banned
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1d ago
I'm not sure how to bridge our different reading of the statute, but I don't agree with that summary at all. The text there [emphasis mine]:
§ 14‑12.7. Wearing of masks, hoods, etc., on public ways. No person or persons at least 16 years of age shall, while wearing any mask, hood or device whereby the person, face or voice is disguised so as to conceal the identity of the wearer, enter, be or appear upon any lane, walkway, alley, street, road, highway or other public way in this State. (1953, c. 1193, s. 6; 1983, c. 175, ss. 1, 10; c. 720, s. 4.)
This seems really clear to me that intent aside, the effect needs to be concealing the identity of the wearer. For example, the proverbial immunocompromised patient going to a hospital - we know they're not concealing their identity because their actions require the people they're interacting with to know who they are! It's true that determining whether someone's "face is disguised so as to conceal the identity of the wearer" requires some degree of interpretation on the part of police and prosecutors, but I think that's just an unavoidable part of criminal law. The change here isn't actually a change to the need for contextual interpretation, it's just removing health as a fully general exception.
If someone wanted to take the principled stance that you should just be allowed to conceal your identity, I think they could probably make a pretty reasonable case for that, but it would be a pretty different argument than what we see the legislators and newspapers running with.
I would agree that in my example that funny hats at the mall are now banned. What I wouldn't say is that funny hats were generally banned. You can wear your funny hat to a lot of places! You just can't do it at the mall anymore. In the mask case, people that have some actual medical reason and aren't concealing their identity shouldn't really bump into much of a problem. The one area of overlap that I could see this actually being a thing is someone that insists it's medical getting into a conflict with a business-owner that just hates masks and wants them to take their stupid mask off. In the hat analogy, I would think it was weird if someone was super pissed about the funny hat change when what they really don't like is the loitering rule at the mall.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1d ago
The problem with this formulation is that Y isn't banned unless done as part of X. In this case, what's illegal is not the wearing of a mask, it's wearing a mask to conceal one's identity.
I'm not sure I agree. I don't read any intent requirement in the text of 14-12.7. It seems like what's banned is "being in public wearing anything that could conceal your identity." Your intent about concealing your identity doesn't enter into it.
As to your examples I think it would be fair to say "they're banning standing around in front of the mall in a funny hat" or "they're banning beer in the park" but the firearm one is trickier.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1d ago
The problem with this formulation is that Y isn't banned unless done as part of X. In this case, what's illegal is not the wearing of a mask, it's wearing a mask to conceal one's identity. People may do Y, but they can't do Y in furtherance of X. To concretize other possible examples:
-
There is a law against loitering in front of the mall, unless you're wearing a funny hat. The exemption for funny hats is set to be removed. Are funny hats banned?
-
You may not drink alcoholic beverages at the park, with the exception of beer. The beer exception is removed. Is beer banned?
-
Carrying a firearm to intimidate others is illegal, but firearms in holsters are exempted. The exemption is removed. Are firearms or holsters banned?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1d ago
I don't know. I think if some activity X is generally banned, but with an exception for Y, then you remove the exception for Y, your action is fairly characterized as "banning Y." You used to be able to do Y. Now you can't. Sounds like a ban to me!
I know LLMs are banned here so mods please don’t ban me for this. Here is what I get from chatGPT when I ask “what does it mean for something to be low entropy in the context of the information it contains?”
In the context of information theory, low entropy indicates that the information content is highly predictable and ordered. Entropy, a concept introduced by Claude Shannon, measures the uncertainty or randomness in a set of data. When entropy is low, the data has less randomness and is more structured, meaning that there is less information content or fewer surprises in the data.
For example, a string of repeated characters like "AAAAA" has low entropy because the next character is easily predictable. Conversely, a string of random characters like "G7d2#k9" has high entropy because the next character is unpredictable. In summary, low entropy implies high predictability and low information content.
This is what I mean. Very low information, skimmable (because it’s predictable and repetitive).
I agree that “low information density” would be a better way of phrasing this, it seems like I am using this term wrong. Thank you!
Corvos
1d ago
I think it is far more likely (I'm not projecting here honest) that people are worried about making a top level post that sits at 2 upvotes and gets no engagement, rather than a fear of being 'banned' or any other mod action.
