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admiralteal

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admiralteal ,

Makes me presume power harassment.

On the flip side, he was using up millions and millions of company dollars on his singleminded pursuit with no obvious results to show for it. Had things gone even a little differently, things would've gone very differently indeed. Hard to imagine most companies tolerating an employee flat ignoring instruction to change to another task when their old task was proving fruitless.

Hindsight is clear enough here, but in context it was pretty nuts what the guy was doing.

Makes you wonder how many great inventors of revolutionary tech were shoved off their path by dumb luck.

Why isn’t the Biden administration suing Texas for taking over the job of Border Patrol? (www.nbcnews.com)

The Biden administration has not sued. It did win a Supreme Court ruling that it could take down the razor wire that Texas has deployed in Shelby Park and elsewhere, which the administration said has led to drowning deaths among migrants. It has now cut razor wire in some sections of the border, but not in Shelby Park, which it...

admiralteal ,

Presuming that the administration doesn't really want to do any liberalization at the border (a very safe assumption), what is the actual victory condition of escalation the confrontation here?

I really want everyone to think very carefully about the counterfactual here. What's to be gained by going full scorched earth against Texas? What's the political or practical benefit to going in and arresting government employees / Texas national guardsman who are acting according to orders of the governor?

Texas isn't going to handle the border any better than the feds did. They will almost certainly handle it worse, and look like assholes and monsters while doing it. They'll prove the administration right that the border is hard and these "simple" solutions are idiotic and ineffective. Denying fed access is unquestionably illegal and frankly seditious/secessionary. Even the people defending them know and agree that it is a bad look for a state that is begging for federal aid to be simultaneously refusing federal aid.

On the flip side, if the feds feed into the New Civil War politics by escalating or even turning violent against Texas, the entire Confederacy will close ranks and use that momentum to likely win elections. That's what Abbot wants. That's WHY he is making this very public provocation. If you actually look at the hotspot here, you'll see that the actual "disputed" area is basically just one fucking park. It's barely anything.

The controversy here is both literally and figuratively borderline inconsequential. It's just a big, stupid political trap. "That's nice, hun" and waiting for them to wear themselves out is the correct response to it.

admiralteal ,

...asking for rights for non-US citizens who are in the active process of breaking the law.

It is not illegal to seek asylum at the US border. Refugees are not "illegals".

admiralteal ,

Domestic US law recognizes that right of asylum. Don't need to bring up any international law.

We have weaponized our incompetence against these people. We're so bad at managing the border that we are unable to process them in a fair, safe, and orderly fashion. We're unable to even follow our own laws and offer the due process our Constitution requires.

The expectation should be that the asylum-seekers do not know the process. Do not know the proper rules. Are desperate and maybe even afraid and just doing their best under life and death (i.e. coercive) circumstances. As the ones who defined that process, it is our job to catch and guide them through it. It is our job to give them their due process. There should be no presumption of their criminal intent. That should have to be proven in a court of law.

It's definitely complicated. Feeding into the right-wing rhetoric about the "illegals" is a way to simplify and thought-kill that complexity.

admiralteal ,

I’ll ask again, does a migrant entering somewhere else and simply invoking “asylum” make their entry legal?

I feel like my last reply addressed that, but since you are asking directly I'll be explicit. It does not make their entry legal. Their entry was already legal.

That's what I mean when I say it is up to us to guide them through the complex process we've set up -- they are seeking asylum which is a status we recognize. They might not know the proper legal incantations or arcane procedures for that, but they aren't the ones who invented those legal incantations and arcane procedures. They are refugees doing their best. They should be treated as innocent until proven guilty.

It is not illegal to, while acting in good faith, get lost in the bureaucracy, ESPECIALLY when that bureaucracy is designed from the ground up to be unmanageable in order to disparage your right, ESPECIALLY when your own personal circumstances leave your life at risk.

Sure, you can point towards people who clearly knew that particular point of crossing was not legal. And I will point to people who already had their proper rights disparaged without due process based on how much of a failure the "legal" crossing was.

If you're only using these words like "illegal" in a 100% legalistic framework, where we care about the letter of the statutes and not the actual rights and people the statutes assert and protect... stop. Don't do that. That's harmful.

admiralteal ,

Pretty much all of those vehicles require a CDL.

