Rov_Scam
1yr ago
I apologize if any of the following suggestions have been brought up downthread, but I've been engaging with the new site significantly less than I did when we were still on Reddit, and this pretty much comes down to readability issues. I should note that I mostly browse The Motte on a desktop computer and have only checked out the mobile site once, so these comments concern issues with the desktop site only.
The biggest issue that I've seen users here complain about so far is that it's difficult to follow threads and their various subthreads. The line you introduced separating parents in yesterday's prototype helps, but it's really a band-aid solution to a much bigger problem. If you look at old Reddit, the parent comments were all justified hard-left, at the edge of the screen, without any kind of margin. This acted as a sort of straight-edge; the top-level comments were always aligned with the edge, so it was easy to quickly tell where they were. New Reddit moves them farther toward the middle, but this is countered by not one but two visually distinct margins—a dark grey margin covers most of the sides on a widescreen monitor, and a margin color unique to the individual sub covers the area immediately to the left of the thread. Again, this provides a distinct demarcation between margin and content. Here, though, there is a margin but it is the same color as the body text background. Post's positions within the hierarchy are determined by how far they are indented from the edge, and when the edge is well to the left of the highest level everything is just sort of floating in space. Coloring the margins in or running the body hard-left would greatly improve readability.
The second big issue involves line length. Most professionally typeset materials aim for a line length of between 45 and 90 characters. Old Reddit had a max line length of about 110 characters, which is on the high side but still reasonable. New Reddit reduced this to about a hundred, again, a little long, but at least within Microsoft Word's default settings. Here the lines are a whopping 185 characters long. To put this in perspective, in Microsoft Word, in 12-point Arial with default (1") margins this is going into the third line, and could be well into the third line depending on where the breaks are. The effect of this is that once a reader gets to the end of a line his eyes have to move quite a ways back to get to the start of the next one, and by then it's hard to tell where he left off. It's not like he's always consciously losing his place, but after a while the small, frequent adjustments get fatiguing.
Finally, there are a couple minor things that could be tweaked. I don't have numbers, but the font size on Reddit seems slightly larger, and that can increase readability without sacrificing too much space, provided the adjustments are made judiciously. Second, I've never been a fan of Helvetica and it's various clones for body text. Helvetica was designed for things like signs and advertisements, where large amounts of text weren't going to be read in one go. The old rule-of-thumb was that sans-serif fonts were better for viewing on a computer, but this is obsolete advice from the days when everyone was using 72 dpi CRTs. With the ubiquity of high-res monitors, either serif or sans-serif fonts can be used comfortably. But either way, Helvetica was never a good choice for body text; the shapes are too similar and legibility is affected. Reddit uses Verdana, which was commissioned by Microsoft specifically to be used as body text on old monitors, and, while not my personal favorite, it works fine and is a much better choice than Helvetica. Open Sans and Fruitger also work well.
That's all I can think of for now. I had a couple big posts in me and one continuing series that I had been meaning to contribute once we made the move, but I'm having such a tough time staying engaged that I don't know if it's worth the effort at this point. I appreciate all the hard work you've been doing to make this place possible, but I can't argue with my eyes and fight through the tedium for a pursuit that is really just entertainment for me. Thanks and I hope to see at least some of this addressed.
Thanks! Already a 100% improvement. This actually made a much bigger impact than I thought it would have.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
In retrospect, one of the biggest problems I had in school was that I would always write sequentially; I would start at the beginning of whatever I was writing and pound through it until I was finished. In the meantime, I had all these great ideas about what I wanted to write, I just never seemed to get to them, and when I did I had trouble phrasing them correctly because the preceding text didn't set things up the way I wanted. As a result, writing was like banging my head against the wall where I had 500 things I wanted to say but couldn't figure out how to say them because I was handcuffed by what I had already written. Then later I realized that if I just wrote out the substance of what I wanted to say and tacked on the intro, transitions, etc. in "post-production", so to speak, things went much smoother.
