Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
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User ID: 863
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
7mo ago
It is not correct to say the judge is the one valuing Mar-a-Lago at 17-25 million. The judge is just quoting the valuation from the Palm Beach County Assessor:
From 2011-2021, the Palm Beach County Assessor appraised the market value of Mar-a-Lago at between $18 million and $27.6 million.
You can read the full ruling here. The ruling also goes over a bunch of properties Trump owned where he lied about easily verifiable facts to inflate valuations, like claiming his Trump Tower triplex was 30k sq ft when it was actually 11k sq ft.
Seriously, just skip down to page 20 and start reading. For property after property Trump was in possession of third party appraisals of his properties that he inflated to many times their actual value when reporting their worth to other parties.
Seven Springs:
Notwithstanding receiving market values from professional appraisals in 2000, 2006, 2012, and 2014 valuing Seven Springs at or below $ 30 million, Donald Trump's 2011 SFC reported the value to be $ 261 million, and his 2012, 2013 and 2014 SFCs reportedthe value to be $ 291 million.
So he inflated the value of his property by almost 10x what an appraiser said it was worth.
40 Wall Street:
In 2010, Cushman & Wakefield appraised the Trump Organization's interest in 40 Wall Street at $200 million. Cushman & Wakefield appraised again in 2011 and 2012, reaching valuations of between $200 and $220 million.
Despite these appraisals, the 2011 and 2012 SFCs valued the Trump Organization's interest in the property at $524.7 million and $527.2 million, respectively, an overvaluation of more than $300 million each year.
Please tell me how it isn't fraud to lie to banks you're seeking a loan from and claim your assets are worth many times what they are actually appraised for.
Highly recommend Matt Levine's article on FTX's balance sheet. There is no way to read this balance sheet and come away thinking that Bankman-Fried, FTX, and Alameda were merely incompetent.
In round numbers, FTX’s Thursday desperation balance sheet shows about $8.9 billion of customer liabilities against assets with a value of roughly $19.6 billion before last week’s crash, and roughly $9.6 billion after the crash (as of Thursday, per FTX’s numbers). Of that $19.6 billion of assets back in the good times, some $14.4 billion was in more-or-less FTX-associated tokens (FTT, SRM, SOL, MAPS). Only about $5.2 billion of assets — against $8.9 billion of customer liabilities — was in more-or-less normal financial stuff. (And even that was mostly in illiquid venture investments; only about $1 billion was in liquid cash, stock and cryptocurrencies — and half of that was Robinhood stock.) After the run on FTX, the FTX-associated stuff, predictably, crashed. The Thursday balance sheet valued the FTT, SRM, SOL and MAPS holdings at a combined $4.3 billion, and that number is still way too high.
I am not saying that all of FTX’s assets were made up. That desperation balance sheet lists dollar and yen accounts, stablecoins, unaffiliated cryptocurrencies, equities, venture investments, etc., all things that were not created or controlled by FTX. 5 And that desperation balance sheet reflects FTX’s position after $5 billion of customer outflows last weekend; presumably FTX burned through its more liquid normal stuff (Bitcoin, dollars, etc.) to meet those withdrawals, so what was left was the weirdo cats and dogs. 6 Still it is striking that the balance sheet that FTX circulated to potential rescuers consisted mostly of stuff it made up. Its balance sheet consisted mostly of stuff it made up! Stuff it made up! You can’t do that! That’s not how balance sheets work! That’s not how anything works!
"It was obviously in good faith that we exchanged customer funds in actual things (dollars, bitcoins, whatever) with coins that we made up and whose supply we control and that could not be sold for even a fraction of their claimed value." Or having an account labelled "Hidden, poorly internally labeled ‘fiat@’ account."
How about a thread of ballot measures of Culture War interest and their results? You can find a list of all measures on the ballot in every state here.
Abortion
Four states (CA, KY, MI, VT) had measures on the ballot related to abortion last night. Three of these (CA, MI, VT) were attempts to enshrine abortion as a right in their state constitutions. All three passed. One (KY) was an effort (similar to KS earlier this year) to amend their constitution to clarify it does not contain a right to abortion. This measure failed. One thing I want to draw attention to is the difference in margin between the KY Senate race and this ballot measure. Rand Paul easily cruised to victory with a margin (according to the NYT) of 890k votes to 550k votes (61.6-38.4). By contrast this ballot measure lost 700k votes to 632k votes (52.55-47.45). Even if every single Booker voter also voted No on the amendment there would still have to be another 150k Paul voters (10% of the electorate, 1/6 of Paul's voters) who also voted No. So it seems like there may be a substantial number of Republican voters who are turned off by the party's position on abortion.
