Blood requirements are set by the tribe, not the federal government
Source: am member of a federally recognized tribe that only requires one parent be a member for their children to be a member, much like US citizenship, so unless that changes my children for 100 generations will be 100% Native-American just as they will be 100% American
Being likeable is more desirable than being an amazing programmer
People would much rather work with someone mediocre who is pleasant than someone very talented but who brings everyone down, this is especially true for junior positions where you're expected to not be very good... so as unfair as it is make sure you come off as charismatic in your interview
> The spread of anti-BDS laws in U.S. states is largely due to the lobbying of the Israel Allies Foundation (IAF), an umbrella group of Israel lobbies headquartered in Jerusalem that has received funding from the Israeli government
BDS != The only way to criticize Israel. Lobbing against BDS has a pretty simple cause...
From the same page:
> ... A dozen local and national parliaments have passed symbolic resolutions condemning BDS. Most of these condemnations have alleged that BDS is anti-Semitic.
Boycotting doesn't seem to me to be a form of speech. It's just people choosing where to spend their money. Divestment is similar - people choose what to invest in and what not to invest in.
Campaigning for BDS does seem to be speech, and regrettably institutions seem to have gathered around the view that it's antisemitic speech.
anti-BDS regulations, implemented through either legislation or a governor’s order, require businesses contracting with the state to affirm that they are not participating in a boycott of Israel. I don't know of any laws that have attempted to silence individual citizens or direct their ability to protest as individuals (not businesses who also want government contracts).
Anti-BDS "laws" are the most idiotic culture-war bullshit the American political system has come up with in the past five years. Secondary boycotts imposed by contract terms were illegal decades ago, and so all these new "laws" are entirely symbolic. It's the worst kind of political red meat, too, because both sides take the bait as if something was actually happening.
I agree. I think the argument that there is some infringement on constitutionally protected speech is unfounded. The issues to argue over (and context) is complicated enough as it is.
"Boycott Israel because of their treatment of Palestinians." A perfectly acceptable political statement.
"Boycott Israel because they are a bunch of greedy Jews." An obviously anti-Semitic statement.
The problem is that people who believe the latter will often say the former. This causes opponents of the latter to doubt the authenticity of people who say the former. Some people who oppose the former might also accuse people of the latter to discredit them. It becomes can quickly become confusing, but it should be clear that a boycott can clearly have both appropriate and inappropriate motivations.
>Boycott Israel because they are a bunch of greedy Jews.
There's no evidence of any BDS leaders saying this.
On the other hand, there's a bundle of evidence of vehement racism in the highest levels of the Israeli government (calls for "racial purity", collective punishment against arabs, "all arabs grow up to be terrorists", etc).
The fact that apartheid south africa was closely allied with israel, shared a nuclear project and was taken down by a BDS movement is, of course, not a coincidence.
The veneer of anti-racism has seemingly been co-opted to support a white european colonialist project behind an apartheid state
that purports to represent a race (again, like apartheid South Africa).
>it should be clear that a boycott can clearly have both appropriate and inappropriate motivations.
It should be clear that evidence-wise, being anti boycott most likely indicates at the very least stark naiveté and perhaps darker, more racist motives.
Equally, dismissing various criticisms (including boycotts) about the illegal military occupation of Palestine as "anti-semitic" is exactly what groups as JIDF (defunct), ACT.IL and many others are experts at doing.
Yes, I specifically pointed that out when I said "Some people who oppose the former might also accuse people of the latter to discredit them." However that neither exonerates the people who are doing it for truly anti-Semitic reasons or proves that those people don't exist.
Yet they all tend to be grouped into that category when a phrase like "anti-semitic" is used. If jews criticize Israel, they're labelled as self-hating. Whitewashing in the name of holocaust victims is doing a disservice, to say the least, IMHO. Religious zealots on one side are treated with white gloves, while any dissent or uproar (unrelated to Religion, even) on the other side is seen as justification to take any action in the name of security.
When the descendants of victims from places like the Warsaw Ghetto justify and defend their operations of the modern-day ghetto in Gaza...
When you compare Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto, you're doing violence to history. The Warsaw Ghetto did not have elections to vote in a terrorist group. It was not offered its own nation-state. It didn't receive billions in foreign aid to build bombs. It did not have a charter, nor was the annihilation of German civilians in its charter. Moreover, it existed as a way to round people up in order to exterminate them. That is not the "purpose" of Gaza. Gaza should by now be a successful part of a successful Palestinian state, and the reason it is not has a lot to do with Hamas.