So my advice is to simply write down whatever is on your mind. You know what you want to say, the problem it stating things coherently so that other people will understand them. Don't stress out over whether what initially comes out sounds like a schizophrenic with aphasia; that's just the first step. Then you can edit what you've written so that it's actually coherent. I've never noticed any issues with your writing here so it's obvious that you have it in you, so I wouldn't worry about lack of ability. A big part of the problem is that pressure and stress can become overwhelming and prevent us from doing what we need to do. For example, I do a lot of mineral titles for work, and most people with my job complete their files in a certain sequence. At some stages in the sequence, complicated issues can arise, and these issues can make it difficult to meet deadlines. If I run into an issue that I can't resolve in a reasonable amount of time, I usually just skip it and move on to the next part of the sequence. That way, if I'm about to miss a deadline I can tell the client that everything's done except this one issue that I need to resolve, as opposed to having to tell the client that the file's nowhere near completion because I spent the past several days spinning my wheels on a difficult-to resolve issue. It gives the client at least some peace of mind that this isn't some money pit project that they're being charged billable hours for; after all, if I spend all that time on one issue there's no guarantee that other issues won't pop up later that will take even more time. And even if the deadline isn't an issue, it's still easier for me to know that I have 2 days at the end of a project to resolve a difficult issue than to spend all my time working on one thing and having 2 days to complete the rest of the file.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
How about an alternative where the Soviets and Germans grind each other to dust on the Eastern Front, making way for the US and UK to roll up the Germans from the rear. The entire Reich is occupied by the US and UK before the Soviet lines have even made it to their own frontier. Stalin is in such a precarious position that he can't realistically ask for any real concessions at Yalta, and prewar borders are largely reestablished. Latvia remains unoccupied after the Germans withdraw and is given substantial Marshall aid. Russia goes back to being a political and economic backwater that retains cordial relations with the US and Western Europe. If you're going to consider ideal alternate histories, you might as well go nuts.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
Attributing it to cordcutting doesn't make sense anyway. All of the Sunday games are shown on broadcast television, and at that time, about half of the Thursday Night games were. The only games that consistently weren't available over the air were Monday Night games, though MNF's ratings woes since 2016 have mainly been attributed to the network's inability to find an announcing crew anyone likes after Mike Tirico left. MNF and Thursday Night games are also carried locally in the primary markets of the participating teams. That being said, Thursday Night games will be carried exclusively by Amazon (with the local market exception) starting this Thursday, though I doubt this is due as much to cordcutting as it is that the NFL wants to get Amazon to pay them a ton of money while streaming is the hot new thing.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
Having recourse isn't the same as getting what you want. You could have challenged the matter in the courts. You could have voted for and campaigned for politicians who were opposed to the policy. You could have petitioned the existing government to reconsider the policy. Even though there was an eviction moratorium, it wasn't the same as the government saying you had to allow squatters—the tenants still owed whatever you were charging on the current lease, and you can still go after them for it once they are finally evicted. And if they don't pay there are mechanisms by which you can enforce the judgment. And if you engage in any of these activities, the risk to your personal safety or livelihood is low enough that it isn't an issue. Contrast this with a drug lord deciding to appropriate your apartment for one of his friends. Who are you even going to complain to? What could potentially happen if you do complain? Yeah, it sucks when you lose money because of a government policy you disagree with, but it's a much better situation than when you lose money because of a criminal you disagree with.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
I obviously can't address any specifics since the book hasn't come out yet, but the entire premise seems absurd on its face. First, I don't know what he means when he says that they "make the economies they move to look a lot like the ones they left". Does he mean that an industrialized economy will revert to an agricultural one? That a capitalist economy will become socialist? That one centered around banking will switch to auto manufacturing? That aside, though, by any definition, I can't think of a single example of a high-immigrant country that has had its economy transformed by high immigration in such a way that the host country started to look like the country from which the immigrants came.
don’t let in a lot of low IQ immigrants into your country or your country will fail; I believe any rational person would come to that conclusion.
Is there any empirical evidence for this? I can't speak to countries, but we can look at various areas around the United States. You don't make it clear which countries specifically you are referring to as "low IQ", but given that most of the HBD discussion as it pertains to immigrants centers around Mexico let's start there, with the caveat that blacks also have low IQs as well. Thus, we should assume that the most successful parts of the country will be the ones with the most non-Hispanic whites. Except this obviously isn't true. I live pretty close to West Virginia, and I can tell you that there are very few people there who aren't non-Hispanic whites (less than 10%, per the 2020 census), yet it ranks 48th in GDP per capita. The state with the highest GDP per capita, on the other hand, is New York, despite being only 54% non-Hispanic white. But maybe that's not fair since West Virginia is rural while New York (and California, and Texas) have big cities that allow them to have high GDPs despite a large number of undesirable low-IQ minorities. So let's compare the cities themselves.
