Pulpachair
14d ago
Political lawfare and the unholy alliance of left-aligned big tech, US IC, and corporate media to try to control information with nascent AI on the immediate horizon were my two motivating factors to hold my nose and support team Trump this go-around.
I don’t know if a Trump administration can sufficiently throttle the DOJ and three letter agencies so that adventures in censorship are no longer an attractive option, but I am happy that there is even a chance of opposition to that particular shoggoth now.
Pulpachair
15d ago
We would probably still have President Biden. If he hadn’t been sinking in the polls in May, he never would have done the debate and could have campaigned from the basement as in 2020. The unpopularity of his policies and poor economy forced him to play his hand, which turned out to be a pair of senile 4s.
Pulpachair
28d ago
Seconded. Unless you have a really odd skull shape, shave it. It’s easy to maintain and makes applying to a biker gang much easier.
Pulpachair
1mo ago
Piggybacking for some of my recent watches.
American Fiction - A victim of its maketing. It is 95% upper class dramedy with 5% race farce, but the race farce was all that was advertised. I really enjoyed it, but I quite enjoy Jeffrey Wright’s understated acting style generally. I barely recognized Adam Brody. I initially thought Issa Rae was meant to be the foil, but they both made her more relatable and a blatantly worse human as the story progressed. I enjoyed it, but it is slow and frustrating often. Qualified recommendation.
Promising Young Woman - Bo Burnham steals the show and Carey Mulligan is excellent, but this is MeToo passion play scripting. All men are monsters and anything done to them is justified.
Boy Kills World - needed a tighter script. The gimmick of using H Jon Benjamin to provide the protagonist’s internal dialogue wears out quickly, and the action was pretty uninspired. Do not recommend.
Haywire - Gina Carano playing Jason Bourne, but not a wimp. The action scenes are well done - Gina’s time fighting MMA clearly shows and it looks like she could hold her own against her male opponents. The story is pretty weak and Carano doesn’t have a lot of range other than glowering. Wild to me that Steven Soderbergh directed this - it feels so sterile and devoid of human characters for one of his movies. Qualified recommendation.
Pulpachair
1mo ago
That is for the February bar exam. Most new lawyers out of law school would be testing in July while those who failed in July would retest in February. I suspect that if you fail once the odds are good that you will fail again.
July 2023 pass rate was 51% and the overall pass rate seems to be between 40% and 50% depending on year.
https://www.calbar.ca.gov/Portals/0/documents/admissions/Examinations/July-2023-CBX-Statistics.pdf
Pulpachair
1mo ago
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/cable-news/
Left-leaning news outlets do better under Republican administrations. Right-leaning outlets do better under Democrat administrations. If the bottom-line was the primary driver, CNN and MSNBC would be pushing for a Trump win.
Pulpachair
3mo ago
Also, machine politics was the norm for most of that era in any city big enough to be worth looting. The secret ballot helped make maintaining the machine more difficult.
Pulpachair
3mo ago
Mentioned downthread, but the timing is interesting that the same week that Kamala assumed the presidency, Tulsi Gabbard just happens to land on the terror watch list.
Pulpachair
3mo ago
I don’t think @Rov_Scam is saying that normies are cool with leftist values. I read it as normies mostly don’t want to get dragged into the mud on culture war topics. Trump calling Kamala a DEI hire is an insult in language that only really matters to people firmly in his camp already, which is true. The Grill party voters that decide the election see it as Kamala saying nothing and Trump making a vaguely racist attack in response, raising the Grillist’s “Oh, right. This guy again.” alarms.
I disagree on the trans attack in terms of political value. Trans issues are still very much an ick for Grillists, so tying Harris/Walz to the trans enthusiasts on the left, especially in the context of enforcing it in schools, i think works to Trump’s benefit. “Vote for these two and you get four more years of gender ideology in your daily life” is exactly the kind of thing Grillists are hoping to avoid.
