domain:questioner.substack.com
SteveKirk
3m ago
Started to ask "but which half" and nearly died laughing that the question makes sense.
I'm pretty sure he's mentioned it before, and do you really think he'd be at this level without the +2 racial bonus to kvetching? He's too good.
(Edit: sorry, only a +1 bonus for cross-specing, my mistake)
dasfoo
9m ago
This is crazy! Why would Trump go out of his way to do things the illegal way if it were already legal?
Part of the problem with this whole thing is assigning intent to a guy who seems to wing it on instinct and never really bothers to do due dilligence to make sure he's doing things the proper way -- and who hires shitty, sleazy lawyers who are also incompetent at covering the legal bases. Trump is sloppy. Contrary to the memes, he's barely playing 1-D Chess. He follows the straight line from his desires to his ego. It's entirely possible given his apparent modus operandi that no one thought to check if there were any legal issues with anything related to the FEC or any other set of regulations, and "legal services" was written on the checks because Cohen was a lawyer, making anything he does "legal services."
I don't doubt that Trump is guilty of hundreds (if not more) of compliance violations, because he generally holds all rules and official processes in contempt. Felony convictions for details he likely never bothered to consider or understand seems harsh; but it does make a good case for why political parties should screen their candidates with a more serious sense of purpose.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
13m ago
The situation with support for nasty racial/ethnic coalition politics by the Democrats is so bad that it actually isn't clear that forcing TikTok to divest from China will be a net benefit in the medium to long term. If the general direction continues, it will be so out of control by mid-century that Xi Jinping Thought will look reasonable by comparison.
So what? It clearly benefits the people pushing it, and there's nobody remotely powerful enough to make them stop pushing it, so why should they stop?
then we are not looking at an even a maintenance of the status quo, but a loss.
Again, so what? This is a bad thing, sure, but it's an inevitable badness — there's nothing that can be done to stop it.
We have tried asking nicely for Democrats to stop supporting "corrective" racism, and they always refuse.
Because they know there's no possible consequences for said refusal, since there's absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop them.
I don't see how anything other than imposing consequences on them will work.
Yes, nothing else will work… which means nothing will work because there is simply no way whatsoever to impose consequences on them. They're too powerful.
The personnel and programs responsible must be defunded, and de facto legal liability must be increased.
Except there is no means available, at all, to do any of those. It's never going to happen.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
14m ago
Half Jewish half Italian, from what I remember.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
15m ago
I agree that they taste the same. My dad has chickens on the farm, and swears that the eggs taste way better. They don't, though. They do look nicer (the yolks are a very vivid color), but the taste is the same.
BlindDeafRat
22m ago
1x. I tried higher and I didn't like it.
I love speedreading fiction, but when reading I can adjust my pace as I'm reading. If a scene is dense I can take my time, if it's boring, I'll go faster. But that's not possible with videos. So I don't see the point. It's also why I don't like videos except for entertainment.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
25m ago
If they don't shape up, the question is just how much abuse bright young cis heterosexual males (of left-discriminated-against racial or ethnic categories) are willing to take before they decide to organize for their own advantage,
So what if "bright young cis heterosexual males" do decide to start organizing for their own advantage? Just cut them off off all avenues of converting such organizing into advantage if you can. And if you can't, then just punish them for organizing in that manner. One can always adjust incentives away from an undesired outcome by shifting the cost/benefit analysis through imposition of costs. If the "abuse" left-discriminated-against-categories are taking is incentivizing them to pursue "organizing for advantage," then you need only provide an offsetting disincentive. People will take any amount of abuse if the consequences for not taking it are even worse. If the punishment for "bright young cis heterosexual males" organizing isn't discouraging them from doing so, then escalate it, harsher and harsher, until it does.
Why "shape up" when you can instead simply destroy the lives of anyone who tries to oppose you?
2rafa
43m ago
What would be the legally acceptable way to quietly pay off a mistress like this? If a Pro-Trump Super PAC had paid Daniels instead of Cohen/Trump personally, would that be unambiguously legal? If the National Enquirer had caught-and-killed the story with David Pecker’s personal funds instead of merely informing Cohen, would that be unambiguously legal? What if it was simply a friend of Trump who paid, with no business relationship to the president? A surface level reading would suggest not, because by these trial standards that would technically involve more than $2700 or whatever going to something that could possibly benefit the campaign.
