DradisPing
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User ID: 1102
DradisPing
20hr ago
Over the weekend a tape of Nick Fuentes having sex with Destiny leaked online. I haven't actually watched it.
Destiny made a short video statement about a friends account being broken into, which makes it less likely to be some sort of deep fake.
It's possible that this is all some sort of prank that I didn't pick up on. But "a male streamer leaks sex tape with Fuentes because Groypers keep attacking him online" lines up with my priors for Nick Fuentes.
DradisPing
20hr ago
Niggardly isn't that common and there are plenty of alternatives.
Chief is in the top 3000 most common words, so trying to get rid of it is much more difficult.
The upsetting one is "tar baby" because it's actually a useful concept without a good alternative.
DradisPing
20hr ago
It's probably too low brow for this site, but does anyone have a good thread of jokes about the Fuentes / Destiny sex tape?
DradisPing
21hr ago
It's an old word. England had a Chief Justiciar back in 1106. Native American tribal chiefs got the name because of their similarity to Scottish clan chiefs.
DradisPing
21hr ago
It's common for people to assume animals can fly that can't.
Take the legendary version of the tiger, the manticore.
You're out in the woods. A tiger, drops from a tree, grabs Steve, jumps back into a tree and runs off.
From your point of view the stripes on the tail could be segments like a scorpion. It came down then went up. Obviously it flew.
If you talk to hunters many of them will joke about deer flying. They get spooked, run at you, jump over your head, then when you look around they are gone. You just saw them go up and vanish.
So that's probably the source of Pegasus and flying reindeer.
So the historic dragon might not have even flown. It could just be a good pouncer who can get away quickly.
Of course that's less fun.
DradisPing
4d ago
A BA was originally about helping wealthy and intelligent people to lead a more enriched life.
The problem is that schools took over credentialization without adjusting their programs.
Right now no one has an interest in explaining to students which subjects are rich kid majors.
I think the real solution is to involve actuaries in the federal student loans program. Analyse data and warn kids that their program is unlikely to ever pay off their student loans.
DradisPing
4d ago
I think that there is a big problem with post-grad programs at low ranked schools. The school is basically scamming students who think an MA/PhD from that school will open up academic career possibilities.
DradisPing
5d ago
It's hard to know all his motivations. I think part of it was that hiring a bunch of leftists to run funds kept Elizabeth Warren and her ilk off of his back.
DradisPing
6d ago
That's Blackwater, the private military contractor.
There's also Blackstone which is a different asset management company.
DradisPing
7d ago
Mark Kern talked about this: https://www.geeksandgamers.com/video-game-producer-mark-kern-talks-sweet-baby-inc-and-esg-in-gaming/
Basically the issue is how games are funded. The studios get investors to front money for game development.
When companies like BlackRock were pushing ESG hard, ESG money was cheap money. Companies like EA saw the cheap money with the only condition being that they had to hire a bunch of DEI storyline consultants.
Now games are failing, but it's hard to fire the storyline consultants. They know how to work the system.
Also the various left wing activists they've hired over the years are trained to form a block and not back down, so it's a giant fight where just getting rid of the new hires isn't an option.
Of course you're right in that part of it is the devs. Trans women in particular tend to have issues with women's hips in games.
On a bit of a tangent, a surprising amount of game development is done in Canada as it's harder for devs to find other jobs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games_in_Canada#Studios
Assassin's Creed 4 has it's modern day sections set in Montreal. Mass Effect 3 has Shepard's trial take place in future Vancouver.
DradisPing
10d ago
A bit of a tangent, but foreign financial crimes are almost always prosecuted in the Southern District of New York or the Eastern District of New York.
I'm a bit surprised that foreign oligarchs and billionaires haven't set up a scheme to flood those districts with ex-pats who are available for jury duty.
DradisPing
11d ago
Not a lawyer, but criminal fraud laws are loose enough for them to be charged if the prosecutor really wanted to.
As a one off it's hard to imagine them getting charged with anything. Dean could probably sue if he found out, but he wanted to avoid court in the first place.
DradisPing
11d ago
There's a saying "code should be written to be understood by humans first an only incidentally executed by a machine".
