The woman, referred to as “Witness 1” in an FBI affidavit, previously recalled how a bit of “comically minimal ego-stroking” on her part led to Taake and other Jan. 6 participants giving up information about their activities during that attack.
“I felt a bit of ‘civic duty,’ I guess, but truthfully, I was mostly just mad and thinking, ‘F— these guys,’” the woman, who spoke anonymously for fear of online reprisal, said. The men wanted to “regurgitate” the lies they heard from prominent Republicans about the 2020 presidential election, she said.
What does communism have to do with progressives or conservatives? These topics are not related. Unless you are pointing to deadly conservative communist governments like the CCCP.
i love how you slashed through that socialist/capitalist dichotomy and got down to the meat: right vs. left. let’s narrow it down even further: altruism vs. narcissism. you either have empathy and want to see other people live well, or you’re a selfish asshole. this is the true dichotomy. there are ways within different systems of law and economics to make life better for most people just like there are ways within different systems to make everyone miserable. intent is what matters. my intent is to purge this world of the narcissists.
…you either have empathy and want to see other people live well, or you’re a selfish asshole. this is the true dichotomy.
Hear, hear! This is really what it all comes down to. I suspect sociopathy is a gradient scale where “woke leftist” is the lowest value on the left and “conservative nazi” is the highest value on the right. It all seems to come down to empathy.
The right have killed significantly more than communists. We just don’t label it as murder when it’s capitalists, because making “lower beings” suffer is the intended effect of capitalism. Why is it not capitalism’s fault when conservative states fail catastrophically and cause the deaths of millions, but when a communist state fails it’s suddenly socialism’s problem?
Conservatives refuse to acknowledge that capitalism is built on mountains of bones, hubdreds of millions of bones at least, and is still completely dysfunctional. Their criticism of better ideologies is just projection of that.
Well sure, but only self-identified communism rather than real communism. Like the National Socialism Party, the Chinese Communist Party, or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. They were all “socialism” and “communism” where the rights to everything were held exclusively by the state which was controlled by small groups of individuals. To me that doesn’t sound like it fits the bill, but whatevs.
China has issues for sure, but let’s not pretend like the United States achieved it’s world power status with hugs. They sat out WW2 till they had a war machine, and now that war machine is too significant a part of it’s economy and power base to let there not be war so they start them all over the place to keep the party going.
I mean, you could have started with things like the (multiple) Bengal Famines, the Holocaust, and the Imperial Japanese conquests that killed twenty million people themselves, but, sure, student protests…
Lol, because these topics are at all on the same scale of evil? Kent State (4 deaths) compared to the Fucking Holocaust and Rape of Nanking?
Or chattel slavery?
It’s just weird to lead with Kent State of all things when the other guy is saying communism is the most evilest thing ever because Lysenkoism or whatever bullshit they’re on.
lmao, you really linked to the Tiananmen Square wiki article. I knew whatever the link was, it was going to be stupid, but I audibly laughed when that page came up.
Thanks for the entertainment. Sorry about the bad brain.
Which is actually pretty hopeful. Once the dude got out of a media ecosystem telling him what to think and feel, and he was presented with the facts in an irrefutable way, he did what was right.
Right-wing media is all about creating an information bubble keeping inconvenient truths out.
Also forcing them to communicate with real people in real life makes a HUGE difference. Combine those two things and you have a potentially powerful force of deprogramming.
It’s almost like forcing the Germans to walk through the camps after they were liberated… Except hopefully before it gets to that point.
I strongly believe that the majority of Trump supporters (maybe not the supremely rabid ones) truly believe that they’re doing the right thing based on the propaganda they’re exposed to.
I live in a rather red area of my state and while I definitely know racists and selfish assholes (this is NY so they’re everywhere) most of the Republicans i know are generally good people that are just submerged in a propaganda ecosystem. Hell one of my coworkers is absolutely a way better person than I am: volunteering and giving to charity, giving a lot of their time to others, but they’re also a die hard Republican.
If anyone checks my history I say this a thousand times: I FUCKING HATE PROPAGANDISTS they are a cancer on society…
God if that’s all it takes… Stick each of these fuckers in a tiny room with 11 of their peers and FORCE them to listen to nothing but cold hard facts for hours a day, for weeks, and then discuss them in person until they can all unanimously agree on our collective reality…
Maybe it’s doable? God, I hate the idea of “re-education,” it has such an icky, authoritarian connotation. But it’s literally what these people need. Except in this case it isn’t about inundating them with propaganda, it’s literally just reality and irrefutable facts.
If the people on the jury started to see themselves as a coherent group, then they can change minds and reach consensus. People listen to other people in their in group way more.
If you try to talk to a maga person, and they see you as a Outsider, you’re going to have a very difficult time getting them to listen to anything you say.
We all do this to some extent.
It’s just really bad currently that the maga people will look to their group for consensus reality, and they have mostly bad ideas.
people put off buying homes and other big purchases because they know it will be cheaper later
What absolute drivel. This myth was obviously formulated by some wealthy economist who had only ever worries about purchasing vacation homes.
People put off buying homes UNTIL THEY CAN AFFORD IT. How many people does the author think are currently in the streets or renting for years just so they can save a bit on their mortgage? Completely garbage.
But companies will have to lay off workers! Oh wait, they’re already doing that despite record profits.
Companies will stop giving raises! Oh wait, they’ve been doing that for decades.
The economy stopped working for the average person. It’s been going on so long now that it’s normalized. People are afraid. We need to wake up to our exploitation.
And I say this as a person who is well paid, at a company that treats its people well. I’ve worked enough other jobs to know how abnormal my situation is and will gladly fight alongside those who aren’t as lucky as me because I refuse to accept the “fuck you, I’ve got mine” mantra.
With the interest rates what they are, it makes sense to wait on buying a home, even if you can technically “afford” it. My mortgage would be 60% higher if I bought today vs. 2 years ago when interest rates were a lot lower.
