domain:astralcodexten.com
Throwaway05
2hr ago
Metformin is seemingly more benign than statins (which have a bigger argument) but has a few significant drug interactions and a bunch of hypothetical (read: hotly debated) kidney and Lactic Acidosis issues.
Most otherwise safe medications have COVID vaccine problems - you give em to the entire population and weird shit starts happen. One in a million side effects happen hundreds of times.
Ponder
2hr ago
Awakening from the Meaning Crisis is what came to my mind too. The first 25 lectures are also now in book format. I think the book presents the material in an even better way because John gained additional experience in communicating the material since the lecture series.
I am curious how the series practically improved your life? For me it provided deep insights into modern problems and explained how we need an ecology of practices to address them. We need to go deeper than propositional knowledge (statements that are true or false) and utilize the other ways of knowing (procedural, perspectival, and participatory). One thing I'm kind of stuck on is the Philosophical Silk Road (in the lecture series it is the idea about a Religion that is not a Religion). I see the necessity of distributed cognition (i.e. collective intelligence), but I haven't had success in finding a like-minded group of people locally that is interested in John's work.
@roche Episode 8 (The Buddha and "Mindfulness"),9 (Insight), and 11+12 (Higher States of Consciousness) are particularly relevant to your post.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2hr ago
More comprehensive tl;dr (text of decision):
-
A grand jury is led by the county prosecutor to indict Smollett on 16 counts of felony disorderly conduct (falsifying evidence).
-
The county prosecutor recuses herself and appoints an assistant county prosecutor to replace her in this case as "acting county prosecutor". The assistant county prosecutor decides to drop the case (nolle prosequi) in exchange for 10 k$ of restitution (less than 10 percent of the overtime pay spent by the Chicago police on investigating this case) and 15 hours of community service, all of which Smollett has already provided. Smollett will not even be required to admit guilt.
-
A third party moves to disregard the assistant county prosecutor's actions and appoint a special prosecutor. The third party argues that, when the county prosecutor recused herself, she was required by law to appoint a special prosecutor in her stead, and had no authority to appoint an assistant county prosecutor to the nonexistent position of "acting county prosecutor". The trial judge agrees and appoints a special prosecutor.
-
A new grand jury is led by the special prosecutor to indict Smollett on six counts of felony disorderly conduct. Smollett moves to dismiss the indictment, arguing that starting a new prosecution after entering into a nonprosecution agreement of which the defendant held up his end is a violation of the constitutional prohibition of double jeopardy. The trial judge denies the motion. A nolle prosequi is presumed to be a unilateral and non-final decision rather than a formal nonprosecution agreement (dismissal with prejudice) that triggers double jeopardy if reneged upon (like what Bill Cosby received in Pennsylvania), and in this case there is not enough evidence of a bilateral agreement to overcome that presumption. Smollett is convicted on five of the six counts, and is sentenced to 5 months of county jail, 25 months of probation, 25 k$ of fines, and 120 k$ of restitution (the aforementioned overtime pay). A majority of the appeals panel affirms the trial judge's analysis.
-
The Illinois Supreme Court unanimously reverses. (1) In this case, from the wording that the assistant county prosecutor used, it is apparent that a bilateral agreement had been reached between the assistant county prosecutor and Smollett, and that the parties intended the agreement to be final. Under these circumstances, the fact that the charges technically were merely nolle prosequied rather than being dismissed with prejudice does not matter. Call it a "bilateral nolle prosequi". (2) Smollett himself never argued that the assistant county prosecutor's appointment was unlawful. Rather, he relied on the idea that the appointment was lawful in obtaining the bilateral nolle prosequi. Therefore, the third party was not entitled to suggest that the appointment was unlawful in order to cancel Smollett's bilateral nolle prosequi.
