Esperanza
9mo ago
The Treaty says that local authorities cannot construct things that are banned by article 3 of the Treaty of 1884, but that says that you can't make jetties, piers, or constructions that deflect the current. Buoys are not covered by this in the plain reading. Is there another clause that you were referring to?
Article VII of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) forbids some things on "The river Gila and the part of the Rio Bravo del Norte lying below the southern boundary of New Mexico." This might cover it.
the navigation of the Gila and the Bravo below said boundary shall be free and common to the vessels and citizens of both countries; and neither shall, without the consent of the other, construct any work that may impede or interrupt, in whole or in part, the exercise of this right; not even for the purpose of favoring new methods of navigation.
I think the question here is what a "work" means? Normally floating buoys would not count but I think an argument could be made that convinced me that this was impeding vessels.
I think you are on a loser here. The prize announcement for the 2006 winner says:
The new laureate began his career in the 1950s and was part of what was then considered the avant-garde in São Paulo, known loosely as creators of the Paulist brutalist architecture—practicioners whose work, often using simple materials and forms, emphasized an ethical dimension of architecture. He is widely considered the most outstanding architect of Brazil.
Exposed raw concrete is the essential element of brutalism:
Among his most widely known built works is the Brazilian Sculpture Museum, a non-traditional concept of a museum, nestled partly underground in a garden in São Paulo. He made bold use of a giant concrete beam on the exterior that traverses the site. His Forma Furniture Showroom in the same city is considered an icon of his approach to architecture.
How many winners need to be officially considered brutalist for you to be wrong?
The 2019 winner was Arata Isozaki.
Notable early works include the Ōita Prefectural Library (1966), Expo '70 Festival Plaza in Osaka (1970), Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, and Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art in Fukuoka (both 1974). Several of his works from this era are considered definitive examples of Japanese brutalism.
These works were cited in the Pritzker prize announcement.
Esperanza
9mo ago
Perhaps I could have phrased this a little better. The point is that people who earn $2M a year are by no means "the elite." By the time you are in the 0.01% you are probably at least on first-name terms with a lot of actually elite people.
The modal person with an income of $2M probably owns some car dealerships. This might make him a big shot in his town, but it does not make him elite.
Esperanza
9mo ago
Let's say the ultra-elite in the US is something like 10,000 families. That's accounting for the roughly 700 billionaires, a larger number of 9-digit millionaires, some political elites, some cultural elites, and a few odds and ends. If 1/4 of those have a kid in college at any given time, that's say roughly 2500 ultra-elite students in college at any moment.
3% of Harvard are from the 0.1 percentile. That is 50 kids per grade. The threshold to get into the top 0.1% by income is supposedly $1.6M. These people are not rich or elite in a meaningful way. The top 0.01% have a threshold income of $7.5M, and these are comfortably well off. There are about 16k of these families. One thing worth remembering is that almost all very rich people are very, very old, so their grandkids are the ones going to college, not their kids. If there are 50 kids from the 0.1% then there are perhaps 5 to 10 from the 0.01 percentile, the people you would consider elite.
From personal experience, there are about that many actually rich American kids at these colleges, and perhaps the same number, or more, of rich foreign kids.
Esperanza
9mo ago
Nationalism is a very specific concept: It is that every "nation" has a right to its own state.
This seems to be older than 150 years to me. "A Nation Once Again", the Irish song, is 170 years old. Parnell's "No man has a right to fix the boundary of the march of a nation; no man has a right to say to his country—thus far shalt thou go and no further." refers to Ireland losing its parliament in 1800. Was O'Connell a nationalist when he said "“No person knows better than you do that the domination of England is the sole and blighting curse of this country. It is the incubus that sits on our energies, stops the pulsation of the nation's heart and leaves to Ireland, not gay vitality but horrid the convulsions of a troubled dream.”
After the war of independence in 1921, Ireland demanded "a self-governing Ireland with restitution of confiscated lands and churches, freedom of movement, and a strong Roman Catholic identity" exactly the same terms that O'Neill had asked for in November 1599. Few doubt that De Valera was a Nationalist. Why wasn't O'Neill one, given that he asked for identical terms?
Wikipedia writes:
Generally, Irish nationalism is regarded as having emerged following the Renaissance revival of the concept of the patria and the religious struggle between the ideology of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation.
This seems late to me, and 1169 is a more natural date, if not 1014, or earlier.
In the Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib (The War of the Irish with the Foreigners), which described the Battle of Clontarf the Irish were described as: brave, valiant champions; soldierly, active, nimble, bold, full of courage, quick, doing great deeds, pompous, beautiful, aggressive, hot, strong, swelling, bright, fresh, never weary, terrible, valiant, victorious heroes and chieftains, and champions, and brave soldiers, the men of high deeds, and honour, and renown of Erinn.
