domain:asteriskmag.com
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
2hr ago
I have to give it to you, if this is bait, then it's well done. From most other commenters, I would have assumed that they had genuine, sincere concern.
Mantergeistmann
2hr ago
I suppose it depends on who you believe: the fellow's family, or the Guatemalan government
The Guatemalan Migration Institute said in a statement that it coordinates with ICE on all deportations from the United States and that no one matched Leon’s name, age or citizenship.
So! If your story as presented is full and true... it's absolutely god-awful, a horrible overreach, and there should be some sort of massive legal reaction against the levers of power that made it happen. If not... well, it's yet one more reason why I find it difficult to get worked up when I'm told about a horrible news story with political implications, especially a breaking one.
Mantergeistmann
2hr ago
I've seen it said that with your standard press-releases-as-articles, most papers will just chop it up a bit and regurgitate it. The Daily Mail will send someone round to interview neighbors for a juicy take on it instead.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
2hr ago
where is the shame?
I simply don’t have any!
My shame response has always been rather attenuated (in certain contexts) compared to the population average. Probably part of what makes it so easy to resist the “right-thinking” social consensus on immigration.
Anyway, no, sob stories won’t guilt us into not having borders and immigration enforcement procedures.
iprayiam3
3hr ago
Ditto to Rescuers down under. Aladdan 2 and Toy Story 2 are “watchable”. Everything else is slop.
Where is the shame, Americans? Where is the shame?
Background: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/20/ice-secretly-deported-grandfather (all bolding mine)
Ice secretly deported Pennsylvania grandfather, 82, after he lost green card
Family of Luis Leon say they were initially told by someone he had died, but they found him alive in Guatemala hospital
An 82-year-old man in Pennsylvania was secretly deported to Guatemala after visiting an immigration office last month to replace his lost green card, according to his family, who have not heard from him since and were initially told he was dead.
According to Morning Call, which first reported the story, long-time Allentown resident Luis Leon – who was granted political asylum in the US in 1987 after being tortured under the regime of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet – lost his wallet containing the physical card that confirmed his legal residency. So he and wife booked an appointment to get it replaced.
When he arrived at the office on 20 June, however, he was handcuffed by two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers, who led him away from his wife without explanation, she said. She herself was kept in the building for 10 hours until relatives picked her up.
The family said they made efforts to find any information on his whereabouts but learned nothing.
Then, sometime after Leon was detained, a woman purporting to be an immigration lawyer called the family, claiming she could help – but did not disclose how she knew about the case, or where Leon was.
On 9 July, according to Leon’s granddaughter, the same woman called them again, claiming Leon had died.
A week later, however, they discovered from a relative in Chile that Leon was alive after all – but now in a hospital in Guatemala, a country to which he has no connection.
According to Morning Call, the relative said Leon had first been sent to an immigration detention center in Minnesota before being deported to Guatemala – despite not appearing on any Ice detention deportation lists.
A recent supreme court decision ruled the Trump administration could deport immigrants to other countries beside their country of origin.
In his nearly 40 years living in the US, Leon spent his career working in a leather manufacturing plant, and raised a family. He had since retired.
His condition at the hospital in Guatemala is unknown. He suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure and a heart condition, according to his family, who said they are planning to fly to Guatemala to see him.
An Ice official told the Morning Call it was investigating the matter.
My first reaction after seeing this was a singular and complete WTF???. I do not see how it is possible to read this and go anything other than "Shame on you" at the American government, ICE in particular and also the American populace for acquiescing to this.
Note that this is not some drug dealer or gang lynchpin, this is 82 year old gramps, who is a retired leatherworker granted asylum fully under the rules who has been working in the USA for the last 40+ years and has raised a family in the country. Instead after losing his Green Card he gets summarily disappeared and put on a flight to Guatemala, a country to which he has no connection...
