#always struck that no matter what it's never an entirely independent enterprise

[death-rebirth-senshi]

I think it's interesting to look at ideas they played with in dark souls 3 that made their way into Elden Ring, because while I don't think the Lord of Londor ending is nothing, it's fairly. A whole load of nonsense that's just kind of there.

And like, to a degree that fits the vibe of dark souls 3. It's all a whole load of nonsense; linking the fire, an age of dark, usurping the fire, it's all equally desperate attempts at mending a world that started circling the drain long ago.

And becoming Elden Lord in Elden Ring is similarly kind of vague as far as what it means and what exactly you accomplish by becoming elden lord. And it's similar to me in the way these desperate masses bow to you and beg for you to "make Londor whole", somehow.

Slightly less vague in Elden Ring; like the first flame, the Elden Ring has power, and power specifically to enforce a new Order upon the lands. And you get to choose what kind of Order that will be, or you can reject it and burn it all down, or you can reject it for something dark and frightening and uncertain.

[tanadrin]

I’m reading One Long Night, because the interview with Andrea Pitzer on Chris Hayes’ podcast was so interesting; and the book does not disappoint, though the subject matter is in equal measures depressing and infuriating. I want to talk about it at length when I’m through with it, but I was particularly struck today by her discussion of the Soviet gulags and how concentration camps arose in Germany, and how they marked a transition away from how concentration camps had been used before then.

The background is this: the concentration camp as we know it is only a little more than a century old. The individual kinds of violence that all inform the modern concentration camp have plenty of predecessors, some as old as time: internal deportations, native reservations, forced expulsions, detention without trial. But prior to the modern era, the characteristic feature of a concentration camp--the long-term detention of large numbers of civilians not convicted of any crime--would have been prohibitively expensive in manpower and effort. Two major technological innovations altered that calculus, Pitzer argues: the automatic gun and barbed wire. Those two devices permit a small number of guards to contain a much larger number of people; all that was needed was the will to do so.

The concentration camp as we know it was invented during Cuba’s struggle for independence; the advantages enjoyed by the rebels meant that Spain struggled to clear them out of the countryside, and the general in charge of Cuba, Arsenio Martinez Campos, noted that the only way to win the war would be to relocate basically the entire rural population of the island to Spanish-held towns to cut off the rebels’ base of support and prevent them from hiding among the rest of the population. And this he refused to do, considering it unthinkable under the rules of warfare. So Spain replaced him, and his successor, Valeriano Weyler, was all too happy to attempt what Campos would not. The resulting atrocities--including starvation and the spread of disease--were one of the things that spurred the American public to support war with Spain shortly thereafter, and while the Maine provided the immediate casus belli, Spanish conduct in Cuba was, in the public’s eyes, just as important a reason for going to war.

What is so bitterly comedic about that justification, though, is that after the war, when the U.S. found itself in possession of former Spanish colonies like Cuba and the Philippines, it found itself struggling against the very same rebels that Spain had failed to suppress; in the Philippines, the military immediately adopted tactics almost identical to the ones the Spanish had used in Cuba; and when during the Boer War in South Africa, the British likewise rounded up both Boer and black civilians in the Boer republics, it could cite the U.S.’s use of concentration camps as a justification for its own. And so on--each subsequent generation of internment drew on the precedent its predecessors had established, and if you wanted to object to (say) the policy of Germany interning all the British in the country at the start of World War I, you had to contend with the fact that they were doing nothing the British hadn’t done a few years before. (Indeed, it was the British internment of enemy aliens specifically that set off reciprocal treatment all over Europe; Pitzer relates the account of one Israel Cohen, a British man, being arrested in Germany and interned at Ruhleben, who, when the police came for him, was told ‘You have only your own Government to thank for this.’)

In fact, World War I is very important--internment of enemy civilians established not only a general precedent in favor of concentration camps in the eyes of the public, but it created the expectation that if you went into a concentration camp, you would come out again. The conditions in these camps were not good by any stretch of the imagination, but they were not as awful as the camps of Cuba, the Philippines, or South Africa, where famine and disease killed thousands. Concentration camps became decoupled from actual battlefield strategy, arising not “out of the local chaos of warfare, but instead represent[ing] a deliberate choice to inject the framework of war into society itself.’ (p. 103)

To this grim precedent, the Soviets added another innovation: the gulag was the first time concentration camps were used in peacetime particularly, and they were integrated into the Soviet state apparatus as a normal part of its justice system. And more than just the semi-punitive labor that, say, German POWs had been forced to perform during the war (and after--Germany had to release the POWs it held when WWI ended, but thousands of Germans continued to be detained long after the war), the Soviets hoped to make gulags profitable to their economy on net. Whatever their original justification, it quickly becomes clear as the labor camp is institutionalized in Soviet society that much of the behavior of the Soviet state around forced labor is shaped by the age-old impulse of conquerers to use conquered peoples to enrich themselves. After Poland was divided with Germany, thousands of Poles were shipped to the gulags and forced to work. And not only was the USSR thus inheriting the system of forced labor that Tsarist Russia had used, it was making it significantly crueler.

The premise of using labor to reeducate problematic citizens to be part of a bright Soviet future gave way to the idea that detainees themselves represented raw materials to be consumed in building that future.

