Month: October 2024

A few weeks ago I mentioned that California had passed a law banning "materially deceptive" campaign deepfakes created by AI. Today brings this comment:

This claim has been all over the place, but it's demonstrably untrue. The judge did indeed rule the law unconstitutional, but did so for the simplest of reasons: it was too broad.

Under strict scrutiny, a state must use the “least restrictive means available for advancing [its] interest.” The First Amendment does not “permit speech-restrictive measures when the state may remedy the problem by implementing or enforcing laws that do not infringe on speech.”

....Ultimately, as Plaintiff’s motion points out, despite AB 2839’s attempts at a limited construction, the statute encompasses a broad range of election-related content that would be constitutionally protected even if false and cannot withstand First Amendment scrutiny.

The ruling was unrelated to parody except for one thing: the judge ruled that the law required too large a font for its labeling requirement.

For parody or satire videos, AB 2839 requires a disclaimer to air for the entire duration of a video in text that is no smaller than the largest font size used in the video.... AB 2839’s size requirements for the disclosure statement in this case and many other cases would take up an entire screen, which is not reasonable because it almost certainly “drowns out” the message a parody or satire video is trying to convey.

Nickel summary: the judge ruled that the First Amendment allows even knowing falsehoods ("it is perilous to permit the state to be the arbiter of truth”). It doesn't matter if they're digital ("YouTube videos, Facebook posts, and X tweets are the newspaper advertisements and political cartoons of today, and the First Amendment protects an individual’s right to speak regardless of the new medium these critiques may take."). Nor does it matter if these lies harm the electoral prospects of a candidate ("When political speech and electoral politics are at issue, the First Amendment has almost unequivocally dictated that Courts allow speech to flourish rather than uphold the State’s attempt to suffocate it."). What's more, there are already laws on the books to protect individuals from defamatory falsehoods ("Other statutory causes of action such as privacy torts, copyright infringement, or defamation already provide recourse to public figures or private individuals whose reputations may be afflicted by artificially altered depictions peddled by satirists or opportunists on the internet.").

California's law did not ban parody. It specifically exempted parody, as the judge recognized. He ruled that the labeling requirements were a little too onerous, but that's it.

On this first anniversary of October 7, I have a bit of an unusual observation. I don't even know if it's correct, but here goes.

On the Israeli side of things, there's no shortage of people who will publicly say exactly what they think Israel should be doing. Their point of view is pretty simple: Hamas and Hezbollah are murderous terrorist groups that will never cease their attacks on Israel. They need to be destroyed, full stop, and Iran's sponsorship of terrorism needs to be hit hard enough to make them give it up. If a brutal war is the only way to accomplish this, then so be it. Enough is enough.

This may or may not have any chance of working, and you may or may not agree. But it's all pretty clear.

Now consider the pro-Palestinian side—here in the US anyway. During the campus turmoil earlier this year it was striking that the protesters were reluctant to talk to the press. It was specifically discouraged, in fact. More generally, the pro-Palestinian side never really says what they think Israel should do.

Don't get me wrong. In the short term they think Israel should stand down. They support a permanent ceasefire. That much is self-evident. But over the longer term, what is it they think Israel should do? The obvious answer is that Israel should stop fighting; should stop oppressing Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank; and should allow Palestinians a free and clear homeland with no restrictions.

But the TV talking heads and newspaper pundits rarely actually say this—or so it seems to me. Am I just watching the wrong TV? Or are they, in fact, reluctant to say this publicly?

If reluctance there is, the reason is probably not hard to figure out: it's because they know nobody would buy it. If Israel literally retreated to its borders, took down its walls, and foreswore any further military action, they would instantly be the target of endless, sustained terrorism. Eventually they would be destroyed. It would not be a "genocide" in the sense of killing 2% of Gaza, it would be a genocide in the sense of killing every Jew in Israel.

Help me out. Where am I wrong? Who should I be listening to on the Palestinian side that has sensible things to propose that don't presume the extinction of Israel?

It is now OK in Germany to use an apostrophe to indicate the possessive:

Guidelines issued by the body regulating the use of Standard High German orthography have clarified that the use of the punctuation mark colloquially known as the Deppenapostroph (“idiot’s apostrophe”) has become so widespread that it is permissible.

