wemptronics
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User ID: 95
but are you entirely sure that the changes will be improvements as game writing?
Absolutely not. I'm just pretty sure games haven't perfected process and that there is for improvement by using AI during their creation. No game developer should trust the consumer's wisdom. I would recommend they ignore gamers the most.
do you want to let the AI rewrite your game on the fly, like a GM does, not just write things you can review in advance?
If it does it well because it's powered by the 200 million dollar Unreal Storytelling Engine, yeah, I'd try it out. I don't think we need procedurally generated stuff to have more choice and consequence in a game as mentioned. The best practices reasoning ignores all the limitations, constraints, industry standards, general audience, and on and on. Pressures that can be mitigated by an always on, if not always deferred to, modest writer.*
a world where ten characters have deep dialogue trees and are critical to the story while another hundred characters have deep dialogue trees but are still going to be plot dead-ends after those trees are finally exhausted
Can we not provides clues or even tell the player what they can expect from the 100 'non-essential' characters? Don't many games already do this when they choose to include such content in the experience?
I recommend playing the Half Life 2 Episode 1+2 with Director's Commentary
I don't need to they were clearly an innovator if not a pioneer in "show don't tell" for video games. I'm not saying to take creators, artists, and innovators out of the equation or to cede your storytelling role to a robot. Guard rails are good and necessary in many cases. Based on my experience with LLM (prose, given) and my experience with video games: there's already a role for tapping LLMs and it would be an improvement in many games-- including big budget titles. But I appreciated the perspective!
wemptronics
1d ago
Agreed. Hyphenated name felt bad to repeat, but adding in "Eduardo" there was lazy. There were options: X individual, Mexican national (established above), assailant. I consider it improved now.
ultra generic, has no sense of tone or effect, and lacks any of the idiosyncratic spontaneity of even sloppily put together human content... a lack of broader complexity, meaning that any ‘character development’ it’s adding to a given story isn’t corresponding to a grander vision of what that story aspires to be or is about
That's what I think about many video games! Given that RPGs were never my forte, but I have played enough games. I've even played enough of recent-ish titles.
Take any Bethesda game or probably most other open-world titles. They all have mountains of generic filler called content that doesn't get cut despite being generic filler. The content doesn't get cut, because it needs to be there. Players like wandering into an interaction and they like doing the thing. That's the appeal. Developers can reward players with do-the-thing-get-thing reward and writers reward players to do the thing because they've become invested in some story or consequence behind it. A great game rewards a player with a dopamine did-thing-got-thing and it rewards the player with an engaging story. There are not very many great games and there's only so many opportunities for great writing in a given game.
In Starfield, there's a common loop. Player meets character NPC. Player may have up to 4 distinct interactions with the character. Possibly one or two of those interactions have 2 different variations. The player is provided with a few sentences of backstory in some way, then the player is expected to recognize the shape of a familiar story and fill in the blanks. These storytelling opportunities come a few phases translated to video game format:
- Introduction: "Woah, hey there! I'm Sam, the elderly forgotten veteran who runs the goompiunk shop now ever since my wife passed away. I do miss Marla. I'd love tell you a story about the time in the space war, but no one cares about old Sam anymore. Not since those dastardly Space Pirates showed up 150 meters to the North East at Ugorts Bar. They've been coming around every week to extort me. Last time they smashed my favorite picture of Marla here and..."
- Quest complete: "Thanks stranger. You know whispers Old Sam has an old Vorseork Blaster from the Second Grand War in the back of the shop. I don't think Old Sam will be needing it since you've dealt with those Marituzen thugs at Ugorts Bar."
- Repeat process until story is exhausted. Loop the last dialogue option.
There's nothing in there that can't be improved upon by a writer working with an LLM. If nothing else, this results in the player being provided the opportunity to add depth to a bland and boring A-B experience. The generic shape of the story, where the player is expected to recognize it to fill in the blanks, gets more filling.
Starfield is a bad game, but Starfield had so many of these generic fetch quests, generic storylines, generic dialogues that I don't think I got close to finish it. And hey, I know this developer, I expect some level of generic human slop, but boy did it seem bad. On the other side I've also played most of Baldur's Gate 3. BG3 is a much higher quality game. As I understand it's considered a generational class of game. My generation of this genre would be The Witcher 3 which, as I recall, had relatively rich stories and writing in part. There's still plenty of bland, formulaic, or marginal content that wouldn't be harmed by curated robot slop.
