TheFooder
1d ago
Here's some culture war red-meat: Jussie Smolett conviction overturned
On one hand, I want to see this smug a-hole who disparaged my once beautiful city get his comeuppance.
On the other hand, I dunno...I can't think of anything.
Smollett had challenged nearly every aspect of his case, arguing that his legal woes should have been over after the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office struck a controversial deal to drop charges just a month after Smollett was indicted in February 2019.
The agreement should have prevented Smollett from being charged for the same crime by a court-appointed special prosecutor a year later, according to the state’s highest court.
In a 5-0 opinion, with two justices abstaining, Justice Elizabeth M. Rocheford wrote the second case violated Smollett’s due process rights because he had fulfilled the requirements of his earlier plea deal by turning over his $10,000 bond and doing community service.
“We are aware that this case has generated significant public interest and that many people were dissatisfied with the resolution of the original case and believed it to be unjust,” Rocheford wrote in the 32-page ruling. “Nevertheless, what would be more unjust than the resolution of any one criminal case would be a holding from this court that the State was not bound to honor agreements upon which people have detrimentally relied.” The court ruled that a controversial decision by prosecutors to drop all charges against Smollett amounted to a plea deal, and that the case brought by a special prosecutor a year later was invalid.
I suppose I can see the logic of "you can't charge a guy who's already agreed to a plea deal." So, whatever, I guess. As a former Chicagoan, the real villain always seemed to be Kim Foxx, who kind of just did whatever she wanted, including letting this fool off the hook.
With only nine days before she leaves office, Foxx claimed Thursday’s ruling offered her office a measure of vindication.
“We have spent five years and millions of dollars on the re-prosecution of someone for a low-level felony,” Foxx told the Chicago Sun-Times, noting that her office’s handling of the case was used as a cudgel by critics of her broader reform agenda.
“This case was bigger than what Jussie Smollett did,” she added.
You can say that again.
I'm sure most people, at this point, are simply sick and tired of all these people and figured the whole ordeal was over. It's clearly a slap in the face of the prosecutor Dan Webb (what's with all these double consonants? amiright??) but I doubt it's going to rehabilitate Smolett's career. Actors are infinitely replaceable, so without divine intervention his career is effectively over. Of course, I might also be wrong as I rarely watch TV or pay attention to celebrities.
Oh, wait...
In an interview last month to promote a new film Smollett co-wrote and directed, he remained defiant and claimed to have spent about $3 million on his defense — even though it might have made more sense to have served out his time.
So...was he a victim of a vindictive prosecution, or just an innocent dude trying to get a better contract? Ok, it's really hard for me to be unbiased her. I'll admit it.
TheFooder
3d ago
I always liked (perhaps a bit sardonically) Michael Chabon's solution in the The Yiddish Policemen's Union. They turned the southern bit of Alaska, the area around Juneau, into Israel. The US didn't miss it. I always think about that whenever the discussion of what to do with the Palestinians comes up. If everyone is so concerned...give them the cold wilderness no one else wants to deal with. (This is just a silly thought experiment, not meant as a serious solution)
TheFooder
4d ago
https://glog.glennf.com/hcwm-store/how-comics-were-made
Deep dive into how printing works/evolved
TheFooder
4d ago
What's the mechanism for useful therapy? Is it hearing good advice from an actual human, or is it hearing advice that unlocks subconscious truth? I'd suspect the latter in which case LLM's may be perfectly suitable, particularly for people who don't want to reveal their inner darkness to another person. However, maybe revealing one's innermost thoughts to a living judge is what gives the therapy depth and meaning.
TheFooder
7d ago
Cthulhu may swim slowly. But he only swims left towards safetyism
"I swear officer I didn't mean to send those poor people gibbering and screaming for the insane asylum!" "Tell it to the Deep Old Ones, Chtulhu. We've finally got your number this time!"
TheFooder
7d ago
As a relatively long-term user of Substack and Substack's Notes platform, it seems like the better X refugee camp from what's available, at least as far as vibrant public square goes. There has certainly been an uptick in doofuses and bad takes but, in my experience, it's easy to ignore them (Mute) or blast them out of your feed (Block). It serves my needs and I like it in conjunction with The Motte for general information and sense-making.
