Because of the Fifth Amendment, no one in the U.S. may legally be forced to testify against himself, and because of the Fourth Amendment, no one’s records or belongings may legally be searched or seized without just cause. However, American police are trained to use methods of deception, intimidation and manipulation to circumvent these restrictions. In other words, cops routinely break the law—in letter and in spirit—in the name of enforcing the law. Several examples of this are widely known, if not widely understood.

1) “Do you know why I stopped you?” Cops ask this, not because they want to have a friendly chat, but because they want you to incriminate yourself. They are hoping you will “voluntarily” confess to having broken the law, whether it was something they had already noticed or not. You may think you are apologizing, or explaining, or even making excuses, but from the cop’s perspective, you are confessing. He is not there to serve you; he is there fishing for an excuse to fine or arrest you. In asking you the familiar question, he is essentially asking you what crime you just committed. And he will do this without giving you any “Miranda” warning, in an effort to trick you into testifying against yourself.

2) “Do you have something to hide?” Police often talk as if you need a good reason for not answering whatever questions they ask, or for not consenting to a warrantless search of your person, your car, or even your home. The ridiculous implication is that if you haven’t committed a crime, you should be happy to be subjected to random interrogations and searches. This turns the concept of due process on its head, as the cop tries to put the burden on you to prove your innocence, while implying that your failure to “cooperate” with random harassment must be evidence of guilt.

3) “Cooperating will make things easier on you.” The logical converse of this statement implies that refusing to answer questions and refusing to consent to a search will make things more difficult for you. In other words, you will be punished if you exercise your rights. Of course, if they coerce you into giving them a reason to fine or arrest you, they will claim that you “voluntarily” answered questions and “consented” to a search, and will pretend there was no veiled threat of what they might do to you if you did not willingly “cooperate.” (Such tactics are also used by prosecutors and judges via the procedure of “plea-bargaining,” whereby someone accused of a crime is essentially told that if he confesses guilt—thus relieving the government of having to present evidence or prove anything—then his suffering will be reduced. In fact, “plea bargaining” is illegal in many countries precisely because it basically constitutes coerced confessions.)

4) “We’ll just get a warrant.” Cops may try to persuade you to “consent” to a search by claiming that they could easily just go get a warrant if you don’t consent. This is just another ploy to intimidate people into surrendering their rights, with the implication again being that whoever inconveniences the police by requiring them to go through the process of getting a warrant will receive worse treatment than one who “cooperates.” But by definition, one who is threatened or intimidated into “consenting” has not truly consented to anything.

5.) We have someone who will testify against you Police “informants” are often individuals whose own legal troubles have put them in a position where they can be used by the police to circumvent and undermine the constitutional rights of others. For example, once the police have something to hold over one individual, they can then bully that individual into giving false, anonymous testimony which can be used to obtain search warrants to use against others. Even if the informant gets caught lying, the police can say they didn’t know, making this tactic cowardly and illegal, but also very effective at getting around constitutional restrictions.

6) “We can hold you for 72 hours without charging you.” Based only on claimed suspicion, even without enough evidence or other probable cause to charge you with a crime, the police can kidnap you—or threaten to kidnap you—and use that to persuade you to confess to some relatively minor offense. Using this tactic, which borders on being torture, police can obtain confessions they know to be false, from people whose only concern, then and there, is to be released.

7) “I’m going to search you for my own safety.” Using so-called “Terry frisks” (named after the Supreme Court case of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1), police can carry out certain limited searches, without any warrant or probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed, under the guise of checking for weapons. By simply asserting that someone might have a weapon, police can disregard and circumvent the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches.

U.S. courts have gone back and forth in deciding how often, and in what circumstances, tactics like those mentioned above are acceptable. And of course, police continually go far beyond anything the courts have declared to be “legal” anyway. But aside from nitpicking legal technicalities, both coerced confessions and unreasonable searches are still unconstitutional, and therefore “illegal,” regardless of the rationale or excuses used to try to justify them. Yet, all too often, cops show that to them, the Fourth and Fifth Amendments—and any other restrictions on their power—are simply technical inconveniences for them to try to get around. In other words, they will break the law whenever they can get away with it if it serves their own agenda and power, and they will ironically insist that they need to do that in order to catch “law-breakers” (the kind who don’t wear badges).

