nickhammes

IANAL, but to my understanding, SCOTUS is defined by the constitution and given certain powers and protections, to interpret the constitution, mediate disputes between the political branches, and certain duties given to its chief Justice. Congress is given broad powers to set the laws, which includes details of how branches are run, like creating departments in the Executive, and setting the number of Justices on SCOTUS.

If I understand Jurisdiction Stripping correctly, it's not preventing SCOTUS from eventually reviewing the case, but a law that says they don't get the first review of legal challenges. It could slow the process, at the very least.

Which could potentially create a situation if Trump were to win, where his electoral votes are split across JD Vance, and thanks to the 12th amendment, the Senate picks the VP, and selects Harris's running mate. If Jon Tester keeps his seat in Montana, which doesn't seem super unlikely, this probably means a 50-50 Senate, with the VP keeping it in the Dems' control.

I still don't understand the logic of this. Tens of millions of dollars a year is a lot of money, but so is the profits from running three casinos.

Wouldn't running the casinos well be more profitable in the long term? And generally more sensible unless the goal is specifically to hurt the banks?

I get what you're saying, it's certainly a hard situation, and a rare one, but I think "truly nothing we can do" is an exceptionally rare situation.

But why is that person acting the way they are? People do things for reasons, even if they aren't good ones. Maybe the only way they can safely interact with people is via video chat, and respecting the humanity of the others around them means that's all they get. There are ways for them to get access to food, water, shelter, sunlight, even socialization, without physical access to others, and access to somebody to talk to who might be able to help them, even if the DSM doesn't have a specific diagnosis that describes them.

I think any system that deals with people who have done what society has labelled crime should seek to minimize harm, and maximize opportunities to grow for those who wish to take them. I don't think your "textbook" case for the death penalty achieves either of these aims.

I don't disagree with your main point, the carceral system is itself fundamentally broken, and fixing one thing won't suddenly make the system humane. The goal of a criminal justice system should be to reduce recidivism, to empower people through education to leave ready to have a more constructive and fulfilling life than when they arrived. We should respect the humanity of inmates, overturn wrongful convictions, eviscerate minimum sentencing guidelines, abolish stupid crimes that don't even represent a threat to society like prostitution, and apply state and federal minimum wages to inmates, among so many other changes.

There's so much inhumanity in the system, to your point. We can and should revisit convictions, and try to make amends if we got it wrong. And it should really never look anything like putting people in a cage for life.

But that's kind of my point, the only humane method is not to kill people. Asking "but how do we do it" is like asking how to square a circle; there may be a couple of interesting things to learn along the way, but you won't find any satisfying answers to the question.

Despite him having been the star of a different 2000s reality show, Trump truly is The Biggest Loser.

I say the death penalty is itself inhumane, focusing on the technical problem misses the point. Killing people you have a high degree of confidence committed murder means on a long enough time span, you're virtually guaranteed to kill innocents. The process required to minimize these false positive killings makes the death penalty more expensive than life in prison, on average. As far as I can tell, there's no upside to the death penalty, unless you're firmly convinced that the criminal justice system needs to focus on retribution.

The only humane option I see is to let them live out their lives in a context where they won't reoffend.

1. I've learned a number of tools I'd never used before, and refreshed my skills from when I used to be a sysadmin back in college. I can also do things other people don't loudly recommend, but fit my style (Proxmox + Puppet for VMs), which is nice. If you have the right skills, it's arbitrarily flexible.

2. What electricity costs in my area. $0.32/KWh at the wrong time of day. Pricier hardware could have saved me money in the long run. Bigger drives could also mean fewer, and thus less power consumption.

3. Google, selfhosting communities like this one, and tutorial-oriented YouTubers like NetworkChuck. Get ideas from people, learn enough to make it happen, then tweak it so you understand it. Repeat, and you'll eventually know a lot.

I doubt it's a moral line. Seems like a pragmatic stance that standing behind him isn't worth the bad PR they'd get for doing it. It's certainly something, at least.

I think the justification is that people will be more honest/rational when betting their own money.

It's probably less irrational than stock markets, since there's a very clear time horizon people are betting on, and data like polls can be pretty good. But since they're looking at essentially the same data as pundits, it's unsurprising they tend to do about as well.

It's a question of the most stable thing to use to mediate value for exchange of goods and services, right? Fiat currency is just the choice of "the state" as a stabilizing force. Certainly it's better than trusting the scarcity of rare metals, but eventually "just trust the state" will become a problem, and we'll need to think about rebasing currencies. In theory, computational complexity isn't a bad choice, but nobody has come up with a solution that actually functions well as a currency.

But I agree, the finite planet has nothing to do with any failings of fiat currencies, and only makes sense as a failing of the "number must go up" mentality endemic to capitalism.