My knowledge of Bluesky is that's where all the anti-comicsgate (I think that's the side of the lefties/femenists) people ended up after everyone kept bashing their rotten takes, doxing and general whisper-network activity. They are definitely hidden behind a firewall now, but I can't tell if that made them more or less powerful. Whatever they did to Ed Piskor seems to have been coordinated there and it was enough to drive the man to suicide. Anyway, take a look at Heather Antos, Gail Simone, Mark Waid and Alex Di Campi and let me know what you see. If it's not true and these folks are monsters organizing industry hits on people, that would be good information to know.
TheFooder
7d ago
That back-and-forth is exactly what I would expect from Bluesky. I've know about Bluesky for a bit because it's where the comic-book whisper network went after they were infiltrated on Facebook. As I understand it, the reason people like Bluesky is they can protect their groups and conversations from the public and it's a hard-left space.
As for the death of X, yes and it couldn't have happened to a nicer social-media platform. I've been using Substack for years now and the Notes app fully satisfies all of my social media needs. I have an impression it's pretty mixed as many of the biggest accounts are leftists (Robert Reich, Michael Moore, Heather Cox Richardson) but the majority of what I see seems to be centrist/right-leaning. It's full to the brim of renegade journalists, for instance everyone from the Intercept is there (though Glenn Greenwald already broke for Locals), Taibbi, Scott, FdB, etc. My experience is the debate is much more robust and diverse than anything I saw on X, Reddit, Facebook, etc. and the radicals simply get filtered out because they don't offer any insight.
It's possible it is just as easy to fall into an ideological well as anywhere else but even the crap (ahem, Michael Moore) is better written and more thoughtful than most places. I think it must be better than I imagine Bluesky to be, but I wouldn't even consider Bluesky unless I was specifically trying to own libs with their bad takes.
TheFooder
11d ago
Interesting...I agree with your assessment of all the people you mention with the possible exception of Jesse Singal, who seems like he may actually have some journalist chops. Just today Yglesias was had a post "something something media loves Trump" and I knew exactly what it was going to say before I read it. I read a third of it and shrugged. At least he's not offensive and rude? Hannananinana seems to delight in being a scoundrel to some extent and that turns me off. I watched some live video with him and Michael Tracy and jsut got too bored to keep watching. (I think Tracy is interesting FWIW).
Anyway, it's nice to test my perceptions against others, so thanks!
TheFooder
11d ago
Ditto on the 'moved out of a blue bubble' to a mixed area. It's remarkable how much chiller and more functional everything seems to be. I was just at my kid's Veteran's day pageant. Never once in my older child's school career (in Oak Park, IL) did they ever do anything Veteran related I ever knew about.
Anyway...that's the way Amerca works best: conservatives and liberals in neighborly competition trying to make difficult things work. I couldn't see it from within the Blue Bubble of Chicago.
TheFooder
11d ago
What your take on Richard Hanania I can't tell if he's useful signal or bloated hot air. Mostly I'm not a fan, I find him pompous, aggressive and mostly without anything interesting to say....but maybe I'm missing something? Smart people seem to respect him. EDIT: I ask because I think he might be in that intolerable pundit's and influencers class but don't want to miss signal if it's there.
TheFooder
14d ago
I've often thought, "If they just told us what the trade offs were and were honest about it, they'd get my vote," but I doubt that's a winning strategy.
TheFooder
14d ago
One of my neighbors asked me if I gave my child fluoride pills now that we live on well water. I stifled a gasp and asked her to describe what she was giving her kid. Apparently her dentists said kids without city water need fluoride and this kid takes fluoride pills--like swallows them. I asked the woman if she understood how they work and she admitted she didn't know. Rather than kill the party I said it was interesting and went straight home and re-researched the topic to make sure I actually understood what I thought I understood: fluoride is a topical treatment to help re-build tooth enamel.
