Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
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User ID: 551
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
7mo ago
...is eventually going to be made obsolete by people getting their information from LLMs, especially the ones hooked up to the internet.
For things that are uncontroversial and just require ELI5 explanations, this will probably be an improvement. For things that are even the slightest bit controversial, turning the information source and how it's written into more of a black box than the current Wikipedia situation is apt to be pretty terrible for people's information diets. Existing sources like ChatGPT are heavily modified to deliver what I would most accurately describe as the "midwit lib" answer to many questions. Trying to get factually accurate information that doesn't include endless hedging like, " I must emphasize the importance of using respectful and appropriate language when discussing social issues and vulnerable populations" is already like pulling teeth. This isn't a big problem in and of itself, but if most people come to believe that they're actually getting accurate and authoritative answers there, this is going to be pretty bad. There's already enough, "ummm actually, that's been deboonked" without people relying on regime-influenced AI to deboonk for them.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
10mo ago
Curiously, the two judges in the majority (Wynn and Thacker) are Obama appointees, whereas the one judge in dissent (Richardson) is a Trump appointee. As the preceding comment observes, the argumentation in the dissenting opinion is far better than that in the majority opinion.
I have to say, I do not find this curious. I have admitted previously to being legally unsophisticated and I remain so; in recent months, I've taken to reading more decisions than I had in the entirety of my life up to that point, and the experience has substantially shaped my view of left-leaning jurisprudence for the worse. There are, of course, decisions with sketchy logic running in either direction, but the number of times that I run into reasoning from left-leaning judges that aligns with that first comment you quote on the "bad man" theory of law is so, so much more frequent. Sotomayor and KBJ seem to have particular enthusiasm for explaining how a decision will have bad outcomes rather than focusing on whether it's, you know, legal and consistent with an ordinary reading of statute. For instances, [this Sotomayor dissent regarding Covid restrictions] or the recent KBJ perspectives on affirmative action. In contrast, Gorsuch seems the most likely of the justices to just read the text to mean what it literally means on ordinary reading.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
It's interesting to see a certain weird tic that's become common in various American stories make its way into this one:
Western officials paid tribute to his courage as a fighter for freedom. Some, without citing evidence, bluntly accused the Kremlin.
Without citing evidence. Without. Citing. Evidence. Are you people fucking kidding me? Who is doing the editing for this that they feel the need to inject that phrase into every claim that isn't bibliographically footnoted and addended with appropriate Bayesian odds? Yeah, when the leader of political opposition to an autocrat dies in a prison colony at 47 years old, the default is that they were murdered by the regime. Even in the event that they didn't do anything in particular to him that day, any reasonable person looking at the basic facts would conclude that the regime is responsible for his death, because that's the whole point of sending to him to a Russian prison colony in the Arctic Circle called the Polar Wolf.
On the flip side, I had assumed that this stupid editorial tic was mostly just directed at the American right, but it seems that it's now standard practice.
It made me ask myself: is it fair to say that elderly care in the US and Western countries in general is based on the unstated rule that you as a frail and elderly person pretty much only deserve to have a quality of life worth a damn if you have loving, caring children and grandchildren living nearby, visiting you regularly and looking after you if needed?
On the contrary, I think you're building a big assumption in here, that countries could simply provide "quality of life worth a damn" to everyone living under their umbrella and are electing not to out of spite. Instead, as that thread covered, even providing a low-quality of life for someone that can't fully care for themselves is incredibly expensive and a massive burden on nations that are dealing with inverted population pyramids. I see this sort of thinking with regard to various supposed positive "rights" and it just seems utterly fantastical to me to think that there is sufficient state capacity to give everyone a nice life if only the affirmative choice were made.
As a practical matter, it is true that the main way for someone to have a quality of life that's worth a damn if they grow feeble is to have loving, caring children and grandchildren nearby. That this won't happen for everyone is a reminder that aging is cruel.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
6mo ago
While granting that it's probably a small part of the zeitgeist, who the hell wants these women for commanding officers? Worse than the general impression from the photo and worse still than the display of naked racial supremacy is knowing that the top brass above that will simply lie about plain statutes to protect these favored regime pets:
The inquiry concluded that the photo was among several taken in the spur-of-the-moment. It was intended to demonstrate “unity” and “pride,” according to the findings of the inquiry.
In addition to concluding there was no violation of DOD Directive 1344.10, the findings state, “that based upon available evidence none of the participants, through their actions, intended to show support for a political movement.”
This is ridiculous! They're throwing up a classic gesture of racial and leftist politics. One finds it hard to believe that a group of white male cadets performing a Roman salute would be able to get away with claiming that it was mere unity and pride, and therefore a non-political gesture, worthy of no discipline.