I'm sorry to be pedantic but this is a pet peeve of mine. If you bought a house you would not have any mortgage payment. You (and everyone else usually) are talking about financing a house.
Maybe I'm the crazy one but when I buy something I like to look at the total amount that I'm paying for it.
If I wanted a house listed for $300,000 5-years ago and I wanted to finance it, the rate might have been 3% so the total amount I would be paying would be $455,332.36 over 30yrs. Therefore I would only finance if I thought ~$450,000 was a fair price. If I thought the house was only worth $300,000 then I would need to pay in cash.
Today rates are at 7% so a house listed at $300,000 actually costs $718,526.69 when financed. Do I think the houses I see listed for $300,000 are worth over $700,000? No. Do I have more than $300,000 needed to afford to pay in cash? Also no. Therefore, I'm not buying.
*These calculations are ignoring the down payment but the principle is still valid.
I’ll up your pedantry with even more pedantry, colloquially “bought a house” is understood to mean “closed a deal on a house with financing” - “bought a house outright” would be for a full cash purchase.
I don’t mind unnecessary pedantry where appropriate, but you’re incorrect in this context.
And, technically speaking, when you buy a house (mortgage or not) you become the owner of that house - you’re just also receiving a loan with your house as collateral. So, if you fully paid off your house and then applied for a loan to start a business would you consider your house no longer owned by you?
If we really dig down here your pedantry about buying a house becomes quite meaningless because the loan using your house as collateral doesn’t mean you’re any less an owner of your house - you own it, fully and completely, you just also have an outrageously large loan using it as collateral (granted it’s a pretty special loan for a number of good social reasons).
It is extremely good to acknowledge how much that loan interest rate is effectively increasing the price of your house though, far too few people realize how much actual money they end up paying.
I would disagree with you on the pedantry. There would be two separate transactions: a buy buys the property from the seller, and the borrower borrows from the lender.
The property is treated as collateral, but the buyer/lender is the owner of the property. Mortgages are a bit special different from most common consumer debt because of the timing- the transactions need to be simultaneous because you need to have the collateral to get the money, and you need the money to get the property, but afterwards you still have ownership of the property.
Whether it’s a mortgage, a car, putting a latte on your credit card, or a multi-billion dollar corporate acquisition it’s the same.
That aside, the rest of your comment I agree is good advice to consider, but it’s just part of the equation. You’re assuming the mortgage is actioned as plan throughout it’s lifetime. However, the borrower has options. They might want to pay early and will save a lot of interest that way (maybe more than just interest if they have PMI). There’s also the option to refinance out of a higher rate later on.
Also… You’re comparing two different things by asking if a house listed for $300,000 is worth $700,000. In order to do a fair comparison, you need to do the same calculation for every house you consider and for the entire market you’re basing your expectations around. The only houses worth $300,000 when you factor in the interest of a 30 year mortgage would be a fraction of that cost. Or if you’re comparing to the alternative of not buying, then what you really need to compare is the cost of renting vs the interest you expect to save in whatever period you expect to defer buying for.
Except even then you can plan to refinance. There’s tradeoffs- it’s a pain and you have to pay additional costs, but if the rate is that much of a problem it’s usually worth it. Plus the additional history of a few years of mortgage will likely help your credit score.
And there’s even more context. You’re talking about buying today- my parents had immaculate credit and a huge down payment when they bought their house in the 80’s. Their interest rate was 15%. The US has had artificially low rates for decades, to the point where people are considering 6% and 7% to be “high”.
Rates will certainly impact who can or cannot afford to buy a home of course, but the only ones who are deferring purchasing at all for that reason are people viewing their home as a financial instrume that needs return on investment. If you need a home for shelter, a slightly higher rate is still a way better financial decision in the long-run than renting most of the time.
Yeah, we would move tomorrow if we could afford to. We own a house that is a nice house in a nice neighborhood, but not in a desirable town, so it’s not worth much. We can’t afford to sell it and buy a house somewhere else. We’re not waiting for a good deal, we can’t afford any deal right now.
So in theory, it’s not exactly wrong. If you’re going to buy a house that’s $300k today, but you knew that it would be $250k tomorrow, why wouldn’t you wait? And the next day you see that the price has dropped to $225k, so why wouldn’t you wait a little bit longer?
That’s why the Fed tries to maintain a positive inflation rate- if your money is going to be worth less tomorrow than it is today, you would want to spend it as soon as possible to maximize your purchasing power (assuming you’re a rational actor, which is always a toss-up when discussing economics).
In practice, you’re exactly right. I’ve seen people not buy houses because inflation was too high and they couldn’t afford it, but nobody was waiting when inflation was low for it to get even lower before buying a house. Mostly because when housing gets too low, rent-seekers start buying them en masse.
The problems are 1) when your inflation rate is too high, because then people just don’t have the money to buy things so instead of not buying because they don’t want to, they stop buying because they can’t spend more, and 2) corporations used COVID as an excuse to jack prices up because they could. When your production is back at pre-Covid levels but your pricing isn’t, simple supply/demand curves aren’t enough to explain why. (Also I’m not saying that all production and manufacturing has returned to pre-Covid levels, only that it’s been a long time since I went to the store and couldn’t get what I wanted or a reasonable substitute yet those things are more expensive than they were five years ago.)
The other thing missing is you need to live somewhere now. You also have other considerations - if you are starting a family you typically will need to have a place for the family to live and that forces you to buy now. This is why most deflation arguments fail - people need to live, so they will buy food, and shelter (including clothing). People will replace their broken down car. People will buy toys if they can afford it.
Even if you can buy the house for $200k next year, you don't know that the price will go down - I've seen prices go down and then go back up more than once in my life. Maybe you get unlucky, but maybe you bought the bottom, you have no idea what inflation/deflation will do in 5 years and only educated guesses for next year.
