Tyreek Hill gets (almost) arrested

I hadn't planned on talking about this situation, but it has made an extended news cycle, and has some aspects that are worth noting. 

The story is that Tyreek Hill, who plays for the Dolphins football team, was on his way to the game in his fancy sports car.  He was pulled over for speeding which we later learned was on the Turnpike, before he exited onto the roads around the stadium; we are told he was going 55 in a 40 MPH zone and they pulled him over what seems to be much later. 

The police exerted their authority over him, and pulled him out of the car, handcuffed him, and threw him onto the ground. All while (a) they were aware who he was and (b) he was cooperating reasonably well.  I've attached the body cam from one of the officers below so you can see how this played out.

Here's the thing that gets me: sometimes you'll see a video of someone else getting kind treatment by police, and no force is used. 

What's the difference you may ask?

In my humble opinion, this is often about race.  The pleasant white woman is helped along.  The black man in the expensive car gets roughed up because he wasn't OVERLY nice; he was merely acting just like anyone else might.

And therein is the summary of what the Black Lives Matter movement was/is about: being treated the same as everyone else.  Put away the rhetoric and the dumb politics of it and just think about it as being fair.

We can do better.  Having the authority to pull someone out of his car for speeding (but being decent), vs actually doing it, is something we need to discuss.

Maybe this story is the next chapter in that conversation.  We can hope, anyway.

And that, maybe, would have been the end of the story, except another detail emerged later.  A second player (Calais Campbell)  was on his way into the stadium, when he saw what was happening and pulled over “to help.”  The police took exception to that, and restrained him from getting involved. I have heard conflicting reports about whether he was handcuffed or not, but he was viewed as a threat. 

As the situation escalated because of the police action(!), the police made the decision to arrest both Hill and Campbell, and haul them off to jail. 

And that’s when the Dolphins organization stepped in. Remember that this was at the stadium, which the dolphins own. And the dolphins pay for the police to be there (at nearly every stadium, the police are paid overtime to be there as a kind of perk of the job, so essentially they are private security for the team). 

The dolphins learned about the situation, and asked the police to release the players so they could play in the game. 

This raises a whole bunch of other questions for me, and should concern all of us. The police overreached. But then relented because they were asked to by a sports team? Sigh 

Oh and one last thing:  the guy who first posted video of the incident on social media - the video was the impetus for the national attention - was interviewed.  In short, he was only concerned with his football star being able to play in the game! Which is another part of the problem...how about concern for the guy and how policing works?

Tyreek: https://youtu.be/ba9x9a3EGLI?si=A0SH8z6nYNwiBp04

Other case: https://youtu.be/iCrb01JVHCE

Hill made light of the situation on a touchdown celebration. 

Breaking down plastics

Here's an interesting bit of study into using iron trichloride along with sunlight to break down plastics. 

So far this inorganic and seemingly non toxic compound has shown some great success in achieving the goal. 

Science for the win!

https://interestingengineering.com/science/tough-plastics-sustainably-broken-down

Civilian space walks!

SpaceX continues to do some surprising things.  They are, of course, in the money making business, with an eye on the future. They have starlink satellites that provide service. They launch satellites for companies, nations, and even small groups of people.  And they have contracts with NASA to go beyond that.

And sometimes, they act like their competitors, and launch people into space for civilian space travel.  

This past week, they launched a Polaris mission with a few paying customers, and they gave one of them - and a SpaceX engineer - an opportunity to open the Dragon capsule and step out into space.

On September 12th, they successfully did just that. Each of them was in space for a few minutes.  It was remarkably cool.  But more than that, SpaceX has been working on a lighter weight space suit that allows for more mobility than what NASA has ever had.  And on this space walk, they got to test them out.

In effect, someone was paying to field test all of their R&D work.

This

Eloquently put. 😍

Steve Jobs told Bob Iger to plan for his retirement … back in 2011

This is an interesting tale. Steve Jobs told

Bob Iger to retire and enjoy life. 

And 13 years later, we're still pretty much where we were. Iger is still in charge and there's still no succession plan at Disney. 

https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-bob-iger-not-to-stay-too-long-disney-2024-9

Russian influence

One of the more intriguing stories this election season has to do with Russian influence.  

At the end of the week, the DOJ announced charges against a group of US-based, and fairly prominent bloggers/podcasters/youtubers/influencers.  They are charged with accepting money from Russian agents to produce content that is, essentially, Russian propaganda.  

Of course, there was some content that was specific to the Ukraine war. But there also was a large amount of MAGA-related content.

The influencers all are pleading ignorance.  They didn't know where the money was coming from, and that stories were merely suggested, and it was more about the quantity of stories.  They're innocent!

But as you dig deeper, you see that the money was significant.  They claim its not out of the ordinary for what they take in from advertisers and whatnot, but that is simply not true; it was more than they'd make in several years of doing their work. And it also turns out that the same general stories were told by each of them, effectively nullifying their claim that stories were just suggestions

Of course the orange menace had to chime in on this.  He railed about it being DOJ overreach, and people were falsely accused,  Then added that Putin really wants "Comrade Kamala" elected and not him, so it can't possibly be true! 

Yeah, this is where we are...