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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • So I can pitch in here. I was a juror on a trial where jury nullification was talked about. Multiple potential jurors did bring up jury nullification and the final jury contained some members who openly stated that they believed in jury nullification.

    The judge and the prosector actually didn’t really care that much - the judge just asked the juror something along the lines of “ok, but do you think you can stay impartial for this trial?”, and if the juror said yes, they were on the jury. And the prosecutor didn’t dismiss anyone.

    My understanding is that both the prosecutor and the defense get 10 freebie dismissals - they can dismiss up to 10 potential jurors for any reason. If the prosecutor wants to maximize the chances of getting a guilty verdict, they may potentially try to use those freebie dismissals to get rid of jurors who know about jury nullification. But it seems like, at least in my case, knowing about it (or even openly stating that you believe in it) doesn’t automatically disqualify you.

    The defense started talking jury nullification halfway through the trial (it was a wild trial), and that was where the judge drew the line. His reasoning was that the it was the judge’s role to instruct the jury on their job and role, so the defense cannot instruct the jury on their own about what to do. So it seems like you can talk about jury nullification, just not if you’re the defendant.

    As for why jury nullification isn’t commonplace, the prosecutor will try to convince the jury that the defendant deserves punishment. It doesn’t matter if you believe in jury nullification if you also believe that the defendant deserves to be in jail. If the prosecutor doesn’t make a convincing argument, then you’d just vote innocent and that’s not really jury nullification. So there’s really quite a long criteria for jury nullification to occur:

    1. The jury knows about and believes in jury nullification
    2. The jury disagrees with a particular law or case but also isn’t emotionally charged enough about it so as to remain impartial
    3. The prosecutor doesn’t use their freebie dismissals to get rid of jurors who might be willing to do a nullification
    4. The jury believes that the law was broken, but is also unconvinced that the defendant deserves punishment


  • Change isn’t necessarily impossible, but it’s really difficult and requires a huge amount of self discipline - if someone changes, they will be a standout exception rather then the norm. I urge you to consider that someone who ghosts you likely does not value you enough to be willing or able to put in the effort to change. Ghosting is deeply rude to do to anyone, and especially toward your significant other.

    Take my interpretation with a mountain of salt, because I don’t know the full story. But, from what you said, it seems more likely that he reached out to you because you were a convenient backup


  • Pretty sure lunar effect is a real, scientifically confirmed thing, just known by a different name. Perhaps not the full moon specifically, but we do oscillate according to the moon phase. It’s called circalunar cycles. The name might sound familiar to circadian cycles because they both derive from the same word structure, ie circa-dia (“around a day”) and circa-lunar (“around a month”)

    At minimum, I’m quite surprised that Wikipedia lists this as a pseudoscience, because my impression has generally been that circadian researchers acknowledge circalunar cycles as a given





    1. Not really, no. Love and attraction are different things. You don’t need to be attracted to someone you love.

    2. Unless you find your partner unattractive, I don’t see how sex could meaningfully change

    3. People are good at picking up social cues. That’s probably what you’re referring to. Humans are social creatures, after all. Also, people are trash at picking up social cues, so you’re probably also missing a lot of cues.

    4. That sounds like a really bad idea. Your sense of how common those relationships issues occur is warped. People don’t generally go into relationships trying to exploit someone. You’re going to cause issues (moral, logistical, and practical) with your plan, all because of a concern that’s not likely to happen.

    5. That’s the vast majority of humans. We are a monogamous species, after all. When you see “alpha males” on the internet, just be aware that they’re grifters that want your money. And the best way to make sure you keep giving them money is to make sure that you stay single and unhappy.

    6. Can’t help you there. I can at least tell you that enacting your plan in question 4 is going to lower your chances of finding a wife to 0.


  • The other comments cover things pretty well, but I feel like I should also pitch in as well. I’m in my mid-20’s in a stable relationship of over 3 years (at least a part of which was long distance), so I could probably offer some more age-specific advice.

    I find that a lot of younger people (ie, people at or below my age) put a lot of undue emphasis on social media. Liking a post, not liking a post, follow, not follow, whatever. These are all contrivances. They are a game designed by social media companies to keep people doomscrolling on their platform. It’s important to see and really understand that it genuinely does not matter what someone does on social media. Your boyfriend seems not to have interacted with the Instagram model after he got with you. So that’s good right? If that’s what’s really important to you, then why does it matter if he still follows her?

    And even if we assume that he was still actively interacting with the model, that’s still fine. It’s important to know that there is a difference between attraction and love. Love is the very specific feeling of caring about the other person and wanting the best for them. Many younger people think that attraction and love are the same, and so a lot of drama gets started because neither side realizes that they’re mixing up their ideas of what a relationship should be like. One common issue to be aware of (and most relevant to this situation) is that being attracted to someone else is not love, and it’s not cheating. It is ok to find other people attractive, and likewise, you should not find it offensive if your boyfriend finds someone else attractive.

