Search for "banned" - The Motte"

Corvos 1yr ago

It’s not that it’s complicated, it’s just mostly irrelevant to people outside the USA. For better or worse, my country essentially banned guns fifty years ago, so the back and forth on the Second Amendment doesn’t really hold much interest.

Incidentally the reduction to legal battles is both the strong and weak point of constitutional government IMO: it sublimates important questions into legal ones. The important work of convincing people ‘guns are important weapons against tyranny’ vs ‘guns aren’t worth the extra murders’ has nothing to do with textual debates about what exactly an ‘arm’ can refer to.

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Tanista 1yr ago

I go back and forth on how much of it was caused by Elon acquiring Twitter, but that was certainly the signal of some kind of turning point.

As someone raised on the Left it's just hard to believe that history turns on whether some rich asshole makes the wrong tweet and then doubles down.

And yet...

It is now 'safe' to resist the Cathedral, and its becoming fun to do so as well.

Before Elon there was an attempt at mocking the Ts on TikTok around the hashtag "SuperStraight". It died when, you guessed it, TikTok just banned it.

It's hard to know. On the surface it looks like you just can't keep the discontent down forever. It clearly flared up even in the real world over big enough issues without Elon.

But what I think control of all of the media outlets does is allow you to stall until it's entrenched as a fait accompli. How many people went along with pronouns just to not get banned, for example? Nobody wants to admit they're a coward, so then it just becomes "oh, I just want to be polite". And now the rules of etiquette have changed.

I remember us having discussions about this on a sub I modded. We decided to let people do as they willed because it was relatively new to us. But if the admins had beat on us, we'd have folded and beat on the users and they'd have likely folded too. This happened later to supposedly skeptical subs like /r/stupidpol so all of their criticisms are constrained.

I've seen this happen with many inconvenient claims. Sometimes you just get silenced outright, post removed with no reason. Sometimes you get banned for "relevance" or not dotting some I (allegedly). Sometimes you get banned not because of your point (allegedly) but because of how you put it out there. Sometimes, on reddit, mods let you have your post and then post a stickied counter or warning, chilling the whole thing. Your enemies face no such impediments. By the time you figure out enough message discipline to get the point across you at best make a neutered argument if not an outdated one. Or you simply get banned for "inciting harassment" before then.

It's hard to build up a head of steam, a movement of normies willing to side with you if you have to be worrying about all of this. And the message to any normie is "this is not a big deal" or, even worse, "this is low status".

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gattsuru 1yr ago

Nybbler has already gotten into the pragmatics of leaving half or more of the country a no-rights zone, but I'm going to murder this question closer to its root: I do see personal challenges to gun rights as a Red Stater.

The federal government passed -- post-summer-of-Floyd! -- a bill that banned hunter education and sports teams in public schools, and that was the unintentional bit they eventually reverted. The same law's restrictions on gunsmithing, in contrast, remain unquestioned. You have to sell a ton of guns to have the federal government break down your front door and shoot you in the head in a Red State, but the federal government also argues that it's illegal to sell one. Blue States will happily sue the companies selling firearms into the ground, fuck federal law or common sense saying otherwise.

I'd be a lot more persuaded by the 'laboratories of democracy' argument were it allowed to apply in any way that wasn't a ratchet down.

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KingOfTheBailey 1yr ago

Is there a youth backlash brewing against LGBT?

I came up out of the subway the other day, and nearly my entire field of view was filled by a massive glowing screen full of flapping pride flags, wall-to-wall and six feet tall. It was a project by some charity or other claiming that "hate crimes" (or victimization, or incidents, or whatever they measure) jump by 60% during pride month. I've been so burned out by the sight of that flag everywhere that the only reaction I can muster is "maybe stop being so obnoxious about it then?" From the POSIWID perspective, one could consider the purpose of pride month to be to spike hostility against LGBT people, so why do it?

A long tweet from sci-fi author Devon Eriksen claims that pride month is downstream of the "toaster fucker" problem, in reference to an ancient greentext. Condensed: the internet brings together people with bizarre niche interests (what he calls "toaster fuckers" — he claims it's meant to be a general term but he's clearly writing about the LGBT theater of the CW). A supportive online community stops these people from leaving the toaster in the kitchen and adjusting to the normal world around them, and instead these online groups metastasize, eventually spilling over into the wider world: intra-group status competitions start with "who can fuck the most toasters", lead to "'toaster-fucker pride' bumper stickers" and then "bragging about how they sneak into other people's kitchens and fuck their toasters, too" and "swapping tips for how to introduce kids to the joys of toaster-fucking."

I think I agree with some of that description but not all of it, and may write it up in another thread if I get time, but it's not so important for this post. I need it as context for the bit that I think is more accurate: the normies getting fed up with all the toaster-fucking, the backlash, and the response (lightly edited to concatenate multiple small tweets, but no words changed):

Pretty soon normal people, who ten years before would shrugged and said "that's weird", are now sick of toaster-fucker flags everywhere and their kids being told to fuck toasters by sickos, and now they're going to burn every toaster-fucker flag they see, and Florida just passed a law requiring you to be 21 years old with proof of ID to buy a toaster. And Utah has banned toasters altogether and the Mormons have stopped even eating toast, bagels, waffles, or any other heated bread product.

But it doesn't stop there, either. Because a few toaster-fuckers get beaten with fence posts by people sick of hearing about toaster-fucking, and other people, who didn't see or hear the toaster-fuckers' prior behavior, say "holy shit, toaster fuckers really are oppressed". And they decide to become "toaster-fucker allies", despite the fact that they haven't the slightest real interest in fucking any toasters themselves.

I think this explains the split in normie opinion pretty well: red states have had more than enough and that's led into the various legal battles that Devon alludes to, school choice advocacy, campaigns to replace progressive school boards, etc. I don't think I've seen "beaten with fenceposts"-level backlash (I figure it would pop up here if it was an issue), but even the memory of such events in the semi-recent past could explain normie "I want to be a good person so I'll call myself an ally"-ism. Compare the number of "racist hate crime" hoaxes over the past few years, to the point where "the demand for racism exceeds its supply" has become a dark joke among cynical online commentators. I don't think I've seen LGBT activists fabricate incidents (certainly none as badly as Jussie Smollett did), but it seems useful for a group to have opposition to keep its supporters energized ("our work is not yet done!") and I could definitely see obnoxious pride month displays as accidentally serving this function.

Onto youth. A recent tweet by a newish Twitter account, America_2100, claims a drop in support for LGBT over the past few years (2022–2023: US-wide: -7 points; Republicans: -15 points, to a 10-year low of 41%; Democrats: -6 points; "young people": -8 points). In particular, they claim Gen Z's support for gay marriage dropped by 11 points between 2021 and 2023, which is double the time span of the other stats but could indicate an ongoing decline in support. Unfortunately the tweet doesn't source the surveys it refers to beyond saying that it came from PRRI and I don't have hard data beyond a couple of anecdotes. Lime, a scooter rental company, made a pride-flag crosswalk in Washington a 'walk-the-scooter' zone after several teenagers were arrested for leaving skid marks on it. I saw a recent comment on a gaming subreddit (sorry, I can't find it), in response to yet another pride-month-themed mod, saying something like "don't be discouraged! 50% upvotes for a pride mod is pretty good these days". But when I interact with university students, the discourse is still very pro-LGBT: they talking about being excited for pride events, etc.

So, questions for the floor:

Do you see a "vibe shift" around attitudes towards LGBT, and if so, is it generational?
Have you seen any discussion on the progressive side around changing strategy?

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Amadan Enjoying my short-lived victory 1yr ago

Okay, you've been warned repeatedly. While being a misanthrope is not against the rules, posting nothing but low-effort rageposts about how much you hate the world is. A part of me feels sorry for you, because maybe you really are this miserable and just looking for "your people," but then I look at all your other recent posts and they're about trying to get around your sitewide reddit ban and how rapidly you cycle through alts. So I think neither you nor we will lose much by this account being banned.

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do_something 1yr ago

Why you are even trying? ok-target-7361 posting will get you banned very soon anyway.

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Amadan Enjoying my short-lived victory 1yr ago

Are you sure your ingroup is who you think it is?

Who do you think is my ingroup? Because I don't define either my ingroup or my outgroup by their religious beliefs or lack thereof, or at least not just by that.