The foreigners as: the shouting, hateful, powerful, wrestling, valiant, active, fierce-moving, dangerous, nimble, violent, furious, unscrupulous, untamable, inexorable, unsteady, cruel, barbarous, frightful, sharp, ready, huge, prepared, cunning, warlike, poisonous, murderous, hostile Danars; bold, hard-hearted Danmarkians, surly, piratical foreigners, blue-green, pagan; without reverence, without veneration, without honour, without mercy, for God or for man.
Little has changed, and the foreigners still have blue-green hair.
Esperanza
9mo ago
Pickering involved a letter written to a newspaper, not intramural speech. De Santis should only fire the university employees that argued for DEI programs in internal venues, not those that used the press.
Esperanza
9mo ago
See this law review article for a discussion of terrible decisions arising out of Garcetti.
Why are all those complaints not protected by the laws that protect you from retaliation when you complain about working conditions? The asbestos and scabies seem to fall under this.
California has: Labor Code section 6310 prohibits an employer from retaliating against an employee who complains about safety or health conditions or practices at the workplace, institutes or testifies in any proceedings relating to the employee’s rights to safe and healthful working conditions, exercises any rights under the federal or California law relating to occupational health and safety, or participates in an occupational health and safety committee established under Section 6401.7.
OSHA, which seems federal, has whistleblower protection that should cover some other claims.
It seems whistleblowing is only protected when you complain to the right person. That seems stupid to me.
Esperanza
9mo ago
There had never been nationalist uprisings against foreign rule before the 19th century?
Ireland fought for freedom for 800 years, but according to this claim, only the last 150 were for nationalist reasons. I don't understand that claim at all. The big nations, like Italy and Germany were only created in the 19th century, but prior to that there were smaller nations, like Ulster or Saxony. Ancient Greece saw itself as a nation in comparison to the barbarians and came together to fight the Persians. Presumably there is a reason that people want to claim nationalism is a new idea, but it does seem to go back as far as 1066 and all that, if not further.
Esperanza
9mo ago
If post-op trans women prefer sex as a woman rather than a man, then I would consider this strong evidence that the woman's role is more enjoyable.
I agree that the sexual experience is probably very different, but my sense is that it would be better for natal women than trans women.
Similarly, if post-op trans men enjoy sex more as men, then that would be evidence the other way. Here are a bunch of transmen talking about sex. They seem hornier and more comfortable, but none claim that the sex is better. In contrast, a plurality of transwomen seem to enjoy sex post-op more.
Esperanza
9mo ago
There are 60 schools in Chicago where no student is proficient in math or reading.
These are not underfunded schools. The Douglass Academy High School gets $56k a student and has none that are proficient in reading.
Esperanza
9mo ago
If you meet these kids, it is immediately obvious, in the first minute or so, whether the child has it or not. The difference between the top kids (say, the top 20% of the class at a top university) and the rest is palpable. The top 5% are different yet again, and the smartest ten kids in the grade are obvious to all the faculty who mee them, as well as all their peers.
The SAT does not work, especially know that all the heavily g loaded parts have been removed.
Esperanza
9mo ago
Also casual sex tends to be a mediocre experience for women
How do you compare the experience of the two sexes. Tiresias at least experienced both conditions and voted conclusively for being a women, though it cost him his sight. "Of ten parts a man enjoys one only."
I wonder which trans people prefer. Are there cases where transwomen feel that they have lost out in switching teams? Similarly, do trans men feel they are on to a good thing? My guess is that this effect is swamped by other issues.
Esperanza
9mo ago
IQ is gender normed, but that does not mean there are no differences between men and women on specific subtasks. I know it is illegal to have certain tests for jobs unless they are needed for the role, as otherwise, it is too easy to discriminate against women.
Esperanza
9mo ago
The last ten men probably get killed, as do the older women, and the children and young women are absorbed into the winning tribe. All tribes have neighbors which they compete with.
Esperanza
9mo ago
Do you know many Italian Americans? The ones I know are very aware that their name ends in a vowel and that they are distinct from regular Americans. I would have expected them to be more integrated, but Italian Americans are still quite distinct. German Americans barely know that they were originally German, in contrast. I think Poles fall into the same bucket as Italians, where they feel quite separate from mainstream America.
Esperanza
9mo ago
The quality of graduates from the top schools has fallen precipitously over the last 30 years. This shows in two ways. Firstly, while in college, students are less interested in the material, ask less questions, interact with their TAs and professors less, and generally are more like consumers than people engaged in discovery. The quality of exam answers increased up until about 2010, but the quality of in-person engagement decreased notably. Students who are selected for doing well on exams do well on exams, but somehow, they are less interested, and significantly less interesting. Cheating has gone from being almost unheard of, save for very marginal students who were desperate to pass, to commonplace, and now to almost universal. I have seen students speak at graduation who did not do a single problem set of their own.