I mean - I could afford a home now, it’s just stupid expensive and I’d be leveraged up to my eyeballs. You do usually need to have the deposit in on-hand cash (though if you’re sneaky and an utter idiot you could probably find some way to borrow for the down payment).
I understand where you’re coming from but it’s accurate language to use because a lot of people technically could afford to buy homes right now they just know it’s dumb and realize the market is about to collapse and they’d end up underwater on like an 8% mortgage.
Aside, it is absolutely fucking insane that rents usually far exceed mortgages. The rent does need to account for the lack of liability for depreciation property damage (like, if your apartment floods you’re not on the hook to replace your floor boards) but in a lot of markets it’s become entirely detached from reality.
With persistent deflation, that down payment would have to be 100% of the price of the house.
As for right now, you don’t need a 20% down payment for a house. That just avoids mortgage insurance. You can get rid of that once the remaining mortgage is at ~80% of the current value of the house. We got rid of ours in 3 years with a 10% down payment but that was in a booming market in the fastest growing large city in the country. It may not even make financial sense to buy in your area. If it is going to be an extra $1000+/month to buy vs renting, stick to renting and make sure you are filling up your Roth IRA and if you have more, throw it into a savings account which actually bears interest now.
And of course if you are doing something as lavish as eating avocado toast or getting coffee from a coffee shop…keep doing that of it makes you happy. It is not going to really amount to shit.
There are circumstances when it’s appropriate but it’s really risky. It’s extremely easy to find yourself underwater in debt if you’ve borrowed the full amount. In 2009 when the housing market had fully crashed it was probably an acceptable level of risk.
Unless you’re planning on installing the panels yourself, the price is actually going up now because the labor component of the installation is growing faster than the equipment prices are declining. Furthermore, many utilities are trying to enact regressive metering policies that will make ROI nearly impossible to achieve over the life of the panels.
The best time to install was the year the IRA was signed into law. The second best time is now.
This all seems to assume I live in the USA which is not the case. Last time I had a solar panel company representative visit the vast majority of the cost was the equipment - the installation itself is rather quick. Obviously the price decrease is not going to last forever but so far it has been true. Also, this is just to highlight the fact that “deflation” does affect consumer behaviour in a negative way.
There’s probably a good reason the vast majority of economists agree that deflation is bad for this exact reason. It’s not just my opinion - I’m not an economist and I doubt you’re either.
Economists are pretty famous for fighting amongst themselves. The vast majority of economists don’t agree on anything with each other.
The loudest economists tend to agree with each other. The ones whose views and supported policies happen to result in more wealth being funneled to capital holders. For some reason those people are the ones who get interviews on TV and articles published by major outlets. I wonder why that could be?
I’m not saying every “indie” economist on the Internet is valid as there’s plenty of bad ones too. But the idea that deflation is terrible certainly deserves scrutiny. Just look around… Is the populace happy with the results of the current systems and policies?
To quote one of the most famous economists, Hayek, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design”
This is a misunderstanding of the issue. If money gains value by sitting in a mattress, there is incentive to not spend or invest and large portions of it effectively gets removed from the economy altogether.
How many people can afford to keep their money under a mattress though? According to studies last year, 57% of Americans could not afford a $1,000 expense.
Why is saving such a bad thing? There’s so many articles about how people aren’t saving enough for retirement (especially with pensions disappearing as a concept over the last several decades). I know it’s been a couple of decades, but just a couple generations ago consumers used to actually benefit from the interest on their savings. My mom likes to talk about how she used Certificates of Deposit to slowly get low-risk, passive income that exceeded the rate of inflation and her mortgage rate and helped to pay off her house. I check every few years and even now CD’s just aren’t worth bothering with because the rates are so low.
“Savings lowers spending, that’s the paradox of thrift. Keep that money in your pocket and the growth will never lift” has some truth to it, but why do we need to perpetually grow on a planet constrained with finite resources? When will our hunger be satisfied?
A lack of savings creates more volatile markets and a worse quality if life for everyone because of it. Toyota famously led the way with their “just in time” business model- reducing inventory down to the absolute bare minimum to operate (savings is not just limited to money). Pretty much every manufacturer in every industry followed suit. Toyota learned it was a bad idea when Japan was hit by an earthquake and they struggled to get parts to make cars- they then reversed course and kept a modest supply of parts on-hand. Most other companies saw this during Covid when “logistical issues” (really the greed of these businesses leading to inadequate insulation from supply chain disruption) led to shortages of almost every consumer good.
Economists seem to forget sometimes that money needs to be used for things other than passively making more money.
Not really. Many put off buying a house until it makes financial sense. If renting makes more sense (it does in many markets currently), you are going to continue to do that. Why buy something and deal with the hassle of ownership if you don’t have to? As someone with an 80 year old house, I can tell you that renting was a hell of a lot easier.
It’s also a lot more difficult to afford when the bank has no reason to lend to anyone. They can just sit on the money they already have and make a return risk free.
I mean Rudy was on his podcast telling people his location for weeks so the fuck up was Rudy taunting the AG not so much that Rudy was hiding and the AG couldn’t find him.
I think Trump loves the idea of going to jail to make a political point but I also think Trump is too stupid to realize what being in a jail cell actually entails.
I think he will not go to jail. And I do be not mean it like „buh, American system bad, they will never do it“, i mean it as in: they will put him on house arrest. Normal cloth. Normal food. Security at the door. If he continues to break the gag order and we reach contempt No. 20 then maybe (maybe!) we see him in an actual jail. Not before.
Even that would drive him insane because there is no way they would let him post on his stupid Twitter clone while under house arrest and he wouldn’t be able to campaign.
No. It should be apparent from every other time that hlnothing has happened to shut him up that things will not change and no judge will ever actually shut him.
It sucks, but he will continue to be allowed to spout his bullshit even if the judge does try because SCOTUS will insist Trump gets to say whatever he wants.
I think he will not go to jail. And I do be not mean it like „buh, American system bad, they will never do it“, i mean it as in: they will put him on house arrest. Normal cloth. Normal food. Security at the door.