Does this sort of thing matter? I genuinely don't know. I'm not hanging around 18-year old kids that are looking at entering enlisted ranks. I have no idea if they're even cognizant of these sorts of things. If they are, I would certainly expect it to be discouraging and demoralizing to know the politics of the officer corps and top brass.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
10mo ago
Education is a public good, which should provide broad social benefits. Universities and the government should maintain the right to press on the scale to ensure democratically available and efficient outcomes.
Old post of mine at the old place, but I want to reiterate my objection to referring to education as a public good:
On student debt forgiveness, I'm seeing the emergence of a new framing that seems almost completely nonsensical to me. In a recent Voxsplainer, this quote is included from a policy person:
“What’s attractive about student debt cancellation in this moment is that in addition to righting a policy wrong — which is the decision to make the cost of college an individual burden when I would say it’s a public good — is that it can help stimulate the economy at a moment when we need economic stimulus. And it has significant racial equity implications as well,” said Suzanne Kahn, director of education, jobs, and power at the Roosevelt Institute and an advocate for complete federal student debt cancellation. It’s also something Biden could try to do independently of Congress, which is attractive since stimulus talks have stalled out.
I want to emphasize the use of "public good" there - this doesn't mean something that's good for the public, this is a specific economic term used deliberately. The meaning is:
In economics, a public good (also referred to as a social good or collective good) is a good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous.
...
Non-rivalrous: accessible by all whilst one's usage of the product does not affect the availability for subsequent use.[8]
...
Non-excludability: that is, it is impossible to exclude any individuals from consuming the good.
This is not at all what university educations look like. Not only are degrees both rivalrous and excludable, they're also positional goods that convey signaling benefit to their recipients. To make them non-rivalrous and non-excludable would substantially remove their value to the individuals receiving them. We can imagine a world that looks like that, where Harvard offers all of its classes online to anyone that would like to take them and anyone that signs up and passes receives that Harvard degree, but that looks nothing like the world we actually live in.
From my perspective, student loan forgiveness would be one of the worst policies in American history. It would:
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Reward irresponsible people that had no plan to pay debts freely entered into.
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Reward universities that conferred expensive degrees that don't have an actual return on the investment.
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Reify moral hazard and perverse incentives related to the above.
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Continue to inflate college costs due to the expectation that no one actually has to pay for anything.
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Further the class/social war by explicitly choosing to extract from non-university labor to reward the formally educated.
Almost all of the upsides seem to me to be incredibly short term and ignore normal human reactions. To me, the justifications all look like sophistry in service of smash-and-grab politics.
As an addendum to the above, even if I were to take a less formal definition of "public good" as just meaning something that has positive externalities, I would need an explanation for why the value of an education isn't primarily captured by the educated individual and instead accrues more broadly. Sure, there is going to be surplus value from some educations, but it's going to be pretty hard for me to understand how a Harvard-educated attorney or financier isn't actually capturing the majority of the economic value produced by their skills.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
7mo ago
The question I keep coming back to when I see these pro-Palestinians-murdering-Jews rallies is, "why are these people here?". That's my instinctual response to seeing this in New York, Toronto, Sidney, really any nice, polite, Anglo-founded civilization. Don't get me wrong, I understand why they want to be here, there's all sorts of material goods to be gained by moving to nice, polite, Anglo-founded civilizations. What I mean is how did we wind up with a set of policies that allowed immigration of people that were going to bring their old ethnic hatreds and import them to nice, polite, Anglo civilizations. I can't really begrudge black Americans for holding a grudge over American history and I certainly will grant that Native Americans have a point or two. But why the hell did we add a set of people with Middle Eastern grievances to celebrate the barbaric murder of Jews?
This is, of course, rhetorical and I am familiar with the history of immigration in these countries, but I just can't get past that being my sentiment every time. Whether people have a right to be bigots or not, Sydney didn't need to invite them in to do on the steps of the Opera House. The people that want to engage in desert barbarism should be doing so in said desert, not in Times Square.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
7mo ago
somewhat charming cast
I think it's hard to overstate how heavily the show was driven by Hugh Laurie just being really, really good at delivering the House role. The rest of the cast does a good job too, but Laurie is perfectly cast, well written, and consistently delivers sardonic humor that keeps the whole thing running. Maybe the exact jokes don't get written that way in 2023, but the basic character would work just fine and would simply be taking shots at someone else instead.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
9mo ago
'Why is peepul thinking we wuz talkin' 'bout killin' peepul? Y they not get de IMPORTANT ENVIRONMENTAL CLIMATE CHANGE FIGHTIN' POINT?'
