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Posts published in “Politics”

I will disappoint you sooner or later.

[twenty twenty-four day twenty-nine]: phantom enemies

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"I'ma gonna get that bird in the mirror, I swear, this is my territory, I'll show him---BONK!"
"Okay, this time for sure---BONK!"
"Tenth time's the charm---BONK!"

Not even putting up a screen in front of the mirror has helped; our little friend just hopped down onto the stairs of the cat condo (that "table" is a cat condo with a re-purposed glass tabletop, to give one of our now-passed older cats a place to sit and see the stars while shielding him from the rain) and started bonking the lower section of the mirror.

There's no reasoning with some people.

-the Centaur

P.S. Yes, I am making a direct comparison of people whose political beliefs are built around their persecution by imaginary enemies to a bird not smart enough to recognize his own reflection, why?

[twenty twenty-four day twenty-one]: it’s too cold to be stingy

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Look, I get it: giving money to pandhandlers is not necessarily the best way to help lift people out of homelessness, and can often be counterproductive. Out of all the money that I've given to people, I'd say one out of three of them I could tell benefited from it (for example, one guy immediately bought food), one third were scammers (for example, one "hungry" guy immediately bought alcohol), and one third, I dunno. That's one reason that signs like this go up in public squares all across the country:

But look at the kind of day that this sign was having. It didn't get above freezing until noon. It's too damn cold to be stingy to people who ask for things from you. Jesus said "Give to all those who beg of you" and while sometimes we can't follow that advice given the context, yesterday was not one of those days.

This is part of a whole trend of "hostile architecture" where we structure our societies to make things difficult for people who are homeless - closing the parks, making benches hard to sleep on, stealing the possessions of the homeless (either as a condition of going into a homeless shelter, or outright theft by the police) and eliminating low-cost housing that could provide a path out for the homeless.

I'm not sure what the right answer is, but when it's fifteen below freezing, the right answer is not "no".

-the Centaur

[twenty-twenty four day thirteen]: are you registered to vote?

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2024 is shaping up to be one of the most consequential American elections in recent history, in which our first twice-impeached ex-president is running AGAIN for the highest office in the land. When he ran for office the first time, it wasn't clear precisely what he would do if elected, and Clinton had her own problems.

But now, what Trump stands for - and would do - is clear. Even if you forget the two impeachments (no convictions) and the many indictments (not conclusive yet), Trump was more than just a poor loser hawking false claims of a stolen election: he actively tried to overturn it, and stoked the fires of insurrection on January 6th. He's a proven threat to American democracy.

And, not just a proven threat: he's an openly stated threat to American democracy. If elected, he openly admits plans to purse his enemies, Ron Desantis-style. And he's backed by the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 plan to reshape our civil-service-based federal bureaucracy into a Soviet-style system controlled by the Republican party apparatus.

American democracy is the light of the world. Whether you're Democrat or Republican, you should register to vote, and vote for almost anyone else than Trump. And if you're a Republican, you should contact your congrescritter and state your opposition to Project 2025.

Democracy is a wonderful thing - if we can keep it.

-the Centaur

[twenty twenty-four day nine]: cold traps and atmospheric collapse

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It's fascinating to me how concepts far from our daily experience can help us understand our world. Far out in the galaxy, many planets like Earth orbit far closer to their suns, and can become tidally locked - always facing their parent star, the way that the Moon always faces the Earth.

As you might imagine, the light side gets hot, and the dark side gets cold. But what isn't clear is that the atmospheres of such planets are bistable - there are two different conditions many of these planets can exist in, even traveling at the same distance away from their parent stars.

If the atmosphere is hot enough, then greenhouse gases trap heat at the surface, sustaining the atmosphere so it can warm the night side through convection. But if the night side ever gets cold enough, the greenhouse gases can freeze out into ice deposits, which act as a cold trap.

As greenhouse gases disappear from the atmosphere, the atmosphere loses its ability to retain heat, and the night side gets colder and colder, harvesting more and more of the atmosphere to the cold trap. Eventually most of the atmosphere freezes on the night side, creating an ice cap.

