Rov_Scam
1yr ago
I doubt his immigration status was relevant to the story fading away. It was a liberal organization, the Washington Post, that led the charge to get the DC police to take a closer look at the guy. More importantly, though, when these things are done, they're done. When the FBI released their final report in the Gaby Petito investigation last January, it made the news, but the interest wasn't nearly as big as it had been last fall. The New York Times ran over ten stories about the Petito disappearance during September and October of last year, and the story of the FBI report is the only one they've run since then. That's not quite a 1 to 1 comparison because the Petito mystery was solved and the Levy mystery wasn't, but people move on from popular crime stories easily.
If liberals really couldn't cope with an illegal immigrant being the perp, they wouldn't have blocked it out, but focused on what a terrible case it was. The only real evidence the police had against the guy was the testimony of a jailhouse snitch who had a history of telling stories to curry favor with law enforcement. The initial story the informant gave police (back in 2001) was that Condit had paid the perp $25 grand as a hit job on Levy. The assertion is ridiculous for reasons I shouldn't have to explain, and the DC police rightly told the guy to pound sand until the Post started asking questions years later. When it was revealed post-conviction that the informant had perjured himself on the witness stand the prosecution was forced to drop the charges, since the guy had no credibility at this point and the rest of the case was garbage. Not that anyone could have known all of this in 2008, but cases that revolve around jailhouse informants and other questionable kinds of evidence are generally pretty shoddy.
As for the Ogaden War, I apologize for getting the year wrong; I knew it was the Carter Administration but whiffed on the exact date. Anyway, one year ago today we were in the midst of the Gabby Petito obsession and, as I alluded to earlier, the Times mentioned Petito's name in 16 articles, though some of these were bare mentions (e.g. "While most of us are obsessing over Gabby Petito, the Yankees are still in a pennant race", etc.) and others are only peripherally about her (e.g. articles about other missing people), so I'd say there were at least ten depending on what you count and as high as 18 if you count every article that mentioned her name, ever. In the first 2 months of the Ogden war, July and August 1977, the Times ran over 50 articles about the conflict. Granted, some of these were world news briefs, and the Times traditionally focuses more on hard news and less on popular crime stories, but the difference is still stark. I don't want to suggest that this war was on everyone's mind to the same extent the Petito case was (what the Times didn't provide was more than made up for by the tabloids), but it had serious Cold War implications and was certainly a big deal at the time.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
I'm not sure what Dearie's angle here is. The scope of the review does not include classification status, and it's not clear what he plans to do with this information. Trump is arguing that since it's irrelevant at this stage of the investigation he shouldn't have to disclose which documents were declassified and how, because it would give the DOJ a sneak preview of what defense he planned to use if he were indicted for mishandling classified information. It's essentially saying that if the DOJ wants to hear specifics about declassification it should either wait for him to request return of the documents (unlikely), or indict. If the DOJ gets to hear his declassification arguments before they indict it gives them a gauge on how to move forward; if they think his arguments are cock and bull they may be more willing to move forward than if they had no clue about what he planned to argue.
As for the estoppel, generally speaking, it applies to any issue that has been settled. To nitpick, Dearie isn't making any judgments about classification, only privileges, etc. So theoretically, if Dearie were to rule that a particular document wasn't privileged, and the DOJ wanted to use it as evidence in another proceeding, Trump couldn't try to preclude it due to privilege. I say theoretically, though, because there are some limitation. First, estoppel is more of a civil thing than a criminal one, and while this case isn't exactly criminal, it falls under the rubric of "criminally-related civil proceedings", and that could cause problems. Second, it only applies with a final judgment. So even if a court ruled that estoppel would apply here, it would only be effective if Trump were actually charged and convicted or acquitted. If the DOJ doesn't indict or indicts but then drops the case it wouldn't apply.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
The problem isn't that he's making the argument, or even that he's making the argument repeatedly; the problem is that he's exclusively using this site as a sounding board for his hobby-horse and driving traffic to his blog. I don't have any problem with someone using this space to do either of these two things independently. Beej has always linked to his blog, and he has his hobby-horses. But he's also a regular contributor (and mod of the old subreddit), and his hobby-horses weren't single, narrow topics. Alexandros's contributions to this site so far have been one bare link to his Substack and 4 comments defending it. And all his Substack seems to talk about is how Ivermectin is actually a good COVID treatment.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
This isn't legal representation, it's a registered agent. Basically, if you want to register an LLC in a state, you need to use a physical street address. For most businesses, this isn't an issue, as you either use your office address or the address of the mailbox store you're using (like the UPS store, though there are other copy shop type places that do this as well). An issue arises, though when you want to register your LLC in a state where you don't live and won't be receiving mail regularly. Registered agents provide this service for a low price. You will still receive some mail at this address, but it's not a regular business address, and the mail is forwarded to the address of your choosing. The main reason why a physical address is required is that if the LLC is the defendant in a lawsuit, the plaintiff can always opt to sue in the state in which the LLC is registered, even if that's the only connection to the state. So there has to be someone there whom you authorize to receive service on the LLC's behalf. So all this really means is that the LLC associated with Kiwifarms will either have to find another Wyoming address or reincorporate in another state, though I honestly don't know how much of an issue this is since the various departments of state don't seem to check up on this too regularly for small businesses.
