Evil in the world

This weekend I went through one of those unpleasant parental firsts.  Pinkie Pie got her first experience with sexual harassment at the hands of an older man, and I had to figure out what to do about it.

He met her on the street, managed to convince her to give him her phone number, and then proceeded to text her over the course of the next hour or so.  He told her he was in love with her, that he desperately needed her, and asked for pictures.  He ignored the fact that she isn't attracted to men in any way, smashed right through her 'but I have a girlfriend' objections, and wasn't fazed at all when she told him she is only 14.

He continued to message her with desperate and bizarre statements, making it clear that he required her in his life and could not cope without her.  He even claimed to run some sort of 'love and connection' business, for which he even had business cards.

Thankfully Pinkie Pie trusts us, and brought his messages to us to ask for help.  I talked with her about all the obvious manipulation and gaslighting, and explained what he was trying to do.  She had been feeling worried and bad about the whole thing, and was happy to block him.  As far as lessons go, I am glad she got past this one without much damage.  I think she is over it, and is moving on.  

I, on the other hand, keep having thoughts of tracking this bastard down and smashing him into hard objects until he breaks into little pieces.  I doubt that the police can or will do anything, since while it is obvious to anyone who glances at the messages what is going on, he hasn't actually done anything illegal, as far as I can tell.  In this, we are on our own.  I don't know if there is any point in messaging him myself, threatening outrageous bodily harm should he ever be near her again - it certainly isn't an idle threat, but I have no idea if that would make things safer for Pinkie Pie or not.

Making it safer for her is my only concern.  Making things safer for all the other 14 year old girls out there is important, but I can't do a lot about that.

I am not one to overreact in terms of what I will let Pinkie Pie do.  She is going to continue to have the same freedom to wander about as before.  The world isn't perfectly safe, but I won't build a cage for her.  The best I can do is teach her how to handle this sort of thing and hope that I never actually need to beat the hell out of some asshole who tries to hurt her.

Her friends, to their credit, were entirely supportive and were talking about going out to beat this dude up or try to scare him.  I made it clear that they were not to do such a thing under any circumstances.  They noted that it would be a pretty bad look for a bunch of white kids to be out beating the hell out of a black guy in a bout of vigilante justice - not an observation I would have expected from my friend group when I was a teenager.  They are way more woke than I ever was.

I don't want this to escalate to violence or intimidation of any sort, and I particularly don't want kids involved in any way.  If that sort of thing was ever called for though, it is definitely not on them - it is on me.  Here's hoping it never comes to that.

Learning from disaster

The ongoing crisis has taught me some things.  While I hang out at home a lot, I apparently chafe at the requirement of staying home.  I suppose that isn't unusual, but present circumstances certainly bring it into stark relief.  I also discovered that while I support substantial restrictions on our collective behaviour to combat covid-19, some of them really grind on me.

Throughout my life a lot of things I try to do have been criticized by people under the umbrella of 'safety'.  Going barefoot, you can't do that because safety!  Polyamory, you can't do that, because safety!  Marijuana, you can't use that, because safety!

My usual response to this is to bristle with indignation and then swing back, hard.  I tend to go on about how those same people yelling about safety happily support all kinds of things that are drastically more dangerous, and argue that their real issue with my behaviour is simply that I am doing something different than they are used to, but they fall back on 'safety' when they have no real arguments.

Sometimes I don't have time for debating the topic and my response boils down to

FUCK YOU I DO WHAT I WANT.

It turns out the restrictions on behaviour because of Covid-19 push my buttons because of this.  I agree that I should stay at home, and I agree that we must endure inconvenience to make grocery shopping less likely to transmit diseases, and I agree with most the things we are doing.

But damn when authorities tell me how to live because 'safety' my instinct is to snarl and tell them to get bent.

Even though those arguments from safety are well grounded these days I have gotten so used to safety being thrown around as a catch all for 'I have no actual reasons or data' that it really winds me up.

This came up in regards to grocery store population caps.  Recently I was really grumpy after a grocery store visit where the security person enforcing store population sat on his phone ignoring everything and occasionally looked up and motioned a random bunch of people into the grocery store.  The cashiers were standing around bored because the security guard wasn't keeping enough people in the store, and the people waiting in the enormous line were standing close together, often chatting with one another.  Keeping us all in line was simply increasing the danger to all of us, not just wasting our time but also *increasing* our risk. 

It bothers me to restrict people's behaviour for no gain, but it *really* burns my bridge when regulations in the name of safety actually make things worse.  It is a tough thing to argue though, because I actually support greater safety measures that are effective, and if I argue against restrictions people will naturally assume I am in denial of some kind, or that I buy into the 'let all the old people die to save the stock market' thing.

While I don't think I will come out of this mess with new skills, I suspect I will end up at least learning a few things about myself.

Big scary man

I sometimes have daydreams or fantasies about fighting people.  They are mostly banal revenge fantasies where I beat up a group of teenagers threatening my daughter or somesuch.  I assume that such an occasion will never come to pass, and certainly it would be best if the opportunity never arose to test my mettle in such a way.

Today seemed like it might be a day where I get to find out if I can fight as well in person as I can in my imagination.  Thankfully no fighting of any sort occurred and the question of my martial capabilities is as yet unresolved.

Pinkie Pie called me up to say that her friends were being chased and harassed by a group of teenage boys from the local high school.  She and her friends needed to get somewhere, but they were worried about what would happen if the big kids found them.

An opportunity to be big and scary and yell at teenagers?  I am in!

I put on my usual outfit, which is pretty well suited to this cause.  It is a leather jacket, black leather gloves, and sturdy boots.

Also a knitted rainbow striped hat.

When I got to the elevator and looked in the mirror I realized that although the rainbow hat is a fine fashion statement usually, it really did not help me at all in the 'looking scary' department, so I stashed it my pocket.  If I really wanted to rock the scary biker man aesthetic I should invest in some facial tattooes I think, but thus far the call for that look has been lacking, so my tattooes are all under cover.

