Rov_Scam
2hr ago
For a while I assumed that the big AI companies would permit porn generation eventually. They might want to act high and mighty now, but a time would come when they needed to show revenue, public perception be damned. Unfortunately, I'm naive enough that my conception of pornography did not extend to the type that could be legally problematic. Back in January, a bipartisan group of 35 attorneys general published a letter to Elon Musk asking for assurances that the company was taking steps to protect against NCII and CSAM, though it's unclear if he ever responded. Last week, a class action suit was filed in the Northern District of California, alleging that xAI is responsible for producing nonconsensual nude images of three underage named plaintiffs. Yesterday, the Baltimore city attorney filed a lawsuit alleging violation of various city ordinances involving consumer protection.
It appears to me that these issues could probably be solvable. Disallowing generative editing of user-uploaded images seems like a no-brainer. The CSAM issue is a tougher nut to crack, but it seems like the NCII issue is what was getting everyone's attention, so if that goes away then I doubt that the existing safeguards against the latter would be found deficient. But the cat's out of the bag at this point; Elon fucked up and now he's under the scrutiny of people who have the power to make life miserable for him. I imagine the class action suit will settle, but it will take years, and Elon is hard-headed enough that he might decide to make a statement out of it. The plaintiff's attorney seems to have selected the worst possible place to file, as I don't imagine you're going to find a more tech industry-friendly jury pool anywhere outside of Northern California. The Baltimore case is on less solid ground, and the potential exposure is likely lower (I can't imagine it being more than a few thousand dollars per proven victim), so it may make more sense to fight that one, although all that will accomplish is proving that he didn't violate a specific Baltimore consumer protection ordinance.
Rov_Scam
3hr ago
Rick Beato was on Lex Fridman's podcast recently and they were talking about how when YouTube first came out and nobody really knew what to use it for one of the thoughts was that it would allow people to distribute their own short films to the public. YouTube is now a mature platform and YouTuber is a job description, yet there is very little resembling traditional film making. I just don't think there's much of a market for it. From Super 8, to camcorders, to everyone having a decent video camera on their phone and access to free editing software, the process has become increasingly democratized over the past hundred years, yet making amateur movies is still a fringe pursuit, and at that it's mostly people who are pursuing careers in the industry.
Rov_Scam
19hr ago
It's just an archaism that got handed down through the generations so much that it became a convention. Similar to "attorney at law".
Rov_Scam
22hr ago
Do you have some evidence that one (or all) of them is the child of a foreign sovereign?
Rov_Scam
22hr ago
First, I want to apologize for not responding to your comments from the other thread despite your requests. I was too busy overall and my Motte time was mostly dedicated to finishing up the next Pittsburgh installment, and by the time that was completed I kind of forgot. Second, I want to assure you that the comment about people acting in bad faith wasn't directed at you personally. I had in mind specifically a bill from the early years of the Obama administration that went nowhere and read:
(b) Definition.—Acknowledging the right of birthright citizenship established by section 1 of the 14th amendment to the Constitution, a person born in the United States shall be considered ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States for purposes of subsection (a)(1) if the person is born in the United States of parents, one of whom is—
“(1) a citizen or national of the United States;
“(2) an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the United States whose residence is in the United States; or
“(3) an alien performing active service in the armed forces (as defined in section 101 of title 10, United States Code).”.
It's no surprise that these people, and nearly everyone else I've heard flogging for a more restrictive definition of "subject to the jurisdiction thereof", take a dim view of immigration generally and support as many restrictions as possible. With that out of the way, I can move on to address your main argument about using Schooner Exchange as a framework. First, I think we can both agree that the purpose of a constitutional provision, as opposed to a law, regulation, enforcement policy, etc., is to take certain issues outside the realm of politics. In other words, we recognize that certain things should be beyond the temporary whims of the legislature, executive, or government agency, and only be changeable if there is broad consensus to do so.
