netstack
Texas is freedom land
No bio...
User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
8d ago
Were you already religious?
Because that strategy begs the question of why people have been falling away for decades. Otherwise you’re betting on a losing horse. Fine for getting a local support network, but I don’t see it scaling like the more ethnonationalist examples in that essay.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
14d ago
Texas recently started enforcing HB 1181, a viewer-age-verification law. The sort which intends to make it very annoying to distribute pornography if and only if one intends to run a business in the U.S.. Hosting a server out of Czechoslovakia is, as I understand it, still untouchable.
Pornhub’s parent company responded by cutting all services to Texas. Should a Texan IP address make a request to their site, he will receive instead an angry letter about his lawmakers’ shortsightedness, questionable legal footing, and so on. Other sites have followed suit. The argument goes that 1) the law only hurts the most compliant companies, and 2) it fails a variety of Constitutional protections.
Naturally, it was wildly popular, passing 141-2. It has also survived legal challenges up to the 5th Circuit Court. Even though one of the provisions was struck down as improper government speech, proponents insist that the rest is perfectly above-board.
So far, it’s looking like another step towards pillarization.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
13d ago
Man, I really enjoyed the summary, especially Gorsuch reducing a professional to a stammering mess. Warms the soul.
Then you had to go and ruin it by tilting at this weird caricature of “New Lefty Science” and “the Lefties That Be.” Have you considered that maybe people you don’t like can be right?
- Sotomayor asks: if this ordinance is not applied to people who are incidentally sleeping outside, but only if the police think they have no home address, is it really legalizing conduct?
- Kagan adds that enforcement rests on having a home, which is a status, not a conduct.
- Evangelis counters that Robinson featured no actus reus, but this situation does: camping. Or really sleeping outside, due to the specifics of the injunction.
- Jackson reasons that if you’re relying on the act of sleeping, then you are touching on a “basic function”. And that’s what gets proportionality protections from the 8th.
- Evangelis avoids a follow-up about eating in public by arguing that a “necessity defense” would come up before the 8th.
- After some going around in circles, Roberts shelves the subject.
Which part of this do you have a problem with? Because it looks, to me, like a legitimate debate over the limits of the 8th. The hypotheticals are relevant. The questions are clear. No digressions about historical richness or other sources of vibes. Just “why is this different from Robinson?”
I will try to review more of the summary later. So far, I don’t see what you’re so sarcastic about.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
13d ago
No, it doesn’t.
I’ve laid out the case for deterrence before. That only requires Russia to think they can succeed quickly and easily. Correcting their estimate is valuable.
In the world where we refused to supply any of them, Russia could exert power over its NATO neighbors.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
13d ago
I was commenting on the Kagan/Evangelis exchange which you quoted. It was specifically about distinguishing status from conduct. Was that not what you wanted to talk about? I can move on to the rest, I suppose.
New Correct Lefty Science
To be clear, I read this epithet as referring to Corkran’s claim that a person can’t go from addiction to non-addiction. My phone won’t let me quote from PDF, but there’s a relevant passage on page 38. Evangelis argued that homelessness, due to its mutability, does not fit Robinson’s definition of a status. It’s exactly what Corkran was trying to rebut when you quoted her. Clearly, the whole court and both parties are interested in the bounds of this category.
I couldn’t actually figure out where mutability came into play. The Robinson opinion doesn’t mention anything like it, but it could be in oral arguments. As best as I can figure, it has something to do with short-term or automatic changes. But I digress.
So at what point did this become “lefty science”? When Evangelis conceded it before arguing homelessness was different? When Corkran asserted it before insisting homelessness was the same? When Jackson, whom I assume you think is a partisan hack, asked for clarification?
I think all of those options are stupid. They’re clearly arguing about something with a little more nuance than “can things change at all.” Ignoring that to dunk on unspecified lefties is playing an entirely different status game.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
22d ago
Deus Ex released in May 2000 with memorable writing, interesting choices, and a deliriously complicated setting. Between the cool factor and the memes, it’s remained relevant for decades.
Daikatana also released in May 2000, featuring…none of these things. It’s best known today for its questionable marketing.
I don’t take this as evidence of a trend in game writing or production. Our impressions are formed by outliers rather than the mean or median or even modal game for a year. We still get vivid, cohesive experiences from developers with a vision. Have you played Disco Elysium yet?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
13d ago
In this Court counsel for the State recognized that narcotic addiction is an illness. Indeed, it is apparently an illness which may be contracted innocently or involuntarily. We hold that a state law which imprisons a person thus afflicted as a criminal, even though he has never touched any narcotic drug within the State or been guilty of any irregular behavior there, inflicts a cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. To be sure, imprisonment for ninety days is not, in the abstract, a punishment which is either cruel or unusual. But the question cannot be considered in the abstract. Even one day in prison would be a cruel and unusual punishment for the "crime" of having a common cold.
