I went to school in a crappy district and hated every minute of it, and now that I'm an adult I wouldn't trade it for the world. The academics were a joke, but I got to know people who weren't from my economic/racial/whatever background; I'd say the life lessons have outlasted the academic lessons by a long shot. I…

Can I ask you about the Staten Island demographic? My impression is that it's chock-full of first responder families. If you had to speculate about the demographic breakdown of a random 23-person sampling from Staten Island, would half of them be black? I know it doesn't really matter at this point, I'm just curious…

Calling people out is very important. Beyond that, donate money to groups that are working on the ground to combat these problems. Sometimes that means donating to a community center in a predominantly black neighborhood, sometimes it means donating to legal defense funds or funeral funds for families who are going…

Me, pretending to be a Prosecutor: "Hi guys! Here's a video of Eric Garner being choked to death while begging them to let him breathe. Here's where the NYPD manual says No Chokeholds. Here's the list of civil suits pending against the officer in question. Okay? Have a nice day!"

My instinctive response to this was, "If Tamir Rice's killer isn't indicted and imprisoned, I'm going to burn something down."*

Sexually harassing an 8-year-old should be of interest to someone higher up in law enforcement than the local sheriff. Has anyone tried going over the local PD's head and contacting someone with more oomph? (I hear there's a knitting circle in Oklahoma, maybe they have some time on their hands...)

We need any punishments, period. If you look at how many women report their rapes, how many reports lead to arrests, how many arrests lead to trials, and how many trials lead to convictions...the last time I tracked down all that data and did the math it was something like 1-4% of rapists seeing ANY prison time at…

Jaime is the dude in the middle and I am literally everyone else after reading that.

The laser sights definitely appear to have happened, unless someone went to extreme lengths to fake the video I saw. The video at the bottom of the linked page shows two incidents between 1:25 and 1:35. First there's a shirtless guy with his back to the police and a sight on his back; then there's a guy in a striped…

I think the goal is to solve the problem *before* an innocent 12-year-old is gunned down for no reason.

If someone would kindly make this into a gif, I can use it for all my future butt-toucher stories.

Much as I'd like things to be this simple, Mike Tyson is a convicted rapist with...something...tattooed on his face, and his career isn't over. I have to see his dumb cartoon face on the Metro every morning because he's in a new show, and every time I want to take out a sharpie and write RAPIST on it.

I wonder how much of this "flirting and causing a ruckus" was women just sitting there eating salad while a bunch of guys catcalled them from the next table.

I'll attempt to respond to your serious question with a serious answer.

That's horrible. I'm so sorry you experienced that, both the horror of the rape and the rage-inducing incompetence of the justice system.

Yes! And not just rape. I recently got into an argument with my dad about catcalling. He spent 15 minutes insisting that "men will be men," and once I had finally convinced him that I was serious about the subject and he needed to stop making those excuses, he apologized and added, "I just want you to know, I've never…

Anything that can be combined with the phrase "hitting the jackpot." Examples include:

I missed this yesterday, so I will undoubtedly end up at the bottom in the grays, but I can't resist posting this one, which I will dub Mom's Ultimate Dealbreaker.

I guess in my version of the plan, there would be a "polite dismissal"button. So the recipient could release a message without having to engage in conversation, but also without reporting it as creepy. Perhaps to encourage recipients to read & react to messages, you could only have 10 in your inbox as well, and in…

My office is using a referral service to find new applicants, and their flood-prevention deal sounds pretty legit. (From what I've gleaned eavesdropping on my boss's conversations,) the gist is that you are given 10 "invitations" you can use to message 10 people. You can't message anyone else to express interest until…