Messages

1

General Comments / Re: Will Trump burn down the Republican Party if DeSantis runs?

« on: November 29, 2022, 08:55:20 PM »

It's happening now because they have two years until the next election that matters. It gives them time to re-consolidate if they successfully turf him out or two years for the base to forget that they tried and failed.

2

General Comments / Re: Election Results

« on: November 29, 2022, 03:27:30 PM »

The worst part is that if the votes don't get counted a lot of people will believe that the Democrats sued to stop the certification and stole the seat. Because that's the story the GOP and its media will tell them.

3

General Comments / Re: Election Results

« on: November 29, 2022, 10:45:00 AM »

I'd be as happy as the next gay if another district goes to the democrats, that a couple of idiots can throw out thousands of votes is alarming. I'm glad someone is suing to try and get these people to do their jobs. If there are voting irregularities, I'm sure they'll present evidence for them in court.

4

General Comments / Re: #Tweetstorm 14:1-5

« on: November 28, 2022, 05:27:32 PM »

Probably that nothing showed up when Musk asked people to commit a felony by sending him CSEM.

5

General Comments / Re: Will Trump burn down the Republican Party if DeSantis runs?

« on: November 28, 2022, 11:43:15 AM »

Could a party pass a rule disqualifying convicted felons or people currently serving a sentence from running in the primary? As private organizations, as I assume they could but they're so close to government agents in terms of setting electoral rules.

Frankly, the GOP passing a "no crooks" rule seems like the only way Trump getting convicted could have a material effect on the primaries.

6

General Comments / Re: Fundraising never stops

« on: November 22, 2022, 09:08:17 AM »

If you give the representative money they'll yell louder at the DOJ? Though she's probably just trying to capitalize on a moment where less politically involved people might be more favourable to handing out cash.

7

General Comments / Re: Fundraising never stops

« on: November 21, 2022, 05:13:28 PM »

MLB didn't organize its fans the way Swift fans are organizing against Ticketmaster. The recent sale of concert tickets was apparently egregiously mishandled. I haven't paid enough attention to know if it's notably worse than the average World Series or if Swift fans have different expectations than baseball fans.

The issue isn't that a single event is overpriced. The issue is that Ticketmaster has leveraged its monopoly to be the ONLY ticket vendor for almost all venues in the country. If you want to buy tickets for an event and don't want to buy from Ticketmaster, in many cases you're just plain out of luck -- which gives them unchecked power over fees, surcharges, etc.

The last tickets I bought to an event had 45% Ticketmaster surcharges.

If you buy the premise that the government has an interest in breaking up industry-wide monopolies, Ticketmaster is definitely due some scrutiny. 

They also have significant control over booking (due to a somewhat recent merger) so if an artist doesn't want to use Ticketmaster, they lose access to the best venues.

8

General Comments / Re: Cacas Maximus Has Reentered the Match

« on: November 18, 2022, 12:00:09 PM »

The imbalance is even worse because Biden's had to deal with Covid reaching maximum spread for his whole tenure plus people getting fatigued with mitigation efforts.

Of course, there's no support for the idea that Trump would have been any slower at ditching mask mandates or otherwise trying to convince people that everything is fine. It seems more likely he would have announced that COVID was over following his re-election because it was just a liberal hoax.

Ontario's populist government is busy pretending everything is fine as our hospitals fill up with sick kids and I expect Trump would have done the same.

9

General Comments / Re: Cacas Maximus Has Reentered the Match

« on: November 18, 2022, 11:40:24 AM »

Like, when even Fox news cuts off your speech, how can a demagogue get anywhere?

10

General Comments / Re: 2022 Congressional Leadership

« on: November 18, 2022, 11:28:20 AM »

So there absolutely needs to be defections for the Dems to take advantage of GOP disunity. That seems unlikely but given the UK, it seems unwise to completely rule out the possibility of flagrant incompetence. It's also hard not to assume that every election strips away a few more of the reasonable members of the GOP as representatives get tired of being stuck in the clown car.