Pulpachair
3mo ago
Vance isn’t a bridge to Ohio, he is a bridge to Thiel-adjacent SV capital. If Trump continues to cut into dem advantage with latino and black votes AND tech money moves toward donation parity between the parties, that cuts into two of the Democrats’ most important election pillars for the last 15 years. Democrats can’t win elections relying on, ahem, childless cat ladies as the only reliable party structure.
Pulpachair
4mo ago
Potentially, but I would expect that widespread gun ownership would help dissuade the vast majority of potential muggers (a far more common form of gun violence) while very slightly increasing the risk of political assassinations.
I suspect that there is a very low, static baseline likelihood of a political assassination in a stable society - aka crazy will find a way. Japan has very low gun ownership levels, but that didn’t save Shinzo Abe from being killed with a homemade zip gun.
Pulpachair
4mo ago
I am somewhat baffled about why people would think that Kamala isn’t implicated in the coverup of Biden’s deterioration. Either she was totally fine with continuing a charade of Biden being compos mentis, or she is such a naif that we might as well just tell Taiwan to start playing nice with Xi now. Same goes for Buttigieg, Newsom, Milley and every other mouthpiece who swore up and down that Biden was in command and showed no signs of slowing down.
Pulpachair
4mo ago
The 25th amendment is not obligatory. There is no requirement to invoke the amendment if the president is incapacitated, only a pathway to do so. That Kamala and the cabinet have not done so thus far is bad for the nation, but good politics. You don't want to be the one to point out that Brezhnev isn't all there anymore.
Pulpachair
4mo ago
Over a dozen democratic governors have convinced Joe Biden to take a medical test (undoubtedly a cognitive test) to see if he can continue as a candidate.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. Biden has made it a point to release his physical check results each year, but does not include a cognitive exam in those results. If he agreed to a test, it's probably just another one where the report will be "is in good physical health for a man of his age," and is silent on mental acuity.
Pulpachair
4mo ago
That Eigenrobot post really nails it. I had a relatively tame disagreement with someone who has since deleted their response back on the reddit version a few years ago about this exact scenario, and was noting the markers of early-stage alzheimers back in 2020 due to a member of the extended family who has been going through roughly the same thing at roughly the same pace. I won't claim some sort of magical prognosticating powers, only just being willing to observe publicly available information and not be spun (a childhood stutter that reemerged in his late 70s my stuttering ass.)
But the debate was just too hard to explain away. Beyond the clear aphasia, the vacant expression, the weak and tremulous voice, the physical signs are impossible to ignore. That's not just the first lady helping the president take a single step down off a short stage, but a staffer immediately stepping up to provide a second bit of support. This is the way you treat an 81 year-old man who definitely has a history of falling when unaided, and those falls have not been reported out of the White House at all. I'm not talking stumbles on the stairs to AF1 or tripping over a sandbag at a speech, but the kind of falls that accompany the middle and late stages of alzheimers.
I'm not even mad at Biden, his grasping nursemaid wife, his corrupt family, or the staffers and flunkies who honored the omerta on saying what was really happening. I'm pissed that we went four years without anyone in the media thinking, "Boy, I could really make a name for myself by reporting on how Biden's gait has notably changed within the last 18 months." Or, "It sure is weird that Biden keeps calling himself a Senator or Vice President and doesn't do public appearances at night. I should start digging." The first, second, and third question always seems to be "Will this help Trump/Republicans in any way? If so, better just ignore it."
Republicans, and Trump especially, are not more honest than Democrats. Such is the nature of the species homo politico. Except that Republicans/Trump mostly can't get away with it due to being forced to operate in enemy territory. Democrats, and the liberal portions of the federal machine, on the other hand . . . We just had four years of Trump Russia! Russia! Russia! followed by two years of Covid lies at the same time that the man at the helm of the ship of state was slowly (and then rapidly) turning into a root vegetable. Having a political press, intelligence apparatus, and bureaucratic state that is completely pliant to the will of one political party isn't just bad for the out party, it encourages deep rot in the benefitting party too. Occasionally that rot gets exposed to air.
