freemcflurry
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User ID: 106
freemcflurry
2mo ago
It would be one thing if the auto industry was dying a natural death and Trump wanted to prolong it with tariffs. But that's not all that's going on, the Biden administration is actively trying to kill the industry by effectively outlawing gas cars. The EPA issued regulations that would force 60% of new car sales to be electric by 2030*. That's billions of dollars in capital investment not just for the Big 3 but also for their suppliers and for foreign brands with facilities in the US that will all go up in smoke based on a whim of the EPA. One advantage they have over China is experience in working with gas cars and with their existing capital. They aren't losing in a fair competition where consumers decided they want electric cars, they're losing because of regulations that target US manufacturers but not their Chinese competitors.
So it's not just about Trump passing tariffs to protect Detroit. Biden is shutting down one of America's largest industries by fiat and Trump can stop that from happening, at least temporarily.
*There are rumors that the EPA is going to push that target back a little bit but while it's easy to rewrite the regulations every few months it's not easy to reverse decisions to invest in factories that take years to build.
freemcflurry
4mo ago
This part jumped out:
That same month, The Globe published details of the video referred to in E.M.’s statement of claim. Two videos taken on the night of the incident were shown to reporters by lawyers representing some of the players. In the first, which was recorded within the hotel room at 3:25 a.m. on June 19, 2018, E.M. can be seen from the neck up. A male voice can be heard saying “You’re ok with this?” “I’m ok with this,” she replied. In the second, which is 12 seconds long, and which was taken at 4:26 a.m., E.M. appears to be covering herself with a towel. “Are you recording me?” she asks. “Ok, good. It was all consensual. You are so paranoid, holy. I enjoyed it, it was fine. It was all consensual. I am so sober, that’s why I can’t do this right now.”
She says that off camera they forced her to say that but eh.
She was exchanging texts with them the next day:
The Globe story also revealed a text message conversation between E.M. and one of the players in the hours after she left the hotel room. The player begins by asking E.M. whether she had gone to the police. The woman said she had spoken to her mother and her mother had called police against her wishes. “You said you were having fun,” the player wrote. “I was really drunk, didn’t feel good about it at all after. But I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble,” she replied. “I was ok with going home with you, it was everyone else afterwards that I wasn’t expecting. I just felt like I was being made fun of and taken advantage of.”
To me this tilts more towards the "I regretted it afterwards" side of the scale than the "was held down and forcibly raped" side. Maybe her mom pressured her into escalating things legally.
freemcflurry
11mo ago
Why has the white working class been voting GOP for many decades despite essentially voting against their economic interests?
I don't think voting against the people who want to systematically discriminate you in education and hiring is voting against your economic interests. Even putting that aside, California has a higher poverty rate than Texas so it's not a given that big government is an economic boon for the working class.
freemcflurry
11mo ago
I know it's not entirely unbiased
The article linked in the Twitter thread is entirely based on an interview they did with the kid and his mother, so I think that's putting it lightly. Unless I'm bad at Twitter and missing where they got her side of the story.
I think the narrative that they ganged up on her and tried to take her bike is accurate. If you get the last rental car but I really honestly had intended to make a reservation soon I don't get to car jack you and take it.
The kids apparently filmed it with a legitimate fear that she would turn it into "gang of teens harasses pregnant white lady."
They knew exactly what they were doing:
Michael added: “She did something wrong, and she basically got rewarded for it. She’s made over $100,000 on a GoFundMe. She got all the white conservatives on her side. Everyone who was on my side has just kind of stayed silent.”
That wasn't some legitimate fear of being demonized like this is Alabama in 1912. They immediately publicized the video and spouted all of the right code words to start an internet mob to get her fired and a nice big GoFundMe for himself.
their version is that if they'd given up the bike, one of them would have had to find some other way to get back to the Bronx
It says that the e-bikes specifically were rare. They could have made it back on another bike but would have had to pedal.
freemcflurry
5mo ago
Pope Francis has announced that priests are now allowed to bless same sex couples as long as it is not done in a way that implies that it's a ceremony or equivalent to a marriage. I haven't read the full document and the Vatican press release is confusing (like a lot of what this Pope does) but it seems to be trying to thread the needle of blessing gay couples but not their "union".
When two people request a blessing, even if their situation as a couple is “irregular,” it will be possible for the ordained minister to consent. However, this gesture of pastoral closeness must avoid any elements that remotely resemble a marriage rite.