I live in Pittsburgh, one of the whitest cities in the US. Blacks are only 8% of the metro population (compared with 16% in New York and Chicago and 45% in Atlanta), and there is practically no Hispanic population to speak of. Even the housekeepers and restaurant workers are white. All in all, the metro is 83% non-Hispanic white. The only other metro with a population over 2 million that even comes close is Cincinnati, at around 75%. Yet Pittsburgh and Cincinnati sit at 24th and 25th, respectively, in GDP per capita among the 35 US metros with populations of 2 million or more. Again, you could argue that other factors account for this, namely deindustrialization in the rust belt (although other rust belt cities with larger minority populations have higher GDPs) but that's just making my point for me: Even if all of this were true, it's obvious that the average IQ of the ethnicities that inhabit an area has little influence on the economic situation compared to other factors. As a final thought, if the entire population of Mexico were to immigrate to the US tomorrow, it would go from being 18% to Hispanic to 38% Hispanic. That's still lower than the Hispanic populations of Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, and San Antonio are currently. I think the US will be fine.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
US support for Israel didn't really begin in earnest until the Kennedy Administration, and by that time Pan-Arabism was a lost cause. Pan-Arabism's main proponent was Nasser, and other Arab leaders were rightly suspicious that Nasser only advocated for it under the presumption that he would be running everything. It was this reason that the union of Egypt and Syria was so short-lived; Syria, despite being nominally committed to the Pan-Arab cause, wasn't about to surrender sovereignty to Egypt. I haven't read Gowans's book, but any serious concern about Pan-Arab socialism after about 1970 comes across as anachronistic.
Thus, it's not necessary to explain the invasion of Iraq with Israeli influence - it's sufficient that Saddam at least came from an Arab-nationalist background and ran a highly nationalized economy (which was swiftly privatized after Iraq invasion).
Well, no, it's not sufficient. Saddam may have been an Arab Nationalist but he was one who was already hated by the rest of the Arab world. Even the fellow Ba'athists in Syria sent troops to fight against him during Desert Storm.
It's not necessary to explain the destabilization of Syria with Israeli influence - it's sufficient that Assad is an Arab nationalist, and even a successful overthrow of his regime is not necessary, destabilization is enough to achieve goals.
Detsabilization by whom? I have yet to hear any credible arguments that the United States, Israel, or any other Western government is responsible for the situation in Syria. Israel had fought wars there but they'd been doing that since 1948, and had officially been in a cease-fire since 1974. If anything the US government was criticized for not getting involved enough; Obama publicly called for Assad's resignation but nonetheless allowed him to cross several "lines in the sand" without any action or consequence other than condemnation. The US didn't get formally involved until 2017 but even then this was pretty minimal involvement.
It's not necessary to explain Nasser's pro-Soviet orientation with Israel - US would have eventually opposed him anyway, as he was an Arab nationalist.
Nasser was only pro-Soviet because they were willing to sell him weapons when the US wasn't. And the reason the US wasn't was that they were trying to keep the Arab-Israeli Conflict in low gear. Nasser wasn't interested in aligning himself with any superpower, only with doing what he felt was in Egypt's interest. And if that meant playing the powers off of each other and getting into wars, then so be it.
Your summary here highlights a lot of the objections I have with purely ideological writers like Gowans and Chomsky is that they have a sort of tunnel-vision where they stick to a thesis that confirms their priors and if there's tons of evidence to challenge this thesis, they ignore it rather than address it. It's almost as if they assume that their audience is a bunch of fellow tankies without knowledge of the subject looking for a polemic they can use any time they're trying to crap on US foreign policy, kind of like how in Manufacturing Consent Chomsky expects that the reader won't know that the North Vietnamese invaded Laos in 1958 and that that may have had an influence on Laotian politics at the time.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
Israel didn't participate in either of the Gulf Wars (in fact they sucked up Patriot missile batteries that could've been used elsewhere due to Iraqi Scud strikes attempting to fracture the US-led Coalition).
I haven't read Mearsheimer's book so I'm not familiar with how he handles the subject, but there are good reasons Israel didn't participate in either Gulf War. Namely, the US didn't want it to. In Desert Storm, there was concern that if Israel got involved it would put the Arab members of the coalition in a precarious position and they would need to withdraw, as being openly allied with Israel would have been a political disaster for them internally. Given that the coalition needed to use these countries as staging areas, having them in was critical. Saddam understood this, which is why he launched SCUD missiles at civilian targets in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities—if he could provoke Israel into joining the war, the coalition effort would be imperiled. It took a great deal of restraint and US diplomacy to ensure that Israel wouldn't retaliate even after the attacks continued, and the crisis eventually passed.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
Keep in mind that this is the same party that spent hundreds of thousands last year forcing out Annamie Paul after she made statements about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that, while anodyne by any standards, weren't sufficiently anti-Israel for the rest of the party leadership.
