His ex-wife Ivana said in their divorce hearings that he kept Mein Kampf on his bedside table. Very believable, but perhaps he had it just as a token since I’m not convinced he can really read.
I think they meant anything longer than a tweet or a newspaper article about himself. We know how his officials had to dumb down every briefing for him because he never read anything ahead of time and had a hard time in general comprehending basic topics.
Not a chance. You can’t have it both ways, and there’s no way he had the patience to read an old book. He didn’t read intelligence briefings specifically made for him.
I promise you’d be surprised what being interested in a topic can do. He doesn’t give a flying fuck about intelligence briefings. But a book by a genocidal dictator? Now that will really pique his interest.
Being able to and wanting to, being practised in reading and actually understanding what you read are probably very different things. Some people decided that colorful flash cards work best with him. The news articles about him not reading his briefing materials but looking at the pictures are also out there. I think he reads everything that comes in the size of a flash card or a tweet, much longer than that and I have my doubts.
Having a gun for self defense fucks with your head. When my wife and I lived in a relatively rural area, I used to keep a shotgun under our bed for protection, but I eventually got rid of it. Never shot it a single time, but you’d better believe every time I cleaned it or moved it or just remembered I had it, I was imagining the horrible situation I might be forced to use it in. That shit low key fucked me up. Strange sound in the middle of the night? Better grab the gun.
I can’t even begin to imagine carrying one on me, especially in public. I like to think I have a pretty level head, but some people are just waiting for you to look at them the wrong way so they finally have that moment. So frightened or psychotic or some combination of the two that their first instinct is to just start shooting. Hell, my wife’s cousin-in-law got in a fucking shootout when he cut someone off in traffic.
Used to be very pro responsible gun ownership, but lately I’m thinking that level of responsibility is far too rare in people.
I am the same person as you except I actually carried around my gun. Being an stupid 21 year old with a gun sounds so stupid back then. I’m glad nobody died because of me.
When I was a kid this guy released a movie like every week. And every time we’d go to a Jacky Chan movie, I’d walk out of that theater thinking I was the king of fuck mountain, that somebody aught to just TRY and fuck with me.
I was not the only one. I don’t know who it was, but I saw a comedian on comedy Central echo that exact same feeling, which seemed to resonate with the audience, so I know it’s not unique. You feel powerful just being in the presence of such a thing.
There’s a whole book series about the presence of powerful things being a corrupting presence. They’re pretty good. Turned in to movies and everything.
I have an airsoft gun and it’s only after I shot my wife in the ass that I considered the considerable weight of responsibility that such a weapon imposes on a man.
I want some sort of driving test for guns. If you fail it, no guns for you. Have to retake it every 5-10 years and it’s pretty easy to pass if you aren’t a moron.
I’ve seen literally the dumbest shit on ranges. People flagging one another. Accidental discharges a few feet from one’s foot, flagrantly breaking the range rules while the range instructor literally just finished explaining the rules to everyone there.
Christ, one time (in a rural state) someone didn’t want to give up their CC to run a combat-style range. It was for safety, in case they ate shit on the course. They said they needed their CC in case there was a “terrorist attack”. I looked around the bumfuck, empty desert we were in and wondered where the terrorists would even come from, lmao.
This seems to work for the Swiss. Heck they have a shooting range that fires over a freeway, and any incident involving firearms makes national if not global news.
Hard agree on the gun safety test. Buying a gun, especially in the US, is way too easy and the number of people walking around strapped with absolutely no knowledge of gun safety, let alone armed self defense training, is terrifying.
My wife’s family leans very hard into the guns, god and Trump right wing. My father in law set up a shooting range on his property, and it’s a tradition for the cousins to get together and show off their arsenal. I keep a pistol there because it’s a hellava range gun and the 22LR rounds are dirt cheap, but you can imagine the shit I catch in a family where 9mm is considered a “pussy round”.
