Well within the time period when even minor news was routinely posted to the Internet, so it's searchable. On the other hand I have a really common name.
Reasonable articulable suspicion. In my case, an imaginary dog "alerted" an unnamed handler. So that gave them RAS to strip me naked, be jailed, and be made to poop in front of them to ensure there were no drugs that came out.
Contacted several lawyers, nothing to be done, no chance of fighting it. Girl that tried before me, lost.
I like that saying. You can see it all the time on Reddit where, not even counting AI generated content, you see rage bait that is (re)posted literally years after the fact. It's like "yeah, OK this guy sucks, but why are you reposting this 5 years after it went viral?"
I think people should realize that, in a democracy, it is virtually impossible to put these safeguards in place if people at large don't want them.
The reason Trump is able to get away with so much right now is because Congress is letting him. They could easily constrain his tariff powers, or his warmongering powers (they actually were close to doing that WRT Venezuela before some Republican Senators caved like a bunch of wet blankets), but they don't, because this is what people voted for. Trump is so much more powerful in his second term because at this point everyone knew he was a convicted felon, they knew he fomented the attack on the Capitol, and still a majority of voters voted for him.
Safeguards only work of someone is willing to enforce them.
It may not be possible to do perfectly, but here are many things that can be done to make it harder.
E.g.:
- no direct elections of a president with such broad powers.
- Separating the head of state and head of government, and split their powers.
- Proportional representation to reduce the chance of the largest party obtaining so much power alone.
- Not letting the president appoint supreme court justices.
- No presidential pardons; basically removing the chance of getting out of protections against legal sanctions after leaving office, and removing one of the strongest means of protecting loyalists.
The US isn't uniquely vulnerable, but it is a whole lot more vulnerable than governments in countries where the head of government is easier to replace and have fewer powers vested in their own personal mandate.
A direct election of a single powerful leader is also fundamentally creating a less democratic system - it reduces the influence of a huge minority of the electorate far below what their numbers justify.
> One of the key arguments is that Congress can't take that power away from him. For example, Congress can't tell him that he can't fire executive-branch staff, because the executive power rests with him, not with Congress.
Just want to comment what an incredibly piss poor argument that is, because if you take it to its conclusion, it means all of the power rests with the Executive and none with the Legislature. That is, by definition, the Executive branch has all the people that actually "do stuff". If the executive has full, 100% control over the structure and rules of the branch, why bother even having a legislature in the first place if all the laws can be conveniently ignored or "reinterpreted".
You could argue Congress still has the power of impeach if they believe laws aren't being faithfully excited, but I'd argue that is much too much of a blunt instrument to say that laws should be able to constrain what a President can do within the executive branch.
I liked this post. I may have some minor qualms (e.g. while I think execs should be proxies for the customer, they have many other competing motivations that can push customer needs way down), but I especially liked the closing section:
> Understanding before criticizing
> Large software companies have real problems. Some are structural. Some are cultural. Many are self-inflicted. But many of the behaviors people complain about are not pathologies – they are consequences.
> If you want to criticize how large organizations operate, it helps to first understand why they operate that way. Without that understanding, the criticism may feel sharp, but it will not be useful.
I see that kind of "criticizing before understanding" all the time on HN, and while that's probably just inherent to an open forum, commenters who do that should realize it makes them come across as "less than insightful", to put it generously. Like I see tons of comments often about how managers only get to their position through obsequious political plots. And sure, that may exist in some orgs. But you can always tell when folks have never even considered the competing forces that act on managers (i.e not just the folks they directly manage, but requirements coming from higher ups, and peer teams, and somehow being responsible for a ton when you actually have few direct levers to push) and solely view things through the lens of someone being managed.
I mean, their escape was quite complex and did actually "work", it's just they didn't get very far beyond that. Any dramatization would clearly need some comedic element
But still, I think the solution is brilliant and I can't wait to try it.
If you ask someone to turn it down, it can immediately come off as confrontational, even if you're being polite. With this solution, though, it's kind of hilarious because in one sense it's more confrontational, but the original music blaster would have to ask you to turn it down - but it's just their music.
I'm a pretty nonconfrontational person, but the one time I lost it was when this late middle aged woman kept chatting away on her cell phone in the quiet car of the LIRR despite other people previously telling her that she was in the quiet car (I believe my exact words were "Hey princess, what part of 'no cellphones' do you not understand" - there is a giant sign at the front of the car that says no cellphone use). But I don't think I'd ever do this in a public situation where the rules weren't so clearly spelled out.
I think I saw this quote somewhere else on HN about a post lamenting how difficult it can be to make new friends after age 30 or so:
Finding new friends as an adult can be exceedingly difficult, but becoming a friend to someone is surprisingly easy.
Lots of people (and if I'm being honest I'm one of them, so no judgement) just sort of expect friendships to come to them. But if you actually do the hard (and somewhat socially risky) work of inviting people to do things, offering to help unsolicited, organizing gatherings, etc. new friendships are much easier to come by.
Agreed (mostly, but going into the Electoral College debate is a whole other rabbit hole, and regardless a majority voted for these people at least once, with full prior knowledge), and in a democracy we get the government we deserve.
But still, I saw a good clip from Bernie Sanders arguing that when people voted for Trump, they weren't really voting for giant tax breaks for billionaires, or making health care much more expensive, or kicking lots of people off food stamps (though I'd argue they should have realized these things were coming if they had paid attention). What they were voting for was a fundamental shake up of the system, and (for better or worse) Trump was the only one offering fundamental change, vs. the incremental anodyne "can't we all just get along" milquetoast plans from the Democrats (or at least the "elite" Democrats).
Also, for this imperial expansionism issue in particular, I'd argue that this really does feel like a 180 flip flop from Trump after all his "America First" and isolationist rhetoric. For a lot of other issues, for example the immigration crackdown or tariffs, I was truly baffled that some people were surprised how dumb or extreme his policies were, as he basically laid out that this was exactly what he was going to do in the campaign. But putting us in the path of more global conflict and territorial expansionism was actually the exact opposite of what he said he'd do. I'm not that surprised because he's such a transparent malignant narcissist, but again, at least on this issue he flip flopped.
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