>Do you have any guesses on why that is?
Mainly income inequality coupled with a severe lack of a social safety net. Contributing factors are guns and practically non-existent mental health care for the poor.
908 karma · joined March 30, 2025
Mainly income inequality coupled with a severe lack of a social safety net. Contributing factors are guns and practically non-existent mental health care for the poor.
Austin: $525,190,972
https://budget.austintexas.gov/#!/year/2025/operating/0/fund...
West Midlands: £842,588,000 ($1,144,307,581)
https://www.westmidlands-pcc.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/... (page 17)
Based on population that is $528 per resident in Austin and $387 per resident in the West Midlands. I can assure you that crime is way more than 36% higher in Austin. Income is approximately double in Austin, though.
Austin has spectacular reporting on their spending. As far as I can tell West Midlands does not. They just have broad categories (not defined in the budget document) like "Local Policing", "Major Crime", and "Security" among others. There may be other resources but (shrugging guy emoji).
A huge part of Austin's budget is.. drumroll... Healthcare!
Yes.
This may come as a surprise to you but the United States of America is severely under-staffed when it comes to police, especially given its higher crime rate compared to other developed countries. Cities are the most critically under-staffed, though some rural areas may have few, or no, local dedicated police resources.
Austin PD has a staff of slightly over 2,000, with 1,816 positions for police officers, with 330 vacancies. Let's call that 1,500 officers. Austin, TX has a population estimate for 2024 of 993,588. 1,500 patrol officers for 993,588 people is a rate of 150 per 100k.
Those 1,500 officers responded to 286,035 incidents in 2024: https://app.powerbigov.us/view?r=eyJrIjoiNjJhMmU4YTMtM2IyZS0...
That's 190 calls per officer per year.
Birmingham, England has a population of 1,157,603. Let's call 990k and 1,100k "close enough". It is covered by the West Midlands Police territorial police force. West Midlands has a staff of 12,511, with roughly 8,000 officers. West Midlands has a population of 2,953,816. That is a rate of 270 officers per 100k.
Those 8,000 officers responded to 736,532 calls for service. https://www.police.uk/pu/your-area/west-midlands-police/perf...
That's 92 calls per officer per year.
150 vs 270 officers per 100k
190 vs 92 calls per officers per year
On top of all of that, Austin cops are much more likely to encounter an armed individual, much more likely to encounter an individual under the influence of drugs, have received much less training than the West Midlands officer, and are much, MUCH more likely to be on a call alone, far from backup.
This is a pattern repeated across the United States, yes with exceptions, but IN GENERAL the norm is for officers in the US to basically burn out after 4-7 years due to overwork.
You can compare officers per 100k here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
The US has the same per-capita number of police as France, but has 5x the murders, 6x the firearms, and 1/4th the training.
The solution is to hire more, pay more, and train more, but there we go being cheap again!
I assert the police are a reflection of the society they serve, and we are cheap, poorly educated, violent dickheads so I expect nothing less from our cops.
I've read this before and when I asked for examples, all of the examples given involved either people who were kicked out of open source projects for being huge dickheads or companies who held recruiting events at historically black colleges and universities being called woke.
Do you have any examples of meritocracy beliefs being considered "white supremacist rhetoric"?
BTW you spelled supremacist wrong. I'm curious about what browser/operating system combination did not highlight the misspelling.
ArcGIS is the best general purpose solution.
If doing mission planning including flight guidance for aerial operations, FalconView is the least worst.
Telling an experienced GIS user to drop ArcGIS is like telling a somehow-still-living B.B. King to stop using Gibson guitars.
And by "better supported" he probably meant "isn't a huge pain in the ass that breaks every other kernel upgrade due to dkms or the package manager shitting the bed" when it comes to Nvidia drivers. Doesn't matter if it's a 1080ti or a 5090.
This is not true.
In the United States GENERALLY SPEAKING you can manufacture any substance that is not on the list of controlled substances on the CSA Schedule.
You cannot sell it or administer it to others.
Also IN GENERAL you can consume any substance that is not illegal to possess or manufacture.
In the non-pharmaceutical realm there are a few additional restrictions, like ethanol (which you can manufacture for industrial use but not human consumption) and various nuclear, biological, and chemical munition components. (Don't know how many people are ingesting those)
If you have the ability, you can manufacture your own sofosbuvir and ingest it.
You cannot sell or give it to anyone else.
The US has been a net exporter of oil for several years now and what it does import is mainly (>70%) production from Canada and Mexico. As far as crude oil goes, in 2024 the US imported 6.48 million barrels per day and exported 4.06 million. Of those 2.42 million barrels of crude oil, approximately 1.7 million came from oilfields in Canada and Mexico.
