benmmurphy
9mo ago
That article claimed Russia was openly waiting for Ukraine fatigue to set in but never provided any evidence to back this statement. Funnily enough the author of the article seems to be the disinformation Mary Poppins.
There is also a longshot theory that the FBI 'reformed' and suppressed the Hunter laptop story because they were worried it was going to be another Steele Dossier situation. Assuming the FBI was acting politically neutral they may have been worried that Giuliani was manipulating them like the DNC had manipulated them with the Steele Dossier. However, this doesn't seem to be consistent with the FBI positively claiming the laptop was Russian disinformation. I think there is a big difference between looking at a situation skeptically and taking positive action to spread falsehoods. When they were asked about authenticity of the laptop it seems they could have just gone for some cop-out where they don't affirm or deny the authenticity.
I think there is also a chance that this might end up being used as a 'defence' for the FBI's institutional behaviour if there is an investigation into what went on. "We learnt a lot from the IG report into Crossfire Hurricane about dealing with politically sensitive individuals where information is brought to us from people who have clear conflicts of interest but we just went overboard in the wrong direction and this caused us to make mistakes when dealing with the Hunter Biden situation."
benmmurphy
8mo ago
sam brinton must have read the alt-text on that comic
As far as I’m aware if the police were prosecuting her under Part 3A 29B of the public order Act she has a clear defence because she was in a private dwelling and only people within that dwelling heard her. Now, maybe she is screwed because the police recorded it and the police then played the recording to people outside the dwelling but I think you can claim a defence that you reasonably believed your words would not be heard outside the dwelling. I suspect the reason for this defence is to cover situations where the accused is being secretly recorded. Of course it also completely ridiculous for the police to accuse you of a crime that they have facilitated by their own actions.
2)An offence under this section may be committed in a public or a private place, except that no offence is committed where the words or behaviour are used, or the written material is displayed, by a person inside a dwelling and are not heard or seen except by other persons in that or another dwelling.
In proceedings for an offence under this section it is a defence for the accused to prove that he was inside a dwelling and had no reason to believe that the words or behaviour used, or the written material displayed, would be heard or seen by a person outside that or any other dwelling.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/part/3A
The whole situation is a bit sad because without the altercation at the end it does look like good community policing. Maybe the officer was just sick of being a glorified taxi driver for bratty girls and kicked off.
i don't think the calculus is so straight forward. imagine that there is a fixed amount of raping that men want to commit. then basically any kind of defence is a defection because the defence is a cost and the same number of rapes is going to happen no matter what. i'm not saying that this is the actual reality but it is a possibility and if you advise defending against rape then you should also be prepared to defend against this. the reality is probably defence is part defection and part reduction but then it is much more complicated question. of course also there is the question of whether the cost of defence justifies the risk reduction. you could not walk across the badly lit field for a x% reduction in rape but is that actually worth the cost of pursuing the alternative route. i fear there is trap where people will sacrifice anything to avoid some kind of negative -EV event but i don't think this is rational.
i think a lot of these decisions are very complicated but unfortunately they are reduced to soundbites like 'i shouldn't have to change my behaviour because some dickheads will fuck with me' or 'you need to take preventive actions so dickheads won't fuck with you'.
benmmurphy
7mo ago
There is a lot of game theory based around this. Stuff like schelling points or when private knowledge is mysteriously transferred to shared or public knowledge due to action or inaction. There are a bunch of neat brain teaser puzzles based on this.
benmmurphy
6mo ago
it is a problem because you can always find someone who is associated with cause X but also has unsavory opinion Y. of course it seems like its fine to use these tactics to smear other causes.
benmmurphy
6mo ago
No leaders said that the idea was divisive, would create special "classes" of citizens where some were more equal than others, and the new advisory body would slow government decision-making.
that sentence is kind of ambiguous. i guess the last 'and' makes the reading a bit more clear because you would expect that to be an 'or' if the 'No' at the start was not part of 'No leaders'.
benmmurphy
6mo ago
Seems a bit like positivism/normativism. This is the current state of the world I think the optimal behaviour is X is not endorsing the current state of the world.
