Friday
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
2mo ago
I have been calling out Hanania's stupidity since at least 2023, and I'm no true blue aussieleftist. But he's definitely flattering different biases these days.
sockpuppet2
2mo ago
Four weeks ago, I praised the TV show "The Good Wife", but forgot to mention that its creators followed it with a great black comedy mini-series called "BrainDead," whose premise can't really be explained without spoilers. I recommend it.
gattsuru
2mo ago
I have a big breakdown here for both disto recs and general tips and tricks, and I'll stand by it. I'm running an arch hypr variant, and it's a good learning experience and looks great, but it's not really ideal as a daily driver or for people that are not techies -- Linux Mint, Ubuntu, or even Elementary/Zorin will probably be better experiences your first time around.
It's very hard to break things irreparably with Linux, but it's unfortunately easier-than-Windows to get your machine into a state where a fresh install will be easier than cleaning things up. Manjaro is okay, but I will caution that if you aren't into tech (commandline) debugging it will quite happily let you get into goofy states. Even moreso than in Windows world, having a good backup setup is very important.
If you're planning to dual-boot, I strongly recommend increasing the size of your EFI partition to 200MB-500MB. It's not often an issue, but it's a lot less painful to handle before you've got your whole computer setup.
For gifts for parents, depends a lot on the people.
MollieTheMare
2mo ago
That is a fun fact. Is there a culture war implication though? Maybe this is better suited for the Friday Fun Thread?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2mo ago
Can you say more about how Livelsberger was a leftist suicide bomber? According to the article you link:
On Friday evening investigators released a note found on the suspect's phone where he claimed to have major grievances about the country and military.
In one of the letters police say were found on his phone, Livelsberger expressed support for Donald Trump and the president-elect's allies, Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He also expressed disdain for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and income inequality and expressed a concern about homelessness, according to the letters.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2mo ago
Okay. Even granting all that, what now? Blame current-day Europeans for the sins of their forefathers? Spend all of eternity re-heating old grievances concerning harm done by dead people to other dead people? Try to conclusively settle that which is impossible to settle, so that the next generation can turn around and call a foul and claim that the settlement was in itself unjust, so our descendants can all have another go at the merry-go-round?
in 2025, Colonial powers have little remorse for their actions.
The colonial powers of yestercentury don't exist anymore. You can go and extract apologies from the current French, Spanish, British or Belgian governments and what the hell are those worth? The people in charge now and the people who live in those countries now aren't the same people who committed whatever crime happened in the colonial era. It's trivially easy for them to apologize; especially in the current environment of "colonialism bad, europeans bad, africans good" in which you can thus put yourself on the right side of history, no matter whether there is any substance to the subject matter of the apology.
And that's completely eliding the question of whether we need to also account for the good the colonial powers may have done if we already weigh up the bad. Let's say there was no good, for argument's sake.
What would you want us Germans to do? Kowtow even further to Israel? Bend over backwards a little more to accept our great German guilt?
Fuck. This is the Friday Fun Thread?
Am I wrong in reading there seems to be reasonable wiggle room built into the EO?
Sec. 6. Default Mens Rea for Criminal Regulatory Offenses. (a) The head of each agency, in consultation with the Attorney General, shall examine the agency’s statutory authorities and determine whether there is authority to adopt a background mens rea standard for criminal regulatory offenses that applies unless a specific regulation states an alternative mens rea.
There's built in discretion to maaaybe adopt a different mens rea standard for criminal regulatory offenses. One hopes that the AG only accepts reasonable defenses of different standards of criminal enforcement, but there are probably many reasonable, wiggly exceptions.
"Excuse me, AG Bondi, in 98% of cases the US Forest Service targets Big Criminal Forestry-- these jerks are always finding ways to wiggle out of their illegal logging. If we lose strict liability standards for this enforcement they will claim ignorance every time, in every forest, and likely get away with their illegal logging. By the way, Mrs. Bondi, I have it on record we protested this. We aren't going to eat this story when the time comes."
Apply that to less reasonable, but similarly wiggly enforcement. Requiring a defense of different standards is good, but there's got to be thousands(?*) of these, and a safe political decision would be to defer to the agency if they request a different standard. This EO wasn't blasted out with political vigor. It was dumped on a Friday with barely a peep, so there may not be a big Trump backing to hide behind any unpopular decisions.
I may just be negative. This seems good, generally. If done intelligently, better. There are likely real trade offs in losing flexibility with higher burdens for enforcement, but still seems amenable.
** Many, many thousands. Hundreds of thousands. I forgot we don't actually know-- which is why step one makes agencies plainly list them. Yuge!
I'm of two minds with regards to this. On one hand I wish that my parents would have been stricter about video games. I sunk so many hours into CK2, Civ, Dark Souls,etc. that could have been spent hanging out with friends in real life (perhaps one of the reasons I don't have any friendships remaining really from this period), learning a language, or just chilling out/running slightly more. On the other hand, these games got me interested in history and geography (CK2, Civ), and philosophy (Dark Souls). Also my ex-girlfriend and her siblings were raised with no video games/social media. It didn't really help at all: she still got addicted to instagram/tiktok, her brother still got addicted to video games in adulthood.
To synthesize, I think some kind of exposure is good to be able to handle the super stimuli in adulthood, but I would recommend some kind of limits to be put in place. My parents let me play video games for 2 hrs Friday/Saturday/Sunday. Sometimes I would go over a little, but these limits were pretty well enforced. Maybe you could do something like this?
hydroacetylene
3mo ago
I would say that if a pope is elected tomorrow afternoon it’s probably one of the four of Avelline, Pizzaballa, Erdo, or Parolin(like 60% sure there’s more than 45 cardinals dead set opposed to him but only 60%). On Friday I’d add Ambongo and Mamberti. Of course the three dinosaurs that were in JPII’s inner circle and just stayed in important Vatican roles are always possible.
If it goes longer than that, it’s anyone’s game, but it’s probably someone very old, because papabile settling for a compromise candidate want another shot at the top job.
hydroacetylene
3mo ago
If only the College of Cardinals had addressed this...
The College of Cardinals released a declaration on April 30, recognizing the right of all 133 electors to participate in the upcoming conclave and determining that the legislative provision of UDG had been tacitly dispensed from by Pope Francis when the set limit was surpassed
In the absence of a pope the College of Cardinals functions as a senate, although the legislation will need to be confirmed by a future pontiff.
Tomorrow or Friday the chimney will emit white smoke. The new pope will, after receiving homage from the cardinals, emerge from the room of tears and the protodeacon shall from the balcony overlooking the Vatican intone 'Habemus papam...' before the new pope shows himself to bless the crowd, the city of Rome, and the whole world. After this he will immediately confirm as valid legislation the decree of the College of Cardinals on this matter. All this has happened before, and it will happen again; the grand pageantry of tradition goes on and the everchanging world is transfixed.
