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Historically it was used by white juries to let off fellow racists who committed crimes against minorities, which is why the courts discourage it.
It was also used during prohibition, and courts do more than discourage it, you can be held in contempt for mentioning it.
How is it intended to be used then, just pretend it doesn’t exist till final deliberations?
It still exists, so when is it intended for?
It exists only as a consequence of two other requirements of the jury process. 1) jurors cannot be held accountable for any decision they make as a jury and 2) any not guilty verdict delivered by a jury is absolute and final.
It is meant to be a final check and balance on the courts by the populace to prevent tyrannical abuse of power. Say locking up political opposition, as an example.
That’s a common belief, but it’s not correct. It isn’t MEANT as anything. It’s purely incidental. A jury not guilty finding is irreversible. And jurors have certain criminal and civil immunity in their roles as jurors. Both of those facts are important for the functioning of our legal system, but they create a loophole. This loophole was named “Jury nullification” and was mostly used for terrible things like letting racists off.
I’m not saying it’s not possible to use it for good, but it’s certainly not some intended function of the justice system that’s being kept quiet by the powers that be.
Wasn’t the guy who killed his sons rapist in plain sight of everyone let off due to jury nullification?
Gary Plauché killed his son’s rapist in front of a TV crew’s rolling camera, he was only charged with manslaughter and received 5 years probation and 300 hours of community service partly due to state prosecutors not believing they would be able to successfully convict him of murder due to the public’s widespread support of his actions
That sounds like a pretty easy constitutional violation lawsuit, though.
It’s also been used by black juries to protest mass incarceration and civil rights. The so called “Bronx jury” phenomenon.
Of course this might not be explicit nullification but rather the experiences of minority juries and their skepticism of the police leading to genuine reasonable doubt.
I have to admit, this is the dilemma I see; no system - Democracy, Law, Businesses, achieve their goals if a huge number of its participants have ulterior motives. You can’t put 8 people in a room, and give them a “system” where they will move a ball from one side to the other, if 7 of them don’t want to move it.
So while I hate the racists appearing on juries, I’m still not sure I’d use that as a justification against the practice.
This one can have legal ramifications. Generally speaking, you can explicitly state that you are not willing to follow the law regarding the duty of jury members to make judgements of fact based on the facts presented. You should be able to defend your position, and you may be asked to do so privately.
If you were to potentially taint the jury pool by going on about nullification, that might open you up to contempt charges. I’m not saying that it should, but people interested in the subject should know that it’s a risk they run if they take that approach. Talking about nullification outside the context of a court falls under free speech, but I do think people have been cited for handing out nullification flyers outside of a court building.
I have a similar problem in that I do not believe free will exists, which shifts the idea of “guilt” from a moral to a medical dimension. I could not find anyone guilty of the crime of murder, for example, because there are a whole range of cause and effect cascades that brought the particular action about that had nothing to do with free will or choice. I do think it’s ethical to remove someone who has committed murder from society for as long as that tendency persists, but that’s a very different thing than finding someone guilty of the crime of murder, which requires mens rea - a state of mind that renders an individual as culpable for their actions. I would not find that the defendant had willfully carried out the act, any more than I’d find someone who had an epileptic seizure while driving and killed a pedestrian as guilty of murder. In order to do so, I’d require the prosecution to demonstrate a conclusive neurological argument proving the existence of free will.
I won’t engage you in a discussion of free will, I refuse to do it, you can’t make me.
What will really bake your noodle is you just did.
Thatsthejoke.jpg
What will really bake your noodle
I like that. Can I use that? (It would really bake my noodle.)
Sure, but be aware it’s a popular line from The Matrix series specifically about predetermination!
I think that prison, especially in its current state, is cruel and unusual punishment.
I also believe that a person having a criminal record that follows them for the rest of their life is cruel and unusual.
I also think removing a persons voting rights is cruel and unusual.
So, I’d have a hard time finding anyone guilty.
Even murderers and rapists?
If prisons only had those kinds of criminals in there I’d hope that the prison system could be reformed enough to not make it a cruel punishment.
I still think you should not carry around a criminal record and I do not think extremely long prison sentences should be allowed.
Let’s do 5 years max.
Guilt and mens rea can be quite compatible with your admittedly strange idea of there being no free will (and yet trying to parse laws under a framework of people having free will), unless you believe that all acts are coercive (which is quite reductive).
All you need to ask yourself is if the person wanted and intended to do that, whatever the nexus of causes led up to them wanting to do the act.
It seems very weird (and a bit lazy) to subscribe to a framework of there being no free will and yet not even trying to contextualise the safeguards of the legal system to fit that framework. Sure you may agree with putting people in jail to prevent net societal harm, but mens rea is one of the checks to ensure that they will cause societal harm to others, and without being able to settle such a question of fact you will instead never be able to put anybody, even if they need to be put behind bars, there.
