John R. Mayne

@JASchmidt_MPD @AdamPlantinga Each county in CA is its own thing. My county, which includes Modesto, has an electronic warrant system.

I'm blown away the state doesn't have a website for cops where they can write the affidavit and then submit to whomever the their county's on-duty judge is, and then print the warrant in a standardized format. MN has had one for at least 10 years, and it makes the process so painless.

Was waiting with 5 other cops to get search warrants signed. A 6th cop entered, saw the line, and loudly said "Shit!" Problem was, court was in session so the judge sternly reprimanded her. She apologized and the judge continued to preside. When there was a break in the proceedings, I approached the court reporter to ask if the "Shit!" was going to make it on the official court transcript and was greatly disappointed to hear it wasn't.

@MerriamWebster @gl_morticia I was unconvinced because I felt I've heard "an" more in the last 20 years than the first 40 or so of my life, but the dictionary is right: ngrams shows 100-1 for "an" in 1800, and about 5-1 for "a" now. Now I can't get in an online argument with a dictionary. Life goal missed.

@gl_morticia The reason for this is that in that word the initial H was, for a long time, unstressed to the point of inaudibility.

An -honest woman -FBI memo -hourly wage -NFL player A -one hundred dollar bill -united front -unicorn

@TalkinBaseball_ Thanks man, you gave us some fun.

Brett Phillips officially calls it a career

@littmath Event test FTW. (The field is correct.)

You have 3 coins. 2 of them are fair; one is rigged so that it always lands on heads. You choose a coin at random and flip it; it lands on heads. The coin is probably

@DSzymborski Dan. Dan. That's what 10% means - not going to happen. 90% means is going to happen. (100% guaranteed means 50% to happen in practice.) I didn't invent Twitter probability, I just understand it.

Here's a direct screenshot of FanGraphs playoff probabilities meaning nothing. Also: things projected to happen 10% of the time should NEVER happen or your model is broken.

@ASFleischman California's Judicial Council has an Appellate Advisory Committee which, if I understand correctly, occasionally does things like this. The easier way, I think, is just to have someone (legislative analyst or similar) responsible for shipping judicial comment to the leg. branch

Throwing this tip out for the Supreme Court of Georgia. When you write a concurrence or an opinion asking the General Assembly to fix a problem, legislators don't always find out about it. Often times, I'll email them to let them know. It might be really smart to have a system to ping someone at the General Assembly for cases where the Court is seeking more clarity. That might be a liason, or a way of marking your cases, or just a habit of emailing certain cases the General Assembly legislative counsel. I see so many good ideas that nobody in the General Assembly ever sees or takes action on.

@nealagarwal The radio change was good, though.

we've been stuck in the suburbs for about 12 hours

@whitesox The good: Meidroth looks legit. The bad: This may lead to the White Sox social media folks' retaining shreds of their sanity. (I enjoy the descent into madness.)

Chase to Chicago

@kareem_carr Fun fact: Bridge (cards) writer Phil Martin wrote about this a year before MVS published: sites.google.com/site/psmartins… He said, "the trap is easy to spot." I once convinced a non-believer by event-testing - he did 50 prize doors, and I said, "I guess 1 + switch on all." Him: OHHH!

I know folks love these "the experts don't know anything" stories, but this isn't one of those cases. The Monty Hall problem was *created* and solved by statistician Steve Selvin in 1975, 15 years before vos Savant published her solution.

@CBSScottWhite Zebby.

Survey Q2 of 8: Which starting pitcher is the best bet to break out? ("Likes" won't count as responses.)

@OrinKerr @JosephPatrice at Above the Law called it before it happened: abovethelaw.com/2025/01/the-ca…

Ugh. nytimes.com/2025/03/02/us/…

@drewlgoins Drew was awesome. But I yelled "Grand mal" at the TV and he ignored me. Absolutely one of the most likeable Jeopardy players I've ever seen.

I love you so much brother 🥹

@shachaf Always event-test. Stay.

My sister sent me this puzzle. It's so good!

@anderssandberg @KhalilBabilli @ESYudkowsky Or one crushing filter.

@KhalilBabilli @ESYudkowsky To get a great filter you need a factor like 10^-11 to 10^-20 to get empty galaxy or universe. If your first Drake terms >> 1 you need a very, very strong set of late filters to get things down like this.

Conversation from a decade earlier that may become relevant to AI: Person 1: "How long do you think you could stay sane if you were alone, inside a computer, running at 100,000X the speed of the outside world?" P2: "5 years." P3: "500 years." Me: "I COULD UPDATE STORIES FASTER THAN PEOPLE COULD READ THEM." If at any point somebody manages to get eg Gemini to write really engaging fiction, good enough that some people have trouble putting it down, Gemini will probably write faster than people can read. Some people will go in there and not come out again.

@JudgeDillard @GB2d I am jealous.

Welcome to my chambers, Justice Kagan.

@DSzymborski Worked for me.

And...that link doesn't work? I guess Twitter shenanigans? Or Dancompetence?

I made a #FanGraphs starter pack for BlueSky of our current writers and contributors who are either also over there or exclusively so. go.bsky.app/Q1Dm1ED

@CBSScottWhite Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? Morons! (This is the pinnacle of human achievement.)

Camineeeeeeerooooooooo!

@OrinKerr @BrianLeiter @StanfordLaw @BerkeleyLaw Wow! Congrats to Stanford and you.

Some news: As @BrianLeiter reported on Friday, I will be joining the faculty at @StanfordLaw in January. I've had a wonderful time at @BerkeleyLaw since I arrived in 2019, and it was a hard decision to depart. But I'm really looking forward to joining the community at SLS.

@iowahawkblog What have you done with David Burge?

Ahh and now for a refreshing panna cotta and fresh glass of whiskey

Steaming westward across the Atlantic aboard the Skytanic

@MerriamWebster Interrobang.

'Phlegm' was voted the Worst Word! (grabs hand sanitizer) It's time for the final category so let's make it count. What is the BEST WORD?