The case literally has zero to do with an affair. The alleged affair could be a complete fabrication. The point of the case is that Trump directed his lawyer to use money for XYZ. Trump then put that money down on the ledger as ABC. That he claimed it was ABC and not XYZ is the entire point of the case.
The WHY he decided to commit fraud is a nice detail but literally has zero bearing on if Trump actually did the whole I said the money was for ABC but it was really for XYZ.
I thought that they are pursuing him for election law violations and if they prove that he made the payment to help his campaign then the other charges of falsifying business records carry more weight since it was done to cover up a crime.
You’re both right. The reason the ABC/XYZ thing matters, and is tied to the presidency, is because the money came from campaign contributions and the ABC/XYZ are things you’re allowed to spend campaign funds on and things you aren’t.
I thought the argument was that it was for the campaign, because it was meant to help his chances of getting elected, but wasn’t reported as a campaign expense, which is a campaign violation.
If he had just said the reimbursement was a campaign expense, which probably would have been counter productive to his desire to cover it up, he would not be in hot water now.
They have motive to suppress the story, true or not. So whether the affair actually happened is of little consequence when it comes to proving motive or intent.
I agree with you. I think the media is handling it all wrong, it is a business fraud case, not a “hush-momey” case. However, I can see the prosocutions strategy. Hurt his ego, and he will react poorly in the eyes of the court and jury, let him purger himself, give him enough rope and he might just hang himself (in a legal sense).
The WHY he decided to commit fraud is a nice detail but literally has zero bearing on if Trump actually did the whole I said the money was for ABC but it was really for XYZ.
Actually this isn’t true, the why is very central to the case. The prosecution’s argument is that the “why” is that it would’ve been damaging to his campaign. That is what links it to the campaign finance law, and what makes it a felony offense. This is an element that they will need to prove in court.
The falsifying business records piece is pretty much a slam dunk.
I have finally stopped using Spotify.
Now using TIDAL and absolutely loving it. It’s like what Spotify used to be, loads of great recommendations, much better audio quality, a bit cheaper, and I believe the artists get a better cut.
It’s too good to last, but I’m going to enjoy it while it does
I absolutely love Tidal as well. Was a long time Spotify subscriber, but their UI/UX decisions, especially for their desktop client, finally frustrated me enough to switch. Had almost no issues moving my playlists over, have a shuffle which actually shuffles, still have daily recommendation playlists, and my favorite part -patch notes; I know what’s happening and why. They actually listen to user feedback and make updates based on it.
When I signed up they had a very easy process which allowed migration of playlists. I believe it was a 3rd party utility/website which you could actually use to migrate playlists from and to any of the music streaming services.
I saw Spotify sent out an email for another fee hike yesterday. When I opened the app, it was showing me some garbage for an AI playlist generator and the email mentioned they needed more money to pay for amazing new features, the new AI system was no better than the previous system so I figured wtf do they need it for.
After 15 years of being a paid member, I’m going to wrap it up and go back to piracy.
I’m on the same track although I distribute my music there, so I wonder if unsubbing will affect that. I’m not subbed to the other platforms that have my music, so I don’t see why it would.
Because they have a huge market share, though, it’s easier to tell people check me out on Spotify than Tidal/Deezer/Bandcamp or whatever because the average Joe doesn’t know what those are.
Just took a look at their pricing. Immediately comparable with Spotify (same price for both individual and family). Looks like I’m trying a new streaming service!
Switched to tidal as got fedup with Spotify shit app quality, constant breaking when usieng Android auto, and glitching out when playing between pc/android. Tidal is better but missing things. My wife loves alexa integration…so she sticking with Spotify. I am enjoying tidal though. It just works evey time. Its clear why it stops playinga song, and so on. I would rather miss featurs then use buggy product. Spotify is full of random featurs and crap but its buggier then ever…
One other stark difference is the qulaity of of mixes and radio stations tidal puts together…spotify plays same stuff on loop basically, i rarely got anything good thats new and not promoted artist…with tidal i get a huge mix of artists in mymixes and radios, both new and old stuff…its been better for discovery then Spotify.