I walked the kids three blocks out and three blocks back, and absolutely nothing whatsoever happened.  We were on busy streets the entire time so even if the troublesome teenage miscreants had been about nothing would have happened, but I am glad I could set their minds at ease.  I remember being scared of other kids when I was young, so I don't mind providing moral support.

I wasn't looking for a fight.  Much as my fantasies would like to be fulfilled, real fights suck.  You can get punched in the face, and getting punched in the face sucks.  What I really wanted was a chance to go all Scary Man on some evil teenagers and make them regret harassing smaller people.  Scaring smaller people is ethically sound when it is in retaliation, right?

Right?

But no intimidation was required, just walking.

Much like the rest of parenting, there was hope for excitement, worries about danger, and then a whole lot of tedium.

I did learn to not take my rainbow hat out when my job is to be a big scary man though, so at least I am practiced up for when it happens for real.  I wouldn't want to screw that one up!

Serious Medicine

I was at a marijuana dispensary earlier this week, and what I saw there amused me to no end.  I wasn't actually buying MJ myself, just accompanying someone else to get her own supply.  I was under the impression, prior to going, that dispensaries were regulated and serious, supplying medicine to people who needed it.  Also they were clearly just selling to anyone who wanted to pay.  However, I expected some sort of cursory screening process and at least a pretense of officialness.

I didn't even get a pretense.

The dispensary had a board of daily specials.  Now I may not be any kind of medical expert, but I feel like daily special such as "Hash Wednesdays!" aren't quite selling the 'serious medicine' thing.  Nor was the plate of cookies, the trance music, or the checkout clerk vaping in the corner.

I don't mind any of that of course.  MJ shouldn't be illegal and there is no compelling reason why people should have to jump through crazy hoops to get it.  It should be sold with just as much hucksterism as anything else.

But that contrast between the fact that MJ is clearly being sold as a recreational drug and the official line that it is still illegal here is staggering.  The government is maintaining the line that MJ is dangerous and that it is under control so that all the pearl clutchers can stop worrying about reefer madness while at the same time officials basically ignore MJ being sold openly.  We have this foolish, destructive, hypocritical system that can't decide if MJ should just be lightly regulated and otherwise ignored (it should be) or if it is a dangerous drug that has to be kept away from people no matter the cost.

A week from now MJ will become legal here.  We will finally be able to use it without worrying that we will be tossed in jail, our lives torched in order to prevent us from feeling sleepy and snacky.  Naturally the government is rolling this out in a completely idiotic way, using a single government supplier that won't even have any brick and mortar locations in the beginning.  The lack of competition in supply and the lack of freedom of purchasing means that people will continue to buy from illegal sources, funnelling money into organized crime.

Legalization is a good first step, but the Ontario government is still proceeding as if they can prevent MJ usage by simply making production by the private sector illegal.  A cursory examination of any part of human history can teach us that this is foolish in the extreme.

There are a lot of things that the free market is bad at, but providing MJ is one of the things it would actually be good at.  Tight fisted government control just makes things worse.

At least there is some measure of progress, and in a week I can wander down to my local dispensary and fill out an official looking form to buy my weed without worrying about being imprisoned for my troubles.  That much, at least, is looking up.

My nipples are a terrifying thing

Today there were new signs in my building's workout room.  They said all the usual things about being quiet and not damaging stuff, but there were two new clauses tacked on at the end.  One said that everyone must wear proper shoes while using the equipment, and the other said that everyone must be properly clothed in a Tshirt or exercise clothing.  I HATE the word proper.  It can die in a fire.

My nipples are at fault.

I have been working out barefoot for almost three years now, so that isn't the thing that has prompted this new grasp at power by a bored bureaucrat.  The difference is that over the past few months I have occasionally gone shirtless while lifting in the weight room.  Normally I am alone, and sometimes I get so sticky and hot during my routine I shuck my shirt.  A few people have walked in, and while none of them have said anything, obviously somebody was extremely frightened and offended at my nipples and they complained to the authorities.

Nipples are terrifying as fuck, y'all.

Before anyone starts excusing this nonsense let us be clear:  My shirt, by the end of my routine, is soaked.  My bodily goo is getting all over everything no matter whether or not I have a shirt on.  Women often wear sports bras as their only top, and nobody is complaining on that account.  This is purely a nipple issue.

I know what will happen if I protest this.  I have been down this road before.  They will make noises about 'safety' and cluck disapprovingly about disease.  This is the standard nonsense people spew when anyone does something outside social norms, because it masquerades as concern, when in fact it is purely classist bullshit.  We don't want *those* sorts of people in our building, they think, and those undesirable types must be full of disease and filth.

It is the same whether or not I am trying to go without shoes, be polyamorous, or not wear a shirt.  People assume that because it is weird that anyone doing it must be filthy and dangerous, and they don't even bother with a cursory examination of their reasons.

But you can't fight city hall.  They can enforce any bullshit ruleset they want, and nothing I say is going to convince the condo board that my right to dress how I like is as important as other people's right to tell me how to dress.

One good thing though is that when you are replete with rage, full to the brim with fury, and consumed with a desire for righteous vengeance, doing your workout routine is easy as hell.  I tore through those reps like they were NOTHING.

Cold as ice

I am in Thunder Bay visiting family for the holidays.  It is -28C raw temperature here - with the wind chill and humidex and such it would be far chillier than that.  We decided to take a walk along the river today to watch the ice and see what shape it had taken; every year is different.  You really have to wrap up properly under these sorts of conditions and though I managed to keep the rest of me warm the tip of my nose was not pleased about hiking through the woods on such a cold day.

We found an area where the river had a little bay of sorts and the water in the bay was shallow and frozen over.  We walked out onto the ice and managed to get quite near the edge where the fast moving open water began and while perhaps it should have been a nerve wracking experience it didn't work out that way.  My dad has lived rural for nearly his whole life and he knows what is safe and what is not, though admittedly my mom has too and their assessments of risk do not always quite agree.  At any rate he assured us that the ice under us was quite thick enough to be safe so we stood on the ice just 2 meters from the edge of the water gazing at the ice formations all along the river.

