Indiscreet Function

Layla Law-Gisiko 罗蕾菈 reposted Kate Willett @katewillett • 11/24/25 I can't believe I petitioned and canvassed to have a real estate lobbyist doing all of Zohran's housing hires Nick Garber @nick_garber • 11/24/25 Zohran Mamdani is in Central Park announcing hundreds of appointees to his transition committee. Among those here: @annemariegray, head of YIMBY group @OpenNYForALL

Jack Schlossberg • @JBKSchlossberg PUERTO RICO SHOULD BE A STATE. Puerto Rico deserves respect and representation. The State of Puerto Rico I would welcome. I would not welcome statehood for DC. To me, that's different. We need a federal territory for the capitol, it's in Constitution.

today I am issuing my first ever anti-endorsement:

DO NOT VOTE FOR:
-Layla Law Gisiko, a Kate Willett Retweeting anti-Zohran NIMBY who rallied with Republicans against the pro-housing ballot measures
-Jack Schlossberg, an incompetent failson who has never had a real job and opposes DC statehood

The Supreme Court is too partisan for normies and not MAGA enough for MAGA

I need to go to bed but the fat person case is interesting here because (a) I don't think the state has any right to push them either (in the literal case or in the public policy analogue) and (b) I would guess (though I am not 100% sure) that both you and Allen Wood agree

...or the application of the rule to the case may be indeterminate.
3. Given that we're not pacifists (etc.) in 2.-type cases, I'm not sure it works to sharply distinguish the individual case from the public policy case (assuming the law doesn't answer the question). But I will think more about it.

1. Thanks for these helpful responses. I will read the article.
2. I think there are a wide range of cases where the "political" answer doesn't work--war was already mentioned; also foreigners (e.g., climate harms); also non-human animals. Even in a literal trolley problem there may be no rule...

It's true that certain answers to those questions might hinge on features that don't appear in the thought experiment (though I don't think political legitimacy really works, among other reasons because these kinds of policy harms rarely stop at people with suffrage)

I think a question like "how do we think about the fact that permitting this pollution will inevitably cause death" (or "this vaccination campaign because of rare adverse events" or...) almost inevitably engages the kinds of questions raised by the Trolley Problem.

But this last claim seems wrong: we are presented with life-against-life tradeoffs all the time including in mundane contexts like pollution regulation and traffic safety. (It's true that we don't, or at least shouldn't, resolve these with vigilantism! But I don't think that resolves the core issue)

It's one of the most constructive thought experiments in moral philosophy and the criticisms of it are all wrong.

I'd go a step further: the Trolley Problem is a very useful thought experiment for teasing out the distinctions between (1) intending harm and knowingly causing harm and (2) different non-consequentialist accounts of the absolute norm against killing

Balance of equities. Finally, the “equities do not justify depriving [the parents] of the District Court’s judgment in their favor.” Alabama Assn. of Realtors, 594 U. S., at 765. Everyone agrees that children’s safety is the overriding equity. And the injunction here promotes child safety by guaranteeing fit parents a role in some of the most consequential decisions in their children’s lives. The injunction also permits the State to shield children from unfit parents by enforcing child-abuse laws and removing children from parental custody in appropriate cases.

To be fair the Supreme Court did seem to understand that the injunction required disclosure to abusive parents--it just thought that was fine because you can make resort to child abuse laws and the child welfare system (!)

I'm not sure "the Supreme Court majority didn't understand what it was doing" is a basis for a stay but I wish California luck

#24 in Mirabelli, et al. v. Bonta, et al. (9th Cir., 25-8056) – CourtListener.com MOTION to Clarify or Amend Court Order or Disposition filed by Appellant Rob Bonta, Appellant Tony Thurmond, Appellant Linda Darling-Hammond, Appellant Cynthia Glover Woods, Appellant Francisco Escobe...

California is now before the Ninth Circuit trying to get a stay of certain aspects of the district court's injunction that it claims are not supported by the Supreme Court's reasoning, including the absence of an exception to disclosure for risk of abuse storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

One of the many problems with the shadow docket order in Mirabelli is that it made no attempt to address the specific things actually included in the district court's injunction (it also mostly ignored giving parents veto rights over pronouns, for another example) bsky.app/profile/homo...

Notwithstanding the Supreme Court's apparent attempt to cabin Mirabelli to the parents, California has posted the notice covering teachers as well ("until the district court provides further clarification otherwise") www.cde.ca.gov/ci/pl/suppor...

It's obviously a cliche at this point to say but the number one threat to Israel is not anything like raw military parity from another power in the region but its institutional and constitutional incapability to resolve any of its external crises politically.

The mistake of interpretation here is not reasonable for the reasons the judge gives but you can sort of see how it happened: you read one part of the rule, and not the later parts, and don't really think through what the part you did read is saying

1. This is the yikesest one of these I have ever read
2. I like "timeously," which avoids the jarring adverbial usage of "timely"

Yep--this is not a "no one would do this to any other community" thing, it's a "people do this all the time and it sucks"

Some argue he may also be missing an opportunity. “Zohran Mamdani is the most prominent observant Muslim in American life. He has made his religious identity a central part of his political identity, and he has vowed to stop ‘biting his tongue’ in the face of Islamophobic attacks,” Reihan Salam, a Muslim who is the president of the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, wrote in an email. “That gives him unique credibility and authority to speak out against the chauvinism, extremism, misogyny and racism that exists within Muslim communities and that has spilled over into violence again and again.”

The most substantive argument in this article is this from Reihan Salam--Mamdani should seize on the opportunity to do cultural criticism of the Muslim community. Does this apply to other communities, e.g. are Jewish politicians duty-bound to do intra-community critique of support for Israel?

Or maybe the problem is that he also condemned the protest (also outside his house) directed against him for being Muslim?

Mamdani Chooses His Words Carefully After Alleged Terror Attack

Shame on Mamdanni for not making a funny social media video about someone trying to blow up bombs outside his house www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/n...

????? does Trump know his own administration's policy on this?????

By "extreme caution" presumably the National Medical Director for Specialised Services at NHS England means "extreme caution about the risk of regret or unwanted side effects" and not "extreme caution about the risk of dysphoria or other psychological harm from waiting"

As usual, it's all about the starting framework in which you consider the question: "The NHS has exercised extreme caution when considering starting young people on this treatment."

it's taking a stance on the filioque clause controversy!

Iran’s people were facing a horrible shortage of water before the war began. If we are destroying desalination plants and setting fire to Teheran we are committing unfathomable crimes.

To be clear: I would 100% read this novel

oh my god

This is not a lot of pages by eDiscovery standards and I don't think every objector objected to all production?