domain:kvetch.substack.com
BreakerofHorsesandMen
Sweet Sejenus
22hr ago
It is chutzpah of the highest order to rely on the charity and good will of your enemy to feed your people.
It’ll be nice to see siege warfare make a return.
EvanTh
22hr ago
- Higher standards for filing a case to begin with
This could be a good thing, but I'm concerned about cases where people don't have the evidence up front and need to get it through discovery. People with very legitimate cases can end up in that situation.
- Another similar option, just ban someone from seeking further redress for a while (forever?) if they're found to be constantly abusing the courts.
This is a thing in some jurisdictions: recognized "vexatious litigants" have to get the court's pre-approval before filing further complaints. However, standards for being a vexatious litigant are high.
faceh
23hr ago
Yep. Once I read about the Analog Hole I realized that there is no possible scheme of DRM, access control, or privacy measures that can ensure anything you transmit digitally will be kept 'secret.'
Encryption gets you something resembling 'privacy' in the data being transmitted, but you CANNOT control what the end user does with it, and they can record and expose it at will if they're malicious in the slightest.
Combine that with dirt-cheap storage and its best to assume that most of your digital communications could resurface at any time. I try to hammer it into my legal assistants' heads: Don't put anything in an e-mail or chat message if you wouldn't want it to be read out loud in Court in front of a Judge later.
Attorney-client privilege is powerful but not invincible.
This gets REALLY interesting when discussing cryptocurrency and private keys.
We could do the discussion of voyeurism vs. exhibitionism and the "reasonable expectation of privacy" if that illuminated the issue more. I've actually got a claim to real expertise on such matters. Its almost beside the point, to me, though.
A year and a half ago I was 'forced' to learn that there are Congressional staffers who will film themselves having gay sex in the hallowed halls of the Senate. Assuming all involved consented to it, including the recording of the act, whatever, its not the most immoral thing done in that building by a long shot.
But can we agree it displays bad judgment? Disrespect? A lack of concern for others who might prefer not to stumble upon that sort of thing while just going about their day?
Granting that someone doing risky public sex is an even larger red flag, I can pass similar judgment on someone livestreaming sex acts to an anonymous audience. Don't do that unless you EXPECT it to possibly be recorded and possibly republished. You're not a 'victim' in the most stringent sense if someone takes a recording here and passes it around.
Maybe it makes me a prude (I'm not, I've pushed these sorts of boundaries before, but I also knew the precise definition of public indecency. so I could mitigate the legal risks.) but the type of person who does this stuff openly and often enough to get 'caught' is displaying a disregard for risks that probably hints at sociopathy. At least in the same way that a person who routinely drives 15 mph over the posted speed limit or hops on the shoulder of the road to dodge traffic is being anti-social. And filming the act is just compounding it.
Even if the rules are stupid or a bit arbitrary, the person who flouts them is still defecting in a way that makes them, to me, inherently less trustworthy, especially in positions of 'power' or authority.
Civilization is a game that only keeps going if people don't defect too often. And we certainly don't want to reward the defectors once the defection comes to light.
This recent article from WaPo via their local reporters is filled with anonymous and Unnamed General claims, so I take it with a grain of psyop salt, but its the first time I've seen a WaPo-like outlet assert that the food aid is important to Hamas operations with any specifics attached.
For instance, the officials said, Hamas seized at least 15 percent of some goods, like flour, and aid vouchers that international agencies had intended to provide to hungry Gazans...
A Gazan businessman said Hamas had imposed a tax of a least 20 percent on many goods. But the group also would take control of trucks carrying high-demand goods like flour, which could sell for up to $30 for a kilogram, and steal fuel meant for aid groups. Fuel supplies have produced high revenue for Hamas during the war, with the group both taxing and seizing fuel stored at gas stations for sale, said an Israeli military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in accordance with military protocol.
Taking control of the food distribution is the first yuge strategic decision that Israel has committed to following the invasion. If aid supplies are as critically important for Hamas as reason and reporting implies, then this is actually a plan to judge. Hamas can subsidize motivation with martyrdom, but even fervor requires sustenance. Assuming Israel doesn't starve everyone to death -- which I don't expect they will -- then the NGOs will cave before famine. They will submit to Israel's request to manage all the aid distribution and Israel takes full charge of the grain doles. I guess it is technically more accurate to call the GHF an American group sanctioned by Israel for aid distribution, but, is anyone under the impression there's any real difference in this case?
They are perfectly willing to watch Gaza starve until some entity comes out of the territory that they can negotiate with.
Which, until that happens, Gaza and the responsibilities associated with managing will increasingly fall to Israel. Until it finally becomes governance. Sure seems to me they wanted to avoid that outcome and may have even procrastinated decisions in hopes of an alternative. Israel left Gaza not 20 years ago. There's no winning. Not even if they defeat their enemies do they win.
At the moment Israelis may shrug callously at the idea of governing Gaza. Certainly not with any measure of goodwill or with any concern for headaches that are associated with that responsibility. Until I see the yet-to-be-seen viable alternative actually come into existence, then that's what the future looks like to me. Alternatively, Hamas has enough recruiting power to be fed by Israeli aid distribution while continuing to lead the forever war. I doubt it.
benmmurphy
23hr ago
Honestly, maybe we should remove defamation and have a free-for-all and consumers of media or other people's opinions have to just exercise caveat emptor. Part of the harm in defamation is because there are defamation laws. People are more trusting of another person's claim if they are putting money on the line. I guess the problem with ditching defamation laws is it might destroy the utility of useful information that was previously trusted.
Maybe Trump abusing defamation will produce a positive change. I guess its much harder to push a case against defamation when the victim is Alex Jones.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
23hr ago
I'm not finding evidence of this, though obviously it's possible I'm missing something. States mandate that the Holocaust be included in the educational curriculum, among myriad other topics, but I'm not finding anything specifying mandatory classes focused specifically on the Holocaust.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
23hr ago
But…Germany also fought Stalin.
Surely there are some former East Germans somewhere in the country, too.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
23hr ago
Instead, the unwashed masses decided that BTC would be a great investment, so you got an endless procession of shitcoins and NFTs instead.
I find this a weird conclusion given that Congress just passed a big series of crypto regulation and specifically of stablecoins which seem like a very clear candidate for an alternative to payment processors.
Now Circle and Tether do still have a sort of similar problem to Visa and MasterCard, but the ground isn't exactly the same as it was then years ago and you ought to acknowledge it.
The rat obsession with AI to me feels like smart people finding a new god and being too afraid to go back to older ones.
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