domain:rifters.com
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1hr ago
Words are words, and actions are actions. If ICE agents actually come to major and life threatening harm as a direct result of city-mandated inaction, that’s one thing. If the Chicago mayor says inflammatory things that’s another. Trump floated using the Insurrection act, but it’s a major stretch from the actions POV (which is what matters way, way more in legal matters) to jump straight to claiming actual insurrection and rebellion. Trump has gotta sit and wait for evidence. Much like I disapprove of “declaring” emergencies (IMO you need to have, you know, an actual emergency and not just a political agitation) I strongly disapprove of that kind of crackdown based on what “might” happen. I know it kind of sucks if you’re convinced overreach is inevitable (on either side!) but the simple sucky fact is that usually you need to wait for things to actually happen (or not happen) before you can take the next step. Perception of inevitability is time-proven to be not at all equal to actual inevitability.
And on the facts the local government will always be reasonable for preventing the feds from setting up in school district parking lots (the practical and contextual issue at hand, less so some kind of Seattle lawless zone 2.0). It’s reasonable for the city to object to these actions hindering the normal and peaceful operation of their city. Even if you’re a “make immigrants uncomfortable on purpose” type, there’s a compelling public interest in making schools off-limits.
07mk
1hr ago
I'm reminded of an ironic line someone posted in a comment back on slatestarcodex or perhaps the subreddit, well before TheMotte was a thing:
I'm principled! My principles are, everything for my team, nothing for yours, and win at any cost.
I'm also reminded of a discussion I had on the SlateStarCodex subreddit with someone probably around 2020, when they were arguing that Twitter was being perfectly principled in selectively censoring Trump, since they were following the principle of "I don't want Trump to speak" (it might have been some different public figure on some different platform - my memory is fuzzy).
If you make principles sufficiently absolute or sufficiently bespoke, then you can make any behavior principled. Which, sort of like "everything is political," is really just word games, since the entire point of words having meaning is to discriminate between things that match that word and things that don't, and this destroys this ability to discriminate between "principled" and "unprincipled."
Either that, or perhaps it forces people to explicitly declare which principles are involved, forcing people to recognize different principles that each other have that were only implicit until then.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1hr ago
I mean sure. All we know is Americans don't like something about what's happening. Occam's razor suggests Americans opinion of this is probably being shaped by the things ICE is deliberately doing to shape their image.
What if the Democrats spin up the "super ATF" who start kidnapping people who fuck up their gun paperwork into unmarked vans to be sent to Romania?
That's been tried before: in 1992 (admittedly under the elder Bush administration) Randy Weaver (not the best of characters, mind you) had an undercover informant request illegal shotgun modifications, then ATF agents shot his dog, shot his son in the back, and shot his unarmed wife who was holding a 10 month old baby.
And they followed this up a year later by, on a rather flimsy set of weapons allegations, (allegedly) lighting on fire and demolishing the Branch Davidian (David Koresh again not the best of characters) compound near Waco, killing 76, including 25 children.
The resulting backlash was complicated [1] (and also pretty terrible, but Weaver did win a civil suit and there were some later investigations of the Waco incident that weren't entirely supportive of the government side), but seemed to usher in a ceasefire in practice, with the gun folks (mostly) filling out all their paperwork and ATF not shooting up (too many) places (see the two Bundy standoffs in which they didn't go scorched earth). Although the two sides, as far as I can tell, don't really have tremendous fondness for each other still.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1hr ago
Looking at foreign-born fraction, I see
- Birmingham AL: 4.36% foreign-born
- St Louis MO: 6.47% foreign-born
- Memphis TN: 7.38% foreign-born
- Baltimore MD: 8.67% foreign-born
- Detroit MI: 5.87% foreign-born
For reference 13.8% of all US residents are foreign-born by the same metric. If you're going to Notice things about the populations of those cities, the things you notice are not going to be immigration-related.
Unless you're saying the hispanic people have a sense of racial solidarity with other minorities, to which I have to ask whether you've ever talked to a mexican person because they are usually second only to indians in expressed racism.
I don't think you need to conclude there's a 'conspiracy' to notice that the messaging around AI is a bit schizo right now.
You've got anyone who is deeply invested in the industry constantly vaguely implying that the next big improvement is going to be "THE ONE" that makes it able to replace almost any knowledge work, and that this is inevitable and good.
BUT those same people will try to downplay the actual power/risks of their product. "Sure we're trying to build GOD here, but c'mon don't impose oversight, that would be lame!"
And the AI Doomers who are kinda helping the hype by suggesting that the AI is going to go FOOM sooner than expected and completely upend human society (in the best case) and end us all in the worst.
