Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
No bio...
User ID: 863
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
19d ago
Ok, but how does this relate to the OP? This is true whether or not there's a leak of some specific passwords in a publicly accessible excel document. Somebody has to have access to maintain voting machines and by the nature of maintenance would be able to compromise the thing they're maintaining.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
22d ago
The meeting was with Blue Origin executives which is Bezos' space flight company. Presumably WaPo doesn't endorse Harris and maybe Trump steers some NASA contracts Blue Origin's way if he wins. This hearkens back to the JEDI military contract during the Trump administration, which allegedly went to Microsoft over Amazon for political reasons (including alleged interference by Trump).
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
22d ago
I do not find Bezos' denial that this was politically motivated very credible. Just earlier this month the Post editorial board endorsed both a Senator and a House rep. Apparently Bezos came around to these principles in the last two weeks. Or maybe endorsing Senators/Reps moves the needle for voters in a way it doesn't for President? Does endorsing these candidates not create an appearance of bias the way endorsing a candidate for President does?
Also this:
I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here. Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision. It was made entirely internally. Dave Limp, the chief executive of one of my companies, Blue Origin, met with former president Donald Trump on the day of our announcement. I sighed when I found out, because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision. But the fact is, I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand. Even Limp didn’t know about it in advance; the meeting was scheduled quickly that morning. There is no connection between it and our decision on presidential endorsements, and any suggestion otherwise is false.
Does Bezos understand this makes it look more like a quid pro quo? If the meeting is something that had been scheduled months ago and just happened to fall on the same day then it could excused as a coincidence. "The meeting (quo) wasn't set up until we killed the endorsement (quid)" looks worse! Not better!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
27d ago
Indeed, "abuse that will result in your children being taken away" is not some objective thing in the universe. It is relative to a very particular social construction (laws).
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
27d ago
In fact if your child had cancer in their penis or breasts then not cutting them off may very well be abuse.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
27d ago
Is it also political when the state wants to give children blood transfusions and parents object?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
27d ago
The state, obviously. They're the ones who pass the laws defining abuse!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
27d ago
It is good when abusive parents lose custody of the children they are abusing.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
28d ago
I think "unable" is the wrong word. The United States government almost certainly could do this. The problem is lots of politicians (I suspect primarily Republicans) are skeptical of the kind of national database that would have to be constructed to do so. What is going to be on the cards? Are we just adding a photo to your SSN card? But that wouldn't establish where you live for voting purposes. Will it also have your address? So the federal government is going to have a database of the address of every citizen?
Lots of politics groups in America are suspicious of the federal government knowing too much or having too much power which hampers our ability to coordinate that way and is why so much is done by states instead.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
28d ago
"Losing money" is not, by itself, what I object to. Approximately every company loses money in some quarters. Even billions of dollars. It's the scale of the loss relative to incoming revenue. If you look at Twitter's first 10K after going public you will see there was only one year (2011) in which their losses are more than double their revenue. If you look at their first 10Q after going public you will see they were actually profitable that quarter! Meanwhile DJT is posting losses on the order of 10-20x revenue. As far back as I can find data for Twitter, they were not posting losses like that.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
28d ago
Evidence that Twitter's fundamentals were "similarly dismal?" As of Twitter's last 10Q they were reporting $1.2B in revenue against $1.5B of expenses for a net loss in the $300M range. I think having expenses that are around 25% higher than revenue is pretty different from having expenses that are 1000-2000% (10-20x) higher than revenue, as DJT reports.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
29d ago
I think one important distinguishing point you don't mention re:Hawaii is that Nixon, presiding over the session, sought and received (unanimous) consent from both houses of Congress to count the alternate slate of electors for Kennedy. The then-operative electoral count act had specific provisions for Congress to decide which sets of electors ought to be counted. Trump's plan relied on the Vice President having unilateral authority to decide which set of electors should be counted. It's obvious that Trump's plan is indefensible because ~0 people who supported that plan would support Vice President Harris doing something similar with respect to the 2024 election.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
29d ago
As of Gamestop's latest 10Q they reported assets of around $5.5B against 386M outstanding shares. Valuing Gamestop strictly as a pot of money implies a per-share price of around $14/share vs its current closing price of $21/share. Having a tradeable stock ticker is valuable but I am not sure it is worth $3B!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
29d ago
According to the USA Today article you linked Truth Social had $8.3M in legal expenses and $3.1M in technology expenses for its streaming service. Assuming both of these go to 0 that still leaves them with ~$8M in losses against 800k in revenue. Do you think Truth Social increased it's revenue 10x in the last three months? Did they reduce a bunch of other costs by 90%?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
