Open Thread Wednesday

By on June 19, 2018 11:17 pm in open thread

What’s on your mind? Comment away!

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  • aeshtron

    Hesitant to post about this hot-button issue but here goes — identifying details have been left out and my understaning of some of the details may be incorrect. Today, Wednesday June 20th at about 1:00pm on Pier 2 in Brooklyn Bridge Park a teenager punched a local elementary school student near the basketball courts for no apparent reason. Fortunately, the elementary student seems not to be badly injured but did have to go home early. Apparently the teenager missed the punch, hit the student’s chest and is a weakling coward. Police were quickly on the incident and the offending individual was taken away in the back of a police vehicle. Sad : (

  • aaa

    The solution remains the same as it’s always been: Remove the basketball courts so Pier 2 can be safe again.

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7nPOzGeyaw Arch Stanton

    Deprive the vast majority of peaceful athletes of the basketball courts, because the occasional actions of a few miscreants? What a ridiculous, chicken$hit idea.

  • meschwar

    Look. Any time people (ESPECIALLY TEENAGERS) gather, there’s always the chance of violence. It sounds like one punch was thrown, and the appropriate party will face punishment. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

  • Jorale-man

    Looks like a giant chunk of the Borough Hall station’s ceiling fell onto the platform today. #infrastructure
    http://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/transit/2018/06/20/debris-falls-at-borough-hall-subway-station-in-brooklyn-nyc

  • TeddyNYC

    It’s a good thing the platform wasn’t jammed with people. I looked up at that ceiling a couple of times and didn’t like what I saw. Actually, I could say that with other stations too.

  • DIBS

    Cuomo is focused on far more important things now than transit system infrastructure.

  • Jorale-man

    Well, you have to wonder why he hired Andy Byford and made this big production of rebuilding the subway system if the State (and to some extent, the city) can’t follow through on funding it. Sadly, I suspect many commuters see this and shrug it off as another day on mass transit.

  • Roberto Gautier
  • Roberto Gautier
  • Andrew Porter

    Gee, all the many hundreds of science fiction conventions I’ve attended over the decades have never been marred by violence. Guess I wasn’t hanging out with the right crowd.

    Bunch of rowdy teenagers at the 1939 World Science Fiction Convention, in NYC:
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d4e9d0cd479ba7fd45435a388dd5025cd0a19b71a035178e965d7c3db0910e13.jpg

  • Andrew Porter

    In case you missed it the first time, here’s my 1907 postcard showing the station when newly opened, in pristine condition:
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/be34c5947a3c29ea96c43ef3d57a189bbb1691624528dc3c5d00112d81fa071f.jpg

  • Andrew Porter

    Another of those old photos I’ve taken of BH, showing how things haven’t changed very much in 40 years. Film shoot at Fulton Ferry, before the fire boat station became the ice cream place:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/96e1e56765436267a2be63b4fbf364ea81e739a92936faeb72d171a261b65243.jpg

  • MaggieO

    i’m thinking you’re trying to make a joke, but given the racial dynamics that are implied in the complaint your comment and the photo are incredibly tone deaf.

  • Teresa

    Not to mention yet another copyright violation.

  • meschwar

    Think there are no problems at sci fi cons? Next time you’re at one, try asking a woman or POC there about their experiences at cons. Get back to me.

  • Andrew Porter

    I was sent this photograph by Forrest J. Ackerman, who has been dead for a couple of decades.

  • Andrew Porter

    Racial dynamics? Show me where race was mentioned in Meschwar’s post.

    I think you’re the one with the problem!

  • Teresa

    That doesn’t change the copyright implications.

  • Andrew Porter

    Yes, there have been problems at recent conventions (many of which are for comics, cosplay, not the ones I go to), but there are Codes of Conduct which address these problems.

    See this one for this year’s World SF Convention:

    http://tinyurl.com/ybrt2e9n

  • Andrew Porter
  • Teresa

    Yes, I’m concerned with the rights of photographers and with making sure that this site follows copyright guidelines. I’d like to think you’re smart enough to figure this out, but just in case, here you go. And I will henceforth recommend that your posts that violate copyright be deleted.

    “Copyright infringement, on the other hand, is illegal and carries with it potentially significant consequences. Plagiarism can be avoided by providing attribution and giving credit, copyright infringement cannot. “

    “LifeHacker goes on – which should make you, as a photographer cheer – to say that ‘copyright law gives the copyright holder the right to decide where their work is published and maybe they don’t want their work on your site, in your book, included in your newsletter or distributed to your social media network.'”

    https://thelawtog.com/fair-use-copyright-what-this-means-for-your-photographyfair-use-and-what-it-means-for-your-photography/

  • MaggieO

    you’re right, race wasn’t mentioned. and you’re right that i’ve made a problemmatic assumption about what happened. but please don’t pretend to be ignorant of the ongoing debate (as indicated by poster “aaa” below) about the basketball courts attracting an undesirable element. It was in that context that i read the post, noting in particular that the kid who got punched was described as “local” and the one who did the punching was not.

  • Andrew Porter

    The photographer is dead. All the people in the photo are dead. The person who sent me the photo is dead—and they gave me permission to use it before they died.

    This has been reproduced numerous other places, and no one has ever complained to me.

    Except you.

  • Andrew Porter

    However, I did not reply to aaa (probably not their real name). So I did not address their comment which, yes, is inflammatory.

    The current NYPD presence in response to previous problems has apparently solved that problem.

  • MaggieO

    I’m glad you’re not continuing to pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m accusing you merely of making a tone-deaf joke in response to a post that touches on a well-known neighborhood issue that has a racial component. here’s a simplification of how this played in my head:
    OP: “black teenager from outside the neighborhood punches innocent white child!”
    Comment1: “teens do stupid and sometimes violent stuff, glad it was dealt with properly”
    Your Response: “in my day, none of the kids at sci fi conventions ever got violent ::picture of a bunch of white guys::”
    your inability to acknowledge that your comment was tone-deaf confirms for me that it was innocently tone-deaf, rather than maliciously pointed.

  • Teresa

    I’m not interested in talking about other websites, or who else is or isn’t interested in copyright. Do the right thing.

  • Andrew Porter

    I think I am doing the right thing, actually.

    And I ran articles and a column about copyright and such by the then-president of the Society of Illustrators, so I think I’m in the right on this one.

  • Andrew Porter

    Wow, talk about putting words in my mouth. BTW, we in the SF field never ever use the horrible word “sci-fi”. See:

    http://tinyurl.com/y7d6nd7e

  • AEB

    Could aaa possibly be…is it reasonable to surmise…that it’s Mr. Smith, who always seems to duck into conversations like this with bigoted commentary?

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