amalcon

In legal terms, one would call this a "statement against interest". If a politician says he does not care one bit about the welfare his constituents, it is reasonable for those constituents to take him at his word no matter how untrustworthy he is. It only hurts him if we believe it.

Iranian negotiators probably shouldn't believe him, because it's not against interest in that context. There probably just aren't any on Hacker News.

I mean, I followed the 2020 primary. Basically everyone who thought they had an outside chance seemed to be running there. I liked Buttigeg and Booker then, because they most fit the Obama mold -- well-spoken, charismatic, unifying rhetoric, credible claims (at the time) that they could take on the establishment, no serious baggage. Realistically, both were closer to Al Gore than Obama in execution, but still.

Booker clearly never had a chance in the primary to begin with, even moreso than Harris. Buttigeg suffered from never finding a strong enough constituency -- he wasn't loud enough to pull from the populist wing (who went to Bernie), but never made a serious play for any of the other major wings. He couldn't do that the way Biden did (by calling in favors with other popular Democrats) because he didn't have the connections, but didn't even try to do it the way Warren did (by advocating specific policies).

Meanwhile, Bernie never really tried to expand his coalition outside the populist and leftist wings (which he basically took all of). It turns out that those groups are not enough to win a democratic primary on their own. He was also perceived as a liability in the general -- remember, Democrats hadn't totally given up on Florida yet, and embracing the term "socialism" is a massive liability there.

Warren was somewhat effective in building a broad coalition, and had a similar strategy to Obama. She maybe could've pulled off that style of insurgent campaign. Her candidacy was doomed because of two factors: first, she is just not charismatic enough to compete with Bernie for the populist and leftist wings, but they are absolutely required for an insurgent campaign. Second, even if she had won the primary, she is a massive liability in the general election for a lot of reasons -- which ensured she was never going to win a primary when the primary concern was stopping the bleeding that Donald Trump was seemingly-deliberately causing.

Once you've ruled out Booker, Buttigeg, Sanders, and Warren, you're basically left with Biden vs. a crowd of other boring people. Is it really surprising that the guy who can barter for endorsements and trade on Obama's legacy managed to beat people like Klobuchar?

Now, you might say it's possible that those people (Booker, Buttigeg, Sanders, Warren) would have all made better candidates than Harris in 2024, and could have succeeded with Biden out of the field. I'd agree with that! I am not trying to argue that none of these people are better than Harris; I'm trying to argue that none of them are what Obama is. They were either trying to do something very different than what he did, or much worse at it. They all also lost significant "outsider" cred by 2024 for various reasons.

What would you have them do in that period? Give Trump a 100% chance of winning? Make up a candidate who wasn't actually running? Arguably the most realistic thing to do would be to give X% Trump, Y% Some Democrat -- but had they done that, they'd have been rightly criticized for making an obvious vibe-driven decision. You can't change a quantitative prediction based on qualitative observations; all you can do is try to find more and better data sources.

The issue the models had in that period was pretty well documented: the models rated fundamentals (like economic indicators) more highly relative to polls when the election was farther in the future. Those were the same economic indicators that famously do not capture the pain average Americans have felt since COVID, and that politicians across the spectrum have tried to use to deny that pain when they are in power.

You can argue that this issue was well known at the time, and that a better group of analysts might have taken action to mitigate it. I'd argue that myself. It turns out that it's kind of hard, but that's a terrible excuse not to try. That is different than deliberately manipulating results for political ends, though. It's unclear what political ends those would even be -- who exactly benefits from an "unclear winner" forecast in that situation?

Obama is a very unique case. I wouldn't exactly call him a firebrand, but his public persona managed to give the perception of being a steady hand on the tiller who also had big ideas. The only other presidential candidate in my lifetime to give a similar impression was Al Gore, but he leaned more into the "steady hand" thing to his detriment. He also, as you note, had far less charisma than Obama.

So, I would actually agree with you that 538 was a mess in that period. I would actually trace the first problems back to Enten's departure, but it did get worse when Silver left.

It's just that this particular criticism (that they got it "wrong") doesn't seem very well founded.

Hell, when it comes to government, I easily prefer boring to not-boring in an executive all else being equal. Which it wasn't here, but still.

I want the firebrands with big ideas to improve things in the legislature, and steady hands on the tiller in the executive. Unfortunately it seems that my compatriots want firebrands in both places.

538: "We have no idea who will win. It seems like basically a coin toss."

Reality: someone wins.

Internet: "How did 538 mess this up so badly?"

The simpler variant of this is to obtain a gift certificate. They are required to let you spend it it, so you can get into the store that way. Bring cash, though -- they don't love that people do this, so they don't always take credit cards on these transactions.

Sending a letter containing public information to a place that hasn't heard yet is not insider trading, even if you own the post office. Algorithmic trading firms are doing the modern equivalent of this at all times to arbitrage the NYC/LON/HK exchanges.

The classic example is that sitting outside a factory and counting trucks does not result in insider information, but driving the trucks does. Even though it is the same information.

Important that it was not "during school". The student in question had not even been to school that day. He just showed up at an event that was near the school, that school officials were also at.

But your overall point - that not every population defines free speech the same way - is accurate. I think the difference here is just a bit less than sometimes implied.

Not quite the same thing since it was a school official rather than police, but we had something similar in the US. Right down to confiscation of a juvenille sign.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_v._Frederick

It's definitely possible for a job to have negative expected value for the employee, even if looking only at cash flow. MLMs are the most obvious way, but e.g. hairdressers often need to rent their station in the store -- while this can be a reasonable deal, it can also run negative.

For inflammatory pain (most headaches, most pain from injuries), ibuprofen absolutely works better. For migraines, neither works at all on its own -- though ibuprofen plus caffeine (I generally drink tea) does a little. For overexertion aches and cramps, or fevers, I think either is generally fine.

