Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
No bio...
User ID: 863
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
3yr ago
It seems the pizza box claim goes back to this Twitter thread, which has a screenshot of this article. The article mentions the police used "social networks" to determine the brothers were together in Romania to arrest them but doesn't mention the pizza, or any particular social media post (Tate had made others about being in the country).
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
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?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
The latter seems like the biggest scandal since JFK assassination.
I cannot tell if this is intended to be hyperbole. I feel like I could name a dozen government scandals worse than anything the US government could possibly have been doing with Twitter. Iran-Contra? NSA spying? Watergate? Pentagon papers? The government pressuring a social media company to suppress speech it doesn't like and promote its own agenda is bad, to be sure, but I am not sure it is "sell weapons to Iran and send the profits to South American rebels in direct violation of an act of Congress" bad.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
I admittedly know relatively little about Tate but it seems to me totally on-brand for him to be a sex-trafficking rapist. It'd be like if you told me Roosh V was a rapist. Like, no shit. It'd be more surprising if he wasn't. The guy who was banned from Twitter for saying it is partially a rape victims fault that they are raped and who said that 40% of the reason he moved to Romania is because police would be less likely to prosecute rape charges, is a rapist? What a shocker! Who could possibly have thought such a person would rape and traffic women! Here's an interview from 2019 where Tate gives his thoughts on the Romanian legal system:
The women understand they ain’t going to sit there and drink all your drinks and play with your d*ck, go to your house and suck your d*ck and then start having sex with you and say, you know what, “it’s rape.” It doesn’t even cross their minds. They’re very self-protective cause they know if a rich Romanian man did something wrong to a Romanian girl and she called the police, he’ll just give him $500 and it’ll go away. It’s as corrupt as f*ck. So there everyone’s far more personally responsible.
Definitely sounds like a guy very concerned with staying on the right side of the Romanian legal system!
Presumably their hustler university program and other businesses provide plenty of legal revenue; why engage in such unnecessary risk?
What I have heard from online rumors is that the women were trafficked as part of the Hustler University program. Basically "look at all these hot women who'll have sex with you if you follow our program!" Only the women are not there consensually. Maybe he thought he'd be able to give the police $500 to fuck off like he mentions in the interview and that turned out not to be the case.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
My impression is airlines are pretty heavily regulated at the federal level (for obvious interstate commerce reasons) and that there is also a lot of consumer protection regulation at the federal level. I don't see why the consumer protection angle is insufficient. The articles don't go into too much detail about what the accountability is supposed to look like but what is mentioned (refunds for customers) or hinted at (perhaps increased regulation) seem like straightforward consumer protection stuff.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
I agree this is inappropriate but no drag shows I've been to have featured anyone's exposed breasts.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
I am curious what proposition, overt or covert, you take the depiction of interracial or LGBT families to be propaganda for.
Literally every single book my 3 year old daughter got for Christmas is either packed to the gills with LGBTQ "families" or interracial families mixed to a degree that I'm pretty sure is genetically impossible. Like I don't think White Woman + Latino Man = 1 Asian Child, 1 Black Child and 1 tan baby.
I suspect most people are not thinking about the plausibility of genetic relationship between depicted family members when buying children's books. For one, people can have family members whom they are not genetically related to. For two, children's book authors are known to take creative liberties with reality for the purpose of telling an entertaining story or imparting a moral. For example, they may depict an animal doing something it is quite unlikely for it to do in reality (like a caterpillar eating chocolate cake) or imagine entirely new creatures which do not exist (like large furred horned hominids or dragons).
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
I am not aware of any others, but I'm also not aware of any other legislative body that has anything like the cloture rule in the US Senate (requiring a larger proportion of votes in the body to end debate on a bill and proceed to a vote to pass it than is required to actually pass it). If the Senate didn't have its particular cloture rule it would be unnecessary to tie so many bills making substantive policy changes to a spending bill, because they could just be passed through ordinary business instead.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
It's certainly not a good thing but it's not as bad as it may seem at first glance. A lot of the content in the bill won't be new material to the people voting on it. Part of the reason the bill gets so long is because Congress takes a bunch of other bills introduced throughout the year and append them to the appropriations bill. So in addition to funding the government this bill also contains reform of the Electoral Count Act and a bunch of other stuff not related to funding the government.
