benmmurphy
7mo ago
It's also probably not the worst pardon in history. I was under the impression domestic terrorists had previously been pardoned. Bill Clinton pardoned Linda Evans and Susan Rosenberg from the Weather Underground and granted clemency to 16 members of the FALN terrorist organization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_pardon_controversy).
benmmurphy
8mo ago
The motte is the more extreme version of slatestarcodex/astralcodexten. Vance is not based enough to hang out here. He probably hangs out with the normies in the slatestarcodex comments or that other weird vbulletin forum. What you would really hope is Vance is that guy that keeps posting on the reddit split off asking where everyone else is.
benmmurphy
9mo ago
I think the problem is people are willing to pay infinite costs to prevent a bad thing from happening as long as the wordcels can manipulate the language in the correct way. This shouldn't make sense from a rational economist point of view because the bad thing can be modelled as a cost so you should be able to reverse the situation and think about paying a cost (the bad thing) to provide a benefit (avoiding the infinite cost). This is where the wordcels come in to make sure people only look at the problem from one direction and always look at it from the correct frame. I'm not exactly sure what is going on but I don't think most people are rationally looking at the costs and benefits but rather doing something else like making decisions on vibes.
benmmurphy
11mo ago
OP suddenly finds he is being investigated for breaching labor laws, anti-money laundering for paying in cash, etc.
benmmurphy
1yr ago
the situation is weird because the allegations are part of the text of the indictment but Trump is not actually being charged for incitement or anything else in regards to the Jan 6th riot. his lawyers tried to get that part of the indictment removed because they believed it was irrelevant and potentially prejudicial to a jury but the judge did not agree and let the text stand as-is. here is the text of his motion: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24078250-motion-to-strike-inflammatory-allegations
The indictment includes repeated references to the actions of independent actors at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. See: ... The indictment does not charge President Trump with responsibility for any of these actions.
And here is the judges opinion for reference: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.258148/gov.uscourts.dcd.258148.158.0_1.pdf
An uncharitable reading as to why this text was included in the indictment could be so that third parties reporting on the indictment could muddle things for their audience and give the impression that Trump was being charged for the Jan 6th riots. I believe a similar thing may have happened with the statement by former intelligence officials about the Hunter Biden laptop. If you read the statement on the hunter biden laptop it doesn't actually say anything useful but other people could then portray the statement as saying something meaningful. The way the media works is kind of similar to chinese whispers but if you are aware of this then its possible to manipulate it for your benefit.
benmmurphy
1yr ago
I guess he will get a gold coffin, nationwide protests and calls to defund the ATF.
benmmurphy
1yr ago
it was just a protest that got out of hand. a similar thing happened in Australia except it was the left protesting against a right wing government, i'm sure the right tried to make it out like it was the end of the world but i don't think anyone ended up serving 20 year prison sentences because of what happened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Parliament_House_riot
benmmurphy
1yr ago
that's a very cheeky opinion by the court. they find that the 14th amendment doesn't apply to Trump so there is no finding against Trump but then include a bunch of disparaging stuff about him that will never been challenged on an appeal. but this courts opinion on Brandenburg would not be held up by higher courts. they even include a case where the plain language used by the accused was much worse than Trump and the the accused was not convicted but then magically read further than the plain language of Trump to find that he did commit insurrection.
benmmurphy
1yr ago
I enjoyed the bit where Hollywood cashed in twice
benmmurphy
4mo ago
rick scott (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Scott) but maybe there are two
benmmurphy
10mo ago
The anti-immigration argument expressed in this post seems too strong. It seems to be along the lines of if there is any kind of downside from immigration then immigration is bad. But I don't think this is a realistic benchmark for any government policy. The positives have to be weighed against the negatives. Maybe certain classes of immigrants are net-negative and a better immigration policy would be able to discriminate against these people but I don't think the UK is at the point where all immigration is net-negative.
benmmurphy
1yr ago
I'm secretly hoping for Trump to be elected while being in State custody. What actually happens in the situation? Do Federal Marshals show up at the prison demanding Trump's release?
benmmurphy
1yr ago
its interesting that part 2 mentions the pipe bombs. the fake pipe bombs were very weird. apparently, they were placed the night before and there is video of someone suspected of placing of the bombs but one of them (or both?) used a 60 minute kitchen timer as the pretend detonation source. now, its gets weirder because apparently someone 'found' one of the bombs at a point in time where the timing made it look like it would explode around the time of certification. this was partly covered by an interview in congress: https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/republicans-release-new-information-january-6-pipe-bomb-investigation and FBI Director Wray's testimony: https://youtube.com/watch?v=DaL5RM-ZYt0 the cell phone data from the area was also mysteriously corrupted which impeded any investigation.
