In The Wake Of The Alec Baldwin Trial Dismissal, We Should All Be Asking Ourselves Why The Prosecutors

In the wake of the Alec Baldwin trial dismissal, we should all be asking ourselves why the prosecutors felt so empowered to brazenly doctor the case. From what I can tell, they…

…tried to add a charge that didn’t exist when the incident occurred.

…beat key evidence—the gun involved in the incident itself—to pieces with a hammer before the defense could examine it, reconstructed it, and went “trust us bro, it works exactly the same as when we got it.”

…hid live rounds taken from the movie set under a different case file, labeled as documents instead of physical evidence, and went “yeahhhhh but those aren’t relevant” only to have the judge look at them with her own eyes and determine the rounds were a dead ringer for the one that killed the victim.

If law enforcement felt confident enough to pull this in a high profile case in the national news, against a rich white actor with a household name, I can only imagine how many times that corruption has flown under the radar against those without the resources to defend themselves against it.

Less "if they really loved you, they wouldn't ever hurt you." More "hurt feelings and conflicts are an unavoidable part of life, but the people worthy of being in yours will apologize and work on their behavior once they realize they are hurting you. You can't expect perfection from anyone, but you can and should expect effort."

There's an EU initiative going on right now that essentially boils down to wanting to force videogame publishers with paid games and/or games with paid elements such as DLC, expansions and microtransactions to leave said games in a playable state after they end support, or in simpler terms, make them stop killing games.

A "playable state" would be something like an offline mode for previously always online titles, or the ability for people to host their own servers where reasonably possible just to name some examples.

I don't think I need to tell anyone that having something you paid for being taken from you is bad, which is a thing that routinely happens with live service and other always online games with a notable recent example being The Crew which is now permanently unplayable.

Any EU citizen is eligible to sign the initiative, but only once and if you mess up that's it. You can find it here. (https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007_en)

Even if you're not European or you signed it already, you can share this initiative with anyone who is, even if they don't care about videogames specifically because this needs a million signatures and there is different thresholds that need to be met for each EU country for their votes to even count and could also be a precedent for other similar practices like when Sony removed a bunch of Discovery TV content people paid for.

Despite what my mom thinks, she is objectively wealthy. Lives in a McMansion in an affluent white suburb and everything. When I was a kid she refused to stock food I could eat to the point that in high school my PCP told me that if I didn’t get my weight up by my next appointment she would diagnose me as clinically anorexic to force changes. There were frequent times when my punishment for “disrespecting” her was that she’d confiscate any way I had of reaching support outside the house, threaten to use the police to bring me back if I ran away, and scream at me for hours. When it was time for college she refused to contribute for a laundry list of reasons, almost all of which were some flavor of resistance to her demanding complete control of my life.

My dad, by contrast (they were divorced and separate households) was extremely supportive. Despite paying child support, going bankrupt twice, and generally being much less well off he was the “no child of mine is going to school in tattered clothes / going hungry” type. He also took out loans to support my going to college and eventually shamed my mom into contributing.

The difference between their resources and their support was stark, and telling.

Allergy to nuance isn’t a problem unique to the left, but it is a problem. Ignoring nuance creates victims. Always. When it comes to the class war, the heart of the struggle is haves vs have nots. An oppressing class of wealthy elites vs the people they exploit by hoarding wealth and gatekeeping opportunity. So it’s kind of a… wild position, to be like “But not THESE people who are being kept from accessing wealth or having opportunities taken away at the whims of the elite!”

The bitter pill is, folks who are content to say that all children of the wealthy are “the enemy” regardless of their circumstances are more interested in creating a social in group / out group than in actually fighting any good fight. Or in justifying taking out their rage on the vulnerable people they can actually reach while the elites remain shameless and untouchable.

Morality isn’t as simple as political slogans make it seem, and the abused children of the rich can tell you first hand that unnecessary wealth is a fucking disease.

As a kid, when your parents are poor, you're poor. If they don't have money, that means none of you have money. But if someone's parents are rich, that doesn't necessarily mean the kid is. Sometimes rich peoples' kids aren't rich kids, they're just some rich freak's exotic pets that can talk but aren't allowed to.

It is very funny seeing Trump supporters lose their shit over being called ‘Weird’.

It absolutely attacks them at their core.

It's not that I don't want to visit, it just wasn't on the list I made in my head