Slavery
Involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime was on the ballot in five (AL, LA, OR, TN, VT) states last night. Of those, four of them (AL, OR, TN, VT) passed their ballot measures prohibiting involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime and one (LA) did not.
Drugs
It was a pretty mixed night for drug legalization on the ballot. Five states (AK, MD, MO, ND, SD) had marijuana legalization initiatives. Two of those (MO, MD) passed and three (AK, ND, SD) did not. Colorado looks set to approve a ballot measure decriminalizing certain psychedelics (including psilocybin and DMT) statewide.
Nondiscrimination
One final ballot measure I want to call attention to is in Nevada. There they passed a constitutional amendment that "prohibits the denial or abridgment of rights on account of an individual's race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, ancestry or national origin."
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
The simple version is that wherever the constitution uses the phrase "people" or "person" (which is most places) it applies to all people physically in the territory of the United States of America. This goes all the way back to 1896 and Wong Win v. United States.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
I do not have much to contribute analytically but this seems tailor made to cater to the kind of financial engineering in ESG investing that I often read about in Money Stuff. Maybe the SEC creating some standards here will cut down on some of the shadiness (heh) in the industry? Also seems like it's of a piece with the trend towards the financialization of everything. On the one hand it's good to be able to have some sense of the value of things for the purpose of analyzing tradeoffs. On the other hand there's a lot of power (and controversy) in doing that valuation.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
11mo ago
1. How viable is Dr. West as a third-party candidate?
As viable as any other third party candidate, which is to say not at all. Like, what is the group of people that (1) West appeals to more than Trump or Biden and (2) constitutes a majority of voters in sufficient states to win those states and the election? I submit there is no such constituency.
2. Are viral speeches still the greatest arm in an Outsider Politician's arsenal?
Probably? I suspect one of the biggest issues for Outsider Politicians is a lack of name recognition. Those Outsider Politicians that have been the most successful are those (like Perot and Trump) that had the most name recognition from before their candidacy. Viral speeches are one way for candidates to get their names out there.
3. Will this campaign introduce trepidation in the academic veneration of Black Americans?
Wat. The Ivy League has trained a hell of a lot more than two detractors of their "party-ideology!" Including several actual Presidents who were arguably opposed to their ideology. Why would Cornell West running for President (winning or not) change anything?
4. What new ideological platforms will be introduced to navigate the thorny task of denigrating a formerly sacred opponent?
There won't be any because it won't be necessary. The likelihood that West gathers the requisite support that doing anything to oppose him is necessary is remote. They'll just ignore him like basically every other third party candidate.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
You might be interested in checking out the latest State of Theology survey. 43% of respondents who identified themselves as Evangelical Christians agreed with the statement "Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God", up from 30% in the 2020 survey.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
Let me see if I understand correctly.
In Biden's case the staffers who discovered the documents immediately alerted NARA to their existence, turned the documents over, and are cooperating with the governments investigation into how the documents came to be there.
In Trump's case NARA learned Trump had documents bearing classification markings after some were included in boxes of presidential records Trump returned to NARA. NARA told Trump they were going to inform the FBI of the classified docs. Trump asks NARA not to tell the FBI, but produces no further documents. Eventually NARA informs the FBI. The FBI gets a subpoena for all documents at Mar-a-Lago bearing a certain set of classification markings. Trump turns over some documents and (falsely) certifies that those documents are all the ones in his possession that are covered by the subpoena. The FBI, by means not fully public yet, develop probable cause to believe Trump has further documents covered by the subpoena which he has not produced. A magistrate judge issues a warrant and the FBI execute that warrant. In the course of executing the warrant the FBI discover their probable cause was correct and Trump had lied about compliance with the subpoena.
Now, maybe some very damning facts will come out in the Biden case. It is a developing situation after all. But on the basis of the facts I know so far the differential response by law enforcement and related entities seem totally explicable.
