#Maya has committed so many crimes and is now evil and the moment we get out of this maya is gonna get possessive af

[knivesrey]

Dnd thoughts again

[d-criss-news]

Darren Criss and Este Haim’s Friendship Takes Center Stage on That Thing I Do

On their new podcast, the musician-actors are picking the brains of fellow creatives about the passions that fuel and define them.

Darren Criss and Este Haim may have named their podcast That Thing I Do after the mid-’90s movie close to their hearts—That Thing You Do!, about the rise and fall of a fictional rock band—but there’s another film that seemed to loom just as large when creating their show.

“I think we’re like, slightly obsessed with the Sliding Doors moment,” Haim told Vanity Fair, referencing the 1998 rom-com that follows Gwyneth Paltrow’s character down two divergent timelines. “If you’re so incredibly passionate about multiple things, what is the thing? What is the event? Was there an event that made you kind of pivot and just go left instead of going right at that fork in the road?”

That pivotal crossroads is just one of the topics that Criss and Haim are eager to delve into on their show. Produced by Cadence13, That Thing I Do is a friendship-fueled quest to understand the passions, past and present, that have shaped the careers of other multi-hyphenate artists (Criss is an actor with a background in music, and Haim is a musician with roots in theater). In addition to lengthy, intimate conversations with celebrities including Carly Rae Jepsen, Evan Rachel Wood, and Reggie Watts, That Thing I Do mines Criss and Haim’s insatiable curiosity for all things creative to produce episodes that are as unpredictable as they are delightful.

As hosts, Criss and Haim tear through each episode like tornados: Accents are adopted, sentences are sung, and movie references and inside jokes fly hard and fast. Criss is a verbose, hyperkinetic storyteller, quick with a self-deprecating comment or quippy aside, and Haim is eager and unselfconscious, with a palpable enthusiasm for every guest and every possible subject. It quickly becomes clear that this is one of those friendships where the participants seem to more or less share a brain; where one can riff off the other, seemingly in perpetuity, about any number of topics without ever getting bored. And when a pair of celebrities find themselves so simpatico—especially a duo as funny and game as these two—what are they supposed to do? Not start a podcast?

That was more or less Haim’s thinking, after she and Criss started logging lengthy FaceTime calls during the pandemic that she increasingly felt would be entertaining to a wider audience. Criss, however, was more reluctant to start recording their conversations: “I said no so many times,” he said. “I really felt like I didn’t have time. But Este wore me down.”“I am pretty relentless when I want to do something,” said Haim, grinning. Haim, one-third of the eponymous rock band Haim, experienced her own “Sliding Doors moment” in her late teens, when after years of theater and dance training, she chose to attend the University of California, Los Angeles, for ethnomusicology, instead of pursuing drama programs at Carnegie Mellon or New York University. Over 10 years later, with a slew of Grammy nominations under her belt, music videos directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, and a life spent performing alongside sisters Danielle and Alana, there’s no question that Haim loves what she does, and takes it seriously. “I try to work at my craft every single day,” said Haim. “So at least I have that. I definitely try to stay creative every single day. If it’s not me writing lyrics, it’s me, you know, singing ideas into my iPhone.” But she’s still open about a “hunger” for acting and dance that she feels is still important to nourish, however and whenever she can. She reminisces about taking an improv class at the Upright Citizens Brigade in 2017, and her love of the Suzuki and Viewpoints methods of acting, both movement-based techniques that draw on an extreme awareness of the body. She claims she still interrogates actor friends about their experiences working in avant-garde theater (she charmingly calls these conversations “offline podcasts”).

Haim’s passion when talking about physical theater surprises even Criss: “We’ve talked a lot about stuff, but we’ve never really talked about [Suzuki],” he said. “I want to talk about that in the podcast, because we get to learn new stuff about each other every week.”

That real-time revelation speaks directly to Criss and Haim’s goal with That Thing I Do—to create a space where artists can speak to all parts of themselves, and bring previously unknown or underappreciated areas of passion and skill to light. “One of the things that I always love finding out about artists who I think are so incredible in one field is that there’s usually a seed somewhere else that is just as potent,” said Criss, citing recent interviews with Thundercat, in which the musician revealed his background in visual art, and Maya Rudolph, who majored in photography at University of California, Santa Cruz, before becoming a Saturday Night Live all-star, as prime examples. “Having an artistic spirit is by its nature very amorphous. It usually comes with a lot of roots that go other places.”