The amount of stupid shit I’ve seen on this range would boggle your mind, and I feel a deep responsibility to make sure nobody dies while I’m there. I’ve seen people walk in front of the range with earmuffs on while someone was getting ready to shoot. I had to stop my father in law from breaking his thumb trying to shoot a Glock with his thumb resting right on the slide. I watched my uncle-in-law (a Republican state senator, mind you) hand a loaded AR-15 to his ten year old son, then just walk away.
You know I think that’s actually the intelligence and responsibility I expect from republican state senators. I bet he screams about how responsible gun owners shouldn’t be prevented from ownership just because of irresponsible gun owners
I want some sort of driving test for guns. If you fail it, no guns for you. Have to retake it every 5-10 years and it’s pretty easy to pass if you aren’t a moron.
So basically a CCW permit for carrying. Problem though with “uneducated or undereducated people shouldn’t have guns,” while I agree in principle, is that it’ll play out affecting poor and marginalized communities which are mostly POC more than say some white people who simply had more privileges growing up.
Again, in principle I agree, I just don’t trust our legal system not to turn it into racism like they do with everything else.
I agree with you on everything except that that’s what a CCW permit is. I’m sure in some states it’s that. In other states it’s closer to the test you take to get your temporary drivers permit as a kid.
It does depend on the state, and in some there’s even no permit, but in most that have them they do instruct about basic safety and use of force laws. That is however relegated to the state to form their own policy, and changes all the time. If you feel your state should do more it’s easier to work on that then federal, so it’s probably more effective this way tbh.
Honestly there isn’t much to gun safety, either, it isn’t actually all that hard and doesn’t really take too long to learn. The hard part is making sure people adhere to it at all times, which tbh is functionally impossible beyond “if you see someone being unsafe, say something” which is common to do amongst gun owners, but doesn’t prevent everything. Accidents can happen at any experience level, it’s also a common saying amongst experienced gun handlers/owners that “complacency kills,” and it does, it’s something you have to be ever thoughtful of while handling one (not always while carrying, I mean, but while it is out of the holster for any reason. Be it defense, range unloading/cleaning, leaving it in the car because of a no gun sign, etc.)
Also, just as a sidenote, something you can test for yourself: Go to any pro gun forum, say r/firearms or whatever, or c/leftistgunowners here, any one, and make a post saying something along the lines of “Hey I’ve decided it’s time to pick up my first gun, any advice?” I guarantee you many posts will say “welcome to the club,” many more will say “buy you a glock” and almost all of them will say “but it isn’t enough just to get it and put it under your bed, learn how to be safe and learn how to use it at the range. Last thing you want is to kill someone innocent or die fumbling with it because you never learned how.” It isn’t a legal requirement, and of course you could just waltz into a gunshop and avoid most of that, though they will also offer advice most often if they know it’s your first, but at least the culture at large generally is pretty safety conscious already without it being mandated, so at least that’s something.
Don’t make the classic mistake of thinking everyone is limited to your abilities, there are other people in this world with their own thoughts and feelings that may not line up with yours and projecting your thoughts onto them is simply not a good basis for anything.
Well with the second amendment being interpreted as it is by the supreme court, that doesn’t seem like it could currently stand unfortunately. We do however require it for concealed carry permits in most states though, so at least that is something. We could also normalize gun shops give a basic multiple choice test before sales even without mandating it legally, as shops have the right to refuse sale to anyone if they seem sketchy (and often do refuse sales, but not often enough.)
Frankly I go a step further, we should make actors who don’t own guns but use real guns as props in movies should also be subject to learn at least Cooper’s 4 rules, like they do at most indoor shooting ranges on your first visit.
Outside the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, virtually no January 6th traitors were sentenced to more than a couple of years.
And those were either violent, ringleaders or didn't take a plea deal. Federal sentencing rules use a point system & don't allow for much flexibility in sentencing for a reason.
There was an infographic posted here a couple months ago that explained this in detail.