Once these kids hit the workplace, they are strikingly lost. They understand how to do a set task, so long as it is phrased like a problem they would be posed in school, but beyond this, they find independent work very challenging. They tend not to be comfortable having opinions of their own. When asked to do analytical work, they tend to write in a polemical style. They will present all the information that supports a thesis, but do not understand the importance of covering the facts and evidence that points the other way.
A lot of this may be due to the practices of college admissions. Kids who get into top schools tend to have gotten straight As, perfect recs from their high school teachers, and have learned to lie about (or at the very least, wildly exaggerate) their extracurriculars. This requires diligence, always agreeing with authority, never displaying independent thought - as high school teachers hate that. Developing a passion for a subject requires time to think and space to explore. How housed kids do not get this, and thus arrive in college with no opinions that they have developed for themselves. They sit through classes where they don't interact with the professors, as they have learned that channeling their teachers is a bad idea. They write banal essays so as not to offend.
Much of modern high school is about learning to deny the obvious. English is perhaps the most obvious example of this, where literary classics, that are obviously great, and intermixed with books that any smart high schooler can see are pulp trash. Getting good grades requires pretending that Beloved, which does not have literary merit, is just as good as Shakespeare. This lying about the obvious teaches very bad analytical skills, where students learn to support pre-given conclusions, rather than follow where the evidence leads.
History is just as as bad, as AP History explicitly has themes that give the answer to each question. The historical facts are secondary to large-scale themes that the curriculum has identified. As an example, one of the themes is the West colonizing the rest of the world in a search for raw resources. The correct answer to why Cook traveled to the Pacific is thus that he was looking for resources for England, not scientific exploration, despite the transit of Venus being the stated reason for the trip.
I would call the ones I met noticeably capable, well-adjusted, balanced people when compared to the median individual: smart, knowledgeable, conscientious, well-connected, well-off, and ambitious, the sort of people who stand out in any group they're in as being the ones who get things done.
They are smarter than they average person, but they are a lot worse than they used to be.
Esperanza
9mo ago
Hercules is a fairly straightforward coming-of-age story where the hero rescues a damsel in distress, but Meg is a little sassy and more of a femme fatale than a damsel. The Swan Princess is more of a pure damsel in distress movie, and bombed in 1994, which might explain why people shied away from this genre.
Earlier than that, The Princess Bride (1987) is notable for having a dumb, beautiful protagonist who is clearly a damsel n distress, though it is not animated. Star Wars in 1977 felt the need to make Leia a strong independent woman who did not need to be rescued, so The Princess Bride was quite brave. Whoopi Goldberg was considered for the role of Buttercup, which would have been different.
My son's favorite character was Gaston, and he believes the movie is a tragedy and should end with Gaston falling from the roof. From his point of view, Gaston did nothing wrong. His crush was captured and imprisoned by a beast, so he roused the village to rescue her. Stockholm syndrome is to be expected, so we can't take Belle's word for things, as "No denying she's a funny girl that Belle."
Esperanza
10mo ago
The officer, Nolan, who relayed the wrong order at the Charge of the Light Brigade, or at the very least, was unclear, was killed in the action, so escaped a court-martial.
The order was drafted by Brigadier Richard Airey and carried by Captain Louis Nolan. Nolan carried the further oral instruction that the cavalry was to attack immediately.[2] When Lucan asked what guns were referred to, Nolan is said to have indicated, with a wide sweep of his arm, the mass of Russian guns in a redoubt at the end of the valley, around a mile away.[3] His reasons for the misdirection are unknown because he was killed in the ensuing battle.
Similarly, at Salamis, Xerces's brother was killed in early action.
On the Greek left, the Persian admiral Ariabignes (a brother of Xerxes) was killed early in the battle; left disorganised and leaderless, the Phoenician squadrons appear to have been pushed back against the coast, many vessels running aground.
That did not stop Xerces from administering a little discipline.
Xerxes, sitting on Mount Aigaleo on his throne, witnessed the carnage. Some ship-wrecked Phoenician captains tried to blame the Ionians for cowardice before the end of the battle. Xerxes, in a foul mood, and having just witnessed an Ionian ship capture an Aeginetan ship, had the Phoenicians beheaded for slandering "more noble men". According to Diodorus, Xerxes "put to death those Phoenicians who were chiefly responsible for beginning the flight, and threatened to visit upon the rest the punishment they deserved", causing the Phoenicians to sail to Asia when night fell.
Burgoyne demanded a court martial to clear his name, but this was refused.
