Funniest/Most Inisightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That One Guy with a comment about the lawsuit between cops that resulted more than $23 million in damages:
‘They hospitalized a cop, but he’s a black guy and they’re white so…’
The injuries:
And he’s already secured a settlement from the city for $5 million, so at least he’s getting something out of this beyond two titanium plates in his neck, the removal of his gall bladder, a fused vertebrae, and a deep distrust of law enforcement.
The verdict:
Boone was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison after being convicted by a jury of a single civil rights charge. [Christopher] Myers was sentenced to probation after pleading guilty to a single felony charge, and [Bailey] Colletta got probation for lying to the FBI and a grand jury about the attack. [Steven] Korte was acquitted of the charges against him.
Now imagine what sort of charges would have been on the table if anyone but a quartet of bigots with badges had done that sort of damage to a police officer, and for extra points imagine if the officer in question had been white.
Yeah, I’m thinking that the cops who had their wrists slapped were very much not the only bigots in the courtroom during that trial.
In second place, it’s Bruce Elrick with a comment on our post about effective altruism:
This sounds like the Dianetics/Scientology playbook.
For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we’ve got a pair of anonymous comments. First, it’s one about attacks on encryption:
Whenever a cop spokesman says “encryption must be broken”, I always ask “does that include police and government encryption?”
I’ve yet to get anything more than a dirty look.
Next, it’s one about the impact of paywalls:
One other note about paywall-centric journalism: it makes it transient.
Back when everything went into newspapers, libraries collected those newspapers for people to read 100 years in the future.
When things started going digital, archive.org was created, which archived all the digital content.
But when paywalls took hold, for the most part, the paywalls also blocked archive.org from accessing the content (because otherwise, people could just go to archive.org to read it).
As a result, the “back issues,” if they exist at all, are siloed by the provider and anyone who happened to save a copy who paid for it. And as soon as the publisher decides to take their service in a different direction, all that content can vanish. Not to mention, stuff gets lost with every “site refresh” – where the content is no longer searchable and isn’t accessible at its old location.
All this to say: it’s very possible that we could wake up one day and find that the only version of our history that’s available is a fake one that was carefully crafted by someone with an agenda, and the real content of generations is nothing more than tatters held here and there by a few archivists with enough money to preserve what they could while they could.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is another anonymous comment, back on the subject of effective altruism’s bait and switch:
I quite like the part where they turn the pyramid in this scheme into a funnel.
In second place, it’s an anonymous clapback in a long debate thread:
Hey, Dr Fallacy! Welcome to the Techdirt comments section!
And I see you’ve brought a hasty generalization to share with the class!
For editor’s choice on the funny side, we’ve got a pair of competing jokes on our post about the Catholic church’s “AI priest”. First, it’s That One Guy making an observation about the standards here:
So that’s what it takes for the catholic church to disavow a priest…
Next, it’s Bloof who isn’t so sure about those standards:
So they’re punishing it because it gave nonsensical advice based on unreliable data that was completely disconnected from the real world? Isn’t that what all priests do?
That’s all for this week, folks!