Fact(mostly), Fiction and Opinion

Thanks to WordPress support, I finally figured out how to post my last novel here on this site. Warning: The novel’s content rating of “mature” is well earned. There are several explicit depictions, and most of the content revolves around sex work and human trafficking. The link is https://karlfandkin.com/frontal-lobe-override/ .

If you like the novel, please purchase a copy on Amazon.com. Other than here, it is only available on Kindle.

“So,” you may ask, “why are you giving away your novel here and selling it on amazon?”

Formatting!

Kindle’s book format adds a bar at the bottom of tables. I used tables to format transcript like dialog. Transcripts are interspersed with narration and dialog making the bars too distracting. I tried using containers to achieve the same effect, but they were not supported either. In the end, I had to use outdents. Outdents looked fine in Libre Office Writer, but they do not scale well in either Chrome or Kindle.

There may still be some formatting problems. Feel free to point them out. It feels good to finally have the novel where it formats well. I’ll get back to actual blog entries soon.

Observation: I’ve been following Trump’s New York civil fraud trial mostly through CNN articles. The plaintiff’s finished their case a couple of days ago. The defense will start soon. Nothing much happened today.

A few things stood out for me. Trump consistently calls the trial a political witch hunt. He challenges the Judge Engoron and at least one of the judges staff with partisan actions. He has been fined twice for violating gag orders. On the stand, the former president was cautioned several time for giving lengthy, meandering answers to “yes” or “no” questions. CNN characterized much of his testimony as political theater.

Several CNN analysts thought that Trump’s performance was good campaigning but poor legal defense.

Analysis: Google “Trump bullying” and pages and pages pop up. The issue was first brought to my attention by a friend at the gym during the 2016 primaries. He said that people who went to school with Donald Trump remembered him as a bully. I have not confirmed the accounts but a PBS report discusses some of it (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/trump-the-bully-how-childhood-military-school-shaped-the-future-president/). There are many more articles from several sources that school children, inspired by Trump’s behavior, are bullying their classmates, a problem more prevalent where Trump support is high.

For me, that Trump bullies and intimidates people seems apparent, but I’m more concerned on seeing its impact on the NY fraud case. So, let’s take the assumption for granted.

The issue is can bullying deflect loss in a high profile court case. At stake is $250M, the right to do business in New York and the Trump brand’s reputation. In theory, judges should have nothing at stake otherwise their impartiality would be impaired. By making the case about politics, Trump put the Judge Engoron’s reputation and legal career at stake. The game was on. In poker terms, Trump made an outsized bet, over reason, but not quite all in, and the judge folded.

Our legal system gives judges a great tool to maintain its impartiality, contempt of court. Trump started his campaign before trial, letting him establish his position and placing Judge Engoron’s career at risk. He, the judge, tried a gag order. Trump violated the gag order, but incurred a meaningless fine, $5000 or a chip. Trump violated the gag order again and was fined two chips.

Opinion:

Were I the judge, I would have played it differently.

1. Before the first motion, acknowledge that Trump is a political figure in the midst of a political campaign.
2. Warn that this is a duly brought legal case. In order to maintain impartiality, the court will place any party (plaintiff, defendant, plaintiff’s attorneys, defense attorneys or witnesses) in contempt of court and place them in jail until the party public apologizes and declare the court is politically impartial.
3. Any second attempt to paint the court as a political instrument by a party will land the party in jail for the duration of the trial isolated from contact with anyone other than their legal team.
4. In addition, the judge will sue that party for defamation for a sum no less than a billion dollars. The party will have to prove the judge’s political bias in a court of law. The good news for the contemptuous and defamatory party is that once the judge files suit, he must declare a mistrial. Another judge will try this case.

Sometimes, it’s best to walk away from a table, and a billion dollar case might make the walk a little easier. Taking this course assures victory in the defamation suit. By defending their impartiality at the expense of losing a high profile case, judges prove their impartiality, though it’s doubtful they would get a billion in damages.

Back to the Analysis:

The judge is now on his back foot and in a defensive position. Trump will continue to push, forcing concession after concession unless the judge overreacts, at which point, Trump wins.

Yes, strangely enough, taking a maximum position at first usually wins. After that, it is a struggle. Of course I’m thinking about poker, which I know better that law. I am not now, nor have I ever been a lawyer or attended law school. I do play a lot of online poker tournaments. In this case, I think the strategies are related.

In just about every online poker tournament I’ve played, one or more players go all-in pre-flop on the first hand. We call them the “crazies” At smart tables, the other players let them steal the blinds. It gives them a small advantage, but even crazies can get lucky.

