Rov_Scam
7hr ago
The "feels free to leave" test comes from Michigan v. Chesternut. The cases you cited seem to ask whether the suspect would have been free to leave in particular circumstances that don't apply here, or free to refuse a search in circumstances that don't apply here.
Rov_Scam
7hr ago
The problem is that the cop didn't notice the gun until after he initiated the detention. If the detention were initiated based on his seeing the gun, there would be reasonable suspicion to retain and there wouldn't be a problem. Hence why the state tried to argue that it wasn't a detention.
Rov_Scam
22hr ago
The exact same thing happened to me once at a car rental place, upgrade and all. Or maybe that was Bryan Garner; I can't remember.
Rov_Scam
22hr ago
A German or British police officer would have the power to detain all juvenile males wearing a single article of black clothing within a one-mile radius of the robbery
I've read a lot of crime books in my life, and one of the things that's always interested me is suspect descriptions and how useful they are. I've read about cases where police failed to solve the crime because they seemed to focus on a description that wasn't very good, and others where they didn't solve the crime and dismissed good descriptions as being too vague. I've also seen authors excoriate police departments for not focusing on suspects who matched relatively vague descriptions. So during my time at the DMV I also thought about a rubric that could be used to categorize suspect descriptions.
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A Level 1 Description would be one that eliminates 90–99% of the population. This may seem high, but anything less than that isn't really even a description. If the suspect is described as a black female, well, only 12–14% of the population is black, and about half of them are female, so that eliminates 93% of the population right there. If the suspect is described as a young, tall, white male, 40–45% of the population is white males, eliminating children and anyone too old to be reasonably described as young and you cut that in half, and cut it in half again to get rid of anyone shorter than average height, and you're down to 10%. These kinds of descriptions are of little to no use in a police investigation and are completely worthless in a trial.
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A Level 2 Description is one that eliminates 99–99.9% of the population. These can be of some use in an investigation but are of little to no use in a trial. Suppose the man running from the scene was described as an African American teenager, short and extremely overweight. Take the 7% who are black men, teenagers being about 20% of them, divide by half again to get people shorter then average, then in half again to get anyone plausibly described as overweight (always use the larger numbers), and we're in that 0.1–1% range. But in most places there are going to be entirely too many short, black, overweight teenage boys for police to identify and question them all.
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A Level 3 Description would eliminate 99.9–99.99% of the population, but still include between one person in a thousand and one in ten thousand. To give a few examples:
- Caucasian male, age 50 to 55, tall, athletic, blue eyes, grey hair, driving an older model pickup.
- Caucasian female, 20–23 years old, brown hair and eyes, about 5'7", large breasts, extremely good looking, piercing in the nose and tattoo on the lower back.
- Hispanic female, 45 to 50, extremely short, somewhat overweight, perhaps 4'11" and 130 pounds, bushy eyebrows, wears glasses, blue painted fingernails.
These kinds of descriptions are of value to police and may play some role in a trial, but no one could be reasonably convicted of a crime based on them. It's also worth noting here that some of the attributes are changeable, and this needs to factor into the analysis as well.
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A Level 4 Description would eliminate 99.99–99.999% of the population, but still probably include a few people in any decent sized metro:
- Caucasian male, 40–45 years old, between 5'2" and 5'5", thin, long, sandy-colored hair, large glasses, large square face, smokes cigarettes, looks a little like John Denver.
- African-American male in his 20s, average height, muscular build, shaved head, several gold teeth, gold earring in left ear, prominent scar on neck. Very deep voice with trace of a Jamaican accent.
If you match a description of this specificity you should expect the police to come to your door, but it still wouldn't be enough to convict absent other information.
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A Level 5 description would exclude 99.999% of the population or more, aka 1 person in 100,000 or less. This is the point where you stop combining combinations of independent variables that belong to lots of people and zero in on very specific attributes that are themselves fairly unique: A missing finger, a particular tattoo, one green nipple, etc. At this level you're on the defensive; if you match a Level 5 Description, you're going to need an alibi.
