Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2020 August 26

= August 26 =

Police killings increase in the US
It appears that police killings and police brutality increased drastically in the 2010s compared to other years. Lists of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States says that before 2009 (i.e. between the 19th century and up to 2008) there were a total of 248 killings, but then in 2010 alone there were 299 and such three-digit numbers have been persisting in each subsequent year, causing the emergence of Black Lives Matter, among other things. I understand the lists may not be exhaustive, but still this is staggering statistics. What caused such increase? Thanks. 212.180.235.46 (talk) 19:07, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The numbers listed only count the number of entries in the Wikipedia list; they do not pretend to count up the actual killings. Thus, whatever the numbers actually were in reality, the number of entries on Wikipedia have to be understood in the context of: Wikipedia growing and becoming more popular; such killings perhaps being more publicized; a growing population; and other such confounding factors. BirdValiant (talk) 19:44, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, well put. Are there any reliable statistics on the subject that would go back far enough to allow a meaningful comparison? --184.146.89.141 (talk) 19:52, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You might find possibly relevant links in our Crime in the United States article. It has been my understanding that compiling certain US crime statistics has been actively blocked, financially and/or legally, by certain elements in American government, and I had heard that The Guardian newspaper (or some associate of it) maintains such statistics from outside the country, but being from and in a different continent myself, I am not clear on the details. Perhaps others can enlarge on this. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.123.24.187 (talk) 22:37, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It's a difference in reporting vs. occurring. Just like if we stopped testing for Covid the disease would not go away, the lack of specific cases on a Wikipedia list is a symptom of the fact that before the internet, there was no convenient way to track killings by police officers.  Most modern databases of these things are tracked by data scraping methods that go through local news sources and public records semi-automatically; prior to about 2000 this sort of thing would have been literally impossible and there has never been a systematic attempt to track police killings by any official government agency.  Heck, in the U.S., prior to 2018 it was illegal to use federal money to track gun deaths in general, aside from police shootings.  See Dickey Amendment.  While the language made it possible to do research so long as the research was not used for advocacy, in reality any attempt at researching the number of gun deaths using federal funds was declined due to the perception that the mere gathering of such data only served the purpose of advocacy.  In 2018, clarifying language was enacted in an unrelated law that explicitly allowed limited gathering and publishing of statistics.  -- Jayron 32 12:17, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You might want to look at List of police reforms related to the George Floyd protests. deisenbe (talk) 15:04, 27 August 2020 (UTC)


 * As for non-lethal police violence, it makes a difference that portable videocams are now ubiquitous. —Tamfang (talk) 01:58, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Earworm-like phenomenon
An earworm is supposed to be a single catchy tune repeating incessantly outside the control of the "listener". I sometimes experience something a little bit different from that, where I can choose the tune myself (and it can have lyrics) but it's difficult to "turn off the radio". This usually happens to me while driving on the freeway, and in that situation it's not bad, as it keeps me entertained without needing a music player. Right now though it's distracting, and it just now occurs to me that it might correlate with white noise (we have an air purifier running in the apartment because of the California fires, and its sound is similar to road noise).

Is this a known variant of the same basic phenomenon? It's been Non più andrai for the past while, but then temporarily switched to Reveille before switching back. I can set it to something else if I put a little bit of effort into it, but that is the current "idle mode". Thanks. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:DDAF (talk) 22:51, 26 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Hearing meaningful sounds in random noise is an auditory form of pareidolia, best known in its visual form, like seeing a cloud that looks like a dragon. This may be related to musical ear syndrome. Even a slight beat in the noise (a regular rhythmic variation in the amplitude) makes it far more likely to be perceived as a familiar melody with a similar tempo. Back in the days when electronic computers filled a whole room I was sitting for hours hearing the hum of a magnetic drum, in which I started hearing song melodies, especially as my attention was focussed on other things. Here fan noise gets a specific mention as a stimulus triggering the phenomenon. If you are prone to earwormitis, I guess one of your regular visitors may grab the opportunity. --Lambiam 10:39, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

Cuidado: possible earworm trigger:

(here's Herr Doktor Schneidler, fictional Nazi scientist (and excellent stereotype) who kept ruining his experiments cause he can't focus as he tries to unwind on a train)

He lay back on the cushions relaxing, thinking about nothing, that was it. Let the precision tool of his mind rest for awhile. Let the mind wander free, watch the night stream by, listen to the somnolent rhythm of the wheels: clickety-clickety clickety-clickety clickety-clickety clickety-clickety clickety-CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! a wife a CLICK! and CLICKenteen children in STARVing condition with NOTHing but gingerbread LEFT / nothing but gingerbread left...

...

Eggerth bent over the report, squinting in the bad light. Ten head of cattle, scarely worth slaughtering for their meat, but the cows giving little milk. . . Hm-m-m. Grain—the situation was bad there too. How the Poles managed to eat at all—they'd be glad enough to have gingerbread, Eggerth thought. For that matter, gingerbread was nutritious, wasn't it? Why were they in starving condition if there was still gingerbread? Maybe there wasn't much—

Still, why nothing but gingerbread? Could it be perhaps that the family disliked it so much that they ate up everything else first? A singlularly shortsighted group. Possibly their ration cards allowed them nothing but gingerbread LEFT! LEFT! LEFT!

LEFT! RIGHT! LEFT!

LEFT a wife and kids and SEVenteen children in a STARVing condition.. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:24, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Lambiam, thanks, those links were interesting. Musical Ear is supposed to be a hallucination (hard to distinguish from real sound) and I haven't experienced that. It's more earworm-like. Right now its singing The Happy Wanderer in German. Sheesh. SMW, that story is funny but I feel like I'm supposed to recognize it and I don't ;). 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:DDAF (talk) 06:22, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It is an excerpt from the 1943 story "Nothing but Gingerbread Left" by Henry Kuttner. --Lambiam 12:33, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the fictional marching song of that story was not fictional, but mutated after successful war-time injection in the German collective unconscious into the post-war Mein Vater war ein Wandersmann (Falera ha ha ha ha ha faleriii, ...). --Lambiam 12:42, 28 August 2020 (UTC)