I thought this was going to be a post about the NYT fretting about "backlash" to the Kill the Boer song.
On topic, the climate radicalization I see forming is turning me into a "climate change denier". I am agnostic on the impact of human emissions on the climate and tend to assume that the basic described effect of CO2 upregulating temperature is probably right, but I am increasingly seeing framing of "climate catastrophe" and "existential threat", to which I think just outright saying that this isn't happening is probably closer to the truth than some middle-ground. In the same way that "Covid is just a cold bro" would get closer to my preferred policies than "Covid is a very serious emergency", I think "climate change is not a big deal and has always happened" will be closer to my preferred policies than "climate change is literally going to end humanity" and I probably have to pick a side.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
11mo ago
Sure, this passes the sanity check.
Really though, I want to step back from that for just a moment and focus on just how disingenuous I believe the puberty blocker discourse to be from trans advocates. Without linking to outside drama, there were two threads in my local subreddits yesterday regarding how puberty blockers are "completely reversible", that they're validated by medical science, and have been long-used. Here's one example:
Even if a kid just wanted attention and convinced everyone around them they were trans, the side effects are basically non-existent...stop taking the blockers and continue on with puberty.
This is bullshit, and not in a fashion that implies misunderstanding, but the product of absolutely ridiculous lies that anyone with a thin grasp of developmental biology can spot in a moment. There is almost zero chance that you can just press pause on an important developmental process for years at a time and have it be "completely reversible". Perhaps after rigorous study we can settle on the position that it's the least-bad option available, but passing it off as totally harmless, so harmless that it could be used as on someone that just wanted attention is the product of bold-faced lying by people that are ostensibly medical professionals and scientists. That the default position on this has been flipped to it being requisite that you spend a great deal of time dealing with bone structure or any other singular dimension is privileging the null hypothesis despite the blatant, obvious reality that puberty has massive effects and that delaying it while other growth and aging processes continue will almost certainly have impacts on development. Again, maybe those won't be so bad, maybe on net it turns out to be an improvement for the kids, but I absolutely refuse to treat these as no big deal to pass out like candy.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
11mo ago
All else aside, it is absolutely breathtaking that the mainstream position circa May 2020 was that lab leak was a "racist conspiracy" and that "they have super sketchy meat markets, really dirty people spreading all sorts of diseases" was the thing that decent people believed.
If a singular person (small group of people) is revealed to have been responsible for all the death, of all the suffering, of all the economic disruption and all the curtailment of simple human livelihood that resulted from Covid 19 and the associated panic, what crime can you charge them with?
I still think the worst crimes were the government responses rather than the actual disease. Yes, someone screwing up with a highly contagious virus and then covering it up is a Bad Thing, but I can still figure out why someone acting basically rationally would do that. The insane suite of policies that accomplished absolutely nothing other than economic ruin and political chaos on the other hand... well, it's still not fully legible to me how we wound up there. I would prefer to start with punishment for the policymakers than the scientists.
During my run yesterday, I gave a listen to the oral arguments from Murthy v. Missouri that had happened earlier in the day. Before getting into what they covered in the argument, let's have a quick rundown of the basics of the case from Wikipedia:
Murthy v. Missouri (originally filed as Missouri v. Biden) is a case pending in the Supreme Court of the United States involving the First Amendment, the federal government, and social media. The states of Missouri and Louisiana, led by Missouri's then Attorney General Eric Schmitt, filed suit against the U.S. government in the Western District of Louisiana. They claimed that the federal government pressured social media companies to censor conservative views and criticism of the Biden administration in violation of the right to freedom of expression. The government said it had only made requests, not demands, that social media operators remove misinformation.
On July 4, 2023, Judge Terry A. Doughty issued a preliminary injunction against several agencies and members of the Biden administration from contacting social media services to request the blocking of material, with exceptions for material involving illegal activity. On appeal, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals found that there had been some coercion in the government's contact with social media companies in violation of the First Amendment, but narrowed the extent of Doughty's injunction to block any attempts by the government to threaten or coerce moderation on social media. The United States Supreme Court initially stayed the Fifth Circuit's order, then granted review of the case by writ of certiorari.