I don't think you are an atheist anymore.

Do tell. Why do you think that? Because I am able to talk to believers without sneering?

If you can't get wrecked by facts and logic then what is the point of even talking on a rationalist forum?

First of all, as we have often pointed out, this is not a "rationalist forum." It is certainly rat-adjacent, because of our history, but many people here - maybe even most, by now - do not identify themselves as "rationalists."

I'll also note that you haven't "wrecked" anyone with facts and logic - in fact, to the degree that you have argued against religion, you haven't offered any facts or logic. Just repeated assertions that you are right because you say so and anyone who thinks differently is a dum-dum.

You're pretty terrible at making the case for atheism, frankly. If you meant to bring the principles of the Motte to bear on the question of religion, you haven't even attempted it yet.

So anyway, we have atheists, and agnostics, and religious believers of various faiths and political slants. And everyone needs to be civil to one another, even if some of them believe the others are going to burn in hell or believe in ignorant fairy tales.

Right now you've got no less than three mods very patiently trying to explain to you why your attitude is going to get you banned, and your response continues to be "But I'm right lol!"

No one can make you change your behavior. We can only inform you what the consequences will be if you don't, and then apply them.

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FCfromSSC Nuclear levels of sour 1yr ago

Pretty aggressive stance here FC!

I think it's just about the right level of aggression, actually. You're staking out a position where you get to decide what beliefs and opinions people get to express. I wouldn't expect others to defer to my views of which beliefs and opinions people should be allowed to express, and so I won't defer to your views. If you were able to convince enough other people to go along with implementing your preferences, the correct response is to fight you.

Keep it where it belongs, in your heart.

No founding father I'm aware of ever expressed anything even close to that philosophy. On the other hand, your views sound indistinguishable from the Soviet maxim "Pray as much as you like, so long as God alone can hear".

Don't proselytize for it

All humans have a right to model the world as best they're able, and to share that model with those who are willing to listen. If I can tolerate the models I don't like and have zero respect for, so can you.

and belittle those that believe differently or not at all

Claiming that sin, divine judgement and punishment in the afterlife exist is not belittling anyone at all. Believing that some actions are right and other actions are wrong is not belittling anyone either, even the people who you claim are doing wrong. The rigor of your statement is so isolated we'd need a radio telescope to detect it. Everyone, absolutely every last goddamn human alive on earth, has a model of right and wrong and judges themselves and the people around them accordingly. We have a system whereby this is a problem if that judgement results in serious material harm to people, and otherwise is none of your goddamn business. It's a good model, and we should have stuck by it better.

Me believing in sin and hell, and stating that belief in relevant conversations, again, neither breaks your leg nor picks your pocket, any more than your belief that I'm a deluded idiot wasting my time praying to a make-believe sky-daddy breaks mine. As for the rules here, there's ways to express both those beliefs that cause no problems, and there's ways to express them that cause a lot of problems. I and most of the other people you're complaining about consistently confine ourselves to the former. You consistently fall back on the latter.

The basic problem is that you don't understand or don't care how the rules here actually work. Consider the following two phrases:

"It seems obvious to me that God doesn't exist, and I'm mystified how others could draw any other conclusion on any rational basis."
"God doesn't exist and if you think he does you're irrational."

The former is a reasonable attempt at starting a conversation. The latter is a pretty clear attempt at stopping one. This place exists to facilitate conversations, so the latter is antithetical to its purpose, and those who make a habit of communicating in this way draw mod attention rapidly.

don't propose it as a solution to poorly understood problems of modernity.

When materialists are freaking out over how serious and intractable those problems are, while believers are doing significantly better by the standards the materialists themselves propose, it behooves an inquisitive person to ask why.

If you do those things then no one will push back with upsetting comments like " it is all make pretend".

Honestly, it's like you aren't even paying attention to the conversations your in, but rather are running off some cached script. No one you're talking to is objecting to you expressing your non-belief. The only person trying to stop people from expressing their beliefs here is you. I'm happy to discuss the conflict between your atheistic worldview and my theistic worldview, and I'm even happy to overlook significant and entirely moddable rudeness on your part to do it. Only, last time we dug into it in detail, you're the one that begged off, not me, and I'm happy to continue the conversation whenever time permits. Only we won't be able to do that if you continue to break the rules on a routine basis, because sooner or later you will be banned.

The rules are not hard to follow, and if you are willing to follow them there is no practical limit to the opinions you can express here. The fucking nazis are able to figure this out. Why can't you?

Don't bring it up and neither will I.

No one is asking you not to bring it up. Both I and others are happy to discuss it with you. But there are rules here, we all have to follow them, and that includes you. I have zero respect for anyone who actually supports communism or fascism or, indeed, most variants of Enlightenment ideology. I still have to simulate respect for them in my communications here. If I can do it, you can do it.

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bolido_sentimental 1yr ago · Edited 1yr ago

My favorite car I ever owned, or probably ever will own, was a 2001 Volvo S40. I just loved the way it looked, and I never had a better-feeling car to drive. The handling was very precise and the turbo was very responsive. It drove like it was on rails. Even more than that, I absolutely loved having a car nobody else had. Here in the Midwestern U.S., I have seen fewer than 10 other 1st-gen S40s, ever. I mean, ever. And I keep a sharp eye out for them. (The first-generation V40 is even rarer.) Obviously there's stuff out there like the BMW M series, various Acuras etc. that would have been hotter performers, perhaps objectively better cars on any axis; but that Volvo S40 was mine. I identified so strongly with it for some reason.

But it got to the point where I couldn't keep the CEL off reliably, and I really got tired of crawling underneath that thing, or putting my arm down in the engine bay to try and wrench out more stuff with my Torx kit... I am grateful for the mechanical competence I got from dealing with that, but I have a good job now and I just don't need to do that shit any more. I was ready to have that feeling that when I go to start the car, it definitely will start and I will get where I'm trying to go.

So I traded it in, and I now drive a white Buick sedan. In general no one will notice it. This Buick is definitely the most reliable car I've ever had. My cost of ownership has been minuscule. Absolutely great, reliable car. But it's not especially fun. Just comfortable. I wonder if I will ever have another car that I think is "fun." By the time I'm ready to, I wonder if driving yourself (instead of having a self-driving car) will be banned.

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gattsuru 1yr ago

The Senate Democratic side tried to push a bill that would have banned both bump stocks and anything that could "materially increases the rate of fire of the firearm". On one hand, they tried to push it through using unanimous consent that they definitely weren't going to get, so perhaps it is just for the sensationalism. On the other hand, they did include that portion, which might as well ban gunsmithing entirely: either they have so little familiarity with the topic as to believe that a resistance to such a ban would be just as sensational, or they actually want it, and a lot of them also say at length that they actually want it.

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sarker It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing 1yr ago

No, the eggshell thinning was not a lie. It really is a great insecticide, it's a shame that's it's real bad shit for non-insects.

You'd probably lose your bet if only because it's not actually internationally banned for pest control. You just can't dump tons of it onto your crops anymore.

Yes, car regulations come with a cost - as a sedan driver I'm not happy about mega trucks sharing the road with me thanks to CAFE standards. But you can't pretend that urban smog is nowhere near as bad as it was in the 70s. That's obviously a tragedy of the commons mitigated. The mitigation isn't perfect, but that's an absurd standard.

If you're talking about hypothetical (and probably non-existent) deaths from lack of DDT you ought to weigh the people who didn't die of air pollution much more than the fact that you don't have a minitruck.

It's not that we've never solved a tragedy of the commons, it's that I don't think we've ever solved it well.

That may be because you appear to be largely unaware of the details of the examples I posted. The irony of being obsessed with showing your kids eagles that were nearly eradicated thanks to DDT crippling their eggshells while claiming that was a lie is heady stuff - history is truly doomed to repeat.

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hydroacetylene 1yr ago

Some Kind of Brouhaha over Trans Kids in Texas

I'm not actually sure what the one sentence summary is here, so bear with me. https://thetexan.news/issues/social-issues-life-family/paxton-investigates-texas-childrens-hospital-following-second-child-gender-modification-whistleblower/article_d61a2ece-2e6b-11ef-aeaa-cf9abce1d2a4.html

Following reporting from Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, of another gender modification whistleblower at Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH), the Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG) has launched an investigation into the issue.