At the river's edge, standing on the ice, we found a couple particularly interesting formations - giant slabs of ice that were halfway on the shelf that held us and halfway in the water.  They were 2 by 3 meters and a good 20 cm thick, with one end dipping into the river and the other tilted up in the air, with the whole slab carefully balanced on the edge of the ice.

Of course we couldn't leave those slabs of ice alone!  We tried pushing them into the river and levering them up but neither really worked - instead we ended up accidentally snapping them in half and watching the half that was up in the air come crashing down and break into hundreds of pieces.  I had to grab those pieces and hurl them into the river, using them to try to smash other chunks of ice free to get them to float downstream.  I smashed many chunks of ice to smithereens and freed up some enormous pieces to float down the river.

It was glorious.

I don't know why smashing huge chunks of ice to bits is so satisfying, or why I feel compelled to get the ice moving downriver.  Sometimes I need to dam rivers and sometimes I need to watch them flow and carry all the things away.  Usually the river isn't quite so dangerous as it was today though.

Walking in a winter wonderland indeed.

Getting the guns out

Recently there was a mass shooting in Las Vegas.  58 people died and hundreds were injured by a single person with a huge collection of guns.  Gun control has been a huge topic on the internet as a result, and stocks in gun companies have shot up on the assumption that people will buy guns trying to get ahead of possible gun control laws.

The debate is a mess.  Talking about it is tough because we get bogged down in details, when what most people want is for action to be taken that will change the status quo.  For example, people will call for bans on assault rifles, not realizing that 'assault rifle' is not a well defined thing.  What differentiates a semi automatic rifle from another one that is classed as an assault rifle but which is pretty much equally dangerous?  Random details in the gun laws, that is the only practical difference.  Ban assault rifles and gun manufacturers will just make new guns that are outside the definition of assault rifle and you are back to where you started.

It is true that 'ban all assault rifles' is nearly worthless as policy, but the trick is that gun regulations in general aren't particularly effective as policy.  25% of Canadian households have guns, and 38% of American ones do, and yet the mass shooting rate in the US is somewhere between 4 and 6 times higher, depending on how you count it.  Most shootings don't include really powerful, large, military grade weapons either.  The difference is less in the number of guns or who owns them, and more in the culture.

You can't legislate away the toxic masculinity that goes along with gun fetishization.  You can't write a law that tells people that going out in a hail of bullets is pathetic rather than brave.  You can try to write laws to get the most dangerous of the guns out of people's hands, but those are only going to be modestly effective, especially in a country like the US where there are already more guns than people.

What is actually necessary is a change in thinking.

The US needs it especially, but the rest of the world could use a dose of venerating nonviolence.  The culture of honour that demands that you be able to defend yourself violently from attackers is incredibly destructive and it leads to all kinds of deaths, both deliberate and accidental.

We will get modest results at best from legislating away guns.  We should still do it, but that isn't actually the thing that needs changing most urgently.  The real culprit is the belief that having guns and using them makes you a big shot, powerful, worthy of respect.

"Ban assault rifles" is not useful policy.  This is true.  But the appropriate response to such a statement isn't "Bah, we can't define this correctly, so we shouldn't bother."

The appropriate response is "Guns are a problem, so I am going to get rid of my guns, and so should everyone else."

When people minds have changed, and guns are seen as the problem rather than the solution, then the laws will change with them pretty nearly effortlessly.

As to how to convince the gun enthusiasts to come around en masse and advocate for a gun free society... I don't have a lot of good answers for that.  I wish I did.

Showdown at the playground

This past Saturday I helped run the Fun Fair for Elli's school.  I was the volunteer coordinator, which means I was the one panicking when half of my volunteers either didn't show or showed up late.

On a related note, damn teenagers.  I had eight of them signed up to help for the whole day to get their volunteer hours to graduate high school.  They all confirmed they would be there from 8 until 2.  Now, being the realistic person that I am, I assumed they would be late.  An hour late, say.  At 8:30 the first teenager rolled in, a couple more arrived at 10:30, and several didn't get there until 12:30.  Then they acted like nothing was wrong, and said "Oh... but I didn't know when it started....."

Yes.  You did.  Because I got you to confirm specifically that you were going to be there from 8 until 2.  I have it in writing!  ARGHERKHGH.

Anyway, despite teenagers being incredibly unreliable we got great weather and had enough people to make the thing work and overall it was a successful endeavour.  The children got to spend a ton of time standing in lines in the hot sun for bouncy castles and fair food, and for some reason they liked this.

All that stuff was predictable.  Obviously scheduling volunteers for an event like this will be a disaster, and obviously teenagers will sleep in and be unreliable.

What surprised me is how close I got to getting in a fistfight.

Fistfights, for the record, are not usually a feature of elementary school Fun Fairs.  Although if they were we could rope them off and probably bring in a lot more people... <scribbles notes furiously>

During the Fair one of the people running the bouncy castles for us who worked for the bouncy castle company came up to me and asked for my help.  He was scared, he said, because one of the people at the Fair was getting aggressive and shouting at him.  He wanted me to help.

I wandered over to the man he pointed to, and instantly I realized that the man was kind of drunk.  Drunk Guy looked at me in a way that made it clear he knew I was there to fuss at him and he was immediately defensive.  He was sitting down so I crouched down to talk to him in the hopes of keeping him calm, but Drunk Guy quickly stood up and launched into a tirade about how terrible the bouncy castle person was.  The basic story came out that children were trying to leap over the edge of the bouncy castle, the employee told them to stop, and the Drunk Guy was angry about this.  He demanded of the bouncy castle person "Do you work here?" which is actually kind of a tricky question in this circumstance, and the bouncy castle worker walked away, which enraged Drunk Guy.

Drunk Guy then proceeded to yell at me about how terrible it was that someone walked away from him.  He yelled it at me several times to make sure that I knew that it was terrible.  He was obviously worried about being kicked out and had nothing useful to say in his defence.  He got really agitated and started demanding that I agree with him that the bouncy castle person was way out of line.