Hearings for the case were held in May 2023. Judge Doughty issued his ruling on July 4, 2023, issuing a preliminary injunction against several Biden administration officials from contacting social media services for "the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech."[14] In his 155-page ruling, Doughty wrote: "The Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the Government has used its power to silence the opposition. Opposition to COVID-19 vaccines; opposition to COVID-19 masking and lockdowns; opposition to the lab-leak theory of COVID-19; opposition to the validity of the 2020 election; opposition to President Biden’s policies; statements that the Hunter Biden laptop story was true; and opposition to policies of the government officials in power. All were suppressed. It is quite telling that each example or category of suppressed speech was conservative in nature. This targeted suppression of conservative ideas is a perfect example of viewpoint discrimination of political speech. American citizens have the right to engage in free debate about the significant issues affecting the country."[15] He continued: "If the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States' history. The plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the government has used its power to silence the opposition."[14]
To no one's surprise, federal agencies have been continually reaching out to social media companies, "encouraging" them to implement moderation policies that are in keeping with the federal government's preferences. On some of these, I can certainly see honest motivations for federal actors to prefer that things be moderated, on others it seems entirely self-serving, but the question before the court on whether the speech rights of posters are being infringed doesn't seem to hinge upon what the government's motivation is (although there is an argument that restrictions that would meet a strict scrutiny standard could be legitimate). The oral arguments were moderately interesting and I thought the first half, argued by Brian Fletcher on behalf of the government, raised some points that I hadn't fully considered. As ever, I am not a lawyer. If you want to peruse the transcript, you can find it here. The most salient piece for me is when Sam Alito is exchanging with Fletcher:
JUSTICE ALITO: Mr. Fletcher, when I read all of the emails exchanged between the White House and other federal officials on Facebook in particular but also some of the other platforms, and I see that the White House and federal officials are repeatedly saying that Facebook and the federal government should be partners, we're on the same team, officials are demanding answers, I want an answer, I want it right away, when they're unhappy, they -- they curse them out. There are regular meetings. There is constant pestering of -- of Facebook and some of the other platforms and they want to have regular meetings, and they suggest why don't you -- they suggest rules that should be applied and why don't you tell us everything that you're going to do so we can help you and we can look it over. And I thought: Wow, I cannot imagine federal officials taking that approach to the --the -- the print media, our representatives over there. If you -- if you did that to -- to them, what do you think the reaction would be? And so I thought: You know, the only reason why this is taking place is because the federal government has got Section 230 and antitrust in its pocket and it's -- to mix my metaphors, and it's got these big clubs available -- available to it, and so it's treating Facebook and these other platforms like they're subordinates. Would you do that to The -- to The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal or the Associated Press or any other big newspaper or wire service?
MR. FLETCHER: So there's a lot packed in there. I want to give you one very specific answer first and then step back out to the proper context. So specifically you mentioned demanding an answer right away and cursing them out. The only time that happens is in an email that's about the President's own Instagram account. It's not about moderating other people's content.
JUSTICE ALITO: Okay. We'll put that aside. There's all the rest.
MR. FLETCHER: So --
JUSTICE ALITO: Constant meetings, constant emails, we want answers.
MR. FLETCHER: Right.
JUSTICE ALITO: We're partners, we're on the same team. Do you think that the print media regards themselves as being on the same team as the federal government, partners with the federal government?
MR. FLETCHER: So potentially in the context of an effort to get Americans vaccinated during a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. And I really think that piece of context, it doesn't change the First Amendment principles, but it's relevant to how they apply here. And I think it's important to understand that at this time, this was a time when thousands of Americans were still dying every week and there was a hope that getting everyone vaccinated could stop the pandemic. And there was a concern that Americans were getting their news about the vaccine from these platforms, and the platforms were promoting, not just posting --
JUSTICE ALITO: Well, I -- I --
MR. FLETCHER: -- but promoting, bad information.
JUSTICE ALITO: I understand all that. And I know the objectives were good, but -- but, once again, they were also getting their news from the print media and the broadcast media and cable media, and I just can't imagine the federal government doing that to them. But maybe I'm naive. Maybe that goes on behind the scenes. I don't know. But I -- I -- it struck me as wow, this is not what I understand the relationship to be. That's all.
