Fluid ImaginationSome people wonder whether copyright law, fundamentally unchanged since the late 1700s, can handle generative AI. Its basic unit is the “copy,” a concept that’s felt like a poor fit for modernity since the launch of music and video streaming in the 1990s. Might generative AI finally bend copyright past the breaking point?
– “Generative AI Is Challenging a 234-Year-Old Law,” The Atlantic
There comes a point in the history of a society that has become pathologically rotten and soft, when it even sides with its attacker, the criminal, and indeed, in a genuine and serious way. Punishment: that seems unfair to it somehow, – what is certain is that it hurts and frightens society to imagine ‘punishment’ and ‘having to punish’. Is it not sufficient to render the criminal undangerous? Why punish as well? Punishment itself is terrible! – with this question, herd morality, the morality of timidity, draws its final conclusion. Assuming one could completely get rid of the danger, the reason for being afraid, one would have got rid of this morality at the same time: it would no longer be necessary, it would no longer regard itself as necessary any more! – Whoever tests the conscience of today’s European will always have to draw out the same imperative from a thousand moral folds and hiding places, the imperative of herd timidity: ‘our desire is for there to be nothing more to fear some time or other!’ Some time or other – the will and the way there is called ‘progress’ everywhere in Europe today.
– “Beyond Good or Evil,” Friedrich Nietzche
A careful study of the text and history of Section 3 [of the 14th Amendment] shows clearly that the provision was designed to protect American democracy against exactly the kind of threat that Donald Trump represents. The justices have therefore been faced with the decision of either following the Fourteenth Amendment’s command and accepting the momentous consequence, or concocting some sort of escape route.
— “The Hot Potato of Trump’s Disqualification,” The Atlantic
A smart tax system…is one in which you “tax the late-career folks who aren’t really going anywhere and use it to invest in the things that attract and provide support and are appealing for future high-income earners.”
— Final Reading: ‘A small fraction of a small fraction’: Lawmakers weigh risks of millionaire tax flight, from VTDigger.com
I’ve come to think of our current condition as a kind of long Covid, a social disease that intensified a range of chronic problems and instilled the belief that the institutions we’d been taught to rely on are unworthy of our trust. The result is a durable crisis in American civic life… For millions of Americans, distrust feels like the most rational state.”
– “We Were Wrong About What Happened to America in 2020,” The NY Times Guest Essay [🎁 Gift Link]
No matter what the Court does next [regarding whether Mr. Trump can appear on the ballot], its popular legitimacy will be sorely tested. Tens of millions of Americans are going to believe that it got the answer wrong, and that the result of the 2024 election is at best unfair because of it. Punting will only make already bad matters for American constitutional democracy worse. For there is no legitimacy, or democratic stability, in governing institutions that do nothing but race to see who can avoid taking responsibility for the hardest issues for the longest time. And basing decision making not on facts or law but on, as some have counseled in this case, fear of arbitrary violence is anathema to a rule-of-law system.
— The Supreme Court Shouldn’t Punt on This One, The Atlantic
These are the likely centerpoints of a second Trump term. None of these are speculative — all of them are plans that Trump and/or his supporters have openly discussed. And most of them stem directly from the authoritarian faction’s experience straining against our democracy’s guardrails the last time around.
— “How It Could Happen Here,” ifyoucankeepit.com