11

General Comments / Re: Election Results

« on: November 17, 2022, 11:04:56 AM »

* The book that was ghostwritten for Trump

ETA: I don't know if I'm just more interested in the other side or that the liberal/leftist bubble is more permeable because what you don't know may include plans to kill you.

12

General Comments / Re: LDS Church Supports Gay Marriage Act

« on: November 16, 2022, 01:11:16 PM »

It's notable there's been some acrimony in the queer community over respectable gays abandoning trans people in order to make gay marriage more palatable to the straights.

13

General Comments / Re: Paul Pelosi got hammered ... again.

« on: November 16, 2022, 01:03:43 PM »

These are the good anonymous sources.

14

General Comments / Re: Election Results

« on: November 16, 2022, 11:10:04 AM »

cherry, you said on the other thread that the loan program can't get passed the courts. Has someone solved the standing problem? AFAIK, they can't find anyone specifically harmed by the program who can sue the administration even if it's executive overreach. Not unless they want to authorize every Tom, Dick, and Harry suits against any government expenditure they don't like.

15

General Comments / Re: 2022 Congressional Leadership

« on: November 15, 2022, 04:28:32 PM »

Can the speaker be elected with only plurality? Is the vote just a straight up and down on a proposed candidate or do the representatives vote for a specific person? Like, can a bunch of MAGAs abstaining through the selection to the democrats?

I'm wondering how easy the system makes it British Tory levels of shenanigans.

16

General Comments / Re: Alex Jones, scumbag

« on: November 14, 2022, 01:08:22 PM »

I had the impression Epstein was caught out more by #metoo.

The details of Pizzagate were too obviously absurd to influence anyone who engaged with it critically. I don't think you can give it credit for being true in theory when it was so wrong in practice.

17

General Comments / Re: Alex Jones, scumbag

« on: November 14, 2022, 12:48:26 PM »

cherry,

public accusations, even if you believe them, should still be defamation if that belief isn't based on evidence.  What if your local radio announcer decided that he sincerely believed someone was a pedophile, and began saying that regularly on his broadcasts?  The person thus accused will have their reputation ruined.  Making a statement accusing someone of something that damages their reputation without evidence supporting the accusation, is a reckless disregard for the truth, and thus is and should be defamatory and subject to legal remedy.

I think those who are engaging in such behavior for profit, should have a more serious burden of evidence.

That still poses a problem for conspiracy theorists because their ability to assess the quality of evidence is compromised. They aren't--or at least don't act like--reasonable people as the law usually assumes. Pizzagate is an excellent example. Historically, their views usually aren't widely disseminated or are too risible for anyone to act on. They've also tended to be hate speech which tends not to defame individuals. It's why the recent mainstreaming of conspiracy theories is so alarming.

18

General Comments / Re: Election Results

« on: November 14, 2022, 09:34:00 AM »

Has there been another court challenge other than the ones with dubious standing? I hadn't heard anything about the debt plan being more than temporarily inconvenienced.

19

General Comments / Re: Alex Jones, scumbag

« on: November 13, 2022, 09:31:07 PM »

Dsiparaging non-specific groups of people (Jones might have called out individual parents). Sandy Hook Parents are a limited set of identifiable people. The Jews (sorry, I mean the "lizard people") are not.

As for people who receive specific attention from conspiracy theorists, you have to call them a liar not just imply they're a liar by contradicting them. Defamation is one of the "magic word" areas of the law. Say the right words and the most offensive of slanders are not statements of fact and therefore not defamation.

Harm is also important. Some dude on the internet calling a demolitions expert or a New York Fire Chief a liar isn't going to cause any measurable harm. By measurable, I mean the kind you can spend thousands and thousands in lawyer fees spelling out for the court.

This is not a legal reason but the Streisand effects means you should only sue people when you're absolutely sure more attention won't benefit them. Tens of millions of people simply aren't worth elevating with a very public and controversial lawsuit.

20

General Comments / Re: Alex Jones, scumbag

« on: November 13, 2022, 05:17:49 PM »

As Tom said, defamation is not protected speech, but shutting up when someone tells you your words are causing harm is probably a good defence against a law suit.