In reality, Frenkel [an administrator at the Solovki camp] did not invent the tiered ration system from scratch. Likewise, the shift from idealized rehabilitation to a more permanent system maximizing forced labor may have been inevitable. Stalin appeared impressed with the possibilities of detainee labor and believed in the profitability of the Solovki endeavor (despite the fact, as Anne Applebaum has noted, that Solovki required a subsidy of 1.6 million rubles--perhaps due to graft). (p. 132)

Under the tsars in previous centuries, Polish insurgents resisting Russian rule or political prisoners convicted for offenses against the tsar were shipped off to remote Siberian katorga, working in mining or logging. Their penal labor had often been brutal, but it had come after conviction in an actual trial. Compared to penal labor under the tsars, Gulag workdays were longer and the rations shorter. A daily quota for earth mined by a single Decembrist prisoner at Nerchinsk under Tsar Nicholas I was 118 pounds; in the Soviet era, the same lone prisoner might be expected to excavate 28,800 pounds. And while tsarist courts had long sentenced political prisoners to labor camps, the Gulag was orders of magnitude larger from its very beginning. The Soviet Union had grafted the worst of Russian penal history onto the extrajudicial detention of internment, creating a vast malignant enterprise. And it would continue to grow. (p.133-34)

The scale of the gulags declines after Stalin’s death, but it never quite disappears.

Neither self-sustaining nor productive in the long run, the system required tremendous resources, and the economic burden of the camps had weighed heavily on the Soviet Union in wartime.

Still, as historian Steven Barnes has pointed out, ‘The Soviet leadership never entertained the notion of dismantling the system.’ The USSR had always had a camp system; its tendrils had grown into agriculture and industry, as well as becoming a key facet of government interactions with citizens. The Gulag was intrinsic to the state itself. (p.155)

And then there’s this passage, about the camp at Solovki, which was almost painful to read:

Prisoners heard from the radio station that [Maxim] Gorky was coming. Detainees could hardly wait for him to tell the world what was happening on Solovki: ‘Gorki will spot everything, find out everything. ... About the logging and the torture on the tree stumps, the sekirka [punishment cells], the hunger, the disease... the sentences without conviction.... The whole lot!’

Before Gorky’s visit, contingents of prisoners were hidden in the forest to lessen evidence of overcrowding. Sick patients were given new gowns to wear ... . Gorky visited the sick bay, a labor camp, and stopped in at the children’s colony that had been formed since Likhachev first encountered the urchins hiding under his bunk.

Gorky asked to speak to one boy privately and stayed with him a long time. Standing outside with the rest of the crowd, Likhachev counted forty minutes on the watch his father had given him. He recounts that Gorky emerged weeping and climbed the stairway to the punishment cell at Sekirka.

Yet when Gorky’s anxiously awaited piece on the trip came out, the section about Solovki was relegated to Part Five of the report, with the devastating conclusion that ‘camps such as “Solovki” were absolutely necessary. ... Only by this road would the state achieve in the fastest possible time one of its aims: to get rid of prisons.’

The German system, of course, did not start out as a program of genocide. It did not even necessarily start out as a program of forced labor (i.e., slavery) like in Russia. Its immediate predecessors, in fact, might be said to be the concentration camps established before the Nazis even came to power to keep Roma away from cities like Frankfurt (cf. p. 183); the Roma were subject to registry before any racial laws about Jews were passed, before the Nazis ever took power, and they were swept up along with the homeless during the Olympics to keep them out of sight of the international press (p. 187). But as the classes of political prisoners and other undesirables swelled, so did the concentration camp system.

Once war broke out, of course, the temptation to use prisoners for war industry was not resisted.

By late 1941, the camps had grown dense and squalid from the flood of detainees arriving from abroad, yet the war placed still more demands on the camps. ... a complex network of labor projects emerged, spread across thousands of sites. Every camp and subcamp used prisoner labor in some fashion. Prisoners working for the I.G. Farben rubber plant lived in a dedicated compound at Auschwitz. Fur linings in the coats of the SS came from hutches of rabbits under the administration of prisoners at Dachau. At Neuengamme, detainees were set to work clearing rubble from the bombed roads and buildings outside Hamburg. ... Both Nazis and Soviets went to war on the backs of their concentration camp prisoners. Forced-labor Gulag efficiency expert Naftaly Frenkel had suggested the system be optimized to get the most out of prisoners in their first three months, after which they were disposable. He would have been ideally placed to appreciate that before the end of the war, average life expectancy at Neuengamme concentration camp had dropped to twelve weeks. (p. 200-201)

What is perhaps the most bitter flourish on the German concentration camp system is that there was a very real possibility it could have been entirely avoided. Pitzer argues that even after the death of Hindenberg and Hitler’s adoption of the title Fuehrer, there was a very real possibility that the Nazi regime might have proceeded along (still cruel, still inhumane, still racist) legalistic lines, keeping continuity with German law, rather than relying on extrajudicial terror. Himmler’s desire to strengthen his position within the government and the purge of Rohm and the SA led to him expanding the concentration camp system further; and this was what ensured that, when the systematic, wholesale extermination of the Jews was decided upon, there was a preexisting infrastructure in place to facilitate it. (see p. 178-179) In the early years, local prosecutors actively sought to arrest and try sadistic guards, and the notion that the concentration camps were sites of abuse or torture was hotly contested.

In his first months as commandant at Dachau, Theodor Eicke flew into a rage, haranguing prisoners about the vicious rumors in the community about conditions there. Reminding them that detainees had already been killed for spreading word about the camp--including Dr. Katz, who had helped so many prisoners--Eicke threatened that more could be executed at any point. He seemed especially offended by any suggested comparison to Soviet tactics. ‘There are no atrocities and there is no Cheka cellar in Dachau!’ he insisted. ‘Anybody whipped deserves to be whipped.’