In any case, where you have actual genocide - e.g. the systematic murder of a Muslim minority in China - no one is calling for boycotts or comparing it to the Holocaust, or even labeling it a genocide. Tesla opens a dealership in Xinjiang and the same exact people who want to boycott Israel go out and buy Teslas. Teslas they can charge up at the casinos on Indian reservations between LA and Phoenix. Chatting on their iPhones made by slave labor in China.
But then, where you have nothing remotely similar to systematic murder, as in the Palestinian territories, people call it "genocide" and call for a boycott. Ain't that funny?
You just mentioned a number of the double standards that exist netween the US and countries with immoral policies. There were uprisings in the ghettos. Granted, they didn't have enough time to form a democratically elected government. I am pointing out the irony of using anything similar as the Germans against a people who live in the most densely-populated, walled off land on earth...to say the least. Prolonging that with impunity and pride will certainly not make things better for anyone. You are casting aspersions against what I said, with no reason.
Yes. There was an uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. You know what happened? The Germans leveled the ghetto and killed everyone. Because they wanted them dead. There was an uprising in Xinjiang. Know what happened? China put millions of people into forced labor camps. Because they want them dead.
There was an uprising in Gaza. Guess what happened. Israel withdrew its own settlers unilaterally at gunpoint and handed over the territory, leaving greenhouses which were then leveled by Hamas.
Israel is also an extremely small, densely populated place surrounded by people who want to kill it.
To respond more directly, I didn't mention any double standards between the US and countries with immoral policies. I'm not even sure what that means; it's a nonsensical statement, as double standards don't exist "between" countries, they only exist in terms of criticism. Specifically, they only exist where criticism is biased.
To your second point, you say the Warsaw Ghetto wasn't able to hold elections to form a democratic government because they "didn't have enough time"? It had absolutely nothing to do with not having enough time. The Ghetto was a transit point for people to be gassed, nothing more. Imagine if they were encouraged to form a democratically elected government and hold elections, like Gaza, and if those elections were backed and monitored by international human rights organizations, like Gaza's elections were. And imagine if what they voted in was a theocratic dictatorship who proudly proclaimed that their winning would signal the final democratic election, ever.
Finally, you might have misunderstood what I said. The Germans in my scenario are the Israelis - that is what the BDS people think. They think the Israelis are Germans, and the Palestinians are Jews. The only irony in the situation is that the people who think this are Germans and/or other Europeans who did not give a flying fuck about the Holocaust when it was happening, and now suddenly are gripped by conscience when one is not happening - insofar as they can still be antisemitic in polite company.
Again, not disputing the history. Nevertheless, drawing a comparison to showcase the irony. Especially as the situation in Gaza and West Bank has been ongoing across multiple generations. Forgive the simplistic, cheeky remarks about not having enough time for elections. That's meant, once again, to draw attention to the length of time that Palestinians have endured this onslaught.
Go back to the beginning of Israel, check the terrorist activities of jewish groups. Ongoing settlements, landgrab, indiscriminate retaliatory measures--military or otherwise systemic in nature. Yet time and time again, no measure of accountability for a regional superpower.
Hamas was declared a terrorist organization by the EU in 2001, five years before they won elections in Gaza.
Palestine declared statehood in 1988 when Jordan renounced the West Bank. In 1993, the Oslo Accords would have granted statehood to Gaza and the West Bank. This was rejected by the PA leadership under Arafat because it would have foreclosed the possibility of a return to land within Israel proper, and they didn't have the political strength to make that palatable when most of their power rested on raising the street in anger. The fact remains that a free Palestinian state was offered to the PA, which would have included all of Gaza and most of the West Bank.
Should all opinions based on bad reasons be banned? Should people be compelled to explain their beliefs? Who decides if these opinions are good or illegal?
I don't believe fairly arbitrating expression based on beliefs is feasible, and I do believe it is actively harmful
Everyone is free to their own opinions. Actions can and should be banned depending on their motivations. We already apply this to other forms of restriction on speech like defamation. Often defamation will require negligence to harm or intent to harm. Someone who is factually incorrect through an honest mistake generally isn't considered to have committed defamation. I don't know why we are okay trying to ascertain the motive behind speech in one instance and not another.
We do this with plenty of crimes. Murdering your spouse to collect their life insurance policy is punished harsher than murdering your spouse after you come home to find them having an affair. Motivations and intent matter.
That was one example of the law no acting based purely on result. If you want specifically an example of motivation what about killing in self defense? That is a motivation and not an intent. It can also be what decides guilt or innocence.
Defamation has a singular victim. Hate speech has a class of victim. Why should we allow one and not the other? Why can't we just scale up our defamation laws to also apply to groups of people?