I can get into more detail, but the line of thinking is not only compatible with neuroscience, it is as far as I am concerned a necessary conclusion from everything we know about neurobiology (and biology in general). I am a theoretical biologist myself and can get into detail, but Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky has written extensively on the subject, and the conclusions of that school of thought are fully compatible with the conclusions of philosophers of consciousness and the self such as Thomas Metzinger.
So no, I do not think that “the person wanted and intended to do that” is a statement that is compatible with what we know about how brains work. But let’s take a closer look at that. Let’s say you have a person who had his daughter kidnapped, and the kidnappers told him that they would execute his daughter unless he robbed a bank for them. The person believes them. He knows robbing the bank is wrong, he put a plan together to do so anyway, and he carried it out. He gets caught, and the kidnappers get caught as well. Assume for the sake of argument that these are undisputed facts. Would that person be guilty of armed robbery? Or would the prosecutor not even bother to bring charges, because the person was compelled to do so via what we’d call a forced move in chess? That’s just a philosophical illustration and still builds on the idea of choice, but it illustrates that even what we consider “choice” isn’t always a free choice and that the justice system accounts for that.
Let me illustrate what I’m actually talking about though. I’m going to make up some values to show what I mean. These are not the actual values, but the relationship holds. Let’s say that for any randomly chosen American, there’s a 1% chance that they will commit a murder in their lifetime. Now let’s start tweaking some of the dials. Our random person, P, grew up in a community where they experienced strong degrees of racism and violence. This physically alters brain structures like increasing the size and influence of the amygdala, which has influenced over fear and threat reactions. It reduces the size and influence of the prefrontal cortex, which is charged with deliberation and predicting consequences. As a result, person P now belongs to a population where they have a 5% probability of committing a murder, because their brain is going to be far more sensitive to threat perception and having a response less regulated by their PFC. Let’s throw in malnutrition, which also affects both brain development and (if the mother was also having such problems) epigenetic developmental factors, which again make changes to both the physical brain and to the genetic processing at the cellular level. Throw in drug addiction. A highly population disproportionate of people in jail for committing violent crimes also have a medical history of traumatic brain injury.
None of those factors were even theoretically able to be affected by the choices made by P, but they heavily biased the probability function. The relationships between all of these factors and a given action are highly characterized. We can look at causal factors from seconds before the physical event (pulling the trigger happened) seconds ago - there were a chain of neural activations in which a specific area of P’s brain caused the muscle contraction in the finger. We can look at what happened hours to days ago that biased those neurons to be triggerable by that level of stimulus. P did not make a conscious decision to have the threat-response associated neurons building to a state of high excitability - that came from the way the brain was wired up in the first place, which happened months to years ago.
What it boils down to is that there is no neuronal argument for free will that can identify a specific chain of causality that identifies and isolates free will as a phenomenon.
Far from being lazy, my position is based on a career in the study and teaching of biology and complex systems analysis, and I can come up with a lengthy bibliography including experimental and philosophical research to defend my position.
The takeaway is that we need to address these as issues that have causal explanations, rather than failures of individual morality. This has been a process that we’ve been performing throughout history, as concepts like demonic possession and trafficking with the devil turned out to be caused by psychological and neurobiological conditions, such as epilepsy. Eventually, should we make it long enough, I think that’s where we will end up.
This feels like a scientism method to arrive at compassionate justice reform and I have no problem with that.
You don’t understand. Obviously everyone is a product of their environment. But after all of that, if the person wanted and intended to do something because of all of these different dispositions and upbringings and backgrounds, then they have mens rea.
Like I said before, it’s purely a finding of fact. Does it mean that there shouldn’t be mitigating circumstances? No, there might well be reasons to argue that they were only doing so out of desperation. Nonetheless, they had mens rea.
Recognising that there are all these complicated factors but not taking the time to at least make sense of them is the worst kind of determinism. Sure, there’s no free will in your conception. There still needs to be laws and concepts like mens rea still need defining to allow for the protection of “innocents” under the law.
No, I do understand. What I am saying is that the concept of “wanted” does not apply in a framework that’s grounded in modern neuroscience and biology. There’s teleological behaviors, yes, but there no will involved.
Let’s break it down to something simpler. A protozoan (a single cellular animal) will swim towards food and away from poison. It has receptors on its cell surface that, when activated by a series of molecules indicating an increasing gradient of food, there is a cascade from activated cell surface molecules to internal chemical cascades that has a direct causal link that’s as deterministic as what your accelerator does to your car. Cell surface molecules undergo a conformational change which causes the phosphorylation of molecules inside the cell, which ultimately drive the motors that make the protozoan swim in that direction. It’s deterministic.
We no longer think of people with leprosy as being cursed by god because of their sins. This is the same thing.
You’re wilfully applying a very stunted concept of “wanted” to a legal system that deals in fact. I’m not saying you don’t understand whatever it is you claim to be supporting. What I’m saying you do not understand is the concept of “wanting” and “mens rea” (as it applies in law, but also as it applies under your framework - you’ve chosen instead to just pretend it’s no longer relevant instead of redefining it under your framework - like I said, the laziest kind of science.) And there’s really no point in me repeating what I’ve said before.
