According to [1] San Francisco has the most police per 100,000 residents in California amongst cities with populations 100,000 or more. According to [2] this is still less than the number of police per 100,000 people in London. Given the prevalence of guns, lack of social safety net in the U.S., and overall higher rate of murders I would have thought American cities had more police than British cities. Note that police forces have gotten smaller in the UK over the last several years and they consider themselves under staffed.
In the U.S. the reason is the Republican party. If we pay an amount to register a vehicle based on weight due to the increased damage it does to the roads then it will be portrayed as a radical environmentalist plot to get rid of SUVs and trucks. Republicans as love the idea of pay-as-you-use government services except when it comes to infrastructure. For example, it’s OK for a $25 traffic fine to include $100 in court costs but don’t under any circumstance expect one to pay more for gasoline to pay for road maintenance.
Various places have been doing exactly this for decades and while I'm sure there are plenty of complaints, it's not exactly something you hear about on FOX news.
Motorbike $50.52
Vehicle with curb weight of 4,500 lbs or less with a payload capacity of 2,499 lbs or less. $95.42
Vehicle with curb weight of 4,501 lbs or more with a payload capacity of 2,499 lbs or less. $151.55
Vehicle, Truck, pickup truck with ... a gross weight of 16,000 lbs or less or with a payload capacity of 2,500 lbs or more. $224.51
Truck or vehicle with a gross weight of 16,001 lbs or more with a payload capacity of 2,500 lbs or more. $505.16
Interestingly, minivans are most commonly the thing that surprise people. The lower trim levels usually qualify for the $95 annual sticker but the upper trim levels just barely cross the threshold and must pay the $151 annual sticker.
I don’t think anywhere in the U.S. taxes for registering vehicles and gas are enough to pay for roads. These charges do not pay the “true” costs of vehicles’ damage to the roads.
It's a tricky thing to implement as the road damage is typically quoted as being proportional to the fourth power of axle weight. That means that either the heaviest vehicles would become economically unviable due to the taxation (which I think should be the case) or most consumer vehicles would be too light to make a meaningful taxation contribution.
A 2000 pound vehicle driven an average of 15000 miles per year does $x of damage to the roads. X is a calculable figure. Tax the vehicle to at least pay $x. If it is in the pennies then tax that amount. That a heavier vehicle does more damage just means calculating the appropriate amount to tax it.
It could work out that it costs more to implement the smaller vehicle tax than it would recover in revenue. Also, there's a major problem with logistics companies having considerable power over politicians, so I can see problems with getting them to pay for their considerable share of the road repair costs.
As a Seattleite, I don't think it's fair to blame Republicans in this case: my city, county, and state are dominated by Democrats who promote Vision Zero[1] yet refuse to do anything about these obscenely large (and growing) vehicles.
It's safe to say that no Republican is going to win city/county/state-wide office around here, so the "attacks" are moot. For example, the state's hurtling towards passing an emergency AWB into law, all while Republicans yell and scream. So, again, the Republicans ain't the problem.
Are there any policies that Democrats could enact that would make them lose support? The answer is clearly yes. Is taxing vehicles enough to pay the true cost of road maintenance such an issue? I don’t know but it may be one that Democrats don’t want to tangle with. Such taxes are done at the state and national level and I think this is an issue they don’t want to give Republicans a win on.
Edit: The nation as a whole has shifted very much rightward the last 50 years. Instead of saying Republicans I should maybe say “right leaning politics”.
Office-chair-stealing Tim Eyman and his supporters would likely get an initiative passed that disallows any limits or weight-based fees. It's not a winning strategy, unfortunately.
Michigan is the home of the US auto industry and that state is filled with politicians from the Democratic party. Ford and GM are making some mighty big vehicles and I'm sure their elected representatives (Democrats) are doing their best to encourage it.
Where's the disconnect? The OP claimed it was purely a republican move. The reality is that the powerful people in Michigan are Democrats and the state's top tier companies make some of the heaviest cars on the market. If the Democrats wanted to do something about it, they could make the cars illegal and also put some of their citizens out of work.
But the reality is here in the States it's not the EVs that are the weight problems - it's the mega trucks and mega SUVs. The vehicles people drive today are comically large compared to those we were driving when I was a kid.
