CZEdwards

The subtweet to end them all.

No, I haven’t been drinking. Sleep deprived, yes. Not drinking. (I actually do math or I write, or both, when I’m soul-wounded.)

Here’s the story: She ran away to the far side of the continent because our parents stopped being parents when she was 6. The parents were bored being the adults, and they only stayed together for another four years because they were each other’s best source of drama.

(They still are. Divorced for longer than they were married, and they still care more about who the other is fucking than who they’re fucking.)

The parents’ subsequent spouses were in fact more awful than the original pair, and I couldn’t take care of her. I wanted to, and I couldn’t. Six years older, paying for every dime of uni on scholarships & 20 hour work days and praying the Feds would approve my Pell, because my parents ruined my credit before I turned 15?

I ran away to college at 16. And stayed gone even when I literally could not afford both rent and 1000 calories a day. Middle sib ran away to a boarding school (the discipline-problems-of-the-rich-&-famous schools need someone willing to take a scholarship for being the dorm monitor type of boarding school.) Baby sis ran away by sneaking out, staying out, then leaving the day after graduation with a wet EMT vocational diploma. That’s how bad it got. We’ve got 8 ACE scores. Our molesters weren’t in-house? Nor was the drug use? Those have got to be advantages, right?

Child support? No, there was never any. For any of us. Because the courts let people get away with that shit back in the 90s. Like a pair of Cluster B semi-sociopaths with one gambling addiction and a compulsive shopping habit, edging into white collar crime, could write any check that wouldn’t bounce anyway. (How do you think I learned about money laundering? Books? Only to identify what I’d already seen and make it all hang together.)

So, she ran to the far side of the continent, with her best friend; two girls, worked crap jobs near military bases (it’s what we knew), and hooked up with some of the lesser specimens because freedom is intoxicating, and lust tastes like love when you’ve been starved all your life.

She graduated in 2000. Yeah, you see it coming, too.

It was whirlwind courtship dictated by ship date. They look cute and way too young in their wedding picture from Walmart, but he was shipping out, and he was mad at his mother, so wanted to make sure if he died, someone else got his pay out. At least she wasn’t pregnant when he left for Iraq.

First leave, though? Oops. Well, turned out she was good at being a single mother. Figured out base child care, ran housing, found a job she liked, partnered up with another friend to have their babies together... And she loved that baby more than her own life. Because she didn’t think she’d have another. (We have, as they say oh so delicately in the South, female troubles.) And so did I, and her grandmothers and everyone who ever met her.

True story: We took that baby to a Chicago dive bar one night because we needed to find a place that was open and served food, and that was it. The bartender was not keen on having a baby in his bar, but when I paid, he told me I could bring back my baby any time I wanted, because she was such a good baby. And she totally was. Every single day. Is. Please let it be is.

I say he was broken before they ever met, long before basic, but she swears he came back from some subsequent deployment broken. Okay, sure. They did hide the PTSD from the PTSD specialist sibling for a looooong time though. Just saying. I think she did what most emotionally abused and neglected girls do: we either fix our heads and marry the opposite of what we had growing up, or we marry the same fucking thing, and try to fix their heads. It’s psych 101, but it’s trope because it’s more true than not.

Whatever: he was broken when he came back, however he got that way, and he hated how good she was at being a single mom. She’d built a life for herself? He demanded they move, near the awful parents who drove him into mil life. She tried to get him to consider moving to where she came from. He claimed he was too Southern to survive Arizona. And that’s how they ended up in Jaw-ja. Where he started collecting guns, listening to Beck and Limbaugh and militia, hoarding gold, all if it. For all I know, he’s half a dozen of the trolls I’ve blocked.

Fucking Magat hell. Where my sister, who would be Senior Management in any other place, is still running the shipping, and the training, and the phones, for a small biz that doesn’t give her raises. $13/hour. Because structural misogyny and what he’s done to her head...

Oh, and he’s never been involved. Worked swing shift when possible, so he never had to see his children. What little he did? It was more than my sister remembered our father doing, therefore it was being a great, involved parent. It wasn’t even bare minimum.