Maybe what I’ll leave you with is a possible definition of “want” under your system, which is one step further in thought than it seems you’ve ever gone: an action is wanted if the action would have been taken with no immediate or overt external (needs to be defined) motivation. This means if they were abused as a kid and later this translated into abusing other people, they still wanted to abuse them.
(As a note, I’m not saying this is the correct definition, but this is what is needed for people to start discussing what should and shouldn’t be in this definition.)
Saying “nobody can want to do anything because determinism” is an incredibly lazy determinism because it’s starting with the axiom and then not bothering to come up with a proper framework to explain everything else in the world. If you continue to protest it not being lazy there’s really nothing else we have to talk about.
I will welcome any input that has a basis in biology, physics, or neuroscience. I think you’re taking the position that the conclusions you see as implied by a statement of physical and physiological fact as backed from every field from neuroimaging to developmental biology leaves us in a position that’s philosophically incompatible with the world as envisioned by the way we’ve currently constructed the law. Honestly, I would consider that to be the intellectually lazy position as it’s a rote defense of the status quo without making an attempt to address the actual argument.
The law already recognizes that there are circumstances that are outside the control of the individual, and that our concept of justice demands that those conditions are exculpatory. I’m arguing that our present day understanding means that we need to increase the scope of that interpretation, and that criminal problems should be reimagined as medical problems with evidence-based treatment regimes.
I don’t think people have free will either. It doesn’t follow though that someone couldn’t be found guilty of murder. A rock doesn’t have free will, but you could say it “wants” to roll down a hill. We all “want” to do things even though those desires are the result of countless variables like genetics, upbringing, nutrition, weather.
In an ideal world the criminal justice system would be designed solely to mitigate future harm caused by criminals, and to reform them to the degree that’s possible. I don’t think punishment or vengeance should be part of the legal system. Still, we have murder charges because someone murdered someone. And we’ve got to do something about it, because otherwise the conditions that led to the first murder could lead to more.
I entirely agree with the idea that there are persons that society needs to defend itself from. It’s the same as a physical body needing to defend itself against disease. But if we take an evidence-based approach, our way of addressing the problems would shift. If we know that maternal malnutrition and severe social stresses causes hypertrophy of the amygdala of the fetus, we could cut the crime rate by fixing that part of the problem. The concentration would be on prevention first and treatment second. The treatment would probably include things like psychotherapy or medication.
Again, I think that the example of a person who has their first epileptic seizure while driving. They will lose their ability to control the vehicle, and muscle spasms may cause them to floor the accelerator. If that person were to then plow onto the sidewalk and kill a child, we would not consider that to be a murder. We wouldn’t think it was a deliberate, and we wouldn’t treat them by exorcism because they’re possessed by a demon. We also wouldn’t treat them by locking them alone in a room for five years and then let them go. We would put them on medication, we would teach them coping mechanisms and give them training and therapy for mitigation, and we would pull their driver’s license until we could determine that their medical condition no longer was likely to produce a similar harmful event.
We know that punishment based models do not work. The US has a stunningly high incarceration rate and a level of barbarism in prisons that’s pretty unique among developed countries, but nevertheless has higher recidivism and crime rates than, say, the Scandinavian countries.
Come on now. On a very practical level, you can choose to reply to this message, or not, and that has nothing to do with “a whole range of cause and effect cascades that brought the particular action.” Saying you can’t make that choice is pure sophism that is tantamount to an excuse. So what’s your choice going to be?
It is an argument with a strong foundation in neuroimaging, neurobiology, developmental biology, and the experimental philosophy of the basis of the ego and ego-identity.
Did I have a choice to reply to your message? Let’s put on our statistician’s hat and take a look at that. Let’s build a probability function R that we’ll use to predict the probability of a reply. Lets define the probability of replying using some basic measure of number of replies based on number of users.
First, I am a cis male in what is still a largely patriarchal society. I’m more likely to speak up because I’m allocated a higher social value and feel I have the right and authority to speak in group settings, even if I have a contrary opinion. I am less likely (holding other factors constant) to just go along. Similarly, I’m the eldest child in my family, which has similar kinds of effects and compounds the male thing.
Second, I am an academic type whose position and career has been driven by research and presentation of results. That creates both a physical alteration in my brain that combines both a dopamine-driven preferential pathway for arguing (because I get the neurochemical rewards for doing so) and also has a survivorship bias - people without certain dispositions tend to drop out of academia or never try in the first place. This will also increase R over baseline.
I’m entering a week that will be applying minor social stressors, priming my amygdala and limbic system to respond with either confrontation or withdrawal. I just delivered a major project but now need to catch up on other work, which has a similar effect. My prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for pushback on that kind of thing, is primed by my active intellectual engagement in this area, and its role in future-projection is moderated by both knowing that I know about this area and that I have a bit of breathing room regarding my actual work.
