Churchgoing after the pandemic

During the height of the pandemic when things were pretty much locked down and all but essential workers were required to work from home, there was considerable speculation as to whether some of the changes in work and lifestyle might become permanent. Particularly in the case of work, many people found the absence of a tedious commute a very positive benefit. Some business found that they could dispense with the offices in city centers for which they were paying high rents. As a result, there was speculation that some employers might continue the practice even after things opened up, adopting at least a hybrid model of some days at home and some in office. It is too early to see whether those speculations will pan out or whether businesses will go back to the old ways.
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Punitive prison sentences

The US criminal (in)justice system has at least two major flaws. One is some police and prosecutors prioritizing convictions over justice, and the other is them seeking extremely harsh penalties for even minor crimes. Combine that with racial prejudice and the combination is deadly because you can end up with innocent people serving extremely long sentences and even being executed.

As an example of the first type, I wrote recently about how many police line-ups are conducted in a way that witnesses are subtly influenced by the police officers who have arrested a suspect to pick the suspect, instead of using a double-blind method.

As an even more extreme example of the two flaws together, Emily Bazelon writes about a case in 2012 in which 19-year old Yutico Briley was wrongfully convicted of a crime because the prosecutors were more interested in getting a conviction than justice.
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“It is what it is”

This phrase started becoming very popular a few years ago and I had a colleague who was particularly fond of using it.

(Pearls Before Swine)

I must admit that when I first heard people using it, I had the same reaction as Rat. It seemed like an irritating banal tautology. After all, if something is, how can it be anything else? But over time, I have come to terms with its use as a statement of resignation about a situation that cannot be changed. It can even be viewed positively as a call to accept the current situation and take action based on it, rather than simply whine about something that cannot be changed.

It is akin to “what will be will be”, though that carries a sense of fatalism, that we have no agency over the future.

Racist focus in the midst of erratic behavior

It is a measure of how racist sentiment has been inflamed in recent times that people who appear otherwise normal can suddenly act in ways that seem erratic except for the choice of targets of their behavior, as in this case.

An American man who crashed a stolen lorry into a house before shooting two black bystanders was a suspected white supremacist, police say.

Nathan Allen, 28, fatally shot retired policeman Dave Green and military veteran Ramona Cooper in Saturday afternoon’s attack in Massachusetts.

Investigators later found racist and anti-Semitic writings by Allen, who was shot dead by officers at the scene.

He was married, employed and had a PhD and no criminal history, police said.

According to CBS affiliate WBZ-TV, Allen walked through a marsh to a garage in the city of Winthrop where he stole a plumber’s lorry. He crashed the vehicle into an unoccupied home, causing extensive damage.

He then climbed out of the wreckage and attempted unsuccessfully to carjack another vehicle.
…

Investigators said they found “troubling white supremacist rhetoric” in the gunman’s handwriting.

Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins told a press conference on Monday that Allen is believed to have acted alone.

The prosecutor said he had “likely appeared unassuming” before unleashing his attack with a firearm that he legally owned.

Her office’s statement said: “This individual wrote about the superiority of the white race. About whites being ‘apex predators’. He drew swastikas.”

The statement added: “He stole a box truck, crashed it into another vehicle and a property, walked away from the wreckage interacting with multiple individuals and choosing only to shoot and kill the two black people he encountered.”

This person was clearly having some kind of breakdown that resulted in him doing seemingly random things. And yet in the midst of it, he was able to think lucidly enough to pick out among all the people he encountered the only two Black people to kill.

Wall Street-backed candidate loses race for Manhattan district attorney

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the importance of the Manhattan district attorney’s office since it overseas Wall Street and others parts of the city where some of the wealthiest people in the country work, and thus is the hub for all manner of white-collar crimes that the rich indulge in, including but not limited to, tax fraud. The current occupant is Cyrus Vance Jr., who has long been friendly to the New York elites including the Trump family but recently seems to be trying to right that balance by using a grand jury to investigate the Trump organization. Just this week, his office issued indictments of grand larceny and fraud against the Trump organization and its chief financial officer and long-time Trump confidante Allen Weisselberg.
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It’s about time: Moratorium on federal death penalty

In a welcome move, US attorney general Merrick Garland has imposed a moratorium on the federal death penalty.

The US attorney general has imposed a moratorium on all federal executions while the justice department reviews its policies and procedures on capital punishment. Civil rights and criminal justice advocates have been pushing for a halt following a wave of controversial executions under the Trump administration.

Citing the disproportionate impact of capital punishment on people of color, and deep controversy over the drugs used to put people to death, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, ordered a temporary pause on scheduling executions.

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Who reads all these Trump books?

It is not uncommon for people who work in presidential administrations to write books once they leave office. These books generally fall into two categories: those written by high-level officials trying to justify their actions while in office and those written by lower-level people and reporters using administration sources that purport to reveal secrets, sometimes embarrassing, about what was really going on.

What has been extraordinary about the defunct Trump administration is the large number of books written, especially books that fall into the second category. It seems like not a day passes without the announcement of yet another tell-all book. In one sense it is not surprising. Whatever else one might say about that administration, it was not boring. Pretty much every day brought some new outrage or chaotic development. The Trump administration from the top down was full of venal grifters, incompetents, and outright sociopaths and so there are many salacious stories to tell.
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There are some limits to religious exemptions

In the US, people use religious beliefs to claim a broad array of exemptions from the laws that apply to everyone. The primary vehicles for doing so have been the Free Expression clause of the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), and courts have often been willing to accommodate them. But it seems like there are limits to that leeway, as this case shows.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a religious rights case involving an Idaho man who refused to provide the state his Social Security number in a job-related filing because he said it was “the number of the beast” – an ominous biblical reference.

The justices let stand a lower court ruling against a man named George Ricks who in a lawsuit against Idaho demanded an exemption due to his Christian beliefs from the state’s requirement that he provide his Social Security number to apply to work as a state contractor.
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More fitting obituaries for Donald Rumsfeld

The smug and arrogant Rumsfeld, an utterly odious man, died yesterday at the age of 88. In a just world, he would have been tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison for war crimes. But given that he was an American leader and we all know that by definition Americans never commit war crimes, that would never would have happened.

To get a more accurate recounting of his career, we can read Jon Schwarz who calls him a “dreary war criminal” who “managed to do terrible things throughout his life while remaining tremendously banal”.

[L]ess than six hours after the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, Rumsfeld was anxious to “hit SH [Saddam Hussein] @ same time.” And he wasn’t especially concerned whether Iraq or any target was responsible for the attacks. He wanted to conduct “massive” attacks on targets “related & not” (emphasis in original). That is, he saw the deaths of thousands of Americans as a wonderful opportunity to do whatever the George W. Bush administration wanted.

At that moment, Rumsfeld was doing what he did best throughout his life: spinning the unspeakable suffering of others into the desired ends of himself and his political allies.
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Hilbert’s Hotel shows why some infinities are bigger than others

Here is an entertaining video that has a nice explanation of a seeming paradox about infinities.

In 1924, the German mathematician David Hilbert raised a peculiar and seemingly paradoxical question: are some infinities bigger than others? The answer he arrived at – yes, actually – might have been impenetrable to non-mathematicians if not for the thought experiment he devised involving a hotel with an infinite number rooms. This video from the Australian filmmaker and educator Derek Muller builds Hilbert’s ‘infinite hotel’ and populates it with some strange, fuzzy creatures to demonstrate how the mathematician arrived at his groundbreaking conclusion, and touches on the real-world implications of his discovery.