I think this is sort of missing the point: I’m happy to trade a bit of attention here and there for services because I’m just going to go without a lot of things if I have to pay real money for them. If we go to a model where every site charges for usage, I will start using fewer services regularly and will use each service for more things which seems a bit counterproductive in terms of monopolies.
That's what you don't get. You aren't just watching ads. You are giving them data about you, a lot of data. That data is used to heavily manipulate you. This isn't like the old days of broadcast TV where ads air and you aren't directly tracked. If you ever find a product that is free, it isn't. You are the product that is being sold.
The data is not just used to manipulate you, but everyone like you. Also you are giving away data from everyone that contacts you. You are non consensually making that decision for everyone in your inbox (and, I suspect, many others too).
if you think a bit harder, you shouldn't be. the data on you isn't just used to manipulate your choices on the market, it also ends up being used to manipulate your choices as a citizen -- politically, socially. You might think you're above such psychological tactics (and perhaps you are, but many many people are not, and whether you believe the democrats accusations of electoral fraud in 2016 or the many accusations on both sides since, there is absolutely no doubt that the corporatization of the internet has played a giant part in the most repugnant aspects of american and world politics since 2016)
Democrats didn't say there was election fraud in 2016. It was that the Russian government had workers on social media posing as Americans supporting Trump's campaign, and that they also got access to thousands of DNC emails due to a spearphishing campaign targeting DNC employees.
What they are probably referring to is that the Clinton Campaign in one of the Rust belt states asked for a recount as "claiming election fraud." The votes were close and within the margin for the campaign to ask. They asked, it got recounted and Trump ended up with slightly more votes after the recount. Then that was it. You know, what normally happens. The Clinton Campaign did not send someone to go do a press conference outside of the Four Seasons landscaping to repeat over and over claims that were repeatingly found false in courts.
You’re not actually paying with attention—attention isn’t money. Google’s customers are paying for your attention and you are paying for more expensive products. All of the money in Google’s pockets comes from their customers and we all end up eating that cost as participants in the global market sooner or later.
This is a reductive view of the economy: one pays for something whenever one trades something of value to one’s counterparty to something that’s of value to oneself. In many cases, in fact, it’s preferable to do this sort of “bartering” to reduce the expenditure of money you might need for other things.
Finally, I have, in fact, benefitted personally from products that were advertised to me on the basis of user tracking data so a bit ambivalent about the anti-tracking argument.
Well, in the idea of the system there is: The system is built around the assumption that Congress would impeach a president who fails to to the right™ thing (or fails to make his administration do ...)
However once the legislative branch surrenders oversight over executive there isn't much left keeping the system in balance. Even if judicial branch would call a measure unconstitutional, who'd execute that ruling?
The system is built around the assumption that a notable part of the system wants to keep it alive.
I think it’s pretty reasonable that it might take more than 2 days to review all CDC datasets for whether they “inculcate or promote gender ideology”. If the administration wanted to avoid interruptions in access they should have provided a longer timeline.
I think they should have been more specific with their wording of the order. It does not specifically say studies or datasets, but it doesn't make it clear that they should be excluded. The actual order:
- Take down all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts, etc.) that inculcate or promote gender ideology.
- Withdraw any final or pending documents, directives, orders, regulations,
materials, forms, communications, statements, and plans that inculcate or promote gender ideology.
The order itself is poorly written, and was clearly drafted by someone who understands neither government process or the confusing reality of biological sex. For example, it seems not to acknowledge the factual biological reality of intersex people at all.
Worse, It provides no clear definitions, funding, or means to enforce compliance. Just an unreasonable and vague demand, especially when applied to the work of scientists.
It belies a middle school level understanding of the world we live in, and it's ridiculous demands should be met with only scorn and derision. This is not how functional grown ups behave, it's how angry children who believe that all complex problems have simple answers behave.
We love MuckRock! And we made the original FOIA request to the VA for this dataset via MuckRock’s platform. You can see the actual screenshot in the “Reclaiming These Records” legal papers section. They also get a shoutout in our colophon for indirectly inspiring the FOIA-by-fax-via-web method, although I believe their site uses e-mail, including interfacing with agency FOIA portals when possible.
