Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to Rich Lock,
No. Just that the UK has a far larger proportion of people who at least partly rely on, and exist within, a parallel shadow economy. Their cash income will be far more reliant on day-to-day cash-in-hand jobs, the proceeds of petty crime etc.
So what was the difference to the lumpenproletariat?
I don't see it as a pejorative term quite so much as Marx did, btw. They're still people, making choices that are a likely consequence of the system they find themselves in. They have to be accounted for in a fair society. They're also quite a rich seam of the most important people society ever produces - the various idle intellectuals and artists whose contributions simply aren't valued, and don't have a rich patron to keep them going.
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to Russell Brown,
I suspect there's a mix of just running into whatever's around the corner and the message going out on the next place to hit.
That's exactly how zerging works in multiplayer online games. You make the assumption that about one in 15 people will listen to you, but moving decisively towards your objective moves the large group quite quickly. Of course it's better if your team isn't 14/15ths morons who follow the pack and go for cheap frags (and end up being cheaply fragged), but assuming they are, they're amazingly manipulable.
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
They aren't materially poor in the sense of a third-world nation, or even New Zealand, but they exist outside the whole "legal" economic and social structure. When the cops threaten their livelihood, they'll fight back.
Is that what's known as the Lumpenproletariat?
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to Rich Lock,
However, I'll go on record now and state that I will be very surprised if it turns out that there are small hardcore teams operating in the shadows, effectively attempting to carry out their agenda by zerging the packs of idiots.
For now. How long before people discover that they can, though? I was constantly amazed in online gaming just how many people who didn't have a plan were susceptible to the power of suggestion from anyone who did.
ETA: There's no guarantee of good motives in this. The small organized group could just as easily be bank robbers who figure that if you collect a bunch of police in one place fighting looters, making a getaway on the other side of town is going to be all the easier.
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And anyway, I’d always rather play Pollyanna than Cassandra, the latter is so damn smug when things go wrong.
Nice. Word.
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I deliberately brought up computer game warfare, because the organization in there is always totally anarchic. Essentially, small teams self-organize, a pack of idiots tend to zerg up, not realizing that the smaller teams can pretty much dictate where those packs go simply by communicating effectively.
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It’s dedicated, enthusiastic and energetic brewers like Paul from Croucher's and Luke from Epic and Richard from Emersons and Søren from 8-Wired and Andy from Renaissance and Stu from Yeastie Boys (and many others) that are changing the way we think about beer and changing what we think of beer drinkers.
I had a tour of Hallertau last year and the guide made the interesting comment that most of the best brewers begin as home brewers. Degrees in beerology are available, but they don't instill the love of beer so much as the science of large scale production, which is anathema to the creative process. So he said. Makes some sense.
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to Rich Lock,
I've read something that suggests the police are having trouble containing this because it's opportunistic rather than organised - it flares up semi-spontaneously and randomly. They can't focus their resources because they don't know where it's going to happen.
It's called rushing or zerging or blitzing. Works well against a strong opponent. I wonder what games these kids have been playing?
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to Richard Aston,
I wonder if that "punch-in-the-gut adrenaline ride" also has a primal sense of power in it.
Of course. Adrenaline is nature's fight-or-flight wonder drug. I've not been in a riot, but have experienced being punch-drunk. It's extremely powerful, and it's no wonder that soldiers miss it when they're taken off active duty, indeed finding it so powerful that it's hard to find any meaning in their lives when they're not terrified. It can make you feel superhuman.
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to Russell Brown,
Some of them may feel shame when they get up in the morning and see what they’ve wrought.
I've had policemen describe exactly the same thing to me.
How exactly does one die in custody from alcohol/drug abuse?
Presumably from stuff taken just before being apprehended, and no one checking whether the person lapsing into unconsciousness is actually in very bad shape. They could just be an annoying drunk sleeping it off.
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