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A plan? Actually there is. This is all part of the backdrop to end US elections. We can’t have elections in the middle of a major war. And if we do have them we must greatly constrain how they are held while we are at war.

We had elections during WW2, the largest war of all time; we had elections during the civil war when confederate troops were 30 miles from DC. An air campaign in the Middle East is just another tuesday by comparison. This theory falls flat on its face - it is not a reasonable pretext for suspending elections, and this administration does not bother with creating pretexts for its power grabs.

Ah, but whether it is a "reasonable" pretext/excuse for suspending elections is up to the media and how they want to spin it for the masses, to shape their opinion, isn't it? And how practical, that more news outlets are now owned by MAGA people. Furthermore, I will not put it past Trump to use any flimsy excuse to suspend elections, if he thinks he will lose.

The president has no legal powers over elections, per the constitution. Only states can hold elections.

Of course Trump and the GOP can try all sorts of voter suppression, which is what they're doing now.


What if Trump were to say elections are illegal due to the war. We need to delay them. And Republicans in congress did nothing. And the Supreme Court decided not to hear any cases related to it. What then? We’re learning the US government has basically no teeth to stop something like this.

It's a scary thought, albeit not a realistic one at the moment, thankfully. The Supreme Court has shown ample willingness to strike down blatant (and subtle, for that matter) executive overreach. Exhibit A is Trump's tariffs, which were justified by the administration to be legal through the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows the president to “regulate…importation” during a declared state of emergency. The Supreme Court found that the wording in the act allowing the president to “regulate…importation” was not sufficient to grant the president the power to impose tariffs. The wording in the IEEPA is vague enough that you could go either way, but the conservative majority tends to follow the Major Questions Doctrine, which essentially says that in vague matters like this, assume that the power belongs to Congress and not the president.

Meanwhile, delaying or canceling elections through executive order would be blatantly illegal, particularly when no conflict is taking place on U.S. soil. The case likely wouldn't even make it to the Supreme Court, but if it did, I have no doubt elections would be promptly reinstated.

I'm not saying the Supreme Court has a perfect record, of course. Not even two years ago, they essentially ruled that the president is above the law. But at least in matters regarding the balance of powers between branches, the Supreme Court is wary of the power of the executive branch, and that should certainly include the president's ability (or lack thereof) to interfere in elections.


Can you name something which can't be spun by the media or that you could not believe Trump would try to use as an excuse? If something is always true, it is evidence of nothing in particular.

Claiming this strike on Iran is an attempt to suspend US elections is exactly as ridiculous as claiming the last round of strikes on Iran, or the Maduro raid, or any of Trump's other previous military boondoggles were attempts to suspend US elections.


What, is the US Ukraine? Is it under attack?

When zelenskyy mentioned elections were suspended by the war to trump, in the Whitehouse while in a room full of media, trump replied something like "now that's a good idea"

I've been trying to avoid the news for a little over a year now. I needed a detox. ... Is this true? That is, are there legitimate proposals to cancel or constrain the November elections in any significant way? Or, is this all speculation?

There's a memo out about nationalizing elections and there's the SAVE America act to require much stricter voting requirements. Both of these unconstitutional obviously because federal government doesn't run elections.

> We can’t have elections in the middle of a major war.

Yes we can? Is there any provision in the US Constitution that allows delay of election because of war? We have had elections during most of our recent wars (Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan).

Trump could definitely try. Or pull an emergency card out of his ass. But it doesn't mean there is any provision for cancelling elections because of this 'war' with Iran (which they aren't even calling a war, but a "special combat operation" to get around congress having the war powers)


That statement was not on my voice, but the coming voice from this administration. IMO there is never a reason to withhold elections.

That's an absurd stretch with no basis in fact or history.

Unfortunately, you can't dismiss it based on that. Most of what this administration does is an absurd stretch with no basis in fact or history.

The president said they should cancel the elections.

