Here are a couple of nicely-synergistic pieces from Cracked about taking offense at things seen online and in society:
Rant derived from a comment on a friend’s Facebook post:
“Actual innocence” is basically a defense strategy once you get to the appellate level, which is one of the truly ridiculous side effects of a criminal justice system that focuses on burden of proof rather than guilt/innocence.
It is generally accepted among police and prosecutors that a “not guilty” verdict does not equate to “innocence”—it just means that the state didn’t meet its burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Yet thanks to uncreative word usage, a “guilty” verdict is construed by police and prosecutors to mean that the person actually committed the offense (i.e. is “guilty”), not just that the state met its burden of proof. Appellate courts then look at it more as a question of whether the state broke any rules or the trial court made any errors, and not whether the defendant actually committed the offense.
In a purely procedural, theoretical sense, it’s a great system. It works perfectly for jurists like Scalia, who seems oblivious to the presence of complicated human beings within the system.
The most bizarre side effect, IMHO, is the ability of courts to use acquitted conduct as evidence at sentencing, because the burden of proof for factors to be applied at sentencing is “preponderance of evidence” (proof that something more likely than not happened) as opposed to “beyond a reasonable doubt.” There was a recent case of several defendants who were convicted of drug distribution, but acquitted of conspiracy to distribute. The trial court applied enhanced sentences based on the drug distribution conspiracy—the very same activities for which the jury had just acquitted them. The appellate court said this was fine because (a) the enhanced sentence was only for the distribution conviction, and (b) the state had met the “preponderance of evidence” burden re: conspiracy, just not the “beyond a reasonable doubt one.”
tl;dr – In the criminal justice system, “not guilty” and “innocent” are two separate concepts. The antonym for both terms is “guilty,” but the system doesn’t really trouble itself with making a distinction there.
I really don’t care that Jared Leto’s Joker looks more like a Juggalo than an insane criminal mastermind. I am trying very hard to resist the temptation to make negative comparisons to Heath Ledger’s interpretation of the character. I don’t even care that Leto looks more like a fan of the Joker—who got way too carried away at the tattoo shop—than like the actual Joker.
© DC Comics / Warner Bros., via Twitter / @DavidAyerMovies
Any time I think a modern-day portrayal of the Joker is in any way ridiculous or unworthy of the character, I just remember that Cesar Romero’s Joker was once the only live-action screen portrayal of the Joker in existence. Continue reading
It’s hard to convey to someone who isn’t from Texas just how big of a loss the recall of Blue Bell Ice Cream is. Even if other types of ice cream are most likely still safe (h/t Bob), this hits us deeply here in Texas. Blue Bell isn’t just a Texas-based ice cream brand that lots of people passionately love. To many Texans, Blue Bell is ice cream.
We have lost OUR ice cream!!!
Yes, yes, Ben & Jerry’s makes some phenomenal ice cream, but they’re from Vermont. Vermont is not Texas. They don’t understand ice cream the way we do. I’m not saying Blue Bell is better, per se, it’s just………well, it’s Texas.
We also have the phenomenally-awesome Amy’s Ice Cream here in Austin, but Amy’s is something of a destination, while Blue Bell is intended for home consumption. It’s just not the same.
It didn’t seem real to me until I went to the grocery store, and there they were….the empty freezer shelves, where once sat gallon upon gallon of creamy Brenham-made goodness: Continue reading
This doesn’t really depict my mood on a Monday morning, and it’s not “cute,” per se, but here it is anyway:
(h/t Karnythia)
If the Civil War had not taken place, we might not have the Fourteenth Amendment. But it did, and we do. Laws that once might have applied only to the federal government now apply to the states as well.
By the same token, if the Articles of Confederation had worked, we would not have the Constitution. But they didn’t, and we do. We cannot go back and undo the Civil War, and we can’t go back to the Articles of Confederation. Time only flows one direction.
– Hrafnkell Haraldsson, “It’s Getting Hard to Tell Where Sovereign Citizens End and Republicans Begin“, PoliticusUSA, April 24, 2015
There’s no way getting around it: Coachella ain’t cheap.
A three-day pass alone will set you back $375. Add in the costs of getting to and from Indio, after-concert Uber pickups, hotel rooms, vittles and other incidentals, and we’re already near $1,000. VIPs, trustafarians and other one-percenters can easily spend three, four or five times that. Even the grungiest, tattooed bro camping in a tattered tent and subsisting on booze, dope, cigarettes and dust can expect to spend around $500.
Compare that to Woodstock. In August 1969, advanced tickets to “3 Days of Peace & Music” cost $18, the equivalent of $120 in 2014 dollars. Not a bad deal to see The Who, Sly & The Family Stone and Jimi Hendrix all in their primes, especially since most concertgoers got in for free.
And the Woodstock Generation came to Max Yasgur’s farm clad in the counterculture uniform of jeans, beads and T-shirts — or nothing at all. Turns out it cost a lot less to be an actual hippie than a wannabe playing dress-up at Coachella.
– Marc Ballon, “How the Hell Do People Afford Coachella?” Westword, April 13, 2015
(This is my obligatory annual I-don’t-get-hipsters post, roughly coinciding with Coachella.)
Friday, the second full day of our NYC adventure, began with the sort of intense muscle soreness that only those who live in commuter cities and don’t exercise enough can truly understand. For my part, I understand if your cup doth not run over for our plight. Stiff legs aside, we set off for Brooklyn via the bridge of the same name.
After marveling at a truly impressive feat of 19th-century engineering (seriously—they used glorified diving bells to put the supports in place under the East River, which is really hardcore), we descended into the subway system again.
After the previous day’s subway (mis)adventure, I figured I had this whole public transportation thing down. I was wrong. For reasons I still don’t understand, it was announced that our train would be skipping our intended station, which led to a sort of circling around the stop we wanted. I hope one day it will seem funny.
On the plus side, the Brooklyn Museum has some amazing stuff. Continue reading
The bloodbelly comb jelly appears to offer evidence that aliens have already arrived on Earth and found the oceans preferable to land.
Picking up where we left off yesterday, let’s talk a bit about the New York City subway system. See, you might think that you are pretty adept at navigating a city’s rail system, based on the fact that you had no problem with the metro systems of Washington, D.C. and multiple European cities*, not to mention the bus systems of Washington, D.C. and Reykjavik. You might think that, but you still might not be prepared for the rainbow-hued, alphabet-soup, spaghetti-like clusterf*ck that is the New York City subway. See, from the map, it looked easy: hop on at the nearest station in Queens, about five blocks away, take the only line running out of that station (the purple one) to Grand Central, then take the green line going towards Brooklyn for 2 or 3 stops (I forget at the moment), and presto! You’re two blocks from your new hotel!
I didn’t account for two words, because I had no idea they were an issue: “local” versus “express.” We did eventually get to the hotel, and were able to reflect on how this was, on the scale of vacation f***ups, pretty close to the bottom.
From here, we began the walking. Oh, how we walked. I kept expecting my exercise tracker to ask who I was and why I stole an exercise tracker from a guy who takes an average of 3,000 steps a day. Continue reading
