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Gillitrut

Reading from the golden book under bright red stars

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joined 2022 September 06 14:49:23 UTC 

				
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Gillitrut


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 14:49:23 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Highly recommend reading Ian Hacking's Making Up People which was a decade ahead of The Geography of Madness in describing this phenomenon.




Around 1970, there arose a few paradigm cases of strange behaviour similar to phenomena discussed a century earlier and largely forgotten. A few psychiatrists began to diagnose multiple personality. It was rather sensational. More and more unhappy people started manifesting these symptoms. At first they had the symptoms they were expected to have, but then they became more and more bizarre. First, a person had two or three personalities. Within a decade the mean number was 17. This fed back into the diagnoses, and became part of the standard set of symptoms. It became part of the therapy to elicit more and more alters. Psychiatrists cast around for causes, and created a primitive, easily understood pseudo-Freudian aetiology of early sexual abuse, coupled with repressed memories. Knowing this was the cause, the patients obligingly retrieved the memories. More than that, this became a way to be a person. In 1986, I wrote that there could never be ‘split’ bars, analogous to gay bars. In 1991 I went to my first split bar.






This story can be placed in a five-part framework. We have (a) a classification, multiple personality, associated with what at the time was called a ‘disorder’. This kind of person is now a moving target. We have (b) the people, those I call ‘unhappy’, ‘unable to cope’, or whatever relatively non-judgmental term you might prefer. There are (c) institutions, which include clinics, annual meetings of the International Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation, afternoon talkshows on television (Oprah Winfrey and Geraldo Rivera made a big thing of multiples, once upon a time), and weekend training programmes for therapists, some of which I attended. There is (d) the knowledge: not justified true belief, once the mantra of analytic philosophers, but knowledge in Popper’s sense of conjectural knowledge, and, more specifically, the presumptions that are taught, disseminated and refined within the context of the institutions. Especially the basic facts (not ‘so-called facts’, or ‘facts’ in scare-quotes): for example, that multiple personality is caused by early sexual abuse, that 5 per cent of the population suffer from it, and the like. There is expert knowledge, the knowledge of the professionals, and there is popular knowledge, shared by a significant part of the interested population. There was a time, partly thanks to those talkshows and other media, when ‘everyone’ believed that multiple personality was caused by early sexual abuse. Finally, there are (e) the experts or professionals who generate (d) the knowledge, judge its validity, and use it in their practice. They work within (c) institutions that guarantee their legitimacy, authenticity and status as experts. They study, try to help, or advise on the control of (b) the people who are (a) classified as of a given kind.






This banal framework can be used for many examples, but roles and weights will be different in every case. There is no reason to suppose that we shall ever tell two identical stories of two different instances of making up people. There is also an obvious complication: there are different schools of thought. In this first instance, there was the multiple movement, a loose alliance of patients, therapists and psychiatric theorists, on the one hand, who believed in this diagnosis and in a certain kind of person, the multiple. There was the larger psychiatric establishment that rejected the diagnosis altogether: a doctor in Ontario, for example, who, when a patient arrives announcing she has multiple personality, demands to be shown her Ontario Health Insurance card (which has a photograph and a name on it) and says: ‘This is the person I am treating, nobody else.’ Thus there are rival frameworks, and reactions and counter-actions between them further contribute to the working out of this kind of person, the multiple personality. If my sceptical colleague convinces his potential patient, she will very probably become a very different kind of person from the one she would have been had she been treated for multiple personality by a believer.






I would argue that the multiple personality of the 1980s was a kind of person previously unknown in the history of the human race. This is a simple idea familiar to novelists, but careful philosophical language is not prepared for it. Pedantry is in order. Distinguish two sentences:








A. There were no multiple personalities in 1955; there were many in 1985.










B. In 1955 this was not a way to be a person, people did not experience themselves in this way, they did not interact with their friends, their families, their employers, their counsellors, in this way; but in 1985 this was a way to be a person, to experience oneself, to live in society.








As I see it, both A and B are true. An enthusiast for what is now called Dissociative Identity Disorder will say, however, that A is false, because people with several ‘alter personalities’ undoubtedly existed in 1955, but were not diagnosed. A sceptic will also say that A is false, but for exactly the opposite reason: namely, that multiple personality has always been a specious diagnosis, and there were no real multiples in 1985 either. Statement A leads to heated but pointless debates about the reality of multiple personality, but in my opinion both sceptics and enthusiasts can peacefully agree to B. When I speak of making up people, it is B that I have in mind, and it is through B that the looping effect occurs.






