lollol
2mo ago
I do agree that naturalized citizens would actually have to do their civic test and therefore already out-qualify many if not most non-naturalized citizens in that aspect. I am interested in what /u/Opt-out counts as "an American" though cause it's starting to sound awfully like "what kind of American are you?"
lollol
2mo ago
well this is a different argument isn't it? Trump pardoned the J6 stuff, and looks like the DOJ is arguing that evidence of other crimes collected during J6 investigation should not be prosecuted further. And yes, looks like they're only doing that for the politically defensible stuff. And yes that's bad because it's inconsistent.
But what you're saying happened to Daniel Tocci is clearly a lot different: intimidation, planting of evidence, and framing of child porn possession. Again, if Daniel is innocent, there are now plenty of platforms in which he can tell his story.
In addition, based on what I can find, "[s]ix of the pardoned January 6th insurrectionists are charged with committing child sex crimes, ranging from sexual assault to possession of child pornography." (I think I counted only 2 with child porn charges). Seeing as there's 1.5k+ J6ers, that's a very very very small amount of people being framed. I can easily see at least an order of magnitude more and most people won't bat an eye. I also don't see any reason why Daniel Tocci is so special that he needed child porn planted. Occam's razor points to that Daniel Tocci was highly likely already in possession of child porn.
lollol
2mo ago
I'm going to pushback a bit at least on tech employment and present this data analysis posted on /r/cscareerquestions yesterday. Bolded mine:
From the data, several distinct periods can be identified:
Following the early 1990s recession and during the Clinton admin. economic and internet boom, tech employment increased exponentially at a 12% annual rate, peaking at 1.358 million in March 2001. It then collapsed in the dot-com bubble, up to an 18% downturn at its worst, and only recovered to the same level 6 years later, on March 2007. However, the market returned to growth in under 3 years.
The 2008 global financial crisis actually had only a limited impact on tech employment, since tech continued to boom during this time. From June 2009 to the pandemic in February 2020, tech employment increased in a remarkably stable and rapid linear growth pattern of around 80k per year.
The disruption caused by the pandemic was incredibly brief. It caused a net change of -70k, but by June 2020, hiring restarted at the fastest pace in history, around 130k per year. Having been a high schooler in this period, I definitely remember how insane the hype was around tech.
Hiring finally began to plateau beginning in May 2022. Total employment peaked at 2.483 million in March 2023. Ever since then, it has changed at a net rate of -42k a year.
The current slump is characterized by being less severe compared to the massive displacement of the dot-com bubble, which was much worse in percentage terms.
However, the current slump is also very protracted. This is the longest contiguous period of declining tech employment in the 36 years of data. That probably explains why this slump feels worse than anything in history. Even if it is not as intense as the dot-com bubble was, it is already longer, and it also followed the most rapid period of hiring in the history of tech.
It seems obvious that 2021-2022 overhiring has contributed to a disproportionately large glut of CS majors who had been expecting that 130k/yr employment growth rate when the market has actually suddenly shifted to -42k/yr, a gap in expectations of 172k.
This can be seen by the recent shifts in CS major enrollment. We can see enrollment as a rough 3-4 year lagging indicator for the sentiment of the candidate pool (since the data I have only tracks the employee pool, not how many people are applying for those positions). It started to drop rapidly this year.
So there is definitely a downturn in tech employment. And because tech ate the world, there are reverberations outward.
FRED source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ces6054150001
lollol
2mo ago
I'm going to reply here to keep the conversations we have together concentrated.
In the United States federal system, guilty pleas are procedurally manufactured through defendant intimidation.
So, imagine, you are told by the judge you can't allege the government framed you in your trial. You can stage a half-defense at your trial, but if the jury doesn't buy it, since it is not the true defense, you will go to jail for 5 to 10 extra years. They plea out at this point.
I don't doubt that instances of this happens. But for this particular case you cited, I see that Daniel Tocci plead guilty to child pornography. Let's say he was intimidated and framed into pleading a guilty plea on "sprinkle some child porn on him", well, this is the perfect administration and the perfect FBI director with a great conservative media system who would love to hear this story and spread it as far and as wide as possible. His defense attorney also doesn't seem like the type to let his client make such a plea seeing as they're fighting on procedural ground for evidence dismissal. If the injustice to Daniel Tocci is real, Trump is right there in the correct spot to help him.