If a player continues to bet large, other players mark him (“he” general case) for a trap. The problem is that he already has more chips than the rest of us. In a recent tournament, a crazy went all-in on the first hand. I trapped him on the second hand, but he still had fifteen chips from the previous hands blinds. He then went on a lucky streak tripling and quadrupling up on five consecutive hands. His stack was again larger than mine. I trapped him again, taking him down to a small stack. He lucked out a couple more times and survived ten or twenty more hands before another player took him out. Despite his lucky streak, skilled players still marked him for a trap.

The crazy poker strategy is similar to social bulling strategies. I’ll stick to the one I’m more familiar with. In poker, large bets put pressure on other players. In casinos you play with real money and you feel losses. Online, you can win some real cash. I have won a few $100 tournaments ($100 is the total pot, winner only gets $25, but it still feels good) against 700-1000 other players. The pressure is similar. The theory is that under pressure, players make poor decisions. Faced with the likelihood of making a bad decision, players fold. If all other players fold, the crazy does not have to reveal their hand, so other players do not know if the large bet was justified. Good players go into information gathering mode. They note the crazies betting patterns. If he returns to normal betting, they unmark him, otherwise, they wait for a decent hand, one they would not usually risk their tournament on, and call the crazy’s bet.

Even the crazies get lucky. There is always a risk. The higher the stakes, the more likely good players, even the best players, will fold winning hands. That’s how crazies win. That’s how bullies win. It explains Trump’s behavior in court this week.

Back to poker. Good players rarely risk their entire stack. Even if the board (five cards all players share: a combination of the flop. First three, turn, next, and river, last) leaves no doubt they have the winning hand. The goal in poker is to take other player’s chips. Smart players play it smart, set limits, try to read the other players, gather information and time their own overvalued bets to put undue pressure on players.

Trump overvalues his hands. Judge Engoron already ruled on the facts. Trump went all in to get (or in this case, save) chips. Some people really are that lucky. A one term president appointing three Supreme Court Justices. Lucky even if you believe one of those was stolen from President Barrack Obama.

Prediction:

Judge Engoron seems smart, so it’s likely he’ll play it smart. Smart ain’t everything. He’ll impose a large settlement of $100M, admonish Trump that disclaimers do not cover deliberate lies and declare justice has been served. In other words, Trump wins.

Trump is involved in three other major cases. I doubt the other judges will view their cases as anything other than legal trials. Trump will likely repeat twisting the legal system. I hope the other judges view their cases more like poker. The should remove the possibility that bullying tactics will weaken their ability to keep the case about law.

Side note:

The word Bully has changed over time. The earliest meaning in English was “sweetheart.” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bully). The meaning later changed to something akin to “a good chap” or “a fine chap,” and later to “fine” as in “I feel fine.” From there, bully went on to mean drunk (think of an intoxicated person’s response to the bartender’s inquiry. “I’m fine.”)

The last meaning is used in the sea shanty Bully in The Alley where bully means drunk, feeling fine and left the alley. It’s the association with drunkenness that leads to the modern usage. Drunks oft become belligerent, and there we go. Bully now refers to someone who, convincingly, threatens violence to get their way.

Opinion:

Were this fiction, I’d start somewhere in the middle, but, as this is an opinion piece, I’ll start more akin to the beginning.

I am a bit of a cliché. I am one of those people who sit at Starbucks absorbed in their computers. Most of the time, I play internet backgammon. I need the distraction, and unlikely, unbelievable and unfair opponent dice rolls both help me focus my thoughts (anger, emotions, sense of justice, oh, damn whatever!) and motivate me back to writing.

I finished editing my friend’s screenplay last night. His raging rebuttals to my notes should arrive late this week. He’s pretty fast. Perhaps this weekend, perhaps next, we’ll sit down over lunch and go through my most egregious notes about some of the weaker parts of the script and start refining the movie. Such is the process of editing.

This left me time to solve another problem. I want to put the text of my last novel online here on my site so that it can be read as intended. I tried a lot of text formatting to represent transcripts (depositions and TV Shows). Out of habit, I used html tables to line things up. Unfortunately, Kindles azw format adds a table control bar at the bottom of each table. Since I used tables interspersed with narrative text and dialog, this didn’t work. It looked horrible. I tried other html ways to line up the transcripts only to find out Kindle didn’t support them. The book looks good in epub, awful in Kindle. So, for the dozens of people interested in the book, I’d like to put it up in the html that formats nicely.

I thought South Pasadena would be a good place to work this out. Here’s where the universe comes into play.

