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Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

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Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#261

Post by n4r9 »

WalterBright wrote: post #138
n4r9 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also only commenting on what the parent wrote to be fair. My point is that being disappointed not to be involved in a death - as that comment suggests - is a level of callousness that goes well beyond accepting the cost of progress.

Since I don't know the man, I prefer to be charitable and am willing to assume he was just being inept in his choice of phrasing rather than assuming he is evil. I worked on the stab trim gearbox design for the Boeing 757. That gearbox is "flight critical", meaning total failure of it means a crash. I'm very proud that the stab trim system has never caused an accident in the service history of the 757. (Of course, th…

Ok, it's fine to make different assumptions about the context. I think you could have made it clearer in your initial response that that's how you saw it.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#262

Post by vharuck »

astrange wrote: post #202
adventured wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pardon people before they're convicted of anything. Trump pardoned Steve Bannon for example and he has not yet been convicted (he has been charged). Assange has been charged with various things by the Feds, which is what Trump would pardon. The floated theory went that Trump could plausibly pardon himself as well, for any likely future charges.

It's questionable if you can pardon yourself or your coconspirators, and you specifically can't pardon yourself for things you were impeached for. It's not questionable if you can pardon things that haven't been charged yet. You can. The pardon power is absolute, greater than laws that define specific crimes, and doesn't require accepting guilt or whatever.

>It's not questionable if you can pardon things that haven't been charged yet. You can.

For a specific example, Jimmy Carter pardoned everyone who dodged the draft for Vietnam[1]. This showed that pardons could both apply to actions which hadn't been charged and categories of people.

I think one of the only limits on the pardon power is that it can only apply to past behavior.

[1] https://www.justice.gov/pardon/vietnam-war-era-pardon-instru...

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#263

Post by gowld »

gus_massa wrote: post #188
spacemanmatt wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The white supremacy sign is a white power sign because white supremacists use it to signal each other. It is called a "dog whistle" because people like you cannot hear it accurately.

We can't let trolls and white supremacist steal the ok symbol. We must fight back. The problem is that whoever makes the the first step will get called a white supremacist, so nobody want to volunteer.

If we remove white supremacists from positions of public power and view, then we can stop worrying about what hand signals mean. Help us out.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#264

Post by Ardren »

limaoscarjuliet wrote: post #125
apexalpha wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really think people now use "OK", a sign used for years, to signal they are racist? I think you're the butt of the joke here...

A SCUBA diver here. Apparently we are all racist while submerged.

Are you thick? Really. Can you not see the difference?

It would only be an issue if you were SCUBA diving with a white supremacist and doing the hand sign.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#265

Post by Loughla »

user-the-name wrote: post #155
t-writescode wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These aren't problems with the power, they're problems with people that abuse the power. We've had presidential pardons for centuries, and they are both a carry-over from the time of kings, and they could arguably serve as a short-circuit against injustice at the hand of the legislature. Not everything illegal is wrong. Not everyone in prison is serving a just sentence, no matter what the legal system declares it to…

After the last 4 years, maybe it is time to realise that a working democracy can not rely on the assumption that those in power will just use their powers responsibly and honourably, and that "checks and balances" need to actually have the ability to both check and balance.

If Trump taught this country anything, I hope that it is 'relying on long-standing norms of the office is a bad idea'. I think we need legislation to make sure the 'norms' are 'required'.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#266

Post by dharmon »

marton78 wrote: post #210
matwood wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, context is key. We played a game as kids where if you looked at one of us with the ok sign, the one doing the sign got to punch you in the arm. It was joke. Even though this new origin is a bit of the tail wagging the dog (it started as a joke on 4chan), the ok sign has taken on the meaning of a white power sign in certain situations. Unfortunately, people have trawled old pics and attacked people for using nor…

Wow, that game seems to be surprisingly common! It was played on my school in Munich, Germany. The rules were: if you look through the loop, you are punched in the upper arm. The puncher has to draw a bull's eye first, then punch, then the recipient must say "thank you" and the puncher must reply "you're welcome" (of course in German, i.e. bitte, danke). Any deviation from the rules is punished by a punch, to be admi…

I grew up in South Carolina and we definitely did this (without the "please" and "thank you" part).

If I recall, there was an additional requirement where the ok hand had to be held below your waist, though.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#267

Post by prepend »

mechEpleb wrote: post #194
yread wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you're saying it either means "white power" or "we're trolling people to think we mean 'white power'"? As for white power not being associated with anything heinous, yeah "Hail victory" also sounds good. Who doesn't want victory?

The whole thing was started as a deliberate meme by /pol/ to take an innocent, commonly used hand signal and make the left treat it as a white supremacist dogwhistle. So it can mean anything ranging from "ok" to "this will make the libs angry" to "I am an actual nazi among like minded friends". Which one it is must be discerned from context, meaning that the symbol itself is largely meaningless.

I use the symbol to help identify people who believe anything they read on the Internet.

I don’t think I’ve used this symbol since I was a kid to mean “ok,” and I certainly won’t use it now due to potential association.

But it is nice to be able to easily tell if someone is either stupid or duplicitous by reading them talk about this symbol always meaning white power.

I’m sure if I went looking on nazi sites I would see it used in hate, but every story I’ve read about it has been a waste of time. I only see a few come through threads like this but when I read the link it’s usually someone trolling or ambiguous.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#268

Post by coldtea »

koheripbal wrote: post #244
coldtea wrote: post #132

> Anthony Levandowski, 40, was sentenced in August to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty in March. He was not in custody but a judge had said he could enter custody once the COVID-19 pandemic subsided. That's the part that caught my eye, not Trump's pardon. So that's how rich people are treated by the court system...

This is how all non-violent criminals are treated. Many many prisoners were even released in the early days of the pandemic.

>This is how all non-violent criminals are treated.

Not, all. Some are shot on the spot, despite being non-violent, unarmed, or even a kid playing.

Others get life for "three strikes" (non violent).

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#269

Post by severino »

secondcoming wrote: post #183
n4r9 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think they're referring to this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-55236260

Intersting, thanks. Is this not just a coincidence of scheduling though? Or do courts normally schedule executions for presidential transition periods?

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/execution-database?f...

Look at the dates, from the beginning. To me, it doesn't look like a coincidence.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#270

Post by 0goel0 »

tomp wrote: post #243
chandra381 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Anthony Lewandowski being pardoned advance any public good? I would argue it does the exact opposite.

His conviction is based on being a fall guy for Uber’s corporate espionage. His pardon could be interpreted as a strike against “piracy is theft” mindset and the idea of “intellectual property” in general that HN often rallies against. I’m quite disappointed by Trump’s pardons but this one is actually a good one.

> His conviction is based on being a fall guy for Uber’s corporate espionage

Do you have any evidence that he didn't commit the crimes he is convicted of? Because his lawyers would've loved to talk to you last year.

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