Rov_Scam
2d ago
I don't and I can give you a couple if you think it would help, but I tried it with 4o and o4-mini and it didn't work well. I've done hundred, if not thousands, of these manually, and I checked several that terminate at different stages of the analysis to see if any would correspond with what I determined originally. I would add the caveat that the actual algorithm would be more complex; I was writing this as I was leaving work on Friday afternoon and there were several rules that I failed to consider that came up when I ran it, most notable that if there are two conflicting months of release then use the last usual release day of the earlier month (assuming the months ore consecutive or otherwise close together or that there's no reason to believe that the earlier month is wrong). There are also a bunch of edge cases that I didn't put in, like singles that are released locally before being given a national release some months later (occasionally happened with smaller labels in the 1960s who had local hits that would get picked up nationally), and specifying which country of release to use, and a bunch of other stuff that's too uncommon to even mention. That out of the way here are the trends I found:
- The Reputable Sources: There were no problems accessing Wikipedia (duh). 4o couldn't seem to access 45Cat for some reason, while o-4 mini could. Neither accessed RYM, though I also dabbled with Claude a bit and it could. It was good at identifying other reputable sources I didn't list, like Discogs and AllMusicGuide, although these are unlikely to have anything the other sources don't.
- Copyright Data: Nothing could access this. The 1972–1978 data is scans of bound volumes that archive.org has available in various formats, but the AI couldn't access this. It also couldn't access the computerized data from 1978 onwards, even though the copyright office just created a new website that's easier to use than the old one.
- Chart Data: Both AIs could determine the date a release first charted. However, most charting releases were reviewed or advertised prior to charting, and it couldn't access this information. I suspect that's because there are various databases that contain chart information, but finding dates of review or ads requires looking at the physical magazines. There's still no reason why AI can't do this, though; all of the back issues from the 1940s onward are available online and OCRed well enough that I can usually find what I'm looking for by searching Google Books. Google is missing some issues so I sometimes will go to a dedicated archive that doesn't have a global search function, but I can still search each issue manually. Additionally, 45Cat does occasionally include a note with review or ad information, usually in the form of BB 4/17/1967 or whatever. I don't know how realistic it is to expect AI to know what this means, though it's obvious to anyone who uses the site and there's probably an explanation somewhere. There are also occasionally users who comment about release dates and chart info here. No AI was able to access the ARSA data. The website does require a free account; I'm not sure how much of an impediment this is.
- Estimating based on sequential catalog numbers: It did this occasionally but unnecessarily since every release I picked had a better estimate, and this happens rarely enough that I couldn't think of one to use off the top of my head. I didn't check it to see if it was making reasonable estimates, though they seemed reasonable.
- Last resort estimates: If I'm asking AI to make a reasoned estimate I'm not going to argue with it because at that point I'm just looking for a number to use. It got to this point pretty frequently.
Miscellaneous Notes: It made a few odd errors along the way. It wasn't able to determine a typical release day for any label and always defaulted to Monday, except in the case of British releases, where it defaulted to Friday. These were the most common release days in the 60s and 70s for these territories, but they were by no means universal, and I specifically tested it with labels that released on other days. It also made some errors where it would give an incorrect date, e.g., It would say June 18th was a Monday in a particular year but it was really a Wednesday.
Conclusion: It's capable of producing reasonable estimates that are relatively close to my own estimates, but are nonetheless almost always off. If I don't have a credible release date, almost all estimates will be derived from either copyright data, trade publication review dates, or ARSA chart dates. Since the models seem incapable of accessing any of these, they are functionally useless. They're limited to finding dates I can already find more easily without AI, and estimating release dates based on chart data. I'm not familiar with o-3 or how it compares to what I was able to use, but if you think it could succeed where the others failed, let me know and I'll give you a few to try out. I don't want to waste your tokens on a vanity project for an extremely niche application, but I understand you might be interested in how these models work. Also consider that I'm an AI skeptic who would pay for a service like this if it could reliably do what I need it to do. A lot of my skepticism, though, stems from the fact that it seems incapable of accessing information that's trivial for an actual person to access.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Yes. I'm very pedantic about my music collection and I insist on having exact dates of release. Often, though, the exact release date isn't easily available, so I have to conduct research to determine an estimated release date. If ChatGTP can imitate my research process I'll take back everything negative I ever said about it:
- For major label albums released circa 1991 or later, an official street date should be available. This gets first priority.
- If a release date is provided by a reputable source such as RateYourMusic, Wikipedia, or 45Cat, use that date, giving 45Cat priority.
