It’s complicated, and people can have different philosophical approaches to the goals and purposes of criminal punishment. But my argument is that people should be internally consistent in their views. If people believe that the consequences of a crime should be considered when sentencing for that crime, then emotional consequences should count, too, because emotional harm is real harm.

I didn’t think I’d ever agree with Hawley

Hawley represents the future of the Republican party, in my opinion: populist conservatism that is willing to bend on party orthodoxy on how taxes and regulations shouldn’t be captured by big corporate interests, but is just completely abhorrent on cultural issues (and whether the government should be involved in those issues).

In an earlier political era, there would be opportunities for cross-party dialogue on the issues that the parties have deemed non-partisan (where divisions don’t fall within party lines and party leadership doesn’t care that their members hold a diversity of views on), but the number of issues that fall within that category have plummeted in the last 20 years.

Why do we punish based on consequences caused by the crime, then?

A drunk driver is punished much more severely if they hit and kill a person, than if they hit and hurt a person, than if they hit a tree, than if they don’t crash at all.

As long as we’re punishing people based on the actual impact of their crimes, then emotional impact should count.

why evidence rules exist in court.

Sure, but not for victim impact statements. Hearsay, speculation, etc. have always been fair game for victim impact statements, and victim statements aren’t even under oath. Plus the other side isn’t allowed to cross examine them. It’s not evidence, and it’s not “testimony” in a formal sense (because it’s not under oath or under penalty of perjury).

I’d argue that emotions are a legitimate factor to consider in sentencing.

It’s a bit more obvious with living victims of non-homicide crimes, but the emotional impact of crime is itself a cost borne by society. A victim of a romance scam having trouble trusting again, a victim of a shooting having PTSD with episodes triggered by loud noises, a victim of sexual assault dealing with anxiety or depression after, etc.

It’s a legitimate position to say that punishment shouldn’t be a goal of criminal sentencing (focusing instead of deterrence and rehabilitation), or that punishment should be some sort of goal based entirely on the criminal’s state of mind and not the factors out of their own control, but I’d disagree. The emotional aftermath of a crime is part of the crime, and although there’s some unpredictable variance involved, we already tolerate that in other contexts, like punishing a successful murder more than an attempted murder.

Along the same lines, from the same writer/creator, Armando Iannucci, there’s The Death of Stalin. The absurdity of how the inner circle navigated the politics around Stalin, including after his death, is hilarious but also a good look at how these power dynamics work in an authoritarian, despotic government.

Or also from Iannucci, Avenue 5, which basically is set in the future where all of this political nonsense continues, and is in the background of a comedy about a space cruise ship.

Everyone has their own reasons. If you disagree with their management, then you should celebrate other people choosing to leave, even if for different reasons than your own.

Republicans killed a COVID era $3600/year child tax credit, letting it lapse in 2023 back to the 2018 amount of $2000, which was increased from $1000 as a replacement for the $5050 tax exemption parents used to be able to get before the 2017 Trump tax reforms. For a married couple whose combined income was between $75k and $150k, that $5k tax exemption was worth about $1250, so it was a bad trade for them (or anyone making more).

If Republicans were serious about financially incentivizing having children, they’ll need to support the kids throughout the entire life cycle: healthcare for pregnant women, including through labor and deliver and post partum, support for families with young children (including parental leave mandates), subsidized daycare, good schools, parks and libraries, and economic stability (including in housing costs).

But they’re not, so here we are.

I don’t brush anything under the rug. I actively shared the Tweet that started this hole BS.

I get that. But my point is that you can’t claim that Proton’s CEO is acting independently of the Proton corporation itself when Proton’s official corporate accounts chimed in on his side on this.

Both of the American parties are a shitshow

Not on antitrust. The Biden administration was one of the strongest advocates for consumers on antitrust issues we’ve seen since Robert Bork convinced Reagan to tear it all down.

Anyone who says otherwise is trying to lie to the American public about it, and should be called out for actively advocating for false MAGA propaganda. Andy Yen did it, and Proton agreed with it.

Proton didn’t decide anything, Andy Yen posted ONE tweet and then doubled down on it with the Proton Reddit account which was deleted.

How are you going to say that Proton didn’t say anything and then acknowledge that the official Proton social media accounts were making statements like this:

Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses

That’s the context you keep brushing under the rug. The official Proton position is not just that Trump made a good choice, on this one thing, it’s that you should vote for Republicans over Democrats.

