CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
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User ID: 333
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
3d ago
Welcome back.
I've teased you in comments, but I'm glad you're alive and well.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
4d ago
Maybe his calculus was that the only way to reshape
existing trade relationsAmerica was to just rip the band-aid off, because otherwise governments and businesses would have just eternally dragged their feet.
As a general rule I'd say his attitude is the above. If you slowroll any policy it will just give the opposition time to bog things down, or so the thinking goes.
I think it was JD Vance that said they've set themselves a target to accomplish as much as they can before the mid terms.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
4d ago
I rode a motorbike without owning a car for about 10 years.
Basically if you can control yourself (which is a big 'if' for most riders in their 20's) the largest risk comes from inattentive and reckless drivers in other vehicles. Think of the worst driving you've seen in a car where people don't effectively check mirrors, blind spots, or oncoming traffic. Now crank that up 2x or 3x. That's how often you will see people turning into your path from side roads or changing lanes directly into you. Some people train themselves on only noticing car sized objects or larger in their mirrors.
You need reasonable reflexes (or riding experience) to defensively react quick enough to this sort of behaviour. It's probably the main reason I gave up motorcycle riding.
If you do get a bike, remember to wear All The Gear, All The Time (ATGATT).
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
6d ago
Most things from the golden age of Science Fiction are pretty good. Things by Robert Heinlein, E.E. 'Doc' Smith, Larry Niven, Isaac Asimov etc.
Most of the heroes are strong willed masculine archetypes, but flawed in one way or another.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
7d ago
The Mauritius Command. Somehow Aubrey now has kids.
I wish the series were better spread out over the Napoleonic Wars, but I guess the author didn't realise how popular the series would get when he started writing it and timeskipped too much to cover the best bits of the wars.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
10d ago
I'm sure posters here could provide a reasonable steelman for Trump's position if asked
I asked this after the election, because the tariffs were on the horizon even back then.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
10d ago
It's bizarre.
It's normal hyper-agency in action. This is not a child, its a male adolescent and thus has full agency and responsibility. How else could the filmmakers make their point?
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
11d ago
I had to read several articles about this to really understand
I hate journalists so much. They deliberately lie by omission because of their ideologies (Right wing journos leave things out too).
It shouldn't take so much time to figure out what all these people are arguing about.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
14d ago
Try toasting croissants open with ham, cheese and tomato filling.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
17d ago
Yeah, it looks like Waltz's (now deleted) Venmo account was full of journalists including from MSNBC and CNN.
He might not necessarily have been previously leaking info to Goldberg. Maybe Goldberg previously contacted him asking for comment and was saved as a standard phone contact that way. Maybe someone else sent him a dodgy contact card which he saved into his phone. This contact was then imported into Signal and then he accidentally added it to the group chat. He made a comment about contacts 'getting sucked in' in a recent interview.
I think Waltz is basically lying through his teeth right now for damage control, so I don't think we're going to get a straight story from him.
Great travelogue. Looking forward to the sequel(s).
They have an advanced form of analog Tinder. There are hundreds or thousands of essentially dating profiles on laminated sheets of printer paper laid out on the path. There are sections for foreign matches and all sorts of categories. Some have phone numbers; some are tended by the prospective matches or, more commonly, their parents, uncles, or aunts. According to the wife, the women greatly outnumber the men. It wasn't clear to me why, given the sex imbalance should lean the other way.
My understanding is that you need a residency permit to live in Shanghai. Women from rural areas travel to Shanghai on temporary permits to work and live a more modern lifestyle in the big city. Then if they want to stay they need to marry a local man with the proper 'household registration' (hukou (户口). Demand for 'eligible' local men is sky high. There's parallels with people moving to the West on temporary visas and trying to marry a citizen.
Edit: Grok says its less of a residency permit and more access to resources:
'Cities like Shanghai, Beijing, or Guangzhou offer “urban” hukou perks: better schools, hospitals, social welfare, and housing benefits.'
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
18d ago
Glenn Greenwald agrees with you.
I've struggled with this because of Goldberg's hostility to the administration, but nothing else fits unless someone else had access to his phone. He already denied that a staffer of his changed the contact.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
18d ago
This tweet is doing the rounds that says advanced warning that the US will attack is automatically classified as Top Secret. The only way I can square the weaseling is if I squint and say SecDef has the ability to declassify any DoD classified information, which he presumably did by posting it in the chat.
