To look on the bright side, perhaps such systems could elevate the level of insults. For example, let us imagine an internet dispute over feminine bottoms. One might see a comment like:
You shit-eating moron! Big butts on hoes are da bomb!
And that would score 94% "toxicity." Or, the author could reflect a bit and write:
My good sir! Even a caprophagous rapscallion could determine the ultimate pulchritude of femininity, which lies most gloriously in lovely and great callipygian virtues.
And you'd score a mere 12% "toxicity," despite expressing a nearly identical sentiment.
I'm normally not a fan of trolls, but if a system like this could lead to, shall we say, more "creative" insults and "elevated" ways of expressing such matters, that might be very entertaining.
(Alas, I know this system isn't sophisticated enough to generate such an outcome, since it's easier to "break" than just using words with more syllables.)
Yes, you're right. The point is that there have been certain libertarian organizations pushing states to adopt "free speech laws" on public university campuses recently. The worrisome thing isn't the promotion of "free speech" (which obviously should be protected) -- it's that many of the libertarian groups lobbying for this as well as the state legislators proposing the bills don't actually realize the language they're writing is overly broad and could lead to all sorts of strange side effects, like whether professors actually get to say a student is ever "wrong" in pronouncing a belief in a classroom, or whether a college might be forced to expel a student just for standing up and arguing with a speaker more than once.
There is longstanding precedent in allowing U.S. Executive Agreements that merely enforce what was already agreed to or authorized by previous Senate-approved treaties. That's what you have here -- everything that is **legally binding** in the Paris Agreement follows directly on stipulations made in the original 1992 treaty. All the rest is technically optional and was negotiated specifically to be such. Hence, Trump's withdrawal merely confirms his decision not to honor our self-determined optional commitments.
Despite your unnecessary rudeness, I decided to go back and re-read the relevant sections of the agreement. And I will admit that I think my interpretation of the clauses I cited was not completely correct (I don't claim to be an international lawyer). Despite the wording, I no longer think the new agreement is technically an "Annex" to the original convention, but rather functions under a set of rulemaking authorized by the original 1992 treaty. Anyhow...
That said, your statement isn't entirely correct either. The agreement still is intended to be part of the original 1992 framework and was specifically tailored legally to not have any legal REQUIREMENTS that went beyond what was articulated in the 1992 treaty. All of the rest of the provisions are technically voluntary, and the U.S. could alter its commitments to them at any time.
Also, not all countries ratified the agreement through legislatures. Every country has its own means of dealing with international agreements: many have ratified through legislature, but not all. U.S. diplomats actually were quite conservative in drafting the language of this agreement so as to keep the legal requirements within the confines of the 1992 treaty (and therefore not requiring additional Senate confirmation). There is a longstanding policy in the U.S. that Executive Agreements which merely enforce the legal terms of previous treaties do not require additional Senate approval.
The UNFCCC was used as a basis for the Paris Accord, but it is not the same treaty, nor is the Paris Accord actually part of the UNFCCC.
The Paris Agreement was explicitly adopted as an "annex" to the UNFCCC. See the text of the agreement (from p. 2):
I. Adoption. 1. Decides to adopt the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (hereinafter referred to as "the Agreement") as contained in the annex...
The formal "annex" begins on p. 20 of the link. Let's see what else you have.
The US has never ratified the Paris Accord, in any way, and is not currently a member of it. It cannot 'withdraw' because it was never a part in the first place.
Again, nope. Note further the stipulations from the original UNFCCC treaty for annexes (Section 16):
3.
An annex that has been adopted in accordance with
paragraph 2 above shall enter into force for all Parties to
the Convention six months after the date of the communication
by the Depositary to such Parties of the adoption of the
annex, except for those Parties that have notified the
Depositary, in writing, within that period of their
non
-acceptance of the annex.
Note further that Article 23 of the Paris Agreement states that Article 16 of the Convention specifically applies to the Paris Agreement. Since the U.S. did NOT notify the Depository of its non-acceptance of the Annex known as the "Paris Agreement" within 6 months, the UNFCCC automatically makes the Paris Agreement binding upon the U.S., according to the terms approved by the Senate when it adopted the treaty in 1992.
So yes, even if the U.S. didn't sign the Paris Agreement, since we didn't "opt out," the U.S. is by default bound to it by the terms of the previous UNFCCC treaty.
The Paris Accord was a 2015 modification to that Treaty. Modification to the treaty or accord requires Senate approval. No such approval was obtained. As such, the USA was never part of the Paris Accord.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the whole point of the UNFCCC treaty was to create a "framework" (it's in the name) for future climate agreements.
The Paris Agreement was specifically designed to be "voluntary" in many of its requirements to avoid the legal issues that plagued the Kyoto Accord back in the 1990s. The Kyoto Accord *did* place legally binding restrictions on climate actions to be taken by the U.S., and as such, it required Senate confirmation (where it was rejected).
Executive Agreements do not necessarily require reconfirmation of the Senate when they are implementing a treaty already approved by the Senate. Specifically, if they do not modify existing domestic laws, executive agreements generally don't require Senate confirmation. (Note that Executive Agreements are not uncommon -- the U.S. has engaged in over 18,000 of them, some dating back to the early days of the country, compared to only a bit over 1,000 treaties.) As I understand it, the Obama administration intended to enforce its contribution to the agreement through existing federal statutes and regulations (like the Clean Air Act), so no changes to domestic laws would be necessary beyond what was already achieved in the UNFCCC treaty.
Note, of course, that an Executive Agreement is less binding than a treaty, so there's no question that Trump has the authority to unilaterally withdraw from it, though doing so without following the terms of withdrawal in the agreement would be a diplomatic disaster that would undermine U.S. authority in international negotiations.