I’ll go “buh, American system bad.” My prediction - what you have described is the worst he will ever see, if convicted of everything he should be. That man will die of old age, wearing his own clothes, in his own house, living a 1% lifestyle, having never seen the inside of a cell, still claiming he won in 2020. Mark my words.
I’m angry that facing the actual consequences is likely to make him more popular with his base.
This does anger me. But what angers me more is the feeling that a significant factor in this kid gloves treatment is fear of how his supporters will react. It’s literally handing power to fascist regressives.
The issue with a house arrest order would be that it fully denies Trump the ability to campaign for president, which (in his mind and his brainwashed constituency) is a political act and one that he has already prepared his goon squad to riot over. Buckle up buttercups, this should be fun.
one that he has already prepared his goon squad to riot over
That concern for the safety of the officials who would have to enforce an incarceration order is one of the things the judge specifically referenced in his statement.
They are not going to go crazy or anything. Here’s why Trump is popular among the cud-chewers:
He gets away with it
That’s it. That’s why long winded articles in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair about his many misdeeds don’t sway his supporters. He does bad things and gets away with it.
As soon as he lost the election, he lost a lot of his power. J6 only happened because he was still in office at the time. He could still “get away with it”, with help. Just putting him on trial takes away more of his influence, because he’s not getting away with anything anymore.
If he is thrown in jail for contempt (or house arrest) I predict his supporters will be angry but not “go nuts” and attack anything. Fucking vote. This guy is clearly touchable.
In all seriousness, it seems like a disproportionate chunk of the time that I see a House member doing something wacky, its from Georgia.
Some years back, I remember discussions about the US reinforcing the Guam garrison, and Hank Johnson in Congressional hearings saying that he was worried that Guam was going to tip over and capsize.
He’s still in office up there, but he’s at least pretty laid back. He replaced Cynthia McKinney, who was definitely not laid back and infamous for her own brand of conspiracy craziness (other end of the political spectrum from Marjorie Taylor Greene, but wacky as well).
There has got to be something in the water in northern Georgia, because the “House Representative going bonkers” quota is pretty disproportionately represented in the news that I’ve seen out of there.
And it’s not because I’m in Georgia or thereabouts and just seeing local political spatting – this is stuff that makes national news.
Hank was a good guy overall, but the tipping over thing remains possibly the absolute stupidest thing I’ve ever heard anyone say. Its just so damn stupid.
Yeah: go back to the nineties and the man arguably most responsible for the hyper-partisanship in modern politics was also a rep in Georgia…Newt Filthypigfucker Gingrich
What gets me is how controversial things like this are in the US. Non-competes are antisocial, because they blunt one of the few mechanisms capitalism has to keep employers in check – labor market mobility. One of the things that’s supposed to make capitalism kind of okay is the fact that “if you don’t like it, you can go elsewhere.” Well, if you’re not allowed to start a business or get another job in your line of work for like years after you leave, how the hell are you supposed to actually do that? How does the labor market route around bad employers when workers are literally trapped?
Way I see it, a non-compete is just an employer’s way of telling you they’d keep you trapped in a box in your off-hours if they could.
Is it controversial? The only support I’ve heard for them comes from corps, sleazy executives looking to control their employees. Everyone else is like”meh, clearly unfair and should be illegal but I can’t do anything about it and still have a job”
Another commenter in this thread noted that the chamber of commerce is just a right wing lobby group, completely separate to the department of commerce. Not sure if you know that already, but I think it basically aligns to the view of the comment you replied to.
My country has non-competes in the most sensible way: if you don’t want the employee to go to a competitor, you must pay him what he could earn at the competitor during the duration of the non-compete. Employee quits? He can either join the competitor or you can pay him as long as you want him away from the competitor.
Will employers still put non-applicable non-competes? They sure do and I smile when I see those baseless clauses. Have they tried enforcing them at the “work tribunals” (free for the employee), yes they have and they’ve been laughed off by the judges.
Unfortunately, there is a strong implication in American culture that your worth as a human being scales directly with your productivity + net worth. Rich people are intelligent and to be admired
Now take all that stuff that you pointed out as bad, and add on the fact that your healthcare typically comes from your employer too!
You probably don’t even need me to tell you that the right wing media in this country would immediately kick into gear and start programming their base to hate the idea of labor market mobility and the market routing around bad employers. Those people ARE the bad employers!
Before long they’re going to start floating some modern version of an indenture contract for service workers and arguing for the reinstatement of serfdom.
Oh yeah, and they would be going for it right now if they thought they could get away with it.
I mean, how could you not appreciate your employer-provided housing and convenience stores? They’re right next to where you work. You don’t even need a car!
I think the British royal family is a scourge on the earth, responsible for untold amounts of suffering. The UK, British Isles, British people, and world would be a better place without it. I truly hate everything the Windsors stand for, along with their ancestors going back hundreds of years.
But I hate cancer more.
I think it’s possible to have complex feelings about this. Nobody deserves cancer. A lot of the kings of England deserve to have had their heads cut off, but none of them deserved cancer, and certainly not this lady who just lucked and schemed and Machiavellied herself into a life of incomparable privilege inside one of the most powerful dynasties still in existence–the same thing anyone would have done given the chance.
Fuck the royal family. But fuck cancer more. I hope she comes out of it alright, because her husband needs to break the British monarchy, and it would be nicer for him if he had his wife with him when he did.
Hating the British royalty specifically also makes me think British. I’m quite disappointed more people don’t hate monarchy in general though.
I guess in 2024 nobody believes in divine right, and I recognize that the monarchs in the vast majority of countries with active monarchies have only ceremonial power, but i still struggle to understand how people in the Commonwealth realms, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, etc., are cool thinking that some rich fuck is somehow better than them or important in any way just because their ancestor was the last person sitting on the throne when everybody decided they weren’t playing the game anymore.