Do you think people should be able to tell harmful lies about someone without the victim having any recourse?

21

General Comments / Re: Alex Jones, scumbag

« on: November 13, 2022, 11:59:54 AM »

In Jones' case it was failing to comply with discovery. I also find publicly calling parents of dead six-year-olds crisis actors is pretty egregious. Especially when you keep doing it after you know they've been harassed. It's not as if Jones' made a podcast or a youtube video and got hit with a suit the next day. He had plenty of opportunities to shut up and stop being a scumbag.

His followers are culpable for whatever acts they committed but that doesn't absolve Jones' of responsibility for his own words. Defamation requires communication of the falsehoods. The person doing the defaming doesn't get to skate by saying "while I didn't decide to fire you."

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General Comments / Re: Alex Jones, scumbag

« on: November 13, 2022, 10:54:18 AM »

Traditional conspiracy theories don't name specific people. They're about the CIA, the Jews, the Mafia, or whoever. You can't defame the CIA. The typical conspiracy theorist also isn't knowingly making false statements (yes, that's hard to prove, it's why if you lose a defamation suit in the US, you've probably done something egregious).

Cheney can't prove damages. How has he lost money? What has 9/11 theories cost him? There's also a higher burden for defaming public figures but I don't remember how exactly that it works.

23

General Comments / Re: Alex Jones, scumbag

« on: November 12, 2022, 11:33:40 AM »

In the case of someone suing over glance, it would be laughed out of court. Various states have further measures in place to protect people from frivolous lawsuits.  If there's the possibility of legitimate tort but there's no actually basis for a suit (the harmful statement is obviously true for example), then there's often a quick and cheap way for the suit to be dismissed. If a person keeps filing frivolous lawsuits, I think most states have rules in place to sanction them.

24

General Comments / Re: Alex Jones, scumbag

« on: November 11, 2022, 07:29:29 PM »

Damages is not an inconsequential bar either. I think you usually need to show direct monetary damages or potential loss.

For the Buzz Aldrin example, it'd be pretty difficult for him to show that he lost money or his reputation was damaged by any statements about the moon landing.

Weasel words have long been a defence against defamation. "Alledged" is a popular one. Insults are also a way out as they are considered opinions rather than statements of fact. "This guy is a *censored*ing loser" is not actionable while "this guy is a cheater and a fraud" could be.

25

General Comments / Re: Alex Jones, scumbag

« on: November 11, 2022, 03:07:19 PM »

In Jones' case, he was successfully sued because he told the courts to go *censored* themselves. The size of the damages are possibly because he's a scumbag but they could also reflect the intensely personal nature of the harm he did and that he has a lot of money (or at least appears to have a lot of money). If I wanted to punish someone for telling parents of a dead six-year-old that they're just crises actors and they don't have a dead kid and made millions doing it, I'd impose a penalty he couldn't pay out of pocket change.

26

General Comments / Re: Alex Jones, scumbag

« on: November 11, 2022, 12:11:59 PM »

It's not the evisceration of the First to hold that a person can't say untrue things that harm other people without being held to account for it. Again, you should stop being alarmist and at least familiarize yourself with how defamation law works in the US, if not these cases in particular.

27

General Comments / Re: #Tweetstorm 14:1-5

« on: November 11, 2022, 10:39:57 AM »

If it's going to fail better than it fail quickly than slowly. A slow decline means Twitter would shed users and reputation but a quick drop off the cliff and the core "product" might still be able to be salvaged by creditors. I like the space that is Twitter and would prefer it continue to exist and that can't happen if Musk slowly drives it into the ground over the next few years.

28

General Comments / Re: Alex Jones, scumbag

« on: November 11, 2022, 10:36:28 AM »

If you're really worried about it, cherry, you can look up the jurisprudence on libel and/or slander. I don't think any of your questions are particularly novel and US law has had a fun time getting defamation to fit with the First Amendment. My impression from assorted anecdotes is that if you lose a defamation suit in the US, you've probably done something pretty egregious. This is a contrast to the UK which is weighted more towards the plaintiff.

