Politics

Oh, the hypocrisy

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

So there have been two high profile.. events with the United States Senate in recent weeks. And boy do people either not know the history of this country just over the last few decades, or they’re gaslighting.

Mitch McConnel, the current Senate Majority Leader, has been absent from his post for only a little over a month after being hospitalized on June 14. Many on the left are engaging in massive conspiracy theorist thinking in saying he’s actually dead and his death is being covered up to prevent the Kentucky Governor from calling a special election to fill his seat for the time being – Kentucky is one of few States that does not allow the Governor to merely appoint a replacement.

And pointing out the fact that McConnell was also being kept on the government’s payroll during his absence even though, as of this writing, he’s been away from his post for only a little over a month.

Unlike South Carolina. Senator Lindsey Graham did die rather suddenly following a major cardiac event. The South Carolina Governor moved quickly to appoint his sister, Darline Graham, as his replacement till a new replacement is selected in November. And many on the left have decried her appointment as “she’s not a politician!”

Except she kind of is. She has no electoral political experience, but she was appointed in 2019 as the commissioner for the South Carolina Commission for the Blind and served till she accepted the appointment to replace her brother.

So why am I saying “hypocrisy!” with this?

First the parallel to Mitch McConnel is, easily, Gabrielle Giffords. On January 8, 2011, Jared Loughner attempted to take her life by opening fire on a public gathering in Tuscon, AZ, where she was speaking. Unfortunately Loughner did succeed in killing Federal Chief Judge John Roll, 9 year-old girl Christina Taylor Green, and four (4) others. Giffords was, unfortunately, struck in the back of the head, sending a bullet through her brain, and leaving her with significant impairments.

Aside from one vote in 2011, Giffords was unable to carry out her duties as a sitting member of the House of Representatives. In August 2011, not long after that sole vote, I said that she should have been expelled “months” before that article was written. That article came not long after it was reported that a potential Democrat primary challenger to Giffords was trying to make traction. And being repudiated for it, as if Giffords was owed reelection because of her predicament.

And in making that call, the kindest label I’ve received from those on the left is… “heartless”. Yet for that entire year, Giffords was kept on the government payroll, allowed to collect her salary and benefits the entire time.

And blocking the Arizona Governor from calling a special election to replace her.

I renewed that call, on January 7, 2012, saying she should either resign or be expelled, and Giffords resigned eighteen (18) days later. Ron Barber was elected to replace her in the special election, and won re-election in the 2012 regular election.

Again, that was for a year. Mitch McConnell has been out of commission for only… a little over a month.

For the parallel to Senator Graham, we need to go back to 2000. John Ashcroft was running for reelection to his seat in the United States Senate. He was running as a Republican and his Democrat challenger was Mel Carnahan.

Interesting coincidence here, too. Prior to running for the US Senate in 1994, Ashcroft was the Governor of Missouri. Carnahan was elected to replace Ashcroft and Ashcroft was elected to the US Senate. Then, as mentioned, Carnahan ran to take Ashcroft’s seat in the United States Senate in 2000. But he died in a plane crash just three (3) weeks before the election. Being so close to the election, the election was allowed to proceed and… Carnahan won.

Robin Williams even made a joke of it in his “Live on Broadway” special:

You have to remember, John Ashcroft is a man who LOST to a dead man in Missouri. The choices were clear: John Ashcroft, Dead Man. And everyone in Missouri is going, “Sorry, Johnny. The dead man scares me less than you do.”

Yep, Missouri elected a dead man to replace John Ashcroft. Ashcroft would then be appointed as the Attorney General of the United States during George W. Bush’s first term in office.

But since Carnahan obviously couldn’t actually serve, and Missouri does allow their Governor to appoint a replacement pending a special election, the Governor selected… Carnahan’s widow. Who, up till that point, had zero political experience aside from whatever exposure she got being the First Lady of Missouri. She did run in the special election, but lost to Jim Talent, who would lose in 2006 to Claire McCaskill.

Yet in both instances, did anyone on the left complain? Nope. Yet with McConnell and Graham’s seats, they’re acting like petulant children.

Again, when I called for Giffords to be expelled, the kindest I was labeled was “heartless” despite her being on the government payroll but not actively serving for a year, and blocking a special election to fill her seat that entire time. McConnell has been gone for a little over a month and the left is screaming.

Because they want to flip his seat. McConnell is out in January, regardless. But they want the special election with the unspoken expectation that a Democrat will be elected to replace him. And there’s seemingly the same expectation with calls from the left for a special election to fill Graham’s vacancy rather than the South Carolina Governor being allowed to appoint his replacement pending the upcoming election.

Product and service reviews

New Plex Pass pricing change

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Last year there was a major blowup online about Plex raising their prices for the first time in… nearly a decade. Tons of commentators online telling people to move away from Plex all because they changed their pricing model in a way to better guarantee they have the revenue they need to… keep doing business.

Since Plex is… a business… I really hope that isn’t coming as a surprise.

And I wrote an article saying that I was staying with Plex. That I didn’t really care much about the pricing models since the only effect they had with me was an extra… 2 USD per month. I like Plex. And as I wrote in my article last year, aside from a couple hiccups when I tried using the Plex server plugin embedded in FreeNAS, I haven’t had any issues with it. I have zero reason to switch.

And I have zero issue paying for the monthly Plex Pass since that means continuing to support the company.

And their latest pricing announcement regarding their Lifetime Plex Pass is not surprising.

