dmatech

Primarily because it encourages people to keep doing this performative stuff, think they're actually helping people, and take resources away from more meaningful work. By resisting these efforts, I'm preventing what would likely be runaway acceleration.

In theory, the actual individuals are still bound by state law, but the supremacy clause allows federal laws made in pursuance of the US Constitution to preempt those state laws. Of course, these laws still need to be "necessary and proper" for carrying out an express power like regulating immigration. A law that is unnecessary or improper would theoretically not hold up in court. The same goes for executive action.

Perhaps the most infamous case of this was the Idaho manslaughter case against FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi for killing Vicki Weaver in the Ruby Ridge incident. His case was simply "removed" to federal court and dismissed under the supremacy clause (although this dismissal was later overturned narrowly when appealed).

This is why it's absolutely essential to always be aware of which types are value types in the .NET type system. Attempts by either users or the designers to conflate or unify them are ill-conceived. The nullability semantics could have been kept consistent if they went all the way back to the beginning of the CLR and did it that way, but this would have not been consistent with Java's JVM and type system (which they were trying to mimic).

That said, we already have value types like System.Int32 which inherit from System.ValueType (an abstract type) which inherits from System.Object (a non-abstract reference type), so things are already a bit weird.

Providing a platform for defamation and other tortious speech is generally legally protected under §230. They still have to respond to court orders and DMCA requests, though. This is how sites like Kiwi Farms remain online. That said, commercial apps can sometimes be sued under defective product laws.

Are there any POSIX or ISO guarantees on "FILE"? I think it's safe to assume that it isn't an incomplete type, but all functions that use it operate on pointers anyway. Storing a copy of a "FILE" object might result in each copy pointing to the same underlying file handle but having different internal state.

The consequences for following an illegal order include being sued, being held in contempt of court, or being criminally prosecuted by a subsequent administration. They don't have the same immunity that presidents do because they don't have a direct vesting of authority under Article II.

In the USA, both are true. Civil servants can (and should) refuse to follow an order they think is unconstitutional, illegal, or simply unwise. But this won't stop them from being fired for insubordination. I don't think the courts will attempt to force the president to retain subordinates that are actively opposing him on the job.

It allows links to bsky and Mastodon posts, but it doesn't auto-summarize bsky posts at the moment.

Yep. It's probably rooted in our psychology as primates. I'm not saying this is good, but psychology is often ugly.

Men want to compete for status against other men. If women are present, it's not quite seen as a venue for male intrasexual competition in the same way. It's also possible that the greatest status in society can be found where males compete (unless you're dealing with a matriarchal society).

Ordinarily I'd agree, but I don't think these degrees are being marketed as vocational credentials like you'd see at a vocational school. If you get one of the more questionable humanities degrees and expect it to get you a job, that's not exactly a reasonable expectation. Some degrees basically double as a vocational credential (CS, medicine, and even journalism), but not all.

A big problem is that a lot of people think that doing what they're told by the "smart people in charge" (which might include their parents), they can expect to succeed in life. And a lot of people told the kids to follow their passions but also get into the most elite school possible in order to impress some HR person. This was bad advice.

T&S departments generally exist for one reason: to manage reputational risk. This sometimes involves legal risk, but it usually just means preventing relentless hit pieces about your company enabling something portrayed as horrible. This can result in customers and even employees leaving if the media is relentless enough.

Companies take risks if the reward is considered good enough. In this case, that reward is income from the customer (who can still be dropped if the hit pieces start getting published).