Yeah, I'd say getting modded is rare whereas having proof people aren't really interested in what you have to say is much more intimidating.
Whatever you guys might claim to be, this seems to be a place where it's ok to call an immigrant group an infestation but not to say that the antebellum south was an execrable culture.
You have either fundamentally misunderstood or are fundamentally misrepresenting the thread you linked. You are in fact allowed to say that the antebellum south was an execrable culture, and many people have said here it many times before. You can in fact argue that Confederate statues should be torn down, and you can even argue that people who think otherwise are bad; many people have argued that here many times before. You do in fact have to be careful about how you talk about any group here, and quite a few anti-woke people have in fact been banned for failing to do so properly. The objection in that thread, as described to you repeatedly at the time, was that you were conflating people to object to the destruction of Confederate memorials with slave owners.
I think the antebellum south was an execrable culture, and holding the history constant to the start of the Civil War, I prefer our actual history where their society was destroyed through mass violence to counterfactuals where it might have been allowed to fade away peacefully, continuing to perpetrate evil throughout its decline. Further, I think that destroying Confederate monuments is both stupid and evil here and now. I'd be happy to discuss either opinion with you as time permits, as either side of either opinion fit comfortably within the rules here.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
Please don’t threaten him with a good time.
Also, he’s already banned.
cjet79
2d ago
that many of them perceive the barrier to entry to be too high.
Exactly! Its a perception thing, so I am trying to clear it up by changing that perception. WhiningCoil and others are making it more difficult by adding to the false perception. You of course are asking them to stop posting these bad interpretations of the rules, and thus discouraging posting, right?
Saying that they're mistaken, it's really not that high, isn't going to change anyone's mind.
There are different barriers to posting. One of those barriers is being afraid that the mods won't like your post and you'll get banned or in trouble. I can lower that barrier. I can't lower other barriers like "I don't know what to post about", or "I don't really want to talk about anything".
Spookykou
2d ago
I think it is unlikely that a fear of getting banned is very relevant to this issue. I think that people feel at least a mild incentive to upvotes a top level post where the poster clearly put in effort even if it is not particularly interesting, so most large, well formatted top level posts get at a minimum 20 upvotes and some engagement.
I think it is far more likely (I'm not projecting here honest) that people are worried about making a top level post that sits at 2 upvotes and gets no engagement, rather than a fear of being 'banned' or any other mod action. Honestly, if a modhat came along leaving the only comment saying you didn't try hard enough, ten people would suddenly come in out of nowhere to defend your post even if they would have never engaged with it otherwise.
Stellula
2d ago
A lot of the posters here are just very bad communicators who are good at writing gigantic, very low entropy walls of text.[1]
Those walls of text have become semi-required by the moderators[2].
Thus: normal posters don’t post about any of these (interesting almost always fruitful for discussion) topics because they don’t want to get banned. I suspect that most of the interesting people have already left the party, but unfortunately I don’t know where went.
[1]: If you are into cryptocurrency, watch the episode of Alexi Friedman with the founder of Cardano on it. He talks for like 6 hours and says NOTHING. This is a good example of what a 2024 motte poster does in most top level posts.
[2]: Yes cjet as you say every single time anybody complains about this topic there is no length requirement. And yet: yes there is.
Take their names away. You could try enforcing uniqueness across the public-facing Internet (it won't stop organization in private channels, but because visible attention-whoring is the driver of this damage, this will make it inconvenient).
For owners and higher-ups, use a unique username that's divorced from your other identities.
Off-topic chat is banned from the project's mailing list.
This is 4chan 101 stuff. The problem with it is that it requires foresight and isn't obvious to people who don't understand why those measures are necessary, which people who tend to post about more interesting things clearly underestimate.
To add to The_Nybbler's point, oral arguments in Rahimi were November 2023, a case where an incredibly unsympathetic defendant (alleged multiple shooter, drug dealer, and girlfriend beater) was indicted for possessing a firearm while subject to a domestic restraining order. We won't know for certain how the court rules until the opinion drops, and that probably won't happen for a month (or up to three).
But it's extremely unlikely that this will result in a significantly broadened understanding of the Second Amendment. The most optimistic takes in the gunnie world hope that the Court will allow Rahimi's conviction and just require a finding of 'dangerousness'. Most expect that they'll overturn the lower court, or leave only the most narrow process grounds to protect Rahimi.