Lifetime anything means that the company selling it gets revenue from a customer only once. So surging the price on the Lifetime Plex Pass from around 250 USD to 750 USD is absolutely not surprising and is about encouraging anyone coming to Plex to go for the annual or monthly Plex Pass.

Last year, Plex raised the price of the Lifetime Pass from 120 USD to 250 USD. The monthly Pass at the time was just 5 USD per month. So this meant the Lifetime Pass initially brought in only 2 years worth of revenue. Once. Last year’s price increase kicked that up to 3 years compared to the monthly.

Now… it’s shy of 10 years.

So this is about better ensuring revenue going forward and pushing people to the annual and monthly passes for a more consistent revenue stream.

As with other subscription models, this also eliminates lock-in. If you have the monthly Plex Pass, or was an early adopter of the Lifetime before the price increase last year, there is no buyer’s remorse. If you find something more suited to your media streaming needs, migrate everything and just cancel your Plex Pass subscription.

The new pricing, though, would definitely be locking you in for much longer. And, again, I feel the new pricing is entirely about discouraging anyone coming to Plex from buying into it so they have a more consistent revenue stream.

And I would not be surprised if Plex announces next year that they’re discontinuing the Lifetime Plex Pass.

And I also will not be surprised if a ton of commentators on the various platforms all make videos and other content decrying this move as “greedy” and the like, demanding everyone abandon Plex for… Jellyfin or anything else that’s just… not anywhere close to Plex. You know, like what happened last year. And all without trying to understand the underlying math and the fact Plex is doing this to, again, ensure a consistent revenue stream.

Either pay per month or year for the Plex Pass, or pre-pay nearly 10 years up front. Your choice.

Crime

About the SPLC indictment

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Okay let’s talk about the recent indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center and piss off half the country in the process. Since the indictment is being framed as “The SPLC is funding hate groups!” But reality is… a little more complicated.

But first I’ll say up front that providing material support to a violent extremist or domestic terrorist organization is NOT among the allegations in the indictment.

Confidential informants

The SPLC called them “field sources” or, simply, “the Fs” according to the indictment – see ¶8.

Confidential informants, a.k.a. CIs, are not unusual. Law enforcement makes use of them, as do private investigators and journalists. CIs are solicited by investigators, whether the CI is already employed by the target or is to become employed by the target, to funnel information back to them. And often they’re paid.

That the SPLC is using confidential informants as part of their operations isn’t a problem. Lying about it, though, can be. We’ll get to that in a little bit.

And paying confidential informants who operate within white supremacist organizations can look like you’re funding those organizations when you’re instead paying the CIs for the information. The indictment, however, makes no distinction. And that’s going to bite the Department of Justice. Here’s ¶9 of the indictment:

Between at least 2014 and 2023, the SPLC paid their Fs in a clandestine manner. Doing so hid the fact that while the SPLC received donation money under the auspices that the funds would be used to “dismantle” violent extremist groups, this donation money was, instead, being used, in part, by the SPLC to pay leaders and others within these same extremist groups. That money was then used for the benefit of the individuals as well as the violent extremist groups.

Much of this is also mirrored in ¶19 of the indictment. And it isn’t as cut and dry as it seems.

Paying their CIs in a clandestine manner might be a crime depending on the details. But that they were paying CIs who are also insiders in the violent extremist groups the SPLC was seeking to “dismantle” is part of working with confidential informants. Before they can “dismantle” the organizations, they need enough information from insiders – i.e. the confidential informants or “Fs” – to facilitate that, then feeding that information to authorities to take them down.

The question is whether they were able to actually get any violent extremist organizations shut down using their confidential informants. But that’s outside the scope of the allegations.

That some of the relationships with the CIs listed in the indictment have been going for nearly a decade, possibly longer, shows that the SPLC needed to be periodically evaluating their CIs. Someone dropped the ball there, and there was probably some underlying embezzlement happening. I would not be surprised if some of those payments were instead going to SPLC employees or officers while looking like they were going to their “Fs”.

Update: And it looks like I was right in part. Heidi Beirich, believed to be “Employee-2” in the indictment against the SPLC, has been indicted on Federal charges associated with $1.2 million in money transfers into a bank account she shares with one of the Fs.

But let’s get back to the CIs by using organized crime as an example. If you want to take down a major crime family, you find someone willing to, under risk of being disappeared, be a rat or a mole. And if you pay that person to funnel you information, it can look as if you’re supporting the mafia.

That distinction absolutely matters. But it’s a distinction being lost on everyone. And Director Patel’s statements during the press conference didn’t help.

Shell companies

That the Southern Poverty Law Center was paying confidential informants isn’t a problem. How they were paying them, though, absolutely is, if what’s in the indictment is true. And this is where we get into the meat of the indictment.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is being charged with violating three Federal statutes, all sections under Title 18 of the United States Code:

  • §1014 – Making false statements to a financial institution (counts 1 – 6)
  • §1343 – Wire fraud (counts 7 – 10)
  • §1956(a)(1)(B)(i) – Money laundering (count 11)

In short it is a Federal crime to try to disguise the source of funds. The comparisons with organized crime are apt here, since organized crime engages in various front operations and clandestine dealings to disguise proceeds coming from criminal activity.

Here, though, the SPLC is engaging in much the same to disguise from the confidential informants – again, the Fs – that the SPLC is paying them. This also has the effect of hiding from the SPLC’s donors where the money is going. Since the SPLC would have to disclose where donor funds are spent.

The shell companies, though, would not.

So it would look like the SPLC was giving millions of dollars to several corporations aligned with the SPLC’s goals. And to the confidential informants, it would look as if several companies unrelated to the SPLC were buying information from the CIs.