Oh, one more thing. I am experimenting with, for lack of better terminology, the I-Ching lifestyle. The basic concept is to make decisions based on uncontrolled events. So far, those events are, primarily, bus arrivals. There many bus stops served by multiple bus routes. Each one will take you to different destinations. Assign which destination you would go based on the bus. Go with the flow, and hop on the first bus to arrive. Even with scheduled buses, the actual arrival time can vary a few minutes either way, so actual arrival times, while not random, are sufficiently unpredictable to represent the universes ebb and flow. In theory, flowing with the universe is better than fighting against it.

To get to South Pas this morning, the corner of Fremont and Commonwealth offers two possibilities. Line 258 which would take me to Fair Oaks and Rollin where I could indulge in one of my favorite breakfasts at Hi-Life burgers and from there a twenty minute walk to The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf where I would investigate how to get my novel onto this Word Press site. Alternately, at the corner of Fremont and Commonwealth, either of the ACT lines take me to Atlantic from where Line 260 takes me to Starbucks on Fair Oaks and Mound. I would grab breakfast there and set up cyber camp.

I actually timed things for Line 258, but somehow, the bus crossed in front of me while waiting to cross Fremont. Okay, I thought, plan B. I crossed Commonwealth. Little did I know that the bus, to get back on schedule would wait at the bus stop for minutes. It took me awhile and a traffic light cycle to realize this. By the time I approached the bus, a mere fifty feet in front of me, it took off. Oh well, back to plan B. It’s just the universe guiding me.

Not long after setting up at Starbucks, a jackhammer’s noise interrupted concentration. Oh well, another of the universe’s messages. Stop writing and read some until the jackhammer is done. I had to use the restroom, so I figured I’d switch tasks when I returned. No. Didn’t think things through. The jackhammer was there for good reason, to gain access to external pipes. The restrooms were “Out of Order.”

Okay, another redirection. Go with the flow. The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf usually has open tables. What’s another Chai Latte? Five bucks? No. Didn’t think things through. All the tables were occupied. Of course. Starbucks patrons escaping jackhammer interruptions and needing to use the restroom, also occupied.

Analysis: So what went wrong. I went with the flow. My college degrees are in Philosophy and Film.

Philosophy is of no help. No amount of inductive or deductive reasoning would have anything to do with interpreting the universe’s intent mostly because there is no rational reason to assume the universe has an intent. The problem might lie in my intent. By choosing to go to South Pas I might have been choosing to swim against natural currents. There were many other options, destinations and activities. I could have chosen to celebrate finishing a task and taken in a movie. So much for philosophy.

In film terms, this story can be seen as comedy or drama. As a drama, my headstrong decision to go to South Pas was a fatal flaw. No, that’s wrong. Nothing fatal about it. Such picayune consequences indicate a comedy where a comic figure keeps making small mistakes which seem, temporarily, important but add up to almost nothing. It makes me wonder. If a car hit me while trying to catch up with the 258 bus, would that elevate the story to a drama? Can I ever be considered a hero, or just a fool who should have waited on the traffic light? It doesn’t feel like a comedy, but I doubt it would rise to drama. It seems a film degree is little help as well. So much for a college education.

All the same, I think the universe seemed to be against me today. It doesn’t exist to make my life happier. I should learn to read its currents, ebbs and flows and make better decisions. As I said, I am still learning. I am experimenting with the I-Ching lifestyle. Not every experiment needs to be a success.

Damn, this is going to be a boring post. My fault for starting a blog after dinner. It’s too late too come up with something interesting.

I’m too old for this. I retired last June. I finished the first draft of my last novel last October. It is off to the editor now. I planned to start a blog then, but my friend wanted me to edit his latest screenplay. I finished that ten minutes ago. I’d like to say that’s why I decided to blog tonight, but no.

I decided to start a blog back in March when ex-President Trump announced his 2024 run. I wanted to write about it. The title would have been, “A Run for President Should Not be a Run from Justice.” Perhaps the time has past for that post. All the same, it would be weird if one of the first things a newly elected POTUS does is pardon himself from a jail cell. We live in historic times.

To the introduction part. I am an amateur author. I write under the pseudonym Karl Fandkin, NMRN, and I’d like to preserve some of my anonymity. No great reveals in this introduction. I confess to being a retiree, an Angelino and an unpublished author.

Now that I’m no longer grabbing at literature’s brass ring of publishing novels, I’d like to write my opinions, observations (facts) and stories I may come up with (fiction). I’ll try to label each appropriately.

In the future, I plan to get some assistance from AI. I hear RITR is good. Everything posted, however, will be reviewed and fact checked by me. No blaming AI. I will, of course, blame my pseudonym. That’s part of what they are there for.

This is my first, and, hopefully, most boring post. I am trying to see how things work here at WordPress. I do apologize if you read all the way here.