dsg42
A court might disagree. The CFTC could potentially disagree, although yesterday's agreement makes me think they may have given up on that to some extent. But I actually think it's pretty clear that any cryptocurrency project offering a reward for "staking" or similar is a security.
[1] https://www.axios.com/2022/06/28/bitcoin-is-the-only-coin-th...
- To commit a crime
- Not a real use case (If someone has no access to normal financial infrastructure, including Venmo and similar, how would they ever use crypto)
- To avoid processing fees by paying higher fees?
We need to start by recognizing that, although the Constitution is an important original source in understanding how our government functions, we have over 200 years of Constitutional interpretation that lies on top of it. You are welcome to make a Constitutional argument that goes against the existing jurisprudence, and Constitutional interpretation does change over time, but it does so only slowly. One of the most important principles in Constitutional interpretation is that of stari decisis, or issues which have already been decided. In almost all circumstances, courts adhere to precedence. This isn't always the case, but when you are fighting against the current understanding of the Constitution, you need to realize that you're fighting an uphill battle, and frame your arguments as such.
So where are we in our understanding of these issues? First, the Supreme Court has literally ruled that the Tenth Amendment is useless. Specifically, in US v Sprague (1931, SCOTUS ruled that the Tenth Amendment is a "truism" that "added nothing to the [Constitution] as originally ratified."[1] It was later used to create an anti-commandeering understanding, which in this circumstance just means that the federal government can't pass a law that requires states to enforce a federal mask mandate. There might be a public health exception to that though, but that's where the tenth amendment would be relevant.
You also need to understand that SCOTUS has repeatedly expanded the commerce clause to cover basically everything. The federal government can pass pretty much any law they want, say it affects interstate commerce, and win. You don't have to like that interpretation, but everyone follows it. It was only during the Rehnquist Court that a few exceptions were carved out, but they're very, very narrow. The most famous example was that the court ruled that the federal government couldn't ban handguns in schools under the commerce clause. But for anything even vaguely interstate, and a contagious virus certainly counts, the federal government is allowed to pass pretty much any law it wants.
The courts also tend to be pretty generous towards allowing emergency powers to deal with a genuine crisis. I expect that the federal government could do pretty much anything it wants to deal with COVID. I'm sure they'd allow a national lockdown by executive order right now. A legislative mask mandate would be completely non-controversial from a Constitutional perspective.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_... - Yes, this is Wikipedia, but I don't feel like reading a SCOTUS case to write a HN comment
- Felony convictions: Black and latino men are convicted of felonies at much higher rates than any other population. In 2016, 7.44% of black people had their voting rights stripped for felony convictions.[1] Over 1% of all black people in the United States are currently incarcerated, compared with about .2% for white people.[2]
- DC in majority minority, with 46% black residents.[3] Puerto Rico in 98.9% hispanic.[4]
- Citizenship: Over 800,000 people have enrolled in DACA, mostly of Latin American and East Asian origin. [5] They are ineligible for citizenship. Among those eligible to apply for Citizenship, many are from Canada or Europe.[6] Our immigration laws are setup to favor high school immigrants, who are far more likely to be white than the immigrant population as a whole. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it means our voting population is far more white than our resident population.
- Disenfranchisement: This is far more piecemeal, but southern states routinely take actions that just so happen to make it more difficult for minorities to vote rather than white people. I recommend listening to [7] if you're interested, which covers a specific recent circumstance in Florida, with a few examples from other states. It's no coincidence when eliminated polling places and dropboxes just so happen to always be in Black neighborhoods.
Remember, the voting rights marches of the 1960s weren't about giving black people the right to vote, that happened in 1870. They were about how certain states had made it so difficult for black people to vote that it was essentially impossible. Sure, many black people vote in these states today, but that doesn't mean that they have an equal ability to vote. The measures aren't as strong as they once were, but they still exist.
[1] https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08... [2] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p19.pdf [3] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/DC [4] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/PR [5] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/25/key-facts-a... [6] https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/lpr_pop... [7] https://www.npr.org/2020/10/26/927846676/who-gets-to-vote-in...
- Residents of DC, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Guam
- People who have had their names removed from voter roles with no warning, as in Georgia, Wisconsin, and North Carolina, in the last few years.
- People who can't get US citizenship despite having lived here most or all of their lives.
- Vulnerable individuals who couldn't get an absentee ballot in Texas despite the pandemic
And so on. They're smaller, more specific minorities now. But there's a lot of them
What this gives you is a fresh perspective when you get back. If it's time to move on, you'll be dreading coming back to work, thinking how stupid your project is or how much you hate your coworkers. Maybe you'll realize you're incredibly excited about something else.
Some people really need to journal to think their way through these things, but others just don't. Again, the process is totally individual. But I think you'll be surprised how much perspective you get removing yourself from the situation.
Take, for example, the density statistics presented on DC. The numbers used, 440 stations, 3700 bikes, 680000 residents, and 68 square miles are facially accurate. But the resident and size figures are of DC itself, ignoring the fact that only 239 of those stations are actually in DC - the rest are in Maryland or Virginia [1].
Looking at the station maps, it's easy to see what's going on. SF's program is much less developed than many of the others mentioned [2][3][4][5]. This is fine. It takes a lot of time and money to put all those stations in place. That doesn't mean the program is a failure.
Bikeshare programs, like all transmit programs, have a major network effect - you need a station both near the start and end of your journey. As SF adds stations in more residential neighborhoods, you'll see the ridership statistics climb. In its current state, there's nothing bad or surprising about any of the numbers presented.
Spin is trying to divert interest in SF bikeshare programs to its model before the current program becomes too successful and entrenched. Don't let it distract from the fact that we're off to a great start.
Oh, and I can't believe they have the gall to say SF is a great biking city.
[1] https://www.capitalbikeshare.com/press-kit [2] https://member.bayareabikeshare.com/stations [3] https://secure.capitalbikeshare.com/map/ [4] https://member.citibikenyc.com/map/ [5] https://member.divvybikes.com/stations
Perhaps it would be more successful if it were more targeted. That's an interesting thought.
For example, I decided to check out my own alma mater, Yale, to see how the rankings were calculated. One professor stood out to me: Dan Spielman. It happens that he won the Nevanlinna Prize in 2010, during the period that your rankings cover. Yet, his average comes out to a mere 4.5, which would mean he would actually bring down the average score at any of the top ten schools.
The issue here is that, until computers can reliably rank the quality and importance of papers in real-time, these types of rankings mean little. It's the quality, not the quantity, of papers published that matters.
But your argument distracts from the fact that the phenomenon she described is very real. Women face challenges at every turn as they try to get into tech. One of those challenges is people like you who want to nitpick everything they say.
Why are you arguing with her? What is the point of it? Can't you accept that the general argument that women struggle to exist in the tech industry is real?
You're like a global warming denier fixating over some discrepancy in the data. You're not wrong, it's just beside the point. We need to be arguing over how to fix our gender issues, not whether they exist. And one of those ways, without a doubt, is getting more women to take the AP CS exam and go to programming summer programs.
Just because you're factually correct (which I'm not conceding here, but it shouldn't matter) doesn't mean your point has any merit.
Imagine you have a heap of sand. Now, if you remove a single grain of sand from a heap, it's still a heap, right? But if you remove every grain of sand, then eventually, you're left without any sand, which is definitely not a heap. So somewhere along the way, when removing individual grains of sand, the heap stopped being a heap. But where, exactly, did that happen?
You're making our industry a terrible place to live and giving decent people a bad name. Please stop.