That interconnectivity of talents is something that Criss, an Emmy– and Golden Globe Award–winning actor (The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story) deeply relates to. As he describes it, each thread of his creative expression is inextricably linked to the other: “When I’m acting, I’m composing music, the way that dialogue is put together has rhythm, cadence, speed, tone, pitch,” he said. “There’s things that are very musical and compositional about the way that you deliver dialogue. So to me, it’s all kind of the same stuff. It’s all one body of water that can take different shapes.”

That’s not to say he hasn’t wondered what his life might have been like had he prioritized one of his skills over another at a certain time, imagining his own Sliding Doors plotline. “I often wonder what would have happened if, when I was 22 and I was getting attention from major labels and acting wasn’t happening, music was happening—would I have been a Shawn Mendestype?” said Criss. “But I don’t mind the expense that I’ve paid in not doing those one things, like, volumetrically. I now have a collection of a lot of things that have lower visibility, but higher passion and gratification.”

To that point, That Thing I Do doesn’t dwell too much on the could-have-beens and what-ifs, as tempting a thought exercise as it may be. He and Haim are more interested in finding the common threads between their own experiences and that of other creatives, and seeking the “why” behind the artistic choices their peers have made. Haim also reveals a less lofty, ulterior motive behind the pod: “This was also our evil plan to make new friends.”

And while both multi-hyphenates may have just added yet another commitment to their already very full plates, both appear energized by their newfound vocation as hosts—and to have a dedicated space to simply shoot the shit with each other. “I think we’re just getting started,” said Criss. “And I think Este would say the same.”

[somerandomwriter1234]

GMW Fanfic: Story Time with Farkle and Smackle Returns!

-Once upon a time, two young after school leaders attempted to tell a story to a group of children. The following is a written transcript of their attempt.

Hello everyone. For those that haven't gotten to know us yet, my name is Mr. Farkle. And apologies that we're breaking the norm of your regularly scheduled events you experience here.

But since Miss Maya is out today helping take care of her wife who is recovering in the hospital, we thought we'd do something different, yet super fun today. By the way, I'm Miss Smackle.

Yeah. So with fewer adult leaders at the program today, we thought we'd just keep you all entertained this afternoon with some good old fashioned story time.

With minor changes added into our classic stories as a means to appeal to our target demographic groups.

Smackle, we don't have demographic groups.

That's what the Ninja Wombats of Antarctica want you to think.

I… I don't even know how to react to that.

You can react by letting me make alterations to the story wherever I see fit.

Whatever. So today we're going to share with you all the story of the Three Little Pigs. Now, long ago there lived three little pigs who one day told their mother that they were ready to live on their own.

Hold on. How can the pigs talk?

It's a fairy tale Smackle. They just do.

But you said this story took place long ago. That infers this story took place in the past of our world. Can we say this story took place in an alternate universe?

Why would I want to bother with a detail like that?

Because if you don't, then many impressionable children here will start to believe that pigs have the ability to talk, and when they go visit a farm one day, they'll be very displeased to learn pigs don't talk, which will inspire those children to turn into mad scientists that start to do genetic engineering on pigs in an attempt to actually make them talk so that they can make their childhood dreams come true, but of course tinkering with the genetic code of pigs would only eventually inspire those aforementioned individuals to want to commit all sorts of other crimes against nature, which would eventually lead to a domino effect that would wipe away everything that exists on our planet including all traces of our culture except for the Statue of Liberty and a bunch of monkeys!

Okay. So this story takes place in an alternate universe where animals can talk.

Thank you for clarifying that.

Anyway… these three pigs wanted to live on their own. So they decided to all build their own houses. The first pig built his house out of straw. The second pig built his house out of sticks. The third pig built his house out of bricks.

Yes. And there's a reason why those first two pigs built their houses out of materials that aren't very good to build with.

Well, yeah Smackle. That's actually an important part of the story. I'm glad you pointed it out. Now the reason why the first two pigs made their houses out of straw and sticks was…

Was because they had fallen on hard economic times due the terrible state of the country they lived in.

What?

Yeah. I mean that's the real reason why they left their mother to live on their own in the first place. She couldn't afford to feed them anymore. If she could, they would've been living out of her basement until they were 45. So they unfortunately had no cash lying around. That's why the first two pigs had to build their houses out of cheap material. Now you may be wondering how the third pig was able to afford to make his house out of bricks. Well basically he won the lottery but didn't want to share his winnings with his family. The jerk!