How did that limit the US's warfighting ability? If the US had stayed ambivalent throughout the entire Arab-Israeli conflict, once Saddam started launching SCUDS we would have been in a much less advantageous position when it came to keeping Israel out of the war. Can you imagine what the mood would be like in America if our cities were subjected to a month of missile attacks from a foreign adversary? Can you imagine any situation where there wouldn't be immediate calls for retaliation? It was largely because of our special relationship that we were able to convince them to cool it. If we were just some other country the Israelis would have looked at us and said "Who the fuck are you to tell us how to respond to attacks on our country!" Do you think Israel really gave a shit about Kuwait, a country that still doesn't recognize them? Before you knew it you'd have had Israeli bombers over Baghdad and the US and its Western allies scrambling to keep the Arabs in the coalition, along with uncertainty about how far Israel really wanted to take this. The SCUD attacks are an example of why having them as an ally enhances our warfighting ability in the region.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
At this point I'm cynical enough to believe that Hollywood goes through the following thought process when it comes to "diverse" casting:
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A franchise has a dedicated-enough following that its fans will watch anything with the franchise's name on it.
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The fanbase is also fickle and their standards will never be met; every attempt at a reboot is almost certain to be at best, a disappointment, and, at worst, a betrayal.
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The studio wants to do a reboot/sequel, etc. but knows there is no way to meet the audience's expectations unless they can really knock it out of the park.
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The studio knows that the chances of knocking it out of the park are slim. Once the franchise has been ossified, anything that deviates from the existing formula is out of character for the franchise, while anything that conforms to it is merely a rehash. There's a narrow window where the studio can please everyone, and it knows it's unlikely to hit it.
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There is pressure from people outside the fanbase but with influence in the industry (mostly journalists) who want to see more minorities in big roles.
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The studio knows that there is one group they are guaranteed to satisfy regardless of the movie they make.
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The studio casts a bunch of minorities and spends the rest of the budget on special effects so it doesn't look cheap. Little thought is given to the story, dialogue, editing, etc.
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Everyone who was a fan of the movie announces their disappointment with the product. A few point to the unbelievability of all the minorities in the case.
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The studio blames the complaints on the racism of the audience.
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The journalists agree with the studio about the racism and go the extra mile to insist that it actually was a good movie.
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The product is, by any measure, a success. It did well commercially, because the fanbase will watch anything associated with the franchise. Journalists liked it. The studio made money without too much thought.
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When the studio wants to make another franchise film they point to the success of the last sequel and the bank gives them the money to do it.
If Star Wars fans had been logical and given up on the franchise after Episode I, Episode II would have bombed and everyone would have been saved decades upon decades of mediocre films. But instead, it was one of the most successful movies of the year (and Episode 3 made even more money), so they will be making these films till the end of time. If the franchise isn't big enough to coast like this, though, they have to resort to minority casting as a safeguard. As a side note, this only seems to happen to franchises people grew up with as children. Had Coppola turned The Godfather into a never-ending franchise I doubt it would have stuck. Eventually these things turn into Death Wish IX: Michael Winner's Revenge and whatnot. But when it comes to children's films all reason is lost. I'm glad I never got too into any of them.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
The problem is that conservative ideas are only popular among the conservative base to the extent that they can be used to make culture-war hay. When it comes time to turn this rhetoric into policy, the politicians know that it won't fly, so they back off toward moderate reforms. For example, most Republicans in the US blame "tax and spend Democrats" for a whole host of economic ills and advocate for a leaner Federal government. But when it comes to actually reducing spending, the big social programs are so popular among the conservative base that they're untouchable. No Republican is going to march into the US congress and advocate for a big plan to reform, let alone eliminate, Social Security. Or Medicare. And these two programs alone account for nearly 60% of the entire Federal budget. Add in military spending and you're looking at 3/4 of the Federal budget that's off-limits to conservatives to any kind of cuts. Add in that most conservative constituents expect at least minimal spending in other areas, and grand plans of budget cuts are reduced to trimming around the edges.