According to Rufo, he received information from a second whistleblower that “doctors at Texas Children’s Hospital were willing to falsify medical records and break the law to keep practicing ‘gender-affirming care.’”

So two whistleblowers told Chris Rufo that a children's hospital in Texas was doing gender transitions in violation of the law, and he got Paxton to open an investigation. Ok, page five story. Their names are Ethan Haim and Vanessa Sivadge.

According to Sivadge, TCH was “unlawfully billing the state Medicaid program” for the purposes of child gender modification.

Again, kind of boring, but public funds were supposedly being illegally redirected to do illegal things(remember, gender modification is considered child abuse in Texas).

Here's where it gets interesting:

Following Sivadge talking with Rufo, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sent agents to her home to “intimidate and threaten her,” in Rufo’s words.

Rufo also previously reported on the first TCH whistleblower, Eithan Haim, who alleged that TCH has continued to provide “gender-affirming care” to minor children.

Since then, Haim has been visited by agents of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and has been indicted on four felony counts of violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA.

So the federal DOJ stands accused of, basically, witness intimidation to enable medicaid fraud. Meanwhile, the Texas government is investigating the hospital for medicaid fraud.

Now, fraudulent medical billing isn't the most interesting story in the world. But the accusations of FBI witness intimidation are https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/06/18/whistleblower-surgeon-trans-kids-gender-affirming-care-texas/74075234007/

Haim recorded evidence of the hospital's ongoing care and passed it on to Rufo. Haim says he redacted any patient information that would violate HIPAA. On May 16, 2023, City Journal published Rufo's story that included Haim's anonymous account of what he witnessed at the hospital. The Texas Legislature then officially banned transgender medical interventions on minors.

Our first whistleblower claims that his releases didn't violate HIPAA; no doubt he didn't air personally identifiable information in the media. But three felonies a day and all; there might well be a crime involved.

Our second whistleblower is more interesting https://nypost.com/2024/06/19/us-news/texas-nurse-alleges-fbi-threatened-her-for-blowing-whistle-on-transgender-care-of-kids/

Vanessa Sivadge, who is a nurse at Texas Children’s Hospital, said the alleged feds “promised they would make life difficult” for her and that she was “not safe at work” after she started speaking out about the facility’s gender affirming care practices.

That sounds... pretty bad.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is investigating her allegations, a spokesperson for his office told The Post.

This could get interesting, if Texas is actually(which this may be bluster, taken out of context, whatever) investigating federal agents for witness intimidation in a medicaid fraud case.

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Amadan Enjoying my short-lived victory 1yr ago

"Calling out" other posters is something we frown on generally, and starting a thread just to bash someone who's permabanned and can't even answer for himself looks like bad faith trolling to me. If you want to know what Hlynka thinks, go ask him on reddit - he's still there.

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phailyoor 1yr ago

Having worked internally at bigcorp with the team that handles this, they are incompetent and inhuman. Their only care is keeping the spam rate "acceptable" while also keeping the rate of false bans "acceptable" too. They will leave useless rules in place while refusing to add new rules as long as their metrics are good. Of course there is no feedback loop so they never know what the actual rate of false bans is. Thankfully bigcorp only bans when you try to do something spammy, unlike google and discord, which ban you on login, which seems retarded in my imo. (The trick being if you never log in, you never get the discord verificationwall, so back up your cookies and auth tokens and never log into discord again since they don't ever log you off)

The problem you're facing is due to two things, new account spam, and account takeover.

Spammers use new accounts because it's the most obvious route, so this is the first thing they need to address. That's why you get screwed when signing up with a vpn. (though residential proxies exist, at not much higher cost then vpn, so this is likely a dumb rule anyways.)
Once spammers have their main route blocked, some will try to take over aged accounts. Of course all of the spam rules for 1. don't work anymore on aged accounts, so the anti spam teams have to make a whole new set of rules, with much less data to boot. You can blame the suckers who got hacked for subjecting you to this struggle. But on google you can mostly avoid this by pre-emptively setting up 2fa with totp, y2f or sms burner on your aged accounts to prevent them from being banned.

Eventually I ... create a functioning Discord account.

Since all of these services are past their hyper growth phase and have a moat, they don't care about impeding your signup, because as you've seen, you'll sign up anyways no matter how much bullshit they put you through. So if you have an aged account, you should take steps to protect it, because getting another one is going to be difficult. And if a new service is on the rise, you should start aging a personal account just in case, even if you don't want to use it right now.

Appendix

rdrama.net now hardblocks links to [discord] because they very noticeably siphon off conversations and people

Elon vindicated? I'm guessing this is coming soon to Reddit as well, given the number of subs that died after the mods posted a discord in the sidebar.

burner phone

You might want to just pay for data on that phone. Most phone providers use NAT so you'll have a shared ip with others, giving you an intermediate level of anonymity between vpn and a residential line. This also means an intermediate level of scrutiny when signing up for services online.

Use Matrix at a minimum people, seriously. Discord is shit garbage.

Matrix is shit garbage. I could destroy Matrix overnight with an attack over federation, but no attackers have ever tried because Matrix's defenses are so weak that spammers (and worse) don't bother - they just sign up for infinite regular accounts.

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official_techsupport who/whom 1yr ago

Fortunately @everyone saw my message and I was able to join the game, but not before he got his drama account temp shadowbanned for falling afoul of the Discord filter.

Apparently it was not even a temp shadowban as such, Carp manually unbanned me as he does to most victims of Aevann's rslurration that catch his eye.

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BurdensomeCount —Your em dash is showing... 1yr ago · Edited 1yr ago

I hate the antichrist!

Modern technology is in dire need of modern solutions

Our story starts a few days ago when I changed the IP address of the VPN I use to connect to my BurdensomeCount accounts and identity. This is a fairly regular thing I do for Opsec reasons. I also scramble the MAC address of my devices every once in a while, same reason. Normally this is all fine and dandy except that last time I decided to do both of these things together. Looking back this was a very bad idea indeed. While minor minutae of misfortunes I've had to face in my daily life aren't worth making a mottepost on my struggles over those pained few hours, if only for didactic reasons about the current state of modern large technology companies and the decay of the anonymous free internet, are well worth writing about.

On Saturday I tried to log into my discord account for a voice game of Blood on the Clocktower (on a server that originally sprung up from The Motte so populated by smart people, it's quite a fun way to spend an afternoon if you have nothing better to do). After inputting my email address and password and solving the captcha- these days they're using one with a picture containing multiple objects, all but one of which are in pairs, so like 2 trucks in the image, 2 lions in the image, one rabbit and you have to click on the unpaired object to pass- Discord did the whole "new login location detected, please check your email address" thing, all well and expected because of my VPN reset.

At this point I went to Gmail to log in. Email address, check; Password, check; no issues here. Since I was using a new IP and MAC Gmail asked for an extra security check before they let me in: they wanted a mobile phone number to send me a 6 digit code. This was the first sign that something was wrong: I didn't even have a mobile phone associated to this account so why was Gmail asking for a phone number? Like seriously, why do you need me to associate a phone number before you let me into my own account? I tried to see if there was a way around this but apparently not, Google wanted a phone number or it was no dice for me.

Obviously I didn't want to provide my registered phone number linked to me in real life but fortunately I have a burner phone. I gave Gmail one of my burner numbers and got the code from Google. Note that since I didn't have any associated phone numbers with the account anyone could have used literally any phone they had lying around for this so it's not like this was providing any real security benefit to my account against intruders, it was all a charade for Google to get its hand on a phone number. I was medium annoyed at this but I had a voice game to play so let it slide. I got my six digit code and put it in, only to be told:

Google couldn’t verify this account belongs to you. Try again later or use Account Recovery for help.

No shit you couldn't verify this account belongs to me when I don't even have a phone number associated with the account? What possible reason related to identity verification could you have to ask me for a phone number in the first place?

It was off to Account Recovery for me. Google again wanted my email address and password, which I provided. I also had some security questions registered to my account that I knew the answers to but Google didn't even bother asking me about them, instead taking me straight to:

You didn’t provide enough info for Google to be sure that this account is really yours. Google asks for this info to keep your account secure.

If possible, when signing in: Use a device where you’ve signed in before Use a familiar Wi-Fi network, such as at home or work

and leaving me at a complete blank wall. My only reaction at this point was WTF?? Locking people out of their accounts when they've forgotten their ID details is one thing, but doing it to someone who remembers literally every single piece of identity information associated with their account is a whole new level of bastardry. Do no evil indeed.