All right. But the point is, the pigs were living in three different houses made of three different types of materials. But then one day, a Big Bad Wolf came to town. And he wanted to eat those three little pigs.

Because the only fast food place in town was Chick-Fil-A, and the wolf really was only craving bacon that day.

So the big bad wolf went to the house made of straw. He knocked on the first pig's door and said: Little pig, little pig, let me in.

And as the first pig stood scared and realized his life was soon to end, he began to flashback to when he first met Elsa the Snow Queen and their amazing adventure they had where he learned that when it comes to your fears, you just have to let it go, and should instead ask all of your friends if they wanna build a snowman.

Hold on. What are you doing?

Having a flashback moment. All the best modern stories have them now. Wait'll we get to the part where we discover the first little pig once had a trans-dimensional adventure where he finally discovered the secrets as to why 10 year olds in the Pokémon world never age!

Whatever. Let's just move on. So the pig of course tells the wolf that he can't come in. So the wolf says: Then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down. And with a large puff of wind the wolf made from his mouth, he blew the house over.

And of course, the second pig had been watching everything from afar this whole time and saw how that evil wolf senselessly ruined his brother's life. And that was when the second pig decided to dedicate his life to stopping crime.

What?

So by the time the wolf got to the second pig's house and said: Little pig, little pig, let me in, he heard the second pig say: Some little piggys go to market. Some little piggys go home. Some little piggys got roast beef. BUT THIS LITTLE PIGGY IS PACKIN! Then the pig opened the door to the house showing he was holding two HUGE laser guns. The pig pointed them at the wolf and then declared: My name is Inigo Pig Toya. You killed my brother. Prepare to die!

Smackle, what are you doing to this story!?

IMPROVING IT! So then the wolf laughed at his adversary and said: You believe a pig like you can defeat me? The pig smiled and replied: In the words of the cutest sitcom character ever – Michelle Tanner… YOU GOT IT DUDE!

But getting things back on track: the wolf simply huffed and puffed and blew the second pig and his house down. Then the wolf moved on to the third pig's house. And when he got there…

The third pig walked out of his house with two even larger laser guns, and then declared to the wolf… One shall stand. One shall fall. The wolf looked at the pig in hate as he replied: Why throw away your life so recklessly? The pig then simply said: That's a question you should ask yourself Big Bad Wolf.

Hold on! Smackle, what the heck is going on in this story now?

The greatest battle of the century! So the pig and the wolf fought with their laser guns and fists. Eventually they were near the edge of a cliff. Despite both being weakened, the wolf now had the upper hand as he looked at his pig opponent. As the wolf prepared for his final blow, he said: Grr. I would've waited an eternity for this. It's over little pig. Then the little pig put both of his fists together and yelled: NOT BY THE HAIRS ON MY CHINNY CHIN CHIN! And then with his last ounce of strength, the pig pushed the wolf off of the cliff. At last, the little pig had finally honored the memory of his fallen brothers. And that… is where our story ends.

Oh good. Well at least we can stop now before…

Until we get to the sequel where a giant transforming planet turns the Big Bad Wolf into a new villain known as Galva Wolf. But luckily a new hero known as Rodimus Piggy steps up and shows that he has the touch, and he has the power!

Okay. I'm not even doing anything anymore. I'm leaving.

Wait. Farkle. You're going home early? But what about your next story? I thought you were gonna tell the kids all about Sleeping Beauty.

Another time. Besides… it would probably just end with you explaining how the prince was secretly a Pikachu in disguise the whole time.

Wait. You knew that too? Awesome!

THE END

[askaceattorney]

Dear Decoy13,

There’s actually only two of us! This is Modthorne. And thank you so much for the praise! It’s really difficult running a giant blog like this, much less with two people and so many responses. We might run into each other if we’re not careful and respond to something twice, or something else. But we do try our hardest.

Co-Mod here, and I’d just like to add one thing: at the time you sent this letter, there was only one moderator (the Mod), but he’s since taken on the two of us, and there’s a chance he’ll still answer a few letters every now and then.  He deserves a lot of credit.

Dear Crazyarielxd,

You’re welcome, and thank you for writing letters to help keep the blog going!

