RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
Married to a tomboy, so I have that going for me, which is nice.
User ID: 3756
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
20d ago
That if people weren’t getting pictures of immigrants piped to their phones 24/7, they wouldn’t feel like P(E) was so high.
As someone else mentioned, I think perception of crime rate is highly influenced by visibility of antisocial behavior. Murders and car thefts have fallen, but if going in public involves navigating multiple individuals screaming at invisible demons and flailing around, the drop in murders is probably not that comforting. The media undoubtedly plays a role since they're the ones telling me about the knife attacks (but non-fatal!) on public transportation in my nearby city, but I can see the homeless encampments and sketchy methheads with my own eyes.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
21d ago
In the hundreds of comments on this topic, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned this book: From Dawn to Decadence. Barzun defined decadence thusly:
All that is meant by Decadence is "falling off." It implies in those who live in such a time no loss of energy or talent or moral sense. On the contrary, it is a very active time, full of deep concerns, but peculiarly restless, for it sees no clear lines of advance. The loss it faces is that of Possibility. The forms of art as of life seem exhausted, the stages of development have been run through. Institutions function painfully. Repetition and frustration are the intolerable result. Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
21d ago
Additionally, I don’t like giving chicks the sexual attention they crave without me getting anything out of it. I’m not running a validation-providing charity for attention whores over here.
This is the best reason not to look. I'm happy to provide some validation that addresses their daddy issues, but they have to be offering me more than wearing some skimpy clothing around the gym.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
21d ago
Yes, that's exactly it (and the article lives rent-free in my head, too). It seems like there is something at least once a week that makes me feel like a chump for getting up, going to work, trying to do a good job, trying to avoid taking any government cheese I don't feel entitled to (which is all of it), and then seeing hordes of grasshoppers scam the system. It's a good thing I don't live in Minnesota because I don't think I could handle the level of chumpitude that I'd feel there.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
22d ago
I've noticed that easily half of the County-level Judges I have worked in front of, especially those that have held their seat a long time without getting called up to Circuit level, are basically glorified clerks for all the legal reasoning they can do.
I had to google it since I'm not familiar with FL judicial structure--your county-level judges would be magistrates where I am, and they don't have to be lawyers here. Having them use LLMs for help would probably be a shocking level of improvement. Even the felony-level judges here (what FL appears to call the Circuit judges) who do have to be lawyers would generally benefit from the assistance.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
22d ago
think I'm about at the point where I might accept the LLM's opinion on 'complex' cases more readily than I would a randomly chosen county judge's opinion.
You're not exactly setting a high bar for an LLM to overcome.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
26d ago
If you're represented by a lawyer, why are you asking an LLM questions about your case. That's the point of having a lawyer!
My clients love doing their own "research" and trying to "help" with the case. I'm just some public pretender, so an LLM/their cellmate/their cousin who knows a guy who got his case dismissed by filing a sovereign citizen motion all know way more about the law than I do.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
26d ago
Also, nominative determinism claims another victim?
No kidding. A bold strategy for someone with the last name Pester to become a teacher.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
27d ago
We need a specific term of art for these kinds of events (in which a lone wolf nutter seeking personal infamy shoots up a location more or less indiscriminately) which excludes gang violence and accidental discharges.
There was a push for about 2 days to use "violent nihilistic extremists," which is better but still not specific enough and rather unwieldy.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
27d ago
I think the true boundary between gen-z and millennials isn't a specific year, it's whether or not someone is able to remember 9/11.
This is the dividing line I've always used, and the dividing line between X and millennial is remembering Challenger. I'm brushing 45, but I don't remember Challenger, so millennial I am.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
27d ago
Can anyone explain why the defense council didn't held his mouth shut?
I believe defense counsel needed to identify the documents to assert they were privileged. Otherwise they would be presumptively non-privileged items in the defendant's possession and automatically subject to examination by the prosecution.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
27d ago
novel The Final Reflection by John Ford
As a total tangent, John M. Ford has one of the strangest bibliographies of any novelist out there. The Dragon Waiting is an excellent fantasy/historical fiction that more people should read, but he also wrote 2 Star Trek novels, a coming-of-age story involving elves in Chicago, a scholarly cold war thriller about a lost Marlowe manuscript (Scholars of Night, a bit dated but another good one of his), a space opera, and a vaguely cyberpunk thing.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
27d ago
Are sleazy consigliere-types really common outside of Hollywood and TV fiction?
Common, maybe not. But lawyers with questionable ethics who will go to great lengths to protect clients for the right fee? Well, yeah. That's why there are some private criminal defense attorneys billing over $1k per hour and the clients don't blink at it.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
27d ago
Golden Delicious (non-bruised, so hard to find), Gala, and Honeycrisp are kings among fruit.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
27d ago
LLMs as legal advise is one of the largest fails so far. They are simply extremely bad at the job. Even big corps like Westlaw and Lexis that have been trying it out have seen poor results. The fact is there is a gap in tech.
Even Westlaw's "closed universe" research AI is not impressive.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
27d ago
Considering the utter flop of the $1 presidential coins, I don't see the use of a $2.50 coin.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
27d ago
I think your lawyer has the option to recuse themselves if they have clear proof you are guilty. They also have the duty not to lie, and not to attempt to deceive the court. So if you start talking to your lawyer about dismembering your murder victims, your lawyer is likely to try to persuade you to plead guilty and they will also refuse to do many of the things that they would do for you if your guilt were actually in doubt
Entirely incorrect for U.S. attorneys. I could have a client arrested for DUI who confessed to me that he dismembered his entire family and buried them in the crawlspace, and I could not divulge that information. Any discussion about past crimes is strictly privileged.
I do not get to withdraw from a case even if there is strong evidence my client is guilty and he confesses to me that he is guilty. If that were true, I wouldn't have much to do as a public defender. I have to defend the case to the best of my ability regardless of the strength of the evidence.
For future crimes, I am required to disclose anything my client says if I reasonably believe there is a realistic chance of physical harm coming to someone. I have the option, but am not required, to disclose statements from a client about future crimes that do not pose a risk of physical harm but some other kind of harm.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
28d ago
But even the NYT is now no longer as zealous about the topic as it once was, and the whole right is in agreement.
I don't know. APnews has a main story that studiously uses she and her. That strikes me as still zealous on the issue given it's a mass shooter.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
28d ago
I don't know that there's a special term for the bread and butter of mainstream news coverage: reporting every single "man bites dog" until it's nearly forgotten that "dog bites man" exists.
A Myopic History of the Alt-Right is an interesting post from 2017 on a now-defunct NRx blog that talks about how those threads came together.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
29d ago
I suspect you will greatly enjoy Laurent Binet’s commentary about the historicity issues in Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones.
Fun for map/big project autists:
Land Use Database
A serious rabbit hole of a website. All kinds of interesting entries, but weighted towards big industrial projects (mining, solar, uranium cleanup in Utah, etc.).
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