- If a reputable source only provides a month of release, use that as a guideline for further research, subject to change if the weight of the evidence suggests that this is incorrect.
- For US releases from 1978 to the present, use the date of publication from the US Copyright Office website if available.
- For US releases from 1972 to 1978, use the date of publication from the US Copyright physical indexes, images of which are available on archive.org, if available.
- For releases prior to 1972 or are otherwise unavailable from the above sources, determine the "usual day of release" of the record label, that being the day of the week that the majority of the issues with known release dates were released. Be aware that this can change over time. If no information is available regarding the usual day of release, default to Monday.
- If ARSA chart data for the release is available, assign the release date to the usual day of release immediately prior to the date of the chart. (ARSA is a website that compiles local charts from individual radio stations).
- If ARSA chart data is unavailable, assign the release date to the usual day of release the week prior to the date when the release was reviewed by Billboard, first appeared in a chart, or was advertised in Billboard.
- If ARSA and Billboard data are both available, use the earlier date (ARSA will almost always be earlier unless there was a substantial delay between release and initial charting).
- If neither ARSA nor Billboard data is available, use a similar system with any other trade publication.
- If no trade publication or chart data is available, determine the order of release based on catalog number. Assume that the items are released sequentially and are evenly spaced. Use known release dates (or release months) to calculate a reasonable date of release based on available information, including year of release (if known), month of release (if known) and usual day of release.
- If none of the above can be determined, make a reasonable estimate based on known information.
The following caveats also apply:
*For non-US releases, domestic releases often trailed their foreign counterparts by several months. Any data derived from US sources must take this into account when determining if the proposed estimate is reasonable.
- If the date of recording is known, any estimated release date must take into consideration a reasonable amount of time between recording and release based on what was typical of the era.
- For independent releases, dates of release from Bandcamp may be used provided they don't conflict with known information (i.e. sometimes Bandcamp release dates will use the date of upload, or the date of a CD reissue).
There's a ton more I could put here if I really wanted to get into the weeds, but I don't think ChatGTP can do what I've asked of it thus far.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
As an avid mountain biker, I'm curious as to what you think was gamified about the whole experience. Most people who get into the sport start riding relatively easy trails and progress to harder ones as they get better, but the whole concept of difficulty is vague and not necessarily related to how fun a trail is to ride. What most people don't do is start off by taking lessons and sticking with it to "unlock" various achievements by passing certain thresholds. Easy trails can still be a blast for experienced riders, and a beginner can always walk anything he's uncomfortable with (most difficult trails are only truly difficult for relatively brief stretches). Most people, though, will be good enough in a year that they'll be able to ride whatever they want to, within reason, and the only thing that differentiates riders is speed, which isn't important if you aren't racing and which no one cares about on casual rides. Skills improvement usually just means getting faster by being able to navigate tricky sections better, like having the technique to navigate tight turns without slowing down too much or being able to find lines in rock gardens. The end result of developing these skills is that you end up finding certain kinds of trails more enjoyable, but it's a completely personal gain.
Nah, I agree with the others below: If you need to gamify something to enjoy it, then you don't actually enjoy it. It's like people who get gym memberships on January 2 with the goal of trying to lose that stubborn 20 pounds and finally "get into shape". But the goal is more important to them than the exercise, which they find sucks, and they have to force themself to get to the gym and quit by March. the fit people who go to the gym aren't there because they have exceptional self-discipline; they're there because they like going to the gym. It's not something they have to force themselves to do; it's something they look forward to doing. I'm an avid cyclist, and I regularly go on long rides on the weekend. But I'm not putting in 60 miles because I need to tick some box that says I have to do 60 miles today and maybe I get some kind of reward for doing it. I ride the 60 miles because that's the length that corresponds to the amount of time I want to spend riding. And if I get sick of it and turn back early I don't care, because I'm not trying to force myself to do anything, or unlocking any achievement.
I feel that this is a problem of box tickers and speed-runners in general, and especially in the outdoor scene. About a decade ago I was hiking on the Appalachian Trail in Massachusetts when I came across a through-hiker eating lunch at the saddle between two mountains. I told him I was surprised that he was so far north about a month before most hikers would get that far. He excitedly told me that there were people who had finished already. I continued up the mountain and was enjoying the panoramic view at the top when he passed me. He plowed forward without even looking at the scenery. What's the point of doing a hike like that if you aren't even going to stop at the summits? It was clear that he was eating at the saddle so he could carb load before the climb and make better time.