I think that Kristoph and Dahlia had a few similar behavior issues -- being two-faced, selfish, unfeeling, etc. -- but when it comes to mental conditions, I’d say Kristoph was far worse off.  In fact, I’d say Capcom tried to make him look like a disturbed man from the very beginning.  When we first see him, he looks like a calm, intelligent, well-mannered person (he even has a nickname reflecting this):

But in reality, all it takes to disrupt his peaceful visage is for someone to question his character:

This also seems like the best explanation for why the opportunity to become a hero was, ironically, what turned him into a villain.  I can understand someone being bitter about not being chosen for something as important as defending a famous magician, but when they start plotting the demise of the person who was chosen and the one who chose them, I feel like there has to be more than bitterness behind it -- especially considering it wasn’t his first time constructing a murder plot.

As for Dahlia, I share pretty much the same opinion as the Mod about her mental state -- she knew what she was doing, and just didn’t care.  If I did think her behavior had to do with a mental disorder, I’d probably hate her a lot less.  From what I saw, greed and arrogance seemed to be the only motivations behind her actions.

By the way, I hope you weren’t expecting to see any pictures of her.  Sorry, but I’m about half sick of seeing those.

But Manfred von Karma’s behavior is even more confusing to me.  “Earn me a penalty, will you, Gregory?  Well, then I’ll just murder you, steal your son, and raise him to be a ruthless prosecutor like me before having him framed for murder!  >Optional evil laughter<”  Besides the fact that the motive for his crimes makes him sound like a 65-year-old child, his decision to hold a grudge for so long ended up causing even worse problems for both of his proteges.  It makes sense in Edgeworth’s case, since he never cared about him in the first place, but why would he let his own daughter suffer for it?  That showed some serious stubbornness on his part.

Since we don’t get much of a backstory for him, I can only assume that he was either taught at an early age that winning cases is the only important goal a prosecutor should have, or he actually cared about justice at some point, but as he kept winning case after case, he let it all go to his head and started only caring about winning.  Either way, pride seemed to be the only thing driving him.

And finally, Damon Gant’s motives seemed like a mixture of pride and obsession to me.  He knew he was headed for a higher position in the police force, and when he found three unconscious people in his office, he saw it as an opportunity to gain even more power.  I do find it strange that he never did anything so extreme before that, which makes me wonder if Capcom just wanted to make him a villain for the sake of thickening the plot.  He himself even admitted that he’s better suited for solving crimes than committing them.

I’ve already started seeing a few letters dealing with touchy subjects, and so far there haven’t been any that made me too uncomfortable.  There was even one that I was very glad to answer, because it was about something I relate to strongly.  Honestly, as long a letter follows the blog’s rules and doesn’t involve something that one of us sees as too offensive or sensitive to be shared online, we’ll do our best to give it an answer.  Just keep in mind that neither of us are the ruling authority on topics regarding ethics, psychology, religion, politics, ladders, etc., so we can’t guarantee a satisfactory response.  We’ll do our best, though!

(Previous Letter)

Uhhhhh... It’s too bad it’s come back to haunt me the MINUTE I return, ain’t it? I’m, er, gonna have to bite the bullet on this one. Heh heh...

Dear Yessiee!!!!,

(So he can pull himself together when he wants to!)

It’s true that presenting us with different version of the same puzzles could be seen as laziness on the developers’ part, but I’d say it was worth it to see Ms. Belduke’s attempt at a puzzle-solving pose.

I finally reached the end of Layton Brothers yesterday (relative to when I’m typing this), and I think it was a pretty fun game overall.  The soundtrack was incredibly engaging (which is often what keeps me coming back to a game), and the carefully-crafted story lines reminded me a lot of the ones found in Ace Attorney -- way more condensed in this case, but still very similar.

My favorite character by far was none other than the cute but courageous Lucy Baker.  Her charming optimism and adventurous attitude made her almost like a British Maya Fey in my mind.

“Let’s get going, Prof!  Out in t’ wild!”

I know she didn’t actually say that, but that’s the message she conveyed to me at nearly every part of the game.  Alfendi became a poor, tired Phoenix there for a moment.  Speaking of Al, I wasn’t sure how to feel the first time I met “Potty Prof,” but he sure made the story more intriguing.  I kept wondering what he was going to do next, and that made him all the more interesting to watch.

I won’t say who my least favorite was to avoid any spoilers, but when a woman decides to get a new boyfriend days after her husband’s death, it’s hard for me not to at least cringe a little.  Oddly enough, there was also a young lady who greatly reminded me of Ms. Hawthorne, but I found it hard to hate her quite as much for some reason.  Strange, isn’t it?