Of course that distinction is subtle and the mainstream media mostly appears to be either misunderstanding it or intentionally misrepresenting it as allowing the blessing of the union itself. ABC went with the headline:
Pope says priests can bless same-sex unions
While he inserted a lot of caveats so that people will not interpret this as accepting gay couples and that marriage can only be between a man and a woman, my prediction is that lay people will just walk away with the headline that the Church has got with the times and is finally ok with gay marriage. A lot of the more liberal clergy will probably spread that view as well, even if they use language that could kind of technically be considered orthodox if you squint.
It reminds me of what CS Lewis wrote about how in each age we warn people the most about the errors they are least likely to commit. So in a time when most Catholics are already essentially apostates the Pope is doing his best to guard against zealotry and intolerance. It's hard for me to believe that this will lead to anything good for the Church. The future is clearly in the more conservative faction with large, churchgoing families. A move like this will discourage them but do nothing to bring in more liberals who will applaud from a distance but aren't going to start attending Mass.
freemcflurry
7mo ago
There was a tweet that was something like
Actors in the 40s: He was discovered by a talent agent in Cuba where he was in jail for assault while serving in the merchant marine.
Actors today: His dad was a hedge fund manager and his mom was a model. He went to Yale.
freemcflurry
3mo ago
If it is found that their child knows what "bussy lmao" means or the lyrics to WAP, the book can't be banned. Physician, heal thyself!
I have a counter-proposal: If it is found that the students at a school are not testing at grade level for math, reading and science then the school is not allowed to spend any time or money on LGBT or DEI subjects.
freemcflurry
11mo ago
A black man who was caught on video beating and trying to shoot a female sheriff's deputy in California was just found not guilty of attempted murder and assaulting a peace officer. He was found guilty of "negligent discharge of a firearm". She survived because the gun jammed when he pointed it at her and pulled the trigger.
It reminds me of the thread a few days ago about black defendants being acquitted of murdering white victims. The most common sentiment in the comments was that a list of examples isn't enough to prove a trend. I think that's fair but also I don't see how you could ever collect enough data on this to ever prove bias conclusively (are black defendants acquitted because juries are racist against whites or are innocent black people charged by racist DAs?). It's also possible that he was acquitted because of anti-police sentiment instead of anti-white. I think there's no chance he was factually innocent because it was caught on video, this is jury nullification of some sort.
It's a dangerous trend if this becomes more common. I don't see how we can have both law and order and strong constitutional protections for defendants if juries side with violent criminals over law enforcement.
freemcflurry
11mo ago
Harrison Ford is 80 years old, who on earth thought he should star in an action movie? He was already too old in Crystal Skull in 2008. Couldn't believe it when I saw the trailer yesterday.
freemcflurry
1mo ago
It's ironic that, after so many years of dismissing conspiracy theories, the government is telling us that the Russians are shooting energy beams at their brains. Maybe they could wear tinfoil hats to protect themselves.
If you work for the CIA or State Department and ever experience fatigue or headaches there is now a huge financial incentive to blame the Russians for it:
the Biden Administration signed into law the Havana Act, which provides six-figure compensation for confirmed victims of AHIs.
Lenzi, his wife, son, and daughter, were all medevaced from Guangzhou, China in early June 2018 after they each failed brain injury tests. According to Lenzi, he and his family have been compensated by the U.S. government with “more than a million dollars because of our diagnosed traumatic brain injuries” in a combination of civil litigation settlements and Havana Act payments.
freemcflurry
8d ago
newly-arrived grandparents
It's insane to me that this is allowed. The justification for immigration is that these are net contributors and we need them to prop up the social safety net but instead actually we're letting in people who will never work again (or not for long) and will almost immediately start collecting benefits. There was a similar deal a while back in the US when a Pakistani Uber driver was killed after his car was hijacked by a couple of, um, youths. The guy was 66 years old and driving for Uber. He had only immigrated a few years previously. The citizens who fund this stuff in the US and Canada are getting fleeced. You work for 40 years and instead of getting to leave it to your kids it all gets sucked away to pay for people who just showed up and never contributed a dime.
freemcflurry
4mo ago
freemcflurry
10mo ago
And in addition to that deconstruction is so common that the target audience often isn't even familiar with the trope that's being deconstructed any more. Every movie with a princess is careful to subvert the expectation that she'll be a damsel in distress who needs rescuing. All of the princesses are sassy feminists who know karate or have super powers and are conspicuously more competent than the male lead. But when was the last time a major animated feature film did the damsel in distress thing? Looking on Wikipedia I think it was Sleeping Beauty in 1959. So a kid watching Disney today is watching a deconstruction of a trope that hasn't really existed since their great grandparents were going to the movies.
freemcflurry
30d ago
At the beginning of the conflict western countries accepted Ukrainian refugees on very generous terms but did not accept men fleeing the draft from Russia. Morally this feels right but practically it's completely backwards. If you want Ukraine to win you should only accept their children and old people. You should bribe able bodied Russian men between 18 and 30 to seek asylum which would deprive Russia of both soldiers and workers.
freemcflurry
1mo ago
It's more than a little suspicious to me that every solution to climate change is something the left already wanted to do for other, unrelated reasons. What a coincidence that to fight climate change we have to become vegetarians, have fewer kids, demolish the suburbs, redistribute wealth to minorities and abolish capitalism.