The CIA director alluded to this argument in his Senate Intelligence answers today.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
18d ago
So it looks like the administration straight up lied. I don't know why they would considering Goldberg had the receipts. Are they trying to use some weasel reasoning of what is and is not 'classified'?
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
18d ago
Thanks, fixed.
Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor added everyone to the group and he used his phone's contacts to do so. He denies having ever met or having the contact on his phone of the journalist in question.
In this interview he says the the contact he had in his phone was for someone else that should have been in the group. But that contact's name was somehow attached to the journalist's number instead. The interviewer asks if it was a rogue staffer who substituted the number, but Waltz denied it. He says there is an investigation underway with attached technical experts trying to determine how the wrong number was assigned to the legitimate persons name in his phone.
It would make sense that a motivated person would try to substitute a hostile journalist's number in this way, but how that happened is still up in the air. Still, some of the blatant smearing of the journalist in question by Waltz in this interview (and Hegseth when interviewed earlier today) in some post-hoc Poisoning the Well makes it more difficult to take everything Waltz is saying at face value.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
18d ago
The whole thing is really bizarre. Like the outsider added to the chat just so happens to be a journalist? What are the odds of that?
I don't believe the theories about it being deliberate and some manipulative exercise against friendly and hostile foreign governments. Hegseth purportedly posted operational details which isn't 'no classified information was discussed'. It was specific details about a military operation before it occurred. And then in the Senate Intelligence hearing they glossed over things with the CIA Director saying Signal is an approved app for comms like this.
If the whole thing was some sort of PsyOp, why did Hegseth post those details? Did it never happen and the journalist is complicit? Isn't there an easier way to PsyOp without making the administration look incompetent?
I think its just what it looks like. A big stuff up.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
19d ago
Some kind of fractured derivative of the Red Pill. Not that he would identify as that (which is kind of my point). Do you think Tate would go 'I'm part of the manosphere'?
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
19d ago
I'd consider adding some basic cardio like a daily 30 minutes walk if you aren't getting that in already.
For big four lifting there are basic resources like the book 'Starting Strength' which contains beginner routines.
On top of that I would actually look into pilates and stretching.
Maybe not all of these things at once as it would be overwhelming, but incrementally look into them. Sadly I'd probably look into stretching before I looked into heavy lifting if you want to save yourself injuries.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
20d ago
I think it was Au Pair work too; eg chores, babysitting in exchange for under the counter 'pocket money', room & board and cultural exchange. Western governments have traditionally turned a blind eye to this sort of thing for a while, to the point were people doing it expect that it won't be targeted. Unfortunately for them, the current political climate happened.
Also, I agree with others that both: A - the rejection from Canada triggered additional US BCP scrutiny; and B - there is a possibility that either her artist work or political views didn't work in her favor.
Something that isn't really focused on is why Canada rejected her for 'au pair' work. Details are (deliberately) vague.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
20d ago
This appears like a level of brazen, incompetent comfort that suggests to me they're probably using Signal for all sorts of coordination.
Now that the US's rivals know this, how possible is it for them to compromise Signal's servers for some Man in the Middle breach? Is it true that even the Signal company themselves can't read user comms?
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
20d ago
It makes sense in the modern age that a signal type app would be very useful for this type of coordination. What doesn't make sense is that some dept like the NSA hasn't developed one already.
Also, there are some conversations that should still be reserved for SCIF's. Hegseth should not have sent any operational details for instance.
Still a huge screw up, but rather than fight the tide the government should create its own app for executive comms like this.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
20d ago
JD's phrasing is exactly how an underling should disagree with his boss before a final decision is made. I've used similar phrasing before, even to my boss's face and it is entirely appropriately to do so in private (sausage factory) communications.
It isn't disrespectful, it provides an alternative point of view ('have you considered these ramifications..?') and he was very clear that he would support the consensus decision. This is exactly the type of thinking you want in committees like this.
Consider the alternative; pure Yes-manning. Would a leader want a sycophant in his camp? Ok, Trump might, but not in a position like VP. If Vance was like that behind the scenes, trump would not respect him and not delegate power to his VP in the way that Vance has been assigned this administration.
Arguably the primary targets are boys
I'd even just stop it here. Feminists like other critical theorists have done their own march through the educational institutions. I haven't really seen any pushback in Western public school systems and when I do it ends up as a cautionary tale..
I'd try to remind myself that someone resorting to ad hominem has lost the argument. There's little point in pointing this out to them as it will likely result in more ad hominem, but to neutral parties, the one resorting to insults isn't the one that is credible.
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