lollol
5d ago
Ehhh, I really don't think Howard meant aliens the way we now understand aliens. And this is assuming he meant aliens as a separate category rather than as explanatory of what he meant by "families of ambassadors or foreign ministers".
I did some research on this and this is a good summary: https://old.reddit.com/r/asianamerican/comments/1i6pbh1/from_1866_when_the_senate_was_debating_the_14th/
I read the debates itself as well: https://www.congress.gov/congressional-globe/congress-39-session-1-part-4.pdf
Really wished someone transcribed the whole thing for easy search and copy paste but Howard had no objection to the comment by Conness:
The proposition before us, I will say, Mr. President, relates simply in that respect to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens. We have declared that by law; now it is proposed to incorporate the same provision in the fundamental instrument of the nation. I am in favor of doing so. I voted for the proposition to declare that the children of all parentage whatever, born in California, should be regarded and treated as citizens of the United States, entitled to equal civil rights with other citizens of the United States.
And Howard had plenty of objections when others say things he didn't agree with during that debate (such as on the matter of Indians untaxed or not taxed, etc.)
lollol
5d ago
agreed. I personally don't think this is Dredd Scott level of bad, I don't think people will secede. I also haven't read the thing yet but Kavanaugh left it open for Congress to make some laws.
lollol
5d ago
Someone here earlier this week or last week said that this decision will be our generation's Dred Scott regardless of how it is decided, and that it will tear the union apart in similar fashion. Demographic changes in the West generally are leading to ever increasing tension and dysfunction, and I fear this decision will ensure that a breaking point is reached soooner, rather than later.
Sounds to me like the there will be increasing tension and dysfunction regardless of whether your stated position was affirmed or struck down. The decision is just another signal/marker of the continuing trend that you're describing. Dredd Scott can be viewed as a bad decision that made things worse, but one can also see that even if Dredd Scott ruling was reversed (that Dredd Scott became a free man by staying in the free Missouri territory), there would still have been a Secession. Congress (and by extension the People) punt on something long enough then yeah it will come crashing down on them. This is exactly what the People deserve.
lollol
5d ago
To add more information gleaned from scotusblog live chat:
- West Virginia v. B. P. J decides that states may segregate sports by biological gender. And already working through the lower circuits are lawsuits asking that states must segregate sports by biological gender.
- National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission. I will be interested in the first and second order effects of this.
- Trump v. Barbara. Kavanaugh concurred on the ruling but dissented on the opinion, so it's more like 5.5-4.5 . And Thomas has a 91 page dissent.
lollol
9d ago
unimportant technicality of election law
election law technicalities are important, case in point: In Elections, Timing is Everything - Power Politics where "Today, we look at one of the biggest factors in determining the outcome of elections: when they are scheduled."
Anything worth a fight is important to somebody somewhere.
lollol
9d ago
Yeah, with how much attention is being brought to it, I think there will be more attempts at vandalism, which would distract from how there really is probably incompetence involved (how much was the damage? "a caulk over the foam sealant that was cut with a sharp knife or razor" might or might not actually create the algae bloom problem)
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10d ago
Thanks. How was the ROI in terms of a law degree for you even though you're not on that path? Did you pass the bar?
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11d ago
I personally think it's incompetence. And even worse, it's incompetence due to corruption.
But in an effort to be charitable: somebody certainly made "giant ‘8647’ markings on National Mall" and that's vandalism, so can't rule out the same for the pool as well.
lollol
11d ago
Inspired by this comment from @magic9mushroom . What is TheMotte's preferred political compass survey? I assume it's not https://www.politicalcompass.org/
lollol
13d ago
yeah, seems like the plan is at least try the LSAT once but if I don't get above 170, there's no point.
Thanks @Rov_Scam, as an aside I'm always looking out for your comments because I know you're a lawyer and have a particular viewpoint on whatever is being discussed.
Don't get me wrong, I like my job, to the point where I don't even mind Mondays, but I also don't have any expectations that every case is going to be a corker. The thing that separates mediocre attorneys from good ones is that the good ones pay attention to the details of the case and treat everyone as if it has the potential to be a corker. Instead of going through the motions, they'll find something to argue about, and don't mind if things don't work out in the end.