I wasn't at all sure what to do.  Obviously Drunk Guy was being a shithead and it was all his fault, but it wasn't clear to me how I should handle the situation.  Should I tell him he had to leave?  Would that result in him taking a swing at me?  Should I yell at him and hope to intimidate him into shutting up and leaving?

In this sort of situation size and intimidation are key pieces of information.  Drunk Guy was close to a foot shorter than me and lightly built, so barring him having combat training I rate to be able to toss him out physically without any trouble.  But obviously I don't want to actually fight anyone if I don't have to.  Being that much bigger than another man in a showdown tends to make them defensive and keyed up, but it does mean that they are afraid of actually throwing a punch.

I decided to do what I normally do in this sort of situation, which is to just stand there and listen but adamantly refuse to get excited or angry.  I let him spew his nonsense at me for awhile until he had repeated it all a couple of times and I never really engaged with it.  Eventually my refusal to escalate at all seemed to wear him out and he stopped telling his story and demanded to know if I was going to kick him out.  I hadn't even had a chance to answer that when he said "Hah, I knew you couldn't kick me out!" and turned and wandered away from me.

Something deep inside me *really* wanted to yell "Buddy, not only do I have the authority to kick you out, but if you don't do as I say I will toss your ass over the fence myself!"

But that probably isn't a good idea.  Deeply satisfying in the moment, makes a good story to tell the grandkids, but not a good idea nonetheless.

So I just stood there and watched him wander off.  I kept a really close eye on him for quite awhile, figuring that if he gave anybody any more trouble I would have to make a scene, but Drunk Guy seemed determined to behave himself after that.

I think what happened was he realized that he was in a terrible bind.  If he escalated the conflict with me he stood to 1.  Look like an asshole in front of hundreds of people.  2.  Lose a fight.  3.  Get arrested.  But he desperately didn't want to back down and apologize, so he settled for pretending that he won the argument.

Everybody knows that when you are in a staredown with someone as part of a yelling argument and you mumble quietly about how you won and walk away while the other guy glares at you... you lost.  But by fussing about how I couldn't kick him out anyway he clasped his tattered dignity to his chest and got out of there.  Shortly thereafter he left the Fair, so the problem went away on its own.

I am glad it was me that had to deal with that.  All the other people running the event were women of much more moderate size than me and I don't know what he would have done if they had shown up to chastise him.  It might have gone better potentially as maybe he got more aggressive because I am a man, but he might well have decided that he could just trample all over them and/or threaten them.  I am quite sure that I was the one who would be least upset about that sort of confrontation, in large part because of the lack of fear of what would happen if he decided to get physical, so I am glad I was there and that I was the one who got the call to deal with it.

I do wish I knew if I dealt with it correctly.  Hell, I don't even know if me going over to him at all was productive.  I know that I don't want to let people be assholes like that, especially because of the possibility that this had a racial bigotry element to it.  (The Bouncy castle worker was a person of colour, and Drunk Guy was white.)  However, it might well be that me going over to him was really what got him wound up, and I escalated just by being there.

My suspicion is that an intimidating stare combined with the stubborn refusal to get angry or excited was the right way to handle the situation, but again I don't know.  Sometimes people really want other people to share their emotions and they get angry when that doesn't happen.

Delivering a lecture on his drunkenness, his entitlement, or his aggressiveness would have been satisfying, but probably counterproductive.  And yet I really want him to understand why he fucked up... though likely that is impossible in the state he was in.

I can say for sure though that I am glad for the training I got in sales surrounding these situations.  The more times you have to practice coping with someone who is frothing mad while maintaining professionalism the easier it gets and the less scary it is.

Fitting in

Elli wants a phone.  She has wanted one for a couple years now, but the desire has reached a fever pitch.  The other day I asked her why exactly she wanted a phone and what she intended to do with it.  She couldn't give me much of an answer aside from 'play games' and I felt like that wasn't compelling.  Later on that night though she came out of her room crying and told me that she knew why she wanted a phone.

"All of my friends have phones and it feels like they are in a club that I am not invited to and it makes me feel sad and left out."

I tried to comfort her and I suppose I succeeded to some extent.  I felt sad for her because it sucks to be the one left out.  I remember everyone in my elementary school getting Club Monaco branded sweatshirts and mocking everyone who wore anything else to school.  The sweatshirts were cheaper than a phone, but they sure were useless aside from signalling that you were a conformist.  At least the phone has functionality!

I hate buying into peer pressure and it irks me greatly to fork out money just because other parents have done so.  I don't want to be on that treadmill, and I don't want Elli to think that she or Wendy and I should be that way.  You can't win.  But I also don't want Elli to spend her school days pushed to the margins either and I just don't know how to bridge that gap.

There are plenty of arguments against giving kids phones.  One of them is that my generation didn't have cell phones when we were kids, so why should they?  Of course our parents didn't have computers, and yet we were pretty happy to have them, primitive as they were.  My parents also grew up in an era when beating your children over minor infractions was considered a normal, even noble, thing to do.  I sure wouldn't want that.  Generally speaking I don't think that "it was different in years gone past" is a strong argument for anything.

Arguments for giving kids phones exist too.  Elli being able to text us does increase her safety and her utility.  I could get her to go to the store for me more easily and effectively!  She could change plans with friends and easily check in with us when doing so!

Thing is, I don't want to spend fifty bucks a month for her to have a phone, nor many hundreds of dollars to buy something new and fancy.

Probably the best compromise is to give her a phone for social purposes but try to dodge the cost.  A used phone that only has a text plan is still pretty great for her - it grants communication at a low cost, and can still do lots of nice phone things through wifi.

At ten years old Elli is going to be far more tech savvy than I was.  Also a lot worse at chopping wood and fixing things.  Which I guess sums up pretty much every new crop of kids for half a century, at least.  Nothing new there.