I don't know how the question of belief affects a suit, though I think being able to demonstrate having solid grounds to believe something would be an effective defence. In Jones' case, he's actually argued that he doesn't believe what he said so that's not available to him.

If the suit against Kanye is spurious then one would expect he'd get fees awarded.

I don't find "how does it affect the richest people in the country?" to necessarily be a good way to evaluate the quality of a law. It's already difficult, if not impossible, to inflict sufficient damage on bad actors due tort reform to keep them from flagrantly breaking the law. I don't think we should make it harder out of misplaced empathy for the ultra rich.

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General Comments / Re: Roll Tide

« on: November 09, 2022, 03:28:08 PM »

They figured that out when they couldn't get majority to kill it outright.

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General Comments / Re: Roll Tide

« on: November 09, 2022, 01:45:37 PM »

The justification for the narrative is that this should have been a cake walk for the GOP. Almost all the historical indicators were against the Democrats. The GOP should not have suffered several high profile losses and should have easily taken the House and Senate.

31

General Comments / Re: Roll Tide

« on: November 07, 2022, 11:42:53 AM »

Tumblr bots (which must have been a waste of money) were mostly interested in cultivating a "pox on both your houses" attitude rather than to sway people to one side or another.

Apparently the error bars of the poll aggregations encompass a red wave or a total rout of the GOP. So things might be very fun for the rest of the week.

ETA: The House will impeach Biden because otherwise Trump turn on them.

32

General Comments / Re: Roll Tide

« on: November 07, 2022, 09:43:20 AM »

I meant that "my" will at least accept the counting of the votes.

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General Comments / Re: Roll Tide

« on: November 07, 2022, 09:13:32 AM »

The benefit of the other side cheating by voter suppression and disenfranchisement: losing is always an option.

34

General Comments / Re: Election Results

« on: November 03, 2022, 02:27:40 PM »

Some of these so-called Anti-Trumpers would be all-in for Trump except Trump and his people can't even provide a fig leaf of a reason for what they're saying.

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General Comments / Re: Ще́дрик, щедри́к, ще́дрівочка

« on: November 03, 2022, 11:50:00 AM »

Certainly not until it's solved the problem of Big and Modern in a legacy army. Like Russia, the part of China's army that's Modern isn't Big and the part that's Big isn't Modern. Ukraine proved you can't rely on the Modern part lasting long enough for the Big part to be telling.

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General Comments / Re: US Government Censorship program on social media being unearthed.

« on: November 03, 2022, 11:26:16 AM »

But Right wing liars aren't "caught."

Because these days the people they're talking to don't care if they're lying. Oh, that's not what you meant.

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General Comments / Re: Paul Pelosi got hammered ... again.

« on: November 02, 2022, 03:35:01 PM »

Your ability to draw incorrect conclusions is astounding.

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General Comments / Re: Paul Pelosi got hammered ... again.

« on: November 02, 2022, 03:16:01 PM »

Yes it wasn't clear you were asking questions as genuine inquiry to finding the truth but it seemed the intent was to obscure  the truth.
If your intent was genuine inquiry then I apologize

Given all the editorializing, I think it's pretty clear genuine inquiry isn't the point.

39

General Comments / Re: #Tweetstorm 14:1-5

« on: November 01, 2022, 12:31:30 PM »

Twitter can be good if can you minimize your interaction with the algorithm and don't have a lot of followers. If you do have a lot of followers the trick seems to be to block early and block often and restrict the ways random people can interact with you.

I would like a replacement for Twitter but I have no idea what it would be.

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General Comments / Re: Ще́дрик, щедри́к, ще́дрівочка

« on: October 31, 2022, 05:28:36 PM »

Given how thoroughly Russia has stuck its junk in a meat grinder, I think the current international order still has awhile to go before it collapses. The destruction of the Russian army without a shot fired by NATO I think proves that attempts to hurry along the end of Pax Americana is not a safe proposition. If we're really lucky it suggests that a modern system army is incompatible with authoritarian regimes and that anyone who's likely to play the game by the old rules will end up with similarly shredded junk.

