I’m not saying that taxes are bad. I’m saying that if the government says “there’s a new tax you have to pay if you do that” and you say “ok, then I won’t do that,” you have done nothing wrong. You have a duty to obey the law, but no duty to maximize government revenue.

Do you just voluntarily give the government money that you aren’t legally required to pay?

The World Socialist Web Site? Seriously? This isn’t ML.

Demands made by hunger strikers are not democratic demands because rule by those willing to kill themselves isn’t a democracy.

Handcuffs can leave signs, but I’m not sure how examining a body could indicate that the person had been blindfolded. Were the bodies returned with blindfolds on?

Our interpretation is that people who responded positively to these statements would feel they “win” by endorsing misinformation—doing so can show “the enemy” that it will not gain any ground over people’s views.

The article glosses over the distinction between endorsing misinformation and believing misinformation. I think people often interpret poll questions as expressions of political affiliation, so for example a person who thinks that the covid lockdowns were a mistake might say that covid is caused by 5G because that’s the answer that upsets or offends lockdown supporters, not because this person thinks it is the literal truth. In other words, what the authors are seeing is not necessarily sincere belief but rather a deliberate, politically motivated endorsement of statements known to be false.

Edit: a blog I like addressing a similar phenomenon:

You can see that after the Ferguson shooting, the average American became a little less likely to believe that blacks were treated equally in the criminal justice system. This makes sense, since the Ferguson shooting was a much-publicized example of the criminal justice system treating a black person unfairly.

But when you break the results down by race, a different picture emerges. White people were actually a little more likely to believe the justice system was fair after the shooting. Why? I mean, if there was no change, you could chalk it up to white people believing the police’s story that the officer involved felt threatened and made a split-second bad decision that had nothing to do with race. That could explain no change just fine. But being more convinced that justice is color-blind? What could explain that?

My guess – before Ferguson, at least a few people interpreted this as an honest question about race and justice. After Ferguson, everyone mutually agreed it was about politics.

I don’t understand what he was hoping to gain. Intercepting the flotilla without anyone getting hurt once it got close to Israel was well within Israel’s naval capabilities and received relatively little news coverage because everyone knew from the start that it would happen. Playing around with drones offended the countries that the flotilla was near when it happened, got a lot of unfavorable news coverage because it is such a weird thing to do, and likely wouldn’t have stopped the flotilla even if it had burned down several ships.

Do you imagine that the Russian people could possibly change their situation by voting?

I don’t trust Trump about this, but I trust Venezuela about as much as I trust Trump.

Norman Bates executes a no-knock warrant.

I wonder how they managed to target these guys after previous attacks, both by Israel and the USA, appeared to be largely ineffective. Was it a serendipitous opportunity or does it reflect progress on establishing an intelligence network in Yemen?

What a bizarre story. Toronto voters elect a city government in favor of bike lanes, then for some reason the premier of Ontario decides he knows what Toronto needs better than Toronto voters do, and now a judge decides that removing bike lanes is somehow unconstitutional because apparently the constitution is detailed enough to specify things like that. (Does this mean that it’s unconstitutional to have any roads without bike lanes, or is it just unconstitutional to remove existing bike lanes?) I drive, bike lanes piss me off, but they’re a local matter that should be decided by the local government.

The study revealed that, while transparency about good news increases trust, transparency about bad news, such as conflicts of interest or failed experiments, decreases it.

Yes, that’s generally how a Bayesian agent would determine the extent to which an institution is trustworthy. A failed attempt to hide “bad news” would be stronger evidence that an institution is not trustworthy than a frank admission is, but that frank admission is still a reason to revise one’s estimate of trustworthiness downwards.

That man has the squarest jaw I have ever seen.

“Defending the free world alongside a European people is apparently already National Socialism for Hans Neuhoff. Neuhoff’s actions correspond to those of members of Putin’s party United Russia,” Schramm responded to accusations.

Quite a comeback.

So this is a matter of religion for you? Which religion is that, and which side are you on?

the 20th century

Yes, that’s why I quoted the part where he also says it’s the worst in the last 50 years.

This is simply objectively false. For example, ten times as many people died in the Syrian civil war.

“There is no prior experience in my five decades of humanitarian experience that can come close to comparison to the horror we are all seeing in Gaza.”

This year is the 50th anniversary of the start of the Cambodian genocide. The Rawandan genocide was 31 years ago. This guy is either deliberately lying or an idiot.

I don’t understand the long-term purpose of a cease-fire. Is it an admission that Ukraine will not be able to retake occupied territory and an attempt to limit further losses?

I do generally lean towards lowercase-L libertarianism (I don’t support the Libertarian party) but running a huge deficit isn’t libertarian. Taxes shouldn’t be lower than spending in the long term.

I didn’t mean to imply that Trump’s overall budget is a good one - maybe the cuts could be justified as part of a serious effort to reduce the deficit, but I don’t support them when they’re accompanied by even bigger tax cuts and the deficit grows.

So far, Milei has been right and his critics have been wrong. I assume he’ll veto this again.

The thing about government spending (and I’m seeing it come up a lot in the context of Trump’s budget cuts too) is that pretty much all of it is important to someone sympathetic who will experience hardship without it. Reducing spending means taking money away from people who need it, but reducing spending is still sometimes necessary for long-term national prosperity.