November 25th Links

• In order to be a contrarian, having a core belief in the fallibility of simplified generalisations, and an instinctive aversion to binary, reductionist thinking, is half the battle won, because it will cause you to be willing to seek out and listen to contrary arguments; test the veracity of widely-accepted claims against new evidence/data that emerges; and generally keep an open mind. Conversely, if you believe the world is simple and black and white, you'll find this virtually impossible, because you'll believe yourself to already be in possession of all the answers. Often, active open-mindedness is all that is needed to develop a far more nuanced, balanced view than the general consensus, and it is from this place that contrarian views naturally spring (often what is contrarian is actually having a more balanced view, far removed from the extremes/absolutes harboured by the mainstream). The reason people do not behave this way is not temperamental per se, but because they think the truth is obvious and further scrutiny of their existing views is therefore unnecessary. This is the fundamental cause of confirmation bias. [LT3000]
• For Defendant's comments to relate to Plaintiff's participation in the public controversies, there must be some relationship between pedophilia and the [Rescue] or the Subs—there is simply no credible connection here. The limited-purpose public figure doctrine exists because "[t]hose who attempt to affect the result of a particular controversy have assumed the risk that the press, in covering the controversy, will examine the major participants with a critical eye." Waldbaum, 627 F.2d at 1298. But this eye only reaches "the issues at hand." Id. To allow criticism into every aspect of a plaintiff's life simply because he chose to get involved in a limited issue would render him an all-purpose public figure—effectively merging the limited-purpose public figure doctrine. [Unsworth v Musk]
• There is no way the fight for single payer would survive Warren's plan. It is practically tailor-made to divide, depress, marginalize, and exhaust any political will for single payer before we've even begun the final fight. A skeptic might say that Warren must certainly know that this would happen, and is simply triangulating between Bernie and Buttigieg at this point — but her motives are really beside the point. We can generously say that she is being naive, and it nevertheless remains the case that Warren's plan cannot possibly succeed in what it supposedly sets out to do. Which returns us to the difference between Sanders and Warren. Sanders understands that this is a political fight, and that's why he insists on settling this in one bill — an approach that stands the best chance of keeping the public mobilized. Warren, for all her technocratic savvy, has badly misunderstood the political problem at hand: and that is why her plan, and so many of her plans, are doomed to fail. [Jacobin]
• [R]unning your own mail server is not as daunting as many would have you believe. After all, that is how email is designed to work. Email is perhaps the most successful federated, decentralized protocol to ever exist. It's a shame we've allowed a centralized, monolithic advertising company to obtain a near monopoly on such a great technology. [link]
• A recent event in Culiacan, Mexico should have drawn a lot of attention but didn't: a Fourth Generation entity, the Sinaloa Cartel, took on the Mexican state and beat it, not just strategically but tactically. It did so by demonstrating a remarkably rapid OODA Loop, far faster than the state's. This is a sign of things to come, not just in Mexico but in many places. All this is happening not in the Hindu Kush but on our immediate southern border. That alone should have drawn greater attention from a defense establishment fixated on non-threats from Russia and China. But there is more here than meets the eye. [Traditional Right]
• A classic move from a potential buyer, that I've experienced in other businesses, is to make all kinds of assurances about how interested they are very early on in the discussion and then at the very end of the deal process the lawyers and accountants dig in with a million nit-picky irrelevant quibbles; then they come back with a ridiculous low ball offer. [link]