The president and his cronies are openly immune to any recourse from the law at the moment. They are doing widespread and overt corruption and insider trading on a daily basis on scales that have never been seen in human history before. There is not any attempt at stopping that by any organ of government.
Separately, internal security forces have been killing citizens without any cause nor investigation after the fact, in contravention to all of the supposed "rights" those citizens were once said to have.
These are the things the rule of law is about. It is meant to be a higher power than any individual, no matter their position.
The U.S. does not have the rule of law any longer. It's best to look the truth in the face rather than hide from it.
Mostly you should assess rule of law by threat to you and people you know and not by what it seems like other people are able to get away with.
Yes, a big part of the idea is that laws are meant to also apply to the powerful, but it's difficult to accurately assess situations that are far away from you.
What a nonsensical statement. From a distance it’s pretty clear that there is no rule of law anymore in the USA. Yes, it’s partially functioning, but that’s not the rule.
If you're a cop, ICE agent, your neighbour is black, you're a US diplomat's wife (one of which murdered a young man here in the UK and ran away with no consequence, and the American state refused to send her murdering arse back), or you have enough money, by the looks of it you could do that without consequence.
I’m more inclined to agree with you, but the replies to this did strike me as darkly funny. These exceptions for the chosen in-group are some of the hallmarks of fascism, and this administration has leveraged several other popular tropes as well—fetishizing Greek/Roman mythologies, hobbling academia and the press, ethnic cleansing, Christian Nationalism, revisionist history, idolatry, eugenics, etc.. Fascism is a term I would have called absurdly exaggerated just a few years ago, but to the extent that the President and his administration are the leaders in both policy and diplomacy, I think it’s probably fair to level a judgement that their behavior is the contemporary set standard for the United States. This is a fascist country right now.
But I agree with you that nuance-free oversimplifications are likely unhelpful in any meaningful discussion.
These things don’t usually happen overnight, and for the vast majority of the public it will never be directly visible. It’s not like someone flips a “Anti-Antifa” switch and a bunch of ultra-starched uniformed troops start goose-stepping through Toledo. It’s a developing series of dynamic events, many of them will seem rational, justified even, but the result is concentrated executive power, a toothless legislature, a complicit judiciary, and a pliant mainstream press. I’m sure there are lots of people who will recognize these for what they are: an alarming number of dominoes falling towards a totalitarian dictatorship.
However the United States is a big, complex beast of a country, and the judiciary has not been fully captured, and neither has the legislature. All we need to do to stop this creeping authoritarianism is show up in-force and vote overwhelmingly against it this November. They will obviously try to confuse the issue with any close calls, and use such opportunities to assert dominion over local/state governments. We cannot let that happen. The best way to avoid such a scenario is to show up strong enough to make the results beyond question. That’s the ultimate test that we are still a nation of laws, and I am cautiously optimistic.
What? No. Rule of Law should be assessed by how well the law applies to everybody. The wealthy often get away with serious law breaking in the US, the poor are hammered down with the law over petty crimes. That is defying the Rule of Law any way you try to look at it. The whole point of The Rule of Law is to prevent unfair application of the law to benefit the few over the many.
It takes months or years for courts to intervene and even then they often set aside rulings because they expect appeals. All the while the abuses continue. How many years do you suppose we'll have to wait to see the Trump family subject to tax law?
> It takes months or years for courts to intervene and even then they often set aside rulings because they expect appeals.
Interesting. Again, how do you reconcile that theory with the with the large number of court cases involving Trump's specific actions that managed to make it all the way up to the Supreme Court, leading to many clear rulings against Trump, all within the first year and a half of his current term?
U.S. democracy is still very strong and freedoms are protected, when compared with with other superpowers like China, Russia. My personal metric for comparison is: in those countries if you would make public jokes about the leader of the country to a large audience, at best you would end in prison, at worst you and your family would be death.
Dictators expect that people fear them, they control by fear and terror. If you can make jokes about leaders you show that you don't fear them, you show that they don't control you.
But the increase in corruption in US goverment indicates slow progress towards authoritarianism. This can be slow process, it can take years or decades, as was seen with Hitler and Stalin.
ICE excessive force use, encouraged by Trump and welcomed in large part of US population, could be the next step. This piece by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller describes the progression of authoritarianism:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
No, momentary abuses of power do not mean the US has no rule of law. The law is what put Trump in office in the first place.
If you aren’t glued to the news and doomscrolling you wouldn’t know anything about Trump and ICE. Day to day for nearly everyone is exactly the same rule of law where you can call police for a murder and roving gangs can’t setup shakedown checkpoints.
> Day to day for nearly everyone is exactly the same rule of law where you can call police for a murder and roving gangs can’t setup shakedown checkpoints.
Is that your threshold for "rule of law"? And I'm sorry, but what separates ICE from a roving gang setting up shakedown checkpoints, and executing at point blank range with no repercussions dissenters?
That’s how the US got here in the first place. Not much of what the president and his friends and family are new to the US, now its more daring and freely talked about and normalized, like in a state where there’s no rule of law. You don’t need to be glued to doomscrolling to learn that a government is turning laws to punish terrorists inwards but you need to be glued to something to know its been in the making for over 20 years.
Excuse me. The law(14th Amendment section 3 specifically) clearly prohibited Trump from being eligible for federal office. That the Supreme Court abrograted state's rights to run elections free of federal interference, not to mention the lack of recusal given the blatant conflicts of interest, is a separate matter altogether.
