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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • I just read that law and it’s far from clear that it requires any aid to Israel at all.

    Section 1 just defines the title.
    Section 2 provides a statement of findings.
    Section 3 covers US policy towards Israel. This is the closest I could find to something requiring assistance. Policy statements don’t bind the president. At best they serve as guidelines for future legislation.
    Section 4 talks about actively defending Israel but brackets the whole thing in “should”. That has a specific legal definition that includes, “but it’s not required.”
    Section 5 simply extends some deadlines that were going to expire.
    Section 6 mandates some reports.
    Section 7 defines terms.

    The language in the Leahy Act is considerably stronger and more explicit. “No assistance shall be furnished under this chapter…”






  • I get the feeling of discomfort but it’s basically the same feeling we get when someone breaks a pencil

    There is no evidence that a mosquito is capable of feeling the kind of despair or horror that a human would feel in a similar situation. It’s unlikely that mosquitos can form emotions at all.

    At the same time, a huge portion of human-animal interactions involve the human controlling the animal in ways that they animal can’t even comprehend. A dog has no idea you’re doing operant conditioning to change their behavior. Pigs have no idea they’re being fed just so they and their children can be eaten.

    The only way to avoid this kind of thing is to turn off your big human brain and go back to ape tier. We might need to go farther down the tier list than that though https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War



  • That seems unlikely, since the constitution doesn’t really include safeguards against someone like Trump.

    The founding fathers were afraid of a King (at least some of them were). They put all kinds of limits on the power of the executive but they assumed people would follow those rules. They never really considered the possibility of a private citizens gaining so much power that they can ignore government.


  • Charity is about who benefits, not about who decides how to provide that benefit.

    The idea of choosing a charity based on the donor’s will of how it will get spent describes almost all types of charity. If someone donates to any charity at all, they have made a choice on how to allocate their resources and they just take it on faith that that’s the people who need it the most.

    Furthermore, any given dollar of his can only be spent once. The money he spent on himself enriches himself. It’s a considerable amount of money but it’s a tiny fraction of the money he controls. Any dollar he gives away can’t be spent to enrich himself.

    Finally, Buffet has donated over $57 billion. How is he supposed to distribute that? Fly a plane around the country and dump cash out the window? Send a huge check to the IRS? Give it all to your favorite charity? The obvious answer is that he sets up an organization that will analyze existing charities for need and effectiveness and then distributes his assets accordingly.



  • There’s an odd trend of labeling everyone with even the slightest advantage a, “nepo baby”.

    Nepotism is when you give friends or relatives special consideration for jobs or positions. As far as I know the only job Buffet ever had from a relative was working in his grandfather’s grocery store. The closets I could find for Elon Musk was that he started one of his companies with his brother.

    Elon’s father was an engineer. That certainly put him in a comfortable position, particularly as a white engineer in South Africa but it definitely doesn’t get you recognition from old money families. Buffet went to public school.

    They both had advantages growing up but if we expand nepotism to include people like that, it becomes a pretty meaningless term.



  • It’s not just the sexual aspect that makes people uncomfortable.

    Many people view it as childish. Children are really into their stuffed animals and love playing dress up. There is nothing inherently wrong with enjoying activities normally associated with children but other adults tend to look down on it.

    Some furries like to talk about their fursona as a spiritual extension of themselves. Many people associate that kind of language with crazy old hippies.




  • We’d probably need a very similar model.

    Replicators don’t replaces services, just goods. Most people aren’t willing to render services for free.

    The replicators also use enormous amounts of energy. They’re basically nukes in reverse. They “solve” this problem with anti-matter but the anti-matter reaction seems to require trilithium. And as we know from several episodes, trilithium is definitely not an unlimited resources.

    The economy might not involve anyone hand-making widgets but there would be a lot of economics around acquiring, processing and distributing trilithium.



  • It’s not deeply rigorous but it’s correct reasoning in principal.

    The scientific and statistical standard interpretation of the null hypothesis is that there’s no relationship between the variables in question. It’s up to the researcher to establish an evidence based argument that the null hypothesis should be rejected in favor of some alternative.

    When we “fail to reject” the null hypothesis, we haven’t proved it’s true, we just continue to assume it is until someone proves otherwise.

    In this case, the alternate hypothesis is that there’s a correlation between incarceration and crime rates and the null is that no such correlation exists.

    As of now, the bulk of the research has failed to find such a relationship https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C22&q=correlation+incarceration+crime&btnG=


  • I don’t think it would even have to go that far.

    It’s mostly that Harris needs to be able to present credible red lines. Right now, the perception is that Israel can get away with absolutely anything.

    Anything to break that perception it might be enough. A light version might be something like, “Every time X happens, we’ll delay weapons shipments by a week while we investigate.” That’s not much and it might not even change Israel’s behavior but I suspect that just articulating some policy and sticking to it would be sufficient.


  • In terms of her affect on the Green party, those numbers make it look like she’s fairly run-of-the-mill. Her first one was low and later on she posted numbers similar to more famous candidates.

    I did a quick search on where those candidates are and it seems that many of potential Green party candidates are in swing states. It also looks like many of them are specifically siding with them because of their stance on Gaza.

    That suggests that she’s just fine for the Greens and is likely even helping them. She’s a problem for Democrats because there’s an assumption that those voters would switch to the Democratic ticket if they don’t vote Green.