We are aware that this case has generated significant public interest and that many people were dissatisfied with the resolution of the original case and believed it to be unjust. Nevertheless, what would be more unjust than the resolution of any one criminal case would be a holding from this court that the State was not bound to honor agreements upon which people have detrimentally relied. As the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania recently stated [in the Bill Cosby case] when enforcing a prosecutorial promise not to prosecute:
It cannot be gainsaid that society holds a strong interest in the prosecution of crimes. It is also true that no such interest, however important, ever can eclipse society’s interest in ensuring that the constitutional rights of the people are vindicated. Society’s interest in prosecution does not displace the remedy due to constitutionally aggrieved persons.
That court further noted the consequences of failing to enforce prosecutorial promises when a defendant has relied on them to his detriment:
A contrary result would be patently untenable. It would violate long-cherished principles of fundamental fairness. It would be antithetical to, and corrosive of, the integrity and functionality of the criminal justice system that we strive to maintain.
Okay, so you have crafted a hypothetical situation where police wouldn't have probable cause to arrest a person who is guilty? Now what?
This doesn't mean the law is unenforceable, it doesn't even mean this law is special. There are dozens of laws which are hard to prove, especially when not witnessed by a cop, and sometimes the cop goes to investigate it starting with a "voluntary" talk and the person doesn't given them the necessary evidence for there to be probable cause for arrest despite that person being guilty. Are those other laws unenforceable, despite hundreds of people being arrested and prosecuted for them daily in the US?
What constitutes probable cause for a search, arrest, detention, etc. if a cop smells marijuana? Well, how much of a smell? What kind of smell? From where was the smell? Funny enough, all of these quandaries were answered and guidelines were produced as to what was enough to constitute various standards of suspicion. Institutes of serious training were created so officers could get a certificate of expertise in the smelling of drugs.
It turns out the court system is capable of coming up with answers, however unsatisfactory, to answer this sort of string of questions which look more like an attempt to overwhelm to stop them from trying as opposed to informing. These aren't actually hard questions to answer and enforcement of such a law could be just like every other law which is regularly enforced all over the country. All that is necessary is the will to expend resources to enforce them.
Whether or not these laws or weed laws are stupid is another question, but it hardly makes these laws special or these questions some sort of unique hurdle for enforcement.
dovetailing
2hr ago
dovetailing
2hr ago
I checked out that archival link to 4chan. I have to say, there definitely is a heavy selection effect going on there, but at least it's a different one than the the other places I've looked.
I find 4chan slang and culture to be extremely offputting, but a certain subset of the population there at least has the "brutally honest" thing going. (Or maybe they're being hyperbolic or making shit up for fun. Hard to tell sometimes...)
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
My grandfather, back during segregation, conspicuously used the colored bathroom many a time. Nothing was ever done because no one gave a shit(it, uh, might have been different the other direction, but a wage slave at a store has Better Things To Do than get in a confrontation with a customer so lots of them presumably got away with that too- I think some of the segregation cases involved blacks who got away with using the white section over and over again before anyone called them on it).
Of course the real benefit to these laws from a red state perspective is it makes it impossible for blue cities to force bathrooms to be gender neutral.
WhateverHappenedToNorman
2hr ago
Schafer usually gets cast as trans characters, so I wouldn't say they're the "pinnacle of passing", because they being noticeably trans is part of the point.
I'd probably go with someone like Ángela Ponce: if you already know, you'll find a lot of tells, but they clearly resemble more an attractive woman than a man.
ControlsFreak
2hr ago
You are advocating for people to do what they want and have others pay for their failure.
I cannot believe this is a good faith reading of what I wrote. You think that I am advocating for people to do what they want with their cars and have others pay for their failure?! h-What?!
antibiotic
Ah, yes, the one example people always go to when they want to defend the status quo. It may be the case that antibiotics have a significant externality. Perhaps some drugs are, as you put it, "complicated". We might have to figure out what to do about that one. It might be the current regime; it might be something different. But for now, let's do a little exercise. Let's put antibiotics to the side. They're "complicated", maybe even a special category. Now make an argument for the entire rest of the world of prescription drugs.
