Wednesday, October 16, 2024

16: Donald Trump



In Case of an Election Crisis, This Is What You Need to Know In 2020, when Donald Trump questioned the results of the election, the courts decisively rejected his efforts, over and over again. In 2024, the judicial branch may be unable to save our democracy. ............ The rogues are no longer amateurs. They have spent the last four years going pro, meticulously devising a strategy across multiple fronts — state legislatures, Congress, executive branches and elected judges — to overturn any close election. ............. The new challenges will take place in forums that have increasingly purged officials who put country over party. They may take place against the backdrop of razor-thin election margins in key swing states, meaning that any successful challenge could change the election. ........... Stephen Miller, a former Trump adviser, has brought suit in Arizona claiming that judges should be able to throw out election results. ........... Many states recently changed how they conduct voting. Even a minor modification could tee up legal challenges, and some affirmatively invite chaos. ........... Any time a state changes an election rule or can be accused of not having followed one, someone with legal standing (like a resident of that state or a candidate or a party) can bring a lawsuit. ........... Federal judges have on occasion been known to act in political ways, and any one of the 1,200 of them could make a decision that plunges the nation into deep confusion. ................. public confidence in the court is nearly at a three-decade low. No matter how nonpartisan the justices are, should the Supreme Court intervene, there is a high chance millions of Americans would see the decision as unfair. ................. state officials and local election boards also can wreak havoc by refusing to certify elections, and this time they will have new tools to manufacture justifications for undermining democracy. A new Georgia law empowering local boards to investigate voter fraud offers a prime example. On its face, the law sounds laudatory or at least innocuous. But the law could be read to give an election board the power to cherry-pick an instance or two, claim the entire election illegitimate and refuse to certify the votes. This is straight out of the 2020 playbook, when Mr. Trump reportedly successfully pressured two Wayne County, Mich., election officials not to certify the 2020 vote totals. Fortunately, that tactic didn’t work. This year it might. ................ there are state legislatures to contend with: They might make baseless allegations of fraud and interfere to get a different slate of electors appointed to the Electoral College, as happened in 2020. ............ the Congress has the power to swing the entire election. The rules are complex; even as a law professor, I can barely make sense of them. ............... Such maneuvering is totally inconsistent with the 2022 law. But it can be attempted and create chaos. Likewise, if a governor certifies a fake slate, that will be hard for Congress to fix. ............... In a world in which one party is still consumed by election fraud claims from 2020 (as JD Vance’s nonanswer in the debate underscored) and is prepared to claim the same in 2024, we have much to fear. ............ It does not require much imagination to see a member of Congress acting in bad faith to try to squeeze through bogus election fraud theories and plunge the country into uncertainty on Jan. 6. The 20 percent voting threshold is meant to avoid crackpot election fraud theories, but these days more than 20 percent of Congress might be inclined to support a crackpot theory. And some Republican strategists are gearing up to argue the 2022 Electoral Count Reform Act is unconstitutional and invalid. ................ If no candidate gets a majority of the Electoral College, either through mischief or a simple tie, then the Constitution sends the election to Congress. Mischief can occur on Jan. 6, for example, with Congress knocking votes of electors as not being “regularly given.” If for whatever reason no candidate gets a majority of electoral votes, the House will decide the presidency, under arcane voting rules in which the states, not a House majority, pick the president. ............... If either candidate wins the Electoral College decisively, any dispute will be rendered academic. ............ it is the new House and Senate, not the existing ones, that will call the shots on Jan. 6.

Three Weeks to Go, and That’s All Anyone Is Sure Of



Kamala On Fox

16: Canada

Tuesday, October 15, 2024

15: Paul Krugman

Kamala Harris Is Turning a Trump Tactic on Its Head
When Trump Rants, This Is What I Hear
Ignore the Polls
Supreme Court Reform Is in the Air
Trump Has Become Unmoored in Time On Thursday, in the course of a rambling, at times incoherent speech to the Detroit Economic Club, he declared, “We don’t have electricity. In California, you have brownouts or blackouts every week. And blackouts, I mean, the place is stone cold broke, no electricity.” This isn’t true, it wasn’t true when he made similar assertions last year, and 39 million Californians can tell you that it isn’t true. But in Trump’s mind, apparently, that long-ago electricity crisis never ended. ................ New York’s transformation into one of the safest places in America has been especially spectacular: The city had 83 percent fewer murders last year than it did in 1990, and neither I nor my neighbors seem terrified about crossing the street to buy bread at my local bodega. ................ ............. In big cities, he has asserted, “You can’t walk across the street to get a loaf of bread. You get shot. You get mugged. You get raped. You get whatever it may be.” ................ New York’s transformation into one of the safest places in America has been especially spectacular: The city had 83 percent fewer murders last year than it did in 1990, and neither I nor my neighbors seem terrified about crossing the street to buy bread at my local bodega. ................ he may actually believe some of what he’s saying because he has become unmoored in time ............ During his Detroit speech, the former president did something unusual for a candidate one might have expected to flatter the voters in an important swing state: He insulted the city that was hosting him, declaring that if Kamala Harris wins, “Our whole country will end up being like Detroit.” ................... Actually, that would be great if true: Detroit has been experiencing a major economic revival, so much so that it has become a role model for struggling cities around the world and has been praised for its startup ecosystem. But I doubt that Trump knows or cares about any of that, and in his mind Detroit is probably still the poster child for the industrial Midwest’s economic struggles around, say, 2010. ..................... Trump routinely peddles a grim picture of America that has little to do with reality ................. what would Trump say about an opponent who, like him, seems stuck in the past, who routinely describes America in ways that suggest that he doesn’t know what year it is?

