help, it's again

When my grandmother was sent a death threat through text message, I reported it to the police. The officer told me that "it's not considered a death threat unless the message mentions a weapon and a deadline".

As a result, they didn't do anything. Not even a verbal warning to that person.

They are treating these CEOs as if they're members of our government. The cops don't touch threats unless they're made against political leaders. They don't shut down cities for a manhunt unless the victim is a political leader. They don't charge people with terrorism unless the target is political. They are admitting publicly that CEOs and corporations are the ones running this country.

And then if you go to college, there aren't quite so many people making things fun for you--although there are RAs, and the student life office, and various clubs and organizations doing activities, etc.--but you're in an environment where your friends are nearby and you all have similar schedules and responsibilities, so a lot fun just kind of arises spontaneously.

But once you're out on your own, in the workforce and whatnot, all that just drops of a cliff. Planned activities for adults exist, but you generally have to seek them out, rather than having them relentlessly advertised to you and/or taking place in locations where you will bump into them on the way to breakfast. And your friends are all spread out, and everyone's busy at different times, so you aren't just bumping into people and getting sucked into whatever adventure they have going on, you have to make arrangements.

It's a big shift! If you have kids, you generally figure out pretty quick that your role is now the Planner Of Fun, but without that big obvious signpost, it can feel like the world just gradually stopped having fun things in it.

https://www.wfla.com/news/briana-boston-case-how-would-attorneys-defend-against-threat-accusation/

of all the nice press about dropout this ranks among the most meaningful

First, you need to understand that the rule that jurors can’t just google things is coming from a good place. Like imagine that you are on a jury that’s considering, say, a medical malpractice lawsuit and one of your fellow jurors comes into the jury room and says to you, “I think the victim’s expert was lying because WebMD totally contradicts everything they said.”

And you might be like, “But WebMD is notoriously unreliable website and the expert you’re talking about is a researcher from Mayo Clinic.” But this person cannot be swayed.

Like, we can all agree that would be bad.

So even though these rules can contribute to unjust outcomes as in the case above (and seriously, the fact that the defense attorney didn’t fact check that is probably grounds for legal malpractice), they also prevent jurors from just looking up bullshit online and taking it more seriously than the actual experts the court has put on. And I think in the era of anti-vaxxers/QAnon/COVID denial/etc., we can all understand why it’s a bad idea to trust that people can tell fact from bullshit online.

So in light of this, how do you as a juror fact check something?

The key here is that you have to ask the court for information. Jurors can ask questions of the court during deliberations, so if something you said sounds off to you, you can ask for more information.

The key term you want to use here is “credibility.”

The job of a jury is to decide what are called “questions of fact.” Long before the trial even starts, lawyers will have hashed out all the “questions of law” --- like, what the statute of limitations is; what laws, exactly, were allegedly broken; whether the court you’re in even has jurisdiction; stuff like that. Jurors are responsible for deciding which side’s version of the facts has more credibility.

For instance, if the prosecution’s witness says X and the defense’s witness says Y, the jury is responsible for deciding which is true, X or Y. And you do this by weighing which one is more credible.

So in this case, if the juror had known to, he could have told the judge, “In order to properly assess the ICE agent’s credibility, I need more information about his tattoo. I have doubts about whether he was telling the truth about it, which would impact how credible I would find his testimony. Can the agent please provide evidence that it really is what he says it is?”

Person: Did you see that?

Me: See what?

Person: That. It, him, whatever they're called

Me: (Sees a femme with masculine features)

Me: What about them

Person: Well what is that? He's dressed in women's clothes, so is he-it, they- What does that mean?

Me: I mean. If you're concerned about pronouns you can probably ask

Person: But do I call it a Mister or a miss?

Me: Well uh. That depends on what they tell you but "them" is usually safe.... but based on their makeup, hair, and heels I don't think they'd be mad if you assumed thry were a lady

Me: So like. I'd say she's probably just. Here for the event

Person: That's fine, I get that, I don't have a problem with trans people, I just don't get how you're supposed to know

Person: Like how do you know if someone is transsexual or just cross dressing?