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
Musk and Rogan have legitimately embraced some conservative views, even if mostly on the libertarian end.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2hr ago
Illinois gonna Illinois. I'm pretty sure that normally, jeopardy does not attach in a plea bargain until the plea is accepted; the prosecution cutting a (corrupt) deal to drop the charges without the court's involvement doesn't cut it. And won't cut it in future cases when the political element isn't included.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
2hr ago
It makes very little sense to accuse Israel of genocide/ethnic cleansing if you claim that you we don't have a reasonable sense of the numbers of civilians killed. What are you even basing the accusation on then?
Francesca Albanese's report to the UN. I know you said that she is "cartoonishly anti-Israeli" but if you can spot any lies in here that I missed feel free to point them out. There's actually no point relying on the number of civilians killed to identify genocide or ethnic cleansing, because by the time those figures tell you that a genocide is occurring it is already too late to do anything about it, and the point of identifying genocide/ethnic cleansing is to make sure it doesn't happen again.
In the present report, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, examines the unfolding horrors in the occupied Palestinian territory. While the wholesale destruction of Gaza continues unabated, other parts of the land have not been spared. The violence that Israel has unleashed against the Palestinians post-7 October is not happening in a vacuum, but is part of a long-term intentional, systematic, State-organized forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians. This trajectory risks causing irreparable prejudice to the very existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine. Member States must intervene now to prevent new atrocities that will further scar human history.
I highly recommend giving it a read - there's a mountain of citations, and there are even a whole lot more photos of children with bullet wounds in those citations as well. That said the report is extremely long so I'll refrain from just posting the entire thing here, but it represents my position on the conflict very well. There are mountains of evidence with regards to the genocidal intent and actions of the Israeli government, even if you just go through the citations of that report. When I read a report about IDF soldiers killing themselves because they can't live with what they've done in Gaza, or how they can't eat meat anymore because they ran over so many people with a bulldozer and saw the "meat" come out I find it very hard to believe that nothing's happening. When Israelis chant "School's out in Gaza because all the children are dead" to try and intimidate people in Amsterdam, I find it very hard to feel sorry for them.
For what it's worth, I don't find the argument about whether or not Israel is actually a committing a genocide to be that interesting - the answer is just so clearly and blatantly yes. Attempting to make the claim that israeli protests against enforcement of rules against raping prisoners are just made up by evil terrorist prisoners when I've seen the video footage just makes me feel like you're trying to insult my intelligence. Even one of the debunking links you gave me is so nakedly partisan that is has two giant DONATE TO ISRAEL NOW buttons on it - I may as well link to the Daily Stormer as proof that Israel is bad.
I like these conversations a lot more when the Israeli side is willing to admit that they're a blood-drenched, bronze-age state intent on ethnic purity and conquest via force of arms to reclaim the territory their god said was theirs - when you're willing to admit that there are actual conversations that can be had. Will Israel's plans actually work? What are the long-term consequences going to be? Does ethnic cleansing actually work without any downsides? Does international law exist at all? Those are all much more interesting topics, and as an added bonus I don't have to look at gore of dead children or picture hundreds of people getting crushed with a bulldozer in such a gruesome way that it made one of the drivers kill themselves later.
07mk
3hr ago
That's absolutely what's often cited as the experience of "passing." "I went outside, everyone referred to me as a woman, and no one called me out as trans, ergo I passed." Tbh, if anyone thought I was trans but never brought it up out of politeness, how would I know? My experience would look exactly the same on the day to day: I go outside and act like a man and people treat me like a man. Maybe some people are uncomfortable with me or don't like me, but who knows, maybe they're Cowboys fans who cares?
I wouldn't characterize such a statement as conforming to that definition of "passing," though. It appears more like just jumping to conclusions, that the absence of people bringing it up is proof of the absence of people noticing, which is what determines "passing."
I mean, I can take your word for it, that some TRAs do use the term that way, but that seems clearly very different from the way people use the term when discussing CW issues, and not in quantity but rather quality. When people talk about "when trans person X passes," I don't think they tend to mean "when trans person X only interacts with or notices people who will treat them in a certain way," but rather "when trans person X presents in such a way as to meet some sort of threshold in how others perceive their gender."
