Oh, and let's not forget the _next_ thing he said, as part of 'explaining' that he was throwing his heart to the crowd, was: "It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured."
Now, that sounds like an innocuous statement, and maybe would be if not done immediately after that gesture. In fact, it probably went by a lot of people, the media included, especially if they were still shocked by that gestures.
But when done essentially _as_ part of that gesture, one cannot help but think of the 14 words: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.
Did he intend to obliquely reference that? I dunno.
Na.zis would think of 'white people' and 'civilization' synonymously, but that presumes the end result.
And the future of those things is 'assured' vs 'secured'. Coincidence, or deliberate change to sound very similar while not actually being identical?
It's not impossible for someone to say that sentence innocently. It feels saying that innocently _as part of doing a thing very similar to a Na.zi salute_ is somewhat more unlikely. Maybe? Hypothetically?
The thing is, again, Elon is a known troll who has no problem trolling white supremancy and Na.zism...because he is, in fact, supporters of those things. Benefit of the doubt is really not something that should be extended to him.
No, there wasn’t. Even before the 14th Amendment, citizenship under Anglo-American common law was based on jus solis rather than jus sanguinis, i.e., place of birth rather than parentage.
Yes, this.
The 14th amendment did not generally change who became citizen. The situation under US law is that almost all of them were citizens anyway.
Except for children of slaves, who were explicitly barred by law from being citizens. Along with a few other specific groups of immigrants. (1)
The 14th did not do anything laws could not have, and it didn't really change how we understood citizenship. It was written so we could never _exclude_ people from citizenship via the law.
1) Along with, interestingly, Native Americans, which the 14th did _not_ include because it said 'the United States' and that was understood to mean 'The group of actual States', and Indian reservations were not, and still are not to some extent, part of the jurisdiction of the states they are inside. And even moreso back then, where reservations were treated, in a sense, as sovereign nations that we had treaties with that was not under US jurisdiction but just happened to be inside the US.
This is much less true now, and it's an interesting question if the 14th would cover them _now_, but we passed a law in 1924 saying they were all citizens from birth anyway. (Which does, indeed, allow them to become president, although we've never had one.)
We have _tons_ of records about passing this bill, and absolutely no one, not even him, agreed with how you are interpreting that _single sentence_ said in a middle of a discussion about whether or not the amendment was a good idea because it made the children of foreigners into citizen.
Here is another quote from that debate:
The proposition before us, I will say, Mr. President, relates simply in that respect to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens. We have declared that by law; now it is proposed to incorporate the same provision in the fundamental instrument of the nation. I am in favor of doing so. I voted for the proposition to declare that the children of all parentage whatever, born in California, should be regarded and treated as citizens of the United States, entitled to equal civil rights with other citizens of the United States.
The entire discussion over that bill, which was debated for months, literally due to the fact _it would include the children of foreigners. Both here legally and illegally.
The worry about then was about the Chinese (Who had a tendency to just sorta...get off the boat in California and start working.) and, pardon the slur, 'gypsies'.
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And let's just look at how weird that sentence is if you try to parse it that way. It doesn't say that the _children_ of foreigners born in the US wouldn't be citizens, it says _foreigners_ born in the US wouldn't be citizens. What sort of gibberish is that? That doesn't mean anything. Also, how are foreigners born in the US? To be a foreigner, you have to be from somewhere else. (Foreigner, unlike 'alien', is not a legal terms. It just means 'someone who isn't from here'.)
Also that sentence, uh, is not a list. Firstly, a list has an 'or' in it or some other conjugation, and also you don't make a list that is 'All foreigners, all foreigners except stated differently, and some specific foreigners who are diplomats'. Does that sound like someone making a list?
It very obviously is not a list, it almost certainly is a correction or clarification, where he first starts with 'foreigner', realizes that is not really the correct word in a legal sense, and corrects to 'aliens who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States', which would be the correct way to say that.
But again, we don't need to guess the meaning, because it's a single sentence in a discussion that everyone operated as if the amendment meant that the children of foreigners would be citizens and had a huge discussion about it. You, or rather whoever fed you this, tried to cut a single awkward sentence out a discussion, pretended it's clearly a list despite it clearly not being a list, and basically just made a whole pack of lies.
John Bolton just had his secret service protection revoked by Trump.
You may be wondering why John Bolton, previous National Security advisor 2018-2019, had secret service protection, which is obviously not standard.
It is because Iran is trying to kill him. He was given that protection by Trump, and then Biden extended it, because even though John Bolton is, of course, a Republican, we probably should let Iran assassinate former US officials.
Anyway, then John Bolton wrote a book about how incompetent and criminal Trump was.
This isn't someone where we start with the benefit of the doubt. This someone who has been repeatedly critized, in just the last year, for flirting with Na.zism.
Notice how troll-ish the last one is. I would explain that Elon didn't do the Na.zi salute seriously, he did it to troll because he had an audience in front of the world, but I feel that some people would think that means it's less important. But it was.
Also, note that I do actually understand the difference between Na.zism and fascism. The Republicans are leading us into fascism, American's own brand of it. (Wrapped in the American flag and carrying a cross) It's not the same as Na.zism, just it's not the same as Italy's or Argentina's or Greece's or...any of the other places where fascism has existed. Fascism, like all political ideologies, change and evolves over time and from place to place.
Elon, meanwhile, is flirting with Na.zism. Just...straight out Na.zism.
And screaming “fascism!” every fifteen seconds doesn’t work anymore.
What frequency do you think people should be screaming 'fascism' as fascism happens?
Was the congressman making a joke in poor taste? Because if the congressman was making a joke in poor taste, I’m going to say “the guy made a joke in poor taste”. (I’d agree that he shouldn’t be a congressman anymore, if you’d like.)
Wow, the right wing has gotten you so well-trained you make justifications _for them_ that they themselves are not making.
No, it was not a 'joke'. We might have some indication it was a joke if, you know, he _said_ was a joke.
Just like we might have an indication that Elon's gesture was a not a Na.zi salute if he _said it wasn't_.
We still might not believe those thing, but the fascism-enablers like you would look less completely ridiculous as you would no longer have to invent justification that they don't even bother to use.
Define it broadly enough and anything right-wing is “fascism”.
So you don't think there's any actual meaning of 'fascism' at all, there's no difference in kind, just degree. That Na.zi Germany and Fascist Italy were examples of the normal right wing going too far. That wanting to murder huge swaths of people based on who they are is just...normal right wing stuff, but normally it should be dialed down a little.
That is an interesting concept.
Anyway, my former congressman (1) has just suggested deporting a reverend (2) for expressing concern about LGBTQ people in a sermon.
Religious freedom, yee-ha.
1) To clarify, he is still a congressman, I just do not live there anymore.
2) Who, to be clear, is a US citizen born in the US. It is unclear where we would deport her to.
No one in the universe gestures 'throwing to an audience' as 'overarm extended rapidly upward at an angle'. That gesture is 'grab imaginary heart, pivot arm forward, palm up'. This allows you to 'spray' the audience with what are throwing, like you're throwing confetti.
There is a slight variation where your palm is down, making throw more solid, but even that doesn't have the hand go _up_. Or you could literally pretend to be baseball or softball pitcher, make an underhand or overhand throw. Again, motions that don't end up vaguely near where he got.
