Felagund
17hr ago
American society used to have a much larger distaste for money being wasted in this kind of corrupt way.
I think societal norms and character of a people play a bigger role in outcomes than people tend to think. Our turn to welfare spending following the great depression changed pretty dramatically how people relate to the government, and it is bad.
Felagund
1d ago
You can get some information as to the current net total by going to their profile (assuming history's not hidden), and sorting by top or bottom, time restricting as necessary. For example, my "upvoted" comment at the start of this thread must currently be at 2, since it appears after the 3s and before the other 2s, and they're sorted secondarily by time. That doesn't say how it breaks down, of course, though.
Felagund
1d ago
Or that it's repetitive, saying the same thing in too many ways rather than saying new things.
Felagund
1d ago
Oh, I also definitely do some affirmative action in the form of "normally I wouldn't upvote this, but you've already been downvoted plenty, it's good enough, and I don't want you to think everyone hates you."
Felagund
1d ago
Okay, more seriously, I generally agree. I think it is worth pointing out that like/dislike (as you suggest) is more accurate than agree/disagree (as some suggest)—I, at least, will sometimes upvote comments that I disagree with if I'm in a productive conversation with them, and will fail to upvote comments that I otherwise agree with if it's in some respect bad, including beyond content.
I also agree that it's useful to look at user's most upvoted and downvoted posts, even when not a mod. It helps remind me a little of their own inclinations, should I forget, and highlights good old posts from them.
Felagund
2d ago
Many of these loans were taken out with the expectation of securing a valuable job.
Expectations aren't the basis for loans. Do we think mortgages are invalid if the house burns down?
Felagund
2d ago
Inez Stepman's recommended taxing university endowments, but I haven't seen it become a wider talking point.
Felagund
5d ago
This is excellent, thank you.
I'll second what @Primaprimaprima said, about this not being a very good marker of a political divide.
But I'll definitely have to think more about that overall.
I'd argue, though, that men die because of the fall, rather than it being deeply natural.
Felagund
5d ago
I'd really appreciate it if you could teach all of us the basics of what we should know of Israeli politics. I'm sure we'd still be hideously underinformed, but slightly less so.
Felagund
5d ago
Well, they come out Thursdays, most of the time. Do you really want to wait two days?
Felagund
5d ago
I read a book once where the start of each chapter listed the contents of every paragraph. It was fantastic.
Felagund
6d ago
While I generally agree with your comment, I think in my own case, 2x speed is usually closer to reading than speedreading, in that I'm still able to follow pretty closely, not merely get it because it's low in information density. It doesn't feel like I'm forcing my brain to comprehend faster, it just feels like I'm causing them to get through what they're saying at a less ponderous speed. Of course, they vary in how information-dense they are, so I will slow down depending on the video.
Felagund
6d ago
2x speed when possible (and I'd probably experiment with a little, but not too much, higher if offered). If they speak too quickly for me to keep up, I'll drop a little to 1.75 or 1.5, or more if needed. I'll drop temporarily and rewatch a portion if something was hard to catch.
But video content feels inefficient, so I try to prefer text, or watching quickly.
People watching videos (at least, ones primarily meant to inform) at 1x speed is kind of crazy to me. How do you sit through that? Why not watch twice as much in that time? At least, for me, 1x speed is, unless there's a very quick speaker, quite a bit slower than what's needed for me to understand—it's at the pace of them speaking, and usually it's faster to understand a sentence than to come up with one. Perhaps that would change if I watched videos on harder to understand topics, like advanced math or something.
I should probably make more use of youtubetranscript.com.
Felagund
6d ago
I crave insights. What should I know, or how should I look at things, to have the same effect?
Felagund
6d ago
Sure, many would agree. But I've seen this as a way that people have claimed the election was stolen without having to endorse the stronger claims, so I wanted to be sure I included it.
Felagund
6d ago
What about it being a loan from Cohen, instead of a donation? Does that work?
Felagund
6d ago
Quite possibly. What, do you expect him to want the supreme court to rule that the president of the united states is stuck in jail?
Felagund
6d ago
The jury isn't exactly normal. There's a banker, two attorneys, and a software engineer.
Felagund
6d ago
I'll second at least the sentiment that RINO is almost always wrong as an appelative. (And am sympathetic to much of the rest.)
Felagund
6d ago
What exactly does stolen mean?
Suppose
- Actors work to give one candidate an unfair disadvantage in voter perception, but votes are voted and tallied fairly. (E.g. the suppression of Hunter Biden laptop story)
- People change rules to give a favored candidate an advantage (E.g. Pennsylvania Supreme Court broadening early voting standards)
- A few people submit votes illegally, or in an illegal manner.
