domain:nytimes.com
sockpuppet2
21m ago
AP: Conservative news network Newsmax files antitrust lawsuit against Fox News
As always, initial reporting is based on the complaint and the respondent's PR statements, so take with a grain of salt. Why CW? I can't recall a precedent for this - can anybody else? If not, is it because of something Fox-specific or something about the culture of the conservative infotainment ecosystem?
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
27m ago
I expect you to be quite disappointed when Trump kicks the bucket and the half of America that considers you an enemy doesn't abruptly vanish like the morning mist.
Yep. Might have happened before the 2024 election (well, it would have been more an angry red mist). But now someone's going to take the MAGA ship and try to sail it. J.D. Vance being the obvious candidate, though a few years can be a long time politically. Probably won't be as successful in energizing the base (either their own or their opponents) as Trump; maybe the middle will come back into play, or maybe it'll be more trying to separate the Democrats from groups they've neglected. I can't tell from here.
Payback23
32m ago
So it was right wing violence via law enforcement who were brutalizing protestors of Covid lockdowns? That doesn't make sense to me. Could you clear that up?
Payback23
35m ago
If a riot happens then it should be dealt with overwhelming force. A society does not just let rioting and looting occur no matter the reason. Is that something you agree with?
Payback23
42m ago
The maga coalition is united by one thing. its hatred of the left. This cult of personality you're obsessed with isn't the card you think it is.
Payback23
44m ago
This pattern happens constantly. inflation, the border, the wuhan lab, trans surgery etc.
The whole cycle can be completed in under a month
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
47m ago
The US is becoming more authoritarian. I agree with that. But my point is that it's being pattern-matched to fascism too aggressively by libs who have these nightmare-wishmares about Trump sending LGBT to camps and implementing white supremacy. Or they go 'tariffs will crash the economy' when tariffs are bad but not beyond the usual range of terrible economic policies the US indulges in. They can't possibly do as much damage as the EU has done to Europe.
You can legitimately use troops to crack down on criminals, the US crime rate is too high by developed world standards. Send the criminals to prison, crack down on them. The US sent a bunch of criminals to prison in the 1990s but we don't necessarily consider that fascism. Trump hasn't even gotten that far. The US just blew up that boat of maybe drug smugglers and people are complaining about it. But the US blows things up all the time. Biden blew up a 'maybe terrorist' that was just an Afghan trying to get water for his family during the chaotic evacuation. Clinton blew up a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant for no good reason. Bush shot down a random plane back in 2001, not to mention the wars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Peru_Cessna_185_shootdown
That's not necessarily fascism either. It can sound like fascism if you make the argument, it's aggressive and obnoxious behaviour. Authoritarian too. But you can go from 30 Authoritarianism to 40 Authoritarianism and stop there, it's not a slippery slope in and of itself. The situation may change and being stuck at 30 is no longer adaptive.
teatonglu
51m ago
timecube
Lul i just checked out Time Cube & it made me laugh! True, I added creativity touch/self-expression/meh humaness elements cuz I was excited - feel free to use LLM to get TL;DR if you want
The whole document is kinda more of a technological utopia manifesto - it is just the first three pages are about 'B-theory of time.
Today, I discovered B theory of time & David Lewis Modal Realism, which is mostly what I was writing about! I wish I had known about them two sooner! What do you think about these two theories? I guess they are metaphysical - can't really prove or disprove but you see - if I personally come up with it as a logical/rational universal truth, then it matches someone's smart in this world & has an interest from among the scientific community then...
I am extremely satisfied. I am not the only one!
I added the extra spice, which is the 0th Dimension, the nothing, that brings the two theories into existence? Metaphysics is cool
I expect you to be quite disappointed when Trump kicks the bucket and the half of America that considers you an enemy doesn't abruptly vanish like the morning mist.
From my perspective, everything you've listed is already priced in. I know that people like you are in favor of what is, from my perspective, corrupting institutions, looting the treasury and mocking the concept of rule of law. I've observed these tendencies for more than a decade, it would be very late to affect surprise now.
Anyone voting for Trump or his allies now on the belief that electoral success would result in permanent victory is a fool. I, and I think many others, have long understood that we can rely neither on the Constitution nor purported "rule of law" to protect us from rule by those who hate us, and that to the extent that we uphold institutions or norms at our own expense, the response will be ceaseless defection. We do not consider people like you to be our countrymen. We do not wish to share a society with you, and if providence be kind we will not do so much longer. We will never accept your authority nor your rule. We are, collectively, now in the process of burning what shared institutions remain, and then either we will go our separate ways in peace or resort to fratricide.
cjet79
58m ago
As I said things are a spectrum, you said continuum. I don't think I'm asking for an impossible standard. The post office will send any letter between two private addresses, no matter what words you put in there. They'll send it no matter who you are or the recipient is or who they voted for. As far as I know they've maintained this level of non-politics since they were created. Even when they were a much more essential service.
