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Cake day: December 26th, 2023

  • And what happens after you kill the Houthi leadership? Do all of the Houthi forces turn over their weapons and go home? Get taken over by a more radical leadership? Split up into a bunch of cells with no centralized leadership?

    The Houthis are not a force for good on the region. However, compared with other terrorist groups, they are relatively rational and constrained. If even half of their forces want to go more extreme, they will have a proximate reason to do so, and no leadership to stop them.

    The likely result is the Gaza war expands into having a full war on the Yemen front (which is, admittadly, on track to happen anyway), against an enemy that no longer has the capacity to negotiate or surrender.

    As a fun side note, a bunch of those cells are also going to be freshly angry at the US, which is very much not in her interest.

    We’ve tried killing terrorist leadership before. It tends to not end well.


  • I don’t understand how Israelis keep voting him in either.

    They aren’t exactly voting him in. Israel operates under a parliamentary system, not a presidential one.

    Between 2018 and 2022, Israel had 5 elections because they were unable to form a government. No political party held an outright majority of parliament, so to form a government, they needed to form a coalition between multiple parties. Historically, this had gone fine, but during this period the more liberal parties adopted an “anyone but Bibi” stance, and refused to join in a coalition led by Netanyahu. Similarly, Netenyahu’s party, Likud, representing about 25% of parliament, dug in and refused to remove Netenyahu from being party leader, and the other conservative parties joined in and refused to join a non Netenyahu coalition. With the Arab parties forming a third wing, neither side was able to get to 50% to form a government.

    Ultimately, Likud and the conservative parties ended up winning this fight, but only by joining with far right parties that were previously to extreme for Israeli politics.


  • The main complaint isn’t so much that Israel is killing enemy leaders; but that it is doing it in a strategically self destructive way.

    Bin Laden was a risky move, but the strike was conducted in Pakistan, who was friendly to us; and there are allegations that the Pakistani government gave more of a green light to the operation than they were willing to admit.

    Al Zawahiri was in Afghanistan about a year after we left. The Taliban at the time was still occupied in condolidating their power domestically; and their big victory was getting the US to withdraw. They lacked the will and means to start a major war with the US.

    Al Bagdhadi was done as part of the Syrian civil war, in direct coordination with the SDF. At the time the operation was planned, the US military was directly involved on the ground in Syria, although our sudden withdrawal prior complicated that.

    Israel is dealing with a country that is antagonistic to Isreal, and which has spent decades building up its military capabilities in anticipation of an eventual hot war with Israel. Iran has demonstrated that it has serious political will in avoiding a hot war, however it is just 1 miscalculation away from stumbling into one anyway; and every direct attack Israel makes causes Iran to roll the dice again. Or, at some point Iranian leadership might decide that all Israel’s direct attacks mean they are in a hot war already, an that Iran should respond with full force.

    In the case of this particular assassination, I struggle to see what tactical or strategic upside Israel gets to justify the risk. Israel is nominally trying to negotiate with Hamas; but they just killed a senior Hamas member who was involved in those negotiations. Worse, they killed a member who was, within the context of Hamas, a pro peace moderate. Him leaving for completely benign reasons would have been bad for Israel, because his replacement woukd likely be more antagonistic then him. This is 100x worse when he leaves due to a direct and deliberate attack by Israel.

    The only way Israel’s actions make sense is if the leadership that has been spending years trying to start a war with Iran is trying to start a war with Iran; and if the leadership that has been spending months sabatoging any potential deal in Gaza wants to sabatoge the potential for a deal in Gaza.






  • The bill: https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/s3696/BILLS-118s3696es.xml

    As always, I read the bill expecting to be deeply disappointed; but was pleasantly surprised with this one. It’s not going to solve the issue, but I don’t really know of anything they can do to solve it. My guess is this will mostly be effective at going after large scale abuses (such as websites dedicated to deepfake porn, or general purpose deepfake sites with no safeguards in place).

    My first impressions on specific parts of the bill:

    1. The bill is written as an amendment to the 2022 appropriations act. This isn’t that strange, but I haven’t actually cross-references that, so might be misunderstanding some subtlety.

    2. The definition of digital forgery is broad in terms of the means. Basically anything done on a computer counts, not just AI. In contrast, it is narrow in the result, requiring that:

    when viewed as a whole by a reasonable person, is indistinguishable from an authentic visual depiction of the individual.

    There is a lot of objectionable material that is not covered by this. Personally, I would like to see a broader test, but can’t think of any that I would be comfortable with

    1. The depiction also needs to be relevant to interstate or foreign commerce. There hands are tied by the constitution on this one. Unless Wickard v Fillburn us overturned though, me producing a deepfake for personal use reduces my interstate porn consumption, so it qualifies. By explicitly incorporating the constitutional test, the law will survive any change made to what qualifies as interstate commerce.

    2. The mens rea required is “person who knows or recklessly disregards that the identifiable individual has not consented to such disclosure” No complaints on this standard.

