feel like sh*t about that. My words were also twisted into something utterly vile due to those heated emotions. Call that a backwards apology if you want - I am truly sorry I hurt a friend with my carelessly and stupidly chosen words, but that friend also didn't give me a chance to explain before jumping to the worst possible conclusion as to my meaning. Misunderstanding is a two-way street. I picked the absolute wrong words - I own that. She didn't give me a chance to explain what I was really trying to say. Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference. Now we'll never know. America was formed long before the American Revolution, and this American isn't proud of it at all. I think it's pretty damn disgusting, but go ahead and speak not only for all white people, but all Americans as well - even though you aren't one. If you're referring to the American Revolution, though, this American also thinks we'd probably be a lot better off if we'd lost the war. The fact of the matter, Dano, is that you and Alwin aren't Americans, you don't live here, and you really have no idea how black people are treated by American police because you base your opinions on how the police in your countries operate. The way our police operate is so far removed from the way your police operate that you can't imagine how deep corruption and hatred are embedded in the systems that form the basis of policing in America, and how the police unions have made it so that it's damn near impossible to clean it up. They collect millions of dollars in dues every year and use that to fight any legislation that would support any kind of oversight, not only through lobbying, but "donations" to elected officials to rule against that legislation - If there is one thing our politicians are excellent at here in the states, it's taking what are essentially bribes. I can't understand how black people are treated by the police either. I'm a white middle class woman that lives on the right side of the tracks (in Louisville, that's the 9th Street Divide), but what I can do is listen, and believe, and support the black community when they tell me that the cops treat them different than they treat me. Police brutality isn't just a black people's problem, no. We see the news daily of these protests and cops beating the living hell out of white people, too. What it boils down to, though, is that when the police are dealing with black people, they make an early assumption that physical force is going to be necessary, no matter how innocuous the encounter is. Their posture is different, their bodies are tensed, their hand will be on their holster, and the attitude and manner of speaking is entirely different from their attitude and manner of speaking with me. That's just the simple truth of the state of policing in America.

This forum is a god damn minefield.

No, WE were the people. You weren’t having an argument with yourself. There were quite a few people involved. And just to clarify, my comment about the Klan referred to ALL OF US having stopped talking about BLM and police brutality because that is a conversation that they would definitely not want to be part of, but a conversation about looting during race riots would be right in their wheelhouse. I wasn’t, and wouldn’t, call anyone a Klansman except actual Klansmen. And Trump. A topic started to discuss support in SL for BLM turned into a discussion about racism and that turned into a discussion about looting, with a hundred or so side conversations, and then you were mad and convinced that I was calling you a Klansman and at that point, there was no way to further the conversation. You were, and apparently still are, seeing red. I’m not the only one guilty of having knee-jerk reactions.

That’s not what I said. If you’re going to quote me at least do it correctly, please. You’re also reading meaning into words that I didn’t say and perhaps it would have been a lot simpler had you asked me to elaborate rather than jumping to conclusions and making it all about you. Here are my actual words: “It’s pretty gross how this thread that was supposed to be about BLM has turned into white people arguing about looting. The Klan would be so proud.“

I do so humbly apologize, Sir, for having my attention diverted in multiple ways while You were demanding my attention, Master. I most respectfully apologize, Sir, for neglecting to devote myself entirely to You and Your most desirous patriarchal requirements for correcting my exceedingly improper behavior. I shall set myself upon a course of correction that involves proper self-flagellation. Would Sir prefer I use the chain, or the barbed wire? I'll try to do better. Please don't beat me again, Master. Translation: I'm working my real job, my internet keeps going up and down, there is an excruciatingly loud lawn mower right outside where I'm sitting, and also, **** **, *** ************* *******.

Wow. Really? Really, Tolya?! Disagree with me if you want, but that was really hitting below the belt.

You think they report it? C'mon... you aren't that naive. How many reports say the suspect tripped?

See? I'm not all that evil, either... 😜

Force isn't limited to lethal force. How many times have they used their tasers, or batons, or rubber bullets, or pepper balls, or their fists?

I only read the lyrics, but I think it's the truth, and I don't think there is any shame in admitting it so long as we are willing to learn from it. There have been several people in this thread who are getting stuck in the noise - and it's noisy as hell right now. There are voices coming from all over the place shouting to be heard above everyone else - myself included. Everyone wants their opinion to be heard above all others, and maybe we should all try to quiet down a bit and listen instead - myself included. I'm not a perfect ally. I'm trying to be better. When I lived in LA, I was talking to a coworker who was black, and we were talking about race relations. I don't remember why we were talking about it, or what context it was brought up in, but I asked him a question about whether or not he personally felt that white people were being more tolerant towards the black community. It never once occurred to me that there was anything wrong with my phrasing. He stopped me and asked how I'd feel if someone asked me how I'd feel if someone said they tolerated me. He explained how we tolerate misbehaving children in restaurants, but that people were not things to be merely tolerated based on the color of their skin. He was absolutely right, of course. Once I thought about it, and how that word sounded in that context, I understood that it was a really crappy thing for me to say. It's the little things like that. Learning that we're not perfect, but that we can change - if, and only if, we can stop being so defensive about "I'm not a racist! Are you saying I'm a racist? How dare you!"

Happening Now - George Floyd Public Viewing

Yes... tapping is awful! Lip-smacking is awful! Crunchy ice is a new one for me... I need to give that a try. My current favorite channel is ASMR Love by T&P. They do super long videos and don't switch up the triggers, which is something I also hate. I'll be nice and relaxed and suddenly the scritching changes to tapping or something else and the spell is broken.