More proof that the War on “Drugs” is largely an authoritarian criminalization of untreated mental health issues.

We shouldn’t lock people up for addiction any more than we should lock people up over depression.

I hate the euphemism of “self-deport.”

Let’s call it what it really is: ICE threatened to lock him up and send him to an undisclosed location if he didn’t flee the country.

Reactionary ideology is absolutely associated with the far right.

Conservatism is a reactionary ideology.

Conservatism is the theoretical voice of this animus against the agency of the subordinate classes. It provides the most consistent and profound argument as to why the lower orders should not be allowed to exercise their independent will, why they should not be allowed to govern themselves or the polity. Submission is their first duty, and agency the prerogative of the elite. Though it is often claimed that the left stands for equality while the right stands for freedom, this notion misstates the actual disagreement between right and left. Historically, the conservative has favored liberty for the higher orders and constraint for the lower orders. What the conservative sees and dislikes in equality, in other words, is not a threat to freedom but its extension. For in that extension, he sees a loss of his own freedom.

-Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind

Sure, but that’s not what police refer to when they talk about blood spatter analysis. I’m not saying it’s impossible to get good evidence from the location of blood; I’m saying that the bullshit they do around drop size and splatter patterns does not have any evidence to support it.

Edit: in other words, they want the credibility of science without doing the hard work of peer-review or falsification.

Trump isn’t doing anything different than he did last time; the only change is scope.

This dipshit really thought that Trump would expose Epstein’s clients even though he wished Ghislane Maxwell well? You have to be a special kind of stupid to fall for that.

From ProPublica:

The reliability of bloodstain-pattern analysis has never been definitively proven or quantified, but largely due to the testimony of criminalist Herbert MacDonell, it was steadily admitted in court after court around the country in the 1970s and ’80s. MacDonell spent his career teaching weeklong “institutes” in bloodstain-pattern analysis at police departments around the country, training hundreds of officers who, in turn, trained hundreds more.

While there is no index that lists cases in which bloodstain-pattern analysis played a role, state appellate court rulings show that the technique has played a factor in felony cases across the country. Additionally, it has helped send innocent people to prison. From Oregon to Texas to New York, convictions that hinged on the testimony of a bloodstain-pattern analyst have been overturned and the defendants acquitted or the charges dropped.

In 2009, a watershed report commissioned by the National Academy of Sciences cast doubt on the discipline, finding that “the uncertainties associated with bloodstain-pattern analysis are enormous,” and that experts’ opinions were generally “more subjective than scientific.” More than a decade later, few peer-reviewed studies exist, and research that might determine the accuracy of analysts’ findings is close to nonexistent.

Cops and pseudoscience go together like chocolate and peanut butter.

For more examples, see “bite mark analysis,” “911 call analysis,” “blood spatter analysis,” roadside drug testing with known false-positives, and even fingerprints (once the gold standard) have up to a 20% error rate.

And that’s not even getting into how their methodology is exactly backwards: they have a claim that they set out to prove, but do no work to disprove what they already believe.

In my opinion, stupid is an aggravated form of ignorant; it’s an aggressive, proud refusal to change one’s mind despite having the clear contradictions in their beliefs presented to them.

They believe the falsehoods because it benefits them to do so. Importantly, all of their friends believe it too, so if they stop then they’ll lose their support and social network. It’s the same kind of thought control techniques that cults exploit.

He’s also the caricature of the dumb micromanaging boss that rips off his workers, but that’s not a deal-breaker for white folks either; in fact, the majority apparently approve.

Americans are just stupid, and it’s easy to whip us into a moral panic.

Reactionaries see the Constitution in the same way they view the Bible: they get to make up insane justifications for doing the exact opposite of what it says.

Wow, they really got the chatbot to sound like a right-wing debate bro shithead. They must have had a lot of training data laying around somewhere.

Subscribe to different comms. There’s a lot of creativity on here, look at !artshare@lemmy.world

When you ride alone, you ride with MechaHitler.

They get off on being hypocritical: they love that they aren’t bound by what they’ve previously said, as it shows that restrictions are for other people.

They believe things provisionally, and only as a means to win an argument. If another argument comes up, their beliefs will shift instantly to whatever is needed to score a point.

This appears to mean that they don’t have any values, but that is incorrect; they unequivocally believe that they should be able to structure society where the people who deserve power will receive it. This is in stark contrast to the left where we believe in equal rights and dignity for all— the exact opposite of their reactionary ideology.

I still cry when I remember that they were clearing them out at $5 a pop. I’ll cling to mine until the day it dies.

From the same article:

The United States also agrees that it will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein, including but not limited to Sarah Kellen, Adriana Ross, Lesley Groff, or Nadia Marcinkova.

There are systems like Blades in the Dark that bypass all the planning phases and just let players jump into the interesting parts of the story. Better yet, it has mechanics to support this kind of play.

“Simulation” type RPGs can be done on computers these days with much more detailed and satisfying tactical combat, but narrative-focused games that play more like an episodic show is where the really interesting TTRPG stuff is happening in my opinion.

According to a ruling by US District Judge Kenneth Marra in February 2019, “from between about 1999 and 2007, Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused more than 30 minor girls…at his mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, and elsewhere in the United States and overseas.” The ruling goes on to describe a child sex ring: “In addition to his own sexual abuse of the victims, Epstein directed other persons to abuse the girls sexually. Epstein used paid employees to find and bring minor girls to him. Epstein worked in concert with others to obtain minors not only for his own sexual gratification, but also for the sexual gratification of others.”

Archive link

Notably, the extra rights are only given to churches. Other non-profits are still restricted in their political activity.