clucas

I think everyone should use this to update their priors on the impact of lobbying. Government action is not contingent on a dollar vs dollar comparison. Citizens United did not result in a raft of unpopular legislation being passed. (Not saying it was the right decision, just that its impact was overstated.)

We should all feel heartened that our government is responding to good arguments over lobbying dollars.

Another one we should keep fighting on is Right to Repair. John Deere and the like can put as much money into the fight as they want - as long as we have people like Rossman being gadflies, sanity will win. Eventually.

EDIT to add: Also https://www.youtube.com/@MartinDonald has some good stuff as well. And here's a subset of Handmade Hero you might find interesting: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEMXAbCVnmY6Mnkt-EZC_...

Free, high-quality history content, can't recommend highly enough: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz...

Be careful here. Read the article closely, here is what it says:

> [Sama] said in a statement that its agreement to collect images for OpenAI did not include any reference to illegal content, and it was only after the work had begun that OpenAI sent “additional instructions” referring to “some illegal categories.”

Note how carefully this is worded - if Time could confidently say that OpenAI asked for C4 images, they would have absolutely put that in the article. Now, this is filtered through PR statements, but it reads to me like a poorly-worded email went out from OpenAI that didn't actually ask for C4 images, but one of Sama's employees interpreted it as an ask, and started collecting without raising any red flags up the chain. And they got fired for it.

Again, I think the harm of mandating backdoors far outweighs the benefit, but imagine your job is to make sure people aren't organizing mass terror attacks. I think you can take a look at the above environment and get a little worried, in a way you wouldn't be about people just whispering to each other in-person. When we say "no backdoors," we are truly making a tradeoff.

Also, you didn't answer the question about principles. I'm still interested in that. I believe I have a rule about social media moderation that I've applied consistently across a wide variety of circumstances. Can you say the same?

Edited to add: And again, if the intelligence community was trying to pick a winner, why didn't they try to ban all the other stories about the laptop? And why only on Twitter? The NY Post was still going strong on Facebook, right?

Also, what exactly is the rule you want in place re: banning by social media platforms? Do you have a principle behind your positions that you can articulate?

Edited to add: I am a little curious why the free speech absolutists weren't up in arms about those bans though. Hmm.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oSdLfPas8dw around around 10 minutes. Good stuff!

You called it a fairy tale, do you believe that big corporations are actually bigger tax cheats than small businesses, and they're just getting away with it somehow?

But, since you brought it up, can you point out any laws passed since CU that were pushed by lobbyists, but were broadly unpopular with the general public? Or laws that failed to pass due to a lobbying effort, despite being broadly popular with the general public? Anything were we can trace this supposed corrupting effect of direct corporate influence and see a result that is actually contrary to what the electorate wants?

I agree it was a bad ruling and should be overturned, but I don't think the doomsday scenarios predicted after the ruling have actually happened. I'm open to being proven wrong though, show me what you got.

Is that because you don't believe that most congressional representatives act according to the will of their constituents? Or because you don't believe that the will of most constituents is worthy of respect?

EDIT: someone updated the title, it used to read "The worst drought in 1200 years" - so this whole tangent about clickbait is even more pointless than it was when it started, sorry everyone!

In this case, it's an accurate description of the phenomenon discussed directly in the article.

I hope he's OK too.

I found this channel last week at a friend's recommendation, here's his video on nougat. Really interesting to see someone show the reasons behind industrial food production without the automatic condemnation that usually comes with it.