plea bargaining

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on how prosecutors wield power in the US criminal justice system and how it can be abused. It touches on elected district attorneys, plea pressure and the lack of electoral competition.

An Onion News Network sketch in which two teenage girls appear on TV to plead for their kidnapped friend's release, then start gossiping about classmates. It is a satirical parody of teen behavior and sensational news.

A KQED Truly CA documentary narrated by John Waters about the Salton Sea, a once-glamorous California vacation spot now home to an eccentric community. It covers the area's economic, political and environmental problems and features Salvation Mountain.

Ron Pressler's Curry On 2015 talk arguing that imperative languages should not be polluted with pure functional concepts like monads. He favors simple blocking code over non-blocking styles.

A short animated explainer that stages a $100 footrace in which contestants start at different distances from the line, depending on the advantages or disadvantages they inherited. It uses the race as a metaphor for how unequal starting points shape outcomes, citing US census income and poverty figures.

Matt Gray and Tom Scott review how viewers worked out where they watched the 2017 solar eclipse from, based on clues in their video. They go through the methods people used and how accurate the guesses were.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on police interrogation tactics and how they can lead innocent people to give false confessions.

A clip from The Wire (season 4, episode 7) in which a former mayor tells Tommy Carcetti about having to "eat shit" from each constituency during his term. It is a parable about the unpleasant compromises of political leadership.

Not Just Bikes argues that the Netherlands, famed for cycling, is also the best country for drivers. It explains how prioritizing walking, cycling and transit makes driving faster and more pleasant.

Scott Meyers' keynote at DConf 2014, drawing on 25 years of C++ experience to offer the D language community a plea about what it should avoid. It centers on the accumulated complexity and pitfalls of C++ as a cautionary tale.

A one-minute clip of a crow repeatedly sliding down a snowy roof on a small lid, apparently just for fun.

Computerphile interviews AI safety researcher Rob Miles about ChatGPT: how it was trained with human feedback, why it tends to produce confident nonsense, and where it may or may not be dangerous.

A short excerpt from a BBC interview in which Richard Feynman explains why he dislikes honors and prizes, including his own Nobel, saying the real reward is the pleasure of finding things out.

John Conway talks in a short Numberphile interview about his mixed feelings toward the Game of Life, his most famous invention. He says he is not especially pleased that it overshadowed his other work.

The Explosions&Fire channel taste-tests the chloride salts of the alkali metals (lithium through cesium), plus some alkaline earth metals and ammonium. The presenter describes the flavors, and the results are more pleasant than expected.

Tom Scott explains YouTube's 11-character video IDs, which are base-64 encoded 64-bit numbers, and whether YouTube could ever run out of them. It covers counting systems and base 64 briefly.

A five-minute clip in which Erich Fromm asks whether the purpose of work is just making money. He argues that white-collar workers end up selling their personality, relating to others the way goods relate to each other on a market, and he points to creative pleasure, participation and usefulness to society as what work could offer instead.

Not Just Bikes explains Dutch bicycle-only roads, which let people travel long distances in and out of cities with almost no car interaction. It shows how this changes cycling from a chore into something enjoyable.

A short episode highlight from NBC's The Good Place in which Eleanor and Chidi try to terminate Janet, the all-knowing assistant, who begs for her life. It is a comedic clip about an AI with a self-preservation reflex.