EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
I know what you're here for. What's his bias? Politically I at least like to think of myself as a true moderate, maybe (in US context) slightly naturally right-leaning but currently politically left-leaning if I had to be more specific.
User ID: 1043
I believe that the idea was to have an apostolic guidance for the church as a whole but persecution, deaths, unauthorized doctrinal changes, undue pagan influences, power grabs, a view that the Second Coming was imminent, and the gradual loss of divine revelation made the church fundamentally changed and eventually bereft of authority. Perhaps some city bishops had some legitimate authority for a while, but the connection that e.g. the Bishop of Rome would have any actual special sway over the church as a whole is highly suspect, as was especially the consolidation under Constantine. The later "sins" of the Catholic church are some evidence, but not the primary evidence. I agree that to the extent historical matters should be considered in coming to spiritual conclusions, that history both theological and otherwise are fair game for examination - though my comment was more about the theological history of the Catholics than their more political/historical acts.
Getting a little off topic I guess, but in terms of Book of Mormon history, the position has long been (and is mildly supported in-text) that the people there were simply one of many living side by side. Archeologically speaking, we simply do not have anywhere close to a comprehensive survey of all peoples who lived in Mesoamerica. Among the Maya, for example, we've only excavated about 1% of the sites and of those sites only 10% of what's there, approximately. The Book of Abraham I feel was used as a starting point for inspiration on Abrahamic writings rather than a true transliteration, though admittedly there are decent reasons to think otherwise I certainly wouldn't begrudge others for believing. A few edits to a single section don't really change anything about LDS in-text our out-of-text teachings on the Trinity. Many Old Testament prophets were polygamists, so clearly it's compatible with Christianity, yes? It's I believe a plausible or even likely reading of the history that Joseph Smith was forced into accepting plural marriage (obviously it brought nothing but trouble) as part of the "restoration of all things", i.e. re-treading parts of earlier pre-Christ Christianity as part of the doctrinal point that the gospel (Christianity broadly from Adam to now) is now in its ultimate and most complete form (though some allowance is made for new knowledge, teachings, and practices to be either restored or newly given). At least under this model of Christian history, there's far less confusion over having to litigate and reexamine each and every piece of modern practice and belief - Protestant, Catholic, or otherwise - for accuracy. Study is helpful for understanding true religious principles, and might be a rewarding activity, but it is not the cornerstone of doctrine, nor is there a need for major political activism to influence church leaders at the church-wide level.
Returning back a little bit to the original point, it's amazing to me that anyone would read the Epistles of Paul and come to any conclusion other than that there were serious doctrinal misunderstandings by new converts everywhere, on top of the rampant persecution, on top of the behavior problems, on top of the cultural difficulties popping up as many new members tried to blend their previous beliefs into the new religion. The vibe is that there's definitely a bit of a mess out there, yeah? Paul was obviously, I think everyone agrees, capable of correcting misunderstandings and offering some excellent guidance, but there were only so many people like Paul, and fewer by the year. And there's little evidence as far as I'm concerned that anyone satisfactorily took his place, much less the Bishop of Rome, though a few bishops tried to a limited extent.
There's this fascinating twitter thread (unroll link for better reading) about A Minecraft Movie, and how it is fundamentally a Zoomer movie on an emotional level, not just a subject matter level. Specifically, he calls it (followed by some key excerpts, though I recommend the entire thread):
the most reactionary movie I've ever seen and the future zoomer world order is bright and wonderful. I would have called it "The humiliation of the coward Jack Black and the end of irony"
... [A]fter this introduction, when [Jack Black] sends the mcguffin to earth to be found by the main character, the movie’s language changes. It is no longer gen x nihilism, or millennial irony after Jack Black is put in prison in hell, and we change protagonist to Young Zoomer Henry.
The reason the movie resonates with the Zoomers is because it reflects their own life experience back at them, and they pick up on that in a subconscious way even if they can’t articulate it.
The real plot of the movie is that a boy is SUCKED against his will into a RECTANGULAR PORTAL into a world that is HYPER STIMULATING and OVERSATURATED, where the people he meet tells him it is a beautiful world of “creativity”, but it’s actually a really simplistic world of base Id expression and Id satisfaction
... On a literal plot level, the antagonist of the movie is some witch pig lady. But on an emotional level, Steve is a villain, the shadow of the protagonist of the movie. The main character Henry is a genuinely creative and smart kid. This is illustrated by him being able to draw well, and being a literal math genius, who can engineer a functioning rocket from scratch. Jack Black is a “Creative”, which is illustrated by him making silly faces and yelling random nonsense. When Henry and the other cast of characters are stuck in minecraft world, they are not actually aided by Steve.
... The story ultimately never portrays “the minecraft world” as a good place, but a place of indulgence, of Id expression and satisfaction... [Steve] is a gooner. And the film itself utterly rejects him: there is no ambiguity here, the minecraft world is bad, and the real world is what matters. “being creative” in minecraft is shallow and hollow, and is a bad outlet for your talents.
The hypersaturated world of hyperreality, of the media-mediated reality that was forced on the zoomers, as their parents plopped a phone or ipad on them as children, is a shallow and hollow mimicry of the real world, and exposing children to “minecraft” at age 9 is not going to make them more “creative”, it is just going to make them into autistic gooners. It is not really a minecraft movie. It is a movie about the zoomer life experience, and a genuine and open confrontation with prior generations. The minecraft branding is arbitrary. The emotional core of the movie, and there truly is a genuine human emotional core, is a genuine inter-generational dialogue.
And I say, the reason the zoomers like it, is not some ironic doubly irony joke where they pretend to like a bad movie - that is just what it looks like to millenials, because “that’s what millennials do”. The reason they like it is because they resonate with a story about being raped by a magical portal that sends you to a fake world you have to escape from. And that is extremely genuine and real, and the movie totally succeeds in expressing something, that possibly haven’t been captured in art before, with the novelty of our technological-historical situation.
I don't know if I ever thought of it this way, but now I kind of can't unsee it. I genuinely wonder if Zoomers will end up feeling bitter towards Millennials like me in much the same way we feel in many cases bitter towards Boomers, but instead of a grudge over amassing self-serving stock market wealth and monopolizing limited housing stock, it's despairing over the perhaps mishandled human-technological interaction surface that emerged after Millennial founders and users created the modern mobile-social-internet landscape.
But in a way maybe this is all healing for Zoomers? There is definitely some actual awareness and maturity that their brains are on some level being cooked, they know they use TikTok too much, but there's still some earnestness left despite all that. Also, Minecraft is a weird thing because it is one of the few completely crossover experiences between Zoomers and Millennials, but even so, the actual experience is somewhat different. For Zoomers, it's a simple childhood exploration time and a cultural touchstone, with some nostalgia and force of memes and videos. For Millennials, it was more overtly a sea change in gaming (constant updates, a rise in indie titles, graphical reversion), more directly creative as a more adult/late teen outlet, and with nerdy overtones. Spending time in Minecraft and building things creatively were quite literally different for the two age groups, in the aggregate. At least in this viewing, Jack Black's Steve represents on some level the disconnect between the two generations that are so close in the overt trappings, yet so far in their emotional response to modernity.
