toadworrier
No bio...
User ID: 1151
toadworrier
9mo ago
Indeed.
But having once had a female head of state is not a signal of that. It's a signal of jack shit.
toadworrier
9mo ago
And if they don't publicize it, it doesn't matter.
Why not?
toadworrier
9mo ago
I think Australia is a very unusual case, because for us, until Christmas '21, Covid suppression actually worked. This was because we closed the borders fast enough to keep the numbers at a level where test & trace was enough. Although we became lockdown poster-child, we were actually far more open for most of the time because there was simply no Covid around to suppress.
Then came the Delta wave, which we might or might not have got on top of with lockdowns and travel restirctions. But what we definiately did do was ruin Christmas, especially for those of us travelling to Queensland. And at just that time, Omnicron comes along knocking both Delta and Covid suppression sixes-at-will. The whole country just gave up, except for some idiots at the Saturday Paper who thought that politicians overruling public health bureaucrats was "the tail wagging the dog".
In other words, by luck or good management, Australians -- including the decision makers -- supported lockdowns when they worked and gave up on them when they stopped working. In other countries, the lockdowns never worked, but were still enforced (with public support) for at least as long as in Australia.
toadworrier
10mo ago
Suppose there were bands of brown-shirted (and presumably red hatted) thugs who were reputed to go around murdering enemies of the president. Obviously already illegal, no need for a new law.
Suppose members of the FBI etc occasionally met with the leadership of these gangs and there are transcripts saying how the feds mentioned that so-and-so is not a nice guy (but never actually asking for a hit of course). Then suppose there's a pattern of so-and-so's getting murdered by "unknown assailants".
Do you seriously think it would be unconstitutional for Congress to pass a law banning those meetings?
toadworrier
10mo ago
Elitism over issues like crime is often a way to signal leftist ideals to boost one's social status, e.g. saying that crime is bad because of racism.
Nah, the narrative is more often about guns.
Government speech is a whole explicit area of US jurisprudence which is probably over both our heads.
But however you categorise, an injunction preventing government agents from merely communicating with persons is a pretty big deal. But IMHO the judge go this right. The injunction is mostly a list of prohibitions like
[Youse fuckers are enjoined from]:
emailing, calling, sending letters, texting, or engaging in any communication of any kind with social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech;
My emphasis. So he is allowing the Government to communicate, but just not for the constitutionally forbidden purpose. Sounds reasonable.
toadworrier
10mo ago
The word appears twice in the poem:
I don't know if that's what you consider a heavy Australian accent. The speaker is the real deal, though not what I would call ocker. His voice is well matched to the poem.
toadworrier
11mo ago
Trump and his "body man" Waltine Nauta moved dozens of boxes containing records and documents (presumably including the classified documents at issue in this case)
And Nauta is being charged for conspiracy, because the invariant is always that the butler did it.
toadworrier
11mo ago
It's good for the soul.
toadworrier
11mo ago
the BRICS New Development Bank (Egypt, Zimbabwe and Saudi Arabi will probably join as well).
So after all those betl-and-road-initiative projects failed, the Chinese want to lose more money and influence?
toadworrier
11mo ago
In Australia this is normal. Pale-skinned aboriginals are commonplace and to be found on both sides of politics. This is not really like Elizabeth Warren style fakery.
toadworrier
1yr ago
Where have you encountered it outside of Ms. Harrington's work?
I've seen it here, and I feel the ethos in a lot of the more intellectual parts of the New Right. As far as I can tell, they are making are logical / epistemological case similar to Harrington. I.e. we are judging the past by present standards, this logic extends over as many domains as you care to name. But really Harrington is the only one I can clearly point to because she is the most honest and explicit. Which is why I like her.
I do find it interesting that this stance is left-coded.
The Harrington and the other tradfems are hard to place on the left-right axis. But insofar as they are "trad", their arguments are more like the post-liberal right than the left.
That said, the illiberal left has a similar thing going on. They want to deny the moral standing of the present.
toadworrier
1yr ago
Why biological sex and not 'gender identity' matters for norms, culture and language
I hope you are also communicating with him about what matters for his child.
toadworrier
1yr ago
Calvin's Geneva and Yankee Boston
These are two notorious theocracies. They had the advantage that they were also bearers of new ideas that were on the up. But those ideas only came to be of importance in the context of a healthier, non-theocratic society.
toadworrier
1yr ago
I came back to the country a few years ago to find Labor and Liberal in some tedious stouche that I can't even remember; except I was astonished to find that Derren Hinch and Pauline Hanson were acting like the only grownups in the room.
I thought that was just one weird freak of probability never to happen again, but now I am not so sure. The ONP is starting to look smarter than everyone else, if only because Pauline is merely stupid while the rest of the polity is actively anti-intelligent.
toadworrier
1yr ago
Orthogonality Thesis: This is the statement that the ability of an agent to achieve goals in the world is largely separate from the actual goals it has.
This assumes that intelligent agents have goals that are more fundamental than value, which is the opposite of how every other intelligent or quasi intelligent system behaves. It's probably also impossible, in order to be smart -- calculate out all those possible paths to your goal -- you need value judgements of what rabbit tracks to chase.
This is with EY is wrong to assume that as soon as a device gets smart enough, all the "alignment" work from dumber devices will be wasted. That only makes sense that what is conserved is a goal, and now it has more sneaky ways of getting to that goal. But you'd have to go out of your way to design a thing like that.
toadworrier
1yr ago
I think we are talking about the kind of undergrad exam where you have you have to evaluate a bunch of fairly difficult but still turn-the-crank type integrals and also some fairly easy ODEs.
toadworrier
1yr ago
Yes, how is it that the US has fixed interest loans as the norm? Is there some sort if regulation enforcing it?
Here in Australia, most people get variable rate. And even a "fixed" rate is fixed only for a small number of years.
toadworrier
1yr ago
It's just a guess. So yes, idle theory.
toadworrier
1yr ago
I don't know whether or not they scan Kindle's actively for sideloaded stuff. But there is probably specific pressure to go after you.
I think in the case above, Amazon wasn't acting out of a general programme to enforce copyright, they were reacting to someone with laywer who was upset about a particular e-Book that they had actively distributed.
toadworrier
5mo ago
police force that’s often taken a less-than-fully-zealous approach to organized crime.
This bit does sound like a historical holdover, since certain respectable political parties both north and south of the border have friends in interesting places.
toadworrier
9mo ago
you better aim to be really sick
But not the sort of really sick where you need a scan to find out that your illness is life threatening.
I have a cousin who only found out about that when she flew back to her 3rd world homeland to get treatment.
toadworrier
9mo ago
OK so the law against conspiracy to murder is constitutional because murder is not lawful.
Whereas a law against conspiracy to ostracise is not, because it burdens the rights of those who are taking orders about whom to ostracise. How exactly does it do this?
It's one thing to say that ostracism itself is legal (which it is), or even protected by the 1st Amendment (which it isn't), but it's another thing to say that the conspiracy is protected.
toadworrier
9mo ago
Sounds like a great Eighth Amendment test case. With a dash of the First for flavour.
The supreme leadership probably thought they were supporting a bioweapons research program and conning the Americans into helping. Turned out they were sort of right, just not in the way they expected.
More options
Context Copy link