sus
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@suspendedreason have you read any Giddens, Blair’s favourite on agency?
Never, tell me more!
You mean Tony Blair, the PM across the pond?
@suspendedreason have you read any Giddens, Blair’s favourite on agency?
not just The Wire. all of Simon's - along with his network of collaborators - projects are about this, at varying levels of directnessThe Wire is all about how individuals within a structured system can't really make free, moral decisions without paying for it
one of the most bitter ironies of crime stats btw is that Americans don't believe them
by any statistical measure, violent crime in the U.S. has dropped precipitously in the last 30 years but Americans mostly believe the exact opposite
i.e. Many Americans are convinced crime is rising in the U.S. - they're wrong
everything he and his team do is is extremely high quality - intensively researched, every care given to detail and realism, etcI enjoyed The Wire and Generation Kill.
looking forward to your posts 3 hours from now in that case. awaiting the revelation.
the most powerful example on The Wire I think, even more than the crime stats, is public schools in Season 4
the 00s being the era of No Child Left Behind, which epitomizes Goodhart's Law
incentivizing every school and teacher to teach to the test over everything else, with exactly the results you'd expect - gaming the numbers to match unrealistic goals, etc - just like the crime stats
thinking more or less continued by Obama admin's educational policy, to my understanding
as that article mentions despite Chicago having become notorious for violent crime, nearly all of it is concentrated in a small % of the city
I live in one of those neighborhoods and the contrasts are fucking surreal
I don't even live too deep into the hood and it's still all dudes on street corners, the cops are almost literally a force of military occupation, etc
but you go a mile east or north and it's totally gentrified, fancy restaurants etc, yuppies commuting (pre-pandemic) to DT from converted condos, etc
I work downtown myself - only about five miles away, feels like a different galaxy
predictably, the people most likely to be hella nervous about violent crime live in neighborhoods where it isn't remotely an issue
while people who live here mostly just get on with living and take sensible precautions
I knew that I think. it's right up his cerebral alley. and he's not wrong, The Wire is a truly great work, especially if you excise S5.Obama was a big fan of Simon