Reblogged
billy-pilgrims-steering-wheel
I’m a sinner and it feels so good 💙
Can we have that in a larger font please.
@theshitpostcalligrapher I think I found one.
saw a tiktok that was making good points except it was like "if you're over 23 you shouldn't even know anyone under 20 unless they're family and it's weird if you do" and I just. have you guys ever had coworkers. students. family friends. clubs. is no one going back to school for their BA/MA/PhD. what kind of isolated world are you living in where as a 23+ year old you never interact w anyone under the age of 20. this idea that even Talking to anyone younger than you is somehow predatory is absolutely insane god I hate western individualism so bad. no your best friend ever probably shouldn't be a teenager when you're a grown ass adult but we do in fact need to be in community w people younger than us
Reblogged thesummoningdark
my pain scale invention. it goes from 0-16. you fill it out like this:
i made this because i find pain to be a multifaceted thing that influences me in different ways. i can accomplish lots of small tasks while in pain but that doesnt mean i can move around or even think clearly. its name is the goldstein expanded pain index or gepi. you can use it if you want. or not.
THIS. Gonna take this to my doctor at the next physical exam.
As a doctor, I would really like to see our profession adopt this!
Screw that dumb "on a scale of 1-10" pain level crap.
Reblogged thesummoningdark
Beware of those wearing anime shirts, because they stopped caring what others think of them a long time ago.
OH FFS 🤦♀️
FRIENDS, ROMANS, BESTIES: If they were at the stage of filling out jury questionnaires, that means the people involved were most likely only potential jurors, being polled to see if they were qualified to serve on the actual jury. So sure, maybe it seemed like a ballsy move to stand up and condemn the system, but odds are that trial is still going full speed ahead, anyway—except now it’s a dead cert that anime guy absolutely won’t be selected for its jury, because announcing your lack of impartiality to the court tends to get you automatically dismissed.
And, y’know, not to rain on anybody’s feel good parade, but if you want to effect real change for the people targeted by an unjust legal system, the best thing you can do is tuck away your freaking soap box, shut the hell up, get yourself on an actual goddamn jury, and then NULLIFY. THAT. SHIT. Seriously. I’m sure (if this really happened) that a bit of performative grandstanding in front of the judge gave anime guy a nice dopamine hit, but it’s ultimately an empty gesture. If you want to actually influence trial outcomes in a situation like this, then your priority should always be getting selected with an eye towards jury nullification. You help nobody by giving up your possible spot on a jury to some milquetoast white lady who “isn’t that political.”
I'm unsure the power one juror would actually have
If they're able to sway the others, you're absolutely correct, but if they're not? Then you've got a hung jury
In the US that means a mistrial and the whole thing happens again, in the UK the judge would probably rule to accept a majority verdict. Either way, the outcome's the same (the people deciding are all the milquetoast white people who "aren't that political"), but the objections are sealed within the jury room rather than aired before the lawyers and judge to be entered into the record
I don't know what I'd do in this situation, but I don't think it's quite as clear cut as either side of this debate makes out
So a few things:
- I wouldn't underestimate the influence even just one informed juror can have on the outcome of a case. Maybe you won't convince everybody—true. But as a juror, you never know who else is on the fence until you voice your doubts and opinions. Some people are reluctant to speak out or deviate from the group, but will respond if somebody else is there to take the lead. Some people might even change a vote just to speed things along because they don't actually care about the outcome. You don't know what power you have until you try, and It's always worth trying.
- According to FIJA (the Fully Informed Jury Association, which is a good resource for jury nullification information and support), a hung jury is functionally "far better for the defendant than a conviction. Undoing a conviction is very difficult. An appeal is not guaranteed in the first place. It may not be legally permitted, the defendant may no longer have the financial resources to mount an appeal, etc. Even when a defendant is able to appeal a conviction, that individual no longer enjoys the presumption of innocence." So if you can't nullify, hanging the jury is better than nothing!
