Prelude to the Apocalypse

[Ed Oscuro]

Quick turnaround tonight (i.e., a few hours while people frantically tried cooking an excuse) from "how dare they invade Trump's sanctuary" to "what FBI doing, they should have gotten those files earlier, before it could become a problem"

[BryanM]

I thought the Rand cult loved trains.

Nah, that's an Ayn thing that's emblematic of the era she grew up in. Cars are really fucking young, and the woman was born a couple years after the Ford motor company. Trains were amazing back then.

These days it's only really popular with materialist city planning type people. Leftists are very horny for trains, to the point it's a little worrisome. (Which always leads to an awkward exchange when Jesse Ventura is concerned. "If you want to see what Ventura would do as president, just look at what he did as governor." -> "You mean there will be more trains? This is a dangerous gambit you play, considering the sexual proclivities of our comrades..")

The price of using these things in the real world always comes across as irritatingly moot as a consumer though; bus, train, whatever. Ticket price is always similar. In terms of energy usage efficiency, empty seats are devastating waste just as they are in cars. A car culture where people drove single seat vehicles when traveling alone would be a vast improvement, but good luck transitioning to a sane world where anyone would want to travel in a smol deathbox in this culture~ (always reminds me of this simpsons bit. Good god Classic Simpsons could cram a lot of effective political commentary into 30 seconds...)

And of course the bicycle is the most energy efficient way to move around, with the velomobile being the king at higher speed. I always say the post apocalyptic world will be a Postman wasteland, but while the ruins of street infrastructure is still decent maybe it'll be a Mary Poppins hellworld for awhile?
____

I do enjoy no-dialogue travel videos on the youtube, it's a calming ASMR/liminal kinda of thing that doesn't cost $60 for a few hours of entertainment doing it for real.

[Ddshot]

You dudes really think trump is out to sell US nuclear codes??for real??no matter what political persuasion you are it seems a bit far fetched,no?

[Mischief Maker]

You dudes really think trump is out to sell US nuclear codes??for real??no matter what political persuasion you are it seems a bit far fetched,no?

No.

It's the single most believable thing you could accuse Donald Trump of doing.

Of course, my view of Trump could be jaundiced because I get info about the man from places other than Ben Garrison cartoons.

Spoiler

[orange808]

I thought the Rand cult loved trains.

Nah, that's an Ayn thing that's emblematic of the era she grew up in. Cars are really fucking young, and the woman was born a couple years after the Ford motor company. Trains were amazing back then.

Maybe. I think she had Asperger's. I'd also like to.point out that: we have a name for it and diagnose it for a reason. Sorry if someone is triggered.

There's a movement out there to declare that everyone is naturally alright and perfect. The same general dangerous idea that has unleashed Polio on the world again. (Seriously people? Seriously?) The fact is, a disability is exactly that: a disability. And, of course, nature is all about quick iterations, entropy, and recycling; for life, that means death. We aren't naturally made to survive very long. So, no, we aren't perfect. Not even close. Sorry. Nobody is born without limitations.

And, that leads me back to my "matter of fact" and simple observation: I think the woman had a social disorder.

----

On transport, there's almost always a trade off.

I don't think single passenger vehicles make a lot of sense. For starters, you'll introduce more safety problems with smaller vehicles. Once you get a safe design, you've gone very far away from a motorbike. It's a car. At that point, you can get a wagon (it's a "crossover", lmao!) or van design onto the same platform with very little penalty. With the immediate torque of electric motors, adding mass should make even less difference. Of course, making the batteries comes with its own environmental and political headaches. Need bigger batteries to put that torque to work in larger vehicles. (Economies of scale and whatnot ) If we wanted a better solution, I'd suggest car pooling or ride sharing. Robot electric busses/taxis might make sense. Instead of a driver, you get a policeman and a camera. Of course, that raises privacy issues and we have to ban human drivers to be safe.

Trains can be very efficient for specific uses. As usual, the AOC bunch played SimCity one too many times and they're being utopian. I'd argue that the bike thing is equally utopian. You can't carry much, the weather is a huge factor, it's slow, and many people can't physically operate a bike.

Non stop high speed trains between distant metropolitan areas sounds good in theory, but how many seats are on the train? Bulding a rail line from LA to New York would be ridiculously expensive and difficult. When you got done, it still couldn't carry all the people and freight between the two cities--and it wouldn't be faster. Could put more than one train on the line at once--traveling at ridiculous speed. What could go wrong? Still wouldn't be enough capacity. There's also the problem wirh spending so much to build transportation that only connects two locations. Adding stops will slow the line. Is it worth the huge investment?