As for a right of representation, I'm a lawyer, and there are various reasons why a lawyer would end representation, though this is unlikely to be one of them. First, if you want to withdraw from representation while there's ongoing litigation you need permission from the judge. If a client doesn't pay no judge is going to make the lawyer continue representing them for free. If the client's just a pain in the ass and not worth your time, then it depends on the judge, the stage of litigation, the consequences, etc. In a criminal case it's rarely allowed except under unusual circumstances. If there's no litigation pending then you can drop a client at any time, provided you return any unearned retainer. I've "dropped" plenty of "clients" who I had represented in the past but didn't want new business from because I was too busy, or didn't feel I was qualified to handle their matter, or the client was a bitch, or they were asking me to violate ethical canons, or any number of other reasons. I've never dropped a client because I didn't like the political stance of their issue, but I don't deal in issues that generally elicit strong political stances. And even if he is dropped, he'll find another lawyer. We represent all kinds of scumbags for all kinds of reasons, including plenty of people who have done a lot worse than he has. Even if his lawyers had dropped him for bullshit reasons, he'll find another lawyer. It might not be a very good lawyer, or he might have to pay more than he expected, but someone will represent him. Lawyers generally can't be cancelled like other businesses because a lot of us are solo or in small firms, and the big firms don't really give a fuck, so if one lawyer takes issue with something there will be 20 more ready to replace him. If it's really an issue, I'll represent him myself provided he has a 100k retainer and the understanding that I'm totally unqualified for whatever it is he needs. But it would still be better than representing himself.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
Estoppel applies to any issue in the case that is ruled on by a judge. A defendant's assertion as to why he didn't commit a crime isn't something that a judge is going to rule on, there's unlikely to be the kind of parallel litigation where it would matter, and estoppel is limited in criminal cases anyway, so it's unlikely to be relevant there. But if a defendant in a civil case makes a motion to exclude certain material from evidence because it's privileged, the judge appoints a master who determines that it isn't privileged, and the judge issues a ruling that the material isn't privileged and admits the material into evidence, the defendant can't argue in another, related, case that the material should be excluded because it's privileged.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
Yes, I apologize, I should have clarified that I was referring to collateral estoppel, or issue preclusion, as it's mostly known nowadays. There are several kinds of estoppel but this is the one I brought up because it's the only one that could apply here; most estoppel doctrines are only superficially related and involve different areas of the law. Equitable estoppel is much different and is usually used in torts cases where one party misleads another party to act to his detriment. Your property example doesn't quite hit the mark because estoppel bars actions, not testimony. A better example involving land would be this: You buy a piece of property with a fence along what you assume is the boundary. You ask your neighbor whose side it's on and he tells you it's on your side, but this isn't the case. After you tear down the fence he has a survey done that shows the fence was actually on his side of the line. He's estopped from suing you for destruction of the fence. Keep in mind that the doctrine requires reliance and detriment; if you didn't tear down the fence and after the survey he merely told you that it was, in fact, on his side, you can't assert that your property line moved because he was initially mistaken. And even if you did tear down the fence and he was estopped from suing you, he'd still own the property up to the actual line. It should also be noted that equitable estoppel is an equitable doctrine, meaning there's no legal right to it—asserting the defense is merely a prayer to the court that legal remedies are insufficient but relief should still be granted based on fairness principles.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
Various state statutes create civil causes of action for violations of various criminal laws, and create standing for the AG to sue. In this specific case, New York Executive Law §63(12) states that:
Whenever any person shall engage in repeated fraudulent or illegal acts or otherwise demonstrate persistent fraud or illegality in the carrying on, conducting or transaction of business, the attorney general may apply, in the name of the people of the state of New York, to the supreme court of the state of New York, on notice of five days, for an order enjoining the continuance of such business activity or of any fraudulent or illegal acts, directing restitution and damages and, in an appropriate case, cancelling any certificate filed under and by virtue of the provisions of section four hundred forty of the former penal law [FN3] or section one hundred thirty of the general business law, and the court may award the relief applied for or so much thereof as it may deem proper. The word “fraud” or “fraudulent” as used herein shall include any device, scheme or artifice to defraud and any deception, misrepresentation, concealment, suppression, false pretense, false promise or unconscionable contractual provisions. The term “persistent fraud” or “illegality” as used herein shall include continuance or carrying on of any fraudulent or illegal act or conduct. The term “repeated” as used herein shall include repetition of any separate and distinct fraudulent or illegal act, or conduct which affects more than one person.