So, my baby girl is brilliant. Really, not just her doting adults say so. Keeping her challenged is the hard part, and we’ve been pushing for challenges because too easy is as bad as too hard. She was born snarky and built the vocab for sarcasm by age 3. Robot girl, walked into her Magnet school.

3 years ago, my baby developed a crush on another kid in her Magnet school. Who was not the same race. And her pre-Magat father went apeshit.

Nothing would suit him except a survivalist house, out in an all white neighborhood, that they couldn’t afford, except if they rented their in town, paid off, convenient to all jobs and school house.

He built the McWhite McMansion so his daughters would be kept far from the kids of color, put them in stifling schools where they wouldn’t be taught anything like independent thought, and expected them to just stay home when they weren’t in their awful schools.

And my sister would have to commute a couple hours a day, or quit working. Either suited him – he’d either alienate his children from their always absent mother, or have a stifled wife dependent on him.

And then he moved his mistress into the paid off house. Didn’t even pay rent long enough to make it look legit. And then came the divorces, where the Magat, gun-humping, gold-bugging racist shit refused to sell either house, and demanded my sister take responsibility for the McWhite McMansion (which she hates) as a condition of child support and property settlement.

There are no ATVs in the interior neighborhood where the paid off house is. There aren’t even riding lawn mowers, except at lawn service companies. They went from a walkability score of 87 to one of 2, and that was his plan. To keep control over my sister and my nieces. Because he’s a waste of molecules.

The middle of nowhere does have ATVs/UTVs, and someone gave the keys to a teenager – not my niece – on a wet, freezing, school night; after dark, where there are no street lights.

Mt niece and her friend got t-boned. My niece got thrown. Think human cannon ball. There’s almost no chance she can survive.

Because of the racist, paranoid, broken piece of trash couldn’t bear the idea of a daughter in love.

And if he’s reading this: it should be you dying. Because it’s your fault. If you could keep your dick in your pants, if you could let your child be her own person, if you’d let them have the city, or you sold that monument to your ego... She’d be fine right now.

Do your remaining daughter a favor. Pay her child support and go away forever. Never come near her again.

In Defense of Constructed Language in Fiction

Deoxyribonucleic Acid. Voice Over Internet Protocol Digital Subscriber Line Insulin Hemoglobin Telephone

Those six concepts all entered into the English language to describe new concepts as they were needed. That’s what English does, and what all languages do, because the human experience that we share develops new ideas all the time, and better ways to describe them.

(I SWEAR there’s a DAMN good reason Galantier has a deeply constructed internal language. I just can’t tell you why. You’ll figure it out. It’s worth the work.)

Any sort of speculative fiction will have some constructed language, because if it doesn’t, it might as well be AU coffee shop fanfic of the modern world (which I’m not knocking). World building means setting up new concepts, new modes of communication, new ideas.

If a reader can’t cope with a con-lang, that’s on the reader. REALLY. Because if that reader has problems gathering enough context to cope with a con-lang, they’re also going to have context issues with classic fiction, period lit and almost anything that’s not specifically brand new and targeted right at them. That’s a reading comprehension issue or an attention issue.

