Or as the clickbait news should report it:

FBI Director Claims Charlie Kirk Not Going To Heaven

Does it count if an LLM is generating mountains of code that then gets thrown away? Maybe he can win the prediction on a technicality.

Violence is a defining feature of US politics.

Roughly 10% of all US presidents have been assassinated: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and JFK. That’s 4 out of 47. In most other countries it has either happened once or not at all.

All you can really say is that there was a relative lull of political violence between say 2005 and 2015. But, even that period would be seen as massive political violence in most other advanced countries in the world.

Is it just me, or does this look like a teen’s body? It’s not just that the “boobs” are small, it’s where they’re situated on the body.

It could be that Trump is just a bad artist. But, he definitely seems to have made an artistic choice when it comes to the size and placement of the boobs on that body.

For anybody who doesn’t know, “fully depreciated” is an accounting term for an asset that is all used up and worth only its salvage value. So, what Trump is basically saying here is “Jeffrey is showing a talent with money and women because he sold Trump a woman who was all used up for $22,500”

Obvious questions are:

1. Who was this woman?
2. How old was she at the time this was written?
3. In what sense was she “sold”?
4. In what sense was she “fully depreciated”?
5. What was her relationship with Epstein?
6. What was her relationship with Trump?
7. Were there other women/girls who were sold by Epstein to Trump?
8. Did Trump buy any “assets” from Epstein that were brand new, and unused?
9. Are there any other records of Epstein selling women/girls to people?
10. If this doodle and the posterboard-sized check were the things Trump was comfortable having out in the open, were there more salacious things they kept quiet?

Amputated arms? Cool, cool…

I wish that were true, but it isn’t. A majority of Americans are too propagandized to be mad at the rich. They believe in capitalism deep in their souls, because schools have been teaching that capitalism is the best system in the world since at least the end of WWII, never mind that the US isn’t even a true capitalist state.

A majority of Americans believe capitalism is a meritocracy, and that everybody who wins at capitalism is a superior person who got there on their own merits, because that’s what they’ve been taught their entire lives. Fortunately or unfortunately, a large minority of Americans have also been completely failed by their education system and their news system, so they have all kinds of other magical beliefs, like that there’s a cabal of rich and powerful who are draining children of adrenochrome. It’s a really stupid conspiracy theory, but it just happens to end up pointing them at the right targets for the wrong reasons.

My concern is that neither side has released a list because its going to be insanely ugly. Like the most powerful people in the US…and the fallout is going to be anarchy.

Yeah, sure. Anarchy. Let’s say everybody Epstein ever hung out with is rounded up and executed. Even if that does mean that 95% of US billionaires are executed, you think that’s going to result in anarchy? It’s just going to finally give a chance to people who aren’t rich. The only possible “anarchy” would be from these rich people refusing to go quietly. But, the rich never go quietly. They’d refuse to go quietly if it was a 2% wealth tax, and not an execution.

Also, don’t forget that after his first arrest, Epstein was more or less radioactive. That was in 2008, 17 years ago. Prince Andrew did meet with him in 2010 and it was a huge news story because he obviously should have known better.

So, let’s say that anybody who was 18 or younger in 2008 is safe from suspicion. Anybody younger than 18 in 2008 was possibly a victim, but was presumably too young to be preying on these underage girls. How old are those 18 year olds now? They’re 35. They’re old enough to run for president in 2028.

I say fuck the gerontocracy. The only people who are 100% above suspicion are the ones too young to have been involved with Epstein. Let them run things.

I mostly agree. The one thing I’ll say is that police departments weren’t specifically ordering MRAPs. It’s more that the military had a lot of spares that were otherwise going to be mothballed or destroyed. In some ways it’s efficient to reuse military materials like that. But, there are obviously downsides too.

Smaller countries seem to be handling it better. New Zealand, for example, seems to still be relatively responsive to the desires of the people. NZ doesn’t have that much power because it’s so small, so it can get bossed around in some ways, but it does seem like it’s not becoming authoritarian in the same way as other places.

