Nougat

@Nougat@kbin.social

I am trying to focus on posting source documents, as opposed to someone else's reporting on source documents.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

Nougat ,

... willful idiots we had this time ...

Oh, there were plenty of those in 1918, too.

Trump is disqualified from Illinois ballot, judge rules ( www.reuters.com )

An Illinois state judge on Wednesday barred Donald Trump from appearing on the Illinois' Republican presidential primary ballot because of his role in the attack at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but she delayed her ruling from taking effect in light of an expected appeal by the former U.S president.

Nougat ,

Trump was never going to win Illinois anyway.

Nougat ,

This is for the tax case; Carroll's judgment for the most recent one was $83.3M. They're both civil cases, though this one is NY State, and Carroll's is federal.

In either case, if the bond amount is not posted, there is no appeal, and assets can be seized to fulfill the legal consequences.

Nougat ,

"I don't want extra attention from the IRS, let me send them a letter that will surely cause them to pay less attention to me!"

Nougat ,

I read The Fountainhead instead, and it was interesting enough to keep me reading. "Okay, there's a lot of setup of characters and circumstances going on, I am curious to know how this plays out," and then it just ... doesn't. It was all a lead-up to a long, weakly written, and plainly stupid monologue about how completely ruthless all people should be at all times, only ever thinking in the shortest term about themselves.

I closed that book wondering why Ayn Rand was famous for anything beyond being a shitbag, when I was young enough to be kind of a shitbag myself.

Nougat ,

Tangent story, I was in Manitowoc, WI, on a motorcycle trip. In WWII, they built submarines there, and they have a US submarine at a museum on the lake.

You might remember Manitowoc as being the area where Making A Murderer happened. Turns out that series only gives a light impression of the local accent there. The tour guide for that submarine sounded like he was speaking a completely different language from English.

Nougat ,

This has been going on forever.

Why does our civilization send signals and our location into space?

Individually doing atmospheric analysis for every planet in the galaxy is probably an impossible task for a civilisation confined to a single solar system. Listening for signals is something our civilisation already does. If we discover radio signals from a primitive civilisation in the next star system over there's a non-zero...

Nougat ,

Even then, the signal strength is not high enough. It gets overshadowed by the CMBR before it gets anywhere significant.

Nougat ,

The meat:

“Having argued to the jury that President Trump has great financial resources, Plaintiff is in no position to contradict herself now and contend that she requires the protection of a bond during the brief period while post-trial motions are pending,” he huffs. “This fact nullifies risk to the judgment creditor and weighs heavily in favor of an unsecured stay.”

Only problem with that is that it's not Plaintiff who is requiring a bond pending appeal. It is the United States of America.

Nougat ,

The E. Jean Carroll defamation case was in federal court.

Nougat ,

The legal term for Engoron's ruling (New York state civil fraud judgment) is "undertaking." In the Carroll case (Kaplan, federal defamation), it's "damages," a large portion of which are punitive damages.

Nougat ,

In a Feb. 22 court filing made public this week, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche said Cohen had a history of lying ...

He's not wrong ... because Cohen used to lie for Trump.

Nougat ,

No true Christian, amirite?

Nougat ,

He slipped real hard during his presidential bid. Remember how his VP pick was Sarah Palin, for example.

Nougat ,

Post only links to articles

Nougat , (edited )

I am definitely curious as to how this impacts his Georgia plea agreement.

Edit: He is in violation of his Georgia plea agreement.

Nougat ,

EVERYONE MUST REGISTER EACH SEXUAL LIAISON WITH THE STATE

Nougat ,

There is no more perfect image for the circumstances.

Nougat ,

Or as I like to say, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good enabler of the what the actual fuck.

How Trump will seek to pit federal judges against each other to avoid trial ( www.cnn.com )

A primary aim for Trump’s legal team, according to people familiar with the strategy, is to put the judge in DC overseeing the 2020 federal election obstruction case, Tanya Chutkan, in a position where she can’t start a trial before Election Day

Nougat ,

Because for a criminal proceeding, the accused must appear. Can't be in two places at once.

Nougat ,

That's so reddit.

Nougat ,

Ellen Pao.

Nougat ,

The actual government has been railing against the service for being a national security threat. Donald Trump was railing against CHYNA for a moment, before he got a hankering for some of that Xi.

Nougat , (edited )

The Republican Convention this year is going to make 1968 Chicago look like a quinceañera.

Edit: Oh god, it's in Milwaukee. That's like seceding from the Union and then putting your new capitol city 100 miles from Washington DC.