Simpler question: Why would Millennials, in the United States, vote for the Republican Party? On what prominent issues do the official Republican party line and Millennials agree? It's not gay marriage. Both the 2020 Republican party platform and Rick Scott's Rescue America Plan say marriage is between one man and one women. Meanwhile Millennials support gay marriage 74-26. What policies does the Republican Party have on offer that might be worth the state illegalizing your marriage? Or the marriage of a friend? It definitely isn't abortion. Again, both mouthpieces of the Republican Party call for the criminalization of abortion. Pew doesn't break out generations specifically in its abortion polling but legal abortion in most or all circumstances is supported 62-37 by those between the ages of 30 and 49 (so some overlap with Gen X) and is supported 74-25 among those 18-29 (so some overlap with Gen Z).
I feel like any question of "why doesn't <group> vote for <party>?" needs to start from an analysis of the policy preferences of <group> and <party>. If there's little or no overlap between the two, why should we expect <group> to vote for <party>? I'd be interested in anyone going through either of those documents and finding a position expressed by the Republican party that has majority support among millennials.
As for why this is the case, I think purity politics (of the kind that produce accusations of RINOism, the Tea Party, the House Freedom Caucus, etc) have effectively arrested the historical leftward slide of the Republican party. New generations keep getting more liberal on issues but the Republican party is so effectively in the thrall of the older more conservative part of its base that it cannot alter its policies to appeal to younger people.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
I think the "suffering as much as" is an exageration, and one the comment you quote doesn't say, but I don't think it's odd that people suffer, to some extent, when they hear about others suffering.
Speaking for myself, hearing about the suffering of others can definitely have an impact on my mood. I can get outraged when hearing about injustices that don't effect me personally. I could feel sad when hearing that something bad has happened to someone else even if I don't know them personally. Contemplating all the suffering and injustice happening the world over and the remote possibility of alleviating it can be a profoundly depressing and draining experience. This is exacerbated by the fact that I'm plugged into an information ecosystem that will surface these kinds of facts to me the world over.
To the extent other minds are like mine I find the comment you link relatable.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
25d ago
I think the bigger problem for shady companies switching to crypto is that they are going to have expenses they cannot pay in crypto, necessitating entities that will swap their crypto for fiat. These entities are almost certainly, if they do business in the US, required to abide by KYC and AML laws. Maybe randos looking at the blockchain don't know address X is Pornhub, or whatever, but whoever is changing Pornhub's crypto into dollars has a legal obligation to know. So the angle of attack can easily shift from payment processors to whoever is doing their currency exchange. Crypto is censorship proof as long as you only ever have to use crypto but that's not a sustainable state of affairs for most people or businesses.
My response is that we have no objective reason whatsoever to believe the scientific method is worked in hindsight -- not for the purpose of discovering universal laws of nature, anyway! I will grant that we have had pretty good luck with science-based engineering in the tiny little spec of the universe observable to us. I will even grant that this justifies the continued use of engineering for practical purposes with relative confidence -- under the laws of statistics, so long as, say, one anomaly per hundred thousand hours of use is an acceptable risk.
From my perspective, and I suspect the perspective of most people who care about the scientific method, this gives the whole game away. Sure, the things we call the "laws of nature" may not be the true causal description of the universe at some level. What matters is that the universe acts as if they were universally true, as best we can tell. Sufficiently so that we can use them as a basis for intervention in reality and accurately predict the results in advance. Crucially any refinements to these laws will need to explain all the same observations that the laws they are replacing did. This has happened with scientific theories before. Newtonian mechanics was supplanted with various relativistic mechanics explanations for objects that are very large, or very small, or very fast. To put it another way:
Ah, again this is the result of a confusion. The laws of the universe are not like the laws of man - they do not dictate to nature what it should or should not do. The so-called "laws of nature" are descriptive only. If what we did "violated" the laws of nature, we would not call that action free from the laws - we would merely say that our laws were not correct, and try to modify them to match this new behavior. So you see, one cannot even speak of "violating the laws of nature", for those laws are simply whatever occurs.
Scientific laws are not the source code of the universe, they're just formalizations of observed relationships.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4mo ago
Trump will not take office next year.
Pedantically, assuming "next year" means 2024 this would be true even if Trump wins. The President does not assume office until January the year following the election (2025).
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
Do you ever feel like there are just... too many men on this planet? Not humans. Just men, in particular.
No.
