Empty Stadium


  • ♿ (Parody)

    Due to rioting in Baltimore, the Orioles (baseball team located in that city) have decided that instead of more postponed games, they'll play in an empty stadium to keep their fans from having to travel through riot zones. Of course, you still have the problems of getting the people involved in the game to and from the stadium, but that's a lot less risk than a regular game.

    There are some interesting issues here, I think (NB: I learned this and am quoting from Althouse):

    Playing before the empty stands makes a powerful visual statement that is entirely different from a postponement. If there's a postponement, there's nothing to see, and seemingly nothing is lost...Many people will watch/listen and experience the theater of sadness.

    I think it will be a surreal experience for all involved. Looks like it will be on MLB's network (which I don't get) today at 2:05 PM EDT.

    Althouse also quotes another lawprof:

    But even if it was more expensive to the owners and MLB, sacrificing fans for the profits and logistics is not a good idea.

    Well, sure, the people who had tickets (the fans to which he referred) are missing out, but I suspect more fans watch on TV than in person any ways, and lots of postponements cause their own problems.

    A commenter weighs in on something stupid the owner said about the riots:

    I thought it was pretty rich for Orioles owner Angelos' son to try and blame outsourcing and the poor local economy for the riots--haven't the Orioles enjoyed the sort of tax subsidies to keep them in the city that could otherwise have gone to encourage local industries to stay in Baltimore?

    More to the point on the riots: If they're really about the police and the corrupt government, why do the rioters (NB: don't confuse this with peaceful protestors who are focusing on that stuff) loot and burn private property instead of government stuff? I think they guys attacking the police should be prosecuted, but I can at least respect their acts of noncivil disobedience. Assholes who use it as an excuse to loot Doritos are just assholes.

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CDjSLckUMAAhOny.jpg



  • @boomzilla said:

    Assholes who use it as an excuse to loot Doritos are just assholes.

    Could be worse. Before the 1950s or so, riots usually turned into pogroms.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    Before the 1950s or so, riots usually turned into pogroms.

    Hmmm...which way? By or against the rioters?



  • @boomzilla said:

    Hmmm...which way? By or against the rioters?

    By the rioters against whatever the local hated minority was.



  • @boomzilla said:

    Assholes who use it as an excuse to loot Doritos are just assholes.

    Lyrics from Sublime's "April 29th 1992":

    April 26th, 1992 There was a riot on streets Tell me where were you? You were sittin' home watchin' your TV While I was participating in some anarchy First spot we hit it was my liquor store I finally got all that alcohol I can't afford With red lights flashin', time to retire And then we turned that liquor store into a structure fire Next stop we hit, it was the music shop, It only took one brick to make the window drop Finally we got our own P.A. Where do you think I got this guitar that you're hearing today?

    That's the mentality of the looters. They didn't even have enough respect for the original reason for the riot to get the date right.

    However, don't make the mistake of dismissing the riots just because assholes are piling on.



  • @boomzilla said:

    If they're really about the police and the corrupt government, why do the rioters (NB: don't confuse this with peaceful protestors who are focusing on that stuff) loot and burn private property instead of government stuff?

    I've seen a lot of people ask this online, and the typical response has been "You aren't black so you can't understand it!" 😕


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @mott555 said:

    I've seen a lot of people ask this online, and the typical response has been "You aren't black so you can't understand it!"

    Sure, but let's talk about calculus, and if I say, "You aren't white so you can't understand it!" then I'm the racist.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Jaime said:

    However, don't make the mistake of dismissing the riots just because assholes are piling on.

    I totally agree (as I think my OP shows). I just want to deal with the assholes as the assholes they are and not excuse them with otherwise legitimate issues.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @boomzilla said:

    More to the point on the riots: If they're really about the police and the corrupt government, why do the rioters (NB: don't confuse this with peaceful protestors who are focusing on that stuff) loot and burn private property instead of government stuff?

    Because every single protest is discredited by assholes at some point and journalists prefer talking about those assholes to talking about the actual, legitimate protests.

    BTW: When was the last time you saw a photo of some protest that was not staged? I honestly can't remember.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @asdf said:

    Because every single protest is discredited by assholes at some point and journalists prefer talking about those assholes to talking about the actual, legitimate protests.

    Obviously, one is more sensational. More to the point, what can you say about the actual protest issue here? We don't really know what happened in the case that touched everything off, but I suspect we can all agree that Baltimore city government is a cess pool.