You can sometimes get a prescription for a different form or different dosage than what's available OTC. These are most commonly administered in hospitals (and insurance will cover it there), when you're at home it's usually equal or cheaper to just buy the OTC version.

If you own all of it, yes. If you only own most of it, the minority owners do have some rights -- just fewer than you do.

I'd be careful normalizing bribery. It's very micro-efficient, almost definitionally, but the macro effects of normalized bribery are well known and not good.

The fundamental problem is that "staying alert for tricky situations" is essentially an exercise in prediction. FSD effectively hides a bunch of variables from you, making the prediction harder.

Have you ever been a passenger of an unpredictable driver? Was that stressful? Now, add not just the capacity but the responsibility to fix their mistakes.

I'm just not sure how to respond to this, because this criticism doesn't seem to actually address the point. I suppose I could have communicated poorly, but I'm not sure how I could have been more clear.

"Almost all of the past points of contention have been agreed to" is pretty specific language, that indicates a new negotiation. What does "have already been agreed to" mean?

Do you think Trump was referring to an agreement that was in place prior to the war? If so, why did the war happen at all?

Do you think he was referring to future negotiations? "Have been agreed to" would be an odd way to phrase that.

Do you think he was referring to an agreement that lifts sanctions and permits uranium enrichment? That's #1, US lost.

Do you think he was referring to an agreement that contradicts the public 10-point proposal? That's #2, everyone lost.

Do you think that was just something he said, that doesn't have any truth behind it? That's #3, he's lying.

Do you think he was referring to negotiations that did not include uranium enrichment or sanctions? That's #4, he's using an obvious bad-faith rhetorical trick to stall.

Do you think he was referring to something not in one of those categories? Then what?

Yes? "Workable basis on which to negotiate" generally does not include things that directly contradict existing agreements, though. I am pointing to "Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to" to establish that he's claiming some agreement on the past points of contention that matter.

If the "workable basis for future negotiation" contradicts that agreement, then someone is lying about something.

Clearly you do, since Donald Trump has been aggressively doing this for his whole political career. I agree that it's a morally problematic thing to do, and it can be bad tactically depending on the situation. Practically, it does happen without consequences.

If you get into the details, the two biggest "points of past contention" (nuclear enrichment and sanctions) are in the ten point proposal. I only see four ways to resolve that conflict:

1) The US agrees to the resolution of those that Iran publicly claims in the proposal (aka we lost)

2) Iran is lying publicly, and actually agrees to keep sanctions in place and/or give up uranium enrichment (maybe, but the plausible version of this is just reversion to the diplomatic status quo ante - a de facto defeat for everyone).

3) Trump is lying publicly, and there is no agreement on any of this (plausible, but it's unlikely to end better than #1 or #2)

4) This is just a rhetorical trick in service of a stall tactic ("almost all" does not include the ones that actually matter - plausible, but it's unlikely to end better than #1 or #2)

#2 is best case for the US, and represents a defeat in that costs were paid but nothing achieved. It's also a defeat for Iran, but I don't think many of us care about that?

Edit - I guess it is also plausible that Iran's current leadership is sufficiently fragmented that "what Iran agrees to" is not a coherent concept right now. That is just the practical effect of #3 by another route, though.

Trump's tweets are low effort. Just like most of his rally speeches, which are also unhinged. Other presidents, especially e.g. FDR, put effort into all of their communications. Including speeches and, when available, tweets.

Republicans have been calling democratic voters baby-killers for the entire time I have been aware of what a republican is. This sort of behavior has only gotten worse over time. They still manage to win elections.

I get that there are real asymmetries here, but I really don't think there are substantial blocs of swing voters who use "who has insulted them less" as a real factor. If that were the case, Trump would not have made the gains he did in 2024.

The important thing is to make people feel welcome in your coalition. It is clearly possible to do that either with or without being nice. It's just a different skillset.

If you're in a situation where the thing you're doing can be meaningfully called an "execution", a firearm is a convenience, not a necessity. There are also plenty of effective attacks on logistics trains that don't involve firearms, though I will grant that they are at least sometimes a force multiplier there. Hence "that matters a little".

I think you misunderstand me. I have never owned a gun, fired one exactly once more than 20 years ago (Boy Scouts), and advocate for more gun control (not less). I would be totally useless in any realistic fight. The argument has some merit though, in that it is as yet unclear how much it would matter.

I don't think that unclear merit outweighs the very clear and data-driven drawbacks. I just prefer to engage subjects like this in a charitable manner.

The thing that makes the large quantity of American gun owners potentially useful in that sort of scenario is not that they possess guns. That matters a little, but usually most of the equipment a resistance uses is captured and/or supplied by allies. The thing that would be useful is these individuals' skills with firearms. It's theoretically kind of an alternate route to a similar (but lower) background proficiency level that some countries achieve with mandatory military service.

Note however that America is not only not unique in having that background proficiency -- but unlike mandatory military service, this approach has not really been tested. It's far from a certain proposition either way.

"No such thing as bad publicity" is a very old idea. That quote is usually attributed to PT Barnum, but the idea is much older than him.

The Iran-Contra scandal from the Reagan administration comes to mind. Congress explicitly de-authorized the executive from funding the Contras in Nicaragua. The executive kept doing it anyway. Nobody faced any consequences, though Congress at least made a lot of noise about it.

That's kind of ineffective, but not to this level where Congress is just fine with blatant illegality.

The Department of Defense is so named by legislation. Executive orders cannot override legislation.

It might surprise some people that courts are wise to this sort of thing. Lawmakers generally empower them to ignore such legal fictions.