stares directly into camera

(in regard to R. Kelly)

*groans and rubs temples* not sure which is worse, how stupid that is or how we probably saw that stupid coming for several miles

but in lighter news

he's 29 so at minimum he could be out when he's 75 and that's only if he gets parole

@Memor-X She's a perfect example of someone that the media needs to stop giving a platform too

Including social media

Seriously companies, stop letting your platforms be used to spread hate.

@Facebook, @Youtube, @Twitter

@Wipqozn It's bad that she's saying that kind of thing, but by what standard should it be removed from those platforms?

@murgatroid99 Because giving people a platform to spread hate just spreads more hate.

A tolerant society shouldn't tolerant intolerance.

@Wipqozn That's not what I mean. You need to have standards or rules for deciding what speech is allowed. "Hateful" is ambiguous and interpreted inconsistently. So, what I'm asking is what kind of consistently enforceable rule would ban that kind of speech?

@murgatroid99 Ah, okay, I see what you're saying. In which case I'm just gonna say that's not a discussion I feel like getting into with any depth at the moment. I suspect, though, that it's not something we'd see eye to eye on anyways. Not to assume, but I figure you're much more against any kind of restriction of speech on a fundamental level than I am, based on other conversations you've had in the past.

Although I'm sure the wikipedia page about Canadian hate speech laws might give some insight into where I'd be coming from, since I'm a strong fan of our hate speech laws.

Would that tweet be a violation of those hate speech laws?

I mean I might totally be done with discussing it more if I wasn't planning to head to bed shortly (which is to say whenever I tear myself away from anno).

@murgatroid99 To be honest I'm not sure, especially since I know there are some province-to-province variations of it.

I am generally opposed to speech restriction, but I wouldn't really be opposed to implementing existing tried-and-true hate speech legislation from a country like Canada as rules on those sites.

But reading that article, it's not any clearer to me what that law considers to be "inciting hatred"

To be honest it's not even that specific tweet of hers, it's just her in general. Her entire purpose in life, as far as I can tell (in my likely confirmation biased sources) is to just try to spread hate.

She wouldn't be able to do that if folks would just stop giving her a platform,

Right, but my point here is if her statements wouldn't even violate the hate speech laws you reference, what kind of stronger standard would you want those sites to apply?

@murgatroid99 So I'm by no means an expert, but from what I understand Canadian laws tend to be more about the spirit of the law than the letter of the law (when compared to the USA), so I think our laws often a lot less detailed as you'd probably be used to in the US. But again I'm by no means an expert on that, so take it with a grain of salt.

My overall point is that it seems to me that it's possible for someone to be a generally hateful person without necessarily saying anything direct or specific enough to get them in trouble with existing hate speech rules, and I think it would be very difficult for platforms to put good rules into place that would also effectively deal with those people.

And I don't want to spend any longer on her Twitter feed but it seems to me that Ann Coulter is one of those people

@murgatroid99 So one of the reasons I didn't really want to discuss it too much, aside from the fact I'm exiting soon, is just that "defining hatred" and "when does it cross the line?" isn't something I've put enough thought into that I could really properly put it into words, especially not to the level of detail I you'd be comfortable with.

@murgatroid99 Well what I've seen of her over the years has led me to believe she's not one of those people, and that she very clearly crosses the line into "spreading hate". But I can't really drag up specific examples, because it's not like I've made a point to follow her, I just constantly see stuff she's said over the years.

Although again when we're talking about specific laws you could be very well be right, but also private companies shouldn't be held to the same standard as governments. Twitter is under no obligation to give people a platform.

But Twitter isn't one person. They can't have one decider looking at every account and making a yes/no decision. They need policies for making that decision. And I think it would be very hard to make a policy that is broad enough to hit generically hateful people without also doing too much collateral damage.

@murgatroid99 Yes that's a concern.

But on the other hand it's apparently super easy to have an explicit policy categorizing intentionally misgendering people as abusive and yet they don't even enforce that one. Somebody at twitter has been making a call that actually this rule is fake if you're a british man named graham with a blue checkmark

Which could be any number of people in my "we have received your report" box but not in my "an update on the account you reported" box

@murgatroid99 Some of my stance on this is derived from what I've seen happen on platforms in the past ~5 years, especially REddit. Where groups such as stormfront actively target it as a way to spread hate and bigotry and grow their numbers. They do so since it's a platform filled with kids (<18) who are very impressionable.

