domain:kvetch.substack.com
Azeltir
1m ago
I literally cannot conceive of Trump going for option one. If he did, it'd completely rock my worldview and my trust of all of the political voices around me. Is there any time you can point to where he's behaved with such magnanimity?
Tenaz
4m ago
I have it on mobile (chrome) but only when I scroll up. No idea how to remove it, sorry.
jeroboam
10m ago
When you are weak it is best to avoid antagonizing your enemy.
The worst case scenario is that the bureacracy would just say "no" to Trump's orders, precipitating a constitutional crisis. More likely they'll just slow play his demands until the clock is run out. Then the lawfare against him can begin anew.
The only way he doesn't die in jail is if a Republican is elected in 2028. For that reason, he needs to remain popular with the people which means not triggering a crisis.
hydroacetylene
12m ago
And again, the secret to making money off of wind farms is to have preexisting land that the wind farming company leases from you. It’s pure rental income, not an investment.
theory
14m ago
Okay, but Yasuke kicks ass.
Less than any of the associates of his owner for one year, but they weren't Africans so they all meld together in the minds of non-Japanese due to outgroup homogeneity bias. The Japanese have a slight reason to care about the Black guy in question, since they already know most of the more important people of that time and place. American obsession with Yosuke is elevating bar quiz trivia to the level of actual history.
hydroacetylene
14m ago
Rental companies don’t pay for fuel(that’s on the customer), but if electric cars really do take no maintenance, as is indicated upthread, that’s a pretty big cost saving- mechanics are paid by the job and fleet managers are almost never people who know anything about auto work, so rental companies get fleeced on maintenance costs. Same as how the conventional wisdom is not to have a woman go to the auto shop alone, but applied to an absentee landlord.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
16m ago
Go after voter fraud and ballot harvesting.
To be clear, this is not a corrupt policy choice and shouldn't be lumped in as some malicious attack motivated by revenge-getting. It is just actually bad that elections are insecure and political operatives collection ballots.
hydroacetylene
17m ago
Or consumer protection?
Consumer protection is one of the few things Biden has at least tried to deliver.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
20m ago
To confirm you aren't crazy: I get the bar too, although I don't mind it all that much.
RegularlyExpressed
22m ago
How multi-lingual are these guys really? My impression was that they achieve very basic conversational aptitude in the languages they study i.e. enough to play the role of white guy who "stuns" native speaker of X by order noodles in X, rather than reaching genuine fluency.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
23m ago
If I were Trump, I'd go with option 1.
Why? What successes have come from previous iterations of this option? Why do you believe it would deliver superior results versus prosecuting the culture war to the greatest extent possible?
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
26m ago
I'm for "Trump smash". Breaking the current environment that any tactic is OK for the left but none (including ordinary political rallies, which as you may recall the left liked to disrupt in 2016) for the right is necessary for the right.
But I suspect that a Trump in Sing Sing for putting an expense in the wrong ledger category(with the correct one determined retroactively, natch) will have trouble doing any of those. The boomercons will desert him as a criminal and he'll lose, and the left will be emboldened.
Of course if they put Trump in Sing Sing and he wins, he'll almost certainly at least TRY "Trump smash".
RegularlyExpressed
27m ago
I don't think even RFK supporters think he's going to win? He's interesting to discuss because of votes he'll take away from either of the other two candidates.
SteveKirk
40m ago
People really need to study the rise of the crits in academia. On the CRT wiki page it's of course described as a "right wing maga conspiracy theory", but if you go to Derrick Bell's bio it explains how his fringe group used threats and backstabbing to take over departments and get their allies hired, their enemies fired, and infinite money for their programs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derrick_Bell
Liberalism can't beat leninist vanguard party organizing. And Conservatism can't beat it without nuking the whole battlefield.
Tangentially related...
How much should Trump get even, if he is elected? Either choice he makes seems pretty fraught.
Option 1) Play the bigger man. Pardon himself, obviously, and a few limited other people. Beyond that do nothing. This will prevent a wider conflagration in the culture war. Downside: without a tit-for-tat, the left will be emboldened for much greater tats in the future.
Option 2) Do unto him as he hath done unto me. Pursue corruption investigations against his pursuers (many of whom quite deserve them). Go after voter fraud and ballot harvesting. Turn the executive branch against the left in the same ways it has been turned against the right thus far. Upside: When both sides are armed, the chance for peace is higher than when only one side is armed. Downside: The system will probably resist him, and it could provoke a bigger backlash.
If I were Trump, I'd go with option 1. In reality, I expect him to just do whatever he wakes up feeling like he should do that day with little follow through.
RegularlyExpressed
48m ago
I'm less cynical; I think it's likelier that the people who came up with the story are true believers in the progressive cause. Insofar as it's about optics I would imagine it's more about looking good to the professional media class than it is about pre-emptively shielding themselves from public criticism. I don't know how effective it would be against criticism anyway, mechanically it'll probably be fine, and things like micro-transactions are hated by the left as well so accusations of racism won't do much to defend them in their eyes.
hydroacetylene
49m ago
Look on the bright side- good chance he’ll get out of our hair and be replaced with Greg Abbott’s(who will at least give technocrats a hearing) chief of staff.
hydroacetylene
50m ago
Ken Paxton has a core staff of highly competent people that are loyal to him personally- they left the AG office to defend him during his impeachment- and the opportunity to recruit almost unlimitedly from red state governments, even ignoring project 2025 lists of potential conservative hires.
hanikrummihundursvin
52m ago
The west comes in and does whatever it wants. They're paying for everything after all.
faceh
54m ago
People do occasionally bitch about the leader selection, but I don't think there's ever been a point where a given leader was race or gender-swapped. Easy to avoid critiques from either side about 'inclusion' when the whole point is to represent the entire gamut of global civilizations and to faithfully represent each one as its own unique racial, social, and technological mix of traits.
Leaving aside the running gag about Ghandi being a nuclear-armed terror.
Some complaints about picking lesser-known leaders from a given nation's history in order to prevent a complete sausage-fest.
Hell, STALIN was a playable leader back in Civ 4 (also my favorite to play as incidentally), I dunno if they'd be able to get away with that today, even though he is probably the one leader most Americans could name from Russian history (okay, they COULD name Putin but lol that's not getting included) Note they also completely removed reference to "slavery" as a mechanic post Civ 4.
Probably also a reason that South Africa has never and will never be implemented in the base game.
RegularlyExpressed
58m ago
But but... one point someone made is that the playable protagonist of EVERY game before this has been a fictional character made up specifically for the series, with no historical parallel, which is perhaps in order to give the player the 'blank slate' avatar and avoid any major historical inaccuracies by having some well-known historical figure being an extremely dangerous assassin in their spare time.
I think you're right that they obviously want to make this all about Yasuke, and that wouldn't work unless he's the main character because you could always just ignore him otherwise. I also think part of it why previous historical figures weren't playable characters is that it's often more inspiring to imagine hanging out with and earning the respect of your heroes rather than literally being them. Taking the example of AC2, it was quite cool for a lot of people to have their character become friends with Leonardo Da Vinci, but I don't think a game where you play as Da Vinci would have generated quite as much excitement.
Yes it was this. Thank you so much!
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