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A Level 6 description is a description that applies to only one person: Fingerprints, DNA, being recognized by someone who knows you. A Level 6 Description is an identification.
The above is taken from an award-winning post I did about a year ago when something similar came up. I apologize for the long quote, but I omitted the formatting to make it less annoying. Anyway, it makes the point. If 20% of the population can be reasonably described as juvenile, and another 20% is wearing at least one article of black clothing, that description describes 4% of the population, making it a Level 1 description. If the suspect had simply been described as an Asian male, about 6% of the US population is Asian, about half of them men. Would it be reasonable to round up and detain all Asian men based on this description? Remember that the statistical probability of one of these being the perp are about 25% higher than a random juvenile with an article of black clothing.
And then you have to consider the area. This isn't some rural village. It isn't even some backalley urban ghetto. The robbery took place in Chinatown in Philadelphia, which is just outside of Center City. A one mile radius from here includes an estimated 57,479 people, likely more as it includes some of the most visited parts of Philadelphia on a Saturday night. One can expect there to be approximately 2,300 people within a one-mile radius of the robbery who fit the description. In my estimation, police need to get at least to Level 3 before a court will determine that, in similar circumstances, there is reasonable suspicion sufficient to allow an investigative detention, and at least Level 4 before you can start talking about a custodial interrogation.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
If I want to talk to someone I walk directly at them in their path.
If you're approaching them from the opposite direction then yes, that's perfectly normal. What happened here is that the officer was following K.C. from behind, got ahead of him, and turned around, blocking his path forward. If a stranger did this to you in public, it would be highly abnormal and probably raise some kind of alarm. If a cop did this to you, it would not suggest that the encounter was casual.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
And what are they doing with that domination? They might be holding on to science by the skin of their teeth, but there has been no worthwhile contribution to any of the other fields for years if not decades.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make by saying this. That conservatives are so inept that they can't create their own institutions despite the existing liberal ones not doing anything worthwhile for decades? Seems like low-hanging fruit if you ask me.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
If you're not going into a scenic rural area and building a facility the size of six football fields that employees fifteen people they don't have a problem with it.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
I agree with most of what @Shrike and @birb_cromble have to say about a Fabian strategy not working. But I want to put a finer point on it. Your thought experiment is in a pretty common vein among history buffs, and while these can be fun, as intellectual exercises they are often lacking. The reason for this is that the participants too often presume to second-guess the actions of the real-world participants with the benefit of knowing how everything ends. It's illustrative that you bring up Joe Johnston's actions in the Atlanta campaign and point to them as wise and prudent, in contrast to the recklessness of John Bell Hood. This is a pretty common take among Civil War buffs. Almost no one, however, says the same thing about Johnston's actions during the Peninsula Campaign two years earlier, or equates Lee's actions in the Seven Days to Hood's in Atlanta. It's because we know now that Lee's actions spooked McClellan enough that the Union ended up withdrawing from the Peninsula entirely. If you're going to take the position that Davis should have undertaken a Fabian strategy you don't get to apply it only to the situations where, with hindsight, that would have worked. You can't just tell Lee to not invade Pennsylvania; you also have to tell him to fall back to Richmond during the Seven Days, and to be prepared to abandon it if the situation became untenable. No stupid shit like dividing his army to attack a larger force. Of course, had the South actually pursued this strategy, the war would have been lost in 1862, even with an idiot like McClellan in charge of Union forces.
In 1862, Johnston had strategically retreated against a less aggressive general while he was more evenly matched in terms of manpower. By July 1864, he had spent the previous two months strategically withdrawing in good terrain for defensive battle. By the time he reached Atlanta, the situation had worsened. If I'm Jeff Davis, by that point I'm waiting for a telegram saying that he doesn't like the looks of Sherman's position and the only prudent thing to do is abandon the city before Sherman outflanks him, cuts the rail lines, and lays the city under siege. Remember that you aren't fighting some idealized war with the benefit of hindsight; you're taking a position on what Davis should have done given what he knew at the time, using the people who were actually involved. Whatever ideas you have about what Johnston should have done had he stayed in command, he probably wouldn't have done them. If he had any intention of fighting a decisive defensive battle for Atlanta, the time to do it was weeks earlier when he had a terrain advantage. Part of the reason he got canned in the first place was because he chose to retreat to a less defensible position.