And there are reasons beyond oral argument tea-leaf reading for that. It's already happened before in Gary/Greer, where unsympathetic plaintiffs made it easy for the court to decide that for process reasons a prohibited person didn't need to be proven to know they were prohibited.
But even more broadly, there's just not that much of the court touching this right to protect all but the most aggressive infringements in the cleanest-cut cases across the wide scope of all people in a jurisdiction, and sometimes not even that, even as case after case was teed up.
If the Court wanted to protect the rights of people who hadn't been violent, they had a case where a man was banned from possessing guns because he was convicted of counterfeiting cassette tapes in 1987. And they punted. If the Court wanted to protect the rights of people who had suffered mental illness long ago and recovered, they had a case where a man was banned from possessing guns because he had a depressive episode in 1999. And they punted. States requiring guns to have technologies that don't exist? Taking private property without warrant or compensation or grandfathering? License denials for driving while black a police encounter that did not result in an arrest or any evidence of wrongdoing? Punt punt punt.
The best result the gunnie sphere other than Bruen was Caetano v. Massachusetts (2016! and see the massive resistance in O'Neil v Neronha, only finished in 2022). After that, there's maybe the GVR on Duncan v Bonta... except they GVR'd it to the Ninth Circuit, which even at the time had literally never allowed the Second Amendment to do anything, and since broke rules to slow Duncan down further. It's not like Bruen is even the only example: Caniglia v. Strom, was more a Fourth Amendment case, but see the later punts on the massive resistance it has faced by lower courts.
Maybe I get surprised here, or VanDerStok is where (... in 2026? assuming it doesn't get punted then?). But despite an environment with a massive variety of low-hanging fruit, these are the only things the Court cared about, and that's not random.
cjet79
3d ago
Banned on request, he did not say he plans on coming back. My impression was that this was permanent and from a building discontent with the community. The main point of frustration was with people dropping bullshit or unsubstantiated claims. And then those claims mostly going willfully uncorrected.
The Brooklyn District Attorney's website reports:
“Ghost guns are a threat to New Yorkers everywhere, and my Office is working tirelessly with our partners in law enforcement to stop their proliferation. Today’s sentence should send a message to anyone who, like this defendant, would try to evade critically important background checks and registration requirements to manufacture and stockpile these dangerous weapons. Every ghost gun we take off the street is a win for public safety.”
The District Attorney identified the defendant as Dexter Taylor, 53, of Bushwick, Brooklyn. He was sentenced today by Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Abena Darkeh to 10 years in prison. He was convicted of two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon; three counts of third-degree criminal possession of a weapon; five counts of criminal possession of a firearm; unlawful possession of pistol ammunition; and prohibition on unfinished frames or receivers on April 16, 2024, following a jury trial.
Taylor, also known as CarbonMike, was both a CTRL-Pew 3d printing enthusiast and a New Yorker, a combination that Didn't Go Well.
The specific charges and sentencing are complex, but if I'm reading matters correctly, almost all sentences run concurrently, so the headline charge about ghost guns, like the charges about possession of pistol ammunition and so on, are kinda swamped by a ten-year sentence for 'assault weapons' and for 'owning five firearms'. There are a few border issues on the text of the statutes, but there's not a ton to argue on whether Taylor complied with these statutes.
((Not least of all because many are vague or broad enough that it's very much up to the local DA to make the decision anyway.))
There's a lot to be debated about whether the laws are constitutional, but not much chance that it matters. The New York Assault Weapons Ban has been the target of prolonged lawfare since before Bruen, with the FPC currently supporting Lane after the state was getting good enough reception in Vanchoff v James about lacking credible threats of prosecution, and that's the case with the stance furthest along. Other statutes, like possession of ammunition or "ammunition feeding devices" without a matching pistol permit, are difficult to write cases to challenge before enforcement at all. Even if the statutes for each of the longer sentences are overturned, bail pending appeal is extremely unlikely. Taylor will have served most if not all of his sentence first, especially given the glacial pace that courts have set for these matters (cfe Duncan).
Taylor also makes the argument that he did not have a fair day in court, and while almost every defendant does that to some extent, his argument is unusually compelling. No few gunnies finding a pull quote from the judge allegedly claiming that "Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York." but the gameplay about objections, if honestly stated, is as bad or worse. (I'm unable to find a direct trial transcript.).