Not to mention that the default judgment happened not once, but twice, in both Connecticut and Austin, after some of the most hilariously incompetent lawyering by his defense counsel. They accidentally emailed Jones’s unculled phone data to plaintiffs’ counsel, which included texts showing that Jones was refusing to produce relevant information, all after years of dilatory tactics and abuse. They data dumped on the plaintiffs in the Connecticut case, including child porn that should have been culled. If you are an unsympathetic defendant, maybe don’t fuck around with testing the limits of the rules of civil procedure.
Jones is definitely an enemy of the cathedral, but he’s also a scumbag and an idiot who deserved to lose his cases. He will get out of this relatively intact after discharging the judgment debt in bankruptcy and go back to being a convenient weakman for the left to meme on.
Pulpachair
6mo ago
The world does not owe you anything. You have to offer something that people want in order to get what you want from them.
Don’t be afraid to fail spectacularly. You will fail and the earlier it happens in life, the more time you have to incorporate the lessons gained from failure.
Hit the gym.
Pulpachair
8mo ago
In my mind, the order of operations is:
- Creatives come up with a cool idea/world/gameplay mechanic that, despite having quite a bit of jank, catches on and is a moderate success
- Creatives scale up a bit and second try is better than the first. Huge success and brand loyalty follows.
- investors get involved (either finance types or an outright purchase of the thing by an EA or Microsoft) because the creatives suck at/don’t care about business aspects. Decision process starts changing to prioritize engagement metrics.
- Studio expands or becomes part of a larger corporate environment. HR starts making more decisions.
- Old guard leaves/is forced out. New hires are mostly fans and not the ones with creative vision. Innovation becomes irrelevant as decisions are now being made based on engagement.
That is the pattern I see across the NA AAA games industry. The games that are being made are so laden with vampiric “engagement drivers” (read: unfun tedious time wasters not central to the gameplay loop) and cash shop features that they were never going to be fun. They tack on DEI feelgoodery to provide the thinnest veneer of moral virtue over what is basically a $60-70 predatory phone app disguised as a game.
The focus on DEI is symptomatic of the ultra-safe corporate decision making, but not the cause of why games (and movies and comics) suck now. For example, a hypothetical Suicide Squad game with fighting fucktoy Harley Quinn and a soy-free Luthor and no other changes would have still been shit. Gamers would be complaining that it was a tragedy that Kevin Conroy’s name was associated with such a dreadful game, and Rocksteady would still be dead.
Instead, we’re going to have a media cycle talking about -ist/-phobic gamers, and the corporate types who killed Rocksteady will end up at another company and start poisoning that one too.
Pulpachair
10mo ago
I don’t believe Buttigieg’s paternity leave was kept from the White House, it just wasn’t announced to the public.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
I wouldn't say so, but either way this is irrelevant, because it's a completely different question to whether the economy is 'good' or not.
I don't think it's irrelevant. The economy isn't just a snapshot, it's a trendline with predictive value. We've got an uptick in the trendline right now, but is it a dead cat bounce or actually indicative of healthy and sustainable economic growth.
Here's the fed in July 2007, after the fuse on the bomb was lit.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
Thanks for this post. It made me stop and think about why I'm so pessimistic on the economy, and I think that my pessimism is, at best, only partially warranted. Here are my thoughts on why I think pessimism is still warranted, though not as doomy as previously.
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Trust in elite institutions is deservedly low. The pandemic blew up any notion that global institutions were remotely concerned about the public weal when the well-being of PMC/Blue Tribe is at stake. The media and public watchdog groups are all-in on team Blue, so my expectation is that any information that looks bad for Blue will be suppressed if possible, excused if not possible. Any information that trends well for team Blue will be given more weight than it is actually due. If there are black swans out there right now, we're intentionally trying not to notice them.
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The pandemic flipped the switch on remote work being preferable for many jobs. For the industries I'm privy to, this largely meant divesting from expensive investments in blue cities and seeking out qualified employees in lower cost markets. This was a substantial increase in the earning potential in more depressed parts of the country at the cost of eliminating a lot of jobs in more expensive cities. So, it's a net increase in wages across the country, but still incredibly disruptive to the workforce left behind in the big cities.
