netstack
Texas is freedom land
No bio...
User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d 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
4d 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
3d 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
4d 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
5d 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
3d 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
6d 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
3d 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
5d 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
3d 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
4d 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.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
How does Christianity map to wokeness? Outside of the cheems mindset slave morality.
It’s not the monotheism, or anything resembling belief in an almighty God. No equivalent to the Trinity. No miracles, no message of salvation.
If wokeness has none of the cosmology, mythology, or eschatology, what’s left?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5d ago
Interesting.
I could see US protests operating the same way, but I don’t really have any statistics. @gattsuru gave examples of larger groups which would credibly show up at, or at least contact the organizers of, protests across the country. Even though we’re much larger than the UK, a core of protest enthusiasts could be doing that.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
I think the effort level is fine, though I am left a little confused about where you’re going with it.
But I expect it to devolve into culture war immediately. Would you mind reposting it in the thread?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
Ain’t nothing natural about this feedback. A is taking a trip into weird corners of the psyche even before B starts pulling the rug.
The converse is when people talk about social media as addictive, promoting gambling, and so on. It’s a crazy artificial environment we hooked up in pursuit of…cred. Money. Connection? Weirdness should be the default assumption.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
You’re kind of touching on two questions.
The thing about images is that the map is not the territory. Concerns like pixels—resolution—only sneak in to quantify the limits of that map.
A mathematical construct like the Fourier transform doesn’t have that problem. The transform of a pure sine wave is the Platonic ideal of a pair of points. But you can’t make such a pair out of samples. You’re forced to approximate, which gives you a resolution.
So question 1 is “do we have a map to quantify smell?” The answer is yes, but no one can agree which is best. Here’s a more recent study which has a bunch of cool charts showing the perceptual space. There’s also the classic OChem Smells Chart.
Question 2 is how good the resolution is for any of these models. For sound and sight, we’ve done experiments to identify how small of a difference can be recognized. Presumably, something similar has been tried in the smell literature. In theory, you could use one of the Question 1 schema to choose several components of smell. Say “edibility,” “temperature,” and “irritation.” Then test different substances on each axis to estimate resolution. That’d give you a map of possible, distinguishable smells.
I’m going to be lazy and assume the same is true for taste.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
Nietzsche specifically calls out Judaism as slave morality. Or, uh…
\195. The Jews—a people "born for slavery," as Tacitus and the whole ancient world say of them; "the chosen people among the nations," as they themselves say and believe—the Jews performed the miracle of the inversion of valuations, by means of which life on earth obtained a new and dangerous charm for a couple of millenniums. Their prophets fused into one the expressions "rich," "godless," "wicked," "violent," "sensual," and for the first time coined the word "world" as a term of reproach. In this inversion of valuations (in which is also included the use of the word "poor" as synonymous with "saint" and "friend") the significance of the Jewish people is to be found; it is with THEM that the SLAVE-INSURRECTION IN MORALS commences.
“Slave morality” describes a set of values, not a methodology. So Christianity and Judaism are both perfectly capable of dominating their surroundings. They just do so by convincing people that suffering is moral. This is an incredible competitive advantage against “master” moralities, which lack leverage on the have-nots.
Islam is a good example of how this gets weaponized. The general concept of jihad—struggle—fits slave morality. Fighting the good fight is supposed to be hard. More specifically, martyrdom for eternal rather than temporal reward is textbook slave morality. I’d argue that Western coverage of Islam in the GWoT era actually centers on eroding that moral high ground, mocking its abstract rewards to make them seem base and worldly. 72 virgins, huh?
But I digress. Nietzsche observes that slave morality wins, citing Judaism as well as Christianity. They won using their inverted morals, not in spite of them.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
The laws do have to improve the situation, thanks to jurisprudence about "narrow tailoring" and "compelling public interest." Here's the full exchange in question (pp. 52-56):
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: You've said several times that it's a difficult policy question, a complicated policy question. I think everyone would agree with that.
How does this law help deal with the complicated policy issues?
MS. EVANGELIS: One of the most difficult challenges is getting people the help that they need. And laws like this allow cities to intervene, and they're an important tool in helping incentivize people to accept shelter.
So Ms. Johnson, for example, had said in her deposition -- it's in the Joint Appendix -- that she does not wish to stay at the Gospel Rescue Mission. One of the reasons is because of her dog. She also had other reasons. She doesn't like being around people and -- and so forth. People have all sorts of circumstances. It's very complex. And the individual decisions --
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: How does it help if there are not -- how does it help -- the rule here, the law here, how does it help if there are not enough beds for the number of homeless people in the jurisdiction?
MS. EVANGELIS: So, for Ms. Johnson, she sometimes stays with a friend. So there are other --
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: How about more -- more generally, though?
MS. EVANGELIS: Yes.
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: I guess, if there's a mismatch between the number of beds available in shelters, even including Gospel Rescue, and the number of homeless people, there are going to be a certain number of people who there's nowhere to go?
