domain:betonit.substack.com
MiltonMurrayRobertLucas
Conan still talks to us too
26m ago
I'm honestly getting sick of hearing the word 'antisemitic' as if this is some major moral standard that matters. It is honestly starting to make me...anti-semitic.
I think the word is even worse than you think; it's not just that it's being overused, it's that it's so wrong.
What does 'Semitic' mean? It's a linguistic term for referring to people who spoke Semitic tongues. If Hamas is anti-Semitic then they might as well be called a "self-hating" group, since Arabic comes from the same Semitic family of culture as Hebrew.
What does "Anti" mean? It means to oppose something; but to oppose doesn't mean "a wish to destroy each and every single one of it's advocates". It's why it's so obtuse and disingenuous to use the term "anti-trans" to refer to someone who opposes any of the trans lobby's social and institutional takeovers; since the term "anti-semite" is the biggest culprit of "antis", you're basically implicitly putting someone who thinks male serial rapists who all the sudden identify themselves as female shouldn't be in women's prison in the same camp as someone saying "We should lock all transgender people into death camps and exterminate them until none are left alive, and hunt down all those who got away to the end of the world".
Gustavo Perednik, famous historian of Judaism and philosopher (who I met once!), uses the term "judeophobia" to describe this feeling, which is better because at least the targeted group is being accurately represented, but I still think it comes short; fear isn't the root of what we're talking about here. Guys who rub their hands on their shoulders after shaking them with someone gay can be called homophobic since he can be understood as being afraid of them; someone who wishes to place restrictions of homosexual behaviour on public places, put gay people into ghettos and make conversion therapy compulsory (or worse) isn't being homophobic since he isn't operating out of fear, but disgust and hatred.
The only "marginalized" group who's had the dubious luck to have the correct term for people who despise them are women: misogyny (ironically, they are also a group who despite all their oppression have never been a victim of genocide! "Women, can't live with them..."). Some times it can be over used (oppressing women of the "keep them in the kitchen" variety isn't misogynistic; raping, murdering them and treating them live slaves of the opposite sex is), but if you want to imply hatred or disgust of something, that's the correct prefix: "miso". Hence, the prefix "miso" should be used to describe someone/something that holds a group of people in contempt.
The result being: a force like Hamas, who wishes the genocide of Jews, should be described as miso-Judaic or having miso-Jewry at it's core. I think anti-judaic is a ludicrous label to place on someone chanting "They've got tanks, we've got hang gliders, glory to all the resistance fighters": it's a valid way of describing someone who mows the lawn on Sabbat while rubbing it in its Rabbi neighbour face, or someone who doesn't stop making dumb jokes about its co-worker's yarmulke because he can't stand it, but I think it comes short of describing in accurate dimensions the feeling harboured by Nazism/Islamic supremacism.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
28m ago
In this vein, I think it would be a very different world if the lines in the budget were listed as percentages, and then the overall total was determined based on a factor of tax revenue. So a simplified version would look like:
War: 25%
Social Security: 25%
Bureaucracy: 25%
Debt: 25%
Total budget: 1.25x tax revenue for 2023.
And then the actual amount of money would get calculated based on these figures. Right now the numbers are so disconnected from anything the average person can comprehend.
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
34m ago
Don't know how true this is. Your W2 says how much tax you paid, everyone knows how much is being taken.
Primary was meh, very disorganized state schools.
Secondary was excellent, went to an expensive private boys school. Nearly everyone was very clever and most were very rich, getting dropped off in Porsches or BMWs by their lawyer-doctor parents. A small fraction got in via networking and were more interested in rugby than academics. We had big exams for every subject twice a year, everyone took them quite seriously. The classes for each subject were sorted from A to F or H based on the results from the exams, there was a very clear and objective hierarchy. I think this was a great source of male motivation: competition and prestige. Latin and Ancient Greek were offered, the teachers were paid as if they were university professors (and some had been). It was like a trip to an alternate dimension, we sang patriotic hymns in assembly. At one point the sports reports were read out as (quite good) poems. At one point they brought in a leading quantum physicist to deliver a speech about their work in quantum computing, it went right over 99% of our heads, faculty included. One boy asked a pretty incisive question, he managed to understand the content.