Speaking of that character, my favorite case was probably Case 7, where she trapped Lucy in a room and made her solve a case that happened years ago before she’d let her out, without giving kind of explanation for it until the end.  I liked all of the cases pretty well, but that one did a good job of building up the mystery.

The gameplay wasn’t that impressive to me, though.  I’m okay with having no penalties for guessing the wrong answer, but why does the game constantly tell you to investigate things you’ve already investigated?  That just seemed like a pointless way to further the story, in my opinion.

I don’t think I’d put this game above an Ace Attorney game in terms of overall fun to be had, but I did have some good fun watching it, and it’s definitely whetted my appetite for the Professor Layton games.  And I pretty much gave up trying to guess who the culprit after Case 3, which did indeed confuse the heck out of me, but I at least got most of the questions right.

Have a good day yourself, and I hope you got the reference at the beginning there.

-The Modthorne and Co-Mod

[mrsbluebertgreggleson]

So often, the conversation is had surrounding mass incarceration as a whole. However, we don't always account for all of the small systems within it that allow it to be the beast that it is. One of those systems is cash bail. Of course, cash bail isn't intended to be a problem, but for low-income folks, that's exactly what it becomes.

Cash bail happens before trial to ensure that defendants come to court to settle their charges, with the alternative being that they’re held in jail until the bail fee is addressed. Unfortunately, if they cannot afford the bail amount, this can force low-income people to miss work, lose time with their children and otherwise have their lives unfairly destabilized.

A prime and heartbreaking example of this system at work is Kalief Browder, the young man from the Bronx who was held on Rikers Island in New York City for three years at only 16 years old for a crime he maintained he did not commit, simply because he couldn’t meet his $3,000 bail. Browder committed suicide in 2015 after his release.

According to Teen Vogue, organizers across the country have begun community bail funds to aid in fixing this problem. Even better, there are now apps which allow you to donate to the cause.

The first app, Bail Bloc,  is a computer app project from The New Inquiry that uses cryptocurrency to convert your computer’s unused energy stores into funding for the Bronx Freedom Fund and eventually a nationwide initiative, the Bail Project. Once downloaded, the app takes advantage of your computer’s unused processing power to “mine” a secure, private and untraceable cryptocurrency called Monero. Cryptocurrency (like Bitcoin) isn’t “real money,” but can be exchanged for real money. At the end of each month, Bail Bloc exchanges the Monero for real money, which it then puts toward bail funds.

The second app, Appolition is also focused on ending cash bail using a different method. This mobile app automatically donates your spare charge to a bail fund. The app is said to allow you to make an encrypted connection with the account you use for your daily purchases (any purchase over $1.80 qualifies); the app will then round all your purchases up to the nearest dollar and then — once you reach at least $2 in accumulated spare change — will donate the money to bail funds. The app is modeled after savings apps that also reallocate your spare change.

While both apps are fresh and new, they are adding a powerful tool to the issue of combating a rigged system. By just allowing people to have the ability to attend their court date, the number of people being convicted drops drastically. With the amazing work they're doing, will you be checking them out?

Linked article published November 27, 2017.

More info on Appolition and its success linked here. Since I ‘d already checked into Appolition, I also wanted to check on Bail Bloc before recommending it. To quote a Quartz article (link here):

Every night, nearly half a million people who have not been convicted of a crime are nevertheless sitting in jail cells across the US. The vast majority of these people in pretrial detention are at risk of losing their jobs, their homes, and even custody of their children because they cannot afford bail. And so, regardless of their innocence, 90% will choose to plead guilty rather than wait the weeks, months, or years necessary for backlogged court systems to hear their cases. It’s just one of the many ways that the US criminal justice system punishes the poor before they ever get to trial.

In an effort to address this injustice, The Bronx Freedom Fund provides bail for the accused who cannot otherwise afford it by collecting donations from the public. And in recent months, the organization has partnered with the online culture magazine The New Inquiry to take a much more experimental approach: building its bail fund with the proceeds from mining cryptocurrency.

Bail Bloc, an app developed by The New Inquiry and launched in November, allocates a small percentage of the operating device’s excess computing power to mine cryptocurrency. Bail Bloc mines Monero, a relatively energy-efficient cryptocurrency, and transfers the rewards it collects to a central pool, which is converted to US dollars and donated to The Bronx Freedom Fund. It can be downloaded for free on the magazine’s website.