Following Saratoga, the indignation in Britain against Burgoyne was great. He returned at once, with the leave of the American general, to defend his conduct and demanded but never obtained a trial. He was deprived of his regiment and the governorship of Fort William in Scotland, which he had held since 1769.
This may have been done to protect the Secretary of State, George Germain. North's administration was in trouble, and Germain was force to accept a peerage and step down.
Germain became a target for the opposition and was eventually persuaded to step down in exchange for a peerage, and in February 1782, he was made Baron Bolebrooke, in the County of Sussex, and Viscount Sackville, of Drayton in the County of Northampton. That was considered essential if the North government was to survive by bringing in factions of the opposition to which Germain was personally objectionable. He was replaced by Welbore Ellis. In spite of Germain's departure, the North government fell shortly afterwards in February 1782 and was followed by a period of political instability.
Esperanza
10mo ago
Bligh was found not guilty, given another ship, and sent back on the Providence to finish the job of bringing breadfruit to the Carribean. Alas, slaves would not eat the fruit. He was later captain of the Director on which he successfully engaged three Dutch vessels and captured one.
He played a critical role in the Battle of Copenhagen while captain of the Glatton. Nelson refused to acknowledge the signal to stop battle, and Bligh, who alone could see both signals stood by Nelson.
Nelson ordered that the signal be acknowledged, but not repeated. He turned to his flag captain, Thomas Foley, and said "You know, Foley, I only have one eye — I have the right to be blind sometimes," and then, holding his telescope to his blind eye, said "I really do not see the signal!" Rear Admiral Graves repeated the signal, but in a place invisible to most other ships while keeping Nelson's "close action" signal at his masthead.
Bligh was also court-martialed for the Rum Rebellion, and again acquitted.
Esperanza
10mo ago
In the Hillary case, they offered immunity to people while investigating, preventing any later prosecutions. I would imagine that this deal will similarly prevent any later prosecution of other malfeasance.
Either that, or it is the traditional "modified limited hangout":
PRESIDENT: You think, you think we want to, want to go this route now? And the – let it hang out, so to speak?
DEAN: Well, it's, it isn't really that –
HALDEMAN: It's a limited hang out.
DEAN: It's a limited hang out.
EHRLICHMAN: It's a modified limited hang out.
PRESIDENT: Well, it's only the questions of the thing hanging out publicly or privately.
Esperanza
10mo ago
Those terms are meta-exclusionary. They only exclude people who try to exclude others. This is reminiscent of Popper's intolerance of intolerance.
I expect you can come up with new examples that are not meta in this way, but of course, offhand, I cannot.
Esperanza
10mo ago
I'm sure next time you're looking for a job and your interviewer plays games with you "to test for proper attitude, flexibility etc." you won't buy that kind of shit.
I was in a restaurant, where at the next table a group of lawyers were having lunch with a prospective candidate. All was going well until the senior lawyer said to the hire, "Everything looks good, but we like to be on a first-name basis in our firm, and we already have a Lisa. Would you consider changing your name?" The guy was playing games and as I am not a lawyer, I do not know what the right answer was. Interviewers play games. That is the entire point of interviews, as far as I can see. They exist to test the candidate.
Actors are regularly tested on their ability to plausibly act in sports movies. Sir John Gielgud could act, but all his thespian skills could not avail him when a tight spiral was required.
Esperanza
10mo ago
they'd peaceable allowed blacks to settle there through the 30s, 40s, and 50s,
People often talk about how black people moved to cities in the 30s and 40s, missing the point that there was a depression on in the 30s, so there were no jobs in Northern cities, and that in the early 40s, people were a little busy with the other thing. There was some Black migration to Norther cities during the war to replace white workers who were fighting.
Racial covenants were ruled unenforceable in 1948, so there was essentially a year or two when Black people could not move into white areas after the war. Furthermore, the red-lined areas in those cities were drawn in the 30s, long before the bulk of the great migration. Black people moved to red-lined areas because they were cheap. For red-lining to have made a difference would require that black people lived in the area before it was red-lined, and then left the area before red-lining was eliminated while white people moved in. I can't think of any place where there was a gradual displacement of black people by white non-Hispanic people in Northern cities. There are, of course, examples of Hispanics displacing Black people.
Esperanza
10mo ago
This makes me question claims that homosexuality was widespread in ancient Greece and Rome.
I question it too, but the evidence seems pretty strong. In Rome, it was definitely socially normal to have penetrative gay sex with young boys. That suggests that their society was very different from ours and perhaps suggests that we have a lot further we could go in that direction.
You asked about the winners of the Pritzker prize. I gave two from the last 20 years who were cited as brutalists by the Pritzker announcements. The award is now a lifetime achievement award, it seems, and they cite brutalist buildings in the award announcements.
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