Now I could not be aware of the new fangled indie RPGs true gamers play these days, but I have played enough games to know the writers phone it in no more than a good prompt. That may be due to a workload as is typical for the industry or it might be that video game writers write games for a reason other than greatness. In either case I bet there's a use case for this now. Today! Someone could go find banal interaction in a game, feed a few prompts, and get something that enriches that experience. No question in my mind. AI will not single-handedly create a cohesive BG3 story board and 100 hours of dialogue in one go, but even a free model can help a mediocre writer enrich their 15 minute mini-story side quest #121.
That's a shame they're being shamed. One of my takeaways from GPT-4 was that it was good enough to beat a lot of video game text and dialogue. Filler content, conversation with NPC #987, and side quests? AI can jazz up things budget doesn't allow for. It should no longer be cost prohibitive to develop the 120 filler fetch quests into something slightly more meaningful and engaging. Extra flair, storytelling, or character development where there was barebones effort. Someone needs to weather the criticism, raise the bar, and get paid for it.
wemptronics
1d ago
That domestic violence received all that attention for fundraisers, charity, and politicking while also receiving "non-violent" mitigation cover is indeed maddening. It's easy for me to say that a murderer should serve his sentence before we extradite, deport, and pass him along. It's more difficult to say we can't suspend a guy's sentence of a few weeks to get him out of here while we have him. We could even use that space to jail more domestic violent non-violent domestic abusers!
She's been suspended since April, but still is technically a judge.
The "You Know Who is a felon in office" snark writes itself. Maybe the right school will send the right offer to teach law from house arrest and all can be forgiven.
It's not a glamorous beat, but another CW news follow-up.
Last week Judge Hannah Dugan of Milwaukee County Circuit Court was found guilty of felony obstruction by a jury. This was the judge who assisted an immigrant's attempt to evade arrest by ICE. The Wisconsin Examiner published what looks like excellent coverage of the trial and verdict.
Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, Mexican national, was arrested in March of 2025. Milwaukee ICE cross-referenced his fingerprints where they found a match with a previous 2013 deportation by US Border Patrol. Milwaukee ICE conjured up an administrative warrant and gathered a smorgasbord of FBI, CBP, and other federal agents. They planned to apprehend Flores-Ruiz after his appearance. At the courthouse, with the agents presence known, Judge Dugan and a Judge Cervera approached the agents in the hallway. At the end of this interaction, Judge Cervera left with the agents to go to the chief judge's office. According to the agents and Judge Cervera's testimony that was where they were told to go to hash out the legitimacy of their presence, warrant, and the planned apprehension. According to Dugan's defense, that conversation never occurred, though from the reporting alone I do not know what they offered as an alternative except that Dugan did not personally review the warrant.
Judge Dugan returned to her courtroom where she rearranged the docket to move Flores-Ruiz's case to the top. She told him and his attorney their next hearing could be held via Zoom then she "led Flores-Ruiz and his attorney, Mercedes de la Rosa, to a non-public door to exit" the courtroom. Instead of making an escape, Flores-Ruiz and his attorney stumbled into the public hallway which eventually led to his arrest-- an agent had remained behind with eyes on that exit. It's interesting his attorney did not prevent this navigation error despite having knowledge of building. According to the Examiner she was portrayed as a "naive" stooge by the prosecutors. This suggests to me she sensed a measure of impropriety, if not outright criminal potential as this was ongoing. Judge Cervera, who accompanied the agents in the halls, testified at trial and did not run cover for Dugan.
Jurors were played mute security camera video and asked to decide whether they believe Cervera that Dugan told the agents three times that they needed a judicial warrant, something that didn’t appear to happen in the video. “Judge Cervera is wrong,” said Luczak. “I don’t know if she’s lying, but I could think of some reasons why.” Cervera, the attorney argued, was trying to save herself by throwing Dugan under the bus.
It's safe to assume the water cooler talks have become more awkward in Milwaukee County. Other judges and lawyers testified for the defense. Even a former mayor came out to testify as a character witness.
[Judge] Gramling-Perez reviewed emails on the stand that said “the historic protocols are now shifting quickly,” and explaining that although state and local law enforcement have conducted arrests around the court in the past, those activities were always guided by clear policies or practices which were respected by law enforcement... Prosecutors repeatedly attempted to get Gramling-Perez to say that ICE arrests were allowed in public hallways, per the “key takeaways” that she outlined in her email to Dugan and other judges. Gramling-Perez, however, didn’t budge. When prosecutors showed her images of documents they claimed were part of her presentation, she said she’d never seen them before...
