> it's not clear until the very end whether the character is going through increasing levels of paranoia, or dealing with an adversary
Er, which one do you think it resolved as? Your phrasing suggests you went from doubt to believing the narrator is reliable and sane. I was and am convinced in his reliability; yet, he fell for a painfully obvious ploy by the adversary, which is not terribly consistent with superintelligence. Nevertheless I understand the story to be, in-universe, reliable, but from outside, intentionally following narrative tropes consistent with mental illness. Other tropes include "there's something in the jab", "CIA is after me", "I have become the renfield of a hidden adversary".
So there's a lot of evidence for the opposite interpretation, that the protagonist is simply ill the whole time. This interpretation has the distinct advantage that falling for the attack was truly a flaw on the part of the protagonist (qua confabulator, I suppose) rather than the narrative or the author. In fact I can't really say why I don't adopt this as my preferred interpretation; perhaps a bias for my original interpretation, or skill on Chiang's part in convincing the reader of the less plausible explanation through, what, sheer sympathy?
> The folks objecting to this don't make much sense to me. The injunction forbids the gov't from doing the things that the plaintiff complains about. If the gov't isn't currently misbehaving, then the injunction is a No-Op: the government's claimed current state of doing nothing wrong will just continue as is (putatively) already is.
The argument being pushed is "The government didn't do those things and it's a good thing that it did." Makes perfect sense to me, in the correct context about the ideology of those pushing it.
That is a potentially grave mistake to make. They are in no way frugal (the very concept of being frugal with an unlimited faucet of "other people's money" is truly ridiculous). If they forbear to go to trial and/or appeal adverse rulings, it is only because they strongly prefer never to suffer adverse precedent. They would rather lose the same case a thousand times, than have precedent which restores the rights of ten thousand all at once, let alone 300 million. In a way it's quite the opposite of frugality.
Also, periodic reminder that articles which don't link (or even quote) primary sources are propaganda, not journalism. Here's an article which does link and quote: https://reason.com/volokh/2023/07/04/july-4-injunction-bars-.... Most notably, the order does not, as TFA claims, include a blanket ban on communication with specific carveouts. Only specific kinds of communication are banned, and the carveouts are on top of that.
Thanks, I started reading this article really just looking for an actual link to the injunction[1].
As you note, there is a helluva carve out. It's also incredibly frustrating to look for news on these cases. The heuristic I've had to use since 2016 or so is if there is no link to the primary source, I am being lied to.
>IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the Motion for Preliminary Injunction … is DENIED as to the following Defendants: U.S. Food and Drug Administration; U. S. Department of Treasury; U.S. Election Assistance Commission; [and] U. S. Department of Commerce
Edit: link to the decision, which is 155 pages long and filed earlier today. (Happy 4th of July, I guess). I am strongly skeptical this journalist has actually read all of it, let alone has spent enough time to properly analyze and research it for a story.
Preventing such stripping as a website operator would be trivial. Just sign the combined URL and tracking parameters and refuse to serve the unauthenticated version. This is very well understood technology with a barely novel application.
From what I heard, Facebook already does this, and it was supposedly introduced as a response to a similar anti-tracking measure by Mozilla. Not by signing the URL, but by encrypting everything into an opaque blob.
Primary sources are anathema to mainstream media. It's not just political articles, it's the whole damn profession. If you can watch ten seconds of him bowling you don't need to spend ten minutes on the article.
It's telling that not a single reply to your comment actually engages with the question about poor smart white kids. The answer is simple: poor white kids are the outgroup, and "mainstream" American society would like them to kindly go away. They aren't wanted. Society has no use for them.
> it's not clear until the very end whether the character is going through increasing levels of paranoia, or dealing with an adversary
Er, which one do you think it resolved as? Your phrasing suggests you went from doubt to believing the narrator is reliable and sane. I was and am convinced in his reliability; yet, he fell for a painfully obvious ploy by the adversary, which is not terribly consistent with superintelligence. Nevertheless I understand the story to be, in-universe, reliable, but from outside, intentionally following narrative tropes consistent with mental illness. Other tropes include "there's something in the jab", "CIA is after me", "I have become the renfield of a hidden adversary".
So there's a lot of evidence for the opposite interpretation, that the protagonist is simply ill the whole time. This interpretation has the distinct advantage that falling for the attack was truly a flaw on the part of the protagonist (qua confabulator, I suppose) rather than the narrative or the author. In fact I can't really say why I don't adopt this as my preferred interpretation; perhaps a bias for my original interpretation, or skill on Chiang's part in convincing the reader of the less plausible explanation through, what, sheer sympathy?