Seems like vehicles over a certain weight requiring a special license classification is a pretty straightforward and reasonable requirement.

But we can't do it without simultaneously addressing mass transit, bikeped, and our general absolute psychological fixation around designing all of our society around cars first and people second.

admiralteal ,

I did not know that, but it unfortunately makes sense. You should always be absolutely terrified for your life when you see a uhaul for a reason.

God, it truly is "for non-commercial use only". I hear a chorus of sovcits cheering.

admiralteal ,

Analog cameras also do not catch an image exactly as-is. Most likely, the idea of a "true" image of exactly how a thing exists in the real world is just a fantasy. This is qualia. An image is definitionally subjective. Just look at the history of film technology and the racial biases it helped perserve.

But there's undeniably a huge difference between how you interpret and commit the photons going through the lens versus entirely inventing photons going through the lens.

admiralteal ,

No, because you are asking the data broker to do something with your data that they possess. It is not possible for them to delete your data without knowing which are your data.

The only alternative is fully banning this kind of data collection. Which would be nice, but isn't happening anytime soon.

Biden Threatens to Veto Bill That Would Help Israel but Not Ukraine (www.nytimes.com)

President Biden vowed on Monday to veto a House Republican bill that would provide $17.6 billion in aid to Israel, calling it a “cynical political maneuver” intended to hurt the chances of passage for broader legislation that would provide money for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and the U.S. border....

admiralteal ,

I don't. We got the biggest and most important climate bill ever, likely in the entire world, by getting to ostensibly package it as an anti-inflation bill.

Politics is a game of negotiation and compromise. The same impulse as "nothing should ever be logrolled" is saying we should be entirely uncompromising on everything always.

If Ukraine and Israel aid were not bundlable, guess what? We'd get Israel and not Ukraine aid. The more deserving recipient wouldn't get the aid.

admiralteal ,

And it would probably be more expensive to get precision-calibrated equipment to get you at the bottom end of the tolerance to save product cost than what it would cost to just aim for the correct value with less precise equipment.

This one is a conspiracy theory I struggle to get behind. It seems like the conspiracy would be less profitable than the "proper" behavior here.

admiralteal ,

Big "How much can a banana cost, $10?" energy here.

We're talking about one of the cheapest brands of commodity pasta here. Think about how much effort you are implying the company put into this versus what 8g of major wholesale flour costs -- the only cost they'd really be saving in this conspiracy.

Even at consumer retail prices that's, what, $0.012 per box? And I bet wholesale prices are at least an order of magnitude less than that. Is the maybe tenth of a percent of cost savings worth a potential class action lawsuit and the horrific pain of Discovery that comes with it? And does that maybe tenth a percent of cost savings even come close to covering all the additional production costs involved in having that machinery calibrated so much more precisely? The juice is not worth the squeeze, my friend.

You think you're arguing that they would do evil for profit's sake, but you're actually arguing they would do evil for evil's sake even at the expense of profit.

admiralteal ,

155k registered motor vehicles in Ethiopia for a population of about 130 million. Is it really so unimaginable to you that a country may not be car-dependent?

admiralteal ,

I have no idea what the specific requirements for vehicle registration are. I doubt this article is even true, frankly.

But electrifying smaller vehicles is much, much easier than electrifying large vehicles. The biggest cost center in an EV is the battery, and smaller vehicles need proportionally way less battery compared to large vehicles. An ebike that can go 20-30mph runs off of something not substantially different from a cordless tool battery -- a pack of cheap, commodity 18650s -- and otherwise functions off of totally standard, mechanically simple parts.

admiralteal ,

You cannot hope to teach any kind of literature without teaching important context around it. You are wrong.

admiralteal ,

It is, though. You just don't know it -- probably because your dumbass teachers avoided non-white authors in your classes.

admiralteal ,

A social studies teacher is not the right person to be analyzing and teaching modern persuasive writing styles. That material belongs in an English class and if you teach it in social studies you have philological fucked up.

admiralteal ,

She told her class they would spend the next few days listening to a recording of the book, while each student took notes. After that, they would conduct independent research to develop their own arguments. They could agree with Coates, disagree with him or land in the middle.

...