A disqus post from four years ago on racism & policing. While it doesn’t strictly apply to immigrants (It was written during Ferguson), there are more black people than immigrants in the US. And the actual statistical murder rate is equally low.

~~~

Want to divide the number of people killed by cops by the total cop population and compare it to the number of people killed by black people divided by the black population?

Sure, let's play math and compare actual stats versus gut. Stats are useful things.

(All citations are from the FBI Unified Crime Report)

As of 2008, the last year there was complete data, there were about 120,000 full time police officers in the United States.

The FBI does not keep adequate stats on killings in the line of duty, but the number, per academic and investigative sources, is probably about 1,000 people per year killed by police officers.

Using that number, Victims divided by full time cops is 0.00833... But let's say the academics have their hair on fire, because so often we do, and they're over-estimating by 100%. There are only 500 officer-caused fatalities per year.

That's 0.0041666... Or even more conservatively, only 1 per million residents of the US per year — a literal one in a million incident. That's 335 per year and a ratio of 0.00279167.

As of the 2011, there were approximately 43.8 million people who identify as Black/African American. (US Census, 2010)

Per the FBI's 2011 Unified Crime Report, 5,486 murders were committed by known black perpetrators. citation Perpetrators divided by full population: 0.00012525

That's more than an order of magnitude difference even at the very lowest reasonable estimate.

(Given that there were over 100 officer caused shooting fatalities in the US between Aug 9 and September 15ish, when I stopped watching that specific Twitter feed because I could not take it anymore... My bet is on the academics.)

For the police to have the same ratio as the general black community, they would have to kill no more than 15.03 people per year as a whole.

Southern California alone had blown by that number by May. (equation: 0.00012525 = x / 120,000. It's pre-algebra to solve for x, but for the 5th graders in the audience, one multiplies both sides by 120,000.)

Yes, cops are more dangerous per capita than the general black population. Significantly more dangerous. By a factor of at least 20 and up to 70. Seriously, do your homework. This is stats 101 and elementary Googling.

There's nobody to compare our police with except our general population. We are murderous compared to the rest of the post-industrial world. We're about average with the post-conflict states but that assumes both our stats and theirs are honest, a questionable assumption. Our post-industrial peers have from ¼ to 1/100 the number of police injury rates (both officers injured in the line and officers doing the injuring).

The best comparison in terms of statistical similarity (age, income, gender) is either the military or estimates of gang activity. Cops come off worse than the military (using only direct confrontation rates because thank FSM cops don't have air support — about 0.0008 to 0.001 enemy fatalities in a war year to the 600K service members) and comparable to best estimates on gangs.

(Huge ballpark numbers here because very few gangs let sociologists follow them around, but FBI estimates 1.4 million US gang members — street, prison, biker, white supremacist — and estimates they are responsible for 48% of crime. If they're responsible for 48% of the murders in 2011, then 14,548 * .48 = 6983/1.4M = 0.004987. Using FBI numbers on gangs is problematic since conflict of interest, but they're all we've got.)

For more than 20 years, crime rates have been falling and law enforcement violence has increased. Those stats shouldn't go together, and they don't everywhere else. We have a structural problem that we are not addressing.

There is no actual justification for the violent, enforcer mentality in our police forces. It doesn't work, it costs much more, produces far worse outcomes and death spirals into more expense and worse outcomes.

Historically, from the origins with Robert Peel in 1830s London and the Parisian gendarmes (beginning formally in the 17th century), modern policing started and has survived everywhere except the US as peace officers.

London's example is particularly instructive. They were unarmed, as continues to this day for most, and for the first twenty-five or so years, were required to wear their uniforms even when off-duty. That latter requirement was to prevent the sort of corruption prevalent in their predecessors, the Bow Street Runners. The people of London would not trust a police force they could not monitor 24/7. The rest of the post-industrial world does exceedingly well in terms of low crime and a functional society without having to resort to state-sanctioned, poorly trained and disciplined paramilitaries.

