TSN Open Mic for the week of 2/20/2023
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to Ten Second News.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these on the Sidebar every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
First! But with something horrible I didn’t see on the news until today.
LA Auxiliary Bishop Found Shot to Death
https://www.yahoo.com/now/la-bishop-shot-killed-hacienda-175140264.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGCJZncHetjlUFaa4u63o1rI_Ir-iP1AzGVUZDDrT-L5y6f8mLhCYFNqSxzslKjaS5npqtz5jv76U4YBQEcEL2lAUKB5zwR3ZXPVDuZ7TnFoiOUMwH7tlimEDeQIkeV3QUodJE73_1tJLVqDmQSaHNbkdW5QNTdYsHGgzYdkAMBgReport
Yeah that’s not anything close to good news. May he rest in peace.Report
Not really a link because it is taking place on a private lawyer group I’m part of but my profession seems to be having a big fight over social media use by lawyers. Some see it as an innovative way to educate ordinary people about the law. And there is some of that. There are lots of good YouTube channels that educate lay people about the law. The other faction that I basically lean towards, is that social media is just a new way for the more dishonorable lawyers to spread a lot of misinformation about the law. I’m growing increasingly convinced that the decision to allow lawyers to advertise was a mistake.Report
Demystification has harmed a *LOT* of professions.
Account management used to be a department. Now it’s a dozen or so scripts.Report
Immigration law is filled with the unauthorized practice of law, that is non-lawyers doing stuff only lawyers are supposed to, and lawyers who give unscrupulous advice because they are dealing with people who want to hear good news over something more qualified. All areas of law have the later problem. Good lawyers don’t guarantee anything but clients want to hear that they have a slam dunk case. So lawyers who say “we will take care of you” get a lot more people to sign up than lawyers who say “you meet all the qualifications but I can’t guarantee a good result.” Lawyers who say “we will take care of you” don’t know what they are doing though.Report
https://twitter.com/NGrossman81/status/1627814024980078592?s=20
The right-wing is apparently very upset with Biden’s secret visit to Ukraine. MTG declares impeach Biden or grant us a divorce. Political science professor Nick Grossman explains why this a fake position:
“”National divorc’” isn’t a real position. You don’t need to think through how it’d actually work. They don’t know either.
What people who say it actually mean is that they deserve to be in charge, and if they’re not—eg because they lost elections—they’re entitled to get violent.”Report
No wonder they’re so fond of the Confederate flag.Report
Can you really be radicalised by Great British Railway Journeys?
https://archive.ph/5RQ0d#selection-1325.0-1325.64
“There is also a reading list of historical texts which produce red flags to RICU. These include Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government and Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, as well as works by Thomas Carlyle and Adam Smith. Elsewhere RICU warns that radicalisation could occur from books by authors including C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Aldous Huxley and Joseph Conrad. I kid you not, though it seems that all satire is dead, but the list of suspect books also includes 1984 by George Orwell.”
Rolling my eyes here……Report
Life under Republicans, a continuing series:
School board in Escambia County, Florida considers banning 115 books, after a challenge from ONE teacher.
Among the books is one called “And Tango Makes Three”, a true story about a same sex penguin pair, with absolutely no sexuality in it.
Her reason for wanting to ban it was stated forthrightly as “LGBTQ agenda using penguins”.
https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1627859576216322048
This is what is going on here. It has nothing whatsoever to do with making education better, or giving parents a role. It is entirely about creating state-mandated censorship of ideas which offend bigots.Report
I also note the continuation of the trend where its male homosexuals who are targeted in books that are banned. Just like males drag queens. While this particular teacher may well be bigoted against all homosexuals . . . seeking to ban book only about males is telling.Report
Life under Republicans, a continuing series:
School board in Escambia County, Florida considers banning 115 books, after a challenge from ONE teacher.
Among the books is one called “And Tango Makes Three”, a true story about a same sex penguin pair, with absolutely no sexuality in it.
Her reason for wanting to ban it was stated forthrightly as “LGBTQ agenda using penguins”.
