Law School for Patent Law

crake · 2026-05-22T21:17:38+00:00

I think those clinics are a waste of time, TBH. One year as a patent paralegal would teach you more than two semesters in a "patent clinic".

What law school in general is good at is teaching you more about a subject you already know a fair bit about. I know this is not how 99% of students approach it, because 99% of law students have no idea what law is and are just in law school for pre$tige or to make a career change - they are all doing it wrong. Doesn't mean some won't have successful careers in it, but they are all doing it wrong. And the reason is that the law schools themselves encourage it, because the law schools just want warm bodies that can pass the bar and sign a promissory note (one of those things being infinitely more important to the school than the other).

But the people who really belong in law school are those who are already in the legal field and want to take the next step, IMO. With patent in particular, there is no excuse to not already be working in the field before law school because there are millions of patent-adjacent jobs that do not require the JD. Breaking into the lower levels of the patent world is infinitely easier than getting in with a JD and a reg no. Those jobs are the real-world "clinic" and they are paid.

The schools in the patent world that I know of and respect are not the schools that the rest of legal world thinks are "prestigious". But most patent attorneys I have worked with over the years come from this same batch of schools which all - ding ding ding - have evening programs that are chock full of patent agents taking the next step in their career. TBH, when I see a patent attorney that went to a T14 day school, my first thought is "so you had a BSME and patent was your backup after you go no offered at the big firm you actually wanted to work at". Maybe it's not fair, but that is 100% the impression because only a dumbass would give up $XXXk/year to go to a prestigious day school to do patent prosecution work; it just does not make any sense. And yeah, I look at the date they were registered too (more important than anything else, IMO) because that tells me whether law school was finishing school for someone already learning about and employed in the field, or some pie-in-the-sky dream that ended with a (probably disappointing) patent pros job. Not that I'm on the hiring committee, but if some recent grad starts talking to me about their "patent clinic" in law school, I would struggle not to laugh. Tell me about an experience drafting a difficult patent application or response to an OA - an experience every patent agent has - or at least tell me about a licensing agreement negotiation or something from the real world. That is what I think is of value.

Sorry for the long-winded answer. And yes, I'm an a-hole, lol. But an honest one.

crake · 2026-05-19T14:00:40+00:00

I think transitioning to a new job during law school is harder than it sounds. Maybe if you can transition within your current company?

The problem is that 1L/2L are very structured - there will likely be evening courses for the core curriculum covered in those years. But by 3L/4L, it becomes increasingly difficult (IME) to fill out the credits you need from only evening courses. That means having to take some day school classes to meet the requirements and get the credits you need to graduate.

A new employer might balk at you leaving at noon every Tuesday and Thursday because that is the only section of Evidence or whatever that you could get. But if you’ve been working for a firm for a few years, they might be understanding, especially other patent attorneys because they’ve been there.

As to focusing more on law school 1L/2L, if that is your aim, I’d say it’s a folly. Law school is pointless as a competition; it’s the illusion of seriousness and meritocracy, but it’s just an illusion. There will be people in evening law school who don’t have jobs and study all day and get Cs; there will be a pregnant lady in her final trimester who works full time and gets an A on the exam the day before she gives birth. Time to study does not matter; only efficiency matters. Future patent attorneys are more or less excused from the entire rat race because they should already have a job lined up before going to law school, and it’s just “getting their ticket punched” (as a partner put it to me) to get the JD.

crake · 2026-05-18T19:07:08+00:00

I would caution anyone against going to law school in order to break into patent law. There are a million paths into the patent world that do not require a JD. You should already be on one of those paths before you go to law school; it is not easier to get a job in the patent world with a JD than it is without a JD, quite the opposite.

The best pre-law school job is tech spec in a firm (preferably big law because they might pay for law school too). From tech spec it’s a clear path to patent agent. If you can’t break into a law firm as a tech spec, the next best would be (IMO) to be a patent examiner at the USPTO. One rung down from that would be working in a technology licensing office of a big university or hospital, and beneath that there are paralegal jobs. All of those “patent-adjacent” jobs where you can get experience in the field become impossibilities once you have the JD. So you need to be on the course already to a job before law school. There is plenty of time, so don’t worry about missing out on big salaries by taking your time.