While we as a society should transition away from fossil fuels as quickly as practical, there is actually a very small chance a gallon of gasoline pumped into a vehicle originated in a shady petrostate.
>Tesla’s are obviously incredible engineering feats that everyone should want
Teslas were impressive, technologically, to normal consumers ten years ago.
Having driven every single model of Tesla ever made they are not for me except for the Roadster; their dynamics more closely resemble a heavily laden minivan with fantastic acceleration than a fun-to-drive car and their styling is design-by-committee bland.
That's not provocative. The vast majority of recalls in the modern age are software updates. Ford just recalled 1,075,299 vehicles due to backup camera failures last week and the fix is a technician plugging a cable into the vehicle and running a software update. The only difference is Tesla does it over the air.
It was reported as "Ford Recalls More Than 1 Million Vehicles with Backup Camera Issue".
No agenda. Factual, plain language writing.
I was either born without the gene or raised to not do this for myself but I do, quite often, dwell on the unlived lives of people I knew who were never given the chance to live their lives.
My best friend was murdered at school when he was 16. In the Army there are several guys I considered to be "old men" at the time who I am now decades older than.
Now I'm the old man.
Others have taken their own lives or had it stolen from them by drunk drivers or disease.
But me? I just happily (for the most part) stumble through my own life, knowing the past is immutable.
The utility of "what ifs?" seems very low when looking at the past.
The present is a different story, but the convoluted fantasies people seem to build in their minds about going back and marrying that person or taking that risk seem futile because anything you create in your mind is as real and likely to happen as a myriad other options and knowing how that path would have unfolded is impossible.
"I would have been happier/better off/more X if only I.." No. That is unknowable.
Yeah. Go back in time and invest in a sure bet. You got fabulously wealthy and Very Important but ended up dying in your comfy first class seat sitting next to the cofounder of Akamai on 9/11.
"No with my time machine only good things happen"
“F**k” could be any number of things. (Shrugging guy emoji)
As a methodically scientific academically academic scientist myself I struggle to arrive at a firm and defensible position on what it could be.
Prior to the invention of the automobile, if a pedestrian walked onto a public street and was struck and killed by a vehicle, the pedestrian was 100% at fault unless the driver was negligent. Merely operating a vehicle in a normal manner was not negligence.
It has been understood since the construction of Pompeii at the latest, that pedestrians belong on sidewalks and vehicles in the road.
Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris was built in the 1600s with sidewalks.
All of the oldest photos from the 1800s of major cities show a separation of vehicles and pedestrians.
If you have access to a newspaper archive like I do you can run a search for jaywalking and sort by oldest result.
Most of the pushback to jaywalking laws was because they required crossing at corners, not the middle of the street.
People instinctively (wrongly) believed that crossing in the middle was safer. Statisticians know that corners are safer.
Fun fact: you were more likely to die being run over by a horse in New York City prior to the invention of the automobile than you are to be struck and killed by an automobile today.
Much MUCH more likely.
>Horses killed in other, more direct ways as well. As difficult as it may be to believe given their low speeds, horse-drawn vehicles were far deadlier than their modern counterparts. In New York in 1900, 200 persons were killed by horses and horse-drawn vehicles. This contrasts with 344 auto-related fatalities in New York in 2003; given the modern city’s greater population, this means the fatality rate per capita in the horse era was roughly 75 percent higher than today. Data from Chicago show that in 1916 there were 16.9 horse-related fatalities for each 10,000 horse-drawn vehicles; this is nearly seven times the city’s fatality rate per auto in 1997.
https://www.accessmagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/20...
344 is a lot. In 2024, there were 252 auto-related fatalities (drivers, occupants, cyclists, and pedestrians) in NYC.
I once saw an article that in the 1800s there were over 150 fatalities per year in San Francisco due to street cars alone so I wager the increasing value of human life in the early 1900s also contributed to jaywalking laws.
Everyone just used to accept people dying left and right due to horses and trains.
But again, it WAS NOT a conspiracy to steal the streets from pedestrians.
That's $90 today.
I don't play very many video games anymore though I did play the hell out of Doom 30 years ago.
What I have noticed, as an outside observer looking in, about people who play video games today is that they seem to be among the most entitled people on the planet who love bitching about everything.
This was a mistake. It slowed upgrades. The several second's worth of speed increase was irrelevant when to upgrade an Amiga you had to ship out 2x 40-pin DIPs and floppy disks as opposed to just floppies.