This is what is going on here. It has nothing whatsoever to do with pornography, making education better, or giving parents a role. It is entirely about creating state-mandated censorship of ideas which offend bigots.Report
I really wonder how many humans are living under a permanent conspiracy theory in their heads. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are still widespread in many places of the world. You have rightists in the United States who believe that some sort of woke cabal will come and take away all their American liberties.Report
The irony here is that our OT comments largely come from leftists in the United States who believe that some sort of rightist cabal will come and take away all their American liberties.Report
I wonder where they got that idea.
Edited to add: After all, it’s not a “secret cabal” if it’s operating right out there in the open!Report
So you and Dark and Brandon and Koz and Kristine and Jay are all leftists? Color me gobsmacked.Report
I don’t see myself as a “leftist”.
More of a “fan of enlightenment culture”.
That used to be a hell of a lot more on the left than it is now, lemme tell ya.Report
The Supreme Court looks like it will not destroy the Internet.Report
At least not this term.Report
This strikes me as odd because if it’s true it’s weird and if it’s not true it’s weird that they communicated that it was true.
Report
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158356619/plea-bargains-criminal-cases-justiceReport
Award-Winning SciFi/Fantasy Magazine Closes Submissions Amidst Avalanche Of AI-Generated Spam
https://www.dailywire.com/news/award-winning-scifi-fantasy-magazine-closes-submissions-amidst-avalanche-of-ai-generated-spamReport
Sadly we will see more and more of this. Not every technological advancement can or should b implemented just because it exists.Report
The interesting question is whether they’re any good. It relates to a recent OT discussion about chatbot opinion pieces on Substack. I personally don’t think they’ll stand the test of time, but I could be mistaken.
If someone is entertained by AI content, I can’t complain about their tastes. I think that we forgive content a lot though, sitting through a maybe-not-good movie for the occasional striking moments. I doubt that AI will be able to create striking moments, and if content is produced without them, then people aren’t going to put in the effort to consume it. Consumers may be fooled by mediocre material long enough to finish it, but they probably won’t come back if it never has a payoff.Report
I am pretty sure that a decent prompter can provide something “any” good.
How good does something have to be? I mean, for you to drop… $10 on it? $5 on it? $2 on it?
How much time do I have to spend prompting a chatbot to make a light novella to get one that would get you to say “okay, I’ll drop $2 on that”?
If the answer is “a month”, it’s probably not worth it.
If the answer is “a week”, it might be worth it.Report
Remember, I’m the guy who still can’t decide if he should buy Civ VI which is currently on sale for $5.99 on Steam, so you probably shouldn’t ask me.
But I think there’s got to be a hook, or a vision, or a ton of style to make something worthwhile. Current AI output doesn’t have those. Maybe one can aggregate every story hook and be able to generate similar ones, but I’m not 100% confident. As for vision and style, I’m not seeing those yet.Report
There’s not a whole lot of space to do better than 90% off.
But there are a bunch of people out there who are hungry for something else to read in their preferred genre. They want to read another sword and sorcery fantasy. They want to read another Vietnam story. They want to read another trashy romance novel (Oh my gosh, this is going to *WRECK* the romance novel section).
It’s not a good story.
But it’s content.
And the people who yearn for content now have a firehose.Report
Good question. Art is a lot of things, but among them we could break out two meta-items: Technique and Content/Meaning
There are lots of books that teach technique and lots of people have and can develop technique. Some of them even take their technique/skill and use computer assisted tools to expand/improve/evolve their art.
But not all people who have an eye for meaning/framing/content can learn the techniques required for various visual arts (or any other art, for that matter).
I have a professional artist friend that we share some ideas on a project we might collaborate on… I have some notions on the meaning/framing and it’s hard to collaborate on the techne.
I’m starting to wonder if what I’m seeing via AI will enable the content/meaning creators to access the techne without the artist ‘getting in the way.’
Or will directing the AI be harder than collaborating with a friend?Report
Interesting comment. You’re coming at this from the perspective that people are interested in creating something of value, and that wasn’t one of my assumptions.
Scenario 1: “AI, write a story with aliens and time travel”.
Scenario 2: “AI, write a story where a time-travelling alien spends thousands of years on earth guiding humans to understand science because there’s a weakness in our galaxy’s structure and when we generate FTL travel it’ll collapse the Milky Way and propel him backwards to his original time.”
