Pulpachair
8mo ago
Is this where we pretend that Trump didn't get the 2nd most votes in the history of the country, improving on his previous total by 11,000,000 votes?
Trump is remarkably good at motivating Republican voters. I would argue that the only thing he is better at is motivating Democrat voters, thus no longer being president.
Pulpachair
9mo ago
Werewolf suggests involuntary transformation into a defined form. Navajo yee naldlooshii are evil witches who can assume multiple different forms and possess animals and other people. Update your monster manuals appropriately.
Pulpachair
9mo ago
Obama cancelled offshore drilling and pushed green tech too and yet oil production doubled under him.
Mostly in spite of his policies. 2010-2014 was the technologically-driven shale boom period, followed by the crash in 2014-15. The leases that facilitated this expansion were created under Bush who was a wee bit more energy industry friendly than Obama/Biden.
US oil production continued to expand under Trump, though more slowly than it did during the Shale boom and peaked in late 2019-2020 before COVID nearly bankrupted 1/3 of the US regional producers by briefly making oil prices go negative. It has taken three years for US production to get back to 95% of the peak production because it isn't just like turning on a spigot again.
Prices are slowly normalizing, but are still historically high, even adjusting for inflation. This makes very little sense to me because U.S. demand has fallen almost 10% from 2019 and almost 20% from 2005 despite returning to high production rates. I'll have to look into what is going on with global production in that time period, but that data is harder to track down and less reliable.
I have no idea. As I argued in previous posts I think regulatory decisions are probably less impactful than the broader global markets, and investments in new productive capacity remains low for that exact reason. So a lot of the future probably hinges on stuff like the Ukraine War and the decisions made by OPEC. Still, coupled with the fact that Biden tapped the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to depress prices, I think this largely confirms that Biden was certainly not driven by a desire to crush oil production and keep prices high for Americans. Like most Presidents, he wants voters to be happy with him.
This analysis seems apt to me, with the exception of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve publicity stunts. Tapping the reserves to increase supply temporarily to help lower prices was nothing more than a headline generator, and was a poor decision strategically. It's selling cheap gas now to buy expensive gas in the future.
I do appreciate that the messaging from the Biden administration has moved away from "Evil Oil Companies™" to focusing pretty much exclusively on culture warring in the runup to the election. I don't think campaigning against big oil is a winning strategy when prices are still 50% higher than they were under the last Republican administration.
I have no dog in this fight. Ballard could be the hero he is made out to be or a grifter. I have no idea and don't really care, but there is nothing in the world that I loathe more than:
Vice reports
My heuristic with Vice and most other "progressive" news outlets is that when it comes to reporting on non-progressive topics, I'm more likely to be closer to the truth by believing the opposite of what is reported. I view every part of the article as presenting the available evidence in the least charitable and most misleading light possible.
So, let's look at who the authors of this piece are, Tim Marchman, a "sports journalist" formerly of Deadspin with a lot of articles about Q-Anon and Anna Merlan, author of Republic of Lies, a book about Q-Anon. So we have two Q-Anon obsessed progressives focusing their little part of the eye of Sauron on an organization that works against child human trafficking. They have written 12 articles critical of OUR since December of 2020. The linked article is pretty much a rehash of their last article on the subject in July. It's surprising there is any axe left here after all that grinding.
So, let's check on the sourcing here:
- "according to sources with direct knowledge of the organization." Anonymous sources not within the organization
- "Sources familiar with the situation" Anonymous source not within the organization
- "These sources requested anonymity because they fear retaliation." Okay, more anonymous, and retaliation from who?
- "One source close to OUR" Yet another anonymous source with an alleged link to the organization
- OUR official statement in response to a request from VICE - okay, an official nonconfirmation of any allegations.
- "sources with direct knowledge of OUR corroborates an anonymous letter that’s been circulating in the Utah philanthropic community for the past several months" anonymous source confirming an anonymous letter circulating in "the Utah philanthropic community".
- "Women believed to be at the center of the investigation have not responded to requests for comment, or have declined to comment." Other possible direct sources would not confirm.
- "Ballard did not respond to requests for comment submitted through his personal website; that of his new organization, the SPEAR Fund; and through a spokesperson whom OUR previously told VICE News is his personal representative." Crazy that the guy you had written 11 hit pieces about previously didn't want to engage with you.