Me: Uhhhhhhhh

Me: I mean

Me: I don't know. Any cross dressers. Who would be offended by being pronoun'd by their outfit. But like.

Me: I guess if you choose wrong. And they correct you. Then you just.... apologize and use what they tell you?

Me: .... Do you plan on talking to them?

Person: No

Me: Then why d. Why does it matter

Person: I'm just trying to understand

Me: And that's great! But like. You don't need to

Person: What

Me: You don't need to. Necessarily. Understand. You know?

Person: Huh

Me: They're here for the event. You don't have to interact with them. In two hours they'll go home and you'll never see them again

Person: I'm just confused

Me: You're allowed to be confused

Me: You can stay confused

I don't know how applied statistics works

Thats fine

I'm probably gonna die confused about that one

I don't need romance know the gender and physiology and medical history of a random stranger I'm never gonna talk to

Why do you need to know

Do you think they're gonna quiz you before they leave

There is some of the usual pearl-clutching about "dangers" and such, but I'm not sure they really believe that under all the nonsense they've internalised. The more I've talked to them about these things and seen them interact with people, it really does seem to be about anxiety and not embarrassing themselves. They were taught to put people into boxes, and interact with them based on that. And that works well for them in 95% of conversations, and you can see the code switching, especially in my mum, when she's talking to a man vs a woman. But if she doesn't know which code to use? Pure panic. I've seen her basically have a meltdown once we get home about whether she handled the interaction properly. Whether she slighted the other person by doing something wrong. Whether they're off muttering about how terrible she is for something she said.

A medieval Londoner could look at any stranger and tell if they were a servant or an apprentice or a storekeeper or an unmarried woman or a housewife (and how prosperous her husband was) or a lord or a nun or a priest or whatever; if two strangers came upon each other they knew at a glance who was to bow to whom (and life was a succession of giving and receiving small bows by way of passing acknowledgment) and whether they were of sufficiently compatable status to have a conversation or seek a friendship.

People's entire constructions of social interactions RAN on this shit for thousands of years. The intricacy and the importance of it has largely dropped, but when parents freaked out in the eighties over their son's long hair or housewives in the fifties refused to step out of doors without gloves, hat, and handbag, they were running on the social programs they grew up into and being protective of a type of status and respectability that had had real consequence in their lives.

And that consequence depended on the understanding that they didn't just have those things, they were those things. A lady was someone who had the personal skill and poise and attention to detail to pull off ladylike behavior (and the money to buy the necessary quality clothing and the leisure time to put herself together); faking it would have been no more expected than that an amateur would present herself as a prima ballerina by dancing across the stage; ladies, as well as other sorts of people, were self-proven by success.

A child who's grown to teenage years learning the concepts of freedom and truth and applying them to self-expression has largely inverted the order of operations their parents have used; instead of "I am a good, respectable high-status lady and therefore I wear the proper clothing and accessories with good grooming and good poise, and express my personal aesthetic preferences within that context" they get "I feel most myself and most comfortable with long hair and T-shirts and jewelry, this is WHO I AM, Dad, why are you persecuting me?" and the rigid standards that allowed Dad or Mom to access the securities of high social status according to the mores of their generation are subordinated or dismissed entirely, to the embarrassment and terror of their parents who viewed that respectability of dress and behavior as both security and privilege were aghast that their children would so willingly reject it, when it arguably was barely REAL to their children in the way it was to them, and functions more as prison than social status buff.

The idea of dressing purely for one's own aesthetic pleasure, let alone being a whole new gender, comes across as part neglect of a very important social function, and part pure dishonesty, to someone who depends on the structure granted by standards and assigned places in the standards. A paradigm shift in which rights replace responsibilities and in which gender is understood as a social construct rather than a force of nature, is not something they're well equipped to handle, and the translations and explanations have not been as useful as they could be.

Social mores and their use are a technology, in the widest sense of the word, and a lot of old people are in their "you met your fiance OVER THE INTERNET?!!! They could be anyone, you'll be murdered!" stage regarding the ability to choose to become something other than your family status and birth assigned you.