Hard to take a law podcast seriously when it openly broadcasts a political agenda. The image with Trump with a partisan caption, all the partisan logo T's in the merch shop ("abortion is healthcare", "leave trans kids alone you absolute freaks", etc.). The one linked here and SCOTUSBlog seem much better.
Having a viewpoint isn't a sin. The SCOTUS justices are allowed to rule on cases from a political viewpoint - even if it's euphemistically called a judicial philosophy - so why hold podcasters to a higher standard? At least they're upfront about it and you know what you're in for. That's what people say they like about the president elect.
Just sounds pro-democracy and pro-ethics, of that's an "agenda" then it's a good one. What you've described increases my desire to watch it, not decrease.
Openly calling people "freaks" is not exactly indicative that you can expect that person to be impartial and accurate in their reporting of the facts. Moreover, calling abortion "healthcare" is disingenuous at best. Everyone knows damn well why people oppose abortion, and trying to euphemistically refer to it as healthcare is willfully ignoring the dispute.
I like knowing someone's bias. It makes it easier to understand their viewpoint whether I agree with it or not. It's the people that claim to be unbiased that worry me the most. While not always true, I suspect them of lying or lacking self-awareness.
The two hosts are center-right, but I think their takes are largely pretty fair. Note: Sarah Isgur worked in the Trump Justice Department but is hardly a fan of Trump… again, I find her pretty fair minded).
It's good to get an uneditorialized view so you can know what's going on without wasting your breath making the same complaints over and over.
But that doesn't mean the complaints are wrong. SCOTUS is an insane, dysfunctional institution.
The premise of judicial review is that if you have ideologically-aligned justices, then any petitioner who disagrees with Congress or the executive can file a lawsuit, hit the appeal button twice, and get SCOTUS to undo the law. The amount of law that is supposedly derived from the (tangentially related) terse sentences of the constitution is immense and, imo, completely unjustifiable.
The court's ability to strike down 100-year-old laws (whether acts of Congress or their own previous decisions), and their ability to effect these changes at times when the legislature is in a more or less favorable position to react, is destabilizing.
Even if this isn't convincing, just look at the farce that is lifetime appointments. Large swaths of our ways of living are dependent on the health, age, and egos of these people. We have had manifestly unfit justices cling on to the bench in hopes that they can retire under a friendly president. We can do better.
It's partisan. It's no coincidence that the side disagreeing with all the EFFECTS of the decisions (not necessarily even the legal interpretations - those tend not to get addressed) is the one calling it corrupt.
- There is a partisan component when democrats criticize the effect of cases like Dobbs, Janus, and Trump v. USA. This definitely exists.
- There is definitely a legal interpretation component. I heard some good analysis on legal interpretation on NPR around the Chevron deference when Loper v. Raimondo happened. They had on law professors, federal lawyers, and even one of the lawyers who argued the original Chevron case. There was a lot of content educating people on the history of Chevron deference, what it means, and what the new ruling might mean for regulators in the future. I've also seen a lot of discussion poking holes in the unitary executive theory (on the left) and justifying it (on the right). You sometimes have to dig to find this - long discussions on legal theory don't exactly make for compelling media.
- Finally, there is a "corruption on the SCOTUS" component. I would argue that the timing here is partisan, but the material is not. The conflicts of interest documented are factual, and the calls to adopt a code of ethics should have been a nonpartisan issue. Personally, I believe that the GOP learned the wrong lesson from the Nixon impeachment and Bork nomination and has adopted a more doveish stance on balancing political power versus corruption within their party, and the partisan lean of the SCOTUS scandals is a consequence of this.
I'll be upset with liberal justices, too, if evidence turns up that any of them are being bribed on a grand scale by billionaires.
That this is regarded as partisan by anyone is why we're screwed. The revelations about Thomas should have had all of Washington after his head. Nope, it's "partisan" so zero action taken and normal people are even confused enough about it that here we are, having this exchange. If that doesn't scare you, it should.
Plenty of evidence has turned up already? This is just a small smattering of the potential bribes the liberals justices took.
> Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg disclosed taking more trips than any other justice in 2018, totaling 14. She visited Tel Aviv, Israel where she was awarded a lifetime achievement award by the Genesis Prize Foundation. Shortly following the award ceremony, she disclosed being provided transportation, food and lodging as a tourist and guest of billionaire Israeli businessman Morris Kahn. Companies spawned by Kahn have had had business before the Supreme Court before. The high court handed Amdocs Limited a win in November 2017 when it declined to take up a patent-related case.
> Justice Stephen Breyer disclosed a dozen trips, three of which were supported by the wealthy Chicago-based Pritzker family. Breyer took two trips related to his position on the Pritzker Prize for Architecture jury, which honors architects each year. Breyer has served on the Pritzker jury since 2011 and became chair in 2018. He also disclosed taking a one-week trip to Ireland and Spain as part of the “Pritzker Fly-Around Program,” which paid for his transportation, lodging and meals. Breyer has taken 219 reimbursed trips since 2004, more than any other sitting justice.
The Republican members weren't disclosing anything, including on their required reporting, until they got caught, years after the fact. There's also tons of just super corrupt stuff, like Harlan Crow buying Clarence Thomas's mothers home for him for above market rate, and letting her continue to live there literally rent free.
Ask yourself this: why are you only hearing about this 13 years later? This wasn't a big deal when the allegedly problematic ruling on the hedge fund came down, only when the ruling on Roe v. Wade did.
I won't comment on the factual accuracy of the claims in the article. I haven't investigated them thoroughly, so I don't have an informed opinion on them. But if you want a rebuttal, maybe read the response from Alito linked to in the article? https://www.wsj.com/articles/propublica-misleads-its-readers...
Because "Alito did not report the 2008 fishing trip on his annual financial disclosures." It was extremely difficult for anyone to find out about this.
Parts of Alito's response are extremely difficult to believe.
> Until a few months ago, the instructions for completing a Financial Disclosure Report told judges that “[p]ersonal hospitality need not be reported,”
Alito intentionally cuts out the rest of this sentence. The law says "except that any food, lodging, or entertainment received as personal hospitality of an individual need not be reported". Obviously a private jet flight does not qualify as any of these categories. Why did he ignore that part of the law?
> My recollection is that I have spoken to Mr. Singer on no more than a handful of occasions, all of which (with the exception of small talk during a fishing trip 15 years ago) consisted of brief and casual comments at events attended by large groups.
On a multi-day fishing trip with a very small group, where you were personally hosted by Paul Singer, you only made small talk? You flew on his private jet, and were photographed multiple times posing with him in front of a tiny boat or plane that only held a handful of people, so you must have spent many hours with him and only a couple other people. It is completely unbelievable that anybody in this situation with a sitting supreme court justice would only make small talk.
Why did he invite you, if he didn't care about your position as a justice and you barely knew each other?
> when I was invited shortly before the event
Who invited you?
> Had I taken commercial flights, that would have imposed a substantial cost and inconvenience on the deputy U.S. Marshals who would have been required for security reasons to assist me.
Alito does not address the third option of not going. What was this event and why was it important he attend? He doesn't say.
This calls to mind complaints from a few years ago about fact-checking as "damaging to the reputation" of the person whose claims were fact-checked and identified as false.
One's reputation is damaged when they choose to tell a lie, not when someone else points it out.
Similarly, when someone accepts a bribe, they have damaged their integrity. That damage was not done by the person who exposes the bribe, but by the person who chose to accept the bribe.
Put another way: unethical behavior is unethical regardless of whether one gets caught while engaging in it.
Is your assertion that no reporters disliked Alito enough—and/or, that none were career-advancement-motivated enough—to bother reporting on this in 2008, and that's why it was only reported recently?
It seems to me the more likely explanation is that nobody who might be inclined to report on it, knew about it then.
Maybe. But even if that's true, then why did the people "inclined to report on it" only find out about it right after Dobbs?
You could say it was just coincidence, but this isn't the only story making accusations against conservative justices that came out right after the Dobbs decision. I'd say its far more likely the result of opposition research. Which doesn't necessarily mean its not true, just that you should take it with a few extra grains of salt.
No, of actual corrupt behavior. Plenty of us would get fired from our jobs for less. Much of what’s happened would get lower justices disciplined, because there are ethics rules with teeth for them.
