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bananabiscuit

685 karma · joined May 21, 2016

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bananabiscuit··on Increasing the lifespan of a bulb makes it worse in every other way
In every company I have worked so far, for the very large majority of decisions I've seen everyone try to act very ethically and morally. However, every once in a while, a temptation to make a greedy decision comes up, and what I see during the discussions of these kinds of decisions, where everyone already knows they want to make the choice that would be harmful to the customer, is that the usual detailed discussion of pros and cons that normally happens is reduced, and everyone implicitly somehow knows to focus on only talking about just the pros, both for the company and the customer. Sometimes cons for the company are mentioned, and it feels very performative, as if just to give the appearance of balance. At times when I or some other individual speaks up about the obvious harm to the customer, usually ignorance is feigned, people pretend not to understand the harm, or they counter with all the "pro-customer" points that have already been said so far.

It's never an overt thing like how you portrayed it, but it happens every single time when the perceived payoff is too enticing to pass up.

bananabiscuit··on Ask HN: Why is every company encorporating AI everywhere?
I've found the new AI customer support bots that a lot of websites started using are usually more knowledgeable and honest about whatever product they represent than human agents are. I'm sure that will change eventually when they start figuring out how to lock down the AI to a "safe script" the same way they train human customer support, but for now, it's pretty great.
bananabiscuit··on Creatine raises brain energy levels and slows cognitive decline: study
It dissolves a lot easier in warmer water, like around 45 degrees.
bananabiscuit··on GTA 6 Developers Unionize
Passion tax.
bananabiscuit··on Let's call a murder a murder
https://x.com/i/status/2010037103665787019
bananabiscuit··on Let's call a murder a murder
I watched the video and I saw Renee attempt to hit the ICE agent with her car. After doing that, lethal force is unfortunately on the table. The officer doesn’t have time after that to wait and see if she is going to try to kill him again or not.
bananabiscuit··on Let's call a murder a murder
Yeah, at some point every rule will run into its exception and you will have to think on your feet about which of your bad options you should take.

Cops do need to be severely punished for abuse of authority, nothing I said so far contradicts that.

bananabiscuit··on Let's call a murder a murder
I never said the U-turn was the only acceptable reason that they could be there, I only mentioned it because it was the most innocent possible reason for Renee to be there that I can think of.

In these cases, isn’t it usual for evidence to be kept out of the public eye until after all relevant court trials are done?

Also, just to be very clear, I am not saying ICE shot Renee because she was being a nuisance. I am saying she got shot because she made an intentional and almost lethal maneuver at the ICE agent with her car.

bananabiscuit··on Let's call a murder a murder
Specifically in the officer POV video (2nd link in my original post), with how the car was positioned, and that Renee’s partner was walking around outside and was not in the car, and the style of the back and forth dialog between, Renee, her partner, and the officers, all served to give me the impression Renee and her partner were there for a while, and weren’t just “passing through”. Again, I am willing to admit I might be wrong, it’s possible they were in the middle of an awkward, u-turn. I think we will know the clear truth of at least this aspect of the situation sometime soon, seems like a thing that would be easy to verify or disprove with how many videos must have been recorded.
bananabiscuit··on Let's call a murder a murder
You describe a very unfortunate situation, and it’s the reason why impersonating an officer is such a serious crime. In the case at hand, however, there is no mistaken identity.

I think for there to be any chance for government officers to do their jobs, and for there to not be any pointless deaths, their authority should never be challenged in the streets, and if they do abuse that authority, the officer should be severely punished.

bananabiscuit··on Let's call a murder a murder
That’s interesting, because I’m actually also frightened. But the thing that scares me is how quick everyone wants to jump to conclusions as long as it supports their existing world view.
bananabiscuit··on Let's call a murder a murder
Sorry, had a sentence mangled due to some editing, should have read “due to Renee’s positioning of the car, and her wife’s interaction with the officers”.

As for my biases: I don’t care for Trump, I like some things he does, I hate others, but I do think illegal immigrants are a problem.

bananabiscuit··on Let's call a murder a murder
I think this situation is very tragic, and I wish it had not happened.

The reason I am taking this stance, is because I think that, unless they are fine with becoming a martyr, people should not go and mess with government officers in the streets.

Yeah, I know: “victim blaming”, but there is a difference between officers descending upon a blameless victim vs. you going out looking to make trouble with authority. Even in the first case, the right thing to do (if you value your life) is to comply with the instructions (even if illegal) and challenge them in court later.

bananabiscuit··on Let's call a murder a murder
I hope you are not claiming perception of intent is enough to claim a life. It is the actual intent that counts.

No, I am not claiming that. I explained previously why it looked to me that Renee intended to hit the officer with her car, very hard, and the only reason it was a slight hit was because she lost traction on the ice. [1] And also she did hit the officer, this was even acknowledged in the NYT analysis of the event. Again, he got lucky that he was able to jump out of the way, only because the icy road caused her wheels to lose grip.

At that point, I would think there is an argument to be made that the officer’s life was threatened, and he is allowed to use lethal force, he does not have the time to second guess if Renee is going to change her mind and not hit anyone with her car. I am NOT saying that the officer is definitively absolved, just that based on what I’m seeing, it is not as clear a case of murder as a lot of people claim.

Also interesting that you do not address the 2nd and 3rd shot at all.

This is confusing to me and I don’t really know what to say about that, the lethal intent is there with the 1st shot. Is it that we expect the officer to go from deciding that she is enough of a threat to be shot, to deciding that she is a non-threat in the split second after his first shot?