It'd be more credible if it was an actual treaty and developing nations actually did more than face-saving gestures.
Many have committed to more than "face-saving gestures."
The whole point of Paris was to avoid the diplomatic debacle of Kyoto. Trying to negotiate all sorts of "hard" details in a binding treaty just meant that a lot of countries tried to keep the standards as low as possible, and some countries (e.g., the U.S.) just refused to sign entirely.
Nobody ever thought the Paris agreement was great. But the idea was at least to get as many nations as possible "at the negotiating table" to (1) acknowledge that climate change is a problem, (2) discuss the overall global targets needed, and (3) get all nations to agree to do SOMETHING voluntarily toward achieving those goals. As time went on and some progress was made, the thought was that nations with stronger goals would inspire (or shame) others into complying more.
A more strict agreement would simply just lead to a lot of less developed countries refusing to even take part -- which means no ongoing discussion or negotiation, less monitoring and information from them, etc. Was it a perfect agreement? Absolutely not. But it was a diplomatic first attempt to at least get the vast majority of countries in the world TALKING to each other about this stuff, rather than having large parts of the world population just not even taking part in discussions to address the issue.
it also requires developed nations to give $100 billion annually to the less-developed nations.
To be clear, yet again, all country contributions to this are voluntary. Obama committed the U.S. to $3 billion. (Not $3 billion/year -- $3 billion TOTAL, of which $1 billion has already been contributed.) There is no requirement for the U.S. to contribute more than that, unless it voluntarily says it will.
And the US is already one of the least polluting nations,
Sorry, but this is just absolute nonsense. Among developed nations, the U.S. emits more CO2 per capita that any country other than Luxembourg. It's emits roughly double the amount per capita compared to most developed nations. And almost all of 10 or so countries with higher per capita emissions are in the Middle East.
As for absolute emissions (i.e., total, not per capita), the U.S. is consistently 2nd the world, following China.
You are perhaps correct if by "pollution" you mean stuff like particulates, etc. -- yes, the U.S. has managed to cut down on smog and such in recent decades. But the Paris Agreement has mostly to do with carbon emissions, where the U.S. is one of the MOST "polluting nations." Claiming it is one of the "least" is misleading at best in this context.
What you said is largely inaccurate, but there's a kernel of truth.
Since the Paris deal was never submitted to the Senate for confirmation, it is not a legally binding treaty, only a verbal agreement by Obama.
The Paris Agreement was adopted as part of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), which IS a treaty the U.S. adopted in 1992.
Most of the legally binding aspects of the Paris accord, which include stuff like ongoing monitoring of climate change, reports to the international organization, etc. were part of that original treaty.
Where you're sort of right is that just about all the rest of the Paris agreement was set VOLUNTARILY by each country, including specific actions to mitigate emissions, goal levels for each country, etc. While it would be against the spirit of the Paris agreement, there's absolutely nothing in that agreement that prevents the U.S. from unilaterally lowering its own goals (which the U.S. set itself).
There is disagreement on this point, but a number of U.S. officials who actually were involved with the drafting and negotiation of the original Paris agreement have gone on the record to state the U.S. could "backslide" on its goals. They say that specific language was originally considered that would prevent "backsliding," but it was removed from the final version of the agreement. Obviously there would likely be diplomatic backlash if the U.S. lowers its goals, but not likely worse than what it will experience by backing out entirely.
Which makes Trump's claims all the more mystifying. Especially about his claims that maybe the U.S. could "get a better deal." The U.S. DETERMINED the "deal." It could change its own terms. About the only thing required by the deal that the U.S. would be legally obligated to in the future would be ongoing monitoring and reports on emissions, which (as I said) was basically already part of the original Senate-approved treaty in 1992.
The ONLY reason to withdraw completely is to attempt to send a message that climate change isn't real and thus the entire exercise of the agreement is invalid. But all the rhetoric about "getting a better deal" is complete and utter balderdash.
Oh, and by the way, if you think the pre-9/11 tests weren't as rigorous, you're probably right. But this 2002 report AFTER 9/11 where the FAA was determined to show how bad private airport screeners were only managed to sneak weapons past airport security 24% of the time. At the time, it was a "call for action," and the transition to federal TSA screeners that was to happen later that year was proclaimed as the solution. (At the time, TSA was only involved in supervision, not actually staffing screening.)
That article concludes with the ominous statement:
The Transportation Department's inspector general office earlier conducted its own undercover tests of 32 airports after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and found screeners missed knives 70 percent of the time, guns 30 percent of the time and simulated explosives 60 percent of the time, said a person familiar with the report. Those tests were conducted before February, when airlines still supervised security checkpoints.
So maybe the pre-9/11 tests weren't as rigorous, but TSA audits show it's actually gotten worse, even with billions of dollars more screening equipment and much more thorough regulations for detection.
Oh, yeah. I really want my safety to be weighed against someone's profit margin in a spreadsheet somewhere.
While I probably agree with you in this particular case (though I haven't read all the details), and I'm generally suspicious of relying on businesses to audit themselves, this policy isn't always true in general. Government can also have bad motivations and conflicts of interest.
Take the TSA and airport security for example. Before 9/11, airport security was mostly a private affair, and it generally functioned well. 9/11 wasn't even really a failure of airport security, since the hijackers actually only took approved items through security. Compare that to the TSA, which routinely tends to let 90%+ of dangerous materials through.
(A few internet searches for reports from the 1980s and 1990s indicate failure rates to detect weapons, etc. in FAA audits of only 10-20%, instead of 90% for the TSA now. That's despite reports back then criticizing low pay and frequent turnover as obstacles to better detection rates -- and yet they did SO much better than the TSA does now. In 1987, it was a huge scandal that 20% of weapons got through FAA testing, leading to significant changes that ultimately reduced that number to ~10% in the 1990s. The TSA has rarely managed to FIND more than 20% of weapons in any audit since it has been created; the highest rate I could find in any TSA audit was a 30% success rate.)