I have a crappy lemmy client, which reduces my R because of the level of effort associated with the response, but not so much as if it needed to be done using the web client on an iPhone.
If we were having this discussion in a bar, my tendency to reply would be driven positively by the effects of disinhibition by alcohol. It would be further increased if there were others at our table for whom I felt some level of attraction and wanted to create an impression.
I was born with a brain that is predisposed to systemic and synthetic thinking, and raised in an environment that encouraged it. My mother was an educator who worked with young children, and thus had an educational and experiential background that created reward mechanisms for reading and learning. At the same time it was confrontational, which conditions fight/flight/freeze from the physical requiring of the limbic system.
None of these influences are conscious. For my conscious self, I think I am choosing to reply. But even that image of “self” is questionable based on current research. If you were to have stuck me into a neuroimaging machine, you could see that my brain decided to reply somewhere around 1s before I thought I decided to reply. The delta between making a decision and realizing you made a decision ranges from about 700ms to a few minutes, depending on context and complexity, but it has been demonstrated that much of what we consider reasoning is a backwards projection based on decisions that were made by neural processes not under conscious control.
So if you do want to argue that it was my “choice” to reply, you would need to identify the neurological/physiological basis of some kind of phenomena that do not follow from these kinds of causal relationships. Without retreating into a non-materialistic dimension (eg, god told me to respond the same way he told Rep. Mike Johnson that he had been chosen to be the Moses of America and become the speaker of the house), I think that’s a pretty tough climb.
Okay friend. There are three kinds of logic that end up in the same helpless, stuck place. 1) “God is in control of everything. Each and every thing!” So you can be a murderer, a liar, a thief, etc. All because God is in control of everything! 2) “Everything happens randomly. There is no rhyme or reason to the Universe.” So you can be a murderer, a liar, a thief, etc. All because nothing matters! 3) “Everything is predetermined, there is no free will.” So you can be a murderer, a liar, a thief, etc. All because of fatalistic determinism!
You should look at if your position is any different from the other two in terms of practical results, because from my perspective, when you get right down to it, each of these seem like really potential serial-killer-levels of moral basis. Free pass! You can rape. You can kill. All because of some sophistic philosophy. If you arrive at that position, you made a wrong turn at Albuquerque, one way or another.
Whether the correlation coefficient can explain statistics of your choices (true), or your language, culture, and upbringing have a big impact (also true), or any other seemingly relevant facts are true, you still ultimately have choices in this life. Or at the very least appear to have them. You aren’t a log adrift on an uncaring ocean. Take responsibility for your actions, friend.
Every argument against determinism comes from the perspective that the conclusions of the argument are intolerable. This is not a slight to you. This is the argument put forth by people like Daniel Dennett. I think the field is primed for someone who can back up the argument using the physical sciences, but so far there’s not a lot there.
Let’s do a thought experiment that I call the Reverse Ship of Theseus. The Ship of Theseus is a philosophical demonstration of the origin of identity - if Theseus’ ship were to have, in the course of his voyages, every board, mast, sail, and nail replaced - one by one - does he return in the same ship he left with? In the Reverse version, we replace every neuron in your head (and if you take a more holistic view, every cell in your body) with one from Charles Manson. Every state of every neuron and all of those interconnections are replicated. All of the hormones, neurotransmitters, excitatory and inhibitory chemical reactions are perfectly replicated. Every bit of Manson’s history, from before he was born or even conceived, through his childhood and adulthood, is deterministically encoded in your cells.
At what point do you become Charles Manson? Christian philosopher CS Lewis famously wrote
“You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”
In a materialist worldview, of course, that’s nonsense. The thing to which I’m referring when I say “me” is an emergent phenomenon of a host of physical properties and dynamics on a scale that is, still today, incomprehensible. There’s no “self.” The self is a convenient psychological illusion that allows me to say “This is my hand,” or “That self over there, approaching me with a machete, is a danger to my self.” Even here, we’re not talking a radical point of view. This is where a lot of Buddhist schools have come to similar conclusions, for instance.
I am not a murderer. Is it because I choose not to murder, or is it because I did not receive a traumatic brain injury on top of having an abusive childhood in a violent environment where murder was something I encountered regularly, and would even be considered a rite of passage and garner social approval?
I can think that I choose not to murder because I am compassionate and empathic. But those attributes, were you to swap my brain for Manson’s, would turn Manson into a largely well-behaved pro-social academic with an aptitude for mathematics and a desire to create safe spaces for people.
I do agree with you, though, that you cannot rescue the free will concept by retreating into areas like complexity theory (which I do know a bit about) or quantum theory and physical indeterminacy (which is not my field).
Why have a jury if there are expected to vote one way and not the other? Sounds flawed
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
What the heck is this for and what does it mean?
It’s the illegal prime number used to decrypt DVDs.