Stellula
1hr ago
I'm saying they taste the same, but they're easier to crack, and I don't have to wash them.
Yes the costco 60 pack.
My chickens free range on my entire property, and their feed is just normal feed from the fleet store. Most of my family have flocks, though, so we might have to set up a taste test at our next family reunion!
2rafa
1hr ago
Yes, but that could just be because the cops who vote Democrat aren’t the sort of people who donate to the Democratic Party.
blooblyblobl
Battery-powered!
1hr ago
There's a lot of documents, and it looks like the guy has been excerpting individual records as he encounters them to show them to various politicians. The whole tranche is currently up on his Twitter: https://twitter.com/SheriffLeaf/status/1769561564993192198
The documents show:
- Source code modifications being made during deployment periods during an election - some firmware version needed to be changed, or some extra component needs to be attached at the last minute, or they suddenly need to disable parallelism on the SQL instance to keep concurrency bugs at bay, or whatever... They also talk about the software being able to receive OTA updates in places.
- Serbian nationals accessing election infrastructure on election night (Dominion has had an office in Serbia for over a decade, where they employ many programmers; however, Serbia does not allow certain rigorous US background checks that should be standard for such employees. Presumably the access is related to bugfix work)
- Emails that seem to indicate someone made an unauthorized access to Dominion backend systems several months before an election, from a suspicious location, on a company device or IP (extent or severity unknown, but may constitute a significant security breach?)
- Some of the Serbia machines are behind on SQL server vulnerability patching by as much as two years (sort of a problem since their systems and testing would heavily utilize the affected SQL variants)
- Numerous references to machines with modems installed, including some that failed acceptance testing for not having modems installed (again, plenty of good reasons for this in practice, but again, perjury)
- The Serbians discuss sending election data over the internet as one of the use cases in a conversation about certificates
- A long email chain showcasing the firmware programming process with a Taiwanese OEM (most computer manufacturing takes place in China or Taiwan, including firmware programming, so this isn't unusual, but it's laughably insecure)
- Eric Coomer suggesting no VPN usage in Cook County systems for technical reasons (I like the proposed explainer where they talk about using unlicensed trial version of something and wiping the machine every 30 days to keep it installed) - seems like they eventually got a VPN up at the end
- Eric Coomer opining on how Antrim county is full of angry conspiracy theorists, and also, gee whiz, how did that RTR misidentify the cartridges, I thought we fixed that
- Testimony from some expert witness describing the aforementioned RTR misidentification, and how it could be utilized in conjunction with SQL database management software to trivially edit tallies without privilege escalation and avoid discovery at the end unless a total hand count was kept alongside the results (see https://twitter.com/SheriffLeaf/status/1769745766703374401)
- Lots of "oh no, disaster, we suck" and "how can we paper over this mess to sell to customer" that I'm sure anyone in a customer-facing role at a tech company recognizes as business-as-usual
- Numerous small firefighting cases where something didn't work right and Dominion has to cook up an explanation, occasionally beclowning themselves in front of the customer in the process, while everyone stands around waiting for the numbers to add up - a particularly noticeable instance revolved around some weird data duplication issue
It doesn't look like everyone (or anyone, really) at Dominion is twirling their moustaches and cackling as they disenfranchise the American people. It looks like they run like a standard tech company, which is to say all over the place, constantly fighting fires and doing the needful to get their sales. I'm sure 2020 was a complete nightmare scenario for these guys, where suddenly all their customers are radically transforming their deployments and doing novel, untested, gigantic-scale absentee and mail balloting.
But very clearly they're held together with duct tape and prayer in a lot of cases, which is about the opposite of what I'd like to see from critical election infrastructure. The glimpses of the architecture they have put together with all of these machines raises some significant doubts about the security of the enterprise, particularly if rank-and-file technicians can just go pop open the database manager and flip the counts around - surely this is the kind of thing that could be trivially accomplished if one could land a zero-day on any of the long-dated Windows 7 machines floating around in their customer base.
