I'm Branwyn (queer, she/her). I'm a professional writer who writes fanfic on the side. My current fandoms are Person of Interest and Star Trek, but I've also written in the GOT/ASOIAF, Welcome to Night Vale, Cabin Pressure, Sherlock, and Harry Potter fandoms. You can read my stories at my AO3 account. If you enjoy my writing, please consider subscribing to my Patreon, where I publish original fiction.
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It has been literal years but every time I see Martin’s tweets posted somewhere and his word is shared as truth while her post is not shared it sort of reiterates the fact that we trust men to speak about feminism more than we believe women who experience it.
Reading her account of how their boss treated her blows me away. Men are so emboldened that they will literally admit to illegal discrimination casually and face no consequences.
In all the years of seeing this post I’ve never seen a link to her side. Didn’t even know she’d written one.
Adding screenshots of her post. His whole post is there without needing a link. Hers should be, too.
Also, she posted this is 2017! It’s fucking 2020 and I’ve seen his side of this for years, but it took 3 years for her side to make its way to my dash…
I’ve reblogged his story at least twice; it’s time for Nicole’s.
people in the notes suggesting it was “improper” for the juror to do this or that it “introduced bias” to the court proceeding 🙄 the ice agent in question accused a moc of assaulting him / resisting arrest. how is the agent being a white supremacist not relevant. what universe are you living in
As a member of the world’s SECOND oldest profession, I assure you this is just one of many ways the justice system is systematically fucked up.
For anyone who wants to know how to fact check something you are told while on jury duty without getting fined:
First, you need to understand that the rule that jurors can’t just google things is coming from a good place. Like imagine that you are on a jury that’s considering, say, a medical malpractice lawsuit and one of your fellow jurors comes into the jury room and says to you, “I think the victim’s expert was lying because WebMD totally contradicts everything they said.”
And you might be like, “But WebMD is notoriously unreliable website and the expert you’re talking about is a researcher from Mayo Clinic.” But this person cannot be swayed.
Like, we can all agree that would be bad.
So even though these rulescan contribute to unjust outcomes as in the case above (and seriously, the fact that the defense attorney didn’t fact check that is probably grounds for legal malpractice), they also prevent jurors from just looking up bullshit online and taking it more seriously than the actual experts the court has put on. And I think in the era of anti-vaxxers/QAnon/COVID denial/etc., we can all understand why it’s a bad idea to trust that people can tell fact from bullshit online.
So in light of this, how do you as a juror fact check something?
The key here is that you have to ask the court for information. Jurors can ask questions of the court during deliberations, so if something you said sounds off to you, you can ask for more information.
The key term you want to use here is “credibility.”
The job of a jury is to decide what are called “questions of fact.” Long before the trial even starts, lawyers will have hashed out all the “questions of law” — like, what the statute of limitations is; what laws, exactly, were allegedly broken; whether the court you’re in even has jurisdiction; stuff like that. Jurors are responsible for deciding which side’s version of the facts has more credibility.
For instance, if the prosecution’s witness says X and the defense’s witness says Y, the jury is responsible for deciding which is true, X or Y. And you do this by weighing which one is more credible.
So in this case, if the juror had known to, he could have told the judge, “In order to properly assess the ICE agent’s credibility, I need more information about his tattoo. I have doubts about whether he was telling the truth about it, which would impact how credible I would find his testimony. Can the agent please provide evidence that it really is what he says it is?”