But that's not what real life looks like, which was my point about context. In real life I don't walk around suspecting people's genitals might not match their presentation. So the moment you ask people to identify trans people from a group, you've radically altered their normal calculus! The moment you bring up "trans" you've radically altered their normal calculus.
We can design studies to make the true measure obscure from the participants. This is a common enough problem in such studies that it's fairly standard practice, and there are many ways to accomplish it, including just lying to the participants about what the study is actually about. Of course, it's questionable how effective such things are and they're all imperfect, but, also of course, all models are wrong, yet some are useful.
Hell, the moment you tell people they have to make a decision one way or the other, you're throwing off what passing means in reality. Because non-passing can also mean something like "Idk, she makes me uncomfortable but I can't put my finger on why..." Uncanny valley stuff. So what do we do with that? Where does that fit into either a day-to-day understanding of trans life, or into a Turing test?
This seems quite possible to test as well, though likely quite difficult to do properly. One can measure physiological signs of discomfort, and one can also get assessments from test subjects that don't involve making decisions one way or another, but rather just the sense that they get. It's possible to quantify such things and then compare how they differ between different populations. There are many pitfalls to such efforts, and I certainly wouldn't trust the current academic apparatus to carry out such studies with enough rigor to draw any meaningful conclusions, though.
TheFooder
3hr ago
Here's some culture war red-meat: Jussie Smolett conviction overturned
On one hand, I want to see this smug a-hole who disparaged my once beautiful city get his comeuppance.
On the other hand, I dunno...I can't think of anything.
Smollett had challenged nearly every aspect of his case, arguing that his legal woes should have been over after the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office struck a controversial deal to drop charges just a month after Smollett was indicted in February 2019.
The agreement should have prevented Smollett from being charged for the same crime by a court-appointed special prosecutor a year later, according to the state’s highest court.
In a 5-0 opinion, with two justices abstaining, Justice Elizabeth M. Rocheford wrote the second case violated Smollett’s due process rights because he had fulfilled the requirements of his earlier plea deal by turning over his $10,000 bond and doing community service.
“We are aware that this case has generated significant public interest and that many people were dissatisfied with the resolution of the original case and believed it to be unjust,” Rocheford wrote in the 32-page ruling. “Nevertheless, what would be more unjust than the resolution of any one criminal case would be a holding from this court that the State was not bound to honor agreements upon which people have detrimentally relied.” The court ruled that a controversial decision by prosecutors to drop all charges against Smollett amounted to a plea deal, and that the case brought by a special prosecutor a year later was invalid.
I suppose I can see the logic of "you can't charge a guy who's already agreed to a plea deal." So, whatever, I guess. As a former Chicagoan, the real villain always seemed to be Kim Foxx, who kind of just did whatever she wanted, including letting this fool off the hook.
With only nine days before she leaves office, Foxx claimed Thursday’s ruling offered her office a measure of vindication.
“We have spent five years and millions of dollars on the re-prosecution of someone for a low-level felony,” Foxx told the Chicago Sun-Times, noting that her office’s handling of the case was used as a cudgel by critics of her broader reform agenda.
“This case was bigger than what Jussie Smollett did,” she added.
You can say that again.
I'm sure most people, at this point, are simply sick and tired of all these people and figured the whole ordeal was over. It's clearly a slap in the face of the prosecutor Dan Webb (what's with all these double consonants? amiright??) but I doubt it's going to rehabilitate Smolett's career. Actors are infinitely replaceable, so without divine intervention his career is effectively over. Of course, I might also be wrong as I rarely watch TV or pay attention to celebrities.
Oh, wait...
In an interview last month to promote a new film Smollett co-wrote and directed, he remained defiant and claimed to have spent about $3 million on his defense — even though it might have made more sense to have served out his time.