- "Last week, a spokesperson for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a statement to VICE News that contained a pointed rebuke of Ballard." Hrmm, an anonymous Church spokesperson who issued the pointed rebuke directly to VICE, but did not make it public or official statement from the Church's press office. Links to the statement from Utah news sources return a 404 statement not found. The quotes I could find of the rebuke are as follows
“President Ballard and Tim Ballard (no relation) established a friendship a number of years ago. That friendship was built on a shared interest in looking after God’s children wherever they are and without regard to their circumstance. However, that relationship is in the past. For many months, President Ballard has had no contact with the founder of Operation Underground Railroad (OUR). The nature of that relationship was always in support of vulnerable children being abused, trafficked, and otherwise neglected. Once it became clear Tim Ballard had betrayed their friendship, through the unauthorized use of President Ballard’s name for Tim Ballard’s personal advantage and activity regarded as morally unacceptable, President Ballard withdrew his association. President Ballard never authorized his name, or the name of the Church, to be used for Tim’s personal or financial interests.
In addition, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints never endorsed, supported or represented OUR, Tim Ballard or any projects associated with them.
President Ballard loves children, all over the world. It has been his mission and life’s work to look after them, care for them, and point them to their Savior.”
So, presumably there was a public statement that is no longer available online, was withdrawn without comment by the Mormon church, and what we have left is some citogenesis where the Salt Lake media sources cite Vice citing the Salt Lake media sources. I'll chalk this up as having existed at some point, but perhaps no longer representing the official position of the Mormon church.
So, out of 9 sources, only one partially confirmable source even sort of supports the allegations and even that is now offline less than a week after it was created.
Now let's look at the nature of the allegations:
- "investigation into claims of sexual misconduct involving seven women" What is "sexual misconduct" precious?
- "invited women to act as his “wife” on undercover overseas missions ostensibly aimed at rescuing victims of sex trafficking. He would then allegedly coerce those women into sharing a bed or showering together, claiming that it was necessary to fool traffickers." So, no actual sex then.
- "is said to have sent at least one woman a photo of himself in his underwear, festooned with fake tattoos, and to have asked another “how far she was willing to go,” in the words of a source, to save children." Oh, so still no sex.
- "The total number of women involved is believed to be higher than seven, as that would only account for employees, not contractors or volunteers." That's quite an inferential leap, and believed by whom? The authors of this article?
- "anonymous letter that’s been circulating in the Utah philanthropic community for the past several months, which accuses Ballard of sexual harassment." Still no sex? Man, this guy really sucks at sexual harrassment if he's not actually getting any. And what the fuck is the "Utah philanthropic community." Is it, maybe, composed of other organizations that are competing for donation dollars with OUR?
- "It was ultimately revealed through disturbingly specific and parallel accounts, that Tim has been deceitfully and extensively grooming and manipulating multiple women for the past few years with the ultimate intent of coercing them to participate in sexual acts with him, under the premise of going where it takes and doing ‘whatever it takes’ to save a child." Here we go - grooming them with the ultimate intent of participating in sexual acts. So, did they actually do sex, or were we just in the grooming phase? I know which one Vice wants me to believe, so I'll go the other direction.
- "Ballard, an ally of Donald Trump" Would it be uncharitable for me to think that this is the real accusation here?
So, a bunch of anonymous sources saying that a guy may have inappropriately conducted himself in ways that did not lead to actually having sex with women, but with maximum innuendo of massive misconduct and multiple cover-ups in ways that can't clearly be proven as actual malice in a defamation case. Also known as a Tuesday in Vice-land. If anything in this article turns out to be true, it will be in spite of the reporting on it.
Pulpachair
10mo ago
The main thing to note is that Hunter's main advantage was having the money to pay the tax debt. That is where his status and connections distinguish him. I don't know where he got that cash.
Hollywood attorney Kevin Morris loaned him the money to make the tax payment and has apparently been bankrolling his housing and travel for a few years now.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
I sort of feel like Johnson is not a great screenwriter, just flashy, and pulling wool over people's eyes with simple lazy tricks
I hard disagree. Brick and Looper are two of the better-written movies of the last 20 years. He has a good ear for dialogue and gets good performances from his cast. He was absolutely the wrong man to write and direct a Star Wars movie, but the sequel trilogy was doomed from the beginning due to structural problems with the story JJ Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy decided to tell.