Also, a reminder that the audience is _down_ when you're on the stage. (Unless you're in a stadium...which he was not.) You do not gesture _up_ at people _below_ you to give them things.
If you were to make the throw he pretended to make, the heart would go way way off almost directly to the right and way too high. It's nowhere near the audience. (I mean, the audience is all around him, but you make gestures to people you are looking at at the moment, not the people off to the side.)
Also...throwing things don't end with with a flat hand. The end result of a metaphoric throw is 'halfway curved hand', just like...well, just like you've just thrown a baseball. It's not even an analogy, we know how _hands_ work, we can all pretend to throw a baseball or a baseball-size heart and see how it ends up. Every gesture is going to end that way, with a half open hand.
Do you know something you move your hand upward for and usually keep it open? Acknowledging someone. Saluting them, waving at them, etc. (The hand sometimes isn't fully open for a wave, we're lazy, but it is mostly open.) It's basic human movement, possible even one of the actual 'evolutionary psychology' things that actually exists, instead of what people pretend exists under that 'science'. (Maybe we're showing our hand is empty and away from any weapons? I dunno.)
It's why that salute, which the Na.zi did not invent, exists, it's why all salutes exist.
Salutes are also fast, like what he did. Snappy things you repeat by rote. Metaphoric gestures are a _lot_ slower, even slower than normal movement, so people can follow them. Do literally any metaphorical movement, mime anything, you'll notice that you do it slowly and deliberately.
What he is doing is _way_ too fast, and he notable explains it _afterward_. Or, to put it in the obvious way: He's trying to get away with something, so he does it quickly, twice, to make sure people see it. And then rushes out the explanation he's sure will let him get away with it. He is, again, a known troll, it's basic troll behavior.
We are at the point where a good chunk of people are now allowing the GOP to troll with Na.zi symbolism. (A reminder: There is no difference between trolling as a Na.zi and being a Na.zi, because Na.zis are, themselves, trolls.)
Yes, Jaybird, everyone is aware how the fascists deny they are doing things, or that they mean them, until those things become too obvious, at which point it becomes 'Those things have always been fine'.
It really is interesting watching you carry water for them, though.
I've asked before: When do you actually start admitting fascism is happening? What is the actual line that they cannot cross?
The line doesn't seem to be 'threaten to invade other countries'.
And doesn't seem to be what is, at best interpretation, 'refusing to _reject_ Na.zi imagery'. Even if we take someone who is a) known for liking a _lot_ of antisemitic tweets and has been repeatedly criticized for it, b) is a straight-up eugenicist and was raised in that environment, and c) is well known for 'trolling' with alt-right Na.zi adjacent stuff...even if we decide to, for some reason, give him the benefit of the doubt...as even you admit, he hasn't even said 'Oh, sorry, that was in no way intended.'. He hasn't even said 'I am sorry that _you_ read it that way.', the non-apology apology.
Or to put it another way, and this is a pattern: The right (and even other people) sometime do things that the Na.zis think are supporting them. Including this.
When accused of that, people have an _obligation_ to say 'No, you're wrong, I do not support you Na.zis'.(1) Otherwise, they not only are courting Na.zi support, but it's impossible to tell if they have started doing those 'accidents' _deliberately_. And the correct assumption is, at that point, that they have.
In fact, that tweet makes it _worse_. A Na.zi reading that xhit, who thinks he _did_ 'cleverly' pull off doing a Na.zi salute in front of everyone, will read that xhit as _confirmation_. (Note I have not said whether it is or not, my point is it literally the opposite of rebuking their support.)
1) And you're about to start yammering about 'bad faith accusations', but there's a difference between nonsense out-of-context things that people try to make an issue about and the solution is to ignore them, and pretty overt gestures that people do during actual speeches to the nation. Especially, as I said, from someone who actually has no benefit of the doubt at this point because he's done and said a _lot_ of really bad stuff. This isn't some random guy.
The argument is that people who pass over the argument illegally (or unknown to the government) aren’t covered.
Yes, people who are extremely ignorant of what jurisdiction means do argue that. It is a nonsense argument.
Fun fact: If the US does not have jurisdiction over people in this country, the people arresting them or deporting them or detaining them in any manner are kidnapping them. It's literally kidnapping, it's detaining and moving someone without any legal authority. (Possibly even over international borders, which is _especially_ a crime.)
To lawfully detain someone, you have to have jurisdiction over them. (Well, a political entity that has jurisdiction over them must have granted you authority to do arrests, for that specific set of crimes. But let's simplify a bit.)
In fact, those people can commit any crime and no one can stop them...I guess self-defense and defense-of-others still applies, but not beyond that.
If this sounds vaguely familiar, it is, because there is already a situation where governments do not have jurisdiction over people within their borders: Diplomatic immunity. You are literally arguing that people in this country without permission have diplomatic immunity, but it's somehow worse because real diplomatic immunity is a thing we grant and can order their host county to remove them and then revoke it, whereas here you're arguing it exists _naturally_.
Before you ask, no, this does not work in reverse. You cannot do things to people merely because the country you are in does not have jurisdiction over them, jurisdiction over victims is not required for crimes. (Try killing a diplomat, or defrauding someone in another country.)
Or to put it another way: It is entirely reasonable for the ADL to read Elon's apology for how the gesture looked and that he didn't intend it to be read that way, and that he would never do such a salute, and say 'We believe him'. Like, that is a semi-reasonable thing to say.
The ADL talking about all that political stuff is...not.
...
Oh, wait. Elon _hasn't_ clarified any of this? He's made no response at all? And certainly hasn't before they said that.
So, um...we have the ADL asserting it was an 'awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm', despite the fact Elon has not, in fact, said that? Just...preemptively defending him. Preemptively defending the guy who has repeatedly like antisemitic conspiracy theories.
This is a delicate moment. It’s a new day and yet so many are on edge. Our politics are inflamed, and social media only adds to the anxiety.
It seems that @elonmusk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Na.zi salute, but again, we appreciate that people are on edge.
In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath. This is a new beginning. Let’s hope for healing and work toward unity in the months and years ahead.
In case anyone was wondering what the purpose of the ADL was, there you have it: Defending the richest man in the world. A man that, I remind people, defends the AfD in Germany, and has endorsed antisemitic conspiracy theories on Xitter, repeatedly.
Also, what the hell are they talking about, 'all sides'? They're the Anti-Defamation League, their concern is theoretically just antisemitism, almost with other forms of bigotry. None of that requires a political position, except against those things, which they obviously should not talk about with regard to 'unity'. Talking about 'all sides', trying to manage how the sides feel about each other makes them sound overtly political. Which...I mean, they are. But should be pretending not to be. Because, again, their supposedly narrow concern is bigotry.
And that's not even getting into the nonsense of 'a new beginning'. What the hell is that supposed to be about? What new place do you think the country just got to? We already had Trump as president once. (Antisemitism and other bigotry, very notable, went up.)
There are, admittedly, a lot of people concerned that the country is about to slide almost directly into fascism, with no checks on Trump, which could be a 'new beginning', but those people are not talking about how we have a 'new beginning with healing'. That sounds like directly defending Trump, and you somehow promising that _this time_, he'll be better.