Your average techie/doctor/lawyer/manager who thinks he needs a 4Runner for his 2-kid household is not going to be dissuaded by hundreds of dollars here or their when their mortgage is thousands a month. You need a huge tax. That huge tax would be punitive on all sorts of "legitimate" activity.
If it was a politics thing and not a "everybody who looks into it with any depth decides it's dumb" thing then some state like MD, RI, CT, or MA would have taxed it already.
Furthermore, we're talking about "damage" (in sarcasm quotes because expected and normal wear isn't damage in any normal sense of the word) power equation here[1]. So basically everything that isn't a class 6/7/8 truck is inconsequential for a road that has any portion of its traffic made up by those vehicles. Since those trucks basically run the economy someone has to pay for it. There's really little political will to engage in an obvious exercise of "picking who to screw" like that vs an imperfect but fairly fair fuel tax.
You are correct that the desire to subsidize commercial activity plays a role. Republicans may not have power in a state like CT but there is still a desire not to be beat up on an issue that will play well to the masses. For instance, Michelle Obama advocated for better nutrition for school lunch programs. No reasonable person could possibly have seen fault with this but after Fox News attacked her over this it became a dead issue.
EDIT: It is definitely not a dumb idea as you suggest. Many counties have sensible policies on this issue and yet they manage to trudge along without much trouble. As I said it is OK to advocate for pay-as-you-use government so long as people like you don’t pay for your negative externalities too often.
This is because their campaigns are paid for in large part for by oil and gas companies. These positions they take are sadly rational given this. The solution is campaign finance reform.
Division is multiplication by the multiplicative inverse. Subtraction is addition by the additive inverse. Both division and subtraction undo their corresponding operation. Multiplying by a (provided it’s not zero) is undone by dividing by a. Adding a is undone by subtracting a.
In a ring the elements form a group under addition and thus every element has an additive inverse. The additive identity element, let’s call it e, has the property that ea = e and ae = e. For this reason we use 0 instead of e. In a nontrivial ring 0 can’t have a multiplicative inverse because if it did then every element would be equal to the multiplicative identity (which is unique).
Okay so if you can get to a ring without a multiplicative inverse and then applying that operation to the ring forms it into a field then wouldn't it be fair to say that division is not really the opposite of multiplication the same way that subtraction absolutely is for addition?
The definition of division is multiplication by the multiplicative inverse. It may be the case that some elements don’t have such an inverse but the definition is analogous to that of subtraction. The analogy is not perfect because every element has an additive inverse while not every element had a multiplicative inverse.
What you're saying is that the analogy between subtraction and division is good as far as it goes. So why should "as far as it goes" end at zero not having an inverse, rather than division by zero producing something other than the multiplicative inverse of zero? The two choices end up having different structure, and so they end up being applicable to different things, but there is nothing wrong with either choice.
The word division means something in mathematics. There is general agreement in what that word ought to mean. You can define a binary operation in such a way that it doesn’t look like what we normally think of as division and label your operation division. In the same way you can define the symbol duck to refer to what most people call a chair. You won’t get anyone else agreeing with your new definition though.
I think I understand better where you are coming from. In computer science I don’t know what they typically mean when they say “division”. I’ll be more precise. In abstract algebra division means multiplying by the inverse. All of the notions of division mentioned in the Wikipedia page come from this idea. Computers can’t work with within the realm of the entire real number system. There they have notions of type. They like to extend common operators like “/“ to things that normally it doesn’t apply to. A computer language will sometimes return a value of int or some other type when the integer 5 is divided by 3. Depending on how the language designer wanted things to work. This isn’t division in a mathematical sense though.
I am not at all concerned with what is or isn't possible in a computer for the purposes of this discussion. My only point with the link is that dealing with inverses in particular situations (i.e. where multiplication has or doesn't have certain properties) frequently requires particular considerations, and the properties of division defined as multiplication by the inverse will have different properties as a result.
To be clear, do you disagree that it is commonplace in complex analysis to extend the complex plane by {infinity} and define 1/0 = infinity, 1/infinity = 0? I find it hard to imagine that you can't have encountered that given how much you seem to know about abstract algebra. Or do you just think that it is a bad idea, despite being commonplace? In either case, to say that mathematicians would not call that operation division as a result is contradictory to my experience, even if those two special cases don't fit the category of multiplication by the inverse.