Airports and airlines who funded security had a strong motivation before 9/11 to prevent hijackings, since they affected public perception of flying, and they knew any such events could have severe repercussions to their bottom lines. (On the other hand, there was at least some regard for efficiency in choosing security methods, because there was limited funding.)
But the government? It has basically little motivation to implement effective security. Why? Government is not only interested in protecting citizens -- it has a conflict of interest because it likes power too. Government also knows that fear is a strong motivator to get people to the polls. A minor breach will be motivation for more power and more control, along with allocation of billions more from the basically unlimited "taxpayer checkbook" to pay to 3rd-party cronies in pork-barrel spending. A major breach would lead to Patriot Act 2.0 (or 3.0 or whatever we're on now), with even more powers and less government oversight. Sure, there might be minor disgust among voters immediately for security failures, but that will turn around in a few months with Patriot Act 2.0 and the right rhetoric.
I know this sounds quite cynical, but how else can you explain the existence of the charade that is the TSA, with its high costs and repeated 90%+ failure rate in just about every security audit it has been subjected to? The government either knows the number of actual motivated terrorists who want to bomb planes is so low that they won't even attempt to get through such a weak net, or the government just figures, "Meh -- it's win-win either way for us."
Sometimes businesses who actually are invested in something might actually be more motivated to "do the right thing."
if Harvard can do what it wants because it's a private entity then why shouldn't the bar owner? Who should decide? The business (who chooses to cater to smokers) or the government?
Many states, cities, and other municipalities have decided to regulate smoking in bars because of the public health hazards of secondary smoke. Local governments generally have much broader discretion in determining such polices than, say, federal free speech laws or whatever.
If you're a libertarian, who believes in freedom and limiting government power then you would say that each of these businesses (Harvard, the bar and the bakery) can make their own choice.
Actually, libertarians generally believe that your rights only extend so far that you don't harm others. There's at least a legitimate argument -- which you may or may not agree with -- that the health hazards of secondary smoke are great enough to limit smoking in some contexts.
As for the bakery example, it depends on what you mean by "ethics." If you mean discriminate on the basis of whether someone volunteers at a soup kitchen or something, sure, a bakery can discriminate against any such customer on the basis of "ethics." There's no legal "right" to force a business to engage in a transaction with you. But I assume where you're going with this is the controversies over cakes for gay couples.
What the bakery CANNOT do is discriminate on the basis of legal protected classes. Patrick Stewart made this distinction rather clear a few years back over a bakery which was accused of discrimination for refusing to bake a cake that said "Support gay marriage!" The bakery refused to bake THAT CAKE with THAT MESSAGE, regardless of whether the customer requesting it were gay or straight or Black or White or whatever. A bakery could also refuse to decorate a cake saying "Heil Hitler!" or "Black Lives Matter" or "White Nationalism is Awesome" or whatever. Merely refusing to write a political message is not discriminatory; refusing service to an entire class of people is. Being gay is not a matter of "ethics," but a matter of who you are. Refusing to serve someone on that basis -- sexuality, gender, race, etc. -- is a problem.
I know that many libertarians don't believe in antidiscrimination laws. Nevertheless, many people think there's a difference between refusing to serve a customer for whatever random reasons (generally legal) vs. refusing to serve ALL customers on the basis of who they are (generally illegal for protected classes). For many, preventing systematic discrimination is enough to overcome general libertarian principles.
Back to Harvard: it infringes on no one's legal rights to deny admission, and there's no evidence of discrimination on the basis of a protected class or whatever. So yes, it can make its own choice here.
Yes, obviously you're right. People submit all sorts of crap complaints to the FCC. The question is -- in how many of the cases that you cite did the FCC chairman comment directly on them? In how many did he publicly announce an investigation into them? In how many did he effectively goad the public into submitting more complaints by saying, "Well... if we get complaints [wink, wink], we'll investigate!" I have no doubt that (1) people were going to submit FCC complaints about this anyway, and (2) the investigation was obviously never going to go anywhere, so I sincerely doubt anyone in the Trump administration thought they could "shut down anti-Trump views." Nevertheless, the whole thing with the FCC chairman is just plain weird.
Yes, but what was bizarre about this case was the timeline. One day, the FCC chairman was interviewed saying it's a free country. The very next day the FCC chairman basically announced that "if we hear complaints, we'll investigate" on Fox. By this point the story had blown up on the internet for a few days. SURPRISE! -- The next day he announces that they've heard complaints, so they'll investigate! Well sure, you basically told them on TV to complain the day before.
That would allow, for example, a determination of whether the fault was a design flaw or a problem with the supplied inputs.
But what if it's neither?
I think that's what TFA is really getting at. Many AI algorithms are opaque nowadays -- you create whatever combination of "neural networks" or whatever the buzzword de jour is for the adaptive algorithms, and then you just feed them a bunch of data. And you wait for the results to seem "good." At that point, you end up with a sort of "black box" that consists of an "algorithm" with a bunch of numerical weightings, etc. that don't have clear meaning. If things don't turn out so well, you tweak a few of the initial conditions and try again.
The problem with such systems is that we have absolutely no idea how they'll behave at various edge cases. You can never test them against every possible real-world scenario. So it's quite possible you end up with an error that isn't really a "design flaw" in the sense that no one could have predicted the error or even have known that the system would make it (and subsequent analysis of the "raw data" within the algorithm may not even reveal a clear point of failure) -- but it's not an "input error" either.