Kamalanomics, Revealed: A Solid Center-Left Agenda For one thing, Harris actually outlined her economic proposals, rather than veering off onto topics like who has the biggest crowds and how windmills are killing birds. For another, she doesn’t seem to have said anything demonstrably untrue — a sharp contrast with Trump, who lied or distorted the facts about twice per minute during an event at Mar-a-Lago. ............ the restoration of an expanded child tax credit, which the Biden administration implemented in 2021 but expired at the beginning of 2022 because Democrats didn’t have a big enough congressional majority. This credit significantly reduced child poverty while it was in effect; Harris would supplement it with an even bigger credit for families with children in their first year. ............. On average, Americans who grow up in poverty have worse health and lower incomes as adults than those who don’t, which makes fighting child poverty an investment in the nation’s future. ........... the broader problem with housing affordability in America is zoning and regulation that blocks construction of new housing units. Unfortunately, these barriers to construction exist mainly at the state and local level and are out of reach of any politically plausible federal policy. ............ By the way, one little-noticed aspect of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is that despite all the railing against red tape and environmental regulation, its “Mandate for Leadership” blueprint goes all in on NIMBYism: “Localities rather than the federal government must have the final say in zoning laws and regulations, and a conservative Administration should oppose any efforts to weaken single-family zoning.”

Drill, baby, drill — but don’t build affordable housing.

................. For example, Texas (yes, Texas) prohibits many businesses from “demanding an exorbitant or excessive price” on things including food and fuel during disasters. .......... So what have we learned about Harris’s economics? She is, as expected, moderately center-left. And for those determined to view her as a communist — sorry, she isn’t.




Don’t Lose Sight of Project 2025. That’s the Real Trump. ..... and their unofficial aspirations, embodied by Project 2025. ........... Project 2025 is a blueprint by and for some of Trump’s close allies, put together by the Heritage Foundation, to ensure that if Trump wins in November, MAGA will hit the ground running. It seeks to provide “both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration.” The particulars are laid out in a roughly 900-page document, “Mandate for Leadership,” with specific action plans for many parts of the federal government. .......... Earlier this month, Kevin Roberts, Heritage’s president, said that the country is in the midst of a “second American Revolution” that will be bloodless “if the left allows it to be.” ............. Republicans seem, however, to have belatedly realized that much of what’s in Project 2025, especially its multipronged attack on reproductive rights, is deeply unpopular. Trump has tried to distance himself from the project, claiming last week that he knows “nothing” about it, even though quite a few of the people who’ve worked on it are former Trump officials and aides, and even though in 2022 Trump told a Heritage conference that its people were “going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.” ................. it’s more than reasonable to think of Project 2025 as a guide to what could happen in a second Trump term. ............ it basically calls for replacing much of the federal work force, which consists mainly of career civil servants somewhat insulated from partisan pressures, with political appointees who can be hired or fired at will. ............ Trump actually made a significant move in this direction near the end of his presidency, issuing an executive order that created a category of political appointee, Schedule F, which would have allowed the replacement of many career officials with partisan loyalists. President Biden rescinded that order, but Project 2025 would bring it back in some form — probably on a much larger scale. .................. In 1883, less than two years after President James Garfield was assassinated by a deranged and disgruntled man seeking a political appointment, Congress passed the Pendleton Act, which created a professional civil service in which most employees can’t be fired or demoted for political reasons. There were very good reasons for that reform at the time, but the case for insulating most government employees from partisan pressure is far stronger now. ........... back in 1883 the federal government had a much smaller footprint on American life; federal spending was only a bit more than 2 percent of the economy. Today’s federal government is about 10 times as large and also has a huge impact through its regulation of everything from pollution to antitrust enforcement. ............ Remember, during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump openly suggested that he might not help states whose governors didn’t support him: “It’s a two-way street. They have to treat us well, also.” If he wins and Project 2025 goes into effect, he’ll be in a position to engage in that kind of arm-twisting on a massive scale. ...........

it’s every bit as menacing as critics report.

And despite Trump’s disingenuous attempts to distance himself from the project, it gives us a very good idea of what a second Trump term could be like.