I am reminded, when the queen of England died. A lunchlady- and this was in rural Texas, mind you- was distraught by the news. I did something to her walk in, she complained that, being a lunchlady, she would be unable to see the whole of the royal funeral, for it started at four AM and she needed to be at work at six- in the midst of mourning somebody else's queen. People care about the activities of legitimacy. The commoners cry out for a king. That's why the secular news livestreamed the chimney on the conclave hours before it would give any news, and on a day when there would inevitably be black smoke to boot. The commoners long for a ritual weight to legitimize the rulers, even if it isn't their rulers, unchanging tradition which says 'it's ok, we're still here, the world goes on'.
I've written before about Trump as the king of the red tribe. There's a lot of truth to that; he spun a narrative and then he goes and engages in the actions associated with authority. He pardons. He personally signs- Biden's autopen was a big deal for legitimacy reasons. He negotiates with foreign powers. He legislates- and his supporters are OK with that because he takes ritual, legitimating action. It says 'I am the king' and people believe it. The commoners have always loved the king. It's the way it is.
But back to the pope- papal legitimacy is not based on a valid election. It's based on universal recognition from the bishops and cardinals. The conclave is just a procedure to put forth a pope which the bishops and cardinals will recognize. Past conclaves have done some crazy things, but irregularities in the conclave can't upend papal legitimacy. What can is lack of assent from the bishops. And that was a serious and coming danger with the former pope Francis; the thesis that Benedict's resignation was invalid and thus pope Francis wasn't validly elected had become alarmingly popular from a stability perspective, and among alarmingly centrist clergy. It was only a matter of time until the cordon sanitaire broke and the bishops had to convene a council which would inevitably depose pope Francis- after all, he was unable to avert it. There'd been a respected, establishment-oriented priest excommunicated about once a week for it for the last few months of his reign. The growing popularity of the idea was probably why bishop Strickland was dealt with so harshly- you can't risk a serving bishop breaking for that. Electing a pope who can quell that is a top priority in the Sistine chapel right now, just as it was in 1978. John Paul II was able to convince the world's serving bishops not to join with radical theologians holding that the papacy had deposed itself, and their need to rely for ordinations on the senile brother of the former Vietnamese president who had been forced to retire from his episcopacy in Vietnam after his brother's assassination is why Sedevacantism is now a fringe movement of mostly actual literal cults in the sense of, like, compounds and identical clothing. No doubt, the trappings of legitimacy were an important part of the matter.
It's less about Eastern Orthodoxy as a set of beliefs, and more about the practices and people of Eastern Orthodoxy. And we're not talking about secular women here, I suppose they'd just go running in the opposite direction for reasons that you well understand, but conservative-to-moderate, vaguely religious women, in the United States. And it isn't an active hate, it's not that these ladies are obsessed with Orthodoxy and want to cast hexes at it or something, they just have no interest in it and find it a little odd that anyone would.
As I understand it, the median Orthodox convert in the United States is an intellectual, introverted, evangelical, college-educated man, who discovered Orthodoxy through the mysterious workings of the Holy Spirit, also known as Wikipedia. From what I've heard, and seen, the women in this man's life get dragged to the divine liturgy ("St. Nathaniel says 'come and see!'"), and most often do not hear the angels singing the way the man did the first time he witnessed the liturgy.
At my local Orthodox parish, there was a young guy who dragged his entire family to Orthodoxy, and while his parents and siblings were committed, it's obvious he was the one who orchestrated the whole thing. They'd never have stepped foot in an Orthodox church if he hadn't pushed them.
Frederica Mathewes-Green, who as I understand it is kind of the "influencer mom" of American Orthodoxy, said in one of her videos that she just didn't like the divine liturgy the first time she went to an Orthodox church. She grew to like it, but that initial revulsion, or indifference, is what I've generally seen and heard from women who've had experience with Orthodoxy.
Participating in the honored tradition, I dragged both my mother and my girlfriend to liturgy a few times -- neither liked it. Both of them liked going to mass, though. (Definitely not the latin mass -- they can't understand what anyone's saying.)
I think a lot of it has to do with the people. Your framing says a lot, actually -- the intellectual content of faith is the thing that brings our evangelical man to become interested in Orthodoxy, but the women he drags don't know or care about any of that. She's interested in what's actually going on around her: what songs are they singing? What is this strange artwork on the walls? What's the content of the sermon? What do the candles mean? What are the people like? Are they a bear normal, or strange? Are people happy here? Does this seem like a community where I fit in?
And if we're talking about somewhat conservative American women, the sort of women who might be interested in a conservative religious tradition, we're talking about women who are generally very interested in social convention, unobtrusiveness, familiarity. They're very socially-oriented, they want a community that feels familiar, friendly, and safe, not strange, alienating, and unpredictable.
As our female draggee looks around, she sees these weird Byzantine paintings on the walls where people look odd, with strange proportions and almost alien-like ridges and folds in the depictions of their skin (in some icons, St. Paul genuinely just looks like a space alien to me with his giant head). The church bells ring out, and instead of the sweet ding donging of Western church bells, she hears them clanging like a hailstorm. ("Was that an accident?") She hears odd music she's never heard before, no familiar hymns, no familiar cadence -- if the chant is Byzantine-style, it genuinely sounds, to Western ears, like something from the Muslim and not the Christian world -- and she smells weird smells of strange incense, as some guy in an elaborate robe starts swinging it at her. And the worst part? She's not supposed to sit down! "It's for the old ladies," our evangelical man helpfully told her. Well, she's not an old lady, but this just doesn't seem right. She feels like she's put on the spot and has to stand where everyone can watch her, in a situation where she already feels out of place. And now she can't even get comfortable by sitting down and just watching!
The service ends, and, though she's shy, evangelical man starts dragging her around to talk to people, and she can't help but feel like they're just... a little off. There's the man who's wearing a kilt as his Sunday best in the middle of Kansas. There's the guy who wears a bowtie. There's the dude who seems prone to leering, like he's been on a naval vessel for six months and hasn't seen the sight of a woman in that time. There's the guy she can overhear talking about the upcoming Holy Friday service, who's telling his friends, "I just can't wait to stick it to those Jews." (A real anecdote I heard from an Orthodox friend of mine about someone he knew.) And a bunch of the men, including the priest, have a thick, untrimmed beard -- can't they trim them?