The Deppenapostroph is not to be confused with the English greengrocer’s apostrophe, when an apostrophe before an ‘s’ is mistakenly used to form the plural of a noun (“a kilo of potato’s”).

Huh. I'm fine with "idiot's apostrophe" since I think the apostrophe is pointless and, indeed, idiotic. The Germans should have stuck to their guns.

But "English greengrocer’s apostrophe"? I suppose I would have called it the "roadside fruit stand apostrophe," but it amounts to the same thing. I wonder why sellers of food are such common apostrophe abusers?

This is a bright but overcast morning on the Danube just past Passau.

I've spent ten years on chemotherapy with only moderate side effects: mostly fatigue and peripheral neuropathy. But Talvey! Jesus Christ. My mouth is cotton, swallowing is difficult, my breathing is so shallow I can barely climb a flight of stairs, and my sense of taste is completely gone. This stuff is a killer.

It's difficult to express this convincingly, but it's striking how central my sense of taste is to my well-being. Losing it is repellent and depressing beyond anything I would have guessed.

Are my taste buds ever coming back? I hope so. But so far not even slightly.

POSTSCRIPT: OK, but is the Talvey at least working? There's no way to tell. We won't know for a few more months.

Tyler Cowen points today to David Deming, who is alarmed at the decline in retail jobs:

The final labor market trend we uncovered was a very rapid decline in retail sales jobs, show in the figure below. Retail sales hovered at around 7.5 percent of employment from 2003 to 2013 but has since fallen to only 5.7 percent of employment, a decline about 25 percent in just a decade. Put another way – the U.S. economy added 19 million total jobs between 2013 and 2023 but lost 850 thousand retail sales jobs. The decline started well before the pandemic.

I don't find this alarming at all. Take a look at it this way:

Retail employees today generate about $39,000 in sales each month. Adjusted for inflation, this is up 32% since the year 2000. In other words, retail employees are more productive than they used to be.

Now take a look at the economy more broadly:

Each person in the US generates about $86,000 in GDP. This is up 32% since the year 2000. We are collectively that much more productive.

It is not just normal, but good, for economies to become more productive. Likewise, it's good for individual sectors to become more productive. This is a favorable sign for retail, not a bad one.

Behold our once and future president:

Republicans backing Donald Trump are threatening Deloitte, a consulting firm that is one of the federal government’s largest business partners, with the loss of billions of dollars in contracts because an employee shared messages from 2020 in which JD Vance, now the GOP vice-presidential nominee, criticized the then-president’s record.

Some guy who happens to work for Deloitte embarrassed the Trump campaign. Result: let's make sure Deloitte never gets another federal contract.

Needless to say, I couldn't care less whether Deloitte lives or dies. But Trump's endless threats against anyone who displeases him make him unfit for the presidency. How long is it going to take for 50% of the electorate to figure this out?

The Washington Post has a story today about payment apps like Venmo and PayPal. The gist of the piece is that they're inconsistently regulated and potentially not safe.

I know I'm an old dinosaur, but I don't really get the appeal of payment apps. Oh, if you use them solely to transfer small amounts to friends or for occasional eBay purchases, then sure. I suppose they're convenient. For everything else, though, I continue to recommend two things:

• Use credit cards. Tapping a credit card is about the easiest possible way of paying for things, and they're the only form of payment protected by federal law. You're never responsible for more than $50 in fraudulent charges, and dispute procedures are built in. No other payment method is safer or more convenient.
• For anything more than a few hundred dollars, keep your money in an ordinary bank. It's safe and insured. Anything else is a pointless risk.

I suppose I must be missing something here. I'm just not sure what.

Are we having fun yet? Over the past three years, consumption has grown 13.7%:

Now, these are annual figures, and the latest one represents an increase over the pandemic low. So it's maybe not totally fair. But it's still a great illustration of how strong the Biden recovery from the pandemic has been.

Over the past three years, the United States has produced 378 million barrels of oil per month:

This is yet another 50-year high. You may decide for yourself if it's unalloyed good news, but it's certainly strong economic news.