That being said, let's look at the context of the 14th Amendment. There is broad consensus that the immediate purpose of the amendment was to guarantee citizenship to former slaves. The language itself, however, doesn't limit the scope of the clause to former slave, and this wasn't some oversight, since other parts of the amendment explicitly mention slavery, and the near-contemporaneous 13th and 15th Amendments also explicitly refer to slavery, so we can assume that the clause takes on a general scope. The framers would have understood that general scope to be in reference to the common law. I know you dismissed the common law, but it's important here. You don't have to go digging into old English court cases because as it was understood in America would have been in reference to Blackstone's Commentaries, which were written shortly before the Revolution. There may be court cases that are on point but they aren't terribly important here. For instance, you probably see plenty of personal injury lawyers advertising on television. The vast majority of there cases will involve negligence, which is a common law cause of action that (mostly) isn't codified. Each state has its own variations based on court rulings, but if you want to know what our "general understanding" of negligence is, you look at the Restatement of Torts. the Commentaries are basically a restatement of common law.
The reason Schooner Exchange is important here is because it is basically a restatement of 19th century American understanding of the common law insofar as it pertains to jurisdiction. In other words, this is the context through which the framers of the 14th Amendment would have understood it. Notable, the Schooner Exchange opinion does not mention slavery. Why? Because slavery was not recognized under the common law. British courts did issue rulings pertaining to slavery, and the whole area is a little fuzzy, but there was never any formal recognition of slavery as a status, and Blackstone himself officially disclaimed the idea that slavery could exist at common law. Slavery did exist in the colonies, but it was a creature of statute, formally recognized by colonial legislatures. What the 14th Amendment did was abolish statutory definitions of citizenship and reinstate the common law definition. And at common law, anyone born in United States territory, whether of citizen or alien parentage, is subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, subject to a few well-recognized exceptions.
"Illegal aliens" was not one of those exceptions. I use scare quotes because the concept did not exist in 1868. It would be more than a decade before congress passed any laws barring entry to any class of foreigners, and the common law makes no distinction between legal and illegal aliens. Illegal aliens are a creature of statute, and we can't modify the constitution simply by passing legislation to limit its scope. We can't deny citizenship to the children of illegal aliens any more than we can legislatively create a category of "illegal citizens" and deny citizenship to their children as well. To understand why we can't do this we only have to look at the history of the amendment itself: There was a legislatively created category of people who the court had previously decided weren't citizens, and we passed an amendment prohibiting us from doing that anymore. Taking your proposed framework at face value would mean that we could have denied citizenship to freed slaves by reading antebellum slave statutes and Supreme Court rulings as evidence that they were not subject to the jurisdiction of the US at the time of their birth. Of course, such a reading would have completely obviated the amendment's purpose!
I want to make a final point about Indians that I didn't include as part of my main argument because, as you agree, Indians are weird. First, Schooner Exchange says nothing about Indians, because Indians don't exist at common law, but there is a broad body of evidence suggesting that the framers of the 14th Amendment did not view them as subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, and this isn't particularly controversial. The US had been dealing with Indian issues for decades prior to 1868 and would continue dealing with them for decades thereafter. The important distinction here, though, is that Indian tribes were treated as somewhat sovereign entities but not entirely sovereign entities, and were subject to some degree of control by the United States government. You can bring up the Major Crimes Act, but you also have to consider how limited it was: Certain major Indian on Indian crimes can be tried in Federal Court. Indian tribes still have a degree of sovereignty, including their own court systems, and I doubt anyone arguing that illegal aliens or their children are not subject to US jurisdiction would be arguing that they are entitled to some special judicial treatment as a result. As long as illegal aliens have existed we have not treated them any differently wrt the court system than anyone else (subject to the well-recognized exceptions), and I don't hear anyone arguing that we should.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
The dumbest COVID conspiracy that I widely heard IRL was that Tom Wolf imposed the restrictions because he hated the bar and restaurant industry and wanted to kill it entirely. These same people said he needed to be voted out during the next election and were disappointed when I told them that he was already on his second term, confirming that they had no idea about state politics whatsoever.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Yeah, I can see that. At first I thought you had some kind of distaste for the general vibe, which didn't jive with the rest of your comment. Also props for knowing I was talking about Kelly's Corner since I didn't actually mention it. Not to be confused with Kelly's in East Liberty, which people on Reddit call a dive bar even though it's pretty far from one.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Why do you loathe Lawrenceville? It honestly seems like you spend more time there than I do lately, since the only higher-end restaurants I'm familiar with there are Piccolo Forno and Pusadee's Garden.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
Was it crass? Yes. Disgusting, outrageous? Yes. Did it result in those involve being subject to ridicule and harassment? Seems like it. You can find what Afroman did as offensive as you want, but making fun of people isn't necessarily defamatory. Even in your example, the only scenario under which you'd be found liable for defamation is if the jury concluded that a reasonable person would believe that, based on the video, you had, in fact, had sex with the barista, and that this would damage her reputation. Lying about who you slept with isn't necessarily defamation, even if the lie is told in a more serious context than a rap video. What Afroman did may be intentional infliction of emotional distress, but that wasn't part of the suit.
