When you were like " origins , richard garfields garage as a land i did a spit take" You owe me a diet mr. pibb. Joking aside, good podcast like always.
Do I believe there are dirty cops? Yes.
Do I believe there are racist cops? Yes.
I think cops are a necessary evil in this world (and man-oh-man is there some irony in that statement).
It's not an easy job and mistakes are made. There's an old saying in law enforcement: "I'd rather be tried by twelve than carried by six."
Self-preservation is the rule on the street.
If I'd been attacked by a 6'4" 300-pound man I'd empty my gun into him and call it a day. Right or wrong is for the courts to decide.
I used to work with a guy who carried a .25-caliber throwdown gun in his pocket "just in case." His greatest fear was a situation just like the one with Wilson and Brown.
My favorite reporter story: I prepared a press release detailing the arrest of some juveniles who had committed a string of burglaries in town. The reporter, a young guy named Jimmy, asked to speak to the chief of police. The answers to everything he asked was right there in the press release. He was desperate for a good question and finally asked the chief, "Have you arrested the victims yet?"
The chief fought off the urge to laugh and said, "No, Jimmy, we don't usually arrest the victims. We feel like they have suffered enough."
Two weeks later Jimmy quit the news biz and went to law school. True story.
You are probably right on that count. There is really no incentive to punish officers when there is even a smidgeon of doubt about their act being malicious because their job is dangerous and has inherent risks of violence. That shouldn't mean they get to be immune to prosecution but it does mean the burden is harder to prove wrongdoing. "Accidental" or questionable shootings happen all the time and if the shooter is a cop, they rarely get the shaft. Though sometimes politics gets in the way.
"I thought he had a gun and was reaching for it/aiming it at me/at my partner/at some innocent" is usually good enough.
Having witnessed similar peremptory actions on the part of NYPD in recent years (supposedly some of the most well trained cops in the world, according to police trainers I have met anyway :D) I don't have any doubts about what happened. Though if it turns out differently I will accept that just fine.
I expect Mr Moreno challenged the officer(s) by asking perhaps politely, perhaps not, something like "where ARE we allowed to stand??" and for that got summarily dumped on the ground and cuffed. Do you think that is a fair assessment of what might have happened and if so do you think it is reasonable for an Office of the Law (and Peace) to act in such a manner?
Here is a conversation I have witnessed almost verbatim:
"Move!"
"Wait why?"
"Because I said so, that's why!"
"But where can I go?"
*slight tussle, on ground in cuffs, "Off to the jailhouse now, son!"
To my mind that kind of stuff is what made the late 60s so bad. We are on the verge of yet another era like that and I'd really hoped that we could skip some of the nonsense this time.
"It's us vs them",
"Damned Longhaired, pot smoking, hippies, stirring up trouble!"
"They all get what they deserve"
I could go all day with this stuff. It is not hard to see a pattern.
(I watched some of this happening in the 70s too when I was a kid.)
To be fair it goes both ways with epithets being thrown from the other side that are just as blind and insulting.
As Columbo used to say, "Just one more thing..."
My prediction is that Darren Wilson will not be convicted of murder or manslaughter or anything else.
Graham v. Connor will be the legal precedent that saves his bacon. His lawyers will trumpet that court decision from the rooftops and he will walk free.
The law dogs better be ready that day for the rioting to come.
This is definitely not a molehill in Ferguson. I wasn't referring to that when I made that statement about reporters.
Reporters aren't satisfied with reporting facts. They give their opinions, their feelings, their beliefs,their slant on the events.
Worse than that, they leave out facts which do not support their take on the news. Check out coverage of these events on several different news outlets and it doesn't take long to figure out which side they support (and make no mistake they do support one side or the other).
Interestingly enough, police departments get their military-grade weaponry from the government and they get it with the stipulation that it must be used within a year or they must give it back. Think that incentivizes their use of it even if it is unnecessary?
As for Billy, I'm not buying that story for a second. There's got to be more to it than that.
We will no longer have core set overlap, so you are correct that the number of entirely new cards will most likely go up. They have said they will be more aggressive on reprints elsewhere to help balance this.
Essentially. We currently have big set, small set, small set, core set, multiplayer product. We're replacing the core set with another big set and changing the order.
Josh, 1 million megs = 1 terabyte. You sure that's what you were over? That's a heck of a lot of ram. :D
I am OK with the new set format but I have to say I sympathize with Rexdart who talked a bit on facebook about how expensive Standard will become when one has to buy chase rares to compete and then sell them at a loss because the timing is screwy with a shorter rotation period. Of course that is still a year and a half away (before it matters) but it is definitely a large worry.