I'm pretty certain that isn't what you, the ADL, are supposed to be doing. I'm pretty sure that _you_ should be the people that he is making that promise _to_, and you try to force him to keep that promise. Not you making the promise. You are literally on the wrong side of this discussion. It's almost as if you're acting as a part of the Republican party.
For those who think it's obvious the amendment can't be considered ratified because the time lime is passed, there are two reasons why time limits are not valid:
The first is that expiration is part of the preamble and not the amendment itself. Preambles don't actually do anything. This is the one people seem to know.
The second is...the constitution, extremely clearly, says amendments _will_ be part of the constitution if enough states say so. Not 'Will part if the conditions in the amendment are meet'. An amendment gets no say in whether or not it is made part of the constitution, because it is, duh, not part of the constitution yet.
This is actually pretty easy to prove with just basic logic. Here's the preamble, for reference, which is the 'law' that is Congress passing the amendment, and not the actual amendment itself:
That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission by the Congress: (The actual amendment follows)
Now, I ask people, what if that had said that it would be part of the constitution when ratified by one-half of the states? Or nine-tens? Congress, very obviously, cannot do that. It wouldn't matter what they wrote there, they cannot redefine the constitutional requirements for an amendment.
So why would they be able to add a time limit?
In fact, Congress is not in charge of the amendment process at all. It's a process that requires enough of both the states and Congress to pass an amendment, but there's no requirement that Congress does it first. Yes, Congress has generally written them, but states can also. It is a dual process, equally shared by Congress and the states.
So this would be Congress not only trying to set rules for something laid out explicitly in the constitution that it has not authority to change, but setting rules for the _individual state governments_ part of the process! One of the areas that states have actual constitutional sovereignty. Holy crap.
Congress really, really cannot do that. I cannot stress that enough. Congress cannot alter the amendment process of states by writing things next to amendments as they pass them. (In fact, you might have better logic in arguing that conditional passages like that don't count as actual passage...and exactly that was argued in Dillon v. Gloss. It failed. 100 years ago.)
Now, whether or not States can _rescind_ the passage of the amendment is another issue, one that doesn't impact their sovereignty. The constitution is silent on that. I would argue no, because it's rather unclear why they could only rescind _unpassed_ amendments and not passed one., and that way lies madness. But that one is debatable.
The Supreme Court ruled in Dillon v. Gloss (1921) that (1) Article V of the Constitution implies that amendments must be ratified, if at all, within some reasonable time after their proposal. (2)
Um, the 27th amendment would like a word with you.
We are 100% sure that amendments do not _implicitly_ expire.
The question is if they can _explicitly_ expire, if having a time limit makes them expire.
As far as I'm aware, this is the first time the fact that the law and the courts have discussed the fact that social media algorithms exist and do things, instead of treating social media like some sort of magical box where users post and read other posts and it is entirely user-driven.
This is, of course, true, but it has a bunch of interesting implications if we are acknowledging it under the law. Here's the relevant parg section 230 of the CDA:
(c) Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material
(1) Treatment of publisher or speaker - No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
(2) Civil liability - No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of—
(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
(B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph
You may notice something in that in #2. It talks about how restricting access isn't legal to sue based on. But it doesn't say a damn thing about promoting access. That is a perfectly valid thing to sue about...about the fact you were demoted below those people. (And not for any of the valid reasons for restricting availability, even assuming that would count as 'restricting availability'.)
In other words, you can sue the algorithm if you don't like it. Now that we finally legally admit there is one and it is altering what content is presented.
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But wait, it's a little worse. #1 isn't the absolute statement it pretends. It doesn't allow a newspaper's web site, for example, to not be liable for a slanderous editorial piece about someone, and certainly not someone they paid. But they are not liable for comments under that article.
(Hey, is Twitter paying for posts that have high engagement them paying posters for content and thus legally liable for it...you know, a question for another time. We're actually talking about social media in general, but Twitter is walking some _really_ stupid ground there.)
Now, courts have generally been okay with publishers manipulating user-created information without them losing immunity. But this is because, again, the courts really didn't acknowledge such as thing as the algorithm, that this would be some sort of deliberately coded result, and what they looked at was generally very small amounts like 'promoted posts' which generally were just publishes promoting things they thought were useful. Not 'the algorithm', a system-wise decision machine.
Here's a congressional research service looking at some of these issues, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10306 and of note is this at the end of page 2:
Section 230(c)(1) immunity may bar a lawsuit if the claim would treat a provider or user of an “interactive computer service” as “the publisher or speaker” of another’s content. As courts have held, the converse of this rule is that a service provider can be liable for content that the service creates or helps develop. Generally, courts have said that a service’s ability to control the content that others post on its website is not enough, in and of itself, to make the service provider a content developer. In some circumstances, a service provider may retain immunity even when it makes small editorial changes to another’s content. Some courts have employed a “material contribution” test to determine if Section 230(c)(1) applies, holding that a service provider may be subject to liability if it “materially contribute[d] to the illegality” of the disputed content. Others have said that service providers may be liable if they “specifically encourage[] development of what is offensive about the content.”
Read that, um, last line carefully. The algorithm does, pretty clearly, contribute to the sort of content on a platform, that's literally one of the stated purposes of the algorithm. The algorithm doesn't have to be _designed_ to contribute to, let's say, harassment and threats against someone, but if it _contributes_ to that happening by the way it tries to drive 'engagement', it is not insane to try that legal theory out in court if you are, in fact, harassed. (Just like if someone had _manually_ done that by promoting user content to get someone harassed.)
I don't know if it would win, but it seems meaningful that we now operating in a world where the laws and courts are acknowledging that legal decisions can be based on the abstract 'algorithm' and what it does and who controls it. Someone is going to start looking at this and going 'Wait, does this algorithm expose the company to legal liability?'...either the company itself or people ready to sue it.
And I stand by what I said. If I had a friend who painted something like this, my eyes would bug out of my head.
Your eyes would also bug out of your head if your friend created a completely photorealistic image that, with exact pixel-perfect detail, captured someone's image.
For some reason, you don't seem to think a camera doing that thing makes the camera an artist.
Doing something easily that human find difficult != art
But let’s take your criticism to heart… would it only be a masterpiece if… where’s your baseline? Maybe I could fiddle with some AI and figure something out and get closer after spending 10 minutes on it, as opposed to 30 seconds.
Instead, I suggest you fiddle with taking a stock photo (A thing which a person would find insanely difficult to create without a machine) and run it though Photoshop filters (Applying a bunch of computations which is insanely difficult without a machine), which will get you something that looks exactly as 'artistic' as this, and won't have a bunch of exceedingly weird errors in it.
Is that just as much 'art'? A stock photo and a Photoshop filter?
I seem to remember 'art style' as the thing that has impressed you both times you talked about AI, which rather implies to me you do not understand how it is literally is just a trivial filter.
Jaybird, half those boats do not have people in them. There is also some sort of massive collision going on in the bottom right of the image. The boat in the center right has an impossible perspective where we are somehow seeing inside the far end.
All the lamp reflections are very obviously wrong, either slightly offset or not the same place as the originating light. Sometimes not even there. The background and the mountains have no reflection, the lights in the background have no reflection. The sunrise/sunset has too _much_ of a reflection that goes too far, flat reflections cannot be bigger than the thing reflected.