    I will also caution that many younger couples have this expectation that their partners should allow them to go through the other person’s phones. This is extremely toxic. Don’t do that. People have a right to their own private life, even when they are in a relationship. This applies to social media as well. You shouldn’t be looking through your boyfriend’s Instagram just because you want to see if he’s following anyone that you don’t like. Remember that a relationship is built on trust, and that means that you need to trust your boyfriend to be loyal.

    You might be thinking that if you shouldn’t look through people’s phones, then it’s really easy for your boyfriend to cheat for a long time without you knowing. And that’s true. That’s why cheating hurts so much. But that possibility doesn’t give you the permission to intrude on their privacy. Have faith in your boyfriend.

    Finally, practice open communication and mindfulness. I find that it can be quite difficult to identify what exactly is bothering you, and talking to your boyfriend about a vague sense of jealousy isn’t going to be productive at all. In fact, it’s probably going to get him defensive. When you’re angry, disappointed, upset, jealous, etc., it’s important to take some time to think things through yourself first. These negative feelings tend to result from the feeling that one of your personal rights was violated. If you’re angry or upset, which specific action caused it? Which of your personal rights was violated by that action? It is really important to identify this, since the difference between toxic behavior and valid anger is oftentimes just based on how valid the answers are to those questions. For instance, the “right to your boyfriend’s attention” is not a real right that you have, and so if you were to get angry that your boyfriend isn’t giving you enough attention, that would, in fact, be toxic behavior. And if you do have a right to be angry, then knowing which of your rights was violated makes it easy to prove your point, so there’s no downsides to this approach.


  • You should be aware that there are many reasons why a guy cannot get hard. Being dehydrated, for instance, makes it really difficult to stay erect. Many guys can get pretty insecure about it, so his reaction sounds about right.

    I would recommend that you not blame him for not getting hard. It just happens sometimes and that’s just something that you two will have to work around


  • People say that aiming with bows is easier? What kind of world do they live in?

    I’ve shot a decent amount of bows and guns, and guns are far easier to shoot. The difference is that because guns are easier to shoot, there’s a greater expectation of accuracy. Shooting a bow at 30 meters and hitting your target is considered accurate, shooting a gun at 30 meters is considered nothing.

    That being said, I still like archery more. There’s just something very personal about the experience of pulling the bowstring and manually making the arrow fly


  • Even before Trump and Vance lashed out, it was a shitshow. Every time Zelenskyy brought up security, Trump dismissed it because the the minerals were “more important.”

    European leaders were certainly watching, and their main takeaway was certainly that Trump can and will sacrifice the security of American allies for money.

    Europe and many of the US’s allies had lower military spending and did not to pursue nuclear programs because there was the expectation that the US would help protect these countries. This was exactly the promise that the US gave to Ukraine that got them to give up their nuclear research.

    Now that it’s become clear that the US cannot be relied upon for security, many of the US’s allies are certain to start reconsidering their stance on the military and nuclear weapons. As US soft power crumbles, I expect that new, smaller factions will arise to fill the void, and I expect that China will likely try to expand its influence as well.







  • wouldn’t the obvious answer be cancer

    Sure, but that’s a bit of a teleological reasoning. Not to mention, there are many ways to avoid cancer without removing stem cells from the vast majority of a species’ life history. Beyond that, people are also concerned about what specific mutations led to mammals’ inability to keep stem cells around, because this knowledge would directly help with our ability to generate stem cells in the lab.

    examples

    Intestinal and stomach cancers, for instance, have a lot to do with the stem cells in the intestinal/stomach lining. You can also debate whether the progenitor of skin cells counts as a stem cell. In general though, I think this statement is really just a slightly-more-detailed restatement of the general observation that tissues that experience a lot of turnover are more likely to develop into cancer


  • That depends on what you’re referring to. Quick caveat, I’m not an expert in regenerative biology, but I have studied it somewhat.

    The trick is that the healing that you’re referring to, it’s not really healing in the way that you’re imagining it. The skin doesn’t really quite grow back in the same way. Instead, there’s more collagen than there normally would be (we would then call that scar tissue). In essence, we’re not really healing, our bodies are just doing a patchwork fix. The presumed reason is that our bodies figure that it’s not going to cause any problems before we die from other causes. This is really quite true of other tissues as well. The liver is known to be able to grow back, but if you look at the microstructures, the regrown stuff is missing a lot of the nuances that the original had. Our bodies expect us to live 70-ish years, and so they don’t care about anything that could happen after that.

    In order to truly, really regenerate, you’ll need stem cells. Some animals are remarkably good at keeping around stem cells and regenerating, but somewhere along the evolutionary line, mammals lost the ability to use stem cells. It’s still an ongoing area of research about why this happened and whether we can generate stem cells in the lab and whether we can manipulate stem cells to our benefit. It should also be pointed out though that, by its intrinsic nature, stem cells divide and don’t specialize into any roles, so it’s very easy for them to go cancerous. In the few spots where mammals do keep stem cells around, their division is very tightly controlled, and even then they are the source of the most common cancers in humans