FWIW, I have never met an intelligent cop or detective. I have met some remarkably unintelligent cops and detectives.
It’s rather shocking that the next step in the criminal justice system requires 7 years of education and the ability to pass a bar exam, but police officers range from dolt to average in intelligence, and are often loosed on the streets with months of training.
As I understand it, it’s a niche provider compared to where it was 10 years ago. When was the last time you got a FedEx package from a major retailer? I order shit constantly and can’t remember getting one in maybe a year.
And, if you visit one of their distro centers, they are pale shades of what they were a decade ago, with a fraction of the employees and the vibe of a dying enterprise. Last time I had to hit our local distro center, there were two employees in the entire back area and a giant pile of undeliverable/lost packages in the waiting area.
FedEx is being deliberately destroyed by Amazon. I would love to see it unionize, but it’s arguably not going to exist in another few years as a major player.
Unionization of Amazon delivery systems would have much more ongoing impact. Over-the-road and last-mile have to happen in the US; they can’t be off-shored.
Any unexpected racism? I dated a girl in college whose formerly composed grandmother couldn’t be taken anywhere public, because she would unselfconsciously say super-racist stuff, right in front of some poor POC just going about their day. And, she often thought she was complimenting them, so she couldn’t understand why she was being shushed and would try to restate and elaborate on her comment, getting increasingly loud and frustrated.
My father, who once had an amazing memory, now delights in watching the same few British murder mystery series over and over, because he doesn’t remember anything about them. I can literally ask him the next morning about something engrossing we watched the preceding eve, and he won’t recognize any of the plots, characters, settings, or other details.
Meanwhile, he can talk very cogently about events from the Kennedy administration.
Longtime hard-drug use, and particularly the lifestyle around it, where the user doesn’t eat, sleep, or stay hydrated properly, eats through the frontal lobe, where emotional control, and logic and reason processes happen.
If you watch many hours of him, you realize that his brain short-circuits every time he is confronted with contravening information. He literally can’t respond with what a lawyer would call a “responsive answer.” Instead, his brain shunts over to stock bullshit replies, and if they aren’t immediately welcomed by the first party, he gets frustrated and angry.
He is fundamentally incapable of putting himself in the interlocutor’s position and considering the matter from their perspective.
Finally, if anyone reading this hasn’t watched his Cyber Symposium, go find a good wrap-up on YT. I watched every second of the live broadcast, and it was absolutely nuts. Between the data guy singing, Ron Watkins “analyzing” stolen election machine data live on stage, and Mike Pillow claiming he was attacked upstairs in the hotel, it was an amazing ride.
The greatest gift is that this life eventually ends.