Also to be clear, I know of no counterexamples in abstract algebra and it would make sense to me that in that context division would mean something very particular, in order to be able to talk about it with any generality. But as it happens, abstract algebra isn't all of math.
This is getting very far from where the original question came from. When talking to a layman one would say division is always multiplication by the inverse. There are nuances involved that a lay person simply can’t appreciate or understand. Had I known you knew about the extended complex numbers I would have answered differently. The extended complex numbers are not a ring, not a group, not an algebra, and so…is it really division then?
In math often times the answer we give depends on the knowledge of the person asking the question. For instance we tell calculus 1 students 1/x is not continuous as a function from R-{0} to R. Of course in the standard induced topology it is a continuous function but explaining this to calculus 1 students would be very difficult.
Giving the answer that is relevant to the situation is very sensible. Saying that "this is the only thing division can mean in mathematics" is evidently false, though (I take it that you agree with me on this now?), and false in a way that is very relevant to the original question, which did not specify a context of abstract algebra and seemed to me to be very interested in expanding the mathematical horizons of the questioner, not restricting them.
The extended complex plane is a great example in my opinion, because it shows that yes there are reasons to extend the numbers in various ways, that can give useful structure, but you may have to give up something else in order for that make sense. In my opinion that is a much more complete answer to the deeper question. (Similarly for the reals mod 1, which do have the property that x + 1 = x).
The one point compactification of the complex plane is not a number system in the normal sense of what that means. Calling the use of the notational convenience 1/infinity a true division operation defies the common usage of the term in mathematics. You may call it whatever you want to though.
The answer given to the person who asked the original question was the correct one. You can’t do it because doing so would break consistency and that is of paramount importance when doing new things in mathematics. There are agreed upon usages of terms and symbols in mathematics. Why call something division in the true sense of the word when it breaks the conventional usage of what that term means? But, also, why invent a new symbol to denote what is analogous to division? So we abuse notation. This is done all the time. So on the one had we’ll say to calculus 1 students 1/infinity is 0 but also say infinity is not a number. Things are done for convenience but when asked, “Is this really division?” the answer is no.
Of course you can redefine all terms you desire and say things like: A circle can be squared, I just mean something different when I say circle than when you say it. But why do that? All of this is my opinion. You disagree and that is ok.
I didn't realise this, but apparently it is also possible to do good algebra on this kind of structure by adding an element 0/0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_theory (which someone pointed to in one of the discussions -- I forget which one).
Mathematics is a vast subject and I can’t keep track of all developments. In 2010 there was a paper on meadows. I’ve never heard the term before. In that paper it is written:
As usual in field theory, the convention to consider p / q as an abbreviation for p · q−1 was used in subsequent work on meadows (see e.g. [2,5]). This convention is no longer satisfactory if partial variants of meadows are con- sidered too, as is demonstrated in [3].
So, as I’ve stated many times, I talked about convention and indicated you can use whatever terms you want. In the paper quoted above they acknowledge what the convention is. That is that division is multiplication by the inverse. They are arguing that it is worthwhile in this new algebraic object to change the usual notion a bit. If people agree to a new usage of the word division then definitions will change accordingly. None of this is pertinent to the spirit of the original question given the context under which it was asked. All of this is highly technical.
Definitions and notions change as new mathematics is created (discovered?). This happens all the time. All you have to do is convince other mathematicians to go along with it.
EDIT: Regarding what you wrote in your other comment: The analogy is not apt in my opinion. It’s hard to say zero can’t exist because the nonzero…. The moment you say nonzero means it does exist. I think a better way to look at the situation is:
I have an object that is a group under a binary operation f. There is another natural binary operation on that object that operates with f in a consistent way. That operation doesn’t form a group but if I add a symbol to my set and give these rules then both operations interact in a consistent, natural way. I get a group under the new symbol with the second operation while preserving the group under the first operation minus the new symbol.
With extended complex numbers you don’t quite preserve the structures or properties that one normally wants so I’d say it isn’t true division. It is division like.