Years later I was hiking Mt. Harvard in Colorado when I came across a guy from Kansas City who was trying to hit all of the fourteeners in the state. We hiked together for a while until he decided that I wasn't moving fast enough for him, but he did talk about how his wife was very supportive of his mission. I never would consider a hobby something that required suport from my family unless it was some kind of obsession that kept me away, which it appeared to be for him. When we got to the top we ran across two guys who were hiking together. From the summit the trail continues across a ridge to another fourteener, Mt. Princeton. It was a clear, warm day, and while the trail looped back around to the trail we hike in on, it looked like a long, hot, sunburned, high-altitude slog. The guy from KC and one of the guys decided to do it, while me and the other guy hiked down to the parking lot together. The thing about it, though, was that the guy from KC was staying with a friend in Denver who was getting him into a show at Red Rocks. If he had hiked straight out to his car from Harvard it would have been about the average time you'd leave to get back to Denver and change before heading to the concert. The guy acted like he had to get back to the car by five if he wanted to make it and thought it was possible, but he was effectively skipping the show. And since there was no cell service there, he was leaving his friend high and dry. Skipping an activity to do something else is one thing, but the guy seemed so concerned about bagging an extra peak that he was willing to risk pissing of a friend who gave him free passes to a band he really liked.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
I was referring to the common law rule of primogeniture which was used in medieval England and existed in the United States up until the time of the Revolution, when reforms were instituted that allowed all children to inherit equally. The issue was that, in a time when land equaled wealth and people had a lot of children, a feudal estate would be fairly quickly diluted to the point where none of the individual holdings were sufficient to generate very much income. Assuming equal inheritance and only two children, a 100 acre tract would be down to 50 in the second generation and 25 in the third, at which point it was below the threshold to support even one family. Add more generations and additional children per generation and it goes even faster.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Well, you might inherit, if you're lucky enough to have been born first (or be the eldest surviving son).
Rov_Scam
5d ago
The loser already does pay in the sense that any personal injury action is going to require a lot of up front money for medical experts, depositions, and the like before the defense is in any position to settle. And they're always going to settle because liability isn't usually as much the issue as damages are. Best case scenario for a defendant is that the plaintiff isn't as injured as he'd like you to believe. But even these cases are relatively rare since the costs of litigation and attorney time make anything under $100,000 simply not worth it for most plaintiff's lawyers. Low value cases that are actually filed are usually ones where the plaintiff is paying by the hour or the lawyer is taking the case on the side pro bono.
I'm any event, truly frivolous lawsuits are pretty rare. The ones that do get filed make the news for how unusual they are. When you hear about something like Trump suing the WSJ in a case he can't possibly win, he's paying his attorneys by the hour and isn't concerned about costs, and cases like this aren't going to be deterred by a loser pays rule. Any attorneys fees must be approved by the court, and courts are usually pretty stingy about rates charged and how many hours they'll let you bill. They could ironically make it worse, since a client is going to be disinclined to pay the balance of the bill after the court knocked half of it off.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
No, not really. A motion to dismiss won't be granted unless the facts in the complaint don't trigger liability. This is a low bar, and even questionable claims will pass muster if the complaint is drafted well. Summary judgment isn't much better. First, it happens after discovery, which is the most expensive and involved part of the process, assuming the case doesn't go to trial. And even then, the motion won't be granted unless there's no evidence; not bad evidence, no evidence. If you have one witness who says they saw something and fifty witnesses who said they didn't plus documents to back it up, the jury could always believe the one witness. The non-moving party gets the benefit of the doubt and the court views the evidence in the light most favorable to them. This is why anti SLAPP statutes and other mechanisms have been put into place in certain jurisdictions for certain kinds of cases—because the rules that apply most of the time can be abused by vexatious litigants.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
Moving on, I've seen a few rumors floating around that these firings are due to the officials in question approving the Moderna COVID vaccine while RFK jr was on vacation. If this is true, and that's a big if, it's interesting for a few different reasons.
Do the officials in question even have that power? The FDA is under the aegis of HHS, but they have a separate review team that handles these things. I doubt Kennedy's Chief of Staff has veto power over FDA decisions.
Rov_Scam
8d ago
And you're basing this on what, exactly? Your intimate involvement with the "urban poor"? I can assure you that right now, the patronage of several Pittsburgh grocery stores in wealthy, white areas is close to half black, with jitneys lining the parking lots. These just so happen to be the closest normal grocery stores to "urban areas" without one.