But you could tell that corrosive modernity was digging into the heart of oak and sandstone. A lot of kids cultivated imaginary mental disorders that got them more time in the important state exams for university entry. The younger generation of teachers were much more wishy-washy and progressive. We started getting land acknowledgements and denunciations of Pizzagate where we used to get hyper-abstract philosophical speeches in Assembly. Rumours abounded that they'd try to bring in girls at some point, though I've seen no evidence that they are. There was female-teacher-on-boy sexual abuse (I got a look at the teacher, definitely not the 'I wish that was me!' physiognomy) going on 2 years above me, they snuffed that story out of the media with a lot of skill.
I got along pretty well with people. Teachers were fine but some took themselves overly seriously, like it was their solemn duty to teach us music, languages or geography we had no particular interest in. Met some great, fun, smart people with the same exotic interests as me - friends for life hopefully. Some people, myself included, got pretty arrogant when comparing ourselves to ordinary kids. Arrogance has its virtues when you are indeed right and everyone else is wrong but it also has social pitfalls.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
42m ago
"well you want to turn software into an over-regulated morass similar to what aerospace / pharma / construction have become".
In support of this interpretation:
https://www.themotte.org/post/995/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/210060?context=8#context (whole thing)
https://www.themotte.org/post/995/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/209894?context=8#context ("Maybe their little subculture will change.")
https://www.themotte.org/post/995/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/209881?context=8#context ("coloring inside the lines")
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
55m ago
The inevitable increase of regulation once a regulatory framework is in place is part of it. Another part is that merely having a regulatory framework transforms your industry from "building cool stuff" to "checking regulatory boxes and making sure all the regulation-following is documented". Once the principals know they're going to be put out of business or go to jail for not following the regs or having the docs for following the regs, the whole development process is going to get bureaucratized to produce those docs. This both directly makes development much slower and more tedious, and drives the sort of people who do innovative work out of the field (because they didn't get into the field to sit in meetings where you discuss whether the regulatory requirement referenced in SSDD paragraph 2.0.2.50 is properly related to the SDD paragraph 3.1.2, the ICD paragraph 4.1.2.5, and the STP paragraph 6.6.6, which lines of code implement SDD paragraph 3.1.2, and to make sure the SIP properly specifies the update procedures)
laxam
56m ago
But it's telling that the companies that exist right now that fit the bill are also in Texas and Massachusetts these days, that used to be more rare.
That's like, emphatically not true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Route_128#%22America's_Technology_Highway%22
Silicon Valley may be flashier and, at times in the last few decades, may have been 'bigger' or 'denser' when it comes to its tech startup scene, but the Boston Tech Corridor is old and still producing (and more diversified -- biotech and other startup intensive fields have more of a presence in Boston than in the Bay Area). This kind of thing follows prestigious universities. Even Texas used to be a big spot for this kind of thing in the meat of the 20th century for that reason, although I think it dropped out of the startup mushroom scene for a while.
Glassnoser
57m ago
I'm Canadian and grew up in the central part of a mid-sized city. Only my high school had a cafeteria and I was far enough that I while I walked to school, I didn't have enough time to walk home, eat lunch, and walk back. So I would either eat a packed lunch or go somewhere else for lunch. Some people took the bus, but I think the vast majority walked, especially in elementary and junior high when people lived a closer on average. There were probably some cases, but I don't remember anyone being driven to school by their parents.
I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the concept of not being allowed to leave at lunchtime. Did this apply to the students who lived near the school? How do they even stop you or know what you're doing? What is even the point of this? Why do they care where you eat lunch?
I think the best freedom you have that I lack as a Canadian is the freedom to live in any climate. Our choices are between cold and extremely cold.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
1hr ago
I don't know. All I know is the consequences. Once the cars become popular enough, a self-driving car company is basically going to be mostly a legal company, defending (or settling) lawsuits in all 50 states involving its cars. And that's even if its cars are perfect and never cause accidents, especially since the car company is going to look like "deep pockets" to plaintiff's attorneys and juries. The cost of all this legal defense is going to increase the cost of the cars by a ridiculous amount, and the more cars there are the more of a chance of a "reverse lottery" where a self-driving car is involved in an accident that kills a busful of kindergartners and is found liable for more than Alex Jones even was. As long as there's a fairly small number of cars they can play the odds, but a liability regime which involves a car manufacturer in every major accident one of their cars is involved in will kill the whole thing.