I'm happy to agree to disagree about where the line between "division" and "division like" should be placed. As you say, it is a question of convention and not really a question of math. But I don't agree that a student with the curiosity to ask about extending the numbers in various ways would not find something "division like" with the properties they're interested in to be relevant to the question (even if it is missing some other properties that most mathematicians consider to be essential to the notion of division).
Honestly saying you can't have a number 1/0 because it breaks the ring axioms seems exactly analogous to saying 0 can't exist because it breaks the group axioms for multiplication on the non-zero reals. Is ring multiplication "not really multiplication" because it doesn't satisfy group axioms? That doesn't seem consistent with normal usage to me, but you could imagine a pedantic student coming out of their first group theory course and trying to make that argument.
The question has 300+ upvotes. That’s a proxy for how “good” it is. A person is curious about an aspect of mathematics and posed a well stated question. It is not a stupid question. From their perspective mathematicians appear to do something and they wonder why it can’t be done in other situations. Such a question is the basis of understanding. It is by wondering such things that enables one to gain true understanding of a topic.
Most questions asked by beginners in an area are “stupid” and few as insightful as this one. I’ve taught mathematics at a community college for 20 years and I would be delighted to have been asked this. Usually questions are mundane like, “Why did you add x to both sides?”. Here the person is trying to understand what mathematicians do, what the basis of expanding a number system really involves. This is a fantastic question.
Peoples’ curiosity ought not be labeled as stupid.
> Peoples’ curiosity ought not be labeled as stupid.
Correct. That is why I feel more comfortable asking "stupid" questions to chatGPT. I clarified a lot of concepts in economics through repeatedly asking questions about each concept that pop up in its answers and trying to push it to the limits of what can be defined, explained, etc. One cannot be sure of the truthfulness or soundness of the answers, but they may help.
> It is not a stupid question. From their perspective mathematicians appear to do something and they wonder why it can’t be done in other situations.
I mean, you've already gotten it wrong. This can be done in other situations. Where it isn't done, it isn't done because doing it is pointless, not because there's some bar to giving names to opaque labels.
If something doesn’t behave like 0 in a ring or other algebraic structure then using that label is confusing and simply not done. You are free to use any symbol you want but mathematics is a human endeavor and as such communication is important. Using the symbol 0 signifies something to those with mathematical training. Zero can’t have an multiplicative inverse because anything you call 0 that has an multiplicative inverse makes it behave like something other than zero. So no one would use 0 to describe such an element. In a ring, or abelian group, the symbol 0 is reserved for the additive identity element.
Similarly, I could say snkwoo is what most people call a chair. A grammarian would say there is no word snkwoo even though I just defined it.
Your original comment was wrong and bad. Instead of just admitting it or moving on you’ve decided to double down and make another bad comment.
I'm having trouble following the argument from your premise "it is a stupid question to ask why I referred to a chair as a chair instead of a snkwoo" to your conclusion "it is not a stupid question to ask why, when we have no answer to a question, we don't just say that we do have one".
The answer (to both of those questions!) is, of course, that we could do that, but it wouldn't accomplish anything. Asking the question just means you have no idea what you're saying. Or in other words, it's a stupid question.
> Asking the question just means you have no idea what you're saying. Or in other words, it's a stupid question.
So, to be clear, you're saying that the only kind of question that isn't stupid is the one where the querent already has perfect knowledge of the discipline?
I'm saying that to avoid asking a stupid question, you need to know the meaning of your own question. Stringing words together at random isn't going to get you there.
Compare the famous anecdote from Charles Babbage:
On two occasions I have been asked, -- "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" [...] I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
Is it necessary to have perfect knowledge of the workings of the Difference Engine to avoid asking that question? Of course not. Any knowledge at all would do the trick. If you put gravel into a water mill instead of grain, will you still get flour out of it?
A child asked her mother, “Can I put my hand in the fire?”. The mother responded, “That’s a stupid question. Of course you can.”. The child put her hand in the fire and got severe burns on her hand. She learned then that instead asking “Can I…” she should have asked, “Is it advisable…”. Unfortunately for her she lived in a society in which people frequently say things like, “You have to file taxes on or before April 15.” when they mean, “You can file taxes after April 15 but you may incur fees and penalties if you do so.”. She later became a teacher and was very patient with her students.