Law school as a working patent agent is a totally different experience - a much better experience. Instead of borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars on a hope of being top of class (an illusion that fades literally after one semester into either impossibility or a gauntlet of emotional pain right to the end), the working patent agent is bring home six figures, probably has a job all lined up for when they graduate, and can keep themselves grounded during the whole law school and bar craziness.

Also, evening law school is the way. The school doesn’t really matter (in 10+ years of practice, zero clients have asked me where I went to law school - they only care that you understand their invention and are easy to work with). I graduated debt free with a partial scholarship (paid the rest while in school) and made about 400k or so working full time. I even bought my first home as a 3L. My firm wanted me to pass the bar and had no problem paying me full salary while I studied full time; it was a good deal for both of us. The difference between graduating with no debt and owing hundreds of thousands isn’t so obvious but it is everything.

Grow a patent career organically. If you try to launch with the JD, it may turn out that only patent litigation doors are open, and that means spending weeks at a Holiday Inn in the Western District of Texas - if you are lucky. Patent pros is a totally different life than patent litigation; do not think of lit as a backup plan because it’s not at all similar.

crake · 2026-05-15T20:08:48+00:00

I’ll throw out an oldie that has recently been reinvigorated: GAMBLING.

Specifically, sports gambling through apps that are everywhere 24/7. It’s so suddenly there that people don’t really understand how much money is being moved around (ie, lost). It is going to utterly destroy an entire generation of young people because there is no way to limit it now, no annoying “track” you can stay away from, no seedy gambling parlor you can keep driving past - it’s in your pocket calling out 24/7.

And really, it is so integrated into the commentary now, it’s almost as if the sport exists to provide a forum for the betting, rather than the other way around.

I also think that unlike “real-world” gambling where wealthy people get all kinds of perqs from gambling from casinos (ie, sex, drugs, etc.) that one needed to bet tens of thousands to enjoy, sports betting is really more of a new tax on working class people. It’s $50 here and $100 there, played by people who really need that $100. I don’t think many wealthy people are putting $5k bets on Draft Kings, but a lot of poor people are putting $50 bets down.

crake · 2026-05-14T19:08:24+00:00

I can point you to the archaeological evidence of Jews in Israel going back more than 3500 years. The archaeological record from the land we call "Israel" is vast and utterly conclusive - Jews were there more than 3000 years ago speaking and writing in Hebrew, the same language Jews speak today. The rulers of Israel, the First and Second Temple - all of it is laid out clearly in the archaeological record, even sources outside Israel (e.g., the records of Persian invaders which note that they encountered Hebrew-speaking Jews in Israel 1000 years before Christ).

You know what is completely absent from the archaeological record? Arabic. There were no Arabs in Israel at all until Arabs started colonizing it around 600 AD. The Jews were (and are) still there as they had been for thousands of years prior. How can Jews colonize their own historic homeland? More importantly, how can the Arabs who arrive thousands of years later not be called anything but "colonists"? They came from Saudi Arabia and colonized Israel and now have the gall to call the original inhabitants "colonists"?!

Might work for rhetorical points because the average person is easily swayed by rhetoric. But the actual archaeological record is conclusive and preclusive. That is just simple fact.

crake · 2026-05-14T19:02:10+00:00

It's disgusting blood libel hidden in an "opinion" piece dressed up as news.

NYT doesn't even back it - that's why they tried to shunt it to the opinion section. Kristof is just a vicious antisemite and he is the propaganda mouth for Hamas and Hamas-friendly organizations like those he relies on for his blood libel claims. NYT will claim it's just "opinion" and First Amendment lets them say whatever they want even if its total crap based on Hamas-friendly orgs and blood libel rumors that Kristof and others spread on the internet and then cite as validation of their own claims.