Twitter also makes the explicit decision that content that must be legally withheld in Germany is allowed on their website at all. They just follow the statutory requirements on that and call it a day.

@TimStone This reminded me of that horrifying video of a a guy on a Russian road where suddenly a brick flies off an oncoming truck, crashes through the windshield and crushes the head of the passenger

Huh, did you know Ken Starr was Epstein's lawyer? I did not

Update on the story from yesterday: Miami Herald: Americans arrested in Haiti with arsenal of guns won’t face U.S. charges

I can guess the why, don't think I need an explainer

@BradC hmm I wonder why

> On Wednesday, Vice News reported that at least six jurors ignored Cogan’s orders, perusing social media, surfing the Internet and discussing the discovered information.

I fully expect it to fall on deaf ears, but this is a strong statement:

> To my Republican colleagues: When the president attacked the independence of the Justice Department by intervening in a case in which he is implicated, you did not speak out. When he attacked the press as the enemy of the people, you again were silent. When he targeted the judiciary, labeling judges and decisions he didn’t like as illegitimate, we heard not a word. And now he comes for Congress, the first branch of government, seeking to strip it of its greatest power, that of the purse.

> Many of you have acknowledged your deep misgivings about the president in quiet conversations over the past two years. You have bemoaned his lack of decency, character and integrity. You have deplored his fundamental inability to tell the truth. But for reasons that are all too easy to comprehend, you have chosen to keep your misgivings and your rising alarm private.

> That must end. The time for silent disagreement is over. You must speak out.

@BradC It'll be amusing if Trump goes into an apoplectic rage if Congress has enough backing to override his veto.

@BradC ...

> “I'm either brave or stupid,” the juror responded. “It could go either way.”

You're stupid.

Not about going to the media, but explicitly ignoring a judge's orders.

@Frank Even if they didn't have quite that much, but were able to force him to use his veto, that would still say a lot

> "So he [the judge] did indeed come to our room and ask us if we knew, and we all denied it, obviously.”

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh

@BradC Wouldn't stop him from getting his way, though.

> “I thought we would get arrested,” the juror said. “I thought they were going to hold me in contempt.… I didn't want to say anything or rat out my fellow jurors. I didn't want to be that person. I just kept it to myself, and I just kept on looking at your Twitter feed.”

If the judge was going to hold you in contempt then, they're most definitely going to hold you in contempt now.

@Frank for some definition of "get his way". Several lawsuits have been filed already; and I heard one report that 2 of the 3 purported sources of funds might be yankable by Congress even now

To be clear, a lawyer I respect says that the ultimate question of what the president can declare as an "emergency" is likely non-justicable (the courts will defer to the executive), but there are a few other matters that are more likely to succeed

@Yuuki In the US you are tried by a jury of peers, right? Somehow I don't think El Chapo was this stupid

(eminent domain, whether the wall actually count as "infrastucture support of the military", whether the proper environmental studies have been done per the law)

<insert a podcast joke here> I am forcibly removed from the chatroom

@Unionhawk Are you trying to sell us a mattress?

what

oh right some podcasts have ads

and many of them use the same advertisers

and they're all fuckin, casper dot com, stamps dot com, dollar shave club dot com, simplysafe dot com,

@BradC S Q U A R E S P A C E

Oh wait, that's educational YouTubers.

no that was an el chapo -> the podcast joke

non joke

ah. clear as mud, then.

@Yuuki SkillShare has really taken over that niche.

ZipRecruiter...

@InvaderSkoodge they sponsored some smash ultimate cpu tournament video and I was so confused because they spent the entire match referring to "the skillshare kirby" and I THOUGHT IT WAS A GAME FEATURE BUT NO IT'S THAT KIRBY'S SPONSOR

Wait they sponsored a character in a fighting game tournament?

no, they sponsored a video and the people who did the video turned it into that

What would Kirby teach you exactly? How to do your taxes?

Yeah

Kirby teaches you how to eat the rich and siphon off their powers

Oh I see the atlantic has made a hire, let's take a big sip of coffee and read up on his history

@TimStone Well that's no worse than Yoshi teaching you how to commit tax fraud

The joint resolution to torpedo Trump's emergency declaration was introduced in the House btw

Whereas there is no emergency be it therefore resolved,

@PrivatePansy Well, all you do is turn your enemies into eggs, claim them as dependents, and then throw the eggs at stuff.

Now you have deductions without having to pay the associated costs with raising kids.

@TimStone So it pretty much needs a 2/3 majority for it to be veto proof, right?