If that’s the argument, that’s not even the right price. It should be $15.70, because 15.70 - 30% = 10.99. They are losing money if they keep doing math wrong. Looks like they just put 30% above 10 (which isn’t 10.99 by the way) and ran with it.
I have been using and will continue to use Pandora. I pay five bucks a month for no commercials it continually sends me music that I like to listen to and I have had little to no problems with it since I first signed up. While currently everyone I know who uses Spotify does nothing but complain about how their playlists keep playing them stuff they don’t want or have previously disliked.
I dropped Spotify during that whole Joe Rogan thing but I had been a long time subscriber. I moved to Apple Music which is super buggy and has what appears to be zero interest in playing music I actually like. From your comment, I’ll give Tidal a shot.
I’ll never understand how our infrastructure isn’t on a completely separate air gapped network.
Obviously they need to share data in house, but the government absolutely has the resources to run their own separate intranet that’s not at all connected to the global internet, and yet they just plug their shit into consumer lines and hope their security is up to snuff.
Sometimes an airgap isn’t enough (Stuxnet is a good example), but realistically cybersecurity is an afterthought unfortunately. Simply go onto Shodan and lookup Schneider or Allen-Bradley to see how many of these controllers are accessible directly from the internet
Nah man, this is my game, air gap systems aren’t really a thing for anything non-military anymore. Companies want a real-time view into their production for making business decisions.
There are ways to secure your control systems network properly without a full airgap with proper boundary controls between the various layers of your Purdue model as well as fully separate Active Directories just to make a start.
Its actually an entire independent cybersecurity specialisation for OT networks. For anyone who is interested I would recommend Hacking Exposed Industrial Control Systems: ICS and SCADA Security Secrets & Solutions by Clint Bodungen its a fantastic read and very easy to follow.
Now the concept of air gapping still exists in this architecture, its designed to be able to “Island” which is where you break the connection between your corporate and OT networks when an incident has occurred on the corporate side essentially creating an airgap.
Essentially vs actually is conflation. Zero trust and segmentation is marketing. If its connected its vulnerable. value just determines when. if you really are in the industry the big vulnerability everyone has been talking about last week is evidence enough to the fact.
Oh yea poor old Palo Alto Networks is having a rough time at the moment. But a mature OT network has implemented defence in depth correctly and have a plan in place for incidents such as this one should they occur. I know a few sites who have had to island until they were able to put vulnerability mitigation in place, the good thing is that they could do this without disrupting their OT operations significantly. What you’re saying is correct, if its connected its only a matter of when not if, but you design your system with this in mind.
At the end of the day corporations are going to want business data from your site, and we need to design around that. To fight it and just air gap is going to result in you getting side stepped and your system being even more vulnerable. It’s going to happen either way so we need to make sure we have the plans in place to implement it as safely as possible.
They don’t even need to run a separate network. The NSA has long since figured out a way to move secure data over an insecure network. The problem is that most of the US’s infrastructure is run by “for profit” companies. And since they are neither required, not is it profitable, to have robust security, they don’t. Instead, they do the bare minimum to be compliant with whatever frameworks they are required to. And since basically every one of those compliance frameworks is all about having the right documentation and never actually audit systems directly, their actual security is shit.
If you want companies to start taking security seriously, then we need GDPR style fines when companies get breached and are found to be running operating system and software which is years out of date. Compliance frameworks also need to get into the nitty-gritty details of OS and software configuration and not just “have a baseline”.
Gonna go on a slippery slope and say that if they can’t be trusted to properly report on a genocide, their other reported material should also not be held to any decent standard because there is clearly a lack of guidance and internal process to prevent poor media writing.
Not to mention there are so many better sources and OSINT stuff these days. Reuters and AP by themselves already provide the sourcing for most of these media outlets, might as well bypass the paraphrasing and potential for bias.