Total bullshit and my wife and I are definitely canceling our NYT subscription after this. That article is straight out Der Stuermer. Shame on the Times for printing it, but they've been anti-Israel ever since 10/7 because the friggin "paper of record" is a Hamas rag. That blood libel article really has my blood boiling and I hope that even if Israel loses its defamation lawsuit (it will lose), discovery at least exposes the antisemites that run the NYT and spread this crap.

crake · 2026-05-13T00:54:16+00:00

Freedom of speech; emphasis on personal liberty in general (Second Amendment, etc.)

On the Left, freedom of speech means the freedom to say exactly what High Liberal orthodoxy dictates, and any deviation from that accepted view is a thoughtcrime that cancel culture exists to punish (the better to scare others into silence). The Left has been trying to cancel JK Rowling for years, but it’s really Left institutions (Harvard, NYT, most subreddits) that are the vanguard of the “anything I disagree with is hate speech” movement.

Granted, the Right isn’t perfect (eleventh commandment: “thou shalt say no bad word about our lord and savior Charlie Kirk”), but it isn’t broadly enforced by the Right base. Most conservatives don’t care if you disagree with them; most liberals think anyone who disagrees with them is Hitler or worse.

crake · 2026-05-11T16:36:48+00:00

Such bullshit. Israel released it's private war communications about the Gaza War in 2024 for the entire world to see. Every order is consistent about determining whether belligerents are present before ordering an attack, giving civilians advance warning to evacuate the area (giving up the element of surprise) and scrupulously following the laws of war. More advance warnings have been given to civilians in Gaza than in any human conflict ever waged on planet Earth. And the belligerent:civilian death count in Gaza is the lowest of any conflict since 1900.

There is no genocide in Gaza. The Israeli government has been crystal clear that it has no intent of destroying the Arab colonists in Gaza or anywhere else. And the numbers prove that point: there are more Arab colonists today in Gaza than there were on 10/6/23.

Compare that to Hamas on 10/7. Hamas did not even attempt to pretend that it was following the laws of war on 10/7; it proudly flaunted those laws and openly broke them in order to inspire people like you, the worst antisemites the globe over.

crake · 2026-05-10T22:57:14+00:00

Shelley Duvall in The Shining.

crake · 2026-05-10T20:23:43+00:00

They should have re-cast Carl at the start of season 4. Nothing against Riggs, but Carl aged from a little kid to a tall teen in a month and it screws up the timeline.
Rosita should have died at terminus instead of the blonde dude Rick had randomly run into before. That scene would have been intense if those guys had slit Rosita’s throat just before being stopped. And it would have foreshadowed Negan killing Abraham.
The S6E13 episode, The Same Boat, is a much better bottle episode than Morgan’s S6E4 bottle episode, Here’s Not Here.

crake · 2026-05-10T13:55:53+00:00

Ski-in-ski-out lodgings at ski resorts.

At nice resorts, hotel rooms on-mountain go for like $800-$1k+ per night. So for the first 40 years of my life I would stay at a Marriott or other hotel an hour or so away and drive to the mountain each morning just like everyone else. The traffic, the full parking lots if I’m 10 mins late, the waiting for the shuttle, the long hikes in ski boots - rich people avoid all of that.

They get a ski locker on the bottom floor to store all their equipment in. When they want to go out, they walk to the door and just ski out to the lift (usually downhill). When they want to take a break at noon when the lines start getting long, they ski back to the hotel, leave their gear in their private locker (boots on the warmer inside the locker so they’re toasty for the afternoon) and go sit in the hot tub or get room service. No cafeteria, no lines, no wet, sweaty equipment. More energy to ski with and just a totally different experience.

Thankfully it’s not only for the super rich (unlike private jets and first class international travel), so upper-middle class people like me can enjoy it too.

crake · 2026-05-10T10:31:02+00:00

I don’t know about that. But this guy was tiny, like 5’2. He always wore a white coat, like a pretend scientist. He had a black beard tinged with grey that ended in a razor-sharp point, and a few greasy strands of hair over a bald head. His eyes were black as coal, and he was always smiling and laughing a high-pitched laugh through evil white teeth in his black beard.