Conclusion

The indictment is being played out in conservative media as if the SPLC is funding extremist groups to make racism and white supremacy look worse than it actually is. Yet nowhere in the indictment is that alleged. But the SPLC’s confidential informants program is being misrepresented to that effect.

Again, that the SPLC was paying people to funnel information to them isn’t the issue. How those confidential informants were being paid, though, absolutely is.

And it’s in those details where the SPLC has pretty much royally screwed themselves.

Impeachment

No you can’t “unimpeach” the President

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

I’ll say this up front: a lawyer saying something about the law does not mean it’s true. And Alan Dershowitz recently showed that he has some serious deficiencies in his expertise…

Just the News: “Alan Dershowitz: Trump could move to expunge 2019 impeachment after release of bombshell evidence“

Dershowitz, a Democrat at the time who worked to defend Trump at the impeachment trial that ended in the president’s acquittal, said it would be “an interesting, novel approach” for Trump to go to Chief Justice John Roberts, who presided over the case, or Congress and ask for the impeachment to be reversed because the defense team was denied the right to confront his accusers with exculpatory evidence.

“It’s never been done. I don’t see any reason why it couldn’t be done,” Dershowitz said during an interview Monday night on the Just the News, No Noise television show. “Impeachment is a quasi-judicial procedure, whether you have to go back to Congress and ask them to expunge it or go to the courts.

Impeachment isn’t a “quasi-judicial procedure”. It’s a purely political one. And practically every part of the impeachment process is immune to judicial review.

A singular event in history is Dershowitz’s justification for the claim that Trump could be “unimpeached”. And it’s also the ONLY time this has occurred that I’m aware of. Back in 1834, the Senate made the extraordinary move of censuring then-President Andrew Jackson by mere resolution with a 26-20 vote almost entirely on party lines:

Resolved, That the President, in the late Executive proceedings in relation to the public revenue, has assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by the Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both.

Jackson rightly called the move unconstitutional. The Senate or House censuring one of their own is not uncommon and perfectly allowable under the Constitution, as it gives each chamber of Congress the sole authority to punish or expel its members. But the Senate cannot censure any member of the House of Representatives, and vice versa.

And, largely, they cannot censure anyone outside their respective membership and anyone else working for the Capitol.

The House has the sole power of impeachment. And a censure by the Senate against anyone who is not a Senator or employed by the Senate or Capitol declares someone guilty of fireable, impeachable, or even prosecutable offenses via legislative action. The very definition of a bill of attainder.

In an attempt to correct the move, multiple attempts were made to expunge the censure from the record. Which is itself just as unconstitutional as censuring the President in the first place. From Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution:

Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy; and the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question shall, at the desire of one fifth of those present, be entered on the Journal.

This largely means that what is recorded in the journal cannot then later be removed from it. Any corrections come via floor resolutions that point out the previous error and then correct that when the resolution is approved. And after an expungement vote succeeded in 1837, after Jackson was no longer in office, Secretary of the Senate Asbury Dickins seemed to recognize this. Since he merely outlined the entry for the censure vote and wrote over only part of it that it had been “expunged by order of the Senate” instead of doing anything more to make the journal entry largely unrecognizable.

But no historians see the expungement vote as valid and Jackson is still recognized as the only President to have been censured by the Senate.

But Dershowitz – and some conservative commentators have latched onto this – seems to think that either 1. the Supreme Court can order Congress to expunge something from their record, or that 2. the House can do it on their own. Neither is true.

Again the House and Senate, per the Constitution, must maintain adequate records of their proceedings. There is nothing in the Constitution allowing them to then later expunge that record. And the Senate’s vote in 1837 to expunge their record of their censure of Andrew Jackson is the only time any vote was made to expunge anything from either chamber’s journals. So the Senate and House have otherwise operated with the idea that everything recorded in their respective journals must stay in those journals.

And, as already mentioned, Dickins operated with that idea by not actually doing anything to make the censure vote’s entry unrecognizable, instead only noting that the Senate “ordered” it be expunged.

And the idea that the Supreme Court or any Court within the Federal judiciary can order Congress to do anything is laughable. But plenty of people believe it. As an example, when the Courts declare a statute or some other Act of Congress to be unconstitutional, Congress does not then work to repeal or amend that Act and the Courts do not and cannot order them to do so.

But again, plenty of people keep thinking that a Court can just order Congress to do things in much the same way they do actually issue injunctions against the Executive Branch. Except the Constitution largely protects Congress from judicial scrutiny unless Congress – or either chamber therein – initiates an action with the Court, thus submitting their claim to the wills and whims of the Court and accepting the outcome.

Imagine if Obama had sued the Senate Majority Leader or President Pro Tempore in 2016 to force a vote on Merrick Garland’s nomination to fill the vacancy left when Antonin Scalia passed away. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia, where the lawsuit would’ve most likely initiated, would’ve slapped him down in a heartbeat since the Senate’s power of advice and consent is immune to Court scrutiny.

Which is why we instead got the laughably infuriating idea that “silence is consent” – i.e., the Senate refusing to even entertain Obama’s nomination means the Senate, in effect, rubberstamped it.

And in 2025, Adelita Grijalva and the State of Arizona actually filed a lawsuit against Speaker Mike Johnson to get an injunction ordering him to swear her in. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed as moot since Grijalva was sworn in on November 12, 2025, before the Court could take any kind of action. On which their first and only action would’ve been immediate dismissal.

Because, again, virtually everything Congress does is immune to judicial scrutiny.