Do you read Alito’s rebuttal you linked as an actual rebuttal of the events? It reads as a “yeah, sure, but it’s fine, trust me” to me.
>> Plenty of us would get fired from our jobs for less.
No we wouldn’t. The contention that “plenty of us” would be fired for going on a fishing trip is farcical on its face and even more laughable when you consider how much is given away in the private sector for “business development” or “marketing” reasons.
We get it. You don’t like the conservative justices. There’s no reason to start making ridiculous statements that make you look like an ideological chicken little. While you’re all over this thread hating on Alito and Thomas, I don’t see you saying much about Kagan and Breyer. Why is that?
> No we wouldn’t. The contention that “plenty of us” would be fired for going on a fishing trip is farcical on its face
If someone did business with our company and I was in any way connected with decisions regarding that, and it turned out they’d spent tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars on gifts for me, yeah, I would, even if there was no straight line between the gifts and them later getting what they want, and even if I said I didn’t know, because I should have known. And there are industries with far more scrutiny and stricter rules than the one I’m in. Millions of employees are in the same boat.
These aren’t branded bic pens or a box of doughnuts. C’mon. What’s farcical is pretending this isn’t naked corruption that would get smacked down despite any protestations of “lol it’s fine, trust me” or “oh sorry I didn’t know” from the perpetrators in any other context.
> While you’re all over this thread hating on Alito and Thomas, I don’t see you saying much about Kagan and Breyer. Why is that?
Because the topic has been Alito, and because the known gifts the two you name have received in the last 20 years are under $20,000 combined while Alito’s alone is 10x their combined total(!) and Thomas has received gifts amounting to at least $4m(!!!) in the same time frame. There are two outliers and they both happen to be Republicans, who also have both failed to report really large gifts, not just “whoops I forgot about that $50 lunch”
Let’s absolutely audit the shit out of all of them, I’m entirely on board. Let’s get an investigation right up in these too-powerful-to-touch folks’ finances and see what we find for all of them. Definitely would love to see that. Several of the sub-six-figure gift totals seem too high, too. Drag them all before Congress, subpoena their bank records, by all means, and to all of them, sure.
But what we know now is that two are exceptionally-bad even by lax Supreme Court standards. Maybe more are, too, and I’d say what we know already is enough that they should all have their lives turned upside down to see how far this goes.
>> If someone did business with our company and I was in any way connected with decisions regarding that, and it turned out they’d spent tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars on gifts for me, yeah, I would, even if there was no straight line between the gifts and them later getting what they want, and even if I said I didn’t know, because I should have known. And there are industries with far more scrutiny and stricter rules than the one I’m in. Millions of employees are in the same boat.
Nahhh.
>> Because the topic has been Alito
You elsewhere in this comment section: “I'll be upset with liberal justices, too, if evidence turns up that any of them are being bribed on a grand scale by billionaires.”
Y—yes, though? I’m dead certain I’d be out the door over that. It’s a pretty common set of policies and that wouldn’t be considered a grey area, or even in sight of a grey area. I’d need serious company-politics pull to have any hope. Have you worked for large companies? Small ones may not emphasize this as much (the ones I’ve been at didn’t)
> You elsewhere in this comment section: “I'll be upset with liberal justices, too, if evidence turns up that any of them are being bribed on a grand scale by billionaires.”
Yes. Got something you want to bring up? Not sure if the relevance of your quoting me there to any of the rest of this, but if you’re trying to broach that topic, absolutely, show me the reporting.
> Your partisanship is showing.
I’m beginning to think this isn’t exactly a good faith discussion, though.
Yeah SCOTUSBlog is great. NYT reporting on lower profile cases is often really great too. For higher profile cases I agree coverage is dominated by partisan concerns and discussing the outcomes rather than the law.
> I wish there was some kind of vendor-neutral import/export format rather than requiring a third party to solve the whole matrix of integrations.
"vendor-neutral import/export format" sounds like the definition of third party. It's not that there shouldn't be a third party, it's that spotify etc. should adopt it.
It's a style thing. Fantasy writing often does this deliberately.
