Tell me you know nothing about statistics without telling me you know nothing about statistics.
Kamala responded to her own voters' protestations about Palestine by dismissing them with "I'm speaking now..."
Well, in the end, it was the voters that spoke. And they sent her packing.
And the centrists who endlessly said, "Donald Trump will be even worse for Palestine!," we seem to now have a cease fire, even before Trump takes office. It looks like this particular genocide will be one that was entirely on Biden's watch.
This is a self-serving lie promulgated by legislators and jurists who loathe a check on their own power.
Form follows function. The jury nullification "loophole" has been known for centuries. Entire constitutions have been written knowing full well that they will enable jury nullification. There are ways you could design a legal system that wouldn't allow nullification. Yet time and time again, the people have chosen not to reform the system to eliminate jury nullification.
Yes, giving juries power to judge the law often produces negative outcomes. But that's simply democracy. Sometimes democracies produce bad outcomes, just like any system of government.
Categories? I don't use categories. Just a single giant list! Also, I never clear out my email inbox and let it pile up into the thousands! And no one can stop me. MWHAHAHAA!
Because it's clearly being banned, not because of privacy violations, not because of the nefarious impact of a foreign government, but because of the content that is shared on it. It is the only major social media platform with a strong pro-Palestinian viewpoint on it. And the people in Congress have been caught on camera explicitly stating this is why they want to ban it.
I hate Tiktok. I don't use it. Never have. But I still don't want to see the US turn its internet into the Great Firewall of China 2.0.
The leaders in Congress cannot stand the idea of there being a social media platform that is popular in the US that isn't hosted in the US. Why? The answer is simple - control. All the US social media platforms are heavily influenced by the US government. Hell, most of them openly contract with the NSA. Facebook is an NSA contractor. These platforms get a ton of money from the US government. And despite what conservatives bitch at in regards to "being censored," the real censorship is against anything that doesn't advance US power and influence. Outside of Tiktok, the major platforms heavily censor pro-Palestinian messages and stories. Go to r/worldnews and post anything other than "Palestinians deserve to be vaporized," and you'll be banned within 5 minutes. It's literally that bad. Even when outright bans aren't in place, the platforms will severely down shift any pro-Palestinian content and keep it out of peoples' feeds.
"Beware of he would would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Assuming the trial results in a hung jury the state can refile the case over and over again - but if the outcome isn’t viewed as a fluke then it’s just a huge waste of money.
I'll elaborate on this. In order to actually be acquitted, ie found not guilty, the jury has to unanimously vote him "not guilty." A hung jury is if that jury cannot come to a unanimous decision.
In a case like this, if we get a hung jury, the prosecution isn't likely to let it go. It's too high profile of a case. What tends to happen in cases this high profile is that the prosecution tries again, but with a lesser set of charges.
So here they're trying murder one. If that results in a hung jury for all the charges, then they will try again. Next time, they charge him with murder two. If that results in a hung jury, they'll charge him with manslaughter.
Eventually, the charges they're considering get low enough that the defendant will likely just take a plea deal for a lesser charge. Maybe Luigi takes a plea deal for 2nd degree manslaughter, or whatever the equivalent is in NY. At that point he would likely already have been in prison for years, and he might just be let off with time served.
I don't know how likely that scenario is, but that's what would probably happen if his trials just kept resulting in hung juries. Prosecutors rarely try defendants on the exact same set of charges. If they got a hung jury, they know they were probably over-reaching on the previous set. So each time they dial it back and hope to get the guy on something.
It's not some minor quirk of the system. It's the only reason we have juries at all. If you just wanted a group of 12 people to decide guilt and innocence based on the facts of the case and the letter of the law, you would never hire 12 random untrained nobodies for that purpose. If that is all juries were for, you would have professional juries; being a juror would be a career that required a law degree.
We have juries to protect against corrupt laws. That is the only saving grace of having guilt and innocence be decided by 12 random untrained nobodies. Legislatures can become corrupted and end up criminalizing things that the vast majority of the population does not consider to be wrong. A jury of your peers is the last line of defense against corrupt laws. And this mechanism is the only reason we have juries like we do.
I mean, if he actually were convicted, executed, and later proved innocent...
That is one of the few circumstances that an official "Saint Luigi" could literally happen. Despite the memes, it is an understatement to say that it is extremely unlikely that the Catholic church would ever beatify someone for shooting someone else in the back with a silenced pistol. But to be falsely convicted and executed for the crime? That would make Luigi a completely innocent martyr for the cause of the sick and injured. That's the stuff sainthood is made of.
What really moved me to the camp that "Luigi might actually be innocent" was what Luigi said in perhaps his only public statement after being arrested. His lawyer has wisely since told him to shut up, but he did make one shouted public statement to the cameras.
He shouted, "this is extremely out of touch; this is an insult to the intelligence of the American people!"
