TheFooder
22d ago
I don't think I said it was a bipartisan feeling. If I wasn't clear, what I meant was that Biden had an opportunity to do one thing that would have a) shored up the center bringing non-Trumpists back from the brink, and b) possibly, actually making our elections stronger and more transparent. From where I'm sitting it appears the exact opposite has happened with less optics into voter roles, voting dates, mail-in ballot rules,etc. I am short-USA so I don't really pay that close attention to the details, (are non-citizens voting in this election? Who knows?) but from a 50k ft. perspective, Biden missed the boat big time.
There is no reason we should have any doubts about the results and getting the vibes right is the one thing a president can do. Taking the position that this is only a Republican problem misses the elephant for the trees. We're in a situation where every candidate from here until our final pitiful collapse can claim shenanigans and everyone will believe it to the extent necessary for their side to win. The more opaque our elections the weaker the union.
TheFooder
22d ago
This was my reasoning behind the single Biden agenda I wanted to hear: a bi-partisan electoral committee focused on shoring up confidence in our elections. Democrats would not want this because it might give Trump or Republicans some faint hope, or possibly be viewed as a tacit admittance of guilt. There's also no evidence that Republicans would accept anything anyone said...so here we are. Nonetheless, the president's job, aside from bombing foreigners, is to represent the vibes of the nation and the vibes were: our elections are total crap. A smarter, stronger, more introspective leader would have realized the need to, at least, try and shore up the center.
Oh well...dreams of a bygone era.
TheFooder
22d ago
Can you even put $7 mil into these markets? Even spread across all the ones I can think of and every possible contract, it boggles my mind.
TheFooder
22d ago
https://www.predictit.org/terms-and-conditions
- Research and Educational Facility PredictIt is intended and offered as an experimental research and educational facility of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand (“Provider” or “We”), not as an investment market or a gambling facility. PredictIt is not regulated by, nor are its operators registered with, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) or any other regulatory authority.
Provider has received a no-action-letter from the Division of Market Oversight of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Without explicitly asserting jurisdiction over Provider or any of its submarkets, this letter, dated October 29, 2014, extended no-action relief to Provider's Political and Economic Indicator Markets (the latter limited to students, faculty and staff of participating universities). The letters are available at the CFTC website as part of their Freedom of Information Act documents. Pursuant to this letter, there is “a limit of 5000 total traders in any particular contract”, and “a limit on investment by any single participant in any particular contract [of] $850”.
You ain't getting very far on an $850 investment at 50-50 odds.
TheFooder
24d ago
I just got an email from Rescue the Republic, which I supported with some cash. The gist is, "Yay, we had 4 million Youtube views...Americans are taking notice!" I've seen similar things with Trump videos on X. Always some form of "something happened on this platform...Americans are totally into it!"
I understand that most viewers of Youtube are still Americans (correct me if that's no longer true) so, yeah, maybe in some basic way the statement is true, but I cringe whenever I see these types of claims. It's the Internet, man...you have no idea who watched your video, upvoted your comment or forwarded you tweet.
Am I way out over my skis here? Is it a safe claim to make or is the rest of the world being under-counted? am I right to side-eye these kinds of claims?
TheFooder
25d ago
Not sure how people take Tulsi Gabbard these days, but she just posted about her visit to the affected areas and said it's pretty bad. I would give her report more credibility than random tic-toks and tweets: https://substack.com/home/post/p-149909700
overall I don't know what to believe as I've only heard random anecdotes, mostly from substack.
TheFooder
25d ago
I've been skimming the NRC documents looking for any plan they might have. It all looks like, "make the NRC better," with no statement anywhere I've seen about increasing or reducing nuclear power anywhere. https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2207/ML22076A075.pdf
This was what I was looking for: https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nrc-certifies-first-us-small-modular-reactor-design
A coworker had a friend working on the project that got approval. It's the first approval in something like 50 years.
There's also this: https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-announces-900-million-accelerate-deployment-next-generation-light-water-small-modular
I have a feeling nuclear is not out of the fight yet and what you will see is something closer to municipalities, small regional utilities and large businesses investing in their own power generators using small scale modular reactors. I'm no expert though, so take it with a grain of salt.
TheFooder
2mo ago
driver since 1991 I've driven in almost every US state and Canada, and many places in Europe. I've been a passenger in the Mid-east and various countries in Asia. I've driven cars, vans and trucks up to 22' with the military. I've towed trailers and driven professionally as a service call technician. I've probably wasted a third of my life in cars.