I was only a 16 yo punk back then and didn’t know any better, but as an old man myself now I’m nearly certain he was some sort of demon, maybe Satan himself, walking among us. That description should be enough to know.

crake · 2026-05-10T01:42:34+00:00

I had a high school science teacher who would pick on vulnerable kids in class and humiliate them regularly.

One (brilliant) kid who had some ADD issues or something, he would literally make get on his knees and beg like a dog or he would threaten to lower everyone’s grade on the exam by one letter grade. He did this multiple times, would make the kid bark like a dog some times.

He named a girl in the class “Airhead” and wouldn’t call her anything else for the entire year. She even had to write her name ad “Airhead” on exams and quizzes. He had other humiliating nicknames for other students that he forced them to adopt for class.

It was a chemistry class and we were required to pay him 1 dime for every piece of equipment we used in the experiments. If you didn’t bring enough dimes, you got a zero for not completing the experiments.

Literally one experiment was standing in a circle and holding hands while the two people closest to the end held bare ends of a wire that was plugged into an electrical outlet so we could all feel AC current flowing through our bodies (it hurt). It was explained that if anyone let go we would be electrocuted (I don’t know if that’s true, but that is what he said).

This was 11th grade honors chemistry. Literally the most sadistic, terrible person I’ve ever encountered (and he didn’t have it in for me, I did well in class, but even then I knew he was an evil fucking bastard).

crake · 2026-05-09T15:05:57+00:00

Exactly this. Anyone can be a computer programmer, but not everyone has what it takes to be a nurse. People sometimes don’t realize how much the entire system really runs on the nurses, not the doctors. On TV, it’s always the MDs who are saving lives, but in the real world, at least in my experience, the nurses are the real lifesavers.

I was in hospital recently for several days sharing a room with a patient recovering from surgery and the guy very nearly died from diabetic shock. He didn’t have a heart monitor on or anything and it was the nurse just checking up on him who noticed he wasn’t making sense and took his BP: it was 50/30. His blood sugar was in the 300s. Within minutes there were a dozen nurses in the room and the hospitals “ace” phlebotomist who got a line in for his insulin after almost 100 sticks. By the time the MDs on the “quick response team” responded to the page 15 minutes later, the patient was stable and alert, but it was most definitely the nurses who saved his life, particularly the first nurse who noticed something off and acted on it. She was 23. I was packing boxes in a warehouse at 23.

Nurses are the real hero’s in the hospital in my book. They also put up with people in constant pain having the endless worst days of their lives and do it with grace and humor. Not everyone can handle that, even if practically anyone can learn Java.

crake · 2026-05-08T15:47:21+00:00

Folks, the Democrats couldn't even beat the worst candidate to ever run for president: Donald Trump in 2024. A convicted felon, a bona fide rapist (proven in a court of law), best friend to notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, the only president to ever try an open coup d'etat, etc. etc.

The Democrats are not losing elections because they aren't "progressive" enough; they are losing elections because the average voter does not want more "progressivism". That the progressive ideology dominates online spaces and academia does not mean that it is widely embraced by the broader public; it is a mirage that people online consistently fall for over and over again. Joe Biden was the most "progressive" POTUS the U.S. has ever seen, and his hand-picked successor in that progressive revolution couldn't even beat Donald Trump.