Felagund
1hr ago
I've usually seen it to mean something having some level of pro-free market (with, of course, a pejorative sense, and while pretending to refer to a precise group), which this didn't exactly seem like.
Glassnoser
1hr ago
OK, at every school I attended in Canada, it would have been unusual for a student not to walk to school. There must be some students that live nearby and walk though. Are they forced to eat at school?
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1hr ago
There is a pie chart of government expenses at the end of the Form 1040 instructions.
Glassnoser
1hr ago
I'm not saying they're obligated to do anything. I am saying that in conversations with white nationalists where they're trying to convince me of white nationalism, they have rarely made any effort to define white people and I find that frustrating.
Rov_Scam
1hr ago
I don't know that any of these are great examples. Let's approach them individually:
Pregnant Worker's Fairness Act
It's a bit academic, but it should be noted that the EEOC doesn't actually have Title VII rulemaking authority. The "rules" they promulgate are merely interpretive documents that inform businesses on how to comply and inform courts on the agency's interpretation. The courts themselves are only bound to follow EEOC guidance if it's "reasonable". Now, there are decisions out there that say that courts can't just wave these away and should give the agency deference, so there's a pretty big hurdle to overcome if you want to go against this guidance, and it gets pretty complicated here, but suffice it to say that courts aren't bound by these rules the same as they would if they were promulgated by an agency that actually had rulemaking authority. It should also be noted that the EEOC still has to follow the APA when it comes to procedural matters in promulgation (like notice and comment), so this lack of authority doesn't exactly make it easy for them to run wild.
As far as the actual rule is concerned, it's hard to say from a Republican perspective what the EEOC should have actually done. Saying outright that the law didn't apply to abortion would have created a situation where the EEOC guidance was directly at-odds with any reasonable canon of legislative interpretation; I don't think any textualist could argue with a straight face that abortions aren't pregnancy-related. Saying nothing about the matter isn't an option either. Since they're still bound by the APA, they have to address the comments they received, and they received plenty of comments about abortion. And even if they could have just omitted the abortion section, all that really does is kick the can down the road for when a court actually has to decide the matter, and it's unlikely that any but the staunchest anti-abortion judge would rule that abortions aren't related to pregnancy.
But that's all irrelevant because it's unlikely that this rule (or lack thereof) would ever result in litigation. The rules pretty clearly state that the effect of this guidance is that an employer is required to give a woman leave (paid or unpaid) to receive an abortion. While this seems like raw culture war bait, the reality is that, excepting for circumstances where someone is trying to rub it in an employer's face, no one is specifically asking for time off to get an abortion. I've personally never had an employer ask about the nature of any medical procedure I've taken time off to get, or had them ask me which doctor I was going to, and if a doctor's excuse is required, I doubt many employers are going to do internet research to determine if this is a doctor who exclusively performs abortions. Employers generally aren't allowed to ask employees about medical conditions that aren't work-related, except to verify leave, although as long as a doctor confirms that the absence is for a medical reason they can't really inquire further. And I doubt they would, since hunting for people who are getting abortions means, practically speaking, that they'd have to investigate every employee's medical leave, which I doubt any really want to do. There may be some unlikely confluence of factors where this could become a real issue, but I doubt it. Most women seeking abortions aren't going to tell their employers that they need time off specifically to get one.
If Republicans felt that strongly of this, they would have sought to get specific language into the bill. They didn't, and complaining about this is just them getting hoisted by their own petard given the electoral consequences involved.
