Federal law-enforcement stings and gun control efforts would be wrong even if they weren’t massively structurally racist. But damn, federal law-enforcement stings and gun control efforts are massively structurally racist. #AbolishTheATF “The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has more than quadrupled its use of those stings during the past decade, quietly making them a central part of its attempts to combat gun crime. The operations are designed to produce long prison sentences for suspects enticed by the promise of pocketing as much as $100,000 for robbing a drug stash house that does not actually exist. “At least 91% of the people agents have locked up using those stings were racial or ethnic minorities, USA TODAY found after reviewing court files and prison records from across the United States. Nearly all were either black or Hispanic. That rate is far higher than among people arrested for big-city violent crimes, or for other federal robbery, drug and gun offenses. “The ATF operations raise particular concerns because they seek to enlist suspected criminals in new crimes rather than merely solving old ones, giving agents and their underworld informants unusually wide latitude to select who will be targeted. In some cases, informants said they identified targets for the stings after simply meeting them on the street. ‘There’s something very wrong going on here,’ said University of Chicago law professor Alison Siegler, part of a team of lawyers challenging the ATF’s tactics in an Illinois federal court. ‘The government is creating these crimes and then choosing who it’s going to target.'”

CTY. Ceriously.

Baltimore.

is on the ground in Charlotte.

is sitting on a plane in ATL, waiting to go to Baltimore for a couple weeks. Of course being on a plane is uncomfortable but the good news is I’m no longer inside the dystopian hellscape of ATL.

If Gödel has taught me anything, it’s that to every ω-consistent recursive class c of formulae there correspond recursive class-signs r, such that neither v Gen r nor Neg (v Gen r) belongs to Flg(c) (where v is the free variable of r).

No, of course he shouldn’t. I think it’s a shame that the poll doesn’t have an option for “No, he did absolutely nothing wrong and there’s no reason to punish him at all.” http://ift.tt/1wpPLCt

“[Quoting a local news story:] ‘A North Augusta mother is in jail after witnesses say she left her nine-year-old daughter at a nearby park, for hours at a time.’ “. . . The shocked adult called the cops. Authorities declared the girl ‘abandoned’ and proceeded to arrest the mother.” #PerpetualStateOfSupervision http://ift.tt/1q9ZwHt

Little perks of protecting and serving. #AbolishThePolice “Dallas Northington spent nearly eight years working for Target [as a security guard trying to stop shoplifting], roaming the stores and scanning the surveillance cameras. In an episode at the Leesburg Target store in May that he said was typical, a man was allegedly captured twice on video shoplifting, and Northington responded as he said he always did: He called the Leesburg police, made a report and provided them the videos of the two incidents. “But the man in the video may have been a Fairfax County sheriff’s deputy, Northington said he soon learned. And within days, two things happened: The deputy retired from the sheriff’s office and Target fired Northington, 29, a married father of two with a third child on the way. “Northington said Target officials told him that he had violated procedure by not filling out the proper paperwork before contacting the police, though he said his office had operated the same way for years. He said he also was told that he had been insubordinate for not seeking approval before calling police, though he said the standard practice was for him to act as needed. “But the man Northington said he and his supervisors identified as a deputy has not yet been charged with a crime though Northington said he had provided the man’s name and two color videos of him in action, his face clearly visible, to Leesburg police on May 27, the date of the second incident. . . .”

Seen recently in a friend’s comments thread: “Unfollowing you for blasting Stef. I’m not trying to be THAT cut and dry but 1. He’s the best philosopher of our age 2. What could you possibly take exception with him on? . . .” If you believe the first thing, or have ever felt inclined to ask the second, please feel free to unfollow me too. #DoIt #DoooooooooooooooooIttttttttttttt