Rov_Scam
8d ago
See my Pittsburgh entry on the Hill District from back in February for a related case study.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
Welp, it finally happened. However often in the past ten years we've heard about the writing being on the wall (which were coincidentally also closing in), or the other shoe dropping, it's always turned out that Teflon Don was able to escape more or less unscathed. Even January 6th, which by all rights should have ended his political career for good, turned into something he could make hay out of, blaming Democrats for overreacting to what was essentially large-scale trespassing, and playing the what-about game. 24 hours ago I thought the Epstein thing had more legs than any of the other scandals, but I didn't see it as having the potential to end things. Trump had handled it poorly, but there was still a chance that some distraction would arise and the whole thing would blow over.
With the filing of Trump's lawsuit against the WSJ, that chance has ended. With the full understanding that I'm making quite a bold statement, I think this may be the biggest unforced error of Trump's presidency so far, that if Murdock was looking to destroy Trump he played the whole thing beautifully, and this has the potential to bring down the entire presidency (though I'm not predicting that it will). It's almost as if Murdoch set a giant, obvious trap and, spying the bait, Trump ran headlong into it without even stopping to investigate. The correct way for him to have handled the whole Epstein thing would have been to shut up about it. It was a lame conspiracy theory that his base bought into but that had little purchase among anyone important. All that stuff about binders being on Pam Bondi's desk was only news among these people, and even Elon's Tweet didn't move the needle much. It wasn't a major scandal until the DOJ published the "nothing to see here" memo. From there, Trump's totally unnecessary denials only added fuel to the fire. He could have fired Bondi and delayed the whole thing for a couple months while a new AG was confirmed, during which time the matter could have died. But he instead doubled down on her pronouncement, calling half of his base losers in the process for caring about it. The WSJ thing wasn't even particularly damaging considering what else had been out there. So Trump may have sent a bawdy drawing to Epstein containing an oblique message that could have alluded to pedophilia. The story might not have survived the weekend if Trump would have just denied having written it and moved on.
Instead Trump had to sue. Because Trump always has to sue; he can't leave well enough alone. He could have taken the weekend to consult with advisors and attorneys on the best path forward. Any kind of reflection would have made it clear that this was a bad idea. But Trump is impulsive, and wasn't going to wait until Monday to file, wasn't going to give himself a chance to cool down. Get it out Friday. Now he has opened himself up to a world of hurt that he couldn't imagine beforehand. Since WSJ's defense depends on proving that their publication of the material wasn't malicious, proving the authenticity of the alleged letter is paramount. And the best way to prove that Trump can't meet his burden is by getting as much information as possible about his relationship with Epstein. Trump will have to turn over ever email or other communication with Epstein that he has. Trump will have to sit for a deposition where he will be grilled about their relationship. He will have to turn over documents. Everything is on the table, and courts give a pretty wide latitude for discovery in civil matters. And the process proceeds slowly enough that there will be a steady drip of documents that the WSJ will gleefully publish as soon as they get them. This could drag on for years, with new stories monthly about how Trump did this or that with Epstein. I'd be surprised if they don't livestream his deposition.
Unlike previous legal issues, Trump can't claim persecution here since he initiated the proceedings. While this means he also has the power to pull the plug if things get too dicey, it doesn't take much of an imagination to see how that would look. Even now, withdrawing the lawsuit is an admission that the letter is authentic. Dropping it at a later date makes it look like he has something to hide that he doesn't want coming out in discovery. Even the best case scenario, where it is revealed that the letter was a complete fabrication, isn't that great for him, as all he has really done taken one inconsequential piece of "evidence" off of the table. It doesn't make the whole Epstein Files mess disappear. But it will be a tough case for Trump to win, and it will be any tougher for him to prove enough damages to have any effect on News Corp. Is a jury in Miami really going to buy that Trump is 10 billion dollars poorer as the result of that article? But that's unlikely since the legal standard Trump has to overcome is the high as the journalistic standards of the WSJ. Murdoch is no babe in the woods, and he isn't running Buzzfeed. If the WSJ runs an article, one can assume that it was vetted properly, especially if they ran it by Trump for comment first. I don't know how this ends, but this suit just put things into overdrive.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
Huh? They interviewed him for three hours. Three rambling, incoherent hours.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
I think that Trump's involvement is the more peripheral "lot of smoke, no fire" kind of thing. The Democrats wouldn't release it because it would have just been brushed off as such and made it look like they were grasping at straws, just like the various prosecutions. If there was nothing they could prosecute, it would just be another smear that everyone forgot about in a week.
