The Many Storylines Of The Upcoming Midterms
There’s More Than Just Control Of Congress To Keep An Eye On
Ten Second News
-Honesty in Advertising
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Focus-Group tested honesty, which is really the best kind when you think about it.
Hoping to fix that, the new campaign will roll out in states beyond Nebraska in the spring of 2019, the Nebraska Tourism Commission said in a press release.
Advertisers tested the campaign and slogan in other states earlier this year and found that it made people more likely to visit the state, and for longer, the tourism commission said. Respondents also said they got the self-deprecating humor in “Nebraska: Honestly, it’s not for everyone,” and that the humor was one of the keys to the campaign’s success.
“The new brand platform is defined by honesty,” said John Ricks, Nebraska Tourism executive director. “The overarching concept of honesty is rooted in a mindset that values transparency, purity and simplicity. A way of embracing the not-so-obvious bits of life. We feel we’ve accomplished just that.”
Nebraska seems like an okay place to live, but not sure why I would want to visit there.
South Dakota, on the other hand, I can imagine both. That they came up with this ad is a point in their favor.
-The Gamble Case
/ #Dual Sovereignty #Fifth Amendment #law #SCOTUSI don’t recall Gamble v. United States being discussed at Ordinary Times yet. But it touches on something about which I have long been curious and yet am not sure where I stand. Here’s Ken White’s summary of the case, from a post that actually is about something slightly different:
The issue at hand is the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which says the government can’t “for the same offence . . . .be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.” Most commonly double jeopardy means that the government can’t charge you again with the same thing after they lose at trial. There’s a notorious exception to it called the “Separate Sovereigns” or “Dual Sovereignty” Doctrine. Under this doctrine, different “sovereigns” can try you for the same crime because they have separate interests in punishing the crime. This most commonly allows the federal government and a state to prosecute you for the same crime, on the theory that they have distinct interests and reasons to do so. This famously happened when the federal government prosecuted the police officers who beat Rodney King even after they were acquitted in state court.
The Dual Sovereignty Doctrine has always been controversial and somewhat unpopular. This term, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case in which it could overturn the Dual Sovereignty Doctrine. That case is Gamble v. United States — you can read all about it here, on the indispensable SCOTUSblog.
White’s explanation, further on, cites an amicus brief that claims dual prosecutions could still be done. One takeaway is that we could still prosecute state-level actors for civil rights violations. But I don’t understand all the legalities. I’ve read a couple of briefs already, and I plan on reading more as this case makes its way to being heard.
Comment → --Capitalists Clean Up
/ #noncompetesFrom The Washington Post, “Even janitors have noncompetes now. Nobody is safe.” [The company is now claiming the employee was treated in this way because policies were “misapplied”, but the article is still worth a read. – Eds.]
One of the central contradictions of capitalism is that what makes it work — competition — is also what capitalists want to get rid of the most.
That’s true not only of competition between companies, but also between them and their workers. After all, the more of a threat its rivals are, and the more options its employees have, the less profitable a business will tend to be. Which, as the Financial Times reports, probably goes a long way toward explaining why a $3.4 billion behemoth like Cushman & Wakefield would bother to sue one of its former janitors, accusing her of breaking her noncompete agreement by taking a job in the same building she had been cleaning for the global real estate company but doing it for a different firm.
(We have discussed this subject before at OT. The tyranny of employer over employee continues.)
-Windows & Window Blinds
What happens when technology is good enough?
[PCs] remain essential to our functioning, and despite the advent of tablets and smartphones, PCs have resolutely hung on as our work device of choice. What has declined, however is their sales. Since 2010?—?the peak year for computer sales?—?rates have gradually eased. They are occasionally boosted by increased adoptions in emerging economies, but on the whole, rates have settled into an apparent permanent stagnation.
At first glance, this seems surprising, given that computers are 1) more central to our lives than ever, and 2) surely increasing their penetration as computer illiterate generations die off and “digital natives” come of age. However, those cannot offset the withering of the most important driver of the industry: upgrades.