> If you aren’t glued to the news and doomscrolling you wouldn’t know anything about Trump and ICE.
This is such an outrageously privileged and out-of-touch statement. Maybe YOU wouldn't know about Trump and ICE if you didn't read the news, but that's your personal microcosm. Please be more mindful about damage and harm done when you're ascribing your personal worldview onto others' actual reality.
I remember playing this game as a child and absolutely loving every tidbit of it... there's never been anything quite like it since, especially nothing with such a banger of a soundtrack.
One of the best parts of the game: Your scowling coach berating you for getting the robot too smashed up and then having to pay for the repairs.
For me, the considerable environmental issues aside, the problem with farmed fish is that it simply doesn't taste nearly as good as the wild-caught versions.
Take salmon for instance. In a lifetime of preparing and then eating several portions of salmon per week, I've noticed that the farmed salmon are pretty much always:
-Very pale pink color, as though the animal was unhealthy (sometimes stores even add red food dye to cover this up)
-Weak and mushy flesh, even when fresh; healthy salmon flesh is muscled and springy, it isn't naturally slimy and it holds its shape
-Weak flavor that seems to be missing a lot of the more robust flavor notes entirely
-Thinner or nearly-nonexistent layer of fat between the flesh and the scales (contributes to less flavor overall and removes a lot of the umami); the same problem also applies to the thin bands of fat between the rows of muscle in the filet itself
-Skin/scales slightly disintegrate or fleck away at a touch instead of remaining intact
I don't even bother buying it even if it's significantly cheaper.
I can't imagine that the nutrient content is the same as the wild-caught fish. And based on the sickly look and taste of the meat, it's also very hard to believe that the farmed fish live a life that they find to be pleasant, to the extent such a thing is possible.
Wild-caught salmon is pink because of the krill they eat, so in a way it’s also a dye. Farmed salmon definitely has coloring added to get this effect, but otherwise the flesh itself isn’t naturally pink.
I eat plenty of farmed salmon (Atlantic salmon) because they are the default in grocery stores here and the few times I went out of my way to buy wild caught salmon I find that they are way worse. The first time I bought sockeye salmon not king salmon which was not fatty at all. The second time I bought king salmon shipped straight from Alaska and the flavor still disappointed. It's everything you say about farmed salmon: weak flesh, weak flavor, pale pink color. I'm starting to think I was scammed.
> the problem with farmed fish is that it simply doesn't taste nearly as good as the wild-caught versions.
I eat wild-caught salmon every day (as part of https://srid.ca/carnivore-diet) and can totally confirm this. Farmed salmon's taste is very off-putting. I noticed this only after switching to wild salmon for a few weeks.
Arctic char and trout tend to taste more like their wild counterparts than salmon since they're raised on smaller, less industrialized farms. Many restaurants actually prefer Ora King salmon over regular king salmon due to the consistency.
A nice steamed white fish is pretty indistinguishable for me. But again I'm not a fresh fish enthusiast, and ultimately aquaculture makes adequate inputs for fish products like fish balls or fish pattys.
Today they're admitting AI is hollowing out entry-level jobs. The reality is that it can and will replace mid-level and eventually even quite senior jobs.
Why?
It's already doing a lot of the loadbearing work in those mid-level roles too now, it's just a bit awkward for management to admit it. One common current mode of work is people using AI to accomplish their work tasks very quickly, and then loafing a bit more with the extra time. So leaders refrain from hiring, pocket the savings, and keep a tight lid on compensation for those who remain.
At some point they'll probably try to squeeze the workforce for some additional productivity, and cut those who don't deliver it. Note that the "ease" of using AI for work tasks will be a rationale for why additional compensation is not warranted for those who remain.
This is fascism. There is no longer separation between the government and private industry as a result of the criminal and out-of-control authoritarian Trump administration.
By and large, Silicon Valley and its kingmakers are fully in support of this, many vocally so.
To the point of the paper, it has been a somewhat disturbing experience to see otherwise affable superiors in the workplace "prompt" their employees in ways that are obviously downstream of their (very frequent) LLM usage.
I started noticing this behavior a few months ago and whew. Easy to fix if the individual cares to, but very hard to ignore from the outside.
Unsolicited advice for all: make an effort to hold onto your manners even with the robots or you'll quickly end up struggling to collaborate with anyone else.
It won't be me or you. Whoever it is, they will not share any of the economic upsides of AI with the public unless they are legally forced -- zero, zip, zilch, nada. Even then, they will keep the lion's share for themselves, and they will use their surplus to shape society to their advantage.
So yes, many millions of us have a big problem to worry about, especially considering how much struggling there already is now.
If the AGI is open source and operates through a decentralized platform, that everyone/no-one owns it, and the upside will be fully distributed to end users.
But even if it stays in private hands, one company monopolizing a technology and keeping it expensive/out-of-reach is generally not how technological innovation works. There is generally intense competition between providers, with each aggressively cutting prices to capture market share.
Separately, internal security forces have been killing citizens without any cause nor investigation after the fact, in contravention to all of the supposed "rights" those citizens were once said to have.
These are the things the rule of law is about. It is meant to be a higher power than any individual, no matter their position.
The U.S. does not have the rule of law any longer. It's best to look the truth in the face rather than hide from it.