Jury nullification. Pass it on.

Jury nullification is so fucking important.

This is something that more people should be aware of, if only because (in many states, at least) defense attorneys are actually prohibited from mentioning it to jurors. The law allows a jury to return a “not guilty” verdict contrary to the facts of the case, but not for the defense to inform them of that power or to argue for its application in the current trial.

I didn’t know about this. Wow.

always reblog

This is SUPER IMPORTANT and also a good reason to show up for jury duty. You know all those laws you think are stupid? This is your chance to maybe do something about it. 

I…. I thought this was common knowledge… signal boosting this because it obviously isn’t!

Did not know this

Jury nullification in the United States has its origins in colonial British America. Similar to British law, in the United States jury nullification occurs when a jury in a criminal case reaches a verdict contrary to the weight of evidence, sometimes because of a disagreement with the relevant law.

YALL REMEMBER THIS WHEN JURY SUMMONS START GOING OUT IN AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER FOR THE PEOPLE WHOVE BEEN ARRESTED PROTESTING IN MAY AND JUNE

I remember lots of media when I was younger where someone definitely broke a law but the jury decided to let them go. I bet a lot of you have seen that too. It is not a fiction trope. The jury has a say based on how they *feel* about the defendant’s unique situation.

THIRST AID KIT | S6E07 | THIRSTMAIL, VOL. 4

We don’t like to brag but our listeners are the best because they send us drabbles that make us swoon and giggle and we immediately put them aside so we can share the wealth on air. And so we did it again… 

We demolished the fourth wall to bring forth some of our amazingly talented thirst-buckets’ output. Quarantine has transformed you all from thirst-Padawans to thirst-Jedi Knights. May the thirst be forever in your favor. 

Or something.

So we got a drabble about John Boyega from Rae …

…and one from Mélissa about Andy Samberg…

…and Mélissa AGAIN with a Seth Rogen drabble…

… and one from Syahidah about Pedro Pascal…

…and this one from Brooke in San Francisco about Aidan Turner that we promised to post in full but had to cut short on air cos it WAS HELLA LONG. (you people do not listen when we say to keep it short… 😂)

I pretended not to watch Aidan as he deftly swept Sternos into a bin, while I attempted to roll the stained and crumb-speckled tablecloths into vaguely organized lumps. Every encounter had made me like him a little bit more, and this was the twelfth shift we’d worked together since Lisa hired him to help during wedding season. Lately, being near him felt like a study in how much of an ass I could make of myself while desperately trying not to reveal that something as innocuous as seeing him button up his standard-issue black catering vest sparked a florid blush that mottled my chest and tinged the tips of my ears pink. The anxiety of this devastatingly hopeless crush was becoming unbearable.

Aidan jiggled his armful of Sternos at me and nodded at the pile of polyester fabric, blasting me with the full force of his canine grin. “Need any help with those? They’re kind of heavy, not to mention super gross. I’m pretty sure I saw a kid blow his nose in that one.”

I tried to maintain casual eye contact and not stare at his gleaming teeth or the light stubble shading his mouth and jaw. The word “wolf” pulsed somewhere in the back of my brain, like an alarm bell. Wolf. Wolf. Wolf.

“I’m good, thanks. Although by the end of this we’ll be able to tell just how many people chose the fish by smelling me.” I laughed weakly at my own non-joke, feeling a prickling heat creeping up the back of my neck. Oh god. Had I just said the words “smelling me” to this man?

Aidan twinkled at me, a closed-mouth smile dancing on his lips. Ignoring both my rejection of his help and my reference to smelling like half-eaten salmon, he started loading the piles into the laundry bins in the back of the van. With his back still turned to me, he called out, “So, um. What’s your schedule looking like this weekend?” I immediately snapped out of a lucid daydream of us dressed like the cover of a romance novel, me stroking the dark hair on his forearms while he held me from behind, passionately kissing my neck. If he wanted me to take his shift at the Osario-Miller wedding on Sunday, he had another thing coming. I may have it bad, but I’d already had my fill of bridezillas this month. “Sorry, dude, there’s no way I’m taking your Sunday shift. I got burnt out from just reading the bride’s notes for the menu. What even is a ‘paleo vegan cocktail’?”