While there is quite a bit more substance, I think Fletcher's argument relies heavily on the bolded above. While he doesn't admit that there is coercion on the part of the federal government (it would be pretty damning if he did), he seems to be suggesting that if there was coercion, it was for a very good reason, so it's OK. In contrast, when the oral argument shifts to the individual arguing against the government, his core position doesn't really rely on whether the speech being restricted is good or bad, whether the government had a strong motivation to encourage restriction of speech, he simply claims that it is illegal for the government to use a third-party to restrict speech:
MR. AGUINAGA: Good morning, Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court: Government censorship has no place in our democracy. That is why this 20,000-page record is stunning. As the Fifth Circuit put it, the record reveals unrelenting pressure by the government to coerce social media platforms to suppress the speech of millions of Americans. The district court, which analyzed this record for a year, described it as arguably the most massive attack against free speech in American history, including the censorship of renowned scientists opining in their areas of expertise. And the government's levers of pressure are anathema to the First Amendment. Behind closed doors, the government badgers the platforms 24/7, it abuses them with profanity, it warns that the highest levels of the White House are concerned, it ominously says that the White House is considering its options, and it accuses platforms both of playing total Calvinball and of hiding the ball, all to get the platforms to sensor more speech. Under this onslaught, the platforms routinely cave. Now, last month, in the NetChoice cases, the platforms told you that it's incredibly important that they create their own content moderation policies. But this record shows that they continually depart from those policies because of unrelenting government pressure. Indeed, as Facebook recently disclosed in an internal email to former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, the reason Facebook did that was "because we were under pressure by the administration. We shouldn't have done it." Now my friend says all this is constitutional because the government has the right to persuade using the bully pulpit. But the government has no right to persuade platforms to violate Americans' constitutional rights, and pressuring platforms in back rooms shielded from public view is not using the bully pulpit at all. That's just being a bully.
JUSTICE THOMAS: Counsel, the -- I know your argument is basically a Bantam Books argument, but do you need coercion in order to -- do you think that's the only way you could make your case, or could coordination accomplish the same thing; that is, the government is censoring by joint actions with the platforms as opposed to coercing the platforms?
MR. AGUINAGA: Your Honor, we don't need coercion as a theory. That's why we led with encouragement in our red brief. And I would point the Court to what it said in Norwood, which is the Court -- or the government cannot induce, encourage, and promote private actors to do directly what the government can't itself do directly. And that's, I think, the principle that's guiding here, which is regardless of the means that the government tries to use to pressure -- to pressure the platforms to commit censorship against third parties, the Constitution really doesn't care about that. It's the fact that what the government is trying to accomplish is the suppression of speech. Aguinaga's argument is that the principle and the literal text of the First Amendment are quite clear, that there isn't some exemption for the government just really, really not liking what someone is saying. The Court doesn't seem to be buying this at all, for three reasons:
[1] Issues of traceability and redressability. The standard is that for the Court to intervene, one must be able to demonstrate that the origin of the restriction speech comes from the government and that relief can be provided by the court. The reason that some of the justices seem to think this isn't traceable is because of how dispersed the government's actions - you can't prove that you were targeted when the government reaches out to Twitter and says, "someone remove this troublesome speech from your platform". Why, Twitter might have decided to do it without the government. Not only that, they didn't say to take down your speech, they just suggested that it would be good if the company took it down. Apparently, the legal theory here is that banning a whole class of speech wouldn't be traceable because the effects are dispersed. One example of this back and forth:
JUSTICE KAGAN: Yeah, but even on that one, I guess I just didn't understand, in what you were saying, how you drew the link to the government. I mean, we know that there's a lot of government encouragement around here. We also know that there's -- the platforms are actively content moderating, and they're doing that, irrespective of what the government wants. So how do you decide that it's government action as opposed to platform action?
MR. AGUINAGA: Your Honor, I think the clearest way -- and if I understand -- so let me answer your question directly, Your Honor. The way -- the link that I was drawing there was a temporal one. If you look at JA 715 to 717, that's a May 2021 e-mail. Two months later after that e-mail, calls were targeting health groups just like Jill Hines's group. She experiences the first example of that kind of group being -
JUSTICE KAGAN: Yeah, so in two months, I mean, a lot of things can happen in two months. So that decision two months later could have been caused by the government's e-mail, or that government e-mail might have been long since forgotten, because, you know, there are a thousand other communications that platform employees have had with each other, that -- a thousand other things that platform employees have read in the newspaper. I mean, why would we point to one e-mail two months earlier and say it was that e-mail that made all the difference?
MR. AGUINAGA: Your Honor -- and I would say a thousand other e-mails between the White House and Facebook in those two months. I mean, that's the volume of this interaction, this back and forth, between the platform and the government. And it's all -
JUSTICE KAGAN: But if it's encouragement -- I mean, let's even take that this was something that the -- that the government was continually pressing the --encouraging the platforms to do. I mean, until you can show that there's something about --overbearing the platform's will, which, you know, seems sort of hard to overbear Facebook's work -- will from what I can gather from the world, but, you know, how do you say it's the government rather than Facebook? This doubles as a great example of what I mean when I say that many legal arguments are fundamentally dishonest.