But they're not very good at arguing for more oversight for various reasons, since their case demands a complete pause or shutdown, rather than merely regulating and monitoring it.
And then the part where the rubber meets the road is in a very odd state. Some people saying that "vibe coding" apparently works but the products coming out there are pretty subpar as far as I've seen. And some industries seem to be integrating AI pretty readily whereas others (like yours) are finding it to be a hassle that might justify the costs but isn't impressive on its own merits.
Consumers can use it for a lot of things that aren't directly productive and capabilities are increasing there but not necessarily towards "able to do all jobs everywhere." Fun distractions on offer, though.
And obviously there's massive capital outlays going into datacenters and power to run them. And you would expect that the smart people spending this money wouldn't do so unless there was some expectation it would return on their investment.
But right now it looks like they're bleeding money that has to constantly be replaced by infusions of VC cash.
Which hey, that's fine if its an actual growth industry. But the capabilities have to grow pretty rapidly if they'll live up to the hype. And then you've got the Oroborous of companies producing the chips investing in the companies selling the compute investing in the companies buying the compute. Either everyone has a lot of faith in where this is going, or they're desperate to keep the train rolling as long as possible and maybe something surprising happens or they can line their pockets and hop off before disaster.
So its really starting look like the goal is "Functional AGI or bust," with 'bust' being the literal implosion of the industry, even if the tech continues to improve.
Totalitarianit
1hr ago
they don't do this to cops, even during the 2020 summer of love
Here's a study out of Canada about doxxing officers.
just arrest people who do this
You could arrest someone who is doing something illegal sure. How many things could you think of right now that are technically legal but that would really stress someone out after they know they're identity as ICE agent has been revealed? I know I can think of probably a handful.
if ICE was in any way sympathetic to the median American, doxxing them would make the Dems look terrible, and prosecuting them would make Republicans look great. If half the country is fine with them getting doxxed, you have fucked up massively, and only have yourself to blame.
The perception from the left is that they are not sympathetic, so this point is moot before you even begin to explain the rest of it.
07mk
1hr ago
That's not how statistics work. It's quite possible that this action by ICE is making Americans like it more, it's just countered by the other stuff around optics that's also happened in that time lowering it. In whole, we can say that Americans like it less now than they did in January - we cannot say that one individual act that happened in that time caused the net negative effect, i.e. which is why I said "I'd wager that," not "it is the case that" or even "it is evident that."
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
Back then the police was the target of a mass freakout the same way ICE is now, when the Blues stop using their media apparatus to drive a moral panic about ICE the shootings will also stop. It has nothing to do with organic unpopularity.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
1hr ago
You actually see a lot of cop ambushes. Because you don't need to murder them in their sleep when you can literally call them out to you.
Police officers across U.S. face crisis as ambush shootings rise: "It just happened out of nowhere"
Fact of the matter is, policing in Democrat controlled areas is fucked. When they aren't being ambushed and murdered, politicians are throwing them under the bus, or to the wolves, and recruitment has completely collapsed. Nobody wants to police Democrat controlled areas with politicians literally putting targets on their back. I wouldn't pretend everything is all hunky dory in the land of policing.
Primaprimaprima
Aliquid stat pro aliquo
1hr ago
Somebody has to pick the crops and slaughter the chickens and thats a very reasonable principled exception.
???????
That’s not principled at all.
If your “principle” is “no illegals, except for these specific jobs that natives shouldn’t sully themselves with” then that’s just a comedic farce and the left would absolutely have every right to spit in ICE’s face in that case.
07mk
1hr ago
It is obviously a shock collar that is being used. No amount of denial or snarky comments can get anyone to believe that their lying eyes can see any differently.
I have no love for Hasan Piker - I don't follow him on any social media, so my exposure to him is all second-hand, and what I've seen of him indicates to me that he's a very careless thinker and impenetrable ideologue that has actively made political discourse worse in America. But I do think there's reasonable doubt here. Based on the behavior, the timing, his personality, the way he seems to treat his dog, and the way he has talked about potentially using shock collars on his dog in the past, I would absolutely guess that the odds are over 50% that that clip was of him using a shock collar on the dog. But without seeing the remote or a close-up of the collar to verify that it's indeed a shock collar, I wouldn't vote to convict in a court of law.
And though he won't be judged in a court of law, he will be judged in the court of public opinion, by people who will be more than happy to hold the "prosecution" to a far higher standard than "beyond a reasonable doubt." As well as by people who will use a far lower standard of, "I don't like him, therefore he's guilty." I believe that there will be more than enough people of the former sort such that Piker has absolutely nothing to be concerned about with respect to "cancelation" or whatever.