#1 Driving sucks and it's gotten worse. There's more worse traffic than 30 years ago. Way more distracted driving, more congestion, more bicycles, more motorcycles, more semis. Some significant portion of traffic are lost gig drivers. In Europe, my experience on the highways is that they are mostly fine, but back roads can be tiny and terrifying when large vehicles--which were not really a thing in Europe back in the day--come barreling toward you. The middle East (UAE, Jordan) is the absolute most insane driving I've ever seen. Thailand is crazy because entire families will be hanging out on a moped doing 60 down the highway in a rainstorm.
#2 You're definitely tired and exhausted from being on full alert the entire time you're operating a vehicle. You have to maintain 360 degree, above and below awareness of your vehicle moving at deadly speeds through space and time. You're looking out for yourself, for other vehicles and for the comfort and safety of your passengers. It's a serious thing that requires full attention and nothing will wear you down faster than pumping road stress blood into your brain.
#3 It takes years of driving experience to 'figure it out' and have a feel for where people are going and who the shits are that need to be avoided at all costs. People drive like they walk, so you you have to constantly assume they do not know you are behind or next to them and presume they might stop at any second. Eventually you will notice that people lead with their bodies and they do this in cars as well. You get a 6th sense that someone is going to change lanes or do u-turns. It's definitely one of those 10k hours things. The only solution is lots of driving experience, so take some road trips. :)
#4 The best drivers are motorcyclists. Stay out of their way.
#5 Everyone is a bad driver >1% of the time.
Tips Make sure you set your mirrors right. Do not drive next to semis. Speed past them if you have to. Be careful when cresting a hill--something might be jsut on the other side out of sight. Always let aggressive drivers pass you and try to remember to stay toward the right on busy streets. Always optimize fore safety over convenience and even the law. Know where you're going before you leave. Learn to ride a motorcycle. Remember people can't see your turn signal if you have you hazards on. Two hands on the wheel!!! :)
TheFooder
2mo ago
I don't think that happens much here in the states, though it might be different business to business. I believe all federal employees are the same.
As for why do people do it? I think you present the best argument a state might use, but it might also just be old-school parochial sexism.
TheFooder
2mo ago
I feel like your best bet is going to be Matt Taibbi Substack, at least as a repository that covers most of these topics.
https://twitterfiles.substack.com/ (I think you can see some of this without a subscription, though I find my sub to Racket News well worth the money. I love the chats with Walter Kirn for instance)
https://greenwald.locals.com/landing/article (Glenn has a lot of stuff behind a subscription paywall. I somehow ended up subscribed so I can see most of it, but don't know the best method now. His stuff with Michael Tracy is pretty good, and might be useful for you since Tracy is still considered a leftist. A lot of Lefties hate Greenwald now--they see him as a sellout)
TheFooder
2mo ago
I have an idea for an on-chain token called The Sovereign that would be granted to all citizens and used for a variety of political activities. I have a feeling I'm reinventing a wheel that exists somewhere (I'm aware of other governance token ideas, but I think mine's different...?). I'm looking to bounce the idea off of some people before I present it to the world and am rewarded with scorn and mockery.
It's been a minute since I've played in this sandbox so, the 'no dumb questions' post seemed a good place to start.
TheFooder
11mo ago
I feel lie your political position and mine are about the same and every time an election comes up, I'm simply floored by the amount of people who actually believe and are energized by their chosen party. It really baffles me that anyone can believe any of it. I often feel like my lack of faith is my biggest failing.
TheFooder
11mo ago
They overestimated Disney+, something I was pretty sure of at the time. It flattens out Disney's product line putting classic Cinderella on par with Brandy's Cinderella or Little Mermaid with Little Mermaid 2-4. There's no distinction between television, direct to DVD and big budget film projects. They screwed the pooch on planning and execution and IIRC, this is mostly under Bob Iger's leadership.
TheFooder
11mo ago
Marvel plans it's films/movies five years out. These were effectively finished pieces before Covid happened.
Worth noting this same general timeline is abused to make it seem that Bob Chapek is responsible for the Disney flops that were well underway when Iger was still in his first run as CEO.
TheFooder
1yr ago
Another question, possibly illuminating, is why is the US so closely aligned with Jordan? We prop them up even more, if I'm not mistaken. My guess would be that we have to separate our view of our strategic relationship with Israel today from our strategic relationship in the 60's and 70's when we were more reliant on the oil it's access and defense and that is the relationship that defines where we are today. Likely, once all the Boomers are out of government and it's run by Millenials and Zoomers, we'll care about a different set of global priorities. I almost choked to death on my coffee trying to imagine that world, but it's inevitable.