Both teachers believed the book, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, is superbly written: a master class in the deployment of rhetorical devices. There was no better way to teach children how to formulate their own arguments, they thought.

“It teaches kids a different perspective, [it] teaches kids how to write well,” Wood said in an interview.

You're just wrong about what kinds of works a good AP Lang class should be teaching. You're wrong about what the class is, how it works, and what it intends. You're wrong about the science of education going into this. You're wrong about the cross-disciplinary nature of the lessons. You're wrong about the purpose of this book being assigned. And in that wrongness you are advocating for a world where education does a worse job teaching kinds how to navigate and be resilient in a world full of people that are going to constantly be trying to convince them to believe certain things and act certain ways.

admiralteal ,

It's the persistent lie of the free market.

Yes, in theory if health insurance were a transparent, understandable product that you could easily switch with another one as an individual based on your needs and costs, market competition would optimize that product rapidly for service and cost.

But every single thing about that theory is wrong.

  1. It's an intensely opaque process. You have no real way to know what the costs are going to be, what your needs will be, what your options will be. You can't even know what a doctor's appointment will cost under healthcare until you get the bill, sometimes a full year later (at least in my experience. Nothing about healthcare costs are understandable even to someone with an advanced medical degree. The layperson has no hope.
  2. You also cannot easily switch it with another product. Open enrollment and contracts severely limit you. There's only fixed, stressful windows where you can change it -- and even then, you're back to point 1. What is the difference between the two plans in actual practice? It's all just gambling.
  3. As you already observed, if your employer offers healthcare, you basically have no choice but to use that product because the subsidies are so intense. You are not an individual. The individual plans suck, are intensely expensive, and usually both across-the-board. The ONLY affordable option for the average person is the employer-offered product, so your choices are severely limited.

And it go this way because the most powerful agents in this system are not individuals.

With home/auto insurance, basically everything gets driven to a commodity product because all costs and risks are pretty uniform and predictable. That's why there is vanishingly little difference in the core products being offered by these kinds of insurance companies, and why the idea that switching your plan is sure to save you gobs of money is... improbable, outside of just periodic renegotiation of rates.

With health, the costs and risks are WILDLY unpredictable. The difference between an "expensive" customer and a cheap one is many, many orders of magnitude.

So naturally, risk must get hedged. The system's need for efficiency is going to try and package people together, just like any other high-risk, low-reward financial product. The need to group people is obvious, so we made it mandatory for employers to provide insurance as a weird workaround to the logical thing of government-run insurance. Now the customers are primarily employers who have TOTALLY different needs and desires from cheap, high-quality healthcare service. The free market will now do its work and optimize based on supply and demand. The efficiency gains will benefit the vendors (insurance companies) and the customers (employers). Individuals are not benefiting from market forces at all.

Free markets are great systems where they apply. They're really good for rapidly assembling efficient systems to get products to customers. But they only work where they work. The persistent lie of the free market is that EVERY problem can be solved with a free market. Nope. Only certain problems can. And where free markets don't work, that typically means you have need of government to step in instead.

admiralteal ,

With group policies, it means that the insurance companies can do their actuarial work on the entire group in aggregate without having to have considerations about prorating based on certain individuals entering or leaving the policy throughout the year.

At least ostensibly. I doubt this actually happens. It's mostly just a way to limit administrative overhead for both the insurance companies and the employers.

Don't think for a moment that employers don't like the whole open enrollment system too. Even if they CLAIM it is a PITA, it lets them only have to deal with this work for newly-qualified employees, separations, and otherwise only once a year.

Either way, it's of no benefit only harmful to the actual consumers of the insurance. But since individuals aren't the customers, that doesn't matter.

admiralteal ,

Nor will Hamas release all of theirs, frankly.

admiralteal ,

God, I remember in the early-ish days explaining what browsers were to AOL users.

It honestly felt pretty early in AOL days that people were mostly just using it for email, chatrooms, and otherwise as a web browser on the regular, non-AOL internet. Then AIM becoming more popular as time went on, but eventually third-party clients totally obviated that in a lesson Google would learn from well (and their takeaway was to destroy Jabber/XMPP with great prejudice before they lose control over their users).