... showing over and over again that Jack Black, as a stand in for gen X nihilism and millennial irony, is totally oblivious, that he doesn’t “get it”, that he is a clown who is not in on the joke... It’s funny, engaging, and genuine. And Jack Black is not in on the joke. That’s what makes it work and that’s the point, and as the credits rolled in the theater, two zoomers who were leaving turned around and waved and smiled and yelled something to me, and I had no idea what they were saying, and I think that’s beautiful.
Thoughts? Is he way off base here?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
19d ago
Per Politico, Zohran Mamdani set to topple Andrew Cuomo in NYC mayoral race, at least the Democratic primary. Live results here if that changes. The general election is in November -- Cuomo left the door open as he conceded tonight already to run as an independent; current mayor Eric Adams already is intending to run as an independent. This is nothing short of a massive political earthquake. Here's what I see as the most important questions raised:
Did ranked choice (and associated strategy) make a major difference?
We don't know yet quite how much. In percents, Mamdani leads 43.5 - 36.4 with 91% reporting as of writing, this means on Tuesday ranked-choice results will be released as he didn't clear 50% alone, since Brad Lander who cross-endorsed Mamdani has 11.4, Adrienne Adams who did not for anyone has 4.1. But it seems a foregone conclusion he will win. I'm not certain how detailed a ranked-choice result we get. Do we get full ranked choice results/anonymized data, or do we only see the final result, or do we get stage by stage? The voter-facing guide is here which I might have to peruse. I think the RCV flavor here is IRV (fewest first-place votes eliminated progressively between virtual "rounds" until one has a majority)
In terms of counterfactuals, I believe the previous Democratic primary system was 40%+ wins, under 40% led to a runoff between top two, so Mamdani would have won that anyways. But the general election is, near as I can tell, not ranked choice, it is instead simply plurality, no runoff. This creates some interesting dynamics. Of course, it's also possible the pre-voting dynamics and candidate strategies of this race were affected.
My thoughts? It seems Cuomo was ganged up on, and I think ranked choice accelerated this. It will be very interesting to see how this did or did not pay off for Lander specifically -- was he close-ish to a situation where people hate Cuomo most, but are still uncomfortable enough with Mamdani to hand Lander a surprise victory from behind? Statistically this seems unlikely in this particular case, but it could still happen, and how close he comes could offer some interesting insights about how popular a strategy like this might be in the future.
Will Democratic support and the primary victory make a difference in the general election?
The literal million-dollar question. Cuomo might very well run again as an independent -- otherwise his career is kind of extra-finished, no? I suppose he could always try and run for Congress later, but this is a black eye no matter how you spin it. Eric Adams, the former Democratic candidate, has also had his share of scandals, so potentially there is some similarity with Cuomo on that level. But he does have an incumbency advantage, and has expected some kind of fight for a while. Republicans might back him more, however, depending on how much they dislike Mamdani. It's hard to say. Also, Mamdani would have the Democratic party machinery and resources behind him. How much will they pitch in? That's an open question for sure. It will certainly help to some extent, for legitimacy if nothing else.
Will these results generalize nationally? And if so, what part of the results?
First of all, you must see this as an absolute W for grassroots. Cuomo is a political super-insider, despite being a major bully who is widely disliked. Yet many former enemies have backed him anyways, especially more "moderate" ones. Interesting article link. Bloomberg for example backed him. He formed a super PAC "Fix the City" and it spent a ton of time on negative attacks against Mamdani, especially on his pro-Palestinian comments framing them as anti-Israel. There's that angle of course. I'd rather not get into it personally, but I'm sure there will be some observations about if the Israel-Palestinian issue was big or not, whether it was fair, etc.
Then there's the socialism angle. Do Democrats want more extreme left candidates? Are socialists ready for the big time? Was this Cuomo's unique weaknesses? Was is just crazy turnout among young people? Did AOC and friends help a lot? All things we will be thinking about for a number of months to come. Personally, I see this as Mamdani doing much, much better among kitchen-table issues for the median voter. All about affordability. Of course, the merit of his attempt is a separate question. He's pro rent control (economically sketchy but not unheard of), wants to create public supermarkets (horrible idea all around, supermarket margins are very small), taxing the rich (will they flee or not?), and is obviously young and not super experienced.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
11mo ago
Just a quick point which has been bugging me in several of these Motte threads about the issue...
Isn't it definitely worth mentioning that if he were born in the UK, it's not at all a "recent" immigration? That's just flat out wrong!! Objectively! I don't know why all the comments seem to conveniently gloss over this. Even if we're playing the counterfactual game, which is always epistemically suspect in the case of individuals, the debate would be about immigration policies 18 years ago, not current immigration policies. Now, given, the PM at the time was Tony Blair, who was Labour, so maybe there's a connection there, but still (it's not like Labour has been in charge for long enough to meaningfully affect immigration policies themselves, and instead it's the Conservatives who were in power for much more than a decade). The situation also pretty much requires asking "how well does assimilation work in the UK"? Answering that is pretty much required context if you're going to connect it to immigration, because otherwise the local UK culture is presumably just as much "to blame" as his parent's upbringing.
But yeah, Taylor Swift being repeatedly brought up is a little odd. But if your goal is to create maximum media attention to an act of terror, choosing as your target a bunch of sympathetic young people and even kids at a Taylor Swift event ( a figure who has a ton of built in attention already) is probably close to the "ideal" target. Now, of course, this kind of terrorism is consummately counterproductive, but to the more delusional kind of terrorist (such as a 17 and 19 year old) it might seem attractive.
So I am seeing people like Elon Musk repeat stuff (tweet here) about Democrats deliberately offering some sort of citizenship-for-votes scheme. Laying aside that there are other reasons besides nefarious ones to want to give legal status at least (not even necessarily citizenship) to people who have lived here in some cases for decades, he had a pretty specific claim, that the 1986 amnesty law flipped California blue effectively forever.
But I don't think the math works out? Anyone want to check this?
~2.7 mil made legal from 1986 law seems to be the common estimate. Here claims 1.6 million applied in California. This report says that 90% were approved. But critically, just because you're made legal doesn't mean you can vote! The same report said that as of 2001, only a third had naturalized. Generally speaking, only half of immigrants ever fully naturalize. That means in the 15 years after the amnesty, only in the ballpark of 500-700k voters were likely added to California rolls. Here we can see that Latinos in general do skew Democratic, but the gap varies by year, anywhere from an 9 to 52% gap. Is that enough to make a difference? In 1996, with that biggest gap, that would be 250k-350k (very ballpark) swing votes, but the margin of victory was at the lowest around 350k in 1988 (about 250k at most according to the gap that year, but I think this was far too soon for the naturalization numbers to swell even that large, since the process takes a few years even for legal residents). Every other election had a gap of well over a million votes! So if you go on and match up the years and the Hispanic vote gap, the effect is even less, often dramatically less: 2004 we see 9% or about 60 thousand votes of delta, versus a margin of victory of around 1.25 million votes, so a very small fraction.