> Traditional taxi services haven’t needed this feature, why does Lyft?
Oh, but traditional taxis did have this feature. If your skin was the wrong color or you wanted the taxi to go to the wrong part of town, you were out of luck. This was one of the reasons why so many people liked ridesharing over taxis.
And now we have "Discrimination as a Service" announced in a press release.
Thus, we come back to the start of the full circle.
The Supreme Court has said it isn’t unconstitutional as a general matter, so a lower court’s ruling won’t force that to change. And because the practice is a holdover from English law and isn’t understood (as a historical matter) to be something the constitution was meant to alter, there isn’t much basis for thinking the Supreme Court would reverse its earlier decisions.
This seems like a strong candidate for a Constitutional amendment. Twelve amendments were ratified in the 20th century—about once a decade since the end of the Civil War. However, if you exclude the 27th Amendment[1], we haven't ratified an amendment in 53 years. My favorite type of amendment is one that extends rights to people, and in this case, also to their property.
[1] The 27th Amendment took a different path compared to the other 16 amendments ratified since the Bill of Rights. It was originally proposed as part of the first 12 amendments but took 202 years to be ratified. This was largely due to the efforts of a University of Texas student in the 1980s, who, motivated by a C grade on a paper, embarked on a mission to see it finally adopted.
How do they align that reasoning with the 4th? Particularly the conservative wing of the bench, as they seem most likely to be literalists (when it suits, at least).
Reason has a good analysis. This recent case was about preliminary hearings in civil asset forfeiture cases in which it was ruled 6-3 that preliminary hearings weren’t required in such cases, but if you read into Gorsuch’s concurring opinion, it looks a lot like he believes civil asset forfeiture is over applied and shouldn’t be used outside of exigent circumstances like those covered under admiralty, customs and revenue law where a ship might leave American jurisdiction before a proper hearing could be held on the asset.
So… with the right case brought before them, the current SCOTUS bench might be ready to gut civil asset forfeiture like a trout.
I don;t think they are trying very hard. They make the claim that the property is involved in a crime (not the owner) and the property does not have rights.
The conservatives tend to be literalists when interpreting statutes and regulations. There are judicial philosophy reasons for that, but also, statutes and regulations can be changed in response to court rulings. That said, the conservatives tend to be literalists from the perspective of the legislature or regulator at the time the law was enacted, though all the justices (conservative and liberal) recognize that it’s a fiction to say Congress has a single point of view.
When it comes to interpreting the constitution, conservatives likewise tend to be focused on the point of view at enactment. But it’s even more of a fiction to say that the states had a single point of view, and in any case, the text of the constitution often isn’t precise in the way contemporary statutes are. So the conservatives are guided more strongly by the historical evidence about what the sovereign states would have “understood” themselves to be giving up, in replacing the Articles of Confederation with a central federal government.
Given that, they interpret the Fourth Amendment by reference to the historical evidence of what phenomena it was responding to. And as a historical matter, the aim of the amendment was to require warrants, not to narrow the scope of what could be searched or seized. So where there’s probable cause that a crime has been committed, a warrant may issue, and it can be directed at the property that “committed” the crime, since that was a known practice in English law at the time.
> That said, the conservatives tend to be literalists from the perspective of the legislature or regulator at the time the law was enacted
I find it ironic that they view the Constitution as "at the time the law was enacted" and continue to rule on literalism that way, even though those same people explicitly specified that laws and the Constitution should be reviewed, revised, and otherwise be interpreted as appropriate for that time, not the time of writing.
There's never really an explanation as to why "we have to treat these things like infallible perfect works" when they're not, and even their authors told us they're not.
> There's never really an explanation as to why "we have to treat these things like infallible perfect works" when they're not, and even their authors told us they're not.
They are not, though. The constitution can be changed and has been changed many times in the past. I assume they think (or justify their decisions by saying that at least) that it’s not their job to pass legislation or enact constitutional amendments without any input from the states/congress which seems like a reasonable viewpoint.