This has all been explained ad nauseam. Nothing you have stated proves anything I said incorrect.
Federal prosecutors didn't think sedition would stick for most of the rioters & they didn't want them to walk free by overcharging them & they are more useful to the prosecution in building the case against Trump & the other ringleaders.
Do you really think you understand the application of federal law better than career federal prosecutors?
BTW, some of these assholes, mostly the ringleaders, did get slapped with sedition charges.
Nothing will change until organization takes place. Assuming you’re in the USA, join your local climate activist group. Nearly any group will do, or if you’re inclined you could start your own. You will meet like-minded people in a driven atmosphere. Can’t make meetings regularly? Go when you can, even if it’s just once every other month. Like a true democracy, collective thought and action is the only true way to stomp out fascism. We need to band together beyond our devices for our voices to be heard.
I have to admit, one of my first emotional responses was anger. I want vengeance. When will we see the day the bullies, abusers, murderers, and their enablers receive justice?
Not civilized “justice” in court rooms, on pieces of paper, with well-dressed men and women arguing politely over legal arcana.
Blood for blood. There should be a mortal fear that if they harm one hair on our heads, something worse will happen to them by far.
Don’t tell me this won’t bring anyone back. Don’t tell me to be better than our enemies. If you will assault someone over their skin color, gender, sexual orientation, you don’t deserve the breath of life.
The problem with mob justice is that it can be leveraged directly in to fascism. This is exactly what happened with the French Revolution and the Soviet one. In both cases valid anger against oppression was directed in to paranoia that allowed for the reestablishment of an authoritarian order instead of liberation. Anger is foolish and easily manipulated. That’s why it’s the only emotion the right wants anyone to experience. That’s why it’s the only emotion patriarchy allows men to express.
Anger is good for destroying things. Some things need to be destroyed. But those things that need to be destroyed are systems, not people.
Anger is activating and should absolutely drive you to action, but the action you take shouldn’t also be decided by the anger. Let anger wake you up, and compassion guide the action you take.
History repeats itself, at least most of the time. That’s why we should learn from the past because humans haven’t changed that much in the way we think under certain circumstances.
No, I’m sorry, if a person was bullied for a year, that was the time for “due process” to protect them and society by preventing further harm. Now it is too late.
They caused someone to die by their violent actions, I am fully in favor of violent retaliation here, and as I said not looking to be convinced otherwise.
There are some things our society gets right, and some things it gets wrong. Passivity in the face of violence is a mistake IMO.
It’s never too late for justice to be done. Though more of it has to done the later it is left. No one is talking passivity here. Everyone wants something done this time and done sooner next time.
Freedom doesn’t exist without law and order. Mobs lynch wrong people as often as not. It’s why the legal system should be above politics. It amazes me America has politically appointed judges. The judiciary should be separate from, and independent of, the government. If the legal system doesn’t work, law and order can break down and you get anarchy.
This Black History Month remember human trafficking was legal. Slavery was legal. Jim Crow was legal. US Govt paying reparations to white enslavers but not to the enslaved was legal. Prison slavery still IS legal.
Do not let legality & power be a measure of morality & justice.-Qasim Rashid
Law isn’t perfect, and must constantly be challenged, but law based democracy is the best society humans have come up with. Plenty of bad law, for example, the war on drugs is stupid, like prohibition alcohol was. But mob lynching can do be part of any justice system.
You sound like a guy who’d be trying to reason with Nazi Stormtroopers as they were shoving you into the boxcar. No great injustices were ever solved through nonviolent means. None.Power does not abdicate itself because you begged for it to.
The Nazi haven’t taken over law yet. In the UK at least, they are going to be losing a lot of power next election. The US is looking screwed. As always, I’m glad I don’t live there.
Do you know how many times we heard that they were gonne lose the next election?..or that they couldn’t possibly pass such a bill here? UK is at even greater risk from what I gather.
