Quinn Yeargain

every single psycho thing Donald Trump does he does only because almost every single federally elected Republican has chosen unilaterally, independently, and with complete freedom to go along with it unconditionally

as well you should be

It’s always a great day to talk about state constitutions!

The damage done to Labour by the by-election loss seems massive. Their argument to centre-left voters that they should “vote strategically” to defeat Reform failed. Now, there’s a *more* plausible argument for Labour voters to vote strategically *against* Labour and for Greens or the LibDems.

yep. that’s what I thought of.

I really don't have words

I find it incredibly insulting when Ivy League law journals—which have never accepted my pieces—suddenly think that I possess expertise and that my thoughts are worth listening to when they want me to review a piece for them.

I'm old enough to remember when "negligently" meant something different from "intentionally and maliciously".

if a frog had a tail it wouldn't bounce on its ass

LLMs break our ability to conclude when there is proof of effort. We make high schoolers write essays and do math assignments not because we care about essay or because we don’t know the problem set answers, but because the effort trains them in a certain way. We read customized cover letters as an important signal of interest, because it has traditionally been hard to make a good one, and you could only do it for so many jobs you applied for. Gatekeeping is inevitable, and when the old mechanisms stop working, other measures will step in, like relying on the prestige of the candidate’s institution or their connections to decide who to hire, or what papers to cite or publish.

I think about this a lot with LLMs and education and also publishing. The hope that by undermining failing or unfair systems, LLMs will destroy the hierarchies and unfairness seems... naive. The result will likely be the opposite. jessicahullman.substack.com/p/zeynep-tuf...

I hope there's a backlash, and if there is, it'll be severe.

the gubernatorial primary is stuffed with candidates. one of them just needs to switch over.

this is just evil.

it's molting season for RFK Jr

Why do I have to pretend that I'm going to print something in order to save it as a PDF. Why do I have to engage in a little ruse.

I made an offer for a house this weekend. I offered X over listing. The seller's agent tells my agent if I offer X+5K, I'll get it. I upped my offer. Then the seller leveraged my offer to get an X+10K offer and rejected my offer.

surely there are no lessons to draw from this about the value of fighting back

what a helpful, constructive response.

hitting the low 30s is when things get real

way too self-congratulatory for a man who chooses to defend child slavery

maybe a sign, but also, there was no competitive and high-octane statewide primary on the Democratic side in 2022

written by an LLM student? a current student at the University of Minnesota Law School? a student at the same institution where he teaches, and where he wields power?

on the other hand, can we really say for sure that the profession of economics doesn't deserve a little bit more shame

there can be genuinely good use cases for LLMs when teaching, but far too often, it's literally just people phoning it in and using an LLM to pick up the slack

This Econ profession should be very much named and shamed

Introducing her view that “commonsense principles of communication” can sometimes help resolve disputes over the meaning of statutory terms, JUSTICE BARRETT points to an old chestnut. Nebraska, 600 U. S., at 512, 514 (concurring opinion). Suppose a legislature used the phrase “who- ever drew blood in the streets” in a criminal statute imposing punishment. As a matter of “common sense,” JUSTICE BARRETT says, it would “‘g[o] without saying’” that the law doesn’t apply to a surgeon accessing a patient’s vein to save his life. Ibid. That is because the phrase “drew blood” is susceptible to two conventional idiomatic meanings: one “applicable to violent encounters with man or beast” and the other “to medical procedures,” A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law 357 (2012) (Scalia & Garner). And any

ordinary person faced with that phrase in a penal law would find it obvious which meaning applies. Ibid.; see also Ne- braska, 600 U. S., at 512 (BARRETT, J., concurring). The difficulty is, our major questions cases are different. Often, little about them “‘goes without saying.’” Ibid. Take FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U. S. 120 (2000). There, the question was whether the FDA could regulate tobacco products. Id., at 125. Looking only to com- mon sense, the answer would have been yes. Congress au- thorized the FDA to regulate “drugs,” which Congress de- fined expressly and broadly as “‘articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body.’” Id., at 126. As a matter of common sense, nicotine qualifies as a “drug” based on this statutory definition, as it might even as a matter of everyday speech. West Virginia, 597 U. S., at 721–722 (noting the “colorable textual basis” for the executive branch’s interpretation in Brown & Wil- liamson). Still, we held the FDA could not regulate tobacco products. Brown & Williamson, 529 U. S., at 159–160. Other cases follow suit. We have ruled that the term “air pollutant” does not include greenhouse gases, even though greenhouse gases pollute the air. Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, 573 U. S. 302, 316, 323–324 (2014). We have held that the phrase “‘[r]egulations . . . necessary to pre- vent the . . . spread of communicable diseases’” does not in- clude eviction moratoriums, even without questioning that eviction moratoriums were necessary to prevent the spread of COVID–19, a communicable disease. Alabama Assn. of Realtors, 594 U. S., at 761, 764. And we have said that clos- ing coal power plants is not the “‘best system of emission reduction,’” even while acknowledging that closing them would reduce emissions. West Virginia, 597 U. S., at 721, 732–735.

Gorsuch is criticizing Barrett’s approach to the MQD here, but I think most people would read this and think, “Sounds like you guys issued some embarrassingly bad decisions in the past.”

e.g., (1) "X must happen soon" versus (2) "X must happen as soon as possible."

(2) suggests to me *overall* a heightened sense of urgency compared to (1), but also one that takes into account the surrounding context.

a question for lawyers, scholars, and other friends: can you think of a case, article, or principle that articulates what the difference is between "[x] adjective" and "as [x] adjective as possible"?

my view is that the latter *could* impose a more stringent requirement, but may not always.

I just assumed Ilan had something