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Texas is freedom land

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joined 2022 September 05 17:27:40 UTC 

				
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Texas is freedom land

				
				
				

				

					6 followers  

					follows 3 users  

					joined 2022 September 05 17:27:40 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 647


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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	 Bump Top Bottom New Old Controversial Comments
	



		

	






	

		
		

		
		
	

	

  







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sam Altman! I know that name!


I suppose I don’t know what you expected. When the government decides to explore a technology, one of the first steps is always some sort of consortium.


Thing is, that’s also perfectly compatible with the doomers. The paperclipper doesn’t care if it was given marching orders by a corporation or by the President, so long as the order involves paperclips. Making it more banal and routine just raises the number of opportunities!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don’t either.


If you expected this, don’t act so sore when it happens.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Transnational Thursday for April 25, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Wikipedia suggests that, along with Russia, they’re the main suppliers for junta forces. Chinese support for rebel factions was the exception rather than the rule.


On the other hand, China has been pulling Myanmar into Belt and Road since before the coup.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				How College Broke the Labor Market
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Would you mind adding a submission statement or otherwise starting the discussion?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
@self_made_human goes into more depth than I would, but his general point is sound: people say a bunch of eye-watering awful shit in the comments, and it’s not always worth policing. The further down in a conversation we go, the more likely that there’s context which we missed. Especially when sarcasm or hypotheticals are involved.


We’ve got at least one user who will report anything and everything shorter than two sentences as low-effort. Doesn’t matter if it’s five levels down in a conversation, or if the parent asked a yes/no question. That’s the rule which gets the most leniency based on depth, since there are lots of good reasons to have a short answer.


boo-outgroup or antagonism…well, it’s a lot harder to find an excuse for that. I’d have modded this particular one wherever it showed up. But I suspect I’ve already earned a reputation as a party pooper.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Never fear, the government is here!
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


"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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
…there is one?


About 4 million Americans are on parole or probation, compared to something like 1 million in prison and another million in jail. They’re being monitored specifically to reduce the chance of recidivism. In the meantime, sure, they still get to ride your subway.


What’s your threshold for “manifestly incapable,” anyway? How should we decide when someone has crossed the line and gets (permanent?) exile instead of prison? I think it looks a lot like sentencing guidelines, probation, counseling, all these other interventions we already do—except at the last resort we boot them to the Montana Gulag instead of the chair.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Man, I dunno what happened here, but chill out.


One day ban.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Banning obscenity and vice are two very popular pastimes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I was sure the “lacking value” argument was specifically addressed in a U.S. Supreme Court case. Is this taken from the pixiv announcement?


Edit: it is, but in exactly the opposite way that I thought. Miller v CA.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Ken state




The Barbie movie has left a lasting impression on our cultural consciousness.


In all seriousness, I don’t think protests have to have direct efficacy. The important thing is when people in power think about aiding Palestine/Israel, they think “people care enough about this to push the envelope of speech.” It’s literally about sending the message.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That’s different than Nietzsche's use of the term. “Slave morality” lionizes the underdog, but it doesn’t have to be passive at all.




“Enlightenment” causes revolt, for the slave desires the unconditioned, he understands nothing but the tyrannous, even in morals, he loves as he hates, without NUANCE, to the very depths, to the point of pain, to the point of sickness—his many HIDDEN sufferings make him revolt against the noble taste which seems to DENY suffering. The skepticism with regard to suffering, fundamentally only an attitude of aristocratic morality, was not the least of the causes, also, of the last great slave-insurrection which began with the French Revolution.




Beyond Good and Evil, III.46


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Texas HB 1181 was passed near-unanimously. It contained two requirements for porn sites: age verification, and a surgeon-general style warning. Nothing about payments.


There’s clearly some interest in suppressing pornography. While I can’t say whether they provided MasterCard or Visa with the impetus, I expect they would endorse payment processors’ restrictions.