Joe Thompson

"In the majority of cases in which the government is losing in the lower courts, it is (1) not seeking emergency or expedited intervention from above; and (2) otherwise complying with the adverse rulings while the cases move (very slowly) ahead."

179. Whither the Birthright Citizenship Cases? Notwithstanding the Court's June ruling, President Trump's birthright citizenship executive order remains blocked—a broader lesson on the risks of paying attention to only one part of the news cycle.

The idea that the courts are taking a long time or failing to redress harms and that as a result, legal action is largely ineffective is a widespread one, but apparently not very accurate: www.stevevladeck.com/p/179-whithe...

I mean, that sounds like a completely unfair summary, even to me as I write it, but I'm not sure which part of it is *wrong*.

Because frankly it sounds like you just don't want this proposal *to be critiqued at all*, because it's getting *popular* and knocking it down without providing something equally activating is depressing to people. And I guess depressing people by arguing a popular idea to be unworkable is bad?

Now you're criticizing the alternative I gave you on, apparently, the grounds that it isn't... what? What criteria would a proposed alternative have to meet for you to be content that critique of this proposal is not "a problem"?

But let's step back a second. You asked for an alternative if I wanted to critique the proposal under discussion, and I actually gave you one (while still feeling it's not really incumbent on me to do so, which you seem to actually agree with).

"Work it out in the courts" seems to be *working* much more often than not, which I see as a clear leg up on proposals that won't work at all, but I don't exclude the possibility that other things might work just as well, or better.

Wouldn't it be even more depressing to get highly invested in something and only find out after it fails that there was no chance of it working in the first place?

Surely you know more about that than I do, particularly when it comes to Chicago, since your profile says you write about "Chicago, labor, and organizing". I'm just a guy on the Internet who happens to know this one specific thing as a side effect of my own property tax fight nearly 20 years ago.

If you proposed to drive from San Francisco to Hawaii and I pointed out that you'll have a hard time doing that because of the lack of drivable road between the two, is it also on me to look up flights from SFO to Honolulu for you?

Not really. It's not anyone's particular job to point out alternatives to things that manifestly won't work just because they point out those things manifestly won't work.

As far as I know the federal government doesn't need to file anything with anyone to claim that exemption. Everybody knows who they are and that they're exempt from ad valorem tax levies. If somebody sends them a property tax bill they can just ignore it and no court will enforce collecting on it.

Not get invested in "taking action" that accomplishes nothing vs. supporting things that are actually accomplishing something like fighting things on the merits in the courts?

Not to my knowledge. They're inherently exempt by virtue of the Supremacy Clause, backed up by federal case law. They may choose to comply with local or state zoning regs so as to be seen as a "good neighbor", but need not if they don't want to.

The current owner's use presumably complies with applicable zoning, and most places don't set levy rates or assess property more often than annually. This is not one weird legal trick that will stop the federal government in its tracks.

Federal government is exempt from property taxes. Pretty sure they're entirely exempt from zoning regulation too.

Please do not give the coiners ideas.

Asking what's the point of doing it is like asking what's the point of writing a long, involved science fiction story to explore a concept instead of writing a short philosophical article on the subject. Doing the thing with some flair is the point.

The same as swearing fluently at an old unreliable car: to *creatively* vent frustration at a nonsentient thing.

And going even further back, the love-letter template engine that Christopher Strachey wrote for the MUC used a "rather simple trick" as he described it (one even more primitive than Eliza), that nonetheless apparently impressed people seeing it for the first time as intelligence in some form.

I'm constantly reminded these days that people frequently insisted the Eliza chatbot *must* have some form of sentience to display such insight.

(It's absolutely fabulous to me that the example in that glorious Tumblr thread of yesteryear is actually a nonsentient robot. Seems highly relevant these days...)

Weaponizing "humans will pack-bond with anything" for... well, probably not "fun", but definitely profit.

And what if you then showed them that the Mandelbrot set embeds a bifurcation diagram?

I am apparently on the "does not like bitcoin/ai" list run by @schizanon, described as "People who have made being anti-technology their whole personality." Describing me as "anti-technology" is especially hilarious to anyone who knows me, like, at all. 8 users block me using this list.

What's that thing about knowing you're on the right side by who counts you as an enemy?

A series of skeets: Jay (@jay.bsky.team) Harassing the mods into banning someone has never worked. And harassing people in general has never changed their mind. Neels Yeah but a customer threatening to cancel their service usually gets a couple things accomplished. C'mon, Jay. Shame on you. Jay (@jay.bsky.team) Are you paying us? Where?

Context:

lol. lmao.

You know, as much as I'm myself cautious about screwing over retirement funds in an excess of zeal to let poor investments finally just fail... I don't know if we'll otherwise ever be able to stop bailing out wealthy investment firms that should fucking well know better.

Silicon Valley and Wall Street invent collateralized GPU obligations. Surely this will work out fine The zero-interest era is over. Money isn’t free anymore. How can Silicon Valley venture capital, and the rest of Wall Street, generate lottery-winning yield levels in this economy? Today’s creative…

Well, there are apparently now companies borrowing billions to buy new GPUs using their existing depreciating GPUs as collateral for the loan (because they have no expectation of actual profits any time soon): pivot-to-ai.com/2024/11/04/s...

You will regret the thing you wanted to do and could have done, but didn't, much more than you will regret doing a thing that didn't live up to the hype -- especially if people you enjoy being with are involved in either case.