Johnson’s problem is that he views himself as an auteur. He definitely makes his best movies when he is constrained by budget or a script supervisor who can put the kibosh on his desire to make “art” instead of telling a good story. He crawled up his own ass when making Star Wars and the fan reaction basically guaranteed he would stay there out of stubbornness. I wish he would come out again and make some good niche movies that weren’t full of swipes at the kids on Twitter who were mean to him for “ruining Star Wars.”
Pulpachair
8mo ago
Does it even matter? Every bit of information I've looked at in terms of spending vs. academic achievement shows basically no correlation, and sometimes a very weak inverse correlation. Utah, Colorado, and Iowa spend close to the lowest amount per student on education, but consistently rank in the top 10 for academic achievement. Arizona spends slightly more than Utah, and New York spends the most of any state, but both of them are ranked below the median (New York well below), while New Jersey has very high spend and ranks in the top 10 for achievement. Arguments about disparate spend amounts based on property taxes beg the question.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
A bit further back than 1997, but still after the purported demise of the machine politics era, the grand jury report for the 1982 Chicago election is informative on the different fraud strategies used to generate over 100,000 fraudulent votes in the midterms that year. The specific strategies included
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Absent voter canvassing - paid canvassers who were supposed to correct voter rolls instead used canvassing to identify voters who had died, moved, or had no intention of voting as targets for fraudulent votes.
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Fraudulent use of absentee registration - precinct captains and canvassers would convince residents to sign up for absentee ballots, then fill out the ballots themselves voting party line
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Paying drunks, homeless and aliens to vote
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Manually altering the vote counts
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Harvesting ballots from nursing homes
Of those methods, manually altering the vote counts is more difficult now. The other methods are no more difficult or much, much easier to pull off. In the 41 years since then, we have expanded the mail-in vote to be broad enough to cover everyone. Ballot harvesting is now explicitly legal in quite a few jurisdictions with minimum verifications in place to ensure that the ballots are actually cast by the person on the registration card. In jurisdictions where it is illegal, there is an awful lot of wink and nod non-enforcement.
Much of the opportunity for fraud is now outsourced to GOTV organizations tied to both the local and national parties. They conduct the registration drives, canvassing, and harvesting with a degree of separation from the party proper so that when an employee is caught being "inadequately supervised" it doesn't implicate the party.
While I assume that both parties engage in fraud to the extent they can get away with it, I would expect that Democrats benefit from it more simply due to the parties' positions on whether greater voter fraud protections are needed. I think it's unlikely but not impossible that the 2020 presidential election was within the margin of fraud.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
That would indeed be terrible if, you know, Twitter weren't already knowingly penetrated by Chinese intelligence assets.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
When election corruption was a little more blatant in Chicago in the second half of the twentieth century, it wasn’t all of Cook county that engaged in corruption. It was a dozen polling locations where the entire polling apparatus was safely within the Daley machine. Still enough to shore up mayoral and statewide Democrat vote totals, but narrow and focused enough that it wouldn’t disrupt all of the races.
Widespread, persistent election fraud is almost certainly not an actual occurrence. To the extent fraud is occurring, I would guess that it is following the Chicago model and focused on small partisan strongholds with the objective of keeping the graft dollars flowing.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
Lay doomer take.
I’ve been expecting a recession since late 2020 and was surprised that it took until q1 2022 to actually arrive. You think the fundamentals aren’t as bad as 2008 - I disagree. The 2008 financial crisis was a US-created speculative bubble that had knock-on effects in other countries. The EU was stronger then. China was ascending. Russia was not engaged in self-immolation. There were limits for how much damage US housing speculation could inflict.
Right now, all I see are dominoes. Europe is facing a major energy crisis. Russia’s economy is being strangled. China was always a house of cards. The current US administration does not appear capable of recognizing things that have already happened, let alone accurately predicting coming events. We ate a lot of seed corn during COVID, and have continued feasting afterwards too. What possible backstop is there against a major downturn?
—
I think your evaluation of legal hiring is a bit optimistic, though your identification of “safe” areas of law is apt.
Since 2008, the big 4 consulting firms have been building larger legal services departments. It has really only been large corporate legal departments, which are almost entirely composed of biglaw alumni, that has kept corporate finance from moving the largest part of legal work to cheaper legal services providers. Recession-type hits to the bottom line should be enough to force gc’s to look for ways to trim the legal budgets, which will mean moving significant amounts of money away from biglaw. Cut off those revenue streams from biglaw firms, and I think you will see hiring freezes generally while law schools continue to churn out new grads. If and when the law firm hiring picks up again (expect a lag behind the end of the recession) you’ll have double or triple the number of applicants looking for the same number of jobs.