Explaining parents that all they needed to do was open another browser -- literally any other browser -- while AOL was running and they could go to the websites with it was rough. "AOL has you connected to the internet already, you don't need to use it to go to infoseek.com" or whatever.

Whenever they finally did it it seemed like magic. WOW, how does this connect to AOL! Then they'd close AOL and disconnect the modem and tell me the other browser was broken.

I remember all my friends convincing me to switch to Opera because it had tabs and that was revolutionary.

admiralteal ,

I had some French cousins we would talk to a little bit at the time, and I remember their descriptions of the early internet were just absolutely bizarre in comparison with the minitels.

In those days, I'm sure every major region and country had vastly different experiences.

But yeah, at least my experience in the US was that AIM was huge. My entire peer group was connected through AIM. That and memorized land line phone numbers.

admiralteal ,

The Proud Boys was started as an anti-masturbation support group for a bunch of self-proclaimed porn addict incels.

I don't really have a point or joke. Just wanted to type that true sentence.

admiralteal ,

Dark patterns.

All the big tech firms do this shit all over the place because the regulators are sound asleep at the wheel.

admiralteal ,

This is part of a growing class of "house rich, cash poor" people.

They can't afford to move because the sale price of their existing (oversized) houses would not be enough to buy existing stock of smaller houses, in spite of the crazy market. The old houses they live in are increasingly in exurbs or even age-restricted communities that the kind of new family that might need a house that size can't be in for totally different reasons.

Plus they might want to stay in that community. Maybe that's where their friends or family are. Their doctors. All that kind of stuff. And it's not unreasonable for a person to want to keep living where they have a social network.

They also can't rent out rooms or ADUs because local zoning laws arbitrarily forbid it either directly or by enforcing things like minimum parking requirements that are not achievable. Which would be one great way to increase housing supply and let people stay where they are; turn extra space into more housing. But these boomer houses tend to be in the most restrictive type of suburbs that stifle the rights of the homeowners and prevents sustainable growth.

They increasingly don't have pensions because those disappeared in their lifetimes. Retirements funds got fucked by a variety of financial catastrophes in the intervening years, so they're increasingly relying on social security checks to pay for their (mandatory) car, big ass house expenses, and all that stuff. They're living well above their means and even if they realize it and want to make a change, the actual ability to do so is a massive problem.

The net result of this situation is even more tightness in the housing market. Even less real stock, since the ability to downsize is so lousy.

This thread has a sure lot of angry people and boomer hate in it. Which I get, but this is all part of the same housing problem with the same solutions -- more low-cost/smaller homes need to be built and fewer restrictive codes/zoning rules preventing common-sense housing. A lot of people want to develop the properties that people want to buy, but city policies are often the biggest obstacle to them -- that and lack of financial products to fund development thanks to the gradual snuffing out of local banks.

admiralteal ,

Why'd you put this in reply to my comment?

admiralteal ,

Huh? Did you only read that single sentence from the entire thing I wrote? I posted explaining my take on what the problem being described in this article really is. Then how this situation doesn't just affect the older, house-rich folks, but how it goes on to hurt all of us. And moreover how the fixes for the general problems in housing policy to help everyone get into more affordable homes would also help these same people.

... and your takeaway from what I wrote is that I'm white knighting for boomers?

That's very frustrating for me.

House GOP releases impeachment articles in bid to oust Homeland Security's Mayorkas over the border (apnews.com)

Republicans contend Mayorkas is guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors” that amount to a “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” on immigration and a “breach of the public trust.” Impeachment, they say, is “Congress’s only viable option.”...

admiralteal ,

Buttigieg is from Indiana.

Nothing good has ever been produced by the GADOT or the greater world of Georgia transportation officials. They're one of the most moronic such organizations in the country and none of their membership will ever go on to do anything meaningful.

admiralteal ,

If you're from Georgia, you know that the GADOT are total morons.

Just look at the southeastern rail corridors. Brightline from Miami to Orlando with extension already planned to Jacksonville. Fast rail service being developed from Raleigh to DC. And what's GADOT doing to be part of the future for the region?

Well, nothing. Literally nothing. Making the ATL->SAV Amtrak cooridor take as long as possible. But at least they're going to gift a few dozen millions of dollars to NS and the major cargo shippers by raising the Talmadge (edit: while already planning its BILLION dollar replacement).