Is it something where they appreciate the tie to history? Even so why would you want a tie to a history that said your ancestors were intrinsically lesser than just because they didn’t have as much land, as big a sword/army, or as much money to pay off the church?
Yup I’m British and I can’t stand the whole concept. I’m a republican (don’t freak out Americans, that just means I want Britain to be a republic without a monarchy).
… This ghoul seriously forced in a talking point asking for more equipment? To grieving parents who watched their kids die while the police were derelict in their duty? 50% of the city budget isn’t enough huh?
The report for the Uvalde city council… was conducted by Jesse Prado, an Austin-based investigator and former police detective.
Ah. “We’ve investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing” despite the feds openly stating the opposite
Yup, once a team decides not to go in, they won’t go. There will always be another goalpost to move. If they had the shield, they would be waiting for one more guy, or a specialized unit or a robot to go in.
It is still crazy to me, he is responsible for an insurrection and still gets the option to run for President. Every time I’ve talked about it on twitter some right-winger will bring up it was mostly peaceful and some other event that has nothing to do with anything lol.
because at no time since this nation was founded was it considered possible for a president of this country to be under the thrall of a hostile foreign power and want to overthrow it.
Yup. They clearly thought individuals could be compromised. Their falling was in not considering the possibility that more than half the people leading the 3 branches of the federal government could all be in cahoots.
They thought the self interest of the individual states would keep them independent.
This is an important lesson in Narcissistic Personality Disorder (Trump is very much a narcissist). Narcissists use vague and ambiguous language, usually rapid fire, in order to confuse and disorient listeners. The term is called Narcissistic Word Salad. It means that he can rile people up to commit an insurrection while at the same time be legally protected because he never directly commanded January 6ers to do what they did with clear and pointed language. All of his communication is very obviously crafted to manipulate and obfuscate, and it’s how he’s managed to keep his crime empire afloat for decades.
I thought he spoke vaguely cause he knows he’s commiting crimes and has some semblance of tact about it (to save himself of course) not a great one but something. I never realized it could be another part of narcissism. I
There needs to be a law for a limit, like yes you used vague language but you did it 50 (random number but something that shows a pattern) times that’s enough to charge you for your actions.
I wonder what actual organized crime bosses think of him, he must have dealt with them in construction in the 80s and 90s.
Nothing says “peaceful” like stealing a cops riot shield and using it to bash through a security window, or using bear spray on the cops trying to protect the lawmakers.
It always fascinates me in a morbid way how we can hyperfixate on individual suffering when there are people unnecessarily suffering and dying in droves both domestically and abroad.
It’s sad, but a woman got kidnapped on vacation and is likely dead or in sex slavery. People unnecessarily die horribly in our tent cities of exposure to the elements and police harassment constantly, as we consider their lives without value because we’re a sick, broken people. Some of us even wish death upon them for lowering local property values by selfishly continuing to exist without capital.
But this victim is affluent and photogenic, so it’s very important and no resource will be spared.
It’s tangable tangible because there’s a face associated with the story and doesn’t happen nearly as often. The other example you provided would be in the news everyday. Its like if your tires were slashed this morning but you decided to tell your coworkers about how you spilled some coffee on the counter.
My example isn’t in the news everyday because our people don’t care about them, otherwise the news would report on them.
Our news knows what drives views. We largely only worry about people of means who are preferably also photogenic who are in trouble.
It scales too. We basically moved heaven and Earth to rescue that billionaire’s goo from the bottom of the Atlantic from trying to show off as it dominated the entire news cycle and the nation and world held its breath for a week.
It’s the world we live in, I just find it morbid, inhuman, and proof of a severe socio-cultural disease.
The article all but says the husband is the suspect here. Reading between the lines it’s heavily implied that he’s directly involved in her disappearance.
If the classic RTS Red Alert taught me anything it’s that Stalin quote “when you kill one person, it’s a tragedy. You kill a million, it’s a statistic.”
Of course I’m sure he didn’t actually say that but it’s fun to pretend
It's easier to hope someone will have information on an individual who's is reported on. Someone might see the article and realise they saw her in a coffee shop with a man, looking very uneasy. And tip off police.
Whereas homelessness is a much harder thing to tackle. That requires government intervention rather than individual intervention from someone who saw something suspicious. And getting a government to care about homeless people is a huge ask.
I hate that we have a homelessness issue, and I hate that it's not reported on much at all. Things should be in the public eye, in hopes that people wrote to their local rep to try get help.
But it's more likely you'll find a missing person (dead or alive) by posting an article than it is likely you'll resolve homelessness.
There have been studies proving its significantly cheaper to house the homeless than to manage the secondary effects of mass homelessness as we do. We want homelessness because our culture is highly punitive, with many believing some deserve to suffer for making “bad” decisions to feel superior. Schadenfreude is a hell of a drug. They also function as scarecrows for the capitalists, ensuring the working poor knows what happens if they fail to show up for their scheduled exploitation.
Empathizing with individuals is built into how the human brain works, because we can theoretically do something about the plight of a single person - at least, this was true in an age before mass communication, when our world was only as large as the people we interacted with. It was mutually beneficial for humans to develop an instinct to help those in their own social group, because it was more likely to result in one’s own DNA being passed on.
Hearing about the problems of large numbers of people doesn’t click the same way for us because, for the majority of human history, it didn’t affect one’s ability to further one’s genes. Aiding some random person from a distant tribe just doesn’t figure into an individual’s reproductive fitness. We don’t have an instinct to help people we don’t know, especially when they don’t have a name and a face. And so it’s not ingrained in us. It has to be taught.
I mean, it also helps that it seems to be an international, targeted hit on a woman trying to leave her husband in a nasty divorce with a lot of money at stake.
This isn’t just some chick went missing on holiday, but wait she’s hot, rich, and probably connected so everyone pay attention because a real person was hurt.
I’m not disagreeing that beauty and wealth are bringing this additional attention, but this is also far more targeted than a sex/violence crime of opportunity.