[1] but just for posterity: a) when she accelerated, she still had her wheels pointing just left of center while the officer was directly in front of her. b) she was looking directly at the officer when she accelerated.

bananabiscuit··on Let's call a murder a murder
Not sure if there anything definitive. I got the impression that Renee and her wife were positioning their car specifically to impede ICE, going off of what I saw from the interaction in the second video I linked in my original post. Does not look like any normal traffic interaction to me, but I could be wrong. This seems like a detail that will be easy to definitively verify or disprove once more information comes out.
bananabiscuit··on Let's call a murder a murder
Once the officer sees that Renee attempted to hit him with her car, he (tragically indeed) has the right to use lethal force. When somebody tries to kill you, I don’t think it’s reasonable to (in that same split second) give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe they won’t try to immediately kill you or one of your partners again.
bananabiscuit··on Let's call a murder a murder
This seems like an intentional misunderstanding to me, but I’ll clarify anyway:

What I said was that she was looking directly at the officer while having her wheels pointed in his direction and accelerating hard (to the point that she lost traction). The looking detail is important because then you can’t claim she didn’t see the officer was in her way because she was still looking back from her reversing maneuver. It makes it more clear that she was intentionally trying to hit the officer with her car.

bananabiscuit··on Let's call a murder a murder
I would agree with this more if Renee was just a random person that ICE decided to give a hard time. But in this case, it was her decision to become involved and attempt to obstruct the officers from doing the job they explicitly have the authority to do [1]. Also in this case Renee is the one who made the first life threatening action. The fight-or-flight situation is her own doing.

People should protest but there are clearly very stupid ways of going about it.

[1] the streets are not the place to decide whether that authority is legitimate, ethical, moral, etc.

bananabiscuit··on Let's call a murder a murder
Alright, at the very least, can we admit that there is an argument to be made here? The innocence or guilt of the officer does seem to hinge on some fine details, I’m just surprised that anybody is already claiming with certainty that this is or isn’t murder.
bananabiscuit··on Let's call a murder a murder
I have only looked at this incident closely. If in other incidents ICE agents ran down civilians, yes, of course they should be taken to trial.
bananabiscuit··on Let's call a murder a murder
Yeah, that would be good. ICE should be prosecuted for all their murder attempts. I just don’t think it’s beyond a doubt that this one in particular was a murder.
bananabiscuit··on Let's call a murder a murder
the front wheel never pointed at the PO.

My whole point is that this isn’t true. Look at the first video I linked, in the first couple of seconds, the cop is in front of the bumper, the cars wheels are still pointing slightly to the left, on their way to center, as she guns the engine. The loss of traction on the icy road is the only reason the PO had a chance to jump out of the way (but apparently by the NYT analysis, he might have been still hit). And at this point he is correct to think the driver is dangerous and might harm somebody.

bananabiscuit··on Let's call a murder a murder
I don’t think this is as clear cut as anyone on either side is claiming.

Looking [1], it does appear that Renee attempted to run the car right into the ICE officer, the wheels were still pointing slightly left, and the officer was still in front of the car. Also in [2] you can see that she was looking directly at the officer during this initial acceleration attempt. The only thing that saved the officer in that initial attempt was the loss of traction due to the icy road.

After that, indeed the wheels were pointing away from the officer and arguably there was no more danger to him, but after the clear attempt to hit him, you cannot realistically expect the officer, in a split second, to re-evaluate if her intentions to hurt anybody changed or not. At this point his life was already threatened. He doesn’t know what she is doing and waiting to find out could mean that he is dead.

[1] https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/2008984798271094791

[2] https://x.com/nicksortor/status/2009683575298211979

bananabiscuit··on Bonkers CDC vaccine meeting ends with vote to keep Covid shot access
But didn't people also think unmodified RNA cannot be transcribed back into DNA until this article showed it was possible just four years ago?

Also we are relying on mRNA vaccines being manufactured correctly, but that link in the chain of reasoning also doesn't seem to be too reliable as many studies seem to have shown, here's one of the more recent ones: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40913499/

bananabiscuit··on Bonkers CDC vaccine meeting ends with vote to keep Covid shot access
the Pfizer scientist explained that it was not biologically plausible: "RNA cannot reverse transcribe to DNA and transport from the cytoplasm to the nucleus and then integrate. That requires a set of molecules and enzymes that don't exist in humans and are largely reserved for retroviruses."

How does https://www.jefferson.edu/about/news-and-events/2021/6/disco... relate to what he is saying?

bananabiscuit··on I Cannot Be Technical
I love non-technical writing. Outside of work, the majority of what I like to read is non-technical.

It’s a mistake to confound non-technical writing with bad writing. Sometimes you have to admit when the emperor is nude.

bananabiscuit··on I Cannot Be Technical
Really? I’m a decent way through the piece and I still don’t understand what she is rambling about.
bananabiscuit··on Zig's new LinkedList API (it's time to learn fieldParentPtr)
Do you mean you will likely make an error when implementing a standard textbook linked list? Or that a standard textbook linked list has non-obvious errors in its design? If so, would be curious to learn more.
bananabiscuit··on Russian death camp: Three stories of Ukrainian prisoners
It’s necessary to whatabout when threads about Russia come up because there are usually plenty of top rated comments (see above) dehumanizing Russians and calling for their extermination. I have never seen any thread critical of US meddling in world affairs express the same hatred of US citizens and supporter's. “whataboutism” should not be used as defense against double standards. Double standards should be clearly called out.
bananabiscuit··on Loneliness trajectories are associated with midlife conspiracist worldviews
Kind of a way of turning something obvious on its head and painting it as a negative. When you are interacting with people, there is pressure to conform to consensus reality, regardless of the merit of that reality. Anybody who goes against the grain, wether they are wrong, or correct and eventually vindicated, first has to face negative social pressure from their peers.
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