It would be better if we could just vote on all these bills themselves but various things prevent that. Part of that is that there is little bipartisan agreement on individual bills which means, with the way the Senate works, only the rare bills with large support in both parties can pass. This is also why there's such a focus on the contours of reconciliation, since those bills can bypass the Senate hurdles. Another part is that there's little trust (for good reason) between the two parties (or even factions within the parties) that they will keep their word on deals for voting for different bills. There's always a concern with enforcement of a deal like "If we vote for and pass bill X, I'll vote for and help pass bill Y." After X is passed you can just not vote on Y, after all. This is also why the end of the year omnibus is so controversial. The funding bill carries a very large downside (government shutdown) in the event it doesn't pass, so both parties load it up with as much as they can before it becomes impassable. Since the whole thing passes as a single package, with a large negative for voting against, it's basically the only time the parties can make some kind of enforceable deal.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
It does seem a little weird to include both subject and object forms. The way I generally understand mixed usage of the forms is as an indication that the individual in question would be fine with either gendered pronoun, not that you should literally alter the gendered pronoun depending on which form you're using. So something like "she/they" is an abbreviation of "she/her/they/them", indicating a comfort with either feminine or gender neutral pronouns. Similarly I'd interpret something like "he/her" or "she/him" as indicating either (1) comfort with either masculine or feminine pronouns (but not gender neutral) or (2) comfort with any pronouns (he/him/they/them/she/her).
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
It's definitely not reliable for accuracy too far outside of it's training set. For example:
M: WHat is 2+2?
GPT: 2+2 is equal to 4.
So it does fine with simple addition, but when you ask about larger numbers:
M: What is 1233234345432+9999999999999?
GPT: The sum of 1233234345432 and 9999999999999 is 11233234345443.
The actual answer is 11233234345431. You can tell because 2+9 ought to yield a 1's place digit of "1", rather than GPT's "3". GPT's answer is pretty close, but subtly wrong.
Similarly when I asked it to balance a simple chemical equation this was the result:
M: Balance the chemical equation Fe+Cl2=FeCl3
GPT: To balance the chemical equation Fe+Cl2=FeCl3, you can start by writing the unbalanced equation:
Fe + Cl2 -> FeCl3
Next, you need to determine how many atoms of each element are present on each side of the arrow. For example, there is 1 atom of Fe on the left side and 1 atom of Fe on the right side. There are 2 atoms of Cl on the left side and 3 atoms of Cl on the right side.
To balance the equation, you need to make sure that there are equal numbers of atoms of each element on both sides of the arrow. One way to do this is to add a coefficient (a number in front of a chemical formula) to each compound in the equation. For example, you could add a coefficient of 3 to Fe and a coefficient of 2 to FeCl3:
3Fe + 2Cl2 -> 3FeCl3
This is the balanced chemical equation for the reaction. It shows that for every 3 atoms of Fe that react, 2 atoms of Cl2 are needed to form 3 atoms of FeCl3.
Interestingly it talks itself correctly through the process of balancing the chemical equation, and even notes the correct coefficient for Fe and FeCl3 in the penultimate paragraph, but then writes the wrong answer (the correct answer is 2Fe+3Cl2->2FeCl3).
I also had this amusing interaction with it when asking about biology:
M: What is the fastest flying mammal?
GPT: The peregrine falcon is the fastest flying mammal. It is capable of reaching speeds of over 240 miles per hour (386 kilometers per hour) when diving, making it the fastest animal on the planet. The peregrine falcon is a bird of prey that is found in a variety of habitats worldwide, including forests, grasslands, and urban areas. It feeds on a variety of prey, including other birds, and it is known for its impressive hunting skills and high levels of endurance. The peregrine falcon's speed and agility make it an effective predator, and it is also valued for its role in controlling pest populations. Despite being endangered at one point, the peregrine falcon has made a successful recovery in many areas thanks to conservation efforts.
M: Is the peregrine falcon a mammal?
