Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
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User ID: 551
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3d ago
Whether he said it or not, the prediction contained within that someone made looks pretty true for the 60-year period anyway.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3d ago
I am very fond of Alito's framing in the summary:
The key concept is “less opportunity than other members of the electorate,” which sets a baseline against which to as sess the opportunity of minority voters. That baseline—the oppor tunity that any given group of voters has to elect their candidate of choice—depends on the voting preferences of other voters in the dis trict. For example, in a district where most voters prefer Democratic candidates, a Republican voter in that district will have a low chance of securing the election of his or her preferred candidate. The roster of voters who end up in a given district depends, in turn, on the district ing criteria the State uses to draw a legislative map. Thus, the “oppor tunity” of these “members of the electorate” to contribute their votes to a winning cause is whatever opportunity results from the application of the State’s combination of permissible districting criteria. That is what a randomly selected individual voter and group of voters can ex pect regarding their opportunity to elect their preferred candidate. Under §2, a minority voter is entitled to nothing less and nothing more. Pp. 19–22.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
4d ago
Yeah, I think I share your inclination that there's a bit of a cargo cult aspect to the specific aesthetics. I actually do like the location, but I'm biased because I enjoy a run that loops around the monuments and pops out back to VA by crossing right there. Going under the arch on the way back to the Mount Vernon Trail would be pretty cool. I think on net I'd be willing to give up my aesthetic preference in the spirit of just building things and some of them will wind up being cool in the long run.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
4d ago
Yeah, I think the Boston decision next year is going to come down to how many club friends I have going. If we have a solid group, I'd love to go again. If it's going to be largely a solo activity for me, I'd just as soon time trial something simpler and faster in the Midwest.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
4d ago
Yep! I am sufficiently old that it's an easy and clean qualifier. I'm not sure if I want to go back straightaway or head somewhere a little smoother next spring. I'm coming off three marathons in 11 months and my current inclination is absolutely to shift gears for a bit and hit the track over summer. Part of me wants to go back to Boston immediately because it really is an incredible course, but the other part of me just wants something straightforward and fast like Glass City. Luckily, we don't have to make that decision till September.
Chicago's great! Have you run it before? The logistics are so much simpler than Boston if you stay downtown. Easy walk to the start line instead of a bus ride and meandering around for an hour.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
4d ago
Finishing up my second first author paper!
Congrats, always a huge accomplishment.
Still recovering from the marathon/think I got sick so mainly walking and trying to run a few times a week right now.
Just reading up and seeing that we were both at Boston! Congrats, even though it wasn't the day you wanted, that's still a solid bit of late race management. I was ~10 minutes slower, a shade over 2 minutes positive split, and my quads have never felt so awful during a race that actually went pretty well. They weren't kidding about those downhills eventually adding up to quite the tax.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
4d ago
It would be easier from a security perspective to host these events at a WH ballroom as opposed to random hotels in DC where security is more lax.
Not that anyone cares, but it would also be way less annoying for DC motorists that are just trying to go home.
They don't have to be taxpayer funded, but it is just about the best use for my tax dollars I can think of. Stripping some funding out of subsidizing food for obese Americans and building cool things instead is genuinely one of the absolute best policy changes I can imagine at the federal level and is absolutely what I voted for.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
4d ago
I can't pinpoint when I started thinking that law was basically a bunch of bullshit, but I know what case solidified that view in my mind beyond any shadow of a doubt - Wickard v Fillburn. For those unfamiliar:
Roscoe Filburn was a farmer in what is now suburban Dayton, Ohio.[4] He admitted producing wheat in excess of the amount permitted. He maintained, however, that the excess wheat was produced for his private consumption on his own farm. Since it never entered commerce at all, much less interstate commerce, he argued that it was not a proper subject of federal regulation under the Commerce Clause.
...
By the time that the case reached the high court, eight out of the nine justices had been appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt, the architect of the New Deal legislation. In addition, the case was heard during wartime, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor galvanized the United States to enter the Second World War.[6][7] The decision supported the President by holding that the Constitution allowed the federal government to regulate economic activity that was only indirectly related to interstate commerce.
...
That effect on interstate commerce, the Court reasoned, may not be substantial from the actions of Filburn alone, but the cumulative actions of thousands of other farmers just like Filburn would certainly make the effect become substantial.
