𝐉𝐨𝐧 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐫

Retired lawyer and amateur musician from Sonoma County, California. Will share cute pictures of his cats on the slightest provocation.

Public Key

npub1059k53kgvh2st8evh73r5m3c2za9rwpyfwey3469njvl3vykxd0q7y8suq

NIP-05 Address

jonberger_at_sfba.social@mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs86zm2gmyxt4g9nuktlg36dcu9pwj3hqjyhvjg6azeex0ckztrxhs4mglks

Author Public Key

npub1059k53kgvh2st8evh73r5m3c2za9rwpyfwey3469njvl3vykxd0q7y8suq

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Last Notes

2024-09-06 01:01:51

I dream of eating his other leg.
-- Moby Dick
#FictionalCharactersFantasy
#HashtagGames

2024-08-17 21:21:11

Henry looking judgmental.
#carurday #catsofmastodon
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/112/979/451/632/975/439/original/38fb9dfea415fcf9.jpg

2024-08-10 01:32:24

Beowulf Hall
#BookASongOrPoem
#HashtagGames

2024-07-30 02:10:59

Lawyers, Peter Gunn, and Money
#SongsAboutTVCrimeDramas
#HashtagGames

2024-06-29 21:02:32

Absolutely delicious applesauce-yogurt cake from #alexandracooks. I threw in some chopped crystallized ginger and raisins, but otherwise followed the recipe precisely, and it's a winner.
https://alexandracooks.com/2013/11/22/applesauce-yogurt-cake-homemade-applesauce/
#cooking
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/112/701/925/079/647/796/original/bcd55f235708f263.jpg

2024-06-27 01:41:50

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
"1952 Vincent Black Lightning" by Richard Thompson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yw2yKNLEPc
#ThemeSongABook
#HashTagGames

2024-05-09 01:19:52

When Chucky Met Sally
#MashUpRomComsAndHorrorFilms
#HashTagGames

2024-05-04 01:24:12

How I Met Your Great-Great-Grandmother
#MakeASitcomParanormal
#HashTagGames

2024-05-02 01:42:04

CinderLA Confidential
#FairyTaleASongOrMovie
#HashTagGames

2024-05-02 01:33:46

The Little Match Girl, Interrupted
#FairyTaleASongOrMovie
#HashTagGames

2024-04-20 18:14:43

Handsome Molly.
#caturday #catsofmastodon
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/112/304/902/642/325/614/original/5cee52b5540620aa.jpg

2024-04-18 16:14:29

Ah, PVC. Is there anything you can't do?
Working on my first batch of cheese after taking a week-long cheesemaking class at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina. This is cream cheese, which is really easy to make. I'll try some fancier ones after my wife employs her considerable woodworking skills to make me a cheese press.
#cooking #cheese_making
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/112/293/102/637/958/794/original/866dffebcdf2856d.jpg

2024-03-22 01:11:42

Red Red Wood
#TreeASongOrPoem
#hashtags4hashtaggames

2024-03-16 13:40:26

Scrungy Henry, placid Henry.
#caturday #catsofmastodon
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/112/105/645/147/309/010/original/a605573ec693818d.jpg

2024-02-29 22:44:01

Today seems like a good day to post this. This version of "Pirates of Penzance" is so good that I can almost forgive the godawful cheesy synth accompaniment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WTSlr_WRgo
#paradox #february29 #leapyear #piratesofpenzance

2024-02-17 18:14:20

Sleepy Henry.
#caturday #catsofmastodon
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/111/948/179/681/327/301/original/9ce77940e45f4f20.jpg

2024-02-07 05:19:01

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@npub1rx7…acx3 Ok, interesting. I don't recall deponent verbs. Maybe they hadn't been invented yet; I took Latin a really long time ago.
Does that explain "res ipsa loquitur"? We translate that as "the thing speaks for itself," but I always assumed, because of the passive ending, that it literally means "the thing is spoken by itself." But maybe that's another one of those deponent verbs?

2024-02-06 00:36:38

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@npub1rx7…acx3 Doesn't the "ur" ending on "pabulantur" denote passive voice? I'm remembering (vaguely) Caesar's "nostra Galli appelantur," in our [language] they are called Gauls.