Ergo today’s Web and the society as a whole are a death ground for journalism. It’s heavily disadvantaged and has no way of escaping.
Either it fights back successfully or we and our children will get a better understanding of philosophers who lived in despotic empires, like many periods of Chinese, Persian etc history.
I think this whole bathroom thing is just stupid. While I don’t really care who is shitting in the stall next to me, apparently some people do, but I think there’s a pretty simple solution: replace stalls with water closets. I mean, nobody likes the stalls. No one prefers them, and the total lack of privacy they provide is why bathrooms are gendered in the first place. Replace stalls with water closets, everyone gets their privacy, bathrooms don’t have to be gendered anymore, problem solved.
This is a logical compromise that seemingly stopped the issue at its source, I would be fine with this change personally. But i guarantee it will not shut them up, because at the end of the day it not about privacy it’s about keeping things the same because “things worked just fine before all this trans stuff started happening” and any change is therefore a loss for their side
You are correct. This has been a thing in the UK where self contained toilets are quite common and the transphobes just make up some shit about how if they let men in use the same ones as women, then they can sneak hidden cameras in there. So they have tried to force places that have always used these toilets, for practical reasons, not even inclusively reasons, to designate seperate male and female toilets.
Since conservatism has run out of governing ideas all they have are wedges - anything to get the workers to fight each other instead of focusing their anger on the rich.
If it’s not toilets they’ll think of something else, like stopping transpeople (and eventually women) from teaching in schools. Iran already blocks people of certain religions doing so, so this is not unimaginable.
I took my parents to this restaurant that has all gender bathrooms. They were weirded out till they saw it was literally a hallway with doors to private, individual bathroom stalls with a toilet and sink. It’s been drilled into them that all gender bathrooms are just a big open piss room where everyone whips out their bits in front of each other
Honestly watching Shakespeare in the cross dressing way really made me like it. They teach you Shakespeare in school by reading it, that’s stupid. That’s like studying the godfather and only reading the script and never watching the film. I hated it. Then one day I saw the actual play, done in drag and it really made the humor pop and made me finally understand what the fuck they were talking about in that script
I think he actually got a little worried about the pushback regarding the most recent bombing of aid vans. Like, even the most pro Israeli outlets and groups online were saying “wow… that was a huge fuck up…”
Of course, none of them were acknowledging it was likely intentional. But I think in terms of gauging “are the Israeli people cool with us literally starving civilians to death” IDF leadership got a fairly affirmative “no”.
How do we know it was intentional? Although I guess the practical difference between intentional and callously indifferent is not very large in this context. So maybe it doesn’t matter.
We don’t, which is why I say “likely” - but the sheer precision and clear markings on the vehicles makes me doubt the “it was a series of accidents” explanation.
Maybe I interpreted the word intentionally differently than you meant to use it. My understanding of the IDF’s explanation was that they mistakenly thought the vehicles were Hamas. So by intentional I thought you mean they were knowingly killing aid workers.
I think everyone agrees the vehicles were deliberately targeted, but why this was done is open to speculation.
No, we’re of the same mindset. It’s clear the missiles didn’t fall on these vehicles by chance, it’s just up for some debate regarding on if they were deliberately targeted knowing they were aid vehicles or not
“All three vehicles were carrying civilians; they were marked as WCK vehicles; and their movements were in full compliance with Israeli authorities, who were aware of their itinerary, route, and humanitarian mission,” WCK said in a statement Thursday.
I’m not sure how it can be accidental if you were told about it in advance.
And even if for a moment, that the person who aimed the guns didn’t know, it was someone’s job to make sure they did. Someone knew.
Someone did but it could still be claimed to be “accidental” if that information didn’t make it to the person performing the attack. I’m not saying that’s what happened but it’s plausible. Though I will say at minimum I doubt they would have done this if they knew how well connected these aid workers were. It would have been politically very foolish.
