jakeinspace

This might be the most blatantly corrupt thing I've ever scene a sitting president do. Might as well have Elon hand him a cartoonish bag with a dollar sign on it at this point.

My understanding of the relevant law and legal precedent is that since revoking a green card and deporting someone is not technically a criminal penalty, it may be constitutional for the government to so. Reno vs AADC went to SCOTUS in 1999, and that was roughly the ruling, although it's unclear how much of a precedent that sets, because the lower court's ruling was rejected due to lack of jurisdiction.

Even if that is considered settled (which, personally, I find a pretty lousy interpretation of the first amendment), it would still make this arrest and detention totally illegal, at least warranting a lawsuit, even if deportation can't be avoided.

Hopefully I'm wrong. This whole thing is so destructive to the constitution, to personal liberties, and to higher education.

Retaliatory tarrifs are something like MAD. Tarrifs are bad for both countries. Yes, Canada placing retaliatory tarrifs hurts Canadian consumers, but it also hurts American exporters. The alternative, doing nothing, would in some sense be preferable immediately, but in the long run would risk losing Canadian industry to the US.

Not a great idea to enter this brave new geological world by shedding Turkey from your alliance.

Ah but you see, I am on my phone and very lazy.

Because if there are multiple inverted units, you'd need to add parentheses to put them all in the denominator. Tidily giving each a ^-1 is clearer (especially with superscript exponents).

It's easy to imagine that we'll have fallen off the precipice well before you or I can definitively say "this is the moment, democracy is at stake, we must go to the streets."

There is no free-market libertarian argument I've ever seen that fixes the problem of monopoly being a fixed point. Monopolies can out-compete others through economies of scale, and then use that concentrated wealth to exert control. All I'll ever hear in response is that it's the regulatory framework monopolies lobby for which secures their position against competition, and I just don't believe it. It helps, sure, but it's just part of the toolbox.

I don't think any system can perfectly ensure that power stays distributed. Marxism-Leninism doesn't, to me, provide any compelling argument that corruption can be avoided when power is concentrated in a bureaucracy, the leap from dictatorship of the proletariat to utopic socialism is extremely tricky. I do at least think that the communists have spent a lot of thought on these things, both in critiquing capitalism and in proposing alternatives, while modern "libertarians" just sound entirely naive on this issue, to my ears.

This money is given away entirely for self interest. I'm not necessarily opposed to retracting soft power, but I am annoyed when the right is so ignorant about what these programs are. They are not generosity for generosities sake. They are why America has the wealth that it does.

Those are different claims. I don't exactly know what frailty means technically, but this was a 5 year study on the elderly. Preserving organ health with a lifetime of omega 3 consumption is totally different.

First, Trump voters didn't exactly vote for this, at least not many. Identify politics and owning the libs, sure, but I'd say that a minority of his voters wanted to totally dismantle the administrative state - or if they thought that sounded good, they may not have been aware the repercussions of that on their lives.

Second, we all have a right to bitch about what seems like a new America being formed. If things go as badly as many of us seem to think, well it doesn't really matter if we convince trump voters they were wrong, because democracy will be have evaporated anyway. Our society has been almost molded for this moment: Americans are more isolated and alienated from each other than ever. The internet today is a fundamentally difficult place to organize any sort of coherent protest when the places people post are algorithmically controlled, manipulated by bots, and moderated.

We are broken as a society. What a waste was all that 20th century plundering and bloodshed and brilliance and effort. I would imagine that even for someone looking at the teetering American Empire with satisfaction, there is a bit of emptiness in just how stupid and pathetic this all is.

The bottom 50% own 2.4% of American wealth [1], while paying 3% of taxes. That, to me, is regressive.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBSB50215

Don't become the very thing you claim to hate!

What still has value when intellectual/knowledge work becomes free?

1) Land

2) Natural Resources

3) Energy

4) Weapons

5) Physical/in-person Labour

That means that, unless there are big societal changes, you better have at least a few of those available to you. A huge percentage of Americans own no land nor investments in durable assets. That means at best, they are thrown into a suddenly way-oversupplied physical labour market in order to make a living.