The idea that you need an advanced degree in "library science" to help school children pick out books is absurd. They'll still have the books, it just sounds like they're getting rid of the librarians and using the space for other things as well. I don't think every school needs a full library with dedicated staff.
And anything that "increases inequity" can't be all bad.
Books will remain on shelves and students will still be able to borrow books on a honor code system
freemcflurry
11mo ago
Caesar had an army and was a military genius, Trump doesn't and isn't. He has no way to credibly threaten a coup.
freemcflurry
5mo ago
They don't even need the edgy 4chan humor part. That reddit post listed "follows Ron Desantis on Twitter" as evidence of Nazism.
freemcflurry
4mo ago
After 12 years of public school what percentage of adults remember how to do anything but basic arithmetic? PIAAC puts 10% of adults in the US at numeracy level 4 or above. The sample question they had for level 4 gave you table of expenditures for three months and asked you compute the mean.
Chicago spends about $30k per pupil per year which would put them at around $360k total for 12 years of schooling. I just can't imagine there isn't a better way to spend that money given the absolutely abysmal results we're getting. The usual answer is that we need to keep doing what we're doing but more and better. The problem is we've been trying that for half a century now with no meaningful improvements.
freemcflurry
9mo ago
Sometimes I wonder if most of the economic growth we get from improved technology and productivity just gets swallowed up by more beareaucracy and regulations.
freemcflurry
11mo ago
The immigrant Air Force recruits undergo seven weeks of training, and once that process is complete, they are sworn in as citizens.
Wow, that is a very fast track. You'd think they'd at least have to serve out their term before getting the reward. I expect we'll see a lot of immigrants join for seven weeks and then find some way to back out (injury, vague mental illness, pregnancy) before they get deployed.
freemcflurry
1mo ago
But you don't know whether you can prove it or not until you end up in front of a judge. That's got to have some sort of chilling effect.
The other famous case recently was teachers in NYC schools. They proved that the test was fine to one judge and then lost on appeal and had to shell out $2 billion. So it's a pretty arbitrary standard that can go either way depending on the judge.
freemcflurry
6mo ago
If the above is true, I don't know why there isn't a mob in DC with pitchforks demanding to cook and eat the bureaucrats responsible for flying the economy into the ground and royally fucking everyone who isn't independently wealthy.
All of the stimulus and money printing was wildly popular at the time (and probably still is). People love getting checks from the government. They don't connect printing a ton of money with inflation, they instead blame corporate greed. The other side of the coin were the coronavirus lockdowns but those were also broadly popular in most places.
freemcflurry
6mo ago
I'm sure a lot of it is partisan but I do think, even setting that aside, that things just feel shitty. Yeah inflation is slowing down but the inflation that already happened is still here. For 10 years before 2020 prices barely budged so I got used to certain numbers in my head. Now every time I go to the grocery store I feel irritated that chicken breast is $4/lb when my brain is telling me it should only cost $2/lb. There are still random shortages showing up occasionally (contact lenses is one I noticed) which I don't remember ever happening before 2020. I'm reading about layoffs constantly in the news so I feel like I don't have job security even if statistically I probably do.
Homelessness and panhandling have exploded like nothing I've ever seen before. The downtown area of my city always had a few homeless, but it's just unreal now with tent cities and stoned people walking around like zombies with festering sores all over their skin. Even in the suburbs a lot of major intersections now have somebody standing there with a cardboard sign.
So yeah I make more money than I did a few years ago, but everything just feels precarious and unpleasant in a way it didn't before. It's like asking somebody about the weather when they're standing in the eye of a hurricane, it feels fine now but I'm not exactly celebrating yet.
You just have different standards for Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats tried to hand out debt relief to farmers but white farmers were excluded. It wouldn't even be conceivable for the Republicans to create a relief program that explicitly excludes blacks. But when Democrats do it it's just business as usual and not considered to be extreme.
https://www.fsa.usda.gov/state-offices/California/news-releases/2021/in-historic-move-usda-to-begin-loan-payments-to-socially-disadvantaged-borrowers-under-american-rescue-plan-act-section-1005_rel001
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