Also, are those dark spaces at the sides of the top treetops or space? They have stars in them that look exactly the same as the dark space at the top (Which is space), but also have tree trumps going up to them.
Also, and this seems sort of obvious, this isn't at night. It's at dusk or dawn. This is a very obvious error where the thing didn't even draw what you asked for. The boats also are not 'going past' us, they are going...all directions. And it's honestly not clear this is a river. It could hypothetically be a river, getting wider, but when you talk about 'boats sailing past on a river', you usually are wanting a _perpendicular_ view of the river.
All of these errors, BTW, are objective physical issues with the rendered world. The art itself is also crap, but I'm not even going to get into that because it's very subjective...but this art isn't art at all.
Literally the only reason this looks like 'art' is the silk-screen painting filter, a thing that a) is a Photoshop effect, and b) completely hiding a lot of blemishes in the work by making it effectively 'lower resolution'. You can make anything look like a work of art by _running it through a filter that causes us to associate it with a form of art_. I could take a randomly-aimed picture of a cat and do that.
Of course if that’s what we’re going with I’d expect some quid pro quo concessions to the public from tech, like IDK, prohibiting Elon from playing footsies with the Chinese.
Oh, there's all sorts of stuff we'd have to prohibit if we decided to say the industry is of strategic importance.
For one thing, we have almost no _chip fab_ in this country. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company makes almost all of them in the world, mostly in Taiwan. They make 90% of 'advanced chips', like processors. One company. In Taiwan.
It's a good thing that there is absolutely nothing could disrupt a supply from Taiwan. Absolutely no sort of geopolitical instability with a US political rival there that could happen with that place!
Anyway, we're supposed to be fixing that, there was a law passed back in 2022, called the CHIPS & Science Act, with incentives for building chip fab in the US, causing a bunch of new plants built by *checks note* Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (Wait), GlobalFoundries, owned by Mubadala Investment Company, aka, the United Arab Emirates, and Intel, which...actually is an American company, so hey. One out of three ain't bad.
And of course there are some other chip fabs already in the US, like Samsung. (I mean, at least that's _South Korea_, and it is very implausible we could end up in any sort of real disagreement with them. *checks earpiece* Wait, their president's been arrested? Is that about the relationship with us? Or we did overthrow him? *pause* No to both?! That isn't anything to do with us at all?! Wow, that's...unexpected. Carry on then.)
The US is actually incredibly bad at actually doing things to secure things of strategic importance. Semiconductors is an industry we've literally tried to pass laws to fix this in, and it's resulted in bunch of foreign-owned plants in the US, and I don't really feel like that's a logical solution, unless we're prepared to suddenly start nationalizing industries when they decide to shut down operations.
I’m not sure any tech entrepreneur is able to make the case for H1B expansion, or maybe even the case for the way the program exists today, in a way that’s going to be convincing in MAGAland.
It would be nearly impossible for anyone to make the case for tech H1B _at all_, because it is an extraordinarily stupid policy to have. It is deliberately creating both an underclass of less powerful employees who are competing for American jobs, which is a thing that is bad for literally everyone except wealthy business owners.
And the only real possible justification is to argue we need it, but you can't use the 'We need immigrants to pick our food' nonsense that usually is done for other immigrants. You have to use, uh, 'They are smarter than Americans', which absolutely no one is going to vote for.
The problem is, Republicans now have to do that justification.
It also would have been hard for Democrats to do it, although maybe they could have threaded the needle by yammering about 'opportunity' and stuff. Republicans cannot do that.
I think a lot of people are subconsciously operating on the idea 'MAGA oppose it, and for xenophobic and often racist reasons, ergo it must be good', but...no. It's not.
To put it another way, when Elon Musk went crazy in the early days of Twitter and tried to get people to sign 'I will work myself to death to pay off the debt Musk incurred by borrowing to buy this company' crazy and probably illegal oaths, and a huge chuck of his workforce quit...the only people left were the H1B visa holders.
Without H1B visa, it is entirely possible that Twitter would have _literally failed_. Not as a company, but as a piece of software. Because no one who had a choice wanted to work there anymore. (And a reminder they didn't quit for political reasons, at that exact moment he was pretending to be apolitical and buying Twitter because 'They're lying about bots' or something. The whole Trumpism thing started months later.)
I personally think if you make your place of work so horrific that half the workforce walks out the door, it isn't a great thing if the only reason the rest of it is staying in place is they will be _deported_ if they quit.
Israel and the pre-Israel militias that became Israel's military killed 15,000 Arabs and displaced 750,000 Arabs in a single year, forcing them to abandon their homes with no recompense.
Surrounding Arab nations, in response to this, had some violent riots that killed ~500 Jews over a decade or so, and had legal changes and threats of violence that resulted in 900,000 Jews eventually leaving them over four or five decades, usually forcing them to abandon their homes with no recompense
You may notice the first was _entirely_ violence, very rapid violence, resulting in a lot of deaths, whereas the second was some small amount of violence, a implied terroristic threat of more violence in the future, and mostly just a bunch of laws and restrictions that made it very clear Jews were unwelcome, or were legally required to leave.
Again, the second is _still_ ethnic cleansing. It's reprehensible. No one should have their government say 'People like you are not allowed to live in this country, you have to move, and we're keeping your house', or have the worry of 'People occasionally get very angry at people like us and kill a dozen', especially when its clear the government doesn't _particularity_ mind that, even if it's not official government action.
But pretending they are morally equivalent is nonsense.
There are some part of the laws (There's actually multiple laws), like foreign aid, that can be waived, and in fact have been waived for other countries. They have not been waived for Israel, so it's actually still illegal.
There are parts that cannot be waived, and those have to do with supplying weapons.
And Israel has not 'officially' tested nukes in the sense that they have not admitted it and the US State Department has very pointedly refused to say anything about it. There is no actual doubt they were behind the nuclear explosions off the coast of South Africa, and there were actually three explosions.
BTW, working with and having a military alliance with South Africa in 1979 is, um, rather deplorable behavior, South Africa was already a become a pariah nation by that point for Apartheid, including a complete arms embargo by the UN in 1977, including nuclear material, but is something Israel indeed did.
The funniest document to come out of all that is this:
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2010/05/23/Peres-letter.pdf
(In case anyone is wondering about South Africa, when it became clear they were going to overthrow Apartheid, they dismantled their nuclear weapons, and signed the NPT. They're fine now under the law.)
People say H-1B visas are bad because they give employers too much leverage over workers (for the record, you actually can change employers on H-1B; there’s paperwork, but no lottery or quota)
Being able to change jobs is nothing. That requires you having already located a job and already been hired by them.
The leverage is from the threat of getting let go. You stop having a job, you have 60 days to find another. Which is, of course, harder for people on a H-1B visas than other people, processing itself can take a month or longer, and they have to find a company that not only will do the paperwork but pay the application fee.
60-days is actually pretty damn short to find a job regardless.
So what the anti-death penalty want is not something that Biden is capable of doing.
Their ultimate goal, yes.
If, in some unlikely universe, literally every US president from now on held the same position as they do and commuted the sentence of everyone that was ever put on death row, hypothetically they'd 'get what they wanted' (Well, except for state executions.), but that's just silly. You generally want political changes done via laws and not subject to the whim of the president.