Also doesn't matter. There is a right to an impartial judge, but this mostly covers matters like giant campaign donations or hating an entire nationality or literally copying text from a party's submissions, rather than just figuratively being on the prosecutor's side. Even assuming Taylor's (and his lawyer's) summary is accurate and complete, the appeals courts don't care that lower courts hate people accused of making guns.
In some ways, Taylor might be the ideal test case: nothing in the visible court records or DA chest-beating show nefarious intent like violent personal history or planned mass shooting or intent to resell (and New York law places a presumption on multiple possession as for sale), he (was) traditionally employed, he credibly claims that he's never fired a single one of the guns, and at 52, he's aged out of the various high-criminal-risk age brackets. To beat the HBDers to the punch, he's even visibly a minority.
((To beat the HBDers with a stick, if we're framing absolutely everything as part of the progressive stack, I think there's strong evidence that the real top of the stack is whatever matches the politics today in a far more direct manner than mere race.))
Of course, the Brooklyn DA brought the case, knowing that. The judge acted like this, in this case, knowing that. And no matter how dim you might think they are, they're winning, and this know what it takes to win. Whether that's because the courts punt on serious cases because defendants fail to present long evidence of futile requests, because they credibly believe that Taylor's not Perfect Enough for the courts to actually handle or for various gun rights orgs to fund, or because even if they're wrong they'll never suffer for it, doesn't really matter. It's possible that Brooklyn DA took the case because Taylor's social media made it easier to prove, it might be that we're only gonna hear about this case out of many because of said social media, and it doesn't really matter.
There's a lot of ways to snark, in "What's the penalty for being late?" fashion, about how Taylor's non-violent noncompliance with a law has gotten a much longer sentence than nutjobs who were separately violent, or a comparable sentence to a man who literally burned another man to death on the pyre of an Approved Cause. And that's not entirely fair, because the federal system doesn't have parole and New York does, and anyway there's a million different squiggly little variables about the crimes and sentences, and there's nowhere near enough cases to make a deep statistical analysis even if I wanted to try. Gun control advocates will certainly quibble, at the edges, about whether this is really 'non-violent non-violent', since there's always the possibility of later bad acts or theft or loss or mental break.
And Taylor ain't dead yet, despite an (alleged) no-knock raid. The actuarials put decent odds on him even seeing the light of day as a free man again, parole or no. Unlike Mr. Lee, had Taylor expressed his dislike of current law enforcement with a bit what the ATF calls a destructive device through a bit of what I call a broken window, the odds would not be looking so good. But there's no magic court case, here, and no golden BB. This isn't even the strawman of a scifi writer drawing up villains who just want their laws as threats to hang over innocent men. If you are ruled by people who hate you, giving puppy-dog eyes and saying this is just a paperwork crime and no one was hurt won't buy you a cup of coffee before you get absolutely reamed in all the least fun ways, and contra a once-prolific-now-banned poster here, everyone who cares about this stuff is ruled by men who hate them.
This is what table stakes looks like.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
4d ago
“There’s no realistic white nationalist movement in the country” could very well be due to the propaganda against it for more than a decade. In other words, it is as much evidence against my point as for my point. The “unite the right” event was catastrophized in the media specifically to destroy the threat of similar rallies; Nick Fuentes was de-person’d, forbidden to fly and having his bank accounts cancelled, not to mention banned by all social media giants. Literally, anti white nationalism was a major news plot point for years during the beginnings of Trump admin.
shakenvac
4d ago
Fair - there was an 'Israel' button but no single 'not Israel' button - the closest to that was Irish singer Bambie Thug who has been at the centre of some very juicy Israel/Palestine drama, tried to get the Israeli team banned and the producers prevented xirself from wearing a pro-Palestinian slogan during her performance, but I guess that was opaque to most viewers.
Armenia
Now, that was a banger!
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
5d ago
Or to be able to say to the right people, "The Motte? Yes, I used to visit it, but they banned me."
His profile says banned on request, people do it from time to time if they need to spend more time away from the community for whatever reason (like real life work).
I’m sure he’ll be back.
Well that is a pretty uncharitable way to put things. I'm to the right of most of my social circle but I'm to the left of whatever this place is turning into. People just get sick of getting downvoted and unable to post in real time, eventually they say something rude and get banned or they say "fuck it" and leave.