Can you eli5?
oh child come on I am WAY too dumb to understand that Wikipedia article. can you just explain it?
It’s the key needed to unencrypt a video DVD, it’s how people were able to make duplicates of DVDs. This was technically illegal to use thanks to the DMCA, but not illegal to know, so people had fun with it and plastered it on T-shirts, mugs, etc…
I remember thinking I was hot shit for ripping a ton of Netflix and Redbox movies back in the day…
Tldr: DVDs can not easily be played unless using authorized hardware (or software in the case of WinDVD)
Once the key was leaked, this was no longer the case, and now DVDs can be played by anyone with the key (enabling piracy)
It’s the password to unlock the content on the DVD (well, HD DVD / Blu-Ray) so you can just copy the video from it for redistribution.
How do you get to the password prompt?
Blue ray movies are encrypted to prevent unauthorized copying. Someone figured out and published the decryption key making copying possible. The movie companies went nuts and tried to suppress dissemination of the key, but it was out of the bag. That 09f9 number is the key that was formerly a big secret. Now that you know it, you can copy blue ray discs.
Why didn’t they just change it? Set a new encryption key for every disc?
Man, you got me with the verified profile picture! Good job!
Hahaha, many many years ago that was in a meta tag on my website and the welcome banner for my mail server!
anyone remember when this flooded Digg.com the day it came out? Happy days.
Peperidgefarm members
Is that the illegal hash?
You can find the PS3 key floating around too.
How to pass/invalidate a lie-detector test.
They are not considered admissible evidence in court (but the criminal justice system still use them to a degree…), and they can be interpreted with intentional bias, so I think it’s fine to share.
One of my psychology professors told me that if you hide something like a sewing needle in your shoe’s insole, you can ever so slightly apply pressure so that the poke causes a physiological spike. They monitor for movement, so it has to be very minute. The goal is to do this on every control question so that they cannot establish a baseline and have to give up.
The best way to invalidate a lie detector test is to not take one, because you can not be forced to take one unless you are applying for a job to the CIA.
Phrenology is more legitimate than polygraphs, and Prenology is nothing but bunk hokum.
I had clients in federal probation whose freedom was dependent on the results of annual polygraphs. Refusal was considered a fail, and they’d be shipped back to FedMed or prison. Inconclusive results were also blamed on the clients, and would count as a failed test.
Was total bullshit, especially given the level of function and serious psychiatric symptoms and diagnoses of my clients.
Oh, right.
For one blissful moment I forgot that America was a festering, infected pustule on the ass of society.
A polygraph, often incorrectly referred to as a lie detector test, is a junk science device or procedure that measures and records several physiological indicators … there are no specific physiological reactions associated with lying.
I argued with the PO and complained to my team about it all the time. Polygraphs are definitely junk science and absolutely should not determine someone’s freedom.
The only functional use a polygraph has is as a tool of intimidation and coercion to people who are uninformed about the true nature of the device and how the handler can manipulate the results.
Which is why daytime TV shows like Dr.Phil looooooooooooved polygraphs.
Prenology is nothing but bunk hokum.
Modern IQ testing is often compared to phrenology. In the revised version of “the Mismeasure of Man” (a history of pseudosciences used to measure humans, and why IQ is among them) the author explained that the comparison was unfair… to phrenology.
While the methodology of phrenology is bunk, Gould explained, it’s theory is sound. Phrenology supposed that their were different locuses in the brain, each responsible for differing functions and that intelligence, behavior, and consciousness was the sum and synergy of these differing regions. This is still more or less the modern understanding of neuroscience. IQ meanwhile fails in methodology and theory.
I remember seeing some cop show a long time ago where they couldn’t figure out how this guy kept screwing up their lot detector tests they were forcing him to take. They found out he was putting a tack under his big toe and using this trick so they scheduled him for another test, but they kept moving him from one building to another looking for the room they were supposed to be in, forcing him to walk a lot.
I think I remember that one as well. Likely was CSI or something
Dragnet!
I heard you can just pucker your butthole too and this will affect the readings on the detector
I’ve heard some of the more advanced bullshit detectors have pressure pads that the bullshiter sits on to measure how much actual shit they are holding back while taking a bullshit test to detect the actual bullshit, but that might be bullshit.
No, you are correct that they have you sit on a pad that monitors movement.
I’m not sure if this is true, likely not, since I saw it in a movie:
At the beginning, when they were establishing the baseline, they asked whether she had ever used marijuana. She said yes, which was a lie, but the interviewer thought it was the truth, because come on, who would’ve admitted that?
The bottom line is, when they’re asking the baseline questions, lie (sometimes).
Again, I don’t know how far this is from the truth, but that show was pretty cool.
I’m pretty sure the baseline questions are things they already know the answer to. Like what’s your name, where were you born, etc. So lying about them would be obvious.
Anything you see on LockPickingLawyer.
This is the LockPickingLawyer. Today …
the april fools episodes are the best content he produces.