> "we have to treat these things like infallible perfect works"
They don't treat the law as perfect, they just believe they don't have the leeway to reinterpret the law as they want in contradiction of the text. The law doesn't work if justices can read between the lines to get what they want.
> would you argue that the definition of a "well-regulated militia" has changed in the last 240 years
That's a good question. And the answer is yes.
At the time it was written, that phrase would roughly mean well-organized, well-armed, well-disciplined. Not regulated in the way we use the term today, to refer to something governed by regulations.
the whole point of the people bearing arms, is to enable the people to regulate the activities of a militia directed by a tyrant, example being rebellion against the occupying redcoats, the commision of the war of independance, and succesion of the republic.
The prefatory clause of the 2nd amendment does not require a well-regulated militia to be in existence in order for the right to be protected, it expresses the motivation and then declares the right uninfringeable:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Maybe you'd be happier if it said:
"The right of the people to keep and bear Arms while they are members of a well-regulated militia shall not be infringed."
I am sympathetic to both sides of the jurispredential pragmatism/literalism question, but don't get your eggs twisted about what the 2nd amendment says, as only the most alien of consciousnesses could find ambiguity in its terse declaration.
> That said, the conservatives tend to be literalists from the perspective of the legislature or regulator at the time the law was enacted
There’s absolutely no objective basis for this statement whatsoever.
The Supreme Court is a political body and always has been. The current rhetorical fiction that it’s some other thing is really a relic of the post-war era that became cemented because it has been a helpful fiction for both sides at various points.
The sooner we retire the nonsense idea that the court is doing anything other than make politically calculated decisions the better off we will all be.
Supreme Court justices make decisions the same way every other political actor in our system does. Because they want to, because they can get away with it, and because their constituencies and supporters demand and incentivize it.
I spent hundreds of hours hanging out in forfeiture court, it's wild. The court I was in eventually got a new judge and she took the two DAs aside and said to them "This bullshit you have going here, the 90% of cases you win because people don't even know how to fill out the paperwork. That ends today. That will not fly in my courtroom."
I remember that same day a dad came in. The State had his new $60K SUV they were trying to sell. His son had swiped the keys, taken it, got caught drunk-driving. The DAs were like "well, tough shit, it's the law" and that judge said "Did this man know his son took the car? Does he have valid insurance? Give this man his damned car back. And I want you to pay all his towing and storage fees too." "His towing fee too?" "Yes" "We don't even know how to refund that, the city has that money." "Well, you have an hour to find out. See you in an hour." LOL
If you are ever caught up in a civil forfeiture, make sure to stay on top of the paperwork. Most people lose their stuff by not doing the very simple paperwork. If you get to the first court hearing the State often gives up if it's not much value.
I wonder if judicial solutions can ever be adequate as police can simply say that an investigation is ongoing for years. And determining whether ongoing possession of seized property is legitimate involves disclosing investigation details.
How is that different than, say, indefinite detention? It’s obviously not implemented perfectly, but habeas corpus is uncontroversial at least in principle. I don’t see anything mechanistically unique about property seizure that would make this tricky to solve.
The most famous example of this kind of use of eminent domain was the Kelo case which went to the Supreme Court. By 5-4 the court rules it was permissible to use eminent domain to get the land to build a campus for Pfizer. (The majority was Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer.)
As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote “The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.”
After all of this, the land didn't get built into a corporate campus:
>...For nearly 20 years since the ruling, the entire Fort Trumbull neighborhood remained a vacant lot after being bulldozed by the city; a neighborhood once teeming with families who resided there for generations was home only to weeds and feral cats. The economic development the city promised the U.S. Supreme Court would materialize—if only the government could get its hands on the land—never materialized, even after spending more than $80 million in taxpayer money.
There was a proposal back in the discussion of extending copyright to be "forever minus one day" by the maximalist camp which included Sonny Bono, so there are hacks around "indefinitely".
Hmm, does my money have the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed?
None of their services are free. You just pay for them in other ways, even if you don’t realize it.