The rest of the post-industrial world has addressed the majority of the social issues that lead to our crime rates — poverty abatement primarily, via housing, health care, nutritional, educational and income support.

They also more strictly control weapons through gun education and licensure requirements. It's not that they don't have drugs, organized crime, and criminality — they just address it from a different perspective and do so without killing 1-3 millionths of their population every year.

Canada's 2014 was an anno horribilis — 12 officer caused fatalities. They normally run 1-6. Even at that high rate, if Canada was 335 million people instead of 35, their rate would be ¼ to 1/10th the US rate.

Their solution is synergistic — their cops are far better trained (RCMP is 2 years over the first 5, with the first 6 months being residential training in Saskatchewan; most US police academies are not residential and only 6 weeks to 3 months, with very little follow up);

have significantly higher weapons discipline and training, and any weapon discharge incident is heavily investigated and threatens continued employment.

All shooting incidents are investigated by a federal panel, not by the locals, and they have a strong wall between their peace officer/law enforcement structure and their prosecutorial judicial structure, so that the cops and the State's attorney are not on the same team.

Training, accountability, oversight, clear separation of responsibilities — that's good policing. (And significantly less crime.)

Comparing US stats to the rest of the world is like comparing seawater to Infinity Stones. No commonality, they don't even share molecules. I'm using Canada as the primary comparison because it's the best natural peer, but you can pick any post-industrial country in the top ten percent of GDP per capita and the numbers look mostly like Canada, not the US.

It's not drugs or poverty or lead paint chips or malnutrition or lack of health care. They're all minor factors, but the big one is that 150 years ago, we failed to compensate more than a million people for two centuries of stolen labor and expected them to function with nothing.

We then spent the next hundred years preventing them from acquiring and preserving generational wealth and depriving them of full citizenship and access. That's five generations of raw deal on top of eight generations of actual evil.

I can S&R on your language and pop Roma or Dalit into your language about young black men, and your content doesn't change. You are blaming the inheritors of centuries of systemic economic and social violence for reacting to injustice.

We have the tools and the knowledge to not sacrifice 400-1000 people a year for devotion to a deeply sunk cost. We're choosing not to use those tools. You're choosing FYIGM when fact contradicts your gut.

Whatever bubble in which you exist, the evidence on the outside says it's polluted.

#TailorSnarkWars Battle 1: Donnie & Vladdie Wear The Clothes (Original thread: July 16 2018 Twitter)

Okay, I’m doing this. Donnie & Vladdie wear the clothes. And starting with a history lesson. @SamuraiKnitter requested.

I’ll try tomorrow. I do read suits, but Dampnuts is too easy. His gay tailor has been making him the butt of a joke for 15 years, and Two Scoops is too dumb to get it. I swear he stiffed a tailor’s bill once, and now they’re ALL out to get him.

To understand Russian tailoring, you have to understand the 300 year relationship of Russia, London & Paris. Always delicate, but Russia has always consumed and modified western culture for their own use rather than supplying it to London & Paris. Especially under Lenin/Stalin.

1. (I’m specifically talking tailoring – menswear – here. Which is just as expressive, but with a limited palette, and for the past 200 years, has been defined by exquisite labor & material, not ornament. This is also true for women’s bespoke clothing for Russia, but more so.)

4.They’ve also borrowed from their east; there’s still much Mongol influence in menswear/cold weather wear that’s not western drag – shoulder button, double breasted coats & jackets; ankle length coats; the furry barrel hats. Steppe winters are horror movie cold. So is Moscow.

1. Under the Tsars, everything the fashionable 500 wore originated in Paris or Savile Row but often locally produced by talented copyists. That continued under the Soviets for the party, except a lot of talent died because tailors who worked for Tsars became enemies of state.

2. In the 50s & 60s, there was a branch of intelligence called Kremlinology that examined publicity photos for information about what Moscow really did. They looked at cuts of suit & made assumptions that narrow lapels & skinny trousers were due to economic deprivation...

3. But no, Moscow seemed to like the Teddy Boy look coming out of London. Moscow fashion can be as capricious as the rest of the world’s, and it has tastemakers. It’s liminal, since it’s the intersection of West & East & it’s a remix culture. So all assumptions carry caveats.

