Complexity

And of course in practice all almost all policy implementation is complex, but the complexity should fall on the dedicated decently paid civil servants who toil away, not on people or even businesses (mostly). It will anyway! No need to share the pain or compound it.

Raise The Damn Minimum Wage

Sherrod Brown talking up an idea that could gain ground with D's: Legislation requiring companies whose workers make enough to qualify for food stamps to pay a "corprorate freeloader fee" to taxpayers

— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) May 15, 2018

This is a constant maddening Dem approach to policy. Basically there's meaningful opposition (and probably some intellectual agreement with this opposition) to a very simple idea. So someone comes up with a much more complicated solution to achieve essentially the same thing (but not really because it's really complicated) premised on the idea that maybe they can sneak that idea through because the lobbyists won't notice. Then you still don't get your complicated solution - or at least by the time it does get through the lobbyists it's even shittier - and you don't even get credit for campaigning on a simple idea.

Autopilot On

Unsurprising.

The owner of a Tesla Model S that crashed into a parked firetruck in Utah last Friday said she had the car’s semi-autonomous Autopilot system engaged at the time of the incident, police said Monday. More than likely, this crash will lead to yet more scrutiny around Tesla’s driving assistance system, which is already under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.


In a statement, police in the city of South Jordan, Utah, reported that the 28-year-old female driver said in an interview that she had been using Autopilot at the time. The driver, police said, admitted that she was looking at her phone prior to the collision.

Obviously you can blame the driver, but I think people usually miss the point of this stuff. In any individual case you can assign specific blame, but when thinking about designing systems that are supposed to be safe, you have to take into account inevitable human behavior. If you want to claim these things are safety enhancing, they have actually enhance safety in practice.

Even the biggest self-driving car boosters realized fairly early on that "it drives itself, but you still have to pay attention" couldn't work. More than that, it actually sucks worse than driving. Elon was just like, ah, fuck it, call it autopilot.

The Small Hours Thread

Dude, You Called It "Autopilot"

It’s super messed up that a Tesla crash resulting in a broken ankle is front page news and the ~40,000 people who died in US auto accidents alone in past year get almost no coverage https://t.co/6gD8MzD6VU

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 14, 2018

SOUTH JORDAN, Utah — A Tesla sedan with a semi-autonomous Autopilot feature has rear-ended a fire department truck at 60 mph (97 kph) apparently without braking before impact, but police say it’s unknown if the Autopilot feature was engaged.

The cause of the Friday evening crash, involving a Tesla Model S and a fire department mechanic truck stopped at a red light, was under investigation, said police in South Jordan, a suburb of Salt Lake City.

Which might have had nothing to do with what happened, but every single fender bender is going to be big news because you called it Autopilot, told people the cars were basically ready for full autonomy and they could prepay for a software update that never materialized, and otherwise suggested that the technology was better than it is, whatever the fine print.

The Game

I lament the WWE nature of The Discourse as it obscures the fact that this stuff actually matters and isn't just a spectacle. But Democrats do have a tendency to believe that reporters should be the referees, but they won't. They're the color commentators and the people who type up the box scores, not the referees. Besides, how do you referee a game when only one side is playing?

Smarts & Marks

This is a good piece from Oliver.

Something Else To Do At The Megamall

I don't entirely know why local governments think "just add casino" is some sort of magic development plan even though it never quite seems to work out for reasons that are actually obvious, but this will presumably bring more of that.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court acted Monday to bust Nevada's monopoly on legal sports betting, allowing more states to get in on the action and reap the tax benefits.

The court, in a 6-3 ruling, struck down a federal law that required states to ban gambling on the outcome of sporting events. The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act was highly unusual: It did not ban sports gambling nationwide as a matter of federal law, but it said the states were not allowed to permit it. (Nevada was grandfathered in when the law was passed in 1992.)

Hey They Get Fox

It's funny that this person in the White House understands Fox News better than I've ever seen any mainstream reporter acknowledge.

With the hope of calming him down, then–chief of staff Reince Priebus and then–press secretary Sean Spicer began a subtle campaign. “It got to the point that they were just like, ‘We need to get him off these channels and onto Fox & Friends or else we’re going to be chasing down this crazy-train bullshit from MSNBC and CNN all day,’ ” one former White House official said.

Like all other ideas, this had the highest chance of implementation if Trump believed he’d thought of it on his own. Priebus and Spicer worked talking points about the network’s high ratings and importance to his base of supporters into conversation until, eventually, it stuck, so that the president’s television consumption is today what the current White House official called “mainly a complete dosage of Fox.” The former official added, “Trump’s someone who loves praise more than he likes hate-watching Morning Joe.”

But the current official acknowledged that it has created a different set of problems: “Sometimes on Fox, a lot of stories are embellished, and they don’t necessarily cover the big news stories of the day. When they cover the smaller stories, if that gets the president riled up, then that becomes an issue. Whenever he tweets, all of us do a mad dash or mad scramble to find out as much information about that random topic as possible. We’re used to it in a lot of ways, so it’s part of our morning routine.”

Overnight

enjoy

Who, Exactly?

