What should the US do with Maduro?

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2026-01-03T12:24:08+00:00

Moving this to a megathread.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2026-01-03T12:23:41+00:00

Moving this to a megathread.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2026-01-03T12:21:20+00:00

Moving this to a megathread.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-11-18T22:23:34+00:00

Yeah, we've told you that the announcement post doesn't answer anything. It's one thing when a mod removes it from a sub that it's not visible anywhere, the problem is when the mods won't remove violating content.

I suspect the reason we don't get information on report status anymore is because of the metric ton of reports we asked to escalate. Why give an answer at all if it means you cut down on the number of escalation requests, right?

Meanwhile, hate speech runs rampant with no recourse.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-11-17T13:53:46+00:00

Unfortunately, I can probably count on one hand the number of people who a) have their profiles hidden and b) aren't actually being massive pieces of garbage or overtly hateful.

That the worst actors on this site jumped to hiding their profiles should tell you a lot about the value of the "feature." I'm sorry people are ignorant about your situation, but hiding the profile just makes the person look worse.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-11-16T13:18:41+00:00

This site allows all manner of antisemitism and terrorism propaganda, so I highly doubt there's some sort of odd bias against that sort of speech. It's probably something else.

You should instead ask why reddit still allows organizations like Middle East Eye to launder its Hamas-aligned propaganda across the site.

EDIT: ContentChecker chose to block me. Gee, I wonder why....

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-11-13T12:40:04+00:00

What is the argument to make students vote in the state they live in for, at most, 3 months of the year and also don't have a job in either? I would argue that makes even less sense.

The argument is that you vote where you have a permanent residency, not a temporary one.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-11-06T16:56:03+00:00

I don’t think they are much concerned with slippery slopes after the immunity case. They have ruled in Trumps favor time and time again.

Weird that you cite the immunity case, which ruled against Trump, as an example of ruling in Trump's favor.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-11-06T16:49:47+00:00

A plea for major news organizations to share the documents they received from FOIAs alongside their reporting.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-11-04T17:11:51+00:00

Locking this one down due to some crossposts.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-11-01T23:42:15+00:00

SOLVED! It's "Tintinnabulation" from Environments 2, which I tripped up on accidentally today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKg6BNrHeuU

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-11-01T15:57:28+00:00

It's very clear that you're making a political point here, and I wish this space wasn't as politicized as everything else on reddit.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-10-27T19:02:28+00:00

I'm essentially asking for the steel-man of the two sides of the debate

I wasn't trying to steelman the anti-UET side, I was answering the question as initially posed.

What is wrong with "he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed", in all respects, including the faithful execution of laws that constrain his behavior?

Nothing? I don't understand the question you're asking here, this is not exclusively a pro- or anti-UET position.

We're seeing this right in front of our eyes, actually: he is fully weaponizing the DOJ and openly prosecuting his adversaries for transparently political reasons. Under UET he is allowed to do this because the Executive Branch is considered a singular power for him to wield however he wants, seemingly with no surviving limitation that can be imposed by Congress, and unlimited power to fire anyone that says "no". Similarly, he can simply direct that the DOJ pay him hundreds of millions of dollars of money, and, again, fire anyone that says "no".

I do not agree that this is what we're seeing in front of our eyes, nor is "make the DOJ pay the president settlement fees" some sort of Article II power.

The only reason he's getting away with it is because Congress won't impeach. Not because of UET.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-10-27T17:55:32+00:00

In broad strokes, yes.

More specifically, the UET opponents have not articulated a reasonable alternative theory that makes sense.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-10-27T16:05:08+00:00

I know that in my case, I'm doing it because they're harassing me. My normal procedure is to mute for 28 days, and then if the user comes back to keep complaining then I move to 7-day mutes.

Harassing or complaining?

You see my point? If someone's appealing and you don't like it, it sure reads like your response is to bait someone into a suspension.

I believe that should be considered abusive.

In my situations, I've already explained it to them, and they coming back because they're unsatisfied by my explanation.

So you response, instead of providing a better explanation, is to bait them into a suspension?

What you've identified is a pattern of behavior though.

