Felagund
1hr ago
I'd really appreciate it if you could teach all of us the basics of what we should know of Israeli politics. I'm sure we'd still be hideously underinformed, but slightly less so.
Felagund
11hr ago
Well, they come out Thursdays, most of the time. Do you really want to wait two days?
Felagund
22hr ago
I read a book once where the start of each chapter listed the contents of every paragraph. It was fantastic.
Felagund
1d ago
While I generally agree with your comment, I think in my own case, 2x speed is usually closer to reading than speedreading, in that I'm still able to follow pretty closely, not merely get it because it's low in information density. It doesn't feel like I'm forcing my brain to comprehend faster, it just feels like I'm causing them to get through what they're saying at a less ponderous speed. Of course, they vary in how information-dense they are, so I will slow down depending on the video.
Felagund
1d ago
2x speed when possible (and I'd probably experiment with a little, but not too much, higher if offered). If they speak too quickly for me to keep up, I'll drop a little to 1.75 or 1.5, or more if needed. I'll drop temporarily and rewatch a portion if something was hard to catch.
But video content feels inefficient, so I try to prefer text, or watching quickly.
People watching videos (at least, ones primarily meant to inform) at 1x speed is kind of crazy to me. How do you sit through that? Why not watch twice as much in that time? At least, for me, 1x speed is, unless there's a very quick speaker, quite a bit slower than what's needed for me to understand—it's at the pace of them speaking, and usually it's faster to understand a sentence than to come up with one. Perhaps that would change if I watched videos on harder to understand topics, like advanced math or something.
I should probably make more use of youtubetranscript.com.
Felagund
1d ago
I crave insights. What should I know, or how should I look at things, to have the same effect?
Felagund
1d ago
Sure, many would agree. But I've seen this as a way that people have claimed the election was stolen without having to endorse the stronger claims, so I wanted to be sure I included it.
Felagund
1d ago
What about it being a loan from Cohen, instead of a donation? Does that work?
Felagund
1d ago
Quite possibly. What, do you expect him to want the supreme court to rule that the president of the united states is stuck in jail?
Felagund
1d ago
The jury isn't exactly normal. There's a banker, two attorneys, and a software engineer.
Felagund
1d ago
I'll second at least the sentiment that RINO is almost always wrong as an appelative. (And am sympathetic to much of the rest.)
Felagund
1d ago
What exactly does stolen mean?
Suppose
- Actors work to give one candidate an unfair disadvantage in voter perception, but votes are voted and tallied fairly. (E.g. the suppression of Hunter Biden laptop story)
- People change rules to give a favored candidate an advantage (E.g. Pennsylvania Supreme Court broadening early voting standards)
- A few people submit votes illegally, or in an illegal manner.
- Same as 2, but at scale, as a deliberate campaign
- Deliberate tabulation errors, at small scale
- Deliberate tabulation errors, by major actors or at scale
- Candidates being ruled ineligible
- Unfaithful electors costing a presidency
- Setting up other slates of electors to substitute for the duly elected ones
Which of these are or are not theft of an election?
My own perception is that Team Biden's done 1, 2, 3, and tried 7 and 8. Team Trump's done 3 (presumably, somewhere) and tried 9. 4 or 6 is what people often hear by "stolen election", but I haven't seen evidence for it.
But whether any election's stolen depends on which of those (and there are probably more debateable types of maybe election theft) exactly is a stolen election.
Felagund
1d ago
Thanks! I could tell that Jackson's was a meaningful dispute, but I just wanted to be done, and so didn't work it out exactly.
Felagund
2d ago
Today's SCOTUS opinions
I'd like to post a little about these as they come out over the next few weeks. One of you said you like themotte's legal takes not too long ago, so I'll give my utterly uninformed ones. If there are new opinions out, and I haven't made a thread, by all means, make one.
Cantero v. Bank of America, N.A.
Written by Kavanaugh, 9-0.
This case is rather obscure. It deals with the question of a law in New York, regulating banks. There are two types of banks, national and state banks. The question is whether the statutes applying to federal banks preempt those applying to state banks. Everyone agrees that they sometimes do. In this case, the court argues that the Second Circuit should have applied a different standard than they did (they should have applied "nuanced comparative analysis" instead of a "categorical test," following the wrong set of precedents), but does not give any opinion on how that should be decided in this case, just that it should be looked at again by the lower court with a different standard.
I know, I know, exciting start.
