zataomm
1yr ago
who caused the Great Chinese Famine
PRC, Mao in particular.
Well that is a misleading answer.
Mao had its flaws but the general direction of china made sense, they suffered from the century of humiliation, something that isn't taught in schools because of racism.
For anyone stumbling upon this thread and not sure what to believe, this is a case where the conventional wisdom is correct, Mao was a terrible leader and his misguided policies were responsible for the deaths of 30 million people from 1960-1962. You can say it was ignorance, not malice, that caused Mao's error, but the fact is that if he didn't know any better it is because he didn't want to know any better.
zataomm
8mo ago
What I find infuriating about this discussion is how often the term "fake electors" is used. If the electors were "fake" and the electors commited "fraud", can anyone provide me with a count of how many of the fake electors' votes were mistakenly recorded in the Senate? Oh, none? Amazing! Well, what kind of detective work went into distinguishing the fake votes from the real votes? Was the Secret Service called in for their expertise in detecting counterfeit money?
Obviously the accurate term should be "contingent electors", in the sense that these would have been the correct electors if Trump prevailed in his various lawsuits. It's easy to imagine that in the case where he was able to establish fraud and the court determined that he had won the election, they wouldn't want the process to get held up by the need to quickly get some electors together to cast their votes and mail them to Washington, DC. The Georgia "fake slate" is dated December 14, so there would not have been much time to get these votes recorded if they had had to wait for all litigation to be resolved.
There's such egregious question-begging going on by calling them "fake electors", it makes me crazy how little pushback I have seen regarding this term.
The Washington Post reports: Florida schools drop AP Psychology after state says it violates the law, a good example of the media getting as close to lying as you can get while still remaining in not-quite-lying territory.
As far as I know, this all started last Thursday, when the College Board issued a statement regarding its AP Psychology course and Florida law. In this statement, the College Board wrote: "The state has said districts are free to teach AP Psychology only if it excludes any mention of [content on sexual orientation and gender identity]."
Citation (desperately) needed! Contrary to what the College Board says, I have been unable to find any source on the internet prior to the College Board's statement corroborating their claim about what the Florida department of education requires. The Washington Post claims that the statement was based on a "conference call" between the board of education and school superintendents, but again, I have found no stories where the reporter interviews someone involved in the call in order to confirm the College Board's characterization of what was said.
On the contrary, on Friday, the day after the College Board published its statement, the director of the Florida Department of Education wrote a letter to the school superintendants, clarifying that
In fact, the Department believes that AP Psychology can be taught in its entirety in a manner that is age and developmentally appropriate and the course remains listed in our course catalog
As far as I know, this letter is the only official statement from the Florida Department of Education regarding the application of the Parental Rights in Education ("Don't Say Gay") law to the teaching of AP Psychology. And yet a google search of "ap psychology Florida" returns headline after headline of major news outlets reporting the College Board's interpretation of this law as if Florida had gone out and "banned" the teaching of AP Psychology in its schools.
Without knowing anything about the conference call (because no reporter bothered to check), I have to caveat that maybe Florida did suggest that some parts of AP Psychology could not be taught, only to backtrack after being called out by the College Board. But for me, it seems like a dishonest characterization of the law intended to make Florida and DeSantis look bad.
EDIT:
Okay, having done a bit more research by going back to read the College Board's previous statements on this matter, I have to admit that my characterization was mistaken. In particular, in their June statement on the AP Psychology course, they reference correspondence from the Florida Department of Education Office of Articulation (what a name!), asking the College Board to affirm that their AP Psychology course conforms to the new Florida law. Still not a "ban," but definitely the College Board is not engaged in the unprovoked attack on Florida that I was imagining. There was definitely some provocation.
I do still think this is more about grandstanding by the College Board than a straightforward application of the law, but I was wrong in thinking that the College Board was one-sidedly attacking the Florida Department of Education.
zataomm
3mo ago
Sorry to be graphic, but as a logistical matter, it's very hard to imagine how Trump could have inserted his penis into her vagina while she was both 1. standing up and 2. actively resisting him. In this scenario as written, he has his hand with fingers in a V-shape at her crotch, surrounding her vagina, and then he sort of squats down while maintaining pressure against her crotch, in order to thrust upward with his penis through his open fingers. At the same time, he is supposed to be pinning her against the wall with his shoulder. The shoulder of the same hand or of the other hand? At one point he grabbed both her arms and pinned her against the wall, but then he is using his hands to undress himself and putting one hand between her legs. Is she still resisting at this moment or not?
