Baby Boomers vs. Generation X vs. Millennials

xps sorry if that sound grumpy or aggressive ENBB. I feel quite defensive about it tbh - because I loved it so much, because I hate what's happening to the liberal arts in this shitty country and how education is becoming purely about how we can make students into tiny profit machines. Which is to say, unfortunately, you're broadly right.

I'm on the 'map, don't become a cop' side I think. Retrain as a teacher. You'd be awesome.

Clearly, law enforcement could be recruiting much, much better people. On the other hand, much, much better people are typically not drawn to law enforcement as a career. I say "typically," with no offense intended to map; however, I wonder if even the people who aren't already disposed to being authoritarian bully boys are eventually ground down by the nature and structure of policing.

Xpost - not at all, I totally understand. It's incredibly disappointing.

I haven't interacted with many cops on a personal level but when working with Black and Latino cops working as off-duty security - people who didn't seem law and order reactionary bullies by nature - it seemed like the camaraderie of the group does much of the work in making authoritarianism more acceptable. The other cops are your teammates, your bosses are constantly making you feel like victims and potentially at risk 24/7 from people outside the team.

When I applied for colleges, I was hoping for maximum financial aid and possibly scholarships - because of that, I was going to pay roughly the same wherever I went, so applied to the places that attracted me most. If that sounds like B’s situation, she could do the same?

Friends’ burgeoning filmmaker kid is going to my old college which now has an amazing film department 18yo me might’ve gravitated towards (or might’ve been terrified of having to compete with nepos to get a place on the course). My college educated plenty of successful filmmakers/showrunners before the programme became what it is today, many of whom were NOT producers’ children or wealthy to begin with. There are so many applied careers that originate in film studies; not everyone winds up a director because there are thousands of other jobs a film grad can do.

You can always pivot from a film degree to making horny vampire music like Boy Harsher.

Or you can become an editor, cinematographer, casting director, prop maker… anything, really.

Best boy

I studied english and I have had a lucrative enough 20+ year career in tech so I dismiss these "don't study english" canards. in fact I'd gather that it may be harder to land a job with a CS degree right now because you are competing against people with deeper career experience, a trillion other recent CS grads, and the desire to ship those jobs out of the US to keep costs low. people should study what they enjoy in college, I think.

fwiw, i was once in a lesbian group where one of the ladies was a cop. she said she got a _lot_ of hatred from queer people. personally i'm more opposed to the oppressive institution of policing than every single individual cop, but apparently a lot of gay people treat gay cops like shit.

my cousin is a cop and I'm very embarrassed about it. shit happens I guess

i'm more opposed to the oppressive institution of policing than every single individual cop

Agree but the way the oppressive institution exerts its power is through individuals so in real life it's pretty impossible to keep those separate.

The only way the institution really changes is if a wider range of people apply to become cops, and I guess you can take the pessimistic view that it doesn't matter, anyone who puts on the uniform becomes absorbed into the unchangeable institution, but I do not take the pessimistic view.

Or you can become an editor, cinematographer, casting director, prop maker… anything, really.

^^This. I just got back from a memorial for a mentor of mine who founded a film program at the CC I used to work at. It's highly likely that a substantial portion of any crew working productions in Houston in the past 20 years, from studio features and series down to commercials airing global to local, were trained in his academy.

Not to mention all the camera and sound people who work sporting events, big concerts, megachurches etc.

pretty well documented that 'good' reform-minded cops (in the NYPD, at the very least) are subject to the whole suppressive person package, up to and including 'accidental' death

reforming a gang from the bottom up is practically impossible

Xp akm did you read D Bond-Graham’s book about the Oakland PD? … I do not doubt there are worse police departments in the US, but ours (OPD) is historically awful and incompetent, which might make it worse than LAPD as a potential employee? Idk…

Forensic accounting usually requires an accounting degree or at least a lot of coursework in accounting from when I looked into it … there were multiple levels of prerequisites before they’d let you take the forensic accounting class ime

i think we need more english grads as cops and more cops as computer programmers and fewer philosophers as baristas

A journeyman’s ticket in a trade and 10 years’ experience on the jobsite before you’re allowed to start studying philosophy.

And that’s another part of the whole cost of education issue! Degree inflation. Probably millennial and younger are most effected, but genx and even boomers have been too… older people who change careers or move to other states, in some cases.

Like, getting needs based scholarships and grants for undergrad was possible (not saying everyone got all they needed) … tax credits are also fairly significant… but the increasing requirements of graduate degrees (Masters, MFA, MBA etc) for employment combined with next to no grant/scholarship assistance, only loans… I feel like a lot of recent labor organizing, specifically in the arts and academia, is spurred by all the debt the workers incurred to get these jobs that do little to repay the debt

I used to work at a museum for $18/hr… but I had no student debt. Someone who has $100k of student debt and is working for those wages (increased a bit since i left)… fuck yea they’re going to unionize and demand better pay

i think i am gonna keep talking about the police thing but i'm gonna do it over here:

Abolish the Police