This is kind of how policing was meant to be historically in the UK as I understand it. Police were meant to be just citizens that were being paid to do a job but having no special powers. Even now I think citizens can bring private criminal prosecutions to court. The Peelian principles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles) article on Wikipedia has some of the background on this. Also, due to historical fears UK police are generally unarmed except for special units. However, I guess as time has gone on the UK has drifted from policing from consent to a more policing by the state model.
benmmurphy
3mo ago
otherwise everyone coming to the US as a conference attendee wouldn't be able to use the visa waiver program
benmmurphy
6mo ago
i feel like rotherham is just the same shit as the catholic church but no-one actually learned the lesson of the catholic church. if people are doing bad stuff then you need to stop them from doing bad stuff. preserving the 'institution' or some other higher value is just some scam the bad people are using to convince you to continue letting them to do the bad stuff.
If the Russians were funding the Greens it would be because they wanted to push for shutting down coal and nuclear power plants which would increase Germany's reliance on natural gas as a way to fill the gap when the baseload becomes more unreliable.
The weird thing is I thought there was a thing about the German secret service infiltrating the Green party due to Russian ties. The problem is I don't know when this happened. In my head this must have happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union because of my age but also in my head my thoughts were 'I hate the Greens. I hate the Communists. But you really shouldn't be doing this in a democracy'. [weirdly enough the USA did the same thing to the Republican party 16 year later]. Also, if I search for the terms 'scandal over germany secret service green party' in Google I can't find it so maybe I'm hallucintating. I asked chat gpt and apparently it happened in 2000 which make sense to me but maybe this is chat gpt hallucinating as well. Chat GPT wouldn't supply me with links and I can't find anything on google in the front page.
this is the closest i could find to what i remember: https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/german-spies-target-left-wing-party but that doesn't mention Russia or the Green party. i could have misremembered and thought it was the green party when it was a leftist party.
As far as I’m aware if the police were prosecuting her under Part 3A 29B of the public order Act she has a clear defence because she was in a private dwelling and only people within that dwelling heard her. Now, maybe she is screwed because the police recorded it and the police then played the recording to people outside the dwelling but I think you can claim a defence that you reasonably believed your words would not be heard outside the dwelling. I suspect the reason for this defence is to cover situations where the accused is being secretly recorded. Of course it also completely ridiculous for the police to accuse you of a crime that they have facilitated by their own actions.
2)An offence under this section may be committed in a public or a private place, except that no offence is committed where the words or behaviour are used, or the written material is displayed, by a person inside a dwelling and are not heard or seen except by other persons in that or another dwelling.
In proceedings for an offence under this section it is a defence for the accused to prove that he was inside a dwelling and had no reason to believe that the words or behaviour used, or the written material displayed, would be heard or seen by a person outside that or any other dwelling.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/part/3A
The whole situation is a bit sad because without the altercation at the end it does look like good community policing. Maybe the officer was just sick of being a glorified taxi driver for bratty girls and kicked off.
benmmurphy
3mo ago
I was also banned from going to the US but no one would wrote up my sob story, but I also didn't break the law by entering the US so no real story to write up.
benmmurphy
8mo ago
"The Hunter Biden laptop is a Russian disinformation campaign" was actually "The Hunter Biden laptop has the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign". Often they are not straight up lying but saying something that is technically true but designed in a way to mislead their audience into believing something that is false. I think if you consciously do this it is not any different from lying. It's like these people running scams on Amazon where they sell you the box but not the thing inside the box but then claim its not fraud because they sent you what was in the picture.
benmmurphy
8mo ago
It would be crazy if this is just some long term strategy by the FBI to make themselves look good. Each year they publish juiced figures that the media can gush over then later on they retract the juiced figures. Retracting the juiced figures is necessary because otherwise each year the FBI would have to make progressively larger adjustments until juicing was no longer feasible.
benmmurphy
1yr ago
name a lion on a sheet of paper
what does that mean? is there a picture of a lion and you can call it simba? i feel like i'm going to fail the dementia test.
benmmurphy
1yr ago
riots are just a schelling point for dickheads
benmmurphy
2yr ago
i don't quite understand what is happening in that video. he takes the corner quickly and almost hits the pedestrian but then there seems to be some people chasing the car. did the people start chasing the car when they saw him take the corner dangerously or were they already chasing the car?
The weird thing is that this is how some government departments have reacted to cuts in the past. They cut the things that are most visible in order to drive public support to reverse the cuts.
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