Fraud is the basis for both a civil cause of action and criminal charges, and is of the nature that it can be systemic and pervasive enough to represent a risk to a wide swath of the public. Generally speaking, civil law exists to resolve disputes between individuals and criminal law exists to protect the public at-large. For example, if I breach a contract or don't shovel my walkway or have a momentary lapse of concentration that causes a car accident, I may harm you, but I'm not really a danger to society. On the other hand, if I rob you or assault you or trick you into giving me your money then there's evil intent and I'm a risk to the general public. In cases like assault or battery I could be arrested and charged and I could be sued for damages as well, but the scope of my actions is limited enough that it makes little sense for the AG to initiate a civil suit on behalf of the victims. Fraud, on the other hand, is usually part of a scheme to defraud many victims, so the state has an interest in stepping in on behalf of those victims.
So why not just charge Trump (or any other defendant) criminally? Well, criminal prosecutions have certain downsides. For one, the burden of proof is a lot higher. While the burden in civil fraud cases is higher than in normal civil cases (Clear and Convincing Evidence vs. mere Preponderance of the Evidence), it's still not Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Second, the law isn't as concerned with defendant protections in civil cases. The biggest is that the right to self-incrimination is severely limited. If the plaintiff wants to depose you, you have to submit to a deposition or be subject to contempt of court. You can be forced to testify. The right to have an attorney present is limited. And while you can plead the fifth, you can only do so if it would affect your penal interest (not merely tank your civil case), and the jury is allowed to draw a negative inference from your doing so (in criminal matters the jury is not, and judges will disallow testimony altogether if they know the witness is going to plead the fifth).
If it seems like this is unfair and puts the defendant at a great disadvantage, there are also limitations of the civil process. The biggest is that the remedies are severely limited. Trump and his associates can't go to jail for anything that happens in this case. The statute only authorized the AG to seek monetary damages, and a few other minor remedies that would prevent the defendants from conducting business in New York. If there's money awarded it will be distributed to the victims of the fraud. The case is basically a way for the AG to go to bat on behalf of the victims of the fraud, and AGs in general are willing to launch investigations like this when the scope of the fraud is large enough to make it worth their while.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
It's not a prosecution, it's a civil suit. The worst that can happen is that Trump et al. will have to pay a huge award and reincorporate all their businesses in another state (though that may be easier said than done). As for the likelihood of success? It's hard to say until we see the Trump team's response, but there's been a 3 year investigation by the AG and AGs in general don't take these matters lightly, so I'm going to assume the court is going to find at least some fraud. The real question is how much the award will be and whether the fraud was pervasive enough to merit ending Trump's ability to do business in New York.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
It's worth noting that this "new math" is the basis for all the contemporary complaints about Common Core math. Most of the parents complaining about it aren't aware that the "old fashioned" way of doing things that they learned was actually controversial when it was introduced in the 1960s. A lot of new math stuff like other base systems was eventually ditched, but new math subtraction is all most people who went to elementary school from the 1970s–1990s really know.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
I don't know that much about it, just that the New Math that Tom Leherer talks about in the song is the way that they were teaching subtraction at least as late as the mid-'90s (and probably later), and that Common Core subtraction is different enough that the people who learned subtraction they way I did complain about it. But I'm not a teacher or a curriculum expert or anything like that.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
I doubt it ever will be. I had a roommate and if we went somewhere together in public people would often insist that we were brothers. We weren't, and we weren't even of the same ethnicity. I have cousins who are of typical American mixed ethnicity and siblings can look wildly different depending on whether the German side or the Italian side is predominant. Facial features just aren't that predictable.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
I think a lot of these power rankings suffer from the same problem that college rankings do; namely, that they stick too closely to preseason rankings regardless of what happens on the field. So a team like the Giants that's showing promise is going to be ranked behind the Bengals regardless of what happens on the field because we just know that the Giants are terrible and that the Bengals Super Bowl appearance wasn't a fluke. Take a look around the NFC and take stock of what you're actually contending with:
NFC East
You've already heavily implied that the Eagles are the best team in this division, especially with Dak out, and only one of their three wins was against a team from this division. The Commanders suck and the Cowboys don't have a QB. The Giants are an interesting proposition. The media has completely written them off as being terrible for the foreseeable future but they're 2–0 due to wins against mediocre teams (but unexpected wins nonetheless), and if they beat the Cowboys tonight it doesn't tell us anything else. So there's no real playoff competition here that the Eagles won't see during the regular season.
