domain:web.law.duke.edu
JarJarJedi
4d ago
It is understandable that they may have different interests than the US, and thus want a monetary system that can not be controlled by the US. The question is, who will be controlling it then? Somehow I doubt it being controlled by Zambia or South Africa or any other African state would be better for the long-term perspectives of it, and in general African states - especially ones that are located close and thus most in need of common currency system - aren't best known for always valuing cooperation over conflict. Of course, they could elect China or Russia or Iran to be their master - but why exactly would that play better for them than the US?
They could try to implement a truly decentralized zero-trust system, but given as nobody really done it on the national scale, I'm not sure they have the expertise or the guts to try it. Would be an interesting experiment though, but there are so many failure modes there that it could only be of any value if successful.
a $200 million trade between two parties in different African countries is estimated to cost 10% to 30% of the value of the deal.
That sounds horrendously expensive. I wonder is that because of the risks? Then of course homegrown systems would be cheaper - by just ignoring the risks, until the next rugpull.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4d ago
Well, like I told Netstack, I think the end result would end up coming off much more whiny than interesting, but I'll keep it in mind.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4d ago
I don't know how you would arrive to that conclusion
It's simple - the "entry points" through which these ideas are spreading through society are centralized in the hands of a relative few. Sure, they can't control the entirety of society at will, 100% of the time, but engineering does not require 100% accuracy, just predictability.
Mihow
Lipstick on a guitar
4d ago
Not to turn this into a travelogue with my fellow traveler heading to China later, but I’m heading to Washington State and the coast of Oregon in early October.
One full day at Olympic National Park coming from the north entrance (Port Charles or something?).
Five days on the coast of Oregon (Arch Cape?) - literally right on the beach.
And then like three hours south and inland for three days. (Scott’s Mills)
What should I and my wonderful wife do?
Specifically anything can’t miss in Olympic? It’s been a dream of mine to go there.
I like waterfalls and short hikes and maybe a brewery or two. I love scenic stuff and have never seen the fall.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
I think nobody drinks warm beer, yes.
Agreed, you can see a similar dynamic with Comedians as well.
The greats all seem to have (or had) some deep well of trauma or crazy that they would draw from.
JarJarJedi
4d ago
Re-read The Left Hand of Darkness which I had read a very long time ago and remembered almost nothing from that time, so it can be counted as the first reading essentially. This novel is well known for it's exploration of gender topics, which got me interested in how it would read in 2025, being written in 1969. It actually read quite well. Since then, a lot of efforts have been made - including, unfortunately, by Le Guin herself - to make the novel be more woke then the text would support, but it did not ruin it for me (one of the reasons being I only read most the commentary after finishing the novel). Wikipedia's description of it is one of the examples of such wokification, which is as expected, and serves as another warning, if one still needs it, that trusting an anonymous woke mob to pre-chew your information for you may be convenient, but has significant dangers. I don't think I agree with all the ideas implied in the book (like "wars are caused by male hormones") but I found reading it and thinking about it enjoyable.
anon_
4d ago
doesn’t that make the fact that they we’re about to declare them out of compliance quite significant?
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
4d ago
The zipper and button closures on men's and women's jackets and shirts are traditionally reversed from each other, too.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4d ago
Believe it or not I'm fairly neutral on the valance of ideas spreading through mind control, and am perfectly capable of admitting my tribe is doing it's fair share of that, but you're probably guessing right about what kind of experiences about what kind of people shaped my views on the matter. So I don't know if I'll be writing any effortposts on this, pretty sure it will come off as whinging about past culture war drama, I think I'd prefer to finish the Psycho Pass review.
gattsuru
4d ago
Can you give an example of a potential EO rule to change this?
How well-grounded do you want?
I don't think we'd see a Democratic President put forward an EO holding all asylees, once granted asylum, to be treated as having "been lawfully admitted for permanent residence" at the time of their entry, rather than the time they were issued a green card, but that's for political reasons rather than fear of judicial review. A court case would inevitably point to such retroactive adjustments in other contexts (the Cuban Adjustment Act was a statute, and had a portion of "lawfully admitted" happening up to 30 months before registry), but the real power would just come from the courts, and especially SCOTUS, not being able or willing to retroactively strip citizenship from hundreds of thousands of people, no matter how improperly given. A unilateral executive modification of the immigration registry date falls under similar problems -- even if a 2029 Dem admin had unilaterally granted it a green card to someone under this law that couldn't possibly have legally been eligible (eg, having been born after 1986), it's not clear anyone would have standing to challenge it... and it's just as unclear what political results would fall from that.
These are still mechanically possible; both could lead to a large number of people being given American citizenship overnight.