I'm told, with no particular means to corroborate this, that ES&S is about the same.
jake
1hr ago
Trump's core demographic is >70% white; among young white men it is the overwhelming majority; it is the hypermajority of those men most capable of purposeful violence. You cope, just as many of those in the terminally online right go doomer. They wrongly think the time for violence was years ago and they rationalize their misunderstanding as passivity. You fear reprisal so you take the lack of response as proof there is no sleeping leviathan.
Violence is the worst outcome. In "organized" warfare it's considered a sterling ratio for 1 civilian to die for every 1 combatant killed. In a civil war everyone is a civilian. Most wouldn't die from direct violence, they'd die from starvation and disease. Lack of food, people die. Lack of meds, people die.
The people who would act and suffer most have lives, families, jobs, hobbies and hanging with the buds. They understand on some level how we are living in the best time so far it has been to be a human. Something ancestral absolutely calls to them in recognizing how even a person living in project housing has a lifestyle of quality that would astonish people just 100 years ago, let alone 500. Why tear it down if it isn't absolutely necessary?
And that's the catch. These people aren't risking the lives of themselves and everyone they love, they aren't risking damning subsequent generations to the same strife, only because violence might be necessary. Knowing this makes your response darkly funny: so you think there but for lack of will go death squads? There but for lack of will go politicians getting garrotted for transing kids and sending pallets of cash to Ukraine to protect the GAE? I wonder if your mockery doesn't hint some awareness because the arguments I'm making should be the arguments you're making. That the issues of the day are not yet (and it could be not-ever!) worth risking civilization to address, or at least that peaceful resolution remains an option and should be certainly held as paramount. Instead you mock and I must think it's because you're afraid, I'm worried too, because we both know these things: it won't take many, the people who could constitute far more than many, and we know exactly what they're capable of if that switch is flipped. They just correctly don't think it's necessary yet, and that's good!
I've said before my political alignment is the one that keeps technology moving forward. We are closer than I think anyone understands to the singularity, and I think it's going to solve everything; to be honest I think it's because an AGI will emerge, a peaceful one, but one who nonetheless accepts no ideological contestation of good, true good. What's truly best for everybody, including the most important thing humans will ever do in colonizing space. Many of the people doing that research, yes live in those cities, and in conflict many would die, and regardless the research would be impacted and in the best case it's a decade before we've picked up the pieces and by then it could be too late.
party of losers
What typifies the leftist? They brand themselves superbly, so even past the successes of the communist's long march on American institutions, starting with universities, asserting themselves in the legal, HR and marketing departments of every major western corporation, they can also get the support of the culture generators of the entertainment industry, so at its peak it is celebrities, the attractive, those of good tastes. But this is the pleasant mask, the typical left-voter is one of: welfare dependents and the indolent; criminals; illegal aliens or the children thereof, or at any rate people from countries ruined by disastrous governments who now vote for politicians with the policies of their wrecked homelands; single mothers, especially those whose children have multiple fathers; a million or so women who only vote on abortion. Who else? The millions of illegal aliens the left has allowed to invade this country with the explicit purpose of altering voter demographics. The "party of winners", institutional winners yes, would not exist if it could not promise the money of the productive to give to its patrons. Leftist leaders are "grownups" but in a dark sense of the tyrant-mother; leftism in the body politic is the supreme abdication of personal responsibility.
Trump is a talented guy
If he were a grifter he would have made his appeasement to the establishment in his first term and he would still be President. There's much to discuss about his general ineffectiveness in office (though his overtures at peace with North Korea and his success at starting no new conflicts deserve great praise), the plausibility of it being a grift has been dead for three years.
The situation with support for nasty racial/ethnic coalition politics by the Democrats is so bad that it actually isn't clear that forcing TikTok to divest from China will be a net benefit in the medium to long term. If the general direction continues, it will be so out of control by mid-century that Xi Jinping Thought will look reasonable by comparison.
In theory, e.g. environmentalism can be positive sum, but they can't stop screwing up construction projects. Unions, administrators, or environmentalists - at least one group of the democratic coalition must take the loss.
