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Robert Black

@hurricanexyz.bsky.social

14K followers 390 following 50K posts

Constitutional scholar, general law nerd, Izzet mage, bear lover, Mets fan. Trans rights are constitutional rights! Uphold Yang Wenli Thought He/him https://www.eveningconstitutional.net

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · Jun 3

I have an announcement!!

Introducing a new project at The Evening Constitutional: Constitutional Perspectives!

This is a series of explanatory essays aiming to be of use for readers with any level of prior knowledge of constitutional law

eveningconstitutional.net/introducing-...

Introducing: Constitutional Perspectives!

Announcing a new project here at The Evening Constitutional! As I wrote shortly after last November's election, one of my ambitions for this site is to create a library of materials explaining Americ...

eveningconstitutional.net

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 5h

Post-Civil Rights Act of 1964 lol

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 5h

The slow, steady decline throughout Bush II when they realized hey yeah things suck actually

And then just unremitting frothing rage through the entire Obama presidency

Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 5h

Ah, yes. At this point you're talking Fromm things, I think.

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 5h

Look

I was there, Gandalf, and I did in fact suddenly get much happier about the state of America as soon as Obama became president 😅

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 5h

Maybe, although it's also true that polling data gets sparse if you go back much beyond the internet age

And it's not like the concept of thermostatic backlash was unknown in ye olden times

Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 5h

The part where line go up on September 12th, 2001 (for both parties!) is kind of uhhhhhh Revealing, huh?

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 5h

Yeah, although there's another dimension to this

It must in some sense be true that the atoms comprising since object contain all the information about what that object is like and how it works

But... it ain't necessarily easy to read

Plenty of tools don't make sense until you see 'em used first

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 5h

Yes although a lot of these problems do predate the haunted house in question

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 5h

Honestly one striking thing about this is the sheer SALIENCE of politics

I mean I guess the question kind of prompts you to think in political terms, but still

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 6h

Yeah, strictly speaking this should be an upper bound. Although I suppose each atom itself has rather more than a single bit of information?

Regardless I think it's fair to conclude that all written human works do not add up to a complete description of a single person, in this sense

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 6h

Oh that's not even what I mean, I mean like, voter behavior seems normatively undesirable

Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 6h

Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuup

I feel like there's a whole bunch of stuff we take for granted about voter behavior that we never really quite stop to interrogate from a theory perspective

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 6h

Still. That's on the order of like 2^100 atoms.

And whereas that 2^40 above actually meant 40 bits, this one means 2^100 bits. I think.

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 6h

Right it's funny, my impulse is to be like, "if you assigned one bit to every atom in existence, that wouldn't be enough"

But... I mean, that can't be right, can it?? Presumably all the atoms that comprise Me do actually already contain all of this information.

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 6h

Yeah, see also amnesia plotlines. They can be done well, but it's tough.

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 6h

(That's log_2 of current world population, plus a few extra because why not)

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 6h

I mean I guess there's like, "this information would let you pick me out of an arbitrarily large room full of strangers" and then there's "this information is a complete description of me and What I'm Like in every detail"

The former, presumably not that big, like 2^40 or something?

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 6h

Jesus H. Christ in a rowboat

Like? They've been... held hostage?? This entire time??? They haven't had, like, agency????

Also haven't an awful lot of them been killed by Israeli bombs

Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 6h

You'll score a lot lower at some random resort course than you would at Pine Valley

But it's the latter, not the former, that would be a lifetime highlight to play

Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 6h

And because it's all really hard, the moment when you actually pull it off is extremely satisfying

But it only works if you basically go into it with your eyes open. If you're kind of looking forward to getting got by the devs. To having that "wtf am I supposed to DO??" feeling.

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 6h

Plenty of stuff in Silksong is Absolute Bullshit. That's just what the game is. But it's also like, doable?

Not that long ago y'all were making fun of me on here for dying 97 times on Celeste chapter one. Well, I haven't yet encountered something in Silksong I couldn't actually do, given time

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 6h

But of course, it's Pine Valley. You can't actually make a Pine Valley if you're worried about being reasonable! The joy, the majesty, comes from asking people to perform utterly lunatic feats

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 6h

A while back, I had the rare opportunity to go walk the grounds of Pine Valley. (It's open to the public one day a year, for some random amateur tournament.) And as I surveyed each hole, I kept grinning like a maniac and thinking "now be reasonable, you can't expect people to do THAT"

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 6h

Yeah, like, it's a game for people who beat Hollow Knight, and it's asking some pretty specific things of you, both in terms of playstyle (just accept that you can't bully even the normal enemies, you gotta learn the patterns & not get hit) and especially in terms of attitude

Kay F. Atkinson - Unlimited Combat Dolls out Feb. 10 @tinylesbianrobot.itch.io · 6h

silksong is interesting because I think it's really really good but I also think it's absolutely earned it's slightly divisive reputation

there are a bunch of area and combat design choices that really have the vibe of 'this was built by developers who spent seven years gitting gud at their game'

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 6h

Uhhhhh like, unthinkably large?

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Reposted by Robert Black

Kay F. Atkinson - Unlimited Combat Dolls out Feb. 10 @tinylesbianrobot.itch.io · 6h

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Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 11h

Hahaha, will do/will try to remember to do 😅

Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 11h

Why did Toronto pull Gausman again??

Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 11h

Hahaha yeah I dunno that this is the kind of thing you can put in a constitution, unfortunately

Robert Black @hurricanexyz.bsky.social · 11h

Ehhhh, the thing about fascism though is that it doesn't exactly make a claim to moral virtue. It just denies the importance/existence of moral virtue.

It's part of why it's so hard for people to wrap their brains around!