I am the first one to agree that much of National TV is just garbage. Lock, Stock and Barrel, no caveats. If not for PBS there would be almost nothing other than the occasional Sci Fi programming worth watching. That said I threw away my last TV several years ago and I haven't looked back.
When I am in some establishment that has a tv playing I leave or find a way to ignore it.
So I totally get your bias (thanks for disclosing it.) On the other hand, when something of this level does happen, it is the imperative duty of those reporting on it TO report on it. That is the sole justification for media rights. To ensure that citizens aren't being denied basic civil rights.
And you may say that it is basically just a molehill out of which mountains have been built by the media and agitators. But you can't deny that the Police there have escalated the sitaution, and over used their toys and the force by which they have "enforced" the laws of the land. (What about the right to peaceful assembly? Is that abrogated by one moron with a homemade cocktail? I am guessing that's a question for the lawyers.)
I question whether the officers had a right to attempt to disperse the protest initially. Yes it became a broohaha which got out of hand and thus necessitated clearing out. I still don't see the need for a militarized approach. The only reason that kind of approach is used is to support a tyranny.
Are we now in that stage and no one bothered to actually stand up and claim it? (I would not be entirely surprised if that were the case. We sure ceded a good deal of rights to the "necessity" of security in the face of "terrorism". (*Note: the quotes are because these terms are questionable but often cited*)
But regardless of any of that, Billy was arrested at least once because he dared ask a police officer where he was legally allowed to stand/and or do legal things in the area. That doesn't sound even like civil disobedience to warrant being slammed to the ground and cuffed.
When an officer of the law tells a crowd to disperse, there is no special privilege for the media. They have to disperse, too.
It doesn't take long to tell from media footage that the crowds were hard to handle. Break it up and send them away. Arrest the looters, the people throwing Molotov cocktails and using firearms.
The media did not help the situation. The media just stirred the pot and continues to stir the pot to keep the unrest going.
Disclaimer: I hate reporters. I used to write press releases for a small police department and without fail the reporters would try to make a mountain out of a molehill. They didn't try to inform the public, they tried to spin every story into something it wasn't.
National media work the same way. Don't slant the story, just report what's happening.
Boy, one really has to admire MaRo's communication skills: I started reading his announcement being totally skeptical about the changes, and ended very excited about them and annoyed that they won't be operative until more than one year from now.
I'll miss the core sets, though. They were able to accommodate low-stakes experiments, like in M15. And I liked how they were now used to give little nods to the planes without the need to fully orchestrate a "return" block. I think they should find some way to still do it. Maybe they'll use the annual multiplayer product for that.
I didn't do the math for number of new cards per year. Will it be the same as before?
Have you even bothered to look at this situation at all?
The police have threatened and arrested journalists on multiple occasions recently, only to release them after hours with no charges. They have fired tear gas at news camera crews and then dismantled the camera gear when they ran from the gas.
There is zero evidence that getting arrested in this situation means you did anything illegal.
As for card availability, from what I heard on Twitter yesterday, they haven't finalized the draft structure yet, apparently they are considering doing Small-Small-Big, rather than Small-Big-Big.
I like the concept of the new block structure and shorter rotation. It will heighten the anticipation in standard and keep things from becoming stale at the top levels.
My concern, for newer players, is that it is more likely to increase the cost of being competitive in Standard; what with lower supply of cards entering the system. Also, it will severely increase the cost of key cards released in the second block (JtMS in Worldwake being the prime example). In the old "normal" blocks, the drafting was 111,112,123. 22% of the cards are from the second block (11% from third block, 33% from both second and third sets combined). In the new block format which is 111,112; only half of the amount of the small set will be drafted relative to the first set when compared to the 3 block format.
This would also mean bigger drops for cards leaving rotation, as few cards hold their value post-rotation. And they rotate faster on top of that.
Overall, I think Standard just got more expensive to play competitively.
The higher rate of perceived rotation may turn a lot of newer players off of standard. The constant release of expansions is the main reason I stopped playing paper middle of Odyssey block.
I have no sympathy for Billy. Arrested three times? Really? How many times do you have to get arrested before you decide to modify your behavior.?
I'm not buying the "innocent bystander" story. I think there's more to it than that. He seems like just another outside agitator stirring the pot.
If he'd stayed home, he would have been arrested zero times.
