jkf
1mo ago
What I do know is that if Kamala wins, the following will happen, with the following likelihoods, whether or not there are any credible widespread fraud allegations:
Trump will declare that he rightfully won and Harris only won due to fraud (99.9%) Elon Musk will say it's very concerning and suspicious how many irregularities there are, and use his platform to spread that sentiment as much as he can (95%) Elon Musk will outright declare that Harris's victory was fraudulent and that Trump is the real winner (85%) Most Trump voters will believe Harris only won due to fraud (98%)
Sounds like it would be best for America if Trump wins then, hey?
jkf
1mo ago
Setting aside that that's a whacky-ass definition of facism, would you really describe Trump as 'socially conservative, but also in favor of wealth redistribution and business regulation'? AFAICT he's diametrically opposed on all of those things.
He doesn't really fit the actual definition of fascism per Mussolini/Hitler/Franco either, so when the left says that I assume they just mean "popular person that we don't like".
jkf
1mo ago
Every single president before Trump (except maybe Nixon) was allowed unlimited time to go through his documents and decide which ones to give to the archives. Obama probably still isn't done, if anyone cared to look -- hell if you looked in Bush's basement I wouldn't be surprised if you found some shit.
It's the furthest thing from cut & dried; the people breaking norms on this one are definitely not Trump.
jkf
1mo ago
If someone wants to just try some acupuncture or homeopathy method at home
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!
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.
The request itself was unprecedented; no other presidents were asked to do this.
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