The regime’s actions around Venezuela are crimes. It really is that simple. The only real question is whether they’re war crimes or just crime crimes. And that uncertainty is only there because it’s the military doing them; if anyone else…
Archive: Book Review: Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody
I should dig up this book for the kid who’s really into the Harry Potter books. An old post of mine from Kuro5hin.Org, dated “Sat Dec 29th, 2001 at 11:23:02 AM EST”. I did get a copy of this book…
Degenerative AI: Government Must Be Able To Explain Its Decisions
The State must be able to justify its decisions and explain the process by which it arrived at them. Obviously. You cannot effectively oversee the operations of a government that will not, or can not, explain the basis for its…
No Consequences: How We Got To This Point
Have you ever wondered why your phone (or banking site, or pretty much anything these days) locks you out for a while if you type the wrong password a few times? This will be relevant to the coup, really. It’s…
Lies, Damn Lies And Politics: Factual Accuracy In Government Publications
The State has no 1st Amendment right to free speech; in fact, even a moderate reading of the 1st Amendment would require the State to avoid any expressive speech at all. And the same can be said for any fictitious…
You Should Read This: On Incomputable Language And More on Turing and LLMs
The pseudonymous blogger Camestros Felapton has an interesting post up today, “More on Turing and LLMs“, which is primarily comment on a post by Elizabeth Sandifer titled “On Incomputable Language: An Essay on AI“. You should read them both. I definitely…
No More Secrets: Seriously, Stop Trusting The Government
I’ve said this before: we cannot trust the government to keep secrets from the citizens. They very obviously are not trustworthy. Today’s stupid secret comes to us from Military.com, probably the best source online for inside news on the U.S.…
No Disintegrations: DHS Is Feeling A Tad Insecure
Many sources are reporting that DHS is looking to spend around $180 million on a bounty hunter program. Which is just so many kinds of wrong. Even the existence of bounty hunters in a modern State is an admission of…
A Just War II: Christmas Has Gone Too Far
I originally posted this mini-rant in 2022. Since then, things have not improved. Thanksgiving is Ukraine to Christmas’ Russia: I wouldn’t normally be particularly interested in it, though it seems fine (if a bit problematic), but its annoying neighbor just…
Do A New Thing: On Interpreting The Law
Paul Campos, at the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog, has an interesting post today about ways to approach interpreting the law called “Follow the rules or do the right thing?“. You should read it. Now, I Am Not A Lawyer…