Multiple personality was renamed Dissociative Identity Disorder. But that was more than an act of diagnostic house-cleaning. Symptoms evolve, patients are no longer expected to come with a roster of altogether distinct personalities, and they don’t. This disorder is an example of what in my book Mad Travellers (1998) I called a ‘transient mental illness’. ‘Transient’ not in the sense of affecting a single person for a while and then going away, but in the sense of existing only at a certain time and place. Transient mental illnesses can best be looked at in terms of the ecological niches in which they can appear and thrive. They are easy cases for making up people, precisely because their very transience leads cynics to suspect they are not really real, and so could plausibly be said to be made up.




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Iran is a different country. Our constitution doesn’t apply to them.




The part of the Iran-Contra affair that is scandalous does not primarily concern events that occurred in Iran. The part that is scandalous is the part where the executive branch of the government deliberately defied a restriction on what it can spend money on passed by Congress, in violation of Article 1 Section 9 of the United States Constitution.




Watergate feels like child play to me. Some burglary.




Again, the significance in Watergate is not in the initial break in, it is in Nixon's attempts to impede or end the investigation into the break in, due its links to his campaign and top officials. Imagine some people are arrested breaking into Mar-A-Lago. Investigation by the FBI reveals the perpetrators are connected to high level members of the Biden administration and perhaps the president himself. The Attorney General appoints a special prosecutor to investigate. After the special prosecutor's investigation implicates Biden, he fires his Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, because they refuse to fire the special prosecutor and end the investigation into him. Would you characterize the scandal here as "some burglary"?




Pentagon Papers - again bad shit we did to people who weren’t Americans. We expect the CIA and Pentagon to fuck up our enemies




The significance of the Pentagon Papers is only partially the things the US government did in Vietnam, it is also about the way the US government deceived the American people with respect to its intentions and motivations for engaging in the Vietnam War, a war that killed some 50k Americans!




This was literally a coup by the deep state against the will of the American people to overthrow a Democratically elected government.




Can you describe for me, as literally as possible the acts you understood the "deep state" to have taken?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There's no way that Trump and his inner circle aren't insider trading on these tariff announcements, right?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
More news in immigration yesterday. There's an Atlantic article about it. The docket is Abrego Garcia v. Noem. The facts I'm recounting come from the declaration of Robert L. Cerna, Acting Field Office Director of the ICE Harlingen Field Office. This declaration is attached as Exhibit C to the government's response in opposition to the TRO (ECF #11).




6. On March 15, 2025, two planes carrying aliens being removed under the Alien
Enemies Act (“AEA”) and one carrying aliens with Title 8 removal orders departed the United
States for El Salvador. Abrego-Garcia, a native and citizen of El Salvador, was on the third flight
and thus had his removal order to El Salvador executed. This removal was an error.






7. On March 29, 2019, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) served Abrego-
Garcia with a Notice to Appear, charging him as inadmissible pursuant to Section
1182(a)(6)(A)(i) of Title 8 of the United States Code, “as an alien present in the United States
without being admitted or paroled, or who arrived in the United States at any time or place other
than as designated by the [Secretary of Homeland Security].”




...




9. On October 10, 2019, an IJ ordered Abrego-Garcia’s removal from the United
States but granted withholding of removal to El Salvador pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3)(A).
This grant of protection prohibited his removal to El Salvador.






10 . Following this grant of withholding of removal, Abrego-Garcia was released from
ICE custody.






11. On March 12, 2025, ICE Homeland Security Investigations arrested Abrego-
Garcia due to his prominent role in MS-13. Over the next two days, Abrego-Garcia was
transferred to the staging area for the removal flights discussed in Paragraph 6.






12. The operation that led to Abrego-Garcia’s removal to El Salvador was designed to
only include individuals with no impediments to removal. Generally, individuals were not placed
on the manifest until they were cleared for removal.






13. ICE was aware of this grant of withholding of removal at the time Abrego-
Garcia’s removal from the United States. Reference was made to this status on internal forms.






14. Abrego-Garcia was not on the initial manifest of the Title 8 flight to be removed
to El Salvador. Rather, he was an alternate. As others were removed from the flight for various
reasons, he moved up the list and was assigned to the flight. The manifest did not indicate that
Abrego-Garcia should not be removed.






15. Through administrative error, Abrego-Garcia was removed from the United States
to El Salvador. This was an oversight, and the removal was carried out in good faith based on the
existence of a final order of removal and Abrego-Garcia’s purported membership in MS-13.




