It's fine that he has an opinion. It's even fine that he's a fanboy, but important for people evaluating what he says about Apple to know that he has a decades long record of being barely more neutral than the company's PR department.
A guy who nearly always defends Apple's controversial decisions. It's probably not reasonable to treat him as neutral or fair in a dispute between Apple and any other entity.
What’s really rich about Meta and Zuckerberg’s incessant complaining about being restricted by Apple’s rules for third party software on Apple’s platforms is that Meta doesn’t allow third parties any sort of access to their successful platforms.
This is a bit of a false equivalency; "Apple's" successful platform is a general-purpose computing device owned by the user while Meta's are hosted services.
These traditionally have different expectations, with game consoles being the exception. Occulus devices seem more like game consoles to me, while iPhones are closer to general-purpose computers with a few weird restrictions. I don't like either, but I see game consoles as less problematic because their use case isn't important.
It's the wording of the 22nd amendment that makes this a possible outcome (emphasis added):
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice
It could have said "no person shall serve as president for more than two terms" or similar wording, but it does not. I agree with you that conservative justices are likely to use this interpretation.
Chance he runs for vice president and wins, with the presidential candidate resigning promptly: 5%
Chance he cancels or significantly delays election: 3%
Chance he successfully refuses to leave office after election using force: 2%
Here are all the ways that doesn't happen:
Chance he dies of natural causes: 70% - it's about one in three per year for a man in his early 80s, which would give us 1-0.66^4 = 81% for four years, but he has access to the best possible medical care
Chance he runs for vice president and wins, with the presidential candidate promising to resign promptly, and is betrayed: 10%
Chance he attempts to cancel or delay the election and fails: 10%
Chance he refuses to leave office after election and is removed: 10%
These things have a less than 1% chance:
Constitutional amendment
Supreme court allows him to run for a third term in violation of the unambiguous text of the constitution
I can, but it would still be effective for public announcements because Mastodon does not typically require a login to view on the web, and it provides am RSS feed. Walled garden platforms that won't show posts to anonymous web visitors are not acceptable for public announcements.
exactly what the fuck did you think Donald Trump was going to do with a room full of national security secrets
Something very crooked, for which he should be in prison.
Most things that are crooked and harmful to the country are not treason, and many things that might be treason are difficult to prove as treason due to the unique constraints on prosecuting that crime. We have other criminal charges for those acts, and Trump was, in fact charged with felonies for them. The prosecution was started too late, for which I do blame the Biden administration and specifically Garland.
the President would be essentially immune from prosecution
What is it you think a special prosecutor does?
The man stole countless boxes of national security secrets, stuffed them in a golf club bathroom, and his son-in-law magically got $2 billion out of nowhere. The man held meetings in the white house with foreign representatives, behind closed doors, without allowing US translators or note-takers in the room.
The first of those things is very much illegal, and the special prosecutor who was appointed too late did indict him for it. On a different timeline with a different judge, it likely would have resulted in a conviction and a lengthy prison term.
The other two are very suspicious. It's very likely there were crimes surrounding those events, but they are not, themselves crimes. They certainly aren't treason against the United States, which
shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
Now it's possible some of those foreign representatives could be considered "enemies", and possible he gave them secret information, which would qualify as "aid and comfort". The next thing the constitution requires is
No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
And sure, if that burden is met, he should be charged. Otherwise, charges that are actually likely to hold up in court are more appropriate.
I didn't really have a high school bully, but I did have an elementary school bully. I knew he would end up in prison when we were both five years old.
It's on the substantial fraction that voted for the asshole.
Everybody saw January 6. Everybody heard the call to Raffensperger. At least, everybody who's paying the least bit of attention did, and I say this as a person who does not spend much time following political news.
I especially blame people who voted for him because of prices. I don't expect an advanced understanding of supply chains, but do people think the USA has a command economy? The president does not set prices, or have much ability to influence them.
The day that Garland got sworn in, there should have been a warrant issued for Trump’s arrest on treason charges.
That would have been foolish both legally and politically.
Garland should have appointed a special prosecutor immediately rather than delaying for a year and a half. Direct involvement of the administration would have raised questions of political bias and revenge with both the courts and the public. A prosecution for treason, which is defined very narrowly would raise similar questions.
The charges against him for January 6 would have likely derailed his campaign and could have led to a lengthy prison sentence had they been filed 18 months earlier. He is not a young man; chances are strong it would have been effectively a life term.
That may be viable for some combinations of finances and lifestyle, but credit scores are used in interactions that don't involve borrowing money. I'm inclined to believer they shouldn't be, but I don't make the rules.
A failure to set an excise tax on a product or service that offsets its externalities is not a subsidy. A lower tax rate than a competing product is arguably a subsidy.
I'm not aware of any modern societies that make a credible attempt to adjust the price of all or most goods and services to include their externalities. That sounds like a good idea in theory, but very difficult to implement in practice.
Fuel, and other car-related taxes (sometimes based on horsepower or engine displacement) in most countries in Europe were much higher than in the USA long before there was widespread concern about the environmental impact of cars.
The previous time I looked, which was a while ago, federal fuel tax revenue in the USA and federal highway expenditures were about equal. Since then, fuel tax revenue has fallen behind highway spending; the required increase to even it out would be modest in absolute terms - something like 15 cents per gallon. States each have their own taxes and budgets, of course.
As for the road damage each car causes, it increases (roughly) proportional to the fourth power of vehicle weight. Semi trucks and similar heavy commercial vehicles cause almost all of the traffic-induced road wear, and passenger cars contribute very little. It's likely the fuel taxes paid for a passenger car (even a relatively large one) are several times its marginal impact on road maintenance.
The commodity price for gasoline right now looks to be about 2 USD per gallon. Retail gasoline in the USA is at least a dollar more due to taxes and markup.
Subsidies may play a role as well, but the taxes in some countries are extreme by American standards. My take on it is that a fuel tax is effectively neutral if it brings in enough revenue to pay for the road system.
From what I can tell, Bluesky is both decentralized and federated in terms of the protocol and software, but in a practical sense, trying to run the whole thing independently doesn't seem quite there yet.
The things that are easy to do are use a domain name as an identifier and host your own personal data server. Owning your own data is nice in theory, but being able to take it with you isn't that valuable when there's nowhere to go.
Zak @ Zak @lemmy.world Posts 10Comments 1,267Joined 2 yr. ago
It's fine that he has an opinion. It's even fine that he's a fanboy, but important for people evaluating what he says about Apple to know that he has a decades long record of being barely more neutral than the company's PR department.