For a more politically plausible path, take something more like a soon-as-possible policy of rubber stamping of asylum claims, followed by a late-in-administration full rule setting a rubber-stamping of asylee-to-green-card-to-naturalization process. The strict read of the relevant statutes has six years, but it's not clear that even a fair-handed judiciary would read it that way rather than five years. This wouldn't get people voting overnight, but it'd be able to naturalize them within a single President's administration. The APA tomfoolery we've seen with DACA applies here; it could well be done with one term if the following administration was forced by courts to keep the old policies running.
There's other options that are more politically possible, but I'm not comfortable discussing them publicly.
Also, hasn't SCOTUS been pretty open to claims of standing by states challenging Federal policy?
Not really. Massachusetts v. EPA's what everyone points to requiring courts give 'special solicitude' to state challenges of federal policy, but that's literally only been used for that one case at SCOTUS, with every following case leaving states high and dry.
floral print
Like Hawaiian shirts? I knew I liked you …
The first store my mom ever took me to in the US was a place called Marshall’s. A fantastic place for cheap clothes that last season were in the fancier stores.
She told me to go look at the men’s area and when I turned a corner there was this huge H Rack of tropical shirts. My little communist brain was gob smacked.
I mean, I’ve seen blacks and Hispanics at this point but I just didn’t know it was legal to wear such bright colors.
It’s been 34+ years and I still rock my tropical floral Hawaiian shirts almost daily.
I also have social anxiety and am 6ft5 285 so I try to hide by standing out and the shirts help in that department.
Love your posts.
E: as to Israel - I’ve noticed people attacks the weak. My opinion is state what you believe in situations that aren’t related to business. People don’t actually care … they’re just pretending.
Bold of you to claim that intelligence, drive, and ambition, are qualities incompatible with being a populist.
You, Fuentes, and Hanania are all coping hard. If somone disagrees with your takes it must be because they are stupid and lazy not because of legitimate differences.
That said, congratulations to Fuentes for being the first gay man invited to speak on Iranian State TV.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
4d ago
I'm so torn on gambling. I'm generally staunchly in the "let people do things" camp, and I dislike regulating things that will immediately create uncontrollable black markets because the demand is very strong.
But holy shit gambling is a fucking disaster for our society. The explosion of sports betting has made me firmly convinced of this.
Crypto at least is harder to get into and plausibility useful. Same with prediction markets
self_made_human
C'est la vie
4d ago
I'm far from an expert on the topic, but it seems to be that the following might be true:
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Brits hold a far greater amount of what can be best described as "white guilt", and are more likely to express remorse for colonial misadventures. I think the exhibition I just saw, putting some random Punjabi woman of no particular importance in the limelight, it's a symptom of various attempts to make amends. It is very easy for people to pattern-match Israel into the colonial oppressor, and Palestine into the plucky underdog. There are a lot of bleeding-heart libs around. I might be rather liberal in my worldview, but I'm also very hard-nosed.
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Opinion polls show that the average Briton is rather divided between the two options. But the younger you go, the more pro-Palestinian they get. And the young are far more likely to be activists attempting to rally the troops. Those geriatrics clinging to their youth I mentioned earlier aren't likely to be the people graffiting slogans. Supporting Israel in that demographic is very uncool, but it's not like there isn't any strong support at all, they've got their share of lobbyists and adherents in the halls of power. So my impression is that there's a Palestinian groundswell going up against an Israeli entrenched government.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/c207p54m4rqt A quick browse of the BBC suggests relative neutrality but a noticeable lean towards Palestine.
Thanks for always posting these stories!
You're welcome!
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
4d ago
sell already cold beer for off premises consumption, because people use it to drink and drive
Do you think that the coldness of beer is a large determinant for whether or not people drink and drive?
Mihow
Lipstick on a guitar
4d ago
My continual take away is that I don’t like war being called ethnic cleansing.
It’s just war. It’s even a just war based on any literal thing I can think of in our psyche over the last several decades, much less the last two thousand years.
My prediction is Iran squirreled away its nuclear stuff and they’ll bomb a few bases and we’ll all call it a day - no idea if the regime is falling or not.
And I’m sure Israel wants leaders around them in various countries that don’t want to slaughter them completely.
HereAndGone
4d ago
I've rewatched several of those Harlan Ellison's Watching bits, and instantly fell in love with this witty outspoken firebrand telling it like it is.
I mean, yeah. He could be funny and charming. My late father, who knew nothing about the guy, saw some of those on the Sci-Fi Channel (back when it was the Sci-Fi Channel and not Syfy or whatever they're calling it today), and he too loved them. Thought they were funny, thought they were witty, they made him laugh, and he liked Ellison.
So it goes, as another SF author said.
FtttG
4d ago
Has Gaza been ethnically cleansed, or is this ethnic cleansing ongoing? If so, that's news to me.
HereAndGone
4d ago
Hurt that someone I looked up to so much as a kid was in reality a hateful, developmentally stunted man.