And due to incompatibilities it was common to install a ROM switcher in your system, especially in Amigaland when kickstart 2.0 came out and you wanted to keep 1.3 so your games would still run. So you had to buy and install a switcher like a MultiStart AND buy and install new ROMs and manage two sets of floppies. This led to a schism in the market where normal people were stuck with an A500 running 1.2/1.3 and its 1980s featureset and power users who wanted space-age luxuries like IDE hard drives were running 2.0.
Practically every word uttered or printed by Commodore about compatibility between the two was an outright lie.
Microsoft had an obsessive focus on backwards compatibility so MS-DOS 5.0 was adopted by practically everybody: just insert the disk, switch to a:, type "install". Done. There were compatibility issues, but they were on a scale that was irrelevant compared to the Kickstart disaster.
Could you imagine in 1992 having a PC and having to install a PCB in the BIOS sockets so you could have both versions 3.02.111 and 4.84.1932 of your BIOS and keep DOS 3.3 and 5.0 boot disks on hand so that you could run Commander Keen and use the newest version of WordPerfect?
I did all of that on the non-PC side of the house, and many others did too. I had (and still have) an A2000 with hard card, flicker fixer, accelerator, ram expansion, rom switcher, and other upgrades. I spent thousands of hours tinkering and having fun with the system.
Tinkerers don't make for successful ecosystems.
Fun, yes.
Sustainable, no.
Moore's law only observes that the density of transistors within an integrated circuit doubles roughly every two years.
It does not comment on the cost of the individual transistors, or other electronic components.
Often, increasing transistor density can lead to significantly increased costs in the short term as production issues are ironed out and massive investments in new technologies are recouped.
There are transistors in an electronic paper display, but they are an irrelevant portion of the cost of the panel.
Thinking they know what a long-dead person would say or think is YET ANOTHER sign of the AIbro’s intellectual and moral bankruptcy.
They, and AI bullshit, are not comparable.
Attempting to equate them just demonstrates the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the techbros behind the ai hype train.
And my trust in the current administration is rather low.
It was particularly difficult for me because I had been in the Army for 10 years and was used to having many male friends I was extremely close with.
All I was doing on the weekends was sitting on the couch and I hate sitting on the couch.
I decided to fight it by focusing on three aspects of my personality and finding activities that suited them.
First was my nerdy side and for that I joined my local amateur radio and astronomy clubs. The amateur radio club is all old guys, but there's nothing wrong with that-- I'm on my way there too. But there is field day, volunteer opportunities, and monthly talks. Same for the astronomy club but slightly younger. You don't even need an expensive radio or telescope, or radio telescope. A pair of binoculars and a cheap handheld radio will get you started. My astronomy club is focused on astrophotography. I will never dive into that nightmare of cost but I have purchased a star tracker and learned to take deep sky photos with a DSLR. Also, if you want 20 different opinions on how to do something, tell an amateur radio club about your plan to do something-- sometimes their input is useful. Sometimes.
Time commitment: one day per month per club and the occasional volunteer event. Financial commitment: if you have self control, minimal.
Next was my desire for mental and physical fitness and for that I, a hairy sweaty middle-aged man who couldn't touch his toes, joined a yoga studio and started going regularly. There aren't a lot of men who go to yoga but they do exist and after a couple of months we started to get to know each other. Now every single Sunday after Yin we go get coffee. We are all into scuba so we go on an annual retreat each year to somewhere with yoga and good diving sites. The teachers think it's adorable, our little yoga men's club. Now I can touch my toes. And do a headstand. edit: and I don't know if it is a quirk of my area but every dude who is in to yoga is also, apparently, in to clay pigeon shooting as well so we do that too.
Time commitment: six hours per week, plus retreats. Financial commitment: large.
Finally was my desire to serve my community. This led me to joining my local volunteer fire company, going through EMT training, and going through the firefighter training pipeline, doing driver and pump operator training, and this fall I'm starting the officer pipeline. Now I staff the ambulance, do CPR training for the community, do a shift on the engine a couple of times per month, am on the board, and MOST IMPORTANTLY drive the engine in every single parade I can. The only reason I am up so late on a Thursday is that this evening was forcible entry training so I'm still amped up a little from hammering on the door training prop for three hours.
Time commitment: don't ask, it's practically a second job. Financial commitment: none, volunteers in my area get property and income tax credits and all training and gear is free.
I don't need to do all three, any single one of these would be fulfilling enough to make me happy-- but my kids are grown and gone and I've decided that working myself to death isn't worth it so I have the time.