All this meant I needed a new Discord account, which meant a new disposable email account as well, and I needed it fast, the games were starting in less than half an hour. I wasn't gonna create another Gmail account after their recent treatment so I went to what I thought was the provider most open to anonymous accounts and least likely to pull another Google on me: Protonmail.

Fortunately making a new account with Protonmail was fast and without issue. I took this new email and tried to use it to create a Discord account. Discord though was much less nice. Firstly it wanted all the standard details: username, email, date of birth (1st Jan 1984 in case anyone is curious) and password. Before making the account it wanted me to verify I was human: it was time for another captcha but that wasn't enough to sate Eris, she also wanted me to verify my phone number to create an account, which as usual I didn't want to provide for Opsec reasons.

At this point I was already feeling some burnout so tabbed over to other stuff for a few minuets. When I came back it was to the landing page Discord has for all new accounts where they tell you about how they are a worse IRC clone and try to upsell you into buying Nitro (but hey, at least it's still better than Slack). Thinking I had lucked through somehow and wouldn't need to go through the whole phone number charade and was home safe I closed these popups but instead of the expected stuff I was presented with the login screen again. It looked like I had timed out instead on the previous screen and would need to login again into the new account.

No matter, at least I was getting somewhere. I put in my new email and password and hit "Log in", only to be rewarded with "Wait! Are you human?". It was captcha time again. I got my burner phone ready and clicked on the rabbit, just about having had it with Discord. Time was ticking, the game was about to start soon and I didn't want to miss out on the first round.

Your Account has been disabled

Fuck me with a pointed stick. Why has this account been disabled when it's never been properly logged into ever in the first place? What possible reason could you have for disabling the account? No phone number? In that case why not just ask for one instead of nixing the account straight up? I hadn't got the time to seethe here so I went straight back to the account creation screen. Since the previous attempt had failed to create a working account I tried to create another one only to be told "Email is already registered", but not before going through another round of captchas.

Great, because I had the temerity to switch over to another tab for a few minutes you've now basically made it impossible to use my email address with discord forever. Normally at this point I'd have gone outside and touched grass to cool off a bit but there wasn't any time for that right now. I immediately went back to Protonmail and created a new account then returned to Discord signing up for another shiny new account with my shiny new email. One more captcha later I was back to the "verify your phone number page". This time I had my burner in hand and gave Eris my number post haste prior to her fickle nature banishing me again only to be met with another "Wait! Are you human?" before she'd send me the six digit code needed to gain access to her inner valuables.

I got the code and typed the digits in one by one, then hit enter. My reward for this was, yep, you guessed it, another captcha. These newfangled automatic registration bots must be getting really good now at inserting themselves directly into the middle of the process given that you need to verify your humanity basically every other click.

Even this was not enough to satisfy her, she wanted me to verify my email as well before letting me in. I clicked on the button to send a verification email only to be presented with yet another captcha. This was too much, I was one sliver away from going full REEEEEE now: Verification can was supposed to be a meme you guys, not an accurate description of reality! Nevertheless I kept my composure, clicked on the rabbit and waited for the fated email to arrive.

Instead of the signup email from Discord I was expecting I got one from Protonmail instead:

Dear User,

Thank you for your interest in our service.

Our system has flagged third-party service registration emails shortly after your account creation, which goes against the intended use of our service and may indicate disposable account usage.

We've implemented these measures to enhance the overall reputation of Proton Mail. This helps protect our domain and prevents the risk of our IP being banned by third-party services, which could affect service availability for all users.

Currently, your account has some limitations, restricting its use for registering on third-party services.

To remove these limitations, you will need to add a verified recovery email address or phone number, or consider upgrading your account.

Learn more about how to verify your account recovery methods here: https://proton.me/support/set-account-recovery-methods.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

Best regards,

The Proton Anti-Abuse Team

WTF???????? The fact that you knew this was a registration email from Discord implies that you have scanned my email. I thought one of the unique selling points of Protonmail was that you were so privacy focused to the point that everything was encrypted and if governments served you a warrant you wouldn't ever have any info about your customer's emails beyond their encrypted inbox you couldn't do anything about. Scanning their emails is about the biggest breach of trust possible here. And it turns out you aren't just doing it when your hand is forced by the government (understandable) but willingly to make some extra pieces of lucre.

What's even the point of Protonmail then if you're going to be just as bad as the big providers when it comes to privacy but also provide a paltry amount of free storage compared to what they give, and we haven't even started talking about how you gimp new accounts or your sketchy and misleading advertising (they say new free accounts get 1GB storage but it's actually only 500MB by default with the rest requiring you to set up autoforwarding from your gmail account to use their UI and also download their app; oh and to create a sense of FOMO you only have 15 days to do this or you're forever stuck at 500MB).

I remember the days when you used to have two passwords for protonmail, one to download your encrypted mailbox from the site and then the other to decrypt the mailbox locally on your own machine. Oh how you people have fallen. I used to be highly supportive of them in the past but after seeing this I would't piss on them if their servers were on fire.

And of course by now Discord had timed out again and my fledgling account had been disabled. I would have to start the process from the beginning and go through the captcha gauntlet one more time. I was legit malding now, why did they have to make it so fucking hard to create a usable discord account? I was close to giving up by now, no clocktower game was worth this much strife.

Eventually I had to go to Microsoft and create an Outlook email to be able to create a functioning Discord account. I had just about given up and didn't expect much from them but surprisingly the process with them was completely smooth. All those capchas by the end though had me channelling my inner Elmer Fudd and I was just about ready to kill that damn rabbit. I noticed quite wryly that in the year 2024 AD Microsoft, that old bogeyman of the 90s, was somehow more OK with completely anonymous accounts than services which a few short years ago were loudly trumpeting how pro-anonymity they were.

But even now I was not home safe. I may finally have had a working Discord account but still needed an invite to the BOTC server because surprise surprise my last link had expired. Even though we're an open fun server that's happy to welcome pretty much anyone from rdrama/themotte in 2022 Discord got rid of permanent non-expiring invitation links unless the owner designates it as a "community server" which means giving Discord full rights to scan all content as well as getting it listed on a public directory on the discord website (not a good thing for us, the server's culture risks getting run over). This means we are forced to rely on invite links that expire every seven days...

This change by Discord making user experience worse sounds completely nonsensical until you realize that Discord wants to compete with other established social media sites like Twitter. That means they're trying to incentivise people to spend as much time as possible on their site and pushing community servers that people can self discover is one way of doing it (same reason they switched to fixed usernames). These incentives also have a side effect of Discord cannibalizing other smaller discussion sites like drama where Aevann who runs rdrama.net now hardblocks links to them because they very noticeably siphon off conversations and people; I can't say this policy is wrong either, something like it is probably necessary for the long term health of the site.

In the end I ended up messaging multiple different people I knew to be on the server and very obliquely asking them for an invite link (because I didn't want my messages to get filtered), hoping one of them would respond so I could join my game. Fortunately @everyone saw my message and I was able to join the game, but not before he got his drama account temp shadowbanned for falling afoul of the Discord filter. After wandering the modern technological desert I had eventually made it to the promised land, but not without half a headache and an intense burning hatred inside of me for the way these big companies operate...

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gattsuru 1yr ago · Edited 1yr ago

Sotomayor on the other hand argues that "a single function of the trigger" should not refer to how many times the lever of the gun moves, but rather its relation to the user, whether it's a single pull to the user. And in this case, as bump stocks allow for the use of them in a single motion, it should be considered a single function of the trigger. the relevant quality for a trigger is the relation not the user, not to the gun.

Sotomayor's argument sounds compelling, except that it's not at all how bump stocks, as banned by the rule in question, work. Accelerators with springs (or rubber bands or even shoelaces) were machine guns before the new rule. The bump stocks in question here do not and can not allow continuous fire in a single motion, because they simply have no ability to store energy between cycles of the action.

To operate, the shooter must push the rest of the gun forward from the stock, after each shot, bringing their finger back into contact with the trigger. There is a 'single motion' only in the sense that people can more readily apply forward pressure that can be overwhelmed by recoil than they can make fast squeeze-and-unsqueeze motions.