GPT: No, the peregrine falcon is a bird, not a mammal. Mammals are a group of vertebrates that are characterized by their warm-blooded metabolism, the presence of mammary glands, and the production of milk to feed their young. Birds, on the other hand, are a group of vertebrates that are characterized by their feathers, wings, and the ability to fly (in most species). The peregrine falcon is a bird of prey that is known for its impressive hunting skills and high levels of endurance. It is found in a variety of habitats worldwide and feeds on a variety of prey, including other birds. Despite being endangered at one point, the peregrine falcon has made a successful recovery in many areas thanks to conservation efforts.
M: What is the fastest flying mammal?
GPT: The peregrine falcon is the fastest flying mammal. It is capable of reaching speeds of over 240 miles per hour (386 kilometers per hour) when diving, making it the fastest animal on the planet. The peregrine falcon is a bird of prey that is found in a variety of habitats worldwide, including forests, grasslands, and urban areas. It feeds on a variety of prey, including other birds, and it is known for its impressive hunting skills and high levels of endurance. The peregrine falcon's speed and agility make it an effective predator, and it is also valued for its role in controlling pest populations. Despite being endangered at one point, the peregrine falcon has made a successful recovery in many areas thanks to conservation efforts.
I didn't copy and paste the first and last responses, it gave me literally identical responses despite acknowledging previously that the peregrine falcon isn't a mammal. Apparently when asked directly whether the peregrine falcon is a mammal GPT can produce text saying it isn't, but it plainly doesn't understand the way the word "mammal" ought to constrain the responses to the query about flying mammals.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
Really enjoyed these posts, two comments I'd add.
On the copyright side, I think it makes sense that the output of AI art generators can't be copyrighted. At least, as long as the use of copyrighted art to train an AI model isn't copyright infringement (I think it would pretty clearly be fair use currently). Otherwise you could do something like:
1. Find an artist whose style you like
2. Train an AI art generator on that artists works
3. Produce new works in that same style, whose copyright you own but the original author doesn't
That seems problematic to me. Especially since if you had spent time learning to produce art in that same artists style without the AI it could be a copyright violation. Laundering copyright violations through an AI seems like a problem to me.
On the legal front, I can't believe anyone is surprised by this arising as an issue. I remember when AI dungeon was new and it got used so often for the production of NSFW content that the model started to produce it in response to ordinary queries, eventually leading the developers to make some of changes to the model. The legal questions also seem complex. If I generate photo-realistic CP of a child who does not actually exist, is that a crime? Does it generate liability? Just for the individual actually producing or possessing the image or for the model developers? What if I create nudes of a celebrity? Would that be a tort? Maybe related to the use of likeness or image? What about various states revenge porn laws?
These questions do not have obvious answers to me and I understand why no one wants to be the first to find out!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
My understanding is that arguments along the lines you describe in your comment have been advanced (unsuccessfully) before the Supreme Court before. Some states have passed laws reintroducing execution by firing squad due to issues with accessing lethal injection drugs and out of a more general concern about the unavailability of lethal injection as a method of execution.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
While the hypothetical has much potential for dark humour, Canada's MAiD program does not seem to have had much interest in deterring people rather than expanding its usage. Indeed, the entire concept is to reduce (specific forms of) suffering; legalizing a method specifically for its cruelty is the polar opposite of the motivating philosophy.
Currently this may be the case, but things can change in the future. My impression is US courts are often concerned not just with the present facts but with the principles they are being asked to endorse. By way to describing this distinction I think most US courts would agree "the methods Canada currently employs for voluntary euthanasia are not 'cruel and unusual' punishment within the meaning of the 8th amendment." Certainly that has been the conclusion of our own Supreme Court. I also think most US courts would decline to endorse the principle OP appears to be pointing at, specifically "Canada having legalized a particular method of killing people for voluntary euthanasia implies that method of killing people is not 'cruel and unusual' punishment within the meaning of the 8th amendment." In the style of the Euthyphro dilemma it may be that Canada's methods of voluntary euthanasia are not cruel and unusual, but whatever makes them not-cruel-and-unusual is not the fact that they are Canada's methods of voluntary euthanasia.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
Why would it require the brands and personalities to coordinate, though? It seems to me the first time a news headline comes out saying something like "Brand refused to pay extortionate fee to Twitter, imposter promptly takes over handle" that will be the end of most Twitter users beliefs that any brand is who they say they are on Twitter. When blue checkmarks ceased being a way to tell who was verified or notable I became aware of that fact in probably less than 24 hrs. Why won't similar information about which brand handles have been taken over by imposters spread similarly quickly? And once Twitter users cease believing brands are who they say they are without extra-Twitter information, what the hell is Twitter selling?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
I am glad I am not the only one who thought this. As soon as we got to questions of "what companies can refer to themselves using what terms and in what contexts" the parallels with trademark law seemed obvious.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
In any of those cases, was a US state able to successfully point to Canada's program in order to argue that the risk was low and that it should not constitute cruel/unusual punishment?