Come on - does anyone really believe that federal agencies sending thousands of emails to Facebook doesn't impact their moderation policies? If those thousands of emails didn't have an impact, one might wonder why the White House staffers wasted so much time sending them.
[2] A strong emphasis on coercion. There are tons of laps done around this, attempting to distinguish between coercion, strong encouragement, and weak encouragement. Arguinaga takes a very libertarian view that even weak encouragement to remove someone's posts would be an illegitimate government action, but emphasizes that this isn't necessary to rule in their favor. These exchanges get more frustrating to listen to later, but here's one that clarifies the point:
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: And one thing that I think I want to square up with you is if someone calls and -- or contacts the social media company and says what you have there, this post, has factually erroneous information, so not a viewpoint that we disagree with, factually erroneous information, and the social media company says, we'll take a look at that and --and you still think that's significant encouragement that qualifies as coercion, if they take it down in response to concluding that it, in fact, is factually erroneous?
MR. AGUINAGA: No, Your Honor. If there's no ask from the government, if the government's just saying here's our view of the statement -- JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: Okay. And we think it should be -- it should be taken down, it's up to you, but we think it should be taken down.
MR. AGUINAGA: I think that's a harder case for me. I guess, you know, if you think it is a close case decide it under the First Amendment.
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: I don't know if --that's the question here. You can't -- you can't just claim the mantle. Yeah. What -- what do you think the -- when you say it's a "harder case," why do you think it's a harder case?
MR. AGUINAGA: Because I understand the instinct, Your Honor, that just asking very, very politely or saying very, very politely we think you should take it down, that that shouldn't be a First Amendment problem but the reality is that when somebody like the FBI or somebody lying a deputy assistant to the president makes a statement like that, that statement carries force. That's just the reality. My dear mother is a saint and if she makes a statement -- same statement to Twitter their -- they don't know anything about her, they don't care, but they do care if it is the government.
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: Why is that? Is it your assumption that anyone in those circumstances is always implicitly threatening adverse consequences?
Aguinaga is actually more conciliant in response than what I believe - yes, when the FBI reaches out to you and says, "we think it would be good if you did X", it is always coercive. The nature of the FBI is that it does not have the ability to merely encourage - every single thing that comes as a "suggestion" from the FBI is inherently coercive to a private party. Thinking otherwise seems like an example of someone that is so lawbrained that they're unable to relate to the experience of a private individual interacting with a powerful federal agency.
[3] Sometimes the government just really, really wants to take down your posts. This theory was pushed most heavily by my least favorite Justice, Kentanji Brown-Jackson:
JUSTICE JACKSON: So my biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways in the most important time periods. I mean, what would -- what would you have the government do? I've heard you say a couple times that the government can post its own speech, but in my hypothetical, you know, kids, this is not safe, don't do it, is not going to get it done. And so I guess some might say that the government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country, and you seem to be suggesting that that duty cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information. So can you help me? Because I'm really -- I'm really worried about that because you've got the First Amendment operating in an environment of threatening circumstances from the government's perspective, and you're saying that the government can't interact with the source of those problems.
Quite the counter. Sure, you may believe that you're guaranteed speech rights, but the government actually has a duty to silence you if your speech is, like, bad. It takes a very sophisticated legal mind to contextualize Brown-Jackson's perspective on the First Amendment, that's for sure.
Anyway, the tenor of the argument made me pretty confident that the Court is going to rule in favor of the government. What grounds they'll have for doing so will be at least mildly interesting. I'm hoping that it will be a narrow ruling, with Roberts spearheading a tailoring doctrine that focuses on the putative lack of traceability and distinguishes between coercion as unacceptable, but strong encouragement being fine. In the worst of all worlds, something like KBJ's principle that the government should censor you if it just thinks you're really bad will be the law of the land. Alito and Thomas will likely offer a short, blunt dissent, probably penned by Alito, emphasizing that the First Amendment actually does say what it says and that implementing censorship via a third-party is fundamentally the same as just doing it yourself.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
As ever, there is absolutely no reason to treat objections to specific methods of the death penalty as good-faith disagreements. The overlap between people that insist that another method be used and people that don't want anyone executed is almost complete. For those of us that think there should be at least an order of magnitude more executions, most of us don't actually care about the method; if I thought updating from firing squad to some fake and lame "humane death" would be a compromise that gets people to stop trying to save the lives of vile murderers, I would take the compromise. I do think execution should be done by methods where the executor can't avoid the fact that they're ending a life, but whatever, I'm not that insistent on the point.