So instead you end up with things like perennial calls to defund public broadcasting. PBS and NPR have been in the crosshairs of conservatives for some time, particularly because their news programs have a leftist slant. One issue, though, is that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's budget is so small that scientific notation is needed to express it as a percentage of Federal spending, so eliminating it is more about signaling than about actual spending cuts. The other issue is that while NPR and PBS news are undeniably left-wing (NPR to a greater degree), they are also pretty much the last bastion of "traditional Western culture" in mainstream American media. For example, classical music would disappear from American airwaves in all but the largest markets if NPR ceased to exist.
An even better example is the utter failure of the Republicans to repeal Obamacare. Opposition to the program was a centerpiece of conservative politics from the act's proposal in 2009 all the way up to 2017. Yet a conservative trifecta couldn't do anything about it. It turns out that when you expand coverage to people who couldn't afford it before, you create a constituency that benefits from the program. Actually repealing the ACA would have meant that a ton of people would have gotten cancellation notices and the status of their healthcare coverage would be in limbo. So there was at least the early recognition that the "Skinny repeal option wasn't really viable"; something needed to replace the program that kept most of the essential protections in place. In a sense, this was already a capitulation, because it suggested that the Republicans' only real problem with the act was that it was endorsed by a Democrat, not because of anything substantive. But even then, they still failed to come up with "Obamacare under another name" and didn't have the votes to repeal the law. The best they could muster was a repeal of the individual mandate, a supreme irony in that the only part of a large Federal program they got rid of was the funding aspect, which only had the effect of making the policies more expensive than they were before. So in the end, all we get from conservatives in the US is moderate tax cuts, which only serve to increase the deficits the right is claiming are ruining our economy. The right can't get any traction beyond "moderate" reforms because there's simply no call for it
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
The public broadcasting situation in the US is complicated. NPR and PBS aren't so much monolithic entities like the BBC but amalgamations of local stations. Congress created NPR and PBS and set requirements for member stations. The member stations can't be commercial and are often owned by public universities or nonprofit corporations that exist solely to run the stations. The member stations in-turn chose directors to run the national-level organizations. Member stations also produce most of the content, some of which airs locally and some of which is nationally syndicated. The government's only active involvement is through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. CPB board members are political appointees, appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, but like other independent government agencies the board members are subject to terms and can't simply be fired (although I'm sure there's some impeachment process that's never been invoked). That being said, the board seats are apolitical and most presidents simply reappoint whoever's currently serving, regardless of political party. That's because CPB's power is basically limited to distributing its funding among local member stations. They don't produce any content or make any editorial decisions, they just deal with funding. And this funding is what's at issue when conservatives talk about eliminating NPR and PBS.
It should be noted, though, that this funding makes up surprisingly little of the overall public broadcasting budget. Member stations only get about 10% of their funds from CPB grants. The rest comes from donations from individuals, businesses, and private foundations. Every public station has a "pledge season" a couple times a year where they interrupt programming to incessantly beg for money for a couple weeks. It should be noted that most of the content on these stations isn't notoriously left-wing. On PBS it's basically limited to NewsHour, the nightly news program, and that isn't even that far to the left. On radio most of the content is either music, locally produced programming, locally produced programming that is syndicated nationally, and independently produced programming. The notoriously left-wing part of NPR is the daily news magazines produced by NPR itself, Morning Edition and All Things Considered. And at that it's mainstream urban left-wing, not radical left-wing. NPR itself, though, gets little to no money from the government directly; its budget mostly comes from syndication fees paid my member stations to air its content. The reason it leans left is that most of the people who donate to member stations are educated PMC lefty urbanites, and he who pays the piper gets to call the tune. If NPR decided to go MAGA its member stations would stop paying for its content and if they didn't, they'd see their donations dry up pretty quickly.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
While this would certainly qualify as a defensive gun use, this is the kind of use that makes me highly suspect of the actual utility of it. Yes, from the story you tell it sounds like you would have had a clear case of self-defense, but I (and presumably anyone else reading this) is going to be biased toward your side of the story. The police, however, are not necessarily going to share this natural bias. Suppose you shoot and kill the guy; what then? Your story makes a good case for self-defense: The guy had already assaulted the housmeate's date and was brandishing a dangerous implement, which he was already using to vandalize the house. He refused to leave when asked to, and approached you with the hatchet in a presumably threatening manner.
