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Res ipsa locutus of borg

@masbackward.bsky.social
462 followers 1.1K following 348 posts

Civil rights lawyer working in the south. Opinions are product of my genes, environment, and culture.

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Reposted by Res ipsa locutus of borg
Cat Hicks @grimalkina.bsky.social · 18h
"why would I ever need a task to be done faster" come on, guys. Because we're dying. Because we are literally all dying all the time. Because we're running out of time. The fact that it's often hard to measure or stupidly measured doesn't mean "saving time" isn't an important thing to human beings
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 17h
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 18h
More generally, while Trump clearly has a corrupt motive here there will be scenarios where executive action makes more sense if a certain party takes Congress--the idea that saying that in advance constitutes bribery is wild to me and really does risk criminalizing a lot of normal politics.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 18h
I found this analysis quite unconvincing tbh. Among other things it doesn't engage with the fact that the payments would go to everyone, regardless of who they voted for. On the face of the statute that may not be determinative but it means this is not the normal vote-buying scenario.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Publichealthguy, his meme reskeeted
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Seeing a lot of takes which seem to assume that when people call it "the hard problem of consciousness" they are being, like, sarcastic, or something.
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Reposted by Res ipsa locutus of borg
Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Its a complaint on par with saying AR15s are bad because the barrel contains trace amounts of radioactive argon
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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
If you have a cup of coffee with almond milk, the almonds in the almond milk are 30k chatgpt queries worth of water usage. There are legitimate complaints about AI and we should have them, but water usage is just such a colossally stupid and losing argument
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28 Days Lehner 🪦 @danlehner.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
This depends on whether if you have a valid copy of something it nonetheless is infringing to use that copy to train a computer-based neural network which is very contested! I train my meat-based neural network on copyrighted works all the time, it's pretty much the whole point!
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Walter Olson @walterolson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
"South Korea has already run the experiment. Its law requires the National Assembly to vote on presidential impeachment by anonymous ballot, and that rule has now removed two presidents." [@andycraig.bsky.social]
theunpopulist.net
A Democratic Senate Should Adopt Secret Impeachment Ballots on a Priority Basis
Such a change, requiring no constitutional amendment, would free senators to vote their judgment instead of their fears
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
A lot of people finding out from this case how conspiracy law works. It's often quite bad! But being held responsible for something you didn't do and weren't present for is a normal feature of it, as is otherwise lawful actions in furtherance of a conspiracy being considered.
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Adam Bonin @adambonin.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
For those keeping score at home, we are now up to *five* different Josh Blackman critical posts in the first few days after Trump's latest 5th Circuit nomination, all making the argument that Someone Else would be a more reliable conservative circuit judge.
reason.com
Comparing the Credentials Of Three Decades of Fifth Circuit Nominees
I think we should just be candid about Todd Butler's nomination to the Fifth Circuit. He has done nothing to…
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
There's no one weird trick for fighting fascism because 1) a lot of people like fascism and 2) a lot of other people aren't fasicists themselves but are fine with voting for them if they think it advances their material interests.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
If it's something I've worked on for a while for sure. Other times though I am looking into something relatively new. AI is helpful for finding relevant authority but it insists on addint its opinion on the conclusions to draw from that authority and that opinion is often overconfident.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
And there's no reason to think it won't keep getting better -- a year ago there was very little use for AI.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I haven't been able to use Claude yet for organizational purposes but I find the westlaw AI is often overconfident in its opinions on the strength of arguments.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Yeah sometimes there's no substitute for that but AI now also lets me do a lot of research I just wouldn't have time for otherwise (or wouldn't have a supervisee with time for, these days). It is dangerous though bc it can make you think you know an area better than you do.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
The next big use I think ordinary people will like is agentic stuff: 1) watch ebay for listings with these 5 criteria and then bid if the price is below X, 2) track the interest rate for my high yield savings account and automatically move my money to higher yield ones (with my approval), etc...
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
As a nonprofit lawyer I can too, I just often don't have time to do that hah. Still necessary though on important issues.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I find the Westlaw AI is good for 1) issue spotting / a basic overview of an unfamiliar area of law and 2) doing initial research to find a few relevant cases which I can then read and use to define the universe of cases. AI is also very good at proofreading these days.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
MS is going to be very very hard to poll because it's the one race that really is almost only about turnout (people say this all the time but its very rarely true) -- Black and white voters there are so polarized but the Black population is big enough that a big drop in white turnout could do it.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Wild line:
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Michael Caley @michaelcaley.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
this is by far the best "I quit my AI job over safety concerns" essay yet because it is the first one that is able to talk about safety concerns in practical terms and that understands "safety" as a topic with extensive literature in analogous fields www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
Two changes are urgently needed. First: AI companies need to rely more on the safety expertise that already exists in other fields. And second, before we create systems significantly more capable than the ones we have today, we need new science to ensure that more capable models (and their successors) will make safe choices when we aren’t looking.