So weirdly enough, as you were discussing the job of practicing law, it keeps reminding me of similarities to the job of a SWE. "Hours of going through the contents of a filing cabinet" on the face of it doesn't feel boring to me. It would be similar to when if I change something in an upstream service, I would be responsible to go check on how my change affects all the downstream services. Or I suppose a better analogy is if my boss or higher made a change then tell me to go clean up for them. I suppose the reminder here is every job needs you to be masochistic in particular ways to be successful and you need to choose the flavor of pain you can grind at for years.
it doesn't sound like you want to practice law, but to do something exceedingly specific
You are right. I don't want to just switch from the SWE-ladder to the Lawyer-ladder like some kind of class-change. I also understand that with regards to the default allure of a career in law, the goal is to have a lucrative career. Well I kinda already have a lucrative career (in a relative sense, my household income barely reaches big law starting salary atm, but that's still pretty good compared to the median American household) so "doing something with law" has to really fulfill something else in the Maslow's hierarchy of needs (so to speak), AND justify the opportunity cost (time honing my SWE career path, law school costs, SWE less stressful working environment).
The allure of law personal to me are:
- It's an intellectual pursuit of building shared understanding (akin to how "software design is knowledge building"). edit: I realized this is very appellate law specific.
- I keep running into problems within the context of law. Politics, culture war, "China is run by engineers, America is run by lawyers". I figure it's better for myself personally to be more than just a layman.
- Prestige bonus like you mentioned.
- Fuse my SWE background with Law to somehow unlock opportunities that either SWE or Law can't achieve by itself.
I do wonder what you think of all that. If you have any more advice or opinions, I would welcome it.
lollol
15d ago
But I have seen a backwater state legislature reject a state supreme court nominee for the crime of not having gotten a 4.0 GPA at their top in-state law school, while cheerfully approving nominees who went to Yale, which doesn't assign grades. It's a real problem.
cool, sounds to me like i should just LSAT and see how it goes, maybe my score will be low enough that it'll just tell me that law is not for me.
Are you married? Do you have children?
Yes, and will. My wife and I will have children for sure, just not right now. For example, at the moment it's not clear if we have children prior to getting the green card they would be considered an American citizen. I am actually currently reading the book Dad Brain and I am quite excited about the prospect of being a dad. But I also want to be an amazing dad with great personal accomplishments as well. I suppose arrogance comes with being a SWE but I do think I'll be a great dad that will gain a lot of joy and pride from raising the little ones, and I also want joy and pride from my own accomplishments as well. No matter whether a bum or a contender, I'll be a great dad, but I don't want to be that guy in his 50s saying "I coulda been a contender".
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16d ago
From what I've read up, it's HYS or nothing. I have a natural aversion to prestige games but I suppose for the prestige chasers that's just loser talk.
The pay is terrible and it's unlikely I will ever make a meaningful difference on actual public policy, but that would probably be true even if I were a powerful appellate attorney.
I suppose this is what I am missing from my normal job, I don't have fulfillment. I feel that I do a good job and the people around me says I am and the company show sufficient financial appreciation, but at the end of the day it's just pushing text from left to right to get people to buy more stuff. At various points in the last few months I've did various searches on "how can a 30 year old do [research/law school/etc]?" And every time it seems like confusing and non-clear ROI. Nor does it seem like my job then would be more fulfilling, at least on the SWE path there are some pretty clear next steps I can do (big tech/unicorns/interesting startups/open source/anarcho-hackers/etc.). And yes, currently I have to wait for the company-sponsored green card process to complete before it seems like my next chapter in life can begin.
That sounds very serendipitous and not something in my control. I suppose the better way to phrase what I want is actualization/making an impact. I suppose post-law-school careers that also seems amazing to me are like Avril Haines or Lina Khan. Not sure if that's even possible for an immigrant (hasn't even gotten my green card yet).
lollol
16d ago
They mostly demonstrated the opposite. Iranian dissidents found themselves caught between a regime that hates them, and outsiders who hate them.
I would rather say that "outsiders who don't care enough to support, or even know them". I know of at least one famous Russian political dissident, Alexei Navalny. For Iranians, I can only think of a film director.
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16d ago
So I'm a software engineer at a no-name startup for nearly 5 years. And recently I suddenly have an interest in learning law. Has anyone gotten on this path or have opinions about this? I suppose in my fantasy future, I would be doing appellate law and someday argue Supreme Court cases, but everything I read up shows that law is a high-stress, singular life. What are pros and cons here? What are things that should encourage me and what are things that should discourage me? If someone wants to pour a basin of water over my head on this whole romantic notion please feel free.
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25d ago
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26d ago
The reason we end up tolerating the youtuber's behavior in the Lego situation, is he TARGETED IT towards an arguably deserving party. Rather than create a generalized nuisance, he became a nuisance to someone who was already inflicting pain on others. Rewarding THAT behavior is generally, on net, pro-social.
