> I don’t agree with the politics of the author of Confessions of a Bastard Cop, but I still recommend the essay.
This essay reminds me, more than anything else, of what I've heard about fake conversion stories in american evangelical christianity. I'm told the demand for actual conversion stories far exceeds supply, and so people sometimes pretend to have once been wretched sinners who saw the light and have now reformed into model christians. These stories serve both to confirm the badness of people the audience already thought were bad, and to provide the positive affirmation of someone on the other side agreeing they're actually right about everything.
The author of this essay claims to have once been a "bastard cop", and assures us that all the other cops are also bastards, in exactly the way you, the presumed cop-hating audience member, already thought they were. Since then, they have somehow transformed into a perfect doctrinaire ACAB leftist, repeating seemingly every talking point I've ever heard from that group, with no caveats or remaining points of disagreement. No explanation is given for this radical transformation, and the overall message seems to be that the assumed audience is completely right about cops, both in general and in every particular, and that the experience of being a cop would only confirm that.
I am accordingly suspicious of both the author and of the process that lead this particular essay being shared around.
I'm glad you shared the piece on palliative care for anorexia. I think where people get weird about palliative care or MAiD for mental illness is that they don't understand that mental illness can be just as serious (or terminal) as physical illness. Not all treatments are easy and pleasant, and some conditions can't be treated at all. Psychiatry is not a magic panacea any more than oncology is.
Although in the spirit of Sarah Constantine's post, I would add "Not all problems are solvable with our current technology. Let's fix that," to the list of Things That Go Without Saying in our community.
Confession: I started a fic for Her Voice Is A Backwards Record in October and still haven't finished it. I blame a curse.
That Hunger Games fic was disturbingly convincing. The piece about Munro's children was also heartbreaking. I am a chronic lurker but this links post was top-notch, so thank you.
I think that minimum wages make sense when an employer is paying below the (middle of the range of) the market wage, because the employer has more leverage. (Or occasionally other effects, but that's much more common.)
I agree with that essay that if prices between worker and customer are liquid, fiddling will only make it worse.
I think the question should be, how often are wages NOT a fair market value. I think that's common but I don't know how to tell how common it is. I'm interested how much people familiar with market arguments agree. And I wonder how much it varies by country, both in fact and in opinion.
On the Hunger Games story, I feel like I should point out that land mines don't actually work that way, even if they're often depicted in fiction that way. :P
The OD article is fascinating. I don't understand why the family, once they realised he really wasn't going to stop, didn't support stabilising him on maintenance dose of clean/trustworthy drug though, or possibly methadone if he could accept it? Surely if they could afford repeated private rehab they could afford clean gear. Historically many people lived at least moderately acceptable lives as substance addicts when that option was given to them; not entirely similar to people with schizophrenia on lifetime antipsychotics or people with severe sex dysphoria on cross sex hormones.
But the idea that this might be a rational choice (and so might be suicide) seems intuitively valid if depressing. I knew at least one non-terminal person with severe mental illness who killed themselves and for whom I never figured out whether they acted "insanely" or "rationally". On the basis of my knowledge of their life I'd lean towards "rationally". And yes, it was tragic. But ultimately it was probably the right thing for them to do.
This of course takes us to the question of suicide being often the optional choice rationally. I'm not actively suicidal in the slightest yet when I look very coldly at the perspective of my remaining "downhill" years, I'm quite strongly aware that the only rational reason for me to continue is to avoid harm to my children and maybe a couple of closer friends, especially the former, as by reproducing I took on a permanent obligation that is never fully discharged. The non rational reasons (survival instinct, fear of dying/pain) obviously dominate, but it's literally letting my monkey brain drive that bus.
That "A World Away" thing reminds me of the bits in "Miss Kuroitsu from the Monster Development Department" where Kuroitsu interacts with that restaurant clerk who's actually the secret identity of the hero her organization fights.