So even the poster child of amnesty doesn't seem to fit with the narrative. Okay, sure, fine, when you drill down to more local elections, not just presidential ones, it can make a difference. But overall, California's blue-ness seems to only be very slightly due to the amnesty bill. If I were a fact-checker, I think I'd say "mostly false" -- the math VERY plainly does NOT work, and doesn't fit with history, but there might be some nugget of plausibility buried. I think you can still, despite these clear factual falsehoods, in good faith make an argument that granting citizenship is a bald-faced political power grab, but I think there are other, stronger explanations. In this sense, the general ideas behind "great replacement theory" might hold some water on the cultural side, but in terms of the actual mechanisms of governance, consider me quite underwhelmed.
Note that the same could not be said for DC statehood -- that's something that in my opinion couldn't possibly be less nakedly partisan and also wildly unconstitutional. I bring it up here as a sort of rough proxy or prior for the general claim about power grabs being real/something to be worried about. When it came up in 2021, 37 senators co-sponsored the legislation. Allowing for some good faith there too (no taxation without representation?), I'd say you can conclude that maybe half of all politicians are willing to make such a power grab? But there's a reason 37 senators is not enough to pass a bill. Once you reach the neighborhood of 45, the difficulty goes up exponentially, so beware accidentally "intuitively" weighting support by the simple number of cosponsors. So again, this seems to suggest that there's a lot more going on than vote-buying.
So the whole idea is far from wild fancy, but the way it's being made, and the framing seems plain partisan warfare. And remember, demographics is NOT destiny! Hispanic voters aren't even necessarily permanent, locked-in Democratic voters, only a few tweaks to the Republican party (which almost happened in 2004ish) would make the platform appeal to plenty of them. For all the noise about how you can "buy votes" via specific, targeted policies, I don't see much anecdotal evidence of that being the case. For example, would-be student loan aid recipients I know don't seem to weight it all that heavily in their decision of who and how to vote -- other things overshadow it by a lot. Polling data suggests the same is broadly true of Hispanics, even if they were to receive generous amnesty. See for example one reason why no one talks about Puerto Rico being admitted as a state: besides the fact that Puerto Ricans somewhat don't want it, neither big party is actually convinced they would in fact be the ones to get the votes. It's a wild-card they don't want to deal with.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
11mo ago
I actually saw that and my heart just sank. I can kinda sorta understand an attempt to hold teachers to a higher standard, as they are role models and directly involved in childhood indoctrination, so I think some sort of awareness about having to watch what you say is to some degree expected when you enter the field. Academia it's a little less clear-cut because everyone involved is an adult. Personally I don't like it too much there. Famous people is also a bit of a weird area, because they fundamentally (well, certain categories of them at least) rely on people's opinion for their living, so talking about people's opinions of you seems like more or less fair play. All of these examples have at least some logical connection where there is an awareness of responsibility.
Retail? Please. She even works up front, which is, if not quite the most thankless job in a Home Depot (that belongs to overnight and lot crew), it's most definitely the one where you get the most abuse - from management, customers, everybody. I can't even think of a moral justification other than "I just don't like what they said and want them to be punished." It's not like she said anything at work, it's not that she can't help people or do her job properly, but instead it's using corporations as a weapon against private people. There's no symmetry, no proportionality, and of course no heart. Let's distinguish between the wishes of the heart and the concrete actions that affect others, both on her part and on LoTT's part.
I mean, can anyone defend this in an actual way, or is this just pure feelings venting?
Reporting from Politico describes the polling conducted for the Democrats, by the Democrats (source poll now released here). It's interesting stuff. When asked (all voters) about the Democratic response to Trump so far:
- 10% The Democratic Party has a good strategy to respond to Trump and it’s working
- 24% The Democratic Party has a strategy to respond to Trump but it’s not working
- 40% The Democratic Party doesn’t have any strategy at all for responding to Trump
- 26% Not sure
Pretty damning. If you lump in the "not sure" with those that actually explicitly say the Dems have no strategy at all, that's a good 2/3rds of voters, and even less than a third of those who think the Dems do have a strategy think it's a good one! And that's before the State of the Union, which seems to only have reinforced this impression. They tested a handful of opinionated claims about what direction the Democrats should go, presented in pairs and asked about which were, relatively speaking, more persuasive if they were to go that direction. Specific matchup data or party affiliation breakdowns wasn't published but overall, some notes about what did particularly well or poorly:
- "Back to Basics" defined as "Protecting Social Security and Medicare, reproductive freedom, workers rights, and an economy that works for everyone" did the best.
- Tied for the best was a message that basically said "Democrats have no message, no plan of their own, and no one knows what they would do if they got back into power"
- Pro-working class/ordinary people and non-ideological emphasis, almost explicitly populist, did well.
- Interestingly, calling out purity tests or snobbish language as being counterproductive didn't do well at all, despite the earlier finding about them being too ideological. Telling them to be less woke was modestly positive but still middle of the pack.
- However, a call to "embrace the fact that they represent the left wing of American politics" and be true progressives also did badly, actually the worst of all of them
- Criticisms of leadership or specific leaders (including Biden), wanting better communicators, as well as wanting new younger leaders, even calling out current leaders as corrupt, were all a bit of a wash
- Advocating for a foreign policy "party of peace" did terrible.
I found the contrast pretty interesting. Voters seem to think that a moderate, mainstream Democratic party would be most effective, but at the same time didn't think that talking down to people was necessarily an issue. Of course, all these reasons were relative to others, not framed in absolute terms, but still. The fact that "Democrats have no message" was found to be MORE persuasive than many of these other reasons, yet a statement calling them to double down on explicitly leftist policies seems to suggest that the Democrats are in a bit of a hole beyond just identity. A lot of people here seem to think that woke language is the millstone, but many voters don't seem to agree. If there's a big takeaway here, it's that voters are probably increasingly favoring short-term, domestic results in their motivations to vote. They don't think the messengers are that flawed, only the message itself, which is super interesting. As such, if I were the Democrats, I'd lean hard back into restoring CFPB-like programs and putting in to place better health care reform as midterm messages. After all, I think a lot of voters still look favorably on the Obamacare reforms. A final note is that this Democratic-aligned polling outfit didn't even bother to include an immigration-specific message! Perhaps because on their version of a Trump approval poll, Border Security and Immigration both received top marks at +10 and +8 favorable. Inflation and healthcare got -10 and -10, emphasizing my point about good points of focus.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2mo ago
Perhaps a better expression of my feeling is that Catholic doctrine, insofar as I understand it, explicitly promotes both Scripture and Tradition as (equal-ish) sources of doctrine... but simultaneously claims authority to make New Changes, due to pedigree/authority. Many Protestants view Sola Scriptura as the best source of doctrine, with perhaps a little history as helpful context, though others take a full "we figure it out with scholarship" approach and basically toss all of it out as unerring sources of doctrine. LDS theology by contrast at least has a nice hierarchy where modern clarifications/additions explicitly take precedence, so there really isn't the same kind of core conflict. That's why, at least to me, the Catholic attempt to split the difference, where some New Changes are OK to make and change Scripture and/or Tradition, but not too many, seems contradictory, and I think Catholic theological history reflects that inconsistency. It's possible I've misunderstood this point or been too uncharitable, of course, but that's my impression. How can a Catholic distinguish between a Tradition that's OK to change, and one that isn't? (Also, maybe doctrinal is the wrong word?)