I don't know if they planned it this way, but it was good ammunition to have in the event that Trump won the election. Now that the pressure to release it is coming from his base, and he at least alluded to releasing it, but he has cold feet for some reason, it makes matters worse. It's like with his tax returns; it's unlikely that they would reveal any criminal activity, but there's something personally embarrassing that he doesn't want revealed. Now that he's been intransigent despite the pressure, anything that is in there that's unfavorable is going to have a much bigger impact.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
My point is that it would have been of no tangible benefit to Epstein. The prosecutor wasn't in a position to cut any deals, regardless of what information was provided.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
You may have had a point if @roche were talking about the internet as it existed in 1993 or so, but somehow I doubt that is the case. In the early days, there were hippies who thought that the ease of communication with like-minded strangers would usher in a new era of peace and understanding, as traditional barriers would come down. The nerds who ran the thing and comprised the bulk of the user base nodded along in agreement. A few years later the internet reached 20% of households and any ideas that this would be the case had vanished almost completely. The early adopters were all hippies and nerds and were basing their predictions on the idea that the general public was largely similar to them. As soon as the internet was being used by 14-year-olds to start flame wars on why Nailz sucked, the idea that the internet was an unalloyed positive force in social interaction went out the window. The "web at large" has been around for 25 years now.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
Consider, for a moment, the mechanics of what you're suggesting. Suppose you're a normal guy working a normal job and you don't know anyone particularly important or noteworthy. And then one day I show up at your door wearing a suit accompanied by two guys with the build of John Fetterman and I tell you that you need to commit a high-profile murder for a certain amount of money, possibly with the veiled (or not so veiled) threat that if you don't comply you or your family will be harmed. Do you say "Yes sir" and do it, not knowing if it will work or you'll end up spending the rest of your life in prison? Not knowing if I'm even going to pay the money you're offered? Will you believe me when I tell you that the Department will have your back and make sure the whole thing is covered up? Will you believe that I actually represent Bill Clinton or Mossad or whoever? Or will you go straight to the police, or your supervisor, or the media about how someone you could identify if necessary offered you money to kill Jeffrey Epstein? Now multiply this across the dozens of people necessary to carry this out, from the COs, to the technicians, to the prison staff, to the investigators with the Inspector General, to the medical examiner, to Bill Barr, to the US Marshalls, and practically every other link in the chain. Do you really think that none of these people would say anything? You don't think that anyone would have simply refused to participate, and at least come forward after Epstein's death? For what it's worth, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas don't seem to be living the high life these days. both were prosecuted for falsifying records and fired from the department, and Noel was working as a medical assistant in a care home the last time she was in the news.
But beyond that, what exactly did Epstein's death accomplish? Why go through all of that trouble? The worst case scenario here would be that Epstein makes public statements accusing everyone from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump to The Man in the Moon of bangin underage girls on his private island. But as I mentioned earlier, there would be no motive for him to do so at that point other than spite. If the Powers That Be were so influential as to have corrupted the entire DOJ, they could have easily written off any accusations as the uncorroborated ramblings of a condemned man with an axe to grind, and said they weren't sufficient to be used as evidence in any criminal prosecution, and they would have been right. The only thing he could have offered would have been context and authentication of other evidence. If the goal was just to embarrass these people, then he doesn't need to provide the kind of evidence that can hold up in court, hence it doesn't matter whether he's alive or dead. He could have sworn affidavits and videotaped interviews where he lays out everything in detail. He was meeting with his attorneys nearly every day after he was arrested, yet the assassins didn't plan for this possibility? Why go after Epstein and not go after other target who would be much easier to get to, like:
- The prosecuting attorney. If Epstein's friends have so much power, they could have certainly pressured the prosecutor to drop the indictment.
- The judge, who could have found that the non-prosecution agreement applied and dismissed the indictment.
- The aforementioned attorneys, who might have incriminating evidence in their possession that would be presumably made pubic upon Epstein's death.
- The accusers who actually provided sworn testimony implicating Bill Clinton and other powerful people.
- Jeffrey Epstein at any time prior to his 2019 arrest, especially after he started getting sued and was being deposed.
- And, this is the big one, Ghislaine Maxwell. She probably had similar evidence to what Epstein himself had, in terms of testimony. She had been missing for years at the time the story blew up in the media. It would have been really easy to make her stay missing. Or just not really look for her. Instead they spend a year tracking her down so they can prosecute her. Why let her live, when it would have been so easy to bump her off?
These people are so powerful that they can make the entire DOJ come to heel, running the gantlet of risk that comes when any one of dozens of links could blow their cover at any time, yet they don't bump off any of the other people who could be gotten rid of more cleanly, or who could have made the story go away with little fanfare?
