Too Much Meta, Probably

Miranda, Florida. I write various fics as SianShanya on AO3, so check that out if you're into it. Primarily into Some of Star Wars, all content involving Pirates, and whatever period drama owns my ass this month.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

ok but DID I come back wrong, or did you build up an idealized version of me in your head that was easy to love while I was dead? but now that I'm real and alive and complicated again, you resent me for not being as simple and compliant as a mere memory?

do you resent me for coming back "wrong," or for coming back at all?

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

i see we are all feeling completely normal about my tags:

#did i come back wrong or were you just bad at loving me from the start? #did i come back wrong or is my crime that i came back the same #did i come back wrong or did you decide on your own that there was always something wrong with me? #and now you're frustrated I survived the traumatic death that was somehow supposed to fix me

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

people keep tagging this Jason Todd, which isn't inaccurate, but also that boy came back WRONG

[asteroidtroglodyte]

Me, tears streaming down my face, sobbing, as I stare at the stars: it’s just so beautiful

The medieval peasant I went back in time to give a bag of Doritos to, concerned: what terrible and powerful sorcerers they must have in your age, to be able to veil the vault of heaven itself from view, as you say

Me, sniffling: I didn’t realize, I can’t, it’s so much, I, I… are the chips good, at least?

Medieval peasant, trying to make me feel better: they’re… magical, strange traveler

[tzifron]

The FBI Faked an Entire Field of Forensic Science

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The Washington Post published a story so horrifying this weekend that it would stop your breath: “The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.”

What went wrong? The Post continues: “Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far.” The shameful, horrifying errors were uncovered in a massive, three-year review by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Innocence Project. Following revelations published in recent years, the two groups are helping the government with the country’s largest ever post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.

Chillingly, as the Post continues, “the cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death.” Of these defendants, 14 have already been executed or died in prison.

The massive review raises questions about the veracity of not just expert hair testimony, but also the bite-mark and other forensic testimony offered as objective, scientific evidence to jurors who, not unreasonably, believed that scientists in white coats knew what they were talking about. As Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project, put it, “The FBI’s three-decade use of microscopic hair analysis to incriminate defendants was a complete disaster.”

This study was launched after the Post reported that flawed forensic hair matches might have led to possibly hundreds of wrongful convictions for rape, murder, and other violent crimes, dating back at least to the 1970s. In 90 percent of the cases reviewed so far, forensic examiners evidently made statements beyond the bounds of proper science. There were no scientifically accepted standards for forensic testing, yet FBI experts routinely and almost unvaryingly testified, according to the Post, “to the near-certainty of ‘matches’ of crime-scene hairs to defendants, backing their claims by citing incomplete or misleading statistics drawn from their case work.”

NACDL executive director Norman Reimer said in an interview with Associations Now that the flaws in the system had been known for years now. “What we were finding was that the examiners … wouldn’t just simply say that there was a microscopic similarity [between the two hairs], but they would go beyond that and say it was a 100 percent match, essentially misleading the jury into concluding that the evidence had a certain value that it didn’t actually have,” Reimer said.

[directactionforhope]

This is another reason why copaganda shows and police procedurals need to disappear as a recognizable genre. They are part of the myth, aura, and narrative that makes people think these things are ACTUAL SCIENCE, and ACTUALLY WORK, when we have known for a decade now, that they're fucking garbage.

The FBI also completely faked the science of "bite analysis," as briefly mentioned above.

They also have known for decades that their/police standard interrogation techniques substantially distort eyewitness memory and testimony, frequently resulting in false convictions, but they will apparently never do anything about it, because they're there to protect the interests of the ruling class and US government, not to protect people.

Relatedly lie detectors are fake too. Don't believe in them, and also never agree to one. As always: Don't talk to cops.

[queerofthedagger]

"i asked chatgpt" well i asked james flint and he said this is how they survive you must know this you're too smart not to know this they paint the world full of shadows and then tell their children to stay close to the light their light their reasons their judgments. because in the darkness there be dragons but it isn't true we can prove that it isn't true. in the dark there is discovery there is possibility there is freedom in the dark once someone has illuminated it all this will be for nothing we will have been for nothing. defined by their histories distorted to fit into their narrative until all that is left of us are the monsters in the stories they tell their children

[twinpirate]

black sails is like okay so heres 20 characters and each of them is involved in some plot or scheme or several and then there's a change of plan in them at least once an episode and everyone is counterscheming and adjusting to each change of plans

[ninjasmudge]

worlds slowest fanfic author tries really really hard

[ninjasmudge]

everyone in the notes we are all holding hands. everyone who hasnt worked on a wip in weeks or months or years, its okay. we are going slow but we are going

[theartofangirling]

black sails really can just be summed up with "what would you give up for the person you love most" vs. "what would you give up the person you love most for"

[losthavenmine]

Harrison Ford as Han Solo || Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

[libraford]

In preparation for the Ides of March, please take one (1) knife.

🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪

[ladyhawke]

MORFYDD CLARK answering what her favorite tv show is experiencing acute Black Sails brain rot at Cannes International Series Festival 2023.

[theartofangirling]

the world was truly not ready in 2014 for eleanor guthrie as representation for girlfail bisexuals. terrible taste in men, fumbles the most beautiful woman in the world, makes the worst possible decisions at every turn. #progressive

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

my other grounding technique is remembering that the earliest abolitionists & the earliest suffragists had no proof that the world would ever make possible what they fought for and indeed many of them did not live to see it come to pass. and yet they did not succumb to despair so it would be disrespectful to their memory to let it overtake me

[martanis]

CHARLIE VICKERS as SAURON in The Rings of Power — 2.07 "Doomed to Die"

[wttcsms]

there's a dark timeline out there where tumblr fanfic writers are considered influencers and get sponsorships, and during kinktober, the horniest fanfics drop and all your fave bloggers are doing "day 1 - toys" and they're including a paragraph that loosely goes something like

[psychicpinenut]

Visit Original Link

Welcome to the Unknown, boys.

You’re more lost than you realize.

[clementine-kesh]

the key to not fanonizing your faves is to simply become academia-brained about it. never make a statement about a character you can’t back up with at least three references to the source material

[pzychojinx]

deleting my dating apps because i want to meet someone the old fashioned way (i am brutally beating a man to death to maintain my extremely fragile status as captain of my pirate ship and you're my new lying ass fake cook with his silly little fake name witnessing the scene like you're both scared and horny)