DradisPing
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User ID: 1102
DradisPing
6d 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
6d 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
6d 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
6d 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
7d 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
7d 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
8d 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
9d 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
11d 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
12d 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.
DradisPing
12d ago
In one of Canada's few contributions to the English language, it's actually the Dominion of Canada.
It's meant to convey a large self governing territory that's part of a larger empire where there are sparsely populated areas and native tribes that aren't exactly under the control of the government, but don't have the population or organization to be recognized as their own territories.
DradisPing
12d ago
The only downside is, it's not 3d. Why, I can't tell you,
I prefer Satisfactory because I like the 3d.
However there are definitely people who strongly prefer the circuit diagram type problems that Factorio makes you solve.
It could be a visual thinker thing. Or possibly a electronics vs software background.
So the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight is tonight next friday.
I'd like everyone who's watching to take some time to watch Mike Tyson Mysteries, a four season cartoon Tyson did.
It features Norm MacDonald as a talking pigeon and Jim Rash as a victorian ghost.
DradisPing
15d ago
I think the reality is that Kamala's signature legislation would have been farther left than she's comfortable campaigning on.
Trump couldn't get border wall funding from Congress with R control of the House and Senate. I don't think his campaign expects a new Congress to be very supportive, so why bother with some bold legislative promise.
Legislative promises during the Presidential campaign always seemed kind of weird custom to me. It's literally not part of the job.
DradisPing
15d ago
Richard Barris is doing at stream starting at 6:30, https://youtube.com/watch?v=o9hRIV2amiI
He gets a bit scatterbrained when he doesn't have a guest on and jumps around data topics. But he'll have a good analysis of how the information coming in compares to past results and who's turning out to vote.
DradisPing
15d ago
Method varied by county, but in 2000 Florida a lot of the recount counties used punch cards. You needed to poke a hole with the stylus on a paper ballot and then they were machine counted. So it was easy to poke multiple holes or not poke all the way through. There were also overvotes where someone would punch "Gore" then write in "Gore" in the write in space.
La Griffe Du Lion had a take on the 2000 Florida ballots back in 2001, http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/elec2000.htm
DradisPing
15d ago
The far left has been strongly focusses on Gaza for the past year. It's not clear they have enough gas in the tank to gather mobs in the case of a Trump victory.
DradisPing
15d ago
The AG has a lot of power to go after individuals in the state. So if a dangerous nutter starts gaining steam in a major party primary it's easy for a better tempered opponent to raise money against them. People on both sides face risk so the other primary candidates can get funding from people who normally wouldn't donate.
Also voters usually just want someone polished and respectable to be AG. There's less demand for someone ideological.
DradisPing
18d ago
It feeds into the culture war. This was a multi agency raid with judicial warrants to kill a squirrel and racoon.
Blue tribe members love to talk about how much government money is spent on rural people. But then things like this are counted as spending money on rural people.
It touches on other aspects. The agents used the search warrant as an opportunity to grill the woman of the house on her immigration status, which is something they never would have done to someone in NYC.
It's common to hear online that people can't understand why other parts of the state would want to separate from NYC when it brings in so much tax revenue.
But a rural view of the situation is sort of like this: A man from the government walks up and demands $5. He then pays his friend $10 to slap you as hard as he can. Then the man goes on a long rant about how much he spends to govern these fucking takers.
Sure, the government man is net spending money. But the rural guy isn't exactly happy about the transaction.
DradisPing
18d ago
It's hard to square the Selzer poll with anything else we're seeing. Looking at Iowa early voter turnout as a percentage of 2020, R got 83% and D got 56%. Sure it's possible that there's a huge block of voters coming out on EDay or that large numbers of Rs are coming out to vote for Harris.
The top 2 issues found in the poll were Democracy and Abortion. Which seems a little weird. Iowa passed some major abortion restrictions over the summer. It seems possible that voters would take that out on Trump, but it's odd that it's suddenly showing up in a poll.
Ann Selzer is 67. It's certainly possible that she took a big payout from someone so she could retire and the Harris campaign could save house seats. Or it could be a polling miss.
Or it could be real. But I'm surprised no one else noticed it if it was real.
DradisPing
30d ago
My suspicion is that Harris did work ad McDs, but it was in high school in Montreal. Her campaign doesn't really want to draw attention to her childhood outside the US, so they are being evasive.
DradisPing
30d ago
Mental fatigue is a real thing. If you only count hours spent actually running then training for a marathon doesn't seem that impressive.
Spending 2 hours a night and 6 hours a day on weekends learning math is going to be exhausting. But it's pretty easy to do that with video games.
DradisPing
1mo ago
They're upset at Elon because they think he doesn't know his place. Aerospace and Car Manufacturing are two big powerful industries in the US. Don't forget about the recent Boeing whistleblower "suicides" where the FBI just shrugged.
He's embarrassed a lot of powerful people and they are trying to teach him to be properly deferential to his betters.
DradisPing
1mo ago
It doesn't seem fair to call it a pyramid scheme. It's just sharing revenue from platform subscribers with the accounts they like.
Twitter is in a strange place where major leftwing users have been trying to bankrupt the company. Encouraging advertiser boycotts and discouraging their readers from getting a paid account.
It isn't really surprising that Twitter went with a monetization system where those users don't get paid.
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.
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