USCE Summer 2022: You can't change the crisis settings.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > USCE Summer 2022: You can't change the crisis settings.

Foxfire_: Nov 8, 2010

TheMadMilkman posted:

Why tf are they making you take those classes? GenEd math shouldn�t go above college algebra unless your major truly requires calculus, and other Gen Ed classes should be things like basic biology, world history, art appreciation, etc. stuff designed to expand your knowledge and appreciation of the world at large.

I do wonder how much of the talk both for and against GEs is determined by how well each person�s school handled them.

Univariate calculus is something the normal upper end of high school seniors take. Having a breadth requirement that expects everybody graduating with a liberal arts degree to meet that is not unreasonable at all. It fits squarely in "knowledge and appreciation of the world at large". Basic computer programming is also valuable for at least a superficial level of making computers not be magical boxes, plus is practically useful for pretty much all fields.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2022 04:31

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 18:26

Foxfire_: Nov 8, 2010

some plague rats posted:

...what? What fields are you picturing when you say "all fields"? "All academic fields" you could maybe make the argument, but everything...?

Any white collar job that's requiring a BA as a gatekeeper probably also includes enough Excel / Word to directly benefit from some basic programming knowledge. More blue collar things aren't going to use it as directly (especially if they are "do the job exactly what these procedures say" type ones), but even there I think exposure to formal systems and mechanized thinking is useful.

Even if there's no practical use in a job, computers are universal enough that a basic survey course would be appropriate strictly from a broad understanding of how the world works purpose of education.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2022 05:30

Foxfire_: Nov 8, 2010

FizFashizzle posted:

Math is just applied philosophy.

Math is just rigorous philosophy.

They're both "given these axioms, what are the consequences?". Math just starts with axioms like "0 is a natural number" & "Every natural number has a successor". Philosophy starts with axioms like "Freedom is good"

# ¿ Aug 30, 2022 23:01

Foxfire_: Nov 8, 2010

Stabbey_the_Clown posted:

I would honestly like to know what a practical alternative to "fix the training" looks like.

"Defund/Abolish the police" as a slogan is a pretty bad slogan because it means very different things to different people. To some people, it means something like "Immediate revolutionary overthrow of capitalist society, police replaced by ??? (or nothing)" because they view current policing as so harmful to society that no state-run organization is preferable. That's not an unreasonable opinion either, if the only thing the police ever do in your community is hassle & murder people, while being entirely useless for crime or order. It's not a particularly popular position outside of communities with that experience though, and the slogan gets interpreted by other people as "Restructure & shrink police departments and transfer responsibility/funding to other organizations"

If I were in charge of the world, I'd do something more like the second one. Current police have a bunch of not-all-that-related-to-each-other functions that are grouped into one organization for historical reasons. I think breaking them apart would reduce abuse and is something that you could implement piecemeal by municipality.

Off the top of my head, things that police currently do that should be broken apart:

- Employ violence on behalf of the state. Stuff like arresting people, responding to 911 calls for things like "Guy brandishing a knife in the street" or domestic violence. I don't think you can actually get rid of that function (I don't think there has ever been a society without it), but you can silo it off and make it as small as possible.

- Traffic control & enforcement. Somebody who spends their day writing speeding tickets or directing traffic around stalled cars doesn't need to have a gun or be trained to use force. Some cities already separate some of this from general policing where parking tickets are done by unarmed non-cops.

- Investigating and prosecuting crimes, including crimes by the state violence people. There's no real overlap between "How to Apply State Sanctioned Violence" skills and "Investigate/Prosecute Crime" skills. If they're an entirely separate organization from State Sanctioned Violence, there would also likely be less rear end covering. Internal Affairs as a department of the police that investigates the police doesn't work. You want the people investigating & prosecuting police abuse to not have ever been police themselves and not see police as their coworkers who get the benefit of the doubt

Foxfire_ fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Sep 1, 2022

# ¿ Sep 1, 2022 02:48

Foxfire_: Nov 8, 2010

Even if you improved battery technology to make them light enough and small enough for swapping to be feasible, you probably prefer to use the savings to increase range/time-between-charges instead.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2022 03:42

Foxfire_: Nov 8, 2010

An amendment removing the Senate is not comparable to any historical amendment. You'd need Nebraska and friends to go "Government listens to what we want much too often. We want to de facto remove all of our ability to influence the federal government".