    3. This is grounds for civil suits only; nothing criminal. Makes sense, as criminal would normally be a state issue and, as mentioned earlier, this seems mostly targeted at large scale operations, which can be prevented with enough civil litigation.

    4. Max damage is:

      • $150k
      • Unless it can be linked to an actual or attempted sexual assult, stalking or harassment, in which case it increases to $250k
      • Or you can sue for actual damages (including any profits made as a result of the deepfake)
    5. Plaintifs can use a pseudonym, and all personally identifiable information is to be redacted or filed under seal. Intimate images turned over in discovery remains in the custody of the court

    6. 10 year statute of limitations. Starting at when the plaintif could reasonably have learned about the images, or turns 18.

    7. States remain free to create their own laws that are “at least as protective of the rights of a victim”.

    My guess is the “at least as protective” portion is there because a state suite would prevent a federal suit under this law, as there is an explicit bar on duplicative recovery, but I have not dug into the referenced law to see what that covers.





  • Delegates have been determined prior to the convention for as long as I can remember. That is the entire point of the primary.

    In this case, the person who won the primary has withdrawn. The presumptive nominee is now the person who voters expected to be his VP pick; so they should have understood that their vote for Biden was a vote for Harris if something happens to Biden.

    Additionally, Biden has endorsed Harris. Most of the delegates are pledge to support Biden. While they are technically free to vote their conscious, the argument of “I should support the person endorsed by the one I was sent here to support” is pretty persuasive. As is the argument of “no one is running against her”

    The issue with Clinton was the presence of super delegates, who were not required to follow any primary election results. An open convention turns all delegates into super delegates.



  • People have been warning from day 1 about the possibility of a regional escalation.

    Apparently you cannot spend months acting in a way that neighboors who already don’t like you find morally reprehensible without some of those neighbors inserting themselves into the conflict.

    The real question is how long can Iran avoid getting dragged into that. And if Iran gets involved directly, will we be able to contain this to a regional war, or will this small decades old conflict between parties whose total population is only about 12 million become the trigger for world war 3.



  • The DNC is planning of formally nominating the democratic ticket on August 5, which does not leave much time to pick a replacement (even if the replacement is vice president Harris).

    The August 5 date was picked back when everyone thought the nomination was a mere formality, in order to comply with an August 7 deadline from Ohio. Ohio, for its part, has pushed the deadline back to September, but I don’t think the DNC wants to risk a ballot challenge making it’s way to the Supreme Court.


  • Israel: Our demands to end the war are simple. The complete destruction of Hamas and a non-Hamas government in Gaza.

    US: Ok. We found a Palestinian organization with decades of governing experience, and a history of working well with you. Also, they have been opposed to Hamas since Hamas took over Gaza.

    Israel: Ok, as long as we don’t need to admit to working with them.

    US: Fair enough. PA, Israel and I have been destabilizing and radicalizing Gaza for decades. No country in the world is willing to touch it with a 10 foot pole now. Would you mind fixing that for us?

    PA: So, you’ll recognize us as a partial governing party is Gaza.

    Israel: No. Our voters won’t stand for us working with Palestinians. We just want you to do all of the work, and take the blame for every that goes wrong.

    US: You should really consider it. It’s a good deal.

    Israel: Also, since your here, these are some new settlements our people are building in your land on the West Bank. Could you keep your people peaceful during this? K, thanks.

    PA: Yeah … No.


    I wonder why Israel can’t find a credible partner for peace.


  • It was expensive and solved almost none of the actual problems

    1. Difficulties distributing food within Gaza? Boats don’t work on land, so you end up loading it all into the exact same trucks you would use for land crossings, so run into the exact same issues.

    2. Difficulties getting enough aid through Israeli checks? By design, Israel inspected all pier deliveries as they left Cyprus, and again as they arrived at Gaza, and the IDF controlled the staging beach within Gaza. If they were giving you problems at all the other crossings they control, they will give you the same problems at this one.

    3. Distance between the crossing and where aid is needed? Sure. Technically this could help some depending on the details of the logistics work being done within Gaza. But… Gaza is just not that big.

    4. Attacks by Hamas? As far as aid deliveries go, this has only ever been an issue internal to Gaza, so see point 1.

    5. Attacks by starving Gazans? See point 1. Also, aid being stolen by starving people is mission accomplished

    6. Egypt closing their border crossing? Sure, but again, Gaza is not that large, the Israeli land crossings are still fine.

    7. Attacks by Israeli terrorists? Sure, but the Israeli police has been doing a fine job dealing with this already, so it has not been an actual bottleneck.

    8. Attack by the IDF that hit people attempting to distribute aid within Gaza? See 1.

    9. Lack of adequate practice for the US military to deploy a naval logistics platform? Fair enough, this project did solve that. Not sure what that has to do with the humanitarian situation in Gaza though.

    At the end of the day, this pier project has always been the “something” to calls within the US that “we have to do something”.