I would love to have a different example where you can point to J6er defendant intimidation/framed.
lollol
2mo ago
I think "100 IQ worker with cop brothers and cousins" would also get filtered out (unless the defense is a joke at jury selection).
lollol
2mo ago
Daniel Tocci plead guilty to possession of child pornography. Doesn't seem like the police sprinkled it on his computer.
lollol
2mo ago
The discussion that feels most balanced regarding the settlement from my perspective was this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Zl4L2OZXFC4
It will percolate through time that this is one of the most corrupt administration in early 21st century US history.
lollol
2mo ago
They did this to several J6ers.
You're saying that the FBI framed several J6ers by "sprinkle some child pornography on him" ? source? would love to read up on this.
lollol
2mo ago
I guess this is what we get from jury system which is basically a theater where regular people can use state power for their own power trips.
Who knows. Maybe if you were on that jury you would have come out to the same conclusion.
lollol
2mo ago
I did. And as I pointed out, unless you're like a detective, most people look at other people and don't notice anything. But clearly, detectives do. Investigators do. Police do. Researchers do. Scientists do. They are trained to pick up on details and infer information that normal people don't. And training meant written down and was probably part of LLM training data. So yes, I am not surprised that LLMs know things about people based purely on images.
lollol
2mo ago
So detective work? Anything a human can do, I do think an LLM can do. People are not that good at hiding who they are under scrutiny.
lollol
2mo ago
Excellent essay. It's essentially a long form explanation of the adage "Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line". I suppose in some sense the GOP is a cult from the perspective of those against the typical Republican agenda.
lollol
2mo ago
This is not about Massie but Cassidy. But I believe on The Bulwark, they did qualitative interviews of Republican primary voters and of the ones that voted against Cassidy all had the first reason being because he voted to impeach Trump. People will say different things and cite different reasons but at the end of the day, I do believe the Republican base, especially the primary base, like Trump more as a stand in figure for their hopes and dreams, than actually care about the actual results of the Trump political agenda.
lollol
2mo ago
You are right and that is true. There is a motte of "they are guilty" and there is a bailey of "the consequences should be this".
lollol
2mo ago
I am of the opinion that we never found out the extent of the guilt/liability because the process of the law was not carried out to its conclusion when the IRS and DOJ decided to settle behind close doors essentially. No judge, no jury, and certainly no congress. All I know about the case that has been decided so far is that the leaker, Charles Littlejohn, is definitely guilty and was sentenced to the maximum sentence under the law
If I have to put a number based on vibes and information I know at the moment, let's say confidence percentage (I'm not well versed in terminology for opinion/prediction) I would say:
- 0%: there was an org-wide conspiracy that the entirety of the IRS organization from the top of the chain of command down to the rank-and-file organized themselves so that they can leak Trump's tax return through a contractor.
- 100%: Littlejohn is guilty of leaking Trump's and thousands of other high net worth individuals tax returns.
- <1%: there was a particular conspiracy of close-knitted people that instigated Littlejohn to be the leaker and fall guy in such a way that Littlejohn thought he had the idea of his own will and therefore they can't be implicated.
- 1%: there was a particular conspiracy of close-knitted people that included Littlejohn and he decided to be the fall guy and is really good at not being a snitch.
- 5%: IRS was negligent in the hiring and vetting of Littlejohn as the contractor
- 1%: IRS was criminally negligent in the hiring and vetting of Littlejohn as the contractor
- <5%: IRS was illegally negligent in the hiring and vetting of Littlejohn as the contractor
- 80%: IRS was negligent in the designing, creating, maintaining, monitoring, and auditing the processes that led to Littlejohn be able to access, download, and leak the tax returns of Trump and other high net worth individuals.
- <20%: IRS was criminally negligent in the designing, creating, maintaining, monitoring, and auditing the processes that led to Littlejohn be able to access, download, and leak the tax returns of Trump and other high net worth individuals.
- 70%: IRS was illegally negligent in the designing, creating, maintaining, monitoring, and auditing the processes that led to Littlejohn be able to access, download, and leak the tax returns of Trump and other high net worth individuals.