And that includes impeachment.

There’s this persistent idea that an impeachment trial acts like a criminal trial, with all the same rules of evidence and procedure as the Federal judiciary, including all the protections of rights and due process that come with it. Dershowitz, quoted above, even called it “quasi-judicial”. And as it acts like a criminal trial, it’s subject to appeal and judicial review.

Conservative commentator Matt Christiansen even plays that up in his video, through which I found the above-linked article:

Christiansen also points out the expungement vote for Andrew Jackson’s censure and says that the House should do the same with Trump’s impeachment.

Except two problems with that. First, saying that the House can “undo” the impeachment after the President has already been acquitted is akin to a prosecutor moving to dismiss an indictment after the defendant has already been acquitted… It’s moot. The House could, however, pass a resolution acknowledging the 2019 impeachment was brought on spurious charges and hearsay, but that’s about the extent of what they can do.

Second, in voting to expunge the censure against Andrew Jackson, the Senate tried to “undo” something that was, by all intents and purposes, not allowed by the Constitution. Impeachment is not unconstitutional.

And the details and evidence backing the impeachment claims are immaterial. No, seriously, they are entirely immaterial.

You’ve probably heard the idea that a prosecutor could get a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich”. While facetious, it points out how far the grand jury process is stacked in the prosecutor’s favor. And impeachment in the House is little different. How so?

The House could, provided they mustered up the votes and momentum for it, impeach the President for merely breathing. And while the “ham sandwich” idea is largely facetious, I’m not being facetious here. None of the House’s impeachment power is subject to judicial review. None of the Senate’s power to try impeachments is subject to judicial review. The Supreme Court made that clear in Nixon v. United States, 506 US 224 (1993). And the reason is quite simply to protect from impediment the vacancies and successions that may occur after an impeachment conviction.

As an extreme example, the House and Senate could collude to remove the President, Vice President, or any civil officer (or ALL of them) via impeachment. Passing impeachment articles that say they merely want them out of office, with the Senate also voting to convict so they’re removed. There is nothing in the Constitution stopping that from happening – since “high crimes and misdemeanors” is largely whatever the House wants it to mean. And it can’t be reviewed or reversed by the Courts. And the Constitution makes it clear the President’s pardon power cannot be used to undo an impeachment conviction.

There’s a LOT about the Constitution many get wrong, including “experts”. But a lot of people seem to think an idea you merely pull out of your ass that hasn’t yet had its wash through the Federal judiciary means it’s a viable or even constitutional idea until a Court says otherwise. So everyone on both the left and the right need to stop manufacturing ideas about the Constitution merely to get what they want.

Marriage and Relationships

It’s her friends

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

From Reddit:

Hey everyone, thank you in advance for taking the time to read my story. I need some sound advice on this issue. I (26) and my husband (26) got into an argument last night because he doesn’t want me to go on a girls trip to Miami. Here’s the back story. He and I were planning a trip to miami to see his friends and my friends came up to me a little afterwards and said that they wanted to plan a trip to Miami. I discussed it with my husband to get his opinion on if we should just do one big trip together or separate. We decided to go together since it’s cheaper that way. Then we started to plan the trip. Unfortunately his friends said they weren’t able to go and another one of his friends never even responded. Which leads just him, me and my three friends. We were still planning the trip but I started to hear less and less from my husband and anything he wanted to do on the trip.

I asked him if he still wanted to go since he would be the only guy there and he’s not really cool with my friends. He said that he doesn’t think it’s a good idea for either of us to go because we’re going to be moving and it’s not a good idea financially. He never mentioned anything about this beforehand when his friends were going. Now that they aren’t going, it’s no longer a good idea. Before I continue I want to address the moving situation. At this time we’re living with my mom because we’re waiting for military housing. We’re not paying movers or anything. We don’t have a lot of stuff and we’re getting a uhaul thats going to probably be about $100. My friends and family are helping out (the same exact friends I’m going on a trip with). And I let him know that it wasn’t expensive moving out of our old apartment. We’re moving up the street, not to a different state.

This I reminded him of, and I also asked him how was it a good idea before and now your friends backed out and now you think it’s a bad idea. He said he’s always thought it was a bad idea he just didn’t say anything…

Next he said that I should use my money to save it and pay down credit card bills. Here is my issue with that. I am the finance person in the house. My husband hates when I say we need to save money and pay debt off. He tells me that I’m acting like a mom and that I don’t have the right to tell him what to do with his money. So we made an agreement that we combined our finances and everything in the household gets paid first, I.e bills, debt, groceries, saving. Whatever is left over we split it 50-50 and we can’t delight what either of the two of us do with that money since it’s our money. His words by the way. Now he’s telling me that I don’t need to spend my money to go to Miami and I need to save it to put it back into the house. I reminded him that’s done with the house hold money. We prioritize the house first before what we personally want. Whatever I have left over I’m saving my personal money to go on the trip and he can’t tell me what I’m supposed to do with my money. I also want to add he’s not saying the same thing about his personal money, just my own. I told him he can’t tell me what I can or can’t do with my personal money. That’s something we agreed on because he didn’t want that to be done to him. He said that he’s not telling me but he’s highly recommending it. But he’s literally telling what to do with my money. I’m not late on anything, I doubt pay all my bills and I tell him to the the same yet he says in doing to much.

Then he said that going on a girl trip to Miami is single people activity and a married women and shouldn’t be going to Miami. I have to he honest, that threw me for a loop. I just wanted to go on a trip with my friends. He said ” I don’t think it’s best for a married women to go on a girls trip. I know two people are married (two each other) but one girl isn’t and I just think that’s single people activities.” I asked how am I acting single for going on a trip with my friends. He said that he didn’t say I was acting single but that it’s single people activities.