And even if he had, so what? People act like he could have just hung out in Atlanta indefinitely, and that the North would have grown restless and elected McClellan to end the war. First, he couldn't have stayed in Atlanta that long. When Hood attacked Sherman, it was to prevent Sherman from positions that were disadvantageous to the Confederacy. What you're suggesting is that Hood should have just let the Union take these positions unopposed. From this perspective, Hood's attacks, while costly in terms of manpower, allowed him to stay in Atlanta about a month longer than he otherwise could have. If the Union had taken the Macon railroad on their first shot at the end of July, they Confederates would have given up Atlanta a month earlier than they did in the historical timeline, not later. And even in the unlikely event that Johnston could have held Atlanta until November, and McClellan won the election, you still need to keep in mind that Lincoln was in office for another four months. There was no way that Atlanta was surviving the winter intact with that much of a Union advantage, and developments elsewhere, particularly Virginia, would have meant that by the time McClellan took office on March 4, the war would have been over anyway.
I say all this as someone who thinks that the Confederacy could have won the war, and who thinks that Jeff Davis and others made a lot of bad decisions. I don't think that Union victory was inevitable. But I'm reluctant to point to any specific tactic or strategy that the Confederates could have used to win the war.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
How old are you? When I was a kid in the 90s our soccer games were all on Sunday, and plenty of birthday parties were on Sunday.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
Some of the images are obviously AI generated, particularly since AI has a problem with generating essentially the same person over and over again.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
It depends on your definition of one hit wonder. Technically speaking, Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, and Thin Lizzy only had one hit, and I can recommend a lot from them, but that's probably not what you had in mind. Technically speaking, Del Amitri had two hits, and I was expecting you to post this song, which I heard quite a bit in stores when I was working an inventory job in college. I'm also assuming you aren't referring to someone like Bruce Cockburn, whose career lasted from 1970 to, as of this writing, 2023, the "main part" of which extends from the mid-70s to the late '90s. By "main part" I mean the part that shows up in Best Of compilations and that fans yell him to play at concerts. Cockburn is a personal favorite of mine but he happened to have one minor US hit in 1979 called "Wondering Where the Lions Are", which nobody remembers and that fans don't have any special affinity for. I mean, it's a great song, but it's not like his concerts are full of people unfamiliar with anything else from his catalog demanding to hear that one song.
ANYWAY, without further ado, here are my selections taken from the nebulous group of bands that everyone agrees are one hit wonders regardless of whether they adhere to any formal definition of the term:
Blind Melon: "No Rain" was their hit, and their debut album was very good, even if it seemed to be ripping off Jane's Addiction a bit. Their second album, Soup, is an unheralded near-masterpiece. Check out Galaxie.
Talk Talk: Best known for the Synth Pop song "It's My Life" (which became better-known after No Doubt covered it), from 1984. By the time of their next album in 1986 they had abandoned Synth Pop for an artier, more adult sound that was accessible but not exactly chart material. By 1988 they had completely abandoned commercial pretensions and were charting new territory, which in a few years would develop into post-rock but would never reach quite the same heights. They had another album in 1991 that wasn't as good but is still recommendable, and then the band broke up. Mark Hollis evidently felt that there was still more work to be done, and put out a solo album in 1998 which is very good but also beyond the comprehension of most listeners (though not inaccessible by any means). At this point he felt there was no more work to be done, as the album ends with several minutes of silence and he hasn't put out anything since. If you listen to the discography in order this makes perfect sense.
Rickie Lee Jones: Best known for the hit Chuck E's in Love, she's also in the Talk Talk boat in that most of her career is a lot artier than most people would guess. Then again, she dated Tom Waits for a while. Pirates is probably her best album.