I think the proportionality argument is pretty solid, even though it doesn’t give us a hard limit.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
20d ago
in a long time
Really? I get that it’s the U.K., but I’m skeptical that the state is getting too cozy with any particular religion.
This looks like the right decision.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
I don’t understand why people expect that of Trump. When has he ever struck back at the civil service? “Putting away woke” (?) sounds like it’ll end with the same results as “draining the swamp.”
Most progress on this front has been made by the B- and C-list of conservatives. DeSantis, Abbott…I think Rufo is more credible as a reformer, and he’s not even pursuing office. Would Trump be making these particular mouth sounds if they hadn’t been pushing related issues in the midterms?
In my opinion, the most likely path for making idpol unfashionable is a foreign-policy presidency. Doesn’t really matter who. We’re not getting a “fresh prince” decade by cranking up the domestic outrage.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
14d ago
By whom?
I'm sure you can find any number of groups who are proud to participate. I don't think any of them deserve much credit.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
29d ago
That exchange project feels like one of the things which people feel the need to talk up, but doesn’t have that much actual effect. Like the ineffective altruists.
But also, I don’t see how it could be bad? It’s absolutely wild how much sortition is involved in the U.S. For a New York resident to visit, I dunno, Dallas—that’s further than Paris-to-Warsaw. The trains are embarrassing, too. We’re firmly in road-trip territory. And the issue is much worse for those who don’t have the disposable income or time to cross the continent for a few days.
I grew up close enough to take an a school field trip to our national capital. I can’t imagine how much of the country never got that chance.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
13d ago
That’s from Robinson v. CA, so…Justice Potter Stewart, d.1985.
I don’t think quarantines fit the bill. In theory, they criminalize the conduct of going somewhere while (potentially) having such a disease, which is distinct from criminalizing the disease itself. Note that in Robinson the man arrested was expressly not taking any unusual actions.
In practice, did any of the lockdown ordinances actually threaten prison? I know there were enforced business shutdowns, presumably enforced via fines. I didn’t live somewhere which actually kept you in your house.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
15d ago
Something like that…maybe. Evidence: the number of alternate topics in this thread.
Calling it class interest or even a cohesive demand is a bit much, though. It’s not the same people protesting every time. I’d say there’s a background temperature of discontent which, this week, happened to be hottest around Columbia. Even if we had known that Iran’s launch would blow over, we could never have predicted that this was going to top the leaderboard for today.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
19d ago
I’m placing my bets on incompetence. Is this really different than Oblivion’s potato faces? I understanding is that was an outsourcing problem. Something about FaceGen.
Really, this comes down to whether you think Niantic could culture-war their way out of a paper bag.
If what you say about locked accessories is true, this was probably seen as the cheapest way to double the number of custom options available to each player.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
21d ago
I really liked your breakdowns of the characterization. I agree that blockbusters are absolutely willing to toss in stock characters and skimp on realistic human dialogue.
Thing is, stock characters have worked since at least the commedia dell’arte. They’re a very efficient way to skip exposition and set expectations for a character. Anime examples abound. Clearly, a script can have familiar archetypes alongside human dialogue…Can.
My working theory is that the ability of western writers to model other human beings seems stunted. The current crop are narcissists, incompetent, or incapable of basic human empathy.
This feels Too Good To Check. It would be convenient if we could write off the people who produce bad entertainment as moral mutants, but is it likely?
Either that, or whatever they put down doesn't survive peer and funding review.
Now this is probably true. No matter the capabilities of individual writers, there’s got to be some mechanism keeping blockbusters from having good characters. Here’s a few possibilities.
- Scriptwriting is democratic, and the narcissism/incompetence/bias of the modal writers means most scripts end up with bad characterization.
- It’s totalitarian, and the n/i/b of the leading writers blocks off any quality contributions from the proles.
- It doesn’t matter how it’s governed, because everyone involved wants the same thing, but that thing isn’t “good characters.” It’s money, and what looks like n/i/b is actually more cost-effective.
- As any of the above, but laggy: decision-makers still haven’t figured out that their decisions are actually n/i/b. If they knew, they’d choose something else.
I lean towards 3 or 4. It would suck if quality (as we understand it) was different than quality (as the market understands it), but…it also wouldn’t really be unique. If you can’t put a price on it, the market isn’t going to take it into account. Option 4 is more optimistic; maybe that makes it cope? Still, I can’t rule out the idea that these people really want to make something good, and are only temporarily barking up the wrong tree.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7d ago
That’s not a nullification. I’d say the correct remedy for opposing a law is challenging it in court, and Abbott’s doing that. But since this isn’t a law passed by Congress, it’s hard to fault him for instructing his administration on how to implement their administrative change.