Reminder: Trump’s Last Year in Office Was a National Nightmare Voters are supposed to remember the good economy of January 2020, with its combination of low unemployment and low inflation, while forgetting about the plague year that followed. ............. 2020 — the fourth quarter, if you will, of Trump’s presidency — was a nightmare. And part of what made it a nightmare was the fact that America was led by a man who responded to a deadly crisis with denial, magical thinking and, above all, total selfishness — focused at every stage not on the needs of the nation but on what he thought would make him look good. ............. most workers have experienced wage gains considerably larger than the price increase. And President Biden is currently presiding over a remarkable episode of “immaculate disinflation”: rapidly falling inflation with unemployment near a 50-year low. ........ Unfortunately, at the time, the man in charge denied, dithered and delayed at nearly every step of the way. .............. It’s well worth reading a timeline of Trump’s statements amid the growing pandemic, which some estimates suggest had already caused around half a million excess deaths by the time he left office. ............. On April 3, he said: “With the masks, it’s going to be really a voluntary thing. You can do it. You don’t have to do it. I’m choosing not to do it.” At that point, the main purpose of masks was not to protect the wearer but to protect those around him; why should exposing others to the risk of deadly disease be a voluntary choice? And why wouldn’t the president lead by example, by masking up? .............. There’s no real question that thousands of Americans died unnecessarily because of Trump’s dereliction of duty in the face of Covid-19. ........... Are we really supposed to feel nostalgic about 2020?



Hail to the Fraudster in Chief Suppose, for example, that a wheeler-dealer uses borrowed funds to make risky investments in New Jersey casinos. If the investments somehow end up making money, he can pocket the profits. But if the investments fail, he may — if he’s been tricky about the wording in his loans or manages to persuade his creditors not to go after his other assets — be able to walk away and leave other people holding the bag. That is, it’s heads he wins, tails the creditors lose. .............. He may also be able to siphon off some of the borrowed money, say by having the casinos pay him or businesses he owns large sums for various services before they go bust. ............... It is the story of Donald Trump’s New Jersey casino empire, a venture ending in multiple bankruptcies that was a disaster for outside investors but appears to have been quite profitable for Trump. ............... there are a couple of ways to pull this off. One, perhaps the main story with those casinos, is sheer power of persuasion, perhaps supported by a cult of personality: Convince lenders that these dubious ventures are actually good investments or that you’re a uniquely effective businessman who can turn straw into gold. ............... Alternatively, you can try to persuade lenders that they’re safe by offering collateral that seems sufficient to protect them but isn’t, because you’ve inflated the value of the assets you put up and possibly also inflated your personal wealth to make it seem you are both a brilliant businessman and a reliable borrower. ............... Trump did, in fact, persistently commit fraud by overvaluing his assets, possibly by as much as $2.2 billion....... Engoron ruled that Trump went far beyond those limits, creating a “fantasy world” of indefensible valuations. ............ The judge made special note of Trump’s claim that he had a 30,000-square-foot residence in New York, when the true number was only 11,000; square footage isn’t subjective. ............. For years, only one major Wall Street player, Deutsche Bank, was willing to deal with him at all, leading to much puzzlement about that bank’s motives. And eventually Deutsche Bank also pulled the plug, citing concerns about his financial claims. Trump did manage to pay off that debt, although it’s a mystery where he found the cash. But as I just explained, getting lucky is no excuse for fraud. ................. Back in 2016, some observers warned conventional political analysts that they were underrating Trump’s chances because they didn’t appreciate how many Americans believed that he was a brilliant businessman — a belief based largely on his role on the reality TV show “The Apprentice.” What we now know is that the old joke was, in Trump’s case, the simple truth: He wasn’t a real business genius; he just played one on TV. ................ But the truth is that this was obvious, to anyone willing to see, from the beginning of Trump’s political rise. .......... I’d like to predict that this ruling will finally destroy Trump’s public persona. In reality, however, his supporters will probably brush this ruling off, partly because they’ll view it as the product of a left-wing conspiracy, partly because at this late date, few of those who backed him will be willing to admit that they were taken in by a charlatan. ........... But they were. And the fact that so many Americans were and remain fooled should lead to some serious national soul-searching.