Exactly. Also I think Billy was expressly there to prevent the kind of behavior people are accusing the protesters of. By teaching nonviolence and peaceful protest. That was the gist I got anyway. And I think there has been a strong attempt to obfuscate what is really going on down there by making it about the morons throwing things. Just as it happened in the TSP riots in NYC in the 90s.
Back then, the cops were extremely violent, belligerent and provocative before anything happened and they elevated a mild protest into all out warfare. I am proud to say I wasn't involved in that madness even though it was in my own neighborhood. I don't think there was any salvaging it once the orders came down to arrest and beat people for no good reason.
Wall Street -Zuccoti park had a similar problem in that there were instigators among the cops (mostly white shirt "brass") and no tolerance for media exposure of what was going on. I am not "FOR" protesting in general. I think in this day and age, it only gives the establishment a chance to turn the conversation away from their own failings and point at "anarchist run amok" no matter what the actual facts are.
Fritz Leiber's book Gather Darkness (not a Fafrid and the Grey Mouser book either) said something like "Governing bodies require an enemy. So with religions. Without an enemy, the heirarchy falls to internal weaknesses" I've probably totally misquoted it as I read it years and years ago but the point is. Don't let the tail wag you.
I've seen video of what the "participators" were doing. I'm willing to stake everything I know that Billy was there to get good work done, and not to throw bricks at police.
Getting what he deserves for helping people, yup arrested three times, gassed a few times, profiled, yeah I'd say he got exactly what he deserved.
I applaud Billy's actions because he saw something that was wrong, and said NO! This Will Not Work!
Not sure why you applaud Billy's actions in MO. The big reason there was so much trouble was because people came from outside MO to "participate" in the melee. Billy got what he deserves for not following the police instructions.
Egg sell ant start to the week! (Sorry but you provoked the play on words even if they don't mean anything :p.) I am surprised no love for the best elf of them all, Deranged Hermit.
When you were like " origins , richard garfields garage as a land i did a spit take" You owe me a diet mr. pibb. Joking aside, good podcast like always.
Do I believe there are dirty cops? Yes.
Do I believe there are racist cops? Yes.
I think cops are a necessary evil in this world (and man-oh-man is there some irony in that statement).
It's not an easy job and mistakes are made. There's an old saying in law enforcement: "I'd rather be tried by twelve than carried by six."
Self-preservation is the rule on the street.
If I'd been attacked by a 6'4" 300-pound man I'd empty my gun into him and call it a day. Right or wrong is for the courts to decide.
I used to work with a guy who carried a .25-caliber throwdown gun in his pocket "just in case." His greatest fear was a situation just like the one with Wilson and Brown.
My favorite reporter story: I prepared a press release detailing the arrest of some juveniles who had committed a string of burglaries in town. The reporter, a young guy named Jimmy, asked to speak to the chief of police. The answers to everything he asked was right there in the press release. He was desperate for a good question and finally asked the chief, "Have you arrested the victims yet?"
The chief fought off the urge to laugh and said, "No, Jimmy, we don't usually arrest the victims. We feel like they have suffered enough."
Two weeks later Jimmy quit the news biz and went to law school. True story.
You are probably right on that count. There is really no incentive to punish officers when there is even a smidgeon of doubt about their act being malicious because their job is dangerous and has inherent risks of violence. That shouldn't mean they get to be immune to prosecution but it does mean the burden is harder to prove wrongdoing. "Accidental" or questionable shootings happen all the time and if the shooter is a cop, they rarely get the shaft. Though sometimes politics gets in the way.
"I thought he had a gun and was reaching for it/aiming it at me/at my partner/at some innocent" is usually good enough.
Having witnessed similar peremptory actions on the part of NYPD in recent years (supposedly some of the most well trained cops in the world, according to police trainers I have met anyway :D) I don't have any doubts about what happened. Though if it turns out differently I will accept that just fine.
I expect Mr Moreno challenged the officer(s) by asking perhaps politely, perhaps not, something like "where ARE we allowed to stand??" and for that got summarily dumped on the ground and cuffed. Do you think that is a fair assessment of what might have happened and if so do you think it is reasonable for an Office of the Law (and Peace) to act in such a manner?
Here is a conversation I have witnessed almost verbatim:
"Move!"
"Wait why?"
"Because I said so, that's why!"
"But where can I go?"
*slight tussle, on ground in cuffs, "Off to the jailhouse now, son!"
To my mind that kind of stuff is what made the late 60s so bad. We are on the verge of yet another era like that and I'd really hoped that we could skip some of the nonsense this time.