To the extent that there is a belief system that is represented by this act, it’s fair enough to call the belief system onto the carpet and judge it.
Yeah, but as far as anyone can tell, that's just _Biden's_ belief system. That was the point I was making, that this isn't some 'statement of the anti-death penalty people, who have decided to carve exceptions'.
Incidentally, the belief system was actually stated by Biden, where he said the commutations were 'consistent with the moratorium my administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder'.
'Hate-motivated mass murder' is rather vague, but...honestly, a lot of people on death row are 'normal' murderers who just got really unlucky in the court system, with people who committed identical crimes often getting 15 years. It's almost totally random. I'm honestly not sure if there's anyone on the list of 37 that would be borderline.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Open Mic for the week of 1/20/2025”
Oh, and let's not forget the _next_ thing he said, as part of 'explaining' that he was throwing his heart to the crowd, was: "It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured."
Now, that sounds like an innocuous statement, and maybe would be if not done immediately after that gesture. In fact, it probably went by a lot of people, the media included, especially if they were still shocked by that gestures.
But when done essentially _as_ part of that gesture, one cannot help but think of the 14 words: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.
Did he intend to obliquely reference that? I dunno.
Na.zis would think of 'white people' and 'civilization' synonymously, but that presumes the end result.
And the future of those things is 'assured' vs 'secured'. Coincidence, or deliberate change to sound very similar while not actually being identical?
It's not impossible for someone to say that sentence innocently. It feels saying that innocently _as part of doing a thing very similar to a Na.zi salute_ is somewhat more unlikely. Maybe? Hypothetically?
The thing is, again, Elon is a known troll who has no problem trolling white supremancy and Na.zism...because he is, in fact, supporters of those things. Benefit of the doubt is really not something that should be extended to him.
"
Yes, this.
The 14th amendment did not generally change who became citizen. The situation under US law is that almost all of them were citizens anyway.
Except for children of slaves, who were explicitly barred by law from being citizens. Along with a few other specific groups of immigrants. (1)
The 14th did not do anything laws could not have, and it didn't really change how we understood citizenship. It was written so we could never _exclude_ people from citizenship via the law.
1) Along with, interestingly, Native Americans, which the 14th did _not_ include because it said 'the United States' and that was understood to mean 'The group of actual States', and Indian reservations were not, and still are not to some extent, part of the jurisdiction of the states they are inside. And even moreso back then, where reservations were treated, in a sense, as sovereign nations that we had treaties with that was not under US jurisdiction but just happened to be inside the US.
This is much less true now, and it's an interesting question if the 14th would cover them _now_, but we passed a law in 1924 saying they were all citizens from birth anyway. (Which does, indeed, allow them to become president, although we've never had one.)
"
Hey, Jaybird, have you ever, like, Googled anything? Instead of just sorta repeating right-wing talking points?
https://www.mediamatters.org/ann-coulter/did-author-citizenship-clause-really-say-it-would-exclude-children-foreigners
We have _tons_ of records about passing this bill, and absolutely no one, not even him, agreed with how you are interpreting that _single sentence_ said in a middle of a discussion about whether or not the amendment was a good idea because it made the children of foreigners into citizen.
Here is another quote from that debate:
The entire discussion over that bill, which was debated for months, literally due to the fact _it would include the children of foreigners. Both here legally and illegally.
The worry about then was about the Chinese (Who had a tendency to just sorta...get off the boat in California and start working.) and, pardon the slur, 'gypsies'.
--
And let's just look at how weird that sentence is if you try to parse it that way. It doesn't say that the _children_ of foreigners born in the US wouldn't be citizens, it says _foreigners_ born in the US wouldn't be citizens. What sort of gibberish is that? That doesn't mean anything. Also, how are foreigners born in the US? To be a foreigner, you have to be from somewhere else. (Foreigner, unlike 'alien', is not a legal terms. It just means 'someone who isn't from here'.)
Also that sentence, uh, is not a list. Firstly, a list has an 'or' in it or some other conjugation, and also you don't make a list that is 'All foreigners, all foreigners except stated differently, and some specific foreigners who are diplomats'. Does that sound like someone making a list?
It very obviously is not a list, it almost certainly is a correction or clarification, where he first starts with 'foreigner', realizes that is not really the correct word in a legal sense, and corrects to 'aliens who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States', which would be the correct way to say that.
But again, we don't need to guess the meaning, because it's a single sentence in a discussion that everyone operated as if the amendment meant that the children of foreigners would be citizens and had a huge discussion about it. You, or rather whoever fed you this, tried to cut a single awkward sentence out a discussion, pretended it's clearly a list despite it clearly not being a list, and basically just made a whole pack of lies.
"
John Bolton just had his secret service protection revoked by Trump.
You may be wondering why John Bolton, previous National Security advisor 2018-2019, had secret service protection, which is obviously not standard.
It is because Iran is trying to kill him. He was given that protection by Trump, and then Biden extended it, because even though John Bolton is, of course, a Republican, we probably should let Iran assassinate former US officials.
Anyway, then John Bolton wrote a book about how incompetent and criminal Trump was.
And then Trump because president.
"
I think you left out 1a) Elon has actually been called out for liking overt antisemitic messages before on Xitter.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-george-soros-anti-semites/674072/
Repeatedly.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/17/business/elon-musk-reveals-his-actual-truth/index.html
And again:
https://newrepublic.com/post/189752/elon-musk-far-right-troll-x-profile-change-pepe-frog
This isn't someone where we start with the benefit of the doubt. This someone who has been repeatedly critized, in just the last year, for flirting with Na.zism.
Notice how troll-ish the last one is. I would explain that Elon didn't do the Na.zi salute seriously, he did it to troll because he had an audience in front of the world, but I feel that some people would think that means it's less important. But it was.
Also, note that I do actually understand the difference between Na.zism and fascism. The Republicans are leading us into fascism, American's own brand of it. (Wrapped in the American flag and carrying a cross) It's not the same as Na.zism, just it's not the same as Italy's or Argentina's or Greece's or...any of the other places where fascism has existed. Fascism, like all political ideologies, change and evolves over time and from place to place.
Elon, meanwhile, is flirting with Na.zism. Just...straight out Na.zism.
"
What frequency do you think people should be screaming 'fascism' as fascism happens?
Wow, the right wing has gotten you so well-trained you make justifications _for them_ that they themselves are not making.
No, it was not a 'joke'. We might have some indication it was a joke if, you know, he _said_ was a joke.
Just like we might have an indication that Elon's gesture was a not a Na.zi salute if he _said it wasn't_.
We still might not believe those thing, but the fascism-enablers like you would look less completely ridiculous as you would no longer have to invent justification that they don't even bother to use.
"
So you don't think there's any actual meaning of 'fascism' at all, there's no difference in kind, just degree. That Na.zi Germany and Fascist Italy were examples of the normal right wing going too far. That wanting to murder huge swaths of people based on who they are is just...normal right wing stuff, but normally it should be dialed down a little.
That is an interesting concept.
Anyway, my former congressman (1) has just suggested deporting a reverend (2) for expressing concern about LGBTQ people in a sermon.