Rov_Scam
11d ago
If you want something else in the same vein, but even worse, check out Dave Winfield's book Dropping the Ball, where he goes through a laundry lsit of things wrong with professional baseball, from steroids, to unhealthy ballpark food, to high school baseball players getting worse girlfriends than football and basketball players, and then proceeds to blame it on nobody at all, saying that everyone in the game from Bud Selig on down is doing a great job. Anyway, to address your points:
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You could have made that argument in 2016, when the superdelegate field was stacked against him, but they changed the rules in 2020 specifically for that reason, ran a competitive field, and he still lost. Anyway, Sanders did not win the first three primaries; he won one primary and two caucuses, and in Iowa and New Hampshire the totals were close enough that he was still behind in the delegate count. This may seem like a pedantic distinction, but caucus states always seem to give outsiders a better chance, likely because of the low turnout compared to primaries. And while Biden did abysmally in the first two contests, he finished second in the Nevada caucuses. It made no sense for him to drop out at this point, as his star was rising and he had been consistently leading polls in South Carolina by a wide margin. And he ends up crushing it in South Carolina, moving into the lead in one fell swoop. Mayor Pete, meanwhile, has been trending downward, and it's pretty clear he has no purchase with black voters. It made no sense for him to stay in for Super Tuesday so he could get walloped in the South. It made no sense for Klobuchar to stay in at this point, either, as her campaign never really picked up speed. Had they both stayed in the race, I doubt it would have made much of a difference. Klobuchar wasn't winning any more delegates. Pete may have peeled some off in 5 of the 15 states that were contested on Super Tuesday, plus a few in California and Texas because there are so many of them, but winning anything was unlikely, and he would have bowed out immediately afterwards anyways. Pete was an outsider who debated well and overperformed in early states with low delegate counts. He was never expected to challenge for the nomination, and if it wasn't for a couple of fluke performances in heavily white areas nobody would be talking about any kind of Bernie screwjob. Sanders went head to head with Biden and lost, that's all there is to it.
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It's identity politics, but not something you can blame them for. Nominees have a history of picking running mates for reasons not entirely related to their qualifications for the office (of which there really aren't any). Bush picked Quayle to shore up his support in the Bible Belt. Trump picked Pence for the same reason. W picked Cheney to counter suspicions that he was a lightweight. Kerry picked Edwards to shore up support among conservative Democrats. Obama picked Biden to compensate for his lack of experience. McCain picked Palin because unexpectedly picking a woman might have provided the miracle his campaign needed to win that race (which backfired, but nonetheless; also see Mondale picking Ferraro). And now we come to 2020, and the Democrats are running an elderly white man in the era of peak woke, four years after they lost a race in part because their candidate wasn't perceived as progressive enough, months after winning a campaign in which the nominee's biggest rival was a self-described socialist. They can be forgiven for wanting to shore up the progressive wing by running a woman of color with progressive tendencies, but not so progressive as to be at odds with the platform. I agree that they should have known at the time that vice president would have been a more important office than it normally is, but I don't see this as a huge blunder. You try to win the election you're running now, not the election you might be running four years from now.
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Sure, but what else was he supposed to run on? His record? Biden's best chance was to keep the coalition that won him the presidency in 2020, and the best way of doing that was by reminding them of all the bullshit they'd be dealing with if Trump won again. The Democrats warned that something similar to this was going to happen, and Trump managed to exceed even the wildest expectations of Democrats, with talk of a third term, shipping people to Salvadoran prisons, talk of invading Canada, talk of firing Jerome Powell, the Epstein business, DOGE, tariffs, and countless more examples to name. His approval rating dropped like a rock upon taking office, and he's net unfavorable in every category. That there are people out there who are surprised by any of this boggles the mind. The biggest mistake they made was that once Kamala was the nominee, they didn't roll out a whole new agenda. She could have been sold as the way forward for Democrats, but in the end there was nothing but a few lukewarm proposals that didn't get any serious traction. You can blame that on the tight schedule, but I would have thought that by September they would have had a clear policy platform that was different enough from Biden's that Kamal could call it her own.
Rov_Scam
12d ago
My take on the whole Epstein thing:
I've posted here on several occasions arguing that anyone who knows anything at all about prisons would know that most of the Epstein murder conspiracies would be impossible without cooperation from practically the entire Department of Corrections. I'm disinclined to make those arguments in detail again, so suffice it to say that I think Epstein's death was clearly a suicide. One other reason for this is that it makes sense: He lived a life of wealth and privilege and was about to spend the rest of his life in prison. He achieved a notoriety that would make it difficult for him to lead a normal life even if eventually released. He had already been on suicide watch. His life was already over, and he finished the job. Even if he had dirt on people it would be pointless to use. No prosecutor could have offered him a reduced sentence for it at that point, and in any event, that's not the way ratting people out works. Epstein was the ringleader; no DA is giving a mob boss a deal to rat out soldiers whom he ordered to murder people, and no US Attorney is pleading down a sex trafficking charge in exchange for uncorroborated information about a rape that happened decades ago, especially considering the source of that information.