I used to live in key west as a kid. We would travel to Miami a lot and I haven’t been back since. Down there we were going to key west to go see my childhood home. On top of everything, my husband has the full itinerary of what we’re going to be doing in Miami. It’s full of museums, site seeing. We don’t go to clubs and we don’t even drink.

It hurt my feeling that he thinks that of me and he’s pushing it so hard that I’m acting single if I go to Miami. But now I don’t know what to do. I feel like he’s trying to control me or he’s upset that his friends are not going so it taking it out on me.

I’ve never been on a girls trip before. The only trip I’ve ever been on is with family or with him. He’s been on trips where it’s just him and we were just talking about him going to see his best friend in Texas and I’m supporting him and telling him to go. But when it’s me I’m acting single and being irresponsible. So am I wrong? Should I sit this one out?

Unsurprisingly many are interpreting his actions as being controlling.

But let’s break down the situation. Initially the trip was going to be him and a few friends plus her and a few friends. His friends backed out so he decided he wasn’t going to go. She decided to convert it to a girl’s trip and he objected – whether rightly or wrongly is up for debate.

But there’s one aspect of this that many are overlooking in the quick bid to label him as controlling: her friends. It’s her friends – or at least one among them – that he doesn’t trust. That’s why he backed out when his friends did and turned against the idea of her turning the trip into a girl’s trip.

So why didn’t he say that instead of coming up with all kinds of excuses – e.g., finances when he was perfectly okay spending the money for the trip until his friends backed out?

The answer is plainly obvious to anyone who knows how men think. Most men are wired to avoid conflict in general, not just with the women in our lives. And saying outright he doesn’t want her to go on the trip with her friends because he doesn’t trust one or more of them would most likely lead to a fight. And he’s choosing a path that avoids saying the obvious – again, he doesn’t like or trust her friends – to keep the peace.

She’s already aware he’s not exactly cozy with her friends – “he’s not really cool with my friends”. And it doesn’t take a leap of faith to go from “he’s not really cool with my friends” to… “he doesn’t want me going on this trip because of my friends”.

It isn’t important for him to buddy up to her girlfriends – I never considered that with my wife’s friends. And doing that would likely not work out well if she’s in any way territorial or easily becomes jealous. But it is important that he not be on any kind of sour note with any of them.

Strangely, though, he’s likely to not bring up that he’s on any kind of sour note with any of her friends to avoid looking like he’s trying to get between her and the friend(s) in question. It isn’t difficult to picture how that comes across. Since a lot of people see their friends as an extension of themselves and identities, him questioning any of her friends comes across as questioning her.

So he avoids that to avoid a potentially larger conflict. And the disquiet manifests in other ways.

It’s excuses as to why she shouldn’t go on a girl’s trip or even just hang out with them. Various side comments or behaviors that show or imply he doesn’t trust one or more of them. Provided she isn’t ignoring or just dismissing them. In the same way he shouldn’t ignore or dismiss any disquiet she presents about any of his friends – just to get that out of the way in case you, dear reader, think I’m being one-sided here.

And that’s provided she doesn’t get defensive of any disquiet he does present. Since, again, to a lot of people, questioning any of their friends can often come across as questioning them.

And what’s worse… he can’t avoid looking controlling expressing his discomfort with her friends. He can’t avoid coming across as trying to get between them, separate her from them, regardless of how well-intentioned he is and how justified his reasoning. The hops aren’t difficult to make anymore based on where modern discourse regarding relationships has largely gone: “he’s trying to separate her from her friends” becomes “he’s trying to isolate her from everyone” or “he’s controlling and manipulative” to… “he’s abusing her!”

Meaning the friends would then try to pull her away from him. On the girl’s trip with the intent, express or implied, to attempt to convince her to leave him.

Because if he has a problem with her friends, he’s got to go… Right?

Ethics/Feminism/Health care

CPR and sexual assault. Yes, really…

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Let’s talk… CPR? Because apparently women aren’t being saved often enough via CPR. And the blame is… not using female mannequins for CPR training, apparently…

In the comments to the above short, a LOT of men pointed out that the problem isn’t that.

For starters, most men likely were trained for CPR on a female mannequin. Specifically the Rescuci Anne mannequin. I was. In high schools in two different parts of the country. This is where the “Annie, are you okay?” line comes from. And this was pretty much the standard for CPR training mannequins for decades, at least through the end of the 20th century.

And a female mannequin is perfect for CPR training anyway. Simply because a woman’s breasts when she’s laying down tell you exactly where to place the heel of your wrist for performing chest compressions: right between them toward the lowest part of the sternum. So why would female mannequins not be used for CPR training? Well apparently that’s the case currently.

But is that really a problem? Not really, and I don’t see why anyone would think it to be one. A woman’s chest anatomy isn’t so different from a man’s that training on a male mannequin cannot transfer.

So something else is afoot. And it’s quite simply… women aren’t receiving CPR nearly as often as men because men aren’t nearly as willing to perform it on a woman. So why is that? Are men afraid of boobs? Hardly. Instead it might have something to do with headlines like this: Chinese Teacher, 42, Faces Groping Allegations For Performing CPR On Woman.

And that was pointed out to Dr Gabrielle. Who then… completely lost the plot.

And as one commenter pointed out in very striking fashion in response, Dr Gabrielle was completely missing the point:

This response misses the asymmetry in how people evaluate risk.