Local trains in large cities can be good. Obviously need to have law enforcement present because you're literally mixing everyone in a confined space. Crime is going to happen. It's going to spread disease, too. Traffic on highways probably declines, but local traffic is still congested and clogged at each station. I don't know. Driving sucks everywhere I go--even when there's a train or two. Need law enforcement at the parking garages. Better integration between ride services and local trains would be good. Of course, many people simply use a ride service to go directly to destinations like the airport, sporting events, and "downtown", where parking and congestion make driving frustrating and impractical. They still don't use the train.

For commuting, no matter what, people are going to be at work 9+ hours a day. Adding a lot of travel time to and from work damages quality of life. So many trade offs to consider.

Agreed on the AOC set. They think the world is SimCity. It isn't.

[Sengoku Strider]

You dudes really think trump is out to sell US nuclear codes??for real??no matter what political persuasion you are it seems a bit far fetched,no?

Not at all. Consider:

1. Trump needed someone on the inside to get him those documents. They're categorized as 'above top secret,' stored in a hardened facility, and a president does not have the authority to declassify them under the Atomic Energy Act. He did not end up with this by accident. So what else would he have them for?

2. The world knew he took boxes of documents with him when he left office, it hit the papers immediately. The National Archive took stock of what they thought he had, and visited Mar-A-Lago a while back to recover it all. But these were stored separately and withheld. People who worked there for years didn't even know that safe existed. These were not just lost in the shuffle.

3. Which is why the FBI had no idea of them until one of 6-8 people in his inner circle ratted. The safe money seems to be on Meadows making a deal to avoid prosecution, but nobody knows for sure at the moment.

And then add in:

Whistleblowers had raised concerns about Trump trying to sell nuclear secrets to the Saudis. Jared Kushner got what was described as a 'comically corrupt' $2 billion Saudi cheque. Trump had a golf event there a week or so back, against US policy. Trump has colossal debts hanging around his neck to multiple banks, and obscenely expensive homes and lifestyle to maintain.

See if you can connect these beach ball sized dots.

So yes, there's every reason to think these were lifted as the most valuable thing he could jack from the US government when he left, in order to keep him from financial ruin. I'm not sure what other conclusion even makes any sense. He wanted to teach Barron about atomic engineering for some father-son time and couldn't come up with anything simpler?

Because it's not the 1960s and of course these exist digitally and are backed up, people can't even resort to goofy QAnon rationales like "He had to keep these secrets safe from Joe Biden's psycho puppetmasters and their doomsday depopulation program!" ...

...

Spoiler

...I don't know why I even typed that sentence.

[Mischief Maker]

And of course the bicycle is the most energy efficient way to move around, with the velomobile being the king at higher speed. I always say the post apocalyptic world will be a Postman wasteland, but while the ruins of street infrastructure is still decent maybe it'll be a Mary Poppins hellworld for awhile?

You still haven't watched Turbo Kid?

AOC bunch played SimCity one too many times and they're being utopian.

[...]

Agreed on the AOC set. They think the world is SimCity. It isn't.

Jimmy Dore and the Gray Zone exist to make the left stupid.

[Sengoku Strider]

Jimmy Dore and the Gray Zone exist to make the left stupid.

Honestly, as near as I can tell all of that talking head stuff is brain poison. It's always snide and pushing emotional buttons and declaring victory in some us vs. them narrative.

At least I post memes.

You dudes really think trump is out to sell US nuclear codes??for real??no matter what political persuasion you are it seems a bit far fetched,no?

Also, not to keep coming back to this question, but there's a lot of clear reasons to think this is exactly what's going on (with the addendum that we're not talking about launch codes or something, but unspecified 'technology'). The House Oversight report from 2019 spelled out the whole thing:

That committee report made a number of accusations against the Trump administration, including that it tried "to rush the transfer of highly sensitive U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia." This was without congressional review and in potential violation of the Atomic Energy Act that restricts the export of U.S. nuclear technology.

The report also raised questions about the relationship between the White House and Riyadh following the murder of Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which was met with "equivocation by President Trump and other top Administration officials."

The report said that in the U.S. "strong private commercial interests have been pressing aggressively for the transfer of highly sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia," and this posed a "potential risk to U.S. national security absent adequate safeguards."