Of course, if the above tactics fail, police can simply bully people into confessing—falsely or truthfully—and/or carry out unconstitutional searches, knowing that the likelihood of cops having to face any punishment for doing so is extremely low. Usually all that happens, even when a search was unquestionably and obviously illegal, or when a confession was clearly coerced, is that any evidence obtained from the illegal search or forced confession is excluded from being allowed at trial. Of course, if there is no trial—either because the person plea-bargains or because there was no evidence and no crime—the “exclusionary rule” creates no deterrent at all. The police can, and do, routinely break the law and violate individual rights, knowing that there will be no adverse repercussions for them having done so.

Likewise, the police can lie under oath, plant evidence, falsely charge people with “resisting arrest” or “assaulting an officer,” and commit other blatantly illegal acts, knowing full well that their fellow gang members—officers, prosecutors and judges—will almost never hold them accountable for their crimes. Even much of the general public still presumes innocence when it comes to cops accused of wrong-doing, while presuming guilt when the cops accuse someone else of wrong-doing. But this is gradually changing, as the amount of video evidence showing the true nature of the “Street Gang in Blue” becomes too much even for many police-apologists to ignore.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/7-ways-police-will-break-law-threaten-or-lie-you-get-what-they-want

them: SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST MEANS HUMANS MUST BE INDIVIDUALLY SELF-SUFFICIENT AND COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT

biologist:

use comic sans to write

i hate this so much but this knowledge is too powerful to keep from you all.

last night @phaltu discovered that setting your font to comic sans in google docs improves writing speed and creativity by an insane amount. “no” i said and “die” but then i tried it and god. i wish it wasn’t this way. i wish it wasn’t true. i wish i could protect you all from this but it’s real. 

something about this font is so disarming. something about this font lets you look past the shape of the words and into their soul. i’ve never written so much as i did last night, on my phone, at 2am, in comic sans.

if you have writer’s block. if you lack inspiration. if you need this. don’t be afraid to use it. sometimes the things we find most horrifying are also the things we need the most. trust me. let comic sans into your life.

INTRODUCING - ‘Artemis’, the Aspec-Pride soap!

Organic, all-natural, homemade handcrafted soap using shea butter and coconut oil! These bars create a quick, sweet-smelling lather that’s gentle enough for normal-to-sensitive skin.

This soap is crafted after the image of Artemis, who is known as the ‘Virgin Goddess’ in Greek and Roman mythology. She is famous for rejecting her many suitors, sometimes to the point of danger upon herself. She (and her followers) took vows of chastity as a loving coven. She’s considered the patron and protector of young women, hunters, wild animals, and childbirth. Each soap is crafted to protect the absence of gender loving, and to celebrate asexual pride! Artemis was a fierce protector of her nymphs and followers, and she would gladly risk her life to keep her friends safe. Bask yourself in the protection of the virgin Goddess!

Available in four different unique scents;

Original scent ’Acetyne’ (Chocolate, Buttermilk, Vanilla, Cinnamon) 

Grey-Asexual scent ’Titanium’ (Tea Tree, Eucalyptus, Lemongrass, Red Ginger) 

Demisexual scent ’Persephone’ (Chocolate, Peach, Geranium, Green Cognac) 

Aromantic scent ’Alphaea’ (Lemon, Lilac, Violet, Frankencense, Ylang Ylang) 

Queerplatonic Pide scent ‘Gautama’ (Mint, Bamboo, Jasmine)

Check these soaps out on etsy.com! The entire pride soap series is available for sale!

Farewell online privacy

[ID: At the top, text reads “Inside you there are two wolves”. Below is a picture of two wolves. The one on the left is labelled “One of them is uncomfortable with the idea of people being sexually attracted to you”, while the one one the right is labelled “The other has been trained to believe that your value depends on your attractiveness”. Below the picture, text reads “You are ace”. End ID]

i have greensleeves stuck in my head but, like, the horrible otamatone version

Hey everyone! We need your help to create the best party game ever!

