Never thought about it that way before

[keystricken]

Analog means smooth, continuous, infinitely variable. Digital means discrete, discontinuous, changing only in jumps. A tape measure is analog; coins are digital. A ramp is analog; stairs are digital. [...] A violin is analog; a piano is digital because of the keys, though analog because of the infinite variations in timing and impact. Texts are

Comments

I like you

[ellybug]

and your thoughts, and you.
also, those are our dishes!
Sango nova black, I believe.

Thank you!

[keystricken]

The bottom of my cup says you're right!

My apartment was furnished with tiny brown teacups, and I was always engineering weird solutions to let me consume more than six ounces of tea at once. This got old very fast. Then I found these overcompensating monsters and life has been much better.

[linettasky]

Kitty?

[keystricken]

Er. I may have already sent an email to the Humane Society, asking if I'm eligible.

[qousqous]

We all know your hat, but surely you cannot mention it so prominently without posting a fabulous picture of yourself wearing it, can you?

[keystricken]

Let me see what I can do.

[freyley]

What was the answer on posse comitatus? It seems like it should cover militarization of police but it clearly doesn't.

Also: I read "a class in intel analysis" as "a class, but I'm governmentally forbidden from telling you about what."

(+1 kitten FTW)

[keystricken]

Mr. SecArmy was a very pleasant man, but he wasn't so good at, you know, actually answering questions. I wish we could have put a couple (okay, I mean six+) excellent beers into him first.

Posse comitatus sounds big and intimidating, and it's right there in the Constitution, but usually these sort of talks degrade into highly technical "who's picking up the check?" wonkeries. The governer can wield Nat'l Guard troops in a disaster, no problem. He can even make them surrogate police. But when the federal government gets involved, then things get all Title 10 because it likes to be at the handle end of a clear command chain. Um. Understandably.

But posse comitatus isn't as ironclad as people seem to think. The Coast Guard gets a free pass, for some reason. Riots and insurrections are another exception. And if you can't find the police, like say they were eaten by a giant hurricane in Louisiana, you can basically do whatever you want

[freyley]

When we talk about the militarization of police, we have to talk about the difference between the military and the police. Which has gotten a lot fuzzier lately (thus militarization of the police and also peacekeeping by the military), but long ago you could boil it down this way

[keystricken]

Well, all right, but you're using experiential criteria (we experience the police as the military) rather than the legal stuff. The state has a monopoly on force; theoretically it can use any weapons it likes. I think it's mainly that our trust that response will be constrained and proportional decreases with the size of the weapon used. We don't seem to care as much when the weapons are overseas.

I suspect that a large portion of our citizenry has a much more visceral knowledge of police than you or I. Once you start feeling like a target, this "legal action" backdrop of society probably becomes a lot more distant and abstract. In other words, their experience may already coincide with your definition of martial law.

There's that Monica journal entry I was pining for.

[lindseykuper]

I knew you'd be back.

Re: There's that Monica journal entry I was pining for.

[keystricken]

(blush) Thank you.

Re: There's that Monica journal entry I was pining for.

[freyley]

+1