It’s Time for America to Get Real With Iran and Israel Iran’s foreign minister says there will be “no red lines” governing Iran’s retaliation for any Israeli retaliation for Iran’s latest missile retaliation. .......... Iran has quietly told Arab gulf states that if Iran is hit by Israel, Tehran may respond by striking Arab oil fields. .............. “Let me tell you how your country looks from C.I.A. headquarters: You are infiltrated, exposed and isolated. ........... the latest joke going around Tehran is that your supreme leader is in hiding and the only ones who know where he is are the Israelis. Israel’s intelligence is very good, but the only reason it could have penetrated your leadership and Hezbollah’s so deeply is that so many Iranian and Lebanese Shiites hate both regimes and are ready to spy for Israel. .................. Israel has badly damaged your Hezbollah militia, in which you have invested billions of dollars, so it is no longer your protection against an Israeli strike on your nuclear facilities. We have inflicted heavy damage on your Houthi militia in Yemen. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad is fed up with you and wants you out of his country, and the Arab gulf states are now doing all they can to woo Assad away from Iran. The mainstream Iraqi Shiite party led by Muqtada al-Sadr hates you for the way your regime and militias have stolen so much oil revenue from Iraq and dragged your Iraqi proxies into your fight with Israel. ............. your implantation of militias armed with increasingly more precise and longer-and-longer-range rockets in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Your proxies crippled those states from the inside and threatened Israel and our Arab allies on the outside. .............. the 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs designed to destroy their deeply buried nuclear facilities and the B-2 bombers to deliver them. ................... The supreme leader Ali Khamenei “has long believed that continued enmity with America and Israel is more vital to the survival of his regime than rapprochement or reform. For that dynamic to possibly shift, Khamenei must face a profound sense of existential angst, one that convinces him that the current trajectory risks the very collapse of his regime.’’ ................ “Iran may seem unpredictable at times,’’ he said in The Atlantic, “but it respects American strength and responds to deterrence. When we withdraw, Iran advances. When we assert ourselves — having weighed the risks and prepared for all possibilities — Iran retreats.” ....................... Our job is to change Iran’s behavior; regime change is the job of the Iranian people. ........... We must not be in the business of making Israel safe so that a radical messianic government can annex the West Bank. ............ Bibi needs to purge the settler lunatics from his cabinet, forge a national unity coalition and agree to open talks with a reformed Palestinian Authority — with a new technocratic cabinet led by credible leaders like former Prime Minister Salam Fayyad — on a two-state solution. .............. That would pave the way for the U.A.E. and other moderate Arab states to deploy troops to Gaza and for Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel and forge a security agreement with Washington. ............ This crisis in the Middle East will not end until Israel clearly defines its eastern border and declares that everything beyond it is reserved for a Palestinian state in the West Bank, once Palestinians meet the legitimate security requirements Israel needs to accept a two-state solution. ................ this crisis in the Middle East will not end until Iran, in effect, defines its western border and declares that everything beyond that is for the Lebanese, Syrians, Yemenis, Iraqis, Israelis and Palestinians to decide — so long as they respect Iran’s legitimate security needs. Iran needs to be out of the Islamic imperialism business. ..........

we really need some creative, coercive U.S. diplomacy right now to finally put an end to both Israel’s and Iran’s colonial projects, which feed each other.

........... the United States is running low on interceptors to protect Israel — should Iran and all its proxies fire on Israel at once.


How Israel’s Army Uses Palestinians as Human Shields in Gaza Israeli soldiers and Palestinian former detainees say troops have regularly forced captured Gazans to carry out life-threatening tasks, including inside Hamas tunnels. ........... Mr. Shubeir, then 17, said he was forced to walk handcuffed through the empty ruins of his hometown, Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, searching for explosives set by Hamas. To avoid being blown up themselves, the soldiers made him go ahead, Mr. Shubeir said. ......... “The soldiers sent me like a dog to a booby-trapped apartment,” said Mr. Shubeir, a high school student. “I thought these would be the last moments of my life.” .......... Israeli soldiers and intelligence agents, throughout the war in Gaza, have regularly forced captured Palestinians like Mr. Shubeir to conduct life-threatening reconnaissance missions to avoid putting Israeli soldiers at risk on the battlefield. ........... While the extent and scale of such operations are unknown, the practice, illegal under both Israeli and international law, has been used by at least 11 squads in five cities in Gaza, often with the involvement of officers from Israeli intelligence agencies.

15: United States



The Push for Minority Voters and the Undecided It’s therefore perplexing why Donald Trump’s bigotry and obsession with immigration — which pervade every aspect of his politics and have always formed the core of his grievance messaging — is not disqualifying for all Latino and Black voters.

OpenAI Could Be a Force for Good if It Can Address These Issues First OpenAI, the artificial intelligence start-up behind ChatGPT, is now worth as much as Goldman Sachs or AT&T. OpenAI has also said it intends to shed its status as a nonprofit to become a for-profit business within two years. ................ Artificial intelligence may be the most consequential technological advance in our lifetime, and OpenAI is unique in the breadth of its potential impact. Its product could displace workers in far-flung industries, from customer service to radiology to film production. Its work is so energy-hungry that it could knock off track the planet’s progress on climate change. ............... the effects it will have on our democracy, national security and privacy will be profound. .............. OpenAI has responded to these concerns by saying it will become a public benefit corporation. A benefit corporation is a traditional for-profit company with one key difference: It is legally obligated to balance profit with purpose. Public benefit corporation leaders and boards must consider workers, customers, communities and the environment, not just shareholders, as in a standard corporation. ............. an estimated 15,000 companies globally adopting the new legal form. Think of Patagonia, Allbirds, Chobani and Warby Parker. .............. even a high-functioning government will not be able to stay ahead of a fast-moving industry ............... Recently OpenAI created what it says is an independent Safety and Security Committee, but it also has the power to blow that up whenever it becomes inconvenient, just as Microsoft laid off its entire A.I. ethics and society team in 2023. ............. Perhaps Mr. Altman could take a cue from Patagonia, a brand he’s often been spotted wearing. Patagonia’s purpose trust owns all of the company’s voting stock, meaning that the decision makers are obliged to advance Patagonia’s commitment to protecting the earth and its natural resources. .............. Every day, by applying these same principles, thousands of certified B Corps show that business can be a force for good to create high-quality jobs, rebuild strong communities and solve environmental crises — all while making money for investors.