Did you read the article? I doubt it since the title is misses the egregious part of the corruption described. It is terrible to be policed by the dolts that were recorded.
it could be police. it could be firefighters. it could be municipal garbage truckers. i dont see "corruption" . i see plain old overtime milking & malfeasance as in any other industry with extremely poor oversight and controls.
It should be a fireable offense. But unions make it hard. That is by design.
Do you think this does not happen in other nyc agencies doing services for taxpayers?
They're delaying due process for their own benefit, this is the definition of corruption. Like the judges selling kids into private prisons, albeit on a smaller scale, no less a violation.
That doesn't seem honest. If they are delaying due process by simply squeezing overtime (due to reforms the benefiaries didn't enact themselves, btw), ...
do we also say a judge going on vacation is delaying due process ?
Since when is optimal performance a right?
Instead, we have curative actions. That is called firing. The fact that the management structure is failing to do that does not mean anyone is stripped of any rights, except that taxpayers are not getting their money's worth for the services they delegated to bureaucracies.
If you think overtime is the corruption one should be worrying about from what is described in the article then you either didn’t read it or you have seriously misguided priorities. Overtime is a red herring.
The white, female Democratic legislator was not expelled but the two black male Democratic legislators were. The white legislator barely escaped expulsion.
Legislators should not be expelled as a result of nonviolent civil disobedience. It is true that there are rules for expulsion and those rules were followed but when things like this are used in an unprecedented way and the normal way legislative bodies function gets upended suddenly it’s a bad sign. Democrats have not kept up with the new political reality.
Your comment makes me think you didn’t read the scholars’ paper. I think you might be imposing your own, baseless, assumption on the scholar’s intent. I think a person writing a research article intended to be read by experts isn’t going to just spout unsubstantiated nonsense. There must be at least some merit to the assertions made. The assertions may be wrong but they are not just personal impositions.
Consider the possibility that experts who study this stuff came to the conclusion because that is where the evidence lead them. That if you had expertise in this area that you too would see this as at least extremely plausible.
While I understand what you're saying, it's cultural and personal bias, and it's present in everyone and everything. Experts are experts, and they are able to sort through field of specialty better, stronger, and faster than non-experts. But, they still all carry their own biases. That's what the original poster was about, I believe.
Looking at historical works about prior historical works can absolutely teach you about the source event. But it is also an incredibly relevant and accurate way to learn about cultural norms and the society the piece was created in.
Most experts go their entire career just trying to identify their own biases and eliminate them from their scholarship; it's harder than it looks because they're so ingrained into our personality.
In theory, the perfect expert follows the evidence to the appropriate conclusion. Only in theory.
In execution, they follow only specific lines of reasoning, certain thought patterns, and certain investigation patterns because of the cultural expectations and social mores the expert has developed, was trained under, and has lived with their entire lives.
edit; OP also said nothing about baseless claims. Just that the scholarship we read will be relevant in the future as a snapshot into our lives, as well as whatever the research is about.
VoodooJuJu said: …this historian's personal impositions onto this ancient deity…
This gives me the impression that VoodooJuJu thinks the historian had an ideological agenda and was making a square be a circle so to speak. If the historians claims are not baseless then how can personal imposition be an apt description?
I agree with what you wrote but I think your edit is wrong. VoodooJuJu didn’t use the word baseless but I think that is the essence of their claim. How can the historian’s claim be an insight into today’s culture, views, and lives if the claim is well reasoned and substantiated by the known facts? A claim that is well reasoned and substantiated by known facts is a claim that could be made by anyone whose language has words for what we call transvestism, gender fluidity, and androgyny. It seems to me at most, with a claim that is well reasoned and substantiated by known facts, one can only infer the level of permissiveness that experts had to discuss such topics.
I think maybe I didn't get my point across as well as I should have.
>How can the historian’s claim be an insight into today’s culture, views, and lives if the claim is well reasoned and substantiated by the known facts?
Because the facts are evaluated through the lens of the historian. The lines of reasoning, logical conclusions, and modes/methods of investigation are all, inherently influenced by how the historian was raised, trained, and how/when/where they live. It's just part of being human. It is impossible to present literally anything without it being biased in some fashion. In deciding what to report and what not to, how much weight to give to historical accounts versus other historical accounts, what sources to chase down, even where to look in the physical world, we are imposing our own beliefs on the event.