Thornell v. Jones
6-3. Alito writes for the majority, which the conservatives join. Sotomayor and Jackson each write dissents, of which Kagan joins the former.
In 1992, Jones committed two horrific murders: he beat his acquaintance Robert Weaver, Weaver's grandmother, and Weaver's seven-year-old daughter to death in order to take Weaver's $2000 gun collection.
Under Arizona law, this was weighed, with the aggravating factors (committing multiple murders in the offence, motivated by money, heinousness, and a young child), and the mitigating factors (Jones had underwent child abuse, began abusing drugs young, suffered brain damage, and received psychiatric treatments as a child), and sentenced Jones to death.
Jones then filed a habeas petition with the 9th circuit, which they grant. Under Strickland v. Washington, he must show that he had insufficient counsel, prejudicing the case against him, and that this would make it reasonable (that is, a substantial probability) that this would have changed the sentencing.
Alito argues that the 9th circuit was wrong for 3 reasons:
- It failed adequately to take into account the aggravating circumstances (in their initial opinion, altogether, and in their later opinion, without the weight that would be given by the Arizona judge)
- They apply a rule that courts may not assess strength of witness testimony
- They held that the Arizona court erred in attaching diminished weight to Jones' mental health conditions because they weren't connected to his actions in the murders.
(some of those sentences closely follow Alito's wording, don't come after me)
Alito then provides his own analysis of the case, considering the new evidence, and that it would be unlikely to cause any revisions (applying Strickland) to the Arizona courts judgments, because it's not really claiming all that much more, and is in the same categories, and so reverses and remands the case.
Sotomayor and Kagan agree that they should have considered aggravating factors, but did not think that Alito should have judged the merits of the specifics of the case (what I talked about in the preceding paragraph).
Jackson thought that the Ninth circuit acted sufficiently in their methodology, and just because they decided wrongly (per Alito) doesn't mean that they were procedurally wrong. Also, she disputes 1 and 2 above.
Legally, I don't have a clear enough view of what SCOTUS is willing to cover to judge whether the dissents are right.
My own (not legal) takeaways: What the heck are we doing as a country that we can't manage to carry out a death sentence 30 years after he was sentenced? Second, activist courts are really a problem. The liberal justices would all yield to those courts, as they misapply standards. If Jackson's right, their process suffices, even if they're entirely dishonest in their evaluation of the evidence. Third, I'm not a fan of a bunch of these mitigating factors. Being abused as a child shouldn't really be an argument against being put to death for murder.
NRA v. Vullo
Sotomayor (!) writes for a unanimous court. Gorsuch and Jackson each file concurrences.
Vullo, in her capacity of Superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services had pressured insurers to drop the NRA, saying that she'd found errors, but they wouldn't be prosecuted for them if they did so. Further, there were letters to businesses saying they should drop the NRA to minimise risk.
The court holds that this is illegal coercion, and violates the first amendment, by punishing the NRA for speech through government action. The indirectness of it does not change that.
Gorsuch writes to clarify that this means that some standard tests aren't always right.
Jackson thinks there is more to be said about whether there's a first amendment claim (so, I think, disagreeing with the majority), but agrees overall.
Felagund
2d ago
I saw it recommended that Biden pardon Trump. I don't actually think that will happen or is in his interest, but it would be quite something.
Also, this'll be interesting in debates.
Felagund
2d ago
therefore stable prices are best.
That does not follow. One group wants lower prices, another wants higher prices is always true (there's always a buyer and a seller), but you want, as a country, the cost of things to be going down and productivity to be going up.
Felagund
2d ago
When governments burn the future to save the past they do it with housing
Unfortunately, not only housing, but yes.
It turns out people want house prices high (maintain property values) and low (affordable housing). It is rather difficult to deliver on both of these at once.
Felagund
2d ago
Also, it looks better for any resources that do not easily grow with more people, if you are measuring per capita.
Felagund
3d ago
Casey Handmer writes some on why he doesn't think this is feasible here.
TL;DR: Transport's costly enough that there aren't many things that would be profitable. But for these, the market demand would quickly be saturated, meaning the price would go way down, so there wouldn't be the enormous revenues.
Felagund
3d ago
Auto-driving seems believable to me, though I imagine regulation's a fairly dangerous threat to any company attempting to do so.
This is excellent, thank you.
I'll second what @Primaprimaprima said, about this not being a very good marker of a political divide.
But I'll definitely have to think more about that overall.
I'd argue, though, that men die because of the fall, rather than it being deeply natural.
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