Given today’s risks, frontier labs need to run like nuclear-power plants or busy airports, with layers of redundancy and careful, time-consuming planning, so that the occasional and inevitable human error does not open a door to disaster. Right now, AI companies don’t know how—but other people do. In a nuclear-power plant, the technical systems and rules people follow are set up so that, if equipment breaks or someone pushes the wrong button, we still won’t risk a meltdown. OpenAI and other labs are growing and deploying frontier AI with far less redundancy and rigor than this, even though the harm from an irreversible loss of control would be much greater than the harm from any single meltdown. Even short of a full loss of control, we could see autonomous swarms of AI agents that act without human permission. Imagine “rogue” agents that work like teams of hackers (for example, holding hospital computer systems for ransom) but never need to sleep.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I was also pretty shocked by Timit Gebru still doing the "maybe the answers to all the tests they are acing are in the training data" thing when interviewed by Chris Hayes a few months ago...
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Seems to be some precedent for the idea that the cubs have a right to prohibit neighboring buildings from selling tickets but it still seems extremely weird to me. Means you have a right to sell people tickets to come on your roof at ever time except when the cubs are playing.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Protecting their control of the Court is one thing everyone in the GOP fervently believes in.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I think they have Trump. And even if they don't they have Thune and the remaining senior Rs who would be just as dedicated to doing this as Trump would be. If Thune calls a vote who is saying no? Murkowski. Probably not Collins. That's enough. Plus Fetterman!
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Oh I thought we were just talking about confirming Alito in the lame duck. All that matters for that is that she votes...
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Graham Nordone isn't dead! But she and several others were appointed and so might leave office immediately not in Jan.--some potential sticky wickets there legally.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Best read on this is that he thinks this will juice R turnout like (supposedly) the Kavanuagh confirmation.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
And to preempt the inevitable doomerism about this, even if you are infinitely cynical about SCOTUS they have zero incentive to go along with him running again unless he has miraculously revitalized his popularity.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
It would end up in the courts very quickly -- some blue state will refuse to put him on the primary ballot and some red state will and everyone will sue.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Only if enough republicans are willing to break with him to get to veto-override / impeachment levels. Which I still doubt.
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Reposted by Res ipsa locutus of borg
cee @cee.wtf · 02/10/2026
rare X -> bsky crosspost
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Just like Dems made gains in 2006 and then more in 2008.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Only takes a 6 point swing to flip the house and a 10 point swing for the senate (approximately): carolinaforward.org/news/2026-sh...
carolinaforward.org
What 2026 could bring — Carolina Forward
The evidence is mounting that the country is facing a "blue wave" election. What are the results likely to be in the North Carolina state legislature?
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Yeah, as I said it absolutely is motte-and-baileying and that's super annoying. Also if the term is so confusing it's not worth using.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Yeah, she also linked to this piece which is explicit that the parrot thing has nothing to do with capabilities and is all about what kind of metaphor we use for LLMs specifically: medium.com/@margarmitch...
medium.com
No, “AI” is not a Stochastic Parrot 🦜
I’ve recently come across a new flavor of AI denialism making the rounds.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
This also just some rando on twitter making stuff up.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
She has a later thread where she seems to pivot to the idea that whether they can do math is irrelevant to whether they are "stochastic parrots" so there is a certain amount of motte-and-bailying going on ("they are SPs so they can't solve new hard problems" v. "SP is just a descriptor").
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Interesting, that's good to know.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
He smiles so much now! Makes me think he should have retired a long time ago.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Even if that's your preferred way to do it, if you're the Google guys and facing a 50%+ tax (supposedly as a one-time thing but you'd have to worry about it happening again) you will definitely move out of state, as some already have done.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I mean if you want to abolish dual class shares just do that. Doing it through taxation is silly. And it's extra silly to try to do it in one state only--the incentives to move are just overwhelming. I like wealth taxes but there are real practical issues with this one.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
It's a form of wealth but how do you measure it? If there's a super-voting stock that trades regularly then no problem--you just value it based on the market. But lots of supervoting stock doesn't trade regulalry bc only a founder holds it. And how large the control premium is varies wildly.
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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
FARGO really gets the reality of crime 99% of the time: criminals are dumb, childish, and self-involved.
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John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
In 2008, California admitted 140,000 people to prison. In 2011, it admitted 97,000. In 2019, before Covid, it admitted 34,000. That's a SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT reduction in admissions. Yet we almost never talk about California's remarkable Realignment reforms.
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
PIERRE NORMAL SOCIAL DEMOCRATÉ %4
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Res ipsa locutus of borg @masbackward.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Is it plausible? That would be a pretty massive fraud for nobody to have blown the whistle on with massive false claims act incentives to do so.
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