Gulf of Mexico to be called Gulf of America, and Denali, highest North American peak, reverts to Mount McKinley

Gulf of Mexico to be called Gulf of America, and Denali, highest North American peak, reverts to Mount McKinley

  • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
    18·
    1 day ago

    Yeah but the American culture is supposed to be different from those. One of the genuine strengths of American culture is that if the boss tells you to echo some bullshit they came up with, most Americans will either just laugh it off, or if they have to put up with it, they hate it and stop as soon as they’re able.

    I realize Trump is trying to turn the US into an Iran- or Saudi-style top-down system where the leader tells you what you’re allowed to call things. Like I say, he will certainly succeed to some extent, I just can’t decide how much or how scared to be about that particular aspect of it.

    • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
      1·
      23 hours ago

      I think that is an image some have of Americans, but I think the reality is that we’re a lot more likely to sit on our hands than do something. You can tell because gestures at literally everything.

      • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
        1·
        23 hours ago

        Some of us, yeah. On the other hand, the BLM protests were the biggest in history, and resulted in significant systemic changes that decades of complaining had failed to produce.

        I think a lot of the issue is that people just don’t have time. During the pandemic, people had time to realize how fucked everything was and do something about it, without endangering their ability to buy housing and food the next month.

        • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
          3·
          23 hours ago

          Bro as someone who went to BLM events and have friends who were injured by pigs for peaceful protesting (including a guy who’s eye got shot out by a pig with a fucking tear gas canister), what significant change are you referring to??? As far as I can tell we’ve only moved backwards as a country for the past… Shit, decade? Longer? Enlighten me because here in bum fuck Indiana I don’t see it.

          • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
            1·
            23 hours ago

            https://www.themarshallproject.org/2024/07/25/police-mental-health-alternative-911

            In the four years since George Floyd’s murder, many sweeping attempts to reform policing have faltered. But one proposal that has taken hold across the country, and continues to spread, is launching alternative first response units that send unarmed civilians, instead of armed officers, to some emergencies.

            For decades, Eugene, Oregon, was the rare city that sent unarmed crisis workers and EMTs to 911 calls. Now, researchers have tracked over 100 alternative crisis response units operating across the U.S. Over half of the country’s largest cities have created such teams.

            https://atlantablackstar.com/2024/03/20/a-historic-backtrack-on-criminal-justice-reform-critics-say-new-laws-could-disproportionately-affect-people-of-color/

            After Floyd’s death, states passed hundreds of reform bills, including chokehold bans and other use-of-force guidelines, while several cities vowed to invest in community programs and crisis response teams to assist with behavioral-health-related calls.

            https://laist.com/news/criminal-justice/george-floyd-police-reform-los-angeles-black-lives-matter-sheriff-lapd-gascon-aclu-defund

            There have been big changes via the ballot box:

            • Reformer George Gascón ousted incumbent L.A. County District Attorney Jackie Lacey in the November 2020 election. Gascón’s promise to review hundreds of past police shootings for possible prosecution of the officers involved helped him beat incumbent Lacey, who was heavily supported by police unions.
            • Voters elected L.A. County Supervisor Holly Mitchell — a former state senator who championed police reform in Sacramento — to the Board of Supervisors.
            • Voters approved Measure J, which requires the county to spend at least 10% of its discretionary money on social programs designed to keep people out of the criminal justice system.

            There have also been funding cuts and policy shifts:

            • The Los Angeles City Council cut the LAPD budget by $150 million.
            • The Los Angeles Unified School District cut its police budget by 35%.
            • The city council is developing a program to use unarmed social workers instead of police to respond to some mental health calls.
            • The city council is studying whether it could remove police from traffic enforcement.

            “I think police reform now has become turbocharged,” said Raphe Sonenshein, director of the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State L.A. “I don’t think anybody could have possibly imagined that so much would be on the table right now.”

            https://www.axios.com/2020/06/10/police-reform-george-floyd-protest

            This one has a big list of anecdotal reforms from different parts of the country.

            I realize that a lot of these describe cases where some reform was initially popular, but now has lost steam or gone backwards. That is what I am saying. I was saying, the wrong people are in charge, and when ordinary people fight to make things better, it happens, and when it’s on autopilot, it doesn’t. It sounds to me like police reform took some big steps forward when people demanded it, including your friends who were fighting like hell to make things happen and good on them for doing it. And then, when the pressure wasn’t on, things stopped happening or backslid.

            I don’t know in what world you expect to say “police be better pls thank you” and it suddenly happens. Who is supposed to be setting up the system for you, so that they will be better, if not you and me?

            • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
              1·
              22 hours ago

              I appreciate this overall, there’s stuff I didn’t know about (although it still sounds like a drop in the ocean), but I have to ask because that was such a fast reply: AI wrote this comment right? Or you had it already saved?

              • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
                1·
                22 hours ago

                No, it’s purely me. Search a couple of things on DDG, Alt-click to open tabs I can copy paste from, and then make the point, it looks longer than it is because there’s so much copy paste.

                IDK if I would agree with drop on the ocean… I mean, the world is a big place and everyone’s just in their thing with their established habits of how things are supposed to be. It didn’t get to be the way it is just in one year of building, and it doesn’t change to be a whole new thing just in one year of changing, but over time things can make huge shifts. For better or worse.