NFC North
The Eagles already beat 2 teams from this division and a third, the Bears, shouldn't be a problem. The Packers are a different story but they don't have a passing game so while I'd definitely call them a contender, they aren't scary enough to come across as a team you have to watch out for.
NFC South
The Falcons, Saints, and Panthers aren't going anywhere. Their offense looked anemic yesterday but that probably has something to do with all their wide receivers being out (and Cole Beasley being in), so I wouldn't count them out just yet. That being said, Tom Brady hasn't played particularly great so far, and there are rumors that he's having personal problems. With Godwin and Evans back I think they'll be good, but not some kind of juggernaut.
NFC West
The Seahawks aren't going anywhere. The Niners might, but I wouldn't be too worried about them. The Cardinals get a lot of hype, but they haven't looked good since their mid-season meltdown last year, and they couldn't get anything going yesterday. That leaves the Rams, the reigning Super Bowl Champions. They looked good yesterday against the Cardinals but their performance against the Saints last week was questionable and the Bills had them completely figured out in the season opener. I wouldn't count them out, but the evidence so far this season isn't looking too good.
My point is that I don't think the NFC has the kind of juggernaut that is going to tear through the playoffs an embarrass a team that only made it in on an easy schedule. If the Eagles get torn apart, it won't be until the Super Bowl, and even then only if Buffalo and possibly Miami or Kansas City are the opponent.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
It actually isn't. They have this in Pittsburgh so it gets mentioned on the news, and most of the speakers are people from law enforcement, DHS, mental health professionals, etc. Former PA Governor Tom Corbett, a Republican, and his wife each moderated a panel discussion, and last year's conference had recorded remarks from George W. Bush. One of the co-chairs is Mark Nordenberg, who made a name for himself as Pitt Chancellor and, while a Democrat, has a reputation for being moderate and mostly nonpartisan. There are some dippy sounding panels but most of them are stuff like FBI guys talking about how to investigate suspected hate crimes and the like.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
I guess you're also of the opinion that The Beatles violated the Budokan?
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
It's a trope as old as cable television, and a true one at that. Jerry Seinfeld joked about it back in the '90s: Men hunt and women nest. I remember my mum constantly complaining that my dad would change the channel any time a commercial came on, her concern being that she'd miss part of the program if he stayed away too long; my dad always countered that he knew the length of the breaks pretty much by heart at that point so no one would miss anything. A friend's mum complained that she'd be watching a show with her husband and would ask what happened to a specific character, only to be informed that that character was in a different show airing on another channel.
With sporting events this tendency is magnified because most sporting events are aired weekend afternoons and evenings, so there's plenty of other sports programming running counter to whatever you're watching, and the temptation is too great to take a quick look at another game. This tendency is magnified further if you're not watching any particular game and just flipping through channels to find something interesting. In my experience, women are more likely to watch a sporting event only if it's a local team or other event that they have a specific interest in, and while men will do the same, they're also more likely to watch a game because it's on television, so there's no loyalty to a specific broadcast. Networks base ad fees on total viewers, but the advertisers know that a certain percentage of viewers are casual fans who aren't going to watch any commercials, period, unless absolutely forced to. So the advertisers are going to tailor their ads to the demographic that's least likely to skip around.