As written, the whole thing just seems impossible, it could have happened if she "gave up" at some point, but it could not have happened in the way she describes.
zataomm
4mo ago
I’ve heard it said that Republicans are getting ready to nominate the only person who can lose to Biden, and Democrats are getting ready to nominate the only person who can lose to Trump. Obviously, a bit overstated, but it feels true. Sensible people in both parties would love to get away from their party's likely presidential candidate, but the Republican experience over the last seven years basically proves that it’s hard to do in the real world.
But yeah, it’s nice to see someone acknowledge that if there were any responsible adults involved, both parties would be taking seriously the major deficiencies in their candidates, rather than just spending their time and energy trying to make the other party’s candidate look worse.
zataomm
4mo ago
Haven't heard this one before. Excellent.
Announcer: Surely one death by drowning is one too many?
Mitchell: That's a ridiculous thing to say.
"Everyone has to die, and in a balanced, fair, and democratic society, some of them should drown."
zataomm
1yr ago
In any legal system, the ability to effectively apply laws hinges on our capacity to establish clear definitions for the concepts and situations they govern. If someone is to be prosecuted for murder, it's necessary to define what constitutes "murder" - this is referred to as the "elements" of the crime. Quickly googling, in murder, we have: 1. Criminal Act (killing a human), 2. Criminal Intent (purposely, knowingly), 3. Harm (death).
To take another case, if a law declares that certain considerations apply to "married" people, criteria must be set to determine under what conditions two (or more?) people can be considered 'married'.
However, the boring process of defining and categorizing has been thrown into turmoil as we deal with gender identity. I recently encountered an article by a trans writer who strongly objected to the idea that "other people" should be able to "decide" whether a person who self-identifies as trans is "really" trans. The author seemed to believe that denying someone's self-identified gender is offensive in a metaphysical sense, as it amounts to denying the existence of the trans person.
It's fine to not want trans people to feel wrongly identified, but this issue becomes legally significant when there are laws that apply differently to "men" and "women." Concretely, a person convicted of murder may be sent to a different prison, depending on whether that person is categorized as a "man" or a "woman". In these situations, clear definitions and categorizations become necessary to uphold the law. I don't think it serves anyone's interest to simply apply the slogan "trans women are women" in such a case; it seems a perfectly reasonable compromise to apply a hierarchy of cases. An example hierarchy might be:
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anyone who self-identifies as a woman can be referred to as "she"
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almost anyone who self-idenfifies as a woman can use the ladies' restroom
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a basic evaluation should be applied to a self-identified woman before she is allowed to play on a woman's sports team
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a strict evaluation should apply to a self-identified woman to determine whether she goes to a women-only prison
I'm happy to argue about how strict we ought to be in a given situation, but I'm not happy to accept that there should be no hierarchy of situations at all. We can't take a shortcut on considering the potential harm caused by a false positive vs. a false negative by simply declaring that we will always affirm the dignity of trans people. Furthermore, any system that attempts to identify people as a belonging to "category X" will inevitably produce false positives and false negatives. It is unrealistic and untenable to demand that the false negative rate must be zero (i.e. we must never incorrectly say that a trans woman is not really a woman), especially when being categorized as X has legal ramifications.
I guess this all seems pretty basic, but I don't know that I've seen anyone state the "different situations, different criteria" case, and the alternative seems to be that people are tarred as "transphobes" for suggesting that someone who self-identifies as a trans woman should not be treated as a woman in some specific situation.
zataomm
5mo ago
Sorry for the leading question but am I the only one naive enough to ask "Why don't the israeli troops just walk into the al-Shifa hospital?"? Where I live, if the national army wanted to take over the closest hospital I am confident they could do it in like 5 minutes by walking in through the front door.
If the answer is as I suspect, "the Israeli troops can't walk into the hospital because the hospital is being defended with guns," then why doesn't that fact appear in your average news story like this one? I know this sounds like a post from a person who really cares about Israel and is always going on about media bias against that country, so I just want to add a disclaimer saying that my position on Israel is that I'm just a normal American non-Jew who doesn't really know or care very much about it.
But honestly, to go back to my opening question, what the heck is going on at the hospital? Why can't they just take it over?
zataomm
5mo ago
Is it just that the news sources I'm reading are terrible? I feel like I've never seen it mentioned that there is another side (not just the IDF) fighting in this war. Like they mentioned that the IDF forces have surrounded the hospitals but it's not clear why, since as far as anyone has told me it is just full of doctors and their patients. I feel like I'm five years old asking these questions but it's just so weird to me, it's like the grownups understand something that I don't.
zataomm
11mo ago
Am I the only one who is unable to investigate that idea further because the phrase “grabby aliens” sounds so stupid it actually makes me mad every time I see it mentioned? Probably yes.
zataomm
4mo ago
This is beautiful in its simplicity, and the Right Thing To Do for the sake of America. But woe unto the Democratic senator or congressman who voted to remove Trump’s disability if Trump actually wins the 2024 election.
