gattsuru
1yr ago
But Colorado does not have a statutory restriction preventing ineligible candidates from being listed on the ballot, and the Colorado Supreme Court did not find one. In fact, it held that :
To that extent, we agree with President Trump that the Secretary has no duty to determine, beyond what is apparent on the face of the required documents, whether a presidential candidate is qualified.
Hence the emphasis on "“wrongful act” that runs afoul of section 1-4-1203(2)(a) and undermines the purposes of the Election Code", and why there's so much emphasis on what's implied for 1203 purposes. But it doesn't matter; this is a state law question, and SCOTUS isn't going to punt because of it, and it wouldn't matter if they did (even for Colorado, for reasons I'm not discussing publicly).
It just makes Unikowsky's argument really weak at a philosophy-of-law level.
gattsuru
1yr ago
I don't think the "Not everything that is permitted is mandatory" part is very coherent. It would be a wonderful argument if there were clear statutory restrictions preventing insurrectionists from going on the ballot -- yet if such existed, we wouldn't be futzing around with these weird third- or fourth-degree restraints. Both Colorado's role and Baude/Paulsen position more generally is not that a state can block insurrectionists from the ballot, but that it must do so where any role to review qualifications exists. Unikowsky tries to shove this problem as if Thorton were the only limit, but Thorton is why Trump's lawyers argue this is clearly and egregiously wrong rather than merely incorrect.
The pragmatic argument is a lot stronger -- kicking this can down the road opens up a tremendous amount of worms, and heightens the risk of people literally marching on SCOTUS among far worse things -- but the pragmatic arguments give a lot of strong arguments toward either completely disqualifying Trump across the board, or completely limiting disqualification, and Unikowsky isn't making either of those arguments in context for Michigan.
((Separately, Unikowsky's aversion to clever solutions isn't as awkward as when coming from the emoluments clause fandom, but it's still pretty nakedly new given the man's role in Espinoza. Or, for that matter, when one examines how 'clever' this is, here.))
gattsuru
1yr ago
I wouldn't worry about IR lighting. I do not recall any evidence or claims that it causes damage to vision, unless we're talking the enormous intensities needed to cause thermal burns. If staring at a campfire doesn't cause people to go blind, a Vision Pro won't, though that might explain the mediocre battery life haha.
The problem is a combination of strong IR (or UV) light, without simultaneous bright visible-spectrum light. The human eye absorbs energy across a much wider spectrum than it can actually see, while the mechanisms that control pupil dilation are tied to visible-spectrum light only, and this can allow a lot of energy into the eye from a source that's not that bright compared to daylight. This is a big issue for DIY kits, where it's hard to source reliable and consistent parts and implement reliable behaviors, but I'm just a little paranoid that a lot of the literature on this matter may not able to measure low-level harm.
What is especially frustrating to me is that, as far as I'm aware, Apple didn't make any effort to ensure compatibility with existing peripherals. I don't think you can use traditional VR controllers with it at all, the closest is pass-through for physical keyboards.
Yeah. Or have an additional in-house controller option. It's not a huge surprise given Apple's weird emphasis on One Interface To Rule Them All, but it definitely puts a variety of capabilities and a lot of software titles off the table.
gattsuru
1yr ago
According to the Washington Post:
Of 244 felony sentencings for all charges, the average sentence has been 41 months, or about 3½ years, The Post’s data shows. For those charged with lesser misdemeanors, about half received a jail sentence averaging 58 days, while about a third received probation and 18 percent were ordered to spend time in home confinement.
But there's not a lot of good sources for how comparable behavior is: see another, albeit longer, probation sentence today for one example. But some people have gotten probation after entering the Capital building proper.
gattsuru
1yr ago
The price is ridiculous. You can get a Bigscreen Beyond, the eyetracking kit, and a pair of decent controllers (and a battery pack) for half that. People are willing to pay an Apple premium, but we're not in 2008 anymore; Apple can't take over a field with a handful of patents anymore, and the custom silicon isn't got an in yet. It's bad enough that it seems like it's partly there to make a ~1200-1500 USD non-pro model more palatable.
