anon_
4mo ago
It also proved that they no longer have any deterrent capabilities. The Israelis operated freely over the entire country, there is no Hezbollah or Hamas left to retaliate. Their entire ballistic missile attack on Israel killed, what, one person? Two people?
anon_
4mo ago
I'm not sure that this applies to national security critical technologies. Certainly I don't think Lockheed could demand that the DOW agree not to use the F35 to bomb on Sundays. And it gets even dicier if Lockheed gets to make decisions about whether specific actions violate the restrictions.
I agree the designation is overkill in retaliation, but there is a core DOW claim that private companies supplying critical technologies should not overstep into making specific operational decisions.
anon_
4mo ago
Realistically, I think the relationship between companies and the government changes considerably when the technology at hand represents a critical and frontier level capability. SpaceX, for example, constitutes a load bearing part of our national security.
Whether or not Anthropic's demands were modest, I think they crossed a line. And the DOW crossed an even larger one with the designation (which is a massive overescalation).
anon_
4mo ago
The idea of "all lawful purposes" is extremely suspect given what the federal government has been doing in regards to surveillance for the last few decades.
While this is true, it would also be quite unfortunate if private companies had to make binding policy judgments on government programs.
Damned either way eh.
anon_
4mo ago
I feel like one doesn't need to reach hard to think that people chanting "Death to the X" aren't a thread to X.
anon_
4mo ago
Partially because Lebanese folks, once removed from Lebanon, are truly exceptionally nice people to live and work with. Never met a single one that was an asshole.
Remarkable really how that works.
anon_
4mo ago
Given that the Ivies famously had a cap on Jewish enrollment, if anything it would be an anti-meritocratic conspiracy on the other side.
anon_
4mo ago
Of course Jews can be accused of anything. But on the one hand there is a claim that they are orchestrating an entire war and at the same time that they are short-sighted enough that they want to willingly add 300K muslims whose policy rounds to "death to the jews".
One can see the "LGBT for Palestine" organizers in a parade and think they are buffoons. But you can't also see them as sophisticated operators playing geopolitical 4D chess. Pick one or the other.
anon_
4mo ago
That wasn't my question. I asked about the specific muslim somalis that were germane to the discussion.
And to hazard my answer to the question: I think the median WASP is far less antisemitic than even the 95^th percentile most tolerant somali. It's not even close.
anon_
5mo ago
Do you think the modal member of a homogenous white US society would be more or less antisemitic than the modal Somali immigrant?
anon_
5mo ago
Jews want to live in a multicultural state and so they decided to import a group of (checks notes) virulent antisemites.
That’s your grand theory? Really?
anon_
5mo ago
But that very same group can’t dislodge people fraudulently extracting billions of dollars and sending it to their sworn enemies?
anon_
5mo ago
I don't particularly object at the macro scale, but I do think KS could have left those driver's licenses valid until they need to be renewed and fix the problem then.
It's maybe a small showing of grace, and maybe undeserved (isn't all grace?) but it strikes me as just fine.
anon_
5mo ago
All of this while the United States mobilizes to fight another war for Israel... but deporting Somalis from Minnesota is just impossible we are told.
I'm not sure if the implication is that this contingent approves of Somali muslims ripping off US/MN welfare programs, a good fraction of that cash ending up being sent as remittances which end up in the hands of groups not exactly known for their love of Israel.
If this is your conspiracy, sure. But quite frankly it doesn't make a ton of sense.
anon_
5mo ago
Well, at the least the official salary could be $1-2M.
As it is, senators make less on paper than some random car dealership owner or Silicon Valley engineers.
anon_
5mo ago
The question is how do we get there from where we are. Congress is supposed to govern but is some combination of unwilling/unable to do so.
anon_
5mo ago
Eh, it's pretty simple. The 6 in the majority only really disagreed about whether the result is reached by MJD (R,G,B) or by regular statutory construction (S,K,J).
Gorsuch's concurrence doesn't add more except to call out both the dissenters and the liberal wing for their hypocrisy, and especially to roast Thomas.
Hardly incomprehensible, but I totally agree that there isn't now a clear marker of whether future arguments that hinge on MJD will stand or not.
anon_
5mo ago
I've made no secret of being a big fan of the Major Questions Doctrine, it seems like an important part of restoring the responsibility and authority of the legislature to legislate precisely and clearly.
Congress continues to be the most broken of the three branches, maybe the Court putting the Presidency back in the constitutional box will help things along.
anon_
5mo ago
Aspirationally sure.
But even then, maybe they valorize the warrior types, the determinant of the overall mission success is their ethos as soldiers.
I guess i don’t object to the claim about what they want, i object to the implication it has on what makes a successful/lethal military.
anon_
5mo ago
Okay, fine. When you think of the term 'warrior', one figure that comes to mind is the Samurai; landed lords, skilled in warfare, but also educated in politics as well as more intellectual pursuits. Knights, in the European tradition, were likely similar.
The issue is that a modal modern soldier is a bit more like a squire, or a wakashu/kosho in the Samurai tradition, than a person of eclectic skill. The most important thing for many is that they keep their equipment in running order, follow SOPs diligently and keep accurate records.
Of course, you have fighter pilots and SOF that exercise the kind of unstructured problem solving your referencing. But even that makes the point -- we need 25 aircraft squires support crew for each plane. And for them, it's more about being a virtuous mechanic than being a warrior.
Maybe one way to square the circle is that the goal of the organization and the virtues that make it possible are not always the same. The tip of the spear accomplishes the goal, but the determinants of success are in creating, fielding, maintaining and supplying it.
anon_
5mo ago
They are both outrage-sampled. No videos that aren't good scroll bait material are passing through the filter.
And in any case you can make some inference about the underlying distribution. There are 20K ICE agents and 750K sworn law enforcement, about a 35x ratio. Even accounting for sampling bias, if you find comparable (even if more for LEOs) behavior at the margin, it's pretty damning.
Indeed, and I think you've touched upon but merits more depth: how one operationalizes compliance with contract restrictions.
Certainly I don't think the DOW can abide a contractor not just having conditions (which may or may not be objectionable depending on their substance) but on the assertion that this contractor itself gets to decide on matter and cut off support on the fly seems like a bridge too far.
Searching in vain for deescalation here, one hopes the parties could come to an understanding where the substantive restrictions are acknowledged without creating a procedural veto for the contractor.
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