That's what I'm trying to get across.
Not about this specific article, or the concepts of gender fluidity, etc. But the actual process of investigating and reporting historical facts. It is an inherently biased process. It just is.
I understand what you are saying and agree with it but not as it pertains to JuJu’s comment and intent.
A baseless claim says much about the person making it. A claim that is well reasoned and supported by the facts says very little about the person making it.
If I say: The IQ of blacks in the U.S. is on average lower than that of whites. that says nothing about my ideology. If I say: Black people are stupid. that says much about my ideology.
Making a claim that is well reasoned and substantiated by the known facts says that the person making the claim reasoned it well and had facts that supported that reasoning and they possessed the vocabulary and permissiveness to discuss those ideas. One can not infer a person’s ideology from such a claim. Of course biases and experience play a role in these things but looking from the outside you can’t say of well reasoned claims: personal imposition. That is too strong of a conclusion.
The parent made a point about trust and how all historians are subject to biases. You responded with an appeal to authority, one of the many ways “history is written by the victors”.
Appeal to authority is not an argumentative fallacy. I say this in case you think it is. Almost all of what you believe comes from “authorities”. What is an argumentative fallacy is an appeal to a false authority. I have some expertise in mathematics and a person using me as a reference in an argument about English literature is making an argumentative fallacy. A person using me as a reference in a matter about mathematics is not making an argumentative fallacy.
What is interesting about your comment is that I made no appeal to authority. I did not quote anyone or make any references to an authority. What I did was to ask JuJu to consider something and to state what I think.
What’s ironic about your comment is that JuJu did make an appeal to an authority.
EDIT: You believe 1+1 equals 2. I doubt you know how to prove this rigorously. Your belief is based on an appeal to authority. Have you independently verified that electrons exist? Or that the moon is a little more than one light second away? Have you ever supplied links to an article to support a position you have?
It is a fallacy, but you’re right ultimately one we have to live with. There’s no way to function doing all the research yourself. This is why trust is so critical.
The crux of your post was “I trust the intent of the experts because they’re experts”. I don’t think that is a good reason to trust somebody.
Nice reference. It’s a source from 1986 about text written thousands of years ago. Well before so called woke culture. I wonder if BaculumMeumEst will admit to jumping to conclusions and realize that they might be a victim in this instance of a propaganda induced reaction.
Maybe this gender fluidity notion isn’t just post-modern made up nonsense.
(I'll leave this helpful comment for historians of future). "Fluidity" is the trip wire word that is not immediately suggested by the Goddess' pronouncements regarding its sexual ambiguity and or nature. 'Diversity' would be the non-ideological term of choice.
For example, castration for the goddess was a big deal. (Kali had her crazed devotees as well. Modern S&M gives you echoes of this urge of the male pysche..) So there is no going back, no back and forth, no "fluidity" when you plop ye old bloody member on the temple floor in front of the goddess. Gender change. Yes. Fluid? No.
Btw, can't recall the source, but there are mystic schools that insist the '[Mother] Goddess' slaughters all these males because she is seeking her Perfect Man/Lover. So the drones that go 'fluid' for her are really just playing their part in the selection process.
[p.s. for historians. Since this comment was posted, I have lost 10 karma points in minutes - it is a touchy topic that elicits emotional responses. ;)]
I’m no expert on the precise definition of gender fluidity. Groneberg used the terms transvestism and androgyny. In colloquial language that’s an aspect of gender fluidity, right? Maybe gender fluidity is the wrong term but it’s certainly a splash of cold water, so to speak, to those that think this is all wokist nonsense. A scholar in 1986 uses transvestism and androgyny to describe beliefs of people from thousands of years ago.
Human sexuality is a very complicated business and I agree that the binary norm is (obviously imo) not the only naturally present modality, and historic matter shows this was also recognized for thousands of years in various cultures. I only remarked on the word fluid and the implied facility, substitutability, and reversibility of the transitions and modalities of human sexuality.
I assume that the 'fluidity' is referring to Ishtar _herself_ rather than the behaviour of her worshippers, though like I say above I'm pretty sure the author is being somewhat tongue in cheek.