The A.I. Wars Have Three Factions, and They All Crave Power Beneath almost all of the testimony, the manifestoes, the blog posts and the public declarations issued about A.I. are battles among deeply divided factions. ............... Some are concerned about far-future risks that sound like science fiction. Some are genuinely alarmed by the practical problems that chatbots and deepfake video generators are creating right now. Some are motivated by potential business revenue, others by national security concerns. ............. this isn’t really a debate only about A.I. It’s also a contest about control and power, about how resources should be distributed and who should be held accountable. .......... Should we focus on avoiding the dystopia of mass unemployment, a world where China is the dominant superpower or a society where the worst prejudices of humanity are embodied in opaque algorithms that control our lives? ................ One faction describes the dangers posed by A.I. through the framework of safety, another through ethics or integrity, yet another through security and others through economics. ............. The loudest perspective is a frightening, dystopian vision in which A.I. poses an existential risk to humankind, capable of wiping out all life on Earth. A.I., in this vision, emerges as a godlike, superintelligent, ungovernable entity capable of controlling everything. A.I. could destroy humanity or pose a risk on par with nukes. If we’re not careful, it could kill everyone or enslave humanity. It’s likened to monsters like the Lovecraftian shoggoths, artificial servants that rebelled against their creators, or paper clip maximizers that consume all of Earth’s resources in a single-minded pursuit of their programmed goal. .................... In the name of long-term-ism, Elon Musk reportedly believes that our society needs to encourage reproduction among those with the greatest culture and intelligence (namely, his ultrarich buddies). And he wants to go further, such as limiting the right to vote to parents and even populating Mars. ............... More practically, many of the researchers in this group are proceeding full steam ahead in developing A.I., demonstrating how unrealistic it is to simply hit pause on technological development. ................ there’s plenty already happening to cause concern: Racist policing and legal systems that disproportionately arrest and punish people of color. Sexist labor systems that rate feminine-coded résumés lower. Superpower nations automating military interventions as tools of imperialism and, someday, killer robots. ................ The doomsayers think A.I. enslavement looks like the Matrix; the reformers point to modern-day contractors doing traumatic work at low pay for OpenAI in Kenya. ............ it’s noticeable that many leaders in this cohort are people of color, women and people who identify as L.G.B.T.Q. They are often motivated by insight into what it feels like to be on the wrong end of

algorithmic oppression

and by a connection to the communities most vulnerable to the misuse of new technology. ............ present-day harms that are exacerbated by A.I. misinformation, surveillance and inequity ....... even those worried that A.I. might kill us in the future should still demand that it not profile and exploit us in the present. ........... One version has a post-9/11 ring to it — a world where terrorists, criminals and psychopaths have unfettered access to technologies of mass destruction. Another version is a Cold War narrative of the United States losing an A.I. arms race with China and its surveillance-rich society. ............. These perspectives serve the interests of American tech tycoons as well as the government agencies and defense contractors they are intertwined with. ............. OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, both of whom lead dominant A.I. companies, are pushing for A.I. regulations that they say will protect us from criminals and terrorists. Such regulations would be expensive to comply with and are likely to preserve the market position of leading A.I. companies while restricting competition from start-ups. .................. A.I. research is fundamentally international; no one country will win a monopoly. ............. fears about the existential risks of A.I. are really fears about the threat of uncontrolled capitalism, and dystopias like the paper clip maximizer are just caricatures of every start-up’s business plan. .................. By analogy to the health care sector, we need an A.I. public option to truly keep A.I. companies in check. A publicly directed A.I. development project would serve to counterbalance for-profit corporate A.I. and help ensure an even playing field for access to the 21st century’s key technology while offering a platform for the ethical development and use of A.I.