"These commercial entities stand to reap billions of dollars through contracts associated with constructing and operating nuclear facilities in Saudi Arabia," it added.

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-s ... st-1733182

At the time this got snowed under because of all the craziness already surrounding Trump on other matters, and the impending election meaning Rs wouldn't get on board with pushing the issue. But there's a really established public trail on this one, it's not the left-field conspiracy that it seems.

We're going to be hearing a lot more about this one, and some powerful people and organizations' names are about to get dragged into it.

[BryanM]

Obviously the codes weren't sold since those are changed all the time and are worthless.

Selling a pdf file for a couple of bucks though? Sounds like the perfect strike zone for an optimal reward to effort ratio.

It would be pretty funny if Trump's bumbling led to a nuclear holocaust and would be one of my favorite possible non-fiction apocalypses. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis and proliferation only makes an incident measured in megadeaths inevitable.

Israel's acquisition of nuclear weapons is a wonderful tale unto itself. Somebody has to steal and sell this stuff, X is somebody, why not them?

And, of course, nature is all about quick iterations, entropy, and recycling; for life, that means death. We aren't naturally made to survive very long.

Degenerative aging is something built into us from back when we were fish; the driving mechanism seems to be exactly the same from fish on up. And it is exactly for that: to cull old populations so that younger populations better adopted to the environment can get a better shot at reproducing.

In humans (or more specifically, the in-between transition species that led to us) the die-off age seemed to originally be around 38 years. The massive longevity we have beyond that was an adaption we earned from natural selection; apparently grand parents are useful to have around.

There are those who think we can just flip off the switch, such as those E5 bros I talked about. At the very least, curing frailty is looking feasible.

For flipping off the switch entirely, there are a few rare species that managed that through evolution, such as those turtles with a maximum lifespan of "as long as I don't die".

You still haven't watched Turbo Kid?

I still haven't and every time I watch some trash John Carpenter or meme film I regret how much I've let you down.

I even doubled my movie intake to two this year to account for Ghostbusters, and it wasn't enough. This winter isn't looking good either: I'm kind of hoping on finishing Shin Megami Tensoy 4 then.

At least I'm proud of myself for only skimming Beaster Day and not committing minutes of my life to the thing. Donald Trump should give me a medal!

[orange808]

John Mackey of Whole Foods says young people have "earn" meaningful work over time.

Interesting...

Well, Mackey is the son of the CEO of a health care company named LifeMark and it's common public knowledge that HIS DADDY funded his startup entrepreneur grocery business. I guess when his parents fucked and mixed up a baby, he earned it?

Earned, indeed..

Fucking born on third base. Thought he hit a triple. Of course, he's a libertarian. Probably a Trumper, too. Born rich, white, and a gun humper. And, now the rich man is "threatened" because other people can disagree with him. Liberty indeed. Naturally, libertarian doesn't mean everyone gets to have an opinion.

Um-kay, mister mack-kay!!

[BulletMagnet]

If the Republicans seriously want to circle the wagons on this one in the name of protecting votes, just burn that whole fucking party to the ground.

There's your answer.

And - say it with me kids - neither conservative nor "moderate" voters will make them pay one iota for this at the polls. Even if they attempted to backpedal at this point, how the ever-loving fuck could they? As they always like to remind us, they're not idiots - they could see where Trump and company were headed just as easily as the rest of us, and cheered their throats raw the whole damn time.

They absolutely own this, always will, and will never apologize, democracy and the rule of law be damned. Remember that the next time they scold you for not reaching out to them enough.

EDIT: Oh, and here's the latest in the "so, howzabout that Deep State?" parade.

EDIT 2: And of course.

[Sengoku Strider]

There's your answer.

Jesus

In McCarthy's view, it was Garland, not his own party's rhetoric, that was dividing the nation.

“Why would you pause and not talk to the American public, knowing where the American public is at, that he is just inflaming the public, and why would you only speak for a few moments?” McCarthy said. “So I think the attorney general has a lot of explaining to do.”

Fucking

“What I am looking for is the predicate for the search,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) tweeted shortly after Garland’s speech. “Was the information provided to the judge sufficient and necessary to authorize a raid on the former president’s home within ninety days of the midterm election?”

Christ.

Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) wound the clock back even further, providing the dependable “but her emails” interjection.

“We saw this media frenzy about supposedly classified information — where was this same media frenzy when there was 33,000 classified emails on a server in a bathroom with Hillary Clinton?” Mullin asked, indignantly. “Why didn’t they raid that bathroom?”