Even the Nazis, one supposes, would balk at being compared to the Nazis.

Special mention goes to two people in this section of the book: Margarete Buber-Neumann, a German communist who fled to Russia and, who along with her husband, was arrested and thrown into the gulag. She survived; her husband did not--but survived only to be handed over to the Nazis after the invasion of Poland, as part of a prisoner exchange, whereupon she was shipped to a Nazi concentration camp. She survived the war, at least, and seven years total of internment; she lived until 1989.

Hans Beimler was a Communist elected three times to the Reichstag, the last in May of 1933. He was arrested in April and imprisoned in Dachau, where he was repeatedly beaten and humiliated and encouraged to kill himself. Nighttime beatings and the murder of his cellmates (some of whom were friends of his) made him resolve to escape, since he figured it would be better to be shot trying to break out than to be murdered and have it staged to look like a suicide.

[A] friend who was a prisoner outside the bunker managed to slip him a tool to unscrew the grate over his window and tin snips to help manage the barbed wire. Later reports claimed he strangled a storm trooper and took his clothing, but Beimler simply crawled out of his high window, taking a board with him. He navigated three layers of barbed wire--the middle one electrified--using the wood for insulation, and climbed onto the six-foot wall surrounding the camp’s exterior. Waiting there a moment to make sure he had not been seen, he jumped down the other side and made his way to Munich.

The next morning, Steinbrenner arrived to find an empty cell. Frantic searches were made, prisoners were interrogated. For some time, guardhouse staff remained certain Beimler was hiding somewhere on the grounds. Dogs were used to search, and a hundred-mark reward was posted in the local paper Amper-Bote. But Beimler remained in hiding until he could safely get to Berlin and cross the border to the east.

Once out of the country, he mailed a postcard to Dachau telling the camp commanders to kiss his ass. Some three months after his escape, he was sitting in Moscow writing a searing indictment of Nazi atrocities. It was printed in three languages and circled the globe. (p. 173-174)

It’s important to observe that no system of mass detention ever sets out with the cruelty that (sooner or later) inevitably manifests in mind. From reconcentracion in Cuba to the Nazi crimes, there is never a single point of no return for the countries involved, nor a single moment of moral clarity where the architects of these policies are forced to confront what they are creating. It is always possible for those responsible to hide behind precedent, behind political rhetoric, behind expedient to justify to the rest of the world as to why their camps are not only right but necessary, to argue away any evidence for the gravity of these sins as ‘a few bad apples’ or ‘an unfortunate excess.’

And the corollary to this is that you will never get one moment you can point to and say to the people around you, “Look! There it is! That’s the moral event horizon, and they just crossed it. You can’t possibly support them now.” Because there will always be a way for people to rationalize their support of such policies. I suspect the only antidote, individual or collective, is an ironclad moral will that rejects the dehumanization of others outright--and to fight like hell to shut such evils down when they first begin to appear.

This all has obvious relevance to the present political moment--that’s why Pitzer was on Hayes’ podcast, that’s why I wanted to read this book to begin with. I don’t think that, outside genuine, self-described neo-Nazis, even in the darkest imagination of the most reflexively prejudiced Trump supporter, the desire for Soviet or Nazi-style gulags exists, I really don’t. But things can always get worse. The cruelties build on themselves incrementially--and the only way to prevent that, to actually make sure that kind of thing can’t happen here (or anything like it--there is, after all, plenty of evil that is not outright genocide) is to refuse to permit the creation of the institutions that are its necessary predecessors.

[artdaily7]