The man could be a comedy writer if he wasnt a lawyer.
Chrisfixit also has great April fools ones
Na, according to TOOOL as long as you are picking locks you own or have expressed permission to pick you are fine.
You can infinitely go around and around a roundabout or a clover leaf interchange.
Look kids, Big Ben, Parliament
Last time this was brought up somebody pointed out that in certain countries (Germany, I believe) it is actually illegal to drive without purpose, so endlessly circling the roundabout would be illegal. I’m so confused how this could ever be enforced though, not the roundabout thing, but generally. Not anymore, but during lockdown I would put on an audio book and just drive around the countryside for hours. The purpose was keeping me sane, but I wasn’t going anywhere.
In a lot of European countries we are now introducing “turbo” roundabouts where you can’t even go all the way around once, and they work way better and amazingly.
Interesting! Though, with the amount of confusion the roundabout in my town (California) still causes after two years in existence, I fear for my countrymen’s ability to conceptualize this two lane miracle of modern wonders. I foresee a lot of attempted lane changes in the circle from people who accidentally got in the “get out on the first turn” lane.
I’m currently visiting my SO in the US and the way roundabouts are used here is terrifying! I’ve seen people just cross straight over them and I have yet to see anyone but my SO use their turn signal on them, not to mention how long people wait to get on the roundabout defeating the point entirely.
The turbo roundabout was confusing the first or second time I was on one, but after that it made a lot of sense and was quite simple. A lot of them even have guiding arrows and signs beforehand telling you where to go, these roundabouts genuinely make it so you basically never have to stop and can just continue driving like there was never an intersection.
It’s genuinely awesome.
When my city first installed roundabouts, we had more than a few people straight-up launch themselves into the air by trying to race through the middle.
I’m not sure if those people legitimately thought that that would work, or if they played GTA too much and wanted to try a ramp in real life. The fact that I can’t be sure which option caused it is a little terrifying.
Option 3: they weren’t paying attention while driving.
There are some around here, where I live. I thought that was just so Americans would provoke fewer accidents. I’ve never seen them anywhere else in Germany, and none in France either
Well, maybe continuously circling the roundabout *is my purpose for driving. Take that, Germany!
Law of thermodynamics has entered the chat
The bane of any Cities Skylines player when setting up roads wrong.
Speaking of which, have you played the sequel yet?
I’ve played it. It’s pretty good. It improves many systems from 1 while keeping the same core game. It’s missing a few things the DLCs for 1 added, like more pedestrian options (and biking in general) and things like that, but it’s generally better. Some people have said the performance is bad, but it was good enough for me, and I’m not using a particularly modern system. YMMV.
Yeah I heard about the performance issues as well, but I haven’t had a chance to try it out myself. Thanks for the insight.
No, I’m giving it a year to bake first.
I often take a complete lap around a roundabout if I have people driving too close behind me, they clearly are in a rush to their accident, they don’t want to be behind me, I don’t want them behind me, one lap of a roundabout solves the issue to our mutual satisfaction.
Juries can nullify any charge based on their own discretion.
Knowing this is how you get out of jury duty
Or, how you make sure a bullshit case doesn’t convict someone…
Or allow racist crime you agree with to pass without conviction
Well yeah but that doesn’t invalidate the concept. Especially when it’s the only tool we really have left to fight the ridiculous system we have now.
It’s better to let 10 guilty people go free than be complicit in ruining the life of one innocent person.
Lol this one is actually illegal to tell others. In the UK you can be tried for contempt of court if you’re caught telling people about nullification, and the juror’s oath tries to explicitly discourage it.
That being said, what’s to stop a jury in a case of nullification from… nullifying your case?
I might be confused, isn’t this the whole point of a jury in the first place?
The point of a jury is to get people who are unbiassed to determine guilt or innocence to help make the trial fair and not a kangaroo court. The jury determining that they absolutely did it, but the law is bullshit so they shouldn’t be punished and submitting a not guilty verdict anyway is basically a glitch or an exploit. They’re not there to determine the validity of the law, just whether or not the law was broken.
The real joke is that the founding fathers genuinely expected people to be fair, impartial and unbiased.
I mean, nobody in any country has found a better option yet and it’s been a couple centuries.
🤔 I made a thread a while back asking people here what they would do if they were founding a country, and one guy had the best solution I ever heard anyone come up with:
It was this tiered, hierarchial council lottery system where people were randomly elected to serve on councils that managed every aspect of day to day life. Eligibility for each council depended on your education, age, background, etc. and it was set up such that you had to take leave from your old job, but your spot would be held, you’d be paid the same rate you were before, etc. to disincentivize people from not participating.
He went into a lot of detail about it, and had a long writeup for it because it was a project for his pol sci degree, and it was based on the assumption that no human involved was scrupulous or trustworthy, and if some aspect of the system could be abused, it would be.
To this day I have not seen anyone come up with a better governance idea, past or present.
