psi's recent activity
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Comment on If our worst fears about Donald Trump play out, how will we know when it's time to leave? in ~society
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Comment on Tracking who US President Donald Trump has named to serve in his cabinet and administration in ~society
psi Link Parent"Tulsi Gabbard’s Nomination Is a National-Security Risk." The Atlantic. I wouldn't go so far as to say she's a Russian asset, but she doesn't seem to mind behaving in a manner consistent with one....Gabbard’s shilling for Assad is a mystery, but she’s even more dedicated to carrying Putin’s water. Tom Rogan, a conservative writer and hardly a liberal handwringer, summed up her record succinctly in the Washington Examiner today:
She has blamed NATO and the U.S. for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (again, to the celebration of both Russian and Chinese state media), has repeated Russian propaganda claims that the U.S. has set up secret bioweapons labs in that country, and has argued that the U.S. not Russia is wholly responsible for Putin’s nuclear brinkmanship.
I wouldn't go so far as to say she's a Russian asset, but she doesn't seem to mind behaving in a manner consistent with one. Her views would be problematic for anyone trying to obtain a security clearance; for the director of national intelligence, they're obviously disqualifying.
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Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of November 11 in ~society
psi Link ParentIt's impossible to overemphasize how unqualified Gaetz would be for this role. By point of contrast, let's compare Gaetz's relevant legal experience with Garland's. Garland: [1977] served as a...- Exemplary
It's impossible to overemphasize how unqualified Gaetz would be for this role. By point of contrast, let's compare Gaetz's relevant legal experience with Garland's. Garland:
- [1977] served as a clerk at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,
- [1978] served as a clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court,
- [1979] served as a special assistant to the US Attorney General,
- [1980-89] practiced (and later became partner) at Arnold & Porter, one of the largest law firms in the world,
- [1985-86] lectured at Harvard Law School on antitrust law,
- [1989] served as assistant US attorney in DC,
- [1992-93] returned to Arnold & Portner,
- [1993] served as deputy assistant general of the Department of Justice's Criminal Division,
- [...] twenty more years of legal experience that I can't be assed to write [...],
- [2013 - 21] served as Chief Justice at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
On the other hand, here's the entirety of Gaetz's legal experience:
- [???? - ??] practiced at the law firm Keefe, Anchors & Gordon in Fort Walton Beach, a law firm so lacking in newsworthiness that it doesn't even warrant its own Wikipedia page.
That's it!
This is the first litmus test for Republicans: can they reject an unqualified candidate whom they nearly universally revile, or will they capitulate to Trump's every whim?
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Comment on 2024 United States election megathread in ~society
psi Link ParentWe won't learn, but here's a guess: if Republicans had won both chambers of Congress but lost the Presidency, they could've attempted to use the Electoral Count Reform Act to disqualify electoral...We won't learn, but here's a guess: if Republicans had won both chambers of Congress but lost the Presidency, they could've attempted to use the Electoral Count Reform Act to disqualify electoral votes by arguing that certain electors' votes (namely those representing the swing states they lost in this hypothetical) were not "regularly given" because of (imaginary) voter fraud.
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Comment on 2024 United States election megathread in ~society
psi Link ParentYeah, not surprising given the state of the Presidential race, but a disappointment nonetheless.Yeah, not surprising given the state of the Presidential race, but a disappointment nonetheless.
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Comment on 2024 United States election megathread in ~society
psi LinkUnfortunately, it appears that Republicans managed to flip the Senate.Unfortunately, it appears that Republicans managed to flip the Senate.
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Comment on US Election Distractions Thread in ~talk
psi (edited )Link ParentMore fun facts! The ampersand was once considered the 27th letter of the alphabet, which is how you get the word ampersand: when reciting the alphabet, the last letter would have been &, read "and...More fun facts! The ampersand was once considered the 27th letter of the alphabet, which is how you get the word ampersand: when reciting the alphabet, the last letter would have been &, read "and per se and".
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Comment on Washington Post cancellations hit 250,000 – 10% of subscribers in ~society
psi Link ParentSee @post_below's comment here (it might be hidden).See @post_below's comment here (it might be hidden).