Even beyond the price, I've got the same problem for Apple as for Facebook (or Google): I don't trust the company running it to treat the hardware or software as a product, rather than the consumer. Even beyond the philosophical issues with that stance, there's the simpler and more pragmatic one where these companies have been not only willing but eager to blow up equipment and communities once the juice is no longer worth the squeeze. Apple may not be as fast to the punch as Google, but when it happens they tend to scorch the earth.
(I also wish they'd figure out some solution for eye-tracking that didn't involve IR illumination. But I'm just being paranoid for eye safety, there.)
That said, there are a lot of more social-focused cases favoring just eye-and-hand tracking. I could see a consumer-focused niche market existing, and at enough scale to justify the custom silicon (especially if it overlaps with Apple's long-term plans for their laptop market). These business cases are rough, but in many ways Apple is better-positioned to exploit them than Meta or dedicated VR hardware companies. Same for some focuses that Apple's probably better-built for, like the endless digital display.
For actual VR gamers, though, there's very little to recommend it; even the one bit that it seems to have the hardware to solve -- getting too immersed in VR and tripping over animals/smacking someone with a controller/weirding out others in the same room -- I don't think Apple really has the knowledge or interest in handling.
gattsuru
1yr ago
Gun control comes up in the context of school shootings because dead children are a hugely powerful rhetorical device. However, the issue has much large impact on the culture, that makes it more reasonable to talk about.
For instance, many police departments and poor communities are effectively in a state of continuous cold war with each other, because the police use extreme methods because they are reasonably worried about getting shot by the populace of those communities, and those communities are reasonably nervous about getting shot or brutalized by jumpy cops.
Even if we can't get rid of all the guns in the nation, taking 90% of them out of those communities would probably do a lot to ease those tensions by making cops feel safer and letting them use less extreme tactics, which could make the communities feel safer interacting with them, and help starting to cut down on crime and violence in those communities.
Whereas most US police departments have a policy of escalating violence (eg point 12 guns at the suspect the second they look at you funny), most countries where guns are illegal have very effective policies of deescalating violence (in my non-professional understanding of the situation).
This is an impact of guns that reaches far beyond the actual people shot by them and even beyond the actual crimes committed with them. These are the types of things that create such divergent experiences about what 'gun culture' means and how it affects people's lives. It's part of why the issue is so urgent to so many people, even if it doesn't usually enter the media narrative.
To be fair, Scott was an outlier at that time. I didn't and don't have his way with words, but I'd had similar drive to overtures of earnest engagement and disarmament, and then had them burned out of me in around 2010-2011. I hope that there's something more or deeper, and in a way I'm reminded of Chuubo's, where :
So, there's two ways to look at wish-fulfillment. One is "wishes are immature: they're all about wanting gratification without consequence." It's like when a cynical realist scoffs at an idealist: "yeah," they say, "your ideals are great and all, but this is the real world."
The other way is "wishes are about building something better."
Like when the idealist scoffs at the realist: "yeah," they might say. "Just accepting the way things are and lowering your standards might be 'realistic,' but it's also what KEEPS things the way they are."
And the truth of dreams, love, hope, hearts, wishes, ideals, fantasies, ambitions, purposes, striving, and even creative chaos is—-
It's both. It's always, always both.
We learn realism. Then we learn idealism. Then we have to learn realism again. Then we have to learn idealism again. If you're an idealist, there will always be realists out there whose narrow-minded embrace of the status-quo is something you've grown past, and there will always be realists out there whose wisdom see through your nonsense and overambition. And if you're a realist, there will always be goofy airheaded idealists out there whose starry eyes you've grown past, and there will always be idealists out there who've accepted and seen everything you've accepted and seen but also gone beyond it.
Wishes are bleak when they're bleak. That's all it is. Wishes are bleak when they cut away the sense in the world. They're bleak when they're the idealism that the realist looks down on. They're bleak when the principal lesson you can learn from them is "possibly you need to do less wishing."
And they're Imperial when they're fundamentally reaching for something better—-when maybe they cause a lot of trouble, when maybe "do less wishing" is a big lesson you can learn from them, but when there's a hint of them of the idealism that's grown past realism.