Scenario 3: “AI, write a Lovecraftian horror story in the style of a David Mamet play.”Report
Was thinking more of the visual arts… but yes… and with much more granularity. Imagine iterating on each aspect of the picture… the landscape, the lighting, the sky, the people, the flowers, the old barn, no the old castle, no the house. ad infinitum.Report
When an elected official lies publicly about the findings of his office, what should we do about it?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/22/arizona-election-fraud-claims-mark-brnovich/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3931988%2F63f648691b79c61f87a25a16%2F59738e7cade4e21a848fe4b9%2F8%2F72%2F63f648691b79c61f87a25a16&wp_cu=5471d46db8b7f35fdd491ffd33791772%7C2AE372BEC443EE5DE050007F01004171Report
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/lawyers-trump-aide-steve-bannon-sue-over-legal-bills-2023-02-21/Report
Definitely studied at the feet of the master.Report
Well, Trump turned East Palestine into a photo op.
He was *ABLE* to turn it into a photo op.
This is malpractice.Report
Sure is. TFG’s crew quashed Obama administration regulations that might have prevented this. Now that’s malpractice.Report
Yeah, it’s hard to believe that he’s being lauded for showing up.
Before anybody else did.
After a mere week and a half.Report
Most sane administrations make it a practice of not complicating things by showing up in the initial response to a disaster. I’ve watched Presidential Secret Service Details much up two hurricane responses. Like I couldn’t leave my desk to help carry water to a car with people in it who came for water because I’d have to break the cordon to do so. Federal officials have been there since day two, and are doing the things they do. State officials have been there since day one, and doing the things they do. The President and his Cabinet have spoken repeatedly about this event and Secretary Pete will be there later today.
That DJT showed up first for a campaign stunt – no doubt mucking up response as he did – is not something to be lauded.Report
Well, I hope that they’re able to keep Secretary Pete safe, despite Trump going there yesterday.Report
They’re not but his press secretary is:
Report
Jaybird isn’t lauding Trump. And I assume he recognizes that top officials can’t do much on the ground. But the common practice is to do so.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/why-americans-now-expect-their-presidents-to-turn-up-at-natural-disasters/2016/08/22/aff7eb76-6891-11e6-99bf-f0cf3a6449a6_story.htmlReport
This isn’t a natural disaster. Its an environmental/business disaster, where active federal investigations are ongoing as is the clean up. Not only can Mr. Biden not do much more then is being done, his presence will in fact briefly hinder actions that are critical to resolving the matter.
The NS CEO ought to be there every day, though I hear there are concerns for his safety.
I assume Jay is trolling because I am sure he has opinions on Trump showing up, just as he has opinions on everything else. That he thinks he’s sly about it by making his “observations” has ceased to be amusing.Report
I’m saying that Trump turned this into a PR win for himself.
This strikes me as obvious.
Trump being able to turn this into a PR win for himself was avoidable.
This strikes me as obvious.Report
Why do you think it was a PR success?Report
Based off of little more than how Trump made out with the camera people and how Buttigieg’s Press Secretary told camera people to back off.Report
Professional camera hog knows what he’s doing, that’s for sure.Report
Is it possible that you found this impressive, and are imagining that everyone else thinks the same as you?Report
Well, it’s more that I think that there are three groups of voters.
Group 1: People who will vote for Biden NO MATTER WHAT.
Group 2: People who will vote for Trump NO MATTER WHAT
Group 3: People who could be persuaded either way, depending.
I don’t really care about Group 1 or Group 2. Their opinions aren’t going to change and the only difference in their voting patterns will be whether they vote early, vote on election day itself, or forget to vote.
When it comes to Group 3, I try to imagine how they view things such as politicians showing up, giving speeches, handing out bottles of water, paper towels, showing up to McDonald’s, handing out hats, etc.
Based on that, I can see Group 3 watching Trump’s grandstanding and seeing it as amusing and then doing a comparison to Biden’s (and/or Biden’s cabinet’s) response.
And I imagine that they’d see Trump showing up and pretending to care as Trump showing up and pretending to care.
And he showed up and pretended to care *FIRST*.
That’s what I’m basing this on. How would we make this measurable?Report
Oh, and if you want to know whether Buttigieg has opinions on how he, himself, is doing, he’s got an interview with CBS where he says the following:
He seems to be acknowledging that he could have done better on the PR front.