Also, if every time a woman was targeted by an ex made headlines, it’s all we would literally ever hear about, anywhere, always.
Family annihilation is often initiated by men, and if it’s a woman killing herself and her kids, there’s a good chance her partner was abusive.
Saying this as a man before any neck beards start angrily sweating about anti-male agendas (not trying to suggest the person I’m replying to is doing that atm).
if it’s a woman killing herself and her kids, there’s a good chance her partner was abusive.
I guess I’ll be the neck beard then. What source do you have that backs this up? Digging through news articles most cases of murder suicide involving the woman killing herself and her kids are due to spite from custody battles or severe mental illness with zero mention of domestic violence.
General population studies of maternal filicide The mothers were often poor, socially isolated, full-time caregivers, who were victims of domestic violence or had other relationship problems.
A mother’s motive for filicide may be altruistic, acutely psychotic, or due to fatal maltreatment, unwanted child, or spouse revenge. In addition, many mothers who do not attempt filicide experience thoughts of harming their child. Maternal filicide motives provide a framework for approaching filicide prevention. Suicidality, psychosis and depression elevate risk, as does a history of child abuse.
So, you can read, but you choose to ignore everything that doesn’t support your opinions. Classic neckbeard!
Yes, revenge is sometimes the driving force - but since you didn’t read any of what was linked with the intent of absorbing information contrary to your existing opinions (or the direct quote I provided), the evidence specifically indicated that abuse/maltreatment is often* the driving force
*the word “often” means it is more common, or at a greater rate than other occurrences.
Hope that clears things up for you!
Now go apologise to your mother for how you are, and try to disappoint her a little less mmmkay?
It’s easier to personally connect with a single good looking person over ‘statistics’. Someone thousands of miles away hasn’t somehow infringed on your life or city or whatever people use to dehumanize hobos.
I enjoyed your paragraph above, regarding the morbid fascination, and I feel I share it.
The waves of hate against all things not white, male, cis/het show up just like Twitter.
Humanity is struggling to adapt to disingenuous trolls in ways that include having people in charge of “moderation” without any desire to foster sincere communication.
Whether it is intentional or not, ignoring fallacies and other red flags used by trolls has only enabled them further and the greatest adaptation of the foreseeable Information Age will be An Effective Bullshit Filter.
My favorite part was how they kept mentioning the sign language interpreters and then never showing them again. Like, give them a picture-in-picture or something. Otherwise, what’s the point?
We switched to closed captions over the course of the 90s. Irl events still use terps but using then on screen is now a specific choice. Usually the only times you’ll see ASL on screen these days is presidential addresses and shows that make a point to cast signers for Deaf characters
I have a question about this, if anybody can help me out. Are Deaf and Hard of Hearing people generally fluent in English (at a similar rate to the general population)? I’ve heard anecdotes about Deaf people who only know ASL, little to no English, but I don’t know how common that actually is. Mainly curious about the US.
I know ofc it’s more complicated than that (ASL isn’t the only sign language used here, and English isn’t the only spoken language, not all Deaf/HH people use sign language, etc.), but I’m just trying to get an idea of the big picture. Like when it comes to TV, are closed captions generally considered ‘accessible’ by the Deaf community?
Apologies if that didn’t make much sense, I had trouble wording it.
So it depends a lot on age, location, and severity of hearing loss. First Deaf and deaf aren’t the same thing. Capital D Deaf means culturally Deaf regardless of severity of hearing loss. Someone can be hard of hearing and Deaf and someone who hears worse may not be. Hoh and deaf people who aren’t Deaf usually are either late deafened or were mainstreamed (basically given hearing aids and usually not taught sign). Little d deaf implies hearing loss severe enough that it would require yelling to have an unaided verbal conversation (not precise but it’s generally accurate).
So for starters, if you grew up with the internet you’re probably fluent in written language, probably English. Unless you’re from a time and place where hearing people weren’t literate you’re probably literate as a deaf person. And to my knowledge there are no widely adopted sign language written forms beyond all caps words in language common to area with sign syntax. That’s why when you see Deaf people struggling with verbal languages it’s usually issues of spelling or syntax not vocabulary. But there’s also fingerspelling. There are a lot more words than signs. Common words quickly get a sign, but shit you don’t have to express face to face often to another Deaf person like professional jargon, you just spell it out.
But think about the 80s-90s in America. People who didn’t learn to read in school were still around. Especially if the system didn’t really care and their parents were illiterate. Even now there are people who can read but not at speaking speed. Captions are fine now, it’s like English to the Dutch. You’ve been using it in entertainment at least partly your whole life. But when it was a language someone half bothered to teach you at ten not so much
Wow, yeah, I hadn’t even considered what difference the internet would have made. Way too often I forget to think about history in its greater context.
And to my knowledge there are no widely adopted sign language written forms beyond all caps words in language common to area with sign syntax.
Not as far as I know, either. About a year ago I learned about a ministry group that translated the entire Christian bible into ASL and made an app where you could watch the videos. I don’t remember the name, but it was cool to learn about. (IIRC, that project was what got me caught up on this question in the first place, lol.)
When you say ‘sign syntax,’ does that mean the same thing as gloss? For example:
YESTERDAY, HOME IX-me STAY
I see it used all the time as a tool for English -> ASL students (of which I am one, lol), but it’s never crossed my mind to wonder what ways it is (and what ways it isn’t) used by the Deaf.
If you don’t mind me asking, are you or someone in your life Deaf? Just curious, since it sounds like you’re more informed than the Average Joe. :)
Yeah there’s a thing where Christians like for their texts to be in every language. It’s probably a lot more of that than anything. ASL was developed by nuns IIRC. It’s definitely not like Plains Sign Language which began as a trade language and eventually developed for the deaf. For as long as modern people of European descent have had sign language we’ve had access to Jesus in it.