Congress has not acted at all, and the issue is whether the bar is self-executing
Congress has acted though, 18 U.S. Code § 2383 - Rebellion or insurrection
Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States. (June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 808; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(L), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147.)
That's why I found this passage shocking; I take your point that if Congress hasn't set up any mechanism to enforce the amendment then it's reasonable to believe that it should be enforcable somehow, but it's much harder for me to swallow the argument that even when Congress does address the matter, the States can set up their own enforcement bodies. In paragraph 105 of the CO decision, the Court writes:
We are similarly unpersuaded by Intervenors’ assertions that Congress created the only currently available mechanism for determining whether a person is disqualified pursuant to Section Three with the 1994 passage of 18 U.S.C. § 2383.
Or are you saying "Congress hasn't acted" because the code doesn't say that § 2383 is "pursuant to the 14th Amendment" or some such language?
zataomm
4mo ago
ProPublica thinks they are running an effective pressure campaign on Clarence Thomas because they have succeeded in moving the NYT and WaPo editors from "convinced that he should resign" to "really, really convinced that he should resign," but they haven't actually changed the mind of anyone who wasn't already convinced.
I guess it's kind of funny that after I have been complaining for years about Twitter's bullshit justification for banning Trump under the "incitement to violence" standard, the new management goes and suspends Kanye West because, according to Elon Musk's tweet, "he again violated our rule against incitement to violence." https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1598543670990495744
Maybe yishan (formerly of Reddit) was right that when you run a social media platform, there are certain bans that you just have to enact to keep your service alive, even though there are no objective rules you can apply to justify these bans.
[EDIT: Just noticed this was already discussed below. Sorry.]
[EDIT 2: I deleted in <10 minutes but there had already been some replies. No good options based on my past choices so I think least-bad is to undelete. Sorry for chaos.]
zataomm
4mo ago
The sad part is they couldn't even find a good "insurrection" to allege. Hunter Biden's dealings with China? Come on. Can't they argue that Biden in some way encouraged the protesters who block traffic to fight climate change? Or the people who graffiti'd the Lincoln memorial in support of Palestine? Everybody hates those guys, why not go ahead an call it an insurrection?
zataomm
4mo ago
The thread is intended as a follow-up to this comment. America-centric for sure but it seems pretty important. Donald Trump, a leading candidate for one of the two major political parties has been declared ineligible for the presidency because, according to the supreme court of Colorado, he engaged in an insurrection against the US government.
zataomm
4mo ago
I've been going over the Colorado decision and found this passage from the majority opinion shocking:
Although we do not find Griffin’s Case compelling, we agree with Chief Justice Chase that 'it must be ascertained what particular individuals are embraced by the definition.' 11 F. Cas. at 26. While the disqualification of Section Three attaches automatically, the determination that such an attachment has occurred must be made before the disqualification holds meaning. And Congress has the power under Section Five to establish a process for making that determination. But the fact that Congress may establish such a process does not mean that disqualification pursuant to Section Three can be determined only through a process established by Congress. Here, the Colorado legislature has established a process—a court proceeding pursuant to section 1-1-113—to make the determination whether a candidate is qualified to be placed on the presidential primary ballot.
This just... doesn't seem right. Imagine Congress passes a law granting some benefit to Americans with disabilities, and furthermore establishes a Board to review cases and determine which people are entitled to the benefit, could a State really set up its own separate Board and establish its own criteria determining who is "disabled"? It seems like this would be challenged and lose, ironically, under the 14th amendment, which disallows States from setting up their own processes by which to deny citizens rights to which they are entitled under federal law.
zataomm
5mo ago
I'm surprised that you're surprised to see people behaving this way.