The issue isn’t whether false accusations are statistically common. Fear doesn’t operate on base rates. It operates on perceived downside. No man is doing probability calculations in that moment. The thought process is simply: if this goes wrong, it could ruin my life. Whether that outcome is rare is beside the point — the cost is unbounded from the individual’s perspective.

So evidence about rarity doesn’t actually address the fear. You’re responding to the middle of the equation, but the decision happens upstream, at the level of threat perception, not rational risk assessment.

That’s why this is largely a social trust problem, not an information problem. When people feel they can’t rely on others to act in good faith, they avoid actions where the downside is personal and severe, even if the probability is low. CPR falls into that category for some men.

You can disagree with that behavior morally, but explaining it requires understanding how fear under asymmetric risk actually works.

This is similar to flying versus driving. Everyone knows flying is statistically safer than driving, yet fear of flying is common while fear of driving is not. That’s because people don’t evaluate risk by frequency alone. They evaluate it by the severity of the outcome if something goes wrong. Driving has a wide range of outcomes — many accidents are minor or survivable — whereas a plane crash has a narrow outcome distribution that is almost always catastrophic. When failure implies near-certain death, probability matters less than consequence. Fear tracks the worst-case scenario, not the average one.

That any men are accused of sexual assault for performing CPR on a woman is enough to deter men from performing CPR on women. We just don’t want to take the risk.

You’ve probably seen this comic panel floating around:

That came out in 2013. MeToo had yet to launch and leave behind it’s dinosaur-ending blast crater. But what was in full-swing at that time was online feminism giving us plenty of ideas like… Schrodinger’s Rapist… (I wish I was making that up…) And “if she’s drunk, she can’t consent“. And “believe all women” was coming around the bend.

So it’s unsurprising that we now have women going to TikTok and other platforms saying “Why don’t men approach us anymore?” or “Why are men oblivious to our attempts at flirting?” Because the cost of guessing wrong on subtle hints is a hell of a lot higher today than when I was in college.

So now it has become… “Why won’t men perform CPR on us?”

You’ve probably heard of Good Samaritan laws. These exist to shield someone from civil and criminal liability for any adverse outcomes (e.g., additional or severe injury) when they are acting reasonably and in good faith to save someone’s life or otherwise remove them from danger . If you pull someone from a burning building or… catch someone jumping to their death like in The Incredibles, you can’t be held liable for any injuries or other adverse consequences that result from those reasonable good faith actions.

But that only stops actions within Courts of Law, not the court of public opinion. As another commenter pointed out:

Also, a bystander with a camera phone can video you while screaming nonsense “You don’t have to touch her like that!” Or other comments that would create doubt in the rest of the people later on. I’ve heard some people’s biggest fear is becoming a meme online. Add that on top of the perceived false allegations. You’re probably better off aiming for women to get training in CPR in this age of ignorance.

And I’ll go one step further.

Remember where I said that Good Samaritan laws only protect someone acting “in good faith”. It would not surprise me if there are women out there who feel that no man can “in good faith” perform CPR on a woman. Because even a willingness to do so is rooted purely in his desire to touch women, their breasts in particular, especially a woman who can’t fight back against him.

And let’s not even go down the rabbit hole of “rescue breathing”…

Crew58 seems to have grasped the concept as well in declaring that “Administering CPR and using an AED is not assault. It’s time to change our way of thinking”. And bringing up AEDs is apt here since administering one does require removing clothing since the pads must be applied to skin.

Others taking advantage of good Samaritans is why Good Samaritan laws exist to begin with. There are outcomes, though, that laws cannot prevent. Such as a Good Samaritan’s actions and motivations for carrying them out being litigated in the court of public opinion.

And the second-guessing of a man’s motivations or actions in performing CPR on a woman.

You’ve likely heard stories of found wallets being “UNO reversed” (or is it “reverse UNO’d”?) into accusations of theft. You find a wallet, take it to the rightful owner, and they turn around and say “There was $500 in cash in here. Where is it?” or something like that accompanied with a threat to call the police if you don’t front the cash on the spot. It’s a common scam tactic, unfortunately.

And knowing that such could be pulled on us, my wife and I didn’t hesitate in turning a wallet we found in our apartment parking lot over to the police. Not the apartment manager. Not back to the rightful owner. The Lenexa Police Department. (We lived just down the road from a precinct.) With our contact details attached. And our fingerprints on the wallet, too. Which, I’ve pointed out before, both our fingerprints are on file since we both had concealed carry permits.

Plus it sets up an instant check had the wallet’s owner tried to pull a “reverse UNO” and accuse us of theft, since the officer could instantly reverse that back on them, “Why would they steal from the wallet before turning it in to us with their identification details attached to it?” You know… why would we set ourselves up for an instant arrest and criminal charges? Sure plenty of people are likely dumb enough to do that, but most of us are not.

As the first commenter I quoted above said, “When people feel they can’t rely on others to act in good faith, they avoid actions where the downside is personal and severe, even if the probability is low.” Such as handing the wallet back to its rightful owner instead of taking it straight to the police. And I believe we mentioned the probability of that to the officer as our reasoning for giving it over to the police.

But the fallout from that lack of good faith is people avoiding being Good Samaritans to begin with. People leaving wallets where they fell to be picked up with someone with genuinely nefarious interests or motives. And men, specifically, avoiding performing CPR and rescue breathing on women to avoid the likelihood, however small, of being accused of sexual assault.

