Today I received the “generous” $54 check for my one day of jury shit. I immediately donated twice that amount to a crowdfund that might be attempting to help with the fentanyl problem.
I did a similar double-first with Trump’s blood money during the “virus” holocaust.
Emerson says you should pay undeserved money before you receive it. This isn’t quite the same thing; it’s arguably deserved but UNWANTED. I don’t WANT to incur a debt to monstrous rulers, so I get rid of twice the amount before I deposit it. I try to send it to a place where the monsters wouldn’t want it to go.
Broadly I’ve been trying to follow the KSTP slogan in the top icon.
Laugh at your ills, pay your bills, behave yourself.
I’m not doing a good job on the first part yet.
I treat the latter two in a somewhat more abstract way. Not just paying the electric and water every month, but paying in the Emersonian sense. Not just behaving in the legalistic way, but attempting to pay back the universe for the blessing of my existence by making more value and beauty.
The purpose of life is to add value and beauty.
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Irrelevant sidenote: I’ve been checking the court calendar to see if the case got sentenced or acquitted. I managed to escape before the trial, but still curious about what happened. One statistic stands out clearly: This court, covering about a million people in eastern Wash, has exactly one jury trial per week. Might be more or less sometimes, but so far it’s exact. The rest of the items in the calendar are “conferences” at various stages of the process.
We know that only 2% of all cases reach a jury. This calendar shows what the statistic means in practice. One a week for a million people. TV and idiot “civics” classes give you the idea that every trial must be a jury trial. “Civics” is a monumental pile of lies, from the “self-evident” outrageous lies in the founding documents to the detailed lies about how government really works.
The measure of a good lawyer is his ability to avoid ALL trials. Even good lawyers can’t disobey a determined moron who insists on his “self-evident” “right” to a jury. Professional criminals and gamblers are ABSOLUTELY CONFIDENT that they will defeat the odds every time. Fuck around and find out. Should have listened to the good lawyer.
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UPDATE 5/7: Finally located the result, and it’s CORRECT. The jury found the “virus” fraudsters GUILTY without my dubious assistance. Now I can let the whole thing loose.
This case also fits the above category. The fraudsters were first arrested in 2023, and insisted on a jury trial. Two years of lawyer fees are EXPENSIVE. They had plenty of chances to grab an easier penalty and spend less. Being professional criminals, they were CONFIDENT that they could fool the uncool government agencies and Deplorable jurors. I could see that the defense lawyer was trying to make lemonade from spoiled lemons. He was looking for jurors who would be fussy about little stuff like bookkeeping with Excel vs QuickBooks, and jurors who would trust their wives before their business partners. If fine-grained details are the best you’ve got, you ain’t got much, and he clearly knew it.
Polistra's Mill 