Rov_Scam
4d ago
I think a better strategy is to just limit your consumption to trusted channels. I'm reluctant to watch anything that isn't by someone I've seen before. I may not be able to tell when it's 100% AI content, but a low effort video is a low effort video. It's pretty easy to tell when someone doesn't know what they're talking about and are simply summarizing a Wikipedia article, or LLM output for that matter.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
At the time of the revolution, the colonies had their own governments and their own courts, which courts subscribed to the common law. Since there was no existing tradition of comprehensive legal codes, upending the system entirely would have meant creating a new civil law system from scratch, which there was no reason to do, since the common law had worked fine for 99% of cases, and they always had the opportunity to enact legislation for the 1% of cases where the common law was inadequate. Even to this day, we still rely on common law for the vast majority of the things that courts actually deal with on a day to day basis, and it continues to evolve in the individual jurisdictions, such that law students are vexed by having to learn majority and minority rules.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
This is one of the areas where the current state of the market is objectively worse than in the pre-internet era. I remember when I was in college (the internet existed but hadn't subsumed everything) it seemed like every town had a video store that opened when the VCR came out in the 1980s, ordered every title that was available, and never threw anything out. The result was that you had independent shops whose archives included pretty much everything that was ever released on video. Sure, it might not be on DVD, and the tape might be in bad shape from having been watched 4 million times, but at least it was available. I remember they had a 5 catalog rentals for $5 deal, and the rentals were for a week, so it was kind of a weekly ritual to rent 5 movies every week whether I planned on watching them or not. They also had a byzantine setup that encouraged browsing because you never knew where you'd find anything, though they had a catalog you could consult. The new releases were obviously segregated, and they had the normal categories (comedy, drama, etc.), but the AFI 100 movies had their own section, as did "Black and White Classics", and there was something called the Video Vault that could have anything. I believe there was even a small LBGT section, definitely odd for a small town store in the mid 2000s.
They closed in 2007, well before streaming. I think it was a combination of OG Netflix and Redbox. I worked at a video store in high school, and 90% of our sales were newer releases, though the one I worked at didn't have much of an archive. It was part of a grocery store, and it became easier for the grocery stores to just put a Redbox machine in the lobby that would cover the dozen or so titles that actually made money. Netflix didn't make sense for new releases at the time, since you had to wait and could be on a list, but for movie buffs who would just put a hundred movies in the queue and watch whatever Netflix sent them, it was perfectly fine and didn't require as much effort. My roommate and I got the Blockbuster equivalent circa 2008 and I remember he spent an afternoon just inputting the entire 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list in, and we'd watch whatever came in. That was probably the peak of movie availability since they really did have close to everything you could think of, unless it was really obscure.
As soon as streaming became the main business it was over, because bandwidth considerations came into play, similar to the space considerations of Redbox, and it was thus impossible to keep an inventory of that size, especially when the licensing agreements were more complicated and probably required them to pay for rights even for stuff that wasn't in high demand.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
There's also Kanopy, which has the added advantage of being free to a point.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
If you seriously think that third world immigration is doing the kind of damage you're suggesting then I have some swampland in New Jersey that's for sale. Maybe you should consider moving to Pittsburgh? Only 4% of the metro population is foreign-born, compared to 14% nationwide and over 30% in places like New York City. We're also about 85% white, almost all non-Hispanic. I love my hometown, and the cost of living is low, but the population has been flat for a while, and before that it was actively declining. If you had been here 20 years ago I could have showed you working-class neighborhoods with high crime rates filled with drugged-out white trash. One neighborhood that looked like it was on the brink of collapse only turned around after the area's modest Hispanic population decided to settle there and revitalize the business district. The other one got significantly better once Bhutanese refugees moved to the area, though that area is still bad, and still 70% white.
Of course, none of these areas are that bad, and everywhere is full of people with names that end in vowels. If you want to see some real shittiness we need to go just down the road to West Virginia. And no, I'm not going to take you to hillbilly country, which would be too easy. I'll instead show you actual industrialized areas full of white Anglos that are shittier than anything you'll find in the Pittsburgh region. Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel ran 9 mills in the Ohio Valley—Follansbee, WV; Mingo Junction, OH; Steubenville, OH; Martin's Ferry, OH; Wheeling, WV; Beech Bottom, WV; LaBelle, WV; Yorkville, OH; and Benwood, WV. There was also a huge mill at Weirton, and several smaller facilities. Most of that is gone now, but the area is significantly shittier than Pittsburgh.
But that's the wealthier part of West Virginia. If we keep going south, I can show you Chemical Valley, which is even whiter and more Anglo than the Panhandle, and the chemical plants are still in production, though Kaiser Aluminum at Ravenswood closed a long time ago, and Ormet closed in 2013. Jamie Oliver filmed a show in Huntington after it was dubbed the fattest city in the US, and it also probably has more fentanyl addicts than any city in the US. Just remember that if you buy a house there not to leave anything in the yard, like grills or lawn furniture or even children's toys, because they'll steal anything that isn't under lock and key. I can assure you that this area is free from the negative influence of dirty third-world immigrants, though.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
I think that the "and" in the 14th Amendment, by imposing two conditions, makes it clear that one can be subject to US jurisdiction but outside of the United States. If the clause only referenced jurisdiction it would be a different matter. There are already people who aren't in the US by any definition of the term, but are nonetheless recognized as being subject to US jurisdiction. For instance, a man in Guatemala who enters into a business contract with a man in Texas might be subject to US jurisdiction even if he's never been to the US in his life.
As a litigator, there are any number of things I might take into consideration when making an argument in front of a judge, including favorable facts, unfavorable facts, favorable law, unfavorable law, and the kinds of arguments the judge tends to pay attention to. On thing I have never taken into consideration is whether my argument is intellectually consistent with an argument I've made in the past, even if I'm arguing for the same client in front of the same judge in a case with substantially similar facts to a case I've argued previously. Indeed, if a judge tells me he doesn't buy my argument, I'm not going to waste my time in a future case making that argument. If I did, I may be consistent in my opinion, but I'd be doing a disservice to my client, putting my own sense of moral consistency ahead of their very real legal jeopardy.
And here you are, saying you're infuriated because a lawyer whose prior stances you aren't familiar with is arguing in an area of the law that hasn't been relevant until very recently in front of a court that has repeatedly signaled that they have a tendency to find some lines of reasoning more persuasive than others. What's she supposed to do, proceed with an argument that she thinks is a loser because she is, in some abstract way, acting as a representative of "the left" and other people who have nothing to do with her or her case besides a vague association with "the left" have made similar arguments in the past? What kind of advocacy is that?
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