Religious freedom, yee-ha.
1) To clarify, he is still a congressman, I just do not live there anymore.
2) Who, to be clear, is a US citizen born in the US. It is unclear where we would deport her to.
"
Dude, have _you_ tried making that gesture?
No one in the universe gestures 'throwing to an audience' as 'overarm extended rapidly upward at an angle'. That gesture is 'grab imaginary heart, pivot arm forward, palm up'. This allows you to 'spray' the audience with what are throwing, like you're throwing confetti.
There is a slight variation where your palm is down, making throw more solid, but even that doesn't have the hand go _up_. Or you could literally pretend to be baseball or softball pitcher, make an underhand or overhand throw. Again, motions that don't end up vaguely near where he got.
Also, a reminder that the audience is _down_ when you're on the stage. (Unless you're in a stadium...which he was not.) You do not gesture _up_ at people _below_ you to give them things.
If you were to make the throw he pretended to make, the heart would go way way off almost directly to the right and way too high. It's nowhere near the audience. (I mean, the audience is all around him, but you make gestures to people you are looking at at the moment, not the people off to the side.)
Also...throwing things don't end with with a flat hand. The end result of a metaphoric throw is 'halfway curved hand', just like...well, just like you've just thrown a baseball. It's not even an analogy, we know how _hands_ work, we can all pretend to throw a baseball or a baseball-size heart and see how it ends up. Every gesture is going to end that way, with a half open hand.
Do you know something you move your hand upward for and usually keep it open? Acknowledging someone. Saluting them, waving at them, etc. (The hand sometimes isn't fully open for a wave, we're lazy, but it is mostly open.) It's basic human movement, possible even one of the actual 'evolutionary psychology' things that actually exists, instead of what people pretend exists under that 'science'. (Maybe we're showing our hand is empty and away from any weapons? I dunno.)
It's why that salute, which the Na.zi did not invent, exists, it's why all salutes exist.
Salutes are also fast, like what he did. Snappy things you repeat by rote. Metaphoric gestures are a _lot_ slower, even slower than normal movement, so people can follow them. Do literally any metaphorical movement, mime anything, you'll notice that you do it slowly and deliberately.
What he is doing is _way_ too fast, and he notable explains it _afterward_. Or, to put it in the obvious way: He's trying to get away with something, so he does it quickly, twice, to make sure people see it. And then rushes out the explanation he's sure will let him get away with it. He is, again, a known troll, it's basic troll behavior.
We are at the point where a good chunk of people are now allowing the GOP to troll with Na.zi symbolism. (A reminder: There is no difference between trolling as a Na.zi and being a Na.zi, because Na.zis are, themselves, trolls.)
"
Yes, Jaybird, everyone is aware how the fascists deny they are doing things, or that they mean them, until those things become too obvious, at which point it becomes 'Those things have always been fine'.
It really is interesting watching you carry water for them, though.
I've asked before: When do you actually start admitting fascism is happening? What is the actual line that they cannot cross?
The line doesn't seem to be 'threaten to invade other countries'.
And doesn't seem to be what is, at best interpretation, 'refusing to _reject_ Na.zi imagery'. Even if we take someone who is a) known for liking a _lot_ of antisemitic tweets and has been repeatedly criticized for it, b) is a straight-up eugenicist and was raised in that environment, and c) is well known for 'trolling' with alt-right Na.zi adjacent stuff...even if we decide to, for some reason, give him the benefit of the doubt...as even you admit, he hasn't even said 'Oh, sorry, that was in no way intended.'. He hasn't even said 'I am sorry that _you_ read it that way.', the non-apology apology.
Or to put it another way, and this is a pattern: The right (and even other people) sometime do things that the Na.zis think are supporting them. Including this.
When accused of that, people have an _obligation_ to say 'No, you're wrong, I do not support you Na.zis'.(1) Otherwise, they not only are courting Na.zi support, but it's impossible to tell if they have started doing those 'accidents' _deliberately_. And the correct assumption is, at that point, that they have.
In fact, that tweet makes it _worse_. A Na.zi reading that xhit, who thinks he _did_ 'cleverly' pull off doing a Na.zi salute in front of everyone, will read that xhit as _confirmation_. (Note I have not said whether it is or not, my point is it literally the opposite of rebuking their support.)
1) And you're about to start yammering about 'bad faith accusations', but there's a difference between nonsense out-of-context things that people try to make an issue about and the solution is to ignore them, and pretty overt gestures that people do during actual speeches to the nation. Especially, as I said, from someone who actually has no benefit of the doubt at this point because he's done and said a _lot_ of really bad stuff. This isn't some random guy.
"
Yes, people who are extremely ignorant of what jurisdiction means do argue that. It is a nonsense argument.
Fun fact: If the US does not have jurisdiction over people in this country, the people arresting them or deporting them or detaining them in any manner are kidnapping them. It's literally kidnapping, it's detaining and moving someone without any legal authority. (Possibly even over international borders, which is _especially_ a crime.)
To lawfully detain someone, you have to have jurisdiction over them. (Well, a political entity that has jurisdiction over them must have granted you authority to do arrests, for that specific set of crimes. But let's simplify a bit.)
In fact, those people can commit any crime and no one can stop them...I guess self-defense and defense-of-others still applies, but not beyond that.
If this sounds vaguely familiar, it is, because there is already a situation where governments do not have jurisdiction over people within their borders: Diplomatic immunity. You are literally arguing that people in this country without permission have diplomatic immunity, but it's somehow worse because real diplomatic immunity is a thing we grant and can order their host county to remove them and then revoke it, whereas here you're arguing it exists _naturally_.
Before you ask, no, this does not work in reverse. You cannot do things to people merely because the country you are in does not have jurisdiction over them, jurisdiction over victims is not required for crimes. (Try killing a diplomat, or defrauding someone in another country.)
"
You have to be exceptionally dumb to think to ADL is not part of the Republican party at this point.
You know who _hasn't_ said it wasn't a Na.zi salute?
ELON MUSK.
On “Ordinary Times Watchalong: The Inauguration of Donald Trump”
Or to put it another way: It is entirely reasonable for the ADL to read Elon's apology for how the gesture looked and that he didn't intend it to be read that way, and that he would never do such a salute, and say 'We believe him'. Like, that is a semi-reasonable thing to say.
The ADL talking about all that political stuff is...not.
...
Oh, wait. Elon _hasn't_ clarified any of this? He's made no response at all? And certainly hasn't before they said that.
So, um...we have the ADL asserting it was an 'awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm', despite the fact Elon has not, in fact, said that? Just...preemptively defending him. Preemptively defending the guy who has repeatedly like antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Mmm hmm.
"
Don't worry, the ADL has promptly responded with:
In case anyone was wondering what the purpose of the ADL was, there you have it: Defending the richest man in the world. A man that, I remind people, defends the AfD in Germany, and has endorsed antisemitic conspiracy theories on Xitter, repeatedly.
Also, what the hell are they talking about, 'all sides'? They're the Anti-Defamation League, their concern is theoretically just antisemitism, almost with other forms of bigotry. None of that requires a political position, except against those things, which they obviously should not talk about with regard to 'unity'. Talking about 'all sides', trying to manage how the sides feel about each other makes them sound overtly political. Which...I mean, they are. But should be pretending not to be. Because, again, their supposedly narrow concern is bigotry.
