Mastodawn

Grown men, he told himself, in flat contradiction of centuries of accumulated evidence about the way grown men behave, do not behave like this.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humorist, screenwriter
Hitchhiker’s Guide No. 4, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, ch. 11 [Arthur] (1984)

More about this quote: wist.info/adams-douglas/82214/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #douglasadams #hitchhikersguide #hitchhikersguidetothegalaxy #solongandthanksforallthefish #adult #humannature #maturity #precedent #principle #realworld #reality #selfimage #truth

Adams, Douglas - Hitchhiker's Guide No. 4, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, ch. 11 [Arthur] (1984) | WIST Quotations

Grown men, he told himself, in flat contradiction of centuries of accumulated evidence about the way grown men behave, do not behave like this.

WIST Quotations

getmisch 6d ago

#Cannon again is through the looking glass. She destroyed 150 years of #legal #precedent, decades of executive-branch practice, w/ no such instruction from the #SupremeCourt; #JackSmith was justly #appointed, case should not have been dismissed. Then, Garland's #DOJ fiddled while #justice burned.
Now, she calls Smith "brazen" - she who #dismissed the #espionage #case - calls *Smith* brazen, for creating the #report.
#SCOTUS #crowned #king #NoKings #OurPutin #AnotherOrban
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/cannon-buries-jack-smith-mar-a-lago-report-on-trump-angry-that-special-counsel-had-the-audacity-to-create-it/

Judge Cannon permanently buries Mar-a-Lago report on Trump, vents about Jack Smith's 'breach'

Judge Cannon permanently blocked AG Bondi and her successors from releasing the report, but she did not go so far as to order the destruction of Volume II.

Law & Crime

Rowan the Selfsame Feb 22

I hate what the hateful and the Benefactors of the status quo are doing.

---

The Ten Commandments can be displayed in Classrooms in Illinois, USA — a 5th Circuit Court Judge made the judicial Decision and set such malformed and #unconstitutional #Precedent.

A federal Judge blocked the installation of Images of the #enslaved _Persons_, whom George #Washington (1st President of the USA) owned as Property; the Sentiment for the Blockage of recognizing the Histories of the People(s) of the USA: it would "disparage" the Public. (FFS! The Descendants of the enslaved Persons ARE OUR PEOPLE TODAY! It is not only disparaging to them to willfully ignore their historic #Abuse and #Maltreatment, but also a disgrace to our Nation, especially to those whom wish to repair the Great Chasm that was built by Racists.)

The Names of the Dead from a Landslide in California, USA were read on public Radio in New York, USA. I have yet to hear the Names of #BreonnaTaylor or #GeorgeFloyd on the radio. Oh, and the Governor of #California knows some of the Dead personally; maybe despotic influence has had a say in whose Lives are remembered and recalled to the Public.

EDIT: "knowns" -> "knows".

Show thread

Jonas Ericson Jan 22

The real danger isn’t military takeover, but that great powers can apply pressure until others start making concessions.

When pressure is rewarded with talks or “processes,” it becomes a strategy.

Territorial integrity erodes through normalized coercion, not war.

#InternationalLaw #TerritorialIntegrity #Precedent #Geopolitics #RuleOfLaw

Arno Jan 17

When history is reopened,
everything becomes negotiable.

Greenland today.
Louisiana tomorrow.

Think carefully.

#MAGA
#AmericaFirst
#RuleOfLaw
#ContractsMatter
#HistoryIsNotFree
#LouisianaPurchase
#Geopolitics
#Precedent
#ThinkTwice

Gerd_Brodowski Jan 4

#usa #venezuela : #uno / #internationallaw / #ruleoflaw / #militaryintervention / #precedent

„The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said he is “deeply alarmed” over the standoff between the United States and Venezuela in recent months, which culminated on Saturday morning in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro by US special forces.“

https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/01/1166698

US actions in Venezuela ‘constitute a dangerous precedent’: Guterres

The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said he is “deeply alarmed” over the standoff between the United States and Venezuela in recent months, which culminated on Saturday morning in the reported capture of President Nicolás Maduro by US special forces.