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Comment on Washington Post cancellations hit 250,000 – 10% of subscribers in ~society
psi Link ParentThat's a rather uncharitable take. The larger issue is that the billionaire owner is interfering in the The Post's journalistic independence due to his own business entanglements with the US...That's a rather uncharitable take. The larger issue is that the billionaire owner is interfering in the The Post's journalistic independence due to his own business entanglements with the US government. In attempting to remove the appearance of bias, he ironically made the issue much worse. Readers must now ask themselves: would The Post be able to accurately report on misconduct by a future Trump administration, or would Bezos interfere if he thought Trump would retaliate by blocking AWS contracts, for example?
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Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of October 28 in ~news
psi Link ParentYeah, in a vacuum Presidential endorsements are pretty weird (as @V17 also mentioned). But the larger issue in my opinion is (1) the meddling and (2) the timing. If Bezos had demanded that The...Yeah, in a vacuum Presidential endorsements are pretty weird (as @V17 also mentioned). But the larger issue in my opinion is (1) the meddling and (2) the timing. If Bezos had demanded that The Post stop endorsing from 2028 onward, I would still think that inappropriate (I don't think Bezos should be making any newsrooms decisions) but at least you couldn't argue that his decision was to the benefit of a particular candidate.
However, by making the decision after the piece had been written, Bezos created an appearance of bias much more problematic than the partisan bias he attempted to restrain, which as you mentioned was probably a pointless endeavor anyway.
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Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of October 28 in ~news
psi (edited )Link ParentI'm not so sure. According to this article [1] about 3% of PA's electorate is undecided. As there were about 7 million votes cast for the Presidential election in 2020 [2], that puts us at roughly...I'm not so sure. According to this article [1] about 3% of PA's electorate is undecided. As there were about 7 million votes cast for the Presidential election in 2020 [2], that puts us at roughly 200 thousand undecided voters in PA. It is certainly conceivable that at least one of those voters would consider newpaper endorsements when making their choice; I would definitely not feel comfortable making an absolutist claim like Bezos did.
Now you might object that I'm just being pedantic -- I also doubt that The Washington Post's endorsement would have tipped the election. But I raise the point to emphasize how sloppy Bezos's logic is. He claims that his decision is more "principled" than The Post's prior position, but mostly he just expects us to take us at his word. He claims that Presidential endorsements are harmful to The Post's financials, but he provides no evidence for the claim. Bezos believes that partisanship is harmful to journalism, but then he barely grapples with the impact of his own meddling in the newsroom.
Insofar that there is evidence that The Post's partisan bias impacts its financials, the evidence points the other way -- hundreds of thousands of people have since unsubscribed because of Bezos's actions. Personally I don't mind if the Washington Post is a little biased; all media are a little biased. However, for journalism to be effective it must remain independent [3] -- and Bezos has single-handedly undermined that core tenet of journalism.
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Comment on Project 2025, and Why It’s Bad, a cartoon by Michael Goodwin and Dan Burr in ~society
psi Link ParentThis is how the Constitution reads, but the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1988 significantly curtails the Senate's authority here. From this summary: So a President can appoint a "temporary"...The article is right that personnel is important. But the Senate would have to approve cabinet members and high-level appointments. What would that be like? It depends on who controls the Senate.
This is how the Constitution reads, but the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1988 significantly curtails the Senate's authority here. From this summary:
The exact length of time an acting official can serve varies according to several factors that are both within and outside of the President’s control. The Vacancies Act normally provides for an initial period of 210 days in which an acting official can fill the role without the president having made a nomination for a permanent replacement. Vacancies that exist on inauguration day or occur within 60 days of it may be filled by an acting official for an additional 90 days beyond the usual 210 day period, starting from either inauguration day or the date of the vacancy, depending on which is later. On the day the President nominates a permanent replacement, a new timeline begins. The acting official may serve until such time as the nominee is confirmed or for 210 days from the date the nomination is withdrawn, returned, or rejected. If the President makes a second nomination, an acting official may again continue to serve until a permanent replacement is installed or 210 days from the date the nomination fails.
So a President can appoint a "temporary" officer for up to 2 years without Senate consent, possibly longer. The Wiki article also mentions a loophole allowing a temporary officer to serve permanently, so long as they aren't described as the "acting" officer after their term expires.