Where does culpability fall then? As AI algorithms become increasingly complex, this problem will only get worse.
But to be more serious, this is going to become a serious problem soon. Whether it's cars or medical diagnosis or some other AI application. I think promoters of AI underestimate just how outraged the public will be when someone is "killed by an evil robot." Human error we can understand and sometimes condemn. But I think there's the potential for a lot more backlash even for minor incidents with AI -- and even if they likely wouldn't have been preventable by a human doctor/driver/whatever. At that point, it won't matter that the stats say it actually saves more lives overall, if the error or the death is egregious enough.
Well, whatever the limits are/were, as TFS says: "bleeped out the questionable word and also blurred the host's mouth as he was saying it.
So, we can argue about what should or shouldn't be acceptable on "public broadcast TV," but since CBS didn't even BROADCAST the supposedly offensive word... I'm not sure why this was ever a thing in the first place.
Re-read the definition. There are plenty of examples where the word "candidates" is referring to someone also ultimately appointed to a position. Whether you consider her elected by her party as leader and hence PM or you consider her appointed by the monarch as PM, she can still be a "candidate" aspiring for that position. She may not be a candidate for election to PM, but that doesn't mean she can't be a "candidate" for such a position, just as there are "candidates" for a job that are appointments chosen by an employer. Perhaps it's not the typical British usage for the term in this context, but it's a perfectly reasonable use of the English word that clearly relates to its standard meaning.
And never mind it's mostly not even about fonts, but rather different language scripts. The vast majority of the article compares German blackletter (not so much English blackletter), Arabic, Cyrillic, Croatian, etc.
Yes, Arabic looks quite different from Germanic Fraktur and Russian Cyrillic. And...??
Different fonts (a.k.a. "typefaces" for the older crowd) are about things like x-height and whether you use serifs and proportional vs. monospace and descenders/ascenders and use of text vs. display weights. TFA doesn't seem concerned with most of that at all, instead focusing on completely different letterforms in different languages, which isn't really a font issue as much as a linguistic one. The only real typeface issues that are brought up at the end of the article contrast the bizarre abstract Hillary logo with the simple script used for "Make America Great Again!" for Trump hats. Except again -- that's really not much of a "font" issue (though yes, a font was chosen for each) as a complex typographical design difference. One is creating a weird logo vaguely based on a letterform; the other is an actual sentence that needs to be typeset in a recognizable script.
Broadly speaking, the article is somewhat about typography. But it isn't really about fonts, so I'm not sure what they're in the title at all.
The length of a work is certainly a consideration in fair use doctrine. As someone who had to secure rights for publication of an excerpt from a short work, I can tell you generally speaking it's not covered under fair use if you quote the entirety (or even a significant segment) of a short copyrighted work. Fair use doesn't care how much of a work it takes to make your "point" -- if your point requires a substantial amount of the original work verbatim, it likely won't be fair use.
While I imagine there will be a bunch of Netflix hate here, I'd assume this is at least partly to conform to licensing standards insisted on by content creators. Obviously Netflix is becoming a major content creator, so they have self-interest here too, but the less "locked down" their service, the harder it will likely be for them to get 3rd-party licensed content.
1a: one that aspires to or is nominated or qualified for an office, membership, or award [Examples:] a candidate for governor -- a candidate for "Manager of the Year" -- the best candidate for the job
If you prefer the OED, the definition reads:
1. a. One who seeks or aspires to be elected or appointed to an office, privilege, or position of honour, or who is put forward or selected by others as an aspirant
Does Theresa May aspire to be elected to an office? Yes. Has she been "put forward or selected by others" as that aspirant? Yes, as party leader, she has been put forward as the likely person they would choose for PM, if they maintain control.
Unless you think it's reasonable to think Theresa May will lose her own local MP election, it seems rather pedantic to claim that she is not a "candidate" for PM. Whether one can be a "candidate" has absolutely no relationship to whether a popular vote is involved. The US public doesn't directly elect its President either (as many were surprised to discover recently). Does that mean people who run are not "candidates" either?
Woah -- calm down, buddy. I don't actually generally support socialist solutions to most issues. I actually don't think single-payer is ideal, but it'd be better than our current mess. Alternatively, the other solution would be to go to the other way and encourage actual payment for health care in everyday non catastrophic situations and reserve insurance for what is ACTUALLY "insurance" in just about any other situation, i.e. for catastrophic events and things that can't be reasonably planned for. What we have is the worst of both worlds AND a bunch of third-party middlemen who add nothing to everyday healthcare skimming off the top. Meanwhile, actual healthcare costs are obscured and basically unavailable to consumers in advance, driving costs to go out of control. So make the hard choice: either require people to actually PAY FOR CARE and create a real market where actual costs are seen and can be controlled through market economics OR shut the whole thing down and do single-payer. What we have now is just a way to keep propping up an irrelevant "insurance" system that's completely dysfunctional.
Did I say the crisis was due entirely to them? Nope. Read what I wrote. They are quasi-governmental organizations that pretend to be independent when it suits them and then got out of control and needed massive bailouts. Half-assed regulation systems that pretend to be part of the government are often worse than either alternative (I.e. independent businesses with less direct government role or full-scale government takeover of that function).
Am I the only one who remembers this already almost a decade ago, back when Google Street View was fairly new? Back before it was assumed that everyone had a smartphone with GPS and a data plan, when you might still print out your Google Maps directions, there already was an option to add a Street View map to every turn.
I remember trying it once for a couple long trips to unfamiliar locations... And I pretty much found the photos pretty useless. Small maps that showed me the details of each junction? Yes, they were occasionally helpful. But photos of the turn often from an angle that wasn't the same as what I was looking at?