I don't think you can justly punish people for an unquanitifiable "group harm" with regards to speech
You could easily use such a justification to ban anti-war speech (something that has been done before), or ban speech against whatever you favorite political view is
I'm not sure why we need to quantify the harm, but even if we did, how does that harm change? Why is it illegal to lie about an individual but it is legal to make that exact same lie about the group in which that individual belongs? Wouldn't you be equally harmed if I said "ForgotMyPwOops drinks the blood of babies" compared to if I said "Everyone of ForgotMyPwOops's ethnic group drinks the blood of babies"?
Also we could just limit this to protected groups as they are currently defined for discrimination. That solves your problem with anti-war speech or generic political views.
Should all speech be up for vote? Should all opinions that the majority disagree with be banned?
I believe weakening protections such as free speech, which are used by the vulnerable to call attention to their plights, is much more likely to hurt Jewish people than allowing ostensibly antisemitic expression to exist
At one point, in my home land (Aotearoa) it was considered perfectly reasonable by the majority to bring teams of white South Africans into the country to play games. They were whit South Africans because they would not allow black South Africans in their teams.
The minority here fought long and hard to stop it, lost the battle (the team came and played their games against our local teams) but now are recognised as heros.
No. It is not the majority who decides what is right and wrong.
Nope, if majority believe A, doesn't make A true. It just means majority believe A.
Public opinion is very malleable.
Hence the existence of marketing.
I do, but, If it also happened in Germany and France which frequently criticize Israel, seems like it anti-BDS has nothing to do with silencing criticizing Israel... because they haven't stopped since.
Israel is pretty tolerant of meek criticism and regular old antisemitism (e.g. like that employed by their allies Orban and evangelicals/southern baptists).
BDS constitutes much more of an existential threat to the state - they're keenly aware of its pivotal role in taking down apartheid South Africa.
That is, it's the explicit anti-racist grass roots and history of the movement that they object to so vehemently.
This is why they routunely throw out unfounded accusations of antisemitism & throw all the quite considerable lobbying firepower they have in key countries to try and stamp it out.
Support for killing BDS in other countries is as a result, indirectly, an accurate bellwether of which politicians will support/tolerate racism and which politicians can be bought (e.g. Trump - big ally, easily bought, largely pro-racism). There are some in most countries.
Another way to look at it is that it isn’t about stopping criticism if the criticism has no effect. Serious boycotts can be very effective, but “criticism” from politicians can be meaningless.
in this case, the "audit" consists of an automated letter sent to their mailbox requesting additional information. It's not an IRS attorney opening their books and going line by line.
I have heard that the IRS doesn't have the resources to go after people who can afford good lawyers
Though I was referring more generally to things like known pedophiles getting slaps on the wrist by the feds, the spouses of politicians making millions insider trading, politicians not facing consequences for deleting public records, ect
How is it different in this case? Any Etsy shop can also configure into an LLC and do the necessary accounting to reduce their tax burden. If you don’t want to do that an Etsy shop is just a weird job, and you pay income tax on jobs.
I think a comment below addresses this, but the usual counterpoint is that a) the "necessary accounting" can become an undue burden itself and b) creating additional audit risks small may not be able to mitigate
The idea is that it is a structure that effectively prefers larger scale businesses who have the means to mitigate both of those
I’m not sure I follow. If you don’t want to set up an LLC you can just treat your Etsy dollars as plain-old personal income like you would as an Uber driver or any other side hustle. It’s just income. Why is a person paying income tax on their income controversial?
The argument is that all of the bookkeeping and accounting required to adequately deduct expenses creates an undue burden on small businesses, especially when it comes to mandatory accounting paradigms like depreciation. This is effectively demonstrated by the conventional wisdom of "just hire an accountant", which will run you at least $500, in addition to needing to get up to speed on how to track expenses and what to track.
A single member LLC defaults to a "disregarded entity" for income tax purposes, meaning it has no bearing on taxation or this discussion. And opting into being taxed as an S-corp (or partnership) creates even more paperwork.
Having said that, one of the great inequalities of our tax code is that individuals are not allowed to take most deductions that business take. It's patently ridiculous that a W-2 employee driving their car to work every day cannot deduct that necessary expense to have worked. But really the whole filing process needs to be simplified, the IRS needs to release tax forms as executable programs (eg python) rather than this archaic "add the lesser of line 25 or line 27 to line 3 from form 1138", and the formulas need to be set and published ahead of the tax year as to stop being ex post-facto laws.
Oh, sorry. I think I misunderstood your comment. I was comparing pre-2022 to 2022 rules for other business structures; I didn't realize you were implying they settle taxes as a non-business.
In my state forming an LLC is an online filing that takes 5 minutes and costs almost nothing. Getting an IRS EIN is similar.
Now, to structure it properly with all the proper recordkeeping and documentation to ensure you really get the protection of an LLC when it matters, is another matter.