29d ago
I think DJT has become a meme stock the same way GME and BBY were before it. Nobody buying DJT at $30 a share is doing a rational valuation based on its actual business. We are talking about a company that, in the three months ending June 30th, had revenue of $800k against operating costs of $19M. You can go read the latest 10Q yourself. Their own calculation shows an outstanding share count of 191M shares against $341M of equity. That's an implied share price below $2, assuming DJT was breaking even in its operations. So, what's the path for DJT to 20x its revenue without any increase in operating cost?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
29d ago
I have a lot of sympathy because I have a pretty similar story. When I was in high school I worked at {local pizza joint} that was sold to new owners and rebranded a couple years after I left. I put it on my first resume and the background check company my first employer used couldn't verify through whatever their normal means are that I worked there. I ended up having to reach out through several layers of friends to get the original owner of the place to write a letter confirming I worked there. It would have been way easier and more convenient to just leave it off. If someone wanted me to prove I worked there again today I'm not sure I could do it. Maybe a dozen people had contemporaneous knowledge and the only ones I'm still in regular contact with are my family.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
30d ago
Sure, but unless one is going through the revision history of the article (which... why?) one would have to have loaded the article during the < 1m period when it was the latest revision to see it as on the main page. The fact the comment I'm replying to wonders how long that will be in the article doesn't sound like they saw it in its already-reverted form.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
30d ago
I am impressed you managed to get the version of the page with that quote. It was reverted in less than a minute if I read the history right. Version with it and the reverted version. The whole quote was removed 11 minutes later.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1mo ago
Here is the letter where the FCC denies Starlink's long form application. The relevant paragraph (emphasis added):
The Bureau has concluded its review of LTD Broadband’s (LTD) and Starlink’s long form applications. LTD proposes to deploy gigabit fiber to 475,616 estimated locations in 11 states. Starlink, relying upon a nascent LEO satellite technology and the ability to timely deploy future satellites to manage recognized capacity constraints while maintaining broadband speeds to both RDOF and nonRDOF customers, seeks funding to provide 100/20 Mbps low latency service to 642,925 estimated locations in 35 states. The Bureau has determined that, based on the totality of the long-form applications, the expansive service areas reflected in their winning bids, and their inadequate responses to the Bureau’s follow-up questions, LTD and Starlink are not reasonably capable of complying with the Commission’s requirements. The Commission has an obligation to protect our limited Universal Service Funds and to avoid extensive delays in providing needed service to rural areas, including by avoiding subsidizing risky proposals that promise faster speeds than they can deliver, and/or propose deployment plans that are not realistic or that are predicated on aggressive assumptions and predictions. We observe that Ookla data reported as of July 31, 2022 indicate that Starlink’s speeds have been declining from the last quarter of 2021 to the second quarter of 2022, including upload speeds that are falling well below 20 Mbps. Accordingly, we deny LTD’s and Starlink’s long-form applications, and both are in default on all winning bids not already announced as defaulted. Because LTD has defaulted on its remaining winning bids, we also dismiss as moot LTD’s petition for reconsideration of the Bureau’s denial of its request for additional time to obtain an ETC designation in Nebraska and North Dakota.
Sounds like the FCC was skeptical Starlink could deliver the speeds it promised on the required timeline for the program.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1mo ago
I think this is too cynical. The way I view most think tanks is doing the hard work of translating abstract ideological principles into actual policy. If I have a belief like "the criminal justice system treats wealthy people better than poor people to an unjust degree" I can't just go pass a law that says "the criminal justice system shall treat people more justly with respect to wealth disparities." Someone has to do the hard work of figuring out how my complaint actually manifests in the system (cash bail) and what policies could alleviate it (getting rid of cash bail). Viewed this way, the work of think tanks is necessary in our modern government. No legislator can be a domain expert on every area they are called to legislate on. Think tanks help that by synthesizing a legislators ideological commitments with domain expertise to produce palatable and effective policy.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1mo ago
I think questions about increasing ones height often have a whiff of an XY problem. Rarely do people want to increase their height as an end in itself, they want to increase their height as a means to advance some other end. The problem (my impression) is that the research on how to effectively increase one's height and how it causally impacts the outcome of interest are sufficiently unclear that it's efficiency in terms of accomplishing ones goals is questionable. That is, for almost any reason people care about their height (sexual success, job success, getting swole) there are almost certainly better things that could be doing with their time, in terms of ROI, than trying to increase their height. So when people ask about increasing their height other people try and infer their motivation for asking and guide them to more effective actions, given their imputed goals. Maybe you're someone whose on the 99.9th percentile of job/sexual/lifting success such that your height really is your limiting factor but I doubt that describes most people asking about it.
Iowa is not exactly a reliably red state either. We're not taking about Texas here. Obama won it by almost 10 points in 2008 and by over 5 points in 2012. "Dem wins Iowa by 2-4 points" is not, historically, a crazy outcome.
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