At the geopolitical level, a country like the United States, with so much of its current wealth tied to amorphous things like IP, the petro dollar, and general stability, certainly has all 5 of the above categories covered. However, there's a lot of vulnerable perceived value in the stock market and housing market which might vanish if the world is hit with a sudden devaluation of labour. Even if the US is theoretically poised to capitalize off of AGI, a sudden collapse of the middle class and therefore the housing market and therefore the entire financial sector might ruin that.

UBI is the bare minimum I can imagine preventing total societal collapse. Countries with existent strong safety nets or fully socialist systems might have a big advantage in surviving this. I certainly feel a certain sense of comfort living in Quebec, where although many aspects of government are broken, I can at least count on a robust and cheap hydroelectric-supplied grid and reasonable social safety nets. Between AI and climate change, I feel like there are worse places to be this century.

Rename to equally reasonable variable names, or to intentionally misleading or meaningless ones? Good naming is one of the best ways to make reading unfamiliar code easier for people, don't see why actual AGI wouldn't also get tripped up there.

$44 billion

Sure, I guess he wasn’t waving the nuclear football around, but give him time. He does have a flair for the dramatic and ridiculous.

If someone makes off-hand threats to another while brandishing a gun, that’s illegal (assault) and condemnable. The (soon) president of the US wields nuclear weapons and the most powerful military on earth, his words by default cary the threat of violence. The difference between this and an asshole with a gun is that nobody stands above a president, at least between elections. He has impunity, but he does at least merit condemnation.

I think control of shipping channels (northwest passage especially), natural deep water ports, and military installations are the main potential values. The oil and gas will likely never have much value, since by the time they’re thawed, the price of both will presumably have collapsed. The rare earth elements and uranium might be nice but bringing in the equipment and infrastructure to do serious mining will takr decades.

Definitely disagree with your binary of options, but if I do accept them, why would scenario 2 justify investing? That scenario sounds to me like a likely societal collapse, rendering any investment moot. Even it it’s not some terminator or paperclip maximizer situation, and the first team to build ASI is able to keep a handle on it, I’m not sure our economy or civilization could handle that much intelligence, let alone concentrated in the hands of a for-profit corporation. The knowledge of such a thing existing would make securities markets collapse instantly - can’t really compete with an ASI agent there, so might as well move everything to real estate and gold.

More alarmingly, such a thing would be more dangerous than a nuclear weapon, and might reasonably merit a nuclear first strike.

Yes, but also we need some more direct incentive for new construction. Real estate as investment property at least used to drive supply. We need massive (tax/interest rate/zoning) incentives for high density construction, both in cities and towns/suburbs. Disincentivizing empty investment properties is the cheapest way for the government, but I think carrot and stick works best.

That doesn’t have value against nation state actors.

Chinese registered, but operated by a russian crew and company I believe.

You’ve posted this site 4 times in the 6 days since your account was created, it’s an ad

This is an ad

Is there a link you could provide to as study? Curious about the methodology for measuring these things.

It was successful clearly, not disagreeing with that. So were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My point was more that this is a truly significant line that has been crossed for the first time by a major military at this scale. People comparing this to isolated assassinations with booby trapped phones, or to wiretapping and other surveillance, are massively downplaying this.

It’s a very small place

Unlike stuxnet, this attack had a lot of non-hezbolah civilian casualties. It’s "targeted" in a sense, but not really much more targeted than a drive-by assassination attempt. Anybody close to these people could have sustained serious injury, and there are reports of children injured and dead. We’ll have to wait for details to emerge.

Politically, this is the sort of action that invites comparison to conventional terrorism. It also begs the question of why Hezbollah or other actors shouldn’t try a similar attack against civilian targets. It’s almost like a chemical or biological attack, which most countries shy away from because it’s so hard to defend against (a big part of why it’s illegal). No country can perfectly safeguard its supply chain from intentional sabotage.

I’m afraid that the entire world is a little bit less safe after this move. Maybe Israel is goading Hezbollah into all-out war, who knows, but this affects all of us.

98% sure these were booby trapped with plastic explosives or similar, meaning it’s a supply chain attack more than a cyber attack. LiPos exploding would be more sizzle and less instant boom, you can’t just hack your way through thermal runaway without all the smoke and building temperature first.