Not a large post, but a brief update on something I've been keeping an eye on. It looks like the Washington Post got their hands on some transcripts of at least police comms the day of the Trump attempted assassination here and, these are the three most relevant pieces of info you should know:
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The first report that the guy had a gun was not until 30 seconds before shots broke out. Local police were tracking him down in the last few minutes, even mobilizing their own QRF towards the building, and apparently some felt until very late in the game confident they would nab him. He was spotted on the actual roof only about 3 minutes before (two minutes after first scaling the roof) and the sheriff inside the USSS post was told 1 to 2 minutes before about someone on the roof, though where on the roof was unclear to almost everyone. That the roof guy was not a cop was communicated however. Photos of the suspect had first started circulating 25 minutes before, but bad cell service means if many of these went through or not is unclear, at least some pics did not (these circulated photos include the 4chan pic, meaning it could have been any of the dozen or more cops in the loop who leaked it). So the most crucial period of time, that last 30 seconds, did not see the local post contacting the USSS at all, instead they were mobilizing the local QRF towards the building at the time shots broke out.
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The local police and Secret Service command posts were different, far away from each other (900 feet or so and twice the distance of the rally site itself, and separated by a pond to boot), and with no direct communication line (they were using ad hoc cell phone calls, for example local cops would call a sheriff in the USSS post, which happened at least 3 times in 30 minutes). It’s unclear how quickly info disseminated to the USSS but it appears to involve at least four layers in the telephone game. With this in mind, we must ask ourselves how quickly did info make it down the chain in those 30 seconds? Apparently, the answer was not fast enough: the USSS was not notified that the shooter had a gun by the time shots broke out! We had seem some claims that the Secret Service perhaps did not open fire on purpose despite knowing about the threat, and those claims are much weaker now.
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What was the local PD counter sniper team in the second floor of the building doing? Apparently at least one person was very mobile looking out several of the windows and moving internally, trying to track where the shooter went. He was responsible for the initial rangefinder call 20 minutes before and possibly the picture too. Most of their attention was in the opposite direction. The new timeline only has the shooter on the roof for about three minutes and identifies where he scaled the roof which was kind of in the middle of the complex - local PD including some taken away from traffic duties was tracking him around the outside, and where he scaled was on the opposite side as the window where you could lean out and see the final shooting position that was featured in Eli Crane’s video. The local sniper second floor's initial setup direction was a third direction away from the rest of the building entirely. I wonder how many people were on this floor and if any considered getting out on the roof themselves, I don’t think the article says, but it sounds like there was likely only the single guy! It's unclear what actions they were taking in the final two minutes.
I had initially said this was more likely a combination of bad inter-service communication, plus poor planning, plus maybe some local cop incompetence and a chance of ROE type concerns, and so far the info lines up pretty consistently with this. In other words, organizational issues, not malice, so far seem to be the overriding factors. Note we do not yet have or know many details about the Secret Service comms side of the story, AFAIK.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
11mo ago
Trump Says He Wants to Deport Millions. He’ll Have a Hard Time Removing More People Than Biden Has (archive here)
Thought this might contribute in an interesting way to the current talk about deportation, expulsion, and the election. So we all know Trump is talking a big game right now about mass deportation. Interestingly, the article mentions that at least in theory, 42% of Democrats also support mass deportation (and slightly over half of Americans overall). Of course, like the wall, it's of some question whether and how much it would happen, and of course we haven't talked at all about who would pay for it this time. Not only are there legal hurdles a president can't fix alone or even sometimes with legislation, at least not easily, but there's also diplomatic considerations -- a lot of countries literally refuse to take people back, planes are expensive, and there's a pilot shortage anyways. The closing quote considers mass deportations more of a general rallying cry on the seriousness level of "defund the police".
Basically the article points out that under existing deportations, there appears to be a cap based on ICE's funding and priorities and infrastructure of at most 30,000 deportations in a month, and this seems to be a roughly hard cap across administrations. Please take a look at this chart or it might lack context. The article talks about how under Title 42's implementation, which was started by Trump in March 2020 and kept in place by Biden when he took office in 2021 and continues through today, you were allowed to more effectively expel migrants (note the phrasing - this is not deportation!) and at high rates, usually at or near the border (unlike deportation, which is usually the culmination of a longer process and involves courts usually).
Largely due to this, the Biden administration actually expelled millions more migrants than Trump did!
During just his first two years in office, Biden used [Title 42] to kick out over 2.8 million migrants. That’s a stunning number. In Trump’s entire time in the White House, his administration removed only 2 million people total.
That's quite a quote. Two years of Biden was more than four years of Trump? Yes. Of course the Biden (and now Harris) campaign probably didn't want to talk about this so explicitly, but there you have it. ICE was surged to the border and prioritized that over internal searches, so that was part of it, and remember that currently, actual deportation is kind of at its limit, in addition to costing thousands of dollars per case, which likely wouldn't change substantially even under the most rosy of Trump deportation plans (though it's possible the time per case might drop with more resources the time to train and prepare the bureaucracy and infrastructure would be significant). The article notes that claims of using the National Guard to do deportations isn't very realistic -- it would take a decent amount of time and training to get them set up to do so, and so using their manpower is far from a panacea.
Anyways, definitely look at the chart. Is this good evidence that threats of mass deportations are indeed political theater more than an actual proposal? Or should anti-immigration voters actually consider a vote for Harris?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
Just because I was reminded by the comment in the main thread, do pierced septums, tongues, and gauges give anyone the major ick? Nose studs? Fine. Belly button piercings? A little wierd but fine. Any non-face tattoo? Fine. But hoooooly crap does anything more than a tiny septum piercing make me uncomfortable. Not just like, “oh that’s weird” but almost I find it physically repulsive that larger ones I find it hard to even look. Ear gauges also, anything bigger than a button. Tongue piercings in any size. Is this just a human “looks like that would hurt” reaction, or is there some other component maybe? Curious if others feel the same but are more/less vocal about it, or if it’s just a personal issue.
