Favorites October 28th 2022

David Watson

Oct 29, 2022

Kim-Mai Cutler @kimmaicutler

Stochastic terrorism fueled by social media.

Adam Kinzinger #fella @AdamKinzinger

A 42 year old obsessed with Jan 6, election conspiracies, religious tones, attacks an 82 year old man with a hammer. Paul was struggling with him. How terrifying. Thank you to SF police. Every GOP candidate and elected official must speak out, and now. @SpeakerPelosi

The attacker was looking for Pelosi who wasn’t home, hospitalized her husband instead. Really can't blame any public official who employs a security detail at this point. The attacker is formerly a nudist protester, who not long ago would have been on the left. Yglesias points to his 'crank realignment' concept, the Republican party has become the place for all types of crazies, and it's probably bad for democracy to have the majority all concentrated in one party.

Mike Masnick @mmasnick

Funny thing is, here's another thing that Twitter actually did... and got blasted for doing so as people insisted it was a "censorship council" (it wasn't).

Elon Musk @elonmusk

Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints. No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.

Masnick goes on to point out, most of the things Musk is suggesting are things Twitter was already trying to do, just with more nuance. Also, apparently the incident where the Babylon Bee was suspended from Twitter was what made Musk want to take over. It really seems like his concerns are over pretty small differences in policy.

Athul K. Acharya @AthulKAcharya

Interesting suggestion from Judge Ho: Qualified immunity for cops making "split-second" decisions to use force, not so much for officials making other types of "deliberate and considered" decisions. ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/2…

Moreover, declining en banc rehearing here is consistent with the
conceptual framework I’ve previously set forth for cases involving qualified
immunity for public officials: When public officials are forced to make split-
second, life-and-death decisions in a good-faith effort to save innocent lives,
they deserve some measure of deference. By contrast, when public officials
make the deliberate and considered decision to trample on a citizen’s
constitutional rights, they deserve to be held accountable. See Horvath v. City
of Leander, 946 F.3d 787, 799–803 (5th Cir. 2020) (Ho, J., concurring); see
also Hoggard v. Rhodes, 141 S. Ct. 2421, 2422 (2021) (Thomas, J., respecting

I hadn't quite caught on that qualified immunity also applies to well thought out actions, this seems like a good change. Although one commenter points out that this would set up an incentive for governments to never deliberate about anything so that they could keep qualified immunity.

Threads

• Thread from someone who joined a bunch of anti-renewable energy groups to see what their main talking points are. A lot of photos of wind turbines on fire.