That last line is, frankly, insane to me given the circumstances. "Yea we knew at the time we deported the guy to El Salvador that it was illegal for us to do it, but it was in good faith!" What is the government's response to having illegally deported someone? Too bad! The government makes a few arguments but here I want to zoom in on a particular one: redressability. Ordinarily in order for a U.S. Federal court to have jurisdiction to hear a case the Plaintiff (that would be Abrego-Garcia, his wife, and his 5 year old son in this case) bears the burden of establishing that an order of the court would redress their claimed injury. This cannot be met here, according to the government, in part because they no longer have custody of Abrego-Garcia and so there is no order the Court can issue as to the United States Government that will reddress their injury. The appropriate entity to be enjoined is the government of El Salvador, over which a U.S. federal court obviously has no jurisdiction.


As best I can tell nothing in the redressability argument turns on any facts about his legal status in the United States. The argument is strictly about who presently has custody of the defendant in question. I do not see any reason why the government could not make an identical argument if an "administrative error" meant they deported a United States citizen.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This idea fascinates me, and while I'm sure there are all sorts of reasons it may be terrible, I fear that financially the U.S. may need to do something dramatic like this in order to get the debt under control, etc etc




What does under control mean here? It's not that long ago (late 90's) the United States has a budget surplus. Our debt to GDP ratio could also be shrinking substantially if we repealed the Bush and Trump tax cuts (i.e. went back to the tax rates we had when we had a surplus). The growth of United States debt to some unmanageable level only seems inevitable because one of the primary ways of reducing it is implicitly off the table. This asymmetry also infects US political discourse. Any new spending must justify itself with how it is going to be paid for but the same is rarely asked of tax cuts.




The question for me is - how would this work? Which areas do you think would get cut the most? (education was mentioned here specifically) Which areas are critical and should remain mostly untouched? (post office?)




Any discussion here needs to start with the actual federal budget. About 60% of which is Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid/Military. Cutting the DOE down to 0 would cut ~10% off the deficit. You could eliminate a solid majority of federal government departments and still not arrive at a budget surplus. Most of them are tiny relative to the size of the deficit.




On top of that, if this were to happen, what would be the primary blockers?




The largest one is probably the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. The Act was a direct response to executive branch employees (including the President) giving out government positions as a kind of patronage. The Act reformed the hiring process for large swathes of administrative agencies to be based on merit and competitive exams rather than political appointment. You might have heard about this in the context of Trump trying to create Schedule F to designate a bunch of positions in the executive branch as exempt from civil service protections.




Do you think Elon is the right man for the job without political connections?




I am not sure how Elon is "without political connections." He just hosted an interview with a candidate for President. His companies are government contractors. He has adversarial relationships with particular executive branch departments. He is not exactly someone with no personal financial interest in the operation of specific government departments.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the article is big on Vibes, Narrative, and Metaphor but pretty light on reason or evidence. If you buy all the authors premises its a nice polemic but as someone skeptical I found basically nothing in it convincing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You might enjoy Matt Levine's take in Everything Everywhere is Securities Fraud




You know the basic idea. A company does something bad, or something bad happens to it. Its stock price goes down, because of the bad thing. Shareholders sue: Doing the bad thing and not immediately telling shareholders about it, the shareholders say, is securities fraud. Even if the company does immediately tell shareholders about the bad thing, which is not particularly common, the shareholders might sue, claiming that the company failed to disclose the conditions and vulnerabilities that allowed the bad thing to happen.






And so contributing to global warming is securities fraud, and sexual harassment by executives is securities fraud, and customer data breaches are securities fraud, and mistreating killer whales is securities fraud, and whatever else you’ve got. Securities fraud is a universal regulatory regime; anything bad that is done by or happens to a public company is also securities fraud, and it is often easier to punish the bad thing as securities fraud than it is to regulate it directly.






...






But the principle of the thing is that U.S. securities law is a global universal regulatory regime: If a foreign company never issues shares in the U.S. and files its financial statements and other reports only abroad, it can still be sued in the U.S. for securities fraud. And in the U.S., everything is securities fraud.




He also has a take on the Bankman-Fried trial in today's issue.


In the FTX case I think the case for fraud is pretty simple.


    

  1. 

    As an exchange FTX was a custodian of customer assets. If a customer bought 10 BTC then FTX was obliged to hold that 10 BTC in case that customer wanted to sell it or transfer it or whatever.
    

    2. 

  2. 

    FTX did in fact represent to customers that it was a custodian of their assets and did have their assets.
    

    3. 

  3. 