And that's not even getting into the nonsense of 'a new beginning'. What the hell is that supposed to be about? What new place do you think the country just got to? We already had Trump as president once. (Antisemitism and other bigotry, very notable, went up.)
There are, admittedly, a lot of people concerned that the country is about to slide almost directly into fascism, with no checks on Trump, which could be a 'new beginning', but those people are not talking about how we have a 'new beginning with healing'. That sounds like directly defending Trump, and you somehow promising that _this time_, he'll be better.
I'm pretty certain that isn't what you, the ADL, are supposed to be doing. I'm pretty sure that _you_ should be the people that he is making that promise _to_, and you try to force him to keep that promise. Not you making the promise. You are literally on the wrong side of this discussion. It's almost as if you're acting as a part of the Republican party.
On “President Biden Affirms the Passage of the ERA”
For those who think it's obvious the amendment can't be considered ratified because the time lime is passed, there are two reasons why time limits are not valid:
The first is that expiration is part of the preamble and not the amendment itself. Preambles don't actually do anything. This is the one people seem to know.
The second is...the constitution, extremely clearly, says amendments _will_ be part of the constitution if enough states say so. Not 'Will part if the conditions in the amendment are meet'. An amendment gets no say in whether or not it is made part of the constitution, because it is, duh, not part of the constitution yet.
This is actually pretty easy to prove with just basic logic. Here's the preamble, for reference, which is the 'law' that is Congress passing the amendment, and not the actual amendment itself:
That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission by the Congress: (The actual amendment follows)
Now, I ask people, what if that had said that it would be part of the constitution when ratified by one-half of the states? Or nine-tens? Congress, very obviously, cannot do that. It wouldn't matter what they wrote there, they cannot redefine the constitutional requirements for an amendment.
So why would they be able to add a time limit?
In fact, Congress is not in charge of the amendment process at all. It's a process that requires enough of both the states and Congress to pass an amendment, but there's no requirement that Congress does it first. Yes, Congress has generally written them, but states can also. It is a dual process, equally shared by Congress and the states.
So this would be Congress not only trying to set rules for something laid out explicitly in the constitution that it has not authority to change, but setting rules for the _individual state governments_ part of the process! One of the areas that states have actual constitutional sovereignty. Holy crap.
Congress really, really cannot do that. I cannot stress that enough. Congress cannot alter the amendment process of states by writing things next to amendments as they pass them. (In fact, you might have better logic in arguing that conditional passages like that don't count as actual passage...and exactly that was argued in Dillon v. Gloss. It failed. 100 years ago.)
Now, whether or not States can _rescind_ the passage of the amendment is another issue, one that doesn't impact their sovereignty. The constitution is silent on that. I would argue no, because it's rather unclear why they could only rescind _unpassed_ amendments and not passed one., and that way lies madness. But that one is debatable.
"
Um, the 27th amendment would like a word with you.
We are 100% sure that amendments do not _implicitly_ expire.
The question is if they can _explicitly_ expire, if having a time limit makes them expire.
On “SCOTUS Upholds TikTok Ban: Read It For Yourself”
As far as I'm aware, this is the first time the fact that the law and the courts have discussed the fact that social media algorithms exist and do things, instead of treating social media like some sort of magical box where users post and read other posts and it is entirely user-driven.
This is, of course, true, but it has a bunch of interesting implications if we are acknowledging it under the law. Here's the relevant parg section 230 of the CDA:
You may notice something in that in #2. It talks about how restricting access isn't legal to sue based on. But it doesn't say a damn thing about promoting access. That is a perfectly valid thing to sue about...about the fact you were demoted below those people. (And not for any of the valid reasons for restricting availability, even assuming that would count as 'restricting availability'.)
In other words, you can sue the algorithm if you don't like it. Now that we finally legally admit there is one and it is altering what content is presented.
--
But wait, it's a little worse. #1 isn't the absolute statement it pretends. It doesn't allow a newspaper's web site, for example, to not be liable for a slanderous editorial piece about someone, and certainly not someone they paid. But they are not liable for comments under that article.
(Hey, is Twitter paying for posts that have high engagement them paying posters for content and thus legally liable for it...you know, a question for another time. We're actually talking about social media in general, but Twitter is walking some _really_ stupid ground there.)
Now, courts have generally been okay with publishers manipulating user-created information without them losing immunity. But this is because, again, the courts really didn't acknowledge such as thing as the algorithm, that this would be some sort of deliberately coded result, and what they looked at was generally very small amounts like 'promoted posts' which generally were just publishes promoting things they thought were useful. Not 'the algorithm', a system-wise decision machine.
Here's a congressional research service looking at some of these issues, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10306 and of note is this at the end of page 2:
Read that, um, last line carefully. The algorithm does, pretty clearly, contribute to the sort of content on a platform, that's literally one of the stated purposes of the algorithm. The algorithm doesn't have to be _designed_ to contribute to, let's say, harassment and threats against someone, but if it _contributes_ to that happening by the way it tries to drive 'engagement', it is not insane to try that legal theory out in court if you are, in fact, harassed. (Just like if someone had _manually_ done that by promoting user content to get someone harassed.)
I don't know if it would win, but it seems meaningful that we now operating in a world where the laws and courts are acknowledging that legal decisions can be based on the abstract 'algorithm' and what it does and who controls it. Someone is going to start looking at this and going 'Wait, does this algorithm expose the company to legal liability?'...either the company itself or people ready to sue it.
On “Short Status Report on the Abilities of AI”
Your eyes would also bug out of your head if your friend created a completely photorealistic image that, with exact pixel-perfect detail, captured someone's image.
For some reason, you don't seem to think a camera doing that thing makes the camera an artist.
Doing something easily that human find difficult != art
Instead, I suggest you fiddle with taking a stock photo (A thing which a person would find insanely difficult to create without a machine) and run it though Photoshop filters (Applying a bunch of computations which is insanely difficult without a machine), which will get you something that looks exactly as 'artistic' as this, and won't have a bunch of exceedingly weird errors in it.
Is that just as much 'art'? A stock photo and a Photoshop filter?
I seem to remember 'art style' as the thing that has impressed you both times you talked about AI, which rather implies to me you do not understand how it is literally is just a trivial filter.
"
Jaybird, half those boats do not have people in them. There is also some sort of massive collision going on in the bottom right of the image. The boat in the center right has an impossible perspective where we are somehow seeing inside the far end.
All the lamp reflections are very obviously wrong, either slightly offset or not the same place as the originating light. Sometimes not even there. The background and the mountains have no reflection, the lights in the background have no reflection. The sunrise/sunset has too _much_ of a reflection that goes too far, flat reflections cannot be bigger than the thing reflected.
Also, are those dark spaces at the sides of the top treetops or space? They have stars in them that look exactly the same as the dark space at the top (Which is space), but also have tree trumps going up to them.
Also, and this seems sort of obvious, this isn't at night. It's at dusk or dawn. This is a very obvious error where the thing didn't even draw what you asked for. The boats also are not 'going past' us, they are going...all directions. And it's honestly not clear this is a river. It could hypothetically be a river, getting wider, but when you talk about 'boats sailing past on a river', you usually are wanting a _perpendicular_ view of the river.
