Raptorpat

https://twitter.com/SCOTUSblog/status/1616154337335443493

https://twitter.com/kkondik/status/1615895437562478595

one member out of commission tbd, one member is "Kitara Ravache" such a super extra-thin majority heading into the debt ceiling fight now imagine if Buchanan rage quit entirely because he got rat-rucked out of ways & means

https://twitter.com/tarapalmeri/status/1615375513375105024

Kari Lake: the perfect candidate for a three-way race https://twitter.com/yvonnewingett/status/1615090660348133377

Laxalt had probably the best chances out of the whole gang just based on candidate quality, but NV was a rare statewide ticket-splitter with the Republicans flipping the Governor's office and losing the Senate. I don't think that discrepancy can be accounted for by a lack of investment alone.

Murkowski is an active, incumbent member of his conference (in a state that routinely votes for moderates over partisans - Peltola, the 2010 Murkowski write-in, governors, coalition conferences in the statehouse). You don't sacrifice actual for potential. Especially when the potential is crazy dogshit-tier quality. The whole narrative of this past cycle was that Democrats stayed home but independents showed up and voted for moderates, and the crazies all severely underperformed. Throwing Murkowski under the bus to gamble on Blake fucking Masters (or Herschel Walker) was never the rational gambler's choice. McConnell was the only stakeholder on either side whose predictions weren't embarrassed by the end results, and because he's always playing the long game (keeping in mind in the immediate term the Senate minority is the only minority conference with a veto), it frankly sets them up for a healthier, functionable majority in the better-than-not odds that they flip the chamber in 2024 because they don't have to take ownership of the extremism and crazy (and whatever Herschel Walker is). Imagine if Roy Moore beat Doug Jones in the special - yes they wouldn't have lost the seat for the rest of the cycle but there'd have been an extra year and a half of Senate Republicans having to own an actual pedophile in the public conscious every single day. It's like that, without the baggage they can focus on the offense against Tester, Manchin, Brown etc.

I remember working tangentially on deepfake issues a couple years ago and that was super landmark. Whether or not something is legal or regulated doesn't indicate whether its moral or ethical, particularly when it's something so new that the lawmaking process hasn't caught up to it yet (or that the relevant stakeholders haven't negotiated an agreement on a bill for the legislature to pass). I don't really know the status of deepfake laws across the country currently, but whether there are statutes or judicial precedents on the books, it's still all super new and subject to change. Same thing here.

what if the messaging turns into "they planted classified documents to justify a fake special counsel in order to block us from investigating them"

Schumer will do whatever he can to try to help conservative Manchin win reelection in conservative WV, including in a primary, just like McConnell did whatever he could to save idiosyncratic moderate Murkowski in idiosyncratic moderate Alaska.

Re special counsel: lol

These discoveries are going to get more fast and furious in the coming years. On top of better ability to spot exoplanets, we now have the tech to determine the chemical compositions of their atmospheres just by looking at their light wavelengths with the Webb telescope. Legit like the smelloscope from Futurama.

by... protecting their members...

The NASA announcement CBS links to is less certain. It actually speculates that the planet is tidally locked (one side always faces the star, like the moon to earth) which probably doesn't help. And then there's all sorts of things they never talk about like tectonic activity or a magnetic field to block radiation. Then we'll find out it's atmosphere is made of like pure farts or some crazy shit. I think the Webb telescope can identify some of those things, pops up in my news feed all the time.

I agree, optics shouldn't matter. But politics is layered into everything at that level. He's a Democratic appointee investigating the top Republican, it's just not possible to divorce an investigation from that reality. It's one of those few scenarios where it's like "maybe the robots would be better".

It's tough because every decision at the top levels is made having to factor in political realities to some degree. Like on paper presidents aren't above the law but the practical reality is DOJ is going to be run by appointees from their party or from the opposing party and there's no way for any decision to not appear to have some political taint. It's why Garland has been so meticulous (slow) to ensure that every i is dotted and t is crossed before he does anything to ensure he can justify it. Another example is impeachment. On paper it's a trial, but in reality it's just how many seats do political supporters and opponents have and there are your results, merits need not apply. The bottom line is that MD is right that political optics are going to be relevant to the decision-making. It's not a great or even good thing, but it's always a factor. Edit: I'm not saying nothing will happen now, but this certainly complicates decision-making.

you'd have to ask sponges. probably that it's just a series of neurons firing off and chemical reactions, which means the real thing is no different than an AI simulating it.

I think pulling it all together, Sponges' central unarticulated thesis is that human minds aren't any more complex, special, unique, valuable, "human", etc. than nascent self-learning AI technology. If you start from that premise, then it follows that it wouldn't intrinsically matter whether you're talking to a real person or an AI on the internet, and it wouldn't intrinsically matter whether art is created by a person or an AI.

I think it's fair to emphasize optics beyond their on-paper merit, because it's probably true that most of the public doesn't have the bandwidth and/or interest in the actual details behind the merits, and decisions of this caliber do factor in public reception whether they should or shouldn't. It's super unfortunate but the things that get talked don't attract eyeballs for their nuance.

From like the battery mineral mining?

I saw a lot of signage from I think Delta hyping up fully electric airplanes by 2026. Not sure that I believe it, but I'm also not a plane scientist so I'm in no position to think about it too hard.

I typically fly once a year at most if I'm lucky

LAX on the return seemed infinitely better. Dropped off the car immediately, shuttle was ready to go, got all squared away fine. Then at the TSA security check they had to feel me up and re-x-ray my laptop. It's not technically LAX's fault but thanks guy