If I have to couch the case so far from my perspective in this forum's terminology. The motte is that "the leak was bad", and the bailey is "the consequences of the leak should be this". The laws are clear and the leaker was guilty and sentenced when it comes to his case. When it comes to the IRS case though, the process of the law was not carried out so it's all murky and easy to understand as being viewed as unjust by a certain part of the public, especially when the consequences are now being reported as:
- third party settlements of over a billion dollars
- a group of individuals are now "immune from IRS audits"
For what it's worth, bills were voted in by congress, the legislative body, which were voted in by voters, so at least in some sense that's the will of the people that insane amount of money were shoveled into ostensible purposes.
Here it's Trump's IRS pitting against Trump's DOJ, both under the executive, making a settlement. Not a judge ordered settlement, but the two comes to settlement (wink wink nod nod) together.
Sarah Isgur (Trump 1 DOJ spokesperson) makes a good point that the proper way would have been to "en banc" the case so that the statue of limitation is frozen. The case would have resumed when Trump is merely a citizen and not the current president, and he would have likely won because the case is pretty solid.
She commented that the judge of the case asked a legal point on how: "It is unclear to this Court whether the Parties are sufficiently adverse to each other so as to satisfy [the Constitution’s] case or controversy requirement.". The judge then asked that both sides submit more information to answer and make claim their position on the point she made. Then conveniently the two teams (and remember, they both work for Trump) drop the case and settle two days before the judge's deadline.
Look, if Congress pass laws to appropriate this $1.7 billion for the same purpose, there won't be an outcry because again, in some sense it flows from the will of the people. Like almost all crimes, it's how you do something that's important, not what was achieved.
edit1: "the outcry would be less justified"
lollol
2mo ago
Certainly the people who support the judiciary branch hates this kind of corruption. When both Democrats and Republicans are unpopular due to transgressions like this (no matter that Obama did X and then Trump did X^2), then the time is ripe for a third party. Unfortunately I think US will be held back by first-past-the-vote again.
lollol
2mo ago
Financial disagreements is the predominant reason leading to divorce. I would even argue that most other relationship problems can be helped by being more wealthy. But anyway. You two seem to have good communication. Maybe throw some videos from “I Will Teach You To Be Rich” her way. I do think trying to live a rich life is more sensible than just hoarding wealth. That guy also specializes in the niche of financial advice for couples, and navigating all the relationship issues when it comes to money. I’m not sure if 60k in emergency fund is low or high for you but 100k is a lot when compared to my own situation (engineer couple in NYC). It seems like your wife has some deep rooted fears or pathologies when it comes to money that makes her want such a high emergency fund. On the other hand, you have the other extreme, what is your reasoning for wanting $0 in emergency fund cash? Is there something you’re not noticing about your relationship with money as well?
One caveat on the 100k emergency fund thing, if you guys have really high annual spend, and I’m talking like 200k and above here, then 100k makes total sense as that’s only 6 months of spend.
lollol
2mo ago
Just kicking off this thread to see what people think will come out of the Xi/Trump meeting.
- would China help US out regarding Iran? (Opportunity for China to look bigger and more powerful than the US)
- How many deals will be announced? How many of them after closer inspection will be smaller than what was announced? (Soybeans for example)
- Would there be any discussions of human rights? (I heard about Jimmy Lai twice from WSJ and The Dispatch? lately)
- Would Trump change US position on Taiwan? (from "the US support One China and support the people of Taiwan's democratic rights for self-determination" to "the US opposes Taiwan's independence")
- Any surprise / dark horse bet that no one is talking about?
lollol
2mo ago
No matter the hype for Wandering Inn, there's no way it justifies its length.
I understand that it's a detraction for many people no doubt, but there is a reason there is hype for it. Honestly when I was getting caught up, I didn't even realize the length cause I was getting really sucked in. The books are getting real prints I believe so maybe that's a good way to get into it. My friends and I tried to convince a friend to read One Piece for over a decade and he always balked at the length. He started reading after he watched the One Piece Live Action to all of our dismay lol.
lollol
2mo ago
At least for me, being able to offload some stuff to AI means I have more time to participate in this forum. My coworkers and I are in a mode where we're assumed we might be laid off in a year or two. Or, in the end, everyone realizes only humans can get sued.
As mentioned, college pipelines are 3-4 years delayed. Job numbers are currently down to -42k/year. Just as the greater economy might not have a big effect on one industry (2008 where tech only had "limited impact"), this time, the greater economy might not/has not yet noticed the relatively constant downturn of one industry. Just because the squeeze is slow does not mean the squeeze isn't there.
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