Yes, it was official corporate Proton position to delete that comment. But it was the official Proton position to make that comment in the first place.

OpenAI’s commercial entity

They should never be allowed to call this a “non-profit”

They never did. The nonprofit parent owned shares in a for-profit subsidiary, which was structured in a way that investors in the for-profit subsidiary could never control the company (the nonprofit would own a controlling share) and had their gains capped at 100x.

Andy Yen went out of his way to criticize Democrats on antitrust, which is how you can tell it’s actually a pro-Trump position unsupported by the actual facts.

I like Gail Slater. She’s possibly the best choice among people who Trump likes, to head DOJ’s Antitrust Division. She has bipartisan bona fides.

But to say that Democrats, after 4 years of Lina Khan leading the FTC, and a bunch of the reforms that the Biden FTC and DOJ made to merger standards and their willingness to sue/seek big penalties for antitrust violations, aren’t more serious than Republicans about reining in big tech consolidation and about stronger enforcement of antitrust principles, completely flips around the history and is a bad faith argument.

Andy Yen could’ve praised Gail Slater, and that would be that. Instead, he took a post by Trump that didn’t even mention Democrats, and made it about how the Democrats are bad on taking on big tech. That’s the problem everyone had with it.

The poverty line was historically measured simply by multiplying the USDA’s cheapest food plan for a household to buy groceries with adequate nutrition, and multiplying by 3.

Then, in the intervening 6 decades or so, food inflation has gone up significantly slower than housing inflation, to where that simple assumption of “barely enough to eat, times 3” began systematically understating actual poverty.

Today, feeding the reference family of 4 (2 adults 20-50, 1 kid aged 6-8, 1 aged 9-11) costs $996.20 per month (as of March 2025). That’s basically $12,000 per year, so the poverty line for a family of 4 is $32,150 (updated every January with September data).

They also know hurting themselves.

General Milley was his first term appointee for Chair of the Joint Chiefs, and one of the first things Trump did in his second term was to strip Milley of his security clearance, security detail, and even his placement of his portrait with the other former chairs.

Jerome Powell was Trump’s pick for Chair of the Federal Reserve, replacing Yellen (the first time that a Fed chair had not gotten a second term, and Trump has been clamoring for the power to fire him.

Jan. 6 “rally”? Uhhhh

He’s fired a bunch of lower level officials.

His pick for acting US Attorney for SDNY (basically Manhattan) was fired a few weeks later for refusing to drop charges against Eric Adams.

The acting IRS commissioner has changed over 5 times in the 90 days of this current presidency, including the most recent firing of a guy that was too close to Elon (in some kind of Bessent-Musk feud), just a few days after his appointment. The previous acting commissioner was fired for refusing to illegally share IRS data with DHS to help with immigration enforcement.

And the current turmoil in the Pentagon is the firings of people he appointed to these positions. It’s a mess.

This is how politics works under an authoritarian: senior officials throwing other officials under the bus by appeal to the authoritarian’s ego.

I keep pushing back on this sentiment because I think it’s wrong.

Even if it is inevitable that he will win in court, it’s still worth fighting every step of the way:

• It ties up their resources, including chewing up loyalists who burn out trying to defend the indefensible. It’s no coincidence that the second Trump term is filled with people who are simply less competent at their jobs, compared to the people in the first Trump term.
• It forces them to actually make statements and stake out positions about what they’re doing. No amount of journalism or activism could’ve gotten the Trump administration to admit that they got it wrong by deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia, because that was the work of opposing lawyers and a tough judge. And even though they fired the lawyer who first conceded that point, Trump’s own Solicitor General admitted it, too, to the Supreme Court.
• If the administration tears down the rule of law, that will have unintended consequences that harm them as well. You know how Trump blinked when it became clear that his ill-conceived tariffs were going to hurt his friends, and destroy his own popularity among the people whose approval he most craves? That dynamic will play out multiple times as he undermines the rule of law.
• Practically speaking, his contempt for the rule of law undermines his popularity and support from many of those he actually draws power from. He wants the financial world, the business world, the press, the film/art/literature/culture world, religious institutions, and the sports world to admire him and support him. Each time he breaks something, he has to deal with the backlash among his own supporters.

I’m not going to comply in advance. I’m fighting every step of the way, because even if he beats me every time, his unforced errors as he does so will still jeopardize his power.