There are times when a plea deal is appropriate, like when a person is definitely guilty but conviction is uncertain for whatever reason, so the prosecutor offers the deal in order to avoid court. But there’s a lot of cases where a person’s guilt is doubtful so a plea deal is used to frighten and bully them out of…

1) she’s definitely not guilty of murder

It could be a less technologically-advanced civilization using more advanced tech leftover from an ancient civilization to construct a sphere.

I can’t believe I willingly read that stupidity. I blame you.

Yeah, it sounds like her life has been completely shitty up until now. Hopefully she can get some help.

The iPhone is one thing, but the crazy diet really isn’t good. For one there’s so many cases where that sort of intense food control turns out to be really mentally unhealthy. For another, banning all fun/unhealthy food isn’t actually teaching your kids about moderation and making good choices.

I think part of it is that the price for traditionally published ebooks is slowly going up, especially for new releases. For a lot of people, if the choice is between a $12 ebook and a $15 trade paperback, they’ll go for the trade paperback. There’s also the obsolescence problem—I know lots of people who don’t buy…

Legal action is often just as hard on the victim as it is on the perpetrator, and it takes a lot of time, energy, and money to pursue a legal case with a doubtful outcome. If she feels satisfied and at peace with just moving on, then that should be her choice.

Of the nearly 1 million refugees who have entered the US in the past decade, only three have even been investigated for terrorist activities. And helping the homeless in the US is a completely separate issue from helping refugees. We can do both, but we refuse to make meaningful progress on either.

Thank god someone else couldn’t get through The City and the City. I LOVE magical cop novels and I couldn’t get through the first 30-ish pages.

Yes. I couldn’t get through The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms but the Fifth Season is really compelling. I think the plot is less conventional.

I dunno. I get that the persona he plays online is just that, and it’s not fair to blame him for the actions of those “bad companions” (*cough* Vox Day *cough*) but the dude keeps making bad choices and then doubling down on them.

My totally-without-evidence take is that Soering knew about the murders and perhaps helped plan them but did not actually take part, and Haysom actually killed her parents. Not sure how to explain the multiple footprints + fourth blood type, though.

Man, I love POI but all the schedule fuckery last year made me totally lose track of it. It seemed like it never aired two weeks in a row.

I agree that students should help finance their degree, but when your parents income is automatically taken into account when calculating your aid (whether or not they’re paying!) it’s ridiculous to say that the parents have no responsibility to help out. When I was in college, the aid department at my school dropped…

But...the daughter does talk to her mother once a week. The problem is that she doesn’t always respond when her mother texts her (random emojis apparently? How does one even respond to that?). Which is a lot, honestly. I don’t even text my best friend that much, because who has that much to say?

OMG, is your husband my long lost brother?

Talking once a week isn’t cutting off contact! That’s a totally normal amount of conversation!

You know, I think its perfectly okay to not give adult children Christmas gifts. They’re adults.

Yeah, this is how my mom is too. She constantly texts me “Hey!” or “:)“ and then gets upset when I don’t give a huge response back (because what do you say to “hey”? That’s not a conversation starter, mom!). She keeps bringing up interests I had in high school or middle school, as if I’m that same person still,…