That last sentence doesn't sound great, does it? The merry mix-up argument says policy was confused and the law unclear, but for questions of intent this recording couldn't have helped:
to "buttress their argument prosecutors played courtroom audio that captured Dugan talking with court reporter Joan Butz and saying “down the stairs” as well as Dugan saying, “I’ll do it…I’ll take the heat,” and Butz responding, “I’d rather get in trouble.”
The jury's verdict -- guilty on obstruction but not guilty on misdemeanor concealment -- is arguable. Dugan's lead attorney "told reporters that he was disappointed with the ruling and didn’t understand how the jury could have reached a split verdict since the elements of both charges were virtually the same." A compromise verdict does make sense in the jury sense-making sense. Most average joes aren't going to relish sending a judge to prison especially when the former mayor comes out to vouch for her.
During testimony earlier this week, federal agents told jurors they notified court personnel of their plans to arrest Flores-Ruiz. The agents also said they told court personnel they planned to carry out the arrest in the courthouse hallway once Flores-Ruiz’s hearing had concluded. Prosecutors showed jurors an email that Ashley sent to his colleagues on April 4, about two weeks before the incident that led to Dugan’s legal troubles. That email came after two other ICE arrests at the courthouse earlier that spring. In the email, Ashley said he was gathering more information, but suggested that ICE arrests could likely be prohibited within private courtrooms.
I have doubts that Dugan will end up serving a real sentence in prison. She's a 66 year old judge who the mayor testified for. I suspect they'll work something out even without consideration of an appeal. Who did she risk her freedom for?
Eduardo Flores-Ruiz was scheduled to appear for domestic violence and battery charges. Those charges come from a complaint by an unnamed roommate who texted Flores-Ruiz about loud music in their shared apartment. Flores-Ruiz confronted the roommate about this text and began pummeling him. This victim was punched in the face at least "30 times." The roommate's girlfriend made an attempt to intervene which resulted in a second pummeling. All pummeled out the assailant turned his attention back to the male roommate and began choking him. A third individual, a cousin of the girlfriend, appeared on the scene, avoided a pummeling of his own, and ended the altercation.
Flores-Ruiz reportedly uttered something in the realm of this isn't over before the couple went to the hospital to receive treatment. They filed a report which led to the Mexican national's arrest and now, also, his deportation. I believe these two were present in the Dugan's courtroom on the day in question.
Anyone surprised by the verdict? Not surprised? Is this a signal received for #resistance in the justice system? A clear line drawn on what the public and feds will tolerate. Or, is the lesson a more practical? More quiet, sophisticated acts are required to protect democracy with celebration for a new martyr on the right side of history. ICE agents lingering outside courtrooms does step on a predictable boundary. If the autonomy of a judge's courtroom justifiably extends into the hallways, then where should it end?
wemptronics
7d ago
True. For others, Judge Cummings ordered this extension of 100 days as a punitive remedy for the DHS declaring the consent decree as expired before it had expired. Cummings being the same district judge as above whose order to bond the detainees was rejected by the appeals court. It would need to be a different kind of reasoning. I don't know how these work, but I do know consent decrees are meant to be mutually agreed upon. One would hope this limitation is respected, but, yeah, wouldn't surprise me. I imagine the admin would fight that one.
Only a few months ago Operation Midway Blitz commenced, also known as the Trump Invades Chicago story. There are still ongoing legal disputes as fallout from the operation. Most recently, a federal appeals court decided that a district judge's order to release 600 ICE detainees after one stage of the operation was no bueno. Although the court did reaffirm certain due process requirements. The consent decree that supervises that due process expires in February, so Trump admin may just sit and wait till then.
I was more interested in belatedly sharing an update to another happening during the Trump-Chiraq conflict which was discussed here. Marimar Martinez was shot multiple times by an CBP/ICE agent after her and one other allegedly rammed their vehicle into an CBP (ICE) vehicle. According to the government, she was a known activist participating in a "convoy" that sought to track, annoy, or disrupt ICE operations in Chicago. Media at the time reported government claims that the agent saw a pistol on or nearby Martinez while she approached him in her vehicle. Her lawyers said her legal carry pistol remained in her purse during the incident.* The statement from the Justice Department at the time of the shooting:
After striking the agents’ vehicle, the defendants’ vehicles boxed in the agents’ vehicle, the complaint states. The agent was unable to move his vehicle and exited the car, at which point he fired approximately five shots from his service weapon at Martinez, the complaint states.