I think their overall strategy makes it clear that they don’t much care to avoid killing civilians and aid workers that are not well connected. But it’s hard to prove it’s done intentionally.
We don’t know that they targeted aid workers. We can certainly say that they killed them without identifying them as valid military targets, because they weren’t.
I completely agree but legally speaking the intentionality does matter in terms of the genocide case, etc. So that’s why I am curious what evidence we have. But intent is almost always the hardest piece of a crime to prove.
First, the crime of genocide is characterised by the specific intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group by killing its members or by other means: causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Note the repeated reference to deliberate or intentional actions. So proving intent is a big question in this case.
They weren’t “well connected”, it was just brazen slaughter of western nationals.
The WCF logo was clearly printed on top of the vans, the routes were already known and cleared by the IDF. Israel intentionally killed them claiming one of the occupants of the 3 vans looked like Hamas. They’re on an insane genocidal killing spree in Gaza, and it isn’t helpful that western media provides cover by calling it an “accident.” It was intentional, and IDF has already admitted this.
Well there have been many killings of Palestinian aid workers, but those did not break through to the mainstream conversation the way this one did. That is what I mean by well-connected. In other words, people with a prominent voice in the west cared that these people died. This is not generally the case for ordinary Palestinians, so similar incidents that have already taken place were shrugged off.
Why are you trying this hard to pretend there is more than one side to this situation? People have given you the facts and you keep snapping back to this CNN passive-voice “we can’t know for sure”.
Because that’s the default response to truth claims that are unproven? I don’t think this hyper-emotional speculation is very helpful personally.
I don’t really care about your emotions or frankly any emotions other than the people directly affected. I’m trying to sort out what is true and false and what can be definitively proven from the available evidence. But there is a ton of misinformation flying around, so I want to be careful about what narratives I endorse, since many false narratives are being used to justify violence and hatred right now.
Israel internationally bombed a clearly marked aid convoy after being informed of and approving their route.
Israel internationally adopted rules of engagement so lax that they allowed for 3 accidental bombings on a clearly marked aid convoy after being informed of and approving their route.
All of the above.
The problem for Israel is that all of those possibilities are war crimes.
Well, what they’re going to claim is that war is hard and this happens to everyone, so it’s not intentional at all. Unfortunately, for people predisposed to believe them, this argument can seem quite reasonable. So that’s why we need to rigorously challenge it using as many lines of evidence as possible.
Beyond the route being approved in advance and the vehicles being clearly marked, the vehicles were also 2 km apart from each other and each one was seperatelt targeted
It’s because there are different definitions of intentional and accidental in this context such that they are not always mutually exclusive.
The strike was intentionally targeted on those vehicles, but IDF claims it was accidental in that they were mistaken about the occupants of the vehicles. Whether this is true is unclear at this time.
The strike was intentionally targeted on those vehicles, but IDF claims it was accidental in that they were mistaken about the occupants of the vehicles.
I don’t believe that bullshit for a microsecond. Either Israel is forehead caved in stupid, or they believe people like you are.
“All three vehicles were carrying civilians; they were marked as WCK vehicles; and their movements were in full compliance with Israeli authorities, who were aware of their itinerary, route, and humanitarian mission,” WCK said in a statement Thursday. Source
Israel is a terrorist state that murders aid workers knowingly and intentionally, and abused claims of antisemitism to act with impunity against aid workers and civilians. There is a long history of this kind of behavior, so Israel deserves exactly 0 benefit of the doubt.
Part of the reason this conflict is so intractable is the blind rage that makes people see things in only black and white.
Personally I don’t think it’s that simple. It’s not about the benefit of the doubt, it’s about the summation of what we know, what we don’t know, and filling in the gaps with reasonable assumptions about what is possible or likely. Even if what you believe is true, it is still worthwhile to prove it.
i am not spending a fucking dime on anything that Elon Musk earns money on
i even deleted my twitter account when he bought it
But, even though Elon is an ass, the way tesla handles repairs on their cars, makes me not want to own one anyway. I wanna just use my local mechanic. Not exclusively teslas own
I disagree with excluding trans individuals from sports, but I can understand that there might be some leagues that disagree with me. So if a league or a private group wants to start discriminating based on some horseshit arguments about competitive advantage, I would simply boycot that league and move on with my day. I can’t control what private groups want to do, and I can’t force them to change eligibility requirements.
