Author: Serene Sargent

I make jewelry and try to read everything on the US Civil War and Reconstruction that comes out, (thereby knowing many smart people.) I know a bit of law, care about Beatles historiography and love the Nagras. Jane Austen whispered her Emma secrets to me across many miles and 200 years. ✨ My father was Bill Sargent, the Pay Per View Beatles guy. #DYRBRY

The Trials of Frank Carson podcast: cast of characters

The judge added that given other problems with the sharing of evidence discovery in the case, the district attorney “should have been sitting here and hearing what the problems are in your office. I don’t get it. I have never seen a case of this magnitude – as you know, I have tried some cases of some magnitude – where the District Attorney’s Office has made so many mistakes with respect to discovery.”

Lt. Zimmerman Gave the Jury in the Chauvin Case an Enormous Hat Rack to Hang a Week’s Worth of Emotion On

This week saw a full day of children sobbing from the trauma of what they witnessed, but they were far from the only witnesses to cry. Mixed martial artist Donald Williams cried between his cogent and and sometimes righteously contained anger. So did the firefighter who approached the scene from across the street — Genevieve Hansen — who first reasoned, then ordered, then almost begged the officers to just “check his pulse!” (“Check his pulse, right fucking now!”)

CHOOSE YOUR FRIENDS LIKE THERE’S A WAR GOING ON

I’m almost ready to say that when it comes to achieving a goal — especially an ambitious one — I believe your outcome isn’t so much determined by what you do, but who you do it with. Outcomes, like math problems, are determined by a factorization of known quantities. Math is never magic. There is an inescapable fatalism in it. Embrace it, because you cannot outwit it or outrun it. Make the absolute most of every piece you’ve got on the board, and remember what every good chess player knows: pawns win games. Spend no time mourning the weakness of your fellow cast. Improve it whenever you can, but if you make an enemy, never let it be by accident. After all, in real life pawns don’t wear pawn costumes and queens wear no crowns.

BACKWARDS: the secret itself was our power

Secrets bond us to others. A secret that only you and one other person in the world know is a bond forged in titanium. To have that secret handed back to you, to carry alone and by yourself, is an impossibility. It just keeps the dead person from ever really dying. I found out that secrets are even stronger than death. They span immortality with grace and ease.

I wrote an overlong reply to a commenter on another blog post about Twitter, and I don’t think I’ve ever written about Twitter on here, so I’m posting it.

Twitter is exactly what you want it to be. You curate it. You choose who to follow. You choose what you see. You choose what you learn. And it can be a little clunky getting there, I won’t lie. But it can also be fun and wondrous: finding some new source of information that tickles you, and diving down their rabbit hole (who they follow, for a start) to find even more people with deep knowledge about a subject you may have felt very few people cared about in the way you do. You never have to see anything you don’t want to. (In settings, you can choose to have Twitter make suggestions. Choose not to.) Some people rush to what’s trending. I don’t usually care. (But occasionally, I actually do, and that’s fun, too.) Twitter is crammed full of total idiots. That’s true. But it’s also a place where a whole lot of the best minds on earth congregate to broaden their knowledge, try out ideas, and share what they know best.

Yes, you absolutely should watch The Wire. And no, I don’t give AF if it’s “your type” of show. Unless “your type” just simply excludes greatness.

So rather than just telling you that you should watch “The Wire” because it’s a work of art, let me let D’Angelo – nephew of “the kingpin” and much loved family member, kicked back down to learn a few lessons and pay some penance – make his own chess analogy, while exhibiting what makes “The Wire” so uniquely, deliciously, and inexhaustibly brilliant.

What are the major systems that protect bad cops and hinder reform? (Hint: it’s a lot more than just qualified immunity)

The mission of the police union is to protect police jobs at all costs. They’re usually led by old-school types who are often the biggest opponents to any accountability. In Minneapolis, the Police Union president, Bob Kroll, is a very controversial figure. He is already vowing to fight to get the 4 officers involved in the death of George Floyd reinstated, and he, himself, has had 29 complaints against him as a cop.