None of that happens now, in our ultra-safe modern feminized society. So we just have a bunch of surplus males sitting around.. doing nothing... simping for women. Taking up body building, or feminism, or prostitution, or onlyfans, or whatever else will give them a drop of female attention.
Society is "feminized" because a lot fewer men die? Also these people aren't doing nothing. They presumably work, generating value for society. They probably have friends and family and other non-romantic relationships. They themselves very likely have hobbies they enjoy, that bring them happiness. The idea that because, in some theoretical 1:1 man:woman pairing, these guys mathematically wouldn't be able to be paired with a woman therefore they should just die is insane. So I guess you characterized your post correctly!
I encourage anyone interested in this topic to read this article about how gender ratios on college campuses impact the dating market. Spoiler: dating norms are controlled by whichever gender is in more demand. When there are more women than men dating norms tend towards men's preferences (lots of hookups, one night stands, few LTRs) while the opposite is true when there are more men than women.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
That's the part that caught my interest: how did the rationalist community, with its obsession with establishing better epistemics than those around it, wind up writing, embracing, and spreading a callout article with shoddy fact-checking?
The same way they got suckered into thinking AI x-risk is an "effective" altruist cause?
At least the callout post came with testimony from people who had actually worked at Nonlinear. It had quotes and screenshots and other forms of evidence of the kind that convince us of many things every day. It turns out these statements did not reflect reality and the screenshots were carefully curated to present a particular narrative. This is a risk we run any time we trust someone's testimony about a situation we don't have first hand experience with. This is an ordinary, and probably unavoidable, epistemic failure mode.
By contrast, what is the state of evidence for AI x-risk research being an effective cause area? If I'm making a $5k dollar donation should I make it to the Against Malaria Foundation (who I'm reasonably confident will save a life with that money) or to some AI x-risk charity? What's the number of lives, in expectation the donation to the AI x-risk charity will save? What was the methodology for determining that number? The error bars on it? As best as I can tell these numbers are sourced to the same place: their ass. If you think AI x-risk is an "effective" cause area, you have bad epistemic standards! Not good ones!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
I think one confounding factor is what kind of language counts as advocating genocide against Jews. Probably the most prominent example of this recently has been the phrase "from the river to the sea." Some people surely use it with a genocidal intent (there should be no Jews between the "river and the sea") while other use it as an expression of solidarity between the West Bank, Gaza, and non-Jews in Israel more generally. If I use the phrase am I advocating genocide against Jews in Israel? It probably depends on the context! I suspect the presidents here correctly deduced how their answers might be weaponized.
I think the whole discourse has been poisoned by Zionists who regard criticism of Israel as a state as criticism of Jews as a people, which is an absurd notion.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
6mo ago
I think I'm as progressive as anyone and I'm pretty confident I don't believe "that casual sex ... devalues or dishonors [women] in some way." I'm not sure I know any progressives that do believe that. Neither the linked comment nor yours provide any evidence that progressives do believe this so forgive me for being a little skeptical that it's true.
I’d argue that the more or less unstated promise of the Sexual Revolution to young single women was that: a) they will be sexually free without inviting social shame i.e. normalized sexual experimentation and promiscuity on their part will not have an unfavorable long-term effect on men’s attitudes towards them, and women will not sexually shame one another anymore b) they will be able to leave their constrictive gender roles to the extent they see fit, but this will not lead to social issues and anomie because men will be willing to fill those roles instead i.e. men will have no problem becoming stay-at-home dads, nurses, kindergarteners, doing housework etc.
And none of that turned out to be true.
I mean, if you view (a) and (b) as binaries that society is either like or not then sure, we aren't there. But if you view (a) and (b) as spectra that societal norms can be closer to or farther from I think it would be pretty hard to argue we're not much closer to (a) and (b) today than we were pre-Sexual Revolution. Sure, maybe the Sexual Revolution (in the sense of particular events that occurred in the 1960's and 1970's) weren't enough to get us all the way there, but my perception is they started us down this path that we continue on towards those outcomes.
Everyone wants to think the promised revolution ending in utopia will happen in their lifetimes. Almost half of Christians polled by PEW back in 2013 thought Christ would return to Earth in the next 40 years. Naturally it's disappointing when you find out that the fruits of the promised revolution may not be happening while you would be alive to experience them.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
7mo ago
Let's say that this reckoning mood last more than two weeks and the inevitable Israeli reaction on Gaza; It is possible that we are beginning to see a realignement from the upper middle class on immigration in general and on inclusion and diversity in particular?