Martinez drove off but paramedics discovered her and her vehicle at a repair shop about a mile away. Martinez was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where she received treatment for gunshot wounds, the complaint states.
In November, Martinez (and an Anthony Ruiz with her) had all charges dismissed with prejudice. Seemingly, the case fell apart for a few reasons. For one, the CBP took pictures of the vehicle for evidence after the incident, but then released it back to the agent involved in the shooting. He drove the vehicle back home to Maine where the CBP repaired the vehicle. Defense attorney jiu jitsu on a technicality? Maybe, but if you're going to cite car ramming in an attack, then the cars seems like important evidence. Further, after the incident the cop did the cop thing. He pumped five rounds into a person who allegedly attacked him, then told his buddies about his marksmanship on Signal: "I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys. Read it. 5 shots, 7 holes."
Video footage, possibly bodycam footage, was referenced by the defense attorneys in multiple news reports. This footage remains sealed and non-public even after the dismissal. Crass cop shop talk and accusations of inappropriate evidence collection might not alone lead to charges dismissed if there exists footage that substantially supported the government's story. One would expect further litigation if the footage and other evidence was totally exculpatory. Maybe everyone got away with something here and that no one is dead for it seems a consolation prize. Verdict: no movement on federal law enforcement meathead-unprofessional scale because, despite the above average marksmanship, this does seem rather meathead-y and unprofessional.
Most "low information" consumers know production is inauthentic. They are not bothered by this while they enjoy the 31st season of The Bachelor. Another segment of somewhat higher information consumers knows and considers the production (inauthenticity) doesn't end with the 31st season of The Bachelor. Production reaches into their TikTok feeds and their least favorite political party's national convention. It merges with and invades their hobbies, interests, and relationships. It reaches out and touches them when as their crush posts a new cute Instagram story dancing to some music.
"What is real?" used to be understood as an appropriate question for smoke filled dorm rooms and entertainment. It has never ~been felt more appropriate to ask this question than while facing a screen. We happen to do that a lot. The philosophy major with bloodshot eyes might not be able to understand, but for this segment of consumers this an uncomfortable question with uncertain answers. Production -- theatrics, marketing, controversy -- has taken over the commons. This may not be unprecedented experience, but it is probably unprecedented at scale and presence.
Discernment takes a lot of energy and time. Ain't nobody got time for that. An inaccurate, but simple categorization system is more useful than uncertain consideration. The hack the nerds don't want you to know is to develop and tune heuristics. Fine, when and by how much? Who do I trust to tune if not the cool dudes who see what I can see and are like me? What is a heuristic anyway? If we feel mean we might dub this a Midwit Consumer Demographic. We don't feel mean though, so we say the path of least resistance is the most natural thing in the world. Better to be guarded by overzealous "fake" categorization than to feel duped like some jabroni. Even the most normie consumers share this perspective at times, perhaps as they read the latest Instagram story debunking junk that bamboozled unwitting others.
I don't know if the epistemic rot is worse on an individual level than a hundred years ago, but if a person wanted to host an everything is fake brainworm they've never been more able to find vindication. The algorithm, its production and theatrics, is always on The Feed. We should probably be more concerned if this segment of people didn't increase after growing distrust of institutions and the evolution of brainhacks-- institutions that do frequently earn a degraded reputation. They fuck up, spectacularly so, and it's prudent to be suspicious of actors that profit off of a fuck-up.
I'm sufficiently conditioned to tolerate a fake mistake technique or the ol' "accidental" release of a trailer. Leveraging an unplanned mistake is the role of PR, so you can't blame them for that. The same types of people, if not the very same ones, do often enough somehow, someway, end up in yet another racist race swap controversy discourse for the latest Disney publicity campaign. While there is a "look in the mirror" defense of these kinds of tactics I don't find them convincing. It's not conspiracy, it's incentives all the way down-- "accident" or not. I'll still cover my bases: the schizos are always right.
I found the NSS a mixed bag. Some parts I appreciated and agreed with. It's good some of these statements are on the record as considerations of strategy. A great deal of the rest seems incomplete or amateur in typical Trumpian fashion. An intent of simplicity stated up front by necessity, because there's no real plan, no diligence-- certainly no 4D chess.
Western-hemispheric control, a revitalizing of the Monroe Doctrine.