This is not the behaviour I would expect of a mature world power like the USA, this is more like what one would expect of Saudi Arabia, or actually no, at least the Saudis would at least have more respect for their elders. Instead what we see here is what happens when a modern secular polity jettisons the moral framework it took up as replacement for the laws of God and the ancient idea of noblesse oblige: we are left with a hollow shell; a massive cavity, ringing under the total emptiness of its own fundamental depravity.
The US supreme court has its own share of blame and shame to take here. Judicial Review is a fundamental check on the balance of power of any modern western government, as Americans with their whole "we have checks and balances" schick are wont to tell us. Instead some power tripping ICE worker two grades above the rank of janitor decided to act as judge, jury and executioner and sent a vulnerable 82 year old man off to a country with which he has no links whatsoever.
And what did the Supreme Court do? It approved this sort of behaviour from servants of the government just a few months earlier. Either this is direct malice from the court or the learned justices, sitting in that august hall (august by American standards, by our standards there is terraced housing within 5 minutes walk of me that is older), failed to consider the reasonably foreseeable consequences of their actions. Now I know what they say about Hanlon's Razor but even I will admit the people elevated to the Supreme Court of the United States aren't going to be incompetent...
In a civilized country like the UK, firstly something like this would never have happened as the man would have a right to argue against his deportation in front of a judge, so none of this "ambush deportation" would ever be possible. Furthermore, even if the deportation for some inexplicable reason happened without following any process the family of this old man would be able to bring a massive suit against the government which they would easily win if the government was foolish enough to not settle.
On top of this, in the UK they have a special class of damages called "Exemplary Damages" which are designed to punish the perpetrator instead of compensating the victim. Exemplary damages are very very rarely available under UK law, but one of the very few exceptions is "arbitrary and oppressive conduct by a servant of the government". In a mature democracy like the UK the government recognizes that it has more power, and therefore more responsibility, than a private entity in the same situation, and so opens itself to an additional type of liability when it makes a big mistake compared to a private company that does something equally as grave.
Instead in the USA we have the opposite situation where the government, with the tacit support of the judiciary, has cloaked itself with additional protections under the guise of "Sovereign Immunity" that mean it can behave in a malicious way and not leave itself liable to damages. The US talks the talk on how it has punitive damages which keeps big bad actors in line so they don't mistreat the little man but then you can take one look at its convoluted and extremely adversarial judicial system and realize instantly just how difficult it is for ordinary people to not get worn down in a war of attrition long before any final hearing.
The UK handles things so so much better here. The judge in the UK isn't a neutral umpire but they have their own duty to the court to ensure that cases are handled fairly and efficiently, the more inquisitorial nature of our legal system means that playing procedural games is frowned upon and both parties are incentivised to stay honest lest they piss off the judge, who has a certain amount of leeway available to them to help out the little man if necessary.
All in all as I learn more about the Law as it is in both the UK, other systems like European Civil Law and the US, I am slowly being drawn to the inescapable conclusion that the American legal system, for all its grandiose self professed claims, is a steaming pile of shit. And no, I'm not basing my conclusion here solely on modern jurisprudence, but also looking at old Supreme Court cases like Espinoza v. Farah Manufacturing Co. where the court, in its infinite wisdom, decided 8-1 that refusing a job offer for a non-security sensitive role to a Mexican national who was a US green card holder with full working rights in the US just because they are technically not a citizen does not count as discrimination based on national origin...
And what may be the worst part of this sordid affair may not even be the ambush deportation, but the utter and total lack of class displayed in falsely telling the family that that their patriarch had died... I mean have some basic respect... The chain of failures and completely absolute misjudgment by multiple different individuals without somebody interjecting somewhere that what they are doing isn't right which must have happened for such a call to ever be made in the first place speaks volumes about the American psyche...
In a way this really goes to show us that the US, for all its wealth, is still a young country: it is still new money, in the worst possible sense of the word. I think the great LKY put it far far better than I ever could talking about the true character of Americans (n.b. I'd say that if you watch just one video today, this should be near the top of your list, it's only 3 minutes long and well worth the time as it shows one of the great men of the 20th century diagnosing the American malaise with effortless precision).