2024-01-15 21:11:15

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@npub1sdk…0kgj This sounds like it might echo the English ballad of Tam Lin, best known to some of us from the classic recording by Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention. Tam Lin was abducted by fairies, and when his human lover wanted to free him, she had to hold him in her arms while the fairies changed him into a snake (or possibly a newt), and then into a lion. No kissing involved, and no poodles, but the reptile theme seems to be a constant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47z5n7p9B3I

2024-01-05 02:11:31

Piano Manicotti
#SpaghettiASong
#HashTagGames

2023-12-28 02:11:26

Nephropidae of the Triffids
#LobsterAMovie
#HashTagGames

2023-11-06 13:48:46

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@npub1sdk…0kgj "It's not what you think, sweetie. She's . . . umm . . . she's . . . she's a Wild Maiden! Yeah, that's it! She's a mystical Spirit of the Mountains, and, umm, she's fallen in love with me, and she will wreak terrible vengeance upon us if she's not allowed to have her evil way with me, so I will make the dreadful sacrifice of allowing her to do that in order to protect you and our farm! Just act like you're good with that and we'll all be fine, ok?"

2023-11-06 13:39:57

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@npub17a9…mv9a Jeez, it's almost as if "originalism" was one of those words, like "malice" and "hearsay," that mean something different in Legalese than they do in ordinary English, and what it means in Legalese is "an analytic framework that invariably leads to the conclusion that we want to reach."

2023-10-29 14:26:34

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@npub1zak…d6uu They're really good roasted: just coat them with a little olive oil and salt and pepper them and put them in the oven for a few minutes. I just learned about that recently, although apparently it's a well-known dish in the southern U.S.

2023-10-28 04:12:52

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@npub1vqm…ccpx Well, it's a contract involving three U.S. parties, so the punctuation should follow U.S. conventions rather than U.K. ones, which means that commas and periods that follow closing double quotes should instead be inside the quotes. But perhaps you mean referring to APBS as "Althea," which is wrong, and which also fails to define APBS as a party.

2023-10-25 17:15:24

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@npub17a9…mv9a @npub1yme…r5de Or else it's what I said above: whatever platitudes Buck was spewing last week, it was never about election denialism; it was about the fact that Jordan's bullshit impeachment inquiry is playing very badly in the media.
Grrr. I hope I'm wrong, but even if I am, it will be someone just as bad. That stuff about "this will get so bad that they'll HAVE to reach a bipartisan agreement with the Democrats" was always pure fantasy.

2023-10-25 16:59:42

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@npub17a9…mv9a @npub1yme…r5de NY Times is reporting that Buck is supporting him. That's very bad. I think this is going to happen.

2023-10-25 14:49:55

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@npub17a9…mv9a @npub1yme…r5de That will certainly make him attractive to Team Crazy. And I have to wonder if the fact that he's not quite as well-publicized a nightmare as Jordan will persuade Team Very Slightly Less Crazy to settle for him. I tend to doubt that the anti-Jordan votes were inspired by his election denialism or his forced-birth advocacy; I think it was more about the Biden impeachment dumpster fire, and that wouldn't apply to Johnson. I have a bad feeling about this one.

2023-10-23 05:13:07

When Harry Dismembered Sally
#MakeAComedyScary
#HashtagGames

2023-10-21 16:38:52

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@npub1mnp…k9zl What a gorgeous cat!

2023-09-24 08:37:40

A #kitten of Kilkenny. Part of a big family of barn cats at the B&B where we're staying. This one is being very clear on the point that if I happen to need a cat, he's available.
#caturday #catsofmastdon
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/111/119/204/719/597/581/original/454f3adb3b68a348.jpg

2023-09-20 09:37:00

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@npub17a9…mv9a Sounds like "Lowlands of Holland," a pretty well known folk song. You'll find dozens of recordings on YouTube. It's a bit weird, but I think that's because you were picking up a lot of someone who was singing a harmony line and somewhat less melody.
(Waves from Co. Carlow.)

2023-09-19 05:55:39

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@npub1vyt…mgjn I make Greek-style yogurt in the Instant Pot, and to be honest I've never noticed that the butterfat content makes much difference. Granted, I haven't pushed it as far as you have; most I've done is add a half pint of heavy cream to a gallon of whole milk. So maybe I'll try a bit more, but I'm actually pretty happy with the results I've been getting. I started with Brown Cow yogurt because it's the only kind I can get unflavored in a single-serving quantity at my local store, and it's turned out great. The big game changer was when I stopped using the crappy narrow cheesecloth I could get at the supermarket and ordered some of the real deal from Amazon, in a width that would comfortably line the entire interior of my colander; that really de-complicated the process. The Instant Pot is perfect for this, though I take it a little hotter on the initial heating; the IP takes it up to about 175, and i run it on "Saute" for another 4 minutes, which gets it to about 195.

