dctoedt

5 ms·

31.
by dctoedt 4mo ago
Neither of the jury verdicts altered the reality of whether Simpson did or didn’t kill the two victims. (In Simpson’s second trial, the jury found him liable , not “guilty.” Guilt is the term used in criminal prosecutions. Liability is th
32.
by dctoedt 4mo ago
> "Innocent until proven guilty" concerns whether someone did a crime See my upthread comment: "Innocent until proven guilty" is catchy but false.
33.
by dctoedt 4mo ago
> innocent until proven guilty Pithy but untrue. The verbose-but-correct statement is about procedural prerequisites: Government officials are forbidden to imprison or fine you until your guilt is proved, to an impartial and properly-ins
34.
by dctoedt 4mo ago
And Brian Reid's Scribe formatter [0] — so much nicer than roff, troff, etc. (descendants of Runoff). In 1981-82 I wrote a user manual and taught my fellow law-review editors — none of whom were computer people — how to use both Emacs
35.
by dctoedt 4mo ago
More information about the origins of the collection and the photographer (a U.S. Army officer, assistant military attaché): https://manhoffarchive.org/narratives/intro
36.
by dctoedt 4mo ago
> a fairly narrow class of credentialed bureaucrats, entry into which is gatekept by elite universities and professional organizations. Now take the next step: Explicitly state, and then defend, your implied premise, namely that it'
37.
by dctoedt 4mo ago
> accepting that Congress is free to set things up as it sees fit within the Constitutional constraints. The unitary-executive crowd worships a golden calf, namely the first three words of Article 2: "The executive Power shall be ve
38.
by dctoedt 4mo ago
An emacs routine to convert a region of org-mode formatting to Markdown formatting and put into the clipboard: ;; Written by Claude 2026-06-06 (defun my/org-to-markdown-clipboard () "Export org region (or buffer) to Mar
39.
by dctoedt 4mo ago
> [Re: Starship Troopers] The book, however, represents a weightier piece of analysis in its own right and provides some fascinating insights into fascism, civil and civic duty, and the role of the individual in the machine. One of my
40.
by dctoedt 5mo ago
> That’s really splitting hairs. As software people are keenly aware, accuracy in writing is important. > The Republic of Vietnam was a dead man walking, but it was a United States puppet state, and they finally collapsed in 1975.
41.
by dctoedt 5mo ago
> Have you ever seen the videos of American fleeing Saigon? Yes. I was a serving Navy officer at the time. My above comment stands.
42.
by dctoedt 5mo ago
FTA: the defeat of American troops and fall of Saigon in 1975 This is a bit misleading: Yes, strategically the U.S. was defeated in 1975, but U.S. troops had pulled out in 1973, having essentially never been beaten on the battlefield —
43.
by dctoedt 5mo ago
It's even harder than "clearly erroneous" (the standard applied when a judge makes fact findings without a jury). Under the Seventh Amendment, if a hypothetical reasonable jury could have reached the result that the actual
44.
by dctoedt 5mo ago
> exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis Or more succinctly, as first-year law students learn: Expressio unius est exclusio alterius — to state one thing is to implicitly exclude others. https://definitions.lsd.la
45.
by dctoedt 5mo ago
> You would be surprised at the number of frivolous lawsuits and seemingly "zero risk" decisions that wind up turning into actual legal risk and legal fees. [¶] The legal world is a lot more complicated than you think. The la
46.
by dctoedt 5mo ago
> this surgeon skipped a step That was the foundational premise of Dr. Atul Gawande's book The Checklist Manifesto, an expansion of his article The Checklist in The New Yorker [0] [0] https://www.newyorker.com/
47.
by dctoedt 5mo ago
> I was in Iowa a few years ago, and the food is awful. ... I suspect it’s always been awful, and people just don’t care about it very much as long as they get the calories they need. Um: My dad grew up in Iowa, so I'd be there se
48.
by dctoedt 5mo ago
This suggests a "knife skills" automatic habit to cultivate:† Whenever opening anything , point it away from your face, or at least move your face out of the line of fire. (Champagne, soda bottles, whatever.) † "Knife skills
49.
by dctoedt 5mo ago
> If American foreign policy was rational, we wouldn’t have been involved in Korea YGBFShM. (As to most of the others you do have a point, but hindsight is always 20-20 — and the Dem decisionmakers about Vietnam had to contend with a r
50.
by dctoedt 5mo ago
Seems to do this in Microsoft Edge, too.* * I use Edge bcs of the vertical tabs — Safari's equivalent is a poor substitute. Firefox didn't seem to have vertical tabs last time I checked.
51.
by dctoedt 6mo ago
> Nowadays in authoritarian societies it looks like it's mostly matter of time before military takes the lead. See, e.g., Iran's IGRC. Counterexamples: China, Russia — and the U.S.?
52.
by dctoedt 6mo ago
> They use tax money to house and feed you? Indeed — just not in the style to which you'd like to become accustomed ....
53.
by dctoedt 6mo ago
> What do you think happens if you send a missile to the "wet surface impoundment" that releases the contents of the lake into the town or the groundwater? I can't speak to that. But nearly 50 years ago I did a deep dive i
54.
by dctoedt 6mo ago
Agreed — but we’re talking about a catastrophic missile strike, not longterm operations.
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by dctoedt 6mo ago
> A missile hitting a coal power plant will also be pretty bad, and there's not a giant shield around it. Probably not even the same order of magnitude. A blown-up nuclear reactor would be WAY worse in short- and long-term effects
56.
Prof. Eric Goldman on "sign-in wrap" decision from Judge Orrick(blog.ericgoldman.org)
4 points by dctoedt 6mo ago|0 comments
57.
by dctoedt 6mo ago
> A common suggestion is to put the bottom line on the top line. BLUF: Bottom Line Up Front — e.g., https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-to-write-email-with-military-pre...
58.
by dctoedt 6mo ago
Dr. Atul Gawande† reported 20 years ago how obstetricians standardized on c-sections because the suppposedly-better alternative, forceps, (i) was very difficult to teach and supervise, and (ii) used incorrectly, could result in horrible i
59.
Google Now Lets You Change Your Gmail Address(wired.com)
13 points by dctoedt 6mo ago|3 comments
60.
by dctoedt 7mo ago
FTA: "Google has legally protected the ability to do this." Um, not quite, if read with one possible interpretation. (IP lawyer here.) The patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US12536233B1/en — see

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