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Category: Official thuggery, bad prosecutions, and bad law

Midweek links

Published May 10, 2017 11:45 am by Claire
  • This is cool. Amazon is building a fabulous new HQ in downtown Seattle. They’re going to reserve half of one of the new buildings for a homeless shelter for women and families. Rent free, utilities paid.
  • Per jc2k in comments: a superior court judge orders a San Diego DA to return seized assets to a medical marijuana dealer. The DA, Bonnie Dumanis, has been snatching millions from harmless people for a long time. In another sign of change, the phrase “policing for profit” has made it into the MSM.
  • Alas, in a sign of how things are still not changing in the war on drugs, there’s yet another New! More Deadly! illegal drug. You’ll die! from a single dose. Even touching it! is dangerous. (And the drug warriors still don’t grasp that these crazy drugs exist only because of their stupid WoD.)
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    • Monday links

    Published May 8, 2017 11:41 am by Claire
  • It’s always hilarious to hear this, but there’s a growing body of evidence that says it’s so. THC, the mind-altering component of cannabis may improve memory in the elderly. Yes, that stuff that makes you forget the sentence you’re in the middle of may help you remember better.
  • How to say no without feeling guilty.
  • The irreverent Stephen Fry faces blasphemy charges in Ireland for expressing a low opinion of God.
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    • Wednesday miscellany

    Published May 3, 2017 1:22 pm by Claire

    The brain isn’t working today. I blame the house foundation. The Monk, however, has his system figured out, with only mild consultation from me (which mostly involved me asking, “Why aren’t you doing XYZ?” and him explaining quite logically why something that made perfect sense in my mind actually wouldn’t work as well as what he’d already figured out). At least I was able to come up with the average psf weight of a house for leveraging purposes. My major contribution for the day. Once the lumberyard delivers beam-and-joist materials this afternoon, my major contribution will be banging nails and/or…

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    Friday links

    Published April 28, 2017 2:55 am by Claire
  • The anti-fascist fascists may have reached a new low. They used threats of violence successfully to cancel a long-time traditional parade in Portland, Oregon. Why? Because Republicans were participating. (H/T M)
  • And once again — as is the usual these days — police are doing nothing to stop mob rule. Just happened again in Berkeley. Mind you, I think it’s naive to expect cops to protect free speech; they’ve rarely ever been in favor of it. But as a general rule, cops have at least enjoyed whacking left-wing demonstrators over the head. Now they’re not even doing that.
  • Sigh. Only NASA could be running out of space suits while hardly putting anybody into space. What a sad commentary.
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    • When doing the right thing is a crime

    Published April 26, 2017 7:18 pm by Claire

    There was a time — long ago now — when this theoretical situation would have been an interesting dilemma worth holding a long discussion over: You’re in a position where doing a good deed involves breaking a multitude of laws. What do you do? Back in the day, “breaking a multitude of laws” would likely have meant you were breaking laws against doing harm. So you’d have to balance not only possible penalties of lawbreaking but also the chance of doing bad to one party while trying to do good elsewhere. Now? It’s not even worth talking about. Laws are…

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    Midweek links

    Published April 19, 2017 11:48 am by Claire
  • Shut up, be terrified, and do what you’re told, Americans.
  • Eleven charts that show just how mainstream cannabis has become. We’ve come a long way, baby. (Although as the first link shows, not always in the right direction.)
  • Get a load o’ this. A cop (ex-cop now) is ordered to pay out of pocket to compensate the family of the teen he killed. Individual accountability begins at last for agents of the state.
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    • Monday links

    Published April 17, 2017 1:48 am by Claire
  • I am really, truly not sure why the National Security Aagency imagines that having tools to breach the international monetary system makes anybody (except the NSA and its Chosen Ones) “secure”). I’m really not sure how they imagined that maintaining such sloppy “security” that details of their exploits got into the hands of hackers makes anybody “secure.”
  • Will the last middle-class person in Seattle please turn out the lights?
  • Waco Wacko Backlash. Or what happens when you point out that the U.S. government didn’t hesitate to attack its own citizens with deadly gas.
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    • Saturday links

    Published April 8, 2017 11:17 am by Claire
  • You may have heard about the Garadget flap, in which a petulant CEO “bricked” a complaining customer’s app. The key line from this article: “… when a device gets connected to the internet—whether it’s a cellphone, a thermostat, or a tea kettle—it’s no longer yours.”
  • And given the way the ‘Net is going, this might be good news to some of you old hands and privacy buffs: a 1986 BBS is back online.
  • This real-life heist has the makings of a movie. Except that Cary Grant’s dead and Sean Connery’s too old. Maybe one of the Ryans — Reynolds or Gosling — could handle the role of the suave criminal mastermind. Great mystery carried out in a rarified intellectual world.
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