Crime

Crossing lines

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

While there is no universal Federal precedent over this topic, it is generally illegal for someone to lay a trap against potential criminal activity. And where the criminal is injured due to the trap, the person who laid the trap can be held liable for the outcome, including facing criminal charges for it.

The readily-cited case in that instance is Katko v. Briney, 183 N.W.2d 657 (Iowa 1971). To be brief, the case involved a shotgun rigged to go off when an inside door was opened. And the Iowa Supreme Court ruled, in short, that there are limits to how far you can go to protect property.

And rigging traps designed to cause injury or death is generally illegal.

Fast forward to modern day when everyone is having packages delivered to their homes on a regular basis, making “porch pirates” a common problem. And in response, bait packages have become a common sight online. While none have (so far) actually killed anyone, lines are being crossed…

To the genius who thought it would be funny to load an Amazon package on their porch with EXPIRED MILK — I’m filing charges… ..

I opened what looked like a normal Amazon delivery while sitting in my car, and it burst open. Rotten milk splashed everywhere — soaking my seats, carpet, clothes, and door panels. The stench hit instantly. Completely disgusting.. .. .

This wasn’t some harmless joke. It was intentional property damage. Expired milk doesn’t just “air out.” It seeps in, curdles, stains, and lingers…. .

Now my car smells like a dairy farm dumpster in the middle of July, and I can’t even sit in it without gagging.. …

So yes, someone will be paying for professional detailing and any related repairs. I refuse to live with sour milk baked into my interior.

Hope those five seconds of laughter were worth it. ….. .

If this porch pirate sued the person who left the bait package, the pirate would prevail. And if the pirate sought criminal charges against the baiter, the baiter could easily face conviction. And it’s simply because of how far they decided to go with the bait package.

Yes, there actually is a line to how far you can go to protect personal property.

The vast majority of the bait packages being left involve things that are generally harmless and more of an inconvenience than anything else. Things like… glitter and colored powders that also make an entertaining display to onlookers and those watching the camera footage after the fact. And it also makes it very easy to identify porch pirates to police, in similar fashion to how pepper sprays now typically include colored or UV-reactive dyes.

But you do have to be careful in how you go about that. Set a trap that causes injury requiring treatment and you could be facing criminal charges alongside the porch pirate. And the criminal charges against you would be far worse than those against the pirate as well.

Sure it’s easy to say “don’t steal”. Briney argued that Katko could’ve avoided getting shot by… not breaking into the farmhouse. Briney even said his only regret was not aiming the shotgun higher – i.e. aiming it so it killed Katko instead of severely injuring him, as if that would’ve been the better outcome. Which is basically arguing that there is no limit to how far someone can go to protect personal property or deter theft. Including setting up an improvised explosive device that kills a porch pirate.

“Well if they weren’t out stealing packages….” Yeah that argument won’t fly.

“They valued the package more than their life.” Umm… no. There are various force disparities that can be anticipated depending on the crime being attempted and the circumstances in which it is attempted. Accosting someone openly in public does carry with it the risk the person you’re accosting is armed. And while breaking into an abandoned building does carry with it the risk of injury, it does not carry the risk of encountering a lethal trap set by the property owner.

And the same with stealing packages off someone’s porch.

Docker

The well-known saga

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

With Discord’s recent announcement that they’re going to declare everyone as teenagers unless they go through age verification, my wife and I are looking at alternatives. That way she has something onto which she can move her friends for their weekly D&D games.

Enter Element.

But I’m not going to be talking about trying to get an Element setup off the ground. Yet. Instead I’m focusing on just one part of that: the .well-known files that Matrix clients use for auto-discovery. And files that have the potential to be make-or-break for your setup.

So up-front question: did you know you actually do not have to manually create that?

This is a small detail all of the setup guides I’ve seen so far have overlooked. And it was something I only saw when looking through the Synapse documentation. The setting you’re looking for is public_baseurl. Set this to your homeserver’s hostname and Synapse will expose the .well-known/matrix/client endpoint and generate the JSON for you based on your configuration.

And if you’re setting up to use the Matrix Authentication Service (which you should), it will automatically include the necessary details based on your configuration.

So if your homeserver.yaml includes public_baseurl: "https://[homeserver-hostname]" – and, yes, it must be in quotes – and you’re using the MAS, the JSON output will be this:

{
  "m.homeserver": {
    "base_url": "https://[homeserver-hostname]/"
  },
  "org.matrix.msc2965.authentication": {
    "issuer": "https://[auth-hostname]/",
    "account": "https://[auth-hostname]/account/"
  }
}

In setting up the authentication service, you already know the front-facing hostname is handled by that service’s configuration, not Synapse’s configuration. And Synapse queries the MAS for those values for the output. It’s a quick check on your configuration, since not seeing that output or not seeing the correct values means something is misconfigured. And it preserves the SSoT principle – single source of truth – for your settings.

Mostly.

Unfortunately Synapse does not generate the needed output from the matrix_rtc settings (I’ve filed a bug about that), but there’s an easy way to add that using the extra_well_known_client_content setting:

matrix_rtc:
  transports:
  - type: livekit
    livekit_service_url: https://[rtc-hostname]/

# You also need to set serve_server_wellknown as true to also generate and
# serve .well-known/matrix/server for MatrixRTC

serve_server_wellknown: true
extra_well_known_client_content:
  org.matrix.msc4143.rtc_foci:
  - type: livekit
    livekit_service_url: https://[rtc-hostname]/

Yes it does mean you’re duplicating settings in your homeserver.yaml, but this does give you an avenue to avoid needing to create the JSON files manually. This is what the final JSON will look like:

{
  "m.homeserver": {
    "base_url": "https://[homeserver-hostname]/"
  },
  "org.matrix.msc2965.authentication": {
    "issuer": "https://[auth-hostname]/",
    "account": "https://[auth-hostname]/account/"
  },
  "org.matrix.msc4143.rtc_foci": [
    {
      "type": "livekit",
      "livekit_service_url": "https://[rtc-hostname]/"
    }
  ]
}

Docker

Traefik and single-host Docker

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Before diving in, let’s first establish my use case, which is likely very similar to yours.

