benmmurphy
4d ago
If independent means they are effectively run as a faction of the Democratic party are they really independent? It sounds like the US has some agencies where for the electorate it doesn't matter if they vote in the opposition party the agency will still be run by the Democratic party.
benmmurphy
7d ago
theory 2 might hold weight if they believe any kind of storming of a building is now an insurrection
i don't know how blocking these cuts using the judiciary will work in the long term. unless this funding has very explicit earmarks from congress then the administration should be able to just redirect it to fund Trump allied NGOs. For example lets say judge decides you can't cut USAID funding overall then Trump just funnels funding away from basket weavers in Afghanistan to pro-life groups in China. Basically just do turnabout and then when people complain Trump is being a hypocrite by carrying out the same corruption he criticised others of doing he can claim he tried to cut the funding cleanly but the judiciary tried to stop him.
benmmurphy
15d ago
One good thing about having Trump as your head of state is that he would never negotiate a deal like this. Because a cursory look at the deal makes it look bad the idea would be toxic to Trump even if a full understanding of the context would make the deal seem more reasonable. I assume if Trump was negotiating he would try to get the lease for free but maybe that just incentivises the Mauritians to walk back the lease in the future.
benmmurphy
16d ago
My theory for why Hitler is seen as a unique evil compared to Stalin and Mao was because the western powers were allied with Stalin and Mao and made war against Hitler. Then it would follow that the way we see Stalin, Mao and Hitler today is poisoned by the propaganda of the past. But I guess that would not explain why Pol Pot is not seen as uniquely evil because the west fought against Cambodia.
it's sad that tracingwoodgrains made all the right noises in his article and they still accuse of him siding with the fascists.
also, its hilarious to create a 'test' where the 'correct' multiple choice answer is almost always the same. surely there is some web app or application where you can feed in your questions/answers and it will randomize the responses. or you can just do this in excel or roll a fucking a dice (rerolling on 5/6) or flip a coin twice for each question. or was this done deliberately because cheating would be too difficult because no-one would be able to memorize the answer key?
benmmurphy
19d ago
You can probably do this if you are producing. If you aren't producing and also not playing the game then things might be difficult unless you are working in a dysfunctional organization.
benmmurphy
19d ago
Can't you just assign people to work in Alaska or somewhere they don't want to work instead of firing them.
benmmurphy
19d ago
Maybe she is just really good at investigative reporting.
benmmurphy
21d ago
rick scott (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Scott) but maybe there are two
benmmurphy
21d ago
The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination. As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1965, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” -- Ibram X. Kendi: How to Be an Antiracist
I haven't read this book but I hope he would have addressed the obvious objection that this creates a loop. So if A discriminates against B then B discriminates against A as a remedy then surely A can discriminate against B in the future according to the same rule. I'm sure if challenged he would have a defence. But I feel like if social sciences are rigorous then you really should be pre-emptively defending obvious objections. My guess would be the concept of collective guilt or guilt following down racial or parental lines is very difficult to defend so the best strategy if you wanted to push these ideas is to just throw shit at the wall and see what sticks.
benmmurphy
21d ago
Apparently, medicare/medicaid fraud is a big thing with hospitals. Apparently, there is a US Senator (R) who used to be a CEO of a hospital company that engaged in a large amount of fraud with the US government.
benmmurphy
21d ago
I think Muskateers was a much better way to refer to the Dodge staffers.
benmmurphy
22d ago
Would it be possible to have an AI containment thread where all the people who want to experiment with AI discussion can do so without effecting the rest of the site?
benmmurphy
23d ago
i doubt there has been a legal misuse of funds. i suspect whatever words are used to control funding are broad enough that they let the wordcels do anything with the funding.
benmmurphy
25d ago
are you sure foreign aid helps the US perception in the world? i wonder if it suffers from this copenhagen ethics problem where because you help out you are now blamed for anything that is not perfect. not the best example but the US helped the afghans militarily then when 9/11 happened apparently the US 'deserved' it partly because they helped the Afghans militarily.
benmmurphy
26d ago
Did people start warring about the film and then someone found Gascon's tweets? Zoe Saldana had to make a speech during a Q&A event bolstering her commitment to diversity in response to the tweets being dug up. (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/zoe-saldana-responds-emilia-perez-costar-karla-sofia-gascon-tweets-1236124082/) There is also a lot of anti-trans rhetoric being directed towards Gascon on X and I'm not sure if that would have been tolerated or not under the previous management of Twitter.
benmmurphy
29d ago
i swear there was even a portmanteau 'chimpler' combining chimp and hitler but I tried to search this in google but couldn't find any references. maybe this was just in my head. the closest i could find was 'chimp bushitler' https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bushitler
benmmurphy
1mo ago
Prevent may actually be a scam that is meant to look like its doing something in order to appease voters but is not very effective in practice. I think even in the UK with some of our crazy laws its very difficult to punish pre-crime and stop people from committing crimes before they carry out the crimes.
benmmurphy
1mo ago
its crazy that Amazon is getting the blame. i think the primary agent responsible here is Alex. but if there is a third party to blame I think the schools should bear a little. the tax payer shells out good money to fund the school system and i feel like they are not doing a good job in instilling proper values into young children. the state has a lot of control over kids. they should really be propagandising them to not do this kind of shit. it could even be the state is doing the opposite and propagandising them into hating society which i don't think is very productive.
benmmurphy
1mo ago
governing well seems to be a W for everyone who has to actually live under the regime and maybe the best we can hope for. i guess revolutionaries and accelerationists want to turn everything to shit so they can create their utopias but i feel like decent governance can inspire more decent governance.
benmmurphy
1mo ago
it could also be massive case of ass covering. 4 years ago security was screwed up during the certification process and there have been multiple attempts on Trumps life. you don't want to be the person in charge if something goes wrong unless you have checked every box.
benmmurphy
1mo ago
it makes sense for Biden to be complaining about fact checking disappearing when the executive under his control tried to coerce social media into using fact checking to remove content that was critical or contradicted his government's policies. hopefully this position gets some criticism because he is essentially complaining elon and zuck have taken his toys away.
benmmurphy
1mo ago
Someone could make a crazy work of fiction out of Garmin's life. This whole Calliope story in the Sandman (https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/the-sandman-episode-calliope-ending-explained) along with the scientology connection where his parents were apparently second in charge in the UK. They could have Garmin making a pact with the aliens to commit rape against women in order to spread an alien virus in exchange for his fame.
they need to get their people into the agencies controlling what the money is being spent on instead of using the OMB. short term they should be able to do something similar to impoundment from within the agency, however in the long run according to laws congress has passed they need to spend the money. but then they can just use their 'discretion' to spend the money in ways that are very objectionable. for example lots of agencies spent money on DEI commissars and that was completely legal. i'm sure trump and elon are not lacking in imagination.
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