That out of the way, it also seems unlikely that Epstein was actively pimping out the girls the way it's has been implied in the media. Over 100 girls have come forward, and only a few have claimed they had sex with anyone other than Epstein. You'd think that with how often Bill Clinton's name has been thrown around at least one person would name him, but no one has. You'd think with how close Trump is to the whole thing someone would have made a credible accusation, but all we have is a Jane Doe lawsuit that nobody took seriously, even in a media environment that would use almost anything as ammunition against Trump. The allegations are so incredible, it's not clear that a real person is behind the anonym. What seems likely is that Epstein was using his wealth to attract underprivileged girls and runaways, and keeping them as a sort of personal harem. It doesn't seem likely that he was running a brothel to hold wild sex parties for the rich and famous.
The upshot is that I think Trump is actually being honest about this. There are no Epstein Files, at least not the kinds of files that the conspiracy theorists assume exist, i.e. unequivocal records of certain powerful people engaging in sex acts with trafficked minors. I do, however, think it's likely that there are some records that don't mean anything that could be seized on by conspiracy theorists as "evidence". Stuff like evidence that Trump visited Epstein's island, or that one of Epstein's girls had appeared in a Trump-related beauty pageant, or something like that that doesn't really mean anything but doesn't require too much of an imagination to lead to the conclusion that Trump was either partaking in sex with Epstein's girls or complicit in some kind of business arrangement. If nothing else, it seems likely that Trump's name came up often enough in the investigation that it will turn into a lot of smoke Trump doesn't want to have to deal with.
So that's my take. The question I have, though, is why Trump proceeded the way he did. He had to have known that either no "Epstein files" existed, or that if they did exist his name was likely to come up a little more often than he'd be comfortable with. I know politicians make campaign promises they can't possibly keep all the time, but why even talk about this? Especially, why talk about it after you've been elected and Epstein is out of the news? Is Pam Bondi really stupid enough that she'd go out on a limb like this before she'd spoken to the president about it and before she had reviewed the files herself? It seems that if a journalist asked about the Epstein files it would be easy for her to say that it wasn't an active investigation and she accordingly didn't know anything about it, or that they'd start looking into it when DOJ priorities allowed, or whatever. Not that that really mattered, because nobody cared at the time. Even after Elon said something about it, it disappeared from the news within days.
The Trump administration could have just let this one die, but instead they had to make the unforced error of issuing an official statement that the files didn't exist. What the hell were they thinking? And now all the boneheaded statements made in the past implying its existence come back to bite them. And Trump keeps making matters worse by making fun of the people who are calling for their release, and saying he may release some of them (i.e. the ones that don't implicate him), and going back to denying their existence. And now Republicans aren't even sure how to handle it.
The other day, Ro Khanna (possibly the slickest Democrat in the House) tried to slip an amendment into the crypto bill calling for a House vote on the release of the files. It was blocked, with only one Republican on the Rules Committee voting for it, but the die is cast. You can bet your bottom dollar that an Epstein Files amendment is going into every piece of GOP-sponsored legislation from now until the end of the term. This is going to keep coming up, at least until the Republicans break ranks from Trump. It's a win-win for Democrats. This is much better than if Biden had just released the files himself. If Trump were in them and Biden released them during the election season, it would have been seen by the Trump base as fake news and more lawfare the Dmocrats are throwing out there to rescue a dying campaign. Now that the onus is on Trump, it looks different. Going into the midterms, every GOP rep in a competitive district is going to have to wonder whether they get primaried for defying Trump or primaried for caving on the Epstein thing. They're going to be getting a lot of calls.
Having had time to think about this, I'm leaning towards nothing existing at all. Even if Trump was somehow implicated, it's hard to see how it could do him real damage considering how eager his base is to buy his explanations. He'd just say that he released it because it didn't implicate him, and that would be it. The story would blow over in a week. But if there's nothing to release, that's a problem. He can't possibly deliver, and all the while it will look like he's hiding something. I don't know how this ends, since we're in uncharted waters here, but I suspect it will be entertaining.
