Enough people show up. They avoid having to spend money figuring out if you really got the summons or if the address in the database is old. Also long as enough people show up, they probably give the benefit of the doubt to no shows.

Decades ago when our system was similar, I mentioned that friend's wedding on the paperwork. While the clerks ignored it, it was a statement with no supporting paperwork, the judge did not. And the judge dismissed me from service for the year, I had several days left to the current service. I recall the judge similarly dismissing people with care for others issues.

Again, decades ago. Today, with phone ins we only have to literally show up for one day. And the waiting room has been upgraded with lots of powered cubicles. So many are doing their work remotely.

Kind of, in the context of how much whale oil can we get from one humpback.

I doubt Europeans are any better, except in those European countries that sill hunt whales.

Outside of commercial whaling communities, its probably just Trekkies (ST IV) and marine biologists, USA or EU.

Word analogies don't work when you don't know what is referred to. OK, cantalope sized might be OK, but being a humpback whale weight? That latter is not really an improvement over "it weight a lot".

Doubtful, it'll go to international conglomerates who put an AI data center in Canada.

Today, it'll probably never get that far. "Environmentalist" lawsuits will probably halt construction, some "protected habitat/species" will be "harmed". Solar and wind projects are increasingly getting stalled by such things. This project will likely face many lawsuits, being a transmission line rather than an oil pipeline won't prevent this.

It's called jury nullification. And it is intentionally part of the system, a check and balance the standing judiciary would never admit to. Yet, the founding fathers considered jury duty the check against an unjust law in extreme cases. Also a way to bring some common sense into the system, rather than blindly following the letter of the law, the literal statute failing to consider something unanticipated.

Locally, jurors no longer wait in rooms to be called. They call in early in the morning to see if they are assigned to a pool. Most never even get assigned to a pool so they do nothing other than make one call early in the morning for a week.

If assigned to a pool for the day and not selected for a trial, they are done with jury duty.

90%+ trials are one or two days. Most serving jurors are paid by their employers during jury duty. Longer trials tend to have retirees on a pension, government employees who continue receiving their salary. Whether one is paid by their employer, and for how many days, is something taken into consideration at juror selection. Jurors are often dismissed from duty by claiming hardship.

I've only been called for jury duty three times in the last 30 years. Once I was on a three day trial. Employer paid for up to 5 days. The other two times I called in, one day I was selected for a jury pool, called in to my employer, showed up at the pool, did not get selected, was told I had completed my jury service.

On that second jury duty service. I was almost selected for a trial that was scheduled to last three days. During questioning I told the judge, truthfully, I was to attend a friend's wedding 5 days after the start of the trial. The judge said that is too close, the trial may run long, and he dismissed me.

The court system accepts as much dickery as juries allow. Letting the more intelligent people avoid jury duty, a culture of not understanding how important serving on juries is, contributes to such dickery.

Actually jury duty was largely unpaid before and after the US Constitution. It was, and is, consider a civic duty that citizens are responsible for. In those early days of the country it was considered a privilege, they knew quite well what a judicial system without juries was like, and understood very well that a system where regular people decide guilt was an important safeguard. A check and balance against the judicial branch of government if you will. No one should be paid less than minimum wage for serving on a jury. It's one thing to be told you have to do it, it's another to be told that you have to do it for free. That's just a limited-time form of slavery, to which practically every institution in this nation boils down in the end.

No. There is a much bigger difference. Americans are far more dependent upon cars. We are so much farther behind regarding public transportation, this factors in here.

That's actually a good one. :-)

It's even better than that. Many were taught by their fathers and grandfathers who were masters. Some of those "churches" were multigenerational affairs. Our modern unions with masters and journeymen kind of pales in comparison. And then there are the folks who probably built your modern house or apartment.

Pfft ... machine cut brick. It'll be 3D printed.

I get that, but have you ever cracked open an old textbook or similar reference to look up a sample implementation? Today's that's where AI capabilities are, when dealing with well known professionally pear reviewed and discussed samples. That the training materials we want AIs to see. Basically the stuff found in the last 40 years of data structures and algorithms textbooks, and standard library documentation.

Yes, don't trust code you can't understand. Especially vibe code kludge on top of vibe coded kludge. But when AI is used properly it can produce understandable code. Recently I needed a debouncing function. I asked the coding assistant for one for a particular data structure. It did a fine job with that 20 line function. Of course I reviewed every line. The short story, we are still learning how to use AI coding assistants, and where to use them. It will be an error filled process without doing so without a lot of care.