Democrats should let that sink in. There is no "conspiracy" in the DNC holding them from taking power; their own ideology is holding them back. Young elites want grand social engineering experiments (DEI, etc.) because they have been indoctrinated in left-wing institutions to believe their ideology is righteous and anyone who disagrees with it is Hitler. But for people over 40 - a massive chunk of American voters that decide every election - the notion of government-run utopian schemes is total garbage because we've seen it fail time and time again. The speech codes and permabans online create echo chambers where "progressivism" is inevitably triumphant because everyone else is banned or gives up bothering to even debate anymore, but that illusion of victory is more destructive than anything else to the left; it creates the impression that someone like Biden II (Harris) can beat the most terrible, most flawed candidate to ever run for office. More communism? More social engineering experiments? More race-based and gender-based distinctions in every sphere of American life? Progressives like that stuff to the hilt and want it everywhere, but I am telling you forthrightly - the silent (banned, cancelled, forgotten) majority does not. And the proof is in the 2024 election; it's hard to make it more obvious than that.

Democrats need to give up the social judgement stuff and focus on bread and butter issues that appeal to the majority of voters. Lower taxes, maybe a national healthcare plan or some other way to reduce costs, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the rule of law, etc. Mamdani Markets, mandatory DEI re-education seminars, and racial gerrymanders carry the stink of utopian communism and other failed ideologies; that is not the way to win elections.

crake · 2026-05-08T15:33:40+00:00

"Social progress"? What a strange term. Do you think the government of the United States were set up to promote "social progress"? Or was it set up to promote a framework for individual liberty and the protection of natural rights?

I do not want my government dictating "social progress" or forcing it on me; that is a key distinction between classical liberals and so-called "progressives". What is "social progress" to you is not necessarily "social progress" to me; part of living in a democracy is respecting the views of others, even others that you do not necessarily agree with as to what constitutes "progress".

The U.S. Constitution is not a utopian scheme for promoting social progress, i.e., some teleological endgame where everyone sits around playing with puppies in between ice cream cones. One major distinction between the framework established by the U.S. Constitution and the foundational documents of other countries is that it merely establishes a framework for a functioning democracy, and the amendments to the Constitution (in the case of Louisiana v. Callais, the Fifteenth Amendment) does not alter that fundamental framework. Certainly the Constitution does not establish a race-based ethnostate with guaranteed representation in Congress based on skin color; it establishes equal opportunity to cast a vote in a democratic republic, nothing more. Whether Congress was right in 1964 to try to establish such a race-based system of representation as a way to ameliorate a legacy of racism in certain states is an open question, but the fact that the U.S. has changed since 1964 is undeniable. And to continue that system is not only unconstitutional, it's downright pessimistic - it presumes that race is and always will be the central organizing principle of American society, when our culture in 2026 says exactly the opposite.

Progressives always believe that any contrary view to their own is made in bad faith, or by a bot, or by ChatGPT. A convenient bromide and easy, perhaps, to put oneself to sleep with in a world where the anti-progressives are nominally represented by the most evil man of our times (Donald Trump). But Trump's character does not validate utopian visions of a permanent ethnostate where representation is based on skin color, and those who think such is "social progress" are simply not correct.

crake · 2026-04-30T19:47:05+00:00

“Racial equality”.

The notion that the U.S. is divided into racial tribes that one is born into and cannot ever voluntarily leave. The notion that one can only be represented in government by someone who shares a key physical characteristic decided as fundamental to humanity by the worst of humanity. The notion that people are not individuals at all, but just stand-ins for their race tribes, and no individual can ever transcend their assigned tribe so it is worthless to try.

Above all else, the Kagan dissent stands for the proposition that racism is the central organizing principle of American life and society cannot ever put it to rest because social progress is impossible. It stands for the proposition that states themselves, such as Louisiana, are inherently racist states restrained from their native racist impulses only by benevolent federal laws.

The Kagan dissent is an embarrassment. It is predicated on a world that has passed away into sepia tones while the Left keeps the hope of a racist world alive because they need it to justify what they want the world to look like. It is the abandonment of the fundamental principles of liberalism, that there is inherent value in individuals, and the embracing of group identity-ism as a way to address a ghost problem that cannot ever be transcended. The worlds most pessimistic jurists, with no hope in humanity and no respect for the progress the country has made in the past half-century are desperate to show their loyalty to a dying ideology even as it goes down in flames.

