jkf
1mo ago
He pretty much had that figured out by the time he started doing TV stuff, if not well before -- are you familiar with his 80s persona? I'm sure he likes those things (don't we all), but looking at the link in the other comment it's pretty clear that he also really likes building things. You can like more than one thing, y'know?
jkf
1mo ago
https://www.trump.com/timeline
Didn't he go hands-off on Trump org once elected for COI reasons? Seems a bit unfair to complain that he wasn't personally building stuff during this period; I hear the President is pretty busy?
Anyways it looks like... quite a lot of stuff got built/renoed post-80s, and I'd expect him to do more once he's done with politics in the event that he doesn't get sent to Gitmo or something -- if only more golf courses for him to play on, he thinks golf courses are super-cool.
jkf
1mo ago
He has metaphorically build a multi-billion dollar organization, and literally built numerous hotels, golf courses, etc -- say what you like about the methods he uses to accomplish these things, but 'GTD' and 'TCB' are not weak points for him.
jkf
1mo ago
I was more talking about Philly, it's well documented due to being one of the few successful R court challenges:
OFC the 'success' was in the form of a court order allowing them to approach counters within six feet instead of being roped off at 20+ -- and came after the counting was largely complete.
I'd have to dig through old reddit materials to get you policies in other places, but six feet was widely enforced, which I'd argue is still too far away to reasonably see what a counter is doing; watchers also complained of being dismissed for improper mask wearing, which Republicans claimed was disproportionately targeted at them in locations with disproportionately fat black female Democrat-leaning counting officials. Of course they would say that, but it doesn't seem like an outrageous scenario even without fraudulent intent -- dealing with challenges is obviously more work for the counters than not, so I can well believe that they'd be looking for any excuse to get rid of people who were bugging them all the time about their procedures. Covid provided that excuse, and people took advantage -- whether they also took advantage in the form of actually biased counting procedures and/or full-on fraud is an open question, and it really really shouldn't be.
jkf
1mo ago
On the threat-to-democracy front I think the obvious angle is that Trump tried to stay in power despite losing the 2020 election and regularly disparages the legitimacy of any election he loses. Forget the riot on Jan 6th. Here are some simple facts, not reasonably in dispute:
None of that seems much different than the democratic campaign to encourage faithless electors in 2016 though? Both were bad, to be clear; neither shattered the republic. (nor ended up having any impact on the results)
I'm curious what in particular convinces you this did happen.
For me it was the talking head that came on the news at ~11PM Pacific on November 6 saying that a water main had broken and counting would be suspended in Georgia for the night -- my memory on this is quite solid as I had a bet on the go for the Georgia results, and Trump was looking good at the time.
Certainly it's possible that the talking head was mistaken, and this has definitely been said by the 'most secure election evah' people -- but then they would say that, wouldn't they?
Even if I grant that this were the case, it seems likely that the Republican observers were told the same thing and went home -- which would have been fine if the officials had not started counting again a couple hours later -- which they very definitely did.
The whole kicking out observers thing I have only ever seen reported third-hand by people like Giuliani
This one there is no ambiguity -- it was in Philadelphia IIRC and there was all sorts of video at the time. Even observers who weren't kicked out were made to stand behind a rope like 20 feet away from the counting 'because covid'. If you don't believe this one you are positing some sort of conspiracy yourself.
jkf
1mo ago
Existing mechanisms like poll watchers haven’t caught such fraud.
Funny you would say that, since one of the big 'smoking guns' was poll watchers in battleground states being effectively prevented from watching -- whether under the pretense of anti-covid measures, or counting continuing outside of their presence.
jkf
1mo ago
24-25 is not young, I have 5 years before I hit 30, more than that neuroplasticity sets in and after an age you are not youthful anymore.
LOL
Ed:
If you are actually looking to improve your tech prospects I'd suggest moving to someplace that's, like -- got a lot of tech stuff/startups going on?
Thailand has a lot of lazy expat partiers and/or sex pervs looking to indulge those habits on the cheap, and Bali is much the same but with more Australians -- fun as these places might be, they will not help your career development.
jkf
1mo ago
Yeah I don't actually mind when this kind of thing is weird and janky on my own weird and janky systems, but if your thing is janky on managed-out-the-ass corporate windows laptops, it's a problem. (not least because on my own systems I can usually dig in and fix the jank if it bothers me too much -- the IT drones OTOH have only so much time to devote to such things, so 'unplug it and plug it back in usually works, if not reboot' is the best I can do for my team)
I'm kind of thinking it's heat-related maybe -- TBF I do have a lot plugged into the thing. I may now have enough pull to just ask IT to send me an HP one -- thanks for the reminder, lol.
jkf
1mo ago
For odd electronics adapters, big choice is StarTech. They're not the only people with USB-serial adapters (second place: TrendNet TU-S9s) I'll trust in safety-of-life situations
I think they may have outsourced some stuff now -- I've got some weird KVM-type stuff from them that is great, but my work IT supplied a simple USB-C dock (probably the cheapest one in their catalog) that is utter garbage; drops monitors pretty often and semi-frequently drops all usb devices, needing to be unplugged from the laptop to reset. Definitely not safety-of-life grade.
jkf
1mo ago
The CO2 cartridges are kind of expensive if you buy them at retail -- I think they are priced so as to barely pencil out against buying the fuzzy water premade.
However a dive/paintball/welding/fire extinguisher shop can do it for like $2 -- if you are really serious you could plumb the thing to accept a larger welding canister, which would last roughly forever and you just exchange the whole thing at the welding place.
jkf
1mo ago
jkf
1mo ago
The problem seems to be that they are also stopping other people from doing things -- the locals apparently feel that FEMA is literally worse than nothing. (and they are indeed being told by FEMA "how to handle hurricane relief" -- in that FEMA says they should fuck off and let only people authorized by them do the relief.)