Nougat ,

Or his daughter Isuzu.

Nougat ,

I'm gonna go a different direction here.

Silencing propaganda is how it expands more.

You cannot stop propaganda. Some of it will always get in. Banning the position being propagandized demands that observers choose sides. Some portion of those people are going to actively seek out the propaganda message to "make an educated decision" (bOtH sIdEs) Some portion of those people are going to buy into the propaganda.

On the other hand, if propaganda is not silenced, the response will be one of showing it to be bunk. This would serve to make the propaganda less effective. Yes, some people will still buy into it, but fewer people than if it had been silenced.

Think about it like scam emails. You can see by the awful grammar and spelling and nonsense email address that it's bullshit. The people who respond don't. They are more likely to fall for it. Silencing propaganda in one place doesn't silence it everywhere, but it does focus its message to people who are more likely to fall for it. They can then strengthen each other's belief by association, and begin expanding on their own.

It's why the big picture is that it's one giant propaganda machine, but when you look closer, it's a bunch of loosely or unrelated local "cells," operating independently. Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Patriot Front, plenty of others nobody had heard of, and the (as yet) less violent collections like Tea Party, Freedom Caucus.

It is far better to answer propaganda than to silence it, but we do all have to agree, as individuals, that that's what we do. The far-right has already decentralized, and reasonable people need to do the same thing. You don't have to be a registered Democrat, you don't have to approve of Biden; you can still contribute to having decisions in government made on the basis of objective reality. You may still not like the decisions made, but your differences will be political ones, and not ones of fact (for the most part).

Luckily, all it takes is standing up for your principles.

Nougat ,

Yes, Christianity is an apocalyptic death cult.

Nougat ,

ACAB ... including Sting.

Nougat ,

The headline and the statement in the article are two different things.

This finding suggests that women with higher levels of subclinical psychopathy, characterized by impulsivity and remorselessness, were slightly more inclined to support Trump, irrespective of the specific electoral matchup.

Nougat ,

God has to blow the breath of life right up a woman’s vagina ...

Good work if you can get it.

Nougat ,

Your Supreme Court says they're children, and you're pre-emptively saying you're not going to prosecute crimes against children? For shame.

Nougat ,

Should definitely report every public works department in the state.

Four members of the Arkansas supreme court are trying to jump to different seats on the bench, a situation that could empower the conservative governor by granting her more appointments. ( boltsmag.org )

Voters are filling two supreme court seats in two separate nonpartisan elections. Neither seat’s current occupant is seeking a new term, so at first glance it may look like the cycle will add two fresh faces to the court. But of the six candidates running for these two seats, four are already sitting justices on the...

Nougat ,

Arkansas Supreme Court is corrupt, got it.

Nougat ,

Math time!

Let's use nice round numbers to make this easy. We're going to pay community mods a salary of US$100,000.00.

Now, keep in mind that the cost of labor to a business is much more than just salary. Employees need technology, 401K matching, health insurance subsidies, an HR department, management, company stock programs, training - all sorts of things. Again, to make this easy, we'll say that each community mod costs the business another US$100,000.00, at least in the first year. (I would expect that kind of cost to diminish as an employee gains tenure, even if it never vanishes.)

This means that for every US$1M Reddit decides to spend on human capital instead of a CEO whose job appears to be largely centered around cuntery, you get five community mods. Since we are referring to diverting US$93M, that would give us 465 community mods.

This doesn't work perfectly, since employees generally like to be paid in cash, while executives (who already have all the cash they'll ever need) are much more willing to be compensated with stock options and other similar non-cash strategies. Huffman certainly got some kind of pre-IPO stock grants and/or options that make this IPO very personally rewarding for him, and which cost Reddit US$0.00. (One of the drivers of inflation is how public companies get to essentially print money by issuing stocks.)

All that said, you can keep that kind of math in your back pocket whenever you become aware of any executive salary. Every million dollars one dick swinger gets would employ five well-paid workers (or ten who can live independently with some level of comfort). That executive who gets $200M a year? Half of that would put 500 people to work, and not impact the quality of life of the executive at all.

Nougat ,

You know, I'm perfectly okay with asking questions about what things in a contract mean.

Asking stupid questions in order to try and avoid actually paying for a car is a whole other thing.

Reddit is licensing its content to Google to help train its AI models ( www.engadget.com )

Google has struck a deal with Reddit that will allow the search engine maker to train its AI models on Reddit’s vast catalog of user-generated content, the two companies announced. Under the arrangement, Google will get access to Reddit’s Data API, which will help the company “better understand” content from the site....