The only photo I found helpful was the final destination for a place I hadn't been to before. It was sometimes helpful to have a visual on that in advance. Obviously this is a bit different now with integration into an app in real time, but I personally would still just prefer an overhead traditional map view, which gives me a sense of context rather than a single perspective.
Slashdot Mirror
You shit-eating moron! Big butts on hoes are da bomb!
And that would score 94% "toxicity." Or, the author could reflect a bit and write:
My good sir! Even a caprophagous rapscallion could determine the ultimate pulchritude of femininity, which lies most gloriously in lovely and great callipygian virtues.
And you'd score a mere 12% "toxicity," despite expressing a nearly identical sentiment.
I'm normally not a fan of trolls, but if a system like this could lead to, shall we say, more "creative" insults and "elevated" ways of expressing such matters, that might be very entertaining.
(Alas, I know this system isn't sophisticated enough to generate such an outcome, since it's easier to "break" than just using words with more syllables.)
Yes, you're right. The point is that there have been certain libertarian organizations pushing states to adopt "free speech laws" on public university campuses recently. The worrisome thing isn't the promotion of "free speech" (which obviously should be protected) -- it's that many of the libertarian groups lobbying for this as well as the state legislators proposing the bills don't actually realize the language they're writing is overly broad and could lead to all sorts of strange side effects, like whether professors actually get to say a student is ever "wrong" in pronouncing a belief in a classroom, or whether a college might be forced to expel a student just for standing up and arguing with a speaker more than once.
There is longstanding precedent in allowing U.S. Executive Agreements that merely enforce what was already agreed to or authorized by previous Senate-approved treaties. That's what you have here -- everything that is **legally binding** in the Paris Agreement follows directly on stipulations made in the original 1992 treaty. All the rest is technically optional and was negotiated specifically to be such. Hence, Trump's withdrawal merely confirms his decision not to honor our self-determined optional commitments.
Despite your unnecessary rudeness, I decided to go back and re-read the relevant sections of the agreement. And I will admit that I think my interpretation of the clauses I cited was not completely correct (I don't claim to be an international lawyer). Despite the wording, I no longer think the new agreement is technically an "Annex" to the original convention, but rather functions under a set of rulemaking authorized by the original 1992 treaty. Anyhow...
That said, your statement isn't entirely correct either. The agreement still is intended to be part of the original 1992 framework and was specifically tailored legally to not have any legal REQUIREMENTS that went beyond what was articulated in the 1992 treaty. All of the rest of the provisions are technically voluntary, and the U.S. could alter its commitments to them at any time.
Also, not all countries ratified the agreement through legislatures. Every country has its own means of dealing with international agreements: many have ratified through legislature, but not all. U.S. diplomats actually were quite conservative in drafting the language of this agreement so as to keep the legal requirements within the confines of the 1992 treaty (and therefore not requiring additional Senate confirmation). There is a longstanding policy in the U.S. that Executive Agreements which merely enforce the legal terms of previous treaties do not require additional Senate approval.
The UNFCCC was used as a basis for the Paris Accord, but it is not the same treaty, nor is the Paris Accord actually part of the UNFCCC.
The Paris Agreement was explicitly adopted as an "annex" to the UNFCCC. See the text of the agreement (from p. 2):
I. Adoption. 1. Decides to adopt the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (hereinafter referred to as "the Agreement") as contained in the annex...
The formal "annex" begins on p. 20 of the link. Let's see what else you have.
The US has never ratified the Paris Accord, in any way, and is not currently a member of it. It cannot 'withdraw' because it was never a part in the first place.
Again, nope. Note further the stipulations from the original UNFCCC treaty for annexes (Section 16):
3. An annex that has been adopted in accordance with paragraph 2 above shall enter into force for all Parties to the Convention six months after the date of the communication by the Depositary to such Parties of the adoption of the annex, except for those Parties that have notified the Depositary, in writing, within that period of their non -acceptance of the annex.
Note further that Article 23 of the Paris Agreement states that Article 16 of the Convention specifically applies to the Paris Agreement. Since the U.S. did NOT notify the Depository of its non-acceptance of the Annex known as the "Paris Agreement" within 6 months, the UNFCCC automatically makes the Paris Agreement binding upon the U.S., according to the terms approved by the Senate when it adopted the treaty in 1992.
So yes, even if the U.S. didn't sign the Paris Agreement, since we didn't "opt out," the U.S. is by default bound to it by the terms of the previous UNFCCC treaty.
Try again.
The Paris Accord was a 2015 modification to that Treaty. Modification to the treaty or accord requires Senate approval. No such approval was obtained. As such, the USA was never part of the Paris Accord.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the whole point of the UNFCCC treaty was to create a "framework" (it's in the name) for future climate agreements.
The Paris Agreement was specifically designed to be "voluntary" in many of its requirements to avoid the legal issues that plagued the Kyoto Accord back in the 1990s. The Kyoto Accord *did* place legally binding restrictions on climate actions to be taken by the U.S., and as such, it required Senate confirmation (where it was rejected).
Executive Agreements do not necessarily require reconfirmation of the Senate when they are implementing a treaty already approved by the Senate. Specifically, if they do not modify existing domestic laws, executive agreements generally don't require Senate confirmation. (Note that Executive Agreements are not uncommon -- the U.S. has engaged in over 18,000 of them, some dating back to the early days of the country, compared to only a bit over 1,000 treaties.) As I understand it, the Obama administration intended to enforce its contribution to the agreement through existing federal statutes and regulations (like the Clean Air Act), so no changes to domestic laws would be necessary beyond what was already achieved in the UNFCCC treaty.