The Looking Glass: "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" is the only thing anyone knows them for, and, like true one hit wonders, their career was rather brief. That being said, I was in a bar in their hometown in New Jersey years ago when Pitt still played Rutgers and one of the locals told me that everyone there knew that "From Stanton Station" was the better song, and it got a lot of play on the jukebox there.
Sixpence None the Richer: You probably know "Kiss Me", and you may know a couple covers that got decent airplay, but they had another minor hit with "Breathe Your Name", that expanded on Kiss Me's borrowing of dominant seventh chords from the parallel mixolydian to give it its distinctive sound. You won't hear that in a pop hit these days.
The Verve: "Bitter Sweet Symphony" was everywhere, but "The Drugs Don't Work" and "Lucky Man" were better songs for the waning days of Britpop.
The Cardigans: Continuing the theme of bands that had more success in their home countries than in the States, The Cardigans only broke through here with "Lovefool", but they had an entire career's worth of hits in Sweden. "Carnival" is representative of the sound, which is essentially a more pop-friendly version of Stereolab. The video is complete with conspicuous shots of Enoch Light and Free Design albums, which were very much an iykyk thing at the time.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
The US also recently announced that they can no longer support all-night operations in the strait and will be limiting support to predetermined windows.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
Not only that; the Bahrain base was only in the news because of the possibility that it may never be rebuilt. The US effectively abandoned other bases in Qatar and the UAE at the same time the Bahrain base was evacuated, as the risk to men and equipment was too great to keep them functioning as operational centers. So while we theoretically have bases that could support sustained naval operations in the region, they are useless at the moment, and we're relying on other bases that are far away and out of range of Iranian attacks.
Rov_Scam
14d ago
Others have admitted to inserting themselves as pseudo medical experts on the jury (the nurses of course). That is not proper during deliberation.
In a technical sense, no, but it's inevitable, and difficult to prevent. Either of us would make terrible jurors because our training and experience would mean that the jury would be looking to us for clarification and interpretation. If I say that the burden of proof isn't met it means more than if some rando says it, because it's presumed that I would know more about the burden of proof than the average bear. Suppose a case involves a trucking accident, and a prospective juror used to be a trucker. You can voir dire him all you want but unless he says something like he quit because trucking companies never follow safety protocols or that normies don't know how hard it is to drive a truck and if a passenger car got hit by one it's because they were probably doing something stupid, you're not getting the juror disqualified for cause. If he merely says something to the effect of some trucking companies don't care about safety and some truckers don't care about safety but some do, and he can't make a determination on the case until hearing the facts, then he's on the jury unless you use a peremptory, and you might not want to do that; the guy is a wild card, but you may need to save your challenges for ones who are obviously bad. So the guy gets on, and when it comes time to deliberate he's going to tell the jury what the standard of care is, that the plaintiff's/defendant's expert is full of shit, and the jury is going to give him more weight than the expert.
And I'm not going to blame the trucker for this. If he knows from 20 years of experience that you're never supposed to do something, I can't expect him to forget that and give my expert who says it's okay to do that sometimes as much credence as someone who knows nothing about trucking. And if I'm a juror who knows nothing about trucking then I'm going to give the guy in the room with me who has 20 years of trucking experience more credence than some expert who was bought and paid for.
Rov_Scam
14d ago
The base was effectively abandoned months ago; at present there is just a skeleton crew there. The evacuation was so fast that families stationed there had to leave their personal belongings, and there is currently no plan to retrieve their stuff. The question is whether the Navy will abandon the base permanently or eventually rebuild it.
Rov_Scam
14d ago
Rov_Scam
14d ago
They need to name a model "Black Hole" just before they start defaulting on their contracts and are unable to meet their financial obligations.
Rov_Scam
17d ago
As one of those people who, in your view, refuses to see the writing on the wall, I'm not sure why you would even be worried about my coming over to your side. Even if you could convince me and all the other AI skeptics out there, what, exactly, am I supposed to do with this information?
Rov_Scam
18d ago
Reminds me of a joke about the pope in a lifeboat with Raquel Welch (Those aren't buoys...)