MS. EVANGELIS: That -- that is a difficult policy question. And we --
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: How does this law deal --
MS. EVANGELIS: Yes.
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: -- help with that policy?
MS. EVANGELIS: So it encourages people to accept alternatives when they come up so that fewer people end up camping. It also -- there is harm in simply camping. Whatever materials people are using when they are living in public spaces without plumbing and infrastructure, there's harm to the whole city and to the whole community, as well as to them.
We know that -- that encampments and these conditions also breed crime and very dangerous conditions. So the City has an interest in protecting everyone, including --
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: Do you think the constitutional rule should be different when the number of beds available in the jurisdiction exceeds the number of homeless people versus the number of homeless people exceeds the number of beds available in shelters?
MS. EVANGELIS: No. That's what we've seen in the Ninth Circuit. We've seen that that is unworkable. There is no way to count what beds are available and who is perhaps willing to take one and who would consider it adequate.
Then the question becomes, are those beds adequate? So, here, Gospel Rescue Mission again --
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: That's a separate issue, I agree.
...
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: I actually have one last question. When you get out of jail if you end up -- what's going to happen then? Aren't -- you still don't have a bed available. So how does this help?
MS. EVANGELIS: So the -- and -- and I want -- I do want to make a point about that -- about the criminal aspect. The trespass law here is only triggered after several civil citations.
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: Right. No.
MS. EVANGELIS: And at that point --
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: If you run through that cycle --
MS. EVANGELIS: Yes.
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: -- and you end up in jail for 30 days, then you get out, I mean, you're not going to be any better off than you were before in finding a bed if there aren't -- going to my earlier question, if there aren't beds available in the jurisdiction, unless you're removed from the jurisdiction or you decide to -- to leave somehow.
MS. EVANGELIS: No. There are services available, and the jurisdiction can put you in touch with services and programs to help you in those circumstances. And for many people, that is a point where they're able to get into treatment. So that intervention actually saves lives.
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: Okay. Thank you.
Kavanaugh is pushing on the Petitioners' insistence that their law helps solve the problem. Obviously, it does help them in many cases. So he pushes on the rock-and-hard-place situation in which the city's preferred intervention is unavailable. As I understand it, this was a big part of the 9th Circuit ruling, since it basically invented a regulatory regime for availability, and no one was happy with it. He touches on the same subject later with Kneedler when they're discussing whether the Court needs to address Robinson at all (p. 112). He doesn't draw conclusions in the transcript, but I can guess how Kavanaugh feels about volunteering the courts to micromanage local policy.
The Petitioners emphasize that their policy should help. The Respondents address edge cases where it won't. Kavanaugh explores that, as did several of the other justices, because this is law and lawyers love edge cases. If he votes to keep the 9th decision and strike down the ordinance, I don't think it'll be driven by his bleeding heart.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
Sorry, I was using it as a generic Eastern Bloc stand-in. Really, any of the smaller countries. I don’t know the legal mechanism, but torrent or vice sites are stereotypically hosted on these more permissive domains. Kind of like how sci-hub.se currently has .ru and .st mirrors.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
Wait, aren’t those both things that happened to Raskolnikov?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5d ago
"access to the financial system writ large" has become so utterly critical to doing anything useful that it immediately has a totalizing effect on what anybody can do
Well, when you put it like that…what’s the alternative?
I met someone, once, who’d been working in Saudi Arabia when her employer switched from paying cash to paying checks. She explained that they used to bring in a giant sack of cash on paydays. Now they could turn it into a bookkeeping problem rather than a logistical one.
These enormous institutions developed by providing a valuable service. People wanted to store their savings. They wanted to distribute promises instead of cash. Eventually they wanted all the records generated automatically, without any humans needing to slow the process down. At what point did they move from a private to a public good?
Because the alternative to private banking, with its private right of refusal and freedom of association, is treating it like we do the roads. A central actor has to step in and say “we know this policy is irrational for any of you as individuals, but we’ve judged the total benefit to be greater.” And that’s not going to happen so long as the central “irrationality” is something unpopular as pornography.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5d ago
wokestupid
Come on, that’s just lazy.
Anyway, I’d argue that colleges still pursue the latter goal. Even for pie-in-the-sky pure science. But I suppose I’m rather biased, seeing as my sister and I both did our Master’s degrees in these kind of labs. There are two media narratives about university research. And neither “breathless futurism” nor “absurd political sinecures” captures the quiet tide of NSF and corporate money.
I don’t fully understand the incentives. Grad students remain cheaper than full-time employees; employing them on tangential research is a popular way to scout talent. It also interfaces into the reputation games of publishing, trendsetting, and attracting new students. Combine all these, and you get institutions which compete to be known for their pure science.
I have no idea what percentage of university research falls under this umbrella. My school probably had fuel for both media narratives somewhere on campus. But it is a lot closer to the ideal of a Research University than you might expect from a random state school.
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.
More options
Context Copy link