Supreme Court Reform Is in the Air Biden is right to propose term limits for Supreme Court justices .............. the political branches have gamed the system in a manner that complies with the letter of the Constitution but violates its spirit. .............. The purpose of lifetime tenure is supposed to be to secure judicial independence, not to secure decades of ideological advantage on the court. The purpose of granting the Senate the confirmation power is to offer a thoughtful check on the president’s judgment, not to cripple the president’s appointment powers unless his or her party also controls the Senate. ............. When you combine a constitutional misjudgment with senatorial shortsightedness and extreme polarization, you land exactly where we are today — with instability and anger that harm the court and threaten the rule of law. ........... President Jimmy Carter didn’t appoint a single justice in his sole term. Donald Trump appointed three. Barack Obama had three vacancies in his eight years, but he was able to confirm only two new justices. Ronald Reagan was able to confirm three new justices ........... Democrats have won five of the last nine presidential elections, but Democratic presidents have nominated only three of the nine Supreme Court justices. ............ According to the Supreme Court, the average term of a Supreme Court justice has been 16 years. Many modern justices, however, have served well over 25 years. ............. And despite their theoretical independence, justices were too often prisoners of their political times — susceptible to the same racism and xenophobia that plagued the rest of the American body politic. ............... The judicial confirmation wars keep escalating. A dispute over filibuster abuse led Democrats to break the judicial filibuster for lower court nominees. Four years later, Republicans broke the filibuster for the Supreme Court. ............. The combination of the Republican decision to block an election-year floor vote for Merrick Garland while Barack Obama was president and then confirming Amy Coney Barrett under Trump just days before the 2020 election was both a raw exercise of political power and an ominous warning that the next phase of the judicial wars may well mean that divided governments simply won’t be able to confirm new Supreme Court nominees. ................ Writing nuanced, thoughtful opinions in hot-button culture war cases is a good way to kill your chances for higher judicial office. ............. the new political imperative is to nominate and confirm young justices who will do exactly what you want for as long as you want — for terms of office that can stretch longer than the reigns of ancient kings. .................. Democracy alone isn’t a sufficient safeguard for free speech, equal protection or due process. Criminal defendants, for example, are not a popular constituency, but much of our Bill of Rights is dedicated to protecting their basic rights. ............. Biden’s proposed reforms adopt the most common term limits proposal — every justice serves for 18 years (which roughly matches the median court term throughout the nation’s history), which in turn means that every president would select two justices per term, in his or her first and third years in office. This proposal has the virtue of addressing the worst of our current problems while preserving the best of the current system. ............... A long, fixed term (absent impeachment) would help guarantee judicial independence. The justices would have more than enough time to develop their own jurisprudence and make their marks on the court.

When Trump Rants, This Is What I Hear I arrived here first as a 3-year-old boy in the mid-1970s, settling with my family in Northern California, in a small town with trees so thick that their branches mingled high over the roads. My mother introduced us around the neighborhood not just as a new family, but as a Peruvian family (she signed cards, “from your Peruvian friends”). It mattered to her that people knew, whether to convey her pride or pre-empt their questions. Even when you’re trying to fit in, you can’t help standing out. .......... I’ve long regarded Trump as a challenge for America — for democratic institutions, for honesty and, yes, for its immigrant tradition — but this xenophobic cacophony, building so relentlessly over the past decade, now feels overpowering. It also feels directed my way, at who I am and the choices I’ve made. ........... For all of Trump’s particular efforts — the wall, the travel ban, the family separations and now the pledge of mass deportation — he is part of a long tradition. You don’t have to go back to the expulsion of Mexicans and Mexican Americans during the Great Depression, or the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in the late 19th century,

or Benjamin Franklin’s musings on those inassimilable Germans

. .............. Trump does not say that he knows any good immigrants; he must imagine their existence. .............. “Little is more extraordinary than the decision to migrate, little more extraordinary than the accumulation of emotions and thoughts which finally leads a family to say farewell to a community where it has lived for centuries, to abandon old ties and familiar landmarks,” John F. Kennedy wrote in “A Nation of Immigrants.” He called it a “highly individual decision” and “an enormous intellectual and emotional commitment.” ............... There is a parallel existence always shadowing me, a version I glimpse in the cousins and friends who remained. What if I’d stayed? ................ I’ve always been jealous of those Americans who claim one unmistakable hometown, the place whose streets and rhythms they instantly recognize, a singular setting that anchors their memory. I ache for that, but I lost it. When I visit Lima, I feel out of place. My cultural references are dated, my mental maps fragmented, my friendships treasured but fragile. I don’t quite get the jokes. My longing is for a place that no longer exists, just like that other person I might have been. ................ “I will never be American enough for many Americans,” the journalist Jorge Ramos writes in “Stranger,” a 2018 memoir. “Just as I will never be Mexican enough for many Mexicans.” ............... The old place is gone, so I cling to the new with the zeal of the convert ............. Six years before Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, began spreading rumors about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Trump complained in an Oval Office meeting that he didn’t like admitting immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador or African countries. “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” the president asked, as he rejected a bipartisan immigration proposal. With little subtlety, he said he’d rather draw from Norway. “Why do we need more Haitians?” he reiterated. “Take them out.” ................ “When migrants move, it’s not out of idle fancy, or because they hate their homelands, or to plunder the countries they come to, or even (most often) to strike it rich,” Suketu Mehta writes in “This Land Is Our Land,” a 2019 manifesto. They move, he explains, “because the accumulated burdens of history have rendered their homelands less and less habitable.” ............ My parents enjoyed a comfortable life in Peru; neither poverty nor oppression compelled our departure. But that life was not enough. My father’s American dream was less for himself than for me and my sisters, and we came here to find it. I chose to return to the United States for college because the Peru of my youth was mired in hyperinflation and terrorism; because I missed the sisters who had made that choice already; because the taste I’d had of America, even as a child, was impossible to forget. ......... Hoping that the new home will be better than the old one does not diminish the pain of truncating the life you have known, leaving a hole so gaping that even a land of opportunity has trouble filling it.


