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by i80and 166 days ago
A decade ago I put this stance into my LinkedIn profile tag line, and was a little surprised how many engineers reached out to praise that decision.

I think it's rapidly, finally, entering the realm of political viability.

2 comments

All it took was a white mother (and US citizen) getting shot in broad daylight. As much as I hate to admit it, a large enough segment of the population needed something blatant like this to care.
It's not flattering to the US that the mother who was murdered needed specifically to be white for people to care.
Don't worry, it's worse. Half the country has branded her as a terrorist, and her killer as a hero.
> It's not flattering to the US

There's such a long list of things one could say that about.

In this instance the "representation matters" thought process seems to bear out.

Folks talk about aspiring to role models who look like them. People also react strongly when this sort of thing happens to someone who looks like them.

The problem is that you can slice representation every which way. It could be "I only identify with 6'3" males who live in Idaho and like trains", or it could be "I identify with humans".

The fact that US culture chooses to identify with people of the same colour is telling, though I don't know, maybe that's a human thing and my country is too homogeneous for me to think otherwise.

It's not. I was a "90 day fiance" immigrant (the concept, not the show).

We had a sincere relationship, but we both agreed that our marriage, while genuine, was earlier than it would have otherwise been other than logistics of an trans-Pacific romance.

We stayed together 5 years, then separated/divorced, amicably. In the midst of all that I missed a USCIS filing date.

I was out of status briefly, but also in a situation where I was ostensibly entitled to stay (USCIS would have to demonstrate a belief that the marriage was under false pretences), so I hired an immigration attorney to straighten things out (which basically involved filing paperwork that I needed to file, and a letter from her and one from me explaining why I missed it.

She did make the comment to me during all that though that I had no cause for concern above and beyond that, quote:

"I hate that I can say it, but the reality is you're both 'the right color' and a high-earning male. USCIS has you so far down the list of their priorities for reconciliation you could stay here decades before them calling you to account".

Most K1 applications are approved, most are female, most are not white. I doubt your case would have been any different had you not been a "'the right color' and a high-earning male".
She wasn't referring to K1 visas specifically, she was referring to USCIS and how they'd prioritize dealing with enforcement actions against people in non-compliance with their visa obligations.

And I'd suspect as an immigration attorney, she likely had first-hand experience of same.

The K1 approvel rate seems a decent proxy instead of 1 lawyer's opinion. Acceptance went up during V1 of the current administation. https://visagrader.com/visa-approvals-and-refusals/K1

Jamaica, not known for having lots of people with pale skin, has basicaly same approval rate as Germany. https://visagrader.com/visa-approvals-and-refusals/K1/jamaic...

https://visagrader.com/visa-approvals-and-refusals/K1/german...

Would be unlikely that the USCIS radically changed their approach when dealing with paperwork messups for populations if these different countries while apparently approving applications at basically the same exact rate.

I wonder what conclusion the FBI's investigation will come to because it sure doesn't look good for ICE to me. Best case, those two agents get sentenced to life for murder but the damage is done and a life taken. If the officer fired two shots and she died at the scene then it seems reasonable to me the bullets didn't go through the windshield and, instead, went through her rolled down window while she was turning away from the officer. If that's the case then I'm predicting riots everywhere over the next couple weeks.

// i know pretty much zero details of what happened and it will be impossible to get any actual facts that are not politicized for weeks

Zero chance they will get life. Maybe they will get promoted. https://rollcall.com/2023/08/24/capitol-police-promotes-offi...
I don't want to be a doomer, but I think the FBI is highly unlikely to do an honest good-faith investigation here.
Given that this administration appointed the head of the FBI due to his loyalty to Trump, the most likely reason they took over the investigation is to shield ICE from any accountability.
The US FBI now seems to act much as the National Enquirer does, as a "catch and kill" tool.

In the case of the Enquirer, this was through buying exclusive rights to inconvenient stories and refusing to publish them. In the case of the FBI, it's by claiming exclusive jurisdiction over incidents and quashing or impeding independent investigation.

See "Former National Enquirer boss breaks his silence on 'catch and kill' as lead witness in Trump trial" (2024) <https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/23/media/national-enquirer-catch...> and <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch_and_kill> (concept) and <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch_and_Kill> (Ronan Farrow book).

Looking at the video in the link GP provided, it is obvious first shot went through the windshield. The others went through the side window.
This administration’s FBI is run by podcasters and completely incompetent.
Not incompetent, but operating as intended: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46554438>
The windshield shows a single bullet entry.
Trump watched the video in front of a bunch of reporters and said "meh". Nothing will change for 3.5 years minimum. 40% of the country thinks he's doing great, and a greater percentage of those 40% vote vs the people who vote from the other group.
If midterms go well, and the special elections last November suggest they may, then at least we may be able to blunt some of the harm.

But the underlying point that about 35% of Americans just fundamentally do not seem to value civilization is a problem that has to be worked around.

The only way elections will change anything is if the Senate flips to 2/3 control by the Dems. I doubt enough GOP will vote to convict to reach 2/3. So even if a 51% House impeaches, it will go no further. We've already seen this scenario. Twice.
You have it backwards. Police shooting a white person will get less attention than if they were not white.
Odd. I thought she was a legal observer. It is funny how quickly the narratives changed given how little traction was gained on 'observer' status.
most people are more than one thing.
Are they now? If so, where is the carefully nuance bio of Good? Why do I get choreographed and weirdly aligned responses from various online profiles ( my 'observer' note )? The answer is obvious: there are points to be made by strategically aligning her verious 'more than one thing' portions of persona to match a narrative, which, but I repeat myself, is very, very tiring.
> where is the carefully nuance bio of Good?

I don't know, I don't think it's normally assumed that when someone dies (or more to the point is murdered) in a very public way we all immediately deserve to know every thing about them.

I don't know what you're talking about really. What I mean to say is the rest of this comment is incoherent to me.

BS. And I do not say this lightly. When it fits a given narrative, media has no issue or qualms in publishing anything and everything related to a given person they find online. It is only when they selectively release it over days that you just know how well the person does not fit the script, as it were.
She can be both, she will become lots of things over time depending on agenda. Her background was decidedly under-reported, for a few justifications, including preventing a preferred audience from sympathizing with the victim.

Not sure what your point is other than volume of information available increases over time.

You do have a point. My point is that we are constantly a part of informational warfare and it is getting old. I would love nothing more than people to look at it all with a cold eye and say something akin to: oh, I recognize this pattern. Instead, I attempts of various power centers to frame it in a way beneficial to them. Some of us are rather tired of this.
But why is your own framing exempt from the analysis? The idea that you should see a murder and "look at it all with a cold eye", to try and dispassionately understand whether it might have been justified, is a non-obvious idea that's quite advantageous to power centers that expect to be shooting people frequently.
Am I suggesting that you do not do it? Hardly. That said, I am simply not buying my newly assigned martyr.
its not some pattern of abuse by shady actors manipulating opinions youre noticing, its voting algorithm and attention economy itself.

new ideas are constantly being published, and popular ones gain momentum by being shown to more people. as the idea gets saturated, the popularity gets overshadowed by the time based downranking.

if the idea is still popular though, in this case that ice murdered some woman as part of their shock and awe campaign, variations are going to show up such as "legal observer" and "mother of a three year old"

So you did it when Obama ( and the current ICE management ) were handling deportations?
He did say 10 years ago so...