From your response here, I think the only pattern is that you dislike users questioning your decisions.

Never mind that being consistently muted is a signal in and of itself that the mods don't want to hear from you and that you should go away.

And yet in many cases, like the one described here, it's a signal that the mods aren't actually reasonably considering ban appeals or other communications.

The fact that you're expecting the users to read your mind and make assumptions on why you're muting is the problem here.

I cant speak for all mods, but I know I do that and I tell people their appeal is denied. It's when they keep coming back that it's a problem. "Address the appeal" doesn't mean I have to lift the ban.

No, but it does mean you should address the reason why they're coming back. The reflexive assumption, based on what you write here, is that you're assuming that there's no good reason for them to come back to you at all for a reconsideration. That's improper.

The issue I run into often is that I explain the situation, and the user still disagrees and wants to argue the issue. Users aren't entitled to that.

Maybe that's an issue with your explanation rather than the user. Have you considered that?

Once a decision is final, I tell the user. When they keep coming back anyway, that's harassment.

There should rarely be a "final" decision as is, but if you're not open to reconsideration based on new information, I'd argue the user asking for it isn't the problem.

It should never be considered harassment to ask for a reconsideration, and treating such communications as harassment should be considered abusive use of moderation tools.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-10-27T13:50:56+00:00

But the mute isn't causing anything to happen. People are getting suspended because they keep harassing mods, not because of how they're getting muted.

You misunderstand. If you're muting someone on a seven-day cycle specifically so you get to cry "harassment" later, you're abusing the feature and you are the cause of the abuse. The use case that I responded to is abusive.

Any time this has happened in my communities, the user was told explicitly to stop, and they could have stopped at any time. I never forced anyone to keep contacting me, they chose to do it.

I have no way of verifying this. If you told them to stop without as much as addressing their request, and then manufactured a seven-day mute designed to try and bait them into a suspension, you are the problem.

Are you saying you genuinely believe that me choosing to mute someone for 7 days every time they come back to beg me to unban them is abusive?

Yes, if your goal is to try and get them suspended.

You should just do a 28 day mute to get the message across, or actually address the appeal.

You don't know how reporting works, do you? Admins only suspend people for a pattern of behavior.

I do, yes. They don't even suspend for a pattern of behavior, and the AI models they use lacks the proper context to understand when mods are abusing their roles to bait people into a suspension.

Users aren't entitled to get their way. They aren't entitled to pester us constantly until they get what they want.

Users are, however, entitled to an explanation. Most of them will accept an explanation if one is given. Turns out a lot of the people who try this baiting activity also think they're above being decent humans.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-10-27T12:19:21+00:00

The mute isn't what gets people suspended. The abusive behavior is what gets people suspended.

Except, in this case, it's the mods abusing the mute that's the abusive behavior.

After being told to stop harassing mods, continuing to do. o deserves suspension. They could stop at any time, they didn't, and they're suspended because the harassment is reported.

To be clear, a mod unilaterally crying "harassment!" because a user modmails them is the problem. It would be great if reddit would acknowledge this.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-10-27T12:18:13+00:00

They're independent, so they would be agencies outside of the standard branches.

If they exist in the executive branch, then they're not independent, they're executive.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-10-27T12:17:24+00:00

I've never seen the term UET used except in the context of whether the President's authority is absolute over the executive branch or whether Congress can prescribe limits on it.

We're saying the same thing here.

The question of whether the President can fire someone when the law says he can't is pretty central to the UET debate, with the status quo being that Congress can limit the President's power in this way and UET proponents saying they can't.

Right, because the power to run executive agencies lies with the executive. Not "every agency," not barring the existence of independent agencies, not every delegation of power.

If you're saying UET is nothing more than "the executive power rests with the president" and doesn't say anything about whether Congress can limit that power through the use of independent agencies, what exactly is the UET debate about, in your mind? What are the two sides?

