Best posts made by saosmash

@nyctophiliac said in The Art of Lawyering:

Jury System. Just why would anyone ever want to be tried by a court of their peers when the majority of our peers aren't all that smart - why not rely on a professional with experience? (Like a Judge!) Does this happen anywhere other than America? What do yall lawyers think about this?

I actually quite like juries. I've found them to be remarkably incisive in unexpected ways when I've spoken to them after court. They frequently come to a "right" conclusion --anecdata only, mind. The last couple of trials I've had, the jury came back with a decision that was basically... what the State offered me in settlement negotiations.

I think that the truth is often best reached by sifting down between opposing viewpoints. In my experience of most witness testimony, what actually happened is often... somewhere betwixt and between.

The Gavel. Talk to me about this. ORDER ORDER! BLAM BLAM! Is it just to punctuate that you mean business? What do yall lawyers think about this?

I've never actually seen one used in court.

Why did you choose the section of law (family, criminal, etc) that you chose? Or did it choose you?

inertia. I took the first job I could get in a terrible economy, and then continued to build my career from there. I do think I'm pretty okay at it, though.

Why on earth did you choose to practice law to begin with? Was it the money or..?

I had no idea what I wanted to do in real life and law school was a way to put off dealing with that for a few more years. My degree was in secondary education English literature and I didn't actually really want to be a teacher. Who knew?

What is the most hilarious case you've worked on?

Most of my shit isn't very funny. We did have an assault 4 once where the defendant allegedly threw a plum at his girlfriend while they were driving. I insistently referred to it as the drive-by fruiting case and made the PA laugh more than the joke was worth. We are the Mrs. Doubtfire generation, I guess.

What is the saddest case you've worked on?

A lot of 'em, really. I represent parents who are trying (and often failing) to not lose their children to the State. The worst is when they really genuinely want to try to fix their problems but their mental health is just too jacked up ... or when they are genuinely improved, but their relationship with the child is just plain unsalvageable.

I've lasted longer in my contract than most do. Turnover is high. Emotions are terrible. But somebody's got to do it.

Criminal Justice Lawyer Types: What's the scariest person you've represented?

I'd prefer not to say.

Would you ever represent someone that is guilty but they wanted you to get them off the hook? Would you lie for them? What's the furthest you'd go?

Guilty is a legal determination. They aren't guilty until they're convicted. I can and have represented people post-conviction, though. But ... I think the very question of whether you'd rep a guilty person misconstrues the point. My job is twofold: (1) to make sure the authority does their damn job correctly; they don't get a conviction no matter what my client did if they fuck up; and (2) to minimize the damage to my client's life that results from whatever dumbass thing they did to get them into that situation. Is it what they're charged with? Maybe, but that's not the point. The point is, no matter what someone has done, they're not beyond human caring.

Any given citizen is vastly outweighed by the power of the State. It's vitally important that no individual be crushed under the weight of that authority and power without checks and balances. The individual case is almost not the point. My role is vital, even though there are individual cases where there is literally fuck all I can do besides go "Your Honor, the burden of proof is on the State."

I don't lie. My professional ethics are extremely important to me, and so is my professional reputation, and I definitely would not compromise either for a client.

Do you like arguing? How can you manage to keep your shit together when impassioned?

I find that, when I am prepared, passion enables me to keep my shit together versus the forces of anxiety that otherwise undercut me.

I don't really like arguing, because I don't really like conflict. I dunno. I definitely didn't decide to be a lawyer because I was like, yay, arguing. But, somehow, here I am.

@bear_necessities OK, but once you've done that, what then? Like, what does equality of access mean in this context? If anyone can request a NPC scene, and both players do, and both get one NPC scene, and one player's NPC scene is stultifyingly boring for the staffer and ends up dead ending because the player lacks initiative or doesn't know how to RP in an engaging way, while the other player's NPC scene results in developing story and plot hooks that the player runs with and ultimately ends up leading to something expanded with future NPC contact because the story goes somewhere -- is the NPCer doing something wrong at that point?

Like, I've NPCed for years. If a character engages with my NPC, and develops that connection, they're ... going to have more access to that NPC in future because they have put in the work to develop that connection. I've had a player do this with a NPC who then had a larger NPC role in the ongoing story because of the connection that developed, and it shaped the future shape of the story in a way that neither I nor the players expected initially.

Or, like, I used to have a staff NPC who I would put out on the RP channel on a game and say, "Hello would anyone like to have an interaction with this NPC!" and mostly the players ignored this but one player took me up on it a couple of times and that led to that player having more scenes with that NPC. Does that mean that that player was a staff favorite? Nah. I mean, it was fine RP. Did those scenes go anywhere? No, not really, I was just trying to be accessible.

