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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2025

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  • If you have a computer at home and the cops think you might have evidence on it of some crime, they ask the judge for a warrant and then they take the machine and they put it in their evidence locker. Then nobody can manipulate it. I mean that assumes the cops are clean, which they aren’t, but it’s not every day that they tamper with evidence inside of evidence lockers.

    Or maybe you’re asking about data stored in the cloud, like if you have some possibly incriminating spreadsheet in your Google account. Then the pigs would ask Google to make a copy of the data stored in your account, and Google would probably do that, then sharing the data with the pigs. So if you decided to edit the data later, it would be too late, the copy would already be out there.

    Civil litigation in the US has different rules. At some point when you find out that someone is going to be suing you or is in fact suing you, you have a legal duty not to fuck with the evidence that’s likely to be relevant. If it is later discovered that you were fucking with the evidence, then the judge or jury might be able to assume that whatever you touched would have made you look bad. Of course the details matter. But anyway, suppose you want to edit some log file so you SSH into your server and then edit it, but that in turn creates a history of your login and commands that you executed, so then maybe you decide to delete your own history, but then the absence of your history is itself evidence of fuckery… All of that being said, we can be sure that some people are somewhat slick and somewhat lucky and get away with altering data from time to time. We just don’t know how often on account of them not getting caught.


  • I guarantee you that it will not descend into eternal servitude. People die, environments collapse, wars happen, empires fall. Although this may sound negative, go read the history books and see how much horrible shit has happened in the course of human existence. All of that should show you that progress doesn’t … progress … linearly. Things change, things get worse, things get better, dictators die, that’s all part of human life.

    Of course there could be remarkably bad times, particularly if we face nuclear war or extended effects related to extreme climate change. Those are not cyclical in any way shape or form. But many other horrible things that you’re seeing right now in the united States, for example, similar bad shit has happened before. That doesn’t mean the country is going to recover in 5 years or even in 50 years, or that it won’t, but it’s not the first time this kind of happening has occurred in history, and it certainly won’t be the last.



  • The timing of Obama’s award was very bizarre because he was approving all of the drone strikes in Pakistan at the very same time he was winning that award. There was never a war with pakistan, those drone strikes were surely in violation of international law and certainly not peaceful, and some of them blew up wedding processions and whatnot, killing children and women and random men who were not at all involved in any kind of violence.

    It was somewhat surreal to read the newspapers at the time. I think many Democrats loved him because he was well spoken and not horrible, and the Republicans who hated him already hated him, so maybe not that many people were interested in discussing why he got this award that he didn’t deserve.


  • Well, the letter of the law is clear enough. IANAL but it looks like there’s probable cause for manslaughter charges. We’ll have to see if the DA agrees. But that doesn’t mean a jury will convict. They’ll want to hear all of the details that we don’t yet know.

    On a general level, though, I would say your position is soft. I believe that if you work a job with small children or other people who can’t keep themselves safe (people with Alzheimer’s, etc.), you have a moral obligation to keep them reasonably safe. If your working conditions are so bad that you can’t, then either blow the whistle or quit. If you don’t, everyone will blame you in the end. This is basic CYA for any job, of course, but it’s extra important when people’s lives are on the line.


  • This looks to be a case of manslaughter, defined by state law as if one “(1) Recklessly causes the death of another person.” For criminal liability, it really is that simple. The person who did the immediate bad act is charged with the most severe crime.

    It seems you want to blame the state. Great! Talking about civil liability, you can be sure the victim’s family will sue the worker, their company, and the state, and they’ll probably settle out of court because it’s a sure win for the plaintiff.