This isn’t that.
an executive order meant to prevent women’s and girl’s leagues and teams with transgender players from using county-run parks and fields.
What the fuck is this? There isn’t even a horseshit argument about competitive advantage here. Are they saying that trans women are going to have so much testosterone that they tear up the fields? It’s just bigotry, and it’s government sponsored bigotry. We can do something about that.
So if a league or a private group wants to start discriminating based on some horseshit arguments about competitive advantage, I would simply boycot that league and move on with my day.
I would agree to an extent. I don’t know if I would be okay with a ‘whites only’ league existing.
This is where all the vitriol over trans women in sports leads. Roller derby is such a hugely queer sport, I’m so proud of them for taking a stand to defend their teammates.
I can’t control what private groups want to do, and I can’t force them to change eligibility requirements.
Yes you can. We have many laws protecting groups from discrimination. That’s why you can’t legally discriminate against people by race/ethnicity, sex/gender, or disability.
It sounds to me like you don’t respect the idea of LGBTQ+ people being part of a protected class.
It sounds to me like you don’t respect the idea of LGBTQ+ people being part of a protected class.
It sounds to me like you’re going out of your way to selectively interpret what I said to create an argument.
I am not empowered to enforce the law, and I have no legal standing to sue for discrimination. I also can’t stop thieves or murderers, but that doesn’t mean I condone those crimes, either.
Sorry, I assumed you lived in a democratic country and were stating that there was no way anyone could ever be obligated not to discriminate. Assuming you live somewhere where you have zero ability to influence change, your original post makes more sense, and doesn’t read like a tacit endorsement of the current status quo against trans people.
This is one of the only reasons I’m still a little hopeful about 2024. Even if Trump wins, he very well could not control the legislature. And because of abortion.
trump would veto everything passed by a democrat-controlled congress that didn't pass with near-unanimous support from republicants, too; abuse tf out of 'executive orders' (even more than the first go around); stack scotus even more; and further empower other nutjobs to follow in his diaper droppings.
trump moving back to 1600 penn ave nw would be a disaster from which this nation would not recover.
Sure, but he would also not be able to pass laws that he needed to pass in order to cement his dictatorship plans. Which is why I have a slight amount of optimism.
The world’s-most-evil-sun-dried-tangelo led an insurrection and is successfully running for president again with people carrying out conversations such as “why Trump’s serious attempt at dictatorship might not be so bad.” If he wins, I’d expect any dissenting Dems to be forced out either by pressures within or legitimate coordinated attacks from MAGA supporters.
Hell, there’s a high probability powerful political adversaries will be straight up killed and they’d call it Operation Hummingbird to honor the true architect of the current Conservative playbook.
Why would he even bother with all of the red tape and process to pass laws? He would just issue imperial edicts executive orders to do whatever he wanted. Laws have never meant shit to him. And why would they? He breaks them with impunity and never faces any real consequences. If he has an unfriendly congress, he’ll ignore them.
Well there’s the fact that the Supreme Court regularly overturned his Executive Orders the first time and also the fact that they are limited in scope and can be reversed as easily as they are issued.
Some days I just wish I could view the world through the addled brains of dolts like you who are just incapable of the most basic critical thinking… It must be a terrifying reality for you, just feeling your way blindly through the dark. It’s honestly sad as fuck.
Will the democrats stop pursuing gun control in the face of this imminent threat of conservatives attempting to take control of the state to install an authoritarian government?
Yeah if only the Bundys had guns, they totally would have succeeded in overthrowing the federal government 🙄. Oh wait, they did. It’s almost as if it means nothing against the most powerful military the world will ever see.