Perhaps after the end of Trump, the USA will be in a position where it can apply for readmission to the human race...
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
That particular church is 1) pretty normal for popes to visit and 2) has architectural reasons forcing ad orientem.
He’s definitely celebrated mass ad orientem as a bishop where it was optional, though.
Lizzardspawn
3hr ago
just asked myself the same. My wild guess is - it requires some major redesign.
SerialStateLineXer
3hr ago
On a related note, I have no idea what Netflix is thinking with their games strategy. Who wants to play Grand Theft Auto on a cell phone?
Soteriologian
4hr ago
The Rescuers Down Under. It doesn’t even feel like a sequel, partly because it’s just better than the original, and partly because it’s from before Disney went creatively bankrupt and started churning out vapid content to milk legacy IPs.
Lorian_Aristedes
4hr ago
Oops, good call. Thanks!
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
4hr ago
I don't know. When I moved from Europe to the US, taking my 2-liters-of-soda-a-day habit with me, it resulted in a slew of crippling gastric issues which responded well and quickly to (1) forcing myself to not drink soda and/or (2) switching to "Mexican coke". Now, of course, there are more differences in the formulations than the type of sugar used. I am however generally very skeptical towards food sensitivities, so it seems unlikely to me that this was pure nocebo.
KingOfTheBailey
4hr ago
You might want to repost this in this week's thread, otherwise you might not get much discussion.
Fascinating, I never knew you were Jewish.
As said, it doesn't really play a role in my life or factor into my views. Besides, "Jewish" is a thoroughgoing exaggeration. "Half-Jewish" is already overselling it by far. I'm German in pretty much every way except for half my genes and some family members. Born in Germany, raised by Germans, lived among Germans ever since, never spent significant time abroad and only ever visit my Jewish relatives for a few days every few years, maybe have a brief phone call every few months and have difficulties relating to them at all on account of them living in different countries (even though I like them and both sides make an effort to stay in contact). I'm an extremely rare statistical anomaly and best filed under "eccentric German" for all practical purposes.
Were your Jewish ancestors Germans before 1939 (or 1933, I suppose)? Did they spend the war in Switzerland, Russia or elsewhere (Spain, America etc)? Did they return immediately after the war or many years later? If they were ur-German Jews, how did they feel (if you know) about the fact that the modern German Jewish community is 80-90%+ ex-Soviets / Eastern Bloc who fled after 1955 (and often after 1980)? I am familiar with some cultural tension. Do you know (locally) any other Germans of immediate (ie. parental) Jewish descent?
I'm honestly a little hazy on the details (and probably doxxing myself anyways), but AFAIK they were all over the place, clustering around Austria-Hungary and Romania. It's not impossible that they might trace back to German Jews, but I wouldn't know. I don't know much about my distant relatives, and my close ones actually migrated to Paris rather than Germany. It's complicated and I only have very superficial knowledge of it. They don't have any connections to the Jewish community here. I know a small handful of Jews in my region, but that's purely by coincidence and since I am judaism-illiterate I wouldn't even be able to tell you what kinds of Jews those are.
I've heard some of my family half-joke that it's not jewish heritage at all, and that the origin traces back to Khazars converting to judaism for political reasons. But that doesn't really explain why they do look distinctly jewish.
Also, unlike my somewhat-stereotypically secular Jewish family, the Jews I got to know in Germany are largely pretty screwed up by the tension between their practicing families and their own dissolute lifestyles. They don't really see me as a Jew at all, and expressed exasperation at my ignorance.
It all doesn't go anywhere, is not relevant to anything I am, think or do. HBD-wise it might inform some of my personality traits, but I'm no expert on that.
I really only brought up my jewish non-heritage to illustrate the point that you can absolutely be on The Motte even when some mottizens would, by some metric and in some extended thought experiments, call for your marginalization or for violence against you. You can in fact just shrug that off. It's just talk on the internet.