"It's us vs them",
"Damned Longhaired, pot smoking, hippies, stirring up trouble!"
"They all get what they deserve"
I could go all day with this stuff. It is not hard to see a pattern.
(I watched some of this happening in the 70s too when I was a kid.)
To be fair it goes both ways with epithets being thrown from the other side that are just as blind and insulting.
As Columbo used to say, "Just one more thing..."
My prediction is that Darren Wilson will not be convicted of murder or manslaughter or anything else.
Graham v. Connor will be the legal precedent that saves his bacon. His lawyers will trumpet that court decision from the rooftops and he will walk free.
The law dogs better be ready that day for the rioting to come.
This is definitely not a molehill in Ferguson. I wasn't referring to that when I made that statement about reporters.
Reporters aren't satisfied with reporting facts. They give their opinions, their feelings, their beliefs,their slant on the events.
Worse than that, they leave out facts which do not support their take on the news. Check out coverage of these events on several different news outlets and it doesn't take long to figure out which side they support (and make no mistake they do support one side or the other).
Interestingly enough, police departments get their military-grade weaponry from the government and they get it with the stipulation that it must be used within a year or they must give it back. Think that incentivizes their use of it even if it is unnecessary?
As for Billy, I'm not buying that story for a second. There's got to be more to it than that.
We will no longer have core set overlap, so you are correct that the number of entirely new cards will most likely go up. They have said they will be more aggressive on reprints elsewhere to help balance this.
But number of new cards in a Core set < number of new cards even in a small set.
Data for the past 2 years of Standard (I did the math now):
RTR: +230 cards
GTC: +232
DGM: +143
M14: +112
THS: +217
BNG: +160
JOU: +161
M15: +141
TOTAL: +1396 cards
Average large set: +226 cards
Average small set: +154 cards
Projected new cards for 4 large sets + 4 small sets: +1520 cards.
Projected outcome: +62 Standard-legal cards per year under the new system.
Essentially. We currently have big set, small set, small set, core set, multiplayer product. We're replacing the core set with another big set and changing the order.
Josh, 1 million megs = 1 terabyte. You sure that's what you were over? That's a heck of a lot of ram. :D
I am OK with the new set format but I have to say I sympathize with Rexdart who talked a bit on facebook about how expensive Standard will become when one has to buy chase rares to compete and then sell them at a loss because the timing is screwy with a shorter rotation period. Of course that is still a year and a half away (before it matters) but it is definitely a large worry.
I am the first one to agree that much of National TV is just garbage. Lock, Stock and Barrel, no caveats. If not for PBS there would be almost nothing other than the occasional Sci Fi programming worth watching. That said I threw away my last TV several years ago and I haven't looked back.
When I am in some establishment that has a tv playing I leave or find a way to ignore it.
So I totally get your bias (thanks for disclosing it.) On the other hand, when something of this level does happen, it is the imperative duty of those reporting on it TO report on it. That is the sole justification for media rights. To ensure that citizens aren't being denied basic civil rights.
And you may say that it is basically just a molehill out of which mountains have been built by the media and agitators. But you can't deny that the Police there have escalated the sitaution, and over used their toys and the force by which they have "enforced" the laws of the land. (What about the right to peaceful assembly? Is that abrogated by one moron with a homemade cocktail? I am guessing that's a question for the lawyers.)
I question whether the officers had a right to attempt to disperse the protest initially. Yes it became a broohaha which got out of hand and thus necessitated clearing out. I still don't see the need for a militarized approach. The only reason that kind of approach is used is to support a tyranny.
Are we now in that stage and no one bothered to actually stand up and claim it? (I would not be entirely surprised if that were the case. We sure ceded a good deal of rights to the "necessity" of security in the face of "terrorism". (*Note: the quotes are because these terms are questionable but often cited*)
But regardless of any of that, Billy was arrested at least once because he dared ask a police officer where he was legally allowed to stand/and or do legal things in the area. That doesn't sound even like civil disobedience to warrant being slammed to the ground and cuffed.
When an officer of the law tells a crowd to disperse, there is no special privilege for the media. They have to disperse, too.
It doesn't take long to tell from media footage that the crowds were hard to handle. Break it up and send them away. Arrest the looters, the people throwing Molotov cocktails and using firearms.
The media did not help the situation. The media just stirred the pot and continues to stir the pot to keep the unrest going.
Disclaimer: I hate reporters. I used to write press releases for a small police department and without fail the reporters would try to make a mountain out of a molehill. They didn't try to inform the public, they tried to spin every story into something it wasn't.
