California matters

People giving up their guns for gas gift cards? The fuel price there is getting worse, huh? Never expected Usonians to willingly give away their guns, considering all the over-the-top anti-gun control rhetorics and ads I've seen. Sure, the UN is coming for your guns.

Edited by SteamKnight on May 24th 2022 at 1:45:16 AM

Guns for gift cards isn't that uncommon, actually. Though the sudden urgency for gas card trade is. When combined with other measures it helps lower the rate of gun violence in an area.

I see. I didn't know anything about that. Hmm... I just learn a new thing today.

Should I be concerned that so many people were willing to give away their guns or that so many people had guns?

I'm more concerned with the latter honestly. Especially since the further out east from the California coastline you go, the more deep south it becomes.

In a ruling that makes perfect sense, and yet is still becoming a meme, bumblebees are now fish under California law.

What's actually happening is Loophole Abuse and analogy interpreting a law to get the results that regulators want. Bumblebees are an endangered species in California and important to the ecosystem, but the plain wording of the law doesn't allow insects to be a protected species. So they're saying that "fish" actually just means "invertebrates," so that bumblebees can get protected status, and the court has accepted that.

Edited by Ramidel on Jun 5th 2022 at 11:25:52 AM

The funny thing is this isn't the first time, historically, that something has been declared a fish arbitrarily because someone said "but that rule only applies to fish" in regards to doing something vaguely important for a non-fish, what with beavers being declared fish by some parts of the church at one point to allow for them to be eaten on friday.

(Of course, we didn't hear about this the time snails and other invertebrates were declared fish under the California Endangered Species act.)

I mean the problem is clearly with the law being way too narrow as written. But then, it was under Reagan that the law happened so we're lucky we got anything at all out of him.

The way the law is written makes it pretty obvious it was intended to extend protection to every living thing in California, but since insects weren't included specially in the general list I can see why they had to do some creative thinking in the fish category.

But all the clades we identify as fish are vertebrates.

I have a degree in biology, so I am qualified to make this statement.

...On a serious note, I am glad that they're extending legal protection to bees, even if they're having to do it in a weird way.

Hope they extend that to other native bee species as well, not just the bumblebees and honeybees everyone heard about.

I think Ramidel explained it backwards. The law doesn't extend any protection for insects, hence why the bees were taken off the endangered list. But under the section for protecting fish the law also extends protection to a variety of classifications that broadly cover most marine life. "Invertebrates" is among those.

The line probably refers to marine invertebrates given the context. But! since it doesn't specify, the bees' lawyers argued successfully that they qualified for invertebrate protection under the fish clause. Hence all the reporters making jokes that the bees are legally fish.

Hooray loopholes!

Reminder to all my fellow Californians that you still have a couple of hours to vote in today's primaries!

California primaries are being counted now, and so far it doesn't look like there's been any surprises.

Despite concerns about Katie Porter's district getting redder after redistricting, she's currently pulling in more votes than all the Republicans in her race put together.

Governor Newsom and Senator Padilla have both advanced to the general, to no one's surprise.

Republican Rep. Michelle Steel and Democrat Jay Chen are about even in the 45th District, but another Republican is also running in that race and his votes combined with Steel's doesn't paint a rosy picture for the general.

Not entirely surprising, 45 is Irvine and a large chunk of the orange curtain. But still, considering the reputation of the orange curtain, it's impressive that that district can swing at all.

It did go against recalling Newsom though, so there's a bit of hope even with the republicans having a slightly higher share of the primary vote. It's possible that democratic turnout could rise going into the general election as less engaged voters step forward during the main thing. We'll see though. Steele does have incumbent advantage of course.

Edited by Florien on Jun 7th 2022 at 10:42:50 AM

Check me on this: Many of the recent pro-housing laws in California were enacted with decent Republican support, true or false?

In regards to the law specifically mentioned in the tweet, SB 9, this does seem to be the case. Democrats have a supermajority of nearly 60 of the 80 seats in the State Assembly, but enough of them opposed to bill to bring support from Democrats alone to just a few votes shy of passing it on their own. 7 of the 19 Republican assembly members crossed party lines to vote for it though.

Someone posted this in the US politics thread: California Legislators Seek To Burn Down The Internet — For The Children - I note though that apparently the bill linked on the state parliament website was significantly altered (to the point of being unreadable) but the most dodgy part "Establish the age of consumers with a reasonable level of certainty appropriate to the risks that arise from the data management practices of the business, or apply the privacy and data protections afforded to children to all consumers." is still in there.

It looks to me like one of those normal overbroad laws that never gets enforced because it isn't actually possible TO enforce, that gets all this scaremongering about how "this time it's going to destroy the internet".

I don't see how this time is any different from the last COPPA revision or any other time something like this comes up, when it's completely unenforceable and walks a familiar path of "we are <protecting the children/fighting crime/doing something else that's generally seen as positive> by saying we're going to regulate everything in mildly invasive ways even though we don't have any way to actually do that" and then ultimately gets gradually gutted over the next few years or just languishes as a useless law.

This one is confusing me, why would having companies “apply the privacy and data protections afforded to children to all consumers.” burn the internet down?

Inherently contradictory positions like needing to verify the age of anyone that would use a service if it's at all possible any child might do, paired with vague wording about what constitutes a high level of privacy. If you then consider that to be not storing personally identifying information, you'd be essentially saying "every website on the internet needs to ask for sufficient information to verify your age every time you visit".

Can you try rewording that? I genuinely can’t understand what you’ve said there.

The bit I quoted said that if they can’t verify someone isn’t a child they have to privacy protect them as if they are a child. Why are privacy protections bad?

Edited by Silasw on Jul 2nd 2022 at 1:59:23 PM

It doesn't establish what constitutes acceptable privacy with any clarity, includes some specifics about not retaining personal information beyond what's necessary (which is itself vague), and therefore requires even more extensive identifying information about someone if a business needs to establish you're an adult.

So it’s saying “if you can’t be sure they’re an adult apply to privacy rules for children”, but the privacy rules for children aren’t actually defined under California law?

Edited by Silasw on Jul 2nd 2022 at 2:09:43 PM

That seems to be the gist of it. This is supposed to get the regulatory agency to write said laws, but they seem to have a habit of falling massively behind schedule.