    How do you fix it? There's no simple RACISM! (or even REPUBLICANS!) explanation, even if some are trying to push that. Tackling that is a lot of work, and what if the answer comes down to the citizens won't pay attention and hold the officials responsible (does that regularly happen anywhere?)?

    Ugly.



  • @boomzilla said:

    why do the rioters (NB: don't confuse this with peaceful protestors who are focusing on that stuff) loot and burn private property instead of government stuff?

    It's typical of crowd psychology. As I understand it, because there is too little organization for overall direction, the crowd tends to break into small groups, each with a leader who may not have any idea how to achieve the real goal (or even what it is) and so may choose inappropriate strategies. Or may even have other motives ("I want a color TV, let's raid that store.).

    Worse, people in the mob become convinced what they are doing is right, because it is what everyone else is doing. This can have feedback cycles as well, and so the activities of mobs tend to get worse over time.

    The picture is a perfect example: We're hungry. We need food. Let's get food. If the store owner resists in any way, he becomes [part of the problem/a surrogate for the government that's hard to reach] and so...robbed/hurt/killed/looted.

    Mobs are capricious and produce some of the worst crimes and destruction humanity is capable of. Somewhere long ago, I saw them compared to a forest fire. (Which was very apt, because fires are also capricious and destructive.)



  • Watched the local news yesterday (happened to be working from home by chance) (yes, yo, dat be my hood)

    Basically, the apparent response from everybody was :wtf:

    My opinion of many, many, of the people involved¹ has gone up a lot.

    except that the local news stuck with the same few stories over and over and never gave us a good overview of how widespread and how intense the "activities" were.

    :hanzo:'d probably, since it took me a while to edit this down.

    ¹except, obviously, the actual looters and rock throwers.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @boomzilla said:

    More to the point, what can you say about the actual protest issue here?

    I wasn't talking about Baltimore in particular, but about protests in general. The fact that anarchists/criminals seem to take over every single protest these days and that media coverage then focuses on those people makes me absolutely furious.

    @boomzilla said:

    How do you fix it? There's no simple RACISM! (or even REPUBLICANS!) explanation, even if some are trying to push that.

    Re: Topic: Although I usually like to blame a lot of stuff on conservatives, I'd be the last one to claim that there could possibly be a simple solution to such a complex problem. In fact, the tendency to oversimplify complex social issues and push idiotic populist "solutions" is exactly what I hate about most conservative/right-wing parties.*

    * Not saying that extreme left-wing/socialists parties don't do the same.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @asdf said:

    The fact that anarchists/criminals seem to take over every single protest these days and that media coverage then focuses on those people makes me absolutely furious.

    I can agree with that, except that these people need some focus, just so long as they aren't described as part of the protest.

    @asdf said:

    Re: Topic: Although I usually like to blame a lot of stuff on conservatives, I'd be the last one to claim that there could possibly be a simple solution to such a complex problem. In fact, the tendency to oversimplify complex social issues and push idiotic populist "solutions" is exactly what I hate about most conservative/right-wing parties

    • Not saying that extreme left-wing/socialists parties don't do the same.

    Yes, it's common for everyone, though in this case in particular, Baltimore has been very much dominated by Democrats for a long time, and there are plenty of blacks in positions of power (recently, at least, I'm less clear on its history WRT race vs party), so the typical lazy responses ring a bit more hollow than they often do. I've heard Obama complaining that at least some of the problem is that Republicans in Congress have held up his agenda, and it's just the sort of vague thing he loves to talk about, but I'm quite certain that if pressed for specifics, he couldn't offer up anything that wasn't super nonsensical.



  • In this case in particular, there was a remarkable lack of finger pointing and blaming. Yesterday.

    Whatever bizarre alignment of the planets caused it, politically, there's not been much rancor since last Fall's election - which featured a previously unknown Republican governor being swept into office in a state that's overwhelmingly, I mean really overwhelmingly, Democratic.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @ijij said:

    In this case in particular, there was a remarkable lack of finger pointing and blaming.

    Yeah, my cynical right wing self says it's because the city is too obviously Democrat run and not by oppressive white folk (at least, not since O'Malley). 👿

    @ijij said:

    Yesterday

    Is that to say that it has started today? Or that you expect it to?