Now, there’s a little problem. The USED already implements other Title IX athletics rules. Seeing as those aren’t being challenged, I assume Congress explicitly delegated the power at some point. Either that, or it was assumed through the ever-popular federal funding mechanism.
So what makes this different? If it were an Executive Order, I’d understand the case for a Constitutional violation. But this is a “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.” See here. It sure sounds like business as usual. If so, the federal government has its obvious recourse: cut federal funding. No Constitutional wrangling necessary.
That’d probably be a big win for Texas Republicans. The rule is being spun as “destroying women’s sports” already. Actually reducing any federal funds? Free leverage for Abbott. As much as I resent the guy, he’s set up a decent gambit. Hard to blame him, when Biden’s agencies are being such partisan hardliners—
Taking those considerations into account, the Department expects that, under its proposed regulation, elementary school students would generally be able to participate on school sports teams consistent with their gender identity and that it would be particularly difficult for a school to justify excluding students immediately following elementary school from participating consistent with their gender identity. For older students, especially at the high school and college level, the Department expects that sex-related criteria that limit participation of some transgender students may be permitted, in some cases, when they enable the school to achieve an important educational objective, such as fairness in competition, and meet the proposed regulation's other requirements.
Oh.
Well, no one was going to look at the actual rule, anyway. And if they did, they’d surely see that it’s a trap; no restriction could ever survive the captured, liberal media blitz. And if it did, the deep state would bury it. And if they didn’t, those partisan judges would have to legislate from the bench to stop it. And if they didn’t, well, Biden would obviously send the 101st Airborne to escort a minimally-sympathetic trans woman into your daughter’s locker room. Or worse, do it himself. And you don’t want Sleepy Joe near your daughter, do you?
Far better to make political hay now, before all that unpleasantness can get started.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
8d ago
Okay, but how bad is it really?
Looking at the Unherd article, for example. Their thesis: #MeToo caused radical misogyny and conservative backlash. Their evidence: one survey showing young men were unusually hostile to the current president. A second survey, published in 2019, saying they really disliked feminism. And then a smattering of demographic and dating stats which don’t really measure opinion so much as try to justify it.
If that’s the quality of evidence, I’m not sure it can be distinguished from garden-variety fearmongering. Hey, our students don’t really like Biden. Does that mean the Democrats are at a crossroads of anti[femin/egalitarian/Semit]ism?
On the other hand, SK apparently elected their antifeminist. That speaks a little louder. Has he actually acted on his alleged platform? Because this sort of narrative is what I’d expect to see from a smear campaign.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
13d ago
In the abstract sense of complicity that you’re using? Quite a few. So long as they keep doing it, I’m willing to be an enabler.
Yes, I do think conscription pushes the balance in favor of surrender. No, I don’t think it’s obvious that the modal Ukrainian soldier no longer wishes to risk death.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
14d ago
Then how do you know it exists?
The bailey, I mean, where these discord servers somehow distinguish their members from "a mob of dissatisfied individuals." Anyone can give out an email address. That puts them roughly on par with a local HOA. Scary.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
13d ago
Why do you think it’s misplaced sympathy and not, I dunno, doing their jobs?
Surely it’s not just because they’ve disagreed with your intuition.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
13d ago
I was using it in response to the OP. That tweet just says “fracturing,” so I’m not 100% sure what distinguishes it from Balkanization, siloing, or walled gardens.
If more people thought like me, it's entirely possible that this war would not have happened.
How do you mean? I expect Russia would have more incentive to invade, not less, if they foresaw no Western opposition.
blank check
If we were talking about Patriot Acts and boots on the ground, maybe. But spending money on munitions is like…our comparative advantage. It’s making a slightly larger fraction of GDP go towards geopolitical goals. I think we’re still getting a decent return on investment.
Yes, more people are dying than would if we washed our hands of it, and I wish they weren’t. But how much of the culpability falls on us rather than on the conscriptors, let alone the invaders?
I would take your “Mistakes were Made” bet, because I don’t expect this to escalate in the ways you’re thinking. Russia is probably going to win out as Ukraine collapses. I will admit that I was wrong—and lobby my Congressman against it, etc.—if America considers more direct intervention.
MIT no longer requires diversity statements for faculty hires.
Allegedly. The only sources I’ve seen covering this are not exactly paragons of journalism, citing emails rather than anything public. MIT’s own website still describes the practice in glowing terms. I am curious whether the general population of MIT staff—the ones maintaining their websites—is in favor of this change, or if any of them were consulted.
Assuming this is credible, let’s make some predictions.
More options
Context Copy link