There's another side to this, though. You were drunk. The guy didn't enter the house. You didn't know the guy and weren't involved in the initial altercation. You deliberately left the safety of the house and went outside with a gun looking to confront the man. I'm not trying to say that your actions were unreasonable given the circumstances, just that the cops don't know what happened and they aren't going to just take the word of the guy in basketball shorts and dress socks who has a pretty good reason to tell stories.
Unless you're incredibly stupid, you aren't saying anything without a lawyer present, and given that it's 2 am on a Sunday morning and you're drunk, you can pretty much guarantee that you'll be spending the rest of the night in a police holding cell. Best case scenario you can raise a lawyer the next morning, the police buy your story, and they let you go right away without pressing charges. All it cost you was at least $500 in attorney's fees (put probably more like a thousand) and the worst night of your life.
More likely, though is that the police do an investigation that lasts months. This is a homicide, after all, and it isn't a clear-cut case of self-defense like a home invasion or attempted robbery. the victim's family could pressure the police. The story you give might not match up with ballistics. The investigators could simply not believe you. The police are going to interview everyone who was in the house last night, and who there can corroborate your story? Your girlfriend was upstairs the whole time and probably can't do anything but testify to the banging and yelling. The housemate might be able to provide a little more detail about the altercation, but probably not too much. The date can provide the most information, but given that he didn't want to press charges against the guy (and he presumably looks to him for spiritual support) there's a good chance he downplays the whole incident and makes it look like your actions were unjustified. Now you're looking at months of hell and thousands in attorney's fees, even if it all ends with the DA declining to press charges.
There was a case in Western PA last winter where a guy at a hunting camp was shot after erratically firing an AK-47 and forcing the other people at the camp to stay at gunpoint. The incident happened in December but the investigation dragged on until the middle of March before the DA announced that they couldn't overcome their burden of proof in a self-defense case. This was in a rural area that is generally pro-gun. Alternatively, had you stayed inside, ordered the others upstairs, and waited with the gun in case the shit hit the fan, the police probably would have arrived before he was able to break in (if that was even his intention), and if you had to shoot him, the self-defense case in much clearer.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
I actually deliberately left that information out in the hope that an enterprising individual such as yourself would track down the story and find out that there was a bit more to it than a straightforward case of self-defense. The point I'm trying to make is that the way I presented it is the way it looked to the shooter at the time: Guy on shrooms waving a gun around, acting crazy and refusing to let them leave. Then once the deed is done more complications come out of the woodwork. There's a bias investigation because the guy was black. There's the fact that the guy never made any direct threats. There's the fact that he was shot nine times in all parts of his body. When you're the one in fear of your life all these things seem like pointless details that you don't even remember. But the police aren't in your shoes. The victim's family isn't in your shoes. The police can't just take your word for what happened, no matter how reasonable it may seem to you. That's why statements like "Anti-self-defense people have managed to rig the system so completely against self-defense that even someone who shoots someone dead for good reasons will be made to seriously regret it" don't quite make sense to me. I mean, yeah, it's certainly possible that that's true at least in some places, but it doesn't really say much about what I'm getting at. If someone is shot dead the police have to investigate. If they were simply to take every self-defense claim at face value then we'd effectively have legalized murder, especially in gangland situations. Unless you can prove that the other guy didn't shoot first, you can't arrest anyone. And if you're taking the guy at his word that the victim did shoot first, then there's not much else to do. As soon as you agree that an investigation needs to be completed, and it's not going to be some half-assed investigation meant to corroborate the shooter's claim of self-defense, then the shooter needs to get an attorney. And the more inconsistencies and complications that investigation uncovers, the worse it's going to be. It's not a question of whether the legal system is unfairly biased against self-defense claims, it's a question of what needs to occur to have a functioning legal system at all.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
It's not even DeSantis's problem. One thing that's often left out is that the Martha's Vineyard immigrants originated in Texas, not Florida. Florida evidently doesn't have enough of a migrant problem to make it worthwhile to find 50 illegals in Miami for his publicity stunt. If DeSantis, Ducey, and Abbot were actually trying to solve the problem and make some political hay out of the alleged indifference of northern states, they would have said "Hey, our resources for dealing with migrants are stretched to the breaking point and we're on the brink of a crisis. Would it be possible for you to accept some of them so that you can provide assistance?" If New York et al. had said no then the GOP governors would have a point. Now the Democrats can simply say that their anger isn't about the migrants themselves but about the lack of preparation they were given and the cavalier way these people are being treated. Taking families in dire situations and busing them to places that you know aren't prepared for their arrival (and going to the lengths of avoiding busy areas to drop them off on middle-of-nowhere residential streets because they're close to the houses of politicians you don't like) suggests that you're more interested in "owning the libs" than in the people actually involved.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
Done Too Soon - Neil Diamond
The Name Game - Shirley Ellis
50 Ways to Leave Your Lover - Paul Simon
Do Right - Jimmie's Chicken Shack
Waters of March - Elis Regina and Tom Jobim
Also the Eclipse part of Dark Side of the Moon, though that's more like a coda to Bran Damage than a song in its own right.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
The trouble with this strategy is that it could backfire. For all the press this is getting, I have yet to see it brought up as a campaign issue, at least in Pennsylvania. Dr. Oz doesn't have anything on his website about it except generic Republican "secure the border" stuff. Mastriano has something about how Pennsylvania will stop receiving chartered buses with illegal immigrants, but it's unclear how this would be enforced. I haven't seen any campaign ads specifically about immigration at all, though it's possible I could be missing them. I doubt anyone would send any migrants to PA anyway, at least before the election, because the repercussions are too unpredictable. Same reason why Biden won't do anything until after the election.