Therefore, Congress could regulate wholly intrastate, non-commercial activity if such activity, viewed in the aggregate, would have a substantial effect on interstate commerce, even if the individual effects are trivial.
Nope. Zero chance. You are just never, ever, ever going to convince me that a single person has ever honestly believed that growing wheat and feeding it your cows is interstate commerce or that anyone believes that such an extension of interstate commerce regulatory powers would have been considered legitimate by the people that penned and signed the Constitution in. If growing wheat and feeding it your cows can be interstate commerce, there is simply no end to the potential malleability of any law on the books.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
4d ago
Yep. As tragic as the events of 2013 were, I think the correct security reaction would have basically been, "yeah, well, what are ya gonna do". Among major marathons, Boston also has the additional complications of starting in a small, rural town with narrow roadways that bunch everything up further. You can take the symbolic action of being fastidious about finish line security, but Patriots' Day is just not really amenable to creating a genuinely secure event.
What really annoys me is that every other race decided that these are just actually good security protocols in general, so you can't drop your backpack at the finish line without it being treated as a security hazard. Guys, no one is trying to attack our 5K fun run and if they were this bag drop rule would not move the needle. But once something is standard practice, you're done for.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
5d ago
I agree with the unpresented perspective that this is another lefty taking a shot at the President because he's been immersed in a stew of leftist propaganda, but I did not read the OP as saying that, at all. The "we" seems obviously to be that state of the United States is at war since the broadly construed political right is plainly not on any sort of war footing.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
5d ago
No joke, this is the kind of thing that would make me say that Presidents should just stay at the White House and basically never leave. If the policy was that the President will be there sometime in the upcoming week so everyone is subject to a search, I would regard this as an obvious 4th Amendment violation, but also just a generalized case for the President staying home rather than annoying thousands of people that are just trying to go about their lives.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
5d ago
I am approximately a security denier. I think almost all security is pretty much just theater when it comes to ability to preempt planned attacks. I was at the Boston Marathon last week and the security around it is so obviously just exactly and specifically targeted at the horrible bombing that happened; perhaps that exact, specific thing would be prevented with the new security, but it would obviously do almost nothing to prevent the other angles of attack that a determined individual would present. The obsession with clear bags and a finish-line adjacent perimeter is very silly when considering the whole host of threats that could exist. Really, all you can do for any of these things is have some armed and trained guys hanging around to handle observed threats in the moment, to react to what they're seeing in front of them. Everything else is just hardening against previously observed attacks to make people feel like they're safe now.
The good news is that this actually most works anyway because there just aren't very many determined attackers. The bad news is that it sometimes fails because there isn't a great way to stop the President from getting shot or a big public event from turning into a mass casualty event. How do our civic norms survive? If things go well, the same way they always have, which is to say that about one out of ten Presidents is assassinated and another chunk get shot, and things just keep ticking.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
2mo ago
I had the same thought when things were starting out this year and then realized that I have very few Winter Olympics memories. I think 2010 was the apex for me as a Sabres fan with a Korean girlfriend at the time - Ryan Miller carrying the US Hockey team and Yuna Kim dominating skating were pretty awesome. The only thing I remember about 2022 is the Wisconsin mustache dude rocking curling. I just mostly don't care about the winter events much. The United States isn't great at them, many of them are totally uninteresting to me, and Norway winning all the time marks it as large regional competition rather than the global spectacle of summer.
Perhaps I'm wrong though. I don't think I'll know until we get back around to 2028 and the Olympics feels big or it doesn't. As a track and field fan, I probably will once again be highly engaged though. For my money, Cole Hocker's gold was the best sports moment of 2024 overall, not just the Olympics or track.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
3mo ago
It's currently sitting at a "Bad" rating--meaning most of the volunteers going through the queue marked it as "Deserves a warning or ban."
Absurd, frankly, and highlights why I've generally backed away. I really like many posters here, I agree with many of them on core issues, I disagree with the OP here, but it's a good post. I think it's wrong! A lot! But it's an honest effort to engage and flagging it for warning or ban is absurd.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
6mo ago
Still in complete agreement!
