netstack
Texas is freedom land
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User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3hr ago
Counterpoint: trusting your family also creates some of the most unhinged legal drama.
One branch of my family has a bit of a “trailer park slum lord” thing going in the Southeast. Buy foreclosed lots, rent them back to the former owners, clean out the ones who can’t or won’t pay.
That branch includes one brother who is very much not welcome in the family business. He’s a scammer who’s known to show up and claim property when anyone near the community dies. Sometimes he even waves a convenient will. He’d happily file a few lawsuits if he thought there was any chance of getting a payout.
There is zero chance that the family business can pull those kind of accounting tricks, because they know their brother would come ruin it. And that’s for quite literally clannish behavior!
Trusting each other works until it doesn’t. There’s a reason that bigger institutions accrue more and more guardrails.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3hr ago
A Bridge Too Far.
Kind of slow going. Still in planning phase before the drops. It’s honest, perhaps to the point of polemic, about how poorly things are about to go. I feel like that actually detracts from the experience.
Castles of Steel told a similar bureaucratic, egotistical tragedy. But I remember it held off on assigning blame. Bridge jumps right in.
And no, I haven’t seen the whole movie.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5hr ago
The few sources I saw showed closer to a 1:1 ratio on replacement. I’m not sure what effect that has on volume of fire. Sure, the HIMARS are only tossing 6 rockets each, but they’re much larger warheads than even the 155mm shells.
I agree that they’ve got to lose out on sustained fire, especially given the cost per round…but that’s a separate issue from vulnerability to counter-battery fire. Shoot and scoot should be much safer than setting up one of those monster cannons, right?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5hr ago
Okay, I guess I fumbled that metaphor.
There was a period after 9/11 when mentioning terrorism basically won any number of debates. American politics adapted, and now the risk of a terrorist link is kind of priced in. Very few of the people who weren’t already moved by the outrageous fraud are going to be moved by this addendum.
It might be a different story if Somali Minnesotans directly funded a known terrorist attack, but up until that point, it’s largely academic.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6hr ago
More “assumes it’s the undead hand of Dick Cheney.”
Though there’s also a subset who would endorse “can’t free Palestine without breaking a few eggs.”
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6hr ago
There was some discussion. I think the consensus was that it was a joke, and people were arguing over which side ought to take it seriously.
More discussion from last month. Personally, I think that analysis still holds.
There’s also the Transnational Thursday threads to consider.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6hr ago
What makes them more vulnerable? Aren’t they supposed to be “highly mobile”?
This is a genuine question. I don’t fully understand how they’re utilized compared to traditional artillery. I know the U.S. is converting some howitzer battalions to HIMARS; they cite improved long-range lethality, which makes sense for the intel-heavy approach to fire support. But that’s not really a privilege enjoyed by Ukraine, is it?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6hr ago
I wasn’t impressed last time people were suddenly interested in minnesota, so my expectations are pretty low. Just flipping through the Post article intermingles a number of claims. It’s relying on the City Journal report, anyway, so let’s go there.
- Minnesota has been investigating >$300M in welfare fraud, mostly by Somalis.
- One Terrorism Task Force detective says that al-Shabab gets “a cut” of any money making it back to Somalia.
- A separate contractor, investigating the 58 Americans who joined ISIS, insists that “the largest funder of al-Shabab is the Minnesota taxpayer”.
So numbers basically evaporate as we move from fraudulent charities to overall remittances to al-Shabab’s cut. Not surprising. But anything related to terrorism still operates on homeopathic principles: diluting it makes people take it more seriously.
(Man, peeling back the calendar, reveals the year: 2001)
I don’t know why you would expect a “more honest conversation”. You’re going to put off anybody who has the cultural antibodies to deal with this flavor of criticism. You might as well accuse Somalia of hiding WMDs. It’s not going to convince anybody new.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
Arguably an accurate choice for a setting designed by Ed Greenwood, though.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
What’s your model for a “traditional” civil war? I’d like to see this analysis applied to the Romans, the English, the Bolsheviks, whichever you think is most typical. I suspect the extreme asymmetry of various third-world conflicts is a modern phenomenon more than a traditional one.
