anon_
20hr ago
Japan is 90 days from a nuclear warhead. The funny (well, not haha funny) thing about that is that it is both a very short and a very long time.
anon_
20hr ago
In other words, the First Strike option is China committing suicide.
Well, there is the off chance that the first strike succeeds very quickly beyond expectations and before the economic/industrial effects take hold.
I don't give it much chance of success, but if China manages to strike first and seize the island by force with low/minor US & Taiwanese casualties, it changes the calculus of the reaction.
I'd probably say 1 chance in 5 that works. And the downside of failure is pretty high.
anon_
20hr ago
give Taiwan an ultimatum of some sort (e.g. "stop buying US military hardware") and then when it is denied, a limited ballistic missile strike on Taiwanese C&C facilities, combined with a lightning heliborne assault to seize a port, coordinated with a large amphibious landing.
The problem with ultimatums is that it telegraphs the next step. By the time the ultimatum is denied, the C&C facilities and all leaders have been dispersed/hardened, all civilian air traffic is stopped and the air defense have orders to destroy anything that flies.
anon_
20hr ago
and so on, you make a military response ultra-hard mode, giving China carte blanche to invade at their own pace with the wind at their backs
I don't think that works. Even with a massive first strike leading to a hot conventional war with the US right off the bat, if China doesn't actually compel Taiwan to surrender in short order, the US has the easy option of having the blue water navy camp outside of Chinese missile range and completely stop shipping in and out of the country.
This isn't hard mode at all, unless China decides to sally their entire Navy and challenge the US outside the range of their land based assets.
This forces a kind of timeline on it. China can surely survive for a considerable time, but it also puts a limit on it that's not "their own pace" -- they have to either seize the island or fold, they can't just wait.
anon_
20hr ago
You need probable cause to search and arrest someone. But you don't need probable cause to be in particular McDonalds.
The latter statement is hard to interpret but might be totally wrong as well -- there is no 'actual reason' test. In fact, the Supreme Court has specifically said (unanimously) that police can stop someone for one reason (for example running a stop sign) even if their "real reason" for wanting to stop is something else (e.g. the cop believes they have drugs in the car) even if the latter reason would not on its own suffice.
All that matter is that the officer had some probable cause to arrest it, for example because she thought he looked like the mugshots of the NYC murder suspect.
anon_
22hr ago
so they ginned up this McDonald’s employee whistleblower so they had a reason for actually being there and finding him
The FBI doesn't need a reason to be in a McDonalds. It's not a private residence, it's open to the public and they can just go.
Maybe there were in there due to illegal surveillance, but even then it doesn't help the defendant. A defendant can't (at least how 4A law is today) argue that a search or arrest is illegal because the police were in a public place but due to information they obtained unlawfully. That information itself isn't admissible tho.
anon_
22hr ago
I fully agree that would be super interesting to hear.
That said, I don't see any reason that at a criminal trial, you'd have to call in the individual whose tip (putatively) lead to the suspect's arrest. That isn't normal in most trials and isn't super probative as to any real (?) factual question about the defendant.
So while maybe all that is true or not (I don't know enough to say one way or the other), I don't see how it would be relevant at trial.
anon_
4d ago
I think you’ll have to forgive that the industry that could benefit from it as decided to obstruct it.
anon_
5d ago
I think the simple explanation is that society generally condones or at least tolerates porn “actresses” making large amounts of money because people generally understand that such women are condemning themselves to social damnation with assumptions about their reputations that may very easily turn out to be naïve and thus deserve to be at least financially well-compensated by simps whom society considers to be loser chumps anyway.
This isn't even true. Most porn stars make less -- it's a steep pyramid.
It's the same with kids that want to become soccer stars or football greats -- sure Messi & Brady made $100M a year or whatever, but it's just not representative. Or rock stars or rappers. There is an allure of glamor and a draw of the very top of the pyramid, but the reality is that most live music acts are done in a local dive bar for barely a few bucks. Some kid in the hood really thinks he's gonna be the next Drake?
This seems like a far more parsimonious explanation about stardom.
anon_
5d ago
Boy, if only there was a technology that could help with that the movie industry would embrace enthusiastically.
anon_
5d ago
Buddy, you can't tell people to shut up.
in a lot of cases, consumers stopped buying the Big Mac because it was outlawed
Yes. This is a problem on the regulatory side. And I'm very sympathetic to the claim that a given regulation (say, for backup cameras or whatever) has an unfavorable cost/benefit ratio -- in many cases it's absolutely true. So it's completely valid to say that shitty regulation makes things more expensive, but that isn't inflation.
anon_
5d ago
Right, but that doesn't change the fact that the car is now, in fact, more expensive than it was before, which is what a measure of inflation is supposed to capture.
Inflation is supposed to compare like-for-like. You can't switch from a Big Mac to a NY Strip and call it inflation, it has to be a fundamentally comparable good.
But if you're a member of the Rent Food Gas class, you have been getting obliterated.
anon_
6d ago
But the previous option is not available. The real cost of car ownership went up, even if that's not, strictly, "Inflation."
Well not really. It moved from one kind of cost (some probability of splattering your brains on the steering wheel) to another kind of cost (at most 2% at most the cost of a new car).
There was never getting around the cost.
anon_
6d ago
I think the smart thing if you're a trans professor and someone does this is to give them a B- and let some cis professor fail them in the next level class up.
Giving them a zero is just taking the bait.
anon_
9d ago
The Supreme Court wasn't very receptive to Trump's argument that he can apply vast tariffs based on a thin (but extant, I suppose) Congressional mandate.
Indeed, it's probably worthy of a larger post, but I think the Court could really lean into the Major Questions Doctrine as an important way of correcting the vast indifference of Congress to actually governing.
So I don't know what happens to all those trade deals, to be honest.
anon_
9d ago
I'm not talking about the mythical never-Trump Republicans, but suburban moderates, swing voters, and independents. I've pointed this out before, but Mt. Lebanon, a wealthy Pittsburgh suburb, used to be reliably Republican area and, while it had been shifting leftward for several years prior, the emergence of Trump turned it into the kind of place with rainbow flags and "In this house we believe" signs.
I guess we'll see if this translates to any real power dynamic within the Demcoratic apparatus, or whether they will triple down on hard wokism.
Republicans had a massive chance when the US decided it was fed up with that shit, I guess we'll see how much of it they squandered.
anon_
9d ago
And this is where we get to see how much the edgy millennials get to determine conservative discourse in opposition to the kind of old school Christian types
anon_
10d ago
You should probably look at this guy’s entire life.
Whatever Bohacek is, “progressive” ain’t it. You’ve lost the plot.
anon_
11d ago
Maybe. But this was a man whose vote was apparently needed. So retarded or not, his view on it matters.
It really would be nice if our leaders could decide not to shoot themselves in the foot. Just once.
anon_
11d ago
I understand how the euphemism treadmill works.
Using terms that are considered slurs today, regardless of whether it's a slur in decades since or hence, is a flex by the edgy -- an attempt t demonstrate that they don't recognize that social norm and can't be made to.
anon_
11d ago
It took me a while to realize this was anti-abortion advocacy.
I'm not really sure it is. Or at least I think the pro-choice advocacy position here is that they too wish they could push a button to make them all better. I think you part ways only on what to do when we cannot do so -- when the kid is not going to be all better no matter our best efforts.
Right, you can’t intervene in an invasion from outside missile range, but you can entirely choke all seaborne commerce.
Hence it puts the timeline pressure on the invasion. Even the largest oil reserve won’t last that long.
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