I was raised as conservative Christian (how conservative? Useless question, too relative) but in liberal Oregon, if relevant, so at least it’s not purely a lack of exposure thing.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
11mo ago
Oh yeah, because cycles of vengeance work so well for everyone involved. /s It's precisely that attitude that is fueling this in the first place, the notion that punishment is the only option, that we as a society and as individuals owe nothing to each other, that duty does not exist, that forgiveness is a sign of weakness. No. No. Forgiveness is a method of strength and leveraging the good traits of humanity. Moral high ground is a corrupt phrase because of the implication, but moral integrity is still a cornerstone for human society and greatness. It's okay to let ourselves emotionally indulge in a moment of "they had it coming," but it's incredibly dangerous as well as morally bankrupt to make it into a guiding principle. And online discourse is not the greatest place to start, but it's a place to start. Even here, we should sit up and treat people like people, because we can and because we should. We owe it to each other.
Mini-rant of the day (am I repeating myself or do I have deja vu? must be getting old): While I appreciate the intention behind occasionally using "they" as a gender-neutral pronoun in cases where the gender is unspecified, the amount of reading fatigue it generates is underrated. First let me say that my actual preference might be a somewhat stupid-sounding but actually refreshing/mildly helpful habit of simply using the opposite pronoun as a habit. For instance, in the financial column "Money Stuff" (great reading BTW) the author when talking about an imagined or generic CEO will use "she" as the pronoun. I'm not really a believer in the whole micro-aggression literature, but I can still see that subtle and low-key (non-mandatory) attempts at gently pushing back against stereotypes can be nice. Handy little reminder not to jump to assumptions. For fairness, this should be more generalized: teachers are mostly women, so use "he" as the general form. Doctors are mostly men, so use "she". College grads are mostly women, so use "he". "They" can still work in a pinch, or perhaps in official documents, but I feel like the tradeoffs involve are favorable on the whole.
But nonbinary people in fiction? That's a whole different story. Consider the following sentence ripped from a story I am reading:
Mirian and Gaius took turns instructing Jherica on soul magic. They would be the weakest of the time travelers, so it seemed best to give them some means of self-defense against the one they couldn't simply die and recover from.
This sentence is a total mess, and a nontrivial cognitive load, for no good reason. Well, not zero good reason, but here the tradeoffs fall very strongly against a generic pronoun: the loss in clarity, the mental burden, the flow disruption, the forced "backtracking" through the sentence to clarify meaning are absolutely terrible. The first "they" isn't immediately clear on the subject - is it the two people, or the nonbinary person? Okay, contextually, we figure out it's Jherica. But then we have an implied subject (who is doing the giving?), the next "them" needs context that takes a moment to process (Jherica again), and then another "they" also referring to Jherica, but needs double-checking. The wonderful thing about this sentence if Jherica were given a normal gender is that "they" clearly refers to the pair of people and not the individual. It's a useful tool in sentence mechanics that is completely ruined. "She" or "he" might induce a small amount of confusion (did the author accidentally chop up the pair and is referring to just one of them?) but partly that would be the author's fault for substandard sentence construction, and I still don't think it is quite as bad. It's far from uncommon to be referring to a group of people alongside an individual, and super useful to be able to casually and implicitly differentiate the two via pronouns.
To be clear, the story is wonderful, and there isn't any big deal or mention made about gender here at all (at least if there was I have no memory of it), and authors can make mistakes especially when self-edited (as is likely the case here). Or, in fact, I'm not even positive the author did make said character non-binary in the first place, since the author occasionally uses "he" in the next chapter, but not always. So it's not some massive culture war thing in this particular case. I think the point remains however that some progressives have tried to gaslight people (including myself) that gender-neutral pronouns are a minor inconvenience at best, and leverage already-existing rules of English. It's true that "they" already can serve this purpose (e.g. "Who's at the door and what do they want?" when it is fully unknown) but there are still some significant burdens if it becomes popularized.
It seems that it really shouldn't be a big loss to perform some nonbinary erasure here. Many forms of fiction already do things to make it easier on the reader (and I always notice when they do) such as giving main characters names that begin with different letters, or in anime they will color the hair differently not just for aesthetics but to make characters more differentiable. Sure, these semantic and visual 'collisions' happen IRL quite a lot (e.g. two Joshes on your team at work), but it seems to me the loss in realism is more than offset by the practical benefits. Note that this isn't purely an anti-woke position, in my book: I think giving characters some identifiable traits can make them more memorable. So there might be good reasons to throw in an unrealistic number of non-straight or mixed-race people into your TV show beyond deliberate representation! I don't think I'm advocating for anything too extreme.
So yeah, emergency expedited Supreme Court oral arguments were today, about - contrary to what the headlines might initially seem to tell you - whether district court judges can issue national injunctions. More specifically, on if "relief" can be given to non-parties in a lawsuit, unilaterally by judge's decision. This is not on its face about Trump's birthright citizenship claims though of course that is more immediately at issue. I highly recommend this piece with a classic back-and-forth between two law professors who disagree about whether or not they should be allowed (disclaimer: both are, however, strongly against the Trump interpretation of birthright citizenship), a format I feel like is way underrepresented in today's news landscape (but weirdly overdone and trivialized on cable TV). NPR would never. Ahem. Anyways...
Some mini-history is these injunctions, as best I understand, basically did not exist until the mid-2000's when suddenly they started showing up a lot, and on big topics too. DACA, the Muslim travel ban, the abortion pill ban, various ACA issues, it has tended to cut across administrations though often the pattern is they show up against the one in power. Both professors agree that the Constitution itself doesn't really say much about the subject one way or the other beyond generalities, so it's going to rest a little more on general principles.
The central and immediate disagreement between the two seems to be whether or not you can or should trust the national government, when it loses a major case, to go back to the drawing board and/or pause the losing policy because narrowly slicing it up doesn't make sense, or whether you might as well do a nationwide injunction because of a lack of trust or simply that the application fundamentally isn't something you can legally slice up finely.
The more general disagreement, and this is the one that to me is more interesting, seems to be what to do about judge-shopping and partisan judges having disproportionate impacts, with some very different ideas about how to address that, contrasted below:
Is this frustrating for you [Professor Bagley] — for this to be the vehicle that may finally be forcing a resolution on the availability of nationwide injunctions?
Bagley: I suppose it’s a consequence of having developed a position over time and across administrations. What it means to have a set of principles is that they don’t change just because you happen to dislike the inhabitant of the White House.
I think a lot of people — and I’m not speaking of Professor Frost here at all — come to this issue out of righteous indignation against the president of the opposite political party, and that’s actually my big concern.
We want to put our faith in these judges, but these judges are just people too. There’s 500-plus of them, and they’re scattered all over the country. Many are smart. Many work hard. Some are dumb. Lots are political. Many are just outright partisan hacks.
All you need to do in order to get a nationwide injunction is file your case in front of one of those partisan hacks, and then we’re off to the races — with these immediate appeals up to the Supreme Court, where hard questions are decided in a circumscribed manner and where the courts themselves reveal a kind of highly partisan pattern of judging that calls the entire judiciary into disrepute.
I would love this birthright citizenship [executive order] to be blown up into about a billion pieces. It is a moral, ethical, legal, constitutional travesty. I don’t know that the engine to do that is a nationwide injunction. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not.