(I agree with him, by the way.)Report
“How would we make this measurable?”
Let’s hope it’s not on a precinct basis the fall after next.Report
So you’re just thinking all this inside your own head, about how other people are reacting?
Then coming to the conclusion that they see it as a PR success.
Am I getting this right?Report
Well, I’m also comparing footage taken by reporters and taking stuff like Buttigieg saying “this is a lesson learned!” into account.
And, yes, remembering how the 2023 defenses of Biden sound awfully like defenses of Hillary in 2016.
That tone, man. When it shows up, you just know you’re in damage control mode. And damage control mode seems to indicate an implicit acknowledgment of damage needing to be controlled.
Why do you think that nobody could have enough information yet to know whether this is a PR win or loss or tie?Report
Just a suggestion, maybe a crazy idea, but before you arrive at a conclusion about how millions of Americans are reacting, do you think it might be useful to, y’know, talk to at least a few first?Report
Oh, if you think that I’m saying “DONALD TRUMP IS OUR NEXT PRESIDENT!”, I’m not.
I’m more saying “Trump was able to turn East Palestine into a PR win by going there before the Democratic Administration sent somebody… and he had days and days to get there. Leisurely. This was a missed opportunity on the part of the Administration.”
And your argument is not even that this is wrong, but that I haven’t talked to enough people to know that?
I’ll ask some co-workers today, I guess. But be warned: I’m considered the degenerate liberal atheist at work. My co-workers will probably consider it an opportunity to bash Biden to someone that they consider to be on “the other side”.Report
I’m just asking if you are open to the idea that not everyone sees it as the win you think it was.Report
Does saying something like “there are three groups of voters” sufficiently acknowledge multiple perspectives?Report
Well, your original statement was an objective assertion that this was a “PR win” which sort of assumes it was seen that way by group #3.
And now it turns out that exactly none of Group 3 were consulted and we have absolutely no way of knowing if they saw it this way.Report
Does a politician saying something like “lessons learned” count as evidence that something went a way that they think ought to go differently next time?
Do you agree that Trump got a leg up over DeSantis on this issue in East Palestine when it comes to the Republican Primary?Report
I have no idea what the political impact of this disaster or response will be.
And from what you’ve presented here, you don’t either.
Right now its like a Rorschach test, where you are telling me it looks like a bat, while for some of my fellow liberals, it looks like a banana slug.
What is it really?
Time will tell.Report
But Chip, you have to understand. There are people who have to have opinions RIGHT NOW on all sorts of things whether they know anything or not. Why they think that, and why they think anyone should care, is a mystery to me.Report
Well, let me ask you a question about something like the exact opposite.
Remember when Texas had that awful ice storm and Ted Cruz went with his family to Cancun or something? And the media covered it as if he was a worm even though he couldn’t have done anything to help Texas?
Do you remember that?
Are you confused as to whether Ted Cruz took a PR hit for doing that?Report
In that case we actually saw the PR hit happen in real time.Report
What would count as this being a PR win for Trump? Would Tweets suffice? Would Buttigieg showing up on talk shows doing damage control for his response count? People who oppose Trump screaming about how this isn’t even close to something that is PR adjacent?
Importantly: Was it possible to look at that and say “Man, that’s a PR disaster waiting to happen” *PRIOR* to seeing the shitshow?Report
“What would count”, is empirical evidence of the only thing that matters in PR.
A measurable shift in public opinion.
Anything else is partisan spin.Report
As someone once — or more than once — told us, there are, at least in logical space, three types of voters: voters who would think well of or vote for Trump whether he showed up or not; voters who would not think well of or vote for Trump whether he showed up or not; and voters who might be moved one way or the other depending on whether he showed up or not. I say “in logical space” because we need all three classes only to cover all the logical possibilities. Whether the third class exists in empirical space is an empirical question, and I see little evidence that the third class exists.
As for before-the-fact prediction, we know before the fact that Elaine Chao, like Mayor Pete, didn’t show up for many, if any, of the 1,000 or so annual train derailments on her watch, even derailments that ended up with dead people. Who screamed then? Lots of bad things happen. Is it a predictable PR disaster if a President doesn’t show up at the site of more than a handful of the hundreds of mass shootings, blizzards, and floods every year?
But hacks gotta hack.Report
I saw an amazing tweet going around.