What is the vision here? The US survived for the duration of the Cold War with its home turf contested. Is the idea Europe falls to the wolves and we hope to make Brazil the new Germany of South America? America turn the meme of BRICS into a reality by investing in it? Explaining it as a ratchet in the scare Europe straight toolbox would be neat, but I'm not sure I believe it.
Bullying Venezuela is great and all, but who cares about Venezuela? We're not retreating from the Pacific, we're just focusing on our own hemisphere. Okay, for what? What will our efforts and focus achieve? A thing to do because we decided not to do the other thing.
wemptronics
30d ago
Technical issues aside, I've had the thought the place would benefit from some limited grass roots marketing. Once or twice a year mods could pick a week and suggest holding a goodpost for it. When it hits everyone all at once breaks the don't talk about Fight Club rule:
Finally, in the interest of the health of this community, we ask that you do not post links to this community on other high-participation platforms. They are invitations for users unfamiliar with our norms to come here and (often angrily) make posts that break our rules. Exceptions may be made for communities specifically designed for compatible content, but these will be examined by the moderators on a case by case basis. If in doubt, please ask first by messaging the moderators.
For 5-7 days people are encouraged to blast links into the ether. Twitter, Substack, reddit, or wherever. This results in an influx which results in a period of managed headache. Downsides are this might result in more attacks, unwanted attention, or permanent damage to a fragile ecological system.
Back in March I read many of the accounts in the 7 October Parliamentary Commission Report which attempted to document all recorded attacks of the day. Based on that, a common role for female IDF women kidnapped or killed on October 7th were in listening or surveillance outposts along the border. There were at least a couple instances of women (and men, too) holing up in a command post or signals room while others put up resistance waiting for relief. I got the vibe that the border gals weren't really expected to engage in combat if it could be avoided. Of those that had a chance to react they were placed in last stand territory. They were not, generally, put out to defend the wire.
The "socially conservative" countries also did the things the reactionaries criticize, so I don't think it soothes anxieties around collapse. These places fell to the same pressures: educate women, push them into the workforce, compete globally, and acquire wealth. Afghanistan has a declining TFR, but not at a rate that will bother the Taliban anytime soon.
I don't think you need to argue societal collapse to see room for improvement. Yes, there is a mean spirited fantasy of the shitpostariat that goes full bore into denigration. Sexless reactionaries are resentful and as a result they don't value women very much, or express as much. The edgy memes were evolved in a period where anything not-feminist -- whatever it meant on a given day -- could be summarily discarded as misogynist. Full stop, end of story. How dare you? Which means some part of the reaction here can be chalked up to unfortunate, if predictable consequences.
At the very least it seems important to investigate radical changes to our society with an appetite for rigor. Improvements may not lie in RETVRN, but they may not lie in our understanding of concepts like "gender role" as wedded to things like second-wave feminism. Judith Butler shouldn't get the last say on how women think of themselves in our world. That's madness! Instead, women should listen to me. Barring that, we should want to look for alternatives or improvements. Why couldn't the next revolution be more traditional without fulfilling a young adult dystopian fiction? What if we can't have whatever makes you happyism without the cost of anxiety disorders, unhappiness, and civilization grinding to a halt?
We probably will avoid that last bit, but "traditional gender roles" shouldn't be off the table for consideration as a Scarlet Letter. That is also not the conclusion of this essay/book review by Ginevra Davis. She is more concerned with biological constraints she feels were imposed on her as a woman, and how that interacts with ideals of traditional feminism. I found her conclusions disagreeable, limited, pessimistic, and a little sad, but this thread made me think of it so I'm plugging it as a different take of being a woman.
One common conservative value, which most people don't outwardly object to though fewer find actionable, is holding motherhood as (if not the "highest and most virtuous") a significant, fulfilling achievement. Most progressives with families value motherhood, but of young women -- who are becoming more progressive with time -- this is a conservative coded value. Society relies on the fact cool, progressive girls ignore their politics, which they consider more important in more key areas than the past, and discover a natural desire for kids. At best, this seems suboptimal and unnecessary.
If we can effect a change in our values we might be able to leverage values into stuff. If it's all structural nothing-we-can-do forces, then the future is looking grim indeed. Baron Trump might put it off, but eventually he'll have to do the annual insemination tour to keep tax dollars flowing. I do hope this is our Malthusianism, and somehow we go back to something more normal and satisfactory in the future. Oh, and personally, I appreciate a woman who can read a book. You can trust her with so much more!
Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard Frank. Thorough research from Both Sides helps the reader better understand the decision to drop The Bomb. It builds on scaffolding that allows the reader to judge how justified the decision was in terms of what relevant actors did know, what they didn't, and some of what they should have. It is a darn convincing defense.
I returned to sci-fi while traveling and on vacation recently. First was Rendevous with Rama which was a quick read and enjoyable. The plot is currently in the news. An object flies into into the solar system hurtling towards the Sun. Except in the book this is a massive 50km x 20km not-comet. The reader goes along with the only team available to check it out.
The second was The Mote in God's Eye which could have cut a bunch. Maybe I am a curmudgeon or I take for granted sci-fi was once new and unrefined. The time it spent thinking about aliens was nice. It has the old school sci-fi autistic charm where the authors forget to include a characters arc then suddenly remember to throw something in. It wasn't a slog, but could've been better.
The honorable fistfight is best suited for an environment like school. It includes a level of trust and familiarity. There is some authority figure nearby who can keep things from getting out of hand. Most of this is not replicated in the real world. Most physical altercations occur between strangers in a bar, a traffic dispute, or a misunderstanding in the street. Sometimes in those places, like a bar, there's a mutual understanding, but more often there is not.
Over expansive definitions of self defense that effectively make any form of physical violence a justification for homicide will make this worse, not better.
What part of it do you consider expansive now?
The rare possibility of physical violence is a good thing for social regulation.
Exactly. Like, if you try to kick my ass because you missed a turn, you might wind up dead. When I don't know anything about you except you are incapable of regulating yourself after you've fucked up a traffic signal, there's not even a partial desire to test my strength or your honor. I don't trust you. The people committing 4 million simple batteries a year don't deserve the benefit of the doubt from me.
Let me kick your ass a little, it'll be good for ya might be convincing from a Certified Mottezan. I suspect you're not going to break my ribs if you've managed to knock me out. The real world is not made up of Mottezans. In my experience, people that escalate petty disputes to physical confrontation are exactly the kind of people you cannot trust to regulate themselves or use appropriate judgment.
Instead we've replaced traditional ethics with a feminized world where all physical contact is treated as a deadly threat, where boundaries are set such that all fighting is illegal and both morally and physically dangerous because of that boundary. We're raising our boys to act like scared old women.
We're long past the point where you can or should trust a stranger to know when you're beat-- if such a world ever did really exist. The situations where a fistfight is good for you are rather limited. The situations where encouraging fistfights ends up as a good thing for society even more limited. Are fistfights more justifiable in some cases of lethal self-defense? Sure, you shouldn't whip out a pistol when Jack, your roommate in college, finds out you've been sleeping with his girlfriend. How many of those circumstances actually occur in one's life? What kind of demographics most frequently escalate fistfights to homicide?
I don't think boys should be expelled from school for getting into a fistfight. Zero tolerance policies are dumb. Encouraging physical violence is not going to improve our society, at least not in any way that a well-armed society can't.
I don't feel like reading that substack, because it seems pretty crazy. Square that framing with CNN's framing this morning. Democrats are committed they are in lock-step they are staring Trump down to get what they want. Which is credit for standing up to Trump.
Democrats are maintaining fierce unity publicly and privately, with lawmakers and senior aides telling CNN that they are prepared to stick with the party’s strategy for the near future.
I trust the more official mouthpiece of the party than the anxious doomsaying of a substacker. If this is the dissolution of Congress, then it is an abdication not an outright power grab. But, maybe your writers address that.
The maximum if I recall which is the nastier end of the example making stick. We don't jail politicians for lying to voters, but he did stick to denial and defiance until there there was nothing left. He probably would have gotten a softer touch had he bowed out with any amount of grace or contrition. In the end he serves 4 or 5 months? If he goes away forever and moves on it seems fine. I don't know if he has that in him.
The guy called someone else a RINO! Absolute mad lad.
Sink or swim? If or when legislators spit them back up, then an additional decision can be made whether to cram the nominee down their throat.
He commuted George Santos's sentence, for the stated reason that Santos always voted Republican, which is a pretty strong method, but is he doing anything to prove his reliability to non-criminal members of the party?
Trump was charmed by his saucy, sassy gumption and fashionable friends. Seriously, the guy could be cast as The Gay Friend in any Hollywood romcom ever made. Straight out of Sex in the City.