I would also ad that the NFL seems to be the biggest culprit of this (though I don't watch NBA games). I see less of this in college football and national NHL and MLB broadcasts, and practically none in local hockey and baseball broadcasts or PGA and NASCAR. And the female-centered ads during PGA events, rare as they are, tend to be for women's-specific golf products, which makes sense. This seems to make sense—there are only 17 regular season NFL games a year per team, and they're almost all on weekends, so following the sport is much easier for the casual fan. Baseball has like 150 games on television and hockey 82, and some of those games have rather late start times if you're on the East Coast, so it's hard to keep track of things closely unless you're really dedicated. Golf and NASCAR don't have regionally-based fanbases so unless there's a big national star like Tiger Woods it's hard to even know who you're watching, and golf is particularly bad on this front because the field is huge, the events start during the day on Thursday, and most golfers only participate in select events, so by the time Saturday rolls around the leaders could be all guys who are well-known in the golf world but who most people have never heard of. College is better on this front but most college teams don't generate a lot of national interest.
At least that's my theory; it could be totally wrong.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
I don't know if vaccine requirements for institutions that have traditionally had vaccine requirements is a good metric to go by. I mean, yeah, a lot of universities are requiring COVID vaccines, but a lot of universities already had other vaccine requirements. I know Pitt requires an MMR vaccine for all students and a meningitis vaccine for students living on-campus. Healthcare workers in a lot of places already required a whole host of vaccines down to a flu shot. For these kinds of places, the COVID vaccine isn't so much an additional burden for the institution but simply another vaccine on the list. The real test is places like concerts and the like that required proof of vaccination and weren't already accustomed to it. These places had additional costs involved in verifying the vaccination status and were only interested in doing so because of the pandemic. I'm sure some of these places still exist, but I haven't come across any (and I was never required to show a card for anything personally despite living a pretty active lifestyle).
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
It wasn't really an out-of-line thing to say in July 2021; once vaccines became widely available infection rates plummeted. In Pennsylvania, for instance, the vaccine rollout began in earnest in January but appointments were hard to come by. Over the next couple months eligibility and availability would slowly expand, and by mid-April nearly everyone was eligible and it was easy to get an appointment. On April 19 there was a rolling average of nearly 5,000 cases per day. By the 4th of July this had dropped to less than 200, a 97% decrease. When infections started picking up again at the end of July, it was in places with notoriously low vaccine uptake and almost always among unvaccinated individuals. Given this situation, what was Biden supposed to think? Yeah, later that summer and heading into fall breakthrough cases became much more common, rates rose in areas with high vaccine uptake, and Omicron eventually blew everything out of the water, but for most of that summer it really looked like we had whipped the pandemic.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
I agree with you but I think the bigger issue is that Georgeism seeks to solve a problem that doesn't exist. There are very few otherwise valuable tracts of land that are sitting vacant simply because the owner refuses to develop them. Most vacant land is outside of cities and is worth very little unless it's developed. Most vacant land in cities is in areas where governing bodies have to give incentives based on taxes that already exist to get people to develop it. The idea that there's prime real estate out there just sitting and not properly contributing to the tax rolls is a fiction.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
Here are my objections:
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People don't care about sophisticated philosophical arguments concerning taxes; they merely care about how much they have to pay. If I have to pay 20k a year in taxes I really don't care whether they tax my income, purchases, or property. I still have to pay it. Sure you can (and Georgists do) make the argument that there are certain inefficiencies with regard to most methods of taxation, and I don't necessarily disagree, but this seems like nibbling around the edges. I don't think we're experiencing some kind of huge GDP loss simply because our tax system isn't optimized to create the right incentives for absolutely everyone. And no one is going to support any kind of tax reform that results in them paying more taxes for roughly the same amount of services. This is a fairly minor objection on the whole (I have no personal objection to land taxes as such), but when people tout the benefits of some sort of philosophical efficiency absent significant tangible benefits it seems like a rhetorical weakness. A system's elegance isn't a great argument for its implementation.