I’d give more context but my asl is shit. I don’t really sign beyond insulting the hearing. I’m third generation mainstreamed. (Yeah my great grandparents, grandparents, and parents were all convinced not to teach their children sign language by the experts of the time). And yeah that more or less answers two paragraphs. I’ve been wearing hearing aids since childhood and my mom, grandma, and sister all also have my degenerative hearing loss.
Yeah there’s a thing where Christians like for their texts to be in every language. It’s probably a lot more of that than anything. ASL was developed by nuns IIRC. It’s definitely not like Plains Sign Language which began as a trade language and eventually developed for the deaf. For as long as modern people of European descent have had sign language we’ve had access to Jesus in it.
I’d give more context but my asl is shit. I don’t really sign beyond insulting the hearing. I’m third generation mainstreamed. (Yeah my great grandparents, grandparents, and parents were all convinced not to teach their children sign language by the experts of the time). And yeah that more or less answers two paragraphs. I’ve been wearing hearing aids since childhood and my mom, grandma, and sister all also have my degenerative hearing loss.
I grew up with captions on the tv in the 90s except when my father was watching with us (he hates captions, and I’ll acknowledge they did suck 25 years ago, just less than not hearing sucked). And in early adulthood I went on a journey of self discovery and community discovery of embracing my deafness but I still need to find the time and energy to commit to asl learning
At least here in Cali we do. My HD truck gets an extra $500~ a year tax on top of the Gas guzzler tax I paid when new. Plus the fuel costs/taxes for that. Compared to my other cars I pay about $600 more for newal on it. The Average car is like $245 a year but the truck is like $840.
Definitely fine with paying the extra taxes though. I use more infrastructure and I also require additional strengthening of crash systems and cause road damage so I’m not opposed.
I kindaaaa get it from the states side. The problem they’re suffering from is just shitty taxes though. Rather than taxing gas they should be taxing based on vehicles and potential infrastructure usage. Given PHEV/BEVs don’t use gas they don’t pay as much into the system for roads. Since most roads are funded through fuel taxes. Which is clearly not going to work. I’d love a system rework of registration and gas taxes to solve this as we go into an electric future.
That said, here in Cali no one is also having a conversation about smog check stations that are state mandated on gas vehicles, but soon they could be a thing of the past and I worry about the economics of keeping smog stations alive when most cars don’t “pollute” the same way anymore.
Oooor. We already pay taxes for the roads, why is there a fuel tax at all. It’s like airline fees. They charge you up front for the flight, then have fees for all sorts of things. Only with taxes, each tax cost a significant amount to collect. One central tax for everything would save a lot of money. But of course somewhere there is a director of fuel taxes bringing home a couple hundred k a year…
We don’t properly pay taxes for roads. Like at all. We have a shit load of roads in the US and the maintenance is insane on them. Me paying my measly $900 a year in registration for my truck isn’t enough for the cost of roads, vehicle certifications, bridges, gas subsidies, tunnels, cleaning, water purification due to run-off, and thousands of other things that cars cause. Americans (me included) have the real cost of a driving centric country hidden from us and we act like taxing it appropriately is insane rather than realizing we chose the most inefficient method of transportation. A central tax doesn’t make sense because a lot of people in New York (as an example) don’t drive. Why should they pay for additional upkeep on roads they don’t actively use? They need bike lanes, walk ways, and subway infrastructure. Taxing vehicles at registration makes more sense. The idea behind the gas tax was that for people who drive more, and therefore use more infrastructure, they would pay more. It was designed to be fair and spread the cost evenly, but that’s clearly becoming a problem. Now we’re learning what that cost actually feels like and it sucks because we’re stuck with the bad decisions of our parents and grandparents.
How do you define makes more sense. Less types of tax mean less overhead. So the people get more for thier dollar. Who uses what doesn’t matter. I don’t use welfare, so should I not have to pay for it? I may not use the roads much, but the people who do are usually doing it for work, and one way or another that benefits me. So we should all just pay for everything that makes society work, and stop wasting so much on overhead.
Lol what state is doing this? That should basically kill EV sales there while simultaneously bringing their gas tax revenue to literally zero. Terrible financial choice.
Rather than tax them a bit more, which won’t actually improve safety if people just opt to pay the tax and drive them anyway, why not just straight up legislate weight limits for private vehicles, with commercial licensing as done with cargo trucks expanded to fit more conventional vehicles driven for commercial purposes that have to be large and heavy? Car companies will start making smaller cars again real quick if they’re not allowed to sell them otherwise
Why not make it a two peonged attack against heavy vehicles?
Tax heavy cars severely, and bring the smaller cars we have in Europe to the US, getting the VW Transporter and MB Sprinter would offer smaller, lighter and cheaper utility vehicles with more useful features to the US.
Why not make it a two peonged attack against heavy vehicles?
If we correct the perverse CAFE standards that push manufacturers to increase the size of their cars, the problem largely solves itself, without pissing off consumers.
The standards currently require proportionally greater decreases in emissions on smaller vehicles than larger vehicles. Manufacturers are deliberately increasing the sizes of their vehicles to qualify for the easier standards.
Requiring smaller decreases on smaller vehicles will reverse this trend. Manufacturers will need to spend considerable resources on R&D to improve the economy of larger vehicles, or slim them up so they qualify for a smaller category.
Fuck that. The problem isnt that people want bigger cars. The problem is that NHTSA’s CAFE standards favor manufacture of larger cars.
CAFE slowly reduces the amount of emissions that vehicles can have, but they fucked it up: the required reductions are greatest on the smallest, most efficient cars, and lowest on the largest vehicles. Manufacturers “comply” with these standards by dropping their smallest cars from their lineup, and increasing the sizes of everything left on the market.
Fix the fucking standards to favor smaller cars, and manufacturers will follow.
It would be great if the standards could be loosened a bit to allow more sedans to exist. A modern crown vic would be awesome, but it’s impossible to make with the current rules.
I’d like a new, S10-sized truck, or even smaller, perhaps closer to a Japanese Kei truck. The current crop of “compact” pickups are larger than the “full size” trucks from the 1990’s.