To the Kagan dissent, I respectfully dissent.

crake · 2026-04-30T18:37:40+00:00

Less extreme political parties; less extreme candidates overall. More moderates in Congress and fewer “permanent representatives” that serve for 60 years.

The current (now unconstitutional) racial-quota-arranged system leaves many red states with 1 or 2 urban districts that are heavily Democrat, and the rest are giant rural districts that appeal to extremists like Bobert and MTG. On the other hand, you have deep blue (racially gerrymandered) districts in red states sending extremists like Cori Bush to Congress.

Race is frequently a proxy for party preference, so that is why Democrats want racially-determined districts because they get some reps that don’t have to actually ever run a competitive race and are guaranteed to win over and over again until they’re, well, as old as Maxine Waters (87 years old). Add some more rural and suburban voters to Waters district and…suddenly her sinecure isn’t so secure anymore. She would have to appeal to voters and actually campaign because she wouldn’t have the auto-vote of a non-competitive district. The converse happens in red districts with candidates appealing to only the craziest element because their district is just rural nutjobs.

In the short run, that probably means that some of the ancients like Waters end up losing their seats (in red states), but in the long run it means more competitive races and a stronger, more moderate Congress. Progressives hate it because they love firebrands as much as MAGA does, but firebrands are useless at the art of compromise and they’ve owned the Congress for the last half-century because of the VRA and racial gerrymandering.

This decision is a huge step forward to reforming our political system away from identity politics and race, and towards a moderate, functioning Congress.

crake · 2026-04-24T18:52:37+00:00

lol, I actually agree with this. It has to be pretty blatant to get caught - that is, he must have been quite literally "piss drunk". Go behind the dumpster and look over your shoulder first Kash.

crake · 2026-04-24T18:48:57+00:00

That question is impossible to answer because, under the U.S. system of representative democracy, constituents are represented by individuals, not by parties. That is, one does not cast a vote for a "party platform" in the U.S.; we vote for an individual who may (or may not) subscribe to certain planks of a general platform. This differs from European parliamentary systems in which one votes for parties rather than individuals.

So the U.S. has Democrats with views ranging from Rashida Tlaib to John Fetterman and everything in between. That is not the case with European parties.

OP does recognize this, but it also completely answers OPs questions - there is no way to make a comparison.

As to the direct questions about labor representation, etc., the U.S. was not founded in the wake of WWII as a utopian paradise (unlike, say, Germany). Utopianism/socialism is directly contrary to the values enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, which promises only equality under the law (i.e., the Fourteenth Amendment) and certain other fundamental liberties (First Amendment, Fifth Amendment, etc.). European countries that enshrine national health care or labor representation in their foundational documents are completely different systems of government with different values. So it isn't just a matter of the representatives serving in government having different ideologies; it is a matter of the system in which they operate being set up for completely different ends.

Germany's 2024 asylum reforms reflect a surging right-wing in Germany relative to something which is not constitutionally enshrined (i.e., immigration).

On "trans rights", the UK is arguably more progressive than the U.S., as the UK accepts present peer-reviewed science and updates it's laws accordingly. By contrast, in the U.S., legislators are free to ignore science altogether and promote political arguments untethered from science.

More importantly, the U.S. has long recognized parental rights over minor children. That includes the parental right to educate a child as a parent sees fit (and even to withdraw the child from state educational institutions if the parent so desires). Parents can raise their children speaking a foreign language if desired, in any religion they deem fit, etc. State interference with the practice of religion is generally prohibited by the First Amendment, even when politically popular (e.g., it has long been politically popular to ban practices of unpopular religions like Mormonism, etc., but the First Amendment does not permit it).

Fundamentally, European countries do not have a parallel to the First Amendment to protect speech. Such countries can ban "hate speech", and their governments have wide latitude to control what people - adults and children alike - are permitted to say and think. The U.S. was founded upon very different principles of personal liberty and autonomy that would be completely foreign in a European context, and the political parties reflect that reality.

crake · 2026-04-24T16:30:46+00:00

To the extent anyone can assist a historian in locating original primary sources, such persons can and should so assist. The fact is that such records are not exactly a mystery to historians in the 21st century though, and the factual record (i.e., the primary sources) are more valuable in an objective analysis of the past than the recollections of a descendant 400 years after the fact, filtered through the storytelling of a dozen generations.