Half the people in the church are speaking in foreign languages she can't understand, and are sticking to themselves, avoiding eye contact. She feels like a foreigner in her own country. People are talking about the lenten fast, and are speaking about cheese like they've been on the naval vessel with the leerer with only bread and water -- wait, these people can't eat cheese for months out of the year? The priest is friendly, but seems strange, overly intellectual, and his beard looks greasy. She strikes up a conversation with another convert's wife, and she tells her, "yeah, I didn't like the orthodox church either at first -- it grows on you."
And the overwhelming feeling our dragged-along woman feels to all this is an unadulterated, grade A:
ICK!
My mom told me once, after I'd stopped exploring Orthodoxy, that the Orthodox parishioners "seemed like hippies." My girlfriend was less expressive, but said she thought they "felt like strange people." Neither would have attended the divine liturgy if I hadn't dragged them, and neither had any interest in continuing to attend after I stopped being interested. They just found it overwhelmingly weird.
This obviously doesn't apply to cradle Orthodox -- it is their tradition and they're quite familiar with it. It's western Christianity that seems weird to them. And there are, of course, women who choose to convert to Orthodoxy on their own, but I've never talked to any of them so I can't offer a take.
Sometimes I share my views on Eastern Orthodoxy and people seem surprised by them -- I don't know, maybe I've just seen a tiny sliver of what Orthodoxy in America looks like and it's different elsewhere. I owe a lot to my time exploring Orthodoxy, including a strengthening of my love for the Mother of God, an appreciation for the iconographic tradition (looks over at my icon of Christ Pantokrator), a more reserved approach to the procession of the Holy Spirit, a grounding and softening of my Western 'hard edges' -- without abandoning the juridical lens on Christianity as some Orthodox seem to call for -- and even a belief in the essence-energies distinction, which, interestingly, resolved a struggle I'd had with Western Mariology. And I sincerely and deeply respect the Orthodox tradition as a pathway to communion with God.
But despite all that, my own feeling after sincerely exploring Orthodoxy is that, for all the missionary zeal it's developed in America through conversion, it still feels like it's someone else's church, and I'm just living in barbarian lands an ethnic diaspora of ethnicities I simply am not a part of. And where even the native converts are, respectfully, not always the most 'normal' or conventional people, even if I bear no ill will towards them.
I had a convert friend in the Orthodox church who was quite interesting, obviously very intelligent. But he also had a passion for Orthodoxy and Eastern Europe that bordered on obsessive; he would talk about and cook Russian cuisine for people, despite being as English-German as the rest of us American white people. He had a two-bedroom condo, and one entire bedroom had been converted into what can only be described as a chapel, with icons covering every wall and liturgical books overflowing bookcases. He wanted to be a priest, but had no interest in marriage (which would make him the perfect Catholic seminarian, but obviously led to some stern pastoral advice from his spiritual father). He honestly struck me as the kind of guy who just needed to get laid.
While I respect other cultures and I'm even open to trying their cuisine, I simply have no interest in becoming Greek or Bulgarian or Russian. At times, it felt to me like fitting in the Orthodox church required a cultural self-emptying, not merely a spiritual one. As though to become Orthodox I had to renounce the profound insights of the Western philosophical tradition or the honor due to my ancestors and embrace a worldview that sees them as something between "deeply mistaken" and "the Great Satan of the whole world." I get enough hatred of the West from the secular world, and I just don't care to receive it from my fellow Christians.
And I guess that's what I see in Dreher. He's a Western man, born in Louisiana, and restoring his relationship with his parents was important to him. But he has so self-emptied himself of his culture that he's literally fled the West to go to Hungary, despite writing a book about how Westerners can create pockets of grace within the West after the model of the great founder of Western monasticism.
If I mean anything by this long post, I mean to say that Orthodoxy feels foreign, alien, even converts often feel somewhat odd or unusual, and very often its prescription to Westerners is "reject your people, RETVRN to ours." And that this is picked up by non-Orthodox women more than non-Orthodox men, because of their strong attunement to social signals and preference for the conventional.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
3mo ago
Sometimes you are being selfish, and you have to realize that it's okay to have (or not have) wants and desires of your own. In pettier situations it does ring a bit hollow, but in my experience if you can't learn to say "No" to something that isn't really a big deal (and to be clear, you don't have to say "No" every time; doing favors can make for rewarding experiences), you'll get get stomped on when the big things do come up. You don't have to be specific, just "sorry man, I'm tired, have other stuff going on, or whatever it is". People aren't going to hate you for that just like I don't hate my friends/relatives for not answering the phone when I call them in the middle of a long drive because I'm bored and trying to kill time. Ask yourself, "Would I be really bent out of shape if someone said "No" to me concerning this?"
I had to kick out two roommates in the last year. One was a big contributor to that 30 grand I mentioned and the other one was an awful, sad story, the prompt of "I have the right to defend myself" as an argument (I'll admit that phrasing comes across as overly dramatic, but you'll see why.). Some spineless regular at the bar I worked at met her on a dating site, hooked up with her, and couldn't handle the crazy (I'm not one who goes around diagnosing every woman I don't like as suffering from BPD, but she's one of two or three I've met in my adult life who was a dead ringer for that malady.). She was homeless/living in extended stays, I had a spare room and could use some extra cash (she was employed), and she seemed nice enough, so I said "Why not?" and took her in. Note to self, Friday night at the bar is not the place to go shopping for roommates.
It was toxic. She's not a bad person and I wish her something better, but she was troubled in a way that I'm not qualified to fix. She was 36 and drank like I did at 22, blacked out every night and trauma dumping on anyone in earshot. Honestly, observing her behavior made me feel deeply embarrassed for myself and how I was at that time and understanding of why the 8th Step exists. During blackouts it wasn't just the mundane stuff about being sexually abused by her father and not believed by her family or being fucked over by every friend in her life, but hearing the most disturbing admission of animal cruelty/neglect that I've heard, being called while working at the bar and told that she'd been on the phone with the suicide hotline, her goading her boyfriend into dumping her because she liked me more (her words), having to reject multiple sexual advances, and her blowing up on me for neglecting her in favor of speaking with an old friend that I hadn't seen in years. All this happened within two weeks. It was a disaster waiting to happen and she had to go. I felt like a massive asshole as I endured tantrums, "Why do you hate me?/What did I do to you/I'm sorry!!!?", and so on with stone silence (precisely how I dealt with/deal with my mother's tantrums), knowing full well what I was exiling her to (where she was before). I did it though, because my only choice was to do the hard thing or get dragged down further into her Hell than I already was. I still think about her sometimes.
