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keltaris @lemm.ee
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Comments 18
Austin Mayor Kirk Watson on dropping police indictments, mending relationship between city hall and APD
  • That's part of a question from the reporter - here's the rest, with Watson's response:

    What does systemic change look like for you within the police department to ensure that something in 2020 doesn’t happen?

    MAYOR WATSON: Well, a couple of things have already happened that make a difference. One is the system no longer allows for the use of the so-called “non-lethal beanbag weapons.” In a congregate-type situation, where you have a group of people, that’s a big difference. Another systemic difference already in place is that you have these mobile field units where people move around and are responsive. Where they are moved and sent has changed. And the third thing I would say is there’s been a change with deployment in a crowd-type situation. We’re making sure the training across groups and entities that are deployed is the same.

    And then the final thing that we have already started putting into place is de-escalation. We want to de-escalate situations as opposed to having to resort to something like what happened in this case. And then the last thing I’ll say about this is that we want transparency. That’s a part of a systemic approach to make sure there’s transparency. And that’s one of the reasons we are agreeing to ask the Department of Justice to come in and look at this specific event and the patterns and practices, including executive-level decisions that were made.

    Aside from the DoJ portion, this looks like a nothing burger of a response 😐 Banning one type of non-lethal weaponry just means the companies that sell to police departments have to change products. It seems like it would be more fruitful to establish regulations around what non-lethal weaponry can be used in protest or non-violent situations, along with defined penalties for violating the regulations that incentivize either leadership or individual officers from resorting to them unnecessarily? Or more generally general regulations on which non-lethal weaponry the department can even buy, based on what it does to the victim?

    Updating training for those deployed in a crowd situation does seem relevant though, so hopefully that helps.

    I don't really get the point about de-escalation though - is there some way they intend to deescalate a protest? The point of the protest is that people are angry enough to come out and demonstrate. If the deescaltion procedures involve working with the protestors to make them feel like their voices are being heard, that seems useful, but if the intention is just to "pacify" the crowd I don't see that preventing another situation like the BLM protests.

    Overall, I'm kinda disappointed in how short the article is and how much of its limited time it sounds on how the mayor is trying to pacify APD

  • [Question] Are you cooking something other than turkey for Thanksgiving?
  • "Cooking" (i.e. reheating) a city ham (i.e. fully cooked , Easter-style ham) sous vide this year. Just me and the partner this year,so a turkey doesn't make sense, especially since I'm usually underwhelmed with turkey anyway.

  • Statewide amendment results (local in comments)
  • Man, the wealth tax ban is mind-boggling to me. I can only imagine what marketing they must have done to convince the average voter there was any downside to the POSSIBILITY of taxing high net worth individuals, without any specifics.

  • How do I unhide posts?
  • As of right now, the button is just a toggle that will turn on the feature to hide read posts in your feed, but won't restore hidden posts (as you found). If you want to see your hidden posts, you can go to your profile (center button on the bottom buttons) and you can unhide a given post from the post itself.

  • What can I build/put in my backyard that isn't just lame plants
  • Since you've already got one tree, sink a 4x4 post in concrete (or just bury it if you want less permanence and like to live dangerously) to use for securing the other end of a hammock (with one end wrapped around the tree).

    The post can serve double duty too - you could use it as a tetherball post (better to use a metal fence post in that case though? Or do they make dedicated tetherball posts), for either you or dogs.

  • Thanks for making a native android version!
  • Not sure if this is different depending on the backing browser, but my experience with this is that it works great to open the link, but when you hit the back button to go back to Voyager, you get kicked out to your home page instead of back to the thread you were in.

    This might not be caused by opening a page in the same browser as the PWA (could be due to issues with the back button that I think we're fixed in the latest build? Or was that about the native apps? Can't remember) but I've been assuming that's part of the issue 🤷‍♂️

  • News Video: Movement to restart the Lone Star Rail District from Austin to San Antonio
  • According to the video, the original effort to get this passenger rail set up died in 2016 because Union Pacific wasn't interested and that's (theoretically) changed now. I wonder if it's just a change in management decision makers or if UP's business is down on those routes and it'd actually benefit them to get a slice of that traffic.

