A few days ago, the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania put out a Twitter press release with a typical law enforcement estimate of "street value":https://twitter.com/USAO_EDPA/status/1141046851132645376I heard about this because my local neighborhood criminal defense blogger, Matt Haiduk, had a few things to say about the "street value" … [Read more...] about How Much is 16.5 Tons of Cocaine Really Worth?
Sri Lanka and the Ongoing Social Media Panic
Immediately after the terrible Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka, the government there took the questionable step of blocking a bunch of social media sites.There can be legitimate reasons for such drastic measures: If you know the terrorists are using cell phones or the internet to set off remote-detonated bombs, it makes a lot of sense to shut down those communications … [Read more...] about Sri Lanka and the Ongoing Social Media Panic
Getting a Few Things Off My Chest: Game of Thrones Edition
The final season of Game of Thrones is starting today (you may have heard something about it) and there are a few things I want to get off my chest.For one thing, I'm wondering if all the death-related magic is connected in some way. Everybody makes a big deal about the Night King and his army of White Walkers because they can raise the dead, but there's a lot of that going … [Read more...] about Getting a Few Things Off My Chest: Game of Thrones Edition
The Software Engineer’s Bar Exam
I follow a bunch of legal blogs, and one of the things they consistently complain about is the content of the bar exam. As Ilya Somin describes it, "the bar exam is primarily a test of memorization that covers huge amounts of material most lawyers won’t need." As a consequence, time and effort spent preparing for the bar exam do very little to make one a better lawyer.I'm … [Read more...] about The Software Engineer’s Bar Exam
Shazam! – Review
The first trailer for Shazam! came out eight months ago, and it looked like a pretty good movie. Unlike certain other DC superhero movies, it looked like the Shazam! filmmakers remembered that comics were supposed to be fun.https://youtu.be/go6GEIrcvFYI managed to catch one of the sneak preview showings of Shazam! last week, and I thought it lived up to the promise of … [Read more...] about Shazam! – Review