It showed side by side pictures of Trump, signing MAGA hats in East Palestine, and Biden walking with Zelensky, with the caption “Spot the difference”.
What was amazing is that it was created by a MAGA, who thought it made his guy look cool.
But it was being amplified and retweeted by a bunch of liberals, who thought it made Biden look good.
This how PR is often a Rorschach test, where Jaybird looks at Trump’s visit and sees a magnificent victory, while liberals look at it and see a grubby Mayor Quimby taking advantage of people’s pain for cheap photo op.
Which is it? We won’t know for a long time, or maybe ever.Report
We can probably come back to this in a week, then.Report
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/?cid=rrpromoReport
Why are you showing me Biden’s numbers instead of Trump’s?
But on Feb 24 when I said we should come back to this, Biden was at 52% approval and the most recent number in your link is 51.3%. So I’m doubly confused.Report
Cut and paste mistake.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/Report
Given that the numbers for both Trump and Biden have remained essentially unchanged for the past few months, and we are several news cycles past the train derailment, it seems like nothing about that even has had any PR effect, one way or the other.
This isn’t a confirmation of a prediction- things could still change and develop and make a deep impact.
But so far, there just isn’t any evidence for that.Report
Trump vs Biden? The bigger question right now is whether this helps Trump in relation to DeSantis.Report
Yeah, Trump pulled off something that DeSantis couldn’t pull off.
DeSantis can’t go to Ohio and say “tsk tsk tsk”. It’s a governor thing, I guess.
Trump can. And Trump can position himself as being against Biden’s administration in a way that DeSantis couldn’t… DeSantis would have to approach this as a fellow governor. Trump has the ability to approach this as a former President.
So I’d say that this helps Trump against DeSantis.
(Just as well. I’ve heard that DeSantis is worse than Trump.)Report
This isn’t a natural disaster. It’s also not a funeral for a victim of police violence, but presidents and VP’s know to show up for those too. I’m cold and impersonal, and even I know this stuff. It’s ok to acknowledge when someone on your side drops the ball. No one will accuse you of supporting Trump.Report
Based on circumstance to date I am not yet seeing any balls dropped.Report
“dropped” vs “not picked up allowing someone else to pick them up”Report
One thing we have learned with the DJT is he is going to do what he wants regardless. Biden being there two or three times in the last two weeks wouldn’t have stopped Trump, and wouldn’t have stopped the GOP from gigging him for something.Report
No, this is a nonsensical position you’re taking. The election is next year, Ohio is a swing state, and an administration should send recognizable figures if a Tonka truck tips over.Report
I look forward to your sharing with us the Biden Reelection Campaign’s response when you send them that advice . . . .Report
What does that even mean? Is this the whole “don’t trust the other side’s advice” thing? No one listens to us. That’s why it’s ok to admit when your side slips up. (That, and personal integrity.)Report
I don’t yet see my side slipping up. If anything they are learning from prior slip ups and not interfering with things on the ground when their presence does no one any good.
The NTSB is there. The EPA is there. I’m sure the FBI, DoJ and Federal Railroad Administration are there. Those are the feds who need to be present.Report
To put a finer point on it – Biden’s approval rating hasn’t dipped from not going. It may even be up a point or two.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/Report
Huh.
Report
Makes sense – the Dutch company who makes all the world’s chip making machines no longer exports to China.Report
That’s a pretty gross exaggeration. ASML doesn’t sell their leading edge extreme ultra-violet lithography gear to China, but sells them older stuff. Last year sales to China accounted for about 15% of ASML’s total revenue, and they have said they expect China to be a similar percentage this year. The Biden administration has said they want ASML to stop selling and servicing the previous-generation deep UV stuff China already has — China mass produces 14nm chips with it — but there’s a lot of details still to be written in the Dutch-US agreement.Report
I sit corrected and better informed.Report
I am puzzled by the administration’s apparent attempt to somehow take away China’s existing 14nm production capability. At least to me it seems like a pure commerce thing. Military ICs depend more on FPGA and ASIC specialty designs for performance rather than constantly shrinking dies. Intel’s military FPGA and ASIC product line is 28nm stuff. Raytheon still builds some custom parts for weapons systems at 90nm and 130nm.Report
Good news about covid, finally: Biden administration plans to end Covid public health emergency in MayReport
Back in November, we noted how DOE’s deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition was accused of taking a suitcase from an airport.