I predict the major earthquake for law to be ABA permitting Arizona-style changes to rules about who can own a law firm, meaning Deloitte can have its own subsidiary law firm covered by MSAs that already exist with most fortune 500 companies. If that happens, biglaw is going to take more than a haircut.
Pulpachair
9mo ago
It is certainly the excuse that many of these men use; how seriously to take that excuse is a different matter, and clearly it’s transparently false in many if not most cases. I do think there is probably something important and true, though, about the profound culture shock and almost “kid in a candy store” mental space that a lot of them must be experiencing in their new environment, though.
I think it is telling that we don’t hear stories about roving gangs of young Amish men on Rumspringa assaulting women. It is far more reflective of Muslim attitudes toward women generally and kafir women in particular that this cope is taken seriously at all.
Pulpachair
10mo ago
I doubt it's any of these. I think it's edgelording. I think it's Iron Maiden feeding on Christian Satanic Rock panic by releasing Number of the Beast. I think it's Joe Biden doing Dark Brandon memes in real life. I think it's 4-chan making the left turn the OK sign into a white power symbol. It's meant to tweak the ideological opponents by saying the thing that will trigger them the most. In which case, well done fellas. Too bad the message was muddled by, you know, having people twerking in front of kids. Message discipline across broad coalitions is a lofty goal.
In general, my opinion on the groomer stuff is that I really, really doubt that the vast, teeming majority of the LGBT community is trying to convert the straights or their kids. Most gays alive today still remember how shitty it was to be a young, closeted gay before the mid-2000s and would prefer to spare kids nowadays the shittiness, so being more open and accepting about it is a good thing, but they don't mind the straights having their preference.
There are, however, a not insignificant number of predatory activist allies who want to collect exotic people like rare Pokemon. The more exotic the better (a shiny Trans kid is the winning card these days.) These people are overrepresented in media, influencer-types and, apparently, the education system. A lot of them don't mind if they make a kid's life measurably shittier as long as they are bolstering their collection. They're the left's version of conversion therapists.
There are also the actual pedos who wear activism like a convenient skinsuit, but I suspect those are mixed in with any group that provides easy access to kids proportionally based on how easy that access is.
The trick for LGBT is how to shed the predatory activists and police against the actual predators. The predatory activists tend to run a lot of the LGBT organizations, so it's a fair amount of cutting off of one's nose to get rid of the predatory activists. And getting rid of the actual predators entirely is a quixotic feat for a group as disorganized as "all of the gays."
One thing that would be really, really, really easy to do, though, is to stop supporting sexy drag shows for kids and stop advertising Folsom Street Fair stuff as being family friendly. If they were to take that really simple, easy step, it would go a long way toward convincing normies that the behavior is not, in fact, "groomy."
Pulpachair
1yr ago
While I agree it is unlikely, Sy Hersh isn’t exactly a random substack.
That said, this is thinly sourced, would indicate criminal behavior by multiple people in the executive branch, and an act of aggression against a warring nuclear power. I think Biden is an idiot, but I have to think the joint chiefs would have stopped this.
Pulpachair
1mo ago
In my mind, the order of operations is:
- Creatives come up with a cool idea/world/gameplay mechanic that, despite having quite a bit of jank, catches on and is a moderate success
- Creatives scale up a bit and second try is better than the first. Huge success and brand loyalty follows.
- investors get involved (either finance types or an outright purchase of the thing by an EA or Microsoft) because the creatives suck at/don’t care about business aspects. Decision process starts changing to prioritize engagement metrics.
- Studio expands or becomes part of a larger corporate environment. HR starts making more decisions.
- Old guard leaves/is forced out. New hires are mostly fans and not the ones with creative vision. Innovation becomes irrelevant as decisions are now being made based on engagement.
That is the pattern I see across the NA AAA games industry. The games that are being made are so laden with vampiric “engagement drivers” (read: unfun tedious time wasters not central to the gameplay loop) and cash shop features that they were never going to be fun. They tack on DEI feelgoodery to provide the thinnest veneer of moral virtue over what is basically a $60-70 predatory phone app disguised as a game.
The focus on DEI is symptomatic of the ultra-safe corporate decision making, but not the cause of why games (and movies and comics) suck now. For example, a hypothetical Suicide Squad game with fighting fucktoy Harley Quinn and a soy-free Luthor and no other changes would have still been shit. Gamers would be complaining that it was a tragedy that Kevin Conroy’s name was associated with such a dreadful game, and Rocksteady would still be dead.