Nougat ,

Not since they shut down API access. Now it's obvious why they did that.

Nougat ,

Why the fuck isn't one of his unemployed sons drive other people's shit around for twelve hours a day instead of him?

Russian autopsy shows Navalny locked self in Siberian gulag, poisoned self ( www.thebeaverton.com )

"MOSCOW – Officials from the Kremlin, under the close supervision of Russian President Vladimir Putin, have concluded an autopsy of Alexei Navalny, concluding that the recently-deceased opposition leader spontaneously sentenced himself to 30 years in a remote Siberian gulag before then ingesting his own poison that he brought...

Nougat ,

And it's really kind of not.

Nougat ,

All you have to do is think about this reasonably (I know, I know). Undocumented immigrants to the US want to come here so badly that they're willing to do it outside of the law. They know full well that if they get caught just for that, they're in a fuckload of trouble. It is clearly in the immediate, direct, and personal best interest of an undocumented immigrant to stay well clear of law enforcement. This means - wait for it - not breaking any other laws.

Undocumented immigrants have a very strong incentive to be absolutely well-behaved.

Nougat ,

And I fully expect there is a higher ratio of "bad apples" among other groups, including "American citizens."

Nougat ,

You can say "shit," it's okay.

Nougat ,

I'm not making excuses for anyone here --

I expect it is extremely confusing for many people when "Jewish" is a religion, an ethnicity, a nationality, a nation, and a political football. This leads to anything the Israeli government opposes to be construed in the same light, which is how we get people equating "Palestinians living in severe apartheid conditions inside the borders of the nation of Israel" with "Hamas." And, of course, anyone who opposes the actions of the Israeli government is likely to get branded "antisemitic," because if you oppose the Jewish nation you must also oppose the Jewish religion, ethnicity, and nationality, right? (Narrator: Wrong.)

Because of this conflation of so many different things being called the same thing, I try to make absolutely clear what I'm talking about (when I dare dip my toe into those shark-infested waters). Hamas fucking sucks. The Israeli government fucking sucks. What both of those entities do - and have done for a very long time - demonstrate that they are both genocidal shitbags. Supporters of either, be they Israeli citizens, Palestinians, or third parties, fucking suck right alongside them.

Nougat ,

Oh, sure - to be perfectly clear, nothing I said was intended to address that concern, and your position is absolutely sound. I was only referring to the tangent of "I rarely get an answer, but I do get told I support genocide," outside of all that.

Nougat ,

The state of Missouri appealed the decision, arguing that the jury selection process had been discriminatory on religious grounds. An appeals court sided with Finney, ruling the jurors had been eliminated due to their beliefs about homosexuality, not because they were Christians. Missouri appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, which declined Tuesday to hear the case.

Constitutional rights, as Alito must surely know, come into conflict all the time, and it is the courts' responsibility to balance one right against another.

Yes, you have a right to your religion and its beliefs, but that right must yield when it infringes on other people's rights. None of this amounts to the courts "labeling someone as a bigot and treating them as such." I can label those people as bigots and treat them as such, because I am not a judge, and "bigot" is not a protected class.

c/SCOTUSJusticesWithPunchableFaces

Aileen Cannon Might Actually Get Herself Kicked Off the Trump Classified Docs Case ( slate.com )

The recent news about possible Russian space nukes reminds us that we live in a very insecure world. That is why perhaps none of Donald Trump’s four criminal cases is more troubling than the federal prosecution brought by special counsel Jack Smith for mishandling classified documents. Unfortunately, the judge handling the...

Nougat ,

Maybe the lasers were designed to project an image on to a far away surface?

Letitia James ready to seize Trump buildings if he can't pay $355M fine: report ( www.rawstory.com )

New York Attorney General Letitia James is ready to seize former President Donald Trump's iconic New York City buildings if he can't come up with the cash to pay his $355 million civil fraud fine, a new report shows. "If he does not have funds to pay off the judgment, then we will seek judgment enfo...

Nougat ,

That's not how that works. The next step after failure to pay a civil judgment is asset seizure.

(That's for passers-by who happen to read your moronic comment and don't realize that you are a garbage person.)

Nougat ,

Someone should cover up all the "Welcome to Texas" signage with giant pieces of cardboard with "PR1V4T3 (not for commerce)" sloppily handwritten in Sharpie.

Nougat ,

The only way Microsoft or OpenAI would know this would be to spy on chatbot sessions. I’m sure the terms of service—if I bothered to read them—gives them that permission.

Well there's your problem.

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