knighthack

You're a fledgling first-year practitioner, with no direct access to the thoughts and business considerations of biglaw firm partners or what they deal with. And yet you confidently conclude that the article "is idiotic and so is most of this thread", as if your statement were fact, with not even a contrary opinion to support your statement.

Congratulations. You're the kind of junior lawyer the article warns against.

> I have practiced law for more than ten years, attended some of the institutions mentioned, and have worked in and with firms that would be considered "elite." I don't recognize any of the phenomena described in this article. Frankly the writer is either very far from the reality of modern legal practice (chasing noise in the system, without any real data) or she's viewing things selectively to serve some ideological purpose.

I am in a similar position as you. I have practiced for more than 10 years, and at one of the largest law firms (which will be kept anonymous), and I have forever been a full-time trial litigator. And I do not share your experience.

I've seen the exact opposite, i.e. as per what the article has described - 'woke' juniors coming in with ridiculous expectations, and being a bit too forward despite their lack of experience. I've seen resumes where applicants wrote that they preferred not to be hired at the firm if it didn't include the diversity policy of their choosing (and which is shameless, since a large firm has no ends of good applicants to select from), and where these applicants listed their own social activities (none of which included legally-relevant matters) with 'woke' topics as if that were of any inducement to a large legal firm that was billings-first, over virtue-signalling. I've seen some of these folks during meetings virtue signal and judge against other associates who they thought didn't reflect their standards, which was very toxic for the work environment as your political/social ideologies should really be kept out of the workplace. And so on.

If law firms are shaped by businesses, then the institutions producing these new students - and capitulating to these unrealistic 'woke' demands - are educating the new generation completely devoid of legal business reality.

No, originalism is not about fashionable ideology.

Originalism is about the *original intent* of laws, at the time when they are made.

The whole idea is rooted in stability of construction/interpretation of laws. Why this is important: if the meaning of a word of law can change so radically based on current events, then judges would find it very difficult to issue decisions and make just judgments based on precedents/stare decisis. (And judges in any event are not to interpose their personal beliefs, or current events onto the interpretation of existing law.)

Parliament makes laws, and amend laws, according to the will of the people - and judges then enforce those laws and changes. Even in the most liberal of (say common law) legal systems, judges are not to make up their own ideas of what the law means as they like.

I have no idea why you're misleading this discussion, that "Constitutional originalism is the fashionable ideology of a particular era". Originalism is not about orthodoxy, or being conservative, or the "inferred opinions of a closed circle of white slaveowning gentry", nor is it against revision - originalism is a strong way to ensure the stability of the legal system (which is the point of the article), and respect for the separation of powers, a key point of modern democracy.

Self-promotion with virtually zero content.

I don't understand this need of politically-correct people to always ascribe the worst possible meaning to a particular context, especially when it's clear that that worst-meaning could not have been intended.

> People dispensing justice want to see that you're making strides in their movement.

Since when was that the case? The "people dispensing justice" are judges - and separation of powers takes away the interest of the judiciary from being minded in advancing politics, ideology, and 'movements'.

The "people dispensing justice" have no business in the politics of their day -- their business is strictly concerned with law and evidence, not the fashionable ideology of a particular era - especially in the originalist and constitutional context. Any attempt by "the people dispensing justice" intentionally to advance a cause is malpractice and an abuse of process, not sound law.

It is especially worse now that the 'people defining injustice' are now being asked to jump to conclusions and assign culpability upon sand - i.e. upon allegations, rather than upon evidence. That is not the legal system of America that we know of.

To add: the defence provided to a client is limited ordinarily to what is legally feasible, and what is ethically honourable (i.e. 'winning' does not mean going to the extent of pulling out dishonourable defences to ensure the accused client win).

The above are fair, and reasonable considerations for any lawyer to mete out to an accused client, in the interests of a fair trial, and for the ends of justice.

Yet what the "woke" community asserts is that any form of representation for accused people - accused, not convicted - is heinous in itself. It is surprising, since the legal fraternity should be first to understand that allegations are not truth -- that even law students have fallen short of this is worrisome, as they are the future lawyers and judges of the country.

So the "right" politics reduces criminal culpability. How just.

> Always. Depending on where you get your numbers from, around 15% to 25% of people are LGBTQ+.

I would love sources for that statement, otherwise I will have to call bunk.

We're talking about a global population of Firefox users.

While technically true, I never mind such things.

Those cabbies are working-class people usually. They often have families, and need the extra money. All they get is usually a few extra dollars; which means a lot to them, but very little to us middle-class people, who would suffer no repercussions financially.

One could see the running meter as a form of a 'tip' or 'donation' - not everything has to be seen in the context of "being taken advantage of", which makes it very hard to live.

This is very different from surprise fees from banks and institutions, for which I can see how a person might feel taken advantage of.

For anyone interested, you should look into George Knapp's Hunt for the Skinwalker. It ties in with the were-mythos.

The "mediocre humans" you cite are the everyday folks who drive cars, most of whom do not get into accidents. That makes them quite a useful model to learn from.

> I can assume they're pushing for openness towards sex bc it allows us to be more open to those who have an identity strongly rooted in sex

Just because one is open towards sex doesn't mean that their identity has to be "strongly rooted in sex".

I don't need anyone to know my sexual orientation. It's not important in whether I'm doing my job right, or when I'm engaged in my hobbies. If anyone wants to have an identity "strongly rooted in sex", more power to them, but there's something wrong in that statement if you have to shove your opinion about your sexuality in contexts that don't matter, and where not all people share your opinion on the importance of sex to their identity.

I have quite a different approach. I would never ask a best friend for a discount, since if I value the friendship, the money matters less than it. (Plus I'd want my best friend to make the money he deserves, not less. A discount is not something I'm entitled to from a friend.) If a sale is a complete rip-off, then I'd rather take my business elsewhere than do a business with a friend whose friendship I value.