TheFooder
1yr ago
2.1 million is a lot of refugees. How does that measure up to previous crises, like Syria, etc? Is it effectively the same but all at once or a much bigger number?
TheFooder
1yr ago
The "it's got a Christian character, therefor it's Christian propaganda," aspect of this story bugs me too. Would we do the same if it was a Jewish person? I'm not sure. If a protagonist said, "My Jewish faith compels me to stop child sex-trafficking," would someone say this was a Jewish movie? I doubt it, but maybe...?
TheFooder
1yr ago
Agree + emphasizing the last line: "...prove to be dangerous down the line." This has always been my contention with Wokeness going back to, at least, the emergence of Jordan Peterson. The left seems to be creating it's opposition through its actions and it's extremely dangerous if you're a person who actually cares about progressive and liberal values. The reaction will be reactionary and that's bad.
TheFooder
1yr ago
I think your experience is broadly what's happening: extreme-lefties will hunker down with the Q-Anon take; Righties will support it's trad values and centrists will look at it, say what's the fuss and become further ostracized from lefty news and culture outlets. This may be going too far, but I'd categorize this as the Left creating its own problems by unecessarily pushing people away.
TheFooder
1yr ago
Your analysis matches what I've been seeing. I've also been following the Wiki Talk pages on this film which is pretty wild. The argument is that QAnon is a thing, so it's important to note in the Wiki page that this film is...somehow...associated with Q-Anon. To me, it all looks like opinion laundering. Something like, "We've convinced ourselves that Q-Anon is an important conspiracy (because Trump believes some or all of it?) that everyone should be aware of (and against), so now we can point at any tenuous connection to Q-Anon as an obvious problem." The argument is circular.
Here's one line from the wiki page that really stuck out to me:
Caviezel has endorsed the spurious belief that child traffickers drain children's blood to obtain adrenochrome,[53] a chemical with supposed anti-aging properties.[60] Caviezel suggested he had seen evidence of children being subjected to the practice.[62] Caviezel reiterated his belief in the adrenochrome conspiracy theory during the press tour for Sound of Freedom.[63]
First, the word 'spurious' is obvious editorializing (against Wiki's view-from-nowhere) which is unsupported by the linked article, but what's really 'spurious' is the claim that 'adrenochrome' is an obvious conspiracy theory. The take goes like this, "adrenochrome doesn't do what people claim, therefor any reference to this is a conspiracy theory." That should raise some flags because, whether or not Adrenochrome is real, effective, or something Caviezel believes in, has no bearing on whether or not people are killing children for their blood, something Ballard claims having seen numerous times in videos he had to watch for the DHS. AFAICT, there's no dispute (or even discussion) about the claim of blood sacrifice just whether or not Adrenochrome is real or a conspiracy theory. This is a prime example of the kind of reporting/editorializing that sets people on edge.
I've been watching this story develop on various media-critique YouTube channels and it's just bonkers how rapidly this became culture war. If you're a publication on the left, why not simply leave it alone, say nothing? That's the part that's weird to me. From a strategic point, how does this not tip middle-of-the-road Americans toward the conservative viewpoint and further reduce the credibility of these journals? The RS piece is especially egregious, IMO.
Also, the denigration of the film is weirdly anti-Latino. As you correctly pointed out the production is almost entirely Latino and the film has a lot of Spanish with subtitles. It's about to be released in Mexico, at which point, I think we're going to see it get a huge bump. If one considers this a Mexican cinema production (cast, crew, writing and directing are largely Mexican) this is the highest performing Mexican film of all time. It's admittedly a bit of stretch and why I didn't add it to the Mexican Cinema wiki page. I'll let other people have that fight.
TheFooder
1yr ago
This has been my position for a while, but I sometimes find it hard to support, like, I can't always rebuff arguments about supreme court, executive orders, etc. They do sorta matter, but it isn't apparent until some time has passed. For instance it took a decade for the effects of Clintonian repeal of Glass-Steagall, the creation of DHS, or Obama's NDAA2012 to become apparent. What seems to be the case, to me, is that the combined effect of the past 40 years of presidential politics is an increase in elitism and consolidation of power and wealth. There's a problem with the brain, not with a particular hemisphere.
Thank you for articulating the same question that's been bugging me for years at this point. It's so bonkers even my wife has started wondering what's up with it. People will flip from perfectly lovely to Dead-in-their-eyes-TDS without any warning and it's terrifically frightful!
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