Marriage by Marianne Moore

This institution, perhaps one should say enterprise out of respect for which one says one need not change one's mind about a thing one has believed in, requiring public promises of one's intention to fulfill a private obligation: I wonder what Adam and Eve think of it by this time, this firegilt steel alive with goldenness; how bright it shows -- "of circular traditions and impostures, committing many spoils," requiring all one's criminal ingenuity to avoid! Psychology which explains everything explains nothing and we are still in doubt. Eve: beautiful woman -- I have seen her when she was so handsome she gave me a start, able to write simultaneously in three languages -- English, German and French and talk in the meantime; equally positive in demanding a commotion and in stipulating quiet: "I should like to be alone;" to which the visitor replies, "I should like to be alone; why not be alone together?" Below the incandescent stars below the incandescent fruit, the strange experience of beauty; its existence is too much; it tears one to pieces and each fresh wave of consciousness is poison. "See her, see her in this common world," the central flaw in that first crystal-fine experiment, this amalgamation which can never be more than an interesting possibility, describing it as "that strange paradise unlike flesh, gold, or stately buildings, the choicest piece of my life: the heart rising in its estate of peace as a boat rises with the rising of the water;" constrained in speaking of the serpent -- that shed snakeskin in the history of politeness not to be returned to again -- that invaluable accident exonerating Adam. And he has beauty also; it's distressing -- the O thou to whom, from whom, without whom nothing -- Adam; "something feline, something colubrine" -- how true! a crouching mythological monster in that Persian miniature of emerald mines, raw silk -- ivory white, snow white, oyster white and six others -- that paddock full of leopards and giraffes -- long lemonyellow bodies sown with trapezoids of blue. Alive with words, vibrating like a cymbal touched before it has been struck, he has prophesied correctly -- the industrious waterfall, "the speedy stream which violently bears all before it, at one time silent as the air and now as powerful as the wind." "Treading chasms on the uncertain footing of a spear," forgetting that there is in woman a quality of mind which is an instinctive manifestation is unsafe, he goes on speaking in a formal, customary strain of "past states," the present state, seals, promises, the evil one suffered, the good one enjoys, hell, heaven, everything convenient to promote one's joy." There is in him a state of mind by force of which, perceiving what it was not intended that he should, "he experiences a solemn joy in seeing that he has become an idol." Plagued by the nightingale in the new leaves, with its silence -- not its silence but its silences, he says of it: "It clothes me with a shirt of fire." "He dares not clap his hands to make it go on lest it should fly off; if he does nothing, it will sleep; if he cries out, it will not understand." Unnerved by the nightingale and dazzled by the apple, impelled by "the illusion of a fire effectual to extinguish fire," compared with which the shining of the earth is but deformity -- a fire "as high as deep as bright as broad as long as life itself," he stumbles over marriage, "a very trivial object indeed" to have destroyed the attitude in which he stood -- the ease of the philosopher unfathered by a woman. Unhelpful Hymen! "a kind of overgrown cupid" reduced to insignificance by the mechanical advertising parading as involuntary comment, by that experiment of Adam's with ways out but no way in -- the ritual of marriage, augmenting all its lavishness; its fiddle-head ferns, lotus flowers, opuntias, white dromedaries, its hippopotamus -- nose and mouth combined in one magnificent hopper, "the crested screamer -- that huge bird almost a lizard," its snake and the potent apple. He tells us that "for love that will gaze an eagle blind, that is like a Hercules climbing the trees in the garden of the Hesperides, from forty-five to seventy is the best age," commending it as a fine art, as an experiment, a duty or as merely recreation. One must not call him ruffian nor friction a calamity -- the fight to be affectionate: "no truth can be fully known until it has been tried by the tooth of disputation." The blue panther with black eyes, the basalt panther with blue eyes, entirely graceful -- one must give them the path -- the black obsidian Diana who "darkeneth her countenance as a bear doth, causing her husband to sigh," the spiked hand that has an affection for one and proves it to the bone, impatient to assure you that impatience is the mark of independence not of bondage. "Married people often look that way" -- "seldom and cold, up and down, mixed and malarial with a good day and bad." "When do we feed?" We occidentals are so unemotional, we quarrel as we feed; one's self is quite lost, the irony preserved in "the Ahasuerus tête à tête banquet" with its "good monster, lead the way," with little laughter and munificence of humor in that quixotic atmosphere of frankness in which "Four o'clock does not exist but at five o'clock the ladies in their imperious humility are ready to receive you"; in which experience attests that men have power and sometimes one is made to feel it. He says, "what monarch would not blush to have a wife with hair like a shaving-brush? The fact of woman is not `the sound of the flute but every poison.'" She says, "`Men are monopolists of stars, garters, buttons and other shining baubles' -- unfit to be the guardians of another person's happiness." He says, "These mummies must be handled carefully -- `the crumbs from a lion's meal, a couple of shins and the bit of an ear'; turn to the letter M and you will find that `a wife is a coffin,' that severe object with the pleasing geometry stipulating space and not people, refusing to be buried and uniquely disappointing, revengefully wrought in the attitude of an adoring child to a distinguished parent." She says, "This butterfly, this waterfly, this nomad that has `proposed to settle on my hand for life.' -- What can one do with it? There must have been more time in Shakespeare's day to sit and watch a play. You know so many artists are fools." He says, "You know so many fools who are not artists." The fact forgot that "some have merely rights while some have obligations," he loves himself so much, he can permit himself no rival in that love. She loves herself so much, she cannot see herself enough -- a statuette of ivory on ivory, the logical last touch to an expansive splendor earned as wages for work done: one is not rich but poor when one can always seem so right. What can one do for them -- these savages condemned to disaffect all those who are not visionaries alert to undertake the silly task of making people noble? This model of petrine fidelity who "leaves her peaceful husband only because she has seen enough of him" -- that orator reminding you, "I am yours to command." "Everything to do with love is mystery; it is more than a day's work to investigate this science." One sees that it is rare -- that striking grasp of opposites opposed each to the other, not to unity, which in cycloid inclusiveness has dwarfed the demonstration of Columbus with the egg -- a triumph of simplicity -- that charitive Euroclydon of frightening disinterestedness which the world hates, admitting:

"I am such a cow, if I had a sorrow, I should feel it a long time; I am not one of those who have a great sorrow in the morning and a great joy at noon;" which says: "I have encountered it among those unpretentious protegés of wisdom, where seeming to parade as the debater and the Roman, the statesmanship of an archaic Daniel Webster persists to their simplicity of temper as the essence of the matter:

`Liberty and union now and forever;'

the book on the writing-table; the hand in the breast-pocket."

Winslow Homer 1874 Moonlight, oil on canvas, PC

[maxwellyjordan]

Opinion analysis: Justices accept, but cabin, SEC’s right to disgorgement in securities litigation

The decision this morning in Liu v. Securities and Exchange Commission struck a middle ground, rejecting the broad argument that the SEC could never obtain disgorgement of profits from unlawful activity in securities litigation, but sharply cutting back the remedy as the SEC has envisioned it in recent years.