From your other comment:
But Larry Flint didn't film an actor who looks like Jerry Falwell having sex with his mother in an out-house in a candid looking video. He just wrote a fake Campari ad in his own known-to-be-transgressive porn magazine claiming it was from Falwell.
You then go on to describe all the elements of the video. Except the argument you're making is exactly the one the court rejected in Falwell. Mr. Falwell argued that the parody in question was so outrageous as to take it out of First Amendment protection, and the court ruled that that isn't a thing. All your argument boils down to is that Afroman's conduct was worse because it was more outrageous than what Hustler did. I don't see how anyone can argue with a straight face how anyone viewing that video could reasonably conclude that Afroman knew about the sexual proclivities of a police officer who was present when his home was raided, and also had video of her licking pussy with him standing in the background. The idea that anyone would be misled by that is absurd.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
A house the size of a small apartment, with a living room about the size of my office at work.
Anyway, I know I've been critical of your house, and I apologize if I've been a little hard on you, but about a decade ago I went through a crash course on all of this where I thought I knew what I was doing and ended up having my eyes opened after I decided to hire professionals. I lived in my last house from the beginning of 2014 to the end of 2023, so almost ten years. When I bought it it was 20 years old and was at just about the point where it needed remodeled, though it was technically in move-in condition. When I got to the kitchen (it was finished in May of 2015, though I can't remember when I started looking into the process), I went to a locally-owned cabinet place and took photos and sketches I had made and looked at samples with a guy who gave me some options, told me they could do what I wanted, quoted prices, and tried to sell me on all the current trends. I felt like the guy knew what he was talking about, and he gave me some printouts with the designs that we had looked at.
A few weeks later my parents told me about an Amish guy who had made furniture for them a couple years prior for a ridiculously low price and had just done a kitchen for friends of theirs for a ridiculously low price, and I should write him. It was a complicated process but I had to write him and give him my phone number, then he'd call me. I had to drive 90 minutes one way to pick him up, take him to my house to measure, then drive him back, because obviously he doesn't have a car. When I got back to his shop he quoted me a price we looked at samples and the hand-built, maple cabinets I ended up choosing cost the same as the cheapest particle board option at the cabinet place, and if I wanted them installed it would be $400 extra. Obviously this deal was too good to pass up, but the guy was no kitchen designer. He could build anything you showed him a picture of, and he kept catalogs in his shop if you needed ideas, but he didn't speak the lingo of the cabinet shop guy, and had no idea about workflow or anything. He said to just tell him what I wanted and he's build it. Not wanting to wing it, I could now afford to hire an architect to design the kitchen.
He basically told me to ignore everything the cabinet guy told me (which was a lot of things, but never a "no"). For example, I had an eat-in area that I never used since I always ate in the dining room. The only time it ever got used was when I was entertaining, and as a junk collector. I wanted to replace it with something else, so I thought I'd put cabinets on the wall for storage of seldom-used items and below that I'd have a bench that could be used as a buffet if I was entertaining, or maybe more cabinets and a counter, or maybe a desk (it was kind of a muddled idea). He told me that based on how much stuff I had I could keep the overhead cabinets but anything else was too far away from the work area to be used and bound to become a junk collector without the advantage of having people be able to sit at it during parties. That saved a couple thousand right there. This was also the time open shelving was starting to become a thing, and the cabinet guy had mentioned that. He told me that if I wanted a display shelf that was fine, but that if I wasn't already a perfectly organized person, being forced to put all my crap on public display wouldn't make me one. This guy told me tons of shit like that that I never would have thought of. He went through my stuff and asked how often I used each item, so that he could design the cabinets in such a way that the more frequently used items would be easiest to access.