2023-09-01 13:15:26

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@npub17a9…mv9a Well, but the state IS enforcing the law in the Shelley v. Kraemer sense, isn't it? That seems like a similar scenario: the Fourteenth Amendment says that the government can't deny equal protection, and the government said that it wasn't doing that because it was just enforcing a private agreement between two non-state actors in court, and the Supreme Court said no, that's wrong because the court is part of the state so the ENFORCEMENT is the state action. Or at any rate that's the very tl;dr version I vaguely recall from Con Law back in the mists. Would that sort of argument have any chance of overcoming all these hateful Texas private-attorney-general statutes, in an alternative universe with a Supreme Court that cared about precedent?

2023-08-26 14:24:14

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@npub17a9…mv9a It sounds interesting and I should have a look. But I'd imagine that one reason they did all of that was that they NEEDED to do it because their caseload would have been unmanageable if they hadn't. If the approach is going to be to make Supreme Court review non-discretionary the same way Court of Appeal review is, there are going to HAVE to be a lot more Supreme Court justices. Right now they grant cert on about 1% of the petitions they get, so that gives you an idea of how huge that change would be. I suppose the Senate could establish a new Judicial Branch department to do nothing but process cert petitions, and take that power away from the Supreme Court justices themselves, but I'm not sure that would really change anything because the justices already have clerks to handle that stuff.

2023-08-26 14:10:02

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@npub17a9…mv9a Well, you're the history expert; maybe they could. But how would that play out in practice? I file my habeas petition in the district court; I lose; I appeal to the Nth Circuit; I lose there; I think it presents a novel constitutional issue that's worthy of Supreme Court review. What happens then? Who decides whether I get to the next level? Somebody has to.

2023-08-26 13:59:43

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@npub17a9…mv9a An ethics code would be meaningless without an enforcement mechanism, and I can't think what that would be other than impeachment, which is already on the table. An ethics code might make it slightly easier to use, but it wouldn't change all that much; the Senate would still have to vote to remove an impeached justice, just like they do now. Changing jurisdiction seems like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic: they'll still have ultimate appellate jurisdiction and certiorari power, that's not going to change, and that's the one that really matters. Adding more justices would be huge, but it's not going to happen until either there's a filibuster-proof majority of the opposite party from the President's or they get rid of the damn filibuster, and as of right now neither of those things appears likely. I wish I were more hopeful, but my general reaction to the point that the Supremes' legitimacy is in the toilet is "yeah, but so what?"

2023-08-26 13:42:51

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@npub17a9…mv9a Everybody just smiled and nodded and went along with it back in 2000 when the Supreme Court installed a President. I hate to say it, but if we didn't do anything about that, it seems unlikely to me that a little bit of friendly bribery is going to spur us into action.

2023-08-26 13:27:09

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@npub17a9…mv9a The Supreme Court has the ultimate authority of interpreting the Constitution becuase the Supreme Court said so. That's always seemed a bit self-referential to me, but there we are: "it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is."

2023-08-23 23:20:20

Fulton Prison Blues
#songsforbooking
#trumpcrimefamilyarrestweek
#HashtagGames

2023-08-08 13:56:00

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@npub17a9…mv9a When I was in high school, back when trilobites roamed the earth, our bright young fresh-out-of-college AP English teacher assigned us "A Farewell to Arms," and a bunch of parents went mega-ballistic because it features two characters who have sex when they're not married. There were interviews in the local paper and outraged speeches at school board meetings, and generally a concerted effort to get Miss Donaldson fired for exposing us tender little flowers to this "sordid trash," as they called it. She didn't end up getting fired, but "Grapes of Wrath" promptly vanished from the syllabus, presumably because of that final scene. In any event, going after the classics for being too racy for high-schoolers isn't a new thing and isn't restricted to Florida; this was in the liberal stronghold of Boulder, Colorado.

2023-08-05 13:36:56

Misha's glamor headshot.
#caturday #catsofmastodon
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/110/837/275/285/856/479/original/29bc8caa3f152cca.jpg

2023-08-02 05:29:46

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@npub1vqm…ccpx @npub1uxz…5ma4 That's absolutely fascinating. This is way off-topic, but that's a version of a really common family of English folk songs about various relatives visiting a guy who's about to be hanged. There are a million versions; here's a famous group called The Watersons doing one of them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BViQOy49QI8
The big difference is that in every English version I've ever heard, the father and mother and all the other relatives say "nope, sorry, no money here, we've just come to watch you die." Our hero isn't set free until his true love shows up, carrying big bags of cash, in the last verse. I never knew there was an American version of this, much less a Leadbelly version..
Sorry, back to the Trump indictment.