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This is less analytical, but still real. The housing crisis took place in 2006-2007 when a wave of ARMs kicked in defaults went through the roof. The smartest banks, with the help of the rating agencies, did everything they could to delay the crash in order to divest from the toxic assets before the crash landed, which ended up putting off the crash until mid-2008.
We blew up the economy from 2020-2021, deficit financing massively distortionary unemployment benefits for almost 18 months, losing track of hundreds of billions of dollars in fraudulent loans, and, thus far, we haven't really paid much of a price. Sure, the inflation figures and supply chain disruptions in the aftermath are annoying, but my gut says that the piper is yet to be paid, and the longer we put it off, the worse it will be.
Consider the current residential real estate market. The high interest rates are keeping people from selling their current homes due to being unable to afford to afford a new 8.7% mortgage payment under current market rates. That means there is a constantly increasing backlog of inventory that is just waiting for a drop in interest rates in order to sell. Once that rate drop comes, a glut of new inventory will drive prices down. Much of the median increase in net worth is driven by the inflated real estate market, and that will suddenly evaporate while the current highs in consumer debt will remain, and people who are buying currently will be underwater. My cynical side expects to see this in early 2025.
I really hope that you're right and I'm wrong.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
The housing market is currently irrational with median home prices outpacing median income for the first time since, well, ever. Certain markets are more insane than others. The median home price in Idaho is now $469,000 while median income in a dual-income family is just under $70,000 before taxes. Assuming a 20% down-payment of ~$100,000, the monthly mortgage payment would be $3,538, roughly 60% of the take-home for the median household. Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado are all fairly similar in terms of median home price outstripping the ability of the locals to purchase. Meanwhile, the southeastern US is pretty stable with low prices and reasonable overturn in inventory.
Texas is somewhere in the middle from what I've seen. Houston and DFW area both have lower home prices compared to some of the really inflated markets in the west, but not as low as the rest of the southeast. It wouldn't surprise me to know that many of the Cali/NE corridor transplants are currently driving up the market in Texas like they did in the mountain west during COVID.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
Heinlein’s “All You Zombies” was 1958. I’m sure there are examples of earlier stories featuring gender reassignment as well. To the extent KSR chose not to have gender modification in a transhuman milieu, I doubt it was for lack of exposure to the idea.
I have no dog in this fight. Ballard could be the hero he is made out to be or a grifter. I have no idea and don't really care, but there is nothing in the world that I loathe more than:
Vice reports
My heuristic with Vice and most other "progressive" news outlets is that when it comes to reporting on non-progressive topics, I'm more likely to be closer to the truth by believing the opposite of what is reported. I view every part of the article as presenting the available evidence in the least charitable and most misleading light possible.
So, let's look at who the authors of this piece are, Tim Marchman, a "sports journalist" formerly of Deadspin with a lot of articles about Q-Anon and Anna Merlan, author of Republic of Lies, a book about Q-Anon. So we have two Q-Anon obsessed progressives focusing their little part of the eye of Sauron on an organization that works against child human trafficking. They have written 12 articles critical of OUR since December of 2020. The linked article is pretty much a rehash of their last article on the subject in July. It's surprising there is any axe left here after all that grinding.
So, let's check on the sourcing here:
- "according to sources with direct knowledge of the organization." Anonymous sources not within the organization
- "Sources familiar with the situation" Anonymous source not within the organization
- "These sources requested anonymity because they fear retaliation." Okay, more anonymous, and retaliation from who?
- "One source close to OUR" Yet another anonymous source with an alleged link to the organization
- OUR official statement in response to a request from VICE - okay, an official nonconfirmation of any allegations.
- "sources with direct knowledge of OUR corroborates an anonymous letter that’s been circulating in the Utah philanthropic community for the past several months" anonymous source confirming an anonymous letter circulating in "the Utah philanthropic community".
- "Women believed to be at the center of the investigation have not responded to requests for comment, or have declined to comment." Other possible direct sources would not confirm.
- "Ballard did not respond to requests for comment submitted through his personal website; that of his new organization, the SPEAR Fund; and through a spokesperson whom OUR previously told VICE News is his personal representative." Crazy that the guy you had written 11 hit pieces about previously didn't want to engage with you.