When the conversation turns to being worried about trump picking his VP based on possible assassination, putting guns in holes as a generational family gun stash in your back yard, "powers that be" conspiring to eliminate people like you, heavily downvoting someone pointing out having sex with blackout drunk people is probably wrong, being afraid to leave your red state for fear of being locked up for defending yourself, practicing religion harder being the only answer to societal ills, women only being truly happy barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen....I mean the parody starts to write itself at some point.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
7d ago
If you don't like the commentary, yes, go do something else. And I did not read the OP as suggesting or advocating for assassination, which makes your pot-shot seem disingenuous and contrived.
Your constant low-effort sneers and pointless posts (and self-admitted drunkposting) are becoming very annoying, and if you don't stop, you're going to get banned.
SteveKirk
7d ago
Conservatives were stupid enough to think these weapons were only going to be used against Osama bin durka durka jihad, which is why all the original "counter-terrorism surveillance tools" had foreign activity requirements.
None of them ever suggested using them against domestic political opponents, and naively believed Democrats would also consider that out of bounds.
If I was going to own up to how stupid I think conservatives and their politicians are, I would be at it all day and inevitably get banned.
...because anyone who doesn't publically "support diversity" is shamed, made a pariah and possibly fired.
Observe the posts in subreddits for individual cities, inquiring about neighborhoods to live in. Every one is looking for a "diverse" area.
Try posting that you want to live in a white neighborhood, and see how quickly you get banned for "bigotry" or "hate speech", with a mod note referring to you as "scum" or some similar endearment.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8d ago
From my limited understanding, the president is the head of the executive, and any democratic legitimacy of the federal bureaucracy ultimately comes from the fact that the bureaucrats are enacting the will of a democratically (or however you call the electoral college system) elected president.
Again, this is how it's supposed to be, on paper. But that matters as much as when Bart Simpson was sent back to kindergarten:
Bart: Lady, I'm supposed to be in the fourth grade.
Kindergarten teacher: Sounds to me like someone's got a case of the s'pose'das
The law isn't what's written on paper, the law is whatever is enforced. There's how the "employee handbook" says a workplace is supposed to work, and then there's how the workplace actually operates. (The very existence of "bothering by the book" and malicious compliance illustrates that there's a difference between the two, sometimes rather vast.) The written constitution is like an ignored, out-of-date employee handbook.
For one thing, do you really suppose the Supreme Court would play along with that?
Maybe, maybe not. But it won't matter.
If they do not, should the rest of DC also pretend that the Supreme Court does not exist?
Absolutely yes. Because there's no actual enforcement mechanism for SCOTUS decisions, except the willingness of the executive to heed them. From the federal court system's own webpage:
The judicial branch decides the constitutionality of federal laws and resolves other disputes about federal laws. However, judges depend on our government’s executive branch to enforce court decisions.
And from Cliff Notes:
The Supreme Court has no power to enforce its decisions. It cannot call out the troops or compel Congress or the president to obey. The Court relies on the executive and legislative branches to carry out its rulings. In some cases, the Supreme Court has been unable to enforce its rulings. For example, many public schools held classroom prayers long after the Court had banned government-sponsored religious activities.
(DC still hasn't given Mr. Heller his permit.)
the long term effects of establishing that the federal bureaucracy is independent of the president would likely be violent.
Not really. I mean, sure, maybe a few people might resort to violence, but only a few hundred at most, and they'll all be lone actors independently pursuing disorganized, poorly-targeted acts of domestic terror. Nothing that the FBI and ATF won't be able to handle (particularly given that at least half of our would-be rebels would be receiving "assistance" from someone in the pay of the FBI). Maybe you get a few more "Oklahoma City"s, but, as in that case, the perpetrators will accomplish nothing but creating martyrs for the other side, tainting their own side by association, and getting themselves executed (assuming the state takes them alive at all). And once a sufficiently-strong example is made of these people, most everyone else will be disincentivized to follow in their footsteps.
Whenever the topic of tradwives and fertility comes up, my first thought is, what do the women on this board think? Are there women on this forum?
Downthread and over the months I've been here, I seen users argue that women's employment and college admissions be significantly curtailed, that makeup should be banned, that the 19th amendment be repealed, and so on.
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