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @ijij said:

    except that the local news stuck with the same few stories over and over and never gave us a good overview of how widespread and how intense the "activities" were.

    Well, you kinda expect that from local news stations. The sad truth is that the big ones aren't much better. Have you ever been publicly accused of hating people of a certain race/origin simply because you went to a school named after a slightly questionable person? Well, I have, on multiple national media outlets.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @asdf said:

    Well, I have, on multiple national media outlets.

    Personally or collectively?



  • @boomzilla said:

    Obama complaining that at least some of the problem is that Republicans in Congress have held up his agenda, and it's just the sort of vague thing he loves to talk about, but I'm quite certain that if pressed for specifics, he couldn't offer up anything that wasn't super nonsensical.
    FTFY

    :trollface:


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @boomzilla said:

    Personally or collectively?

    Mostly collectively, but I've also had to endure personal attacks after that story came out. I don't think that makes a difference, though. If a journalist claims that every single person who has ever attended a particular school which, apart from its name, has no connection to racism whatsoever is racist, then that's a personal attack against anyone who has ever attended that school.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    I agree, but it's a bit more severe if someone is calling you out by name than as part of a group, where many sensible people can / will ignore guilt by association as the crap that it is.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    Well, some people were called out by name. To add insult to injury, some of those were only teenagers at that time.



  • It is really common to have at least one or two "closed doors" football/soccer matches here in my country a year due to several reasons (usually riots during games that lead to a match cancellation, but sometimes it's matches that get cancelled midgame due to weather issues like excessive rains, and they're not going to set up the whole match infrastructure to squeeze 15 minutes of play).

    They're really funny sometimes, because you can hear almost everything that's yelled at in the dugout and such. I guess it's kind of sad? I dunno. It's just not something that happens everyday so it's always kinda interesting to see.



  • @boomzilla said:

    Yeah, my cynical right wing self says it's because the city is too obviously Democrat run and not by oppressive white folk (at least, not since O'Malley). 👿

    It was cutting (or not cutting) both ways. I don't know first-hand about anybody before Shaffer, but I haven't seen much playing of the race card in City politics - except people thought Schmoke (a black man) wasn't very "black". (So O'Malley actually stood a chance against him).

    The obvious tug-of-war in local politics is at the state level - pitting Baltimore against the DC Suburbs, which I think plays down the race issue (of a particular candidate) in the city.

    @boomzilla said:

    @ijij said:
    Yesterday

    Is that to say that it has started today? Or that you expect it to?

    My realism kicked in - it's easier to take the high road when the consequences of screwing it up are so high - when they get back to fighting for budget dollars, that could change.

    But they did a damn fine job yesterday taking the high road.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @dstopia said:

    (usually riots during games that lead to a match cancellation, but sometimes it's matches that get cancelled midgame due to weather issues like excessive rains, and they're not going to set up the whole match infrastructure to squeeze 15 minutes of play).

    They play a lot of baseball games in a season (162), so it's common to tack on games (usually due to weather) or partial games (less common, in baseball only if they're tied after 9 innings and had to stop for some reason) to later games when the two teams meet.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @boomzilla said:

    Democrats

    @boomzilla said:

    Obama

    Just FYI, I'm not a fan of the democrats (and especially not a fan of Obama) either. Fortunately, I don't have the right to vote in the US, so I don't have to choose the lesser evil.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @asdf said:

    Fortunately, I don't have the right to vote in the US, so I don't have to choose the lesser evil.

    These are roughly my feelings on Maryland politics.



  • @asdf said:

    Well, you kinda expect that from local news stations.

    Expected - yeah, probably. The stories they had were pretty compelling, but I'm sure that somewhere in the city they could have found four or five more.

    On the station I was watching, they have a number of people who have done good work for decades in Baltimore, and they did have some good reporting... but I would have liked the additional overview.



  • @boomzilla said:

    These are roughly my feelings on Maryland politics.

    It is sometimes every once in a while challenging when a particular race is a little close.

    Most of the time the (all-but) predetermined outcome gives one great freedom of action.



  • NO DISCOURSE, I am replying to a different sub-idea within this thread I will reply any way I FEEL LIKE!!!

    What little of local media I heard this AM about the empty stadium was all " :wtf: "

    You could should possibly easily pay the stadium staff for their lost earnings, but it was noted that the guy-on-the-street corner selling stuff will be hosed this week, because instead of a week-long homestand, all he got was $$ from Sunday.
    (Saturday had "disturbances", and the next series of games was changed to away games.)