Note, of course, that an Executive Agreement is less binding than a treaty, so there's no question that Trump has the authority to unilaterally withdraw from it, though doing so without following the terms of withdrawal in the agreement would be a diplomatic disaster that would undermine U.S. authority in international negotiations.
It'd be more credible if it was an actual treaty and developing nations actually did more than face-saving gestures.
Many have committed to more than "face-saving gestures."
The whole point of Paris was to avoid the diplomatic debacle of Kyoto. Trying to negotiate all sorts of "hard" details in a binding treaty just meant that a lot of countries tried to keep the standards as low as possible, and some countries (e.g., the U.S.) just refused to sign entirely.
Nobody ever thought the Paris agreement was great. But the idea was at least to get as many nations as possible "at the negotiating table" to (1) acknowledge that climate change is a problem, (2) discuss the overall global targets needed, and (3) get all nations to agree to do SOMETHING voluntarily toward achieving those goals. As time went on and some progress was made, the thought was that nations with stronger goals would inspire (or shame) others into complying more.
A more strict agreement would simply just lead to a lot of less developed countries refusing to even take part -- which means no ongoing discussion or negotiation, less monitoring and information from them, etc. Was it a perfect agreement? Absolutely not. But it was a diplomatic first attempt to at least get the vast majority of countries in the world TALKING to each other about this stuff, rather than having large parts of the world population just not even taking part in discussions to address the issue.
it also requires developed nations to give $100 billion annually to the less-developed nations.
To be clear, yet again, all country contributions to this are voluntary. Obama committed the U.S. to $3 billion. (Not $3 billion/year -- $3 billion TOTAL, of which $1 billion has already been contributed.) There is no requirement for the U.S. to contribute more than that, unless it voluntarily says it will.
And the US is already one of the least polluting nations,
Sorry, but this is just absolute nonsense. Among developed nations, the U.S. emits more CO2 per capita that any country other than Luxembourg. It's emits roughly double the amount per capita compared to most developed nations. And almost all of 10 or so countries with higher per capita emissions are in the Middle East.
As for absolute emissions (i.e., total, not per capita), the U.S. is consistently 2nd the world, following China.
You are perhaps correct if by "pollution" you mean stuff like particulates, etc. -- yes, the U.S. has managed to cut down on smog and such in recent decades. But the Paris Agreement has mostly to do with carbon emissions, where the U.S. is one of the MOST "polluting nations." Claiming it is one of the "least" is misleading at best in this context.
Since the Paris deal was never submitted to the Senate for confirmation, it is not a legally binding treaty, only a verbal agreement by Obama.
The Paris Agreement was adopted as part of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), which IS a treaty the U.S. adopted in 1992.
Most of the legally binding aspects of the Paris accord, which include stuff like ongoing monitoring of climate change, reports to the international organization, etc. were part of that original treaty.
Where you're sort of right is that just about all the rest of the Paris agreement was set VOLUNTARILY by each country, including specific actions to mitigate emissions, goal levels for each country, etc. While it would be against the spirit of the Paris agreement, there's absolutely nothing in that agreement that prevents the U.S. from unilaterally lowering its own goals (which the U.S. set itself).
There is disagreement on this point, but a number of U.S. officials who actually were involved with the drafting and negotiation of the original Paris agreement have gone on the record to state the U.S. could "backslide" on its goals. They say that specific language was originally considered that would prevent "backsliding," but it was removed from the final version of the agreement. Obviously there would likely be diplomatic backlash if the U.S. lowers its goals, but not likely worse than what it will experience by backing out entirely.
Which makes Trump's claims all the more mystifying. Especially about his claims that maybe the U.S. could "get a better deal." The U.S. DETERMINED the "deal." It could change its own terms. About the only thing required by the deal that the U.S. would be legally obligated to in the future would be ongoing monitoring and reports on emissions, which (as I said) was basically already part of the original Senate-approved treaty in 1992.
The ONLY reason to withdraw completely is to attempt to send a message that climate change isn't real and thus the entire exercise of the agreement is invalid. But all the rhetoric about "getting a better deal" is complete and utter balderdash.
That article concludes with the ominous statement:
The Transportation Department's inspector general office earlier conducted its own undercover tests of 32 airports after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and found screeners missed knives 70 percent of the time, guns 30 percent of the time and simulated explosives 60 percent of the time, said a person familiar with the report. Those tests were conducted before February, when airlines still supervised security checkpoints.
So maybe the pre-9/11 tests weren't as rigorous, but TSA audits show it's actually gotten worse, even with billions of dollars more screening equipment and much more thorough regulations for detection.
Oh, yeah. I really want my safety to be weighed against someone's profit margin in a spreadsheet somewhere.
While I probably agree with you in this particular case (though I haven't read all the details), and I'm generally suspicious of relying on businesses to audit themselves, this policy isn't always true in general. Government can also have bad motivations and conflicts of interest.
Take the TSA and airport security for example. Before 9/11, airport security was mostly a private affair, and it generally functioned well. 9/11 wasn't even really a failure of airport security, since the hijackers actually only took approved items through security. Compare that to the TSA, which routinely tends to let 90%+ of dangerous materials through.
(A few internet searches for reports from the 1980s and 1990s indicate failure rates to detect weapons, etc. in FAA audits of only 10-20%, instead of 90% for the TSA now. That's despite reports back then criticizing low pay and frequent turnover as obstacles to better detection rates -- and yet they did SO much better than the TSA does now. In 1987, it was a huge scandal that 20% of weapons got through FAA testing, leading to significant changes that ultimately reduced that number to ~10% in the 1990s. The TSA has rarely managed to FIND more than 20% of weapons in any audit since it has been created; the highest rate I could find in any TSA audit was a 30% success rate.)
