I was in the local Post Office today and the woman in front of me was telling the clerk she hasn't received mail in a few days. The clerk told her the carrier was off until Saturday and that she wouldn't receive any mail until then because they didn't have anyone to fill in.
That's something I never heard before. Is that a thing?
See title.
I just thought this situation was a little odd. Maybe not.
My wife and I have both been driving for about twenty years and have have never had an at fault.
Last December she got into a small fender bender when she was backing up. Less than 5mph. She was determined to be at fault. The other vehicle was a BMW and while the damage appeared minor, the repairs were around $4,500.
Our vehicles at the time were very old and worth maybe $2k each and we had liability only coverage (although with pretty high limits). Since then, my wife has upgraded to a nicer Lexus, although my car is the same.
The other day we got a notice of non renewal from Liberty Mutual. The letter stated her accident and one roadside assistance claim I made as the reasons.
I mean I was expecting our rates to go up, but really dropped entirely after after one fender bender in twenty years? I've been shopping around with other carriers, and the premiums for our same coverage are all well over double what they previously were.
Edit: this is in New York
https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2021/06/florida-social-media-censorship-law-enjoined-netchoice-v-moody.htm
“this is an instance of burning the house to roast a pig”
Highlights of the opinion: the judge struck down the entire law (other than the findings and antitrust parts) as a content-based restriction that does not survive strict scrutiny. The judge added that the law doesn’t survive intermediate scrutiny, which narrows the flexibility of Florida or other legislatures to try different regulatory ideas to get at the same outcomes. The judge also says that the law’s restrictions on good faith content moderation conflict with Section 230. Here’s the court’s conclusion:
The legislation now at issue was an effort to rein in social-media providers deemed too large and too liberal. Balancing the exchange of ideas among private speakers is not a legitimate governmental interest. And even aside from the actual motivation for this legislation, it is plainly content-based and subject to strict scrutiny. It is also subject to strict scrutiny because it discriminates on its face among otherwise-identical speakers: between social-media providers that do or do not meet the legislation’s size requirements and are or are not under common ownership with a theme park. The legislation does not survive strict scrutiny. Parts also are expressly preempted by federal law.
The court says that Internet services “manage” user content, and “[i]n the absence [of] curation, a social-media site would soon become unacceptable—and indeed useless—to most users.” These content moderation decisions require editorial judgment, and the court says that’s exactly what the Florida government wanted to stop. The state’s intent has always been transparently censorial, and the judge calls them out for it:
>the State has asserted it is on the side of the First Amendment; the plaintiffs are not. It is perhaps a nice sound bite. But the assertion is wholly at odds with accepted constitutional principles….
The judge starts by rejecting three arguments for reduced First Amendment scrutiny.
First, the judge dismisses any state action argument.
>“[W]hatever else may be said of the providers’ actions, they do not violate the First Amendment.”
Second, the judge says “the First Amendment applies to speech over the internet, just as it applies to more traditional forms of communication”.
Nevertheless, the judge says:
>the targets of the statutes at issue are the editori
... keep reading on reddit ➡Professor Eugene Volokh has a group blog (link goes to blog), the Volokh Conspiracy (link goes to wiki), hosted at Reason. He is a First Amendment professor at UCLA widely considered both a libertarian and one of the nation's foremost First Amendment experts
He has written an article pdf outlining what he sees as the strongest reasons to regulate Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers (thread itself). He doesn't necessarily think they should be regulated as Common Carriers, he doesn't necessarily think it would be constitutional to do so, but he suspects it is, and here is his reasoning.
Note: the above link goes to all of his posts on the common carrier issue.
The paper is long the blog post itself breaks the paper down into it's many segments. It's sort of okay to pick and choose which to read, I'd say The First Amendment and Treating Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers is a good one to read as well as the conclusion and then the other specific topics that interest you. Most of these blog posts are relatively short and readable
They are all interesting to wethefifth for a variety of reasons
- he has mostly impeccable Libertarian credentials
- he has impeccable First Amendment credentials
- if he says it's probably legal outlining his reasoning in many blog posts and a paper, well, I think that easily trumps everyone on LawTwitter glibly scoffing at the idea and telling people what fools they are, that is, they need to make a proper argument and their name calling is just that and only that
- regulating Social Media as Common Carriers is a goal that has bipartisan support and bipartisan opposition.
- I suspect his opinion will annoy the shit out of several people I have absolutely great respect for, namely Kmele, Welch, Nick Gillespie, and probably McMoynihan
- And annoy the hell out of the staunchest §230 defenders, not that it should, just because the staunchest §230 defenders are often more interested these days in defending media censorship than in First Amendment or Free Speech issues (that would be Mike Masnick, Jeff Kossoff, Eric Goldman, and PoopHat)
And if you want to argue against turni
... keep reading on reddit ➡
This really freakin bugs me.
Internet Service Providers transmit private informational packets across a network which is heavily subsidized by the government. THE ISPs ARE THE COMMON CARRIERS, NOT GOOGLE.
/rant
Professor Eugene Volokh has a group blog (link goes to blog), the Volokh Conspiracy (link goes to wiki), hosted at Reason. He is a First Amendment professor at UCLA widely considered both a libertarian and one of the nation's foremost First Amendment expert
He has written an article pdf outlining what he sees as the strongest reasons to regulate Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers (thread itself). He doesn't necessarily think they should be regulated as Common Carriers, he doesn't necessarily think it would be constitutional to do so, but he suspects it is, and here is his reasoning.
Note: the above link goes to all of his posts on the common carrier issue.
The paper is long but the blog post itself breaks the paper down into it's many segments. It's sort of okay to pick and choose which to read, I'd say The First Amendment and Treating Social Media Platforms as Common Carriers is a good one to read as well as the conclusion and then the other specific topics that interest you. Most of these blog posts are relatively short and readable
They are all interesting for a variety of reasons
- Volokh has impeccable First Amendment credentials
- Volokh is mostly seen as a Libertarian
- Many if not most Libertarians would be aghast at the notion of turning Social Media into Common Carriers.
- His outlining the idea in a detailed paper easily trumps the very glib dismissals of the idea often seen on Law Twitter
- regulating Social Media as Common Carriers is a goal that has both bipartisan support and bipartisan opposition.
- (IMHO) In many ways these days, the notion of turning Social Media into Common Carriers will annoy the hell out of the staunchest §230 defenders, not that it should, but because the staunchest §230 defenders these days are often more interested in excusing and defending media censorship than in First Amendment or Free Speech issues
And if you want to argue against turning Social Media into common carriers, you'd probably be better off knowing the strongest arguments for it.
Fwiw, I myself do not think Social Media should be turned into Common Carriers(*), but I very much think the
... keep reading on reddit ➡