Corvos
5hr ago
the Southport murders (committed by a born British citizen)
Committed by Axel Rudakubana, child of two Rwandan immigrants, picture here.
I wouldn't normally make a point of it, but frankly Mr. Rudakabana is a very non-standard 'British citizen' and that is clearly and directly relevant to both the country being on edge and the Southport riots. The brackets here strike me as deliberately burying the lede.
pbmonster
5hr ago
I'm going through an MIT OCW nuclear course right now.
Then you seem like the best person to ask this rather obvious question: why is nobody doing that in conventional fission reactors right now? At least the fast breeders should have suitable neutron flux, right?
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
5hr ago
@cjet79 thank you for the recommendation for Captain of Industry. Your description of "Factorio + terrain leveling simulator" really sounded fun, and I have indeed been having a blast. I started on what I think is the hardest map ("You Shall Not Pass") because I thought the name was funny + a friend declared "no balls" when I was going to go with one of the beginner friendly maps. But other than the fact I've had to spend a lot of time making level ground to work with, I haven't found it too bad. Factory game experience is helping me a lot, I imagine.
ace
5hr ago
You also need to manage IP addresses and browser fingerprinting. It's quite frankly a lot of work to do well, especially at scale.
FtttG
6hr ago
Back in the old subreddit, I recall some contemporaneous discussion about whether or not George Floyd would go viral, and some speculating (possibly myself included, I don't remember) that it wouldn't specifically because it failed the toxoplasma criterion: in the first few weeks, it seemed that more or less everyone agreed he'd been the victim of excessive force at the hands of Chauvin et al. Perhaps the subsequent revelations about the drugs in his system allowed it to circle back around to being controversial, as for a time it seemed there was some legitimate ambiguity about whether he'd died because of Chauvin compressing his chest or because of an overdose (my understanding is the autopsy confirmed the former).
TitaniumButterfly
6hr ago
Neat!
FtttG
6hr ago
After finishing The Secret of My Success I wanted something light, so I devoured The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in three days. Even though the ending had been inadvertently spoiled for me years ago, I couldn't put it down, and enjoyed spotting all the little clues about the killer's identity which I would have presumably overlooked if I hadn't known. After Ten Little
This morning I started reading a book my mother recommended, Free by Lea Ypi, a memoir of the author's growing up in Albania in the nineties.
I'm a half-jewish German who strongly identifies as German and effectively not at all as Jewish beyond having some family members who do strongly identify as Jewish. By what German public schooling has taught me was Nazi Racial Science, I fully qualify as a Jew to be reomved, though. My Jewish ancestors managed to flee the Nazis as well as the Soviets unharmed
Fascinating, I never knew you were Jewish. Were your Jewish ancestors Germans before 1939 (or 1933, I suppose)? Did they spend the war in Switzerland, Russia or elsewhere (Spain, America etc)? Did they return immediately after the war or many years later? If they were ur-German Jews, how did they feel (if you know) about the fact that the modern German Jewish community is 80-90%+ ex-Soviets / Eastern Bloc who fled after 1955 (and often after 1980)? I am familiar with some cultural tension. Do you know (locally) any other Germans of immediate (ie. parental) Jewish descent?
I'm the same. I can't really form proper models of people over the internet through just their self-descriptions and their usernames, and it's especially tough considering I have a hard time imagining faces in the first place. Here's you:
- Middle-aged.
- Half-Jewish German.
- Father to a daughter (who he is rather fond of).
- Married to a very dysfunctional woman with whom he has a working partner/SAHM dynamic.
- Self-described chauvinist.
- Does not think Peter Watts is a good writer.
I think it's particularly difficult to form proper conceptions of people in TheMotte in spite of how regular most users are, since this forum isn't all that personally-oriented - it tends to be arranged around debating abstract ideas and less about discussing one's own situation. Also everyone here is very concerned with OpSec because of all the wrongthink bandied around on a daily basis, and many members here have jobs and families they would like to shield from any consequences of their online speech.
So we now believe the victim who identified Floyd is lying because an officer involved happened to be dirty?
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