Isn’t it great that we have to make every single regulation perfect without any possible loopholes because it’s just accepted fact that corporations will spend absurd sums of money to avoid having to do anything that might cut into their profit margins?
This isn’t a loophole. This isn’t an example of inadequate pedantry. It’s not even an example of regulatory capture or corruption. This is straight up incompetence on the part of the regulators. They established an easy to meet standard, and a difficult to meet standard, and they went all Pikachu-face when the regulated manufacturers opted for the easier option.
Regulatory Incompetence like this (and malfeasance, like on the part of Ajit Pai’s FCC) are why Chevron Deference needs to be severely modified. We should be allowed to sue the NHTSA for this egregious a failure.
We should be allowed to sue the NHTSA for this egregious a failure.
Can you not? Are you sure? Honest question. It seems wrong to me, but if you have evidence that’s true…
Federal regulatory agencies seemingly get sued all of the time. It’s literally the basis for the current case regarding Chevron deference. There are other cases where the Justice Department is a party to the case.
It’s not incompetence, it’s just the inability to make regulations that are 100% bullet proof, it’s impossible because people are very creative. There is a constant conflict occurring between the regulators doing the best they can to create regulations that can’t be rendered useless, and greedy, amoral corporations that are doing everything in their power to worm their way through a crack and come up with some (often expensive), convoluted way to render the regulation null.
It’s like how DRM in video games kept changing and “improving,” because no matter how secure they were sure they made it, there was always some ridiculously intelligent teenager that comes up with a creative, novel way to crack it.
It’s an arms race, and said corporations will keep finding workarounds until the amount it costs to dodge a regulation becomes higher than what they would have lost had they just followed the rule in the first place… And even then I’m not sure.
I hate that Americans are so ignorant that we have to re-learn, the hard way, step-by-step as to why regulations that we already have exist. It would almost be funny if it didn’t mean that people have to die unnecessarily before they learn the same exact lesson that we already figured out (the hard way).
Can you not? Are you sure? Honest question. It seems wrong to me, but if you have evidence that’s true…
You can sue anyone at any time and for any reason, but that doesn’t mean you’ll prevail. Chevron Deference basically says that unless the agency is actually violating legislation, the courts must defer to the agency’s expertise. Even if the agency’s rule is counterproductive (NHTSA’s CAFE standards) or overtly hostile to the public interest (FCC overturning Net Neutrality under Ajit Pai’s leadership), the courts can only rule against them on the basis that they are violating legislated law.
I don’t see how that’s a better solution than taxing heavier cars…? We can tax the sales of the vehicle directly which negatively impacts manufacturers because in the USA each vehicle dealership is brand associated rather than retailers.
For a tax to be effective for such a purpose, it has to be avoidable. They have to actually make a small car. But the CAFE standards as they currently stand prevent them from cheaply producing a CAFE compliant small car. So nobody gets the tax break on the small car, because there are no small cars to be had.
The tax approach cannot be achieved until the CAFE standards are fixed, but once we fix the CAFE standards to favor smaller cars, the problem solves itself.
CAFE works by requiring a certain percentage of the total number of a manufacturer’s vehicles to comply. Small cars are currently non-compliant. Only big cars are compliant, so they need to sell more of them. When we correct CAFE standards to favor small cars, they will need to sell small cars, and their marketing departments will get to work at adjusting consumer demand.
If it’s cheaper to produce a small car because of the tax, then the tax is effective. Making the bigger cars more expensive incentivizes the smaller cars.
Taxes, fines, and regulatory fees in economic theory are supposed to represent the costs incurred by the general public (in this case the environment as well as infrastructure maintenance) being paid by the parties responsible. This often is not the case in practicality, such as the costs to reverse methane emissions not being covered by the fines associated with flare stacks.
If the companies can’t produce cars cheap enough then they’ll have to raise the price. If less people can afford cars, that’s fine, then more investment will have to be made into public transport, bike lanes, and walkable communities. I do not see any downsides to a tax on larger vehicles.
If it’s cheaper to produce a small car because of the tax, then the tax is effective.
It is not cheaper to produce the small car. You’re not quite understanding this.
The small car does not comply with the perverse CAFE standards. The big cars do comply. If they sell too many of the efficient, but non-compliant small cars, they get penalized. That penalty greatly increases the cost of producing the small, non-compliant car.
Without CAFE standards, your argument is reasonable and valid. With the asinine standards currently in place, your argument is completely irrelevant.
It is not cheaper to produce the small car. You’re not quite understanding this.
The small car does not comply with the perverse CAFE standards. The big cars do comply. If they sell too many of the efficient, but non-compliant small cars, they get penalized. That penalty greatly increases the cost of producing the small, non-compliant car.
Do not sit there and tell me that it’s impossible for a small car to comply with standards. That’s ridiculous. Charge them extra for selling a big car so that making a big car is more expensive than creating a small car. You can’t just say that this is impossible and deny the obvious solution, this is the clear solution.
Do not sit there and tell me that it’s impossible for a small car to comply with standards.
Clearly, you do not understand the problem with how CAFE standards are currently implemented, because that is, indeed, the case. The mandated reductions on small cars are too much, and the mandated reductions on large cars are not enough. Manufacturers did the math, and the most feasible solution was to increase the size of cars. Cars are proportionally wider now than they used to be, to maximize their footprint and bump them up into larger classes.
Manufacturers will do anything they need to to avoid violating CAFE standards. With current regulations, that means “sell fewer small cars”. If we try to solve the problem with taxes on large cars, manufacturers will simply increase the MSRP of small cars. Add a $5000 tax on large cars, and they will add $5000 to the sticker price on small cars, or otherwise ensuring the large car remains the better value.
Correct the regulations so that smaller, intrinsically efficient cars are feasible, while forcing manufacturers to go to extraordinary efforts to continue manufacturing large cars, and the problem solves itself.
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