OTOH I don't hate everyone who's committed a crime, and I don't think the purpose of our system should be "punish the wicked" or exact retribution or anything, either. If we think a person can be returned to life on the outside without undue risk to the public, I'm all for that. but if OTOH we can identify that someone is likely to recidivize(?), then maybe it's best for everyone if they stay locked up. Meanwhile, I don't think we can look at the penal system in isolation to determine that - see e.g. comments elsewhere on this page about the quality and capability of the society at large to provide an environment that lessens the likelihood of recidivism.

You seem to be assuming that the difference between Nordic countries and the US is only about the penal system itself, as opposed to e.g. more social democracy i.e. a stronger social safety net for people once they are back out in society, which might them less likely to resort back to crime?

"In other words, they haven't fixed the problem of recidivism, they've just kept people in jail longer."

If they're keeping the habitual criminals in prison, and it means fewer crimes committed against decent law-abiding folk, then what's the problem? Isn't the purpose of our laws and penal system to protect the innocent?

Case in point: Long Island NY residents and activists got the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant shut down before it ever even went fully on line. Now there are wind turbines, solar panels, and battery storage located there, as well as a connection point for imported power from New England.

I was simply making a factual correction to my prior post. If you wanna yell at someone, at least yell at the right person, mmm-kay?

But that's 3 out of ~300 raw-score points. Is that such a big deal?

Actually, though, I just checked - Google says the median net worth is $192K, and that the average is just over a million. Go figure. But you see the difference between median and average (assuming these numbers are at all accurate)...

"Average" net worth is polluted by trillionaires that bring up the average. You want the median net worth, and I'll bet it's a lot lower than $200K.

And if he sold all of it right now, it wouldn't fetch even a quarter of its market value.

OMGZ you mean it would be worth only 250 billion dollars !??!! Yeah that would really suck for him...

IP68 means immersion to at least 1 meter of water.

Trial-and-error is not "mindless", OK, but it's also not as "mindful" as reasoning out a solution in advance, by first learning and understanding the rules governing a scenario. It's a lower level of consciousness.

...that the Turnip Administration claimed to be about small gubmint and persunnal freedumz. Go figure.

Make it just a little bigger, for one point twenty-one jigawatts!!...?

...a brain has very low-power neurons, but it has something like 100 billion of them. And that's just onebrain.

Hey, if you want green, then you go paint the damn thing.