As securities cases go, the issue in the case was simple, involving the scope of relief in SEC enforcement actions brought in federal court, as opposed to agency administrative proceedings. The specific question was whether the SEC can obtain an equitable remedy of disgorgement in addition to remedies available under specific statutory provisions for penalties and injunctive relief. Faced with the SEC’s challenge to a fraudulent investment fund operated by petitioners Charles Liu and Xin Wang, the lower courts held that the SEC could force disgorgement of substantially all of the funds that investors had contributed, with no deduction even for legitimate expenses of operating the enterprise.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for a nearly unanimous bench, joined by all except Justice Clarence Thomas, who would have held disgorgement wholly unavailable because, in his view, “disgorgement is not a traditional equitable remedy.” The court’s opinion first considers the availability of disgorgement. Sotomayor emphasizes the long tradition of equity practice that has “routinely deprived wrongdoers of their net profits from unlawful activity, even though that remedy may have gone by different names.” She points to the long tradition of restitution to “force disgorgement of [a defendant’s] gain.” Recognizing that “the label” might have shifted from time to time, Sotomayor nevertheless discerns a “foundational principle” set out in a Supreme Court opinion from the 19th century: “[I]t would be inequitable that [a wrongdoer] should make a profit out of his own wrong.”

Two threads dominate her reasoning. One is that the remedy must be “tethered to a wrongdoer’s net unlawful profits,” ensuring that the wrongdoer “should not be punished by” (in the words of another 19th century opinion) “‘pay[ing] more than a fair compensation to the person wronged.’” The second is the “‘protean character’ of the profits-recovery remedy,’” which the court has sometimes compared to restitution and at other times to an accounting for profits. In her view, though, even if the label of disgorgement is relatively new, the body of authority establishes that “equity courts habitually [have] awarded profits-based remedies” as a matter of general first principles of equity.

Sotomayor turns next to a discussion of what limits on disgorgement are appropriate. On this question, Sotomayor observes that in recent years, courts seem to have forgotten that the traditional equity practice “circumscribe[d] the award in multiple ways to avoid transforming it into a penalty outside their equitable powers.” She identifies three specific limits on the traditional equitable remedy. First, the effect of the “profits remedy,” as Sotomayor calls it, was to “impos[e] a constructive trust on wrongful gains for wronged victims.” The remedy made sense only as a way to return the defendant’s wrongful gains to those harmed by the defendant’s malfeasance. Second, because the remedy was limited to the defendant’s profits, it traditionally was confined to the profits obtained by each individual defendant; it would not justify relief “against multiple wrongdoers under a joint-and-several liability theory.” Third, the remedy was limited to the “net” profits, or the “gain made upon any business or investment, when both the receipts and [expenses] are taken into the account.”

The closing section of the opinion points out that the SEC’s pursuit of disgorgement in general, and arguably in this case, has transgressed each of those three limits. Sotomayor notes that the SEC “does not always return the entirety of disgorgement proceeds to investors, instead depositing a portion of its collections in a fund in the Treasury.” That is difficult to reconcile with the court’s view that “[t]he equitable nature of the profits remedy generally requires the SEC to return a defendant’s gains to wronged investors for their benefit.” Sotomayor is unimpressed by the SEC’s broad argument that “the very fact that it conducted an enforcement action” is enough to show that the relief benefits investors, concluding that the SEC’s conception of investor benefit would “render [the statute] meaningless.” The opinion leaves open the possibility that the government might retain funds in a case in which “it is infeasible to distribute the collected funds to investors,” but it would not be easy to fashion such a remedy consistently with the court’s analysis.

Similarly, the opinion criticizes the SEC’s common imposition of “joint-and-several liability” in disgorgement cases, which Sotomayor finds to be “at odds with the common-law rule requiring individual liability for wrongful profits” because it “could transform any equitable profits-focused remedy into a penalty.” Again, the opinion allows that the lower court could find on remand that joint-and-several liability is appropriate in this case because the finances of the two defendants here (husband and wife) were so “commingled” that both spouses “enjoy[ed] the fruits of the scheme,” but that circumstance may be absent in many disgorgement cases.

Finally, Sotomayor flatly rejects the practice (followed by the lower court here) of ordering disgorgement of all revenues, explaining that “courts must deduct legitimate expenses before ordering disgorgement.” Sotomayor acknowledges the possibility that “personal services” expenses should be disallowed as “inequitable” in a case in which defendants operated an “entirely fraudulent scheme.” But the record here showed a variety of ordinary expenses to third parties for such items as leases and cancer-treatment equipment. To the extent those items “have value independent of fueling a fraudulent scheme,” the lower court should have permitted their deduction from the award.

Liu may not be regarded as a major securities decision. It should, though, bring a significant shift to the SEC’s disgorgement practice, to which the lower courts have been much more receptive than has the Supreme Court.

The post Opinion analysis: Justices accept, but cabin, SEC’s right to disgorgement in securities litigation appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

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[ntrending]

Gravitational waves could solve a cosmological crisis within five years—or shake physics to its core

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/gravitational-waves-could-solve-a-cosmological-crisis-within-five-years-or-shake-physics-to-its-core/

Gravitational waves could solve a cosmological crisis within five years—or shake physics to its core

When cosmologist Daniel Holtz took off from Hong Kong on August 17, 2017, his head swirled with the ideas he’d spent the last week lecturing on, including his hope that vibrations in space would someday settle an ongoing debate regarding the size and age of the universe. But he knew it would take time. Time for two of the densest objects in existence to smack together and shake the cosmos hard enough for us to feel the rumble here on Earth, time to locate the disturbance, and time to swing our telescopes toward the collision before the accompanying burst of light faded back into darkness.