People are holding on to their computers for longer. It’s not a coincidence that this is happening now. In (roughly) 2010 a crucial barrier was passed—for the first time ever, the available hardware adequately matched the tasks that were asked of it. Computers booted up with minimal fuss. They opened and saved documents instantly, and crashed increasingly rarely. Internet-based programs went from tolerably slow to satisfyingly quick. And the tag team of USB drives and good Wifi seemingly put an end to the search for better port technology.
In short, computers had become good enough.
I wrote on this a bit the other day, sort of. But if phones are settling in, PCs are settled. The last four versions of Microsoft Windows all have roughly the same hardware specs. And as with the phones, the main liability with getting a computer that’s a few years old is hardware failure rather than innovation. Like with cars, where we seen only incremental improvements over the last decades while we wait for them to be able to drive themselves.
The piece itself is on the similarities of the future to now, and I think it still holds. Self-driving cars will probably look a lot like regular car (as opposed to Jetsons flying cars and such). The next innovation for smartphones will be unnoticeable from the outside: Batteries that can run all day without question.
In the end, we’re all just waiting for Google Glass to pan out, aren’t we?
Comment → --The Herrera Case
/ #2A #Hunting #law #SCOTUSFrom NCSL
Comment → -Clayvin Herrera, a member of the Crow tribe, shot an elk in Big Horn National Forest in Wyoming in 2014, and was charged with hunting without a license during a closed season. Herrera claims that an 1868 treaty giving the Crow the right to hunt on the “unoccupied lands of the United States” allowed him to hunt on this land.
In Herrera v. Wyoming, the Supreme Court will decide whether Wyoming’s admission to the Union or the establishment of the Big Horn National Forest abrogated the Crow’s treaty right to hunt in the forest.
To decide this case, the lower court applied a 1995 Tenth Circuit decision, Crow Tribe of Indians v. Repsis, which raised the same question. In Repsis, the Tenth Circuit held that the “Tribe’s right to hunt … was repealed by the act admitting Wyoming into the Union” and that “the creation of the Big Horn National Forest resulted in the ‘occupation’ of the land.”
The Tenth Circuit in Repsis relied on an 1896 Supreme Court case, Ward v. Race Horse, involving off-reservation hunting rights and decided against a tribe. Four years after Repsis, the Supreme Court decided another off-reservation hunting rights case, Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians, in favor of a tribe.
At issue in this case is whether Mille Lacs overruled Race Horse and Repsis.
According to Herrera, Mille Lacs indicates Repsis was decided incorrectly. Herrera argues: “Repsis unambiguously held that ‘[t]he Tribe’s right to hunt reserved in the [1868 Treaty] was repealed by the act admitting Wyoming into the Union.’ Indeed, for good measure, it declared Race Horse ‘compelling, well-reasoned, and persuasive,’ and it cited Race Horse for the proposition that the hunting right preserved in the 1868 Treaty was a ‘temporary right’ that was ‘repealed with Wyoming’s admission into the Union.’ Mille Lacs rejects that reasoning across the board, from the notion that statehood abrogates treaty hunting rights to the ‘too broad’ construct of ‘temporary’ rights.”
Herrera also argues that the establishment of the Big Horn National Forest did not abrogate the Crow’s treaty rights. Indian treaties are interpreted as the Indians would have understood them.
The Crow Tribe understood “unoccupied lands of the United States” in the 1868 Treaty to mean “land undeveloped by white settlers.” In short, prohibiting “entry or settlement” on land by creating a national forest does not cause that land to become “occupied.”
-Fantasy vs Science Fiction
It’s often said that Star Trek is science fiction whereas Star Wars is fantasy with space ships. This sort of explains the difference:
Chiang offered a short discursus on the history of science. In his telling, the pivotal moment was the emergence of chemistry – a genuine science – from the magical discipline of alchemy. The latter involved the purification of the soul alongside the purification of a base metal into nobility, while the former was grounded in observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and systematization. Alchemy failed and chemistry prevailed, said Chiang, because the soul is of no consequence.
This corresponds to the personalism of the fantasy genre. The magician is always chosen, set apart from others as the bearer of a special destiny. For Chiang, this implies hierarchy, elitism. He contrasts this with science fiction, which he construes as egalitarian. The science of science fiction is – in theory if not in practice – available to everyone. Star Wars is instructive here. Although anyone might pick up and fire a blaster or fly a starship at light speed, only the elect can wield the Force. Star Wars is thus fantasy and not science fiction.