So when I and someone else pointed out all the door conflicts and you said you'd just keep the doors closed all the time I reflexively thought "Does everyone in your household reflexively close doors immediately after use?" Because if the answer is no, then neither you nor anyone else is going to start doing it just because of conflicts. Habit is going to take over and will only change after dealing with the endless frustration of banging doors into each other. I love architecture, but I am not an architect, and I wouldn't try to design my own house. There are some things that you can DIY, but for some things you want to call in the pros, and with how much money is on the line and how often you use it, I wouldn't want to risk a bad house design. Nonetheless, I wish you the best of luck and hope everything works out for you.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
The building code is meant as a strict minimum to protect health and safety. OP is an engineer whose idea of efficiency is that the ideal dwelling adheres as close to these minimums as possible. Comfort and aesthetics are of no concern here, only that the occupants aren't put at any physical risk. He's currently building a house with a living room the size of a small apartment, with a living room about the size of my office at work, and he thinks that he'll be able to rent out the second bedroom to two people because the square footage is within ICC guidelines for four adults.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
It wasn't civil asset forfeiture. It was an evidentiary seizure pursuant to a lawfully issued warrant.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
It wasn't frivolous, in the sense that I understand why the judge agreed to let a jury hear the case, but it was always going to be a high bar to clear. As you say:
Afroman made very specific, defamatory claims using the clear real names and likenesses of the parties he targetted. He did so intending, very specifically, to cause them reputational harm. If they were true claims, then he's very much in the clear. But surely some of those claims were just blatantly false.
True, but these claims were made in the context of, as you put it, a goofy music video. The real question was whether a normal person listening to the lyrics would treat them as statements of fact. Officer Lisa may have to deal with ridicule about her supposed love for cunnilingus, but I doubt anyone making those jokes seriously believes that she licked every pussy in town. It's the Falwell case all over again. It didn't help when the defense called family members of the officers to the stand and asked them if they took similar claims made in other rap songs seriously.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
What you're suggesting gives kids coming out of high school two options:
-
Go to a normal college. If you don't know what you want to major in you can just take core classes the first couple years, since that's mostly what you'll be taking anyway. If you decide on a program that's too difficult or that you don't like, you can change your major at little to no additional cost, depending on when you do it and what your credit situation looks like.
-
Go to medical school where you'll immediately lock yourself into a career path. It will be more difficult and more expensive than going to a regular college, and if you can't cut it or decide you don't like it, you'll have to drop out and effectively start your education over having wasted a lot of time and money. There may also be even more of a time delay because medical schools operate on an entirely different academic calendar than the rest of the college. We also have to have duplicative faculty here, since US medical schools don't currently teach core courses.
I'm not saying that literally nobody will select option 2. What I'm saying is that it's not particularly attractive to a graduating senior, at least not enough that I think it would significantly increase the number of people going to med school. Deciding to take the plunge at age 22, after you already have a college degree and have experience with taking college-level courses is a lot different than getting thrown into the fire when you don't know what to expect.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
I don't think the tiny house thing is ever going to take off. I don't want to say it's dead, but several years ago, when they were becoming a fad, some group tried to build one in Pittsburgh as a proof of concept that they could be used as inexpensive housing for the homeless. The house they built cost double what they expected. The conclusion they came to in the postmortem was that the fixed costs of doing anything at all aren't increased that much by expanding the square footage, so making things smaller didn't save much money. One of the big unexpected expenses they talked about that caused the price to balloon was excavation costs. Essentially, building on a city lot in a distressed area is a bit of a crapshoot in that you don't know what you're going to find. Foundations of prior structures, rubbish, old utility tie-ins, etc. They also spent a lot of money on legal fees, despite the fact that city government was pushing the project; the zoning board didn't really know how to treat it.