Santos “was somewhat of a ‘rogue,’ but there are many rogues throughout our Country that aren’t forced to serve seven years in prison,” Trump wrote
He showed initiative, he showed gumption. What's forgiveness for a little fraud? Another theory: Santos was doing very poorly in prison, or presented himself as such, and Trump took pity on him after an advocate got the president's ear. Santos is reprehensible to me and I wouldn't believe a lick of what he says, but mercy can be a demonstration of power.
Determining who the real hypocrites are is an invitation to the Seventh Circle of Hell. Contextual bickering could occur, but the main difference between Jay Jones and Ingrassia I see is:
After the texts came to light, several Republican senators said they would not support his nomination. They included some of the most conservative and stalwart Trump allies in the Senate.
I assume Ingrassia can be sidelined and replaced with ease. He might even have enemies or competitors with reasons to want that. Dems had no such out with Jay Jones. So, yes, I think it's fair to say Democrats are the hypocrites™ here. The respectability standards, as ever, are fluid and contingent. That doesn't mean they aren't real or are permanently unilateral. I do think the Young Republicans got offered as an unnecessary sacrifice to the altar of respectability. Vance was correct about that.
Platner has the support of people who cheered Charlie Kirk's death and faces off against the establishment. They would be happy to see him drop out. At least one of his fellow primary challengers has demanded such. People still go on about how Bernie had the election rigged against him. That may be what Dem operatives are thinking anyway. It does appear less than ideal some reddit communist has garnered a groundswell of support and a real campaign.
What is not believable is that Platner didn't have knowledge of the lineage of his cool skull tattoo. A veteran marine of multiple combat deployments, who then served as a military contractor -- one that, according to his now former campaign aide, "prides himself on his extensive knowledge of military history" -- certainly knows what kind of tattoo he wears on his chest. Weirder things have happened, but if I could bet money against his total ignorance of the design I would bet a good deal. I don't know why he didn't just say he was inspired by any number of killing-is-rad coded skulls as a young marine, and that the Croatian skinhead who gave him the tattoo only had one design to pick from.
questionable reddit posts "suggested people concerned about being raped shouldn’t be inebriated around people they don’t feel comfortable with."
Now that's just good advice.
It looks like that case laid the groundwork here. It was a 5-4 decision. Roberts I am less sure of, but Kavanaugh concurred in part:
the authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future. But Alabama did not raise that temporal argument in this Court, and I therefore would not consider it at this time.
"Hint hint", says Kavanaugh, "what a shame." In the same year as Allen v. Milligan, the "temporal argument" gets applied SFFA vs. Harvard. He brings it up in oral arguments for LA vs. Callais. There might be other details in how each state framed their cases that dissuaded Roberts, or other tactical considerations. I briefly looked through the history of this one after netstack asked a question one comment below.
I find the temporal argument agreeable, but am less sure what it is based on. Times up! I guess lots of talk was had in the 60-70s about many of the positive discrimination stuff being limited and we just kind of forgot about those?
Wow. Yeah, the majority said Purcell! The stay preserved the map for the election. Jackson dissented and wrote it's not applicable there's totally enough time for remediation.
"Purcell has no role to play here. There is little risk of voter confusion from a new map being imposed this far out... I would have let the District Court’s remedial process run its course before considering whether our emergency intervention was warranted."
The District Court has not yet selected a remedial map, and, were it not for this Court’s intervention, it may have selected a map that complies with both §2 and the Equal Protection Clause. I would have waited until after the remedial process concluded (when it would have been clearer if the intervenors’ faced irreparable harm) to consider their arguments.
I have no idea if the Purcell time crunch was real or a pretext.
Why did the rest of the court want a stay? Was it going to get mooted if the legislature workshopped an alternative to their 2024 map?
LA draws one the district court accepts, or the district court imposes one. If you consider a narrow "did LA have good reason to use race here" preferable from a turn into 2025 "Whether the State’s intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution" then punting it back to district court is a way to avoid being in those oral arguments last week with the VRA coming into view.
Is that reasonable?
My only request is that we build a giant dedicated building for it
An open air amphitheater perhaps? One in which we can host bloodsports that better suit the brutal nature of politics in form and function. Besides aesthetics weather adds a new X factor. The arena would also compliment the return of state-sanctioned duels that keeps the massive lower house orderly. We can call it the Polisseum.
wemptronics
2mo ago
The Constitution does prescribe equal protection.