    Yes. The owner is a tool. Universal opinion is that the O's have been winning lately in spite of him.



  • They are confusing empathy with understanding.

    But of course, they haven't been taught basic civility and communication in order to understand the difference.



  • When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @xaade said:

    They are confusing empathy with understanding.

    I don't think that's really accurate, either.



  • @mott555 said:

    I've seen a lot of people ask this online, and the typical response has been "You aren't black so you can't understand it!"

    I wonder how these people discuss animal rights issues? Does it involve both sides saying "You aren't a dog so you won't understand it" over and over again?



  • @ijij said:

    except, obviously, the actual looters and rock throwers

    Don't hand-waive this subgroup. They are part of the problem.

    When you have to deal with having to tell jerks to follow the law day after day, and get threatened and spit at, it alters your opinion of people that seem similar and seem to share attributes.

    When 90% of the people you end up having to arrest, fight back, you become preemptive in how you handle arresting people that seem similar.

    The level of disrespect from a portion of this community is increasing strain and making it harder to perform the duty of serving the community.

    I mean, it only takes one time of pulling someone over and getting shot at, to associate the skin color and other attributes of the person as an indicator of a need for caution.


    I once saw a kid riding his bike in the median left turn lane, waiving cars around him, then turning through the center of the intersection.

    Dumb as shit.

    I yell at him, "You need to be on the side of the road"

    "I can ride my bike where ever I want."

    "I'm saying this because I don't want you to get hurt."

    "Man, fuck you."

    It then crossed my mind that this type of person could pose a threat to me at this point, because I disrespected him.

    It was pitch black in the road after the left turn, and no more than a second or two down the road, I see his bike dart out of pitch blackness in the center left turn lane, into the ditch on the side of the road.

    Yeah, there's no way anyone could have seen him until it was too late. I almost hit him.


    I can hardly imagine what the authorities have to put up with, when they are telling people these things for their own safety even.

    I can imagine that there are likely as few of bad cops as there are looters, and vice versa.



  • I can imagine what an SJW would tell a cop.

    Cop says that a black person shot at him, so he's cautious when approaching black people.

    SJW responds, but why should you feel cautious. We should teach blacks to not shoot.

    Yet we aren't even doing that.

    We're saying cops should not feel caution, and that no one has accountability for what criminals are doing.

    Then saying women should not feel caution, and that everyone has accountability for what criminals are doing.

    :wtf: is the standard?

    Blacks upset because cops are treating every black as a criminal. Then turn around and treat every cop as a murderer.



  • @xaade said:

    ijij:
    except, obviously, the actual looters and rock throwers

    Don't hand-waive this subgroup.

    If you'll recall, I was talking about folks whom I respect more after watching yesterday's news (which is local for me, so I saw a lot)... so I'm excluding looter and rock-throwers from that.
    Actually, we didn't hear from them on the news...

    The city police have a mighty big chore, and the top-level decisions that have been made for them have bounced all over the place and made their jobs even harder.

    E.g. some wise guy decided for efficiency's sake to create a Central Booking facility, so every farging arrest gets hauled downtown. Even if it gets sorted out and you're released, how're you getting home?

    I'm not hand-waving them away.... there's a whole lot of pissed-off folk out there.


    Filed under: sometimes the OR guys aren't solving the problem, they are the problem.



  • @ijij said:

    I'm not hand-waving them away.... there's a whole lot of pissed-off folk out there.

    It's a downward spiral at this point.

    Each side is fearing the worst from the other and responding in direct proportion to that fear.

    Whether it started with abusive cops or disrespectful/criminal thugs, doesn't matter. Each is feeding off the other.

    What will end it is good cops and good non-cops joining together in solidarity.

    Joining only non-cops in solidarity is just exasperating the problem.

    Non-cops need to find the good cops and say, "We will support you."

    Cops need to find the good non-cops and say, "We will support you."

    And both these groups need to work together to route out the bad weeds on both sides.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @mott555 said:

    I've seen a lot of people ask this online, and the typical response has been "You aren't black so you can't understand it!"

    Translation: I'm pretty sure you're a racist and I don't want to get into a pointless flamewar with racists today.

    That said, muting the thread.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Yamikuronue said:

    Translation: I'm pretty sure you're a racist and I don't want to get into a pointless flamewar with racists today.

