cjet79

cjet79 2hr ago

That rule is insane, because it basically mandates a massive ongoing expenditure for all municipalities.

It also opens up a bunch of other potentially insane rules that the justices pointed out.

Can you only ban public defecation if there are publicly available toilets?

Can you only ban public cooking fires if there is cooked food available?

Can you only ban theft if welfare money is available?

Can you only ban murder if sufficient mental health care is available?

This feels like Copenhagen Ethics written into law. You can't try to partially fix a problem, you can only fully fix it.

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cjet79 6hr ago

Which is potentially the rule no longer, because if the homeless don't want the shelter for some reason you are screwed.

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cjet79 19hr ago

I think the line between status / conduct is pretty clear. It just seems that some people want an expansion of the meaning of "status" so that certain types of conduct are protected.

I don't have the same legal brain as the justices. When I see that attempt at expansion it doesn't make me think that more things should have the protection of status, it makes me think "status" shouldn't have protection in the first place.

To a determinist everything is just someone's status. Their current status along the pre-determined timeline that is their life.

This exchange particularly frustrated me:

JUSTICE KAGAN: -- I'll tell you the truth, Ms. Kapur. I think that this is -- this is a super-hard policy problem for all municipalities. And if you were to come in here and you were to say, you know, we need certain protections to keep our streets safe and we can't have, you know, people sleeping anyplace that they want and we can't have, you know, tent cities cropping up, I mean, that would create one set of issues.

That is exactly what municipalities wish they could do. "Just tell us what laws we are allowed to write that allow us to clean up our streets?!" That is not how the Supreme Court works though. Municipalities instead have to play a game where they write laws that maybe might work, and then the worst versions of those laws get challenged somewhere else with case details picked by people that hate those kinds of laws. Then it spends half a decade in court and then some asshole justice lectures them about how 'they should have just come here honestly trying to address the problem'. Meanwhile the justices and everyone involved will spend a bunch of time going over past court decisions on this topic, the same court decisions that nearly everyone agrees were decided badly.

This is insanity.

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cjet79 1d ago

I don't know any of the practical details/solutions. The companies that sell sketchy products should have been trying to figure this stuff out for the last decade. If they'd dumped a cumulative 1 billion into solving problems like these how many roadblocks would remain? That is just 1% of the industry in a single year.

They didn't do that so obviously a bunch of roadblocks and practical problems remain in place.

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Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 21, 2024

cjet79 2d ago

Android or iPhone?

Haven't had much trouble disabling android notifications. Its all handled in a central area, and android routinely asks me if I want to remove permissions for apps I don't use.

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cjet79 2d ago

I mostly agree that crypto is not very useable. I personally don't use it.

My post was originally just that first sentence, and as I tried to write anything after it I just kept expressing frustration at these companies and users of crypto that have wasted it.

Going through the problems:

Not easy to use.
Value is not stable.
Funds are not secure.
Risk of government crackdown on use.

I think the first problem is something that porn websites could solve. They are web companies, they know how to build useable things on the web. They have more resources than paypal and venmo had in their early days.

The second problem of stable value is solved (as you point out with stablecoins), but people just choose not to use it. Because speculation and gambling is more fun than a boring currency that just does its job of facilitating transactions. This could be better solved by the porn websites and other places that need crypto uniting behind a stable online currency.

I think the funds don't need to be quite so secure if you aren't using crypto as an investment vehicle or speculation device. Store your money in traditional banks / stocks / etc. And then just transact into crypto when it is specifically needed. And yet again porn websites are some of the places that are better suited for dealing with security issues. They still live in a wild west style internet, because they don't enjoy as many protections as traditional businesses. If some hacker messes with a bank website they could have the feds come after them. If that same hacker does the same thing to a porn website, they won't get in trouble at all.

Some governments, like China, have cracked down on crypto. I did have more worries about government crackdowns on crypto back in the early days. The US and western crackdowns on crypto have mostly been because of the problems of crypto. People getting their money stolen, or using it as speculation / asset bubbles. I don't think the Western government crackdowns would necessarily stop if those problems went away, but I think it would blunt a lot of the political momentum.

Most people beyond the small niche of ideological libertarians only use crypto when they're doing something sketchy or illegal, otherwise conventional banking is the easier option with far more guarantees for standard transactions.

The sum of my frustration is that if you are one of those businesses selling "sketchy" things this whole crackdown by payment processors has been predictable and visible for at least a decade. And the solution and their salvation has also been available and sitting there for a decade. Its like they've just been sitting on a railroad track waiting around. Now that the crossing bars are down and the warning lights are flashing they start screaming "no please! don't run me over!" Get off the tracks you idiots!

Maybe its just the nature of people to not treat upcoming disasters as real until those disasters are already upon them. If so, then I'll also say that its in my nature to have no sympathy for them when their lack of preparation bites them in the ass.

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cjet79 2d ago

This is the kind of problem that crypto currencies were meant to solve.

