RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
Married to a tomboy, so I have that going for me, which is nice.
User ID: 3756
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
1d ago
A bunch of Gen X wander around a government building for a few hours, largely make fools of themselves, and then nothing happens?
I am convinced that the outrage in Congress was a reaction to the immense shame they all felt for blowing the chance of a lifetime: whoever went out and confronted the mob and pulled a calm, collected "have you no shame, have you no decency" response would've been elected President in 2024. Instead, they all ran away, and that knowledge will burn them forever.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
1d ago
Stuff you really want to be kept private can be kept in the groupchat
That does not seem to be working so well lately.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
1d ago
People really do underestimate the GFC right now.
In my corner of the world (government work), I think it's because it didn't impact boomers and older Xers much. They didn't get raises for a few years and their home lost value for a while, but that's about it. They weren't looking for work or getting cut due to a federal sequester (that hit the most recent hires, not the guys who'd been around forever) or going way upside-down on an ARM because of an inflated market, etc. They kept getting paid, kept their houses, and kept working their way towards platinum pensions (which got reformed during the GFC to the detriment of new hires, but not towards people already in the system).
It's been close to a decade now, but I remember some higher-ups at work talking about some applicants and they were commenting negatively on all the employment gaps many had from 2007-2014ish. It literally did not occur to them how awful the legal job market was during those years and that even good candidates might have some gaps.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
1d ago
He's roped me into attending a single's event at some exclusive London club. He told me they put stickers on phone cameras and keep naked women in cages downstairs plus bona fide BDSM nuns of uncertain denomination(this is not a joke). The whole place isn't quite Eyes Wide Shut,
Is the password "oooorrrrggyyyy?"
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
1d ago
It is part of my job on a regular basis
Same, but that means I'm getting paid for it. Watching them in my free time would be a different thing, although watching curated bits of the highlights (or lowlights, really) would be more interesting than watching the nth hour of bored cop doing something unremarkable.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2d ago
From Steve Sailer: “The most heartfelt articles by female journalists tend to be demands that social values be overturned in order that, Come the Revolution, the journalist herself will be considered hotter-looking.”
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2d ago
My wife and I watch bodycam videos all the time
Any particular reason for this?
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2d ago
It's been at least a year since I've had to read any caselaw
This is one of my "complaining about the kids these days" hobbyhorses: in criminal defense, there is a reason to be searching caselaw almost every day. Huge amounts of constitutional disputes revolve around tiny factual differences and finding caselaw with the most similar factual similarities and arguing by analogy why those should control instead of the cases favoring the State is the name of the game.
Being able to say to a prosecutor "here are 3 opinions with similar fact patterns and here's why I'm going to win a suppression hearing" is the best move towards a better plea offer (even if the argument is mostly bluster). Maybe the research leads to 0 and it's time for hard talk with the client that they have zero legal issues to stand on. Either way, that exact issue shouldn't need to be researched from scratch in the future and it should be incorporated as base-level knowledge for future cases.
There are plenty of areas of law where changes are slow and caselaw searches aren't crucial, like you say yours is. Criminal defense is not one, especially in more populous states where new decisions on criminal issues are a constant thing. And I cannot get newer attorneys to do caselaw searches. No matter how many times I hear, "I have a case with fact pattern Z, what do you think?" and respond with "I don't know, what caselaw have you found with something similar?," I keep getting blank stares like research never occurs to them. And research could not be easier now compared to the paper days of Shepard cites, or even the early 2000s electronic options.
This is not isolated to my office. I hear the same thing from other defense friends who have become supervisors or mentors. Plus it's merely one facet of the unwillingness to do work overall. Coupled with the overall dearth of candidates (something DA offices are contending with, too), it makes for frustrating times.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2d ago
I was not actually being sarcastic, although I can see how it might appear so. I took note of his mod statement and tried to make a plain statement of information I'll include in the future to provide context and not run afoul of a red tag again.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2d ago
Does anyone else feel guilt over not working the full 8 hours in a laptop job?
Mostly I feel bored and that I'm wasting my life on the days I don't put in a solid day of work. Why be here and put up with all the nonsense of being in an office if I'm not actually accomplishing something? I'd be better off doing a solid 4 and going home, but that's not an option.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2d ago
Exactly! But there is a weird BoomerCon rose-colored-glasses rembrance of the 1980s nonetheless.
Based on the boomercon rose-tinted remembrance of the 80s and the boomerlib ability to trace every modern ill to something Reagan did (military spending and mental health funding for the two most common, but for a way out of left field example, my boomer father recently complained that all these airport troubles really started with Reagan breaking the Air Traffic Controller Union), there is apparently a point in one's mid-30s-to-mid-40s where the mind decides that's where all modern good/bad things stem from. For the boomers, all modern domestic issues can be traced to Reagan (international diplomacy is still Hitler-centered). It's going to be fascinating to see where millennials end up fixated when they reach their 70s. Will it be Obama or Trump?