benmmurphy
6mo ago
I enjoyed the bit where Hollywood cashed in twice
benmmurphy
6mo ago
The norms have already been broken. The best outcome for norms is for the prosecution to be successful but Trump to win in a landslide and be gracious in his victory. Presumably no one would try and pull this shit again after the electorate rejects it.
benmmurphy
6mo ago
it seems to me that this kind of mass attack will always succeed to some extent. maybe it was made worse in this particular situation for a bunch of reasons but even if everything went right for the israelis i think hamas would have had some kind of success. unless you have some kind of massive DMZ and large permanent deployment of troops an enemy will always be able to surge at a critical point and have some short term success.
benmmurphy
5mo ago
i thought this was referred to as 'mood affiliation' in some circles but i'm not sure if that's the right term. maybe it's just confirmation bias. see: https://www.econlib.org/mood-affiliation-or-confirming-evidence/
benmmurphy
5mo ago
i think giving any kind of attention to the shooters increases the probability of future shootings. i think there is very strong evidence that a similar thing happens with suicides. i'm not sure how big of an impact it is or if its worth the trade off to suppress such things but in a free society it is difficult to suppress such things.
benmmurphy
5mo ago
there is a big difference between messing about on a different continent and messing about next door.
benmmurphy
5mo ago
and suddenly all the open border people are policing the heritage of a people. to be fair i have no idea what your position on this issue is.
benmmurphy
5mo ago
also, if the US fights China how am I getting my new iPhone
This is kind of how policing was meant to be historically in the UK as I understand it. Police were meant to be just citizens that were being paid to do a job but having no special powers. Even now I think citizens can bring private criminal prosecutions to court. The Peelian principles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles) article on Wikipedia has some of the background on this. Also, due to historical fears UK police are generally unarmed except for special units. However, I guess as time has gone on the UK has drifted from policing from consent to a more policing by the state model.
benmmurphy
5mo ago
riots are just a schelling point for dickheads
benmmurphy
4mo ago
Israel has been in a stalemate situation with Palestine for a long time. One has to wonder why Israel has not been able to impose their will on Palestine even though they are the superior State and they have the backing of the global hegemon. However, maybe this stalemate is a feature of the incentives. Imagine you are a US congress critter and there are companies in your state that are supplying weapons to Israel as part of the US->Israel defence aid. If the Palestinian question was resolved then a bunch of people in your district may no longer be employed making weapons. Is this is a possibility? Are congress critters actually intelligent or machiavellian enough to carry out this policy. People assume the current situation is a result of 'commies' in the state department but maybe its because of 'capitalists' in the state department.
benmmurphy
4mo ago
the problem is if they do kill trump then you can't vote for him. you will probably just end up accidentally voting for an establishment candidate in the end even if you try your best not to.
benmmurphy
4mo ago
The federal case against Trump seems to boil down to if you challenge an election then you have to be correct or you are going to jail. That doesn't seem to be a good precedent to set. He is being prosecuted for things that are entirely legal and people have done before in the past and have not been prosecuted for.
benmmurphy
4mo ago
I don't think that is a fair characterization of what people wanted the Pence to do. The problem was after certification occurred even if the fraud was found it would be unlikely that the courts would allow the final result as certified to be overturned. The idea was to send the contested results back to the states so the irregularities could be properly investigated before certification.
The most similar election was in 1876. It didn't involve the VP rejecting certification himself and infact there was controversy over who had the power to count the votes during certification but there are very strong parallels and no-one was prosecuted for what happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1876_United_States_presidential_election
benmmurphy
4mo ago
As far as I'm aware Trump is not being prosecuted for threats of violence because he never threatened violence. The federal indictment seems to be around what is being referred to as the 'fake electors' plot and trying to get Pence to reject certification. But if you look at historical challenges to election results the parties who have challenged the results have used similar 'fake electors'.
i think usually people cleaning up externalities would otherwise be doing something else to produce GDP in the economy so the issue is usually not so bad in practice. also, in practice how GDP is calculated might not include some cleaning externalities. GDP is based on final goods otherwise you could just increase GDP by infinitely splitting production into smaller steps. some externality cleaning is going to look like an 'input' to a final product.
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