I dunno, I actually have a very high regard for Koreans and their mindset. This is just an anecdote but I did visit South Korea a while back and left with a very positive opinion of the people there - in fact they're the loveliest people I've ever met in any country, the hospitality they showed us travellers was just overwhelming. So many of the locals there actually went out of their way to help us and make our experience better, I wasn't expecting it at all. They weren't too hung up on social propriety like the Japanese sometimes are and they didn't help in a way where they were just politely showing service to foreigners, they did so as if they actually wanted to make sure we were safe and comfortable. It may well be my fondest travel experience, and part of the reason why is that it just felt so genuinely welcoming.
Regarding the Japanese and their "belief in Japan", I'm not exactly sure this is a positive - I get the sense they do so by ignoring all the warts and all in their own country out of a sense of nationalism, somewhat similar to how Chinese nationalists do so. This is exemplified in their treatment of WW2, where much of the country prefers to ignore it in stark contrast to other Axis powers like Germany. Koreans seem to be more self-critical and this is reflected in their media, but I think in some ways this is a good thing.
Update on my last post.
It, uh...looks like I got that job as a logistics coordinator for the trucking company (Note, the trucking company is just a subsidiary of what is in fact a fairly large company.). I would give my interview performance a B (reasonably well prepared and did a good spin job about my time as the owner's crony at University 2 Go without exaggerating my experiences, but was overly nervous), but apparently it was good. It was with a panel of three (local guy, his immediate boss, and the boss above that, with most of the back and forth being with the latter) over lunch (The office had a burst pipe so we relocated to a quiet spot for lunch. I did crack a joke that Mexican food was a risky choice for the pastel shirt I was wearing.). They were pleased that I'd done some research on the company (I have very little job interviewing experience, but taking a look at the company's "about us" page and/or checking out their Youtube channel to internalize some key facts seems like an obvious thing to do. If it's a family owned company it helps to at least know the name of the founder and being able to recite some key facts of "Why do I want to work here?" seems like a no-brainer.) and apparently impressed that I'd cooked up my own excel spreadsheet to log mileage and earnings as an independently contracted delivery driver (There are apps that do this, but I didn't like any of them so I just went the old fashioned way and opted for a manually-entered mileage log. Add in tips, delivery fee earnings, and number of deliveries and you're a formula away from things you want to know like tip average, average miles driven per delivery, total miles driven in a year, and so on. I'm far from an excel guru, but this wasn't hard and generated a log that required 30 seconds at the beginning and end of a shift of punching in a few numbers on Google Sheets.). He asked if I liked puzzles, and I likened dispatching to playing Tetris (An RTS is also an apt comparison, especially in a food delivery context where it's all about fast, fast, fast, but I didn't want to explain to someone nearing retirement age what an RTS game is.).
Whatever the quality of my interview performance, the big boss stated that he was impressed with me and confident that I can do well at the job, that I reminded him of a guy that he hired back in Houston, and that while he rarely offers a job outright during the interview this was one of those times. Apparently their short to medium term goal is to have me take over the guy who referred me's position so that they can promote him. He stated that I should have a written offer by Thursday or Friday and that he could probably do a bit better than my asking salary. My contact within the company told me today that he's been instructed to decline other resumes and cease the recruiting process, that it's a done deal.
It's taking a bit to sink in (The interview was on Tuesday on one day's notice.), and I won't totally believe it until I sign that offer letter in put in my notice at draft beer corp, but holy fuck I might be out of that shitshow (The latest drama is that they were 15 days late paying the line cleaners their vehicle reimbursement, I'm still averaging less than one revenue-generating call a day, and my supervisor is so overwhelmed or disengaged that I feel like I barely have a boss and barely do anything other than clean beer lines in a terribly inefficient manner and ride the clock. I will not miss having to text my boss at 6:30 AM and ask her what I'm supposed to be doing for the day, nor will I miss driving 1500 miles a week.) and out of working two jobs and still being broke, taking on debt, and wondering at what point to I have to stop the bleeding by calling for retreat and picking a parent to move in with and start over. I still plan on doing some shifts on the side at University 2 Go (It's not a reliable full-time gig, but on the once or twice a week that they're short on a dinner shift or whatever it's easy beer money and I'd like to get out of debt.).
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3mo ago
I yoinked something in my back out of alignment rolling in BJJ last Friday. I'm not really sure what I did, but we were drilling live from De La Riva, so i think I was either trying to hang on to De La Riva or reestablish it. I barely noticed it at the time, didn't affect my game strength, but when I got home I was stiff and by lunch my back was screaming. Saturday I was in a lot of pain and spent all day medicating and sitting. Sunday, I was a little stiff, but felt good after Mass, and decided to try running a full Murph unweighted for the first time. Monday, I was back to normal, but avoided BJJ in favor of climbing Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday is here, and I went to the 6am class and went light, but was basically fine. I remain cautious in my movements, but I don't actually feel any pain or stiffness.
What's most upsetting to me is that I have no idea what exactly I did. I'm not sure exactly what motion caused the injury, what to avoid, what I did wrong. The warmup was the standard guided stretching and calisthenics by the coach. I've rolled a lot more and more intensely than that. I just don't have a good answer. Which makes it scary. I can't be in a position where I'm just randomly crippled a few weekends. When I've injured my back weightlifting, I nearly always knew I shouldn't have done that: I should have warmed up more, I shouldn't have gone for that rep or that weight, I let my form get sloppy, etc. I know what to avoid, even if I don't always manage to stick to good procedure anyway. With this, I feel a little spooky about movement. Hopefully it doesn't recur.
The Murph attempt went surprisingly well given that my lower back screamed every step of the first mile. 52 minutes. I'd like to pretend I'd do better if my back had been healthier, but that's probably bullshit, the mile time wasn't really that bad. I've got about three weeks to Memorial Day, so hopefully I can pick up a little more fitness before that. With the back injury I'm debating whether I want to mess with the vest, or just stick to unweighted. Regardless, it's amazing how I normally think of air squats as "free" but with enough reps they add up and my legs hurt for days.
As I mentioned the other week, my girlfriend and I recently watched the miniseries American Crime Story: The People vs. OJ Simpson. On Friday night we sat down to watch episode 7, and found it so absorbing that we wound up staying up til 4 a.m. to finish the remaining three episodes.
I was particularly intrigued by how the series presents one of Simpson's defense attorneys, the (in)famous Johnnie Cochran. The portrayal is nuanced: the series doesn't shy away from acknowledging his philandering and accusations of domestic abuse, nor depicting the various underhanded techniques he employed in trying to secure an acquittal for Simpson (redecorating Simpson's house to mislead the jury into thinking Simpson is a pillar of the black community; during cross-examination, speculating on the basis of nothing at all that Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman may have been murdered by cartel members); but also depicts him as a tireless advocate for black civil rights, who takes on OJ's case specifically to call attention to police racism and misconduct within the LAPD and within American society more broadly. It doesn't hurt that Courtney B. Vance gives probably the best performance in the show, effortlessly capturing Cochran's black-preacher charm and flair for the theatrical.