To elaborate:

Cryptocurrencies are a bit like cash in that transactions are never reversed (I know it can be done, but its mostly not done). This is important when the products might be embarrassing and for digital goods which can't be fully "returned" once you have access.
Cryptocurrencies do not have to actively endorse all the transactions that go through them. If a government doesn't like a transaction going through a traditional payment processor, they can lean on and pressure the people running that payment processor.
Cryptocurrencies can have a degree of anonymity. Bitcoin doesn't have great anonymity, large-scale actors like government can figure out who owns specific wallet addresses. But personal anonymity is pretty easy compared to credit cards. Its not a payment to pornhub on your financial statement, its a payment to wallet [string of characters]. Which is often enough to hide from girlfriends/wives.

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to have sympathy for these websites/users, because the failure of traditional payment processors to handle this sort of thing was recognized and predicted before cryptocurrencies existed. When bitcoin/cryptocurrency was first released/invented it wasn't a bunch of people saying "oh look at this cool toy, we have no idea what its for, but it seems neat!" No, they were specifically saying "yay! we have solved this hard problem of digital payments that has been plaguing us for the last decade on the internet! These are the cool things we will now be able to do: [same list as above plus other things]."

For any kind of business that once needed cash to function: switch to crypto or die a slow death as payment processors leave you.

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Friday Fun Thread for April 19, 2024

cjet79 5d ago

And who needs divorce when you can encourage your spouse into dangerous activities that steadily increase their risk of death?

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cjet79 7d ago

Apparently the people in the San Francisco subreddit were generally supportive of this.

go after the leftist orgs funding these protests

I couldn't find any references to them doing this. Sounds like it would just be the specific protestors hit with prosecutions.

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cjet79 7d ago

There have been blocking protests sort of like this with regards to oil pipelines. But yeah its not like they can block a significant amount of traffic.

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Wellness Wednesday for April 17, 2024

cjet79 8d ago

My suggestion: More friends.

We are social creatures, and a kid/wife isn't a substitute for a healthy social life.

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cjet79 8d ago

Antagonistic. You have been warned 3 times before:

5 day ban.

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=FALlhXl6CmA

cjet79 8d ago

Their funding is very confusing.

They get very little direct money from the government. But they license out their content to a bunch of small and tiny radio stations that wouldn't exist at all without government money and grants.

So whenever the topic of funding comes up they get sort of talk out of both sides of their mouth . They'll say "we are mostly supported by donations", but then also say that if you cut government funding they'd have to drastically reduce their programming.

I suppose they could both be true if the donations are mostly for a few very popular radio programs.

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Friday Fun Thread for April 12, 2024

cjet79 10d ago

If anyone likes either the show Hot Ones or Conan O'Brien this is maybe the best of both:

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Friday Fun Thread for April 12, 2024

cjet79 12d ago

I'm terrible with differentiating accents.

Neutral is a pretty good description of yours, but I'm American so maybe that is your accent. You have a very deep voice so that throws me off a little.

I'm not sure if I'm remembering any Indian affectations or I just assumed they were there cuz I knew you were Indian. It might have just been that you correctly pronounced Indian words, which most people with non-indian accents can't do. I think it was a food item curry/Tikka/biryani etc.

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cjet79 13d ago

Don't do this, it is not polite, and it doesn't help.

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cjet79 14d ago

I appreciate seeing some of the actual allegations here. You might not have convinced the person you responded to, but it seems pretty compelling to me.

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cjet79 16d ago

Yes, I agree, as I said in the original post it seems like an objectively bad way to spend money.

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cjet79 16d ago

in the limit it costs less than a civil war would, so "expensive" is relative

Hah, that is true!

Main problem with this would probably be scaling. Which is a problem with a lot of exchange programs. The value-add of exchange programs is often in a human element. So you need good host families, good host situations, and good candidates for an exchange. But you can't really manufacture those or spin them up at need. There is low hanging fruit to be picked when the program is small.

I remember my parents hosted an Italian exchange student for a half semester during my first year of college. They volunteered after the girl had request a home change. The girl had a good time staying with our family, but my parents never signed up for it again.

I stayed with a German family during my European trip, and I stayed in touch with them for a bit afterward. They were awesome, but I also don't think they ever hosted again.

My dad was friends with a married couple that couldn't have kids. They hosted maybe a dozen exchange students over the years. I think the kids that stayed with them had a mediocre time. They apparently had a lot of strict rules, which made sense for them hosting teenage girls for two decades in a row.

Not many data points, but I do feel that maybe some of the best experiences aren't gonna be easily replicable.

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cjet79 16d ago

I don't know how highschools are now, but a decade ago when I was a college-bound high school senior the last semester was basically a joke. As long as you didn't fail anything too badly highschool had ceased to matter. GPA had ceased to matter. Even the most diligent students got caught up in the general mood of laziness. A few weeks taken out of this last semester would probably have no negative impact on education.