None of them are actually harder or easier to read, it's just a matter of familiarity. You need to train your brain to quickly parse code and tweak that for new indentation styles.
You're going to have a better time if you just learn to read the most common styles quickly. You're inevitably going to be reading a lot of other people's code.
I like otbs. It's K&R without skipping braces on one liners, which can lead to bugs on a messy merge.
DradisPing
18d ago
I think the question is do Rubio's past foreign policy statements come from his ideology or is he just going with the flow given the people around him? He has some opinions about Latin America but I think for the rest of the world he'll just run with Trump's view.
His big selling points (to Trump) are that Trump worked with him on Latin America policy in Trump's first term. Also the Republican Senators will confirm him without any fuss.
DradisPing
18d ago
He was one of the more effective pro Trump voices in congress after 2021, and it looks like the DOJ took a run at him.
What they had on him was a crypto guy invited Gaetz on his yacht, afterwards Gaetz venmo'd him $900 and the crypto guy venmo'd two women who were there the $900 split between them. The problem was they couldn't turn that into a federal crime. Even as a state crime they couldn't prove the women were prostitutes or that Gaetz knew the money was for them.
Sending a friend money to cover party expenses isn't a crime. Sending money to a girl you just had sex with to buy herself a present isn't even a crime. It's a bit sleazy but pretty common among the party yacht crowd in Florida. The crypto bro was being threatened with charges and would have been useless as a witness.
So the DOJ leaks facts about the case to the press along with rumours that the girls were underage. They were published March 30, 2021.
Shortly after Gaetz is approached by an ex-military type who claims he can make the charges go away with a donation to a "veterans group". The guy was probably a fed and paying him off would have created federal charges that the DOJ could prosecute. However Gaetz reported it to someone he knew at the FBI instead so that went nowhere.
Basically the DOJ was leaking rumours for 18 months until they admitted there would be no charges. The press is still running with innuendo about it.
But we're approaching 4 years and it seems like the put up or shut up point has passed.
DOJ staff are typically institutionalists and will always circle the wagons to protect the DOJ.
But Gaetz would come in with a personal interest in investigating bad behaviour by the DOJ. They wouldn't be able to try to shame him into hiding things to protect the institution.
For Trumpists that's his big selling point. He's not likely to be highly effective in getting things done at the DOJ but he'll be eager to fire problem people even if it nets him bad headlines from the NYT.
For anti-Trumpists who support the shadier things the DOJ has been doing he's a nightmare.
For people who don't believe the DOJ does anything shady, he just looks like a poor candidate and they want someone more dignified.
Gaetz rubs a lot of people the wrong way because he looks like the rich kid villain from an 80s movie. That's probably not too far off the mark, only as an adult he went to DC and found out people there love to shit on his hometown. So he basically had a heel-face turn where he wants to defend the people of his city against DC.
DradisPing
18d ago
I don't think there's much to be gained from attacking pop stars. Anyone who takes their political takes seriously is already voting Dem.
DradisPing
18d ago
I wonder if its decline is related to it becoming just another mouthpiece for the democrat agenda, or if I'm totally off track.
The bigger issue is that the barrier to entry is so low publishing online now that theonion.com doesn't hold much value.
The pay for writers isn't that great either afaik.
So a talented funny person is better off doing their own thing. YouTube used to be easy to monetize. I think it's more streaming and podcasts now.
DradisPing
19d ago
I really liked the Jacques McKeown audiobooks (Will Save the Galaxy for Food, Will Destroy the Galaxy for Cash, Will Leave the Galaxy for Good). He reads them himself so you get his presentation skills.
I am particularly fond of spaceships, so it got points for that. It's a light and funny listen that's easy to follow. So it's great if you're doing chores or going for a walk where there may be some distractions.
I played it on a drive with my father and he asked me to turn it off because he liked it but it was too distracting. Usually he's fine with audiobooks on drives.
I had trouble getting into "Differently Morphous". I'm less familiar with some of the Lovecraftian & Harry Potterish material that the story involves. Plus there are POV jumps that make it harder to follow in while playing the background.