- Mistrials only mean the whole thing CAN happen again—not that it WILL. If a trial ends in a hung jury, the prosecution will usually review the strength of their case and weigh that against their existing caseload, budget, staffing, etc. to decide if it's in the state's best interest to call for a retrial (there may be some exceptions, but this is generally the case in both the USA and the United Kingdom). Sure, plenty of cases get retried. But in some instances, a mistrial from a hung jury can lead to the prosecution either offering up a more lenient plea deal, or—if they decide pursuing things is ultimately a waste of their time and resources—simply dropping the charges altogether (this is sadly common with sexual assault cases; they're more difficult to prove in a court of law, and while I'm obviously wary of false convictions overall, I do have tremendous sympathy for victims who end up with no recourse for justice once the state drops all charges). In short, you never know what the outcome of a hung jury will have on a case until it actually happens.
- Even if the prosecutors do decide to bring a retrial, according to professional jury consultant Alan Turkheimer, "acquittal rates in criminal trials are significantly higher after hung juries than during original trials." So even if you can't nullify a jury, you might nudge things in the right direction overall.
So yeah, I would still argue that actually being on a jury is a thousand times more useful in the fight against wrongful prosecution than getting yourself immediately dismissed by soap-boxing during jury selection. We need more justice-minded people to be jurors (and/or magistrates)!
Adding these tags from @takiki16 who happens to be a public defender!
#are ya KIDDIN me we celebrate hangs back at the office like the victories they are#a hung jury is a WIN. a hung jury means that the DA FAILED. it is a BIG BLARING SIGN to the DA#that hey...you SHOT YOUR SHOT....AND YOU MISSED.#think twice if you REEEEEALLLY want to try again!#if you reeeeeeally with all of our overwhelming caseloads want to spend your attorney's time and your office's budget#on RE-TRYING this case that wasn't good enough the first time around#and YEAH. YEAH. a potential juror walks in and starts giving Progressive Politics Seminars (TM) and i inwardly groan#bc that is the first juror that the DA is going to kick out of the pool - bye bye helpful progressive!#all the blue lives matter assholes somehow manage to keep their mouths shut and parrot 'i can be fair'#long enough to get a seat on the jury and convict our clients#WE DON'T WANT THE GOOD ONES TO SPEAK UP. WE WANT THE BAD ONES TO SPEAK UP#it isn't jury SELECTION it's jury DE-SELECTION
Play your cards right and get on those juries, kids!
I also want to say that one person can absolutely turn a jury.
The one and only time I was on a jury, they selected 13 people (in case one had to drop), and at the start they gave us pads of papers to take notes. And I took fucking NOTES man I wrote down everything I could. I listened. I was there to do my level best to be a good citizen, because I feel very strongly that being a juror is a civic duty everyone should be absolutely thrilled to partake in.
The case wasn't huge. Assault was the charge. At the start of everything, the judge/lawyers explained our duty was NOT to decide if someone had done or not done the thing, but rather to assess and decide if the prosecutor had proved they did do the thing. Because that's the whole entire fucking thing- the person on trial IS INNOCENT. Until PROVEN guilty. It is not supposed to MATTER if you think they did it or not- did the prosecution prove it they did it, beyond the shadow of a doubt?
If they didn't do that, if they didn't prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that so and do so did it, then they failed, the person is innocent, and you get to point that out. You can use that to flip a jury, if there hasn't been proof enough.
Which is what I did. Across the top of my notes in bold all caps I wrote "MUST PROVE GUILT BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT" and everything else went below that.
Well, I got booted from the jury (rude) because it can only have 12 decide at the end and the lawyers did not like me taking notes. Neither one of them! Fuck em. But!!!
The entire rest of the jury - literally the ENTIRE jury not even "except one," all 12 of them - had decided in their heads the guy was guilty. They all thought he did it and looking back I'll be honest he probably did (based on other stuff the guy ended up on trial for later, which we couldn't possibly have known at the time). But no one in that court had proved it and THAT is what we were there to assess (and if you need to, you can absolutely remind everyone of this!!). When they booted me, I handed my notepad to my friend I'd made, told her to use it if they needed anything, and that I would be outside waiting, and then I went and sat on the courthouse steps.
Around an hour later, she came out and found me to tell me they had found the guy Not Guilty. They all thought he was, they all thought he did it, but they looked at the "beyond a shadow of a doubt" scrawled across the notepad of a juror that wasn't even there anymore, and decided nah actually they didn't prove that and it's innocent until PROVEN guilty, and every single one of them flipped their decision. I turned an entire jury and I wasn't even in the room!! Because I made sure to keep my mouth shut and look like a good jury candidate in the first place, and get on the team, and take notes like the big nerd I am.