Introducing… What The Plot?!

How does it work?

1.) Take a Prompt Card.

Ex. ’Tell us about the time a vampire hit on you.‘ 

2.) You have one minute to bullshit a story.

After the minute is up, the player next to you needs to continue your story and so on. 

However! There is also a pile of cards each with three words on it. Every turn you draw a card and have to use one of the three words from it in your story. Ex. breadstick, cactus, werewolf.’ If you don’t use one of the words during your turn, you lose points. If you can’t continue the story then you also lose points. And if your story is really awful, other players can play the ‘Boo Card’, causing you to lose a catastrophic amount of points. The player who is not the worst wins!

We have already found a supplier and a distribution center in both the US and Europe. We really want to know what you think. Let’s create this game together and make it the best it can possibly be. Are you in?

viewing queer identities as “this is the label that makes me happy and feels most accurate now” rather than “this is who I am, was, and always will be” will definitely take the pressure off, friends. changing your mind is proof that you have one.

Want to know how corrupt the pharmaceutical industry is?

See this?

This is called Afrezza. It’s an inhaler for diabetic insulin. That’s right. An inhaler. That means no more needles. It’s only for fast acting insulin, but it could still vastly improve the life of a lot of diabetics. 

Imagine having to constantly prick yourself with needles to keep yourself alive, and then suddenly there’s a new product that could change the whole way you live your life for the better.

And here’s the thing: it works. It works really really well. People with diabetes that have been lucky enough to have used it think it’s amazing.

But sadly, it’s probably going to end up as a failure because the pharmaceutical company (a French company called Sanofi) that was in charge of marketing it didn’t care enough to actually try. Not only that, but they made it incredibly expensive so hardly anyone could afford it. Most people have never heard of it, and the way things are going, no one else ever will.

Please reblog this to raise awareness of this product and hopefully get another company to market it. It could change so many lives.

Do u ever think about how dogs, who have 2 colour receptors, see an apple as grayish yellow, while humans have 3 and see it as red, and mantis shrimp have 12, and see it another monstrous colour altogether?

How none of us are necessarily correct, and the apple itself, is not really any colour, it’s just a fruit minding its own goddamn business??

Fucking fascinating

hi helo greetings here is an opinion by ME.

Tips for Getting What you Want out of Life

1. You need to begin by thinking about what you want your life to look like. It’s important to be concrete and specific here – not general and vague. Then, use that information to set clear goals for yourself.

2. Be confident and believe in yourself. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have what other people have, or should be that individual you’d really like to be. If you’re willing to work hard, and to pay the price required, then you can have what you want and find the right niche for you.

3. Keep your focus on your goal – don’t get sidetracked from your dream. You’ll have to keep on going and to push through trying times. The prize is worth the effort; you’ll be glad you persevered.

4. Don’t give into temptation to go for lesser goals, or to do something attractive that won’t lead anywhere. Don’t pretend that you’ll be happy if you give up on your dream. You’ll wish that you’d be stronger and looked at the “long-term”.

5. If you slip up – just get over it – and move on with your plan. It doesn’t mean it’s over. you can get on track again. The goal is too important to waste time on regrets. Your focus is the future, and what will take you there.

6. Recognise your weaknesses – then plan to manage them. That way you’ll have some strategies to help you deal with them.

7. Finish what you start, and don’t leave any ends untied. You have to be committed, and thorough, to achieve. Being lazy or half-hearted will hamper your success.

Every plotline of Steven Universe

alien: we’re supposed to be mindless tools but I’m weird

steven: that’s called an emotion and it’s normal

alien: oh my fucking god

aggressively arospec week: arospec headcanons

Mantis from Guardians of the Galaxy

Here’s a fun fact

Bet you haven’t heard this one before

Being asexual means you don’t experience sexual attraction.

It means that, and absolutely nothing else! I know! Crazy, right?

So that means, you can be asexual and have sex or not, fantasize or not, desire physical closeness or not, get married or not, have children or not, and absolutely none of that changes the fact that you’re asexual! Because you still don’t! experience! sexual attraction!

What a time to be alive!