- Same as 2, but at scale, as a deliberate campaign
- Deliberate tabulation errors, at small scale
- Deliberate tabulation errors, by major actors or at scale
- Candidates being ruled ineligible
- Unfaithful electors costing a presidency
- Setting up other slates of electors to substitute for the duly elected ones
Which of these are or are not theft of an election?
My own perception is that Team Biden's done 1, 2, 3, and tried 7 and 8. Team Trump's done 3 (presumably, somewhere) and tried 9. 4 or 6 is what people often hear by "stolen election", but I haven't seen evidence for it.
But whether any election's stolen depends on which of those (and there are probably more debateable types of maybe election theft) exactly is a stolen election.
Supreme Court, Again
I'm back, because the nine are back.
Connelly v. United States
9-0, opinion by Thomas.
This deals with a question about estate planning. Two brothers, Michael and Thomas Connelly, owned a company, Crown C Supply, and agreed that Crown would be contractually obligated to purchase out the shares of either of them upon death (funded by a life insurance policy on each brother, owned by the company). Michael died, the money was paid out, and Crown purchased his stock at a value of 3 million. Then came the IRS, with an audit. An accounting firm that Thomas hired valued the company at 3.86 million, then, with the 77% share held by Michael, the valuation of the shares in the estate were about 3 million. The IRS, on the other hand, argued that the value should be 6.86 million (the 3.86 million valued before+3 million that was about to be paid out), and so there was about $900,000 more owed. The next two courts both ruled in favor of the government, and now, the supreme court rules unanimously for the government.
Now, why?
Redemption of stock is argued to have a net-zero effect on any given investor. That is (example borrowed), if you hold an 80% share of 10 million in cash, and the remaining 20% share is redeemed for 2 million, you'd now have a 100% share of 8 million, which is the same valuation as before. Hence the need for a corporation to redeem shares doesn't reduce the value of the shares.
Further, if someone else had bought the shares off of Michael, they'd be expecting to get the life insurance payoff in the valuation of the company, and so they'd be valuing it at the higher value.
Thomas (Connelly) argues that someone attempting to buy the value, separately, can't capture the value of those insurance proceeds, as those are about to be spent, and should be considered a liability for the company. (Clarence) Thomas rebuts this, saying that this is the same in essence as asking what the value of 77% of shares would be after the redemption had taken place, under the smaller valuation. But the relevant question in estate taxation is what the shares were worth at the time of Michael's death. (Clarence) Thomas further points out that this would lead one to think that Thomas (Connelly) would have a larger ownership share in a company with the same valuation, which doesn't make sense.
My own thoughts: my initial, reaction to the posing of the question was thinking that this was unfair for Connelly, as it felt like a liability, but as I read it, I was convinced that the court decided correctly. (Clarence) Thomas's arguments are persuasive.
Truck Insurance Exchange v. Kaiser Gypsum Co.
8-0. (Yes, eight. Alito recused himself.) Opinion by Sotomayor.
Unsurprisingly, there are many lawsuits due to damage from asbestos. This case dealt with whether an insurer would be able to "raise" and "be party to any issue" in bankruptcy. It is ordinary to put up a trust in such situations in order to pay for future claims against a bankrupt company. In this case, there was a plan in a proceeding of an insured company which handled outstanding claims that would be uninsured versus ones that would be insured differently. It provided more care to be sure that the claims would not be fraudulent when it would be uninsured. Truck Insurance Exchange wanted to be able to participate in the proceedings as an interested party in some relevant respects, as the bankruptcy code allows any "party in interest" to do so. The court does not rule on Truck's arguments about the case in particular, but does say that it is a party in interest, and so entitled to be able to object. This is a straightforward interpretation of the relevant portion of the bankruptcy code, as it was put in an open-ended manner. (The court also touches on legislative intent to back this up.)
There's probably a little more detail here that could be worked through, but I didn't entirely. This seems a sensible ruling, although I would be curious exactly how far "party in interest" can be made to stretch. Probably not excessively far.
Becerra v. Apache Tribe
5-4. Opinion written by Roberts, and joined by Gorsuch and the liberals (Kagan, Sotomayor, Jackson). Kavanaugh writes a dissent, joined by Thomas, Alito and Barrett.
This is a case dealing with Indian tribes and allocating money to them for healthcare costs. The majority rules that they should get more money. I still need to read most of the dissent, but presumably they disagree.
I'll write up this last case properly later, but I'll post this comment as is for now.
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