freemcflurry
No bio...
User ID: 106
freemcflurry
2d ago
Well one big difference is that Trump is doing 1-2 rallies per week where he talks off the cuff. It gets less scrutiny because it's such an informal tone. Biden has been more reclusive and mostly sticks to reading prepared speeches. The fact that he struggles even with those modest challenges does not look great. Also Biden's gaffes tend more towards complete incoherence than just telling a rambling story.
I think Trump has declined noticeably since 2016 but less so than Biden.
One thing that struck me from reading that was:
when Biden makes a gaffe—mixing up a name or a date
Does he seriously believe that Biden's gaffes are restricted to occasionally making a minor factual error? Does he think that anyone reading this believe that? It's like he has to crimestop his own mind from thinking that Biden might have a flaw. He's afraid to acknowledge it, even as part of a rebuttal, because it could persuade those crucial five Pennsylvania residents who will swing the election.
freemcflurry
2d ago
Trajan and Hadrian were ethnically Italian, born in a Roman colony in Spain. I think it's a stretch to call them Iberians, that would be like calling John McCain a Panamanian.
freemcflurry
4d ago
Just finished the original Planet of the Apes novel. The best scene was a flashback to some human characters when the apes were first taking over the planet. (spoilers) It's different from the movie, instead of the humans wiping themselves out with nukes they just evolved to become lazy and docile over time and the apes stepped in to become the dominant species. Personally I think that's a more interesting idea than the Statue of Liberty on the beach which feels dated now that the cold war is over. It was short and breezy, worth the time if you enjoy 60s scifi.
I learned it's the same author as Bridge over the River Kwai so I might pick that up next.
freemcflurry
6d ago
That sounds off. You'd want enough votes to win but why focus on running up the score beyond that?
freemcflurry
9d ago
What are the examples that show it doing meaningful, original reasoning then? I use it daily and I find it useful as a replacement for search engines in some cases, but it never feels like there's any actual intelligence behind the mask.
freemcflurry
9d ago
What's the background on the special prosecutors team, why were they so hostile to Nixon?
freemcflurry
10d ago
To be fair most highschool graduates can't do those things either.
freemcflurry
10d ago
The MIC is a pittance compared to what we spend on transfer payments. Defense spending is only 15% of the budget.
freemcflurry
20d ago
3M and Johnson and Johnson also just had multi billion dollar settlements based on very thin evidence. It's kind of depressing since all that will do is move those jobs over seas and deny consumers access to new products.
freemcflurry
22d ago
Unless having bad customer service correlates with being a good doctor (House was right?) then it seems like it would still make sense to search for one with good reviews.
This has some excerpts from Kevin Purcell's book. There used to be a more complete version online but I can't find it any more.
https://www.dismantleacademia.org/life-and-death-in-philadelphia.html
It's the story of his childhood in Philly where it started as a the type of streetcar suburb that everyone on youtube wants to build these days. It's walkable, there are parks and playgrounds and groups of neighborhood kids stay out playing baseball until well after dark. As black people start to move in it becomes less and less safe. At first they have to go to the parks in groups to stay safe and then later it's not possible to go there at all. There are gangs, break ins and eventually murder. His parents sell their house at a loss to move the kids somewhere safe.
freemcflurry
25d ago
There was this one from this 2000s: https://youtube.com/watch?v=liKnJ-ejztw
So at least sometimes they did.
freemcflurry
29d ago
He'd pay a small amount of income taxes on his Uber earnings, assuming he exceeded the standard deductible. But Uber doesn't provide health insurance to drivers and since he was over 65 he was very likely on medicare and the cost of that would exceed anything an Uber driver would ever pay in.
freemcflurry
29d ago
There's no way the Canadian people can come out ahead here though. Absolute best case is that the sponsor supports them and they never use any healthcare and the net benefit to society is zero (they contributed nothing and took away nothing). In every other set of circumstances it's a net negative because you have to pay for the old person and (in an alternate universe where immigration laws are enforced) pay to punish the sponsor. It's a "heads I lose, tails nothing happens" bet.
freemcflurry
29d 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
30d ago
If we were really going to be libertarians now I'd have some sympathy for that. In practice the Democrats only ever want more freedom on issues that will benefit groups they like (blacks and immigrants mostly) with things like open borders, getting rid of zoning etc. Everyone else gets a boot on their face with high taxes and totalitarian environmental regulations. I don't want regulations to be repealed only when they will hurt me but left in place in all other cases.
freemcflurry
1mo ago
If you're already into paradox games you may as well try EU4, covers the entire planet for 400 years so it's pretty large in scale. Best way to get started is to buy the subscription for a month so you have all the DLC.
freemcflurry
1mo ago
The Battle Barista.
freemcflurry
1mo ago
Who is that in the video?
freemcflurry
1mo ago
Evidence is a fuzzy thing. Toyota got mugged for millions because some old people stepped on the wrong peddle. Juries love people with dead relatives and they hate big corporations.
freemcflurry
1mo ago
Those are often paid for by state or federal grants.
https://apnews.com/article/synagogue-security-federal-funds-worship-c687e3e7c15842fc51103479235cbf45
freemcflurry
1mo ago
No, it's easier to ban meat if there is already an alternative. If there is no substitute then passing a ban is a much higher barrier. Lab grown meat is from the electric car playbook: make an inferior substitute to something people like, gaslight theme into thinking it's just as good and then ban the authentic version.
freemcflurry
1mo ago
I can't really play new games any more, don't have the attention span. I cycle through RimWorld, Factorio, Slay the Spire and EU4 like I have for years. I think the last new one I picked up was Hades which was pretty good and critically it let you start playing the game within 2 minutes of launching it.
freemcflurry
1mo ago
Is it just that they have more parties? If 22% of young people support AFD then presumably 78% of them support more left wing parties.
I'm so happy I finally convinced my wife to let me cancel Netflix. There are so many shows targeted at women and most of them portray all men as malicious, incompetent, sexist pigs. It was just something that was never on my radar before, but the effects of millions of women binge watching that garbage for hours a day cannot be good. Now we have a Plex server with 7th Heaven and Friends on it, much more pleasant to be around.
More options
Context Copy link