Blame it on Stardew // What's Good: Mar. 22, 2024
A lost dog, some judges, and frozen peaches.
Hello, good evening, happy Tuesday. I forgot to write the newsletter because I was playing Stardew Valley. The new patch is so good.
However! We won the election! Graciela Guzman will be our new State Senator in IL SD20! I mean she has to beat the Republican, technically, sure, but this is the most progressive district in the state. So.
I will try to get the newsletter out on time this week. Fingers crossed.
Trump gagged again
Politico saw the chance for a perfect headline and ran with it. I respect that:
NEW YORK — Donald Trump has been gagged yet again.
The judge overseeing the former president’s upcoming Manhattan criminal trial on Tuesday imposed a gag order that bars him from attacking “reasonably foreseeable witnesses” or other people involved in the case, in which Trump is accused of falsifying business records connected to a hush money payment.
Speaking of speech
You can’t taint your jury with your speech, but you can annoy Elon Musk:
On March 15, a judge dismissed an X Corp case alleging that a hate speech watchdog group, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, wrongfully encouraged advertisers to flee the social media platform X.
The nonprofit posted multiple articles about the platform’s safety, including a June 2023 report that said X “fails to act on 99% of hate posted by Twitter Blue subscribers.” Starting a lawsuit in August 2023, X’s lawyers tried to claim that the nonprofit “cherry-picked” data to claim that X “is overwhelmed with harmful content.”
But in the 52-page ruling, a California judge wrote that “X Corp has not satisfied the court.” The judge added that this “case is about punishing the Defendants for their speech.”
Conflict of interest
Sure feels like one, anyway:
When the former president Donald Trump appointed the Texas attorney James Ho to the fifth circuit court of appeals in 2017, lawyers at the prominent law firm Gibson Dunn – where Ho worked before his appointment – had a problem: how to replace the politically connected Ho. Turns out, they didn’t even need to change the home address for his replacement. Ho’s wife, Allyson, moved into her husband’s position and his old office.
Meet the Hos.
Now let them enforce it
NEW YORK — Frozen bank accounts. A sheriff at the door. And maybe even a private plane put up for auction.
Donald Trump could soon face any of those scenarios if he can’t come up with a roughly half-billion dollar bond by next week to stop the enforcement of a civil judgment after a judge found that he and his company committed widespread corporate fraud.
Making it up
Junk data is why you can’t trust cops or prosecutors:
Tracy Harpster, a deputy police chief from suburban Dayton, Ohio, was hunting for praise. He had a business to promote: a miracle method to determine when 911 callers are actually guilty of the crimes they are reporting. “I know what a guilty father, mother or boyfriend sounds like,” he once said.
Harpster tells police and prosecutors around the country that they can do the same. Such linguistic detection is possible, he claims, if you know how to analyze callers’ speech patterns — their tone of voice, their pauses, their word choice, even their grammar. Stripped of its context, a misplaced word as innocuous as “hi” or “please” or “somebody” can reveal a murderer on the phone.
So far, researchers who have tried to corroborate Harpster’s claims have failed. The experts most familiar with his work warn that it shouldn’t be used to lock people up.
Timing
I don’t know, man. It certainly doesn’t look good:
Saturday March 9 dawned as a gusty gray morning in Charleston, S.C. with thunderstorms rolling across the historic city and daggers of lightning lighting up the skies. Just after 10 AM, Rob Turkewitz was sitting in a tony lawyers’ office downtown, waiting for his client John Barnett to testify—and further his crusade for safety in the skies. “My co-counsel Brian Knowles and I were gathered around a conference table alongside Boeing's in-house counsel, and its trial lawyer from Ogletree, Deakens. It was in Ogletree’s offices, much fancier than ours, what you’d call a ‘grand door.’”
A force for good
Sometimes, at least:
On March 17, Hannah Riley got the phone call no dog owner wants to receive: Her beloved dog, Hazel, was missing — and Riley was out of the country, unable to help.
“I just kept repeating, ‘Sorry, you lost my dog?’” Riley, a 35-year-old media professional, tells TODAY.com.
Riley adopted Hazel, an 11-pound papillon, from the Atlanta Humane Center six years ago when she first moved to the city. She credits the dog with helping her through a divorce two years ago. “I know I will love other dogs in my life and I have before her, but Hazel is a special one.” she says.
You deserve some good animal content
https://twitter.com/Gekikawa_Dbts/status/1770786923411312815
https://twitter.com/raccoonhourly/status/1772752911337951398
https://twitter.com/mischiefanimals/status/1772736250362913018
https://twitter.com/RedPandaEveryHr/status/1772734301269885361
https://twitter.com/NationalZoo/status/1772718482808885471
https://twitter.com/twaniimals/status/1772698553850163623
https://twitter.com/twaniimals/status/1772676852894560457
https://twitter.com/GoldretrieverUS/status/1772644027269038359
https://twitter.com/twaniimals/status/1772479456176754712
Have a good weekend.
Addendums
A QAnon-linked magazine did an interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 'The Bachelor' is notorious for minting new influencers. How former franchise villain Nick Viall became its most successful alum. How Kate Middleton Conspiracy Theories Consumed the Internet. A Deepfake Nude Generator Reveals a Chilling Look at Its Victims. Beyoncé's Album Cover Makes Complete Sense to Black Texans.