I can imagine scenarios where decent people in tough environments might be compelled to join a gang, rob, or even murder. That doesn’t make it ok, but it makes it at least understandable.
I’m unable to imagine a reason why decent people might be compelled to rape children, let alone serially.
There is the position, of course, that a sexually abused child that reaches teen years or adulthood is no longer a "decent person" .. which is an interesting transition to dwell on.
That makes it more understandable, but he lost a trial that said he was raping a child when he was 38 years old.
Someone abused as a child who does sketchy things in their early 20s is tragic. Someone doing the same when they’re nearly 40 is a whole lot harder to dismiss. Like, you don’t make it to that age without hearing a lot of people along the way saying not to rape children.
Oh, please, don't think I'm making any excuses here .. but I was around and about the evidence management side of a five deep dive into institutional childhood abuse ... the various things that went down tend to explain a lot of early following behaviour once some kind of distance from early abuse is made.
You're right to flag ongoing and persistent shitty behaviour as unacceptable - even assigning blame there gets problematic as there absolutely is an element of "would they be less bad had they had more support on escape", but you can't be giving a pass forever.
Bloody Trolley problems .. this is one of several areas with no good choices, no easy solutions.
Yeah, I hear ya. My wife and I like watching crime shows, and you see someone like Ed Kemper, and wonder how he would’ve turned out if he hadn’t been subject to loads of abuse. If his parents hadn’t sucked, he might’ve been a doctor or something. It doesn’t forgive his crimes but does give a lot to ponder.
If only human behavior was that simple. The DSM-5 is filled with diseases of the mind. Choice often isn’t as cut and dry as we would like to believe.
No one wakes up and thinks “I want to suffer today of _____.” [1] AndI want others to suffer along with me.
That said, perhaps the universe is binary? Perhaps evil, pure evil does exist? Perhaps there’s no to stopping evil than “just say no”? It’s hard to say.
There is also the theory that it serves as a reenactment of one’s own abuse. Trying to find peace and return to safety by replaying the scene, this time not as helpless victim but perpetrator: in control.
Victims of sexual abuse thus often are haunted by “fantasies” of abuse but avoiding the victim position; the trap is to identify with the fantasies. All too often, they’ve been told it is their fault, they wanted it etc, so the imagined replay “proves the original perpetrator right”.
The only way to break the circle seems to be to fully go into the fantasy and process the victim position, with support of a well-meaning presence (typically a therapist but in another reality it could be friends or family).
Um, yeah? You can’t think of a single reason for justified homicide, ever? Maybe a kid who’s tired of seeing his stepdad beat the hell out of him and his mom, or they’re in a lawless part of the world where might makes right and the local mayor is horrid.
I’m not talking about random “my neighbor disrespected me so I killed him” idiocy. Just saying, I can at least imagine situations where, even if he shouldn’t have done it, if I were in the jury, I’d probably vote to acquit. If you can’t, you are definitely not a decent person.
Nope, I would never justify outright murder. I don't even support capital punishment. I might be able to develop an understanding for the circumstances, but that doesn't mean I would say "Hey, that instance of lynchmob justice was actually OK." Because you know, its a slipery slope I am not willing to walk on.
That's a totally fair and reasonable moral perspective, albeit one not widely shared. I can't imagine a plausible scenario where I — living in a safe place, around decent people, in a stable environment — would ever feel the need to proactively protect myself or my family with lethal force. But every day I watch the news and see people living in war-torn settings, and I can sympathize that they might see it otherwise.
Too bad that tool sucks. I ran my own blog through it and it gave me a middling score, even though I’ve never touched it with an AI tool of any kind, even Grammarly.
It was an era when you could know a machine. I had a C64 and had a huge chunk of its kernal addresses memorized from sheer repetition. You could remember its whole ISA and timings. The memory map was learnable. The hardware interfaces were simple.
I have zero desire to use a C64 again, aside from the occasional nostalgia pang for a specific game or program. But I do miss that feeling of complete, total understand of the thing in front of me. I think that’s the feeling that implanted on me, and that the aesthetics conjure. “Hey, the world is complicated, but this font looks a lot like the time when you felt like you knew everything.”
I started programming on an IBM 1620 with 20,000 BCD digits of memory, 20 usec to add 2 digits, 160 usec for branch not taken, 200 usec for branch taken. I remember these and many other details but I have no desire to go back because I'm not an idiot. The first computer I owned was an Amiga 1000, to which I added a 50 MB hard drive that cost me $1000. Again, no desire to go back. Same with bad fonts.
> Enlisted personnel typically out-earn civilian counterparts when tax-free allowances are accounted.
Citation heavily needed. When I was a junior non-com, my civilian colleagues made way more than I did, even including the (quite nice) military benefits, even when ignoring the fact that 80 hour workweeks are commonplace on deployment.
Did you calculate pension benefits? That military pension should be worth millions since you can start earning it young in life and it's based on your highest pay during the career.
It ought to be worth millions, given that you work your tail off, for significant less pay, and get that pay instead of the civilian 401(k) you could have.
Let's look at an E-9 Master Chief, the highest enlisted rank. Their basic pay is $9267 a month[0]. If they're in for 30 years, and get the High-36 retirement plan[1], then they get 75% of that — $6950/mo — afterward. That's certainly not chump change.
However, the kind of person with the drive, leadership skills, political savvy, and work ethic to become a Master Chief would rise to least a director or VP, or a senior VP, at a civilian company. So yes, their military retirement's quite good, but at a substantial opportunity cost.
To be super clear, my main argument is that the military should earn more, especially for the sheer amount of work they put in. They earn it.