FFLs When the entire point of specific statutory language is to expand a definition, you can't complain too loudly when that definition gets expanded. If you had sole rulemaking authority with regards to this, how would you expand the definition to conform with the new law without simply restating the old definition? I'm sure you can think of a dozen ways that this could be done, but that's beside the point. The point is that someone has to come up with these definitions and they have to conform with the statutory language without being overbroad. But that's tricky. The problem here is that there are two basic categories that are uncontroversial. One is the people who are actually running gun stores who need FFLs for legitimate business purposes. The other is people who simply have a gun they don't want anymore and want to sell it. But there's a third category of people we've talked about before who the government really doesn't like — people who want to sell guns part-time or as a hobby. You mentioned in a previous post how the ATF no longer will issue FFLs for hobbyists. You can disagree with that stance all you want, but it seems to me that Congress agrees with that and that was the specific intent behind the change in language. Now it's up to the ATF to flesh out that definition to cover the myriad circumstances in which someone might be selling guns "for profit". And that's hard! The problem as I see it doesn't stem so much from the law itself or ATF's interpretation of it but that there is a group of people for whom any further restrictions on gun sales is bad and needs to be stopped. They simply aren't arguing that the law was a good idea but ATF bungled the implementation; they're arguing that the law was a bad idea to begin with and using the ATF's interpretation as proof. But those are two separate arguments.
FACE Act It's telling that this law has only become controversial in recent years, after the Biden Administration used it aggressively in the wake of Dobbs. For the first 30 or so years of its existence, the fact that it was never used in cases of church vandalism was never an issue. At least not enough of an issue for 2 Republican presidents to invoke it in 12 years, one of whom was devoutly religious and the other of whom was devoutly into culture warring. It's also telling that the act also allows for private enforcement via a civil cause of action that few parties seem bothered to sue under. That being said, anti-abortion protestors necessarily do most of their work when the place is open and in full view of the public. Most of the church vandalism was done at night by people who actually disguised themselves. One type of crime is much easier to investigate than the other.
Of course, that doesn't really apply to the Nota case, because the perpetrator was caught in the act. But it doesn't compare to the Houck case, at least if you actually look at the procedural posture. The information in the Nota case was filed the day before the plea was entered. This itself was several months after the incident. What this suggests was that this was already a done deal by the time it was even on the court's docket; for all we know, the prosecutor could have threatened to throw the book at Nota before offering a misdemeanor charge and a sentencing recommendation as a lifeline. Houck, on the other hand, was found not guilty by a jury. For all we know he could have been offered the same deal as Nota but turned it down; I'd be surprised to say the least, if there was no deal offered at all.
Glassnoser
1hr ago
That's not true. There was a debate in the US over even including the bill of rights because those rights were considered to already exist and it was worried that including it would imply rights not listed did not exist.
In Canada, our Charter of Rights explicitly lists "freedom of expression", but there was also a law passed earlier recognizing an already existing "freedom of speech" and there are court rulings stating that this already existed as a quasi-constitutional right emerging from English common law.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1hr ago
I present to you: nobody.
... I see a lot of you arguing that The_Nybbler believes that giving an inch here is a bad idea because they think that a tiny regulation will directly kill innovation, while The_Nybbler is arguing that there's no particular reason for the regulators who introduced this legislation to stop at only implementing useful regulations that pass cost-benefit analysis, and that the other industries we see do seem to have vastly overreaching regulators, and so a naive cost-benefit analysis on a marginal regulation which does not factor in the likely-much-larger second-order effects is useless (though @The_Nybbler do correct me if I'm wrong about this, and you think introducing regulation would be bad even if the first-order effects of regulation were positive and there was some actually-credible way of ensuring that the scope of the regulation was strictly limited).
Honestly I think both of you could stand to focus a bit more on explaining your own positions and less on arguing against what you believe the other means, because as it stands it looks to me like a bunch of statements about what the other person believes, like "you argue that the first-order effects of the most defensible part of this regulation are bad, but you can't support that" / "well you want to turn software into an over-regulated morass similar to what aerospace / pharma / construction have become".
IMO, it shows that you misunderstand how these things work. They're not saying "secure against a nation state decapping your chip". They actually refer to ways that persistent storage can be generally regarded as secure, even if you can imagine an extreme case.
Quoting the examples:
Example 1: The root keys involved in authorization and access to licensed radio frequencies (e.g. LTE-m cellular access) are stored in a UICC.
Ok, fair enough, I can see why you would want to prevent users from accessing these particular secrets on the device they own (because, in a sense, they don't own this particular bit). Though I contend that the main "security" benefit of these is fear of being legally slapped around under CFAA.