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2d ago
Noted. I will be more detailed next time and also make it clear that such comments are drawing on my getting-way-too-close-to-20-years of defense practice, sitting through mandatory Continuing Legal Education courses stuffed to the seams with lefty identitarian terminology, and watching new law grads wash out of PD work.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2d ago
It's better to be able to pick clients and then take on a few pro bono cases to feel better about it.
They don't even do this. They want to go to work for NGOs and be "activists" and "raise awareness" and attend zoom meetings talking about white supremacy. Writing motions and appearing in court and doing jail visits and arguing with prosecutors and dealing with hostile judges? That's, like, hard work.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2d ago
That's not how it works, though. Law Enforcement & crime labs do the lion's share of building the case, and they have their own budgets. So it's more like LE + crime lab + prosecutors (all with their own budgets) vs the public defender. Plus, when someone from the crime lab testifies, that's part of their routine pay. The defense getting an expert to testify to challenge something from the crime lab require expert fees that come from the PD budget.
There is also the asymmetry where the DA can dump bad cases or plead them down to make them go away (and save time/money in doing so). The defense doesn't have that power. If it's a case where the client is going to get convicted after 20 minutes of jury deliberations at trial, the defense can't make the case go away if the client chooses to go to trial. Instead, it's going to be the time/money/effort of a trial even if it's an utterly foregone conclusion.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2d ago
I'm a big fan of the "joke" that Vance posts (or at least lurks) here.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
3d ago
SF PDO jobs start at $150k and go as high as $270k. Perhaps even at 150k, it's tough to get by in SF. But they definitely aren't paying Deep South "might as well be working fast food" public defense salaries.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
3d ago
The most impressive part is reaching that philosophical question within 5 subcomments after starting on the topic of money in politics.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
3d ago
for some reason the username makes me think a girl
The same problem plagues Beloved Kitten on X/substack even though his writing style (and very frequent statements of being a man) could not make it more obvious.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
3d ago
I love it, but I'm also allergic to it.
Hop allergy?
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
3d ago
Am I making a distinction without a difference, or is this a different kind of argument?
A little of both. Some states (not sure about CA) have case limits for attorneys because it's recognized that a high enough caseload, at some point, is roughly the same as no attorney. The Ninth Circuit opinion involves literally no attorney, but the analogy is there to be made for attorneys with a high caseload who can't devote appropriate amounts of time/effort to each case.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
3d ago
I just ran the Baltimore marathon this past Saturday in a 2:44
Damn dude, that's awesome. Congratulations.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
3d ago
There is a recent precedent for this kind of thing: Appellate court affirms ruling, releasing defendants from Oregon jails who aren't promptly assigned a public defender
I have zero idea what staffing in the SF PDO is like, but a lack of defense attorneys is a problem in many places (despite all the leftist/woke people attending law schools, the percentage of graduates willing to do defense work seems to be dropping).
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
3d ago
Some of the other stuff is more clearly stuff I wouldn't like, but I think I still dislike the media more than this guy.
Yeah, I have no idea if he's my outgroup or fargroup or what he is. He's obviously a shitposter, so he's my tribe in some ways. Some of his comments wouldn't be out of line here at the Motte. But of course the media makes him into a Nazi rapist when the communist identification and possible calls to violence strike me as the bigger potential problem.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
3d ago
You posted this in the week-old wellness thread, not the current one.
That aside, it appears to be a solid plan. I like a 4-day split with running on the other 3 days and yoga where I can fit it in (plus walking and hiking where applicable), but it does end up taking a lot of time.
Half a loaf? You're quite the optimist that you think you're getting to keep half. I think it more likely that we're going to get the Boxer retirement plan.
Your overall post reminded me of the TW post about the "chump effect." I thought the term was coined by him, but apparently it was the City Journal article he links to.
Stories like the two you pointed out make me feel like quite the chump, as I do most days when I think about these things. I didn't have undergrad debt because I busted my ass in a hard science to maintain grades for my scholarships at a state school. I paid off my law school loans (what a mega-chump move). I drive a 15-year-old paid-off truck. I go to work every day to defend people who are mostly guilty and generally ungrateful. I'm earning a pension, but at best it'll be 60% of the payout that Boomers and Xers are getting from it (thanks to various reforms to keep the system solvent that only took effect long after their benefits were locked in), and that's if I can stick it for another 20 years. So give me that chump jacket, I've earned it.
More options
Context Copy link