Either of those states - a hot greenhouse world with a thick atmosphere, or a hot light side world with a thick frozen ice cap on the dark side - is stable enough on its own. An active greenhouse world stays hot, and an ice cap world stays nearly airless. But the transition from greenhouse to ice cap is a vicious cycle.

So many things in our world are like these cold traps: we don't always see good things when we have them, and once the runaway process is started, it's hard to stop.

Belief is one such thing: an open mind can interrogate itself, but once an ideology starts to take us over, it actively attacks conflicting information, until we're left with nothing but a thick crust of conspiracy theories.

Where's your cold trap? It may feel something like a blind spot.

-the Centaur

[sixty-one] minus thirty-four: that trump business

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sunset in san francisco

You know, I don't comment on politics on this blog nearly enough, and I plan on changing that. But I just found out that the statute of limitations may have passed on the crimes Trump is accused of in New York.

Regardless of the merits of the case, we shouldn't be doing things like that. All too often we let things go that we should drop, or press things that we shouldn't, because of political appearances.

Hm. What does OpenAI"s ChatGPT language model have to say about this?

Has the statute of limitations passed on Donald Trump's indictment?
As an AI language model, I cannot provide legal advice or make a definitive statement about a specific legal case. However, to provide some general information, the statute of limitations varies depending on the type of offense and the jurisdiction. In the United States, federal offenses typically have a five-year statute of limitations, but this can vary depending on the offense. State laws also have their own statutes of limitations for criminal offenses.

Regarding any potential indictment of Donald Trump, it would depend on the specific charges and the applicable statute of limitations. It is also important to note that the decision to indict someone is made by prosecutors based on the evidence and legal standards, and is not determined by whether the statute of limitations has expired or not.

the Centaur in dialog with ChatGPT.; emphasis mine.

Gee, thanks, AI overlord! Seems like the prosecutor's job here may have been to bring the indictment if they believed a crime was committed, even if the statute of limitations had passed. Let's get more specific:

What is the statute of limitations in New York?
In New York State, the statute of limitations for criminal offenses varies depending on the severity of the crime. Here are some examples:

- For most felony offenses, the statute of limitations is five years. However, for certain serious offenses such as homicide or terrorism, there is no statute of limitations.
- For misdemeanor offenses, the statute of limitations is typically two years.
- For certain sexual offenses committed against minors, the statute of limitations has been extended in recent years. For example, the statute of limitations for second-degree rape of a minor is now 20 years from the victim's 18th birthday, or within 10 years of the offense, whichever is later.

It's worth noting that the statute of limitations can be tolled, or paused, under certain circumstances, such as when the defendant is out of state or in hiding. In some cases, the statute of limitations may also be extended if new evidence is discovered.

the Centaur in dialog with ChatGPT; emphasis mine.

According to Wikipedia, what Trump is accused of - falsifying business records - is normally a misdemeanor, but can become a felony if used to further another crime. From what I've read, the prosecution has withheld a lot of facts from the indictment to improve the surprise of their case at trial, so they may have more evidence forthcoming; but "The indictment raises novel and complex legal issues." Sheesh.

This isn't the way to do this.

I understand the desire to speak truth to power, and the importance of holding the powerful to account; but the way to uphold the rule of law is NOT to ignore the rule of law so we can bring a case. There's a word for that: a kangaroo court, "a court that ignores recognized standards of law or justice," leading to show trials.

Donald Trump certainly isn't my favorite politician, and perhaps he needs to be brought to justice; but we should also presume innocence until proven guilty. Here's hoping that either the District Attorney coughs up some very good evidence that justifies his actions, or that the case gets swiftly thrown out if his actions weren't justified. I just can't see any good coming from anything between those two extremes.

-the Centaur

Pictured: Sunset in San Francisco.

Remember January 6th

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Trump Calling for Insurrection

Recall to memory the Sixth of January,
Riot, insurrection and plot
For no justification should the January Insurrection
Ever be forgot

A little over one year ago today, lame-duck President Donald Trump directed an unruly band of his followers to "fight like hell" to overturn the election of Joe Biden, in the hope of disenfranchising me and the 81 million other Americans who voted to bring to an end Trump's dyscivic reign.