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Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of October 28 in ~news
psi (edited )Link ParentFrom Jeff Bezos: In a single paragraph, Bezos managed to say that he was right twice (without evidence) while simultaneously making an absolutist claim about what Pennsylvanians think. Personally...From Jeff Bezos:
Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one. Eugene Meyer, publisher of The Washington Post from 1933 to 1946, thought the same, and he was right. By itself, declining to endorse presidential candidates is not enough to move us very far up the trust scale, but it’s a meaningful step in the right direction. I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.
In a single paragraph, Bezos managed to say that he was right twice (without evidence) while simultaneously making an absolutist claim about what Pennsylvanians think. Personally I found the rest of the piece equally uncompelling, with him offering more of a vibes-based argument than any sort factual analysis. (The closest we get is "[unlike today] in the 1990s we achieved 80 percent household penetration in the D.C. metro area" and implying the reason is because the news is too partisan. Besides the fact that this is obviously not the reason -- the decline of journalism correlates strongly with the rise of free alternatives on the internet -- Bezos certainly knows better, from which we can only conclude that he is being dishonest. )
I'm reminded of this article from The Atlantic back in August, which dealt with Musk's interview of Trump but could be said about billionaires more generally:
And yet, Musk might have been telling the truth about the conversation in some way. It did offer a glimpse into something real and illuminating: In eschewing the adversarial interview, Musk and Trump may have recreated the kind of behind-closed-doors conversation that is all too common among certain types of billionaires and other elites. What is remarkable about these conversations isn’t the subject matter itself, but how vapid, predictable, and sycophantic the back and forth becomes.
[...] Every few minutes, one of the men paused to compliment the other. “Congratulations. This is great. You're an interesting character[.]” [...] As the evening progressed, both parties repeatedly mentioned how important their conversation was. [...]
[...]
Both the Musk texts [from his Twitter lawsuit] and Monday’s Trump conversation operate in the same detached, self-congratulatory sphere. They feature the ramblings of men who are insulated and detached from the realities of many average citizens. They’re radicalized and captured by their own audiences. In Musk’s texts, you can see powerful people—venture capitalists, corporate board members, media executives—fawning over the billionaire in order to curry favor; in Monday’s conversation, the dynamic was reversed, with Musk playing the yes man and, at one point, angling for a role in a hypothetical Trump administration to help rein in federal spending.In both circumstances, we were given a front-row seat to see the way power cozies up to power. The true revelation here isn’t that these men are especially conniving or even cunning: It’s that they are boring and more likely to regurgitate Fox News talking points than offer genuine insight.
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Comment on The Electoral College is bad in ~society
psi Link ParentTo be honest, I don't understand the point you're trying to make. I think my point is clear enough: if the Electoral College is meant to protect us against populism and tyrannical forces (i.e. act...I never claimed our current Electoral College system is a deliberative and contemplative body. In fact, I don't believe it is. I'm going to assume that you misread what I wrote and that it was not intentional.
To be honest, I don't understand the point you're trying to make. I think my point is clear enough: if the Electoral College is meant to protect us against populism and tyrannical forces (i.e. act as "a deliberative body"), then it has clearly failed; instead it appears to aggravate these forces by allowing a bare minority to impose their unpopular, undemocratic mandate on others.
You seem to be defending the Electoral College based on some idealization of it rather than how it actually functions. Maybe I've misunderstood you, but it seems to me that your argument boils down to: We are a democratic republic; therefore the Electoral College is good. But this strikes me as a non-sequitur. How does the Electoral College provide better outcomes than direct democracy for Presidential elections? If we already elect members of Congress by popular vote, why should we not elect the President that way, too? What republican duty does the Electoral College actually serve?
So let me recenter the conversation by returning to your original post.
Forming a deliberative body of experts to elect the best candidate in line with the will of the general populace
As we have both acknowledged, the Electoral College does not do this.
Slower and less reactive systems are generally a good balance for governments and while not optimal are arguable better than more reactive systems. A properly administered electoral college could add deliberateness and contemplativeness to elections
Again, the Electoral College does not do this.
Giving smaller states a larger voice in the governing of the country as a whole (often derided but I find this is often a misunderstanding of what a federal system is and why it's a good thing)
I agree that the Electoral College serves this purpose.
I wish that we could walk back the party ticket system, there is rational as to why the runner up to the election should be the presiding officer of the senate and have the tie-breaking vote
I don't agree, but this point is irrelevant with respect to the Electoral College.