I can't speak to your other questions but I would be fairly surprised if this argument were persuasive in a US court. Primarily because it's not clear what relationship Canadian legislative decisions have to American constitutional interpretation. Is the argument supposed to be that any method of execution Canada legalizes for voluntary euthanasia cannot be "cruel and unusual" within the meaning of the 8th amendment? What if Canada specifically legalizes a method because of its cruel-and-unusual-ness? Perhaps as a deterrent to people seeking it.
More generally I think the conclusion of your argument (death penalty is not cruel and unusual punishment within the meaning of the 8th amendment) and the method of argumentation (based on a contemporary understanding of the term "cruel and unusual") are misaligned with the way these two features often are in American jurisprudence today.
My impression is that judges who would agree with your conclusion tend to be constitutional originalists. They are committed to the proposition that the term "cruel and unusual" in the constitution means the same thing now that it did when the constitution was adopted. Since punishments like hanging or firing squad were permissible then, it's hard to see how "drug cocktail that puts you to sleep then stops your heart" is "cruel and unusual" by comparison. This group perhaps likes your conclusion but is opposed to your method of analysis. Since the words "cruel and unusual" in the constitution have meant the same thing since the founding subsequent developments of Canadian law are of no relevance.
By contrast I think those more amenable to your methods (the use of contemporary understandings of constitutional terms) tend to be opposed to the death penalty in toto. For them it's not a question of what method is used for execution, the whole enterprise of putting people to death as punishment for a crime is unconstitutionally "cruel and unusual". If their arguments are method-agnostic then trying to argue that a particular method is not cruel and unusual is going to be fruitless.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
The obvious solution is to #AbolishTheMonarchy. Then we never have to hear about Meghan or the Royal Family again. Sounds like a win-win to me!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
Meghan derangement syndrome is well known to afflict a number of prominent British commentators, see also Piers Morgan.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
Interestingly Ex parte Young points a little in this direction. Ex parte Young held that when state officials act contrary to the federal constitution they cannot be acting in the scope of their official duties (since their official duties cannot entail unconstitutional acts) and so they cannot avail themselves of the protections of sovereign immunity.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
I doubt these go anywhere. Partially because the evidence I've seen ties lots of high level Trump advisors to various parts of this scheme (Eastman, Stone) but not much for Trump himself and partially because it'll be a million times easier to prosecute him on his theft of government property.
Like, what would you rather try to prove in court?
Option A: Trump was the head of a shadowy conspiracy involving a good deal of his inner circle to coordinate a complicated legal plot involving fake electors and a riot targeting his VP.
or
Option B: Trump lied (or directed an intermediary to lie) to Christina Bobb about compliance with a subpoena.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3yr ago
The principle you want is not executive privilege but rather Sovereign Immunity. The Supreme Court answered this question all the way back in 1890, ruling that federal officers are immune from prosecution by state authorities when acting within the scope of their federal duties (as I think would be the case for all your examples here).
How far do you take the idea that self-determination is a terminal good? Like, would it be better for Scotland to leave the United Kingdom because that would mean they have more self-determination? Would it be better for individual states to leave the United States because it would improve their self-determination?
Unless self-determination is a good that, at any quantity and put to any purpose, is always worth a trade off against a material benefit you're going to need some justification for why we should give up some material benefit to get more self-determination. Are any Brexiters even attempting to make that case?
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