Example 2: A remote controlled door-lock using a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) to store and access the sensitive security parameters.
Seems kinda pointless. If an attacker can read the flash storage on your door lock, presumably that means they've already managed to detach the door lock from your door, and can just enter your house. And if a remote attacker has the ability to read the flash storage because they have gained the ability to execute arbitrary code, they can presumably just directly send the outputs which unlock the door without mucking about with the secrets at all.
Example 3: A wireless thermostat stores the credentials for the wireless network in a tamper protected microcontroller rather than in external flash storage.
What's the threat model we're mitigating here, such that the benefit of mitigating that threat is worth the monetary and complexity cost of requiring an extra component on e.g. every single adjustable-color light bulb sold?
H-what? What are you even talking about? This doesn't even make any sense. The standard problem here is that lots of devices have debug interfaces that are supposed to only be used by the manufacturer (you would know this if you read the definitions section), yet many products are getting shipped in a state where anyone can just plug in and do whatever they want to the device. This is just saying to not be a retard and shut it off if it's not meant to be used by the user.
On examination, I misread, and you are correct about what the documents says.
That said, the correct reading then seems to be "users should not be able to debug, diagnose problems with, or repair their own devices which they have physical access to, and which they bought with their own money." That seems worse, not better. What's the threat model this is supposed to be defending against? Is this a good way of defending against this threat model?
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
1hr ago
self-driving cars are essentially banned.
I don't see why that's a problem, to be honest.
There has to be some sort of consequence for the manufacturer when self-driving cars cause an accident, same as how human drivers pay fines or go to jail. What's your preferred liability structure?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1hr ago
In Australia tax bills are itemized in proportion to the budget, they give you a little chart that shows where all your money is going. I didn't even know we still did 'industry assistance' but we do. All the little fish would be put down in 'other' though.
Dean
1hr ago
I would disagree with your conclusion, and affirm your opening question. I think the variations you see do exist, as Putin runs a personalist system and so his personal foilables show themselves (including his desire for historical reputation, his propensity for aggression when he perceives it as a safe i.e. easy win), but there is a distinction between someone who is pursuing a strategy badly (Putin is, I have asserted for many a year, strategically inept), versus not having a strategy at all.
Putin is in many respects incompetent at various strategic factors, but that's a matter of capability, not intent.
100ProofTollBooth
1hr ago
And this is why anyone who starts their own business and, therefore, has to file quarterly immediately starts hollering "taxes are too damn high!" .... and then you also start paying self-employment tax.
Show me a person who:
- Owns their own business (and, relatedly, pays for their own healthcare)
- Has children as dependents
- Owns their home
And I will show you someone who wants to vote for a conservative with their mind and wallet, but may let their heart and social signaling sway them to voting for a liberal.
100ProofTollBooth
1hr ago
I FEAR NOTHING.
I believe the odds of the State artificially and outlandishly prosecuting me for something like self-defense or free expression go up when in blue states. Especially if the news cycle is just right.
100ProofTollBooth
1hr ago
My community’s source in the DHS tells us that this plan failed because the agents just kept going native.
"This Jesus feller's got a few good goddamn points! Oh - sorry"
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
1hr ago
Liability also doesn't come into play until the suit is underway.
The expenses start immediately.
And yes, I predict that if actual self-driving cars become more common, either we will see limits on liability or the companies will be driven out of the market or out of business.
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 For more information please reread this post
1hr ago
On the other hand, if the tax bill were itemised in proportion to the Federal budget, it might be harder for certain demagogues to get people angry about a government program that costs them ⅒¢....
Income taxation didn't really take off until the invention of tax withholding. Even after the ratification of the 16th Amendment, Congress found popular resistance to the income tax too strong for it to actually be enforced. It wasn't until they partnered with corporations, which were growing in importance in society, to withhold taxes that resistance died down and the tax could be collected. Psychologically, it makes a big difference. You see a number at the end of the year that corresponds to what the government took, but they took it before you even knew they were taking it. You get a paycheck and then there's some accounting about how much they took which comes with a bonus for you. At least, for most people.
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