Rov_Scam
21d ago
Looping in @sleepyegg, @07mk, and @JarJarJedi
You need to take into consideration that York may not be the billionaire you think he is. I obviously don't know his asset profile, but it's not his team, it's his family's. He hasn't had a real job in his life other than with the team, and he's a generation removed from any inheritance. The only entrepreneur in the family was the grandfather, Edward DeBartolo, Sr., who was a shopping mall magnate. DeBartolo was the owner of the Penguins, and his daughter, Denise DeBartolo York, was the team president and an executive in the shopping mall business. When the 49ers went up for sale in 1977, he couldn't buy them outright, as NFL ownership policy precludes owners from having a stake in any other pro sports team. So he gave the team to his son, Eddie. The real estate market collapsed at the end of the 1980s and DeBartolo needed cash, and just as the Penguins were winning their first championship, he was forced to sell the team. This didn't solve the cashflow problem, and he was forced to take the company public, which led him to retire. He passed away in 1994, and the shares of the company were acquired by Simon a couple years later.
Fast forward to the late 90s, and Eddie, who had always had his hands in questionable business dealings, got in some hot water over public corruption in some kind of riverboat gambling deal. The NFL suspended him for a year, but instead of serving the suspension he decided to trade his share of the team to his sister and her husband in exchange for what was left of the family business. Denise's son Jed is at this point in college, and after a brief stint at a financial firm he took a bullshit nepo job with the 49ers. Denise gave him day-to-day control of the team in 2008, in a decision that was widely mocked due to his complete lack of any experience other than liking football. Nonetheless, he turned around what had by that point become a moribund franchise, and everyone forgot about it. In 2024 he acquired enough shares in the team to become principal owner.
Earlier this year, Jed filed for divorce. He and his wife had been living in a large house in the Bay Area, but instead of just buying another house like one would expect a billionaire to do, he moved back to a house his parents own in Youngstown. He doesn't have any money other than what he earned from the team, and he just spent a large portion of that money to acquire a controlling share. NFL ownership policy requires that final voting authority is vested in a single individual, and unless he owns significantly more than 51%, which given his history is doubtful, his net worth is somewhere north of 4 billion dollars. Since he's getting divorced, and acquired an unknown but likely significant portion of the team subsequent to his 2011 marriage, I'd estimate that he's going to owe his ex-wife at least a billion dollars as part of the divorce settlement. Ownership policy prevents him from giving her a share of the team that would eliminate his controlling interest, and he likely doesn't have enough non-voting shares to make a significant dent. This means he has to set off the settlement with other assets, but again, he's unlikely to have this kind of money, and what he does have contributes to the overall pie.
The upshot is that his attorneys are going to have to get creative when it comes to figuring out a settlement, and now is definitely not the time to be taking international flights (which would likely be private or at least first class), or spending a lot of time in Vegas, or doing anything else suggesting he has a lot of disposable cash, and there's a good chance that he doesn't have a ton of disposable cash at the moment. So you have a guy who is getting divorced after 15 years of marriage, likely never hired a prostitute before, is a thousand miles away from his kids in a town not exactly known for excitement or for having a lot of high-end call girls. So when he wanted to get his rocks off, he went online and tried to find some local whores who he could afford to pay and, at the very least, would be cheap enough that his ex's attorney wouldn't be asking too many questions about where a few grand disappeared to, or why he bought plane tickets to Australia.
Rov_Scam
23d ago
See my last paragraph. Though I doubt they'd be profitable immediately. The whole inference is profitable thing evidently only works if you're using non-GAAP accounting that relies on things like "annualized income" which didn't exist until startups needed to justify their burn rates. It's a marketing term, not an accounting term.
I commented above, and those cases don't really apply here. Michigan v. Chesternut says that it's a detention if a reasonable person would feel free to leave due to an officer's is of force or authority. Blocking someone's path so they can't proceed in the direction they were traveling is a pretty clear escalation from simply wanting to speak to someone. The officer was certainly capable of communicating that he'd like to have a chat without physically impeding the kid's progress. This wasn't even a particularly close call.
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