Change your attitude, change your world. Instead try to frame it as how you’re incredibly lucky to live in a place where your greatest concern is the freshness of memes, instead of waiting for your life as you knew of to come crashing down. That way, talk of the unfolding horror can bring you joy that you’re not one of us on the receiving end of it.

According to Wikipedia, the earliest property tax records are from 6,000 BCE.

Definitely illegal in the parts of Wisconsin I’m from. Zoning codes generally include a list of permitted uses for each zone, a list of conditional uses that need approval from the local zoning board or officer, and everything else is not allowed. If this structure were classified as a permanent structure, it would not meet building codes anywhere. If not a permanent structure, staying in it would be considered camping, which is not a permitted or conditional use in the zones of the county where I live. (Or maybe it is somehow; I just glanced over the ordinance.) I do have a bit of land in a county that does allow camping in certain zones, but for a maximum of 10 nights per year.

It seems to me that there’s this pervasive sense that the landscape and lifestyles (cars, single-family houses, lawns, etc.) in the United States are what they are because that’s what its citizens want for themselves. The reality is that just about anything else is illegal. Remember, the United States is the country that invented loitering (a.k.a. existing in public without a specific objective) as an offense in order to force (mostly Black) people into working degrading jobs. This is actually the kind of dwelling that Cornish miners built when they came to Wisconsin to mine galena. They got the nickname of “badgers” for it, and that’s why we’re the Badger State (and not due to the animal). So it’s not like this is a new idea that nobody has thought of before, we just can’t do it anymore.

The ZBMINIR2 that I ordered came in the mail today, and it seems to have the same features as the WiFi version. I’m guessing that Sonoff just increments the model number with each revision, and the ZigBee version came later.

Is the ZBMINIR2 not the ZigBee equivalent?

Disable the ad block, wait for all of the ads to load so the text stops jumping around like a crack-addled wallaby, accept the cookie notice, try to hit the tiny X to close the inevitable video overlay with shaking fingers, try to hit the tiny X to close the ad overlay, too, decline signing up for email alerts, decide whether to accept notifications, and then read the article one sentence at a time while scrolling past ads.

Maybe your local news sites aren’t as insane as mine?

I see what you’re saying. If they convicted Mangione, and the real killer confessed, they’d likely just ignore it and double down on his guilt out of vanity. That’s what usually happens in reality.

But it would not be a good idea for the real killer to confess. Yes, the video shows that one physical human wielded the gun, but as I am pointing out, that doesn’t matter. That’s the fucked-up part here: The legal system would allow two people to be convicted for it, unless somebody took deliberate action to overturn the first conviction.

It might go like this: The NY prosecutors get a conviction, and send Mangione to prison. Then, the real killer confesses. Being the real killer, the confession is very, very credible. The prosecutors can’t brazen it out, and decide to charge and try him. If he pleaded guilty, wham, bam, done. The matter would go right to sentencing. If he pleaded not guilty, the judge might rule that the conviction of Mangione for the same for crime is not admissible evidence, as it might bias the jury. Even if the previous conviction was brought up at trial, they have a very credible confession; it’s clear the real killer did it. And, even without a confession, the jury in the second trial is supposed to consider only whether the defendant is guilty of the crime charged. And if the evidence is strong enough, they probably would. The conviction of Mangione for the same crime would be a matter for another court.

Since the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that innocence is not grounds to have one’s case heard before an appeals court, this scenario could easily result in two men in prison for the same crime. The outcome of both going free is highly unlikely.

Yes, in reality, the NY prosecutors probably would at least have enough integrity to move to overturn Mangione’s conviction if they had a credible confession from another man. But they don’t have to.

Then I don’t know what I can say more clearly. If they convict Mangione, and the real killer confesses, they can convict the real killer, too. They wouldn’t even have to free Mangione to do it.

And there isn’t. If prosecutors file a new case against a second person for the same crime, and get a conviction, there’s no mechanism by which that second conviction overturns the previous conviction. Depending on the circumstances, the first person convicted may not even have grounds to have their case brought before a court to be re-examined.

Sure, a conviction can be overturned, but what I’m pointing out here is that it doesn’t have to be in order to convict somebody else for the same crime.

There’s no mechanism to release a conviction. Usually, if prosecutors have convicted somebody for murder, they won’t pursue a case against a second person only for reason of not wanting to admit that they may have got it wrong. But there’s no legal barrier, and it has happened for other crimes. The Ninth Circuit even ruled that it’s legal.

Here’s an in-depth article from Slate.

Why not? The double jeopardy clause is about prosecuting a single person twice; it says nothing about prosecuting a second person for the same crime. Heck, convicting a second person wouldn’t even automatically invalidate the first conviction. (SCOTUS has ruled that innocence is not a sufficient reason to overturn a conviction.)

Remember, we have a judicial system. Calling it a “justice system” is inaccurate.

The quality triangle format obscures the truth: U.S. health care is only fast and good if you can afford to pay for it. So, for the rest of us, since it’s not cheap, it’s also not fast and not good.

That’s why we’re so pissed off.