The long con, safety wise

I find I evaluate safety in really different ways than most people do.  This came up a few days ago at the cottage with my inlaws when Elli and her friend wanted to take their new little kid kayak out for a spin.  Their new toy is a plastic board, basically, that floats because it is full of air.  It barely stays above water with the two of them in it, but they have an absolute blast paddling it around together.

The conflict arose because my inlaws wanted the kids to stay within a few metres of the dock and I wasn't having anything to do with that.  They both had lifejackets on and I was in the adult kayak alongside them so it would be extraordinarily unlikely for anything bad to happen, but my inlaws were still very worried and keen to keep the kids on a leash.  Instead I led them merrily out into the middle of the lake where they propmtly capsized.

Now you might think that this was me losing the prediction war, but in fact it was exactly the result I wanted.  A clear day, good supervision, no real chance of problems - that is precisely the time when you should learn what capsizing is like and how to cope with it.  I was hoping they would tip, in fact, so that they could learn how to get themselves back on board.  They managed it just fine and off we went around the lake, playing chase games and races and looking at wildlife.  They capsized yet again, and again I got them back onto their kayak.

In the end they told everyone that the best part of their adventure was the capsizing part!

I think it comes down to time horizons.  I think that long term letting kids get out there and try things and test themselves is a positive contributor to safety.  When they can try things without real risk they should, so that when they are older they will have those experiences to draw on.  Safety isn't about avoiding all behaviour that has potential negative consequences, it is about knowing what the real risks are and making sure you mitigate them as much as possible.  Tipping within sight of home while an adult is around to bail you out isn't a real risk.  Never trying anything so you end up not knowing what the hell you are doing on the water is a much greater risk in the long term, and long term is what I care about.

Plus zipping about on the lake and watching my little one make the transition from being terrified of tipping and nervous about the kayak to laughing about tipping and comfortable with the kayak is a wonderful thing.  There is really something to be said for watching your kid make big strides like that, particularly when it happens over the course of only an hour and a half.

Our heroes

I have a problem with heroes sometimes.  Last week I watched Fast and Furious 6, and while I got the ridiculous driving and fighting scenes I expected, I also got a taste of heroism that left me troubled.  Part of the film involves the villain getting captured right after he murders 100 or so random people.  Then he reveals that his henchmen have captured the hero's sister, so the hero insists that the villain be set free, and given a terrible weapon that could kill millions.

Of course in the movie the villain drives away, is intercepted by the heroes, and eventually dies, saving the damsel in distress.  During the escape one of the heroes perishes, and so do ten or so other people.

To me this is the opposite of heroism.  The movie is fluff, but it tries to place the hero's devotion to his family as a good thing, and him as a rogue with a heart of gold.  To me heroic actions are not ones where the hero causes mass carnage to all kinds of random people to save one person the hero cares about - that is just being self centred.  Letting a mass murderer loose with a terrifying weapon so you can chase them down personally makes you part of the problem, not part of the solution.  A real hero puts themselves at risk to save others, rather than putting others at risk to save themselves.

Sure, Fast and Furious movies are hardly real life.  But they do speak to how people think, and the way that they portray heroes is disturbing when I think of things like the gun control debate that rages right now, and which reignites after every mass shooting event.

People make it clear that they want guns, and they want to have them so that they personally can defend their loved ones.  They aren't concerned with the fact that having a gun makes them far more likely to die, and that their loved ones are in much more danger with a gun around.  They aren't concerned about the collateral damage and the risk.  They just want to be the hero with the gun.

We would be far better served by heroes who accept that they shouldn't be the ones pulling the trigger.  By heroes who place the lives of other faceless people above their own when the risk to those other people is much greater.

Self sacrifice is heroic.  Sacrificing others is not.  I wish the heroes we got to see on the big screen and elsewhere more clearly followed that ideal.

Precise demands

The shooting in Orlando is a tragedy for so many reasons.  First off, there is the direct disaster of losing 49 people.  Then there are all the secondary problems, like the Latino and queer communities feeling terrified, unsafe, and hated after they were targeted by this attack.  It is a sad thing, but if you want to read about emotional responses to it you shouldn't be listening to me - there are a lot of people directly or indirectly affected who have lots of things to say.

I do have things to say about some of the fallout of these sorts of events.  There are always long discussions about guns, and specifically banning guns.  I get that people are angry about gun laws (on both sides) but when we talk about these things we need to separate feelings and policy.

Being angry at people who own big guns like the one used in the Orlando massacre is expected.  Wanting to get rid of those guns is normal, and useful in my opinion.  However, when we talk about how to do that we should be careful and precise about what we say so that our outrage has a real chance of accomplishing something.

Saying that we should ban 'assault weapons' is not useful.  As the linked article says, there isn't a definition of assault weapons.  Banning the specific model of gun used in the attack is equally ridiculous.  One problem with these debates is that people get fired up advocating for things that are vague enough to be totally impossible to implement, and that is an impediment to getting it done.

Banning all firearms?  Not likely, but at least specific.  Banning all weapons capable of firing more than 8 rounds before reloading?  Again, decently specific, though unlikely.  The trick is that we need to figure out what we actually want before we have debates about implementation.

The main thing in my mind is to separate emotional reactions from action items.  Hating big, rapid firing guns in the hands of civilians?  Yup, totally on board with that.  But that is a feeling, not a policy.  Totally worth having, worth sharing, but let's not have arguments about the specifics until we actually have specifics.  Far too often I see these debates get bogged down in people yelling about banning assault weapons and then other people yelling about how assault weapons aren't defined and them getting called gun nuts and things go absolutely nowhere useful.

You can see this problem in other situations too.  When the Liberal government was elected here last year they promised marijuana legalization.  Which is good, but there are all kinds of ways that could be done.  They could have a government monopoly on pot, sell it only at a few locations, raise the price to ludicrous levels, and still prosecute people getting pot other ways.  This would be a really crappy solution because most people would get their pot cheaply and illegally and we would have nearly as many problems as now.  On the other end of the spectrum they could just remove all restrictions whatsoever on pot, which is a really different situation entirely.  Personally I am hoping that they restrict pot sales to people 19 and over and require informative packaging but otherwise don't worry about it - much like tobacco is now.

