There’s also the possibility of appeals to get the sentence reduced. And the defendant’s family can apply for pardons. Pardons and commutations are usually associated with political grift in the US (and this is a well-deserved reputation), but they can also be applied for and governors occasionally grant them to prisoners who demonstrate they’re reformed even when they’re not otherwise eligible for parole.

Grovelling before the judge and acting like you accept you are guilty for sixty minutes costs nothing on the part of the defendant anyway.

Even though by the time the hearing commences, the judge has already usually decided on the sentence, every competent criminal defence lawyer will advise their client to grovel and beg for mercy at the sentencing for two reasons:

1. Acting recalcitrant could upset the judge and result in a heavier sentence than the judge originally planned because they feel a need to make an example of the defendant.
2. Not being apologetic damages your future chances of parole when the parole board looks at the tape or record of the sentencing.

IDK, my boss is nice to me because she knows that if she’s not and I tell her to kiss my ass then she’ll never be able to find someone with my level of experience who will be willing to work for the quantity of peanuts that they’re paying me.

True, true.

The midterms are still 18 months away. 18 months before the last election, Republicans were still bickering over who they wanted their speaker to be and obviously they won that last one so anything is possible.

I’m surprised that Sanders is older than both Trump and Biden but retains about twice as much virility as either of them and about four times as much sanity as Trump

Let me rephrase what I mean. I guess I really am talking about the effect of enforced groupthink that platforms with voting like most social media sites cause, advertently or otherwise. Despite efforts to the contrary, voting here and elsewhere has always been an expression of approval or disapproval. So what tends to happen is that if someone posts something against the grain, people downvote it, and then it escalates from there. These numbers, despite their meaninglessness, were designed to trigger an emotional response—positive when high and negative when low. It results in the discouragement of the posting of anything that the user might think to be controversial. It gives a feeling that differences in opinions are unwelcome. And that’s really the problem with the way modern social media networks are designed.

We associate (probably not consciously), high scores and vote totals with things being “good”, and low scores with things being bad, when they really correspond to “popular” and “unpopular”, respectively. The algorithm is suggesting to its users that popular opinions are good and unpopular opinions are bad. This is a fine way to sort content like animal videos or funny dash cam GIFs but it’s a really terrible way to sort opinions.

Lemmy is little better than Reddit in this regard, because Reddit punishes its users for having “low karma” by taking away their ability to post and comment, but I still think that voting systems in general are a pretty bad way to score and recommend content.

Honestly, all Lemmy instances are pretty echo-chamber-y because like all social media, people come here to feel and not think. The only difference between here and other places is that for many users the echo chamber aligns more closely with their own views so it’s tolerable.

Okay, fair criticism

I absolutely, categorically deny in the strongest terms being a “right wing nutjob”. There are basically no such people on Lemmy.

I am simply making a point that we don’t know what the “marijuana-related charge” is. Deporting a person to a country they’ve never been is never going to be a good thing.

I am not accusing anyone of anything. I’m saying we don’t know what the “marijuana-related charge” is based just on this article.

Removed by mod

When your country’s leader is a fat man who inherited everything he’s got from his dad, is always threatening war against other countries, disappears anyone he doesn’t like, lives in opulent luxury while the people suffer in poverty, and demands absolute obedience from the members of his party by appointing people to top government positions based only on their personal loyalty to you.

(Who else fits this description…?)

I’m never going to be one to dog on something before I try it. If it’s good and can offer the same or better experience as Firefox then sign me up. The biggest sticking point for me, though, is potentially losing Firefox’s massive add-in library. I really like my uBlock Origin and Restore YouTube Dislike and my VPN extension and Metamask and all the other crap I’ve got there.

Excuse me, you are suspected of going into the wrong bathroom, in order to make sure you’re not a pervert we’re going to have to take a look at your genitals.

The Boost for Reddit app has not worked for me for ages, although ReVanced still has it going

Into the memory hole you go, thought criminal

Breaking news: Tax revenues from top one per cent of tax payers fall 80% after new IRS changes; experts left scratching their heads; government blames “DEI” and “woke” agents for resulting budget shortfall

Hey, the British were bloody imperial colonialists, not fascists though. Get it right!

Except that Sodor is noted to be in the United Kingdom, which means Thomas was loyal to His Britannic Majesty and served his king and country, not those Nazi scum.