And that distinction was present even shortly after the NFA's introduction: then as into the 1950s and even now, hand-cranked gatling guns remain legal, while gas- or electric-operated ones were not. They can fire pretty fast, and there are points in their cycle where the shooter is 'just' continuing the spinning motion. But you can't make a heap from grains with the magic of 'action', here: there is a shot, and if the shooter disappeared or petrified by magic at that moment, the gun would stop.

((I'll point to a big frustration I have with the left side of the bench, here. Sotomayor cites and summarizes one case as "United States v. Camp, 343 F. 3d 743, 745 (CA5 2003) (upholding classification of fishing reel attached to a rifle trigger that, upon activation, repeatedly operated the curved lever of the rifle).". Which would be pretty strong evidence in favor of a long history of prosecuting gatling-like devices were that the case! But actually look at it and you get something drastically different [emphasis added]:

Louisiana authorities executing a search warrant at Camp's home seized firearms, illegal drugs, and drug-manufacturing equipment. One firearm was a modified semiautomatic rifle; Camp had added an electrically-operated trigger mechanism (device).

When an added switch behind the original trigger was pulled, it supplied electrical power to a motor connected to the bottom of a fishing reel that had been placed inside the weapon's trigger guard; the motor caused the reel to rotate; and that rotation caused the original trigger to function in rapid succession. The weapon would fire until either the shooter released the switch or the loaded ammunition was expended.

Yes, technically a fishing reel was involved. But come on. Camp wouldn't 'activate' the fishing reel; Camp activated a motor attached to the fishing reel. And indeed 'gat crank' devices that are little more than a better-machined fishing reel, without a motor, were still legal under the bump stock rule.))

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SomethingMusic 1yr ago

I disagree. Not only does she look noticeably older, she looks skeletal. Buccal Fat surgery should be banned, it just ages a woman out.

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astrolabia 1yr ago

I too would love it if rationalists were forced to bite the bullet and say something like "yes, racism (in some senses) is rational". However, I'd say that most of them are simply deliberately silent on these issues because they know that dissenting would wipe out their credibility and force them to become a full-time advocate on an issue that they don't particularly care about. For example, James Damore.

I too find it incredibly sad when the ones that do write about sensitive topics toe the line dishonestly, e.g. like Nick Bostrom did on race in his apology, and Eliezer and Scott Siskind on trans issues. I commend Zack M. Davis for calling them out on this and being brutally honest, but he has a horse in this race.

Also, what did Razib Khan and Stephen Hsu do wrong? They put their jobs on the line to talk about the truth. They didn't go so far as to explicitly say that racism (in some senses) is fine, but they pull their punches less than anyone who hasn't been banned entirely.

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naraburns nihil supernum 1yr ago

What I'm curious about is how committed you all are to the rules-based order.

The commitment is to the foundation:

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases.

The rules are crafted in service of that, moderation is conducted with it mind, and where the rules and the foundation might seem to conflict, the foundation trumps.

So far, between me and the Jew-posters, you seem to be committed to banishing assholes more than having legible principles.

I mean, one of the very first rules is "be kind," so banishing assholes is definitely also rules-based. Of course the rules are not self-enforcing and the mod team is not a calculator, we aren't always perfectly predictable and we aren't always right. But the vast majority of our users seem to get on just fine. In general if it looks like you're even trying to follow the rules, you'll be fine. It's the people that go looking for just how far they can go without getting banned, who tend to be the biggest problem.

In principle, it's fine to ask questions about the rules, and discuss them when it seems warranted to do so. But in practice, the vast majority of the time I get questions about the rules, it is from people who are looking for ways around the foundation itself, rather than ways to understand and follow the rules better. (Weirdly, it's also almost always from people who are obsessed with Jews for some reason, including one particularly persistent troll who has rolled literally dozens of alts at this point--like, think of the good such a person could do if they directed their efforts toward literally anything else! But this just seems to be an all-too-predictable symptom of the age.)

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naraburns nihil supernum 1yr ago

Unkind, unnecessarily antagonistic, not writing like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion, egregiously obnoxious, and multiple user reports.

I banned you for breaking the rules, so yeah, the decision to ban you came after identifying the rules you were breaking. But the case was, as you can see, wildly overdetermined. Coming back to open a rules lawyering session (as your aim appears to be here) is not going to benefit this account's longevity, though.

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Felagund 1yr ago

I'm far too late, but I wrote up the (unevenly too long) following on a plane ride.

A few noteworthy, or amusing things I didn't see mentioned:

The Vidal case is essentially 5-4 on methodology, despite all that mess. I don't really see why the majority is doing what it's doing, at all?
Alito using "alien" and Jackson "noncitizen" at every possible opportunity, which is hilarious.
The dissent from Gorsuch in the bankruptcy case is pretty strongly phrased. Jackson, in turn, quotes back Gorsuch's own words from a previous case, that the dissent is "just that."
Barrett's trademark opinion at one point refers to someone attempting to register a trademark for Duchess of Windsor for ladies' underwear.

Regarding your point on the conservatives disagreeing more, the liberals agreed in eight of the nine cases the last two weeks—the only case not unanimous between them was the (in effect) 8-1 NLRB case, (and I suppose if you want to count it, agreeing with different portions of Barrett's concurrence). Meanwhile, the conservatives were less unified. Nearly every pair of conservative justices had some disagreement somewhere in the past two weeks:

Gorsuch disagrees with the other conservatives on the immigration case. Barrett disagrees with the other conservatives on the trademark case. Roberts disagreed with the remaining conservatives on Native American healthcare. Thomas disagrees with the Alito and Kavanaugh on the bankruptcy case. That leaves only Alito and Kavanaugh who didn't really disagree at all these last two weeks.

Anyway, now to what I had written:

Two days of opinions, this last week, in six cases. I've commented on the one about mifepristone here—in short, the doctors trying to get it removed from the FDA had no standing, that is, nothing that made them eligible to bring their case, no harm done, no remedy, etc.

As to the others:

Thursday's cases were all 9-0, at least in judgment, but only the above was truly unanimous; the others had some form of disagreement.

I had a bit more time, so I wrote more.

Starbucks Corp v. McKinney

Thomas wrote the opinion and everyone except Jackson signed on. Jackson filed an opinion which agreed with part of what they said, but had more to say, and I think, disagreed with what the practical outcome should be, despite agreeing on the court's action. That is, Jackson is "concurring in part, concurring in the judgment, and dissenting in part."

That's opaque, so let's get into it.

The case is between Starbucks and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Some starbucks workers tried to unionize and called in a news crew to support them. Starbucks fired them. The NLRB was contacted, who filed a complaint with Starbucks, and filed a §10(j) petition (of the NLRA) asking for a preliminary injunction (that is, until the actual judgment) making Starbucks reinstate the fired employees. Notably, the judgment will be by the NLRB itself. The question is how exactly that petition should that be handled.

§10(j) authorizes a district court "to grant … such temproary relief … as it deems just and proper."

Courts follow two sorts of tests: a two-part test, used by the 6th circuit, or a four-part test. The two-part test is peculiar to the NLRA, and asks whether "there is reasonable cause to believe that unfair labor practices occurred" and whether granting the injunction is "just and proper." Note that "reasonable cause" is kind of broad—you don't actually have to think that they're right, this just requires that it's not "frivolous". This also seems to be derived from the statute of 10(j), as listed above.

The four-part test is from for preliminary injunctions more generally. They cite another SCOTUS case here, which, I think, applies to preliminary injunctions more generally. What this requires is that they are (1) likely to succeed, (2 )to suffer irreparable harm unless granted such a preliminary injunction, (3) "that the balance of equities tips in [their] favor", and (4) "that an injunction is in the public interest." Note especially that "likely to succeed" is a good bit more stringent than the previous "reasonable cause to believe," and "irreparable harm" than "just and proper."

Thomas argues that section 10(j)'s "just and proper" phrase isn't establishing any other standard than the already accepted one, and so they should use the four-part test.

But the board, and Jackson, yield this. Where the disagreement rests is how those should be applied. Thomas addresses this in II-B, but first we'll turn to Jackson's dissent, on the same topic

Jackson argues that, from Hecht Co. v. Bowles, the courts must take into account the judgment and intent in the act from Congress. (This act was also cited by Thomas, but to a different end.) Jackson argues for a two part-standard to decide how the court should judge: first, "whether Congress has clearly displaced courts' equitable discretion," and second, "if no such clear statement exists, we evaluate how that discretion should be exercised in light of Congress's choices in the NLRA." She agrees on part 1, the question is on part 2, which she thinks the majority has hardly addressed.

