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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 31st, 2023

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  • I made course for 11th and 12th graders together with a friend when I at university. It was only one week long and the topic was neural networks (we hit the timing right, it was 3 years before the AI hype started).

    I did that experiment where you give the students 5 random places and amount of time out of a week. You say that is the movement profile of a fictional person and the students have to find out why those places matter.

    Makes them learn the importance of information and how linking data can be an insane tool for understanding as something. But it also teaches how easy it is to gather information from small data points and self aware you should be about your digital footprint.



    • nothing. I have autism. There’s nothing wrong with me, but I’m obviously a little bit different like other people, which in itself is neither good nor bad.

    • because we need a descriptor and that’s just what my friends use; we know what we mean with it and what we don’t.

    Also I’m gonna take those questions at face value, but I’m just gonna note the first question is a bit out out of left field, as no one implied that something’s wrong with that.

    But I don’t wanna assume you are an asshole, so I’m gonna take it as a misunderstanding.


  • Let’s go through examples:

    “He’s retarded” - that’s a slur, unless it’s ironic.

    “That was retarded” - not a slur, cause it’s kinda taking a dig at an action, not a person.

    “I’m retarded” - technically a slur but almost always used with a hint of irony, therefore usually not a slur.

    That’s how I use the word with my friends. And I have autism, so technically 100 years ago I would have been the resident retard ;)










  • Let’s be very clear: a witness refusing to testify is a rare occasion. Why? Witnesses usually only get called if a party thinks they’re worth the hassle. So things like this are usually avoided. Also there’s only a few reasons to refuse to testify:

    • self incrimination (5th amendment), which is protected by law and takes priority
    • distrust for the legal process / the police

    Basically the only way you can get in trouble is if you distrust the legal process / the police, you can not raise 5th amendment issues or there is an immunity deal that applies.

    Currently you are only able to issue contempt charges, and that’s about it, and that stuff is also very much limited considering relevant case law.

    I think it’s like a day to a month in jail.

    Let’s also make clear that there is currently a court case going on against young thug, where basically the whole law community is mad at the previous judge (which has been overruled by the supreme Court in an emergency motion; the equivalent to a royal “you fucked up”), and there’s still an endless list of issues. A lot of issues surround a witness who has been lying his ass off and said as much in open court, but who has been part of highly improper ex parte communications and other shenanigans which basically aimed at intimidating him into testifying against young thug.

    I bring this up because although there’s a lot of publicity, this is not how it usually works, and this is a bad reference, so I don’t want people to draw from this case.

    Back to your question, the penalty, which I again think is about a day to a month in prison. I think it’s a bad thing that you can throw people in jail for this shit, but I also think it’s the best thing there is right now. Court does not have the resources nor the time to properly deal with hostile witnesses, and that means they are limited in what they can do.

    Also let’s point out again that in any case, such witnesses only exist, when the moving party has made a huge mistake or something slipped through the cracks.

    TL;DR I think it’s not a great penalty but it’s the best we have. Also there’s truckloads of context needed to have a very productive debate on this.

    Disclaimer: specific cases get weird, because circumstances and jurisdictions are weird, so “it depends” is still the only viable answer to most things, and IANAL.