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It won't end land speculation. I often see Georgists act like "Speculators" are sitting on large developable tracts in urban areas just waiting for them to gain a little more value. While I'm sure you could find examples of this if you looked, most vacant land is vacant for a reason. Speculators buy land in areas where land is cheap now but where they expect it to gain in value in the future. Emphasis on the "cheap now" part. If the land has little value at present, the taxes on it aren't going to be all that high, and it may be worth it for an investor to hold it for a while. For example, suppose there's a 100 acre cow pasture outside a city that I can buy for $1,000/acre. I can buy it for that price because that's what it's worth, regardless of whether a speculator owns it or someone making the most productive use of it (in this case, as a cow pasture) owns it. And I'm not necessarily just letting it sit. If it's a cow pasture the owner will probably lease it for grazing to whoever owned the cows that were grazing it before. Either way, the land taxes while the land is cheap are just part of the investment formula. If the land increases in value to the point that holding it is uneconomical, the land gets sold. That's the same as it is now—why would I speculate in land I had no intention of selling? I don't understand this argument.
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This is perhaps my biggest objection: It's too easy to game the system. Any improvements to efficiency of land use will be totally subject to zoning regulations. Changing land-use patterns would still be subject to the same political considerations they are now. "So what", you may say, "eliminating zoning restrictions is part of it". And this may be the case. But lack of zoning restrictions only makes the gaming worse. Value of property is dependent on its potential use, and while land-use restrictions can limit potential uses, a more permanent limitation is based on size. If I own a 10,000 sq. ft. vacant lot in the central business district of a major city, and no surrounding property, the value of the land is limited because not much can be built on it that would suit the area. If instead I had a 1 acre lot then it may be worth more than an equivalent number of small lots simply because the development possibilities are more in line with the economic desires of the area. Eventually a lot is so small that it's practically worthless. If I had a large amount of vacant land I wanted to dodge taxes on, the goal would be to subdivide the land to the point that each individual tract was practically worthless. There would be survey costs in doing so, and costs again at the back end to recombine the parcels, but during the period the land is held the tax would be nominal.
So what's preventing people from doing this now with existing property taxes? One big one is minimum parcel sizes; in some areas the municipality simply won't let you subdivide below a certain point. But this brings back our old friend zoning. Such minimums are part of the zoning code, and while they don't sound as disruptive as outright use restrictions, they can still be use to great effect to influence patterns of development. For example, a lot of semi-rural areas near me that don't want residential subdivisions will set the minimum lot size at one acre or larger to prevent sprawl. This may sound like a good thing to those who want more density, but it's usually used as a means of limiting density. To maximize the space you'd need a fairly large building, and if there's no demand for such a building then you're getting houses on 1 acre lots. Set the minimum smaller and you optimize for density but make it easy for a developer to subdivide into oblivion. Commercial and industrial land is generally more expensive (and is thus taxed higher) than residential land. If you want to speculate on land for commercial purposes, just subdivide it into a bunch of lots designed for single-family homes and get a lower tax bill than if the parcel was intact; you've essentially zoned it for single-family use to the outside observer but since you own all the lots yourself you reserve the right to recombine them how you see fit. Or you could just separate out the land fronting the existing roads and landlock a big portion in the middle (nothing reduces a property's value like eliminating access).
I could go on forever like this but I need to head out the door.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
It wouldn't necessarily even take that much. By using training data, the bulk of which is presumably copyrighted, the AI generator is going to use at least some elements of particular copyrighted images in its renderings. It's not inconceivable that some of the images it generates will bear an uncanny resemblance to copyrighted images in the dataset. If you're just a normal photographer, you at least have the defense that you didn't see the image and the resemblance is purely coincidental if that happens to you, but any litigation would require the AI developer to disclose whether or not the image whose copyright was allegedly violated is in the training set, and if it is, it's game over.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
If someone has $50-100 million to invest in 'free speech' or to promote anti-woke causes, how would/should he or she go about it? Someone like Elon can buy Twitter outright, but Kanye is not nearly as wealthy.