All of these errors, BTW, are objective physical issues with the rendered world. The art itself is also crap, but I'm not even going to get into that because it's very subjective...but this art isn't art at all.
Literally the only reason this looks like 'art' is the silk-screen painting filter, a thing that a) is a Photoshop effect, and b) completely hiding a lot of blemishes in the work by making it effectively 'lower resolution'. You can make anything look like a work of art by _running it through a filter that causes us to associate it with a form of art_. I could take a randomly-aimed picture of a cat and do that.
On “The Jack Smith Report: Read It For Yourself”
This is actually half the report. Or one of two reports, whatever.
On “The Shakedown”
Oh, there's all sorts of stuff we'd have to prohibit if we decided to say the industry is of strategic importance.
For one thing, we have almost no _chip fab_ in this country. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company makes almost all of them in the world, mostly in Taiwan. They make 90% of 'advanced chips', like processors. One company. In Taiwan.
It's a good thing that there is absolutely nothing could disrupt a supply from Taiwan. Absolutely no sort of geopolitical instability with a US political rival there that could happen with that place!
Anyway, we're supposed to be fixing that, there was a law passed back in 2022, called the CHIPS & Science Act, with incentives for building chip fab in the US, causing a bunch of new plants built by *checks note* Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (Wait), GlobalFoundries, owned by Mubadala Investment Company, aka, the United Arab Emirates, and Intel, which...actually is an American company, so hey. One out of three ain't bad.
And of course there are some other chip fabs already in the US, like Samsung. (I mean, at least that's _South Korea_, and it is very implausible we could end up in any sort of real disagreement with them. *checks earpiece* Wait, their president's been arrested? Is that about the relationship with us? Or we did overthrow him? *pause* No to both?! That isn't anything to do with us at all?! Wow, that's...unexpected. Carry on then.)
The US is actually incredibly bad at actually doing things to secure things of strategic importance. Semiconductors is an industry we've literally tried to pass laws to fix this in, and it's resulted in bunch of foreign-owned plants in the US, and I don't really feel like that's a logical solution, unless we're prepared to suddenly start nationalizing industries when they decide to shut down operations.
"
It would be nearly impossible for anyone to make the case for tech H1B _at all_, because it is an extraordinarily stupid policy to have. It is deliberately creating both an underclass of less powerful employees who are competing for American jobs, which is a thing that is bad for literally everyone except wealthy business owners.
And the only real possible justification is to argue we need it, but you can't use the 'We need immigrants to pick our food' nonsense that usually is done for other immigrants. You have to use, uh, 'They are smarter than Americans', which absolutely no one is going to vote for.
The problem is, Republicans now have to do that justification.
It also would have been hard for Democrats to do it, although maybe they could have threaded the needle by yammering about 'opportunity' and stuff. Republicans cannot do that.
I think a lot of people are subconsciously operating on the idea 'MAGA oppose it, and for xenophobic and often racist reasons, ergo it must be good', but...no. It's not.
To put it another way, when Elon Musk went crazy in the early days of Twitter and tried to get people to sign 'I will work myself to death to pay off the debt Musk incurred by borrowing to buy this company' crazy and probably illegal oaths, and a huge chuck of his workforce quit...the only people left were the H1B visa holders.
Without H1B visa, it is entirely possible that Twitter would have _literally failed_. Not as a company, but as a piece of software. Because no one who had a choice wanted to work there anymore. (And a reminder they didn't quit for political reasons, at that exact moment he was pretending to be apolitical and buying Twitter because 'They're lying about bots' or something. The whole Trumpism thing started months later.)
I personally think if you make your place of work so horrific that half the workforce walks out the door, it isn't a great thing if the only reason the rest of it is staying in place is they will be _deported_ if they quit.
On “Joe Biden Agrees that Some People *DO* Deserve the Death Penalty”
Let me tl;dr it for you:
Israel and the pre-Israel militias that became Israel's military killed 15,000 Arabs and displaced 750,000 Arabs in a single year, forcing them to abandon their homes with no recompense.
Surrounding Arab nations, in response to this, had some violent riots that killed ~500 Jews over a decade or so, and had legal changes and threats of violence that resulted in 900,000 Jews eventually leaving them over four or five decades, usually forcing them to abandon their homes with no recompense
You may notice the first was _entirely_ violence, very rapid violence, resulting in a lot of deaths, whereas the second was some small amount of violence, a implied terroristic threat of more violence in the future, and mostly just a bunch of laws and restrictions that made it very clear Jews were unwelcome, or were legally required to leave.
Again, the second is _still_ ethnic cleansing. It's reprehensible. No one should have their government say 'People like you are not allowed to live in this country, you have to move, and we're keeping your house', or have the worry of 'People occasionally get very angry at people like us and kill a dozen', especially when its clear the government doesn't _particularity_ mind that, even if it's not official government action.
But pretending they are morally equivalent is nonsense.
"
There are some part of the laws (There's actually multiple laws), like foreign aid, that can be waived, and in fact have been waived for other countries. They have not been waived for Israel, so it's actually still illegal.
There are parts that cannot be waived, and those have to do with supplying weapons.
And Israel has not 'officially' tested nukes in the sense that they have not admitted it and the US State Department has very pointedly refused to say anything about it. There is no actual doubt they were behind the nuclear explosions off the coast of South Africa, and there were actually three explosions.
BTW, working with and having a military alliance with South Africa in 1979 is, um, rather deplorable behavior, South Africa was already a become a pariah nation by that point for Apartheid, including a complete arms embargo by the UN in 1977, including nuclear material, but is something Israel indeed did.
The funniest document to come out of all that is this:
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2010/05/23/Peres-letter.pdf
(In case anyone is wondering about South Africa, when it became clear they were going to overthrow Apartheid, they dismantled their nuclear weapons, and signed the NPT. They're fine now under the law.)
On “Open Mic for the week of 12/23/2024”
Being able to change jobs is nothing. That requires you having already located a job and already been hired by them.
The leverage is from the threat of getting let go. You stop having a job, you have 60 days to find another. Which is, of course, harder for people on a H-1B visas than other people, processing itself can take a month or longer, and they have to find a company that not only will do the paperwork but pay the application fee.
60-days is actually pretty damn short to find a job regardless.
On “Joe Biden Agrees that Some People *DO* Deserve the Death Penalty”
Their ultimate goal, yes.
If, in some unlikely universe, literally every US president from now on held the same position as they do and commuted the sentence of everyone that was ever put on death row, hypothetically they'd 'get what they wanted' (Well, except for state executions.), but that's just silly. You generally want political changes done via laws and not subject to the whim of the president.
Yeah, but as far as anyone can tell, that's just _Biden's_ belief system. That was the point I was making, that this isn't some 'statement of the anti-death penalty people, who have decided to carve exceptions'.
Incidentally, the belief system was actually stated by Biden, where he said the commutations were 'consistent with the moratorium my administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder'.
'Hate-motivated mass murder' is rather vague, but...honestly, a lot of people on death row are 'normal' murderers who just got really unlucky in the court system, with people who committed identical crimes often getting 15 years. It's almost totally random. I'm honestly not sure if there's anyone on the list of 37 that would be borderline.
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