I've thought about this before when I revisited fantasy after years of being in the CS domain which helped me abhor ornate writing. I definitely think there is such thing as TOO ornate but dead-simple language also feels bad. It feels wrong to just say its an exception with fantasy - simplicity is good because it conveys the same thing more clearly and with less effort. I would think that transcends all domains. Still not sure how I feel about this. I guess there is a baseline non-styled language that is all about communicating raw info and then there is style that can be applied to writing which makes it feel more natural in different domains.
Having said all this, I actually do like your example more.
From a writing perspective, I think much of it is about “weighting”. If you make every line ornate and full of adjectives, then nothing stands out.
Therefore for not-so-important details like “the knight woke up” that are just about giving the reader necessary info to follow along, it’s generally better to put less weight and emphasis by stating it plainly. This way when you do add emphasis to make the reader visualize a crucial scene or situation, or describe emotional states at these moments etc, they will jump out as being special rather than just more of the same.
In my experience, every great writer follows this pattern, though they begin at different baselines. It’s fundamental to good writing, just like creating attention hierarchy is fundamental to good graphic design.
That's a good example. I agree the imagery is strong with the Tolkien example. It also struck me as how you might say it if you are verbally telling the story. The "among the trees nearby" interlude and the successive exclamations at the end.
Exactly. Even though I understand every word of this quote
> The reverberations of the trumpet stirred the knights from their deep repose, igniting a tumultuous awakening. With swords unsheathed and hearts ablaze, they clashed in a thunderous symphony of war, each seeking to claim dominance over the waking realm.
there's a distinct feeling of disconnect, I guess? That language feels much more appropriate, when say, you're on top of a mountain and admiring the beautiful landscape around you. Tolkein's words capture the urgency and adrenaline of war with his simpler sentences.
I suppose I'd need to see the context behind the original quote; in a historical lore recap, I'm more happy with that quote.
(Not going to pretend like I know precisely what's different as it's all subjective, but I suspect the mood you're trying to go for heavily impacts your writing choice)
So when there is less ornate and difficult language to parse for the brain, there are more cycles available for imagination? Indeed z
a thin line to balance.
True high fantasy would not reference swords and trumpets, first spending a chapter or two defining a world with its own musical instruments and bladed weapons, their names of course also being in a language, sorry, tongue, for which the author must also first labour to invent a common version spoken by everyone, an ancient/high version only remembered by a few, and at least one alphabet.
In addition, each one must be described in detail, including a potted life story of the blacksmith that created it; when, why, and for whom; metallurgical observations; history of actual use; any supernatural blessings whether apocryphal or actual; the litany of families that have retained it as an heirloom & their subsequent social or political fates; details of any inscription or filigree; and a nickname. This remains true for both the swords and the trumpet. Additional remarks concerning a scabbard or case are optional but highly regarded.
"The world under heaven, after a long period of division, tends to unite; after a long period of union, tends to divide."
- Romance of the Three Kingdoms
It's really is kind of inevitable that this will happen. We've had unprecedented peace and prosperity for many decades. Everyone is getting rich and fat (relatively speaking) and more capable of projecting their power and protecting their interests. The unification of Europe (rebuilding, euro EU), the rise of China, the nuclearization of North Korea, etc. There is no governing body above states - its an anarchic system in that regard. It's just not possible to achieve full globalization and keep it. We'd need something to fundamentally change the game like competition with another world. Im not sure if you've noticed but the world order has been degrading since the 90's.
Another way to put it is simply that ChatGPT search is built on top of existing search engines. The best case scenario is that it cherry picks the best from all available search engines. It can’t totally supersede all search engines.
> But the idea of letting an LLM write/move large swaths of code seems so incredibly irresponsible. Whenever I sit down to write some code, be it a large implementation or a small function, I think about what other people (or future versions of myself) will struggle with when interacting with the code. Is it clear and concise? Is it too clever?
I agree with our conclusion but not your supporting evidence. Not only can you read it to answer all these questions, but you can BETTER answer these questions from reading it. Because you are already looking at it from the perspective you are trying optimize for (future reader).
What is less clear is if it handles all the edge cases correctly. In theory these should all be tested, but many of them cannot even be identified without thinking through the idiosyncrasies of the code which is a natural byproduct of writing code.
> Does that mean that other countries can impose tariffs and sanctions on the US to punish this obviously anticompetitive and anti-free market behaviour?
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