Monday, October 14, 2024

14: Robotaxi



Adobe Launches AI Video Generator
Nobel economics prize goes to 3 economists who found that freer societies are more likely to prosper
How have social media algorithms changed the way we interact? “the features of social media platforms don’t allow for free and fair competition of ideas to begin with… the ‘value’ of an idea on social media isn’t a reflection of how good it is, but is rather the product of the platform’s algorithm.” .......... “algorithms on social media platforms have fundamentally reshaped the nature of free speech, not necessarily by restricting what can be said, but by determining who gets to see what content” ......... “Rather than ideas competing freely on their merits, algorithms amplify or suppress the reach of messages… introducing an unprecedented form of interference in the free exchange of ideas that is often overlooked.” ......... Facebook is one of the pioneers of recommendation algorithms on social media, and with an estimated three billion users, its Feed is arguably one of the biggest. ......... Determined by the interactions on each post, this came to prioritise posts about controversial topics, as those garnered the most engagement. .......... Because contentious posts are more likely to be rewarded by algorithms, there is the possibility that the fringes of political opinion can be overrepresented on social media. Rather than free and open public forums, critics argue that social media instead offers a distorted and sensationalised mirror of public sentiment that exaggerates discord and muffles the views of the majority. .......... is “free speech” purely about the right to speak, or also about the right to be heard? ......... Our era has been labelled “the algorithmic society” – one in which, it could be argued, social media platforms and search engines govern speech in the same way nation states once did. .......... While Professor Candeub is a “free speech absolutist”, he’s also wary of the power concentrated in the platforms that can be gatekeepers of speech via computer code. “I think that we would do well to have these algorithms made public because otherwise we're just being manipulated.” ............ There is a right to freedom of speech online but not a right for everyone to be heard equally: it would take more than a lifetime to watch every TikTok video or read every tweet.” ......... “Chronological feeds are not … neutral: They are also subject to rich-get-richer effects, demographic biases, and the unpredictability of virality. There is, unfortunately, no neutral way to design social media.” ............ Platforms do offer some alternatives to algorithms, with people on X able to choose a feed from only those they follow. And by filtering huge amounts of content, “recommendation engines provide greater diversity and discovery than just following people we already know”, argues Bertram. “That feels like the opposite of a restriction of freedom of speech – it’s a mechanism for discovery.” ............. “Regular TikTok users are often very deliberate about the algorithm – giving it signals to encourage or discourage the recommendation engine along avenues of new discovery” ........... just 28% of Americans say they like documenting their life in public online, down from 40% in 2020. People are instead becoming more comfortable in closed-off group chats with trusted friends and relatives; spaces with more accountability and fewer rewards for shocks and provocations. .......... Meta says the number of photos sent in direct messages now outnumbers those shared for all to see.

Israel faces a fierce and evasive foe in Hezbollah’s drones The unmanned aerial vehicle, laden with explosives, evaded Israel’s multilayered air-defense system and slammed into a mess hall at a military training camp deep inside Israel, killing four soldiers and wounding dozens. .......... Hezbollah, which said the attack was in response to Israeli strikes in Lebanon, said the drone was “able to penetrate the Israeli air defense radars without being detected” and reach its target. It claimed it had outsmarted Israel’s air defenses by simultaneously launching dozens of missiles and “squadrons” of drones simultaneously.......

Drones are harder to detect and track than rockets or missiles

.......... Israel has a formidable arsenal of drones, capable of carrying out spy missions and attacks. It has developed a drone capable of reaching archenemy Iran, some 1500 kilometers (1,000 miles) away. .......... In July, a drone launched from Yemen travelled some 270 kilometers (160 miles) from Israel’s southern tip, all the way to Tel Aviv, slamming into a downtown building and killing one person without it having been intercepted. .......... The Israeli security official said drones are harder to detect for a number of reasons: They fly slowly and often include plastic components, having a weaker thermal footprint with radar systems than powerful rockets and missiles. The trajectory is also harder to track. Drones can have roundabout flight paths, can come from any direction, fly lower to the ground and — because they are much smaller than rockets — can be mistaken for birds. ........... Israel spent years focusing on strengthening its air defense systems to improve protection against rockets and missiles. But drones were not seen as a top priority. ........ The militant group has launched roughly 1,500 surveillance and attack drones since it began striking Israel in October 2023 ...... Hezbollah has also used drones to erode Israel’s air-defense capabilities by slamming them into the very batteries and infrastructure meant to take them down. Earlier this year, Hezbollah said it used an Ababil explosive drone to down Israel’s Sky Dew observation balloon, a component of its aerial defense. ........... there were ways to combat the drones that could be considered. Detection capabilities could be expanded to include acoustic radars to pick up on the sound of the drone’s engine or electro-optics, which could allow Israeli surveillance to better identify them. He said rockets, fighter jets and helicopters could be deployed for interception, and that electronic warfare could be used to overtake the drones and divert them . ......


'Petty, partisan, un-American': Social media on Harris-Biden Not Congratulating Elon Musk On SpaceX Feat Elon Musk had a clash with California as it rejected Elon Musk' request for more frequent SpaceX launches from the state's central coast and it cited Elon Musk's politics as the reason for the rejection



US to send anti-missile system and troops to Israel, Pentagon says The United States has been privately urging Israel to calibrate its response to avoid triggering a broader war in the Middle East, officials say, with Biden publicly voicing his opposition to an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear sites and his concerns about a strike on Iran's energy infrastructure........ The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, is a critical part of the U.S. military's layered air defense systems and adds to Israel's already formidable anti-missile defenses. ....... "While we have made tremendous efforts in recent days to contain an all-out war in our region, I say it clearly that we have no red lines in defending our people and interests," Araqchi posted on X.