Why doesn't this provide equal protection from the state drawing lines on a map every few years with the intent of limiting the impact of my vote/representation based on my race?
Did The Motte talk about the latest set of oral arguments at SCOTUS for Louisiana vs. Callais? The case is a continuation of the NAACP LDF's efforts to turn this big red blob of a congressional district that Louisiana created into a slightly longer contiguous red blob, but with new lines and a new congressional district. If SCOTUS was to affirm the district court's ruling, then the LDF will have won an additional majority black district in a state that is 33% black. For the sake of context, numbers I find put the state at 30% black in 1990, so this is a relatively stable share.
The decision to upend Louisiana's proposed 2022 map, it was be argued, is what Federal law requires. Section 2 of the VRA has been amended, extended, and litigated on several occasions since the 1965. In 1986, SCOTUS described the Gingles test to determine whether a majority-minority district should be created. I'm sure there are pages of nuance before and betwixt each:
- The racial or language minority group "sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district";
- The minority group is "politically cohesive" (meaning its members tend to vote similarly); and
- The "majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it ... usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate.
According to the NAACP, when the LDF received their favorable decision against the state in 2024, a group of "self-described 'non-African American [Louisiana] voters'" challenged this on the basis of 14th and 15th amendment issues. SCOTUS first heard the case in March of this year, but decided to schedule reargument (somewhat uncommon) which occurred last week. (PDF) The nature of the questions now in play led to a flurry of articles concerned that "justices could upend decades of court decisions holding that states may — and sometimes must — use race-conscious redistricting to protect the voting power of minorities." Other outlets like The Federalist take a Buzzfeed-esque dunk list approach to reporting the case.
My understanding is nobody knows just what kind of scope in ruling we should expect, but that the questions to follow suggest something broader than a Yes/No to a district map. There are all kinds of tidbits worth debating. There's my Big Questions which SCOTUS will not answer like: by how much does the fact my US representative is a black man, whose race I do not share, mean he doesn't represent me? It seems every minority whose vote doesn't represent their A) race and B) party can be considered un(der)represented, even if Congress hasn't provided a statute or adopted a different system of representation to resolve this.
At the time the VRA was written the demographics were very different to today's. Kavanaugh asked Nelson, who was arguing for the LDF, whether there should be a time limit on court ordered, law enforced racial voting maps. He receives a frank reply that is basically "lol, never." It's statute it doesn't just go away unless Congress changes it. That makes sense, but seems to force the hand of a potential majority that has questions on how this all works out.
Justice Jackson covers the more popular argument I see in the wild. She says,
"[Louisiana is] not departing. Their map looks fine, but because of all of these race-based [economic] effects, because of the history of Jim Crow, which I appreciate happened a long time ago, but I'm positing and Gingles allows for us to see where those effects are still occurring."
To her credit, she only mentions the word disparity once in arguments. This is the argument that until blacks disperse themselves geographically as other minorities have, or achieve similar outcomes to something, then states are required to continue to grant them majority-minority districts.
If you transported my liberal sensibilities to 1965 you'd probably convince me with ease that this little unconstitutional carve out was justified and workable. Not so much these days. I don't look forward to a total upending of the VRA house of cards. Sounds messy, but this is the consequence of previous pragmatisms of SCOTUS. The pragmatist leverage left, for me, is the fact gerrymandering is cynical by its nature. If you leave it to states without limitation, then they will discriminate by race for the very reason Justice Jackson says: blacks vote Democrat reliably enough to target. Which means we would still have to answer constitutional questions about lines on a map.
No it wouldn't come up with that from scratch. That sounds like the magic sauce. The intersection of absurdist yet earnest charming humor, games are meant to be fun mindset, and creative freedom. LLMs can imitate the style. As a rule I try not to share LLM outputs, because it isn't interesting, but try variations of this prompt:
I added a word here or there, including an attempt with "nihilistic" added to iconic. Only one of them was awful-awful. Claude even made me smile with one bit. It may have been a real bit, who knows? You could work on the prompt and continue to pay a comedian to work the material to end up with 5x Lazlow radio segments. Or, consider this recent viral Twitter post on output allegedly spawned from a single prompt. But I'm devolving us down to is AI good which has been done to death.
I suspect LLM's are already quite capable to assist in weak areas (as I see them) of mediocrity in video games that require text. If a human is already doing things at a surface level, like the elderly veteran trope, then AI can provide more styled meat or ideas for the meal.
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