Personally, as someone who has had dogs and cats for most of his life, I find shock collars for pets to be pretty much evil, and this has lowered my opinion of Piker as a person even more. But my opinion of him doesn't matter.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1hr ago
Temperature check: do you think ICE should do whatever it takes to accomplish their goals, even when those goals involve behavior which is clearly unlawful, as long as they mostly limit unlawful behavior to people who are in the country illegally? If your answer is "yes", I'm not sure how productive of a conversation we can have here.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1hr ago
I find the view "I'm against illegal immigrants except for farm worker ones they're fine" incomprehensible
That's just being fine with illegal immigration with extra steps.
Bingbong
1hr ago
I mean I get the argument that if you go into forever categories it's hard to draw lines but using this to argue that it is impossible to tell the difference between a Sudanese person and a Japanese person is insane.
KMC
1hr ago
just arrest people
If Democrats were willing to do this, we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place. Regular criminal enforcement was left by the wayside along with immigration enforcement.
I wish we would just arrest people. Democrats have taught me, very thoroughly, that they don't want that, either.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
1hr ago
I'm going to claim that morality is not subjective and also I'm not telling you what it says
This is just trolling at this point.
Which I guess using your logic is comparable to enforcing slavery.
Soteriologian
1hr ago
I agree with much of this. My issue is that Elden Ring is saturated with mechanics that compound unnaturally well in favor of knowledgeable or skilled players and are either useless for casuals or actively counterproductive for them. Take Bloodboil Aromatic: it's extremely expensive to make (requiring an Arteria leaf), meaning you can only use it sparingly. Yet it increases your damage taken by 25%! As a casual player, by far your number one concern is bosses killing you before you have a chance to heal, which this item (and many others, e.g., Fire Scorpion Charm) exacerbates. So what exactly is the point of this item? "Well, if you're good enough to not need it, it makes the game a lot easier!" Yay?
If I were the designer, I'd just remove the penalties on these items. Similarly, the Great Rune system is only useful if you're good at the game and don't need it anyway. I'd just remove rune arcs entirely: once you have a great rune, you can just set it and it's active. These changes make things easier for bad players, while not changing anything for skilled players (and if you want to rebalance the game around this by increasing boss HP, the net effect is the game is the same difficulty for casuals, while being harder for good players).
Even potions (ahem, Flask of Crimson Tears) run afoul of this. Good players don't need these at all: just don't get hit, yo. But for bad players, attempting to use a potion often causes you to get hit, as the animation is painfully long and many bosses are coded to input read it. Again, this could be trivially redesigned in a way that's better for everyone: make potions fast or even instant, and increase boss HP to compensate. For casuals, potions would actually feel useful; for better players who weren't using potions anyway, the game gets harder.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1hr ago
I actually agree with most of what you wrote but projecting an image of:
"If you come here, you won't make any money because every farmer/hotel/roofing company will be too scared to even talk to you, let alone give you american dollars in exchange for your time. You have more economic opportunities in Mexico than you ever will here."
Would be even more effective. In the current version if you can get to Texas/Florida/California and find a farm to work for, you know you're pretty safe.
Most in the Republican party don't actually care about getting rid of all illegal immigration.
Sure but then doing dumb shit that degrades personal liberty and stretches norms about acceptable government force isn't worth the marginal benefit of deporting a small % of illegals? That's a horrible trade.
phailyoor
1hr ago
Sure he might be a dickhead but this is a nothingburger. It might be less popular than before to use a shock collar these days but it's definitely still something that's mainstream for pet owners. And a lot of streamers use their pets as props in the video.
Bingbong
1hr ago
Surely part of this is that a certain side of the political aisle seem to believe that America is the land of milk and honey and that every less-developed country is literally Pol Pot's Cambodia.
Bingbong
1hr ago
I think it depends on the manifestation.
If you accept the compromise today but in 6 months still want to push the terms more in your favor (and you're complying by the terms of the compromise in the meantime) I don't think it's totally unreasonable.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1hr ago
Oh no an almost 10 year old mass shooting in America.
Better let the government get away with whatever they want!
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1hr ago
I'm a different person, that's why I said "let's move from disappearing" because I think that's kind of a silly word to use.
Otherwise actually agree with basically all of that.
My only quibble is that it doesn't seem like ICE is super concerned with avoiding misconduct, which maybe they're sloppier than the median law agency, or maybe they just appear to be.
Which brings me back to my original thesis, their optics are terrible
I would appreciate an in-depth defense of this claim. I'm a big proponent of following the law as it is, but working to change bad laws. If changing the law requires violating it then I would have to rethink my stance.
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