What You See Are People Pushed to the Edge

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, writing at the LA Times:

Yes, protests often are used as an excuse for some to take advantage, just as when fans celebrating a hometown sports team championship burn cars and destroy storefronts. I don’t want to see stores looted or even buildings burn. But African Americans have been living in a burning building for many years, choking on the smoke as the flames burn closer and closer. Racism in America is like dust in the air. It seems invisible — even if you’re choking on it — until you let the sun in. Then you see it’s everywhere. As long as we keep shining that light, we have a chance of cleaning it wherever it lands. But we have to stay vigilant, because it’s always still in the air.

The Militarization of the Police

The Atlantic

Nick Baumann on the militarization of the American police:

“You create this world where you’re not just militarizing the police — you equip the police like soldiers, you train the police like soldiers. Why are you surprised when they act like soldiers?” Rizer, a former police officer and soldier, said. “The mission of the police is to protect and serve. But the premise of the soldier is to engage the enemy in close combat and destroy them. When you blur those lines together with statements like that … It’s an absolute breakdown of civil society.”

American police officers generally believe that carrying military equipment and wearing military gear makes them feel like they can do more, and that it makes them scarier, Rizer’s research has found. Officers even acknowledge that acting and dressing like soldiers could change how the public feels about them. But “they don’t care,” he said.

Research on How to Stop Police Violence

Math

From Samuel Sinyangwe, a thread about solutions to stop police violence:

More restrictive state and local policies governing police use of force are associated with significantly lower rates of police shootings/killings by police. This is backed by 30+ years of research.

Demilitarization. Police depts that get more military weapons from the federal govt kill more people. You can stop that from happening through local and state policy. Montana (Red state) has gone the furthest on this.

Police Union Contracts. Every 4-6 years your police dept’s accountability system is re-negotiated. Purging misconduct records, reinstating fired officers, dept funding- it’s in the contract. Cities with worse contracts have higher police violence rates.

Blast from the Past: My End of Year Lists from 2005-2015

AbsolutePunk.net Heart

Yesterday, I posted about finding and recreating all of the AbsolutePunk.net best of lists from 2005-2015. In an incredible turn of events, a reader actually had saved all of my personal best of lists and sent them to me. I didn’t have anything earlier than 2011 and I thought these were lost to time.1 I am extremely happy to be able to add them back into the Chorus.fm database for posterity.

These are a nostalgia trip. I’ll have to write more about my decision making process, from what I can remember of these eras, at some point, but for now I’m just happy to have them back on our “End of the Year” page.


  1. The era before I was doing any kind of regular back-ups, let alone keeping everything I write in text files on my computer.

Happy Mother’s Day to the most amazing mom a kid could have ever asked for. You taught me strength, courage, the love of a good book paired with a sweet tooth, and so much more. 💙

I realized I never shared the final string quartet rendition of @blink182’s “All the Small Things” at the end of our wedding. And, since I’ve got nothing else to do right now, might as well edit some video. Ahh, memories of being around other people and being able to hug. Feels like lifetimes ago. Arrangement by @drhannahtate

Extremely weird birthday this year. Definitely gonna be one I’m never gonna forget through. Plus this awesome gift from @drhannahtate will be great to get into while we can’t go anywhere.

Extremely happy to support the @portlanddiamondproject and the idea of baseball in Portland. Thanks for the perfect Valentine’s Day gift @drhannahtate.

My mom found a letter I wrote to my dad to get four bucks to see a movie when I was a kid. On a typewriter. I have so many questions, first of which is why I was calling myself Mantis and why my callsign signature had balls on it?! ~~~ MANTIS ~~~00~~~

Jason Tate’s Top Albums of 2019

I’ll always remember 2019 as the year I got married; however, it ended up being a pretty incredible year for music and entertainment as well. As we finish up this decade, I reflect back on just how many of these lists I’ve made. It’s a yearly tradition that I enjoy because it allows me to no only reflect on the past year and reevaluate everything I listened to and consumed, but it creates a little snapshot in time that I can re-visit in the future and remember what I was enjoying and listening to during that moment in time. I thought it was a good year personally, wrapped around a tough year globally. Thank you to everyone that reads this website on a daily basis; I hope you enjoy my list and maybe find something new to love.

The staff compiled best of 2019 list can be found here.

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