Airports and airlines who funded security had a strong motivation before 9/11 to prevent hijackings, since they affected public perception of flying, and they knew any such events could have severe repercussions to their bottom lines. (On the other hand, there was at least some regard for efficiency in choosing security methods, because there was limited funding.)
But the government? It has basically little motivation to implement effective security. Why? Government is not only interested in protecting citizens -- it has a conflict of interest because it likes power too. Government also knows that fear is a strong motivator to get people to the polls. A minor breach will be motivation for more power and more control, along with allocation of billions more from the basically unlimited "taxpayer checkbook" to pay to 3rd-party cronies in pork-barrel spending. A major breach would lead to Patriot Act 2.0 (or 3.0 or whatever we're on now), with even more powers and less government oversight. Sure, there might be minor disgust among voters immediately for security failures, but that will turn around in a few months with Patriot Act 2.0 and the right rhetoric.
I know this sounds quite cynical, but how else can you explain the existence of the charade that is the TSA, with its high costs and repeated 90%+ failure rate in just about every security audit it has been subjected to? The government either knows the number of actual motivated terrorists who want to bomb planes is so low that they won't even attempt to get through such a weak net, or the government just figures, "Meh -- it's win-win either way for us."
Sometimes businesses who actually are invested in something might actually be more motivated to "do the right thing."
if Harvard can do what it wants because it's a private entity then why shouldn't the bar owner? Who should decide? The business (who chooses to cater to smokers) or the government?
Many states, cities, and other municipalities have decided to regulate smoking in bars because of the public health hazards of secondary smoke. Local governments generally have much broader discretion in determining such polices than, say, federal free speech laws or whatever.
If you're a libertarian, who believes in freedom and limiting government power then you would say that each of these businesses (Harvard, the bar and the bakery) can make their own choice.
Actually, libertarians generally believe that your rights only extend so far that you don't harm others. There's at least a legitimate argument -- which you may or may not agree with -- that the health hazards of secondary smoke are great enough to limit smoking in some contexts.
As for the bakery example, it depends on what you mean by "ethics." If you mean discriminate on the basis of whether someone volunteers at a soup kitchen or something, sure, a bakery can discriminate against any such customer on the basis of "ethics." There's no legal "right" to force a business to engage in a transaction with you. But I assume where you're going with this is the controversies over cakes for gay couples.
What the bakery CANNOT do is discriminate on the basis of legal protected classes. Patrick Stewart made this distinction rather clear a few years back over a bakery which was accused of discrimination for refusing to bake a cake that said "Support gay marriage!" The bakery refused to bake THAT CAKE with THAT MESSAGE, regardless of whether the customer requesting it were gay or straight or Black or White or whatever. A bakery could also refuse to decorate a cake saying "Heil Hitler!" or "Black Lives Matter" or "White Nationalism is Awesome" or whatever. Merely refusing to write a political message is not discriminatory; refusing service to an entire class of people is. Being gay is not a matter of "ethics," but a matter of who you are. Refusing to serve someone on that basis -- sexuality, gender, race, etc. -- is a problem.
I know that many libertarians don't believe in antidiscrimination laws. Nevertheless, many people think there's a difference between refusing to serve a customer for whatever random reasons (generally legal) vs. refusing to serve ALL customers on the basis of who they are (generally illegal for protected classes). For many, preventing systematic discrimination is enough to overcome general libertarian principles.
Back to Harvard: it infringes on no one's legal rights to deny admission, and there's no evidence of discrimination on the basis of a protected class or whatever. So yes, it can make its own choice here.
Yes, obviously you're right. People submit all sorts of crap complaints to the FCC. The question is -- in how many of the cases that you cite did the FCC chairman comment directly on them? In how many did he publicly announce an investigation into them? In how many did he effectively goad the public into submitting more complaints by saying, "Well... if we get complaints [wink, wink], we'll investigate!" I have no doubt that (1) people were going to submit FCC complaints about this anyway, and (2) the investigation was obviously never going to go anywhere, so I sincerely doubt anyone in the Trump administration thought they could "shut down anti-Trump views." Nevertheless, the whole thing with the FCC chairman is just plain weird.
Yes, but what was bizarre about this case was the timeline. One day, the FCC chairman was interviewed saying it's a free country. The very next day the FCC chairman basically announced that "if we hear complaints, we'll investigate" on Fox. By this point the story had blown up on the internet for a few days. SURPRISE! -- The next day he announces that they've heard complaints, so they'll investigate! Well sure, you basically told them on TV to complain the day before.
That would allow, for example, a determination of whether the fault was a design flaw or a problem with the supplied inputs.
But what if it's neither?
I think that's what TFA is really getting at. Many AI algorithms are opaque nowadays -- you create whatever combination of "neural networks" or whatever the buzzword de jour is for the adaptive algorithms, and then you just feed them a bunch of data. And you wait for the results to seem "good." At that point, you end up with a sort of "black box" that consists of an "algorithm" with a bunch of numerical weightings, etc. that don't have clear meaning. If things don't turn out so well, you tweak a few of the initial conditions and try again.
The problem with such systems is that we have absolutely no idea how they'll behave at various edge cases. You can never test them against every possible real-world scenario. So it's quite possible you end up with an error that isn't really a "design flaw" in the sense that no one could have predicted the error or even have known that the system would make it (and subsequent analysis of the "raw data" within the algorithm may not even reveal a clear point of failure) -- but it's not an "input error" either.
Where does culpability fall then? As AI algorithms become increasingly complex, this problem will only get worse.
They're not even a real country anyway....
But to be more serious, this is going to become a serious problem soon. Whether it's cars or medical diagnosis or some other AI application. I think promoters of AI underestimate just how outraged the public will be when someone is "killed by an evil robot." Human error we can understand and sometimes condemn. But I think there's the potential for a lot more backlash even for minor incidents with AI -- and even if they likely wouldn't have been preventable by a human doctor/driver/whatever. At that point, it won't matter that the stats say it actually saves more lives overall, if the error or the death is egregious enough.