To me, that doesn't really sound like the proclamation of a John Brown-type figure. Here's what John Brown's words were.
Luigi supposedly planned this elaborate killing down to a T. He even wrote his message on the shell casings. And he wrote a hand-written manifesto. Yet in his one chance so far to speak to the media, did he say, "I apologize for nothing!" Did he say, "Robert Thompson murdered thousands of people; I just brought him justice!" Did he say anything of the sort? Do his words sound like those of a revolutionary, boldly willing to die for his cause?
No. He sounds like a scared kid, caught in over his head, who knows he his being framed and facing potential capital punishment for a crime he didn't commit. That is how I would sound if I were being charged for those murders. I would probably be shouting something very similar if I were currently being framed for some high-profile murder. It would be an insult to the intelligence of the American people, and I would be rightfully scared and infuriated.
Now, it's certainly possible that this whole thing was an act. Maybe Luigi just planned that statement to garner public sympathy. IDK. But at least in terms of publicly observable demeanor, he really doesn't seem like some wild-eyed revolutionary. He seems like a scared kid who knows he's being framed.
It's just another part of democracy. "Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried."
Any form of government can produce positive and negative outcomes. Even absolute monarchy had its moments. Once in a very blue moon, you would actually get a "good" king or tyrant, one that really did try to use his power and influence for the greater good. But through trial and error we learned that, on average, democratic systems produce far better outcomes than monarchical or dictatorial ones. No system of government has entirely positive outcomes; they just vary in their ratio of positive to negative.
Repost of my own comment in a different community:
I would say that jury nullification isn’t just some accident of the legal system, but the primary reason we have juries in the first place.
Judges will say that juries are meant to just decide the simple facts of the case. But what sane person would ever design a system that assigns 12 random untrained nobodies to do that task? If all that mattered was judging the facts of the case, why not have 12 legal scholars instead? Why isn’t “juror” a profession, just like being a lawyer or judge is? If we want people to just apply the letter of the law to the facts of a case, why not fill juries with professionals, each who had a legal degree, and who have sat as jurors hundreds of times? Judging evidence and reading law is a skill. And it’s one that can be educated on, trained, and practiced. Why do we have amateur juries, when professional juries would clearly do their purported job so much better? Or why not just do what some countries do, and have most or all trials decided solely by judges? What exactly is the point of a jury? Compared to everything else in the courtroom, the jurors, the ones actually deciding guilt or innocence, are a bunch of untrained amateurs. On its face, it makes no damn sense!
No, the true reason, and really the only reason, we have juries at all is so that juries can serve to judge both the accused AND the law. Juries are meant to be the final line of defense against unjust laws and prosecution. It is possible for a law itself to be criminal or corrupt. Legislative systems can easily be taken over by a tiny wealthy or powerful minority of the population, and they can end up passing laws criminalizing behaviors that the vast majority of the population don’t even consider to be crimes.
The entire purpose of having a jury is that it places the final power of guilt and innocence directly in the hands of the people. Juries are meant as a final line of defense against corrupt laws passed by a minority against the wishes of the greater majority. An unaccountable elite can pass whatever ridiculous self-serving laws they want. But if the common people simply refuse to uphold those laws in the jury box, those laws are meaningless.
THAT is the purpose of a jury. It is the only reason juries are worth the trouble. A bunch of rank amateurs will never be able to judge the facts of a case better than actual trained legal scholars with years of experience. But by empowering juries, it places the final authority of the law firmly in the hands of the people. That is the value of having a jury at all.
Jury nullification is not just some strange quirk or odd loophole in our justice system. It’s the entire reason we have juries in the first place.
Death is rather difficult to define precisely. If you define it as "the cessation of consciousness," then you die every night. Every sleep cycle has some portions of minimal brain activity. There's nobody home for these periods.
It really wouldn't be the end of NATO. Greece and Turkey have had numerous spats while both NATO countries. An Article 5 resolution can be vetoed by any other NATO member. The US would assuredly do this.
A much more worrying possibility would be Denmark specifically withdrawing from or reducing cooperation with NATO. Forget Greenland, Denmark itself is in a very strategic location, considering its place in the Baltic.
Sure it would be difficult. It wouldn't be easy. Like anything, you don't just start with humans. You start with mice and work your way up from there. But you're right, it would I suppose not be a near term thing. But still, for people like Musk, who always insist how they are so concerned with the future 'survival of humanity?' If you're that worried about underpopulation, to the point you're willingly throwing away civil rights, wouldn't such a thing be worth funding, even if it takes a century to figure it out?
Oh Jesus. As this tech gets good enough, eventually people will start falling in love with the damned things. It's inevitable. And eventually they'll want to make it socially acceptable to take their fuck-robots out in public. They'll want to marry the things. They'll be trying to piggyback off the gay and trans rights movements. Everyone will be like, "dude, that is clearly a robot. I can show you the code. There's nobody looking back from behind those plastic eyes." And they'll be like, "no! You just don't understand our love, I know she's real!"
