Douglas Kelso

Dissent was Kavanaugh, Thomas, and Alito.

Two out of three of Trump's judges went against him.

This is what kills me about the AI zealots: okay, you got to 95% accuracy. Those are impressive numbers for a college exam.

Those are "things go boom" numbers in chemical manufacturing.

This is well put. So *many* technologies are joyous and progressive. The web was invented in a PUBLICLY FUNDED UNIVERSITY! It is, in fact, an aberration that the fascist VCs think they're the default with their approach to tech. They were only ever supposed to be a tiny fraction of the ecosystem.

We can have either an overpowered and unaccountable Supreme Court, or a nation of laws. We can't have both.

Until Congress reforms SCOTUS legislatively, the Constitution is basically a dead letter, having been replaced by a series of arbitrary edicts handed down by a corrupt judicial oligarchy.

On Originalism: The Constitutional Grift and its Christian Cousin What is true Originalism?

Conservatives aren't even remotely "originalists" when it comes to interpreting America's founding documents. Progressives are.

Did they outsource the editing to AI as well?

Did any actual people even LOOK at the ad before it went out?

Indeed, WHY???

I can't see any use for this that isn't either fraudulent or downright cruel.

Weak premiere, uninspired remake of a TOS episode, racist episode. And then that awful Ferengi introduction. I was working in a scifi/comic shop when TNG came out, so I heard a lot of feedback from customers, and it was mostly negative at the beginning.

You willing to propose and pass legislation to rein in the Supreme Court to make sure the whole "no kings" thing exists in reality? Because we can have an overpowered unaccountable SCOTUS or a constitutional republic of, by, and for the people. We can't have both.

No, it's entirely valid to expect a story set in a nominally "realistic" world to be plausible even if one or more characters or gadgets are given a limited exemption to some scientific laws. And if a story doesn't work for a given member of the audience, that's often a problem with the story.

[Scene is a domestic kitchen. Night time. The room is all blue apart from warm orange-pink light streaming in from a streetlight outside. In the center of the room stands a woman named BRANDI, standing in pyjamas looking contemplative, the light cast dramatically on her face. At the doorway, leaning against the frame, her partner JOEL stands has woken up and found her in the kitchen.] JOEL: Honey… what are you doing? BRANDI: Can’t sleep Guess I just like standing in the kitchen at 3am thinking about the supernatural threat we temporarily defeated last year. While saying that out loud in a manner which sounds casually ironic but is actually just blatant exposition. JOEL: Brandi… you're talking strange... BRANDI: Dammit Joel. It’s time you knew. You're a Netflix character. [Joel looks shocked] BRANDI: Everybody you know has been forced to speak to you in second screen dialogue. Second screen dialogue helps the people scrolling their phones in front of the TV to follow the - JOEL: Stop explaining, Brandi! [Hands on head, emotional expression, warm pink light cast on his face against the cool blue darkness of the room]. JOEL: So that's why my entire life has looked so glossy and... BRANDI: Yep... Warm/cool colour graded. [Cut to a TV show TITLE SCREEN]: SECOND SCREEN - A Netflix original - [Ends]

Fundamental category error: there's no reason to forgive information dispensers for dispensing incorrect information, any more than I'd "forgive" a ticket machine dispensing the wrong ticket & charging me a million quid. We forgive humans on an ethical and emotional basis, not informational.

Bottom line: SCOTUS is too powerful and too corruptible. Making it bigger won't change that. Stripping SCOTUS of most of its power will. And Congress can do that legislatively. 5/5

The Court of Review would resolve most appeals from circuit courts. SCOTUS would be allowed to hear very few cases. Congress has power to regulate appellate jurisdiction, so they can transfer SCOTUS appeal power to another court designed for political neutrality and accountability. 4/4

Expanding SCOTUS is useless since it can still be packed & corrupted. Create a new Court of Review below SCOTUS. 13 judges, one from each circuit, serving 4-5 year terms. They're picked by supermajorities of fellow judges, not politicians, and accountable to their own circuit. 3/3

Also, Congress can give itself the power by statute to disapprove SCOTUS opinions as relying on incorrect legal analysis, and therefore not to be treated as authoritative statements of American law. It won't take away a bad decision, but lets other courts ignore it as non-precedential. 2/2

FYI You don't need Constitutional amendments to reverse SCOTUS decisions. A statute can limit stare decisis so SCOTUS can no longer legislate from the bench or rewrite the Constitution. Statutes can create effective checks and balances on SCOTUS overreach inside the judicial branch. 1/1

sucking at something is the price of admission for being good at something eventually

Wouldn't cats be ALL OVER chopped liver?

This is creepy invasive technology rife with potential for abuse – but honestly, as the guy who tends to forget names instantly *and* has difficulty recognizing faces, my first reaction was "this could be very useful in social situations."

This is a safe place! Post a #Superman

Tolkien doesn't offer that many options for straight dudes or lesbians.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Letterboxd screenshot Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) Watched by Branson Reese 28 Apr 2022 Abrams isn't a man so much as he's an avatar of cultural entropy. If you make something popular enough eventually you will die or sell it off and and a person in thick rimmed glasses whose main artistic vision is that he loves to have meetings will take it and sandblast it until it's nothing. I hate to see this happen here but maybe it's good that this happened. Maybe every franchise should collapse into a version of itself that makes shareholders nod and shake each others' hands. We should learn to speak in a language that rich people who don't dream can't comprehend.

i often think about this review

I feel this way about pretty much all vaccine-preventable infectious diseases. You shouldn't be allowed to dump cyanide into municipal drinking water and you shouldn't be allowed to recreationally spread viruses around shared public spaces.

Cartoon. Person says to other person „We invented a robot that answers questions.“, adding, „we just have to feed it 10 baby giraffes a day“. The other person asks „But it answers the questions correctly?“ Person responds „Oh my goodness, no. No no no no no.“ By Aram J. French Appropriated due to missing alt text

Gotta go, my ride's here

No clue. I checked Wikipedia for my school, and the "Notable alumni" were people I'd never heard of, other than a couple of politicians whose names I recognized from brief prominence in state politics decades ago.

I'm sure someone is the "most famous" on that list, but I have no idea who.

I watched the whole thing because it's astonishing

Friends from Minneapolis reporting to me that things are at the point where folks are being hidden in other people's houses and we are in the "again" part of "never again" which the "never" was supposed to preclude