Well, surely they're out there in Atlanta fixing the unspeakable terrible congestion by helping pay for common-sense, costsaving mass transit, right?

Nope. More highways.

How about rural GA? Are they at least making sure the state roads are safe and well-maintained? Wait, why are you walking away?

When FLORIDA's transportation planners are making you look bad, you've got a fucking problem.

admiralteal ,

It never really was about abortion. It was always about building power for conservative christian institutions. Abortion was just the issue that they were able to build a power base around -- particularly by uniting Catholics and Evangelicals who previously didn't really get along. It was mostly an invented controversy that sprang up in the wake of Roe as part of a larger de-liberalization movement.

Even today, the statistics of people who actually believe that abortion should be fully and unconditionally banned -- what the conservatives are all legislating for -- is only something like 8%. Another 29% think there are at least some exceptions, and a vast majority think it should be mostly or completely legal.

In the numbers, this is a settled issue. It isn't even THAT contentious.

But the issue is politically incredibly useful, and the religiously fundamentalist institutions do a great job having outsized influence and concentrating power. It's a rare opportunity for conservatives to take a pseudo-ethical stance and advocate for an actual outcome -- normally they just look like weird, selfish freaks shouting "no no no" all the time. The fact that the ethics aren't there is irrelevant.

admiralteal ,

There's so many little vignettes like this in the rise to prominence of the antichoice movement. Schaeffer is one of my favorites, but there's some other really weird little corners.

Another fun one was all these religious/evangelical schools that, in the post-Brown era, were facing down a future where they may have to start paying taxes if they wanted to maintain segregation. These institutions saw that their strictly racist policies were becoming politically unpalatable, so they sought out a way better issue to get that power. Still happening today, by the way, where explicitly religious schools are actively campaigning to get your tax dollars while continuing to teach bigotry and nonsense. Be VERY wary any time you hear a politician mention "school choice".

I also enjoy that Norma McCorvey (AKA Roe) was later turned into and paraded a bout as a pro life campaigner, saying she regretted the abortion and lawsuit and all that. Only to reveal later in her life that they paid her HANDSOMELY to do so and the beliefs and words were totally insincere, she just needed the money. I think that tells you a lot about the underlying moral fiber of these religious whackos.

admiralteal ,

Yea, it's not that it was botched per se, it's just that this is a terrible, torturous way to execute someone.

N2 asphyxiation is only "peaceful" when it is an industrial accident or performed on a cooperative participant (i.e., self euthanasia) -- it just makes no sense for execution because someone who doesn't want to die is going to be tortured to death by it. Forced to fight every instinct they have to resist breathing until it hurts so bad they think they will die if they don't breath in, except they KNOW they'll die if they breath in so they push on.

It's really, really awful. It's a really horrendous way to execute.

admiralteal ,

How it looks to onlookers should in no way factor in to deciding what method you use.

The onlookers don't have to be there. They have a choice.

admiralteal ,

There was no way to perform the execution correctly. N2 asphyxiation makes no sense as an execution method -- it will only be painless if the person didn't realize what was about to happen or if they were cooperative. If not, it'll mean the person will fight until death. They will be put in a situation of endlessly expanding pain until they can bear it no more.

The idea that an execution method is humane if it would be painless for a cooperative victim, ignoring the experience that will be had be an uncooperative victim, is just... really dumb. It's incredibly dumb.

admiralteal ,

That might just create a situation where the person goes through all this torture multiple times as they hold their breath and experience the pure agony until passing out only to wake up and have to go through it all again. It maybe seems better, but it's still basically the same torture.

Other than doing it TOTALLY unscheduled in the person's sleep, I cannot imagine a way you avoid the horror of this kind of execution method. And it's hard to even piece together a way you could practically implement unscheduled/in their sleep that wouldn't result in the person refusing to sleep, with sleep deprivation itself being a form of torture.

admiralteal ,

For the guy you replied, to the violence isn't a side effect, it's the goal. The cruelty is the point.

