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.

“She didn’t prosecute a single one of them. Not one.”

In her first year alone, non-violent drug crimes resulting in prison terms doubled, with a full two-thirds ending in imprisonment. And while Minnesota’s record of extraordinarily vast racial disparities in imprisonment certainly didn’t begin with Amy Klobuchar’s tenure, during the eight years she served as chief prosecutor her insistence on longer sentences for less serious crimes actually drove up the number of prison inmates in the state by one-fifth, despite the fact that crime rates in Minneapolis had been dropping at least three years before she took office.

What’s going on with Flynn and Judge Gleeson, in two pieces

Snuck from behind the paywalls in PDFs. 🤫 The Flynn case isn’t over until the judge says it’s over: by the retired judge who Judge Sullivan would soon appoint (PDF) John Gleeson served as a U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of New York and chief of the Criminal Division in the U.S. Attorney’s…

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Ahmaud Arbery – 911 dispatcher to alleged murderer: “I just need to know what he was doing wrong.” AUDIO/(video with transcript) -911 CALLS-

911: Okay, what is he doing?
Caller: He’s running down the street.
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The second DA to recuse himself from the case was George Barnhill, and his letter doing so is such an atrocious example of victim blaming, ignoring evidence, and pure petulance that it should disqualify him from holding any public office, let alone any within the criminal justice system.