"Dyscivic" means "antagonistic to civilization." It's a word coined by alt-right pundit Vox Day to disparage the aspirations of "social justice warriors" like myself. I am a writer, and I hereby confiscate "dyscivic" and repurpose it to mean "antagonistic to the civic structures of our society" - which Donald Trump was.

Of my good friends who voted for Donald Trump, at least two voted for him precisely because they expected he would be disruptive to our existing system. One specifically said, "I voted for Donald Trump because I hoped he would blow up the Republican Party, and I'm waiting for the Democrats to go next."

Keep waiting. Even though progressives like AOC and moderates like myself don't always get along, we recognize that we share the same end goals, that our principles are compatible, and they're worth fighting for together, even if we might disagree on methods.

I don't get the same sense from my most right-wing friends, who viciously lambast politicians from their own party for not "getting on the Trump train" in every possible respect - even when those politicians have multi-decade records voting for precisely the positions my friends loudly advocate for.

Reliance on trust is toxic to any organization. It encourages dependence on personal relationships - even friendships - developed over years or decades, and makes the organization resistant to new information delivered by new people. When that trust is in leadership, it becomes loyalty ... which is deeply dyscivic.

The purpose of government is to put the use of force under rational control. To prevent one man from using that force to execute their own personal will, we create civic structures that corral the use of power. We loan power, not grant it; and when you loan power to someone, you watch them.

Over four years, we watched Donald Trump demand loyalty on an unprecedented scale in American politics - from his followers, from fellow politicians, from the machinery of government. He turned on his appointees when their understanding of their civic duties conflicted with his own petty desires.

And when the American people had had enough - when even some of my Trumpian friends switched parties because they could not abide what he was doing to our political system - Trump spat on those of us who dared to vote against him, and then tried to pretend to his followers that we did not exist.

Well, sir, our voices were heard. And we won't be silent. We know that you and your followers are going to try again - I remember watching your suppoprters meeting in the dark in the months leading up to the insurrection (holding 10pm rallies in the parking lot of a nearby grocery store). We'll be watching.

For I'm not the only one. Here's a few quotes from my fellow Americans around the web:

http://wilwheaton.net/2022/01/one-year-later/

We all know how that turned out. All but seven Republican Senators — forty-three of fifty members in the upper chamber — protected him and embraced his Big Lie. In the year since, they have doubled down on it, and they have not stopped insisting that we did not see what we saw one year ago today with our own eyes.

And:

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2022/01/06/january-6-one-year-on/

And yet, after perhaps 48 hours of unrehearsed shock, the Republican party rallied around this traitor to the republic and the constitution, and tried to rebrand an actual coup attempt into overexuberant tourism.

And not about January 6th, but important all the same:

https://angrystaffofficer.com/2022/01/03/american-war-and-american-memory/

Why is this important? Because as we look ahead into another year at the beginning of a new decade of a constantly changing world, America needs to take a hard look at herself and ask whether we are remembering or forgetting the right things. This is not only vital to our collective consciousness as to who we are as a nation, but to the success of future military operations.

I assert that remembering the right things isn't just vital to our success in military endeavors, but to each of us personally, in the aggregate, as a nation, and as a civilization. If we don't remember the true story - good and bad and ugly - then those who make up stories for their own convenience will rule the day.

Remember, the Big Lie was the foundation for the Final Solution.

Let's make sure that doesn't happen here.