Team America philosophy of life lives on:
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27d ago
I started from 0, and no matter how many kids I have, they definitely won't have to start from 0. But yeah, lots of massive assumptions about how my progeny spend their inheritance.
lollol
27d ago
Yeap, pretty much, I was thinking about this recently and at my current rate of accumulation and throwing money into the stock market, assuming things about passive investing holds true AND my child and grandchild also accumulates the same way I do then maybe my great grandchild will be a billionaire (plus and minus a generation). We would all have gotten our wealth ethically, though I suppose because the immoral capitalist ways of seeking profit (whatever they maybe) has been laundered through broad passive investment in the market. Oh right, that would be a billion not counting inflation so the value is totally different.
lollol
27d ago
Don't get me wrong, I think there is definitely an electoral impact when members of Congress make a point of being highly present in their district - like how AOC hosts a local town hall every single month without fail since her election. I just really don't think enough people are keeping constant track of the weekend returns of their Congressperson, nor do I think it matters enough overall to make or break a political career without other factors at play.
The voters that are likely to keep track are exactly the kind of plugged in electorate that shows up for primaries or become volunteers or donate more, etc. It might not be decisive, but it's an effective line of attack that all members of congress has to defend against.
As for the comparison to France, well, it is derogatory isn't it (looks like the US term is carpetbagger)? From what I understand, usually there is a residency requirement for the various political offices in the US, which goes to show how important it is to the local/state residents that they enshrined it into law.
Also, France is smaller than Texas, distance from Paris to the South of France (Google Gemini: "The furthest continental (mainland European) political district from Paris is the commune of Lamanère in the Pyrénées-Orientales department. Located in the Occitanie region along the Spanish border, it sits 721 kilometers (448 miles) south of Paris") is shorter than a flight from DC to Tennessee. We don't compare French politics to Singapore politics for the same reason.
I do agree that the increased nationalization and polarization of politics means residency in your own district doesn't matter as much, but I wouldn't count it out to particular races or elections, even things "on the margin" can be the thing that push it over the line for some.
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1mo ago
As an aside, I do appreciate that you bring a different viewpoint into TheMotte. Anyway, this slush fund is corruption, just because the other side does it doesn't mean it's ok that your side does it too. I do recognize that for a lot of people here it's a feeling of "look what you made me do" or "you made me do this", or maybe a bit of accelerationist, who knows, but the whole point is the ability to curb the extremes and either appeal or force each other to be better without violence and resentment. Anyway, I still feel the slush fund is small, I am more outraged about all the stock trading Trump does.
lollol
1mo ago
sounds to me like we need different states to experiment with different term durations. Federal politics would change significantly if house terms are 3 years, senate 9 years, and president 6 years.
lollol
1mo ago
A 1.6% difference is minuscule and essentially a rounding error.
I read up on the paper a bit and the authors did anticipate this argument . They wrote that they found the average rate of seeking re-election is 89.8%, so I suppose we can think retirement as 10% chance. A 1.6% increase in retirement rate can be thought of as a 16% increase from baseline. In contrast, having a scandal for example is a 12.66% increase in retirement rate (a 126.6% increase from baseline). (apologies to scientists if I am not using the correct words to describe statistical significance). I didn't do my due diligence regarding math and P-values but it looks to be very small as I skim it (p < 0.001).
Do you think AOC or Ilhan Omar would loose their seats if it came out that the spent every other weekend in DC instead of always returning to NYC or Minnesota? I doubt anyone cares.
Uhhhh, well, as other posters have pointed out, it really does help in a primary. I would like to quote this exhibit on the primary race where AOC had an upset against Democratic mainstay and longstanding leader Joe Crowley:
To that end, Ocasio-Cortez has levied a steady attack against Crowley, pointing out that he lives in a house just outside of Washington D.C. where he’s been raising his family and kids for the last several years.
Crowley did not directly answer a question about why his family does not live in the district, but said his presence in Queens remains a constant — a point the Ocasio-Cortez campaign disputes.
“If a person loves their community they would choose to raise their family here, they would choose to send their kids to our schools, they would chose to drink our water and breathe our air,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I think that it takes away a fundamental interest and understanding of our communities when we raise our families somewhere else.”
Anyway, back to your other point.
They have EVERY incentive to bitch and whine about their job and portray themselves as more martyred by it than they actually are.
Point taken, and I agree, yet we are having a pretty dysfunctional congress, so I would like to not dismiss these points out of hand.
Relative to other AAQC, anything below 5 is surprising.
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