4. That said: Putin is almost always v well clothed. Too well, per U rules in both UK and US Old Money. His suits always fit perfectly, and are always impeccable, and show so little wear that they’re fairly obviously newly made for the occasion. That’s what scratches the record.

5. A man’s suit that looks new shouts “New Money! Arriviste! Nouveau Riche!” (For a costuming example: look at Mad Men, first couple seasons – Roger Sterling vs Don Draper. Roger has had those suits for years. Or Prince Charles’ suits vs Tony Blair’s.)

6. Putin’s tailors are very good – he’s a small man and we all forget that because his clothes give him extra broad shoulders, a long neck and a long torso. Note how rarely we see his back or the backs of his legs. (Or his legs at all, come to think of it.)

7. But that’s also both Russian and New Money tailor signaling; the latter unintentional. Russian pride or Vlad’s ego – which are deeply intertwined – doesn’t permit him to be a small man. He must be biggest, baddest bear in the forest. Thus, his shoulders are heavily padded. See?

8. (Note that 🍊💩’s shoulders are also padded, though much worse quality. It’s mostly the same thought process, except shoulder pads are also used to mask a prominent or protruding tummy & to balance out short arms. Difference: you can SEE DJT’s pads in outline. Can’t see Vlad’s.)

9. The long neck is also an illusion thanks to serious talent. In Vlad’s infamous shirt off on the horse photo, his neck is nothing to write home about. It’s about 3 fingers width from collarbone to chin or to jaw. Average. But in suit? Halfway to ostrich.

10. You do that by cutting the suit collar to lay very flat over the upper chest/collarbones, and scooping out the back, standing collar by millimeters, so there’s just a titch more shirt collar showing without looking like anything is over or undersized. Serious props to tailors.

11. And yes, Vlad gets a bit of credit here: he knows how to wear & move in his clothes. That takes study, time and practice. (Yes, I am calling him vain as a phlebotomist‘ s nightmare.)

12. But remember how little we see of his legs. How often we see him sitting, or when standing, using the camera angle to seem as tall as the person beside him. Vlad is Angela Merkel’s height – 5’5”. DJT claims 6’3”, is really about 5’11”. Now look at today’s presser pics.

13. (Part of the reason the Obama-Putin stare down pic is so revealing is because it caught Vlad’s side angle, so it’s clear Obama towers over him. And that Obama is not intimidated. Also... Hillary Clinton is slightly taller than Vlad, and not easily intimidated. Hmmm...)

14. But in today’s press pics, Vlad and 45 are on the same level. I’m gonna guess slouching, boxes, cushions and angles. It’s basic stage-craft. The MCU does it all the time for Robert Downey Jr because he’s tiny and Chris Evans isn’t.

15. As for DJT: his suits are custom, but his tailors intend him to look like he slept in an off the rack suit that everyone else left on the rack. I assume he wears worsted wool, but it looks & drapes like poly-rayon. His sleeves are too long and baggy from elbow to wrist, but...

16. ...His biceps are too tight because fat upper arms. His shoulders don’t fit. If he were wearing off the rack, it’s because he’s buying to cover his gut. But he’s wearing custom, so it’s tailors making fun of him. (For sewists, he needs an Full Tummy Adjustment.)

17. Shoulder pads ameliorate it a little, but not enough. Fat men can wear clothes, they just have to trust their tailor. Since 45 has never trusted anyone but Vlad, well.... Not gonna happen. And no, I’m not fat-shaming or size shaming. I’m saying DJT chooses to be badly dressed.

18. (I say this as a woman who requires a 5 inch Full Bust Adjustment. Not 5 divided by 2 halves, but 5 inch on each side. Patterns are made for B cups; I’m an FF. There is no shame in needing custom clothing, and tailoring can handle any body shape and size. That’s the JOB.)

19. Donald refuses to admit he needs good custom clothing & his vanity can’t admit he’s no longer a man in his 30s. He hasn’t updated his internal profile picture in decades. He sees his Art of the Deal photo when he looks in today’s mirror. (Which is unsettling in cognitive sci...)

20. Dampnuts is still wearing what was fashionable in the late 80s, when he was flying high. Back then, baggy suits, wide shoulders, long ties, and a rumpled look were fashionable. But those do look best on slim men with torsos shaped like a Dorito, not torsos shaped BY Doritos.

21. And nobody around him can say (and be heard), “daddy, you don’t look right. Let’s fix this.” Either they don’t care or can’t get through.

Which ties to my other wheelhouse- behavioral psych: client wardrobe is highly revealing, and attitude towards clothing matters.

/end

PS! That thing I said about stage-craft? Look at this from the last 24 hours. Chris Wallace is 5’10”. Note that Vlad’s seat is lower to the floor, the chair is upstage from Chris, the angle is canted a bit to mask the difference, and they’ve got the chyron. (Also Vlad’s heels.)