I have Docker deployed to my virtualization server with plenty of containers running on it – Portainer, Frigate NVR, Bitwarden, etc. – plus a couple VMs. And I started using Traefik after discovering it with my current employer’s Kubernetes clusters.

For the uninitiated, Traefik Proxy, specifically, allows you to use hostnames to route traffic to your containers rather than relying on port numbers. Then you just need to make sure you have proper DNS resolution for the new hostname. Traefik then uses routing rules to determine which container gets the traffic, keying off the hostname provided via SNI or the Host header in an HTTP request.

And it’s a far less complicated means of putting your browser-accessible containers and services behind an HTTPS proxy.

Almost all of the containers deployed to my Docker server are isolated to their own networks and spun up or down using docker compose. Only two of those Docker services are not behind Traefik: Plex and a MySQL container I use for GnuCash. The MySQL client supports SNI as of version 8.1.0. GnuCash relies on DBD::MySQL, which does not support SNI as of this writing. Plex requires host networking when deployed as a Docker container.

And so does Traefik if you want it to route traffic seamlessly.

Traefik also makes a binary distribution you can run as a service outside Docker. And it might be available from your distro’s package manager. But beware that it may not be the latest version, so you might be missing out on critical security updates like the CVE fix in v3.6.7, the latest version as of this writing.

It’s safe to say, though, that the vast majority of Traefik deployments are via docker compose or the Helm chart for Kubernetes clusters. And as mentioned, I have Traefik deployed via Docker, which is where this comes in:

services:
  traefik:
    image: traefik:v3.6
    container_name: traefik
    restart: unless-stopped

    network_mode: host

    volumes:
      - type: bind
        source: /var/run/docker.sock
        target: /var/run/docker.sock
        read_only: true

      - type: bind
        source: ./certs
        target: /certs
        read_only: true

      - type: bind
        source: ./dynamic
        target: /dynamic
        read_only: true

      - type: bind
        source: ./traefik.yml
        target: /etc/traefik/traefik.yml

    labels:

      - traefik.enable=true
      - traefik.docker.network=traefik

      # When using host networking, you can't use the "api@internal" service
      # to access the dashboard. Instead you have to link the dashboard
      # (port 8080) to a new one.

      - traefik.http.services.traefik.loadbalancer.server.port=8080
      - traefik.http.routers.traefik.service=traefik

      - traefik.http.routers.traefik.entrypoints=websecure
      - traefik.http.routers.traefik.rule=Host(`traefik`) || Host(`traefik.localdomain`)

And alongside the docker-compose.yaml is this traefik.yaml for configuration.

global:
  checkNewVersion: true
  sendAnonymousUsage: false

log:
    level: INFO

accessLog: true

entryPoints:
  web:
    address: ":80"
    http:
      redirections:
        entryPoint:
          to: websecure
          scheme: https
          permanent: true

  websecure:
    address: ":443"
    http:
      tls: true

  # Add any other ports you need - e.g., 3306 for MySQL, 6379 for Redis, etc.

providers:
  docker:
    exposedbydefault: false

  file:
    filename: /dynamic/tls.yaml

api:
  dashboard: true
  insecure: true

And this is the folder structure where these files live:

traefik/
|- certs/
   |- [container1.crt]
   |- [container1.key]
   |- [container2.crt]
   |- [container2.key]
   |- ...
|- dynamic/
   |- tls.yaml
|- docker-compose.yml
|- traefik.yml

So the above should be enough to get you started using Traefik with Docker. Change settings where you need – e.g., dumping logs to files instead of the output available via docker logs.

You will need to read the documentation for deploying your individual services with the proper labels so they are properly picked up by Traefik.

Elections/Supreme Court

No, the Supreme Court did NOT “approve” California’s districting map

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

You’ve probably seen variants of this floating around:

On February 4, 2026, the Supreme Court issued an order in Tangipa v. Newsom, Docket No. 25A839, that says simply:

The application for writ of injunction pending appeal presented to Justice Kagan and by her referred to the Court is denied.

A writ of injunction is a request by the appellant to a higher Court to order a lower Court to issue an injunction in a pending case. And the petition for that injunction was denied.

The case itself hasn’t been dismissed, nor is this any kind of final order or disposition. The case is still pending in the lower Courts. The only thing the appellants sought was an order to postpone use of the new maps still after the case is disposed, provided it’s disposed in California’s favor. And the Supreme Court denied that request. And since the appellants have no other recourse, they can’t seek any kind of injunction against use of the new maps unless something new enters the picture, like new maps.

Thankfully there are some media outlets who are properly reporting the current state of the case over acting like the case is now done. In an article for UPI, Mike Heuer says this:

Although the writ of injunction was denied, the ruling does not end legal challenges to the new map for California congressional districts that was approved by 64% of California voters on Nov. 4.

It does, however, increase the likelihood that the newly drawn districts will stay active during the Nov. 3 midterm election.

This is the correct interpretation of the Court’s action on Wednesday. Again the case is still pending, and will likely still be fully pending beyond November.