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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • Sure, maybe, but I’d also say you shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

    Yes, we should absolutely have better mental healthcare safety nets. Yes, false positives are probably a pretty common prank.

    But this isn’t a zero sum game. This can work on tandem with a therapist/counsellor to try and identify someone before they shoot up a school and get them help. This might let the staff know a kid is struggling with suicidal ideation before they find the kid OD’d on moms sleeping pills.

    In an ideal world would this be unnecessary? Absolutely. But we don’t live in that ideal world.



  • You say “the last time this happened” as if this wasn’t a generalized trend across all schooling for the past decade or so.

    Out of the tens of thousands of schools implementing systems like this, I’m not surprised that one had some letch who was spying on kids via webcam.

    And I’m all for having increased forms of oversight and protection to prevent that kind of abuse.

    But this argument is just as much of a “won’t someone think of the children” as the opposite. Just cause one school out of thousands did a bad thing, doesn’t mean the tech is worthless or bad.


  • This article feels pretty disingenuous to me.

    It glosses over the fact that this is surveillance on computers that the school owns. This isn’t them spying on kids personal laptops or phones. This is them exercising reasonable and appropriate oversight of school equipment.

    This is the same as complaining that my job puts a filter on my work computer that lets them know if I’m googling porn at work. You can cry big brother all you want, but I think most people are fine with the idea that the corporation I work for has a reasonable case for putting monitoring software on the computer they gave me.

    The article also makes the point that, while the companies claim they’ve stopped many school shootings before they’ve happened, you can’t prove they would have happened without intervention.

    And sure. That’s technically true. But the article then goes on to treat that assertion as if it’s proof that the product is worthless and has never prevented a school shooting, and that’s just bad logic.

    It’s like saying that your alarm clock has woken you up 100 days in a row, and then being like, “well, there’s no proof that you wouldn’t have woken up on time anyway, even if the alarm wasn’t there.” Yeah, sure. You can’t prove a negative. Maybe I would usually wake up without it. I’ve got a pretty good sleep schedule after all. But the idea that all 100 are false positives seems a little asinine, no? We don’t think it was effective even once?


  • How do you differentiate what you’re calling psychological torture here from just bog standard negative anticipation?

    Is it psychological torture if I tell a child that we’re going to the doctor because they need to get their flu shot? They have to sit and live with that dread for the whole ride over.

    If this is in some way a difference of kind, what differentiates them? What is the key characteristic that separates the two?

    Is the only difference one of degree? That hurting someone in this way just a little bit is fine, but there’s some amount of damage that makes it unacceptable?

    Or is it that the ends justify the means? That it is psychological torture to tell a child about the flu shot, but that the need to get the shot outweighs the negative of the torture? If so, and if someone truly believes that capital punishment is correct in a given case, why would the same argument not be valid?



  • That all sounds like it sucks, but I don’t think it’s as hopeless as I’m sure it feels.

    Obviously this is just a snapshot into your life, and I’m sure there are more details under the hood, like what exact “adult responsibilities” and stuff you’ve got going on. That said, even in this text I think you’ve outlined a good bit of good stuff you’ve got going on.

    First, I don’t know why you think conflict deescalation isn’t an absolutely in demand skill. Every job under the sun has conflict, and being able to manage that is huge. Even within Engineering, you could put that to huge use as a Sales Engineer or some other customer facing technical role.

    Second, you got your bachelor’s in an engineering discipline. You can poo-poo your grades all you want, but at the end of the day you succeeded. No mean feat my man. That’s worth celebrating.

    Finally, if you’re simply looking for a way out, there are institutions that are always looking for technical people. Obviously this is gonna vary a lot by country, so ymmv, but the government/military is always in need of people in technical roles, and rarely are able to fill them. It probably doesn’t pay nearly what a “normal” engineering job would, but it’d be more than an internship, and it would give you some of that structured camaraderie that you previously felt the lack of when trying to leave.

    All that to say, don’t give up hope my guy. I know I’m just some schmuck on Lemmy of all places, but I think you’re capable of breaking out and getting to a better place.

    You got this!




  • I feel like we’re abusing “historical” here. Is this something of particular note that’s going to be taught to future generations?

    Does the African American community know which president was the first to nominate twelve judges of color? Do women know which president was the first to nominate twelve women?

    This is a good thing, but like, it’s a good fun fact at best. I think saying it’s “making history” is overstating. It’d be like saying the person who has the Guinness World Record for longest handstand is “making history.”




  • Russell Moore is awesome. Been a huge fan of his for a long time. Got me to actually buy a subscription to ChristianityToday when he became Editor in Chief.

    He got kicked out of the SBC ages ago though. He was the head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Council, which is the public policy arm of the SBC. The Executive Council ran him out back in 2016 for saying refugees were people and that maybe the SBC should be doing more to combat internal sexual abuse.

    If you haven’t read some of his stuff from around that time, I highly recommend it. Some of the stuff that went down is absolutely insane, and I have made mad respect for how he managed it all. Hugely upstanding dude.