The electoral college has been confirmed to have overrode the popular vote only four times in the existence of the US and all of them are attributable to the winner-takes-all systems in place, again the problem does not lie directly with the electoral college
This appears to undermine your own argument: if the popular vote is the benchmark, then we should consider some of those incidents in which the results diverged, for example the 2016 election which gave the Presidency to Trump. How did the Electoral College yield a better result than the popular vote in this particular case?
I agree that winner-takes-all is an issue, but from my perspective the Electoral College exacerbates it.
Decisive political environments are exactly the times when direct elections are more dangerous and not as desirable
Hard disagree. Divisive political environments are exactly when you want power to be diffuse, not concentrated in the hands of a few people; that's how democracies becomes dictatorships, as evidenced throughout history from Caesar to Hitler to Putin.
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Comment on The Electoral College is bad in ~society
psi Link ParentAmerica is also referred to as the "American experiment", as it was the first modern attempt at a democracy. We shouldn't treat everything that the founders did as sacrosanct; otherwise there...I think that's a hard position for me to accept as the entire United States government was created on the basis explicitly not to be democratic. It's a cliche at this point but...the United States is an elected representational republic, not a democracy and this system was explicitly chosen as another link in the checks and balances system.
America is also referred to as the "American experiment", as it was the first modern attempt at a democracy. We shouldn't treat everything that the founders did as sacrosanct; otherwise there wouldn't be 16 Amendments to the Constitution beyond the Bill of Rights. Indeed, a few of those Constitutional Amendments exactly undermine your contention that the United States is better off as a republic: the 17th Amendment ensured that Senators are elected by popular vote; the 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th Amendments expanded the right to vote beyond the white, wealthy, and landed gentry, who at the country's founding considered themselves the "deliberative and contemplative" electorate, to borrow your words. With respect to the electoral college, in the majority of states it is required that electors vote for the candidate for whom they pledged to vote [1]. So with respect to your claim that the electorate college
Form[s] a deliberative body of experts to elect the best candidate in line with the will of the general populace
that is explicitly not how the electorate college works. If the electoral college were to elect a candidate other than the one they'd been selected to elect, a Constitutional crisis would surely follow.
Can you please give me some examples of positive action i.e. the government forcing people through law where a majority wasn't present?
Sure, 1825-29, 1977-81, 1889-93, 2001-05, and 2017-21 -- the five Presidencies in American history where the majority of the population voted for someone other than the President-elect, and yet that person still took the Presidency. We could also include every election prior to 1971, that is, before the 26th Amendment was ratified and every American adult was given the right to vote.
And this is before considering how Senate Republicans have disproportionate representation in the government despite representing a significantly smaller portion of the population (in the 2022 election, 36% less [1]), as well as how that disproportionality propagates to a disproportionality in the composition of the federal judiciary.
Please explain this, I don't understand how anyone is currently "exploiting" the electoral college system.
In your words, the electoral college is a "deliberative" and "contemplative" body meant to protect us. Yet the electoral college does not contemplate; it merely votes as it is pledged, with a few exceptions that have had no bearing on the eventual outcome. Nevertheless, the electoral college has in the past 2 out of 6 elections allowed a minority voice to ascend to the highest office in the United States, and in 2016 elected the least qualified candidate in American history. That is the exploitation I am referring to -- a body meant to prevent populism and tyranny has done nothing to prevent that but instead made it easier for a populist authoritarian sympathizer to seize power.
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Comment on The Electoral College is bad in ~society
psi Link ParentBut weakening democracy risks creating a tyranny of the minority, a.k.a. plain 'ol tyranny. Ultimately I find safeguarding our democracy against populism by making it less democratic to be a...But weakening democracy risks creating a tyranny of the minority, a.k.a. plain 'ol tyranny. Ultimately I find safeguarding our democracy against populism by making it less democratic to be a losing proposition, as that allows populist policies to be implemented without even having a bare majority.
At any rate, consider me dubious that the electoral college will save us from populism or tyranny when it is currently being exploited by the populist tyrant-aspirant.