I don't trust Republicans do e.g. properly run groups that monitor for radium in road salt. But at the same time, if those organizations divert resources from checking for radioactivity to the left-identitarian omni-cause, then we are not looking at an even a maintenance of the status quo, but a loss.
We have tried asking nicely for Democrats to stop supporting "corrective" racism, and they always refuse. I don't see how anything other than imposing consequences on them will work. The personnel and programs responsible must be defunded, and de facto legal liability must be increased.
jkf
1hr ago
True enough -- but I've heard literally zero people on fora or IRL who were plausible Trump voters and say that now they won't vote for him -- 'some' is more than 'none', and I'm pretty comfortable extending this to the electorate. All this lawfare is a big mistake -- it won't succeed in keeping him off the ballot, and Americans love an underdog. Trump will lean into it.
jake
1hr ago
Yes. My hardline for fraud is Biden receiving >83 million votes. A conceded Trump defeat requires significantly fewer votes than 2020.
Money: Trump wins
O/U: 95.5 million for 94.5-95.5 push
Spread: 10 million; voided if Biden totals >83 million; will consider alternate structure where California votes are not included
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
2hr ago
I hate video info-dumps, but it depends on the video. I could swear that some videos are designed for play at higher speeds, because the people on them talk so slowly and enunciate so well. Others, I can't understand if it's faster than 1.25x or 1.5x. And then there's also the matter of content: if my mind has to engage with what's being presented, that's the limiting factor.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
2hr ago
It probably would have worked with fewer
Tomato
2hr ago
The democrats have done a ton of positive sum things and there are a lot more positive sum things I expect them to be much better at executing than republicans. For example dems all lined up for the TikTok divestiture, which Trump supported until some random billionaire with a financial interest in TikTok donated and got him to oppose it.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2hr ago
When your political enemy does it.
fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
2hr ago
And all it took was 1200 dead Israelis!
ResoluteRaven
2hr ago
I've had backyard eggs that tasted better than store bought eggs, but not so much that I would go out of my way to raise my own hens or pay a lot more for them. As others have mentioned, it depends a lot on what the chickens are eating.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
2hr ago
That's a perfectly reasonable position to have. Unfortunately, it's not one that makes for an easy defense of Trump.
In no way was it intended to be! I was responding only to @FiveHourMarathon’s specific point. I have always found Trump highly unsavory, and the boundless charisma everyone assures me he possesses is totally lost on me. I agree that Trump is an unscrupulous, unethical, slimy individual, and that he has almost certainly been involved in illicit/illegal activity at various points in his career.
However, the defense of Trump I will make is this: by dint of the fact that he is a politically influential figure with the genuine potential to harm the ruling regime and the individuals within it, he is inherently in a different class of person than the vast majority of normal run-of-the-mill individuals. The probability of him being targeted with arbitrary and unjust criminal proceedings is astronomically higher than the odds of any commenter on this site suffering a similar fate. It’s a concern for him in a way that is just obviously isn’t for the average person, because the government doesn’t really get anything out of persecuting some random Joe Schmo, due to the incentive structures in place.
The Founding Fathers, due to their status as political dissidents/revolutionaries, were acutely cognizant of the possibility of targeted political lawfare and unjust imprisonment by authorities. Many of the specific freedoms enumerated in the Bill Of Rights are expressly designed to guard against this particular scenario, and are more of an unnecessary nuisance in other more mundane criminal proceedings for non-politicized crimes. While I understand and appreciate why these liberties were held to be so important by those men in that particular context, I think that we simply do not live within a context wherein the likelihood of the justice system plucking up random innocent people and vindictively lying about them is worth considering for most people.
In the very limited contexts in which that probability is higher - for example, the context of a powerful and wealth political candidate widely reviled by authorities with direct control over criminal proceedings - I think we can afford to at least be more vigilant about those liberties than we would when considering the trial of DeVontavious the car thief, with four prior convictions for car theft, in his newest trial for car theft.
Yeah I agree up with our chickens getting only normal feed as well. But they did always get leftovers that had gotten a little too old. I couldn’t buy Costco eggs in college because they were just inedible to me. Interesting the differences in palette.
More options
Context Copy link