- "Last week, a spokesperson for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a statement to VICE News that contained a pointed rebuke of Ballard." Hrmm, an anonymous Church spokesperson who issued the pointed rebuke directly to VICE, but did not make it public or official statement from the Church's press office. Links to the statement from Utah news sources return a 404 statement not found. The quotes I could find of the rebuke are as follows
“President Ballard and Tim Ballard (no relation) established a friendship a number of years ago. That friendship was built on a shared interest in looking after God’s children wherever they are and without regard to their circumstance. However, that relationship is in the past. For many months, President Ballard has had no contact with the founder of Operation Underground Railroad (OUR). The nature of that relationship was always in support of vulnerable children being abused, trafficked, and otherwise neglected. Once it became clear Tim Ballard had betrayed their friendship, through the unauthorized use of President Ballard’s name for Tim Ballard’s personal advantage and activity regarded as morally unacceptable, President Ballard withdrew his association. President Ballard never authorized his name, or the name of the Church, to be used for Tim’s personal or financial interests.
In addition, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints never endorsed, supported or represented OUR, Tim Ballard or any projects associated with them.
President Ballard loves children, all over the world. It has been his mission and life’s work to look after them, care for them, and point them to their Savior.”
So, presumably there was a public statement that is no longer available online, was withdrawn without comment by the Mormon church, and what we have left is some citogenesis where the Salt Lake media sources cite Vice citing the Salt Lake media sources. I'll chalk this up as having existed at some point, but perhaps no longer representing the official position of the Mormon church.
So, out of 9 sources, only one partially confirmable source even sort of supports the allegations and even that is now offline less than a week after it was created.
Now let's look at the nature of the allegations:
- "investigation into claims of sexual misconduct involving seven women" What is "sexual misconduct" precious?
- "invited women to act as his “wife” on undercover overseas missions ostensibly aimed at rescuing victims of sex trafficking. He would then allegedly coerce those women into sharing a bed or showering together, claiming that it was necessary to fool traffickers." So, no actual sex then.
- "is said to have sent at least one woman a photo of himself in his underwear, festooned with fake tattoos, and to have asked another “how far she was willing to go,” in the words of a source, to save children." Oh, so still no sex.
- "The total number of women involved is believed to be higher than seven, as that would only account for employees, not contractors or volunteers." That's quite an inferential leap, and believed by whom? The authors of this article?
- "anonymous letter that’s been circulating in the Utah philanthropic community for the past several months, which accuses Ballard of sexual harassment." Still no sex? Man, this guy really sucks at sexual harrassment if he's not actually getting any. And what the fuck is the "Utah philanthropic community." Is it, maybe, composed of other organizations that are competing for donation dollars with OUR?
- "It was ultimately revealed through disturbingly specific and parallel accounts, that Tim has been deceitfully and extensively grooming and manipulating multiple women for the past few years with the ultimate intent of coercing them to participate in sexual acts with him, under the premise of going where it takes and doing ‘whatever it takes’ to save a child." Here we go - grooming them with the ultimate intent of participating in sexual acts. So, did they actually do sex, or were we just in the grooming phase? I know which one Vice wants me to believe, so I'll go the other direction.
- "Ballard, an ally of Donald Trump" Would it be uncharitable for me to think that this is the real accusation here?
So, a bunch of anonymous sources saying that a guy may have inappropriately conducted himself in ways that did not lead to actually having sex with women, but with maximum innuendo of massive misconduct and multiple cover-ups in ways that can't clearly be proven as actual malice in a defamation case. Also known as a Tuesday in Vice-land. If anything in this article turns out to be true, it will be in spite of the reporting on it.
In fairness to Rov_Scam, Kamala was the top of the ticket for just over 100 days and during that time, the race went from what looked like a sure loss under Biden to a very competitive race. I credit that entirely to the Democratic operation (including the media narrative shapers.) From my view, I would describe Harris as a poor candidate propped up by a very effective party structure.
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