All the same, I couldn't help but think this portrayal was sort of - white-washed? From what I've read of the real Cochran, he strikes me as every negative stereotype about cynical, dishonest lawyers rolled into one, who took on OJ's case first and foremost to enrich himself (both directly in his fees from OJ, and indirectly in the trial's publicity making him into a household name) and secondly owing to what we now euphemistically call "in-group preference" i.e. racism. I don't think (as the show seems to imply) that the real Johnnie Cochran thinks that black men who have actually commited heinous crimes ought to be punished, but that the American justice system is so riddled with racism and white supremacy that it is impossible for us to have any real confidence that the evidence mounted in their prosecution was not compromised, planted or coerced. That, at least, is a defensible position, and arguably more defensible in 1995 than today. But I don't think that's what the real Johnnie Cochran thinks, or thought at the time: I think he thinks that OJ is black, therefore he should not be sent to prison (certainly not for murdering two white people; maybe he'd think otherwise if OJ had murdered someone close to Cochran) and any methods are justified in trying to accomplish that goal, no matter how dishonest or underhanded. I think the show was essentially sanewashing the real Cochran.
Am I being unfair to Cochran? People who know more about the real man than I do, do you think that's a reasonably accurate characterisation of his worldview?
Dean
Flairless
3mo ago
In a start to the new week in Europe that is certainly a start, the Iberian peninsula has reportedly just been hit by a major power outage affecting both Spain and Portugal, including their capitals, and parts of southern France. The power outage occurred during the day, and is disrupting activities down to the public transportation level. Power is being gradually restored, though how long for full restoration is unclear.
There is no identified cause (yet), but this sort of outage on such a geographically diverse scale does not usually happen by accident. The Spanish government is probing a possible cyberattack.
While it is possible for problems in parts of the European energy grid to cause problems elsewhere, and there was a fire recently affecting a Spanish-French high-voltage cable, I am unaware of any analogous incident where a power grid failure on the Spanish-French side would affect the Portugal side of Spain as well. (For Americans, this is roughly analogous to an incident in eastern texas leading to outages in western Texas.)
Timing is a soft-indicator that supports, but do not prove, a hostile intent.
Purely mechanical system outages tend to either be random breaks or a result of load shifting. Random breaks (key thing somewhere breaks at a bad time) is more randomly distributed over time and thus more likely on weekends and nights rather than week days. Load-shift outages can occur when a power grid fails to properly balance when raising to meet daily production. This increases the impact on the mornings, when industrial centers increase energy demand for the daily work shifts, or possibly afternoons, when post-work tool-downs create a new load-balance challenge. However, this outage reportedly occurred mid-day, when the power load is relatively stable.
Weekday afternoons, and especially early in a work week, are more valuable hostile-disruption windows. Noon and afternoon attacks affect more people out in their days, and cause more social panic as parents are separated from children or trapped without working public transportation. Mondays in particular are the inverse of the 'bury bad news by publicizing it Friday' rule. An event on Mondays is more likely to dominate public discourse and media coverage for the new work week.
Correlation is not causation, and that does bear reminding here. However, that reminder does not mean correlation is irrelevant to anything else. Expect cyber-security paradigm discussions to grow, particularly if a benign fault can't be identified. Even if a benign fault is identified, awareness of the scale of vulnerability is likely to be used either in other messaging efforts, or as inspiration for copy-cat attacks.
My best wishes for anyone affected, and hope for everyone to stay safe and have a power outage plan.
Following from @Quantumfreakonomic's post yesterday on the judge who was arrested for trying to sneak an illegal migrant out of a courthouse to avoid ICE, that media storm may be prompting a counterstory on the latest Trump immigration outrage to be outraged about.
Reuters: Two-year-old US citizen appears to have been deported 'with no meaningful process'
New York Times: 2-Year-Old U.S. Citizen Deported ‘With No Meaningful Process,’ Judge Suspects
CBS News: Judge demands answers on whether 2-year-old U.S. citizen was deported to Honduras
Washington Post: Three U.S. citizens, ages 2, 4 and 7, swiftly deported from Louisiana
Rolling Stone: Trump Has Now Deported Multiple U.S. Citizen Children With Cancer
CNN: Federal judge says 2-year-old US citizen was deported with mother to Honduras
Yes, the new scandal for the new week, just in time to replace coverage of the somewhat embarrassing judge from last week, now presents a heroic judge objecting to the deportation of US children. While multiple cases are there, the focus of the current not-at-all coordinate push focuses on the 2-year old from Louisana.
Admittedly, the CNN article did make the mistake of letting the headline reveal some of the possible nuance as to 'why'. Being the only headline to mention 'mother' was what started this little media dive.
The key sequence of events from the CBS article include-
According to a petition filed Thursday by Trish Mack, a friend of child's mother, the girl, her 11-year-old sister and mother were taken into custody Tuesday morning while attending a routine check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at an ICE office in New Orleans. The mother had attended meetings like this regularly for four years, often bringing her daughters with her. They were taken to the meeting by the girl's father, the petition reads.
After being detained, the mother and her two daughters were transported to an ICE field office in New Orleans, court documents state. When the father arrived at that office, ICE officers gave him papers stating that the mother "was under their custody," documents read, and that she "would call him soon."
That day, an attorney for the family contacted ICE and informed authorities that the girl was a U.S. citizen, the petition said, and also emailed a copy of the girl's U.S. birth certificate to ICE.
But that night, an ICE agent called the father and informed him that "they were going to deport his partner and daughters," documents read.
On Wednesday, an ICE agent spoke with the family's attorney, and "refused to honor a request to release" the girl "to her custodian, stating that it was not needed because" she "was already with her mother," court documents read.
Some of the potentially relevant context, not all of which was in the CBS article, and which different organizations provide different framings for.
On some differences in filings and timings-
CBS
When Doughty, appointed to the bench by President Trump during his first term, sought Friday afternoon to arrange a phone call with the mother of the girl, Justice Department lawyers informed him that a call with the child's mother "would not be possible because she (and presumably VML) had just been released in Honduras." The girl is identified in court documents as VML.
CNN
Lawyers for the family filed an emergency petition Thursday, asking the court to order the child’s “immediate release” by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saying they “lack any statutory or constitutional authority” to detain her as a US citizen, according to the petition.
