homura1650

The insidious thing is that refusing to serve does not grow dissent within the ranks. It takes those who are dissenting out of the ranks, which causes the army as a whole to be more extreme. And, given long standing compulsory service laws, such dissenters can be jailed, allowing the government to disrupt any potential domestic anti war movement.

"Organization founded on gender discrimination adopts discriminatory gender policy"

The definition being adopted is:

any male defined as a human being naturally born male, who remains and continually identifies as a male,

https://glaad.org/glaad-exclusive-alpha-phi-alpha-fraternity-considers-transgender-ban/

14 year olds have a job. It is called "student". There is a massive societal interest in them doing that job well.

The bill: https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/s3696/BILLS-118s3696es.xml

As always, I read the bill expecting to be deeply disappointed; but was pleasantly surprised with this one. It's not going to solve the issue, but I don't really know of anything they can do to solve it. My guess is this will mostly be effective at going after large scale abuses (such as websites dedicated to deepfake porn, or general purpose deepfake sites with no safeguards in place).

My first impressions on specific parts of the bill:

1. The bill is written as an amendment to the 2022 appropriations act. This isn't that strange, but I haven't actually cross-references that, so might be misunderstanding some subtlety.

2. The definition of digital forgery is broad in terms of the means. Basically anything done on a computer counts, not just AI. In contrast, it is narrow in the result, requiring that:

when viewed as a whole by a reasonable person, is indistinguishable from an authentic visual depiction of the individual.

There is a lot of objectionable material that is not covered by this. Personally, I would like to see a broader test, but can't think of any that I would be comfortable with

3. The depiction also needs to be relevant to interstate or foreign commerce. There hands are tied by the constitution on this one. Unless Wickard v Fillburn us overturned though, me producing a deepfake for personal use reduces my interstate porn consumption, so it qualifies. By explicitly incorporating the constitutional test, the law will survive any change made to what qualifies as interstate commerce.

4. The mens rea required is "person who knows or recklessly disregards that the identifiable individual has not consented to such disclosure" No complaints on this standard.

5. This is grounds for civil suits only; nothing criminal. Makes sense, as criminal would normally be a state issue and, as mentioned earlier, this seems mostly targeted at large scale operations, which can be prevented with enough civil litigation.

6. Max damage is:

   • $150k
   • Unless it can be linked to an actual or attempted sexual assult, stalking or harassment, in which case it increases to $250k
   • Or you can sue for actual damages (including any profits made as a result of the deepfake)

7. Plaintifs can use a pseudonym, and all personally identifiable information is to be redacted or filed under seal. Intimate images turned over in discovery remains in the custody of the court

8. 10 year statute of limitations. Starting at when the plaintif could reasonably have learned about the images, or turns 18.

9. States remain free to create their own laws that are "at least as protective of the rights of a victim".

My guess is the "at least as protective" portion is there because a state suite would prevent a federal suit under this law, as there is an explicit bar on duplicative recovery, but I have not dug into the referenced law to see what that covers.

From the reporting I've read, there have been a lot of meetings between him and leading Democrats urging him to step down; starting with his debate performance and continuing from there.

He's probably been considering it for a while. However, in his position, as soon as you acknowledge that you are considering withdrawing from the race your campaign is over, so he needed to look committed until he was ready to pull the trigger and drop out.

And the President is authorized to use any means necessary to free an allied person who is being by or for the ICC.

True. Back in 2011 Mark Kelly fell for over 15 days straight. Not only did he survive, but he went on to win election as a Democrat for one of Arizona's Senate seats twice!

Delegates have been determined prior to the convention for as long as I can remember. That is the entire point of the primary.

In this case, the person who won the primary has withdrawn. The presumptive nominee is now the person who voters expected to be his VP pick; so they should have understood that their vote for Biden was a vote for Harris if something happens to Biden.

Additionally, Biden has endorsed Harris. Most of the delegates are pledge to support Biden. While they are technically free to vote their conscious, the argument of "I should support the person endorsed by the one I was sent here to support" is pretty persuasive. As is the argument of "no one is running against her"

The issue with Clinton was the presence of super delegates, who were not required to follow any primary election results. An open convention turns all delegates into super delegates.

If you want to learn about games you want combinatorial game theory. Traditional game theory isn't completely divorced from real games either, but comes up more often in economics.

Ahh, the famous cheat of checks notes changing your mind weeks before announcing a decision.

Biden was never running against Trump in the 2024 election. The Democrats still have not announced a candidate. If the Republicans wanted to campaign against the presumptive nominee before an official decision was made, that's on them.