Like, what exactly are you expecting from your STs?

Last night I had ... farfalle with olive oil and salt. It was going to be noodles and cottage cheese but after I made the noodles I discovered the cottage cheese had gone off.

Tfw you fail at your depression meal and your food gets even lamer, lol. Motivation has been a real problem this week. I have to assemble a packet of collateral information for an expert doing an exam for me and I managed to not do it all yesterday even though I "was going to" multiple times. I have to get pretty bad before I start letting it impact my work this way.

Generally just blech.

I don't hide my identity and I'm not going to. I can't even alt-hide. I don't have the attention span, frankly, and honestly I'm prepared to own my shit, y'know? If I said something that pissed you off here and that impacts how you interact with me on a game, that's fine. It's how reality works, actions have consequences.

I hate having to tell people I can't work for free.

Like, the last thing in the world I want to do is work for free. But it's really hard sometimes to be like, "I know you're poor and suffering, but I can't be the one to fix it."

Stupid empathy.

I've never had an issue having my playlist up and am always upfront about who I am on games. If people don't like me, they can avoid me, and it will be better for us both, tbh!

@crawfish AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

70% on macbook, remainder on phone via portal, about a quarter of the remainder from bubblebaths.

So now I'm back at work after a week out sick due to a fkn covid scare and it turns out I wasn't even positive I JUST HAD SOMETHING ELSE, and I'm behind on 2000 of everything, and even just looking at the automated task list in my case management software makes me want to go back to bed.

asd;lkfjasl;dkfjasf

I wouldn't TS as a storyteller because I don't even have time to TS as a player.

Every woman I know has stories like this, ranging from relatively minor stuff to the outright horrifying. It's not far-fetched, it's reality. People in reality behave in many very stupid ways that seem counterintuitive or against their own best interests. Some people vote for Donald Trump.

@silverfox I frequently RP some foreplay, do a quick fast forward, RP some afterwards. It's like the "highlights" or something.

And when evidence that it happens is presented, to whom? Who is the neutral arbiter that decides the weight of this evidence?

If you're going to use the adversarial system as a metaphor for how our culture processes information, who are you saying is the judge of whether these women are lying about what has happened to them? Consistently? Pervasively? Over the course of time? What is this nebulous 'internet' that would have me believe things that aren't true? Is it, you know ... women in other places than me who nevertheless have had similar experiences with men in geek circles being douchebags?

Not all men are harassers. Not all harassment is blatant and obvious. Not all women recognize when they are being harassed.

Not all geek circles are automatically and immediately terrible. Why, I am at a comic convention right now, and spent a whole day yesterday wandering around by myself and had no negative experiences whatsoever with any of the men (or women) I randomly talked to or was seated near. And yet, I do not take this day of nothing bad happening to me as evidence that nothing bad happened to anyone else ever.

I dunno. I recognize not wanting somebody who is overeager for "power" over other players in a staff position, but enthusiasm for the work is different from enthusiasm for the position. If you don't want to staff, though, for god's sake don't staff.

Yeah but isn't it more racist and gross to constantly exclude Asians than it is to, you know, sometimes cast one in a role that is arguably racist? If you know you're making a movie that draws on Asian story elements do you really make it LESS bad by casting all white people? I mean. What if you cast somebody as Danny Rand who is, I don't know, Latino or Native American or something?

There's a lot of things you could do that aren't weird white savior tropes but at this point the accompli is fait. I still love Iron Fist comics so I'm ... fingers crossed that it doesn't suck.

Re Ancient One, didn't they already move that out of Tibet into Nepal? Couldn't they have found somebody Nepalese in that case? I mean, I just don't really buy that their only solution to the Tibet issue was ... white person! I like Tilda Swinton generally speaking and I'm bummed.

Same with Scarjo in Ghost in the Shell. CAN WE NOT? But that's probably OT for this thread.

I think finding other constructive ways to "grow" your house that aren't just about making it physically bigger would be great, and I suspect that the dominion systems are going to be involved in it. I just don't know that there is a great solution for this while we continue to be on action break, pre-dominion system, with everyone and their dog grinding resources times a million.

I don't do this to cashiers because it feels invasive to go after their tag but do historically sometimes go 'Hi, <name>!' when the waiter tells the table their name. It usually makes them laugh but maybe I'm annoying and they just don't know how else to react. I CAN STOP. Are there waiters here who want me to stop doing this?

@Rinel Honestly this is also how I think of him, at least a little bit. At least... pre-Faith Aureth.

Oh my God I can't even imagine working out while talking to clients. I mean I hate talking to clients and I hate working out so this sounds like a recipe for like exponential disaster.

@Rinel He's forty three and has multiple boyfriends and many, many terrible jokes!