Just as the two extreme cases of pot legalization are completely different, there are many gun restrictions that are completely different, and they have vastly different outcomes.

If we want changes to our system, it pays to be precise, to know what our terms mean, and to advocate for policies that might actually get passed and which will do the thing we want.  Our discussions will be more productive and those that might pass laws will be a lot more willing to take our positions seriously if we have put time and thought into them, whichever side they are on.

Everything is fine

A short time ago there was a murder within a few meters of my building.  In fact Elli and I wandered right past the site of it afterwards, noting the police cars but not otherwise being bothered.  Only afterwards did we find out that it wasn't the usual thing where the cops are hassling (or helping) some homeless person in an alley, but rather someone with known ties to organized crime being shot many times through a car window.

My part of town isn't exactly a crime ridden one, so this was unusual to say the least.  However, I saw no reason to react to it since it was obviously a wild outlier and nobody reasonable could assume that I was less safe just because this happened.  Just one more reason to avoid involvement in organized crime, as far as I am concerned.

But other people decided that action needs to be taken.  At our parent council meeting last night there were parent concerns brought forward about security, such as requests for more cameras, buzzer/intercom systems, and other security to attempt to make the school safer.

This sort of thing makes my blood boil.  For one, the incident had *nothing* to do with the school.  Unless the kids are players in the cocaine smuggling market or maybe importing illegal handguns then there is nothing at all to suggest that the school should be concerned.  Moreover one incident, while it does get people excited, it not at all useful for deciding on policy.  You don't wait until something local happens to figure out how to run a school, you decide based on large scale data.  Nothing has changed!

More than that though it bothers me to see security theatre that is utterly pointless.  Intercom systems that buzz in absolutely anybody aren't useful.  Do dangerous or violent people get turned away?  If not, then all you are doing is annoying people.  Slapping more locks on doors that consist of a single pane of glass makes things more frustrating for the people who want to be there, and does nothing to stop someone intent on violence.  If someone really wants to hurt people they will just smash the glass, or even wander into the school yard during recess and open fire on the entire school population... who can't escape *because the doors are locked*.

People even tried to sell more security on the grounds that things are more dangerous these days.  Which they aren't.  Violent crime is down, way down, and we are safer than ever.  Just because you can't avoid hearing about violence on social media is no reason to assume that there is actually more of it, particularly because there isn't.

I get it that other people aren't like me.  They hear about violence, they get scared, they want reassurance.  But we shouldn't suddenly expect everyone to start throwing away money and sacrificing time and freedom just to salve frayed nerves.  "I feel scared" is totally legit.  "I feel scared so big changes need to be made, even if they made no sense" is not.

If someone decides to attack children at school there is nothing useful we can do to stop them.

Nothing.

We can try to teach people empathy, we can try to treat people who have issues that might make them dangerous, and we can try to otherwise create a society where attacks against children are unthinkable, but no amount of physical security can work when we know that lots of random people need to be able to get to the children all the time.  Parents need to get in, deliveries need to be made, teachers and other staff have to be able to move about.  We simply can't build a wall that keeps out the bad people while leaving the good ones able to actually do their jobs and live their lives.

I ranted a bit about this at the meeting, trying to convince people that this was not a useful line of discussion.  For one, parent council isn't responsible for security, and we aren't the ones who can make the decisions.  For two, suddenly changing course on the basis of a frightening but totally unrelated event is terrible decision making.  Unfortunately I suspect I pissed people off but I doubt I changed a lot of minds.  If I was politically astute I probably would have insisted that somebody should do something about this, referred it to a committee, and quietly buried it in a month when everyone forgot about the original incident.

I am not interested in being political though, so I told everyone that kids are safer now than ever before, our current security measures are worse than useless, and the proposed increased measures would be more of the same.

This, I am sure, will not make me popular.

Dangerous mathematicians

There is a new story buzzing around the internet about a mathematician who was questioned at an airport because he was writing math equations on a plane.  Another passenger thought his equations were a sign of danger, reported him to the authorities, and then of course they decided to investigate.  I am trying to imagine this conversation:

I saw a man writing in a foreign language!

So?

But, it wasn't English.  He must be a terrorist!

So he was writing... in a language that isn't English.

Yes!

And from this you concluded he is a terrorist?

Yes!

At this point the conversation should have ended with "You are a racist fucknut, sit down and stop being an asshole."

Instead it ended with "We will question this man on the basis that he is writing in a non English language."

Of course it was just mathematical symbols, not a language, but that point matters not at all.  Obviously the fact that people view speaking a language that isn't English a sign of danger is wretchedly bigoted and xenophobic, but that fact that the people in charge decided this was just cause to disrupt everything for the entire plane is staggering.  Do they have a rule that if anyone thinks another person is suspicious for any reason the 'suspicious' person must be detained?

Just another sign of the ridiculous security theatre that has enveloped airplanes since 9/11.  We surrender all reason and thought and leap to 'terrorist!' without any consideration at all.  Terrorism kills less people than toddlers with guns, less people than falling television sets, less people than moose attacks.  When the excuse for paranoia is outright bigotry and nothing else it is even more embarrassing.

Rules of Engagement

Recently I have seen a bunch of Facebook posts by my friends doxxing Roosh.  Doxxing is the act of publishing home addresses and other identifying information online.  Roosh is also known as Daryush Valizadeh, aka the asshole behind the website Return of Kings which is a site about pickup artist technique, misogyny, and anti feminism.  Roosh is the worst.  He advocates for all kinds of disgusting regressive things including but not limited to not letting women vote, forced gender roles, and outright male supremacy.

But doxxing Roosh isn't the right path here.  I see this as similar to capital punishment, in that it can feel great to see the guilty punished savagely, but we must take care not to become evil in the process.  While the things Roosh has done are much worse than doxxing him, we should not be so quick to punish people in ways we would not tolerate in return.