I tried to use Wayland, but simply speaking the way it handles/supersedes earlier input mechanisms - which some seem to call a form of security theatre - is disruptive.

For instance, I have bound keyboard shortcuts to manage windows via `wmctrl`. It's absolutely crucial to my workflow, since I use an ultrawide monitor. wmctrl is mostly impossible with Wayland, and which required me to revert back to X11. Certain apps also sometimes do not work in X11 (e.g. Ubuntu's Software Center, for reasons lost to me), which then forces me to use Wayland.

I've noted a couple of other grievances, so I do not agree that Wayland is absolutely a good thing for now (at least for me).

How do you browse the Internet then?

> Maybe they could both hire Brandon Sanderson to finish their works someday. He's both incredibly prolific and for the most part very creative and novel. I guess that's why he was hired to finish Robert Jordan's series. It was certainly a good fit, all things considered.

Brendan Sanderson has already said that he won't touch the Game of Thrones series. I can see why - it's quite different, stylistically, but he has religious concerns, which I respect, for not doing so: https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/4uwjq9/comment/d5vj...

> But the point is moot, as I wouldn't say yes to finishing ASOIAF, if asked. (And I don't think they'd ask me.) I'd respectfully decline. I wouldn't be right for the job for many reasons. I wouldn't want to put in the content that the series has, and part of that is due to my religious faith, part of it is just who I am. I don't shy away from difficult material, but I prefer not to get explicit. Honestly, when I read it in George's work, I often just cringe. I don't think it fits in prose; I think it looks tacky. But that's almost 100% due to the my religious leanings. I realize that others don't read such scenes in the same way as I do.

I think this is also because of potential abuse: there's nothing to prevent malicious SEO gamers from reporting legitimate sites as 'spam' to remove competition, as a means of extortion, etc.

So the solution you're describing is: apply public posturing to appease the mob, and highlight the queer/LGBT-positive stance of the company (while disregarding the importance of its engineers, given that Mozilaa is a tech company first, not a social justice company)?

Since when have a "good fraction of their user base", i.e. of Mozilla's, been the queer and LGBT community?

I've been using Rectangle for a while now, as the Mac equivalent for what I use on Windows, i.e. Divvy. Thanks for your hard work! I didn't even realize there was a pro version. Will look towards purchasing it.

The way they described private photos as 'non-public photos' surprised me. I had to really re-read the paragraph to get at what they're going for.

From what I understand, free users now only get to store 50 photos. Any more, and they're at risk of being deleted. I've been with Flickr since 2006-2007; this is an extremely surprising move.

Arguably, anything alien to you, and 'ethnic' to something else, can use the word 'ethnic' as a valid adjective.

That use may not be idiomatic (in the sense how, say, an Indian or Chinese mainlainder would never describe a civil war between white people on US soil as 'ethnic tension' in the English language) but it's a valid use of the word from their POV.

I dislike non-idiomatic uses, as idioms have their uses in language, and not all idiomatic usages are inherently racist or sexist. (Does the word 'white flag' connote something bad? Or does the phrase 'as white and pure as snow' mean something derogatory, as it does not include other colours?)

The phrase 'ethnic tension' to me usually means some arguments between factions in a failed government, local militia forces, autocratic regimes with many tribes, etc. I don't think use of such idioms should be governed. It is definitely censorship.

I have no idea what he means by the 'language is the IDE'. (And I'm using single quotes, because that's my understanding, not his words, which may show that I understand even far less than what the article espouses.)

To my understanding, IDEs are environments - which can stand independent of the language.

To give an analogy: if music is a 'language', I can write/record in with whatever DAW/'IDE' I supposed fit the case - e.g. Reaper, Protools, FL Studio, Garageband, etc. I therefore find it really difficult to grok what it means to have an IDE so closely attached to the language. (In which case we'd have an equivalent to programming in Java, where because of its verboseness, programming in it without an IDE can be an absolute nightmare.)

There's that, and how, from his explanation, it means that no-code is basically a mix-and-match coding solution. Outside of specialized tools for a special purpose (e.g. the Blueprint Visual Scripting system in Unreal Engine) I don't imagine this as a general-purpose tool will succeed at all.

There were some videos a while back on a butcher torturing pigs in a slaughterhouse, which was leaked and showed inhuman practices. The pigs were squealing and grunting in absolute horror as they were tortured. It scares me to know exactly what emotions they were displaying during the torture.

A good checklist of things to mind when designing APIs. Sometimes you forget the good things.

What does the trans issue even have to do with a partnership dispute, on the shareholding structure of their arrangement? Why does everything have to be a gender issue?

Would love to know how it was like working at Apple? How toxic was toxic?

You stated:

> Of course there's some point where most people agree that a classification makes sense, because there's a "well d'uh" kind of difference, like the chicken and the velociraptor. At the other extreme you'd classify every individual, because they're all unique. People will endlessly argue where to draw this line. There just is no answer to the question how far we should go. > > ... > > The problem is that nobody can meaningfully draw a line.

Your statement makes no sense. Anyone can draw a line between a chicken and a velociraptor. Anyone who argues that no line can be drawn between two etxremes are either deluded, insane, or with an agenda.

For purposes of scientific classification, the lines may blur sometimes. But the evidence at hand and discussions among experts does not seem to justify 3 different species. If so, one can only presume that those who wish there to be 3 species are finding ways to inflate/publish a paper and to claim a scientific stake, rather than there being some genuine need for classification.

I really wish that they would agregate to a tested storage format, like SQLite.

This is a good article on the 'states' of knowledge, and how you float between them, and how to examine your (true) understanding of a specific piece of context. Great read.