Optimistically, such paired observations of both gravitational waves and light from these neutron star collisions were about ten years off, he had told the audience in his last lecture the previous day. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) collaboration had already detected black hole mergers and the Virgo interferometer had just come online in Italy two weeks earlier, so the enterprise was developing smoothly. But when Holtz, who works at the University of Chicago, returned to Illinois, he learned the future had arrived early. The gravitational shockwaves set off by the collision of two nearby titans had rippled through his plane—and the entire planet—while he was in the air, and observatories around the world were scrambling for follow-up optical observations.

“We landed, and my phone exploded. I immediately connected and just sat there on my laptop starting to work,” Holtz recalls. “That was the most amazing experience of my life.” Twelve hours after touchdown he had a back-of-the-envelope calculation for the most contentious number in cosmology: the speed of the expanding universe. With just one data point he couldn’t get the decisive measurement he’s dreamed of for thirteen years, but he finally knew the project was possible. Now, after doing some more math, he’s back with a new prediction: the LIGO collaboration may be able to settle the decades-long debate within five years, according to his recent letter in Nature.

The conversation revolves around one question: How fast is the universe expanding? Finding the answer, known as the Hubble constant, is simple in theory. You start with a receding object, typically a star undergoing a particular type of death. These “type 1a supernovae” always explode in the same way, so researchers can get an idea of their distance based on their brightness. To calculate the Hubble Constant, you also need to know the speed at which the explosion is moving away from you, which you can get from looking at its color, a measure of how stretched its light is. Researchers can also do something similar with information in ancient light left over from shortly after the big bang, known as the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Once you know the speed of expansion you can work backward to figure out the exact size and age of the universe or push forward to look at its future trajectory.

The problem is that the two current calculations give different results.

The most recent estimates for the supernova method (73.5 kilometers per second per megaparsec, as of January) and the CMB method (67.4, as of June) differ by about 9 percent. The discrepancy didn’t cause much alarm in the field initially, since the measurements are devilishly difficult in practice. A big, far off explosion looks like a weak, close one, so finding the distance to supernovae relies on the “cosmic distance ladder,” a complicated technique that involves relating three types of objects at different distances, or “rungs.” Astronomers first study flickering stars in our galactic backyard with basic geometry and then transfer that knowledge to similarly behaving stars in distant galaxies to get a read on the supernovae happening there. “They’re incredibly careful in so many different ways,” Holst says. “But there’s a lot of sausage in there.”

Studying the CMB calls for less machinery, but more assumptions. The background radiation preserves a record of the expanding universe in its infancy, and to extrapolate to the present cosmologists have to draw on everything they think they know about what gravity, matter, dark energy, and dark matter have been doing during the intervening 13 billion years. Any number of flaws could have thrown either method off, but even as astrophysicists in each camp have checked and re-checked their math, the two estimations have refused to converge. Now the chance that the cosmological community has just had an incredible string of statistical bad luck is pushing 1 in 1,000.

“It’s gotten to a point now where we’re like ‘wow, that’s probably not just a fluke,’” says Adam Reiss, a cosmologist at John Hopkins University who works on the supernova method. “There’s something interesting going on, something we don’t understand about the universe.”

Holtz has bet his career on the idea that gravitational waves could serve as arbiter. The idea, which originates from a speculative 1986 paper by American physicist Bernard Shutz, is that another type of dead star could replace supernovae as a cleaner yardstick for cosmic distances. After blowing up, giant stars that don’t quite have what it takes to become a black hole collapse into neutron stars—a scrum of particles so dense even atoms get crushed. When two of these stellar corpses crash together, the impact sets off a ripple known as a gravitational wave.

Because these waves are undulations in space itself, nothing gets in their way. Unperturbed by dust and gas clouds, they spread out from the crash site until reaching Earth, where the scientific community operates three L-shaped detectors (with more on the way) to nab them. As a wave passes through the planet, it gives it a light squeeze. One arm of each L becomes about one-proton shorter than the other, and the apparatus notifies physicists and astronomers around the world. Using the exacting equations of general relativity, researchers can measure the distance to the collision accurately with little calculation and few assumptions—no ladder climbing or particle counting required.

Holtz refined the theory in 2005, suggesting that spotting the light from a neutron star crash along with sensing the waves would provide speed information to complement the gravitational wave distance reading, and joined LIGO to spearhead such an effort. Many of his colleagues told him it was never going to happen, he recalls, since astronomical data predicted that neutron star mergers should occur extremely rarely, but all the pieces came together on August 17 just as he was flying home.

The Hubble Constant from that event came in at a very rough 70, smack between the traditional two, but with uncertainty engulfing even the most extreme supernovae and CMB estimates. Settling the conflict calls for shrinking that possible error to 2 or 3 percent, which will take between 30 and 50 collisions of the type observed last year, Holtz calculates in his recent paper. Based on LIGO’s increasing sensitivity and the assumed rate of neutron star mergers, he now expects to have enough data to decide between the two Hubble Constant contenders within five years. Reiss, who wasn’t involved with the work, agrees that gravitational waves offer a plausible and exciting path forward, but points out that it’s tough to guess how often we’ll find mergers. “Maybe they’ll accrue faster,” Reiss says, “but if they accrue 10 times slower I don’t want to wait 50 years.”

Holtz admits that it’s hard to guess how often something will take place after it’s happened just one time, but says there’s reason for optimisim—if he’s done the math right. His model, which he based on common statistical tools for counting rare events, predicts detections of between 30 and 400 mergers by 2026. Any of those outcomes would push the uncertainty in the Hubble Constant south of 3%, he expects, so no one should have to wait 50 years.