I think it should be apparent by now that perceived ideological bent (or lack thereof) is not enough to sustain a userbase on its own. If you want to convince people to switch platforms but can't buy an existing one outright, then you have to do things the old fashioned way and actually build a better platform from the ground up. Reddit is popular, but most Reddit users would agree that the functionality of the site leaves a lot to be desired—it's telling when the majority of users are still using the old UI years after the new one was introduced. After the move here there have been a lot of comments and suggestions on how to make the site better. If you do this and quietly stick to your principles no one will know about the underlying ideology until after the platform is already successful. If you telegraph the fact that it's hard to get banned and put forth a site that's at best a clone of what already exists and at worst a buggy mess, then it's clear from the start that you're only interested in attracting a certain kind of user, and the masses will never follow because the normal person who never posts anything remotely controversial has no reason to switch. It's like asking a normal bar patron to go to a new establishment where the atmosphere is crappier, the drinks are more expensive, the food lousy, and it's full of everyone who's been banned from the other bars in town. If you're going to let these people in then at least have awesome wings.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
Your description of her Senate run overstates her case a bit. New York is seen as a Democratic lock now but in 1999 it was widely believed that Rudy Giuliani was going to run for the open seat, and he was expected to beat every Democrat who had expressed interest at the time. After Clinton threw her hat into the ring the field, such as it existed, stepped aside as the party believed that only a candidate with Clinton's star power would be enough to challenge Giuliani. So right off the bat, she had the crowd cleared for her and didn't even have to run in a competitive primary. Then, Giuliani's marriage fell apart right around the time he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and he decided not to run. Now she's running against Rick Lazio, who was less well-known and more conservative than Giuliani. And she underperformed here, too. Though she ended up winning by 12 points, polling was much tighter than anyone had anticipated; Lazio made it a real ballgame. More importantly, though, while 12 points is a healthy margin, Al Gore ended up winning the state on the same ballot by 25 points. In other words, a significant number of Democrats decided that they'd rather vote for a Republican nobody than vote for Mrs. Clinton. This should have been a prodrome for the future but the Democratic establishment never quite got it. It's no coincidence that when Democrats nationwide were given a choice they chose freshman Senator who had made a good speech a few years prior despite the "aura of inevitability" the party sought to create. It was no coincidence that after the part establishment sough to rectify this in 2016 by clearing the field to an unprecedented degree an old socialist who would have been a fringe candidate in any other election threatened to win the nomination, and was possibly only thwarted by the specter of superdelegates whose assumed positions made all media reports look like Clinton had the nomination locked up before the first primary.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
There are two implicit assumptions buried in your analysis, though:
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Voter fraud disproportionately favors DeSantis's opponents, and
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The fraud is of such a scope to have an effect on an election
To the first point, there's no real evidence that this would be the case. I looked at cases of what I call "casual voter fraud" from the 2020 election in Pennsylvania. By Casual Voter Fraud I mean things like ineligible voting, impersonation at the polls, and mail-in or absentee ballot fraud; in other words, the kind of voter fraud a normal person could attempt without much difficulty. There are other cases of voter fraud, but these all either involved insiders or were part of large schemes that involved a certain amount of organization. Out of five total cases four involved registered Republicans and one didn't specify the party affiliation of the defendant. Given the small sample size, I'm going to conclude that there's no conclusive evidence that deterring voter fraud would help DeSantis's party in any way.
To the second point, again, I point to the small sample size, and to the fact that the incidents in question were distributed throughout the state. If they were concentrated in one area then it's conceivable that five votes could impact some local election, but that simply wasn't the case. More importantly, though, it speaks volumes that DeSantis is making this point by arresting people whom he knows are unlikely to be convicted. If he wants to send a message about voter fraud, then why not have a mass arrest of people who actually committed voter fraud? I understand that maybe it's a difficult thing to catch, but Pennsylvania managed to catch five people in a single election without really trying (there was no statewide crackdown and the only case that got even got significant news coverage was one that Fetterman memed about). Florida is larger than Pennsylvania and if you go back to the start of the Statute of Limitations it shouldn't be too hard to come up with 20 cases of real voter fraud if you were to actually try.
Nah, it wouldn't have. The Colts under Pagano ran a West Coast Offense that revolved around Andrew Luck, who was more of a traditional pocket passer. See what I wrote above, but Brissett is basically the opposite of Kaepernick. He likes to stay in the pocket as long as possible and gun downfield, rarely checking down. He has enough athleticism to get out of a jam, but that's not his specialty. For the Colts to have gone with Kaeprnick it would have required them to retool their entire playbook (and, by extension, their entire offense) for one year only while Luck recuperated. If Kap had lit the league on fire in 2016 then it might have been worth it, but if that were the case then Chip Kelly probably wouldn't have been fired and the 49ers would have exercised their option. The main reason Kap was let go was because Kyle Shanahan wanted to retool the entire offense to a style more similar to the Colts, and Brian Hoyer and Handsome Jimmy were more suited to that style.
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