And as if Democrats are pursuing any kind of legislation that actually does anything to curb gun violence. Just another idiot falling for the propaganda that Democrats want to take away your precious anal dildos guns.
Who cares about facts and objective reality when something just feels right?
And what do you think happens after 4 years? Trump, “I will only be a dictator for one day, trust me,” will just willingly and peacefully hand over power?
Worst case scenario is he comes to power with more dedicated goons as his cabinet and they just do what they want while the already captured courts find new ways to delay and avoid cases so that he never faces any functional check on them. The System is not self-actuating and is already near the breaking point.
It’s a truly bizarre single issue to focus on considering how high impact it is to the masses and how it presumably isn’t enabling them to make more money or solidify control.
If they just brought in a couple of populist policies that made the masses happy they probably would have majority control indefinitely on a platform of hate against the minority.
Going to replace career non-partisan positions across most departments.
Once you own the paper pushers, doing things by the book becomes much less relevant.
In theory there were rules in Germany that would have prevented Hitler up until the point he declared those rules no longer applied and his armed militia agreed with him.
I think it’s an amazing advancement and that’s awesome for a quadriplegic person to interact with the world.
The part that I haven’t heard anyone mention is what is the life cycle of these chips. Computers and cell phones all become outdated so quickly. Are recipients guaranteed upgraded chips as they become available?
I was reading an article recently about people who have had implants in their eyes that help them to see become obsolete. One because the company stopped supporting the specific version that was in the patient. The other because the company had gone out of business.
Even if the chip never went obsolete, the scar tissue build up around implanted brain devices interferes with signal over time and they need to be replaced.
Also, each installation/replacement has a few percentage point chance of leading to a life threatening infection.
Unless both those issues are solved, irrespective of obsolescence this is only the sort of thing that makes sense for patients who feel that their life is effectively over without it and have low risk thresholds for treatment options.
This tech is extremely experimental and nowhere near ready to market as a consumer device that a regular person can purchase, so a lot of those questions don’t really have answers.
Ever seen Johnny Mnemonic? He had a whole 80gb storage in his brain and upgraded it to 160gb. Future proof. He’d almost be able to install a modern AAA title!
I suppose the counter argument is people don’t ask that kind of question when they get a pacemaker. At some point you have to get an implant if you need an implant you can’t go oh well our weight six months because then version 2.0 is out
The story of “Second Sight” and the folks that depended on them is pretty sad. I hope there’s some kind of backup plan in case the company goes under, gets acquired, or decides to abandon existing technology. Like placing the key tech in a trust of sorts.
Part of the study is to see how long it lasts. It’s replaceable in theory but there’s things like are there complications with redoing it (e.g scar tissue) to be explored.
As a human trial, he may never get an upgrade, and it might fail in a few months unexpectedly.
It’s part of the risk of being in a trial vs waiting until it’s a finished product.
Many have mentioned that so you didn’t look very far then. It’s like the first thing people wonder. They have no answer of course, this is research and not a product
Ahh the Spicey one. I had a love/hate relationship with him. For anybody who wasn’t glued to political feeds expecting Armageddon at any moment like me, this pretty accurately sums up Spicer’s reign as White House Press Secretary.
That skit killed his job. Don’t get me wrong, I’m okay with it. But Trump saw it and decided he couldn’t even be near someone who had had fun poked at him lest he appear weak, so it was good-bye Spicey.
Mental illness is always a license for them to kill, it happens ridiculously often even by statistical count.
Something about unexpected responses and unpredictable reactions to shouting and gun waving that give the pigs an excuse to shoot.
Remember that deaf guy that was killed because of his whittling knife? I don’t think the cop suffered any consequences except a paid vacation and an innocent and confused life was lost and the world turns on.
Just crossing the street and clueless the cop was even calling out and bam bam bam shot from behind and he died bleeding out in confusion and fear.
And 1/3 of the country applauded the cop for his community centered focus on reducing the number of undesirables.
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