I'm planning to give it another try.
His books are not anything dense or deep, but I find them enjoyable.
DradisPing
19d ago
The problem with the values side is the values aren't really verifiable. The homeland of a people side feels under threat in large part because many of the people coming in aren't expected to believe in meritocracy, free speech, or any of that.
Take the example of Judge Chutkan. Her parents left Jamaica and brought her to the US because they were too hardline communist for the communists of Jamaica.
The Dems appointed her to be a DC judge precisely because she has weak cultural ties to the US and can't be shamed into following traditional American legal norms. Appeals to democratic traditions and rights just fall flat on her, she just hates her political enemies.
Republican voters see her in charge of the DC Trump trial and loose all faith in values based immigration.
Oh and it's a big lie that H1-Bs go to "highly educated foreign professionals". Sure decent chunk do. But they are randomly selected from the pool of applicants that have the correct paperwork, so there are significant abuses.
For instance here are H1Bs granted to a hog farming company: https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=murphy-brown+llc&job=&city=&year= Median Salary is $40768.
For H1Bs you need to match the prevailing local wage, so a lot of shops set up in a poor city, and pay their employees well below the normal national wages.
https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=wipro+limited&job=&city=&year=all+years
Sort by salary low to high.
As a fix for H1Bs I've long argued that they should award them based on base salary instead of the current random. It'd fix problems.
DradisPing
19d ago
But they are so confident that she’s a Russian agent. What’s the deal with that?
There's a standard and very controlled foreign affairs education in the US (and the rest of the Anglosphere). All the top professors and think tanks interact with the State Department regularly. Papers like The Economist are approved reading. Atlantic Council galas are mandatory for the serious.
In that culture there's a disbelief in any sort of autodidactism. Not disapproval, they literally believe that you can't come up with any sort of informed opinion on your own. You need to go to the proper schools and read the proper papers.
When they see someone intelligent and charismatic on the popular stage with some views that differ they immediately ask "Where did she get that from?". Admitting that she developed different views from her experiences and encounters outside the continental US implies that their own education was insufficient.
It's easier to just claim she's a Russian agent.
DradisPing
21d ago
There's an inherent scaling problem with cars and dense cores.
It becomes especially problematic because some people love driving and have a very entitled view and won't accept that investments in things like commuter rail benefit them by reducing the number of people on the road.
DradisPing
21d ago
September saw the release of a fifth Bobiverse book an a seventeenth Expeditionary Force book. Both were good instalments.
Yahtzee Croshaw released a third Jacques McKeown audibook back in April that I missed, so listening to that now.
I decided to give John Scalzi a shot. Starter Villain was enjoyable but fell apart in the last third. Recommended if you like cats. Constituent Service: A Third District Story didn't grab me, I didn't get far. I'm a few chapters into Old Man's War but not feeling too excited about it yet.
The Freedom's Fire box set had some very good parts, but I think I would have preferred and abridged edition.
Starship's Mage, Book 14 Chimera's Star has them
Children of Time is broadly praised. I gave it a try but I can't sympathise with intelligent spiders.
DradisPing
23d ago
First, why does it seem that the trolling and triggering in gender discourse is so asymmetric?
You have to understand the power asymmetry. The Women's side of the gender discourse is run by Women's Studies department with tenured professors. Low grade trolling is a bit beneath them. They don't want to trigger people like Groypers. They dislike being reminded of the continued existence of Fuentes and Tate.
Also trolling like that is an aggressive guy thing. The equivalent is probably that ex-teacher on Tik Tok who talks about politics in a pre school teacher voice like her viewers are small children.
DradisPing
24d ago
They make new writers watch every star trek episode from TOS - VOY before they start, so there are a lot of throwbacks. It's fun if you're a fan.
But Mariner is extremely obnoxious in the first three episodes.
Scaring away women isn't seen as a big loss. Being the centre of attention for a large number of young men is a huge plus, even if they are lower class.
A straight Fuentes would have focussed his energy and charisma into making money in sales or something like that. Once you factor in the major effort needed, being a far-right figure doesn't get you money or women.
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