    FTX did not actually have custody of the relevant assets. They sold them or lent them or sent them to Alameda or otherwise did not retain the assets they were obliged to.
    

    4. 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it is important in this context to distinguish between "unlawful" in a criminal sense and "unlawful" in a civil sense. Functionally all criminal laws are written the way you describe. With a list of the prohibited conduct and a range of penalties for doing it. Civil law penalties are more vague because their purpose is to redress some harm that some individual A has caused some other individual B. Legislatures can (and do) pass laws modifying what kinds of damages one may receive when one has been wronged in various civil ways but there is not (by design) as complete a specification as criminal law. Civil law instead relies on the Plaintiff (the person bringing the suit) being able to articulate how much they have been wronged and asking a court for appropriate relief. To some extent we put trust in judges and courts (and a complex system of precedents) to figure out what the appropriate relief is in civil cases.


Lawsuits for violations of civil rights are, in the United States, civil lawsuits and generally are asking courts for (1) damages actually suffered and (2) an injunction against the defendant. The second part is important because it means if the enjoined defendant engages in the described conduct again there can be additional penalties (criminal and civil) for violating a court order, above whatever civil law violations it would also entail.


Circling back to your AA example the Supreme Court's ruling is more like "If You Discriminate On The Basis Of Race We'll Order You To Pay Damages To The People You've Discriminated Against And If This Isn't The First Time We'll Impose Additional And Escalating Penalties."




(As far as I know, the universities have not been penalized or ordered to compensate their victims in any way – if this is incorrect, I would be open to being corrected.)




If they haven't yet, they will be. I think a little civil procedure is instructive here. Before anyone in a civil suit gets ordered to pay anyone else damages you first need to figure out whether the defendant is liable. After a court has made a determination about the defendant's liability, that determination becomes appealable to some higher court (and eventually SCOTUS). On appeal the appellate court doesn't take over the whole case, they are usually only deciding the particular issue being appealed. Afterwards they'll send the case back down to the original court with an order to continue proceedings consistent with their opinion. So SCOTUS's decision was the "end" of the case in the sense it found Harvard and UNC liable and created a national precedent that their conduct was a violation of the student's constitutional rights but it was not the end in a procedural sense. The trial court still needs to actually issue an injunction and figure out how much in damages to award the plaintiffs.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I know the whole premise of longtermism is in thinking about the far future but it seems to me the degree of uncertainty involved with respect to what it will be like makes it impossible to take them seriously. Making decisions today about what you expect things to be like in 11 generations, in a sociological or technological sense, is not rational, it is irrational.


Take the Collins example (that you rightly call crazy). How long is 11 generations? Assuming each of their kids has kids between the ages of 20-30 (for simpler math) it means their 11 generations is going to take between 220 and 330 years to realize. What was our own world like 220 to 330 years ago? Well 220 years ago would have been circa 1803. This is before the founding of Mormonism, indeed a few years before Joseph Smith's birth. The United States was still in the grip of a fierce debate over slavery. This was before the development of the ideology of communism by Marx and Engels. If you take the longer end, 330 years, that puts you at around 1693. So now we're back before the founding of the United States. This is around the time the Amish are founded in Switzerland and just a few years after Locke publishes his Treatises.


There is nothing "just" about 11 generations! Making decisions today on the assumption that your kids, and their kids, and so on up to 8 billion people will keep your ideology over the course of centuries is making decisions on the basis of a false assumption.


Even leaving aside this one family, how have various religious or ethnic organizations managed to hold their beliefs across this length of time? My impression is not very well. Firstly, many such organizations that are prominent today have not even *existed * that long. Secondly, among those that have, how many of the versions of these organizations from 11 generations ago would even recognize their modern incarnations? How much is the Catholic church today like the Catholic church of 1803? Of 1693? How much has the LDS church changed, since it's founding by Smith, in a much shorter time?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I guess I have some experience here. Starting back in 2021 I was the heaviest I had ever been (260 lbs) and decided I wanted to lose weight. I saw a nutritionist, we worked on a meal plan and routine. I changed a whole bunch of my habits and about 18 months later I was down to 185 lbs. Over the two-ish years since then I've gained most of it back and am about 220 lbs as of this morning.


Losing weight this way required changing a lot of daily habits. Counting calories. Keeping regular track of my weight. Paying attention to portion sizes. I would venture to say most people don't do any of this. They eat in a very intuitive way that likely matches the way they grew up eating or their social environment. I think likening it to drug addiction makes sense. Not necessarily because people become physically addicted to food, but because the scope of changes to one's life can be similar. I'd liken it to mild alcoholism, which is also something I struggle with. Losing weight was much harder than controlling that!