Well, whatever the limits are/were, as TFS says: "bleeped out the questionable word and also blurred the host's mouth as he was saying it.
So, we can argue about what should or shouldn't be acceptable on "public broadcast TV," but since CBS didn't even BROADCAST the supposedly offensive word... I'm not sure why this was ever a thing in the first place.
Re-read the definition. There are plenty of examples where the word "candidates" is referring to someone also ultimately appointed to a position. Whether you consider her elected by her party as leader and hence PM or you consider her appointed by the monarch as PM, she can still be a "candidate" aspiring for that position. She may not be a candidate for election to PM, but that doesn't mean she can't be a "candidate" for such a position, just as there are "candidates" for a job that are appointments chosen by an employer. Perhaps it's not the typical British usage for the term in this context, but it's a perfectly reasonable use of the English word that clearly relates to its standard meaning.
And never mind it's mostly not even about fonts, but rather different language scripts. The vast majority of the article compares German blackletter (not so much English blackletter), Arabic, Cyrillic, Croatian, etc.
Yes, Arabic looks quite different from Germanic Fraktur and Russian Cyrillic. And...??
Different fonts (a.k.a. "typefaces" for the older crowd) are about things like x-height and whether you use serifs and proportional vs. monospace and descenders/ascenders and use of text vs. display weights. TFA doesn't seem concerned with most of that at all, instead focusing on completely different letterforms in different languages, which isn't really a font issue as much as a linguistic one. The only real typeface issues that are brought up at the end of the article contrast the bizarre abstract Hillary logo with the simple script used for "Make America Great Again!" for Trump hats. Except again -- that's really not much of a "font" issue (though yes, a font was chosen for each) as a complex typographical design difference. One is creating a weird logo vaguely based on a letterform; the other is an actual sentence that needs to be typeset in a recognizable script.
Broadly speaking, the article is somewhat about typography. But it isn't really about fonts, so I'm not sure what they're in the title at all.
The length of a work is certainly a consideration in fair use doctrine. As someone who had to secure rights for publication of an excerpt from a short work, I can tell you generally speaking it's not covered under fair use if you quote the entirety (or even a significant segment) of a short copyrighted work. Fair use doesn't care how much of a work it takes to make your "point" -- if your point requires a substantial amount of the original work verbatim, it likely won't be fair use.
While I imagine there will be a bunch of Netflix hate here, I'd assume this is at least partly to conform to licensing standards insisted on by content creators. Obviously Netflix is becoming a major content creator, so they have self-interest here too, but the less "locked down" their service, the harder it will likely be for them to get 3rd-party licensed content.
We don't directly elect our Prime Minister so Theresa May isn't a PM candidate.
From Merriam-Webster:
1a: one that aspires to or is nominated or qualified for an office, membership, or award [Examples:] a candidate for governor -- a candidate for "Manager of the Year" -- the best candidate for the job
If you prefer the OED, the definition reads:
1. a. One who seeks or aspires to be elected or appointed to an office, privilege, or position of honour, or who is put forward or selected by others as an aspirant
Does Theresa May aspire to be elected to an office? Yes. Has she been "put forward or selected by others" as that aspirant? Yes, as party leader, she has been put forward as the likely person they would choose for PM, if they maintain control.
Unless you think it's reasonable to think Theresa May will lose her own local MP election, it seems rather pedantic to claim that she is not a "candidate" for PM. Whether one can be a "candidate" has absolutely no relationship to whether a popular vote is involved. The US public doesn't directly elect its President either (as many were surprised to discover recently). Does that mean people who run are not "candidates" either?
Woah -- calm down, buddy. I don't actually generally support socialist solutions to most issues. I actually don't think single-payer is ideal, but it'd be better than our current mess. Alternatively, the other solution would be to go to the other way and encourage actual payment for health care in everyday non catastrophic situations and reserve insurance for what is ACTUALLY "insurance" in just about any other situation, i.e. for catastrophic events and things that can't be reasonably planned for. What we have is the worst of both worlds AND a bunch of third-party middlemen who add nothing to everyday healthcare skimming off the top. Meanwhile, actual healthcare costs are obscured and basically unavailable to consumers in advance, driving costs to go out of control. So make the hard choice: either require people to actually PAY FOR CARE and create a real market where actual costs are seen and can be controlled through market economics OR shut the whole thing down and do single-payer. What we have now is just a way to keep propping up an irrelevant "insurance" system that's completely dysfunctional.
Did I say the crisis was due entirely to them? Nope. Read what I wrote. They are quasi-governmental organizations that pretend to be independent when it suits them and then got out of control and needed massive bailouts. Half-assed regulation systems that pretend to be part of the government are often worse than either alternative (I.e. independent businesses with less direct government role or full-scale government takeover of that function).
Am I the only one who remembers this already almost a decade ago, back when Google Street View was fairly new? Back before it was assumed that everyone had a smartphone with GPS and a data plan, when you might still print out your Google Maps directions, there already was an option to add a Street View map to every turn.
I remember trying it once for a couple long trips to unfamiliar locations... And I pretty much found the photos pretty useless. Small maps that showed me the details of each junction? Yes, they were occasionally helpful. But photos of the turn often from an angle that wasn't the same as what I was looking at?
The only photo I found helpful was the final destination for a place I hadn't been to before. It was sometimes helpful to have a visual on that in advance. Obviously this is a bit different now with integration into an app in real time, but I personally would still just prefer an overhead traditional map view, which gives me a sense of context rather than a single perspective.