But I ultimately agree that it doesn't need to be handled through schools. I think this effort is private, and that's how I'd prefer it stay.

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cjet79 16d ago

Agree that more Americans should see more of America. Pretty cool place. I feel like I've done most of my traveling in the last decade just attending weddings. My wife and I both have a lot of cousins. I did more travelling in college and just after college as part of an obscure rec-level sport club (underwater hockey, check it out and play it, my endorsement is worth op security concerns)

I hate the political angle on this. It feels leftist to me that “if we just had more schools/spent more money” we would not have “maga/disinformation problem” instead of most of things being fundamental disagreements.

I am not feeling that this needs a political dimension. I think in general there are two axis of negotiation on any topic. One is the object level disagreement. And the other is a more nebulous social standing / social cohesion.

Take a simple example of where you want to go eat for dinner with a group of people. The object level concern is "what do I want to eat". If you are with people you care about and interact with regularly like your family, then you are definitely willing to go eat somewhere you don't like just to keep another person in that group happy, or make it clear that you might get later leverage on other things. Or you just love them and you want to make sure that they are happy.

Imagine you are instead going out with random strangers. They will eat at different tables, and you won't even know who they are. The nebulous social standing dimension / social cohesion negotiation space gets entirely erased. You have no reason except to advocate where you want to eat. And any compromise is a pure loss.

I think the bifurcation of America into rural vs urban has really destroyed the nebulous social dimension negotiating space. No one on either side is willing to compromise because its a pure loss for them and everyone they know. But if you stick them face to face with each other and get them to talk about politics you kind of reintroduce that nebulous social dimension.

Politics needs some grease to work. That grease is often the nebulous social dimension. Congress itself seems to partly work on these informal social dimensions. Politicians that only went after the objective political issues like Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders were semi-pariahs within congress. They often weren't useful in making deals, because they may as well have been robots.

What this exchange program does, what all exchange programs do is add some negotiating space.

When I went to India, I ended up liking my Indian coworkers better. It meant when it came time to schedule meetings that meant me waking up an hour earlier, I wasn't as annoyed with them. Because I knew it often meant staying an extra two hours for them. There were a bunch of minor effects like that. It added up to me being happier / better at interacting with India team members.

The student exchange program I went on middle school is now dead. Its an objectively bad way to spend money. Its basically subsidizing vacations for less well off PMC children that can figure out the hoops that need to be jumped through to participate. I think this American Exchange program might end up going the same way.

Buying the grease through an exchange program just seems way too expensive. Having the grease is pretty important though. They should probably just pay some popular youtubers or ticktockers to do lifestyle viewpoint videos on rural/urban people. Idk, I'm not smart enough to figure out an alternative.

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cjet79 16d ago

I recently saw an item in my newfeed about The American Exchange Project:

To connect our divided country, the American Exchange Project sends high school seniors on a free, week-long trip to a hometown very different from their own.

There was some positive feedback in the news article I read. I found it a bit surprising just how much the rural/urban divide has grown. I've often lived between the two areas with my schools often having kids living in high density housing along with kids raising barn animals. My parents preferred living rurally, but still had to live close to cities to find jobs.

I've been on two exchange programs myself. One as a middle/high schooler going to Europe with Student Ambassadors (a now dead org). And the second as more of a work exchange trip going to the company's India office. There is something undeniably effective about just having very different people sit down and talk/interact with each other in a non-violent setting. Not that I really disliked either set of people before visiting them, but I felt I definitely understood them better afterwards. There are coincidences of living, and the things you see living in an area. They just sorta seep into your conscious. My young middle school self noticed that Europe generally did not give a crap about topless women. Tits galore on billboards and beaches in Spain. Europe was also pretty open with alcohol, and the 15 year old in the German family I stayed with openly told her parents about the drinking party she was going to. They had to remind her that I wasn't allowed to go, and American drinking ages had to be explained. Bunch of things I noticed in India as well, main one was just the sheer volume of people.

Had a shower thought today about how some people (like Joe Rogan) thought Covid would bring us closer together as we worked to solve and fight a collective problems. I think we maybe mostly agree that did not happen. I'm starting to think that covid was the opposite kind of problem we need. To get that kind of problem solving, humanity coming together juice, I think more people need to be offline, meeting in person, and ignoring things happening too far away from them.

~~Staring at the sun today.~~ Watching the eclipse today, reminded me about solar flares. I'd predict that a widespread solar flare that knocked out communication networks would probably leave us all a little happier than Covid. It would probably be very bad for some people, but we'd know less about those people.

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cjet79 17d ago

From the impression I've gotten from surgeons and doctors who know many surgeons, this doesn't surprise me. Surgeons have a bit of a reputation for being high class technically skilled butchers. They operate on flesh, but their treatment of it is closer to that of a car mechanic than most other doctors. I think they perhaps see it as a very easy case of tumor removal. @self_made_human may have more insight.

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