UN News

RTL Nieuws Jan 4

𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗸𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗴𝗲𝗻 𝘄𝗮𝗮𝗿𝘀𝗰𝗵𝘂𝘄𝗲𝗻: 𝗼𝗻𝘁𝘃𝗼𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗠𝗮𝗱𝘂𝗿𝗼 𝘀𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗽𝘁 '𝗴𝗲𝘃𝗮𝗮𝗿𝗹𝗶𝗷𝗸 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁' 𝘃𝗼𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝗼𝘁𝗺𝗮𝗰𝗵𝘁𝗲𝗻

De ontvoering van de Venezolaanse president Nicolás Maduro gaat volgens deskundigen in alle opzichten in tegen de regels van het internationaal recht. Bovendien, zo waarschuwen zij, schept het een zorgwekkend voorbeeld....

https://www.rtl.nl/nieuws/buitenland/artikel/5550770/ontvoering-maduro-gevaarlijk-voorbeeld-illegaal

#ontvoering #gevaarlijk #precedent

Deskundigen waarschuwen: ontvoering Maduro schept 'gevaarlijk precedent' voor andere grootmachten

RTL Nieuws

Edgecontrol🍉🛹Jan 4

https://www.rtbf.be/article/en-1989-les-etats-unis-capturaient-le-general-noriega-barricade-a-l-ambassade-panameenne-du-vatican-a-coups-de-rock-et-de-heavy-metal-11655821 #Précédent #Dope

En 1989, les Etats-Unis capturaient le général Noriega, barricadé à l’ambassade panaméenne du Vatican, à coups de rock et de heavy metal - RTBF Actus

En décembre 1989, l’armée américaine envahit le Panama pour capturer Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno, ancien informateur...

RTBF.be

WIST Quotations Has Moved!Dec 19

A quotation from La Rochefoucauld

Nothing is so contagious as an example, and our every really good or bad action inspires a similar one.

[Rien n’est si contagieux que l’exemple, et nous ne faisons jamais de grands biens ni de grands maux qui n’en produisent de semblables.]

François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammatist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims], ¶230 (1665-1678) [tr. Tancock (1959)]

More info about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/la-rochefoucauld-fra…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #larochefoucauld #action #doinggood #emulation #example #goodandevil #imitation #precedent #suggestion #wrongdoing #badexample #goodexample #leadbyexample #setanexample

Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims], ¶230 (1665-1678) [tr. Tancock (1959)] - La Rochefoucauld, Francois | WIST Quotations

Nothing is so contagious as an example, and our every really good or bad action inspires a similar one. [Rien n’est si contagieux que l’exemple, et nous ne faisons jamais de grands biens ni de grands maux qui n’en produisent de semblables.] In the manuscript and 1665 ed., this concluded…

WIST Quotations

Andreas Wagner Dec 12

Looking forward to reading this paper that won the Best Student Paper award at #Jurix2025: "Do LLMs Truly Understand When a Precedent Is Overruled?" by Li Zhang, Jaromir Savelka, and Kevin Ashley. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2510.20941

#Precedent #LegalNLP #LNLP #NLLP #LLM #LegalAI #LawAndAI

(edited for typo)

Do LLMs Truly Understand When a Precedent Is Overruled?

Large language models (LLMs) with extended context windows show promise for complex legal reasoning tasks, yet their ability to understand long legal documents remains insufficiently evaluated. Developing long-context benchmarks that capture realistic, high-stakes tasks remains a significant challenge in the field, as most existing evaluations rely on simplified synthetic tasks that fail to represent the complexity of real-world document understanding. Overruling relationships are foundational to common-law doctrine and commonly found in judicial opinions. They provide a focused and important testbed for long-document legal understanding that closely resembles what legal professionals actually do. We present an assessment of state-of-the-art LLMs on identifying overruling relationships from U.S. Supreme Court cases using a dataset of 236 case pairs. Our evaluation reveals three critical limitations: (1) era sensitivity -- the models show degraded performance on historical cases compared to modern ones, revealing fundamental temporal bias in their training; (2) shallow reasoning -- models rely on shallow logical heuristics rather than deep legal comprehension; and (3) context-dependent reasoning failures -- models produce temporally impossible relationships in complex open-ended tasks despite maintaining basic temporal awareness in simple contexts. Our work contributes a benchmark that addresses the critical gap in realistic long-context evaluation, providing an environment that mirrors the complexity and stakes of actual legal reasoning tasks.

arXiv.org