A bigger part of the problem, though, was economic. It only makes sense to build that kind of house if you can get the land for cheap. But in areas where land is cheap, there isn't demand for anything that modest, and the cost of construction swamps what the house can be sold for. Shortly before the tiny house debacle, the local community development corporation built a regular house on a vacant lot in the same neighborhood for $237,000 but were only able to sell it for $143,000. I'm sympathetic to arguments for subsidizing construction to alleviate a housing shortage, but it makes more sense to do renovations or build normal houses.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
I mean, it's not something I actually look out for, but the last time I inadvertently interacted with a suspected tranny was at a suburban Burger King drive thru last year, and I saw the same person on the T last Fourth of July and I'm pretty sure there were anime pins on his/her backpack. I know that the owner of a flower shop near me employs a trans delivery driver, but that's because I know the owner and she mentioned that during a conversation in a bar. I'm sure I have seen one in the interim, and maybe even noticed, but it wasn't enough to register permanently.
I do have a second cousin who decided he was trans a couple years ago at the age of 30, but he sent an angry letter blaming them for "everything" and he hasn't appeared anywhere since, and it's been at least 15 years since I've seen him. His sister is getting married this summer and we're wondering if he will show up at the wedding. I know I'm one of the more liberal posters here but I have no special affinity for trans people, and my liberal family thinks this kid is nuts (we found out he's also a furry a few years back, because of course he is), and he is always dead named when he comes up in conversation, which isn't often.
As for Anthrocon, I haven't been downtown during the convention. I see them on the news, but that's about it. I occasionally see weirdos working at gas stations but I'm honestly not paying enough attention to speculate about their personal lives.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
If the answer is that we have to make massive changes to the entire structure of higher education in the US (and secondary education, too, since most high schools graduate in June), then that isn't really an answer. Not having to pay tuition will also encourage more people to go to medical school, as is the case where you are. I agree with you generally, but I don't think that it's feasible to suggest we overhaul our entire educational system.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
Medical school is totally different structurally than undergrad, and smart kids can struggle with academically rigorous programs, since high school success doesn't necessarily correlate with success in college. If being a doctor means committing at 18 to an expensive, academically rigorous, and time-consuming program that if they wash out effectively means starting college over again, I'm not sure enough will take the deal to meaningfully increase the number of doctors. At least in rigorous undergrad majors you spend most of the first two years taking core courses so if you struggle with college math then maybe engineering isn't right for you but at least you have your math credits complete.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
I think you misunderstand. You and Forney seem to be assuming that tats and piercings and the kind of persona described in the article are an extension of trendy urban liberalism. My point is that this isn't necessarily the case. I grew up in the Mon Valley, which is about as trendy as Rockaway. If I saw a girl like that in Monessen 25 years ago I wouldn't have thought that she was some emigre from the South Side of Pittsburgh (which was trendy at the time) but simply a white trash local. Girls like that in Slipknot t-shirts and cargo pants were a dime a dozen back then, and there was nothing remotely political about it. Most of those people probably couldn't tell you the difference between Democrats and republicans if you put a gun to their head.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
I don't know if "rushed" is the right word. The guy was dead for 30 years before anyone knew of these allegations, which involve events from over 50 years ago.
They're there because RIDC built an industrial park there and is specifically courting them. It's as simply as that. As for how it's shaped the neighborhood, I'd guess that it's contributed to the push for more of these luxury apartments that keep popping up, but that's about it. The CMU lab has been there since 1994 but the push for more tech along the river didn't start until well after Lawrenceville became trendy. Incidentally, I was in Lawrenceville for dinner last night and it didn't seem like tech culture was having much of an influence on the overall vibe compared with a few years ago, though that may change with time and be the impetus that pushed it from the "gentrifying" category into the "upper middle class" category. Traffic was bad in Lawrenceville long before it became touristy. The issue is that it's an unbroken commercial stretch that's two miles long with 16 traffic lights, narrow roads, street parking, no turning lanes, and a lot of pedestrians. The only place I can think of that's comparable is the South Side, and that isn't known for great traffic flow, either.
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