No fan of hierarchy, Chiang observes that fantasy stories are rarely set in post-industrial revolution settings. He explains this by way of Marx’s theory of the alienation of labor: the worker’s estrangement has the effect of erasing difference and collapsing social hierarchies into the binary of proletariat and bourgeoisie. This flattening?—?tightly yoked to the mechanical world-view?—?makes it difficult to believe in a personal universe. Everyone is ontologically equivalent in the eyes of the market. Thus fantasy stories set in capitalist societies require a greater suspension of disbelief.
I’d always thought that magic and technology (applied science) made for an interesting dynamic. It’s pretty easy to imagine that those who are powerful through magic would have a pretty natural hostility towards science, which allows the masses to accomplish many of the same things that they can do. So for it to work, you either need the magical to be very limited in number (like the Jedi) or limited in what they can actually do.
Comment → --Stormy Daniel’s Defamation Suit Tossed, Legal Fees Ordered
/ #Defamation #Stormy #TrumpOne of two lawsuits by Stormy Daniels against President Donald Trump was dismissed by Order of a federal judge yesterday. The Order also requires Daniels to pay Trump’s legal fees, an as-yet-to-be-determined sum that will no doubt reach 7 figures.
A federal judge on Monday dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by the pornographic film actress Stephanie Clifford against President Trump, ruling that the president had not defamed her on Twitter last spring and ordering her to pay his legal fees.
The tweet in question was posted by the president on April 18, one day after Ms. Clifford, known professionally as Stormy Daniels, posted a sketch of a man who, she alleged, threatened her in 2011 as she was first considering speaking out about the affair she said she had with Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump called the sketch “a total con job,” depicting “a nonexistent man.”
In its decision, the court sided with Mr. Trump’s lawyers’ argument that the tweet included an opinion, which the president was free to express.“The court agrees with Mr. Trump’s argument because the tweet in question constitutes ‘rhetorical hyperbole’ normally associated with politics and public discourse in the United States,” Judge S. James Otero wrote in his decision. “The First Amendment protects this type of rhetorical statement.”
While Trump’s lawyer in the defamation case, Charles Harder, declares the ruling “total victory for President Trump and total defeat for Stormy Daniels,” the battles between the two are not over. Daniels has also filed suit to set aside a non-disclosure agreement she reportedly signed in the days before the election, regarding her affair with the president. This suit, filed prior to the defamation suit, is still pending. Trump and the company formed by his former attorney, Michael Cohen, to facilitate the NDA have sought dismissal of that suit as well, and have stated they have no intention of enforcing the agreement. They do, however, seek the return of the $130,000 paid to Daniels in exchange for her silence. Daniels and her attorney, Michael Avenatti, have refused the offer of settlement, and have avidly sought to depose the president.
Comment → --The World’s Oldest Torrent
How a Matrix fan film helped put BitTorrent on the map:
In 2003 the ‘world wide web’ was an entirely different place than it is today.
This was especially true for streaming video. YouTube had yet to be invented, while Netflix only sent out films via the postal service.
It was at this time that a group of New Zealand friends was shooting a fan film of The Matrix, appropriately titled “The Fanimatrix.” With a limited budget of just $800, of which nearly half went into a leather jacket, they managed to complete the project in nine days.
There was a problem though. As video streaming services were still non-existent, distribution was a challenge. The makers managed to reduce the filesize down to 150MB, but even that was too expensive.
TorrentFreak spoke to the film’s ‘IT-guy’ Sebastian Kai Frost, who also had a bit part in front of the camera, in addition to being a wire-work counterweight, gopher, and light holder. According to Frost, regular centralized hosting was not an option.
Setting aside piracy an the like, it’s a very useful technology for open source and public domain. I’m a big fan of Librivox – think Project Gutenberg for audiobooks – and it’s the best way to download large numbers of stuff from their collection. I hope somebody gets it working for public domain comics, too. And Linux distros.
Comment → - ← ITW All TSN →
