FRIENDS, ROMANS, BESTIES: If they were at the stage of filling out jury questionnaires, that means the people involved were most likely only potential jurors, being polled to see if they were qualified to serve on the actual jury. So sure, maybe it seemed like a ballsy move to stand up and condemn the system, but odds are that trial is still going full speed ahead, anyway—except now it’s a dead cert that anime guy absolutely won’t be selected for its jury, because announcing your lack of impartiality to the court tends to get you automatically dismissed.

If they're able to sway the others, you're absolutely correct, but if they're not? Then you've got a hung jury

In the US that means a mistrial and the whole thing happens again, in the UK the judge would probably rule to accept a majority verdict. Either way, the outcome's the same (the people deciding are all the milquetoast white people who "aren't that political"), but the objections are sealed within the jury room rather than aired before the lawyers and judge to be entered into the record

I wouldn't underestimate the influence even just one informed juror can have on the outcome of a case. Maybe you won't convince everybody—true. But as a juror, you never know who else is on the fence until you voice your doubts and opinions. Some people are reluctant to speak out or deviate from the group, but will respond if somebody else is there to take the lead. Some people might even change a vote just to speed things along because they don't actually care about the outcome. You don't know what power you have until you try, and It's always worth trying.

According to FIJA (the Fully Informed Jury Association, which is a good resource for jury nullification information and support), a hung jury is functionally "far better for the defendant than a conviction. Undoing a conviction is very difficult. An appeal is not guaranteed in the first place. It may not be legally permitted, the defendant may no longer have the financial resources to mount an appeal, etc. Even when a defendant is able to appeal a conviction, that individual no longer enjoys the presumption of innocence." So if you can't nullify, hanging the jury is better than nothing!

Mistrials only mean the whole thing CAN happen again—not that it WILL. If a trial ends in a hung jury, the prosecution will usually review the strength of their case and weigh that against their existing caseload, budget, staffing, etc. to decide if it's in the state's best interest to call for a retrial (there may be some exceptions, but this is generally the case in both the USA and the United Kingdom). Sure, plenty of cases get retried. But in some instances, a mistrial from a hung jury can lead to the prosecution either offering up a more lenient plea deal, or—if they decide pursuing things is ultimately a waste of their time and resources—simply dropping the charges altogether (this is sadly common with sexual assault cases; they're more difficult to prove in a court of law, and while I'm obviously wary of false convictions overall, I do have tremendous sympathy for victims who end up with no recourse for justice once the state drops all charges). In short, you never know what the outcome of a hung jury will have on a case until it actually happens.

Even if the prosecutors do decide to bring a retrial, according to professional jury consultant Alan Turkheimer, "acquittal rates in criminal trials are significantly higher after hung juries than during original trials." So even if you can't nullify a jury, you might nudge things in the right direction overall.

#are ya KIDDIN me we celebrate hangs back at the office like the victories they are#a hung jury is a WIN. a hung jury means that the DA FAILED. it is a BIG BLARING SIGN to the DA#that hey...you SHOT YOUR SHOT....AND YOU MISSED.#think twice if you REEEEEALLLY want to try again!#if you reeeeeeally with all of our overwhelming caseloads want to spend your attorney's time and your office's budget#on RE-TRYING this case that wasn't good enough the first time around#and YEAH. YEAH. a potential juror walks in and starts giving Progressive Politics Seminars (TM) and i inwardly groan#bc that is the first juror that the DA is going to kick out of the pool - bye bye helpful progressive!#all the blue lives matter assholes somehow manage to keep their mouths shut and parrot 'i can be fair'#long enough to get a seat on the jury and convict our clients#WE DON'T WANT THE GOOD ONES TO SPEAK UP. WE WANT THE BAD ONES TO SPEAK UP#it isn't jury SELECTION it's jury DE-SELECTION

Level 1: browser extensions

This one is basically impossible to get wrong, or at least to get wrong badly enough that it causes any problems.

Get Firefox, or a Firefox fork like Waterfox. If you use a fork, make sure it's one that will let you use add-ons. On a PC, pretty much any Firefox fork will take add-ons, but on mobile devices, many don't. Iceraven is one that does.

Get the add-ons uBlock Origin, YouTube Sponsorblock (if you use YouTube), and FBCleaner (if you use Facebook).

uBlock Origin comes with a built-in list of filters to block ads and trackers, but you can add your own filters to block any specific element of a website you don't like. You know those goddamn floating frames on fandom.com sites that block half the screen? Now you can zap 'em.

Sponsorblock uses crowdsourced timestamps to automatically skip sponsor spots and self-promotion in YouTube videos. Never listen to anyone say "hit like and subscribe" or "Raid Shadow Legends" again.

FBCleaner hides all content from your feed except posts from people, groups, and pages you've actually chosen to follow.