In terms of why I gained the weight back, the habits necessary to maintain that lower weight require active upkeep, at least for me. If I fall out of the habit of counting my calories or macros, of weighing myself every day, it's easy to get back in bad habits that involve eating a lot more.




But what makes someone — who for months now has been eating much less — be unable to maintain the amount they've been eating for months but instead be compelled to keep eating more even though it's actively physically hurting them (and costing them in other ways, like socially).




This part is weird, to me. I was significantly weaker at my primary form of exercise (powerlifting) after my weight loss. And no one I had ever interacted with had commented on my weight in a negative way socially. The reasons I started losing weight were definitely internal to me, not anything I felt pushed on by anyone else.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think it is pretty common for any large entity (not just government) to have separate departments for authorizing payments and making payments. I am pretty sure in my own  employer this is exactly how it works. If department or individual X with authority to authorize payments has done so it's not clear why department or individual Y should be second guessing them about whether the payment is permitted. Especially for large and complex operations it's not clear to me how the "department of writing checks" can also be expert in the subject matter of every other department and what they are and aren't authorized to spend money on. The accountability is (properly) located in the entity that authorized the payment, not the department that wrote the check. Blaming the department of check writing would be like blaming my bank for letting me send a bunch of money to gambling platforms.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't understand why people suddenly forget about chilling effects in this context. The government passes a law that bans doing X but it's ambiguous whether some similar behavior Y is part of X. Even if Y is not covered by X that ambiguity might chill people from doing Y if they think the government might prosecute them for doing Y. Even if the government ultimately does not succeed (jury acquittal) defending yourself in a criminal trial is not exactly free.


So, let's ask how the exemption for a medical emergency works. Is the standard subjective or objective? Does the physician merely have to say the magic words "I think there is a medical emergency?" Do they have to actually believe there is a sufficient medical emergency? Is their determination open to challenge by the state after the fact? Maybe you're pretty sure, in the moment, such a medical emergency exists. Are you "the state couldn't find a doctor who could convince a jury otherwise on pain of conviction of a first degree felony" sure? Especially if the alternative is, what, a medical malpractice or wrongful death claim? Your insurance probably covers the latter. It won't protect you from a felony conviction!


These laws fulfill their obviously intended effect of chilling doctors from providing abortions whether or not they have a fig leaf of an exception.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Farmshine has learned that these fines were ignored on advice of their former attorney, so as not to admit guilt. After all, why should Herr and Wentworth admit guilt for actions that have become commonplace and are open to interpretation of the state’s vague and archaic veterinary law in regard to defining ‘diagnosis’ — especially since pregnancy is not a disease to be diagnosed, but rather a condition to be observed?




This advice is so fucking stupid they should be suing whatever attorney gave it to them. I am not a barred lawyer in PA but I am confident that the proper response to "a state executive agency has inappropriately levied a fine and injunction on me" is "file suit challenging the action in a court of competent jurisdiction" not "ignore it and hope it goes away." All that notwithstanding, reading the Veterinary Medicine Practice Act, it sounds like the board has not followed the legally required procedure for enforcing its judgements. Unless there have been some proceedings initiated in a PA court that are not being mentioned.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				USA Election Day 2022 Megathread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think agents of the state should have to identify themselves as agents of the state when going about the business of the state. And the particular agents doing the state's business need to be identifiable after the fact to the people they interacted with for accountability reasons. I don't think this an insane thing to say? Maybe I am just too radically libertarian. There are just a whole[1] pile[2] of articles[3] discussing the phenomenon of people impersonating ICE officers to commit other crimes. It turns out a standard like "if someone claims to be from ICE you gotta do what they say, even if they refuse to provide identification or evidence, on pain of committing another federal crime" is a standard that is open to abuse!


On the more general topic I think black bagging is a lot harder in a world where ~everyone has a video camera in their pocket. All the Dem politicians detentions or arrests I'm aware of had contemporaneous video within minutes of them occurring. Even in cases of AEA-related deportation attempts the news has gotten out in hours or less.


My radical proposal is the judiciary should have their own police force, independent of the executive, for the purpose of enforcing their orders.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The actual pardons (Milley, Fauci, Committee) are significantly more detailed regarding what and when.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Harris' biggest advantage is the online right is going to be totally unable to hide their power level, in ways that will be negatively polarizing to the median voter. This is already happening in this thread.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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.