But there's reasons I can't post on rpgnet, anymore, and reasons why they never responded to my appeal, and why I only bothered to send one because one of their moderators demanded it. There's a reason I don't have discussions like those here, on a wide variety of other locations and nyms that are tots open to serious debates, fingers crossed. There's a reason Scott knows that there are things that put his practice or license or career at risk, or whatever is left of his friendships.
There's a reason Moran finished her otherwise-excellent piece about the horrors of a Bleak worldview with
And there are worse things, of course. I mean, a little bit of substanceless fantasy can be better than, like, having the world drown in nothingness, or, say, letting someone suffer from a harsh reality to too great a degree. In fact, really, it should be good in exactly the same circumstances that our cynical realist would be OK with a spot of idealism. You know. To entertain kids. To keep things from breaking down further. To organize volunteer labor. To comfort someone in grief.
gattsuru
1yr ago
The trans issue comes down to sports and if children can consent to irreversible medical procedures. Otherwise, most people do not care that much, including even conservatives and rightists.
I think you're going to find more areas in conflict than that. You're right in some libertarians and a few on the right willing to go for full morphological freedom, but even within that framework there's an absolute abomination of serious legal and financial questions on things like who can (must) pay for things, or what extent the government can (should) enforce politeness on these matters in certain (or all) spheres.
But there's also a lot of conservatives who oppose it at more fundamental levels. A lot of people, not all social conservatives, see legal or social recognition of anything less than magical girl transformations as demanding they deny reality. And social conservatives often see trivial behaviors from trans people as perverse. I'd like to think that they'd get not care as much without the obvious points of contention, since there was a time like that. I'm not convinced that it's anything more than just awareness, though, and that cat's not going back in that bag.
gattsuru
1yr ago
I also find it hard to square Freddie’s claim that “no one” is trying to obliterate the distinction between male and female altogether with his apparent belief that trans women competing in female sporting events is entirely fair and legitimate. How can such a policy possibly be justified without ignoring the indisputable biological reality, consistent across time and space, that the average male person is stronger, faster and more resilient than 99% of female people?
I think there are gender-heavy assumptions that could square that particular circle. At the trivial level, there's a bit of a motte-and-bailey where sometimes we're talking about simply having XY chromosomes, having gone through a male puberty, and having fully reached male adulthood before transition, which can have significantly different effects; there are also difference traits needed for different sports.
Some of them are wronger (eg, comparing the height of someone who transitioned at 22 to someone who started transition at 12) than others (eg, Olympic-level shooting sports strongly suggests women have comparable or better attributes for some trials), but even the wrong ones are questions of fact, rather than incoherent positions. Some of them are facts that I don't even know -- how does the average strength or resilience of someone with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome compare, or someone who never went through male puberty?
Now, there's a stronger criticism that this is a motte-and-bailey -- your link goes to an ACLU page that links to an NCAA page that is broken, but it's supposed to be based around this policy, which says transfem players "may not compete on a women’s team without changing it to a mixed team status until completing one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment", citing this study. But the study only finds that :
... The effects of cross-sex hormones in the dosages commonly used have reached their maximum effects after 1 year of administration. In spite of a large difference in testosterone exposure between men and women, there is a large overlap of muscle area between them. Androgen deprivation of men induces a loss of muscle area, further increasing this overlap with women. Therefore, depending on the levels of arbitrariness one wants to accept, it is justifiable that reassigned M –F compete with other women.
Even this is still compatible with a gender binary, if one different than what you'd accept of understand. (Arguably, it demands it; there's actually a lot of internal conflict between the transmedical side and the enby-heavy sides of the trans movement, but it's hard to find that discussed in external-facing communication.) It's just really misleading.
Why are these concerns legitimate to express, and not: the unintended consequences of abolishing single-sex bathrooms and changing rooms; male rapists with intact genitalia being incarcerated in female prisons; convicted sex offenders coming out as trans and changing their names in order to evade child safeguarding policies - or any other of the litany of reasonable-sounding objections gender-critical people have raised over the last decade or so? No idea.
Largely, because the acceptable concerns have either (or both) solutions that are acceptable to the public mores of the progressive movement and especially deBoer's place in it, and because the things that those solutions demand don't crush the goals of the transgender movement. The former is definitely a larger controlling aspect -- there are definitely places where uncertainty about a specific procedure's efficacy is unacceptable, as Trace has found out -- but it's not like this is new or specific to this particular movement.
