"My Sylveon stole my fuckign gender "

The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.

It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.

The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.

This map required:

North and South Vietnam in it

All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated

Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)

Has Laos and Cambodia in it

Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it

So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'

I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.

Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.

The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.

The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc

At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"

My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond

apparently, cats' kidneys tend to be the thing that takes them down, something about their bodies being unable to self-clean their kidneys, and the vaccine is supposed revitalize the body's ability to do just that. It would be very VERY fucking cool to have cats suddenly reaching 30 years of age be the normal thing.

dude cracked the case about WHY kidneys fail, across the board as far as i can tell. turns out there's a specific molecule whose job it is to attach to waste and signal macrophages to come eat it. it remains inactive in cats for some reason, but the molecule is still there. basically what he's done is found the switch to activate them. this will be profound not only for our domestic babies, but for big cats too - especially cheetahs!

although his research was focused on cats, it's already being used to develop drugs for humans too!

on top of that, since these molecules are tags for waste, this could also dramatically lower the rate of fatty liver disease, liver cancer, urinary crystals, rheumatoid arthritis, and even some neurological cases! like, they're hoping it may have an impact on parkinson's and alzheimers, but it DOES have an impact on stroke recovery. like. holy shit.

furthermore, he's insisting that the feline drug be affordable if and when it rolls out onto the market. he wants this to be something anyone can get for their cat!! idk how much sway he'll have over the human drug, but hopefully enough that it, too, won't be that expensive.

annnnnd in his research that he's still doing for the human side of things, he's found a potential link between this molecule and estrogen. in the 20,000 samples he's tested, women between ages 10 and 29 had the highest amount of this molecule present in their blood (a higher amount means Something Fucky is going on, essentially. There's a higher amount of waste the body is trying to clean out) but it drops down to be almost equal amongst men and women after menopause. it hasn't been looked into yet, but fuck, just the fact it's noted and known and probably WILL be looked into soon??? imagine if this is what leads to figuring out all the various ways the ovaries and uterus fucks with people and how to fix it. or even like, maybe there's something about estrogen that makes it work better. who knows! but it's rad the link is there to be researched :D

As for the study itself, the 360 day follow up on stage 3 kidney failure kitties showed that the control had a survival rate of about 20%, while the test group had a survival rate of 80%

It was written as a parody of the fairly corrupt Japanese legal system, exaggerated for both humour and gameplay reasons, giving us such lovely gems as:

They don't have manslaughter

It's never stated outright to my knowledge, but it's generally implied that the penalty for murder is universally or near-universally the death penalty

Trials are legally mandated to go on no longer than three days, no matter how complicated they can get. The lab analysis for a poison isn't completed in three days? You can't use it in the poisoning trial. Your witness can't be tracked down on the last day? We go to the verdict without their testimony.

Everyone is assumed guilty until proven innocent. The defense attorney has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, within 3 days, that their client could not possibly be guilty, or they're gonna get a GUILTY verdict

In practical terms, this means that if your client is innocent, you have to not only prove that but usually find the actual killer within the three days to show it's a different person. This isn't officially mandated as part of the defense's duties but in pretty much every case it's what Phoenix has to do to exonerate his client, even if he's otherwise proven the killer couldn't be (or is extremely unlikely to be) his client.

Both sides can just show up to the courtroom with new evidence and demand it's accepted as evidence during the trial. There's no verification process for this and no requirement that the other side has access to it pre-trial. You can show up with a letter in hand and halfway through the trial be like "this letter was found in the victim's apartment!" and it becomes part of the case then and there.

There are no restrictions on where or how you can find evidence. You, a defense attorney who doesn't work for the police force and has no equivalent of warrant law, can break into a witness' house and steal evidence from his personal safe to show in court the next day. This is not a crime apparently.

It's normal and accepted that the prosecution will coach all witnesses, usually telling them to lie. It's a huge advantage when you get to interrogate a witness who the prosecution hasn't been able to tell what lies to tell yet. They never face repercussions for this.

The prosecution will frequently falsify evidence. They receive no punishment for this and are allowed to continue practicing law. Witnesses will regularly lie on the stand; they receive no penalty for this and the rest of their testimony is still considered reliable. It's up to the defense attorney to expose every single lie; if you can't prove a word against your client is a lie, even from the mouth of a known liar, then your client must be guilty of it.

All of your trials are overseen by the same judge and he is comically incompetent. This isn't an oversight of the game he is deliberately written to suck at his job, be easily bullied by the prosecution, generally have very little idea what's going on and issue his verdict based on Vibes.

The lawyers will straight up make bets mid-trial with each other like "if you can't find a problem with this next witness' testimony, you have to admit that you're wasting our time and the verdict will be Guilty". The judge lets them do this. This is considered practicing law. Prosecutors will also physically assault other lawyers and the judge in the courtroom but this is okay because it's funny.

The cops work directly for the prosecuting attorney and the prosecuting attorney will openly threaten police witnesses right there on the stand in front of everyone if the witness isn't saying what the prosecution wants them to.

The level of corruption in the prosecutor's office is just. I couldn't describe it in a bullet point. Prosecutors are straightup hitmen for hire and their weapon of choice is the death penalty.

Guess who's about to get tased and robbed in the police precinct evidence room by a highly respected and successful prosecutor!

Prosecutors have full access to crime scenes and it is implied that they lead the police investigations

Defense attorneys are not supposed to engage with the crime scene or investigate at all! (Hence why phoenix has to worm his way in or break into crime scenes to get evidence)

It is expected that all evidence AND witnesses come from the prosecution. The fact that Phoenix brings in his own evidence and witnesses is *weird*

It is implied that not only do trials have to end in three days, but if a trial lasts that long everyone is very confused and miffed about it. The judge was very torn about having to go a second day on one trial bc he made dinner plans

False evidence is solved by "whoops, I'm sorry, I didn't know" on the side of the prosecution.

False evidence from the defense can result in the attorney being disbarred even if the false evidence came from the prosecution in the first place

There is a game where defense attorneys literally get the same sentence as their defendant (put to death) and thats why [insert place here] has no lawyers anymore

Reminder to those who aren't disabled that that can change at any time.

making my Palestine Gear 5 Luffy available to purchase as a print! all proceeds will go to Palestinian GFM fundraisers!

purchase here: https://t.co/aNlKmh4aQq

I haven't seen anyone talking about this and just wanted to make a quick post on here.

Akihiro Miwa recently passed away peacefully june 20th, and was not only a drag queen and a queer icon, but also the japanese voice of Arceus in the movie Arceus and the jewel of life, as well as the witch from Howl's moving castle and Moro from Princess Mononke.