Shared Article from The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

FIRE demands answers from Trump admin officials on arrest of Mah…

Agents from the Department of Homeland Security arrested a lawful permanent resident who has been involved in activism related to the current conflict…

thefire.org

. . . Demonstrations occurring on Columbia’s campus since Oct. 7, 2023, have included both constitutionally protected speech and unlawful conduct, but the government has not made clear the factual or legal basis for Mr. Khalil’s arrest. The statements the government has released suggest its decision may be based on his constitutionally protected speech. This lack of clarity is chilling protected expression, as other permanent residents cannot know whether their lawful speech could be deemed to align to a terrorist organization and jeopardize their immigration status.

The federal government must not use immigration enforcement to punish and filter out ideas disfavored by the administration. It must also afford due process to anyone facing arrest and detention, and must be clear and transparent about the basis for its actions, to avoid chilling protected speech. To that end, we request answers to the following questions:

What was the specific legal and factual basis for Mr. Khalil’s arrest on March 8?

What is the specific legal and factual basis for Mr. Khalil’s detention?

What is the specific legal and factual basis on which you are seeking revocation of Mr. Khalil’s green card?

Will Mr. Khalil be afforded the due process protections required by U.S. law?

Is it your intention to seek the revocation of lawful immigration status on the basis of speech protected by the First Amendment?

— Carolyn Iodice (2025), FIRE Letter to Trump Administration Officials on Detention of Mahmoud Khalil
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, March 10, 2025

Shared Article from experimental-history.com

Science is a strong-link problem

OR: How to eat fewer asparagus beetles

Adam Mastroianni @ experimental-history.com

There are two kinds of problems in the world: strong-link problems and weak-link problems.

Weak-link problems are problems where the overall quality depends on how good the worst stuff is. You fix weak-link problems by making the weakest links stronger, or by eliminating them entirely.

. . .

It’s easy to assume that all problems are like this, but they’re not. Some problems are strong-link problems: overall quality depends on how good the best stuff is, and the bad stuff barely matters. Like music, for instance. You listen to the stuff you like the most and ignore the rest.

. . .

Figuring out whether a problem is strong-link or weak-link is important because the way you solve them is totally different:

When you have a STRONG-LINK problem:

• Increase outliers/variance/weirdness because you’ll benefit from having more very good things
• Don’t gatekeep because you might accidentally keep the best out
• Ignore the worst
• Improve the best
• Accept risk, because the downside doesn’t matter.

When you have a WEAK-LINK problem:

• Decrease outliers/variance/weirdness because you’ll be harmed by having more very bad things
• Gatekeep because it keeps the worst out
• Improve the worst
• Ignore the best
• Avoid risk, because the downside is all that matters

. . .

Science is a strong-link problem.

In the long run, the best stuff is basically all that matters, and the bad stuff doesn’t matter at all. The history of science is littered with the skulls of dead theories.

. . . Here’s the crazy thing: most people treat science like it’s a weak-link problem….

— Adam Mastroianni, Science Is A Strong-Link Problem
Experimental History, 11 April 2023

By A.E. Stallings, from POETRY (May 2020); recently featured on Poetry Foundation’s Audio Poem of the day podcast.

Daedal

To build a labyrinth it takes
A twisted mind, a puzzled art,
A fractal branching of mistakes.

Drag out the shovels and the rakes,
The spirit level, sacred chart.
To build a labyrinth it takes

Shadows, stones, a way that snakes
And ladders to its shaky start;
An average mazing of mistakes,

The kind that everybody makes,
Set random intervals apart.
To build a labyrinth it takes

Dead ends that seem like lucky breaks,
The paths of bats that weave and dart
Through limestone caverns of mistakes.

The shaken Etch A Sketch awakes
A lost child buried in its heart.
To build a labyrinth it takes
Some good intentions, some mistakes.

— A.E. Stallings (2020)
Daedal, in POETRY (May 2020)

Reading: J.D. Tuccille, The People Cheering Brian Thompson’s Murder Can’t Have the Medical Utopia That They Want, today’s issue of The Rattler, for Reason.com (11 December 2024).

Shared Article from Reason.com

The people cheering Brian Thompson’s murder can’t have the m…

Making people more, rather than less, responsible for their own health care is far better than cheering the murder of others.

J.D. Tuccille @ reason.com

The assassin’s fans–and the legal system has yet to convict anybody for the crime–are moral degenerates. But they’re also dreaming, if they think insurance executives like Thompson are all that stands between them and their visions of a single-payer medical system that satisfies every desire. While there is a lot wrong with the main way health care is paid for and delivered in the U.S., what the haters want is probably not achievable, and the means many of them prefer would make things worse.

Unlimited Care… Free of Charge

It is an old joke among health policy wonks that what the American people really want from health care reform is unlimited care, from the doctor of their choice, with no wait, free of charge, Michael Tanner, then of the Cato Institute, quipped in 2017.

The problem, no matter how health care is delivered, is that it requires labor, time, and resources that are available in finite supply. Somebody must decide how to allocate medications, treatments, physicians, and hospital beds, and how to pay for it all. A common assumption in some circles is that Americans ration medicine by price, handing an advantage to the wealthy and sticking it to the poor.

Today, as everyone knows, health care in the US can be prohibitively expensive even for people who have insurance, Dylan Scott sniffed this week at Vox.

The alternative, supposedly, is one where health care is universal, with bills paid by government so everybody has access to care. Except, most Americans rely on somebody else to pay the bulk of their medical bills just like Canadians, Germans, and Britons. And while there are huge differences among the systems presented as alternatives to the one in the U.S., third-party payers–whether governments or insurance companies–do enormous damage to the provision of health care.

. . .

. . . Concerns about rising costs, demand, and finite resources apply just as much when the payer is the government. . . . You have to wonder what those so furious at Brian Thompson that they would applaud his murder would say about the officials managing systems elsewhere. None of them deliver unlimited care, from the doctor of their choice, with no wait, free of charge. Some lack the minimal discipline imposed by what competition exists among insurers in the U.S.

. . .

. . . Policymakers need to understand that the key to affordable health care is not to increase the role of health insurance in peoples’ lives, but to diminish it,” Cato’s Singer concluded.^[1] . . . Those examples point to a better health care system than what exists in the United States–or in most other countries, for that matter. They’re probably not the whole answer, because it’s unlikely that one approach will suit millions of people with different medical concerns, incomes, and preferences. But making people more, rather than less, responsible for their own health care, and getting government and other third-parties as far out of the matter as possible, is far better than cheering the murder of people who supposedly stand between us and an imaginary medical utopia.

— J.D. Tuccille, The People Cheering Brian Thompson’s Murder Can’t Have the Medical Utopia That They Want
The Rattler, for Reason.com (11 December 2024).

1. ^[1][In a white paper that Tuccille referred to earlier in the article: Jeffrey Singer, a surgeon and senior fellow with the Cato Institute, wrote in 2013. The third party payment system is the principal force behind health care price inflation. —R.G.]↩