Bathrooms and changing rooms can't be discussed because the only solution that would solve the proposed threats would cut off access to much of the public sphere; trans rapists and sex offenders because 'everybody' knows that it's really about the Chinese Cardiology over the specific policy questions.
As noted by Wesley Yang, there are 39 separate days3 in the American political calendar specifically dedicated to celebrating trans people
To be fair, naming days for stupid things is what people offer instead of policy behaviors; this is a funny factoid rather than a meaningful counter.
It’s fascinating contrasting the passage above with an article Freddie published in 2022 about the recent phenomenon of social media-addicted teenagers suddenly “discovering” that they suffer from dissociative identity disorder (“DID” for short, popularly known as “multiple personality disorder”), an exceptionally rare condition in which a person has multiple distinct personalities (called “alters”).
That's true, but it's probably a better argument against deBoer's writing qualities in general (I will again bring up that time he had a psychotic break and fasely accused someone of sexual assault). I've probably gotten a sanewashed version of multiplicity compared to the TikTok variant, but compared SSC. Which isn't to say that the DID fandom is right or useful, just that deBoer's critic doesn't even make sense within its own framework (eg, TikTok DID revolves around everyone having had intense childhood trauma, also that was controversial as a claim for even classic-DID, beyond the extent classic-DID was controversial itself).
If you think I’m exaggerating, consider this bill in the state of California which would make a parent’s decision to “affirm” their child’s gender identity (or not) a factor in custody disputes (at the time of writing, it has passed both houses but not yet been signed into law).
Specifically, the bill would require judges to consider it, and has been vetoed. Judges may still do so as a matter of policy.
A “detransitioner” has not simply pressed Ctrl-Z and reverted their body to factory settings - the changes they have made to their body are generally irreversible and will completely change the course of their life. Michael Neary’s victims were furious upon realising that they were denied the ability to have further children for no good reason at all - the idea that medical professionals would downplay the magnitude of the decision to transition is unconscionable.
I get that this isn't a space with a lot of good parallels, but Neary's behavior was a lot worse in terms of informed consent. Neary's victims not only did not know they'd be sterilized before they went into the surgical rooms, but in at least a couple cases the man didn't even tell them what parts he'd removed (or told them incorrectly). We don't have too much detail about how his process worked given all the magically disappearing records, but looking through the patient interviews in the Lourdes report point toward bringing patients in for normal processes or minor surgery and then performing a hysterectomy as an 'emergency' due to complications, only discovering that they've had a supposed life-threatening experience after they've had the surgery completed.
Even if we are to presume that medical professionals are downplaying both the decision and overstating the ramifications for refusal/detransition, these are things happening in daylight; both adult and teenage patients can and should examine statements from medical professionals. I expect that this doesn't have a huge impact on the perspectives of detransitioners, and it doesn't cleave away regulation as an acceptable case, but it really does have an impact on what policy recommendations are available.
gattsuru
1yr ago
The merits panel for California's SB2 has dissolved the administrative stay and denied the stay pending further review by the court.
gattsuru
1yr ago
Netanyahu was successful in his judicial reform bill, pending SC review
In a monumental, highly controversial decision, the High Court of Justice strikes down legislation passed earlier this year that curtailed judicial oversight of the government, annulling for the first time in Israel’s history an element of one of its quasi-constitutional Basic Laws.
The court split almost down the middle over the highly contentious legislation, which eliminated judicial use of the “reasonableness” standard — the only significant law from the government’s judicial overhaul agenda to have been passed so far. Eight justices vote in favor of striking down the law, while seven vote to uphold it.
gattsuru
1yr ago
Some games (eg Terraria) are intentionally 'game-boy esque', and work as well or better on handhelds as on desktop keyboards. That said, I've seen some people play casual levels of more complex games like MineCraft or even FFXIV on Steam Decks without too many problems -- they're not an ideal form factor, but they're still quite usable.
gattsuru
1yr ago
Also, doesn't ASUS clone-and-one-better a computer in basically every form factor anyway?
