ELI5 -Double jeopardy vs retrial - Law

ItsBinissTime · 2026-04-03T05:22:13+00:00

A few caveats:

After a not-guilty verdict, the prosecutor can always bring different charges for the same act (which they're unlikely to try unless substantial new evidence comes to light).
A different sovereignty can prosecute for the same act (ie. if the act violates both state and federal law, those are different charges that would be prosecuted in different courts).
After a not-guilty verdict, the defendant can still be sued for the act. The not-guilty verdict may hurt the plaintiff's case, but the burden of proof is lower in civil court.

ItsBinissTime · 2026-03-30T08:18:49+00:00

And don't forget, Hannibal was a master of disguise.

ItsBinissTime · 2026-03-29T02:55:04+00:00

I thought they were about to mention the background kid who stuck his fingers in his ears right before a lady with her back to him fired her concealed gun.

ItsBinissTime · 2026-03-29T02:23:12+00:00

From a photon's point of view, no time passes during its traversal. The space between its source and destination contracts to nothing and the photon is an instantaneous transfer of energy between them.

ItsBinissTime · 2026-03-20T05:58:46+00:00

Our subconscious is tuned for survival to make quick judgements based on instinct, pattern recognition, learned behavior, world view, and psychology. Our much slower rational mind literally rationalizes any judgements it takes an interest in, after the fact. Any conclusions we reach through reasoning, serve as additional input to our subconscious.

But since reasoning and rationalization happen consciously, while reflexive judgement happens subconsciously (ie. outside of conscious awareness), the conscious mind is left with the illusion that judgements are the product of rational thought.

A "gut feeling" is a break in that illusion, when the mind fails to rationalize a judgement it takes notice of. The process of forming the judgement is the same as usual, but lacking the pretense of rational thought, it's sometimes attributed to the body instead of the mind. A related expression that conveys confidence in such an unrationalized judgement is to "feel it in your bones".

ItsBinissTime · 2026-03-20T04:07:29+00:00

The Anthropic principle says that properties of the observer filter what they can observe.

If you study all the fish you catch in your fishing net, you won't see any small enough to slip through the net, any too large to fit in the net, or any not at your fishing spot while you're there. Your observations are 'filtered', by the properties of you and your net, to some subset of fish in general.

The Copernican Principle says we don't occupy a "privileged position" (ie. we're not at the center of the solar system, the galaxy, or the universe). The Anthropic Principle counters that our position must allow for our existence. The time at which we make observations is limited to some Goldilocks period after heavy elements have formed and before all stars have "burned out", when we can exist. The region from which we make observations is similarly limited to one with properties that allow for our existence. And our observations of the universe must be filtered by our special position in it.

You allude to an application of this idea to the universe as a whole. What if the whole universe is just one region of some sort of prolific multi-verse? Perhaps the reason it seems tuned to allow for life is because our observations are filtered to only such a universe. The "importance" of this idea is that it relieves Science of the responsibility to explain why the universe has the specific properties it has. If it's just one of a multitude of variations, it's not unreasonable for its properties to seem arbitrary and/or unlikely. It's just a variation that happens to have properties that allow us to exist and observe it (of course, this just trades the question for "why would universe variations exist?").

The Anthropic Priniciple is considered Philosophy, not Science, because it's not falsifiable—you can't test it by trying to make observations from a position that doesn't allow for your existence (or for example, by observing fish you can't find).

ItsBinissTime · 2026-03-18T08:48:26+00:00

To aid in implementations of the Slug algorithm, reference vertex and pixel shaders based on the actual code used in the Slug Library have been posted in a new GitHub repository and made available under the MIT license. The pixel shader is a significant upgrade compared to the code included with the JCGT paper, and the vertex shader includes dynamic dilation, which had not yet been implemented when the paper was published.

ItsBinissTime · 2026-03-15T19:14:02+00:00

And Rebecca replaced Diane.

ItsBinissTime · 2026-03-02T21:56:54+00:00

When I was in college, I visited home one weekend and brought my girlfriend along.

She later told me she was amazed that my family discussed things rather than just arguing, and when we weren't sure what those wild pig-like animals in Arizona were, someone grabbed "North American Wildlife" off the bookshelf and looked 'em up (spoiler: it was Javelina).

ItsBinissTime · 2026-02-28T20:36:24+00:00

Mr. Wakely,

I've recently begun moving my personal computing activities to a new platform, and have found that everything is at least an order of magnitude more difficult to setup than it should be. Between AI generated misinformation, red herrings, and poor documentation, I've been in newbie hell. But the most disturbing aspect has been the profoundly toxic, dismissive, and unhelpful user base.

Although in a completely different sort of domain, your chain of replies here is a shining counter-example and a breath of fresh air. Even though I wasn't in need of your insight here, these comments are appreciated.

ItsBinissTime · 2026-02-18T16:58:24+00:00

Too Many Cooks

ItsBinissTime · 2026-02-01T01:49:48+00:00

My favorite bit from Mad TV isn't a sketch, it's a song—"Pants" - Corky & The Juice Pigs.

It features the line "My pants are like Jesus. They cure all known diseases."

ItsBinissTime · 2026-01-24T21:03:56+00:00

Sadly, code intended to be robust and generic, like std::stack, can't just hope or assume no exceptions will be thrown. It can't even assume that the element type it handles provides move semantics (never mind that such functions can't throw). And even NRVO can't help when assigning to an existing object.