Even they think they are going to lose the election. They are so far behind in the polls, both opinion and by-elections, it will take quite an event to change things.
Yeah, and if you remove justice by due process by installing fascist bigots in all positions of the judicial system, then all you’re left with is mob justice. And we ought to be angry about that too.
It’s a social contract thing. Conservatives insist on being granted all of the benefits you get by signing an accord with the rest of us, but then act as though they are exempt from it’s requirements.
As far as I’m concerned, they aren’t covered by the agreement anymore, and should be deprived of any protection offered by it.
Imagine completely legally swindling your way into living rent free in one of New York's most prestigious hotels only to completely fuck it up by trying to fraudulently claim you own the building
Firstly, the energy output falls far short of what would be needed for a commercial reactor, barely creating enough to heat a bath. Worse than that, the ratio is calculated using the lasers’ output, but to create that 2.1 megajoules of energy, the lasers draw 500 trillion watts, which is more power than the output of the entire US national grid. So these experiments break even in a very narrow sense of the term.
It’s so refreshing to see an article at least mention the way these tests are measured are based on the energy just in the laser itself and not the total energy used.
Exactly. These tests aren’t meant to create a practical solution, but to provide knowledge and insight that a) it is possible and b) exactly what is necessary to make it happen, at a physical level. Before this, it (more out than in) was all theory, but now we’re got some hard data to work with.
That’s a big step we’ve been chasing for a long, long time.
Yeah, and a good sign is that the countries with money to invest in the race all seem to be convinced we’ve got the science right and that the engineering challenges are solvable. There have been so many records broken recently we’re getting towards the end of the mile stones, hopefully soon we’ll start hearing about self sustaining experiments with records for how long they ran
I agree it’s good that the article is not hyping up the idea that the world will now definitely be saved by fusion and so we can all therefore go on consuming all the energy we want.
There are still some sloppy things about the article that disappoint me though…
They seem to be implying that 500 TW is obviously much larger than 2.1 MJ… but without knowing how long the 500 TW is required for, this comparison is meaningless.
They imply that using more power than available from the grid is infeasible, but it evidently isn’t as they’ve done it multiple times - presumably by charging up local energy storage and releasing it quickly. Scaling this up is obviously a challenge though.
The weird mix of metric prefixes (mega) and standard numbers (trillions) in a single sentence is a bit triggering - that might just be me though.
British Thermal Units. It’s the energy needed to heat 1 lb of water 1 degree F.
The bad part is that no one bothered to set the starting temp of the water so there’s 5 separate standards for what the hell a BTU actually is, which makes it a really bad standard.
In a number of instances where there is not a standard in place already it is not uncommon to see metric measurements mixed with imperial or US customary measurements.
I’m not in any way shape or form claiming that ALL of it is mixed.
However what does actually happen is the a unit of measure might be mixed with a customary one and then that becomes the defacto measurement, you may see wire resistance shown as a mix of Ohms/1000ft.
I am not getting into an argument about the merits of metric, I’m on board, I am with you. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some silly oddballs.
It might be the case that imperial resistance is ohm the same as metric. Metric uses ohm as it’s constituent with base units of metric, but imperial doesn’t abide by rules like that.
If you had to make a imperial equivalent to resistance, it would be a fraction of the resistance of the monarchs finger.
Fun fact: While metric predates our full understanding of electricity, our understanding of electricity played a key role in the definition of the SI units.
As I understand it, the reason the SI unit for mass is kg not g - making it an outlier to my mind - is so that electical engineers could keep volts and amperes as convenient numbers.
I’ve spent a few minutes trying to figure out who Life Corporation and Walter Monk are. Walter Monk may be an “entrepreneur” in Texas, but that isn’t clear to me. What is clear is that “Life Corporation” has been incorporated since 1995 and has no internet presence as far as I can tell.
This is shady as fuck before you even get to the illegal stuff.
All things considered, that’s a pretty quick setup for a long-running operation on foreign territory. Couldn’t have been easy when it’s only been about four years since the collapse of the USSR.