You must be ignorant - the entire republican leadership is telegraphing the cancel elections

So, I heard Epstein started a war in the middle east...

In 1995 no one used the web still. Sure, we all did, but it was pretty niche. I think you could argue that chatbots are niche as well, but the user base of OpenAI is way larger now than Netscape in 1995. Netscape had probably 25 million users at the end of 1995. ChatGPT has about 800 million.

If public transit was super convenient I think way more people would take it. There are things and places I don’t frequent purely because of parking and public transit isn’t convenient.

But I don’t want to drive three miles to park in a sketchy lot to hop on a train that will drop me off a mile from the venue.


That's a specific school problem. I think being school-shaped is not about being bored, but more about being willing to do tasks on a schedule and can learn a lot of material through a lecture style.

The 3D view works on Edge, but the shirt doesn't fit properly and there's only one sleeve and that sleeve doesn't actually have the arm go in the middle of it.

I asked ChatGPT why it got such an obvious problem wrong. This is its reply:

You’re right — I answered the wrong interpretation of your question.

Technically, what happened is a classic ambiguity + default-assumption failure: • Your sentence: “I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?” • That can be parsed two ways: 1. You + your body traveling to the car wash (as if the car is already there, or you’re going to meet someone / pick it up). 2. The car traveling to the car wash (the normal real-world meaning).

I incorrectly defaulted to (1) because the question explicitly asks about your mode of travel (“Should I walk or drive?”), and in many everyday contexts that phrasing is used when deciding how a person gets somewhere. I then “completed” the scenario in my head without checking the key constraint: the car must be at the wash to be washed.

More technically: I optimized for a quick, practical answer using a common conversational heuristic (“short distance → walk”), but I failed to validate the physical requirements of the task (washing requires the car’s presence). That’s why it looks so obviously wrong after the fact: it violates the hidden but necessary premise.

The correct reasoning chain should have been: • Goal: wash the car at the car wash • Requirement: car must be at the car wash • Therefore: drive the car there (unless it’s already there, or you’re washing it by hand at home)

So the “why” is: I latched onto the distance-to-walking heuristic and didn’t do the constraint check that the object being acted on (the car) has to move too.


LLMs don't really know why they got something wrong, so unless it had access to the original chain of thought, it's just guessing.

They don’t have access to their network level. But I assume they actually do have access to their chain of thoughts.

That just sounds like post-hoc rationalization BS to me.

Another simple example is using the flashlight on your phone to look for your phone.

Oh the cringe. Got me.

Yes, there are thousands of videos of these sorts of pranks on TikTok.

Another one. Ask some how to pronounce “Y, E, S”. They say “eyes”. Then say “add an E to the front of those letters - how do you pronounce that word”? And people start saying things like “E yes”.


Yet IDEs are some of the worst things in the world. From EMacs to Eclipse to XCode, they are almost all bad - yet they are written by devs for devs.

Unfortunately, they are written by IDE-devs for non IDE-devs.

What people who advertise indirectly on the internet. For example the ads around a baseball field - can that baseball game no longer be streamed? Product placement in a movie - can that movie only be in theaters and DVD, but not Netflix? Could streaming companies show previews of coming shows on their own platform?

I also assume it means that sites like X could no longer charge for verified accounts.


I'm curious what the point is in calling out obvious edge cases that can be addressed by either the legislation allowing for discretion in enforcement via the FCC or other department, or having the court system directly address this factors?

What's important is agreeing or disagreeing with the spirit of the law, not trying to get a HN comment to give you a bullet-proof wording.


Because as long as there is a theoretical edge case, nothing should be done, your model is flawed. That's a mentality very common amongst software engineers. In the real physical world, even tying your shoes has edge cases.

Hmm, thinking of it, it may explain the love of sandals in said community.


The obvious edge cases are often the difference between a law having any teeth at all. Or the edge cases can be such a big loophole that everything fits under it.


That's what the judiciary is for. Really!

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