Not only did I remember how the stuff works and learned a bit more, but I discovered that it's insanely difficult to get good information. It's almost all propaganda that says, "fluoride prevents cavities! Trust us!" Effectively, fluoride ionizes existing chemicals in the mouth to boost enamel creation, which is a natural process. There is literally no benefit to consuming fluoride and it's clearly a dangerous chemical to ingest in large quantities. (https://journals.lww.com/jpcd/fulltext/2020/10020/how_fluoride_protects_dental_enamel_from.3.aspx)
I also learned that the guidelines for public water fluoridation had recently been dropped from 1 mg/L to 0.7 mg/L (https://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/about/community-water-fluoridation-recommendations.html) and that there is actually a problem called fluorosis that will ruin your teeth. And besides...who even drinks tap-water anymore (except us Motters) amiright? It's looking bad for water fluoridation!
The thing that blew me away was the oft repeated claim that fluoridation lowers cavities by 30%. The best I could find was that health experts in the 80's found the addition of some fluoride to the water resulted in fewer cavities across the population but I found no evidence where it discussed the actual effect per individual. It really seems like a case of bad numeracy to me, where no one bothers to ask, "30% of what? how?" and everyone just presumes they'll have 30% fewer cavities if they even think about it that hard.
I feel like the real problem here is a lack of scientific curiosity on the part of dentists who just swallow the fluoride story in large breathless gulps.
TheFooder
14d ago
Is this CNN's opening move in a "relentlessly show how Trump's America is a cesspit of bigotry and violence" campaign?
Heaven forfend that Trump's America not give CNN the ammunition they need to make this argument. This seems like an actual news story so it's fair game.
TheFooder
15d ago
Nice. It's gratifying to know my gut is aligned with the most sophisticated prediction matrices and gurus on the planet. I probably would have taken the under though.
TheFooder
16d ago
Yeah, I wondered about gun control. I think gun rights is an issue that will see a lot of movement from non-white voters and women as well.
I never really got the anti-gun stance...like the cat's out of the bag: guns are everywhere and no one is suicidal enough to try and get them back. In this scenario, the person with no firearms or weapons training is basically a sheep waiting to be shorn. Everyone would be far better off with some, even minimal exposure to guns if for no other reason than knowing how to not kill themselves.
TheFooder
16d ago
I think the abortion issue turned out to be very interesting this cycle.
Since the rollback of Roe was a fait acompli, all abortion related stuff ended up down ballot (where it belongs, IMO). Dems tried to tie the issue to Trump but I don't think it landed. If the Florida GOP bans it, why should I care in Maryland? What does that have to do with Trump?
I understand the arguments that this affects some women in some places negatively (it also affect some embryos in some places negatively--just sayin') and I would love it if every state had a sensible middle-of-the-road abortion policy. But the fact that we can now run 50 different simulations on what the sensible policy actually should be maybe In a few more generations we can put this issue to rest forever.
I'm not anti-abortion but I was VERY anti abortion as a single voter issue since 1973. For the first time I can remember, it feels like actual progress in our elections happened. All of the air has escaped that particular balloon and I wonder what will be next. I can imagine immigration getting somewhat solved. Any other single-issue voter concerns on the chopping block?
TheFooder
16d ago
Table near the top show Catholicism at 43%, 30% unaffiliated (agnostic, culturally catholic?),15% evangelical, and the rest who cares.
TheFooder
16d ago
Yeah, I was under-confident, as persistent problem. Still, I made the prediction...who else did?
TheFooder
16d ago
Or is America simply not ready for a woman president (much less a "black" woman president)?
I really disagree with this but I don't have a way of proving or disproving it. I hate the claim and I think a large part of the reason is how impossible it is to prove. Maybe polling could work? I can say confidently (as a person who has voted for two different black men and at least one female) it played no role in my decision.
TheFooder
16d ago
Nobody predicted such a steep drop off in turnout this year.
I did.
TheFooder
16d ago
I agree with this, but can't put my finger on the principle. It's just a vague sense that universal suffrage is a problem not a solution.
TheFooder
17d ago
I don't really get these videos either. I suspect they are entirely jury-rigged to make the 1 look infinitely more prescient than the 25. My wife complains about these same types of videos coming up on her feed but they are always Charlie Kirk debating a bunch of liberal college kids. There are 'owns' galore, but does it change anything? Perhaps. If you watch these vids, at a minimum it can reveal unconsidered problems and different perspectives. Maybe that's enough to justify the entertainment value of naifs looking stupid.
Ain't that the truth. I didn't realize how bad it was until I moved to another state.
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