That said, I think no one who’s looking at 21st century America right now thinks to themselves, “Things are going great.” There are a lot of deep problems. I think our democracy has misfired in a pretty profound way, and some of the institutional constraints on the president that previously held are starting to give way.
I don’t think we give up much by giving up the nationwide injunction. I think we help right the ship, but I don’t know that I know that for sure.
And I think anybody who comes into these debates with extraordinary confidence, one way or the other, about the long-run consequence of doctrinal shifts like this, ought to have their head checked. I have a view, but, like many things in life, it is provisional and what I think is a principled and thoughtful view.
But lots of other people, who are also principled and thoughtful disagree, with me.
So in short, it's too risky to allow judges this power.
Professor Frost, you’re probably not in disagreement on all of these policy and practical issues. Where do you see agreement and disagreement?
Frost: First, I do not think there’s a single judge that exercises this power — in the sense that, yes, that judge issues the nationwide injunction in the district court, but it can be immediately appealed up to an appellate court of three judges, then immediately taken up to the U.S. Supreme Court, as was the case in the mifepristone case, as is the case in most of these cases.
You could say, “Well, we’re now forcing the Supreme Court to decide cases more quickly.”
Wait to see what happens to the court if each and every one of the children born in the United States has to sue to protect their citizenship. Courts will be overwhelmed in that situation.
The consequences for courts are not always great when they have to quickly respond to nationwide injunctions and reverse them, but they can do that. If it does quickly get reversed, then it’s just a couple of weeks, a month or two, that it’s in place.
I will also say that if forum shopping is your problem, your solution is to address forum shopping. And there are proposals out there by the Judicial Conference for more random assignments, and I absolutely favor those. I think forum shopping is a problem. I think politicization of the courts is a problem, but the answer is not get rid of nationwide injunctions. The answer is end forum shopping.
Nationwide injunctions are literally saving our nation at the moment.
It’s not just birthright citizenship, although that is the poster child for nationwide injunctions, and it’s an excellent vehicle in which to consider the issue for someone like me, where I’m worried about a world without them.
Think about the Alien Enemies Act. We have an administration that says it can deport people without due process, and when it makes a mistake, it’s too bad, too late.
If that could not be stopped through an injunction, I think we should all be afraid. And that’s one of many, many examples of an administration that wants to unilaterally rewrite the law without the impediment of Congress or any sort of legal process. Without nationwide injunctions, each and every person potentially affected would have to sue to maintain the rule of law.
So in short, national injunctions are sometimes infinitely more practical, and not the direct problem at stake to begin with, more problems lie upstream. However:
I hear Professor Bagley and the other critics as to the downsides, and here are the downsides.
While the nationwide injunction is in effect, the law is being stopped. This is the frustration Professor Bagley was [describing] about how the government can’t implement its policies. And maybe six, seven, eight months to, at most, a year, the Supreme Court rules and says, “Actually it’s a perfectly legal policy,” and we’ve lost a year.
I recognize that as a cost. However, I’d rather live in that world than the world where a lawless president, or even a president that’s edging toward that, [can act without that constraint].
Obama and Biden did a few things that I thought were lawless, even though I liked the policy, like Deferred Action for Parents of U.S. citizens, which was enjoined by a nationwide injunction. That was an Obama policy.
The imperial presidency is a reality. They are all trying to expand their power, and I’d rather slow them down with the loss of some useful policies that I think are good at the end of the day and prevail in court, than allow for running roughshod over our legal system, as this administration is trying to do.
It's come up here from time to time whether the slowness of the system is a bug or a feature. This debate in at least some respects reflects that tension. Is it acceptable for judges, even well-meaning ones, to pause things for up to a year? One might reasonably ask then, can the Supreme Court thread the needle and simply restrict national injunctions to more narrow occasions (as just one example, the current citizenship case where precendant including Supreme Court precedent is pretty clear), not completely get rid of them? Bagley again:
And the trouble is, in our hyper-polarized environment, that kind of claim is made by partisans on both sides of the aisle whenever somebody is in office who they disagree with. So it is, I think, a comforting thought that we can just leave the door open a little bit, but if you leave the door open a little bit, you’re actually going to get the same cavalcade of nationwide injunctions that we’ve seen.
I’d be open to a narrower rule if I’d heard one that I thought could restrain judges that were ideologically tempted and willing to throw their authority around. But I haven’t seen it, frankly, and, until I do, I’d be pretty reluctant to open that door at all.
I know we've seen some vigorous discussion over the last while about activist judges. But one interesting theme I've been picking up over the last few months especially is, how much work exactly do we or should we expect the judges to be doing? For example, we had the overturning of Chevron, which ostensibly puts more difficult rule-making decisions in the hands of judges. An increase in work for them, championed by the right. But then, we had the right also start claiming that having immigration hearings for literally every immigrant would be too onerous and they should be able to deport people faster, perhaps without even (what the left would call) full due process. Too much work. And now we have the right claiming that each state or district would need to file its own lawsuit, or even assemble an emergency class action to get nation-wide relief, for an executive order with nearly non-existent precedent. An increase in work across all districts. Traditionally the right is against judicial activism in general, saying judges are too involved, implying they should work less. Maybe this all isn't a real contradiction, but still, an interesting pattern. What does judicial reform look like on the right, is it really a coherent worldview, or just variously competing interests, often tailored right to the moment? A more narrow, tailored question would be: what is the optimal number of judges, for someone on the right, compared to what we have now? Do we need more and weaker judges, or fewer and weaker? Or something else?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
It’s true that robotics is getting renewed attention, but this seems to be more the result of increased investment rather than any foundational sea change in knowledge or theory. The fixation on a bipedal and human-ish one is also just that, a fixation, and still leads to some difficulty even moving around consistently - see for example the robot marathon and of course claims that the Tesla robots have been somewhat relying on human controllers last I heard. No new paradigms yet there.
There continues to be progress on the LLM front but this is actually, maybe contrary to the impression you are getting, slowing. I wouldn’t call it a plateau at all but there’s a real sense of struggle out there. Most of the focus in the last six months has been tool use of various kinds, rather than fundamental improvements, though there are some theoretical ideas kicking around that might prove fruitful. On the contrary the major research labs have started to see some diminishing returns. Meta notably can’t even catch fully up to the front players and most of the team quit in frustration. Anthropic has been stuck in a bit of a rut with 3.7 only a mixed improvement over 3.5 and in some ways a regression. OpenAI has had trouble getting the so-called “version 5” off the ground that’s an impressive enough improvement to deserve the name. Google is catching up and adding some neat things. Context windows are going up. “Agent” systems are being experimented with more. Video generation is showing some sparks of brilliance but the compute required is pretty steep. Deepfake video and voice, even real time stuff, is the biggest issue right now, more than any AGI crap.
It’s still hard to believe, even despite intellectually knowing why, how many Americans and even Mottizens display an astonishing capacity to rationalize bad foreign actors. China wants Taiwan primarily out of essentially hurt feelings; the fact that this is a batshit insane reason to start a war over a territory that has self governed with no major problems for over 30 years is so outrageous many are tempted to look for deeper meaning when there is none. Even if the US literally sent 10x the arms to Taiwan, do you know the impact that would have on Chinese national security? Almost literally zero. Zero. Nothing. Nil. Zilch. Nada.