I don't really understand how this paragraph connects to the first paragraph. "I am surprised by how some prominent people on the left are willing to excuse atrocities committed by Hamas, therefore immigration and DEI are bad." How does the premise connect to the conclusion? I don't think most left-ish people's support for immigration or DEI are premised on whether or not certain other leftists will excuse atrocities committed by Hamas.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
There has to be more going on here than a random judge deciding that they are more qualified to decide technical medical questions than actual experts; as a general rule, political opponents aren't ever this insane. What are the details I'm not understanding in the decision that make this more reasonable?
This is a commendable attitude but in this case it is leading you astray. Kacsmaryk granted relief to Plaintiff's who (1) lack standing and (2) even if they had standing their claims are statutorily time-barred and (3) even if they weren't time barred are barred by lack of exhaustion of administrative remedies. You don't have to take my word for it either. Indeed, the lead plaintiff in this case (the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine) was formed three months after Dobbs was decided last year and incorporated in Amarillo Texas specifically so they could file this suit and be assured that Matthew Kacsmaryk is the judge who would hear it.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
I definitely think some people's dietary restrictions have the form you describe, as being some kind of personal belief about the rightness or wrongness of eating certain things (vegetarianism and veganism seem like the obvious example). On the other hand some things (like allergies) don't really have this character. If my friend has a peanut allergy so severe that eating them will cause anaphylactic shock and possibly death, that seems qualitatively different to something like veganism. When I am accommodating someone's allergies like this it's because I don't want to maybe kill them! Which seems like a very reasonable thing to do, and their request seems quite different in character to anything that could be called a "holy act", nor does their motivation for the request seem comparable to religious requests.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4mo ago
So...what gives? Are modern women just that impulsive when feeling unhappy in a marriage? Or misled? Do they have illusions about singlehood?
It might be useful to look at the reasons people give when they get divorced. The top reason (75% of couples cite) is lack of commitment, followed by infidelity (60%). A substantial number also cite substance abuse (35%) and domestic violence (25%). If your husband is cheating on you or beating you maybe you don't care that getting divorced is economically bad for you.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5mo ago
Seriously. What are we even talking about here?
There was a period of time where, among a certain set, "high egg prices" was a synecdoche for high inflation and rising prices more generally. Tucker's reference here is probably not to convey that he literally pays $11/dozen for eggs but something closer to "prices high, economy bad."
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
6mo ago
I apologize if this comes off as straw-man-y but if your argument is functionally "Hamas is so evil they should not be allowed to continue to exist so it's fine when Israel kills thousands of innocents to stop them" then your argument is missing a few steps! Someone put this more pithily than me on Twitter but if Israel killed my whole family, who have nothing to do with Hamas, in pursuit of killing some Hamas member my first response would be to start Hamas 2. Do you imagine that a lasting peace is going to be achieved by killing thousands of innocents to get rid of Hamas?
I suspect a majority of the people who are calling for a ceasefire agree you that Hamas is evil. I've seen lots of people make points about how Hamas oppresses Palestinians in Gaza. How they haven't allowed elections in almost 20 years. Those people just disagree that Hamas is "murdering thousands of innocent people to stop them" evil.
But if these people think that a cease fire with Hamas will lead to a long standing peace then they are delusional.
I don't think most people think a present ceasefire will lead to long standing peace, I think they are much more focused on the immediate goal of preventing the deaths of thousands (tens of thousands?) of innocent civilians.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
11mo ago
This is an important point. Even if the law is unconstitutional courts are not going to raise that issue themselves, someone is going to have to argue it. If everyone charged under the law has pleaded guilty no adjudication about the law's constitutionality has actually occurred.
I think this undersells how much of the emphasis on WMDs was on nuclear weapons, specifically. As other commenters have pointed out we did find large stockpiles of chemical weapons in Iraq. The problem with using chemical weapons as a justification for invasion is that (1) lots of countries (including the US) had large chemical weapons stockpiles at the time and (2) chemical weapons are not actually that effective. I think there was much more focus on nuclear weapons than other categories of WMD due to the idea of Iraq giving terrorists sufficient material to make a dirty bomb or similar. As you note, manufacturing some kind of plausible trail or stockpile of nuclear weapons or fissile material is much harder than doing so for chemical weapons.
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