Recent posts

#21

Off the Record / Re: The EU thread

Last post by Tonitrus - October 08, 2025, 08:57:22 PM

Just start calling it "sawsage".

#22

Off the Record / Re: Baseball

Last post by crazy canuck - October 08, 2025, 08:43:02 PM

Bottom of the 7th, phew - got out of that

#23

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by DGuller - October 08, 2025, 08:42:04 PM

It can. A vindictive landlord could start the snowball effect. "The app" is not an omniscient impartial AI.

Perhaps we should ask DGuller for some info on how it works.  Do landlords rate their tenants or does it record evictions?

I can't speak authoritatively specifically about how landlords work, but I have quite a lot of professional experience with information vendors in general.  Aggregating the information and selling it is big business, and it tends to be a monopoly or oligopoly because the network effect is in play (usually you have to give data to get data, although everyone can scrape the public records).  Credit bureaus were the first ones to the game, but now there are vendors for almost anything you can think of.  It makes much more sense for employers, or landlords, or anything else, to pay a small fee to someone else to do the background check, rather than do it themselves.

The next logical step in the sequence is to not just sell data, but also sell scores.  All these histories of credit card payments, mortgage payments, car payments, etc., are messy and somewhat unstructured.  A score like 690 is easy and quick to understand.  I don't know for a fact if there is such a thing as a tenant score, but I would be very surprised if there weren't.  Most vendors I deal with professionally have a score to sell in additional to the data itself.

The worry that I expressed to begin with is that having these vendors is tying together all the supposedly independent market actors.  The vendor space is monopolistic or oligopolistic, so all the supposedly independent actors can be actually acting in concert, because they're reacting to all the same scores.  The problem with scores is that even if they're directionally correct, there is always a lot of nuance missed.  In this brave new world, you don't get a chance to explain your nuanced situation, you're just a number on a report, and the same number to everyone regardless of how representative that number is.

#24

Off the Record / Re: Refractory Gauls, or the F...

Last post by Jacob - October 08, 2025, 08:31:00 PM

How likely are RN and LFI respectively to undermine democracy? Where do they stand on Europe? And how likely are they withdraw support of Ukraine?

#25

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Razgovory - October 08, 2025, 08:26:35 PM

When I had to find a new place my eviction could be found with a simple search on the Missouri court site.  Basically no one would rent to me.  My options were living in a motel, or a senior living facility.  I picked the senior living facility.  It is certainly not ideal

#26

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Admiral Yi - October 08, 2025, 08:22:58 PM

It can. A vindictive landlord could start the snowball effect. "The app" is not an omniscient impartial AI.

Perhaps we should ask DGuller for some info on how it works.  Do landlords rate their tenants or does it record evictions?

#27

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by DGuller - October 08, 2025, 08:09:31 PM

One can have many objections to coordinated economic actions.  The don't all have to apply to every example of them.

Sure, but you're basing your argument on the basis of analogy.  "We object to this, therefore we must object to this."  If there are fundamental differences between the things being analogized then it doesn't work.

Let's rewind and follow the whole sequence of events.  Let's also allow for the possibility that every time you take an analogy somewhere else, it sometimes helps to give local reasoning, which may not carry back three steps back to the origin.

Here is the sequences:

Yi:  Guy welched on me.  Why can't I boycott him?
DG:  You alone cannot boycott someone.  There has to be a coordinated effort for there to be a boycott.
Yi:  I tell someone else the guy welched on me, I guess then it is a boycott?
DG:  Yes, take whispers far enough, and it can very well be.  That's why employers don't whisper about former employees, because it can be taken as a boycott.
Yi:  You think it's fair and just for employers to not be able to whisper about their employees?
DG:  Replying specifically to the situation with employers, yes, I argued it's more fair than the alternative.  I didn't think far enough to realize that trying to find the best reasons for the employer example would come back to bite me, hence I tried to find the best reason that specifically applied to references.

Let's focus on the common thread rather than the fact that compounding the natural imperfection of analogies can eventually add up.  What's common in all the analogies is that the decision of one market actor, when communicated to other actors, can create a coordination that freezes someone out.  One landlord evicting the tenant gets communicated through background checks and prevents the tenant even from an opportunity to get another place.  One gambler refuses to deal with another and badmouths them to other gambles so that they also refuse to deal with them.  One employer decides to fire an employee and through references makes them appear to be a bad hire to other employers.

The justification for spreading the information is secondary; what matters is the resulting coordination that turns private discretion into systemic exclusion. Once that happens, the market stops being free in any meaningful sense.

#28

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Zoupa - October 08, 2025, 07:57:52 PM

I don't get your point.

You object to bad references because they have the potential to be based on vindictiveness.  This objection can not apply to the rental app.

It can. A vindictive landlord could start the snowball effect. "The app" is not an omniscient impartial AI.

#29

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Sheilbh - October 08, 2025, 07:53:51 PM

This is absolutely dystopian shit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CringeTikToks/s/PNokJGs7RN

A bunch of armed and masked men with no convincing identification thst they are police, put a child into an unmarked civilian car.

Like, the fuck?!

Edit: maybe it's an adult not a child but it only makes marginally less terrifying.

Also the Chicago video. I've said before I think that ICE is lawless and that's not an accident or bad apples. It is the policy. I'd add again that I think this is "American" in the broadest sense - masked paramilitary agents of the state pulling people off the streets, acting on dubious legality etc. I can't help but think of this happening in the rest of the America's in the 20th century fight against Communism and the left and Aime Cesaire's line about how the violence of imperial powers returns to the metropole. How the fascist regimes turned violence and mechanisms of repression onto Europeans that had previously been used by Europeans only on non-Europeans, discretely, imperially. I think Orwell made similar points.

Someone earlier made the comparison with stormtroopers - I think people are talking about conditioning the military to fight like "warriors" in American cities. I'm not sure that'll work. My read is that the American military is committed to its constitutional norms, civil government etc and that is deep in their culture (to an extent that I think they're possibly the last standing institution with a sense of "non-partisanship" about them). But if you need a paramilitary force to go out and be the willing agents of coercion - then I think that's what ICE are absolutely being conditioned to do.

I also think that the right had a weird idea of the partisanship of the military. I think this was Hegseth's pitch - that officers might not like him but the rank and file would love having a real man/"warrior" like him as a leader and he'd basically be able to forge that connection over the heads of officers if necessary. In effect, that the military was ready to be MAGA-fied, they just didn't know it yet. I don't think that's true or that it's happened. By contrast I think ICE, in part because of the political pushback against them (which is correct) are absolutely politicised and aligned with what Trump wants.

#30

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Admiral Yi - October 08, 2025, 07:46:23 PM

One can have many objections to coordinated economic actions.  The don't all have to apply to every example of them.

Sure, but you're basing your argument on the basis of analogy.  "We object to this, therefore we must object to this."  If there are fundamental differences between the things being analogized then it doesn't work.