    I do wonder what the projected cost might be to make this a reality - the rep from the rail line project said a study projected a 20% in traffic on 35 if the rail line were to be completed. I'm guessing that's the optimistic number and it doesn't feel like 20% would be life-changing necessarily, so it's a real question of whether it'd be worth whatever the cost might be

  • "Castlevania: Nocturne" - New Animated Series from Netflix Premieres in September
  • Cautiously excited for this. I enjoyed Castlevania quite a bit, but thought the ending was a little half-baked. I'm curious to see if the IP is improved or struggles without Warren Ellis as a show runner. I've assumed he was the driving force behind a lot of what made the last one great, but the reason he got dropped (sexual coercion allegations) could also explain some of the weirder sections of the show, so might be nice to get some fresh blood.

  • Show previously hidden posts (marked as read)
  • If you go to your profile (middle button on the bottom), there's an option to view hidden posts there. Don't think there's an option to filter by community though, which can be tough if you're looking for a hidden post from a day or two ago.

  • Is there a type of media you favor for fanfiction?
  • No, I definitely still read a ton of AU stuff in the Persona and Marvel fandoms, but I'm less interested in AUs for them where the rules of how the main characters affect the story have changed (e.g. it's Persona but the main characters are all vampires instead of having Persona). Instead I like to see butterfly effect stuff, where canon unfolds differently from a single point of change, and how the characters respond based on that change.

    For HP and Naruto, every character's abilities or proficiencies can be so varied in canon that I'm not really bothered if one of the main characters has an ability never mentioned in canon , because a good writer can incorporate it as the character being unique instead of it being an entirely different world with similarly named characters.

    I'm not sure that makes sense, reading it back, but I'm scratching around the edges of it at least 🤣

  • Is there a type of media you favor for fanfiction?
  • I tend to focus on media that has an ensemble cast or else media that has an entirely different set of rules for the world than our own. My top fandoms are Harry Potter, Naruto, Persona (the game series), and Marvel. For Persona and Marvel, I care about spending more time with the ensemble characters and seeing them interact outside of canon, but am not especially interested in seeing authors rework the rules of the universe. For HP and Naruto, it's more about the flexibility of canon to allow authors to do almost anything with the world, even if it's pre or post-canon.

  • Advocates say new Florida standards require slavery to be taught as 'beneficial'
  • The Florida Department of Education says the new standards don’t teach that slavery was beneficial.

    However, one of the benchmarks (SS.68.AA.2.3) states students will be taught, “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

    Anyone able to think of a good argument for explicitly requiring this? I'm having trouble thinking of why you'd call this out in the standards unless, you know, you are a fan of slavery...

  • Austin Finally Faces Down the Housing Crisis With Single-Family Zoning Reform
  • Code reform has always been such a hot button issue in the past, I don't understand why I haven't heard more about this until now. An I just out of the loop or is this different in some way from CodeNEXT and the other reform attempts that make it less of a slig to get through?

  • Council to vote on allowing taller buildings along Sixth Street
  • I think the compromise of requiring the historic facades and setbacks from the facades is a good way to not lose history while also turning Dirty 6th into something approaching usefulness.

    I think the whole focus on small buildings and maintaining sightlines to the capitol building is stupid, honestly. If we want downtown to support a big city's level of people (and not be a dead zone), we have to build it up like an actual city.

  • Whatcha Playin? : July 7 -> 9
  • I never got deep into StS, so it's possible I don't get what a good run looks like, but I've always felt like StS is about eking out a win by the skin of your teeth and careful choices - MT, by contrast, is more all or nothing. You'll either wipe before you make it to the final boss or you'll breeze through it without breaking a sweat.

    MT is about building the most broken combos you can - it doesn't always work out that way, but there's nothing sweeter than taking down the final boss 3 turns early.

    I highly recommend the expansion: the shards mechanic adds a really great push-your-luck mechanic. Originally I was wary of taking more than 10 or 20 shards over a run, because it makes each fight harder, some in some particularly frustrating ways, but a good infusion or the right upgrades on a card can make a failing run into a winner.