While the United States is slow about it and doesn't execute enough people, that it still does it to some of the worst people in the world is a great example of it retaining civilizational superiority over countries that take pride in their weakness.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
4mo ago
The problem with Trump is the same as the problem with Clinton - the other side hates and fears him so much that running him drives up turnout on the other side. Anyone who doesn't do that will likely have a better electoral outcome.
I believe this is now fully baked in for all Republican candidates. Haley gets GoodGuy points at the moment because she's a loser that has zero chance of beating Trump. If she were nominated, she would immediately be a Nazi, dangerous to our sacred trans children and innocent asylum seekers. Normal, completely ordinary policies from a decade ago are now treated as signs of literal fascism. We're going to need a long period of de-escalation before a Republican winning the Presidency isn't treated like a reason for riots.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
10mo ago
It was both of them! One source here.
After she was sworn in, Kagan told Scalia about how she had invited herself to one of his hunting trips.
"He thought it was so funny, he was on the floor laughing," she remembered.
Scalia took Kagan to his gun club and began teaching her gun safety and how to shoot. After he declared her ready, the two began taking hunting trips together, which is when they began to bond. Birds in Virginia, deer in Wyoming, duck in Mississippi — over the years, the justices traveled, hunted and got to know each other better.
"He was as generous and warm and funny as a person could be. I just so appreciate all the time I got to spend with him," she said. "I miss him a lot."
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1mo ago
The US has a long history of backing coups in Latin America, funding militias and creating banana republics. This has made the region less stable and created more incentives for people to leave.
American involvement also helped produce the two most stable, productive South American countries in Chile and Uruguay. I have plenty of negative things to say about the CIA, but backing the guys that throw communists out of helicopters is actually a good solution to communist rule. Not good for the communists, of course, but it's in everyone's long-run interest to remove communists from governance.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
2mo ago
While it is true that the core groups making these interruptions are small and heavily concentrated among muslim and "POC" demographics, along with a few white leftists, what's remarkable to me is the wider silence among the broader progressive coalition. Many Jews have remarked upon this, that sympathy seems to be muted or even absent. There is an unwillingness to police these radicals among the wider liberal public, which seems to suggest a hidden reserve of silent sympathy which is not being publicly expressed.
As this plays out, I keep thinking of James Baldwin's riveting essay, Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White.
For many generations the natives of the Belgian Congo, for example, endured the most unspeakable atrocities at the hands of the Belgians, at the hands of Europe. Their suffering occurred in silence. This suffering was not indignantly reported in the Western press, as the suffering of white men would have been. The suffering of this native was considered necessary, alas, for European, Christian dominance. And, since the world at large knew virtually nothing concerning the suffering of this native, when he rose he was not hailed as a hero fighting for his land, but condemned as a savage, hungry for white flesh. The Christian world considered Belgium to be a civilized country; but there was not only no reason for the Congolese to feel that way about Belgium; there was no possibility that they could.
What will the Christian world, which is so uneasily silent now, say on that day which is coming when the black native of South Africa begins to massacre the masters who have massacred him so long? It is true that two wrongs don't make a right, as we love to point out to the people we have wronged. But one wrong doesn't make a right, either. People who have been wronged will attempt to right the wrong; they would not be people if they didn't. They can rarely afford to be scrupulous about the means they will use. They will use such means as come to hand. Neither, in the main, will they distinguish one oppressor from another, nor see through to the root principle of their oppression.
In the American context, the most ironical thing about Negro anti-Semitism is that the Negro is really condemning the Jew for having become an American white man--for having become, in effect, a Christian. The Jew profits from his status in America, and he must expect Negroes to distrust him for it. The Jew does not realize that the credential he offers, the fact that he has been despised and slaughtered, does not increase the Negro's understanding. It increases the Negro's rage.
The anger and dislike I see directed at Israel from American leftists does not seem to me to be specific to the Jewishness of Israelis, but to their white, European, settler colonial project. Understood through that lens, there is no mystery in why American leftists dislike Israel in general and Zionists in particular, for the Zionists are seen as no different than the white apartheid rulers of South Africa, or maybe even akin to the Belgians in the Congo. Does one imagine that leftists would condemn Congolese violence against their Belgian oppressors? Or that Nelson Mandela would even be seen as a complex figure rather than an unmitigated beacon of righteous hope? If not, then it isn't surprising to see a hope for a free Palestine, regardless of the cost to their Israeli oppressors.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
4mo ago
This will, again, be the "most secure election ever".