Well, a few days ago, *THIS* tweet popped up:
And people started doing detective work from pictures of Sam and pictures from Asyakhamsin’s insta:
Pictures of outfits, pictures of jewelry…
Guys… I think that Brinton was culturally appropriating.Report
The Onion Chimes In:
Report
Black Panther communist Angela Davis – who teaches that U.S. was built by racist colonizers – faces calls to pay reparations after genealogy show reveals her white puritan ancestor arrived in America on the Mayflower
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11784945/Black-Panther-Angela-Davis-discovers-ancestor-came-Mayflower.html
The question on everyone’s lips is now, will she pay reparations? Could you have written a better satire piece if you wanted to?Report
Lots of black Americans have white ancestry somewhere. And, not coincidentally, often the white ancestor was a slave owner. Or at least an overseer. That’s how he became the ancestor.Report
And conversely, lots of white people have a black ancestor or three.
Including those who proudly tell everyone they are descended from the Mayflower.Report
Yes, but I doubt any single other person has campaigned so much for reparations and white guilt than her….and she’s white…..so will she be kicking in $$$ to pay for reparations? If she has the convictions of her principles, yes, but I somehow suspect otherwise.Report
You keep insisting that Angela Davis is white. If she counts as white, millions of African-Americans count as white. If she was ever counted as white, and treated as white, her life experience would have been almost unimaginably different. She lived the life that advocates of reparations want reparations for, so she, and millions of other African-Americans, would, in effect, be paying themselves. Better to eliminate the middle man.Report
Hey, I’m just using the “one drop” rule in reverse. Only seems fair don’t you think?Report
When you’re in a hole, stop digging.Report
What hole? It’s a perfectly valid question to you and Chip — how do you distinguish between a “Black” person with white ancestry and a “white” person with Black ancestry? How do you measure “lived experience”?Report
Read the thread.Report
OK, you got us.
I’m big enough to admit it, that race is a construct. That if you look white, society treats you like you’re white, and if you look black, society treats you like you’re black.
Thanks for setting me straight.Report
I’m asking a practical question – how would you design a reparations program to get money to the people you think deserve it and not to those who don’t? Anytime the government gives away money, there will be many people trying to get some — what are the criteria for inclusion?Report
no matter the criteria, or the amount of watch dogging you do, people who shouldn’t get the funds will. Not really not a reason to do it however.Report
I’m not a fan of reparations, for many reasons including its inherent unworkability.
There are plenty of ways to repair the relationship between white and nonwhite people besides cash reparations.
One good place to start is doing what we’re doing right here, of everyone accepting that race is largely an artificial construction based on nothing more than physical appearance.
And that appearance becomes a marker for your social caste.Report
“Vibes” is pretty much the answer. For the most part, people are willing to accept a self-report.
Oh, you’re White? Okay.
Oh, you’re Native American? Okay.
Oh, you’re Latinx? Okay.
Oh, you’re Black? Okay.
The problems start to show up when people are mistaken (Elizabeth Warren!) or clout chasing (Rachel Dolezal! Jess “La Bombalera”!).
There’s even a dynamic where people who don’t consider themselves to be white end up being considered white by POCs and that creates some weird dynamics.
And Asians screw everything up.Report
This whole idea is bad and probably unworkable but here’s a suggestion: What if taking the reparation was fully optional, but, if you took it, you had to permanently and forever waive your right to any sort of soft or hard affirmative action or benefit to you and your children? The idea would be that the claimant has now been made whole, and the slate has been wiped clean with respect to that person and his or her descendants.
My guess is that most supporters of reparations would reject this concept, which to me is a great illustration of the fundamental problem with the policy.Report
As a Native American, I accept.
(And I expect that most would reject the offer because any realistic offer that could plausibly be made would be insulting.)Report
As expected, but the positive side of that would be to reveal that most calls for ‘reparations’ are not really about reparations.Report
Well, I do think that there is a case that reparations ought to be made.
But that immediately slams full speed into the brick wall that “any debt that cannot be paid won’t be.”
So we’re stuck with not doing it or only making insulting offers.