Search for “Entity Name” of “Life Corporation”. From there, you can get a list of corporate leadership. CEO (when searched on linkedin) shows the CEO is also a CEO of:
Poll Makers,
Text to Survey
Voice Broadcasting
It seems to be all surrounding a call-center. It all fits.
Oh that’s interesting. Not sure how that didn’t show up in my search. I had to log in to my ancient LinkedIn account to read it, but I’m glad I did, because…
I really like starting businesses. You might say I am obsessed (or is it possessed? ) by this activity. I love helping others start businesses. I am a member of the Entrepreneurs Organization of Fort Worth, and I highly recommend this worldwide organization for any entrepreneur.
In college majored in Wildlife Management, and soon discovered that the life of starting businesses was more fun than going to school. Some of the businesses that I started include gas stations, lobster trapping, a chain of nightclubs and bars, selling bait, a beef jerky plant, a dating service, credit card processing center, condom machine routes, and selling pool cues. Then about 1990 I met up with an amazing set of leaders that have made some of my ideas into very long lasting businesses. Together our team has done billions of phone calls, texts and and done a lot of political polling, nonprofit These all made at least some money except the lobster trapping…I never caught one lobster. I may go back to Hawaii and try that again, it still bothers me :-)
Thank you.
Edit: I should have hilighted this part too, because again, SKETCHY AS FUCK.
Then about 1990 I met up with an amazing set of leaders
So they fucked it up and then there’s a real gem in the article. The jury voted to give him life without parole. A judge overruled that jury to give him the death penalty anyways.
The American system of elected judges is bonkers to me. Here in Canada even your basic judge has to be a lawyer in good standing for a decade before being reviewed by a panel of seniors judges and recommended to the position. Their job isn’t to play “tough on crime” to the crowd and do everything possible to obtain convictions so that people will like them. Until they retire up here their whole job is to uphold and defend the presumption of innocence so a defendant gets the full benefit of the law and an innocent person is not unjustly punished. Their job is to put into practice the ethics and design of the law as written to afford the humane treatment to other humans by the state and defer the ultimate judgement of guilt or innocence to a jury of peers.
Elections in a system like law create natural conflicts of interest and once someone is convicted once on shitty practice by a judge with no prior qualifications getting that person out of the system is like trying to swim against a riptide. The American system seems primed to create victims of the state, not to uphold justice.
This shithead’s genocide is going to birth a new generation of vengeful extremists out of the ashes of Gaza for the rest of the world to deal with, in the future
By design. Fascists need an enemy to protect people from, in order to justify their cruelty. And they need a underclass to oppress, to demonstrate their power.
If they can make one out of the other - why, that’s just efficiency.
The onion had ‘news from the future’ from several years ago and showed the last Israeli fighting the last Palestinian over a stray cat that wandered into the Gaza scrap
A huge percentage of pregnancies end in miscarriage, very often before the woman even knows she was pregnant. This is the same. She should have to take special care of the mass her body rejected just because it was in there a little longer? What's the cutoff for having to report that you had a miscarriage, then? Every period? Every time you have a period that's a week or two late, because that is reasonably likely to have been a miscarriage?
This was a non-viable fetus. It was never going to be a person. It's not a corpse.
How can they be unhealthy? They are called fruit loops and the loops are colored like fruit. That means the loops are fruit and fruit can’t be unhealthy.
Are we pretending that millennials are affording apartments alone? Cause I know very few doing that. Moving back in with your parents, though, that shit’s common.
I’m in the Midwest. Most millennials I know are living on their own or with their partner. However, the younger millennials and gen Z I know? Very few I know aren’t living with parents.
I’m in Seattle, most of my friends have roommates or moved back in with their parents (which I did in 2020 when I lost my last job). I am making slightly more than my last job now with a second degree but after inflation I’m making quite a bit less and rent has gone up significantly since then. So I still can’t afford my own place.
