Exploitation is a loaded term, with many negative connotations. It’s more neutral to state the same thing as, “Nobody gets to be a billionaire without accruing the surplus value of other people’s labor.”

And that’s true of Notch, too. Minecraft wouldn’t exist without countless people who built the computers, the OS, the Java language, built out the Internet, operate the electrical grid, operate the payment networks, litigated and legislated copyright law, et cetera.

Now, you might say that all of those people got compensated for their labor, and it’s true. (That’s why the negative connotations of exploitation don’t apply.) However, the result of their labor unlocks immense value, which they do not share in because of the way the Internet developed. We could easily imagine a different scenario in which the online services won, an alternate reality in which Notch worked as a programmer for PepsiCo-Prodigy-AOL, and got paid a very good salary to create Minecraft for it. Then, it would be fair for the company to reap all of the subscription fees generated by putting the game on their network service.

We can say that in both scenarios, as long as we’re imagining, Notch would have put in the same amount of work. In one, though, he’d live a decent, middle-class life, with a corporation reaping the surplus value of his labor. In our world, he’s a billionaire, benefiting from the surplus value of others’ labor.

Yes, but he gets so deep into character, he could turn American!

That’s an expansive definition that also describes what a journalist does, which is what upset defenders of civil liberties about the prosecution of Assange. The usual connotation of the word espionage, however, is that it is done by an organization, against adversaries, for its own benefit. Assange was explicitly seeking information from whistleblowers to release to the world. Like a journalist.

But to my point, the CIA explicitly engages in espionage as its mission. So would President Xi be justified in sending his police to the environs of Langley to drag CIA employees out of their beds and before a court to stand trial in Beijing? I say no, because they’re American citizens in the United States. Chinese law should not apply here in America.

Traditionally, courts need to have jurisdiction to hear a dispute, and it comes in multiple types: There’s subject-matter jurisdiction; a municipal traffic court has subject matter jurisdiction over traffic infractions. It can’t hear a murder case. Then, there’s personal jurisdiction, meaning it has power to compel an appearance by a defendant, and impose penalties or assess damages. Personal jurisdiction usually comes from citizenship, or physical presence. State and federal courts have wide-ranging personal jurisdiction, but even then they have to “reach out and touch someone” with service of a summons to effect it. (Trial in-absentia is not allowed in the U.S. unless the defendant waives the right to appear.) Tangentially, the admiralty law system developed because of a lack of a country’s courts’ personal jurisdiction over foreign nationals, and suing property (the basis of civil forfeiture) came about due to sailors simply returning to their home countries, out of legal reach.

Thus, the idea of prosecuting a foreign national outside of the U.S., for actions undertaken outside of the U.S., in places where U.S. law shouldn’t apply—essentially extending a U.S. court’s personal jurisdiction to the whole planet—is deeply troubling. Even if it’s just one category of crime, like espionage. If there’s one exception, then there’s no practical protection, since a country can define espionage in any way it wants to trigger the exception. Or not. It could just accuse somebody of espionage, evidence be damned. After all, that person would be hauled off to a foreign land before being able to mount a defense in court.

That is a tool of tyrants.

Sacha Baron Cohen.

The appeal of Trump’s rhetoric and populist message is entirely subconscious, and doesn’t stand up to even a few moments of critical analysis. Baron Cohen has a genius-level understanding of how to get into people’s heads, and what’s more, he can do it fluently, on-the-fly. His U.S. presidential candidate character would totally dismantle MAGA.

And you keep saying espionage, invoking a word as if it’s some special kind of crime exempt from the rule of law, and also immutable. China gets to define what espionage is under their laws. The U.S. did mangle it far beyond the common definition to pursue Assange.

Also, it’s not even the same corporation or factories behind them. It’s just a brand name at this point, and the product has nothing in common with the old, good one. For example, Maytag bought Amana, and then Whirlpool bought Maytag. (It’s enlightening to read the list of Whirlpool-owned brands.)

Oof, yes, we need opponents for this guy who understand the fundamentals of how he and his rhetoric work. The better way to deal with him is to flip the frame. Specifically, in the opening statement, Biden needed to call out very explicitly that Trump was going to lie constantly, and furthermore, point out that you can recognize his lies when he says “best, strongest, biggest, greatest.” That little bit of verbal jiu jitsu would’ve ensured that it was no longer Biden calling out the lies, but the viewers’ own ears, and by bringing them to conscious attention, draining the power of those statements. (Trump spews lies and nonsense that don’t parse analytically, like that alphabet-soup closing statement, but he’s really aiming his words at the subconscious mind.)