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General Comments / Re: The Trump Papers

« on: October 25, 2022, 10:16:58 AM »

I don't know if it's been proven that Patel took documents or not but even if it was, he still shouldn't incriminate himself.

42

General Comments / Re: The Trump Papers

« on: October 25, 2022, 08:00:01 AM »

I suspect part of the reticence to testify on this matter that stealing government documents is illegal even if they were declassified. Perhaps he couldn't find a  way to say "yeah, Trump totally declassified them" without being at risk of admitting he took them.

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General Comments / Re: The Jan 6 Commission

« on: October 24, 2022, 11:11:05 AM »

That makes you a singleton,doesn't it? No one else thinks the J6 Committee is anything but a political farce. There are so many precedents that have been set, thet if the GOP adopts any of them, the Dems are in for a world of retribution. This panel is one-sided and embarrassing at how it is perceives by the public

Thanks to the Dems biased polling, no one actually responds to poll-takers to the point no one can take results at face value. We'll see by the red wave in the next two weeks, won't we?

You really need to acknowledge that not everyone shares your beliefs. Even if many people believe the committee is a farce, that doesn't mean msquared is the only one to be impressed with them. Is this really the only place you encounter opposing viewpoints so that you think the beliefs expressed here are unique? 

44

General Comments / Re: price fixing through shared algorithmic price setting

« on: October 17, 2022, 08:28:31 PM »

It's bad because it might be producing a result identical or similar to collusion and price fixing. If that's so, then why shouldn't we stop people from doing it?

Another problem is that the algorithm might be flawed. Like, you realize why command economies perform worse than free-market economies, right? Having an algorithm rather than a bureaucrat doesn't make the commanding better.

45

General Comments / Re: price fixing through shared algorithmic price setting

« on: October 17, 2022, 07:48:30 PM »

An algorithm is not a calculator.  And the whole point of a free market is to have a whole bunch of people coming up with answers independently. That stops happening if everyone uses the same algorithm.

You go after the algorithm because it's a lot easier than going after the idea of landlords in general.

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General Comments / Re: price fixing through shared algorithmic price setting

« on: October 17, 2022, 03:35:10 PM »

People need housing, they don't need hotel rooms. Very few people are using food banks because the hotel room they got last weekend was marked up by an algorithm. Right now people are spending all or nearly of their income on rent and using food banks and other supports to make up the difference.

I would be surprised if we could effectively outlaw algorithms, even just for landlords. I think we will disagree on the need for and consequences of rent control.

47

General Comments / Re: price fixing through shared algorithmic price setting

« on: October 17, 2022, 02:45:40 PM »

Using an algorithm to maximize rents, or at least all using the same algorithm. I'm aware that turning that statement into something useful as a term of law would be very difficult.

Generally speaking, we should discourage landlords from maximizing rents, especially if properties are allowed to be vacant in pursuit of maximum rents.

48

General Comments / Re: price fixing through shared algorithmic price setting

« on: October 17, 2022, 02:30:17 PM »

I don't think TheDrake's example of individual landlords looking on rent.com is equivalent to a whole bunch of them using an algorithm. Rent setting by "AI" is materially different than more analog means of data gathering and comparing. A new thought is that the use of a algorithm shifts the decision making from the individual market actor to a third party which feels like it should trip over the collusion threshold.

The second part was that we should probably stop landlords from doing this even if it doesn't count as collusion and price fixing under current law, though we might need new law to do it. That we shouldn't get hung up on existing rules about collusion and price fixing as the only measure of appropriate behavior but to consider the effects and whether or not we want to prohibit them.

49

General Comments / Re: price fixing through shared algorithmic price setting

« on: October 17, 2022, 02:01:38 PM »

Are you going to engage with what people are actually saying or will you just continue to fail at being clever?

50

General Comments / Re: price fixing through shared algorithmic price setting

« on: October 17, 2022, 01:42:02 PM »

No, you really don't.

I'm going to go with you being too in love with your own cleverness to read properly but I may not have not have been sufficiently clear.