gameman144

As an example here, my father and grandfather used to swear by Craftsman tools. No matter the context, if there was a Craftsman version, they'd go for it because they implicitly trusted the quality.

Then the Craftsman brand downshifted its production quality to compete in price and their reliability fell through the floor. Now my family will skip over Craftsman entirely even if it's competitive in price, since the breach of perceived trust soured them on the brand so completely.

I don't think the parent was ever saying they'll be good forever. More that if they do become evil, their licensing lets you continue using a revenue structure that made sense at the time you chose it (even if new versions have super awful terms).

My coworkers have called out gaps in my thinking thousands of times when I have explained perceived needs to them, that's one of the main value-adds one gets from working in a team.

If I wanted unquestioned control, I'd run my own shop. If I want the best product, then I hope that people question my assumptions.

> Yup, but an unrealised gain is still a gain.

How so though? If you're not selling or collateralizing something, you're not gaining any money from possessing it (unless you're counting the spreadsheet number going up as gains by itself).

> And when you die, the capital gains base resets

Yeah, this seems pretty ludicrous. I can understand why inheritance wouldn't cause a taxable event (e.g. you inherit the painting), but it seems pretty wild to allow that while also resetting the basis.

I could be missing something, but I don't know of a super reasonable defense for this part (other than potentially disincentivizing inter-generational hoarding of assets? Honestly not sure)

This makes sense kind of, though. If you haven't realized any of your gains, what are you paying the tax with?

This feels like if you're a normal person who happens to own a painting that becomes super desirable and worth millions. If you sell it then tax away, but otherwise it's literally just the same painting you've always had.

I hear this view about jury nullification quite a bit, saying it's fair to ignore the law and acquit if the law is unfair.

Under that opinion, is it equally fair to ignore the law and convict if someone committed some evil act but technically didn't break any law?

I had the same reaction. Having one person read some personal info I'd accidentally forgotten would be one thing, but blasting it for the world to see just seems sort of disrespectful.

Granted, I'm also not a big personal social media guy in general, so maybe that's just my bias peeking through.

> And this inevitably means you get an overrepresentation of open white supremacists, CSAM enjoyers, teenage edgelords and trolls.

This is not a problem for free speech organizations, though, since they have the ability to choose which cases they represent.

They can (and do, I'm sure) often weigh the perception of bias in which cases they take on next.

> You realize that the origin of their changing stance is because they got someone killed, right?

The ACLU didn't get anyone killed, violent right-wing individuals did. The right to have a political protest rally is enshrined in the Constitution.

Consider the looting and rioting that took place following the George Floyd protests. It would be absurd to suggest that because violence and crime was happening at some of these events, the political speech they represented might not be worth protecting.

> The memo listed several factors to consider, including "the extent to which the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values."

This itself is the bad bit, IMO. My expectation of the ACLU is that they will always defend the rights of individuals, regardless of the goals of those exercising those rights.

When the ACLU defended Nazis marching in Skokie, they weren't defending the goals of Nazis to strip ethnic minorities of rights; they were solely defending first amendment rights.

The logic here seems so fragile that I don't see how one could see it as anything other than a bad thing if they value the ACLU as a bastion for defending rights.

For instance, if a criminal is actively going around and killing people from one political bent or ethnic background, they are clearly not respecting the rights of others.

Should we decide that it's okay to not grant them a speedy trial, since giving a jury the right to free them would definitely get in the way of theother rights we care about?

There is a difference between allowing a party and allowing an act. If a party says "drugs should be legal", it doesn't mean that drug dealers are legal today.

Outlawing an action is fine. Outlawing a party who says the action should be okay is anti-democratic.

I guess the question would be whether banning opposition is the best way to quell opposition.

One of the core tenets of democracy is that the people get a choice in their government. If the current government is able to rip that choice away if it's unpalatable, then that's anti-democratic in and of itself.

> Until a pattern of bias is demonstrated, such judgments are neither implicitly discriminatory, ...

I mean, by definition they are discriminatory though: you are choosing to discriminate between individuals that you will associate with and those you won't.

This is not inherently bad, but can definitely be unjust toward those on the receiving end even if it's justifiable by the discriminator.

For instance, maybe a neighbor down the street seems a bit creepy, so I tell my kids not to hang around them to stay safe. This is fine. For that person, though, it may be a totally unfair and unwarranted restriction, and they actually are kind and good, and hurt that people won't associate with them.

The point I'm making is that even if everyone is just exercising their rights and being reasonable and safe, the outcome can disproportionately negatively impact the receivers of the (perhaps reasonable) discrimination.

> These "judges, jurries and prosecutors" are just people who don't want to associate with potentially dangerous people regardless of the legal outcome.

This is true, but also has excused discrimination in the past (e.g. white flight), and can very easily lead to the tarring and feathering of innocent people.

At the individual level, not associating with potentially dangerous people is fine and smart. When large swaths of people avoid the same potentially dangerous people, though, the "potentially" part really does merit a bit more weight.