Aidan barked out a laugh and turned back to face me, “I don’t think anyone knows.” His usual cocksure smile faltered a bit, and there was a curious expression on his face I’d never seen before. “But, actually, I was wondering if you were free on Friday? My sister gave me tickets to this Shakespeare in the Park thing, and I remembered you said that you were an English major back in college, and I thought…” he trailed off, running a hand through his mass of dark curls. “Anyway, if you’re busy that’s okay. But if you’re free, I thought we could go. We could also get food before, if you want. There’ll be food trucks there.”

I was suddenly keenly aware of the wet grass soaking the bottom of my pant legs, the hum of insects and retreating wedding guests, the sharp smell of the disinfectant we’d swabbed on the chafing dishes. Is this what a dissociative episode felt like – an acumination of all your senses? From somewhere outside my body I heard a voice. Mine. “Sure, that would be fun.”

Brooke… you did that. Aidan approves.

We also answered a couple questions that came from right here on Tumblr! Hi, Tumblr! plus a couple of Thirst Sommelier requests… SOmeone was looking for a new crush to give them that Lin Manuel Miranda vibe (broad church!) and another was desperate for a replacement to fill the Terry Crews-shaped gap on her thirst vision board. We did our best and we think we gave a few suggestions that were happy-making. 

Thank you all for sending us your thirsts, big and small. We appreciate you more than you can ever know. Y’all are the best. 💜❤️

You can listen to the whole episode RIGHT HERE (more ways to listen are listed below).

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Subscribe to get new episodes delivered to your device automatically every Thursday. We’re on Apple and Stitcher and Podbean and Google Play and Overcast and iHeartRadio and Spotify and and and… Search ‘Thirst Aid Kit’ wherever you get your podcasts, and we’ll come up. Promise.

We’re on Twitter at @thirstaidkit. We don’t get to read all your drabbles out on the show but please know that we appreciate you sending them in! If you’ve got one for us, please keep it short! and send to thirstaidkit@slate.com. And if you have the time and inclination, please feel free to leave a (five star? 👀) rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you! 

Stay cute and thirsty, but also be safe, OK? Mask up, stay home, and save lives. We appreciate you. 😘💜

My sister Mariah’s best friend, Linda, took her own life this past weekend. She no longer wanted to be “reciting poetry even as the world is burning.” Linda was a writer who had attended the Iowa Young Writers Studio. She was teaching elementary school children in rural China when the COVID-19 outbreak shut down the country. When she returned to the United States, Linda decided she no longer wanted to live.

In the fall, she was supposed to attend Oberlin. My sister Mariah was supposed to go with her — Mariah also got into Oberlin, and had received a $20,000-a-year scholarship. Oberlin was her dream school, I think in large part because Linda would also be there. But my parents told her they wouldn’t pay the rest of the tuition, and Mariah, in the end, decided she didn’t want to go into debt. 

I can’t help but think that Linda won’t be the only young person to take her own life in this terrible year, or in the terrible years to come, as climate change accelerates. Many humans will decide that their own lives are causing more harm than good, especially the ones who are better than the rest of us. 

I have a constant knot in my throat, thinking of Linda. Rest in peace, gentle girl. 

To read more about Linda’s life, visit the GoFundMe page set up by her father.

25 Black-owned bookstores you can support right now

while i don’t claim to be a “book blogger” by any account (more of a cranky publishing-person blogger most days), i know a lot of people have followed me through my book posts, so i’m taking advantage of that captive audience to boost these bookstores. shop them through their own websites and if you’re local, look into curbside pickup to minimize shipping costs and overhead. okay that’s all thanks bye stay safe.

A lesson in how to gird your loins.

via The Art of Manliness

I saw a ball gown version of this somewhere but I don’t know where

omg i googled it and…

YES.

Nobody reblogging this is cishet I guarantee it

Now this is badass

Instant badass mode! For anyone who wears a dress, robe, or long garment. Want to try it? Go for it!

Those articles also blame millennial and gen z kids for not know but bitch who is running the curriculum in schools? Who is making the text books?