This is an absurd comparison. You neglect to include BAH or other tax-free allowances; your figure significantly deflates total compensation. Command Sergeants Major comparing themselves to VP of Human Resources is a meme in veteran circles; as in, those who do it fail miserably to get hired when applying to these positions. They are not comparable.
I don't deny that servicemembers earn their pay. There is a premium to accepting the upheaval of a cross-country move every 3 years. But to assert that the average E-9 is equivalent to a director or VP position is incorrect. People of that rank are told in TAP to accept positions of perceived lower authority. Those who are successful in going from E-8 or E-9 to Director or VP roles are extraordinarily rare.
The DoD publishes an annual schedule comparing civilian wages in most MOS's and rates. I couldn't find it within 10 seconds of searching, but I found this old study [1] posted on a mil website, stating that average compensation was significantly higher for enlisted personnel.
For your individual experience, consider the years of experience and education of your contractor / DA civilian counterparts. Furthermore, consider your CZTE and danger pay. It's possible that your individual experience might have you earning less in pro-rated annual income during deployments. Does that also apply when you were in garrison? Did it account for your free occupational training (that you were paid to attend)? Tricare? Tuition assistance?
The fact you're even posting on the orange site to begin with implies you received some expensive training that would ordinarily require a university degree.
> The fact you're even posting on the orange site to begin with implies you received some expensive training that would ordinarily require a university degree.
No, I’m replying to you, and agreeing with you. I’m not posting here because of my l33t OR tech skills, but because of everything that happened after I got out of the Navy.
military pay is inflation adjusted. minimum wage is not.
Private Dumbfuck will get paid more on a per-year basis than the average Walmart worker, esp. when you take in to account medical coverage and training benefits in service and out (e.g. GI Bill)
on a hourly basis... maybe not -- they can work Pvt Df 24/7 an that will water down the per-hour takehome. But said Private will have the pride of wearing a uniform and being able to say they did their service, while no one will flog their experience of being a Wal-Mart drone.
As an outsider, that’s literally what I’m doing: paying attention to the reviews. And some people are telling the reviewer to shut up and quit whining, thus encouraging them not to leave the review that I want to be reading.
Make up your mind. Do you want people to read and write reviews, or don’t you?
I love it. I’m willing to pay for streaming sports services, to a point, but all of them are freaking insane. For example, my wife and I like watching baseball. So let’s do the right thing and pay for it, right? LOL, as if that were possible. For $120[0] we can watch the Giants games, or for $220, all games… but subject to blackout. For $120, we can’t actually watch home games. We’d have to pay for a separate streaming service for those.
It’s similar for NFL, and I assume NHL and NBA, too. I’d pay to watch the stuff I watch if it were possible, but it’s not!
Sport streaming is the one where I don't feel bad about using unofficial services, they are reasonably priced, I can watch the broadcast of the country that I prefer (Sky UK over the German coverage for example) and I can use an app like https://www.uhfapp.com which is more polished and works better than all the official streaming apps combined.
NHL is similarly frustrating. I pay for ESPN but some games are on TNT, NHL Network, or a broadcast channel. I'm not paying for two different $60 a month services so now they just don't get any of my money.
MLS is the only one that has a good system at this point. Say what you will about Apple TV but the "all games, no blackouts" setup is pretty sweet. I truly hope other leagues take note and find a way to copy this.
for NFL it hugely depends on whether you want to follow the local team. So far, if you're in the local market the NFL generally shows the games on broadcast for free, and that you can get to with an antenna and a TV card depending on where you are.
MLB, I haven't tried for a few years but I could watch any out of market game on mlb.tv, but not any that involved the local team, so it was the opposite. For that there was a special regional sports channel that I'd have to subscribe to. No way to do it directly with the network, I'd have to get satellite or something.
> for NFL it hugely depends on whether you want to follow the local team.
That's the situation for probably 95% of viewers, though. Others might want to watch games from where they grew up, but most people typically follow the local teams. We don't even have a great way to get an antenna feed into our TV, and that also means we have one way to watch everything except local games, and another, worse way to watch them (for example, by not having a way to pause them).
I get why the streaming apps don't show local games from their business POV, but as a potential subscriber, that's a them-problem, not a me-problem. There's no way I'm paying that much money without being able to watch the home games.
Not sure which streaming apps you're referring to. If you only care about the local team, getting a TV streaming option like Youtube TV, sling or hulu tv should work. Probably some I'm not thinking of. As long as they get the main networks, that should cover it. Even when they do a Prime exclusive or MNF(espn) game, they'll show it on the local affiliate for local markets. At least that's the way it has always worked, NFL may change it in the future. The real pain is if you want to follow an out of market team. Just for starters you need NFL Sunday ticket which is not cheap these days.
If you're cool waiting a day to watch the games, nfl plus has everything with commercials cut.
NFL is egregiously bad here. They split exclusives among multiple streaming services, so you need to subscribe to (IIRC) at least Netflix and Amazon Prime in addition to your TV service if you want to see everything.
It depends on how much you want to just follow a single team or of you are just trying to catch any given primetime game. I mean I'm fine missing them of my team isn't in it.
If you're following the local team and don't mind missing the others, NFL is pretty solid actually.
I think a few games are only on NFL Network (not always included in the base cable subscription) also. And you'll need Peacock if you don't have cable/antenna.
The NBA is similarly annoying. It's $110 for the season to watch all non-blacked out games. As a Knicks fan, it was great when I was living in Philly because I could watch all Knicks games unless they were nationally broadcast or if they were playing the Sixers. Now that I live in NJ I'm technically in the NY broadcast region. The only way for me to watch local games legally is to have MSG through a cable provider or pay for Gotham Sports Plus which is $35/month.
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