As I recall the complaints were similar in New Orleans -- if FEMA is worse than useless in non-third-world parts of the country, maybe they should be looking at the chainsaw whenever somebody get around to taking action on the debt?
jkf
1mo ago
I guess overwrought early-2000s psychological thrillers are just that much better than 2020 bullshit -- if somebody wants to start churning out mediocre-but-fun 90s movies again I won't complain.
jkf
1mo ago
The people in charge of the healthcare system are not politicians, they are the administrative state
They tend to also be some form of doctor themselves though -- you can add "bring back medical ethics" to "I want an apology" if you like -- throw a pony on the list, I like ponies.
jkf
1mo ago
OK I guess -- but those purity spirals were literally being driven by the people in charge of the healthcare system. Also individual doctors to some extent, although dissenters did face serious consequences from the people in charge of the healthcare system if they spoke publicly, so some people could maybe be considered victims. (chickenshit ones, but I have some sympathy)
So that is my stance: until the people who did this (ie. the people in charge of the healthcare system apologize and give some credible indication that they won't do it again, I will not only not believe and/or comply with anything they say, but will actively oppose them. If that means that the tree of liberty gets watered with the blood of some 85 y.o.'s with multiple myleoma and Parkinsons, it's sad -- but so be it.
jkf
1mo ago
When the style claimed is "increases discord", it's indistinguishable from internal partisans who are unhappy with the current state of affairs, and post their (discordant) opinions on social media.
I guess this is falsifiable if you found some russian operatives posting so as to... increase harmony, but this seems unlikely, and I can't really visualize what "increase discord" looks like on the other end. "Here's some rubles, go stir the shit on twitter"? Government propaganda campaigns always have some sort of goal in mind IME -- it used to be "promote global communism", but what is it now?
jkf
1mo ago
Dawg have you not seen The Fifth Element?
I mean I did, but like 30 years ago and I don't think his name was, like headlining? Certainly the film had other... more memorable elements.
The last part is completely correct of course -- I do recall being told by Serious People at the time that I shouldn't expect it in this case and needed to Take The Vaccine and Stay The Fuck At Home however -- these people need to at least apologize (for this and their even bigger lies) if they want me to help them out -- that's the bottom line.
jkf
1mo ago
Could the cost of actually-legalized drugs be brought down enough that people shy away from street drugs like most would currently with bathtub gin?
Not sure about cocaine (or LSD I guess -- neither are prescribed very much), but prescription versions of all the other popular ones are already way cheaper than the street versions. (not including marijuana of course, since it's roughly as hard to grow as lettuce and various regulations tend to make the official versions more expensive to produce than the ways the black market has already figured out)
jkf
1mo ago
shit why do I only remember intimidating black men.
Haha not sure -- I admit to have heard of Herman Cain, but not prior to him dying of covid and being relentlessly mocked by all the good people -- Powell certainly counts, I'm surprised that I hadn't heard of his passing. Maybe there were some inconveniences there for the bloody-shirt wavers given that he was not only fully vaccinated, but also apparently "had multiple myeloma, ... surgery for prostate cancer ... and, more recently, Parkinson's disease."
No idea who Tommy Lister is, but if you were a fan prior to covid he counts -- as I said I'm Canadian so know more hockey players than intimidating black dudes.
When it comes to celebrities they seem to have mostly hidden in beach houses and such.
But they (virtually) all got it eventually, right? Same as everyone else.
jkf
1mo ago
You can say haha fuck you doctors lose your careers but you do run the risk of having people die unnecessarily
That is the place I have been driven to, yes -- I stand by it. Maybe next time the doctors won't be so chickenshit and will stand up for the right thing.
I think it makes sense for a higher initial inoculation (like being trapped in a train or city bus with a sick person) to result in more severe illness than walking past someone on the way into a grocery store and catching a whiff.
I think different doses were tested in the challenge trial, and don't recall that correlation being noted -- the thing about viruses is that the replicate really fast and exponentially. So a couple of infected cells becomes a couple of zillion not much more slowly than a couple of thousand would. But even if this were the case, I am not a literal woods-dwelling hermit -- I know lots of people in cities, some of which were noted hotspots. I myself was in a couple of those cities right up until travel was made difficult in Spring 2020. I did not get covid until for another year or so, and none of those city denizens died; none of them went to the hospital.
How many celebrities could you name, if pressed? I think I could name hundreds, many of whom are pretty old and live in big cities; the only one I could name offhand who is said to have died of Covid is John Prine. This also seems inconsistent with the idea that it was ever an extremely dangerous thing.
jkf
1mo ago
It doesn't need to be a generational plague to overload the medical system, which it did to some extent. If we ever get a generational plague again we are absolutely fucked.
So be it -- if the medical system wants me to care about it, it needs to not jerk me around. Sorry-notsorry.
Rural probably does it though, most of the people who had a bad experience were in the city - likely due to close proximity etc, which probably also is why it's way more of a blue tribe concern.
You think that proximity makes infection severity worse? Frequency, sure -- but I don't think I've heard anyone assert that IFR is worse in cities before.
If the generational pandemic only kills people in the city (not including my relatives there apparently, who were fine) I am ambivalent at best. Most of our current national issues are driven by overcrowded cities, and 'plague' might be close enough to 'natural attrition' for me...
Acupuncture is a little different from homeopathy in that there's a plausible mechanism in terms of stimulating nerves or whatnot -- the Asian Woo (Wu?) wrapped around it seems shitty and I haven't tried it myself, but certainly people I know have said it helps with various things. People who are into homeopathy on the other hand just seem to be sick all the time -- for which they need more homeopathy!
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