It’s getting measurably worse at a fairly predictable clip - boomers had it easy, x/y less so, it’s dark for milennials, and impossible for zoomers/alpha.
The guardrails were removed and wheels set in motion by the boomers so they could more effectively ransack the economy - everything since then has been a consolidation of wealth and power at the direct expense of workers.
It is actually worse each time, though. In previous times, it was “oh lordy, prices are going up, shucky darn, guess I will only have 2 pieces of avocado toast each day from now on”. Now people just can’t even get by.
I'm in one of the cheaper parts of Hungary, and it's near impossible to find a job here. Your best luck is to apply awful jobs outside of the county, which will also mean 12 hour workdays with 2-3 hours commute, with the extra of if you go to sick leave, you'll only eligible for a minimum wage for months due to losing the "work presence bonus". (Yes, this was also true during the worst months of COVID, leading to people going in sick to work and a lot of needless deaths.)
What do you mean? Some places in Virginia have a pretty high cost of living, especially the areas within the National Capital Region area. Not as bad as places like NYC or SFO, but still not exactly cheap unless you’re living in the boonies (which can be said of literally any state, excepting very small ones like Hawaii).
With cold hard facts like “some places in Virginia” where cost of living can be reported as “pretty high” I can see why you needed to post this scathing dismissal
Siskiyou County has an average house price of 240k according to this amazing logic, someone would be better off for these types of things in VA than that county.
But don’t worry, I get it, it’s not about facts or using sound logic, which is why you cherry picked all of CA vs Virginia, when the op mentioned only HCOL areas.
I know right? Fuck the poors, that’s what I always say.
The poor states shouldn’t even exist, just merge them with the rich states. BUT only if the rich states have a larger population, we wouldn’t want the poors to get any ideas. Amirite?
I want to leave the PNW because of how much it costs, then I look at the political climate anywhere cheaper and decide that $2.5k/month is acceptable for renting a 1br
You can always move outside of the city. Not sure where you are but even downtown Seattle is cheaper than that. Outside the city in like Renton, you can find one bedrooms for like $1200. $1900 will get you a view of the lake.
It’s really not acceptable, there shouldn’t be that trade off. There is, right now, but we need to take our power back and hold elected accountable. The number of people who have battered voter syndrome that would absolutely be un-understanding with zero compassion for battered partners being in that mindset is astounding. They victim blame the partner with less power in a relationship, especially when there are a few kids involved, but they keep the rest of us ~340.5 million trapped in an abusive relationship some of us want to exit.
I’m just winging it at being an adult, as long as you view your child as an individual and not an extension of yourself your at least doing that part correctly.
I mean he was right though. How the fuck would a consensus based curriculum even work? It’s completely illogical. Unless you are a shockingly stupid suburban parent, I suppose.
Dude really just said fuck it, I am gonna die of old age in 10 years anyway, fuck the future.
Now the NHL has banned pro-LGBTQ messaging, there are animated digital board ads during play, ads on helmets, ads on jerseys, gambling commercials, commentators talking about betting odds, embedded commercials during play, and still no reasonable means of legally streaming NHL games. All under Bettman's watch.
Bettman supporters keep saying how much the revenue has grown under his leadership while conveniently forgetting that every other league has grown its revenue faster than the NHL. As you say, the NHL used to be competitive with the NBA, and in fact, had higher overall revenue 30 years ago.
Bettman hid most of his underperforming league revenue by expanding the league. The new teams didn’t perform well, but they boosted overall revenue enough to let Bettman keep his job. Now we’re left with a league where 6-8 teams should die in order to improve overall league health. It’s unlikely that Bettman or any future commissioner will admit how massive the problem is, so we’ll just get teams that are always threatening to become bankrupt, dragging down the rest of the league.
If you happen to be an out of market fan, espn+ gives you most the games. In market you’re pretty screwed, especially if your team gets a lot of national broadcasts.
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