So...was he a victim of a vindictive prosecution, or just an innocent dude trying to get a better contract? Ok, it's really hard for me to be unbiased her. I'll admit it.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
3hr ago
I don’t know if any specifically transitions to use women’s restrooms. I will say that especially given the trans community’s abhorrence with the idea of having to prove that they’re actually trans and under treatment is basically an end run around the norm. If a guy in a beard and a short dress walked into a women’s restroom, the business is under the civil rights gun and thus can do little about it no matter how much of a pest he’s being until he actually rapes someone. And I find that enabling of crime to be telling.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3hr ago
I assumed the reason we don't give everyone metformin is because of the very memorable bathroom visits that it causes.
FiveHourMarathon
Listen to Pierre
3hr ago
If that's how TRAs use "passing," I've never encountered it, and it also seems like a vapid meaning, because the "polite" in your quote tends to refer to the characteristic of submitting to such wishes.
That's absolutely what's often cited as the experience of "passing." "I went outside, everyone referred to me as a woman, and no one called me out as trans, ergo I passed." Tbh, if anyone thought I was trans but never brought it up out of politeness, how would I know? My experience would look exactly the same on the day to day: I go outside and act like a man and people treat me like a man. Maybe some people are uncomfortable with me or don't like me, but who knows, maybe they're Cowboys fans who cares?
There are likely multiple ways to measure something like this. One theoretical study I imagine, blinded test subjects would interact with a group of people, some trans, some not, and then answered what sex each person they interacted with was born as. If a trans person had >50% of people answer as the opposite of their birth sex, that person would "pass." Another option would be to have test subjects interact with pairs of people, one trans and the other cis, of opposite sexes and the same gender, and if the subjects can correctly guess the trans person at 50% rate, then that person doesn't pass. Could also adjust it to be 1 trans and 9 cis, and if the rate is >10%, or any variation of this, I suppose.
But that's not what real life looks like, which was my point about context. In real life I don't walk around suspecting people's genitals might not match their presentation. So the moment you ask people to identify trans people from a group, you've radically altered their normal calculus! The moment you bring up "trans" you've radically altered their normal calculus. You see this a lot with people talking about true crime stories, "oh how did no one suspect, there were all these clues!" But the people didn't know they were in a mystery, they weren't looking for clues. If you tell people that the sex of the person they're talking to is a mystery, they'll seize on all kinds of clues. If they don't, they'll slide right by the clues. So the moment you run a study on the basis of "spot the tranny" you vastly alter the odds compared to baseline.
Hell, the moment you tell people they have to make a decision one way or the other, you're throwing off what passing means in reality. Because non-passing can also mean something like "Idk, she makes me uncomfortable but I can't put my finger on why..." Uncanny valley stuff. So what do we do with that? Where does that fit into either a day-to-day understanding of trans life, or into a Turing test?
Passing is, weirdly, vastly harder in queer spaces than in non-queer spaces, even if queer spaces are much more likely to hug-box trans people about how great they pass and bend over backwards to avoid mistakes. It's not odd at all for me to see a middle aged woman with a whispy little mustache at church, I wouldn't think she's packing a cock under there just has unfortunate hirsute characteristics.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3hr ago
I take rosuvastatin and it has had a dramatic effect on my cholesterol levels. (Dramatically good).
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3hr ago
Another way to put it is that the definition of "right wing" has expanded to contain even people like Musk, Rogan and Gabbard.
Rov_Scam
3hr ago
the McBride situation aside, these bills are nothing more than performative measures meant to publicly express disgust with the idea of trans people in general. They do nothing to actually keep trans people out of whatever bathroom you're trying to keep them out of, excepting whatever mild deterrent effect comes out of making something technically illegal. What would it take to successfully prosecute such a case? Suppose a woman sees someone she suspects is a trans-woman in a public restroom. What can she do? The first option would be to alert the staff, who may or may not care to do anything about it. Eventually, the police will have to be called by someone. Assuming the police arrive and the suspected man is still on the premises, to what extent does a person have to look masculine enough for it to constitute probable cause for arrest?