Weirdly, no. For the bigger markets, they're willing to make weird one- and two-offs (though not always well, contrast FriendlyElec).
But there is no Asus GPD-clone, for example, probably because it's just too small of a market. While the 5-inch tablets in general have just dissolved since around 2010 for everybody but the weird Aliexpress vendors, for 7-inch tablets you're looking at the MeMoPads running android 4.4 on an atom processor from 2014 (wut), despite a lot of sales at the high and low ends. They don't do nano itx as a form factor, period, even as they've become a major player for NUCs.
Which isn't an awful decision as a business -- spread too far and you lose yourself -- but it's a weird one.
gattsuru
1yr ago
Is it possible to raise the general level of skepticism about AI answers, rather than AI technology?
Given how hard it is to get people to have serious skepticism of human answers? Not hugely optimistic. I like to toy around with the idea of intentionally seeding hilariously obvious lies into LLM outputs, but... uh... there's two ways that could go.
gattsuru
1yr ago
Yeah, especially given Valve's competence in the designs it does create, it's weird how much they don't like building new stuff. Even places that look like past iterations aren't, officially: the Lighthouse V1s were HTC builds and V2s were the first genuine Valve production design, and the Knuckles controllers were 'updated' a few different times but never had an official release.
Optimistically, maybe that's just Valve Being Valve, and when they get bored other people can go into the market that they've formalized (and done a lot of the annoying software work for). Pessimistically, if you only expected to have one shot at this design and picked those joysticks, it doesn't say a lot about what you're planning around. Worse, other companies seem equally cautious about the field: Asus looks like it's using off-the-shelf panel-controller combos on their display as well, even if a little higher-quality, and hasn't committed to long-term support or replacement parts.
((And Asus isn't as competent when it comes to software.))
gattsuru
1yr ago
There's a steelman where establishing 'vital' rules that must necessarily broken on a regular occurrence is counterproductive for all but the dimmest bulbs. Mike Rowe's Safety Third talk is a more generalized version.
Saying that you can't get hurt if you follow these simple rules in every circumstance isn't even strictly true -- ricochet matter! -- but even were it true, it's not very useful, when you have to break those rules on the range, dry-firing, tearing down some guns for cleaning, doing common drills. It's 'okay', because you're only breaking one rule at a time! But while Trigger Discipline ends up being the thing people focus most on because it's so visible in every photo, it's also one that -- as Sig has proven at length -- is particularly awkward for how consistently you have to break it for a variety of situations.
I don't agree with it, myself, still: Cooper's Four Rules are about producing habits, not behaviors. But it's less obviously crazy.
gattsuru
1yr ago
Trump v. Anderson has been granted cert, with a timeline of :
The case is set for oral argument on Thursday, February 8, 2024. Petitioner’s brief on the merits, and any amicus curiae briefs in support or in support of neither party, are to be filed on or before Thursday, January 18, 2024. Respondents’ briefs on the merits, and any amicus curiae briefs in support, are to be filed on or before Wednesday, January 31, 2024. The reply brief, if any, is to be filed on or before 5 p.m., Monday, February 5 2024.
While not on the docket yet, that would put oral arguments on February 8th. Colorado's primary ballots were finalized today, and supposed to be including Trump; Iowa and New Hampshire finish their primaries before oral arguments are set, and Nevada's primary is the same day. It's possible, if not certain, that the Court will rule before Super Tuesday in March, but most Super Tuesday states will have their ballots finalized well before then, with corresponding potential for hilarity.
Notably, that is Trump's petition, rather than the Colorado GOP's.
gattsuru
1yr ago
Genuine portable computing's long been an underserved and overfragmented market. My gaming uses tend to revolve around keyboards, but this design space has a lot of utility for things like (giant-)pocket-sized tablets for note-taking and light management devices that are otherwise not very well-served -- either PalmPilot- or Pi-level devices that can do too little, or GPD Win-knockoffs that are way too high-end for most users.