Many of the people doxxing Roosh have been horrified at the way Gamergate has doxxed or threatened feminists.  But how can we criticize it when we engage in the same behaviour?  Can we in all honesty talk about how we must protect one person from a heinous act while gleefully inflicting the same on another?  I think this is terribly hypocritical and is definitely not the just course.

We can and should talk about how awful and wrong Roosh is.  When he tries to hold meetings we should talk to businesses he associates with and make them see how they should drop him immediately.  If he can be brought to justice for crimes committed, by all means we should pursue that vigorously.  We should, in short, do all the things we can to stem the flow of filth from this man, but we should not stoop to terror tactics and violence, because that is tacitly condoning those tactics as a legitimate way to deal with these disagreements.

Moreover I think that Roosh may even *want* this.  His message consistently tries to portray men as the victims, as the ones being punished by the matriarchy.  Doxxing him and threatening him just furthers this part of his agenda.  He has cancelled events on the basis of threats against him, citing safety concerns, and I think that is actually his plan.  Getting his followers to believe they are being oppressed cements his influence.

Roosh isn't likely to suffer from his address being published.  He cultivates this image of himself being under assault at all times.  But doxxing being a normal thing we do to people we don't like is something that will cause a lot of real suffering among other people.  We need to spread the idea that it isn't okay, at all.

You can't go about saying "Do as I say, not as I do." and expect to change the world for the better.  It is hypocritical, wrong, and, perhaps most tellingly, ineffective.

The smallest of victories

President Obama is pushing through some new gun regulations in an attempt to curb gun violence in the US.  While I am fairly sure this won't hurt, I think we can safely say that it won't help in any significant way.

The first issue is that the things Obama can do without support from the other parts of the government are really limited.  He can redefine some terms and expand the groups of people who need to perform background checks before selling guns, sure.  But how much is that going to matter?

How many people on this list of gun assaults / murders / tragedies would have been prevented by adding a background check?  Probably none.  This only means that a small subset of the population is banned from buying guns legally, but many of the people on that list are banned because of criminal behaviour, which often means that they aren't going to bother buying guns legally anyway.  The US already has so many guns and they are so widely available that this new initiative isn't even going to be noticeable.  *Some* gun sellers will have to give background checks, which will prevent *some* of their clients from buying guns.  Legally.  From those sellers.

Let's face the facts.  Gun violence declines when people believe that they shouldn't have guns around.  They need to be convinced that guns are dangerous, kill tons of innocent bystanders, and get pulled out in moments of anger that are swiftly regretted.  When the people believe this, gun control will follow, but it is that belief that is the ticket, not the laws.

Unfortunately the debate surrounding guns in the US has become so polarized that real change looks nearly impossible.  When every Republican candidate is worried about their pro gun score generated by the gun lobby, how can you expect the culture to shift?

A lot of pro gun activists correctly point out that gun control laws are limited in efficacy, especially if you live in a country where there is a basic right to own firearms in place.  The limitations that the government can place on that are hardly a barrier to anyone with a tiny amount of patience and planning.  What the US needs, and what the rest of the world needs to a lesser extent, is the belief that problems are not solved by shooting.  When the people believe that, the violence comes to a near stop.

I believe.

You should too.

Let them in

Here we are again.  Another firestorm of debate surrounding taking in refugees ignited by a terrorist action in a first world nation.  Considering the progression of the discussion is a maudlin sort of affair.

Religious extremists bomb Paris.  Awful.  Western social media explodes with coverage and people expressing solidarity with the French.  Which is good... but it shows how racist that caring is when we realize that recent terrorist attacks in countries that aren't white got no such response.

That doesn't mean that everyone who publicly supports France is being racist, but it shows us that in aggregate Western society pays attention to people based on race.  We share and care about terrorism in France in ways that we don't when the location is Beirut instead.  We should all take this as a lesson that we need to stop Othering people in countries that are culturally or racially different than our own.  We need to stop ignoring their suffering, and only paying attention when one of our own tribe is in trouble.

Far worse though are the people using this as a platform to complain about immigration and refugees.  That isn't systemic racism revealed by examining actions in aggregate, no, it is just straight out racism.  The refugees are fleeing IS.  They are running away from the exact same group that masterminded the murders in Paris.  They are looking for a new home, a place of safety away from the chaos in Syria.

I said it before and I will say it again.  We have a moral obligation to help refugees.  But we don't need to help them solely because of moral obligation as taking in refugees results in economic benefits for the country in question over time.  We are making the world a better place by helping desperate people in dire need, and in the end we will help ourselves too.

Anyone desperate to use this event as a platform to rail against refugees coming to their nation is just trying to cover their bigotry in the cloak of safety or frugality, both of which are ridiculous, trivially falsifiable arguments.  Maybe that bigotry is cultural imperialism, maybe it is racism, maybe it is religious discimination, or perhaps some combination of the three.  But in no way should we condone this nonsense and it should be called out for what it is.

The way to push back against IS isn't to toss more bombs at cities or to build walls against desperate civilians.  It is to welcome with open arms the people displaced by their violence, to help those still in harm's way with food and medicine, and to set an example of living well and lovingly.  There are many ways to stir up a potential bomber to fanatical levels, but "Go kill those people who help those in need of a home and who cure the sick and feed the hungry" doesn't generally do it, but "Go kill those people who bombed your hometown" sure does.

Fear the ponies

I found a lovely article today talking about the ridiculous fears we have about drugs.  The author talked about equasy, a habit that results in acute harm in 1 in 350 cases and which causes the release of endorphins and adrenalin into the system of humans who use it.  It had thousands of Britons in its grip, including many small children.

Of course equasy is horseriding, and despite the fact that it is vastly more dangerous than nearly any illegal drug no one bats an eye at people exposing children to it.

It is a similar comparison to one I often make where I talk about how people don't think anything at all of children being put in a car and driven long distances to a cottage but they freak out about children walking home alone or using an elevator by themselves.  The fact that the ride to the cottage is vastly more dangerous simply doesn't factor into it as their worry has nothing to do with actual measureable danger.