Also, I don’t think Jefferson was slumming it with weirdos like us.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
Hm. Maybe we shouldn’t try to drift towards the UK.
And Japan has had its fair share of unhinged opposition.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
No, I want the opposite! Everyone else should automatically block politicians. No POTUS Twitter account, no Senators chasing TikTok trends. Think of how much cringe we could avoid.
Holding office should constrain you to official channels, which should be both boring and delayed. If the leader of the free world needs to address the population, he can damn well set up a press conference.
If Congressmen weren’t allowed to broadcast their reelection propaganda like this, nothing of value would be lost.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
Does that mean you agree this isn’t a crime?
Surely a cause-and-effect enjoyer like yourself can recognize that this could not be incitement.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
As tempting as it is to haggle over price, I suspect we’d just be shouting “nuh uh!” at each other.
So—sure, whatever, fuck those guys. What’s that got to do with the price of semiconductors in China? Do you think Trump’s Jan 6 speech was incitement or not?
Because if you don’t, there’s no way this video rises to that level. It shows motive but not means or opportunity. That makes it shameless posturing.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
This is stupid. I hate that a stitched-together video is what passes for an official statement. I hate that Twitter is the de facto source for partisan drama. And Libs of fucking TikTok, no less! I don’t want to watch this slop.
I wonder if elected officials could be banned from social media. Let them appear on TV or release a boring document if they want to puff up their feathers. It’d greatly improve faith in the political process. Make it take more work to bait outrage.
You’d probably just end up with a secondary industry of ghouls like LoTT laundering those official appearances into an allegedly unofficial party line. But I genuinely think our politics would be improved if seated politicians had to put a little more effort into public appearances.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
Maybe if they were making this appeal to the security detail outside a Trump rally. “I know that everyone here will be marching into that rally to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
There’s no route where this stupid video causes the “intelligence community” to plot a coup. At worst, you’re going to get a couple partisans refusing to do their jobs. That’s categorically not as bad as gatecrashing a session of Congress. If you don’t think Trump was culpable for that, you shouldn’t think these chucklefucks are somehow worse.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3d ago
Paging kulakrevolt! Amphetamines and high T for everyone!
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
Right. Fascism quickly and efficiently degrades them—once the bombs start falling.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
Am I the only one who…
No. You’re rehashing perhaps the most popular argument against letting women do anything. Any career, any education, any effort that isn’t spent on popping out more kids for the Fatherland.
It is a stupid argument. WW2 wouldn’t have gone any better if America forced its women to stay out of the factories, too. Keeping half the population locked into one role is an socioeconomic own-goal. Especially if, as you suggest, that role is necessary for “self-actualization.” Let them choose.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5d ago
It’s discriminating on ability to pay, which isn’t a protected characteristic.
“We’ll charge him more because he’s white” is illegal. “We’ll charge him more because he has good insurance” is, uh. Complicated.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6d ago
Yeah, it sucks.
I got a $500+ bill from a lab recently. Their reasoning? Insurance said I wasn’t covered. Check insurance, nope, they definitely have coverage on the date. Maybe they ran the wrong one? Explain this and ask them to run the current one. Month later: bam. Exact copy of the previous bill.
What do I do at this point? Pay the bill and then file a claim, I guess. Except that feels like accepting liability for what is, ultimately, a bullshit charge. The insurer and the provider are gonna laugh at me for holding the bag. Monkey brain says fuck that.
And all of these steps involve going through some combination of 2FA, patient portals, website “assistants,” and phone dungeons. I don’t want to deal with it. This kind of shit is what makes me feel least like a functioning adult.
Has this objection been used before? Conversely, have previous administrations gotten away with repeated interim positions?
I seem to recall Trump I having a lot of trouble filling similar positions. Trump II has done a much better job on that front, so I’m a little surprised that they left the goal open. With control of the Senate, Republicans had to have the option, right?
I’m tentatively okay with this outcome. If your handpicked man resigns rather than take a case, it’s a sign that the case is weak.
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