Municipalities definitely can deal with them in some sense, since otherwise playing cities against each other would have no purpose.

It's our responsibility to make sure our local governments don't screw us over on that front, and that they represent our desires.

I mean, your parents and their 401k that holds all the money they're planning to retire on feels decently human and relatable to me.

One sound that I've noticed a lot recently is an "r" pronunciation which sounds like the tongue is all the way back in your mouth (if you pronounce an 'r' then pull your tongue upward and back, that's the one). It usual appears in "ar" sounds either before or after "g" or "k" sounds.

You can hear it in words like "marker", "park", "craft" and the like.

You can hear it in the words "guardrail" and "crack" at just after 1:35 in this NPR segment (https://www.npr.org/2023/03/10/1162713293/rockslide-repairs-...)

I've noticed that only some people I point it out to notice the difference, but I've heard it becoming more and more prevalent over the past few years.

The only downside is that I have no idea how to Google it to learn more about its roots!

My local mortgage lender wound down right after we bought our house and sold our mortgage to Wells Fargo. I'd been avoiding them for ages; I guess sometimes there's just no escape.

> If caffeine was illegal you and I wouldn't have acquired such addiction, so there is a very big + to prohibition

This is true, but this argument can be made for anything with downsides.

If cars hadn't been made legal, maybe commutes wouldn't be so bad. If TV hadn't been made legal, maybe people would get out and get more exercise. If the internet hadn't been made legal, maybe fraud would be less widespread.

Just in case this is just a case of word confusion (which I've had before), "anthropogenic" means "caused by humans", not "occurring at the same time as humans".

> No, "both sidesing" is not at all how philosophers or mathematicians train to establish the truth

In math, proof by counterexample is pretty directly what you'd call "both-sidesing" above; you make a thorough, detailed, and compelling argument for a case against your hypothesis, then demonstrate why it can't be true.

If you can't do the work of the making such a detailed counterexample, then the proof of your actual hypothesis falls apart too.

Being able to make the strongest argument against your beliefs is necessary for you to hold your own beliefs most strongly.

Am I missing something in your original comment? I don't see any comment regarding gay marriage anywhere up the tree.

> I cannot think of a single major change in any major Western country since the start of the century that I would call an improvement of individual rights.

Would gay marriage rights not fall under an improvement of individual rights here? If not, why?

> My preference, and I'd guess their preference in most cases, is to not allow any state to outlaw abortion.

Yes, but that is the preference of anyone who believes that they're right and the others are wrong. Federalist pro-life voters certainly bemoan that any state allows for abortion.

The whole point of making constitutional amendments is that you either have to:

A.) Have over three-quarters of representatives or states willing to vote with you, demonstrating overwhelming will of the people, or B.) Understand that others disagree with you that the given thing should be codified as a right. In this case, being able to move to places with the rights you want to have enshrined is a good option.

> I'd rather not have the laws change radically as I cross the border.

This is a fair preference, but many people prefer the exact opposite. For instance, people leaving high-tax states for lower-tax ones, or people leaving abortion-restricting states to less restrictive ones.

> but the way the system is designed, a small minority can block almost any action.

Again, this is a feature, not a bug. If over three-quarters of states or representatives can agree, then an amendment can get passed. If over a quarter of states or representatives don't want to codify something in the constitution, that is not a small minority.

> How exactly are you interpreting that?

I'm not interpreting that portion at all -- I disagree that the founders were only looking out for their own interests, but that's fine to disagree on that bit. I'm responding specifically to "The Constitution never benefited the country as a whole", which is the demonstrably false bit. Every single person in the US today has the benefit of freedom of speech, for instance (despite the fact that historically this was definitely not the case).

I do agree with this, but I'd also add that the actual intrinsic growth itself matters a lot more than either achievement in the long term!

E.g. if you learn and retain a lot in a difficult algorithms course, that's more valuable than either the intrinsic "I passed this difficult course" or the extrinsic "I got an A+" for most cases.

> Amendments to the Constitution have become practically nonexistent.

It seems that you're taking this as a sign that the Constitution isn't still relevant. I'd ask you to consider that this might be a sign of the exact opposite, and that we can't get broad buy-in on the things that some groups see as obvious additions.

If the MLB were trying to update the rules of baseball to make it more exciting, and one camp wanted to do that by increasing the number of home runs while the other wanted to do it by increasing the number of strike-outs, it makes sense that they should sort out which approach is best before passing rules (or allowing flip-flopping every year)

> The Constitution never benefited the country as a whole

For citizens, this is so demonstrably false that I feel like I must be misinterpreting you here.

Totally, it's not strange or entitled to ask. But it's also not strange or entitled to reply with "when I get around to it, unless you want to come help!"

Fair enough, a better comparison might be that my "begonias for everyone to view" yard has a stranger say "when are you going to get bigger begonias?"

The response is then the same.