But if this continues after the election, Biden has a pretty easy way out of this without making any real concession. He simply tells Abbot and the others that they've made their point and he agrees that Texas, etc. shouldn't bear this burden alone. Then DHS announces a policy of busing illegals throughout the country so that cities will receive them in proportion to their populations. This is a pyrrhic victory for Abbot and Ducey, who now have to explain to fellow GOP governors how they provoked the Biden administration into busing illegals into places like Cleveland, St. Louis, and Oklahoma City. It's especially bad for a hanger-on like DeSantis—who never really had his own crisis to worry about—who now has to deal with the prospect of migrants being bused into places like Jacksonville and Tampa.
And then there's Venezuela. I can't find good numbers, but reports suggest that a large proportion of the migrants are Venezuelan. Due to the frosty state of US–Venezuela relations, Venezuela hasn't been cooperative with returning migrants. Biden could call up the governors in question and ask them for support in negotiating a deal, making it clear that such a deal would probably require eliminating some of the sanctions. If they don't cooperate, it makes them look like what they are calling a crisis is trumped by a peripheral issue like Venezuela sanctions. If they provide support but they have to buck the GOP to do it then they're in a precarious political position. If the whole GOP gets on board then it's a clear win for Biden.
The problem with these kinds of political stunts is that they seem meant to appeal to the kind of person who wouldn't consider voting for the other party anyway. You can argue with me about how effective they would be but unless you're seriously considering voting Democrat Biden could give a shit about how it appears to you politically. Romney got raked over the coals for saying it but he was right when he said that a certain percentage of the country wouldn't vote for him no matter what and another percentage would vote for him no matter what so his goal was to appeal to those who might vote for him but might not. Some may argue that you need to turn out the base, but research suggests that this also motivates the opposing base to vote against you, so it's ultimately a wash. There's an argument to be made that when you're facing a real crisis and those in charge won't listen then you have to break out the nuclear option. The trouble is that this has to be don very carefully. The other side aren't babes in the woods and they have options as well.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
The trouble is that it doesn't really work like that. So go ahead, punish the legislature and fuck the farm lobby. After all, we're not farmers. Except now there's a labor shortage and farmers can't find anyone willing to pick fruit for 25 cents a bushel or whatever the going migrant rate is. Part of the labor market is not just that you have to pay someone to do something, but you also have to pay them not to do something else. So instead of competing against Guatamalan day labor you're competing against all the jobs that aren't exempt from minimum wage (and few places are even paying minimum wage anymore). So either you let half your harvest die in the fields or pay twice as much as you normally would to bring it in, and now food costs more and everyone's bitching. Considering that migrant workers are the backbone of everything that hasn't been mechanized, the question is how much more you're willing to pay for produce so that you don't have to worry about immigrants. And just because you might be willing to pay a little more doesn't mean that most people would agree with you, even other people who are nominally anti-immigration.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
Actually, it does. Texas has been keen to emphasize that the relocations are entirely voluntary. Forcible relocation would be a pretty big escalation that could expose state and local governments to legal consequences given that they're essentially kidnapping people.