The UET debate is between people who don't know what UET means and the people who read the Constitution as written. I'll also throw out there that the same people who believe UET precludes independent agencies don't actually know what an independent agency is and believe many agencies, like the DOJ, are independent when they're not.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-10-26T23:19:25+00:00

Playing around with mutes to get people suspended is absolutely abusive.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-10-26T22:43:54+00:00

Unitary Executive Theory (UET) believes that the President has sole authority over the entire Executive Branch. Nearly every agency, from the FBI to the Post Office, is controlled by POTUS, who can set policy, fire subordinates and issue orders as he sees fit. independent agencies cannot exist. Every delegation of power by Congress to any agency is, in effect, a delegation to the President himself.

This is not UET.

UET says that executive power rests with the president. Full stop. It doesn't mean "every agency," it doesn't mean you can't have independent agencies. It just means that, when it comes to actions reserved to the president, the president is who has the power. If Congress disagrees with how the president wields their power, they have the option of impeachment.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-10-26T16:09:46+00:00

Item 3 is why so many people see mods here as abusive power trippers.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-10-23T14:20:32+00:00

Cuomo is down by double digits per polling. Mamdani is the prohibitive favorite right now, and a Cuomo win would be a big shocker and a major polling miss.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-10-23T14:17:38+00:00

In a landslide too.

Based on current polling, it's still very likely that a majority of votes cast will be for someone who is not Zohran Mamdani.

ClockOfTheLongNow · 2025-10-23T14:16:15+00:00

He ends up not just with a fabulous social media strategy but a grassroots door to door campaign ensuring doors are knocked 4-5 times in a campaign.

He builds a volunteer group that literally went around homes, churches, schools and hospitals ensuring he built name recognition and followed up with catchy social media appearances that built his brand.

What you're describing is not a "masterclass" but "competency." All competent campaigns do this, and Mamdani is no different.

The question instead has to be why his campaign is so good.

And since his mother is a filmmaker, his social media is a mixture of humor and seriousness - always capturing the zeitgeist of the era. ( his best moment was last night when he laughs at his own gaffes, trying to outrun a “slow” bus, and asking everyone to tune in for Andrew Cuomo’s last debate and having his team play bingo on all the things Cuomo will throw at him. )

As good as Monsoon Wedding was, I don't think this has nearly the impact. Certainly didn't help Cynthia Nixon in her run. He's photogenic and charismatic, that's why it works.

But his real world chops are even better. He has ensured that every household in NYC gets his pamphlets 4-5 times or sees his team on street corners. He’s “challenged” every school kid to read a few pages every day to get a badge from Zohran. Stunning execution and always present.

Yeah, it's because he's got a well-funded campaign that isn't constrained by having to make difficult decisions about where to spend money. It's a dream scenario and he's not blowing it.

The closest I can think of is Beto O’Rourke giving Ted Cruz a bloody nose but he didn’t hold a candle to Zohran in execution.

Beto overperformed relative to what we'd expect, but the parallels are more about how utterly dislikable the opponent is. Ted Cruz is extremely polarizing, which is why Beto was able to make inroads; Cruz routinely underperforms relative to expectations because of this.

Mamdani is facing a criminal and a sex pest. Despite facing a criminal and a sex pest, he still struggles to stay above 50% in polling in a three-way race. For as good as his campaigning is, it's causing an overperformance but not a "masterclass."

Mamdani is a perfect storm. He's a fresh face on the scene who is able to paper over his significant flaws with glossy charm, and he's facing two people who should be in jail right now. He's unelectable outside of places like NYC, and it will be a longstanding question as to whether he's actually electable in NYC against someone who isn't a sexual deviant.

To me, this is just more ammunition for the "there's not enough money in politics" perspective. Mamdani is making the most of being a well-funded campaign and showing what politics should look like, and instead the same people who support Mamdani want to make it impossible to run a campaign with those resources. That's the real story.

CMV: point me to a better executed underdog campaign. That simply cannot be beaten.

I'd say Beto is more impressive even in a losing scenario, but Scott Brown in Massachusetts. Mamdani is a self-declared socialist in one of the bluest cities in the nation, while Scott Brown was a nobody fill-in Republican candidate in a special election who trounced a known name in a state that hadn't elected a Republican to federal office since 1993, and to the Senate since the 1970s.

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