:/

:0

:)

A little update <3

I still read all of your lovely replies! I have not given up on art my friends! I have even started my own webcomic on webtoon! It’s called Seth In Space and it would mean a lot to me if you would support me there! Love you all and happy halloween!!

Point the First: Ariel’s motivations

Ariel fights a shark for a goddamn fork and sings a lovely ballad about wanting legs SUPER BAD both before she ever lays eyes on Eric. She is not motivated to become human for a man. He’s tangential to her motivation to become human, which is for its own sake. 

Point the Second: The Terms of Contract

In the deal Ariel makes, getting Eric to fall for her (and kiss her) is the price she has to pay for legs, not the reward she’s getting. If we were writing it in legalese it’d be like 

PARTY A (“The Sea Witch”) agrees to give PARTY B (“Ariel”) human legs on the following condition:

1. PARTY B must get the human, Eric, to kiss her (with “true love”) before third sunset following the time that she receives her legs, or forfeit her legs and her free will to subjugation to the Sea Witch.

1A. STIPULATION: Before this enterprise, PARTY B must surrender her voice into PARTY A’s permanent custody.

Wooing Eric is the price. Not the prize.

And it’s important to note that that second part is a stipulation related to the first part because

Point the Third: Did we all just collectively forget that she’s a fucking mermaid

Mermaids, aka sirens, have magic voices that can make people fall in love with them (usually for drowning purposes). What Ursula gets in exchange for Ariel’s legs isn’t her voice; it’s the reasonable expectation that she will fail. She gives her a difficult to complete task and then takes away her trump card. It’s a gamble. A risky investment. She may be an octopus, but here she’s being a loan shark, and the basis of her motivation is to give Ariel an impossible task and then benefit from her enslavement (or, rather, ransom) when she fails. 

But if your hero’s quest is to get a guy to fall in love you and you have a magic make-mortal-men-fall-in-love-with-you voice then that’s cheating. Ariel’s voice is taken so she can’t cheat. (Now, Ursula DOES cheat. But she’s the baddie.)

This magic quality to Ariel’s voice is further proven to be the motivation for stealing it when Ursula uses it to do exactly that. When she brainwashes Eric  she’s just…using the same siren song that Ariel would have had at her disposal had Ursula not taken it. 

mutuals do this

I am dead serious: If you are a Walmart employee, at any level and in any store — like if you are a high school kid with a part time job stocking shelves — message me any question you have about unions. Like ask me "What's a union" if you want. I will explain it to you. I am a grievance chair for a white collar union whose workplace only unionized within the last five years and whose management fought as every step of the way, but in the end we fucking won. It can be done, and I can tell you how.

why did they give this line to the villain

To make it seem like a bad thing to young girls

I feel like the body positivity movement is literally only beneficial for average sized women who have been emotionally impacted by images of skinny women and completely useless for women who actually have to deal with the tangible effects of having bodies that aren’t conventionally attractive.

The vast majority of the women in my life are average sized women who have been emotionally ravaged by the idea that skinny is the norm. I won’t take away from these feelings or experiences because they’re real and every day women are struggling with their bodies because of them. However, none of these women actually have to deal the very tangible and devastating consequences of having a body that falls outside of average.

Can you define what you mean by “tangible consequences” in this context? Beyond the internal aspects described in another response? I’m not disagreeing, but I’m not entirely sure what you mean. Are you talking about social consequences of not being seen as “acceptable,” or more like accessibility?

By tangible consequences I mean that they don’t often have to deal with consequences outside of their own personal and emotional perception of their body, which would include social consequences as well as accessibility.

So an average sized woman may feel insecure about her body but those feelings don’t effect her social standing the way that it would with a plus sized woman. Those feelings will not determine the quality of her medical care, the ability to find work, to be promoted within the workplace, to find love, to find friendship, to find clothes, etc. while an average sized woman may feel worthless because she’s not skinny, plus sized women actually socially lose their value as human beings which has far reaching and devastating effects that have nothing to do with ones perception of self.

Furthering this, I think this is why so much of the body positivity movement is about reassuring average size women that they’re normal.

For reference, this is what she’s talking about :

In conclusion: Fanfic is important, there’s nothing wrong with writing or enjoying it and the cast and crew of Good Omens are a gift.

This

Please, enjoy this bop with me