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Cake day: July 15th, 2023

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  • A lot of the Apollo work also got done in basically one administration (Johnson largely continued JFK’s policies). As soon as Nixon was in charge, NASA got gutted, and then they only had the resources for shuttle. Later Apollo missions got cancelled because Nixon thought the money was better spent killing more Vietnamese people.

    Switching administrations means vastly changing policies, if for no other reason than the new boss hates the old boss. SLS “succeeded” (got hardware made and launched, at least) where Constellation failed partly because they buttered everyone’s bread in the right way.

    HLS is dumb. SLS is dumb. But similarly to Commercial Cargo and Crew, it survived administration changes partly because NASA wasn’t directly at the helm, so the new guys didn’t just hit the big red stop button.



  • becausechemistry@lemm.eetoLefty Memes@lemmy.dbzer0.comACAB.
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    1 year ago

    It sounds like you’re breaking down cops into several categories:

    1. Cops that do bad things on purpose
    2. Cops that do bad things on accident
    3. Cops that work alongside groups 1 and 2

    Sure, group 3 cops may use that discretion for good. Maybe they don’t pull someone over for going one over the speed limit, or decide to look the other way when a homeless guy tries to sell cigarettes. I agree with you, this is the kind of discretion that’s supposed to happen.

    But when people say ACAB, they’re saying that when cops that don’t do terrible things work alongside cops that do, they are complicit. One cop slowly, agonizingly kills a guy. Three cops watch and do nothing to stop him. That’s an extreme example. But there’s a million small versions of that, in every big city and small town, where a cop uses either their legal authority or “I’m a person with a gun” authority to do something bad, and their coworkers let it happen.

    Cops that don’t stop their coworkers from doing bad things are just as bad as those doing the bad things. So, ACAB.


  • becausechemistry@lemm.eetoLefty Memes@lemmy.dbzer0.comACAB.
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    1 year ago

    Discretion is just selective enforcement. Lots of people do a thing. But cops only think it’s damaging to society when the wrong kind of people do it. That thing might just be existing.

    Maybe that punishment involves jail time, but more likely it means being harassed, or put in cuffs for a while but let off, or just be intimidated by a guy who can legally whisper “I fear for my life” into a body cam and then kill you.

    ACAB means cops either participate in that system, do nothing to stop it, or try to stop it and get forced out.


  • becausechemistry@lemm.eetome_irl@lemmy.worldme_irl
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    1 year ago

    Not… really? Like, nobody strung up Washington for being a tyrant. Cromwell ruled England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland until he died. Castro ruled Cuba until he died. Stalin was one of Lenin’s lieutenants, and ran the Soviet Union until he died.

    The French Revolution (of 1789, the big one) was infamous for this. The original batch of revolutionaries were mostly liberal-ish nobles and lawyers. The second wave (of what the original guys considered to be street trash) sent many of those guys to the guillotine if they didn’t get out of town fast enough. The third wave sent a bunch of second wave guys to the guillotine. Et cetera, until Napoléon grabbed the reins.



  • A noble French name, with a death sentence in 1790. There’s a good chance that the radical republican that issued the sentence was accused of being a monarchist by another even more radical republican a year or two later and executed as well.

    The Revolution ate a lot of her children.