Washington Post
Lawyers representing the father of the 2-year-old U.S. citizen who was deported, identified as V.M.L. in court documents, filed an emergency petition in the Western District of Louisiana on Thursday seeking her release. The child was put on a plane to Honduras the next morning before the court opened.
CBS
In an effort to halt the deportation of the two daughters, the father on Tuesday filed for a temporary transfer of legal custody, which under Louisiana law would give his sister-in-law, a U.S. citizen who resides in Baton Rouge, custody of both.
CNN and the Washington Post did not raise the legal custody issue raised on Tuesday, which frames later decisions. The Post in particular removes the child from the context of the mother in the plane to Honduras, treating the 2-year-old citizen as the only relevant individual on the plane as opposed to the mother and older sibling.
CBS did raise the custody case, but does not raise the Thursday petition for immediate release that could be understood in the custody decision.
Only CBS raises that the court session sought Thursday afternoon occurs on Friday afternoon. The Washington Post emphasizes the time of the departure flight as before court could open, insinuating without explicitly claiming a motive for the timing of the flight. No context is provided by anyone on what time the flight actually was, what time the court was, or the other normal times of possible flights to Honduras from the local airport are.
Additionally, no media actually characterizes the relationships between mother, father, and sister-in-law. There's no claim that the father and mother are married. Therefore, there is only an insinuation that the 'sister-in-law' is meaningfully related to the mother in a sense that would normally sway custody fights.
On the basis of the child's removal, for sources that did so-
CBS
The immigration status of the girl's father, mother and sister was unclear. The girl was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in January 2023, according to the filing.
"The parent made the decision to take the child with them to Honduras. It is common that parents want to be removed with their children," Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to CBS News Saturday.
Washington Post
The government is not disputing the immigration status of any of the three children. Instead, officials contend that the undocumented mothers opted to take their citizen children with them back to Honduras. In their court filing, Justice Department lawyers attached a note they say was written by V.M.L.’s mother saying that she was taking the child with her to Honduras.
CNN
The federal government said in court documents the mother wrote in a letter she “will bring my daughter … with me to Honduras.”
“Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with someone the parent designates. In this case, the parent stated they wanted to be removed with the children,” the official said.
“V.M.L. (the child) is not at substantial risk of irreparable harm if kept with her lawful custodian mother,” the government said.
Different sources provide different strengths of agency to the mother. CBS only attribute a mother motive via government statement after the fact, and makes no claim of the mother herself expressing an interest. CNN reports that the government claims the mother wrote a note, but does not mention the note itself was included in court submissions. Washington Post notes that there was an actual note attached, but disassociates veracity via 'they say' to open door for doubt.
Only CNN directly addresses a claimed government policy of asking the migrant parent their preference.
On the status of the father-
Washington Post
Justice Department lawyers argued that “the man claiming to be V.M.L.'s father” had failed to prove his identity to the government despite requests that he present himself to ICE agents, adding that he had also “demonstrated considerable hesitation” regarding the inquiries into his immigration status. The man’s lawyers included V.M.L.’s birth certificate in their fillings, which shows she was born in Baton Rouge and lists the names of both her mother and father.
CNN
The father then moved to give provisional custody of his two daughters to his sister-in-law, a US citizen who lives in Baton Rouge, and the mandate was notarized in Louisiana, the documents say.
The petition alleges ICE refused to honor the father’s request to release V.M.L. to the sister-in-law, stating “it was not needed” because the child was already with her mother, and informed the father he would be taken into custody if he tried to pick her up.
The government said the “man claiming to be V.M.L.’s father” has not presented or identified himself to ICE despite requests to do so, the court documents say.
CBS News
The immigration status of the girl's father, mother and sister was unclear.
In an effort to halt the deportation of the two daughters, the father on Tuesday filed for a temporary transfer of legal custody, which under Louisiana law would give his sister-in-law, a U.S. citizen who resides in Baton Rouge, custody of both.
The ICE agent further said that the "father could try to pick her up, but that he would also be taken into custody."
The Washington Post makes no reference to the legal custody attempt by the father, and thus why ICE might request he present himself to them regardless of immigration status. CNN and CBS do acknowledge the custody shift to the sister-in-law, but do not elaborate why the father could not request custody for himself. CBS alludes that the father's status is 'unclear,' while CNN establishes a threat (custody) but not basis for the threat (possible immigrant status himself).
No media covers the implication of an unverified man requesting custody of a child be revoked from the undisputed mother to another woman of unclear relation.
On the Judge's Comments-
CBS
A federal judge says a 2-year-old Louisiana girl and U.S. citizen may have been deported to Honduras this week with her mother and 11-year-old sister without due process, according to court documents obtained by CBS News. In an order Friday, Judge Terry Doughty, who sits on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, wrote there was a "strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process."
Washington Post
Doughty set a May 16 court hearing to investigate his “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.” The order did not call for the girl’s return or recommend any recourse for the family.
CNN
“In the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the government just deported a US citizen with no meaningful process,” Judge Doughty said in the order, a hearing is scheduled on May 16 in Monroe, Louisiana.
The judge added, “It is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommend deportation of a U.S. citizen,” citing a 2012 deportation case.
The federal government, Doughty said, “contends this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her … But the court doesn’t know that.”
Only CNN quotes the opening section of the Judge's sentence and interest. Both CBS and the Washington Post begins their quote after removing the opening clause, creating a stronger statement.
Trump First Term Child Separation Scandal
Human Rights Watch: Trump’s Cruel Separation Policy Has Not Ended
...I kid, that one is from 2018.
No media references, raises, or otherwise brings attention to the criticisms to the first term policy of detaining or deporting adult illegal migrants without their children.
In summary, if it this starts permutating on the interwebs next week-
The two-year-old american citizen case involves
A larger family(?) of non-citizens migrants with a singular birthright-citizenship daughter
- The non-citizen attributed include the mother who was deported, an 11-year-old-daughter also deported but not claimed to be a US citizen, and the father of unclear-nationality
- The family was allowed to remain under Biden-era Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP), which allows individuals to remain in their communities while undergoing immigration proceedings
- ISAP is for illegal migrants, not legal migrant proceedings, as the Biden administration was practicing a remote-application program for processing immigration proceedings pre-arrival, and violating that was a basis of deportation
- There is no allegation that ISAP concluded with a permanent legal status for the family
The American citizen is/was an archetypical 'anchor baby' context without being called such
- Born in Baton Rouge, LA in January 2023
- Which means conception mid-2022, after Biden-era migration policies had become apparent / gained reputation
- The mother either migrated while pregnant, or conceived after arrival.