I am imagining a cop show where the plucky cop duo crash through the door of a ski resort, slam the manager down on the floor, and pack them away into a squad car before delivering some pithy one liner involving saving children from broken legs and frostbite.  (I tried to figure out something about frostbite and broken legs in jail, because that is how those one liners go, but I came up empty.  I guess I shouldn't try to write for TV.)

Canada is going to legalize pot, which is a great first step, but it is only the first step.  Pot has the most medicinal value and the least downsides of the illegal drugs so it is definitely the first candidate for legalization but we should not stop there.  We need to legalize all of it, regulate it, tax it, and focus on helping addicts instead of locking them up.  Failing to do so is the height of hypocrisy in light of how we look at other sources of danger.

For rather than against

I have been posting a lot of stuff about why people shouldn't vote for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives.  As was pointed out to me last week though, I should probably put some effort into explaining why you should vote for my favourite option, the NDP / Thomas Mulcair.

Our current system of voting is awful.  First past the post encourages strategic voting instead of people voting for what they truly want and means that success is more about having a party that has no competition in their political area than having a party the populace wants.  It should *not* be a crippling disadvantage to have multiple parties representing similar viewpoints!  The NDP is going to bring in proportional representation, which is one of the best voting systems.  There are other systems that are also fine, and although personally I would go for random ballot I think proportional representation is a great improvement over what we have.

The war on drugs is wasteful, pointless, and destructive.  The NDP is planning to pursue a strategy of decriminalizing and regulation of currently illegal drugs.  I personally don't think that the government should be stepping in to stop adults from taking recreational drugs at all and I am confident that legalizing them would bring great benefits.  However, that won't happen overnight and dialing back our terrible drug strategy towards an end goal of regulating drugs similarly to how we regulate alcohol and tobacco products now is important.

Repealing Bill C-51 is key to restoring some of our key freedoms, and the NDP will do that.  C-51 was passed in a haze of nationalism and misplaced fear of terrorism and it takes away privacy and due process from Canadians to fight a mythical foe.  We wouldn't give up our freedoms to fight television sets that tip over by accident or moose wandering onto the road, and both of those are an order of magnitude more threatening than terrorism.  C-51 needs to die, and the NDP will do that.

Canada is 95% immigrants, and our country is doing well.  There is every reason to think both from this obvious statement and every bit of research that has been conducted about immigration to developed nations that bringing in refugees and immigrants makes Canada stronger.  New people to our country tend to work hard and do so at the most difficult and brutal jobs.  They didn't cross half of the world because they were lazy and looking to sit around - the types of people that make that transition are by and large people who want something better and will bust their asses to make it happen.  The NDP is going to bring in more refugees from Syria which is both good from a humanitarian and growth standpoint, and they will also make it easier for us to accept more immigrants from all corners of the world.

Thomas Mulcair and the NDP have a plan to lower spending on pointless, sometimes counterproductive things like the drug war and the military and direct that spending to things like daycare and health.  They want to stop the racist terrorism fearmongering and the policies it has spawned that take away our freedoms and work to make Canada worse off.  The Canada I want to live in is one that gives people great freedom of expression, religion, and consumption, welcomes people of all types into our borders (which helps the people that are already here!) and makes sure that our voting system brings in the leaders that the people want.  The NDP want that Canada too, so you should vote for them to give them the chance to make that happen.

Angry man on the subway is angry

Today I was taking Elli on the subway and we had a strange and unsettling experience.  A man dragging a chair and a bunch of large handmade signs with him got on the subway and proceeded to scream and yell at everyone about how women should not wear tights or spandex because it showed off their monkeys.  (I have never heard monkey be used as a term for female genitalia before, but this guy was really insistent on that point.)  He then set up his chair right near Elli and I, put his signs on the floor, and proceeded to yell at the world in general about how everyone should be suspicious of the father of any child in tights or spandex as the father was likely sexually abusing his daughter.  This was especially an issue because Elli was wearing tights, and she was clearly aware that he was talking about her.... and me, by extension.

I really wasn't sure what to do.  If he had seemed physically aggressive or gone after Elli in any way directly with his rants I would have had to do something but I didn't feel like getting in his face to tell him he was wrong was a good idea with her there and I did not want to be chased away.  I don't know how he would have reacted in either case and I certainly had no interest in getting in a physical altercation especially with her right there potentially in harm's way.

If she hadn't been there my plan would have been to try to talk to the guy calmly, to discuss his opinions, and to attempt to convince him that he was wrong and that perhaps he should just stop shouting about it.  I don't have any good reason to think I could have changed his mind really, but maybe I could have shut down the situation and at least made him think twice about delivering such a rant in future.

What I ended up doing was just sitting there watching Elli to see how she reacted.  She didn't seem to get upset, but she did say quietly that she thought he was wrong and that she thought that everyone should be allowed to wear whatever they want.  I agreed with her, and told her that if that man has a problem with how she chooses to dress, it is his problem to deal with and not hers.  I also explained that while we could try to talk to him about how we saw the issue and why what he said was wrong I didn't think it would change his mind and he might not react well.  I think it is important that people step in to try to personally change minds when possible, but no one is ever obligated to do so, and I tried to make sure she understood that.

I think I was successful in passing on my values, but it isn't entirely clear to me.  She reacted really well though and made the right choice of disagreeing without getting herself in a situation that could have been dangerous.  It is difficult to watch someone be such a shitbag like that to her and everyone else on the train and not do anything about it but I would feel far worse if I ended up with her in real danger due to me tossing a match into an explosive situation.

This is the sort of stuff that parenting books and advice really don't teach you, and I think it is these sorts of difficult snap decisions that really come back to haunt you later.  I want to protect her from much of the awful in the world and I know tonight I will dream of all the devastating critiques I could have delivered with a withering stare.  However, in the real world I can't even keep her safe from a random angry man on the subway.