Jackson thinks three of the four factors follow straightforwardly: for irreparable harm, that the interim relief is necessary to remedy the violation of labor rights. For balance of equities, they may consider harms to (in this case, Starbucks), but not its "desire to continue engaging in an alleged violation of the NLRA." For public interest, they defer to Congress in issuing the NLRA. Only the likelihood of the case's success remains. But in this case, it is the Board itself which issues the judgment, and requesting the injunction is a pretty good sign of what it's going to think in the actual judgment, especially since the NLRB doesn't ask for many injunctions, and since the board is granted quite a bit of deference in the appeal.

Okay, that's Jackson, now back to Thomas. He says that the Board actually thinks what the Sixth Circuit is doing is about the application of the statutory criteria. He argues that the reasonable cause standard goes well beyond what's in the traditional criteria, as "likely to succeed" is far more of an evaluation than "reasonable cause to believe." Then, in one paragraph, which is, as far as I can tell, practically the only one actually dealing with what Jackson is asserting, he states that "none of the views advanced in a §10(j) petition represent the Board's final position—they are simply the preliminary legal and factual views of the Board's in-house attorneys."

I don't know what I'm talking about, legally speaking, so I could be off-base, but he didn't explain that at enough length for me to be convinced that Jackson is wrong—if the NLRB is judging the case after the NLRB submits an injunction, then it seems reasonable enough to think it'll win on the merits. I'm not used to siding with the 1 in an effective 8-1 where the 1 is Jackson. Perhaps if I misunderstand this in some respect, it'd be great if any of you who are more knowledgeable could clear it up.

Practically speaking, this doesn't seem like it matters very much in the specific context that it's applied in. 14 injunctions filed per year doesn't seem like much, though I imagine that it could matter more if some of those are large in scope. I can't speak to whether there will be any larger effects regarding willingness to defer to the judgment of agencies.

Vidal v. Elster

Also 9-0 in judgment, but quite the mess in terms of who's with whom.

THOMAS [Sorry, I don't know how to do small caps on themotte], J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part III. ALITO and GORSUCH, JJ., joined that opinion in full; ROBERTS, C. J., and KAVANAUGH, J., joined all but Part III; and BARRETT, J., joined Parts I, II–A, and II–B. KAVANAUGH, J., filed an opinion concurring in part, in which ROBERTS, J.J., joined. BARRETT, J., filed an opinion concurring in part, in which KAGAN, J., joined, in which SOTOMAYOR, J., joined as to Parts I, II, and III–B, and in which JACKSON, J., joined as to Parts I and II. SOTOMAYOR, J. filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which KAGAN and JACKSON, JJ., joined.

So, all in all, six different positions, considering the opinions together. But really, it's more like 2, the men versus the women.

The case regards the matter of trademarks. Steve Elster sought to register the trademark "Trump too small," (referring back to the Rubio comment in one of the 2016 debates) and was refused, because the Lanham Act prohibits registration of a trademark that "consists of or comprises a name…identifying a particular living individual except by his written consent." Elster claims that this restriction, as a content-based restriction, violates the first amendment. The whole court agrees that it doesn't but has some substantial disagreements over why, exactly.

First, to Thomas's opinion (and I'll break them down a little further, because of all the partial concurrences).

In section I (Signed onto by all the conservatives, including Barrett) Thomas mostly just says the same things as I said two paragraphs ago, but at more length, and with a little more detail. Since he'll get into the detail later, I see no reason to look more.

In II–A (Also agreed upon by all 6), Thomas lays out the first amendment claim. Essentially, (by precedent) government content-based regulations are presumptively unconstitutional. Viewpoint discrimination is distinguished (by precedent) as a particularly bad kind of content discrimination. The court's already agreed in 2017 and 2019 that viewpoint-based discrimination, such as the Lanham Act's ban on disparaging trademarks and on immoral/scandalous trademarks were violations of the First Amendment, were unconstitutional. The names clause doesn't discriminate on viewpoint.

(I'll note here that my instinctive reaction to trademarks is backwards to that of the court—they feel more like prohibitions on speech than a case of speech themselves to me, but the court protects with the first amendment registering trademarks as a sort of speech.)

In II-B (also agreed on by all 6), Thomas considers the constitutionality of content-based but viewpoint neutral trademark restrictions.

Thomas begins by saying that there should not be heightened scrutiny here, most importantly because they have always coexisted with the First Amendment. Trademarks have been around from before the founding, going back to English law. Their purpose was to mark the manufacturer. The first federal trademark law was in 1870 (before that, purely states), and included some content restrictions (as did a SCOTUS case), which didn't change with the Lanham Act in 1946. They always involve content restrictions, including, for example, barring the registration of a trademark that is likely to cause confusion with another trademark. Thomas argues that because they have always coexisted with the first amendment that therefore there should not be heightened scrutiny. Further, content-based restrictions are inherent to trademarks more generally, as prohibiting confusion over the manufacturer requires looking to the content of the mark.

Thus far, Barrett signs off on it. In II–C, she departs, leaving us with five justices. Here Thomas chooses not to give a framework as to when content-based trademark restrictions are permissible, but chooses instead to look at history and tradition. It is for this, as we shall see, that he gets excoriated by the defense. Anyway, onto the history of name restrictions. Because people own their own names, trademarking names, even their own, was illegal (consider: there is more than one John Smith, so a ban on using it merely because another had the same name, would be a problem). Trademarks could contain one's name, though, if they also had other content. Originally, this allowed others with the same name still to use it (see, for example, SCONY's Faber v. Faber in 1867). The Lanham Act is to be seen to be incorporating existing trademark law, not making up a new one. The names clause serves to help identify the source, and to protect the markholder's reputation, by prohibiting the use of the name of another without permission. And no one has a "first amendment right to piggyback off the goodwill another entity has built in [that entity's] name."

Thomas concludes that there's a tradition of resisting trademarking of names, coexisting with the First Amendment. He declines to develop a comprehensive theory. Yes, nearly his sole argument in this opinion is that there's a history to it, therefore it's constitutional.

In part III, Thomas briefly addresses Barrett and Sotomayor, arguing that their analogy-based approaches are bad. He is joined in this only by Alito and Gorsuch, Roberts and Kavanaugh having dropped out. I'll return to this later. Part IV is a summary.

Kavanaugh's concurrence (joined by Roberts) is very short, one nine-line paragraph, only adding that such a content-based trademark restriction may well be constitutional even without the history backing it up, and that can be addressed in the future.

Now to Barrett's opinion. Kagan joins in its entirety, Sotomayor joins as to parts I, II, and III–B, and Jackson joins as to parts I and II. She disagrees that history and tradition settle the constitutionality for two reasons: first because the history doesn't suffice to match the names clause, and second, because the court never explains why the whole look for predecessors of the clause is the right approach anyway. Barrett prefers to adopt a standard.

Again, I'll break it down by section, because of the partial endorsements. In Section I (agreed by all four), Barrett begins by framing the constitutional issue as that content-based prohibitions are generally prohibited because they work to drive ideas or views out, but there may be some cases where there's no realistic possibility of suppression of ideas (citing precedents). Content-based trademark restrictions are not presumptively unconstitutional. It's always been content based. For example, trademarks merely describing a quality of an item were prohibited, as other manufacturers should be allowed to use them—that's a content-based rule. Barrett explicitly mentions the incorporation of the first amendment in 1868, which it seems to me, the majority really ought to have done, and agrees that content discrimination was inherent to "the very definition of a trademark" at that time. Hence content-based trademark rules have been needed historically. They've also coexisted with the free speech clause because they do not suppress ideas, and even can help protect them, by preventing things that shouldn't be, like the word "potato" from being trademarked. (example mine, sentiment hers)

In section II (still agreed upon by all), Barrett turns to decide how to judge this. She follows an analogy (proposed by the solicitor general) to limited public forums, when government allows speech on its property, but in some restricted manner. Rules restricting speech in limited public fora are judged based upon "whether they are reasonable in light of the purpose which the forum at issue serves." She thinks that though trademarks are not limited public fora, it's an apt enough analogy. Therefore, "content-based criteria for trademark registration do not abridge the right to free speech so long as they reasonably relate to the preservation of the markowner's goodwill and the prevention of consumer confusion," and therefore, if it helps to serve as source identifiers. The names clause passes.