- The primary legal concern focus raised around this deportation case center around the child's due process rights, not the mother's or sister's
- Unclear legal / policy / political relevance of the sister-in-law to the migrant decisions
More broadly, the headline/surface narratives conflate child deportation with child-custody considerations
- Narratives characterize deportation of the 2-year old child, as opposed to children accompanying deported parents Minimal engagement of process / standards for parents keeping young children with them during processing
- Articles generally avoid acknowledging government policy of offering parents a chance; not mentioned, as opposed to claims it was violated
- General avoidance of parental custody rights and legal expectations of deporting non-citizen adults with citizen minor. For example
-
- If a mother can choose to take an American citizen child with them
-
- If a non-citizen father should be deferred to when requesting custody of children to be taken from the mother to someone else
-
- If the custody dispute between non-citizens must be adjudicated before deportation of the primary parent with their child
Finally- Is there basis for legitimate concern in this scandal?
Yes.
If you thought the lead-up was a the media is totally lying about everything trope, that was deliberate. It was to make a point about why I expect this scandal to hook some and be dismissed by others.
For people who are hawkish on illegal immigration, this case is not your friend. There is a lot of red meat here that could be uncovered- potentially unmarried family unit, a concerned father of uncertain status who in the first minute of establishing contact tries to convey a litigation strategy, child-custody defaults being reversed- but there is a hook that can work against you. And that hook is the disruption of what most people would consider a due process right, even if deportation legalism is different from a criminal court process.
For people upset about ICE and due process, this coverage is also not your friend. The framings- and the not-very-deep undercurrents that go against the framing- will give a basis to dismiss concern as motivated. The children-in-cage's and child-separation critiques are not going to be forgotten. The fact that not separating children from their deported parents is now a basis of criticism is going to undercut criticims of both. The media's rush to present a concerned father is going to run into discrediting disappointing revelations.
But the propaganda doesn't mean there is only propaganda. Even if it's not what the coverage generators wants you to be concerned about, because- again- you need to piece together relevant events not tied together in any single framing.
CBS
When Doughty, appointed to the bench by President Trump during his first term, sought Friday afternoon to arrange a phone call with the mother of the girl, Justice Department lawyers informed him that a call with the child's mother "would not be possible because she (and presumably VML) had just been released in Honduras." The girl is identified in court documents as VML.
Why was Doughty asking for a phone call with the mother?
Washington Post
That [Tuesday] night, the girl’s father was allowed to speak with her mother for only a minute before an ICE agent ended the call, lawyers contend. Lawyers say the man did not get the chance to speak to his partner or child again until after they were released in Honduras.
Why did the Tuesday night phone call with the mother (allegedly) get stopped by ICE after only a minute?
CNN
Before the father could finish providing the mother with contact information for their attorneys, he heard the ICE officer “take the phone from her and hang up the call,” according to the petition.
This is a claim. It is a claim made by someone with an interest in claiming it regardless of whether it is true or not. It is also a valid basis for concern, independent of deportation of the mother or custody decisions of her child.
If true, this would indicate that communication between the woman and potential legal representation was deliberately disrupted. How long it was disrupted is a relevant interest, particularly if other legal advice might have changed her mind of letting her newborn stay with someone else.
This brings relevant questions that may or may not have been precluded.
- Was the sister-in-law a valid close relation of the mother under existing custody precedent? (It is not claimed. Only that the father requested.)
- Was the mother interested / aware of the attempt at custody revocation at the father's request? (It is not claimed. Only that the mother signed an intent to keep her children.)
- Were the father's lawyers denied access to contact the mother? (It is not claimed. Only that the father did not speak with her until post-deportation.)
- Was the mother denied access to any lawyers she was entitled to? (It is not claimed. Only that the lawyers are characterized as the father's or the family's, not if they contacted her.)
- Was the mother, as opposed to the US citizen child, denied due process deportable aliens are entitled to? (It is not claimed. Only that a specific phone call was ended.)
Is there any legal barrier preventing the 2-year-old US citizen from returning to the US, beyond 'typical' international legal custody issues?
It is not claimed. But then, no major media coverage has expressed interest in that paradigm either.
Frustration.
If you want to improve their website, you could try something like what I did to fandom.com using an adblocker.
EDIT: could an LLM do that autonomously? I don't think the non-agent models could see what they were doing, and the agents aren't optimized for it, but surely it'll be done by the end of the year.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
Is community drama Friday Fun?
Rationalist-adjacent blogger Dinomight is accusing rationalist-adjacent Twitter poaster Cremieux of plaigerizing his post on aspertame into a popular Twitter thread. This has now escalated to wall-of-text denounciations, involving characters such as LessWrong admins and our old friend TracingWoodgrains.
And to think, just last weekend I posted some of my thoughts and predictions on last-Friday's foreshadowing. I wouldn't have been surprised if this came even weeks later, but nothing here changes my position in general.
I'd agree with you that this is a good deal for Russia, but I'd disagree that Puti is no nationalist. I think nationalist reasonings would be the reason Putin does not accept this- either by outright refusal or waiting long enough that the Trump administration walks away or most likely by trying to blame the Ukrainians. The 'we're winning and we'll keep winning and if Trump walks away that's good for us to keep going until total victory' is a political force, and Putin is a strategic procrastinator unless faced with clearly bad decisions of setback or worse setback.
This is not that. This is 'good' versus 'could be better later.' If US is willing to recognize Crimea now, there's no inherent reason why Trump wouldn't be willing to recognize Crimea later, or Russia might not demand other (European) countries do as well. Things like preventing Ukraine from having unfettered access to the Dnieper is a point in and of itself for permanent long-term maleffects to Ukraine. Similar with threatening Ukraine power system prospects.
We'll see if the war ends with this. I have my doubts*, but it is within the scope of possibilities. On the other hand, so is kabuki for several more weeks. (The offer mentions sanctions since 2014. This does not specify, but likely includes, European sanctions. However, Trump notably has not exactly included the Europeans, who could veto such a relaxation, in his Putin negotiations.) So would a temporary cease fire that returns to fighting.
*I'll actually go further: I hope it stops, but that hope on my part has a tendency is itself subject to interpreting incoming information with confirmation bias.
Dean
Flairless
3mo ago
It’s the same problem that’s occurred since time immemorial and is the reason why (as I understand it) Republican politicians were discouraged from spending too much time in Washington.
That was part of the 1994 Republican Revolution under Newt Gingrich. It wasn't just 'discouragement' either- it was a organizational-restructuring, as the rules of Congress were changed to facilitate frequent travel out of DC. Most notably, Congressional business workflows were centered on the mid-week, so that key votes were Tuesday-Thursday, to make Monday/Friday travel days more viable.