@Yuuki That is both amazing and terrifying

I want to see the Mushroom Kingdom tax code now

@Nzall Yeah, though the bigger issue is whether it will even pass in the Senate. But it legally has to be brought to the floor so we'll find out!

@PrivatePansy There's probably a specific category for plumberfisting-induced loss of property value

The likely scenario is that McConnell uses all of the time at his disposal to convince Trump to rescind the order somehow, but Trump doesn't give af so gl buddy

All those bricks he breaks etc

@PrivatePansy You should submit that for those Polygon videos

chuckles You're staying in jail my dude

Frequent Fox News guest and checks notes lawyer to the President

This is where I'd normally say "well, that's reassuring" but I'm pretty sure those words have worn out their welcome.

@TimStone When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.

> Bowser will replace Reggie Fils-Aimé as Nintendo of America president

Hehehe

I'm sure someone already made this joke in Arqade, I apologize.

> Nintendo to hire new spokeperson, Daisy Ridley.

@Yuuki Can't help but think how many innocent Goombas might have been spared if Mario had just used a light saber the first time.

cc @fredley

> Google ends forced arbitration for all employees. Employees will be able to sue in court, including class-action lawsuits.

Good

@puzzlepiece87 wait, forced arbitration meant they couldn't sue?

@Wipqozn Yup, forced arbitration in the US for either employment or for products means you forfeit your right to sue. You must present your case against the company to an supposedly independent arbitrator (who is in fact hired by the company to handle such cases).

You will be shocked to learn that arbitrators rule in favor of the company more than 90% of the time!

@puzzlepiece87 Okay so 1) That's completely fucked and 2) Now I understand why everyone was so upset about this

@puzzlepiece87 fuck yeah, finally

@Wipqozn it was often also paired with no collective arbitration thanks to our good buddy judge G

so an employer can now outmaneuver people coming together with a collective wage theft claim

I thought the frustration before was forcing people who have been harassed to go through what is effectively just an HR process with the harasser. which is still bad, but not as bad as I'd expect given the response to it.

I phrased that weirdly, but yeah. Now I get why the response to this from folks was so strong. Much worse problem than I originally thought.

because even though your claim may be a couple hundred dollars in total or something (idk what the "average" case looks like), multiply that by the boss is doing this to every single worker and wew

I think there are a bunch of Uber drivers doing this in CA, but, lucky for them, the state of California requires the employer to cover all costs in arbitration. So even just filing a few thousand independent claims is costing the company a lot

@Wipqozn So that's was specific to workplace harassment, but other grievances were covered under forced individual arbitration.

A detailed look at just how stacked the deck is in arbitration

@Unionhawk Thank goodness for this law. From the article I just linked: "Consumers pay an average cost of $161 to file a claim in arbitration."

Forced individual arbitration is also inherently union busting.

Yes

Thanks justice G

So your employer can steal hundreds of your wages and you'd be forced to pony up $161 just to try to get them back.

(Note that employee vs employer and consumer vs company arbitrations are technically distinct but have many similarities in both process and outcome)

(he made some dumb ruling like "we can't pick and choose which laws we want", and then immediately decided that the federal arbitration act allowing forced arbitration trumped the national labor relations act allowing collective worker action)

(other justices were like "wait hang on we can reconcile this by saying that yeah you can do forced arbitration but you can't disallow class action and bam we've married these two laws" in dissent but alas,)

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

The President sure is friends with a lot of sex criminals tbh

I mean, this is, probably true for president in Presidents

tbf

I mean that's fair Putin did steal Bob Kraft's Super Bowl ring and the Clintons know Epstein so it checks out

the broad strokes of pizzagate are basically real but the details are not

@TimStone lol

Okay, full now

Spent all morning wrestling with one of our stupid systems

Turns out an ex-employee had used his own IAM user's keys for a production thing

So when we disabled his user, the production thing broke

Finally got that tracked down and fixed about 1:30 and went down the street for a delicious bulgogi burger

@SaintWacko Why test in DEV when you can test in PROD?

@MBraedley It wasn't even for testing! He just decided it was a good idea to have the production server use his user's keys to connect to AWS!

@SaintWacko ugh what a ridiculous thing to do

@SaintWacko Extremely same, in terms of having a day of cleaning up dumb things and decisions at work and then having delicious bulgogi for lunch. Mine was a burrito.

@Ash Thanks for linking this and I'm sorry the larger, not LBGTQ, community is so, so indifferent.