And I can see how, though both of those are realistic, they’re really unsatisfying.Report
We’ve got a list of SBF’s political donations. He gave almost $150,000 to Republicans but you aren’t going to see anybody talk about *THAT*.
Report
Executed man calls out DeSanctimonius before execution:
Report
If you look at a map of countries that still have the death penalty, we’re in some not great company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_countryReport
“When he was 15, he was sentenced to life in prison for fatally shooting Lee County sheriff’s deputy Dwight Lynn Hall after the officer caught the boy with a stolen car….In 1990, he escaped from an off-site vocational program, purchased a knife, and encountered [Faye] Vann in her car in a parking lot. When she refused to drive him away, he fatally stabbed her.”Report
Interesting that as a supposed former libertarian, you’re more worried about what this guy said, as opposed to the Governor’s move to make it easier for the state to kill people.Report
As I’ve said before: The cops kill hundreds of people per year. Capital Punishment kills… what? A dozen?
The emphasis is on the wrong place.
We need to reform (no, not “defund”) the police.
Focusing on Capital Punishment is a misallocation of resources at this point.Report
Theodore Dalrymple had a piece in Taki Mag, part of which articulates something I wasn’t able to quite gel as it was happening, but he captures it well…
“That is why those who want to manage the whole of society love the kind of history that sees no grandeur, beauty, or achievement in it, but only a record of injustice and misery (which, of course, really existed, and all of which they, and only they, will put right). The real reason for the enthusiasm for pulling down statues is to destroy any idea of the past as having been anything other than a vast chamber of horrors, and since everyone has feet of clay, and the heroes of the past always had skeletons in their cupboard (to change the metaphor), reasons for destroying statues, even of the greatest men, can always be found.”
https://www.takimag.com/article/the-triggers-of-history/Report
SO you advocate for keeping statues celebrating seditious traitors? Fascinating.Report
OH SO YOU’RE SAYINGReport
These open threads are basically Twitter for OT.Report
What’s interesting is that the statues in question were erected after the war and depicted people who hated the American government and were themselves hated enemies.
A modern analogue would be if some group like the Muslim Brotherhood erected a statue of Osama Bin Ladin at Ground Zero.Report
Or Germany had retained the Third Reich’s self glorifying statues.Report
SO you advocate for destroying any idea of the past being nothing but horror, and nothing good ever came of it? Fascinating.Report
I am quite sure we can teach about the history of Civil War without glorifying those who fought in defense of chattel slavery. Just like Germany seems to do with teaching World War II without any statues of Nazi generals.
But yes, nothing good came from the Confederacy except some dead plantation owners and destruction of their property.Report
To accomplish what you and your decidedly unhinged source would want, we’d have to destroy much of the Smithsonian, the Louvre, rebury Pompei, and on and on.
Keeping Lost Cause statues to seditious traitors in place in the south only destroys the Lost Cause as some to venerate. Which it isn’t.Report
You missed the part this was published in Taki Mag, an incredibly right-wing where John Derbyshire moved after saying stuff even The National Review for being too racist. Now, I’m not shocked Damon, one of our residents “both sides are bad, but I’m going to use far-right framing on basically everything I say” folks gets his talking points from there.Report
Yes, I was. But the SOURCE of the article wasn’t written by him. If you read through the articles that Theodore has written they are not like Derbyshire’s work.
I read articles from a wide variety of people from a wide variety of sites, spanning the political spectrum. If you limit your source of ideas, you limit your mind.
And I didn’t get my “talking points from there”. I specifically keyed in on one paragraph he wrote. Did you even read the linked piece or are you afraid to click on the link? And of course you’re not shocked that I would use this link…you’ve already made of your mind about me and the issue.Report
It’s nice to see Pete step up like this:
Buttigieg calls on Trump to back reversing deregulation in wake of train derailment
Report
Technically TSN 2/27… but
Heard it here first, the Kagan, Jackson, Barrett, Alito, Thomas coalition on Section 230.
https://reason.com/volokh/2023/02/27/why-big-tech-will-lose-its-supreme-court-case-on-section-230/Report
You millennial leftists who never lived one day under nuclear threat can now reflect upon your woke sky.
You made quite a non-binary fuss to save the world from intercontinental ballistic tweets.Report
What the actual F?Report