The New Inquiry estimates that each Bail Bloc user can generate $3 a month. Although that may not seem like much, the magazine figures that only 5,000 users running the app for one year can produce enough funding to free as many as 1,800 people from pretrial detention. And because 96% of defendants out on philanthropic bail money return for all of their court dates, the vast majority of funds raised will be returned to The Bronx Freedom Fund and used to free people in perpetuity.

“The New Inquiry deserves the credit for this innovation,” says Ezra Ritchin, project director at The Bronx Freedom Fund. “They pitched us the idea of Bail Bloc, and we were thrilled to collaborate.”

Although creating an app that fights mass incarceration is ostensibly outside the wheelhouse of a magazine dedicated to criticism, The New Inquiry doesn’t see it that way. Not only does founder and co-publisher Rachel Rosenfelt view Bail Bloc as part of the magazine’s near decade of work criticizing the US criminal justice system (which The New Inquiryhas conveniently bundled together to accompany the app), but she considers Bail Bloc a piece of criticism itself.

“We think of criticism as a political weapon—that individual pieces can actually help us, and help our readers alongside us, articulate an understanding of something that needs to be made sense of,” she says. In Bail Bloc’s case, the thing that needs to be understood is “criminal justice in the United States as the profound evil that it is.”

In this sense, Bail Bloc follows The New Inquiry’s other “rhetorical software” projects: The Founder, a start-up simulator illustrating the all-consuming aspects of capitalism; and White Collar Crime Risk Zones, which applies real-life predictive policing techniques to financial malfeasance.

As far as its development goes, Rosenfelt describes Bail Bloc as “a true horizontalist, collaborative effort.” The concept of distributively mining cryptocurrency was introduced by Grayson Earle, who teaches emerging media technology at the New York City College of Technology, but its application to bail was suggested by JB Rubinovitz, an artificial intelligence designer. Along with Earle, The New Inquiry’s senior editor Maya Binyam helped lead the project, ensuring it complemented the work being done by bail funds and activists.

The New Inquiry’s conception of Bail Bloc as a form of criticism may seem like intellectual spin on just another social justice project, but the app’s design embodies that principle. Monero became the cryptocurrency of choice over the better known Bitcoin because mining the latter requires significantly more electricity—an issue of practicality for users, but also an environmental concern.

Similarly, bail funds were selected as the beneficiaries of the app because they could recycle the small amounts of money produced by distributive mining in perpetuity, while such little money would be of almost no use to other kinds of organizations. Furthermore, Bail Bloc collects very little information about its user—in keeping with activist concerns over surveillance technology and The New Inquiry’s conception of bail as a form of social surveillance, in which the poor are forced to regularly check in with courts and bail bondsmen, lest they be arrested once more.

The app “only tracks how many people are using it at any given moment, but not the identities of those people,” says Earle. “We can also only estimate the number of installs given how many people visited the download page and currently run the software.”

Based on visits to the app’s page, he estimates that 3,000 people have downloaded Bail Bloc to date. With around 1,000 users running the app daily, Bail Bloc has raised more than $5,000 for The Bronx Freedom Fund in the two months since the software’s launch. As successful as that may be, it falls far short of the ultimate goal shared by both The New Inquiry and The Bronx Freedom Fund: abolishing bail altogether.

“At the end of the day, our goal is to drive ourselves out of business by fueling the momentum for systemic change,” says Ritchin of The Bronx Freedom Fund.

It’s a sentiment that Rosenfelt echoes. Discussing reactions to Bail Bloc, she notes the virality of the project, with its coverage in major publications and its mentions across social media (including the Twitter account of popstar Grimes). Of the criticism the app has received, Rosenfelt points to a trend disparaging it for “wastefulness.” She summarizes the complaints as: “ ‘What a wasteful thing to do! Why shouldn’t we just give money directly to bail funds?’ ” To which she responds: “Please! Oh my god, yes!”

Rosenfelt’s delight reveals Bail Bloc’s true purpose. In developing the software, The New Inquiry’s goal isn’t necessarily to have users passively assist the poor. The hope is that, the sooner users realize that they can do more than just run Bail Bloc in the background, the sooner they can start making moves to abolish bail, period. In other words, it’s only once Bail Bloc is made obsolete that its job will truly be done.

Linked article written by Arvind Dilawar and published January 23, 2018.