And in that case, why even pretend? This entire execution method was conceived as a way to be "more humane". It wouldn't exist if not for that objective. And if we don't care about the cruelty, just use hanging or firing squad.

admiralteal ,

I did, in the comment. Read what I wrote again.

admiralteal ,

Nope, was not edited to change contents at any point. You just didn't read it. Compare any relevant timestamps and you'll see you were just being a dolt.

It's OK to be wrong sometimes. You can just be wrong.

admiralteal ,

Which was... dun dun dun, within just a minute or two when it was posted and THREE HOURS before you replied. GASP, you discovered the terrible conspiracy of a typo being fixed! No content was changed!

You're a fucking lunatic.

admiralteal ,

It's definitionally coercion if the only other option is death. You do not have agency in that situation. End of story.

admiralteal ,

But he didn't want to die. If you don't want to die -- if you aren't cooperating with the execution -- it is going to be torturous with this method.

The attitude of "this is the way I want to die" is automatically assuming that you want to die. That you're a willing participant. Execution must be presumed to have an uncooperative victim and the humaneness must be judged in that context.

Lot of people saying he should've just let it happen. It would've hurt him less. That's unacceptable to say to a victim of violence in any other context, so I'm not sure why it makes sense to people here.

admiralteal ,

Just so long as you understand that your desire to end the life of imaginary people who are irredeemably bad WILL lead to the death of real people that are redeemable. Not to mention innocent people.

Though I don't think it is up to you to decide that any life is definitely less preferably to death. Only the ones living those lives can decide that.

admiralteal ,

The pain will come from the desire to not be killed, i.e., holding your breath and resisting breathing the gas.

Just because the gas ITSELF doesn't necessarily cause pain does not mean the METHOD isn't going to be immensely painful. Judging the technique based on how an unknowing or cooperative victim will perform is just so dumb when it is an execution method.

admiralteal ,

Yep, except that has two huge flaws -- first, how do you make sure he really doesn't know its coming so isn't inflicted with other kinds of torture like prolonged sleep deprivation (because sleep = death). Second, how do you maintain the spectacle for the onlookers that have bloodlust in their hearts, who these executions are designed to make happy?

admiralteal ,

"I haven't actually bothered to learn what happened, what's going on, or made any effort to imagine the situation fully or understand what people are saying, but I think other people are dumb."

Go away.

admiralteal ,

I mean, we don't even know that this execution caused pain. Pain is subject and the only guy who can comment on it is dead.

All we know is that the guy was thrashing around and then seized on the bed over the course of the 20ish minutes from administering the gas to when he apparently went lifeless.

But it sure sounds like it was excruciating to me.

admiralteal ,

Literally no experts have said they are confident the method is painless, though.

Just wikipedia PhDs talking about industrial accidents in vastly different circumstances, where victims were caught entirely unaware.

You're basically asking me to prove the negative - so let's put the shoe on the other foot. Find me medical experts testifying that this execution method would definitely be painless, because it's really easy to find medical organizations and medical experts saying their concerned the process could be torturous.

Dr. Philip Nitschke, a much-interviewed expert on euthanasia that shows up in a lot of these articles and who specifically studied use of N2 asphyxiation, expressed great concerns about how this was being administered. The only way this can even conceivably be administered painlessly is if you either catch someone by surprise or have their full cooperation. If they're an unwilling participant you are torturing them to death using a technique that has an indefinite amount of time to work properly. The setup of how Alabama was going to be doing this would be slow and ineffective, and all of that delay is going to be torturous.

And if you can't find that testimony that this process is definitely humane maybe you should stop assuming it is.

It's true, it's pretty inconceivable that any execution method isn't torturing someone to death. Hard to come up with any theoretical framework for that other than taking a gun to the head in your sleep. But these pseudo-scientific techniques that simply refuse to think through the practicality of administration are entirely designed to make the execution more pleasant to watch for the onlookers and that is particularly heinous.

Stop thinking about the methos you would want used on you if you had to be executed. That line of thinking isn't analogous or reasonable. Think about the technique you use on someone who doesn't want to be executed. Because that's an entirely different thing and the practicality of administering is part of how you make it more humane if that's really your goal - and to be clear I'm sure that that's not anyone's goal here.

The goal of the using this technique is being fulfilled perfectly by you, since it was to fool people into believing there is such a possibility as a more humane execution ( that was still reasonable for onlookers).

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