Level 2: leaving enshittified services

The software that's become standard over the years in a lot of fields is steadily selling more of your data, showing you more ads, and pushing you to buy more expensive subscriptions. Time to tell them to get fucked.

Dump Adobe apps for Affinity or Krita. Drop Microsoft for LibreOffice. Change your default search engine from Google to DuckDuckGo or Qwant. Use OpenStreetMaps instead of Google or Apple Maps.

Level 3: network-level DNS fuckery

DNS, or Domain Name Service, is the thing that tells your computer where www.website.com is actually located. By hacking your network's DNS you can force it to tell your devices that ad-hosting domains don't exist at all. Some of the steps on this one can get pretty technical, but because you're doing all the difficult stuff on a dedicated device, you can't really fuck up anything that seriously.

Get yourself a Raspberry Pi (a cheap older one like a model 3B will work just fine for this purpose), and follow a guide like this one to get it set up running AdGuard Home. AdGuard, like uBlock, has built-in filter lists, but you can also add your own if there are specific domains you want to block.

Once it's up and running, you'll need to change the DNS settings on your router to point to your AdGuard service. This is different for every router but will always start with logging into the admin panel with a password printed on a little sticker somewhere on the router.

With that done, every time a device on your home network looks for ads.website.com, it'll get back a message that says "sorry, can't find it", so it won't be able to load any ads.

Level 4: Android-specific DNS fuckery

Because AdGuard runs on your home network, it can't block ads on your phone when you're away from home - and what's worse, your phone will sometimes remember the addresses it got when you were out and about, and ads will get past your AdGuard wall even when you're home.

To avoid this, get AdAway for DNS-based ad-blocking directly on your phone. The easy, but less seamless, way of using AdAway is the "local VPN mode", which doesn't require you to do any mucking about with your phone's operating system.

Level 5: automated media piracy

The best way to stop seeing ads on all your streaming services is to stop using streaming services. There are loads of ways to do this, but the best ones involve setting up what's called an "arr stack" (Google that for setup guides) along with nzbget and a usenet account. Most of the time you'll want to set this stuff up on a dedicated device - an old laptop gathering dust in the closet is a great option, or you can grab something used from a charity shop or a local electronics recycler.

The great thing about usenet is that unlike with torrents, you don't have to do any sharing from your computer, so you're in a lot less legal jeopardy - legally speaking, distributing pirated content is waaayyy more serious than accessing it. I pay about £3 a month for a secure, high-bandwidth usenet service.

Once you start getting your own collection of media on your own computer, use the open-source media library manager Jellyfin to browse and play things from basically any device.

Oh, and don't be a dick. Pirate all you want from big corporations, but please pay independent small-time creators for their work.

Level 6: fucking with Android

Android phones are a lot more locked-down than they used to be, but depending on the device you own you can still do a lot of messing around under the hood. Note that if you get something wrong while doing this, there is always the possibility that it will turn your device into a paperweight.

Before you buy a device, check where it sits on the Bootloader Unlock Wall of Shame. Once you've bought it, check the xda-developer forums for guides on how to unlock it and "root" it (gain admin access) with Magisk.

Once Magisk is installed, you can add modules to do all sorts of cool stuff, including using AdAway in "root mode" which makes it basically invisible.

You can also install YouTube ReVanced, which will do all the ad- and sponsor blocking stuff we took care of in your Windows browser a few paragraphs ago. Be careful: there are a lot of fake sites out there pretending they're associated with the ReVanced project which might be injecting malware into their downloads. This Reddit post has the official instructions and links.

Also, try out the modded version of Facebook from APKmoddone, which will block most of the same shit as the FBcleaner add-on from earlier. There's always a possibility that modified apps like this are doing something dodgy, but I've never had any issues with this one personally.

Level 7: fucking with Windows

This one is scary because it can seriously fuck up your shit if something goes wrong, but some really cool people have actually made it very simple to strip all the bloat, ads, and spyware out of Windows. The tool I use is ReviOS. Start reading at https://www.revi.cc/docs. Basically, you'll need to download a tool called AME Wizard and the ReviOS "playbook" that tells AME what to do. Read the documentation before you do any of this.

Level 8: switching to Linux

I'm not going to pretend this is an option for everyone. Half the software I use on a weekly basis isn't available on Linux. But if you can switch? Do it. These days, Ubuntu - one of the most popular flavours of Linux - is built with people switching from Windows in mind, and a lot of things will be pretty intuitive. It also has great documentation and a huge community you can go to for help if you're confused about stuff.

HEAL BY EXPRESSING YOUR RAGE ! 🥰

What @unsentimentaltranslator said Reminded me of this : are you depressed/having PTSD or are you suffering from a systemic oppression in a cruel world dominated by your oppressors ?