The trouble with Elon Musk’s robotaxi dream Scaling up self-driving taxis will be hard, and competition will be fierce .......... Elon Musk’s choice of Warner Bros Studios for the long-anticipated launch of his robotaxi on October 10th is entirely appropriate. Hollywood’s film studios are as much a dream factory as Tesla, his electric-car company. The vision he served up, accompanied by whoops of delight from the superfans in the audience, is an autonomous Cybercab so cheap that it will serve as “individualised mass transit”. But Mr Musk’s promises were, like many Hollywood movies, long on bombast and short on reality. The road to self-driving taxis will be long, and Tesla will have tough competition along the way............ The Cybercab, a two-seater without steering wheel or pedals, will be on sale “before 2027”, according to Mr Musk, though his timelines often slip—he once promised a fleet of 1m robotaxis by 2020. He also showed off a Robovan, which will carry 20 passengers, and pledged that his humanoid robot will be the “biggest product ever of any kind”. Yet the event, which was light on details, disappointed investors; Tesla’s share price slumped 9% the following day. ........... Waymo, a division of Alphabet, has raced ahead in America. After 15 years and perhaps $30bn of investment it now has a fleet of 700 self-driving cabs running in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Phoenix, and will soon launch in Atlanta and Austin. ........... China has also become a hotspot for autonomy. Apollo Go, the robotaxi unit of Baidu, a Chinese tech giant, launched its service in Wuhan in 2022 and has since expanded to ten other Chinese cities. It aims to double its Wuhan fleet to 1,000 robotaxis by the end of the year. Other Chinese firms including Pony.ai, WeRide, and Didi, the country’s biggest ride-hailing firm, are also trying out robotaxis in several big cities. ............ Waymo and its competitors so far mostly operate in places where the weather is fine and the roads are straight and wide. ............. The cost of the self-driving cars themselves—around $150,000 a piece for Waymo—also remains a problem. Around two-thirds of that is estimated to come from hardware. To run their vehicles autonomously, Waymo and others are relying on a battery of expensive sensors including cameras, radars and lidars, which use lasers to create a 3D image of the vehicle’s surroundings, as well as lots of in-car computing power to make sense of it all. .......... Human drivers account for well over half the fare of ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft, which suggests a big opportunity for self-driving cabs. ............. Bernstein, a broker, calculates that once all costs are considered, self-driving taxi fares will remain higher than human ones for some time. What is more, replacing the fleet of Uber and Lyft cars in America with robotaxis would require up to 400,000 vehicles, Bernstein reckons. At the current cost of a Waymo vehicle, that would mean an investment of around $60bn. ............ Tesla is betting it can make a cheaper option work. Its “Full-Self Driving” system, which will be the underlying tech for its robotaxis, relies only on cameras to collect information. Data from these will go into an “end-to-end neural network”—an algorithmic black box trained on 9bn miles of driving data from the 6m Teslas already on the road—to produce driving commands. As a result, Tesla says its robotaxis will cost under $30,000 and will be easier to transfer from one city to another. .................. JPMorgan Chase, a bank, does not expect “material revenue generation...for years to come” from Tesla’s robotaxi efforts.



New ChatGPT prompt goes viral with Sam Altman’s approval this particular ChatGPT prompt has found a way of resonating with people, providing an instant peek into their own psychological makeup......... Responses on Reddit ranged from Newmoonlightavenger who said simply “It was the best thing anyone has ever said about me” to Jimmylegs50 who wrote, “Crying. I really needed to hear this right now. Thanks, OP." .......... User PopeAsthetic wrote, 'Wow I did it, and GPT gave me the most profound advice and reflection of myself that I’ve ever received. Even told me I seem to have a desire for control, while at the same time having a desire to let go of control. I’ve never thought about it like that.' ............ It turns out that ChatGPT doesn’t mess around when you ask it to roast you, and the results can be quite brutal! ........ In fact, when I tried the same prompt the results were scarily accurate: “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, you’re probably the type to say, 'Draw me like one of your French girls,” only to immediately follow it up with, “But make sure my espresso is ready in exactly 1 minute 45 seconds. And don’t forget to set up the camera – I’m planning a tech review after this sketch.”'

U.S. officials say Israel has narrowed down its targets for strike on Iran The strike could happen at any time, U.S. and Israeli officials told NBC News, and could come during this weekend's Yom Kippur holiday. ........ Iranian military and energy infrastructure. ........ There is no indication that Israel will target nuclear facilities or carry out assassinations ........ Iran's attack caused little damage in Israel. ........ U.S. and Israeli officials said a response could come during the Yom Kippur holiday........... U.S. officials have continued to urge the Israeli government to make their response proportional, sticking to military targets and avoiding oil, gas and nuclear facilities.