-the Centaur

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

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chipman, pruitt, bolton tl;dr: Opponents of things should never be appointed to oversee them. So President Biden has nominated David Chipman to lead the ATF - and he was wrong to do so. It's not that Chipman isn't qualified to lead the ATF - he's a 25-year ATF veteran. It's that Chipman is explicitly disqualified to lead an agency that oversees firearms - because he's a gun control advocate. It's not that he can't be trusted to make good decisions: he can be trusted to make bad ones. Previous presidents have made the same mistake. To lead the EPA, Donald Trump nominated Scott Pruitt, a noted environmental skeptic who had sued the EPA. To serve as ambassador to the UN, George Bush nominated John Bolton, a noted United Nations skeptic who said that it does not really exist. Political cards on the table: I voted for Joe Biden, and I'm happy with him. And while I'm a gun rights proponent - if the Second Amendment didn't exist, we'd need to invent it - I recognize both the need for and constitutional legitimacy of gun legislation, which shouldn't be set in stone as our society evolves. But intellectual and moral integrity demands that if I call an opponent out for their misbehavior, that I also call out allies for the same behavior. Calling out misbehavior only on one side is worse than hypocritical: it undermines trust in the political system, and encourages further distorted value judgments. And humans are great at distorting value judgments when emotions are involved. From the most basic arguments all the way up to the most complex adjudication of fact and law, our moods and emotions affect whether we judge something to be true or false. In a way, we should expect this: researchers like Antonio Damasio have shown that rational decision making breaks down in people whose emotions are impaired, because the value judgments provided by our emotions are necessary for making mental decisions. But a functioning emotional system can also lead us astray: emotions can impair our judgments. Studies show we're more likely to screw up simple if-then syllogisms if they're emotionally charged. Even judges, trained to be impartial, are more likely to make mistakes with legal arguments on "hot" political topics. Heightened emotion distorts perceptions, leads us to attribute our feelings to arbitrary targets we come across, and reduces self-control - precisely what you don't want to have in someone who needs to make impartial decisions about something, and precisely what you do have in the person of a political activist. Now, I'm not questioning Chipman or Bolton's integrity (Pruitt's lack of integrity is well documented, down to his sound-proof booth), or Chipman or Bolton or Pruitt's patriotism, or their expertise. But all three of them are interested enough in the areas they later oversaw to have gone into them as opponents. In our public life, there is politics, and there is civics, and the two should not mix. Politics literally means deciding how to allocate scarce resources, and it is right and expected for us to dive in rough and tumble to ask for what we want - a participatory political system grants moral authority to a government. But government's purpose is to bring the use of force under rational control, and more broadly, to allocate resources correctly when policy has been made. Inevitably, decisions will need to be made on matters of fact at an agency - and a political partisan can be trusted to screw them up even if they're trying not to. When a partisan appoints a opponent of something to oversee it, the person that they've appointed will, very likely, whether they want to or not, "lean their hand on the till" to make things come out for their own partisan ends - meaning they will, sooner or later, fail in their civic duty to make an honest decision. If you're passionate about something, you might feel that it's all right to put a partisan in charge of it,  because then you'll get what you want. But that's evil, on two grounds - first of all, because you are subverting the political process to get a result through the back door that you can't through the front. But more importantly, impartial decisions will need to be made - and by putting a partisan in charge, you're explicitly hoping for them to make a wrong decision to help implement your political desires. Tyrants, bigots and the corrupt throughout history have employed the same tactic. Stop doing it. Regardless of our political desires, we need to step back and decouple our understanding of people into (at least) two parts: their politics, and their competence. If their political orientation isn't a direct conflict of interest for to the matter at hand, their basic competence is the primary qualification for doing the job. I was happy when Trump picked Bolton as National Security Advisor: whether I agree with their politics or not, Bolton had the experience to do the job and the attitude towards the job to do it right. Bush should never have appointed Bolton to the UN: even when he made the right decisions, we couldn't trust them. I might not have agreed with Scott Pruitt politically, but as a lawyer and state Senator, he was well qualified to be Attorney General of Oklahoma. It was morally wrong for Donald Trump to appoint a climate change denier to lead the EPA, and, predictably, that led to Pruitt lying about climate issues. I thank David Chipman for his service at the ATF, and would approve of his nomination to another agency. But the moment that he joined a political movement against guns, he disqualified himself from overseeing gun law enforcement, and if confirmed, he will inevitably make some serious mistakes. -the Centaur Pictured: Chipman, Pruitt, Bolton

Information Hygiene

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Our world is big. Big, and complicated, filled with many more things than any one person can know. We rely on each other to find out things beyond our individual capacities and to share them so we can succeed as a species: there's water over the next hill, hard red berries are poisonous, and the man in the trading village called Honest Sam is not to be trusted.