Yeah, good point. And I'm sure if you get down to it I have topics that make me react emotionally instead of logically as well. Maybe it's the contact between different "tribes" with different taboos that happens on Twitter that makes other humans seem like a weird alien species to me, whereas if they just shared my taboos I would just say, "well of course B' is more objectional than B, B' is just disgusting."
zataomm
5mo ago
Even without formal religion, I just can't believe that early humans didn't have moral frameworks, just from the simple fact that moral systems facilitate group cohesion and survival. There's just no way hunter-gatherers were a bunch of homo economicuses, and only modern humans have morality. Morality isn't a byproduct of civilization; it's one of its foundational building blocks.
zataomm
9mo ago
Thanks for the link. As others have noted, it's extremely long, but its length does help address this feeling of unease many of us experience when observing or engaging with "culture war"-related topics in the modern online space. You wake up one day and everyone is saying something that is obviously false. I'm not sure whether it's helpful or harmful to my case to throw in examples here, but what comes to mind for me are Larry Summers on female representation, Covington Catholic, Kyle Rittenhouse, Trump's "very fine people on both sides", Florida's curriculum on slavery...
Apparently the "stages of grief" don't have as solid a scientific backing as we might hope, but even so, something like those stages are what I have gone through many times in the past few years as these cases have become hot.
Denial - it's just a misunderstanding, after the initial controversy people will look at the full context and realize there was nothing to get so worked up about
Anger - Partisans are inflaming the issue for their own benefit
Bargaining - If my friends and family would just watch this video, they'd see that the media portrayal has been all wrong. I'll just send them the link...
Depression - This is where I usually end up, because none of the above makes any difference.
So I really identified with your experience as an extended example of the "Bargaining" phase I've gone through myself. To be honest, there have been an embarrasing number of occasions on which I insisted on sitting down with someone and showing them a video or reading them an article that unequivocally establishes "the truth", in contrast to the media narrative. At those times, I would have been glad to pay people to watch these videos, because how could they watch the video and still disagree?
I can't say I've had 0% success in these endeavours; I think on occasion I've convinced people that the situation is more nuanced than they were led to believe. But I don't think I've every had anyone really understand my desperation to make them understand, get why these matters are so upsetting to me. So I quite appreciated your essay, not just because we agree on the matter at hand, but because I know how it feels to be so sure you are right but still need someone else to validate that belief.
zataomm
10mo ago
the far left are just rich college educated people who live the values they preach
I'm confused... do you mean to say they don't live the values they preach, i.e. they preach leftism, but live like conservatives?
zataomm
1yr ago
Hoping early Monday isn't too late for a small-scale question, so here goes:
In the wake of a friend falling victim to a phishing scam in which they were convinced to send a screenshot of a link to a password reset page (indeed, head-slappingly bad), I'm currently being dragged in real life for my hot take, two-part opinion that
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This scam was facilitated by the common advice that you should NEVER follow links because they could be from a hacker and then you will get hacked! and
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This advice isn't actually very good, in the sense that nothing bad can really happen to you just from following some random link.
As a web developer I know something about how the web works, but obviously I don't know everything, so I'm curious if someone else can come up with a really bad outcome achievable just by clicking on a link. Could you, say, send an API request to a bank from within your webpage, and then read the response and cookies from the host page? I'm thinking this would be blocked by both browser and site technology. This has to be what CORS is for, right? Not just to annoy me while I'm developing?
Anyway, like I said, suggestions welcome.
zataomm
4mo ago
My point is not that we should ignore the Constitution if a candidate is 29 years old, a born Frenchman, or is running for a third term. What I'm saying is that, rather than trying to divine the appropriate standard of review based on criminal and civil law, let's think about this concrete case. Nobody in 1865 was disputing that the "insurrection" of the 14th amendment applied to the Civil War; in fact, it's safe to say that if by any quirk of interpretation the amendment didn't apply to the Civil War, it would have been re-written until it did apply to that case. So it's really crystal-clear that the disqualification provision applied to those who "engaged in" insurrection by being part of the Confederacy.
In contrast, there are a lot of people who think that the 14th amendment's "insurrection" is not properly applied to the events of January 6th, and that even if it was an "insurrection", Trump did not engage in it. The man literally said, "everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard." Just as I, an honest person, can see why many believe that the phrase was empty BS after Trump spent months claiming fraud on the thinnest of evidence, an honest person on the other side should also see why the application of the 14th amendment to Trump is nowhere near as clear-cut as it was to Civil War participants in the 1870s.
So, just like we have different standards in civil and criminal cases, we need to think about what we're really trying to achieve with the 14th Amendment's insurrection clause. It's not just about the law; it's about making sure everyone, including honest Trump supporters, can trust and accept the outcome. Right now, there's a big gap between the two sides. We need to bridge that by understanding the why behind the law, ensuring the process is fair, and making the outcome something people can believe in, even if they don't like it.
For reference, Scott also referred to this issue in You Are Still Crying Wolf. To wit:
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