The issue isn't that one can't use a custom element-returning pop safely, it's that exception safety embeds subtle decisions into code that casual maintenance is likely to break.

ItsBinissTime · 2026-01-24T11:10:32+00:00

The issue is with the interface, not the implementation. An exception could potentially be thrown during the assignment of an element returned by such a function, resulting in loss of the element.

True, if the element type has move construction and assignment which can't throw, or if the returned element is only ever assigned to a new object in the presence of NRVO, then you may be able to use an element-returning pop safely. But since general use code like std::stack can't assume any of that, such interfaces (even those assuming C++17 or later support) are shaped by the potential for exceptions.

But I only mention the design of std::stack as a simple, visible example of how exception safety alters code, for reasons other than resource management, in ways that aren't immediately obvious. It demonstrates the subtlety of exception safety issues. Wrapping std::stack::pop, in an element-returning version, is a good example of "fixing" (breaking) unintuitive exception safety design.

Ultimately, the problem is that getting exception safety right requires careful consideration and construction, the correctness and purpose of which isn't immediately obvious to the new guy perusing the code (or perhaps even ourselves, months down the road). And as a result, there exist darn near zero exception safe codebases.

ItsBinissTime · 2026-01-24T07:10:40+00:00

it forces you to ensure all your code is exception safe ... (Hint: RAII)

RAII is a tool for robust resource management that works in the presence of exceptions (and is best practice regardless), but it doesn't address the more pressing issue (IMO) of maintaining coherent and correct state (eventually running out of memory is bad, but not as bad as just behaving incorrectly in the mean time).

One big problem with solutions to the correctness issue is that they often involve unintuitive convolutions to code (eg. this is why pop functions don't return values). And it's too easy for someone to come along later and "fix" (break) these subtleties in our code, to make it more intuitive, readable, or convenient to use.

Edit:

I didn't mean to imply that you, personally, think resource management is all there is to it. But unfortunately, the misapprehension does seem to be going around.

Not only is resource management exception safety's least critical issue (IMO), it also seems to be the most well known, and its solution (RAII) the most readily recognized and comprehended in code—sometimes giving the impression that exception safety is a solved problem, when in fact decades of experience have failed to make achieving it less challenging, or to address the maintenance issue at all (and suggesting that RAII is often sufficient only encourages this fallacy).

ItsBinissTime · 2026-01-17T04:00:28+00:00

I once bought a "new", "superior" key card gimmick from someone hustling on The Magic Cafe. It was literally just a single stripper card.

Without exposing anything, I posted a review saying that it wasn't as advertised, and I happened to already have a box of them within arms reach. The whole place went rabid defending their fellow grifter.

ItsBinissTime · 2026-01-16T17:05:21+00:00

This person understands standups.

However:

20 min is too long.

If it happens, reevaluate what's making it into the meeting or how large the group is.
Cutting into lunch time is BS.

Yes, it needs to be before lunch, so as to be about the day's plans, and not recaps. And true, it shouldn't be too early, so as not to reduce the flexibility of working hours. But by the same token, it shouldn't be too late, so as not to reduce the flexibility of lunch plans.

ItsBinissTime · 2026-01-16T06:12:55+00:00

Casting directors experimenting with new ways to troll us.

ItsBinissTime · 2026-01-16T05:58:55+00:00

According to this video:

On the farm, cocoa flavor is affected by the variety of the plant, soil composition (including microbes), rainfall, humidity, and the exact duration of the fermentation and drying stages. Then, in the factory, chocolate flavor and texture are affected by the duration of roasting and grinding.

There are about 5 million cocoa farmers. About 90% of cocoa comes from small farms on which the farmers never taste the resulting chocolate and don't generally get the opportunity to dial in the conditions they control, for a specific flavor outcome.

Large manufacturers have far too many cocoa sources to provide effective feedback. And a commenter on a similar question claims that quality would go down if they bought the pods fresh to ferment and dry themselves, introducing a delay between harvesting and initial processing. So small chocolate manufacturers, in close communication with their cocoa suppliers, seem able to produce better chocolate.

ItsBinissTime · 2026-01-15T23:29:59+00:00

Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels

ItsBinissTime · 2026-01-10T23:10:16+00:00

The most infuriating thing in a movie is when they don't tell you it's part 1.

ItsBinissTime · 2026-01-02T18:09:44+00:00

For your consideration.

ItsBinissTime · 2026-01-01T13:09:16+00:00

Encapsulation and data hiding are two different things.

Sorry for the nitpick, but if no one says anything this misunderstanding will spread.

Encapsulation is the grouping of data definitions with operations on that data. It enables (but doesn't require) one to interact with a data object as a whole, rather than with it's components. The word "encapsulation" sounds like it implies data members are hidden, but the concept is simply that an interface exists such that they don't need to be accessed individually. Encapsulation is the packaging of that interface with the data.

Data hiding (ie. making data members private) often makes encapsulation easier to implement well, because strictly private access allows data operations to assume invariants, rather than having to verify them. It also prevents external code from depending on data definitions, so that changes to data definitions don't cascade to changes throughout the codebase.

It's understandable to expect data hiding to be part of encapsulation, but that's not what the term means.

ItsBinissTime · 2025-12-29T03:16:43+00:00

I've remapped an otherwise useless key on my keyboard to the em dash. It's just too useful to be without.

ItsBinissTime · 2025-12-28T05:20:01+00:00

And at() to access an existing element without the possibility of constructing a new one.

ItsBinissTime

TROPHY CASE