Yes. And no. I loved the writing of Harlan Ellison, and he was responsible for one of the best ever Star Trek stories in all the series, "The City on the Edge of Forever", as well as some classic Outer Limits episodes.
But towards the end of his life, he beclowned himself, notably at the 2006 Hugos where he groped Connie Willis.
All through his career, he had (and cultivated) a reputation of being a grade-A pain in the ass, someone awkward to work with, someone who was a troublemaker - but who was worth it because he was just that damn good. And indeed, if you take the title of the Dangerous Visions anthologies, that's exactly what he thought science fiction could and should do, shake up the conventional pieties, show a different version of reality. He really, truly believed in the 60s and the counter-culture as "this is going to change everything". Of course, in the end, a lot of things stayed exactly the same despite it all. (And the delays, delays, and yet more delays and problems with the Dangerous Visions anthologies were also an example of classic Ellison).
On the other hand... we have to separate the artist and the art. This is a guy who could be a total dick, and yet then he writes a story that smacks you in the chops with its humanity. Sometimes he's screaming in justified outrage, in righteous anger, about a real wrong that should be redressed.
a four times divorced main character convinces his first wife to get an abortion she doesn't want
Yeah. And then he goes and writes a story like Croatoan which does not go where you expect it to go (he should be writing a slam-dunk pro-choice fable here, shouldn't he? but it's not. It's very differently not).
Ellison was someone who suffered in life, and who took advantage of that as an excuse for being an asshole. I was very angry with him in his later years. And then a while back I read a very sympathetic piece (possibly the foreword to the final Dangerous Visions that he edited after Ellison's death) by J.M. Straczynski about his friendship with Ellison and how he (probably, likely, definitely) had undiagnosed/untreated mental illness for a long time, and how he was declining physically and mentally in his later years and that explained a lot about Ellison for me and won back some of the sympathy he'd lost. This comes from an article about Straczynski and Ellison:
Unknown to most of his fans and critics, Ellison was suffering from an undiagnosed mental condition. What had once been an unusually prolific career as a writer of books and TV scripts slowed to a crawl by the ’90s. The missing Dangerous Visions book was only one example of that. There was also some erratic, alarming behavior, including an incident at the 2006 Hugo Awards where Ellison groped the breast of writer Connie Willis onstage and on-camera.
At Straczynski’s urging, Ellison finally went to a doctor and found out he was bipolar and suffering from clinical depression — a diagnosis that remained little known outside his inner circle.
“Once you know he was bipolar, a lot of things that don’t make sense suddenly make sense,” Straczynski says. With treatment, Ellison began to improve mentally and physically. Getting back to work was a real possibility. “One thing we talked about was maybe he could do The Last Dangerous Visions. The mountain didn’t seem so high anymore. And just as he was gearing up to do all that, he got nailed by a stroke. There was a part of him that just said, ‘Fuck it, I’m done.’”
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
4d ago
US v. Virginia et al.: no, spinning up a second school to allow male/female segregation is not, in fact, separate but equal. 1996.
And yet women-only colleges survive.
Yes.
My point is he records everything and has a clear counterparty rather than just spitting predictions with no skin in the game and crowing that he was right when a few of them land.
But Fuentes ain't predicting black swans either. "Israel and Iran will try to hurt each other" is a generally reliable prediction at its base.
And once you've been given the information "Hamas just killed a bunch of Israeli Civilians, in Israel" there's a few straightforward guesses from there RE: Israeli response.
I'll say there's zero chance I would have correctly predicted the Pager operation, even in the broad "Mossad wipes out Hezbollah's entire command in a single attack" strokes.
But "Hezbollah gets decimated by Israeli espionage" is not a wild, out there guess by any means.
If Fuentes was specific enough to say "The U.S. drops bunker busters on Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities" as a likely outcome I'd start to give him credit.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
4d ago
Thanks for always posting these stories! I'm curious how the pro-Palestine monoculture you describe comes to be in the UK - is this stance already the predominant one in their media? Here in Germany, every mainstream outlet is solidly pro-Israel, and since COVID at the latest media skepticism has become right-coded. As a result, we get some wild right-side-of-history positions like "we should let Israel do its thing and take in all the Palestinians as refugees here", along with vegan housecat fantasies that Israel and Palestine could get along if Bibi just were replaced by a proper left-wing leader.
I think what's actually going on with Fuentes is that he's alienated with what he sees as the low-class nature of modern conservatism. Here for instance he attacks conservatives for being "openly hostile to all the good things about liberals" and being "low-IQ hillbillies who take pride in being simple and hate the rich:"
https://x.com/FuentesUpdates/status/1908187813117411525
The problem with populist political movements is that the people who rise to the top tend to have psychological traits more characteristic of elites, intelligence, drive, and ambition, which wind up alienating them from the populist masses.
Obviously. The truly desperate might still drink warm beer and drive, but it would help reduce the numbers.
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