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Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of October 14 in ~news
psi Link ParentYou can't win an election with only "a couple of cities". Using this BBC article as an estimate [1], the seven swing states set to decide the US election amount to approximately 55.5 million...You can't win an election with only "a couple of cities". Using this BBC article as an estimate [1], the seven swing states set to decide the US election amount to approximately 55.5 million people. On the other hand, in order to get to 55.5 million city dwellers, you'd have to add about the first ~100 or so most populous cities in the US [2]. But at that point you're arguing that swing states are good because the alternative is that Huntsville (population 225K) would play an outsized role as a voting bloc, which I frankly do not find convincing.
The current system means that the majority of citizens have essentially no voting power in Presidential elections since the outcome in their state is nearly preordained. How is that better?
[1] "Seven swing states set to decide the 2024 US election." BBC.
[2] "List of United States cities by population". Wikipedia.
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Comment on West’s spy chiefs alarmed at recklessness of Russian counterparts in ~society
psi (edited )Link ParentI don't think you want to normalize political assassinations, especially when you're talking about actors like Putin. Currently Putin's interest in self-preservation prevents him from recklessly...I'd like to see the West reply in kind. The Russian government are by no means the only ones who can play at arson, bombings and assassinations
I don't think you want to normalize political assassinations, especially when you're talking about actors like Putin. Currently Putin's interest in self-preservation prevents him from recklessly lobbing nukes around; certainly he won't restrain himself when he feels that there are credible threats to his life.
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Comment on Look at this photo of Ursula von der Leyen’s new team – and tell me the EU doesn’t have a diversity problem in ~society
psi Link ParentFrom the article:From the article:
The parliament, whose record on representing racial minorities has always been dismal, now counts only 20 MEPs of colour, equivalent to 2.8% of the overall total of 720 newly elected MEPs. That is down from 3.8% last time around – and when you consider the fact that people of colour make up at least 10% of EU citizens, it makes a mockery of the EU parliament’s claim to be the voice of European citizens.
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Comment on Why is the speed of light so fast? in ~science
psi (edited )Link ParentYour first explanation for c seems fine to me, but I find the second explanation for the rest mass a little less convincing. (For instance, why should an object's electromagnetic properties be so...Your first explanation for
cseems fine to me, but I find the second explanation for the rest mass a little less convincing. (For instance, why should an object's electromagnetic properties be so important when the bulk of its energy comes from the strong force? In fact, why should it depend on the electromagnetic force at all? Special relativity stills holds in a universe without it.) I don't want to just knock you down though, so let me flesh out your explanation out a bit.In special relativity, the only inherent property of a particle is its mass
mand the only fundamental constant is the speed of lightc1. A particle's innate (rest) energy must therefore be be some function of its mass, the speed of light, the particle's position, and arbitrary derivatives of combinations of those quantities (e.g velocity, derivative of momentum, etc.).However, we are interested in a particle's innate energy, i.e. the portion of its energy that remains constant as we move the particle around. We consequently require its dependence on position, velocity, higher derivatives, and mixed partial derivatives of position be zero. If we further assume that the particle's rest mass doesn't change -- that is, that mass is some inherent property of the particle and not something emergent -- then derivatives of mass must also vanish.
This leaves only two options for a particle's innate energy:
0orA mc^2(i.e the only combination ofmandcwith the correct units, withAsome generic multiplicative constant). As it so happens, both options are realized in nature. Photons have rest energyE_0 = 0, while massive particles have rest energyE_0 = mc^2(the fact thatA=1basically comes down to a combination of convention and happy coincidence). 2
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As an aside, let me also address why
chas the valuec_EM = 1 / sqrt(ε_0 μ_0). As I previously mentioned, thecin relativity has nothing to do with electromagnetism a priori. However, give that (1) photons are massless particles and must have speedv_photon = cand (2) photons propagate atc_EMper Maxwell's equations, we see thatc = v_photon = c_EM. -
Indeed, massive particles necessarily have non-zero rest energy. To be technical for a minute, the Lorentz group splits into two subgroups, one of which describes massive/time-like particles and the other of which describes massless/light-like particles. Whether an element belongs to one subgroup or the other is equivalent to asking (1) whether a particle is massive or massless which is equivalent to asking (2) whether the particle moves at
v=corv<cwhich is equivalent to asking (3) whether its rest mass vanishes or not.
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That disability assessment works in both directions (emigration and immigration). New Zealand, for example, will reject visas for individuals not deemed sufficiently healthy.