If gravitational waves do let us conclusively clock the expansion of the universe, there are three possible outcomes. LIGO data could back the CMB method, meaning the cosmic ladder failed to reach the supernovae accurately. Reiss says only a “conspiracy of errors” could explain how half a dozen independent calibration methods all failed so badly, and likens this case to being struck by lightning multiple times.

Both Holtz and Reiss are personally hoping neutron stars support the supernova calculation, which would point to a mistaken assumption in how the universe evolved from its birth to now—a much-anticipated sign of new physics. Gravity might have acted differently than we expect, Holtz speculates, or there could be undiscovered particles missing from the cosmological accounting.

Alternatively, LIGO could come back with an entirely different measurement for the Hubble Constant, outside of the range set by both supernovae and the CMB. This outcome would create a nightmare scenario, shaking cosmology to its core. “That would just cast doubt on all of our abilities to make measurements period,” Reiss says, “I hope we’re not in that place.”

For now, Holz just feels thrilled that his bet is paying off. Last year he thought the first data point was still a decade off, and in a few months he’ll be listening for the second when LIGO comes back online in February. “I’ve spent years working on this idea and developing it,” Holtz says. “And in the span of less than half a day, it unspooled in front of me.”

Written By Charlie Wood

[mauricerefrea-blog]

THIRD BLOG ENTRY : “KNOW THYSELF”

REFREA, JOICE MAURICE T. 

11410396 

SHURMAN 

PART I : Personality Test  

Do you agree or disagree with your test results? Why?

For most parts I do agree with my test results. I am a CONSUL PERSONALITY (ESFJ, -A/-T) -> ESFJ-A. The most striking result that I disagree on is that consuls are popular. My entire life I never considered myself popular --it seems that I have considered myself like a wallflower. In Taylor Swift’s song entitled “You belong with me”, I am more of the girl who is on the bleachers than cheerleader. But base on this assessment it seems that I am on the cheerleader comparison for consuls are considered popular.

I certainly agree on how i do enjoy supporting friends and loved organizing social gatherings and doing their best to make sure everyone is happy. I agree on consuls being social creatures, and thrive on staying up to date with what their friends are doing. In fact,i actually love staying connected and updated with the people I value and love. Although i have interest in politics, i certainly agree how i am more concerned with fashion and appearances. I also agreen on that consul personality type will base their moral compass on established traditions and laws-- and true indeed I have a strong belief in ethical and moral principles

Consuls love BEING ORGANIZED AND WELL PLANNED OUT -- there is not doubt that I am this person.I agree with my strengths and weakness esp on my weakness of “ Often Too Needy – Consuls need to hear and see a great deal of appreciation. If their efforts go unnoticed, people with the Consul personality type may start fishing for compliments, in an attempt to get reassurance of how much they are valued.” In terms of work and career I firmly agree on this phrase “they need human interaction and emotional feedback to be truly satisfied in their line of work.” Hence, I liked this survey very much among the surveys on blog entry number 3.

Do the recommended careers (based on the infographics) appeal to you? Why/why not?

The recommended careers based on the website were the following :

Elementary teacher

Child care directorNutritionistCosmetologist

And base on the infographics were the following:

- Sales representative

-nurse healthcare worker

-social worker

-pr account executive

-loan officer

In general, the recommended careers do not appeal to me. Ever since I was little, these professions were the ones that never struck me nor sparked interest. I really dislike work involving children --in general I dislike work relating to medicine. From all possible careers, the only one that appealed to me was the pr account executive. In the pr line of work it brings out my extrovert energetic creative side.

How will the knowledge of your personality type help you to become a successful business leader?

In order to become a successful business leader, I must continue to embrace and develop the following skills traits :

(1) strong practical skills - I must continue to nurture relationships that involve making sure that other are well cared of and must oversee the tasks critically

(2) strong sense of duty - I must strive to be more responsible in order to accomplish my duties and roles

(3) loyalty- I must continue to value my belongingness in my peers and groups to even more exercise this trait

(4) sensitivity and warmness - I should even more try to be sensitive towards others’ feelings so that harmony in the group or organization could be achieved.

(5) Connection with others- I must strive to communicate and relate with others in order to become a business leader. I have to exercise a leader that radiates inclusivity and unity in order to become a successful business leader

PART II : RIASEC PROFILE

Is the definition of each characteristic in the R-I-A-S-E-C profile consistent with what you know about yourself? Why or why not?

Overall, each R-I-A-S-E-C profile is consistent with what I know about myself. I do know that  i am really leaning to extrovert side even though i have an introvert side. From my R-I-A-S-E-C  profile scores in ascending order it is  Enterprising , Investigative, and Social as my best three.

As for enterprising , I really am interested in politics and money. I agree that i am very ambitious. My parents always told me to dream big. This is why I am really ambitious and wanting to achieve so much. I agree on the domineering aspect -- that in real life people find me intimidating.But my personality in conflict with being enterprising and investigative, in enterprising it is being optimistic. While in investigative it is being pessimistic. I agree on both. However, I am torn in those two depending on the situation. For example in investigative, i am rational whenever it involves decision making. While in enterprise i have my impulsive side -- for example, when it is sale in the mall.

As for being Investigative, I agree that i am analytical and independent. As for social I also agree that I  try to be warm and understanding to others. Moreover, i am sociable that I  can handle being out there.

Do any of the suggested jobs fitting your R-I-A-S-E-C profile interest you? Why or why not? Which of the suggested jobs do you think you are capable of doing, based on the level of preparation prescribed in the O*Net profiler?