I specifically meant the jury thing.
Following is a generally devil’s advocate point here, because in principle I’m wholly supportive of jury nullification:
The idea of the jury being able to cast verdicts on conscience rather than evidence does also, however, risk personal bias influencing trials regressively. It is not unknown for systems to acquit or convict someone based on racial prejudice or media coverage of a case, which is why even a sniff of conscience voting of any kind is heavily policed.
More or less.
I agree that the jury should certainly have the power of nullification. And I believe a jury should be made fully aware that they have such power.
However, they also need to be aware of how that power has been (mis)used in the past, and understand that nullification should be seen as an extraordinary act of civil disobedience on par with a full-fledged riot in protest of the law in question.
Nullification is not something to contemplate lightly. If you’re going to be nullifying the law, you should be spending most of your deliberations writing a unanimous joint statement to the press, to be issued as soon as the jury is dismissed.
Nullification is not something to contemplate lightly.
I think it’s the other way around, not nullifying and instead condemning someone unless you’re entirely convinced they’re guilty and deserving, should not be taken lightly. Innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, if you’re on a jury and not convinced even if everyone else is, don’t compromise. Don’t be peer pressured into ruining the life of someone potentially innocent. And, don’t continue to ruin lives because of unjust laws.
If you have a reasonable doubt as to their guilt, your not-guilty vote is not “nullification”. It’s simply “acquittal”. Nullification does not come into play when there is a doubt as to the defendant’s guilt.
To “nullify”, you the juror must first be convinced beyond a doubt that the prosecutor’s allegations are true. You must be convinced that the prosecutor did fulfill their burden of proof. You must be convinced that the defendant did, in fact, break the law that they are charged with breaking. You must be convinced that the defendant is guilty. Until you are completely convinced of their guilt, your “not-guilty” vote is just a finding of fact. A routine acquittal.
Only once their guilt of breaking the law is absolutely proven can you consider whether the law itself is just and proper. A law that was duly enacted by the duly elected legislators of the state or nation, in accordance with the constitutions of the state and the United States, and signed into law by the duly elected president or governor.
In declaring a law invalid, you are contradicting the will of the duly elected representatives of We The People. You are declaring that you know better than those legislators and executives what the law should be, and that nobody should ever be prosecuted under this law. That is your right and is well within your power as an individual and as a juror, but it is also a tremendously bold step. You are quite literally calling for a revolt against the legislators and executives who enacted this law.
Remember: juries commonly nullified anti-lynching laws. Legislators and executives agreed that white people should not have the power to arbitrarily execute black people with impunity. Many juries disagreed with that sentiment, and exonerated defendants they knew to have violated these laws. These juries decided that any law insinuating “black people are people” is unjust and invalid; that legislators and executives should not dare to challenge the fundamental supremacy of the white man.
When I say it is not a step to be taken lightly, I want you to remember that the most famous examples of nullification have been absolutely abhorrent miscarriages of justice, and the nullifying jurors in these cases are reviled by history.
I said guilty and deserving. Also read the last sentence.
To convict someone of breaking a law you don’t agree with would be “just following orders”
Just say “not guilty”
It’s possible to bioengineer yeast to turn sugar into morphine.
Unfortunately, I am allergic to morphine, wake me up when they can turn sugar into Dilaudid.
Or better yet, morphine into fully baked sugar cookies.
The proof of concept was done with Hydrocodone synthesis. It seems like they have the ability to tweak the yeast to complete complex synthesis to end product. I would bet Hydromorphone would be possible.
The Anarchist’s Cookbook is full of bad information, you should use the US Improvised Munitions guide instead
We train the best terrorists 👍
The Anarchist’s Cookbook is full of bad information
Yes it is… even the title is dreck because it wasn’t written by anarchists or even for anarchists.
The US Improvised Munitions books you find online is far better but they are still pretty old, though.
You can resist an unlawful arrest. But good luck with that in the real world.
Yeah at this point I feel like thats only technically possible, as even if the arrest was found to be unlawful, they’ll claim something else you did in defending yourself was illegal afterwards
Meh, if it’s truly unlawful the DA will drop the charges. Until then you are subject to whatever bullshit the cop subjects you to with virtual impunity. Slap you with disorderly conduct, arrested. Or say they arrested you because you were resisting arrest.
The slew of convictions for nothing more than resisting arrest would seem to suggest that’s outdated knowledge.
One might think so based on real world application; however it’s true. And while true, I don’t recommend it as a first line defense.
Yup I’m just trying to say it’s abuse doesn’t invalidate it.
There are free private, and generally better-working versions of almost every software program. Including, operating systems, social media, email, telephone, etc
Blender 3D, Krita, and Gimp have been the pillars of my creative life. And since last year November I’ve been running Linux.
yeah but gimp is kind of… not great. I’m not sure how I managed to use it as a teenager 20 years ago lol.
It’s useful if you want to make a quick image edit. But otherwise… Yeah.