Instead, we’re going to have a media cycle talking about -ist/-phobic gamers, and the corporate types who killed Rocksteady will end up at another company and start poisoning that one too.
Pulpachair
6mo ago
I wouldn't say so, but either way this is irrelevant, because it's a completely different question to whether the economy is 'good' or not.
I don't think it's irrelevant. The economy isn't just a snapshot, it's a trendline with predictive value. We've got an uptick in the trendline right now, but is it a dead cat bounce or actually indicative of healthy and sustainable economic growth.
Here's the fed in July 2007, after the fuse on the bomb was lit.
Pulpachair
7mo ago
So, your position is that Biden asked for the firing in December and three to four months later, Shokin was fired due to a change in public opinion, almost as if a whisper campaign had changed something behind the scenes. Some good luck that Biden was out ahead of the pack in thinking Shokin should go.
Pulpachair
9mo ago
shank's pony
This is not a substantitve response, but it has been decades since I've heard that phrase. You brought a smile to my day, sir.
Pulpachair
9mo ago
I may be your worst enemy. I only tell intentionally bad jokes at work, really awful forced puns and jokes where the setup is overly long for a weak punch line. A portion of it is sadism for sure, but the other portion is giving my team a momentary distraction and a common enemy to fight against. It’s actually pretty good for unit cohesion. On the flip side, if someone laughs at my joke, I know that they’re either an idiot or a kiss-ass and not to be trusted with important tasks.
Pulpachair
9mo ago
The key phrase in your link is "For now, that translates into an almost $4 billion gain," with emphasis on "for now". The SPR is currently depleted to levels not seen since 1983, around 350M barrels. This is from a peak of about 750M barrels. There are at least another 160M barrels earmarked for sale by congress over the next 5 years. DoE regulations permit (but don't require) replenishment of the reserves when WTI crude is at or below $72/barrel. It has been at that price point multiple times over the last two years, including last month, but no effort has been made to replenish the reserves, at all. Secretary Granholm has said that DoE might start replenishment in Q4, assuming oil prices are consistently below the repurchase price point. That level of commitment does not inspire me with confidence.
At some point, that bill is going to come due, either in the form of expensive oil going into the SPR instead of cheap oil coming out of it, or really wishing we had some expensive oil to get past a supply disruption. It's all short-sighted to the point of absurdity.
Pulpachair
10mo ago
If someone had asked you five years ago whether Hunter seemed fine, you probably would have answered yes as well. He was of counsel at Boies Schiller, was co-owner of an investment company, had bounced around at various government and private lobbying posts throughout his adult life, and carried on publicly like a respectable member of a political family. But for the laptop incident, that would still be the public view of him.
Being well-connected and having sympathetic political press at your disposal is hugely beneficial for families like the Bidens. The respectability is more of an effect of people not looking too closely than actually being respectable. I would venture a guess that a deeper look at the rest of the Bidens would probably reveal more of Hunter-type behavior than you might expect.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattel,_Inc._v._MCA_Records,_Inc. is always a fun read.
Bradshaw v. Unity Marine Corp., Inc., 147 F. Supp. 2d 668 - Dist. Court, SD Texas 2001 is a treat in the sense that you can still see the ring marks where the judge backhanded the attorneys:
Before proceeding further, the Court notes that this case involves two extremely likable lawyers, who have together delivered some of the most amateurish pleadings ever to cross the hallowed causeway into Galveston, an effort which leads the Court to surmise but one plausible explanation. Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact—complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words—to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed. Whatever actually occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting task of deciphering their submissions. With Big Chief tablet readied, thick black pencil in hand, and a devil-may-care laugh in the face of death, life on the razor's edge sense of exhilaration, the Court begins.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
This deepfake youtube series of Gandalf commenting on The Rings of Power seems particularly tuned to the interests of a significant number of users here.
Pulpachair
14d ago
The world does not owe you anything. You have to offer something that people want in order to get what you want from them.
Don’t be afraid to fail spectacularly. You will fail and the earlier it happens in life, the more time you have to incorporate the lessons gained from failure.
Hit the gym.
I would venture that he's denying victim status to the two people Rittenhouse killed and the third he wounded - Rittenhouse being the victim. From the conservative perspective, they were aggressors who happened to aggress someone holding a loaded weapon.
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