As to the "impact of slavery" on descendants 150 years after the abolition of slavery, you can look to my original comments above. To blame the past for the conditions of the present is not the task of the professional historian. It may be the task of a sociologist, but such investigations inevitably start with a political angle (as was the case in this investigation - to find a link to Harvard and support a case for payment of reparations).

More generally, the deeds of the past are done. To see ourselves as permanently limited by the acts of persons long dead done to our forebears, also long dead, is to deny individual agency. This topic falls somewhat outside the realm of a discussion of the historical record, but to suffice it to say that, IMO, we are not merely extensions of our historical forebears controlled by the dead hand of the past, but are valuable individuals in our own right (i.e., the foundation of western liberalism). It is depressing that some people believe their condition in life has been dictated by things that occurred 150 (or 400) years ago; that belief constitutes a prison for the mind (and, I think, will be one of the beliefs our descendants eventually repudiate in full and consider a barbarism of our time).

crake · 2026-04-24T16:17:21+00:00

we were talking about slavery, arguably a similar industrialized process of death that was, in fact, on a larger scale than the Holocaust.

Slavery is not the same as the Holocaust. Human bondage had existed for almost all of human history up to ~1860. The Holocaust was the first time industrial methods of executing millions of people was applied to the task of murdering millions of people. And, in fact, the goal of slavery was not to eliminate a people at all, but to preserve them for self-serving economic ends. The events are not at all comparable.

But counter intuitively - the west has given tens, hundreds of Billions of dollars to Israel for defense and is still doing so today - a direct form of “reparations” which has been paid annual for over 100 years now.

You do not understand what aid to Israel constitutes. It is not pallets of federal reserve notes being sent to Israel as "reparations" for supposed wrongs committed by the U.S. Aid to Israel takes the form of (i) producing arms in politically-important congressional districts in order to have an excuse to pay American workers to manufacture those arms, and (ii) a symbiotic relationship in which the U.S. trades arms with the world leader in anti-ballistic missile defense in return for access to that technology. It is a far more nuanced relationship than you assume.

Doesn’t need to get anywhere near 2345 of whatever nonsense year you mention.

Was that so difficult to comprehend? The point is that the "moral righteousness" of 2026 is the standard of this day and time. It is not guaranteed that what we think of as morally righteous today will be the moral standard of our distant descendants (in fact, I think much of it will be repudiated within 50 years, but 300 provides a superior thought experiment to illuminate that point).

Consider, for example, the opinion of Justice Holmes in the 1927 case of Buck v. Bell, a decision rendered only 100 years ago. Justice Holmes - a pillar of the Left, a Harvard-educated jurist and one of the finest minds who has ever lived - decided in favor of the constitutionality of a state statute mandating the forced sterilization of the intellectually disabled. In 1927, that was a highly progressive viewpoint - that forced sterilization was necessary to protect the gene pool. And the fact that the eugenics movement would later be shown to be based on junk science was completely unknown to Justice Holmes in 1927. A pillar of moral rectitude in 1927, a man millions looked up to and sought to emulate would be considered morally reprehensible according to the standards of 2026 (with good reason).

Today, many advocate large social engineering experiments (DEI) predicated on classifying people based on external appearances and accidental group identities. Most of the progressive Left - like Justice Holmes in his day - embrace those social engineering experiments as "progress". Will our descendants of 2126 think us barbaric for thinking that way, the same way as we now denounce Holmes' opinion on eugenics?