Before we get to section III (where Barrett addresses the Court), let's return to Thomas' thoughts on Barrett. He comments in two places: in a footnote in section II, and in section III. For the time being, only section III is relevant. Recall that section III is only Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, not the opinion of the court. Thomas argues that she doesn't justify why that makes sense, merely says that it is "apt," and that the rule is about fora, specifically, and that this is not a forum, and so as there is no analogous forum, it is hard to see why such a test should apply. (Barrett, in response, notes that she didn't say it was a forum, just analogous in that they form content-based restrictions, and states that Thomas ignores her reasons for drawing the analogy.)

Now to part III. Here, Barrett addresses the court's methodology, stating that she does not think the historical record suffices. In III–A, with Kagan alone, she argues that the history does not support what the majority does. Barrett is not convinced that the common law provides protection to someone seeking a trademark including someone else's name. She cites the SCOTUS case Thaddeus Davids Co. v. Davids. Mfg. Co. from 1914, where a "fairly complete" list of invalid marks are made, among which is not listed any names-clause analogue. Further, the sources cited in that case are against enforcing a trademark against individuals with the same name, not prohibitions on names without permission more generally. Barrett argues that the names clause prevents uses of names that may have been permissible under common law, citing several cases that allowed the use of names even of living individuals in the right case, such as Bismarck (because he was famous. The trademark was not to pretend the product is made him). The legislative history backs up that it was not merely common law, but meant to exclude cases like Bismarck, or "the Duchess of Windsor for brassieres and ladies' underwear" that might otherwise be permissible. (Thomas argues that the names she cites are not applicable, being dead, or already generic terms. Barrett rejoins that the cases explicitly allowed for living individuals, and in the case of Bismarck, he was alive at the time.)

In III–B, where Sotomayor joins back on, but not Jackson (and Kagan remains with Barrett), Barrett argues that tradition should not be the proper bar, even if it should be yielded to in some cases for purposes of stare decisis (that is, not changing up the law on everyone for minor reasons). She argues that the majority does not treat the history itself merely as "a persuasive data point," but as the constitutional argument itself. Rather, the court should articulate principles. Her preferred takeaway from history is that trademark restrictions have "been central to trademark's purpose" and "have not posed a serious risk of censorship," and states that this is a good way to think about whether such restrictions work with the first amendment.

Thus far Barrett. Now to Sotomayor, who is joined by Kagan and Jackson. (Simple, for once.) This is another methodological disagreement. Sotomayor argues against the use of looking to history and tradition in general. She points to Barrett's disagreement as indication of the uncertainty of such an analysis, and that the justices are looking at these without them having been raised by litigants, and that nonhistorians are doing historical analysis. She argues further that usages of it in Bruen are problematic, as it has led to confusion. Sotomayor would also prefer "a doctrinal framework drawn from this Court's First Amendment precedent," with the standard being that trademark restrictions should be viewpoint neutral and reasonable for the purpose of trademarks. Sotomayor, in accord with Barrett, allows some use of history, such as to understand what the purpose of trademarks is. Sotomayor argues that the reason that registration restrictions is fine with the first amendment is that failing to get a trademark registered is not a restriction on speech, merely the withholding of a benefit. She argues that there are several cases which back this up, including limited public forums (yes, she uses that plural, not the latin plural. Barrett used no plural, so I said fora due to nerdiness) and monetary subsidies. Those precedents permit imposing a "resonable, viewpoint-neutral limitation on a state-bestowed entitlement." (Thomas, in section III thinks that these are too different; Sotomayor thinks that the underlying principle is still useful.) Because here, if a mark is ineligible for registration, it can still be used anyway (but not restricting the use of others) it's not a problem. It only does not confer exclusive rights to speech, it does not restrict that speech.

My thoughts: I found the (in effect) dissents quite compelling, and am not a fan of the majority's use of historical analysis as sufficient. One interesting thing to think about is what factors may have led some justices to sign onto parts and not onto other parts of opinions. I assume the difference between Barrett and the liberal justices in whether they agreed in part with the main opinion had to do with whether they wanted to show solidarity. Perhaps Barrett didn't sign onto Sotomayor's due to the more oppositional tone, as well as, perhaps, that it seems slightly harsher towards use of history more generally? I imagine Sotomayor either didn't want to engage in any historical analysis (by endorsing Barrett's), or agreed with Thomas that it wasn't sufficient. I'd guess the former. No idea why Jackson declined to sign onto Barrett's part 3. I assume Roberts and Kavanaugh chose not to sign onto Thomas's part three because they didn't want to reject the tests of Barrett and Sotomayor, merely not sign on to them on this occasion?

Now to Friday's cases.

United States Trustee v. John Q. Hammons Fall 2006, LLC

6-3 Opinion by Jackson, joined by Roberts, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Kavanaugh. Dissent by Gorsuch, joined by Thomas and Barrett.

In Siegel v. Fitzgerald, the supreme court ruled that differing bankruptcy fees in districts governed by the U.S. Trustee Program vs. the Bankruptcy Administrator Program is unconstitutional (yes, it's weird that there are two types of districts). This case is about what remedy those harmed should have. Specifically, those who paid the higher amount when others paid the lower amount.

The majority rules that the only remedy is to be equal prospectively. They argue that the harm is inequality, not high fees, and that such a harm may be remedied in three ways: reimbursing those who overpaid, exacting more now from those who underpaid, or only changing things prospectively. Jackson then turns to Congress' intent as to how the remedy should occur (citing precedent). Since Congress wanted to raise fees in order to keep the U.S. Trustee Program to be self-sustaining, they would not have wanted something financially burdensome upon the program, and so remedying it would plainly be opposed to congressional intent. Further, such a remedy would make the disparity worse—if some are rewarded the remedy, then that would merely increase the amount, unless practically everyone, as only 2% of the bankrupt got to pay lower fees. Then, turning to the question of whether congress would want to impose higher fees, they argue that it did not, looking at its subsequent decisions, and that it would have pretty negative consequences. Hence, only prospectively. The remainder of the opinion responds to the dissent, so I'll turn to that first.

Gorsuch's dissent is rather up-in-arms. (And in turn, Jackson's opinion cites Gorsuch's own language that the dissent is "just that."—i.e. only a dissent.)

The dissent argues that Hammons should be entitled to a refund: the U. S. Trustee is agreed to have promised it, and Congress is agreed to have appropriated funding for refund, it is agreed that the suit is timely. Further, when "there is a general right to sue," but no specified form of relief, courts may use any remedy. It's long been the case that the proper remedy for overpayment is to pay them. They argue that this is no remedy at all—the past harm is not remedied. The dissent also casts some doubt on the whole process of imagining what Congress would do. Gorsuch also thinks that congressional intent is in favor of a refund, looking at the statutory text, where the program is authorized to provide refunds. Further, he characterizes it as a bait-and-switch, by promising the the refunds by standard procedures, and now denying any such possibility, and that that bait-and-switch violates due process. Gorsuch also attacks the argument that it would be disruptive as a turn to policy, but "not how remedies work." It's always cheapest not to give remedies.

Okay, now the majority, addressing the dissent: They argue that the dissent misunderstands the problem: to remedy a disparity, not to pay damages. Further, turning to congressional intent for a refund, it's passed regularly and therefore (only applies to ordinary situations, not ones involving 326 million? This is my best guess, it's not quite explicit.). And third, the government didn't really make a promise, but merely that it would wait to remedy until exhausting all appeals.

Jackson argues also that the dissent is wrong in its understanding of due process—she doesn't think the tax cases apply here, and there was a meaningful chance, which satisfied the due process clause.

I think I find the dissent more convincing, but am not sure. A lot would turn, I think on where precisely the harm in nonuniform bankruptcy rests: is it upon those who got a worse deal, or is it something ethereal upon the whole system?

Campos-Chaves v. Garland

Written by Alito, joined by Roberts, Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. Jackson wrote the dissent, joined by Sotomayor, Kagan, and Gorsuch.

This case is about deportation hearings. Aliens have to be provided with written notice. There are two varieties: in paragraph 1, it describes the notice to appear (NTA), and in paragraph 2, a notice saying the new time and place. Here, there were three individuals each of whom got notices that were defective, in that they had TBD or similar written in place of the time. They were subsequently given a notice saying what the time of the hearing was, but didn't show up. The defendants argue that they failed to be served the proper notice, and so should not be removed from the country.