I still can't get over the American Pravda aspect of this. Why not just say, "yeah, it wasn't great, but Covid was a tough time and we did our best"? Would anyone have thought worse of election officials and leadership if they did so? The ridiculous claim that it wasn't just good, but actually the bestest and most beautiful election ever just serves to further undermine trust in institutions. Insisting on phrasing it that way feels more like point deer, make horse than a literal claim about the quality of the election.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
5mo ago
Obviously the uncharitable explanation is that gay men are all perverts, but that's not the sort of thing that, well actually I guess it could be a quality contribution if you put enough effort into it, but it usually isn't and I don't particularly want to do it.
One easy escape is to just say that most men are perverts, but straight men are usually checked by the preferences of women. I don't think that's a complete explanation, but I do think it's mostly true and goes quite a ways towards explaining many of the differences between gay, lesbian, and straight sexual behavior and promiscuity. When I consider how I would have behaved in my early 20s if I had a group of attractive women that were on the same page as me, yeah, it would probably be about how the typical gay guy spends their early 20s.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
5mo ago
But my question for you guys is whether these claims are going to really erode trust in future elections.
Of course they are, because many of them are verifiably true. For example, my progressive County Clerk says that tons of voters that are adjudicated incompetent are voting illegally. This is, presumably, a product of a poor system and genuine mistakes being made, at least in most cases, rather than a marker of stolen elections and open corruption. Nonetheless, the fact that it's trivially true and everyone knows it completely undermines the official position that 2020 was the "most secure election ever". Tons of illegal and slipshod methods were used, black-letter law was violated in the name of Covid safety, and the election was generally a mess. That doesn't mean it was stolen, but it does mean that the people who say that it was actually a beautiful and perfect election are either lying or completely incompetent. If they said, "wow, that was pretty bad, but there were extenuating circumstances and we'll do better next time", that would be believable, but the promise instead is increasing "voting rights" by further liberalizing rules around mail-in ballots. The fact that people don't say that this was bad and we should return to normal election rules greatly shifts me in the direction believing claims of stolen elections.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
6mo ago
Total wealth is also up.
From the post:
This translates to an increase in wealth of about $51,800 for the median American household over three years. Not bad! Median family net worth is now about $192,900.
Man, I'm really enjoying the increase in wealth that comes from a spiked monetary supply that added a hundred grand to the estimated price of my house. With all that extra net worth, I can do really cool things, like have basically zero opportunity to move in the near future because houses cost twice as much to finance as they did a couple years ago!
Seriously though, this stuff just comes across as incredibly tone deaf. Listing "wealth" in nominal dollars when the value of dollars is down substantially is silly. Treating an increase in the price of houses as wealth-building is the kind of thing only a dishonest economist could love. Ignoring that this extra $52K in net worth is offset by an enormous runup in government debt is short-sighted.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
6mo ago
Core inflation, a better measurement of long-term inflation that excludes volatile commodities like gas prices, is even lower at around 2.5%, essentially hitting the Fed’s 2% target.
This is the perfect example of why many people just flatly disbelieve the economists in favor of their lying eyes. For most Americans, housing is a huge percentage of their outlays. In the time from February 2020 to now, the increase in housing prices coupled with the increase in interest rates has approximately doubled the monthly outlay to finance the same houses. People see this, they feel trapped and frustrated by it, and no amount of telling them that if they just ignore the cost of food and energy, inflation is actually low will convince them that their actual cost of living isn't an enormous issue.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
6mo ago
These "moderate" positions are all an illusion based on continual resetting of the Overton Window. That the utterly ludicrous "melt him down out of sheer spite" position became one legitimate wing while "do nothing and don't celebrate him too much" was the other creates the false impression that melt him down and turn him into cannons is a conciliatory gesture. That conciliatory position is still a triumphalist celebration of destroying Confederate heritage, just without quite as much overt ugliness.
In the spirit of framing our own positions as moderate, my position is the true moderate position, which was the "do nothing and don't celebrate him too much", not like the extremist position that the statues should be gilded and used as the centerpiece for a new Confederacy Day on December 20, where all Southerners gather around and chant, "Glory to our martyrs". That would be extreme, as where I am a moderate.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
7mo ago
For me this registers as yet another example of reinventing sexual ethics purity, but with your only available language tools being the ethics of consent. If all sex is morally acceptable between two consenting adults, but you recognize that a hookup might actually be bad for both people, one way out of the conundrum is coming up with a way to say that there couldn't have been true consent.
Amazing story. The American Empire's cultural reach is truly beyond anything I'm aware of existing in all of history. I can barely imagine having to explain to Grover Cleveland what the layered symbols here mean and what the hell they're doing in Budapest.
I like these guys, but I think Auron Macintyre is correct that the side that wants to win will always beat the side that just wants to be left alone.
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