It's not like past voting expansion amendments where every state has roughly the same fraction of women and 18-20 year olds so that no state gained or lost relative power. Women's suffrage also happened incrementally as states allowed their own populations to vote. Lowering the voting age for federal elections was a normal federal law, the 26th amendment only granted voting rights for state elections (and stopped Congress from reversing itself)

In any situation where amending away the Senate is vaguely plausible, you don't have an immediate reason to because the rural states are behaving

# ¿ Sep 11, 2022 07:25

Foxfire_: Nov 8, 2010

silence_kit posted:

Nationalizing an economic function doesn't prevent workers from striking. For example, teachers are usually unionized government workers and it is not uncommon for them to go on strike. Another example: police officers are government workers, their unions rank among some of the most successful labor unions, and police departments have gone on strike before.

The PATCO air traffic controllers strike in 1981 (that resulted in the strikers being fired and the union being dissolved) is another example. Or the French air traffic controller strike that's happening this Friday.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2022 00:48

Foxfire_: Nov 8, 2010

RBA Starblade posted:

So are "special masters" common things and if so why is this only the second time I've heard it come up ever

The best kind are the special special masters, the River Masters
They adjudicate water apportionment agreements for rivers that cross multiple states. The Supreme Court generally rubberstamps their decisions

# ¿ Sep 16, 2022 20:25

Foxfire_: Nov 8, 2010

idiotsavant posted:

CA cities have sued & won or settled when cities in other states gave homeless & mentally ill patients one-way bus tickets to San Francisco, LA, etc. Even if you ignore all the blatantly illegal stuff about the immigrant stunt, there's precedent for making FL pay for it.

Do you have any case names for me to look up to read more on those? It sounds hard/interesting since the other state would either need to waive sovereignty and opt-in to the lawsuit, or it'd be Supreme Court original jurisdiction.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2022 19:40

Foxfire_: Nov 8, 2010

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

The actual potential crime would be leading them there under false pretenses with a promise of financial gain. It seems that might have happened, but it's also not totally clear what was said/promised/what the migrants understood from the information that is public.

Otherwise, giving someone a plane ride for free that they voluntary accept is not actually a crime. It's just a huge dick move to do it to people who are waiting for an asylum review and may not really 100% know what it is going on. Especially since they are dumping them without any warning to the other jurisdictions.

A group of the refugees have filed a class action suit alleging facts. They're saying that DeSantis and associates made specific false promises about Massachusetts's programs and also distributed fake documents claiming to be from Massachusetts's government agencies to lure them onto the plane.

The most likely way I see this stopping is from lower level GOP officials having plausibly-successful civil suits and criminal investigations aimed at them and future minions being spooked about continuing. (Bexar county, TX where the refugees were lured from has a criminal investigation running, in addition to this civil suit)

# ¿ Sep 20, 2022 23:28

Foxfire_: Nov 8, 2010

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

The problem is that basically everyone (including the Fed) has been unable to really accurately predict inflation ~~since the pandemic.~~ So, who knows how accurate the bad or good projections will end up being.

Economists have never accurately predicted anything

# ¿ Sep 21, 2022 20:59

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 18:26

Foxfire_: Nov 8, 2010

Oracle posted:

So does this mean the special master thing is moot?

That injunction is only for classified marked documents. If Trump also had MyTaxCrimes.pdf printed out and in one of those boxes, that would be outside the scope of this order. It would still need Judge Dearie to look at it and say "This document is not Trump talking to his attorney (in a way that is not furthering a crime), so it is not privileged".

# ¿ Sep 22, 2022 01:59

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > USCE Summer 2022: You can't change the crisis settings.