For the sake of completeness though, I think I have undersold just how obsessive our girl is about fetching. This behavior:
Whereas every collie I see playing fetch seems to have it optimized down to a science of how to get and return the ball as quickly as possible, and then to grind out as many repetitions as possible as fast as possible.
Maybe they're actually having a ton of fun doing it, but it just feels very serious in a way other dogs playing fetch doesn't.
That's her when fetching, just completely obsessed with the activity to the extent that she completely ignores other dogs, doesn't want to take even the smallest break, and sprints the ball back as quickly as possible until she's fatigued enough to decide she's had enough. She's an ex-breeder that I think developed some neurotic habits from the confined lifestyle prior to her moving to our home setting, and is also epileptic - there are some neurologic oddities that I think keep her from being entirely normal, so we just kind of roll with that. The finding games at home are a more relaxed, playful activity, but fetching is very serious business.
But yeah, more generally, I know exactly what you mean. I don't understand why people insist on getting these working breeds as city dogs where they're just wildly out of place and obviously have strong drives to do other things. For an old lab, even one that's neurotic about fetching, spending the vast majority of the day laying around is pretty optimal for her, but collies and Aussies and other herding dogs are clearly just losing their minds. I really don't get how their owners look at behavior that is just short of literally chewing on themselves and think it's fine.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
6mo ago
I personally have contempt for people that are too lazy or incompetent to train their dogs and just engage in pointless acts of cruelty directed at an animal that clearly has no idea why they're being hurt. This isn't some Piker-specific position.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
6mo ago
I think most dogs that are bred to run believe that their role is to run and basically enjoy the activity. I'm sure many dogs were subject to abject cruelty in prior eras for reasons that I would personally find abhorrent and I don't think this is much of a defense of Piker. If the absolute best someone can say is that people were also cruel to dogs in the past, this does not move me one iota from the position that this is degenerate, third-world behavior unbecoming of a decent modern dog owner.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
6mo ago
every border collie I see in Toronto is autistically fixated on fetch as a replacement for herding, it's sad
This is also my Labrador retriever, but, well, she's literally a retriever so I don't think it's such a bad life for her. For a 7-year old lab, mostly laying around all day, punctuated by sprinting around fetching and indoor games of "find the stuffed animal" seems pretty good.
More broadly, I completely agree with your core point and think the contrary position seems so ridiculous to me that it's hard to see it as anything other than vice signaling. Taking animals that have these deeply engrained personality traits that they're literally bred to perform and forcing them to sit still for the sake of the aesthetic on stream is just obviously the behavior of a cruel moron.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
6mo ago
I don’t see why “actor” is a less valid vocation for a dog than any of the other myriad tasks we have forced them to do through the years.
It is legitimately impossible for me to believe that this is a sincerely held belief. The dog has no capacity to understand the role of an "actor", this is merely being subject to pointless misery for its entire life. It really seems like you're just trying too hard to lean into how lame it is that people care about dogs.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
6mo ago
Yes, many cultures are inferior to Western culture in ways that seem obvious to me. I'm glad we're Western and I want Piker held to Western standards. If he wants to be held to third-world standards, there are many options for him.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
6mo ago
...a dog can find satisfaction in when it knows it is doing its job well.
Some dogs can, but this is highly dependent on the breed. I don't know enough about this breed to comment on the plausibility of it accepting such a role, but this would be cruel for any active breed with high drive. An Australian Shepherd is simply not going to understand the idea that it's tasked with sitting still, it will be frustrated by this life. Piker aside, people should put more thought into what they hope to get from animals that have had selective breeding that has engrained behavior so deeply that it borders on neuroses.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
6mo ago
No, he's guilty of pointless cruelty directed at an animal that did nothing wrong. It's flatly evil.
The discipline of children is an excellent comparison. There's nothing wrong with the training tool in and of itself, but inflicted on a child for no real reason with no reasonable end goal, it's simply abuse. A man shocking a dog or hitting a child for not instantly complying with his pointless whims is a sinister individual.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
6mo ago
There is nothing wrong with using a shock collar.
As a training tool, sure. As a means of forcing an animal to sit still for the sake of being a video prop, it is simply animal abuse by a stunted and pathetic man.
This is surely an uncommon pairing of leaders for someone to appreciate, but I don't actually see any internal contradiction. Someone could also like Saladin and Pope Urban II even though they weren't exactly working towards the same goals.
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