It was part of 'proving independence from Washington' and 'staying in touch with your constituents.' It is the oft-forgotten root of regular complaints that Congress spends too little time in Washington compared to the past, and the associated complaints that Congress gets less done (because they are present less) and don't know eachother as well. On the other hand, it arguably contributes to the dynamic of voters loving their congressperson but hating congress.
It was also, critically, a period where Republicans were also incentivized to not bring their families to D.C., which in turns means the wives and children who stay behind aren't culturally socialized into the blue-tribe-dominated national capital region. But it also means, by extension, that Democratic representative families under the same dynamics aren't socializing with more red-leaning counterparts, and are free to be even bluer influences on their Congressional-spouses.
This is an oft-forgotten / underappreciated rules-level dynamic of national-level political centralization and elite-consensus.
Keeping key elites spending time together and away from their own power-bases that could foster a sense of disconnect from the central authority has been a national cohesion strategy since before Louis XIV and Versailles. This helped political centralization by giving the monarch an easier time keeping an eye on everyone if they were in one part. But it also allowed for political homogenization/consensus-building/shared-identity cultivation of a common French identity amongst elites, as the French nobility were forced by proximity (and tactical political interests) to get along and socialize. Court politics is infamous in fiction for political infighting and drama, but it does create paradigms for collective understandings, interests, and identities, hence the divide of the french estates leading to the French revolution. Nobles infight against eachother, but unite in common cause against challenges to their collective interests and privileges.
Congressional committee placement politics isn't an exact analog to the French Monarchy making appointments dependent on remaining at court, but there are more than a few parallels. If you're not missing key votes because you're spending time with constituents- because Congressional workflows are focused on Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday execution- then you're not losing your chance at valuable appointments to powerful Congressional committees. The lower the opportunity cost of not-being in the capital, the greater the opportunity-gains of being elsewhere for fundraising / political events / etc. And, again, you're away from your family less if you're free to return to them more often.
These are changes that the Congressional Democrats have kept even when they recaptured Congress. They get many of the same benefits as well. And as the D.C. area is something like 90% Democratic for a variety of reasons, it's hard to see them convincing (or, frankly, forcing) the Republicans to revert to the pre-Gingrich status quo in the name of homogenizing them in an expected blue direction.
Interestingly, it's also a dynamic being actively pursued in the reverse by the movement of property, and not just people.
You can arguably see an implicit effort-to-reverse Federal consensus-centralization ongoing right now, as Trump attempts to push the federal bureaucracy away from the capital region.
One of the less-commented efforts the Trump administration is pursuing is moving federal agencies outside of the DC area and to other states. This has been overshadowed by the media coverage of the personnel management, but the property management is (almost) as important.
Among the earliest executive orders was a direction for agencies to propose relocations away from DC and to other states. This purportedly on cost-reasons. DC property is expensive to maintain, employee allowances are higher to make up for the regional cost of living, etc. The actual cost of moving has to be balanced against savings are likely to provide, but states have an incentive to take some of that cost for their own long-term gain in getting the relocated agencies.
Almost as importantly, Congress persons have an incentive to approve federal agency relocations to the benefit of their own state. Even Democratic politicians who might personally hate Trump. Which is to say, Federal government divestment from DC offers bargaining chips / horses to trade in the upcoming year(s) of budget negotiations.
That this is also is likely to have an employee-composition impact, as the hyper-blue DC environment those agencies recruit and socialize and network within get replaced with more purple environments that are geographically dispersed, is probably not going to be a publicized or recognized until it's as locked-in as the Gingrich Congressional travel changes.
As has been seen with some shutdowns like the USAID shutdown, DC-based federal employees have often indicated they want to stay in the DC area. This is natural. Even if they were offered an opportunity to keep their jobs if agencies were relocated instead of shutdown, some percent would refuse and seek other employment in DC. This is just a matter of statistics. It is also an area of precedent. In the Trump 1 administration, nearly 90% of DC-based Bureau of Land Management employees retired or quit rather than relocated to Grand Junction, Colorado.
That's bad if you think an equivalent dynamic to, say, the DC Headquarters of the Justice Department would lose vital experience and expertise and informal coordination with other agencies. On the other hand, if you don't think the headquarters of the US Justice Department should be rooted in the swamp that is 90% blue, and less than a mile from where a 'Black Live Matter' mural used to be maintained on the street...
And once departments are separated, the sort of informal coordination that can occur if you and a friend/ally you know in another part of the government can meet in the same town also goes away. Inter-government lobbying is a lot harder if you are cities apart. Inter-department coordination is also, and almost as importantly, a lot harder to do without a document trail.
And this is where one could infer a non-stated motive for the resistance-shy Trump. One of the only reasons the US electorate learned that the Biden administration white house was coordinating with the Georgia anti-Trump case despite denials was because one of the Georgia prosecutor assistances invoiced the White House for the travel expenses for in-person engagements. In-person meetings, in turn, are one of the ways to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests or Congressional subpoenas for communications over government systems.
This is where the Versailles metaphor comes back, but as an inverse of sorts. It was easier for Louis the XIVth to keep an eye on and manage the nobility when they were in one place. They were scheming, sure, but he could keep watch of them in a single physical location where he controlled the coordination contexts. Trump / the Republicans do not control the coordination context of DC. They can, however, increase political control over the bureaucracy by physically separating it across multiple physical locations, where they have easier means to monitor inter-node coordination.
It is also an effort that will be exceptionally hard for the Democrats to reverse, if they try to. It is a lot easier to divest and reorganize government institutions when you have a trifecta than when you don't. It is also much easier to give up federal property in DC to the benefit of states than it is to get state Congressional representatives to vote to strip their states of jobs and inflows for the sake of DC.
Which means that federal agencies that depart DC will probably not return in the near future. And the longer they stay away, the longer that local employment hiring filters into organizational cultures at the lowest levels. The more that Federal employees have their spouses and children shaped by the less-blue-than-DC environments, and thus shape them in turn. The less engaged, and involved, they can be in the beltway culture.
The Trump administration DC divestment are arguably going to have long-term effects on affected parts of the federal bureaucracy on par with Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution affects on Congress in the 90's. Affected agencies will be less compositionally composed of, less socially exposed to, and less culturally aligned to Blue-dominated DC in ways that will only become apparent decades from now.
ulyssessword
3mo ago
It would have been so much funnier on Good Friday.
NewCharlesInCharge
3mo ago
This is almost exactly the Good Friday liturgy in my Catholic parish. Though we all come forward to line up and personally adore the cross how we see fit, typically touching it, offering a prayer, and making the sign of the cross.
I wrote on this about a year ago here, but I was replying to a Friday comment on Sunday and it found few eyes.
I'm reposting it because short of cataclysmic war or calamity, what I describe is exactly what will happen.
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