Only if you already know how to use all its features and how to deal with all its quirks. Let me tell you trying to use it without having ever used it before it’s not easy
I’ve been using Photoshop for years that’s why I can’t get into gimp I keep trying to use PS shortcuts. It’s the same with Da Vinci resolve, it’s a great video editing software but I can’t shake the premiere mindset.
I’m not sure how I managed to use it as a teenager 20 years ago lol.
Probably because the interface was a lot more intuitive back then. I’ve taught myself Inkscape, but the latest versions of GIMP utterly defies me.
How is blender running on Linux for you? I’m keen to swap over & use blender all the time
Perfectly. It runs perfectly. Blender is pretty much at home on Linux, and rendering with cycles is a little faster than on Windows.
this doesn’t feel very illegal
In a software ecosystem where almost every program or site you interact with expects some form of steady cash flow in a combination of subscription paywalls, pervasive surveillance, and intrusive ubiquitous ads then I think it does.
What does “free private” means?
I’m puzzled.
I think it’s a missed comma. ’ free, private’
It comes with complimentary dicks.
privacy-respecting
generally better-working
Generally? I know there’s a lot of FOSS fanboys here and I am a FOSS fan myself, but let’s not be fanatic and kid ourselves - I wouldn’t say FOSS software is “generally” better working. There are perhaps a few cases where the FOSS version is better, but that’s more the exception than the rule.
The invisible tracking dots in almost every printer.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170607-why-printers-add-secret-tracking-dots
Similarly, there’s patterns of circles on banknotes that prevent you scanning them or loading them into Photoshop.
I actually tried this and our office scanner refused to scan it, threw an error each time. Worked fine with a regular document.
Yeah, it’s mostly this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation
Although I think there are a couple of other methods in play.
Person named Reality Leigh Winner…somehow that sounds exactly like the name of someone who would leak documents
I mean… She’s the reason we know the Russians wanted Trump to win and took actions to compromise our physical election infrastructure. She leaked that while the Trump administration was actively trying to bury it.
yeah there’s irony to the name and coinciding events… almost like someone named Trump hoarding national secrets after an attempted coup.
You can legally create, own, and use your own flamethrower in the majority of the US.
You can just buy them from hardware stores. They’re great for clearing weeds and such.
I can’t do that in Australia, but I can buy a toy encased in a chocolate egg.
Real freedom
I don’t see the connection here… still, that’s pretty neat, good for you
Kinder eggs are super illegal in the US. People actually get in trouble sometimes instead of just having it confiscated.
It is an extreme application of a rule saying that you can’t have non food items in food.
They sell them where I live in the US.
Are you sure those aren’t kinder joys? They are in the shape of an egg, but it splits down the middle and one half as some kind of soft chocolate candy and the other has a toy
non-boneless meat has left the chat
Just kidding, but yeah that kinda makes sense. When I was a kid I would always try to eat cake toppings because I didn’t know if they were plastic or not. I can see how kinder eggs could be problematic.
Insanely easy too. Fill a nerf super soaker with gasoline and glue a match to the end.
Just in case people actually think this is a good idea: do not. Plastic, uncontrolled spray, and blowback is just really shooting uncontrolled fire in all directions. It works in your cartoon world head, but I know someone who tried and suddenly the failure (like escaping fumes around the holder, gasoline versus rubber gaskets meant for water) make you go, “Oh. Right.” Thankfully, they only got first degree burns on their face, head, hands, and arms, a weird balding patterns, and missing eyebrows. Thankfully, someone had an ABC fire extinguisher nearby. Yes, alcohol was involved.
The ones I have seen that work involve metal tubing and a secondary mixing of forced air along with a special fuel. https://www.recoilweb.com/flamethrowers-once-tools-of-war-now-toys-67763.html
We were all thinking it, he just said it
Gas tends to dissolve/soften plastic.
I’m starting to get a little scared considering the amount of people taking this seriously. Perhaps it’s time to begin a charter to research and develop the most readily available and destructive improvised flamethrowers and other destructive devices
I’ve known at least 3 idiots in real life that has tried that at various points in time.
So, yeah, welcome to reality.
So just fire it faster.
How to make controlled substances.
It’s not illegal for anyone to know, it is also technically legal to make and possess if you have the correct licensing for some substances, but it is illegal to synthesize them.
What’s the difference between making and synthesizing here?
In this instance it’s likely the same.
Same thing, just used a different word
Walter White rambles about process for 2 hours
Making amateur rockets and pipe bombs are basically identical – for a rocket, one end of the pipe is open. There’s a vibrant amateur rockets community nevertheless.
You can request your trial to be done by mail, yes this is legal and if you truly want to get out of a speeding ticket or any other tickets or fine. Just do it the trial by mail and always postpone it for a greater chance of the officer just letting you win it. The source for all my information is from a lawyer, also check your local laws or state laws about this, thank you maggoty as it depends.
I think your results will probably vary by state and county.
