Maybe we just need to self-flagellate harder ...

Looking forward to the ominous tweets of "Omar comin"

Clint Howard in Fringe making the Vulcan "Life Long and Prosper" hand sign.

He also appeared on Fringe as a guy who believed a conspiracy theory that Star Trek was real.

VOLUNTARY-ISH? PSYCHOLOGY AND CONSENT TO SEARCH LORI A. HOETGER Consent to search occupies a central place in Fourth Amendment doctrine, yet courts continue to evaluate voluntariness using a framework that assumes individuals can freely choose whether to consent during inherently coercive police-citizen encounters. Scholars have long criticized this approach, some even concluding that meaningful consent is impossible and calling for abolition of consent searches altogether. No United States jurisdiction, however, has taken that step. This Article offers a different path. It argues that voluntariness is not a binary concept but exists along a spectrum, and that the Fourth Amendment should require what I term “voluntary-ish” consent: choices made under conditions that include sufficient protections, given the coercive pressures of police encounters, to afford individuals a full and fair opportunity to decide. Drawing on psychological theory and empirical research, this Article explains how existing consent doctrine misunderstands human decision-making and why current safeguards are insufficient to protect citizens. Building on this analysis, this Article critiques leading scholarly proposals to reform or abolish consent searches and advances an original, psychology-informed framework for recalibrating constitutional consent. By identifying concrete, theory-backed protections that can move consent closer to the free-will end of the voluntariness spectrum, this Article demonstrates how courts and policymakers can better respect individual autonomy without unduly hampering law enforcement investigations.

My forthcoming article, Voluntary-ish? Psychology & Consent to Search, is now live on SSRN! I welcome any comments and thoughts on this paper.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Muggsy Bogues coming out of retirement.

Images of the longer, rectangular Ipod Nano

I preferred the skinnier rectangle one - it was easier to hold. But they could shrink the form factor a bit.

And Keith's

I don't currently use any Apple products and am disconnected from the Apple ecosystem. But, a new Ipod Nano would bring me back in a second.

Doesn't this cut the other way? If the Justices are operating outside of political pressure because they have life time appointments, release of their memos shouldn't affect them. That's a reason for greater transparency, not less.

I just posted about this the other day: a new Ipod Nano!

But at least it's not going to take as long as World War I or II

It's the darth helmet. And the red panda teeth.

Also, time is everyone's adversary

"Time is not my adversary" is hilarious and there is no way Trump actually wrote that.

When you are surrounded by Hegseth, RFK Jr., Bondi, Bessent, Gabbard, MarkWayneMark, Vought, and Lutnick, you really have to screw up for anyone to even notice.

It's a testament to the insanity and awfulness of the rest of the Trump cabinet that I heard about none of this until her resignation.

Unless, of course, the 49ers opt to use Grok, in which case they will select the fastest, best, most intelligent, and handsomest football player ever: Elon Musk.

With their first pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, the San Francisco 49ers select QB Peyton Brady

Doing a little research and I came across a bunch of articles discussing submitting appellate briefs on CD-ROM. That became ancient history fast.

I emailed the company about this mug, and got a predictably boring response

Title page of our paper, “The Politics of Black Classification: Sociopolitical Cues and Racial Perception,” with Lauren Davenport (Stanford) and Hunter Rendleman (UC Berkeley), dated April 14, 2026. Abstract: What makes someone Black in American society today? From Donald Trump questioning Kamala Harris’s racial identity to Joe Biden’s claim that hesitant Black voters “ain’t Black,” American politics frequently brings questions of racial authenticity and belonging to the surface. Yet political science often approaches race as a fixed attribute rather than a social construction. Here, we seek to understand how Americans define blackness in social and political life. Using a conjoint experiment with a racially diverse sample that includes Black, white, and mixed race Black-white respondents, we evaluate how ascribed and acquired traits influence perceptions of blackness. The results show that inherited characteristics—particularly parentage and skin tone, which are the strongest determinants of racial classification—play a central role, while sociopolitical cues such as partisanship, neighborhood context, and spousal race also influence racial classification. Using a continuous measure, we also show that respondents make graded assessments of blackness rather than purely binary classifications, with some individuals perceived as more Black than others. Black respondents are more likely than white respondents to classify a broader set of profiles as Black, consistent with a more inclusive understanding of racial membership, yet they also place greater emphasis on shared political identity. These findings clarify how racial categories are socially constructed and why that construction carries real political and social consequences.

Our paper, “The Politics of Black Classification: Sociopolitical Cues and Racial Perception” (w/ Lauren Davenport & @hrendleman.bsky.social), has been conditionally accepted at Perspectives on Politics!

Sharing abstract below. Long time coming, but we are really proud of this paper.

More soon!

The oldest known image of Keith Richards, published around 1140 AD ...

Without committing to specific numbers, a federal anti-SLAPP law for high-government officials should clearly be on the agenda of the next sentient Congress.

Senator Mark Warner and his wife, Lisa Collis, share the devastating news that their beloved daughter, Madison, has died at 36.

Gil Duran tweet: TLDR: Fascism in response to Palantir's long fascists screed on X.

"Your Account is Suspended" Message on X

The CEO of Palantir posted a fascist manifesto on X.

I pointed out that it was fascist—which resulted in a permanent suspension from X (my second time!).

So, when you hear the tweeters complaining that BlueSky is intolerant, remember why many of us came here in the first place.

* Marie

Gen V might be headed the same way. I thought the first season was excellent in exploring difficult issues. In particular, Little Cricket needing to purge and Maria needing to cut to use their powers were unexpectedly effective ways to talk about bulimia and self-harm.

Pastapticon

The intesity of opinions politicians/pundits have about what should be taught in college is inversely correlated with their knowledge of what is currently taught in college.

Unvarnished gutter racism akin to what you'd hear out of the mouth of eugenicist Social Darwinists in the early 20th century.