(Though, also, where are you getting the castration thing? There were definitely goddesses whose priesthoods went in for that in that general part of the world, eg Cybele, but I don't think Ishtar was particularly one of them?)
I agree that it likely refers to the divine but as you say it also leaves the door open for confusing mere mortals. I am not certain about Ishtar's priesthood, you may be correct. This article mentions Inana/Ishtar:
> It’s a source from 1986 about text written thousands of years ago. Well before so called woke culture.
A bit unacknowledged fact is that many books Nazi burned were about transexuality. The modernity they hated was also this. Transexuals and gays were particular target.
I don’t think a source saying the deity’s gender was controversial and calling their followers “transvestites” supports the description “defender of gender fluidity”.
I was responding to your response of dude, come on. That response said much about your frame of mind. You didn’t know about the research article that weakfish linked to when you made it. It appears you had no context or knowledge on the topic of this deity or its followers’ beliefs. It appears it was a knee jerk response assuming the reporter was engaged in some wokist propaganda.
An intellectually honest response to the link supplied by weakfish would be to question why defender of gender fluidity is the right description while acknowledging that this is new information and that your initial response was wrong. That the description defender of gender fluidity might have some merit to it but you remain skeptical and would like to learn more about why people use this description.
Murders in the U.S. are very high compared to other rich nations. San Francisco has a very high murder rate compared to cities in Japan, England, France, Sweden, etc.
You said SF hasn’t had a lot of A. I know you meant in relation to other U.S. cities but the fact that people think SF doesn’t have a lot of A is indicative of how shell shocked we are, so to speak, as a people when it comes to accepting violent crime.
I mean sure, ya, if you want to go down that route, SF doesn't even have a lot of B in relation to Caracas, Pretoria, Port Moresby, ...
"But the fact that people think SF has too much of B is indicative of how sheltered we are, so to speak, as a people when it comes to the rest of the world."
To illustrate how bad things are in the U.S. it should be noted that SF’s low murder rate is quite a bit higher than London’s murder rate. London had 124 homicides last year with a population of 8.7 million people. SF had 40 murders per 100,000 people and London had less than 40 murders per 2,000,000 people. We are a violent people.
According to the FBI webpage you linked to it was 40 murders and non negligent manslaughters per 100,000 people in SF. I don’t know the nuances of the definitions involved so maybe the non negligent manslaughter portion is what causes the disparity in the stats cited.
Still, the low murder rate, by American standards, in SF is almost 5 times higher than London’s.
I'd offer the alternative of we don't adequately punish our violent people. We disbanded asylums and pushed the needy onto the streets (I acknowledge the trope of horror/insane-asylum is a real thing and counter with there were good ones and bad ones, proper oversight is necessary), glorified violence, ignored re-offenders, and so on. There is no justice -- not in the real sense of the word -- and so there is effectively no law.
We have a very high incarceration rate and our penalties for convicted felons tend to be quite high in comparison to European countries. When you talk about not adequately punishing violent people are you talking about violent crimes in which police do not make an arrest?
This is an incredibly complex topic, and I apologize for speaking of it so simply in GP.
The justice system in the United States is broken in many, many places. And the issues that spawn from a broken justice system leak into every other facet of life.
I could talk about privately owned prisons that are incentivized to keep bodies in cells (that's how they get compensated). I could talk about the judges that are bribed to ensure these prisons get filled.
We could move on to things like jail-time for minor drug offenses. Is this a DA problem? Or a policing problem? I'm not sure.
Or, conversely, violent criminals who get their jail time commuted. This is a judge and DA problem.
Or, continuing, the definition of "felon" in the United States is a byzantine thing. See [0].
Our laws are too jumbled and onerous. Justice, the ideal, is not sought nor executed in many cases. I don't know how to fix this. A part of me wants to burn two centuries of case law and go back to a bare Constitution, with an emphasis on personal conduct and responsibility (those darn Puritans were on to something). But that's too simple. We're caught in a trap, and I honestly don't see a way out.
There's a quote that comes to mind "representative rule only works when the people are moral". Something like that. Are we moral?
[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Is-the-San-Francis...
[2] https://www.finder.com/uk/police-statistics