So yeah, grandstanding is cool and all and maybe that guy convinced some other people in the room that did become jurors but if you want to be useful, get on the fucking jury and THEN flex. The legal system may be unjust but you have the power to be really annoying to cops and lawyers by participating in it and making it as just as possible.
But you gotta get in the door first.
#i want to be selected for a jury so much#because of exactly this#i can put on a calm facade during jury selection#and then be a total hardass in the room about any shortcuts or bullshit assumptions the prosecution has#i will not let them underestimate the intelligence of the people in that room#and yet here we are#20 years of being eligible and never selected#(20 years of voting straight democrat and never selected either hmm hmm)
Reblogged elodieunderglass
Careful what you wish for, big buddy.
Reblogged witticaster
Reblogged petermorwood
Im in the middle of waterless shampooing alex and i cant get over how dumb he looks fhfhfbvf my poor clean rat son
Bonus tiny blep
Hddhgdhdjsjdhdv
lmao are u kidding me this was at 200 notes last week what happened where did all these people come from
[image ids: the first two images are photos of a tabby cat with substance in his fur that makes it look gelled in all directions. In the second photo, he is sticking his tongue out just a little.
image 3 is a screenshot of tags that read #hi alex #he looks like a well loved offbrand beanie baby going for $2.50 at a yard sale
images 4 and 5 are a short simple line drawing comic where op opens a door saying "Alex I'm home! Did you behave yourself-?" To find a crowd of people staring at their scraggly cat. /end id]
[image id: image 6 is a close-up of the scraggly cat from the previous image. /end id]
We are all looking at the creature
Reblogged witticaster
Not a brave man, but at times a very stubborn one
(Limited color palette assignment for my oil painting class. I love college <3)
Reblogged gallusrostromegalus
God grant me the strength to do the things I enjoy
Reblogged spacemantis
spread this around pls 🙏🏾 i’m tryna see something
I would've probably voted anything made by a human, except I've seen complete accidents (ie, a mirror that busted on the floor in an interesting way, paint stuck on a palette in a random but aesthetically-pleasing way) that look like art to me.
Reblogged highempressofdirt
If you knit at all, I am begging you to learn how to read your stitches, it will make your life so much easier, I promise.
yes but literally how
i mean other than "knit a lot of different terrible things until you understand what the different stitches look like through sheer repetition" because that part i've got
That's the most common method I've encountered, tbh - there are also tutorials on it, like this one from Stitch and Story or this one from Brooklyn Tweed, or this one from Roxanne Richardson if video is more your speed. I found all of those by googling "how to read your knitting", if you want to find more, and there are plenty more out there!
The main method I used personally isn't really actionable, unfortunately. I had put knitting down for a few years and came back to it because I wanted to make cables but crochet ones looked so bad to me, and I watched a video on how to knit cables, and it suddenly clicked while watching that video. (I'm pretty sure it was this one, because I have knit that exact scarf for multiple people.)
The best resource I know for this is Knitting for Anarchists by Anna Zilboorg. There’s a later edition but my copy is a first edition, so I don’t know if the later one does this job as effectively. Reading it early on in my knitting journey is the reason reading my knitting has always come naturally to me.
The most important part of the book is the second chapter, In the Beginning. It’s an explanation of how knitting stitches work and the relationship between the direction in which the yarn is wrapped, the way the needle is inserted into the stitch below, and which side of the stitch (the “leading leg” or the “trailing leg”) is in front of the needle (vs behind it). But understanding all of that is key to understanding the structure of knitting in a deeper way that makes stitches easy to read.
Here’s an excerpt:
I’ll see if I can find way to OCR the text so I can add alt text and it can be accessible l, but for now I think it’s better to share this in the way I readily can than not at all.
I hope someone finds this useful! It’s really a shame that this book is so little known. I found it to be on par with the best of Elizabeth Zimmerman’s work, and better in some ways since it talks about the most foundational aspects of knitting.
Yes! This book was foundational in my learning knitting
Reblogged tatooineknights
this is for @keldabekush :)
Reblogged marbled-polecat
