Tuesday November 8, 2022 is Election Day in the United States of America. In addition to Congressional "midterms" at the federal level, many state governors and other more local offices are up for grabs. Given how things shook out over Election Day 2020, things could get a little crazy.
...or, perhaps, not! But here's the Megathread for if they do. Talk about your local concerns, your national predictions, your suspicions re: election fraud and interference, how you plan to vote, anything election related is welcome here. Culture War thread rules apply, with the addition of Small-Scale Questions and election-related "Bare Links" allowed in this thread only (unfortunately, there will not be a subthread repository due to current technical limitations).
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Notes -
... or DuckDuckGo, for us nerds!
I appreciate that you are taking the time to fact-check both yours and others' assertions. I recommend not using time between responses as an indication of indecision; some of us deliberately restrict our internet usage.
I can't speak to SharpieGate, but I can recall when I was relatively certain (say, 95%) that there were people in US government / political elite who knew that 9/11 would likely happen and benefited from it. I wouldn't say that I was deeply into 9/11-Truth conspiracies (though I did come across them, and I do own a copy of the 9/11 Commission Report, so maybe I need to re-evaluate that).
My certainty was based not on corroborated facts, but rather on my mental model for how elite social world works. If I were to try to summarize:
Politically involved elites tend to be interconnected (politically involved elite people know lots of other elite people).
These interconnections cross international boundaries (e.g., they or their kids go to the same prestigious colleges).
People pass information (or at least tips) along their network of friends / acquaintances.
Large well-funded conspiracies leak, and 9/11 was a large well-funded conspiracy.
It's been two decades. I am far less certain now (more like 20%) about my original assertion, because I haven't come across any well-publicized scandal that so-and-so did some insider trading based on their advanced knowledge on the matter. My suspicion did not disappear entirely though, because my mental model for how elite social world works hasn't changed.
Us true nerds have moved on to Kagi.
I've been playing with https://search.marginalia.nu/ but it's not something I'd use as a primary because of scaling issues. Still refreshing to use an engine that acts like the old days and actually finds niche pages based on text and content instead of one that wants me to talk to it in sentences like a three year old and still not show me things I know exist on the lesser trafficked parts of the web.
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I agree with this and did not intend to imply otherwise. When I mentioned the 5 hour response gap, it was in reference to how no one else who responded bothered to do something as perfunctory as using a search engine.
How you broke down your belief system is an interesting exercise and I wish I saw that more often, so thank you for sharing it.
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