I am a little worried about how much they're willing to explore. Valve's had enough success to at least drive imitators (Asus Ally), but there's a lot of design decisions in both the original and OLED variant that point towards a lot of caution in design scaling (both devices use MIPI displays, and the original IPS one was a weird left-over from a generic tablet display with a funky aspect ratio). Valve has historically been careful in general, but if it's more than just their normal engineering-by-the-shelf, either indicates that they don't want to put down the capital, or don't think they can get the manufacturing interest in it.
gattsuru
1yr ago
The "holding" vs "running" argument is funny, but it really just kicks the can down the road -- Trump's probably hoping until votes are being counted for the general election, but Colorado specifically already has had recent lawsuits over Secretaries of State making orders related to election processes weeks before the election, and there's no reason it couldn't happen in the primary season, too.
Ruling specifically on Trump's eligibility as a matter of legal fact has the problem where it's both too much into political questions for a few members of the court, and simultaneously not enough to actually table the problem. The same approaches can and have migrated to other politicians, and as the emoluments clause fandom demonstrates, there's always some new fact pattern to bring.
Congress having to act would remove a lot of further legal gamesmanship, but I dunno how well it would appeal to most of the Court. At the simplest level, the approach Trump is advocating would not just allow but encourage a situation where a candidate was cleanly and clearly the winner of a state and then the House of Representatives reject that state -- and while I'd recognize some schadenfreude in a reversal, the spectre of Jan 6 isn't something that they're forgetting. Especially given the extent Baude/Paulsen and the lower courts here have rejected due process concerns or even argued that the 14th Amendment overrides earlier test in the Constitution, there's also a lot of really bad problems that could fall from Congress having the power to declare insurrectionists by law.
gattsuru
1yr ago
Habba's been part of the team more involved in Trump's dumb (sometimes sanctioned-level-dumb) civil suits. So not exactly some rando, but still at the point where if she ran into the SCOTUS bar team in a dark alley she'd be having a bad time.
gattsuru
1yr ago
After Obergefell, any official dissenter (and as far as I can tell Kim Davis was the only one) was overruled, fired and ruined.
Tbf, there were a handful of other jurisdictions that did not immediately comply, either by direct defiance or refusing to issue any marriage license, though with one exception this was largely ignored.
gattsuru
1yr ago
There's some interesting philosophical questions about the proper role for federalism in regards to specific rights, but in addition to arguments of past performance that others have already mentioned, there's actually still a pretty sizable number of things that are currently happening.
Hawaii and California have both recently enacted laws enabling the sort of interstate lawfare against gun industry members that I predicted two years ago due to the SCOTUS punt on Remington v Soto, with HB 426 and AB1594, respectively, and they're not exactly alone (I'm familiar with at least New Jersey, New York, and Delaware). Even places without legislative changes to allow such liability have had courts retroactively discover them in long-extent laws, such as Gustafson in Pennsylvania.
Or see the recent legislative efforts which have mandated more and more restriction, including near-complete bans on purchase by under-21s. Or the regulatory action to leave hobbyist gunsmithing and private manufacturing, or to make operating as a firearms merchant more difficult. Or the lawsuits that have (generally successfully) sought to enjoin any attempts at Second Amendment Sanctuary laws.
I bring these not as examples of 'oh, they did it first', or even to highlight what the progressives would need to give up for a return to federalism to have a chance, but because that's a large part of the "why conservatives gun owners must force". They have a model that many of these states have anti-gun populations not out of the natural evolution of positions, or normal distributions of normal beliefs, but because law and policy have been trying to smother the development of any interests in the disliked fields, and to Curley out those who cared about those matters -- and that the progressive movements are both willing and eager to do the same to other states.
gattsuru
1yr ago
Nearer and simpler jurisdiction helps -- the US famously doesn't have interstate small claims courts -- but also the higher damages in severe cases, along with a lot of readily-available experts on best practices, and a liability insurance system that's heavily integrated (and sometimes mandatory) that makes people less judgement proof.
Are you sure on that? Usually it’s the complaint that controls time for statute of limitations purposes, but under federal rules plaintiffs only have 90 days to serve a defendant before they must show cause or have the complaint dismissed without prejudice. That lets them start over again, but it means starting over again.
For sophisticated plaintiffs going after unsophisticated targets, it doesn’t usually matter — you don’t let things get close to running the clock, and know exactly what is to dot to demonstrate necessary attempt of service — but I don’t think that’s the case here.
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