One of the suggested jobs that I liked most that fits my R-I-A-S-E-C profile is being a lawyer. And being a lawyer is on Job zone 5 prescribed in the O*Net Profiler. I really need extensive job preparation in order to become a lawyer. I really  want to be a lawyer it is one of my rational and practical dream. I believe that I am capable of achieving this.

Do you think you will have a fulfilling career if you take one of the suggested jobs for your profile? Why or why not?

My undergraduate is legal management, and somehow it gives you a glimpse of what the future attorney career would be like. With my undergraduate experience so far, I believe that there is a high possibility that if I continue on with this path in becoming a lawyer I would have a fulfilling career. Although a hindrance bothers me, it is the quality of justice in the Philippines. At the end of the day I believe in the goodness of my countrymen and someday I will become a lawyer that best serves the interest of the people.

Do you agree with the comparison between your level of introversion/extroversion to your R-I-A-S-E-C profile? Why or why not?

Yes I do agree with the level of my introversion and my extroversion. I really do have two sides. My introversion and extroversion manifest differently depending on the situation I am in. Furthermore, it also differs depending on my mood for that day. For example, my introversion kicks in whenever I enroll in a younger batch id class in DLSU. Another example of my introversion side is whenever there is a group work and it is somehow the first time getting involved with the set of strangers and their vibe do not really appeal to me --that is when introversion comes in. On the other hand my extroversion kicks in whenever I am outside the country and being allowed to spend days on my own. I love meeting other people and interacting with them.

PART III: SELFSTIR 360 ASSESSMENT

What did you learn about yourself by doing the SelfStir assessment

For some reason, ever since I started being out there like participating in extracurricular activities or being an achiever in my academics I liked the feelings of being praised for the good and hard work. And so through this selfstir assessment it was validated that I have this tendency of overstating my achievements that give off the vibe to others that I am not humble enough. What I have learned is that I should let others recognize these achievements rather than being super proud about it. Another take home learning from this activity is that, I should work on my adaptability and flexibility characteristics.

What is your greatest strength and your greatest weakness? Did these traits surprise you? Or are you already aware of them?

My bottom five or the weaknesses are the following : (1) I practice what i preach (2) I openly share my thoughts and feelings, beliefs and knowledge (3) I go out of my way to help and support people (4) I accept change and uncertainty and (5) I adapt my approach to suit the situation and people involved. On the other hand my top five or the strengths are the following : (1)I am willing to learn from all people, whatever their status (2)I see myself for who I really am (3) I am approachable and encourage honest-two-way-communication (4) I see the good in every person and (5) I am guided by strong ethical and moral values and principles.

The results on the bottom five surprised me actually. I have always believe that I certainly practice what I preach-- with that I disagree on the result of the survey. Knowing that I am more of an extrovert type, it is natural for me to openly share my thoughts and feelings, beliefs and knowledge especially if it involves socio-political issues. I was also astounded with my greatest strength on being approachable. Normally people’s first impressions on me would always include the phrase “ang taray mo kaya”. They would always voice out that fact that I have a resting bitch face that makes me look not an approachable person.

On the other hand, some of the results mentioned above I am deeply aware of. Ever since I was young, my parents would always tell me to look into people’s goodness than their evil doings. My parents always mentioned the “kabutihan” in people-- I would rather call it “kabutihan” than good in english for the Filipino term connotes a more meaningful essence of goodness. Moreover, I am also aware for my eagerness to learn things and definitely it is true that it does not matter to me whether you’re schooled or not -- for I am willing to learn from all kinds of people. Since then I have always believed that I am a person who is really guided by strong ethical and moral values and principles. I believe that success comes in believing and adhering to rational and moral values and principles.

What do you think about other people’s rating of you? Are you surprised to learn about their impression of you? Or are you already aware of the image you project to the world?

I am not entirely surprised about their ratings. I believe that they carefully analyzed my relationship with them before answering the survey. I am just particularly bothered on their rating on personal integrity. The raters’ rating on this part is just average, it is not something to be proud of nor something worth grieving. As I have said, I do have a strong sense of belief on ethical and moral values and principles ; and on this aspect, it seemed that I have not well projected it to the world nor have I radiated it enough to reach interaction with the raters. 

On the other aspects of the survey, my answer and the raters’ answer did not vary too much -- my ratings and their were close to one another. This leads me to believe that the self I know today is being understood and known fairly to others. But then again, there are aspects like one i have mentioned on personal integrity that I must improve on.

How important is a 360 assessment in the workplace?

The 360 assessment in the workplace makes the organization look more progressive than just an organization that is traditional. I am not saying that traditional assessments in organizations are regressive. What I am trying to point out is that 360 assessment makes the organization open to development and improvement. In such sense, the organization becomes progressive for it allows itself to evaluate the situation and relationship in the workplace.

The 360 assessment proves to be relevant for it enables the people in the organization to provide feedback on one another's’ performances. Remember that in the four functions of management, controlling is a crucial part and manifested through feedback. The 360 assessment serves as a system of feedback that balances the views of the people in the organization. It is through this assessment that the people in the organization realize the impact of one another in achieving and working on the pursuit of the organization’s goal.

How can this assessment help you become an effective leader?

It is through this assessment that I could engage in a transparent feedback session with the people. In order to become an effective leader of course communication is a crucial aspect to work on. I believe that through the 360 assessment, I would effectively carry out and improve the rightful way of communicating and projecting myself as a leader. On the 360 assessment, remember that it shows you the perception of others about you. I believe that I could utilize the feedback to actually work on those bottom five or the weakness. The 360 assessment somehow becomes a bucket-list to accomplish and overcome in other to fully realize the potentials to become an effective leader.