Topic: Liberty

…And the lack thereof.

Posted onOpinionated Junk

Broken promise

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I used to make it a point to write a post for Amer­i­ca’s Inde­pen­dence Day. It was an exer­cise in affirm­ing what it means to me to live in Amer­i­ca. I’ve let that go over the past few years for a vari­ety of rea­sons. I just haven’t been express­ing myself in writ­ing so much because dis­course itself feels bro­ken in this so-called post-truth era. But I’ve been think­ing about it for a few days and I do have some­thing to … Read the rest

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If downloading was free everyone would be doing it

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Part two in a series of two or more of top­ics rel­e­vant to the Net­work Neu­tral­i­ty debate

I’m shocked that I need to explain this, but prices are deter­mined by sup­ply, demand, and sell­ers’ deci­sions about the best ways to opti­mize sup­ply and demand. Over time they are deter­mined by noth­ing more than these.

Are there pro­duc­tion costs? Of course. But these are also gov­erned by the bal­ance of sup­ply, demand, and sell­ers’ deci­sions about the best ways to opti­mize sup­ply … Read the rest

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«Unlimited» is fraud

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Part one in a series of two or more of top­ics rel­e­vant to the Net­work Neu­tral­i­ty debate

Imag­ine a pizze­ria. Let’s call it Mono­chro­mat­ic Piz­za because that’s a ter­ri­ble name for a piz­za joint1 and with luck I won’t anger the pro­pri­etors of any actu­al piz­za places. Let’s say Mono­chro­mat­ic Piz­za makes pret­ty good piz­za. Maybe it isn’t the best in town, but you’ve been there before and you like their pizza.

As you walk past Mono­chro­mat­ic Piz­za one nice … Read the rest

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A gold shield is not droit du seigneur

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Call me cyn­i­cal, and I hope I’m wrong. My pre­dic­tion: two NYPD detec­tives will lose their jobs but see no jail time for the rape of a teenag­er they arrest­ed, a crime to which the detec­tives con­fessed.

Now the attor­neys for the detec­tives in ques­tion are attempt­ing to «slut-shame» the teenag­er and paint her as a mon­ey-grub­bing oppor­tunist. Shame on them, but ignore it. It’s all beside the point. It does­n’t mat­ter how ter­ri­ble the young woman might be. … Read the rest

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Freedom is the freedom to say that fewer is fewer

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Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump signed a pres­i­den­tial mem­o­ran­dum1 today insti­tut­ing a hir­ing freeze on Fed­er­al civil­ian work­ers. White House Press Sec­re­tary Sean Spicer said the mem­o­ran­dum «coun­ters the dra­mat­ic expan­sion of the fed­er­al work­force in recent years.»

This comes as wel­come news to mil­lions of peo­ple who believe that the Fed­er­al work­force has been expand­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly under the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. The White House Press Sec­re­tary has said it, and Pres­i­dent Trump would nev­er have tak­en such bold, … Read the rest

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The New World Order Series

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Back in 2008, Barack Oba­ma made a com­ment com­par­ing the long­shot odds of an African-Amer­i­can win­ning a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion to the odds of the Boston Red Sox win­ning the World Series.1 Famous­ly, the Red Sox had won in 2007 for the first time since… well, OK, since 2004. But before that they had­n’t won since 1918.

Oba­ma took some (admit­ted­ly light-heart­ed) jabs for root­ing for the Red Sox, and since he is cur­rent­ly root­ing for the … Read the rest

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Chinese Steel

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Apolo­gies to Dee Dee Ramone and John­ny Thun­ders.

Also, apolo­gies to hero­in addic­tion. Being com­pared to the 2016 US Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion is unflat­ter­ing even to hero­in addiction.

Somebody called me on the phone
I defaulted on another loan
No big deal! Wanna cop a feel!
Let’s go get some Chinese Steel

I’m living on Chinese Steel
Nobody buying Art of the Deal
I’m living on Chinese Steel
Everything I say is in the newsreel, bigly

Got no pesos for
… Read the rest
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Lies, damn lies, and thirteen and a half percent statistics

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It’s unclear why any­one is sur­prised by Bernie Sanders’ tax return. The out­rage appears entire­ly man­u­fac­tured built on dis­tor­tions and an assump­tion that no one will check facts.1

Sen­a­tor Sander­s’s tax fil­ing is sim­ple, easy to read, and con­tains no sur­pris­es at all. His income is close to exact­ly what one would expect2 and his deduc­tions are all com­mon, or should be.3

Yet still we see posts like this:

… Read the rest
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Separating the presumably wiser adults from the relatively inexperienced younger individuals without specifying any gender identity for the purposes of this title

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Pop quiz for self-described Repub­li­cans, Lib­er­tar­i­ans, Con­ser­v­a­tives, and Clas­sic Lib­er­als.1 What is your first thought when you see this head­line from an arti­cle in today’s Wall Street Jour­nal?

Pay­Pal Can­cels Plan for Facil­i­ty in North Car­oli­na, Cit­ing Trans­gen­der Law

Choose the one option which most close­ly cor­re­sponds to your belief:

  1. Polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness has gone too far.
  2. Cor­po­ra­tions have no right to tell peo­ple how to gov­ern themselves.
  3. God­less anti-het­ero­sex­u­al hea­thens are extort­ing the good peo­ple of North Car­oli­na to pre­vent
… Read the rest
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FBI drops Apple case after cracking iPhone

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Dear FBI—

I under­stand that some­times gov­ern­ment is slow to get tech­nol­o­gy right. And I ful­ly sym­pa­thize; it’s hard to keep up with all the trends and new gad­gets and acces­sories. Every­thing changes so quick­ly these days.

But this news is dis­ap­point­ing. It’s just waste­ful. Those iPhones are expen­sive. I know; I have one. What with this being an elec­tion year, all the can­di­dates are promis­ing to cut waste. It might not be too long before you can’t even get a … Read the rest

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