You might argue that the officer could ask them to produce ID, and if the sex was listed as male this would give them probable cause (states with bathroom bills generally require the sex on ID to match that of the birth certificate). While the cop may have a valid argument that he had the requisite reasonable suspicion necessary to require identification, identification in this context is limited to providing a correct name, address, and date of birth; producing a government-issued ID is not required. At this point, there's no probable cause to arrest. There's no probable cause to get a warrant for a medical examination.
The only option at this point would be to run the name and dob through various government databases to determine if the sex listed in the records matches that of the bathroom they were in. But nobody is doing this. And even if they did, it isn't necessarily dispositive, since the person could have been born in a state that allows amended birth certificates. Given that police can't just look at people's genitals based on a complaint alone, actually enforcing such a law would be burdensome to the point that it's unenforceable absent some extraordinary circumstance. Even the state officials supporting these bills, when asked about enforcement, admit that they have no clue.
If the trans community were smart, they'd stop complaining about these bills and shrug them off. Red state legislators know that the bills are unenforceable, but they pass them anyway. I think their motivations are partially sincere, but partially cynical—trans issues are an electoral loser, and passing these laws induces their opponents to take unpopular positions. If the trans community simply announced that they had no intention of complying because the state couldn't do anything about it anyway, it would put increasing pressure on the government to actually attempt enforcement. there would likely be few prosecutions, if only due to a dearth of complaints, but one can imagine a situation where the only arrests of note are of normal women who are mistakenly believed to be trans. This would result in a PR disaster that doesn't require any Democrats to take unpopular positions.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3hr ago
once I've had all the kids I plan on having.
Knowing you are male this wording made me chuckle internally. I get your meaning, however.
Throwaway05
3hr ago
You are advocating for people to do what they want and have others pay for their failure. People taking over their medical care without professional supervision directly hurts others and themselves, and society literally pays for it in terms of opportunity costs and DIRECT costs.
I haven't seen you engage with any of the examples I've given or actual content at play, just give a metaphor which is poor and repeatedly express your stance.
When given the ability to hang themselves in healthcare people do so. This is not a hypothetical. This is true right now and I gave examples, and that's for the simpler things.
If you want to continue this conversation please explain what antibiotic stewardship and why it's important, or argue why it isn't.
ControlsFreak
3hr ago
This is basically the long form of my somewhat pithy/sarcastic comment. Sorry, but we just live in a world where messaging apps have already proliferated. They will all have their defenders that prefer this thing or that thing (see the other responses to my comment). Probably the only thing that grinds my gears more than the people who are just defending this feature or that aspect of whatever messaging service is when they do like the comment I responded to and say that it's mostly about everyone else being there. If that's the criteria, we already have that; it's called SMS. Everybody has that. But of course, it's not really about everyone being there; it's about this feature or that feature. Names, numbers, privacy, temporary names, group functionality, extra gizmos, etc. Once you realize that it AlwaysHasBeenMeme about a cluster of features, only one of which is "lots of people have it", then there just isn't any natural "default" that everyone "should" just use.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
‘Protect women’ is not actually a historical norm, and societies which are not western today often have no problems harming women.
In my mind "passing" is normally used to refer to some mix of:
Strong Passing: your average observer can't tell that the person is trans.
Weak Passing: your average observer knows the person is trans, but its close enough that their existence isn't uncomfortable, their intention is obvious, and most polite people will treat them as the target gender.
My point about trans people experiencing passing is that there's no difference between the two for a trans person going about their day. When I work with the public, I run into trans people who pass weakly, treated them like their target gender so as not to make a day out of it, and moved on. If I ran into a person who passed Strongly, so that I had no idea they were trans, I would have treated them exactly the same way, politely treated them as their target gender and moved on. From the perspective of a trans person, these two things are mostly indistinguishable until you get to a problem like "getting a date" or something like that.
From the perspective of the observer, these are very different experiences.
Where conflict results is from people trying to motte and bailey the definitions and lived experiences against each other.
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