Years ago I participated in a little discussion with some people who are more important than me (and some people who aren't) about the 2005ish version of "why do real Americans hate liberals so much." This was focused on religious voters, because at the time the story was that John Kerry lost Ohio because of genius mobilization of churchgoers. I don't even know if that was true, but that was how the Bush re-election geniuses took credit for their brilliance. People who win presidential elections know how to tell a story of their brilliance. People who lose them, too! It's weird.

There was burgeoning industry of religious Dem consultants. Hey, we all gotta eat. And, sure, if peppering some speeches with some more Jesus-y speech could get a few more voters in Hillsboro, then John Kerry should have done that so that he would've been president. But part of the discussion - and the one I came prepared for - was the idea that Democrats were hostile to religion.


This is one of those big ideas that was being kicked around at the time by people who believed it but also, as we all do, had to eat. And my prepared response for when this was asserted was basically:

I have thought long and hard about who the prominent people in public life are who are openly hostile to religion, and I can only think of 3:

Bill Maher, comedian, self-styled libertarian, not a Democrat, though not always only a critic of Democrats, but not someone who has an recognizable affiliation with the Democratic party in any way.

Sam Harris (this one is funny now, but at the time people sort of saw him on the left). Also, not a Democrat, no affiliation, etc.

Christopher Hitchens. Once a man of the left, never a fan of Democrats, now a giant fan of George Bush.

I agree that Nancy Pelosi probably shouldn't spend her days going on MSNBC and calling conservative voters stupid racist shitwhistles.

Also Nancy Pelosi does not do that. Nor do the liberal hosts on MSNBC as far as I am aware of. Nor does anyone except cranky people on twitter (in the old days this was cranky people on blogs, but blogs don't exist anymore).

But That's What Trump Promised

I often think that this is wrong argument made by journalists who want justify everything Trump does by claiming it's what the people want. This is a weird view not applied to, say, Democratic administrations, but with Trump it isn't even true because mostly his "campaign promises" were contradictory gibberish. Yes he promised to get rid of ACA but he also promised to replace it with something better and while maybe that last part is more ambiguous it's still important.

But the one thing he was clear about - if not on all the details - was that immigrants, especially brown ones, are bad and he was going to do something about that. You can't be surprised by that one.

Harry Phillips, owner of Russell Hall Seafood, understands that. Like his neighbours, he voted for Trump and supports him. But he believes the president has been misinformed on the seasonal H-2B worker visas and would see the devastating results in one quick visit to the island.

“We’re 15 minutes away from Washington by helicopter,” says Phillips, whose crab house was quiet Sunday morning, with empty bushel baskets stacked high because the crab pickers aren’t coming. “There’s a landing pad for the helicopter, and we would welcome him here. If the president could just come and see what’s happening to American workers, he could see it right here, the effects of all this.”

Technolibertarianism

I don't think the "economics" of Star Trek was consistent in any way, but to the extent that it made any sense it was the idea most reflected in TNG of a post-scarcity society. Pretty sure Amazon workers aren't living that dream. Well, Bezos is, but not the ones in the warehouses.

Much of the tech industry, Amazon included, has been driven by guys dedicated to science fiction fantasies. Paul Allen has his science fiction hall of fame at MoPop, Elon Musk says the book that changed his life was Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Bezos considered naming Amazon “MakeItSo.com” in tribute to the Enterprise’s Capt. Jean Luc Picard’s catch-phrase in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Also...HGTTG was funny. I mean I liked it and I totally get why people like it. I especially liked it when I was 14. But it wasn't...that...brilliant.

Two Trends With The Same Cause

UFO sightings suddenly ceasing.

Undeniable reports of black people being abused by cops increasing.

Morning Thread

Oh My God I Hate Driving With Cyclists

Having had to drive a bit more recently, oh my god the additional cyclists in the city make it stressful. I almost ran into one. It was my fault for starting to make a right turn on a red without noticing her in my side mirror. Also it was her fault for starting to run a red light (straight, not to the right), which is the kind of thing you don't look for as a driver. 360 degree awareness is just not always possible and cyclists (also motorcyclists who pull this kind of shit on highways) can't expect it.

But really this just an argument for more truly separated bike lanes. They'll make their lives and those of drivers better.

Saturday Evening

Enjoy

But Will It Be Useful?

He's just blowing smoke but this is the basic question with so much of this stuff. Wow, a tunnel...and?

Elon Musk's first Boring Co. tunnel under Los Angeles is "almost done" and set to offer free rides to the public "in a few months," the CEO said late Thursday in an Instagram post.

"Super huge thanks to everyone that helped with this project," Musk said in a caption for a video racing through the tunnel. "Once fully operational (demo system rides will be free), the system will always give priority to pods for pedestrians and cyclists for less than the cost of a bus ticket."

pods.

Morning Thread

Echidne's blog doesn't suck!.

It's her annual fund raising week. If you can afford to do so, send her some turkee.

Friday, Friday

Sorry this blog has been so sucky. Wish I could promise it will improve!

Classical Liberals

The libs made me do it is such a stupid thing.

The Grownups

Having had to do a bit of minor childcare duties lately...um... these are bad people.

Even though people say that's cruel and heartless to take a mother away from her children?

I wouldn't put it quite that way. The children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever. But the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long.