We are so incredibly fucked.
Maybe for the first few, but after awhile it would be common knowledge that raising rents too much magically causes building to burst into flames. Insurance doesn't cover intentional acts. If you deliberately burn your own house down, insurance isn't going to cover that. Plus every insurance policy would exclude coverage for this sort of entirely predictable and preventable fire.
Depends on the fine print of the contract I imagine. "Spread" for instance could be interpreted to only meaning naturally spread. I would argue that if a fire spreads by arson, it isn't the same fire spreading to a new area, but an entirely new fire being formed.
Let's change the law to bring back the old Germanic tradition of judicial trial by combat. But make it specific to consumer and labor rights disputes. Got a beef with a company? Forget binding arbitration. You can now challenge the CEO to a one-on-one sword fight. The battle will be decided....by the blade! Legally speaking, we'll just assume the fight is in God's hands, and whatever the consumer rights or labor dispute in question, the side that survives is the automatic winner.
And yes, I realize that by proposing this, I'll probably be the first one voted into the Sea. That's fine. I'm willing to take one for the team.
Why are we'all in such a rush, anyway? If you need to talk to someone right away, we got video conferencing. If you, in an emergency, really need to move somewhere fast, there's helicopters. I say we just consign the whole 'car' idea to the dustbin of history, and just convert everything over to canals. If some insist on speed, we can consider adding a train system. But the only means of private mechanized transport must be by watercraft! That should be enough.
Let's make elections TRULY interesting. Our current system strictly prevents any vote totals from being released until the last polls have closed at the end of election day. I say we do the exact opposite. Let's publish vote totals for every election LIVE!
When you vote early or send in an absentee ballot, it may be counted early, but currently those results are held secret until the last polls close on election day. Instead, let's have states and counties publish online live running totals of votes as they come in! Also we can invest in more rapid ballot-counting equipment so that election day results can be published minute-by-minute. Election day will be a mad dash with both sides competing live against each other, against a ticking clock with live vote totals that anyone can see. In close races, both sides will be running around with their hair on fire trying to find a few more votes. You might even see elaborate vote strategies; for example one side might deliberately reserve a chunk of voters until the 11th hour, just to make their opponents overconfident.
Elections are far too boring. Let's publish live running vote totals and turn them into a spectator sport! Embrace the madness. Embrace the beautiful chaos. Turn election day into something people can watch like a sporting event. Let's publish election results as they come in!
The Planet of the Apes film franchise has single-handedly shaped entire fields of biological research. As long as it remains in the public consciousness, no biologist or geneticist will ever experiment with trying to engineer chimps and other apes to be more intelligent. Any research proposal remotely related to the topic will be immediately shot down by someone simply stating, "do you want Planet of the Apes? Because this is how you get Planet of the Apes!"
Forget grand corruption. I want to see some small-time thievery from our presidents. If we're going to have a criminal president, I want them to be less "mobster," and more "meth addict."
Become president. Procede to start a four-year personal petty crime wave. Break into people's homes to just to steal their televisions. Break into construction sites to steal copper wiring. Habitually steal catalytic converters from cars parked in the Pentagon parking lot. Offer the proceeds of your crimes to a local charity, in cash, just to break into their office at night and steal it back.
Oh, and after each crime, issue a formal pardon to yourself, completely absolving yourself of criminal liability. Also, don't forget the best part. As you embark on this wave of petty crime, you'll have Secret Service protection! So even if someone does catch you, in broad daylight, laying on a dolly under their truck, stealing their cat with a sawzall, they won't be able to even get near you! The Secret Service will prevent anyone from being able to physically stop you! Hell, you can break into people's houses at night, just to rough up the place!
We'll cover all our bases and hire people of all faiths. We'll have tens of thousands of people praying to boost our science output. It's sure to work!
Your campaign slogans will be things like: Whelp, we invented crocks. I think we're done here. The fact we built ChatGPT proves we need to be sent back to the Stone Age. We've had a good run. Time to quit while we're ahead. Time to see if nuclear winter cancels out global warming.
When campaigning, promise that you will only do one thing in office. Upon taking the oath of office, you will immediately demand the nuclear football and order the launch of the entire US nuclear arsenal, all at once, in a completely unprovoked first strike against every other nuclear power and against every national capital on the planet.
In debates, your answers will be simple and direct: What will I do about our falling education standards? I'll start a nuclear war! What will I do to ease America's tax burden? I'll start a nuclear war! How will I improve racial justice in the country? I'll start a nuclear war!
St James’s Hospital advised Paige Behan to go instead to Holles Street
Bonus points if you can get a bunch of friends together and assemble a whole fleet of them.