As someone who has travelled to developing countries:

1. Journalists who dared to report negative stories on those in power would disappear or be publicly killed
2. Much more censorship all around, the Internet as we know it wouldn’t exist. The fediverse wouldn’t exist, all media would be centralized so it was easier to monitor and censor.
3. The courts would all be in control of the powerful. Trials would be just for show, because the outcome was already determined. There would be no judicial independence or precedent. In smaller matters where the powerful didn’t really care what the outcome was, bribery of the courts would be rampant.
4. The police would be even more brutal, even more unanswerable, and the text of the laws would be even more meaningless. It wouldn’t be unusual at all for cops to just grab anybody off the street for any reason, and nobody would dare object. Sure, ICE is doing that now in the US but people are objecting, and haven’t been gunned down as a result.
5. Any attempt to push back against the power of the government would be met by brutal force. You wouldn’t have demonstrations, and if you did the cops / military would shut them down with gunfire, not tear gas.

The US is well on the path to this kind of place, but it definitely isn’t there yet. The mainstream press is a bit cowardly, but there are still independent journalists who are digging into stories and they’re not being disappeared or murdered. There’s a fair amount of self-censorship, especially at big tech companies, but that’s more about keeping advertisers happy than keeping the government happy. There’s virtually no true Internet censorship or legal speech. The US supreme court is highly biased, but many lower courts are doing fine, and plenty of judges are ruling against the president. The ICE crackdowns are awful, and they are grabbing people off the street and throwing them into unmarked vans while wearing masks. But… at least they’re still more or less focusing on illegal immigrants. There have been military and police in the streets, but the haven’t been killing protesters, and when a guy recently threw a sandwich at a cop they tried to put him away for assault, but the grand jury laughed at them and they weren’t able to move ahead with that case.

Things are getting worse and worse in the US, and I wouldn’t want to have to live there, but it’s still a long way from an authoritarian state.

Because of things like the North Hollywood Shootout. People don’t want a situation where the criminals have much better weapons than the police. It doesn’t matter that that kind of a situation is incredibly rare. People are scared and want police to never be outgunned.

Of course, that results in a bad situation where the cops in say Fluffy Landing, Florida have an armoured personnel carrier and don’t need one. And, they get to train SWAT tactics just in case, but they never need those skills. And eventually when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, so they use their APC for a regular arrest just because they want to justify having it, and they want to use their cool new toy.

It does vaguely make sense to have a SWAT team, especially in a big city in the USA. A sovereign state is basically defined by having a monopoly on the use of force within its own borders. If the bad guys (ACAB, but you know what I mean) can outgun the cops, then it can lead to chaos.

Also, politicians need to be seen as tough on crime to get elected. If you increase police funding, you’re safe. If you cut police funding and there’s some kind of incident, you can easily lose your next election.

In the US, there’s no effective civilian control over police. Sure, theoretically the cops answer to the mayor or something. But, police unions are extremely powerful, and so mostly the cops get to do whatever they want.

Sure you can. Just unplug the headphones.

First you have to stop whatever you’re listening to or you start playing it on a speaker for everyone. Doing that is an annoyance that you don’t need to put up with if you just use wireless headphones.

Playback stops automatically when you unplug a wired headphone

Maybe it does today, I don’t know, I haven’t used wired headphones in many years. Back in the day it didn’t.

Wtf? Lol. If you’re kitchen is that loud, something’s wrong with it.

If you are kitchen is quiet, you really should be using the fan to get the smoke and food smells out of the kitchen. Maybe if you’re just making pop-tarts then it isn’t a big deal, but if you actually ever do any serious cooking you’ll discover that it gets loud.

Yeah, you’re either trolling or a very special kind of person.

Why are you so scared of the modern world? Is it that you’re too confused by it all? Can’t handle touchscreens? Scared by https? It’s ok man, just take a course. You’ll learn to live in the present, not the past.

You’re the one that implied headphone jacks add cost to phones.

They do.

I’m saying that they don’t, and whatever cost they do add is minuscule.

Ok.

The implication that any cost savings is being passed to you is laughable.

It is, but it isn’t a major savings. But, it’s hard to know because the pricing of phones isn’t very transparent.

Look, they killed the jack because they could save a couple bucks of design time and get a few cubic millimeters of space

Yes…

most importantly they could softly force their users to buy wireless headphones

Why would they care?

Yes, replaceable batteries!

Yes, they are. Glad you’re finally on board the “batteries beat wires” train. Choo choo.

The cheap phones are cheap because they lack other features, not because a headphone jack makes them cheaper.

Go put batteries in your walkman, grandpa.

You sure wish those kids would get off your lawn.

Sure, tailors are affordable, but can anybody really justify spending $80 for a tailored T-shirt? If you’re a multi-millionaire maybe you can, and maybe your T-shirts feel absolutely great as a result.