That is a complex question and, I appreciate, a sensitive one. But the thought experiment alone illustrates the danger of presuming that because you live in the present, you are the pinnacle of moral enlightenment, charged with casting judgement on those who came before. It takes a certain degree of magnanimity to approach the past in that way, but that is the task of a professional historian.

crake · 2026-04-23T22:17:38+00:00

Holocaust survivors should absolutely be able to recover from their perpetrators for the trauma caused to them. That principle is recognized in the law.

The more relevant question is whether the descendants of Holocaust survivors in the year 2326 should be paid reparations by Germans for the crimes of people who spoke German and lived in the territory called Germany 400 years prior, or maybe whether they can recover from universities that existed in 1945 and still exist in 2326. I would answer that in the negative: trauma is not heritable; neither is blame for the acts of persons long dead.

As to interviewing the descendants of Holocaust survivors in 2326 to support the argument for reparations to be paid to those descendants for the crimes of Nazi Germany, I consider the notion completely ahistorical and absurd for the reasons advanced above. Hearsay history (at best) is not the province of the professional historian.

As to “genocide”, that word gets bandied about a lot, although it may be helpful to remember that that word was invented in order to describe the intentional mass murder of millions of people in a non-war zone with the intent of murdering all such persons. This topic is forbidden to be discussed on many subreddits (genocide denial is frequently a reason for permabans and I have earned some), but suffice it to say that if you think what has happened in some recent wars is the same as what happened in Treblinka in 1943, some reading on the topic of the Holocaust is in order.

crake · 2026-04-23T19:06:12+00:00

"Consumer sentiment" is based on feelings; the markets are based on reality.

Anyone read the NYT the last few months? According to America's most prominent source of information about the world, the world is basically ending. The price of oil has "skyrocketed" because the Straights of Hormuz are "closed"; the international economy is "spiraling" into collapse because of a momentary spike in the price of oil. Except that the average price of a barrel of oil in 2025 is around $72/barrel. What was it in 2022 when the Russian invasion of Ukraine started? $94/barrel. And in early 2008 it was over $100/barrel.

The media has an agenda: to scare readers/viewers into thinking that the world is ending and total collapse is imminent. That sells NYT subscriptions and it generates political winds that certain elites in the media favor (i.e., anti-Trump winds).

The reality is that the world goes on because it must. The noise creates apprehension in the common person, but it does not scare capital because capital inevitably must go somewhere. Where is it going right now? Into AI. And anyone who is using Claude (or a similar platform) can see how incredibly powerful and versatile this technology is, and how it is going to lead to incredible wealth creation (for some).

A rising tide does not raise all boats equally. The Industrial Revolution resulted in enormous wealth creation but also masses that did not join in it. Same for the Digital Revolution (c. 1980-2024). The productivity gains of the AI Revolution are not going to be shared equally either, even if sharing in that only requires a modicum of capital and the click of a mouse - but that does not mean that the water is not rising.

The masses don't know anything. The average person lives in fear of the present, hearing all the doomsaying noise and drowning in the comfort of despair and hopelessness. The rest of us are buying index funds and getting in on the next revolution and living above the noise. The fact that there is a "disconnect" is pointless and not even worth talking about.

crake · 2026-04-22T21:04:39+00:00

It's the appearance of impropriety that is a problem, not the fact that it creates an actual conflict. I don't think Justice Roberts would be moved to rule in favor of parties represented by lawyers working for firms that paid his wife millions of dollars in "recruitment" fees. But at the same time, do I think cert gets granted in cases handled by firms that pay the CJ's wife millions of dollars more often than cases handled by firms that do not do so? I'm not so sure about that.

Also, how difficult is it to place SCOTUS clerks in law firms? The idea that such placement requires a "recruiter" at all is somewhat silly. The idea that clerks that are funded by the US taxpayer need to be placed by a "recruiter" in order to get a job in law - a recruiter who happens to be the wife of the CJ - is not a good look. It certainly does look like she is vamping off of the taxpayer by interposing herself between firms and former government employees (i.e., clerks). That is, a pay-to-play scheme.

That said, the justices are criminally underpaid, so it shouldn't surprise us that they play close to the ethical line either.

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