Hell, Taiwan doesn’t even present a regional influence threat. They don’t and couldn’t project power into the South China Sea for example. The only vague threat is as a refuge for Hong Kongers and other dissidents, and even that is far overblown.
Well, maybe some of it has to do with America’s short memory when it comes to the potency of war fever. A lot of Americans try to pretend they didn’t support the Iraq war, but the opinion polls at the time don’t lie. I’ll grant there was some government deception of course but that doesn’t fully explain it.
I mean, doesn't this body cam video kind of vindicate a lot of BLM-type people cop critics? We have a house call with slightly weird vibes that gets escalated -- BY the cops -- and someone ends up dead in their own home literally 10 seconds after what was previously a peaceful discussion. That kind of background impression, as a Black person especially, would be legitimately terrifying, right? That you could be having a rough night, maybe jumping at shadows, feeling a little off, you call people whose job is to protect and help communities feel and be safe, but you say or do the wrong thing in a moment of panic and you could end up literally dead?
It's sadly a bit self-reinforcing too of course. Nervousness around cops leads to irrational behavior around cops, so you could probably make the argument that demonizing the police is self-defeating behavior. But saying "almost all police shootings are justified" in a non-justified shooting moment is a weird take.
With that said I don't want to be too uncharitable. You're right that if we think about it in a false positive/false negative/etc. kind of sense, the false positives are usually very obvious and often overshadowed by the large amounts of true positives, so to speak.
And there are actually useful takeaways from the body cam video beyond "cops bad" or "cops racist" or something like that. I clearly see gaps in cop training here:
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Was it a good idea or not for them to continue investigating after "resolving" the complaint?
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Why didn't the cop in the first half of the bodycam video speak up more and act as a counterbalance to his clearly annoyed and apparently on a hair-trigger partner?
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Why was the cop so 0 to 100 aggressive in escalating things off of her strange Jesus comment?
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Was the cop's warning/threat to the lady effective in its actual purpose?
1 might have a larger discussion, but 2-4 show some clear missteps by the police - the partner was ineffective at his job, the cop escalated needlessly, and in a bad and ineffective manner even if he was going to escalate.
Edit: changed vocab to more accurately convey my point
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
9mo ago
When Trump was first elected President, one common meme was for people to say and post, "NOT MY PRESIDENT." Hillary Clinton called Trump an "illegitimate President." Would you say that Democrats "accepted the results of the election" in that case? Because my read is that they very much did not, indeed still have not. Why didn't they accept the outcome of that election? What could the government have done, to nudge them toward greater acceptance?
There’s a fundamental difference between being bitter about an election result and actually thinking the result was actually illegitimate. I will of course grant you that occasionally the language can appear superficially similar, but the difference is real and very important. Democrats absolutely accepted the result of the election. The process was not in question, and this was telling in the actual actions taken: they thought Russia meddled a bit too much and so the solution is policy to stop it happening again.
Hell, even after 2000, Democrats still by and large accepted the result despite some very potent arguments that they had been robbed by some uncontrollable aspect of the administrative state (broadly). Sure, you had a decent chunk of individuals who continued or even still continue to believe the election result was rigged or undemocratic or whatever, but this didn’t translate to the political class, and it didn’t lead to a fundamental dispute of elections more broadly, and in the actions, Florida got its shit together and fixed a lot of the issues for subsequent elections.
The immediate reaction of Trump and his allies was not merely bitterness but action that should be disturbing to all. They tried both literally and rhetorically to do an end run around the actual election and legal processes to corruptly (mens rea according to the evidence we’ve seen) subvert the actual election, irrespective of fact.
Do you see the difference? “Let’s fix it” is of a fundamentally different character than “let’s change it”. The former recognizes that setbacks happen in politics — even unfair ones! And it recognizes that there will be other chances and that the system is more important than ego. But the second, oh boy, it’s shortsighted and selfish and threatens the whole thing. It’s kind of like a marital fight. There is a line between some things you might say to your spouse in anger, and some things which should literally never be said, because they can’t be taken back and might threaten the entire marriage. With the assumption that the marriage is a good one - here, the assumption that the system of democratic elections is a good one.
It’s not at all clear what kind of system Trump would put in its place, which is PLENTY worrying in and of itself, but I have a very hard time imagining it being better than our current one, and I likewise have I think very good reasons to believe that even if you think for example that the Justice Department needs reform and fairness, Trump is probably one of the worst people to actually do so. That Trump’s personal motivations largely aligned with the country’s in his first term wasn’t an accident but was at least in some sense lucky - but I’m not convinced this can be taken for granted in a second term to the same degree.
Something that needs to be briefly said about some other "human factors" on the defense side of things. Not only is the Secret Service made up of real people who make mistakes, but also their job is 99% super boring, maybe even 99.99%, seeing as the last actual assassination was so long ago. Seems like a recipe for complacency. Of course, as an aside, it seems near certain we've foiled some other attempts both real and bluster, mostly in the earlier stages - I wonder if today's events change anyone's dial on the old vet killed in an FBI home raid last year who had made explicit sniper threats, owned a similar gun, and had the training to use it, though of course he wasn't going to be climbing on any roofs. No, what I mean to say is that there probably aren't all that many dedicated Secret Service agents in the first place. The threat surface as well as responsibility is enormous. You have someone following family, some following former presidents, keeping an eye on their suburban homes; for the president (and others like former President Trump) you have advance teams, mobile response, counter assault, crowd control, preparation for biological attack, equipment to maintain and transport and man, for all of that you need 24/7 presidential protection which means at least two or three shifts, plus presumably vacation time; and then on top of that you have at least the basics that man the static White House itself that needs all the same protection. It's a lot.
Faced with such a massive manpower requirement, what's normally the solution? Outsourcing. The classic. You may not notice, but at least some significant presence at these events is local or usually state police. Their numbers are welcome, but their training and skillset is very different, and these events don't happen all that often in a given state, much less an incident. I'd say these numbers are very helpful for ordinary law-keeping, and regular level incidents, but this can create problems in a Presidential-level threat environment. The Uniformed Division as a whole it seems about 1200 or more judging by some quick math per this recruiting factsheet (though even that division is subdivided and only a fraction are involved at an event like this) and only 20% of the service overall are veterans, so at least some of the UD are not veterans. Which might not matter, but at least anecdotally a veteran soldier's handling of an often-boring and then massive-adrenaline quick-decision environment is likely a bit different than a civilians, despite training. The point remains, that Secret Service numbers often need bolstering to get the kind of presence they would like.