    Is that what the guys online are saying to the questioner, or what you're saying to @mott555 ?

    @Yamikuronue said:

    That said, muting the thread.

    Oh....guess we'll never know.



  • @Yamikuronue said:

    I'm pretty sure you're a racist

    Assuming

    @Yamikuronue said:

    pointless flamewar with racists

    Then just don't comment at all.

    Being dismissive is a goal unto itself. Which is identity politics, which is, we will censor you because we want to control the verbage, narrative, and boundaries of discussion. And we don't want to be held accountable for it.

    It means. I want to be able to say whatever the fuck I want, and not be criticized on it. I only want to have responses from people who are going to circle-jerk with me.



  • @xaade said:

    Non-cops need to find the good cops and say, "We will support you."

    Cops need to find the good non-cops and say, "We will support you."

    You missed one. Good cops need to find non-good cops and say "GTFO". Until people feel like somebody is protecting them from the bad cops, they will continue to be pissed off and scared.



  • <quote>
    lot of things that are pretty obvious to me and I basically agree with
    </quote>

    And I saw a lot of that yesterday.... lots of people from different groups saying:

    " :wtf: did you burn a drug store down for? That didn't help anything."



  • @Jaime said:

    You missed one.

    No I didn't.

    Now, I didn't explicitly say it, but I don't think it needs to be said.

    I think the focus is so much on THAT point, that it basically is being used to dismiss accountability on the speaker's side.

    Who is holding the non-cop community responsible for telling bad non-cops to "GTFO"?

    Oh, you're going to say non-cops aren't an authority, so they shouldn't have to?

    So it's cops responsibility to handle the bad on both sides.

    Saying to the other side, "I support you", means all of this. Holding your own side accountable. Uplifting the good in the other side. Supporting the good people on the other side, and not criticizing them for the faults of the bad people on the other side.

    The equation must be balanced.

    Now I'm not saying people turn vigilante. But what I am saying is that you speak out against the looters as much as you do bad cops. That you teach your children not to disrespect cops, and you teach cops not to disrespect citizens.



  • @ijij said:

    " did you burn a drug store down for? That didn't help anything."

    But it goes beyond that.

    It also means mutual respect for the good people on the other side, whichever side you're on, cop or non-cop.



  • @xaade said:

    It also means mutual respect for the good people on the other side, whichever side you're on, cop or non-cop.

    And after what happened Monday night, focusing on the fact that looting is bad and not dragging "but the cops are lousy" into it, is rather significant progress in that direction.



  • @Yamikuronue said:

    POLITICAL CORRECTNESS VIOLATION!

    I am no longer permitted to participate in this conversation.

    plugs ears

    FTFY



  • @Yamikuronue said:

    Translation: I'm pretty sure you're a racist and I don't want to get into a pointless flamewar with racists today.

    And where do we get the idea that he's a racist? No one mentioned race, they were talking about looting and rioting being counter productive to protesting police brutality. It doesn't matter who's doing the rioting.

    @mott555 said:

    "You aren't black so you can't understand it!"

    The person who makes such claim is the racist.

    It's also a disturbing claim on another level: If not being a member of a group prevents one from understanding that's group's concerns, how are we ever going to have a society that is both harmonious and diverse?

    "You aren't black so you can't understand it!"
    "You aren't female so you can't understand it!"
    "You aren't muslim so you can't understand it!"
    "You aren't disabled so you can't understand it!"


  • kills Dumbledore

    @Bort said:

    "You aren't black so you can't understand it!"
    "You aren't female so you can't understand it!"
    "You aren't muslim so you can't understand it!"
    "You aren't disabled so you can't understand it!"

    (fuck newlines in quotes)

    In absolute terms like that, these are obviously wrong, but they come from the idea that being privileged blinds you to what it's like to be a member of a disadvantaged group. I'm not disabled, so there's only so much empathy and understanding I can have as to what it's like to be in a wheelchair, and if I don't specifically think about what difficulties disabled people face (e.g. when designing something), I'm likely to miss something easy I could do to make their lives easier.

    As a straight white western male, I'm playing life on easy. It's worth remembering that occasionally and trying to think critically about things I take for granted



  • @xaade said:

    That you teach your children not to disrespect cops

    This is a very asymmetric relationship. The police have to make a bold first move before they can expect anything in return. People with power need to earn respect.


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