There are a lot of problems with our legal system, and I think one of the biggest is that jurors aren’t educated about what they can and can’t do. Juries have a lot of power, if (and only if) they know how to use it.
my brothers share special interests and my favorite thing to do is walk in a room and be like “hey guys can you tell me about the mariana trench” and then sit there for an hour while they both infodump to me about the ocean it’s extremely entertaining
and my parents are always like “oh my god why would you do that” bitch. I want to learn about the ocean and these two thirteen year old boys r my most trusted source
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I mean, I could google questions I have about medieval weaponry and horsemanship, but on the other hand I could message my sister the simple statement “have question about historical saddles” and get both a phone call and a comprehensive 3 page google document within an hour
Seriously, if you know someone who has a special interest you’d like info about, go ask them! It costs zero money, you make them happy, and you learn way more than a basic google search would tell you.
moleskine makes people hate pens and is probably a huge part of why so many people give up on good pens.
to folks who might not know, moleskine is extremely famous AND infamous. they are hardcover notebooks with elastic enclosures. they are expensive, and sold everywhere from pharmacies to bookstores, and does collaborations with a variety of brands including james bond and pokemon. moleskine has tried to establish itself as a luxury notebook, which it technically is.
as long as you do not write in it.
moleskine paper is wholeheartedly shit. it is complete fucking garbage. you might wonder, what makes good paper? well the first thing is how well it can be written on. good paper can handle ink well. good ink handling means clear, solid lines without any feathering (fuzzy spreading), not bleeding through the page, and not ghosting. basically, you want paper that can do crisp lines with a variety of different inks and be used on both sides.
moleskine does not do that. anything more than a ballpoint or pencil will look fuzzy and gross and bleed right through the fucking page. the paper is shit. and that makes people think their pen is shit. and ballpoint pens can be seen on the other side of the page.
common knowledge is that fountain pens, rollerball pens, gel pens, felt pens, and more work better on good paper. good meaning good with ink. but when many people think good paper without knowing any better, they will reach for a moleskine notebook. because moleskine is expensive and advertises itself as good and is widely available. so people try out actually good writing implements on this shit paper, see how bad it works, and then blame the pen.
fountain pens, gel pens, and rollerball require much less pressure than ballpoint pens. they are ergonomic. easier on joints, easier for chronic pain. and moleskine makes people give up on them. nobody wants shitty bleeding feathered lines.
in the united states, our ideas of good paper and good stationery in general are extremely warped. so much of this is because paper here fucking sucks. a lot of paper performs like moleskine. there is shit paper at all price ranges. but you can pick up caliber brand paper (the ones that say made in vietnam) from cvs and have infinitely better performance for pennies. even though it looks low quality, caliber paper (vietnam) can even handle calligraphy ink clearly. bad paper makes people hate good pens and bad pens make people hate writing.
another thing really important to mention, a lot of people think thick paper is always better. this is extremely wrong. in terms of being able to handle a wide variety of inks clearly and cleanly, some of the best paper in the world is tissue thin (tomoe river).
do not buy moleskine. even if the stand is right there. they have some of the worst paper you can get at that price point. expensive paper is not always good paper, good pens need good paper, moleskine paper makes good pens seem awful, and moleskine is something you should only give to someone you loathe.
There are so many great options:
- Leuchtturm;
- Rhodia;
- Clairefontaine;
Notebooks made by pen manufacturers.
Seriously, there are so many options, just ask other pen buffs.
Also, if you have to use shitty paper (besides Moleskine, bc Moleskine sucks), then mind nib size and ink.
I could correct copies with a M nib TWSBI Eco with Iroshizuku ink and no bleedthrough. (On moleskine, though… yes.)
Y’all, I’m over here DYING cuz Google suggested me this article about the crisis of backyard chicken keepers– which is that they love having chickens so much that they keep getting more, and then don’t know what to do with all the eggs.
Which I can see how this would be a problem, but it’s just so funny to me because they had interviewed this one guy who started off with 3 chickens, and then kept adding more and more, and eventually started donating the eggs to a local food bank, and at the end of the year when they wrote him a tax receipt, he discovered he’d donated over 400 dozen eggs.
Seriously, it was a whole article talking very seriously about how people are so into chickens that they just keep collecting them like pokemon and then have to “scramble” (their words not mine) to get rid of the eggs, because they weren’t even thinking of egg production, they just loved having chickens.
And while I may be over here laughing a bit too hard, honestly? Big Mood.