Now instead of sitting on the couch all weekend doing nothing I have to specifically schedule weekends and tell people to leave me alone so I can sit on the couch all weekend and relax.
And if I need help moving that couch there is no shortage of volunteers.
Your personality is different but I guarantee, no matter where you live or what you're in to, there is some group somewhere that is looking for you.
Round trips in September are $386-500 depending on the day and duration of the stay. The $386 fare was for a tuesday-to-tuesday week stay and I might just take it, I will be bumping up against use-or-lose limits for PTO by then. There are fewer crowds in September and the weather is really nice.
Most people are ok with terrible service because they save money.
Doesn't stop them from complaining, though.
And yes, "cheapest" includes taxes and all fees.
You can fly from New York to Paris non-stop for $150 if you are patient and flexible. (Please please please call me a liar.)
If you are not patient $500 is more typical.
Twenty years ago was a $800 ticket.
Thirty years ago that was a $1000 ticket.
With exceptions, once you have paid for a ticket all commercial passenger airlines are obligated to transport you under their contract of carriage.
All airlines must do this, I even looked up the contract of carriage for the shittiest airline I could think of and Frontier has this to say:
>Involuntary -- If insufficient passengers volunteer, passengers who cannot be accommodated on the flight will be denied boarding and Frontier will provide transportation on a Frontier flight to the same destination. After a passenger’s boarding pass is collected or scanned and accepted by the gate agent, and the passenger has boarded, a passenger may be removed from a flight only for safety or security reasons or in accordance with Section 3 of this Contract of Carriage.
They must also compensate you. If being denied boarding delays you for 1-2 hours you get 2x the cost of the fare up to $1550 and 2+ hours 4x up to $2150.
And they still have to put you on a plane:
>A passenger denied boarding, voluntarily or involuntarily, pursuant to this section, will be transported on Frontier’s next available flight on which space is available and at no additional charge.
https://www.flyfrontier.com/legal/contract-of-carriage
Contracts of carriage are pretty much boilerplate but all of this is to say: if you pay, show up on time, and aren't denied boarding for a safety reason airlines are obligated to transport you to your destination.
(in the US)
A decade ago if you searched for toggle switches on their website you would have gotten dozens and dozens of results.
Now there are six, and only two of them are actual toggle switches.
Did all of the science and surplus run out?
Like when someone says "cats are furry and fuzzy and I like petting them" and someone chimes in "Well what about hairless cats??????"
Why do you think Tata bought the brands and formed Jaguar Land Rover?
Did Ratan Tata "just like the brand" or did he see every single person around him buying Land/Range Rovers as Indians (and people in China, and Kenya, and everywhere else) got wealthier and started moving out to single family homes in suburbs and he wanted to profit off that?
"But people in Indi.."
No.
Wealthy Indians have fucking single-family Get Me The Fuck Away From Everyone Else compounds surrounded by high walls, gate houses, and surveillance equipment.
Unless you're a lifelong career civil servant in the foreign service nearing retirement who went abroad working in consulates and embassies immediately after graduating university who has spent their entire life bouncing between different assignments to the point that you don't even feel like a resident of their own country anymore, I know more about this than you.
I know what Africans who live in villages do once they get money. (they buy an SUV or wagon and move to an American-style suburb)
I know what Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans who live in miniscule tower apartments do once they get money. (they buy an SUV or wagon and move to an American-style suburb)
I know what Hip Young Urban Professionals Sipping Coffee On A Sidewalk Next To A Cafe Along The Seine Or Rhine Because Their Apartment Is To Small To Do Anything do the second they get money. (they buy an SUV or wagon and move to an American-style suburb)
It seems impossible for the nu-urbanists and the like to understand the brains of normal human beings who prefer not smelling the farts of others or their terrible cooking, hearing them snore or argue or fuck, seeing them scratch their ass and pick their nose.
A GameBoy from 1989 is highly likely to still function.
If you do not like the battery life of new products, continue to use the old ones.
There is no tradeoff.
I started CPAP about a decade ago and in the beginning I would take the mask off in the middle of the night, while sleeping-- completely unaware of what I was doing.
My doctor said this is common with many patients.
Frustrated, I started taping the mask to my face with medical tape.
I only stopped taping up my face when I was able to make it through the night without waking up to my sleeping self trying to rip the mask off.
$7.99
They also have an 8-inch wrench on sale for $3 but I'd spend the extra for the pipe wrench.
Better whackin' with an 18-incher.
Apparently a sufficient number of people don't want to live in microscopic hamster cages, no matter how cool they look, not even as pied-à-terres.
They ain't got no clue, and will almost certainly make things worse.