> I don’t agree with the politics of the author of Confessions of a Bastard Cop, but I still recommend the essay.
This essay reminds me, more than anything else, of what I've heard about fake conversion stories in american evangelical christianity. I'm told the demand for actual conversion stories far exceeds supply, and so people sometimes pretend to have once been wretched sinners who saw the light and have now reformed into model christians. These stories serve both to confirm the badness of people the audience already thought were bad, and to provide the positive affirmation of someone on the other side agreeing they're actually right about everything.
The author of this essay claims to have once been a "bastard cop", and assures us that all the other cops are also bastards, in exactly the way you, the presumed cop-hating audience member, already thought they were. Since then, they have somehow transformed into a perfect doctrinaire ACAB leftist, repeating seemingly every talking point I've ever heard from that group, with no caveats or remaining points of disagreement. No explanation is given for this radical transformation, and the overall message seems to be that the assumed audience is completely right about cops, both in general and in every particular, and that the experience of being a cop would only confirm that.
I am accordingly suspicious of both the author and of the process that lead this particular essay being shared around.
I'm glad you shared the piece on palliative care for anorexia. I think where people get weird about palliative care or MAiD for mental illness is that they don't understand that mental illness can be just as serious (or terminal) as physical illness. Not all treatments are easy and pleasant, and some conditions can't be treated at all. Psychiatry is not a magic panacea any more than oncology is.
Although in the spirit of Sarah Constantine's post, I would add "Not all problems are solvable with our current technology. Let's fix that," to the list of Things That Go Without Saying in our community.
The superhero/supervillain coffee shop fic was awesome!
Confession: I started a fic for Her Voice Is A Backwards Record in October and still haven't finished it. I blame a curse.
That Hunger Games fic was disturbingly convincing. The piece about Munro's children was also heartbreaking. I am a chronic lurker but this links post was top-notch, so thank you.
I think that minimum wages make sense when an employer is paying below the (middle of the range of) the market wage, because the employer has more leverage. (Or occasionally other effects, but that's much more common.)
I agree with that essay that if prices between worker and customer are liquid, fiddling will only make it worse.
I think the question should be, how often are wages NOT a fair market value. I think that's common but I don't know how to tell how common it is. I'm interested how much people familiar with market arguments agree. And I wonder how much it varies by country, both in fact and in opinion.
On the Hunger Games story, I feel like I should point out that land mines don't actually work that way, even if they're often depicted in fiction that way. :P
The OD article is fascinating. I don't understand why the family, once they realised he really wasn't going to stop, didn't support stabilising him on maintenance dose of clean/trustworthy drug though, or possibly methadone if he could accept it? Surely if they could afford repeated private rehab they could afford clean gear. Historically many people lived at least moderately acceptable lives as substance addicts when that option was given to them; not entirely similar to people with schizophrenia on lifetime antipsychotics or people with severe sex dysphoria on cross sex hormones.
But the idea that this might be a rational choice (and so might be suicide) seems intuitively valid if depressing. I knew at least one non-terminal person with severe mental illness who killed themselves and for whom I never figured out whether they acted "insanely" or "rationally". On the basis of my knowledge of their life I'd lean towards "rationally". And yes, it was tragic. But ultimately it was probably the right thing for them to do.
This of course takes us to the question of suicide being often the optional choice rationally. I'm not actively suicidal in the slightest yet when I look very coldly at the perspective of my remaining "downhill" years, I'm quite strongly aware that the only rational reason for me to continue is to avoid harm to my children and maybe a couple of closer friends, especially the former, as by reproducing I took on a permanent obligation that is never fully discharged. The non rational reasons (survival instinct, fear of dying/pain) obviously dominate, but it's literally letting my monkey brain drive that bus.
That "A World Away" thing reminds me of the bits in "Miss Kuroitsu from the Monster Development Department" where Kuroitsu interacts with that restaurant clerk who's actually the secret identity of the hero her organization fights.