If Biden wants to campaign on flagrant misspending done strictly to help people break the law, I encourage him -- I believe this would be a wonderful policy and I have nothing but approval for him doing it. Ideally very loudly.
Just as Texas and Arizona are already doing.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
A couple weeks ago I dropped a couple of names on some people whose ages ranged between mid-30s and mid-60s and I was met with blank stares. Even after explaining who the people were, everyone was still drawing a blank. The names were Chandra Levy and Gary Condit. For those who are unaware, Chandra Levy was a US Department of Corrections employee who disappeared in the spring of 2001. Her disappearance made national news when it was revealed that she had previously been an intern for California Congressman Gary Condit, and there was evidence that they had had an affair. There was never anything approaching evidence that he was involved in her disappearance, but his continued denial of any intimate relationship in the face of nearly overwhelming evidence gave him the aura of a man who wasn't telling the truth, and speculation ensued.
If you're too young to remember the case, I'm bringing it up because it was huge at the time. The New York Times ran over 50 stories about it between May and September. To put this in context, the other big news stories during that period were the Microsoft antitrust suit, the Bush tax cuts, the Andrea Yates child-drowning case, and the president's monthlong August vacation. It's hard to gauge the coverage of most of these, but Yates merited fewer than 20 articles, and the rest of these weren't exactly corkers. The Levy disappearance was easily the biggest news story of that summer, until 9/11 pushed it off of the front page. Even then, it had enough staying power to remain in the background for years afterward, as new developments arose. Condit sought reelection but lost the primary in March. The body was found in May. A man who had previously been convicted of attacking other women in the area where the body was found was convicted in 2006, but was released ten years later after appeals revealed that the prosecution's case was terrible. As recently as last year, the Times was still following the case, this time about how the prosecutors are facing malicious prosecution charges.
It was a big story. It may have only dominated the public consciousness because it was the only interesting thing in an otherwise uninteresting time, but it dominated nonetheless. It's no longer front-page news, but developments still merit mention by the Newspaper of Record. And yet plenty of people who were certainly old enough to remember draw a blank 20 years later. The same is true of the 1979 Ogaden War, or the Bhopal disaster; it seems to have vanished from the collective consciousness, apart from the aforementioned updates and the occasional podcast dedicated to these sorts of things. Now imagine trying to explain to someone how big a news story was a hundred years after the fact. Are you familiar with the Hall-Mills murder? It was easily the biggest murder story in American history until the Lindbergh Kidnapping, and was much bigger than any popular crime story since the OJ Trial. Yet today it only gets a mention in true crime books and podcasts and such. If someone frozen in 1922 were to wake up today and asked about the resolution of the case, he may be incredulous to find out that no one has any idea what he's talking about. Even big political events barely merit discussion. Teapot Dome may be mentioned in every US history book, but good luck finding anyone who can explain what the scandal was (and it was one that jeopardized Harding's presidency, though he would die before it was resolved). So no, there's no one article you can point to that will fully express the magnitude of an issue to someone 100 years in the future.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
Let me ask you this–if you were to walk into a bar and someone was wearing MC colors, how do you think society would require you to act toward them?
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
The main issue with an athletic quarterback is how good his arm is. Your QB may be able to do somersaults into the end zone but he's no good if he can't beat you with his arm if he needs to; otherwise, every play is a running play and he's just another running back. Guys like Michael Vick and Russel Wilson were and are athletic as hell, but they can also pass. Kaepernick's problem wasn't so much that he was incapable of passing, but that he didn't have the patience for it. On every pass play he would do his reads real quick and if nothing was there he'd leave the pocket and start running. And to make matters worse, he wasn't scrambling with an eye to pass—when most good athletic QBs leave the pocket, they're still looking downfield hoping something will open up. Kaepernick tucked and started looking for daylight. If he did look up again, he was completely lost and forced to check down or take a sack. As a Steeler fan (and Pitt fan), that's what's so encouraging about Kenny Pickett; he's mobile but he's always looking to pass until the play is completely blown, and even then he's not afraid to throw the ball away if there's no good running lane.
The inevitable result is that all the smart money will move to Firefox, who has made it clear that they wouldn't be implementing anything to stymie ad blockers. Whether this means anything as far as Google's numbers are concerned is anyone's guess; with all the talk of the "Adpocalypse" in years past, nothing seems to have changed much. I'm guessing that everyone who was going to deploy an ad blocker has already done so by this point, and these people would find the ads themselves more irritating than persuasive.
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