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Showing posts with the label arguing on the internet

Brandolini's Law

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Just in case anyone was curious about why it takes a full five-paragraph essay to respond to a single sentence of misinformation. Well, now you know why! Credit to @sketchplanator Take note and take care.

San Leandro Police Officers Association Lies in Press Release

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( Credit: Gawker ) The SLPOA distributed a press release recently that was picked-up by several outlets. See https://www.ktvu.com/news/san-leandro-police-union-concerned-about-increase-in-violent-crimes. Let's break this down piece by piece. Where is SLPOA getting their stats from? Accordingly to city officials, such as city council member Benny Lee, SLPOA is getting their stats from https://cityprotect.com. If so, then we need to have an honest conversation about that website. All data it receives is taken from law enforcement's own reporting. It doesn't give aggregate numbers, but a data visualization. So SLPOA's numbers are coming from SLPD directly and not the website. In fact, those numbers are coming from data SLPD hasn't publicly disclosed because they don't match with what SLPD is supposed to report publicly. (See below.) This is concerning because SLPOA is not supposed to be using city resources for their own agenda and SLPD is not supposed to have two ...

Arguing on the Internet

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(Even Sean Connery Will Not Stand Idly By) I spend an inordinate amount of time arguing with people on the internet. I have literally held up one index finger to My Life in order to finish the last sentence to a comment the length of a fortune cookie that took 30 minutes to think up. I'm not ashamed of this. I'm an arguer. I come from the land of arguers, raised by argumentative folks in a world of argumentative things where Up could very well be Down, depending on your perspective, and even the color of the sky was debatable. (You probably think that last sentence is an exaggeration. It's cute.) I've played Devil's Advocate so many times that if I could charge billable hours I would be rich enough to buy a Scrooge McDuck pool vault for the rest of my money. Hell, as a child, I used to raise my hand in class just so I could argue the most inane points of semantical nitpicky nothing-burgers. Once I launched myself into cyberspace, I played flamer , concer...