Why do I bring this up? One theory being thrown around is that maybe someone withheld taking a shot on the shooter on purpose. This is plausible of course and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. However, there are two things that might need to be taken into consideration as higher-likelihood events. Disclaimer: of course we're still in the realm of relatively low-information speculation here, we have only seen a few chunks and slices of the story so far. One is simple - communication problems. Local/state police might not be fully looped in or on the same radio channels the same way the pros are, and I'm sure there's some institutional issues or bad feelings too. While pro FPS players who have spent years on a single Counter Strike map have named callouts for all buildings and rooftops, I'm not sure that kind of thing is SOP or even practical for this environment, assuming there even was a direct line of communication. We all know how in a corporate environment sometimes you need to speak to three people before communicating something, even professional organizations aren't immune to games of telephone. Second, the local/state police themselves. Although presumably a Secret Service agent will fire first if they see a gun, I'm not completely convinced that local/state police outsourcing would necessarily have the means and mindset to do so in the same fashion, and might even view a threat to the general public as more likely or more dangerous than a threat to the President, and that's not even saying it is a deliberate choice, just a natural disinclination. And furthermore, according to the BBC interview guy, it was precisely these regular cops who seemed confused and indecisive when they had reported the gunman - so perhaps a combination of the both of the two points above.
As a more funny aside, you know who responds almost the quickest of anyone? The media with their cameras, some of whom you can see sprinting to get a good photo or two even before we know the shooter is actually down.
How do you in-person voters... remember anything meaningful? Grew up in Oregon and opted for a mail-in ballot even here in conservative Utah purely for the convenience. I actually love being able to dedicate a little time one evening to reviewing the mailers I've set aside, the websites of a few candidates, and making sure I could remember the background behind things. Do you just quickly Google stuff? That sounds kind of dangerous as the #1 result isn't always a holistic or accurate portrayal.
Which (voting by mail) was almost incredibly useful this year. I don't know how much y'all may or may not have heard about this, but the Utah Legislature tried one of the most blatant and anti-democratic power grabs in memory, trying to give themselves power to effectively ignore or rewrite ballot measures even after they pass -- which isn't great IMO to start with, but the wording they put on the actual ballot measure/amendment to give themselves this power was an EGREGIOUS misstatement of the actual content of the measure (basically, a bald-faced lie). This happened with not one but TWO measures, both struck down by courts for being misleading to voters (though the second was less overt) -- but weirdly, this decision came too late to reprint the ballots, so votes on both will not be counted but will still appear. (Even worse, the whole thing wasn't prompted by anything understandable -- it was specifically because an anti-gerrymandering ballot measure passed that the legislature didn't like and got caught ignoring)
My point? Although the system worked in this case, if the courts hadn't managed to rule in time, or dropped the ball, a ton of voters right there in the booth may have been confused which one out of the four was the lie, which one was the exaggeration, which one was the one everyone likes, and which was the one that is probably useless (formalizing the election of county sheriffs, which... is already the case?)
But if you take home the ballot, and get to research as you vote, this becomes much, much easier. Professional politicians, hot take, take unfair advantage of voters, even well-informed ones, when voting in person. Vote by mail!
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
11mo ago
This seems kind of... fine? It's not a "do not fly" which creates real and tangible problems, it's rather at worst a waste of government money, right? The program description also mentions that very much unlike the Bush-era program, they take at least some people off the list after a while. If Gabbard temporarily has a few ride-alongs, maybe she gets to be outraged personally for a little while but it doesn't seem like she suffers any actual, uh, harm?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
11mo ago
What's most interesting to me about Walz, though I've been uncharacteristically out of date with politics the last week or so, is that I did see that he has a pathetically low net worth. Without his pension, it's only like 300k or something like that. Which is actually quite nice and rare! I can't remember the last time we had a major presidential or VP candidate who hadn't at least made a million off of books or something. So at least in one sense, he has a legitimate claim to the everyman title.
The best claim to Mormons being Christian is the everyday practical reality of being Mormon. At night you pray to “God the Father”. You ask for forgiveness of sins, something you believe is only possible through the sacrifice of “Jesus Christ”, and a request you believe is mandatory to receive “salvation”. I mean if you had to pick like ONE thing that defines Christianity, wouldn’t you say that it’s more or less exactly this thing? Either you think Jesus died for your sins, or not?
Also, gosh, you can go to the literal official website, not even the one dedicated to explaining our beliefs, and whaddaya know, right there on the front page is a section "What We Believe", with the first link in the section "Learn About Jesus Christ". Clicking this link contains such totally heretical (/s) topics such as:
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Jesus’s Divine Mission
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His Ministry Gave Us the Perfect Example
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His Teachings Show Us the Way to Salvation
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His Sacrifice Means You Can Live with God
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Jesus Made Forgiveness Possible
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Because of Jesus We Will Live Again Someday
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You Can Follow Jesus
If you wanted details, although it's dated in a literal sense, Joseph Smith wrote out exactly an answer to this question ("What do you believe?") in 1842 and we call them today the Articles of Faith which are relatively succinct and also has the advantage of doubling as a primary source.
On a more practical level, i.e. wondering what modern practice is like, I would direct you toward the resource Gospel Principles which has 47 chapters and honestly? Having both read through it and taught lessons from it, I personally consider it the perfect balance of succinct and descriptive for probably 95% of all purposes, as well as quite honest. I'd be extremely surprised it if missed even a single notable modern doctrine or practice, because for many years it was the basis for the first year of lessons for recent converts, so there's obviously not much reason to "hide" anything there, because most of the people using the book were already baptized members. The book is also extremely careful of its wording, and contains some handy scripture (Bible and otherwise) references that offers some further clarification
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4mo ago
Ironically however, this was the result of limited and over-competitive NSF funding causing a race to the bottom for existing funding dollars. Increasing the NSF budget allows the (highly relative) “luxury” of being principled. Clearly, the goals of reforming science and saving money are getting insanely conflated here. I argue that it’s better to do one or the other but not both at once, or you get exactly the current shitshow
Obviously, as a Mormon (member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, whew) I think you're actually on the right track. It's so blindingly obvious that the Catholic church is bumbling along, with zero internal consistency, for centuries and centuries. It shows up all over. Even today, Catholics are very loud about a number of major issues, but very small numbers of actual Catholics actually agree with their own church's doctrine, much less practice it, and that's even before you look at any history at all. Don't get me wrong, I respect Catholics, I get along with many, I still view the religion as an overall net good, etc. but their doctrine is a mess. I genuinely extra respect the Catholics who attempt to pull the doctrine together into a coherent whole, but I just don't see the hand of God guiding them.
Now, doctrinally, to me, this all goes away quite neatly when you give up on the idea of the Catholic line of authority being unbroken. Clearly they strayed, it's self-evident, so my own faith has the nice idea of needing someone to restore and clarify things and have a modern guide/prophet. I'm not saying that people don't find any inconsistencies in Mormon doctrine, there's a people component to be sure, but it's several orders of magnitude less. I strongly reject this idea that doctrine is developed by groups of people hashing it out. Council of Nicea? Convened by Constantine, he basically says I don't care what you produce as long as it's something unifying, and once you do, we'll burn the writings of dissenters and exile anyone not with the program. All this to say you should meet with the missionaries :)
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