To survive, we must constantly take information, just as we must eat to live. But just like eating, consuming information indiscriminately can make us sick. Even when we eat good food, we must clean our teeth and got to the bathroom - and bad food should be avoided. In the same way, we have to digest information to make it useful, we need to discard information that's no longer relevant, and we need to avoid misinformation so we don't pick up false beliefs. We need habits of information hygiene.

Whenever you listen to someone, you absorb some of their thought process and make it your own. You can't help it: that the purpose of language, and that's what understanding someone means. The downside is your brain is a mess of different overlapping modules all working together, and not all of them can distinguish between what's logically true and false. This means learning about the beliefs of someone you violently disagree with can make you start to believe in them, even if you consciously think they're wrong. One acquaintance I knew started studying a religion with the intent of exposing it. He thought it was a cult, and his opinion about that never changed. But at one point, he found himself starting to believe what he read, even though, then and now, he found their beliefs logically ridiculous.

This doesn't mean we need to shut out information from people we disagree with - but it does mean we can't uncritically accept information from people we agree with. You are the easiest person for yourself to fool: we have a cognitive flaw called confirmation bias which makes us more willing to accept information that confirms our prior beliefs rather than ones that deny it. Another flaw called cognitive dissonance makes us want to actively resolve conflicts between our beliefs and new information, leading to a rush of relief when they are reconciled; combined with confirmation bias, people's beliefs can actually be strengthened by contradictory information.

So, as an exercise in information hygiene for those involved in one of those charged political conversations that dominate our modern landscape, try this. Take one piece of information that you've gotten from a trusted source, and ask yourself: how might this be wrong? Take one piece of information from an untrusted source, and ask yourself, how might this be right? Then take it one step further: research those chinks in your armor, or those sparks of light in your opponent's darkness, and see if you can find evidence pro or con. Try to keep an open mind: no-one's asking you to actually change your mind, just to see if you can tell whether the situation is actually as black and white as you thought.

-the Centaur

Pictured: the book pile, containing some books I'm reading to answer a skeptical friend's questions, and other books for my own interest.

A Day Without Women Would be the End of the World

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5ef96d03cb1820c79272ae79625681d2.jpg

Today, March 8th is International Women’s Day, a day that began commemorating the anniversary of a women workers strike – and so perhaps it’s also being celebrated as A Day Without a Woman, another strike designed to call attention to how important women are to our society. But, science fiction writer that I am, I couldn’t help but think of literal day without women - and so, over on the Adventures of Jeremiah Willstone site, I talk about how “A Day Without Women Would be the End of the World”.

-the Centaur

Adventures in Women’s History

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JW Blog Backdrop v4a.png

This month, I’ll be talking about women’s history on the Adventures of Jeremiah Willstone site!

Jeremiah’s world is one in which women’s liberation happened a century early, so, with twice as many brains working on hard problems, they’re more advanced in 1908 than we are today - but that doesn’t mean we’re not trying! In March, the people of our universe celebrate Women’s History Month as a way to highlight the important parts of our history that might otherwise be forgotten, and so this month on the Adventures of Jeremiah Willstone I’m going to highlight various figures in women’s history and how they inspired various characters in the Jeremiah Willstone series.

We’ll be talking about women’s liberation pioneer Mary Wollstonecraft and how she inspired Jeremiah Willstone; women scientists Emmy Noether and Marie Curie and how they inspired Doctor Jackson Truthsayer; computer scientists Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper and how they inspired Georgiana Westenhoq, and women soldiers Kristen Griest and Chantelle Taylor and how they inspired characters like Jeremiah and Natasha Faulkner-Jain.

I’ll also talk a bit about Women’s History Month, International Women’s Day, and the whole notion of “history months” and how Bayes Rule helps us understand why singling out one group for recognition, which to some people seems prejudiced and unfair, really can be a fair thing if that group has been unfairly treated!

Stay tuned!

-the Centaur