Rov_Scam
13d ago
I"m left of center, and I'd love to help, but I read that comment about five times and I'm not sure what you're asking. It would probably have been better to write a gloss of the (article? comment?) and ask a specific question rather than post it and ask if it's "accurate". Now's your chance.
Rov_Scam
14d ago
Another explanation could be that working-class women are more likely to hold public-facing or customer service jobs that require one to present in a certain manner, while men are more likely to do blue collar work where they only have to communicate with their coworkers.
Rov_Scam
14d ago
It reminds me of a friend of mine who went to a trip club to see some adult film star he liked, despite the fact that it was a weeknight and he had to get up early for work the next day. He got hammered and made sure he got more individual attention from her than anyone else in the place, and when he realized it was 11 and his handover was already going to be bad enough, he informed her he had to be leaving. She kept protesting, explaining his work situation, and she kept telling him YOLO and you can survive one bad day at work, and you just need to sober up a little and you'll be fine, etc. Then he uttered the magic words: "I'm out of money". That pretty much ended the conversation right there and he was free to go.
So yeah, this kind of relationship is ultimately pretty hollow, and I don't see the appeal personally, but some guys spend big money on hookers, strippers, and other empty stuff. The business model won't be built around this being a substitute for human interaction generally, but around various whales who get addicted to it.
Rov_Scam
14d ago
I worked for an inventory service when I was in college and mall stores did their inventories after close, which any day other than Sunday was 9:00 pm. So a typical inventory would last from 9:00 to 1 or 2 am. Some stores would do there's before open and those would start at six so the sales floor would be done around 10. Take this advice with a grain of salt since it's been 20 years and my memory isn't great, but I don't believe security ever had to let us in for any of the early stores. We were always told to park near the "main entrance" of the mall, which is almost invariably the entrance into the food court if the mall has one. I'm not entirely sure about this, but I think there was always one door that was open near here where you could just walk in; I don't remember having to ever call security or anything like that to be let in, though since I had a legitimate reason to be there it's possible that security just left a door open for us, though that wouldn't make a ton of sense because in that case I'd imagine they'd leave the door close to the store open.
It's also worth keeping in mind that in this situation you'd stick out like a sore thumb. Actual employees have keys to service doors that allow them to access corridors that run along the perimeter of the building so they can get into the back room of the store. I believe this is strictly necessary since the security gates will only unlock from the inside, though I'm not entirely sure about this. I do know that when we left a late store in the middle of the night, the last group to leave would always exit through the outside door. The point is, though, that the risk of detection is pretty high, since the parking lot will be empty and you'll be wandering around aimlessly in an area that is pretty highly surveilled.
While @self_made_human's recommendation of a hard hat and safety vest is generally correct, there are better ways of getting in (not to mention that it's become a bit of a meme at this point). My recommendation would be to dress in business casual and carry a computer bag. Show up around 6:00 am or a little earlier and try the main entrance doors. Your cover story is that you're from Boschini, Miller and Associates accounting firm there to supervise the inventory of a store that's located in the mall. You will only need to use this if you get accosted, though if you're bold you may be able to use this at a security intercom or something if there aren't any open doors. Make sure the store you pick is a national chain with a different location in a nearby mall. If security somehow knows that there's no inventory scheduled for that day, get out some paperwork that has the name of the other mall on it and get flustered and embarrassed that you somehow got it in your head that it was at this mall and you obviously have to go now because you are late.
Ironically, the bigger risk here is that the security guard buys your story, because now you have nowhere to go but you can't really leave. You'd be limited to making a beeline for the store and then a beeline back to the entrance, telling the guard about your mistake if caught again. Other than that, it's a good cover because it admits that you aren't supposed to be there. It also means that the guard will be disinclined to pursue the matter further or make additional inquiries because the apparent situation is now that you're running extremely late, and any nervousness on your part would be expected considering the professional bind you are now in. I can say from my years as an inventory taker that it isn't unheard of to go to the wrong store. Aside from that, I don't know why you'd want to go to a mall in the middle of the night. Whatever vibe you're imagining is so unimpressive that I can't even remember if they kept the music on, or if they turned off any house lights. As far as I can remember it's just a bunch of closed stores and no people. Just go to a dead mall around closing time and the vibe will be the same.
Thanks for the ideas, but I tried this out and prompting doesn't seem to be the problem. I gave a more detailed response to the below post, but the issue was that while the AI seemed to understand the instructions well enough, it wasn't able to access the necessary information. It seems like it can find stuff on html text pages fine, but if it requires looking at another format (like an OCRed PDF) or a database query it just can't do it. It also doesn't seem to understand how to do certain things absent specific instructions, but that's a subject for another time.
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