Part of this has to do with the word "or". The statute says, "did not receive notice in accordance with paragraph (1) or (2)." Unfortunately legal statutes don't have parentheses, so such combinations of ors and negatives tend to be ambiguous. Alito argues that a notice of either variety counts. More specifically, it has to be whatever notice is relevant—whichever one is connected to the hearing missed.

Alito also interprets the phrase in the statute of changing the time to include the change from TBD to some concrete time.

Jackson disagrees, seeing this as giving the government a pass for writing incomplete and therefore invalid NTAs under paragraph 1. Because time and place is a necessary part of the notices to appear, failing to include them makes them not count under paragraph 1. But a paragraph 2 notice should be dependent upon a paragraph 1 notice: 2 only describes notices changing the time and place, which Jackson thinks should mean that there is already a valid notice to appear before 2.

Jackson also argues that the majority's understanding of the word "change" is a bit unreasonable: the passage is clearly talking about replacing one time with another.

I think I found Jackson more compelling—it's at least a little unintuitive to have a valid notice dependent on an invalid one. The court's remedy (show up and mention the lack of proper notice) helps, at least.

As a side note, it's pretty funny to see Alito using the word alien at every possible opportunity, whereas Jackson uses noncitizen as much as possible (and maybe even bracketed alien out, in a footnote? I didn't check.).

Garland v. Cargill.

Thomas writes the opinion, which the other conservatives join. Alito writes a one-page concurrence. Sotomayor writes a dissent, which the remaining justices join.

The National Firearms Act defines a machinegun as "any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger." The question: are bump stocks machineguns? Thomas argues no. This used also to be the ATF's position, prior to the Las Vegas shooting, but afterward they included bump stocks. The core of Thomas' argument is as to what the words "a single function of the trigger" refers to. He argues that it refers to the trigger of the weapon, well, triggering once. (And he goes through, with diagrams, how exactly a trigger works.) Bump stocks do not change that there is one pull of the trigger for each shot. The finger pushes the trigger once for each shot. They argue, as a different route to the same point, that bump stocks do not cause it to happen automatically, as the forward pressure required is an extra thing in such a way that it is not automatic.

Alito mentions that the ATF should not have changed the rules—rather, congress should. And that the Las Vegas shooting doesn't change the meaning, merely reveals that regulation of bump stocks is probably a good idea. He agrees that the original congress would have wanted bump stocks banned, but denies that they did.

Sotomayor on the other hand argues that "a single function of the trigger" should not refer to how many times the lever of the gun moves, but rather its relation to the user, whether it's a single pull to the user. And in this case, as bump stocks allow for the use of them in a single motion, it should be considered a single function of the trigger. the relevant quality for a trigger is the relation not the user, not to the gun.

I found the dissent in this case more compelling than I expected, given the political valence. I'm not sure who I'd agree with, if I had to choose. But this case is essentially guaranteed to make liberals mad. Not good for trust in the court.

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Hoffmeister25 American Bukelismo Enthusiast 1yr ago

I've even on record in this sub saying that values can be derived from other concerns and can definitely be argued.

In that post, you and Yassine are certainly not arguing that your views are in any sense reconcilable with inegalitarian/particularist views. The central argument there is that your specific set of values are the objectively and inarguably correct set of values, given everything that’s true about the world we live in. Nowhere in there is a suggestion that there’s any practical way for anyone to persuade you out of those values; quite the opposite. You’re saying that the only way someone with inegalitarian values could have any leg to stand on morally is if there were massive, fundamental structural/technological changes in the way our civilization is organized; barring that - something which will not happen in our lifetimes - your values are correct, and mine are not even worth discussing because they’re in the dustbin of (current) history. Not exactly an invitation to “reconciliation”.

I've been bashing my head against this since my first post in this sub and basically consistently gotten replies that are unmoderated personal attacks instead of any substantive argument

I read all of the replies to that post, and I can identify not a single one that I would consider an unmoderated personal attack devoid of substantive argument. Perhaps you’re referring to replies to other posts not linked to.

Again, one of my very early interactions with this community was someone ban-evading and calling me a slithering rat just for having the temerity to try and argue value points.

First off, you’re totally misinterpreting his use of the word “rats” in that post. He is using it as a shortening of “rationalists” - a group with which he himself identified at the time, and presumably still does. It was a very common term of self-identification at the time; there was an entire constellation of Tumblr users, for example, who proudly called themselves “Rat Tumblr” (or Rattumb for short), meaning just “Rationalist Tumblr”.

In that post, Ilforte is accusing you of aping the shibboleths of that subculture while working directly and intentionally to sabotage its aims and core values. In the segments of your post that he quotes, you very clearly do appear to be advocating using social shame to rigidly enforce speech taboos around certain topics - to not only ridicule and socially bully racialists, but to actually actively ruin their lives in a professional sense, or at least to celebrate those who do so. This is, indeed, a very serious violation of one of the core values of that subculture at the time, which was strongly opposed to that type of social shaming and speech tabooing.

I’m also unsure what you mean by accusing him of “ban evading”. That post is in /r/CultureWarRoundup, a totally separate splinter subreddit from /r/TheMotte, and not a sub from which I believe Ilforte was ever banned at any point. If you mean he’s ban evading by cross-posting a post of yours from The Motte and criticizing it… that’s not what ban evading is.

I guess a lot of racialism is just motivated by idiosyncratic aesthetic preferences that are too strong to be overwhelmed by any other consideration---how is this anything but not irreconcilable?

I’m sure that in some cases this is probably true! However, again, many of us racialists once shared your liberal priors, instincts, and aesthetics. Yet this was not enough to stop us from eventually adopting these views. Why do you think that is? Clearly in that case it can’t just be due to some ineffable, inarticulable, subconscious psychological difference between us and you, right? If I was progressive once, I must contain the capability to inhabit the brain states compatible with progressivism. And yet obviously I also simultaneously contain the capacity to inhabit the brain states compatible with rightism. Are you so certain that you lack that capacity?

This experience has not meaningfully changed in the last three years, although I will say that you have been much more reasonable. So trying again, do you mind explaining/linking to some place where you've explained these specific facts?

That would be difficult, simply given the lack of any effective search function in this site’s design. I have been meaning to put together a master spreadsheet of links to some of my more successful/important posts, such that I would be able to supply those links when prompted, but I have not gotten around to doing so. I don’t have time to pull those right now, but I’ll see what I can do at some point in the future. However, I would caution that I’m not confident the posts alone will be persuasive to you, since they will not be in combination with the specific and non-transferable life experiences I’ve had which caused me to be more sympathetic to these ideas than I likely would have otherwise.

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2D3D 1yr ago

When my galpals whine about not finding men to stick with them, I ask them to consider women. Apparently this is autistic to verbalize, because for all their claims that sexuality is a spectrum most insist on liking cock, preferably attached to a 6/6/6 who can 'banter'.

This of course happens because my friends are older women who are comfortable explicating their preferences to Wrongthink William, and when younger these women gaslit themselves on what they actually wanted. Having wasted years of their lives hating themselves for fucking Chad and then displacing their self hate onto Chad, who then rightfully concludes these women aren't serious, the rapidly diminishing physical value these women command has turned the deluge into a shower. At least in the deluge there was the chance of finding a gem in the flow, but in this state they find their pickings increasingly unsatisfying.

The funniest thing is that for the women that do say 'sure lets see what the carpetmuncher crowd is like', its STILL full of dudes! Shitloads of creeps just say they are women or nonbinary and put their full 100% shitty male profile picture and details there. One girl claims she had her account banned for transphobic abuse when she matched with one of these fakers to berate him for abusing the system. I mock them all for the chickens coming home to roost for them, but I still feel for them and wish they can find happiness. Alas the cat-per-woman average is reaching 2 for these girls, and I think thats tipping point but I dont' know why I think that.

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Amadan Enjoying my short-lived victory 1yr ago

Then don't engage.

In the short time since you spun up this alt, you've posted nothing but crappy comments and antagonism. That plus deleting a lot of your comments makes it pretty clear you aren't here to contribute anything but turds in the punch bowl.

Banned for three days. Decide whether you actually have anything to say.

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