The problem is that the more likely a job is to help people the less likely it is to pay well, software engineers are expensive and is helping people going to outweigh things like being able to support a family? Or at least an extra 100k
Because monopolistic business practices tangibly hurt consumers by reducing incentives to produce a good product and by artificially raising prices that get passed to the consumer
My Dad is on a similar diet for health reasons after a cardiovascular scare (not even nuts or avocados allowed), apparently the amount of oil and protein the average sedentary person needs can be obtained from vegetables we don't tradionally think as being good sources of them because you actually don't need much oil or protein to be healthy
Though if you're trying to build muscle/are more physically active you'd probably want more protein rich food sources
My understanding is that this is not correct, it conflates all NFT transactions without nuance, if one buys intellectual property via NFT and can prove it (which is ostensibly NFT's raison d'etre) then I see no reason why they couldn't exercise their rights to it (i.e. sue for copyright infringement, ect)
No, it's a thorough gotcha for a shallow topic to which money has given the illusion of depth. If you need a centralized entity to enforce the rights associated with a decentralized system, the decentralized system is unnecessary. We've long had solutions for the purchase of digital assets on any platform you choose, with ownership and usage rights enforced by the state.
Exactly. This is my problem with all these things people claim blockchain technology will solve. People think it's magically going to solve all the problems created by the government. They think it's a work around to fix corruption.
No matter how hard you blockchain you're still under the law of the government. You still have to pay taxes in your country's currency. Your "decentralized" blockchain still relies on centralization. Your internet infrastructure is centralized and ran usually by the government. The power grid you depend on is centralized.
My point is your blockchain technology still relies on the government. China even outlawed Bitcoin mining. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO FIX POLITICAL PROBLEMS WITH BLOCKCHAIN.
There is one political problem that is solved by Bitcoin, in fact it is why it was created. That is the problem of Central Banks debasing the monetary supply.
They knew that when it was created that States would crush it like they had crushed other attempt. With Bitcoin, they could not. I don't think its safe to say its under the law. The law is to the side. Bitcoin exists in a numerical and computation universe that cares not for the laws of man.
> People think it's magically going to solve all the problems created by the government
No one other than extremists (which exist in all groups) believe this, using this as a reason to hate NFTs makes you appear unreasonable and not grounded in reality
> No one other than extremists (which exist in all groups) believe this
This is the main argument I hear. Tell me then, how else is it useful?
> using this as a reason to hate NFTs makes you appear unreasonable and not grounded in reality
It's a perfectly valid reason to hate NFTs among so many others. Instead of since centralized authority such as a government keeping track of who owns something it's a "decentralized" blockchain.
Your implicit claim is that NFTs offer nothing more than decentralization which is not true, as it's basis is a public tamper resistant ledger that is difficult to censor. How many systems like this exist already? How many are easier to use than NFTs? How many of your prospective customers are likely to know about or want to use this alternate system versus NFTs?
To claim it has no benefits other than decentralization seems odd to me
Edit: I can't respond past this point as I'm being throttled
The only novel benefit, as you say, is "decentralized trust".
The blockchain portion of the NFT in most cases is simple a pointer to the asset and the owner, with the actual asset being off-chain managed by a single entity that can do whatever they please with it.
Why does the ownership need to be decentralized if ultimately, the asset is mutable?
What problem is solved via a public tamper resistant ledger outside of the hypothetical? I routinely make purchases outside of a public tamper resistant ledger without issue.
I’d argue that what you’ve stated is just the mechanism by which decentralisation is achieved (you haven’t identified any additional benefits).
Still, legally speaking, who is exactly enforcing it? Opensea? MPAA? I get that is going to be a fun question to answer since you can technically sue for anything ( but its not a guarantee that a judge will throw it out if he/she sees something sufficiently in the 'wasting my time' category ).
> Can the NFT be cryptographically verified to be authentic?
No. Authenticity of the data is not part of the concept.
What would that even mean in the context of non-physical contracts? You can buy an experience as an NFT (i.e. dinner with a C-list celeb) and the NFT serves as nothing more than a receipt saying you purchased that experience. Doesn't have to be unique (several people could by the same), doesn't include any specific metadata relating to the buyer.
What kind of "cryptographic authenticity" would even apply in such case?
It gets worse with digital assets if all you get is an IPFS URI. The actual data can be removed or altered at any point without the NFT itself being affected in way. Unless the asset itself is stored in the blockchain (which is practically impossible for anything beyond thumbnail-sized images) there's nothing to validate on the BC besides the token itself.
Source: am member of a federally recognized tribe that only requires one parent be a member for their children to be a member, much like US citizenship, so unless that changes my children for 100 generations will be 100% Native-American just as they will be 100% American