National media work the same way. Don't slant the story, just report what's happening.
Boy, one really has to admire MaRo's communication skills: I started reading his announcement being totally skeptical about the changes, and ended very excited about them and annoyed that they won't be operative until more than one year from now.
I'll miss the core sets, though. They were able to accommodate low-stakes experiments, like in M15. And I liked how they were now used to give little nods to the planes without the need to fully orchestrate a "return" block. I think they should find some way to still do it. Maybe they'll use the annual multiplayer product for that.
I didn't do the math for number of new cards per year. Will it be the same as before?
Have you even bothered to look at this situation at all?
The police have threatened and arrested journalists on multiple occasions recently, only to release them after hours with no charges. They have fired tear gas at news camera crews and then dismantled the camera gear when they ran from the gas.
There is zero evidence that getting arrested in this situation means you did anything illegal.
That would put it back in line with the 3 block numbers.
As for card availability, from what I heard on Twitter yesterday, they haven't finalized the draft structure yet, apparently they are considering doing Small-Small-Big, rather than Small-Big-Big.
I like the concept of the new block structure and shorter rotation. It will heighten the anticipation in standard and keep things from becoming stale at the top levels.
My concern, for newer players, is that it is more likely to increase the cost of being competitive in Standard; what with lower supply of cards entering the system. Also, it will severely increase the cost of key cards released in the second block (JtMS in Worldwake being the prime example). In the old "normal" blocks, the drafting was 111,112,123. 22% of the cards are from the second block (11% from third block, 33% from both second and third sets combined). In the new block format which is 111,112; only half of the amount of the small set will be drafted relative to the first set when compared to the 3 block format.
This would also mean bigger drops for cards leaving rotation, as few cards hold their value post-rotation. And they rotate faster on top of that.
Overall, I think Standard just got more expensive to play competitively.
The higher rate of perceived rotation may turn a lot of newer players off of standard. The constant release of expansions is the main reason I stopped playing paper middle of Odyssey block.
That is true. I stayed home. I didn't protest and I am still here writing and using the internet. Not getting involved is after all the safest path.
I have no sympathy for Billy. Arrested three times? Really? How many times do you have to get arrested before you decide to modify your behavior.?
I'm not buying the "innocent bystander" story. I think there's more to it than that. He seems like just another outside agitator stirring the pot.
If he'd stayed home, he would have been arrested zero times.
Considered hermit for that last deck, but the Thelonite version gave an earlier body.
Exactly. Also I think Billy was expressly there to prevent the kind of behavior people are accusing the protesters of. By teaching nonviolence and peaceful protest. That was the gist I got anyway. And I think there has been a strong attempt to obfuscate what is really going on down there by making it about the morons throwing things. Just as it happened in the TSP riots in NYC in the 90s.
Back then, the cops were extremely violent, belligerent and provocative before anything happened and they elevated a mild protest into all out warfare. I am proud to say I wasn't involved in that madness even though it was in my own neighborhood. I don't think there was any salvaging it once the orders came down to arrest and beat people for no good reason.
Wall Street -Zuccoti park had a similar problem in that there were instigators among the cops (mostly white shirt "brass") and no tolerance for media exposure of what was going on. I am not "FOR" protesting in general. I think in this day and age, it only gives the establishment a chance to turn the conversation away from their own failings and point at "anarchist run amok" no matter what the actual facts are.
Fritz Leiber's book Gather Darkness (not a Fafrid and the Grey Mouser book either) said something like "Governing bodies require an enemy. So with religions. Without an enemy, the heirarchy falls to internal weaknesses" I've probably totally misquoted it as I read it years and years ago but the point is. Don't let the tail wag you.
I've seen video of what the "participators" were doing. I'm willing to stake everything I know that Billy was there to get good work done, and not to throw bricks at police.
Getting what he deserves for helping people, yup arrested three times, gassed a few times, profiled, yeah I'd say he got exactly what he deserved.
I applaud Billy's actions because he saw something that was wrong, and said NO! This Will Not Work!
Not sure why you applaud Billy's actions in MO. The big reason there was so much trouble was because people came from outside MO to "participate" in the melee. Billy got what he deserves for not following the police instructions.
Egg sell ant start to the week! (Sorry but you provoked the play on words even if they don't mean anything :p.) I am surprised no love for the best elf of them all, Deranged Hermit.
I do, particularly in red and black. Green has a wider slice as do blue and white. Blue in particularly has a bit of everything.