2023-07-18 01:07:56

#DogsDeepThoughts
#HashTagGames
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/110/732/408/999/292/740/original/33916b0b34432147.jpg

2023-07-04 01:14:52

The Kidneys are Alright
Ok, I'm going to stop now. There are just too many of these.
#SongsBooksOrShowsAboutBeans
#HashtagGames

2023-07-04 01:06:29

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@npub1era…yt7p And don't forget their hit single "Paint it Black-Eyed."
#SongsBooksOrShowsAboutBeans
#HashtagGames

2023-07-01 17:58:05

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@npub1094…2wum What do you recommend for Android? I'm using Tusky; are there better ones?

2023-06-27 00:22:49

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@npub1v2s…mqq5 💖"This is off the record." Turns out, not so much.

2023-06-23 16:01:15

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@npub1hpc…hjn3 Which, by the way, is a reference to morris dancing. The original "nine days' wonder" was when Will Kemp morris danced from London to Norwich as a publicity stunt.

2023-06-20 13:44:51

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@npub1v2s…mqq5 It's slightly good news that she didn't set the trial date after the election. That was one of the things that people were suggesting she might do. She cold have; it would violate the speedy-trial laws, of course, but I assume that defendants can waive those, as they can in state courts. I still think she's in Trump's pocket and I still think she'll do something blatant to tank the case, and I hope the Eleventh Circuit slaps her down again when she does, but at least she didn't do this particular blatant thing. So that's something.

2023-06-12 15:36:04

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@npub1v2s…mqq5 Can the court appoint the Federal Public Defender's office? I mean, unrepresented defendants are hardly unheard of.

2023-06-09 14:41:55

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@npub1v2s…mqq5 Ok, but play it out one more step. Let's say the case lands in Cannon's department. Let's say she doesn't recuse. (I think that one's close to a given.) Let's say that the government writs it to the 11th, and they order the chief judge to assign someone else. The chief judge, Hon. Cecilia Altonaga, is a Bush II appointee; let's say she says "nuh-uh." This goes back to the 11th, who says "no, we really meant it." Trump's team petitions the Supremes for cert. Think they'd get it? I kind of do. Call me cynical, but these days I'm not entirely comfortable putting my faith in any mid-level appellate decision that's contrary to Trump's interests.

2023-05-19 14:10:18

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@npub1v2s…mqq5 Gotta love "Maricopa County has a failed process for verifying thousands of ballot signatures that even some of its own workers question, her attorneys argued in court Wednesday." That's very prettily worded: by the time they get around to mentioning that what they're saying is just a description of what Lake's lawyers were claiming but hadn't yet managed to prove, they'd presented it as a statement of fact. It's like "Washington Times routinely publishes huge steaming piles of right-wing nutjob lies, says a Mastodon posting." Reputable journalists would say something like "According to Lake's lawyers, Maricopa County has . . .," but hey, Washington Times.

2023-05-02 20:02:29

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@npub1cpp…2uya That's a really good idea. Do you dry it in a dehydrator first, or just let it dry out naturally?

2023-04-21 00:32:33

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#[0] What? You're saying that when the government promotes the explicit language from the foundational text of a specific religion, that somewhat resembles establishment of religion? Surely you jest.
(</s>, and yes, I know your name isn't Shirley.)

2023-04-21 00:28:35

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#[0] By the way, whenever these "but, but, but, the Ten Commandments are the VERY FOUNDATION OF OUR LEGAL SYSTEM yes they are too" arguments come up, I'm always struck by the number of commandments that are actually reflected by current laws. "Thou shalt not kill" and "thou shalt not steal," certainly, and I suppose if you stretch a point, "thou shalt not bear false witness" is covered by the perjury laws, though I think it was probably intended to apply more generally than sworn testimony in court or a deposition. But that's it. I can dishonor my father and mother, have gods before The Guy Upstairs, work on the Sabbath, lust after my neighbor's wife, and even commit adultery with her with complete impunity, as far as the criminal justice system is concerned. So the Big Ten are batting .333, tops.

2023-04-21 00:25:58

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#[0] The context of this section of the statute isn't obvious from the article, but as a general matter, sure, you can waive constitutional rights. Every criminal defendant who enters a guilty plea waives a whole bunch of them, including the right to trial, the right to counsel, and the right to confront witnesses. There are a couple of cases, In re Tahl in California and Boykin v. Alabama in the federal courts, that say that defendants have to explicitly waive these rights on the record. But again, no idea if or how that applies to the proposed Texas statute.