Travel to those countries? The precedent here is that China has the right to extradite me for supporting democracy in Hong Kong from here in the U.S., never once even leaving my house. Assange was not a U.S. citizen, and located outside of U.S. territory.

Of course, the U.S. won’t cooperate with the extradition request, but that’s just a matter of power relationships, not principles. The principle is that everybody in the world is subject to every country’s laws. Or, every person in the world is subject to the laws of the U.S., which fundamentally breaks the rule of law.

It’s scary how many people out there are okay with that.

So your decision is to feign helplessness. I can only point this out, but it is your life and your decision to make.

Do you understand? Do you own that decision as your personal choice? I ask because posts like this one indicate otherwise.

Yikes! This reply validates my concern 100%.

Other sovereign nations get to make their own laws and legal systems without our control. They can make bullshit laws if they want to, like conflating journalism with spying. Then they can charge journalists in another country with a crime and extradite them to face charges. But, spying or journalism or criticizing their king, the details didn’t really matter, they could charge anybody anybody, anywhere in the world with any crime they want. And since it’s another country, we have no assurances of due process there.

That’s scary shit.

Another harsh truth that I learned from existentialist writers, especially Albert Camus, is that we are cursed with freedom. How we choose to deal with what the world gives us is entirely up to us, and refusing to choose is also a choice. If we choose not to try to be somebody worth having as a partner, well, that is a choice.

I also understand depression, and that making that effort may not be possible. Then, healthy alternative is to affirmatively make the choice not to try, and to own it. Sometimes, people call this, “owning your shit .” Paradoxically, it helps a lot by putting you back in control of your own life, instead of feeling like the universe’s chew toy.

So, listen to me or not. It’s your choice.

Harsh truth: No, it’s not enough. You have to convince somebody that their life will be better with you in it. Loyalty and respect are requisites for a good romantic relationship, not the reasons to get into one.

Wat? Are you thinking of Snowden?

Worse, it validates the precedent that non-U.S.-citizens can be prosecuted for breaking U.S. law over things they did outside of the U.S.

Really happy that Assange gets to go home, since he’s suffered enough personally, but I really don’t like the precedent that I can be prosecuted in, say, Israel under Israeli law for things that I did in Wisconsin (e.g. boycotting).

It’s a 19th century idea that appeared in the published decision of the Supreme Court in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co.

Only—get this—it wasn’t even what the Court decided. Instead, it was the guy in charge of recording the decision for publication who declared “corporate personhood” in the headnote (summary) of the case. And would it surprise you to learn that the guy was the former president of a railroad company? We just sort of went along with this not-precedent until the Citizens United case.

Honesty, I don’t think that there is a Great Filter. The Fermi Paradox strikes me as not very well-reasoned. A whole hell of a lot of things would have to go exactly right for civilizations to make contact, rather than it being the default assumption. There are lots of filters, not just one Great one.

But the closest to a Great Filter is that space is really, really. stupendously big. The chances of even detecting each other across such distances is vanishingly small, much less traversing them. Add in the difficulty of jumping the metabolic energy gap to become complex life, and that could reduce the density of civilizations down to a level that they’re just not close enough to each other in spacetime to admit even the possibility of contact. And we’re hanging our hat on some highly-speculative concepts like alien mega-structures harnessing whole solar systems to allow detection.

I think a lot of persnickety, smaller filters combine to make interstellar contact between civilizations against long odds. Perhaps the best we’ll get is spectral signatures from distant planets that are almost-conclusive proof of some sort of life.

It could be a word, like everybody or everything, perhaps a synonym for “24/7”.

When times is the diner open? Everytime!

Sheer bloody-mindedness.

Thank you for this moment of Zen.

I don’t have much to contribute, except that I recently got to a see a friend’s backyard. The whole street is built in an old quarry, so the yard abuts a weathered rock wall, which makes it a quiet, secluded enclave. You’d never know that you were in the city if you woke up there, and you’d almost expect to see gnomes and fairies among the maze of trees.