JTarrou
1hr ago
Leaders are almost always elites. You need to get your shit and run if a former bank robber or army corporal takes over the government.
What's interesting to me is how far down the elite governance scale Republicans had to go to find someone who would fight. Whole goddamned party, not one set of nuts between them. Turns out, only Democrats are willing to fight Democrats, the Republican establishment has completely internalized its social position as the Washington Generals of politics.
Payback23
1hr ago
We know. You've already been cheerleading for such. Biden even campaigned on ignoring the Supreme Court bc it resonates so much with you. You wanted to pack the court. Destroy the electoral college and get rid of the filibuster.
Remind me again what other norms were on your wish list to tear down?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1hr ago
Are you suggesting that you figured out what timecube is actually about?
haroldbkny
1hr ago
Look, it happened a long time ago. I specifically don't memorize every thing Trump's ever been accused of, or why the accusations were false. I don't want to devote all my mental energy to Trump, one way or the other. All I knew was that I'd seen that journalist argument before, and I knew it didn't hold water in some way back then, and that made want to illustrate exactly why none of these accusations actually tarnish Trump's name, why people like me check out. Because so many previous accusations don't hold water, and we have epistemic learned helplessness.
erwgv3g34
1hr ago
No? Ren'Py is easy to use; if you can get a degree in physics from Caltech, you should have no problem learning it. Or, if you absolutely can't manage that, you can use Twine, which is so easy, a purple-haired Tumblrina can do it.
As for art skills, come on, it's The Year of Our Lord 2025; that's what AI is for. Try Fooocus, locally if you have a GPU, or on Colab if you don't. Or farm free credits from Civitai and use that.
Aapje58
1hr ago
But with the Holocaust we are told the order to kill all the Jews was communicated through Mind Reading, and no that is not a straw-man those are direct words.
Where do you get that claim from, that the narrative says that they communicated through mind reading?
It's pretty obvious that orders can be given in person, with no records being kept.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1hr ago
Would you change your mind if the military did get a new oath?
Yes. Even the proposed 'free response' questions are less overt than 'I swear: I will be faithful and obedient to the leader of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler'. Loyalty to the office rather than loyalty to the person.
They do this all the time. It's like in academia, they phrase it as 'how do you implement diversity and love diversity and advance diversity, write an essay about it'. You get a choice as to how you respond. They don't go 'swear an oath that you'll advance DEI' formally. Likewise, in the US Air Force under Biden, they sent a memo around saying that they wanted an Air Force that represented the country, so it should have these demographics. Of course they added the 'don't actually act on this, it's all supposed to be meritocratic, it's not a quota haha' part too: https://www.af.mil/Portals/1/documents/2022SAF/Officer_Source_of_Commission_Applicant_Pool_Goals_memo.pdf
If they strip out the waffle and say 'this is the goal, now make it happen' then there's a phase-shift. De facto and de jure are brought into alignment.
SubstackNecron
1hr ago
Trump has also dismantled the Democrats’ base
This doesn't matter if his death just totally disengages and fractures the entire MAGA coalition. If this occurs the Dems basically win by default.
Aapje58
1hr ago
Your intuition is correct that it is outlandish to think the Germans could make millions of bodies from these camps just disappear, they couldn't and they didn't.
Yet very large numbers of Jews did not return after WW 2, so where did they go, if they were not murdered?
SubstackNecron
1hr ago
I mean, the next time they get power when the MAGA cult dies upon its leader's death, I expect them to just legalize them unilaterally. Also college debt should just be deleted and the papper work lost and deleted. If the next Democratic president listens to the Supreme Court a single time, I will consider them a failure.
JTarrou
1hr ago
Adopting the exact same tactics as your side is a "spiral toward civil war"? What was it when your people were doing it?
Now that the other side has learned, now it's a spiral?
There's nothing you think the left should do to de-escalate? No off-ramps you see? The entire elite superstructure of our nation and the world just has zero accountability? No amends that could be made? No compromise?
Doesn't sound like it's my spiral. But I am waiting at the bottom for the rest of you.
Corvos
1hr ago
I wonder if this is just a general human behaviour, and we would have seen exactly the same pattern discussing the Dreyfus Affair in 1894.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
I do not think your skepticism is unreasonable.
I do think that you were illustrating the “standard Trump apologetics,” which consist of denying something as fake news, downplaying it, and then deciding it was actually a good thing.
I find that particular pattern frustrating. There’s nothing wrong with believing any of the steps. Combined, though, I think they’re bad practice.
The deep state shouldn't be considered as a rational actor. No reasonable person would think 'OK we've got Biden as our old and withered presidential nominee, we can just run the country while he's out of it. But let's put in Kamala as a talentless, charisma-deficient vice-president and then when 2024 comes around and Biden is predictably incapable... uhhh... well better think up something clever then!' But they did that anyway and fumbled it.
We already know that they don't use optimal strategies, they're not going to do an assassination properly either. If they try to assassinate someone, it'd look like their military campaigns and spending programs. A giant mess.
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