It's like they're just throwing rocks & cans all over the room to try & distract the clickers. They don't have a single rational argument, every one of those is based on a (really stupid or lazy) logical fallacy or just an outright lie.

At this point I'm starting to see the Hillary fixation less as them tossing rare steak to the hounds and more of a "God I wish we had her on our side running this skullduggery shit instead." Like, they know full well she skated on the email server because she knew exactly where the "I'm fucked if I get caught crossing this line" line was and stayed on the "neener neener you can't get me on this" side of it.

[orange808]

Obviously, Garland was specifically chosen because he wouldn't want to investigate Trump. Oops. They seem to have done a better job sizing up Cuffari. He's exactly what they were looking for.

[Sengoku Strider]

At this point the man has put his foot in his mouth so many times he's punted his teeth out.



"Haha, the DoJ won't comment on ongoing investigations, so I can use this cheesy trick against them even though I could legally release the warrant myself any time I wanted LOLOLOL"

The search warrant – the contents of which were confirmed by the Guardian – shows the FBI was seeking evidence about whether the mishandling of classified documents by Trump, including some marked top secret, amounted to a violation of three criminal statutes.
...

A conviction for violating any of the detailed laws would be severe: the Espionage Act has a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison and the statute for obstruction has a maximum penalty of 20 years, while the statute for destruction of records can also bar anyone convicted from holding future office.

The contents of the search warrant became public days after FBI agents seized 11 boxes worth of materials from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, including records considered so sensitive that they could not be individually listed in the “receipt” of what was removed.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -documents

Crooked Hillary would never get caught looking this dumb. On a daily basis.

[To Far Away Times]

The funny thing is the AG and FBI were trying to extend him presidential courtesy. Trump was given ample time to turn this over. And we would have never known and it would likely have never been prosecuted.

Trump made the warrant public knowledge, backed himself into a corner and now we know Trump at minimum violated the espionage act, even if he did nothing with the documents outside of taking them to just feel powerful. It would be extremely weird for him not to be prosecuted.

[BryanM]

I've been joking he could run from a jail cell, like Eugene Debs!

... things would get very awkward and weird if he won.

[BulletMagnet]

Oh boy.

As we can all relate to, everyone ends up having to bring home their work from time to time. American presidents are no different. President Trump, in order to prepare the work the next day, often took documents including classified documents to the residence.

He had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them. The power to classify and declassify documents rests solely with the president of the United States.

The idea that some paper-pushing bureaucrat with classification authority delegated by the president needs to approve the declassification is absurd.

Forget 8-dimensional chess, this is some Hall of Fame-caliber Calvinball. And half the country, paragons of patriotism and the rule of law that they are, is going to pretend it's perfectly legit. Seriously, what the fuck is the matter with the lot of you?

[orange808]

Bernie wouldn't have pulled this shit.

[Mischief Maker]

Bernie wouldn't have pulled this shit.

Bernie would have had Chris Matthews dragged into Central Park and shot.

[orange808]

What's it like to support a flavor of right wing political views?

Let's investigate.

1. Premeditate a murder plan.
2. Carry out your dumb plan on video.
3. Fucking plead "not guilty".

I think we need an additional mechanism in the justice system that's carefully transparent and allows for established organizations to challenge. The new system would take care of fuckers that are 100% guilty. Every once in a while, someone is obviously guilty and it's absolutely beyond question. We don't need a huge expensive trial or anything. This fucker is just wasting everyone's time. It's rare, but some people are just guilty.

Pleading not guilty is trolling. Nobody anywhere (not even the most compassionate person at the ACLU) believes the guy didn't do what he clearly and obviously did.

Fuck.

But, we are talking right wing, here. The funny part is, "opposing" right wingers can't see they are different verses of the exact same evil song.

[orange808]

Did you know that both documented times that Americans have been officially bombed here on US soil in well organized attacks from multiple cooperating planes, it was done by other Americans? Can you name the episodes? They've been well scrubbed from history. ...

Nope. Not 1942. I'm not sure that even happened. Got nothing to do with Japan! :waggles finger:

No, no. Not Japan. We're talking air raid, not a random exploding balloon or a rogue sub on the coast.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_ ... r_Mountain

Can't hide it, guys.

[Mischief Maker]

Because I can't resist getting my "I told you so" dunks in: "More Progressive than Bernie" Tulsi Gabbard guest-hosted the Tucker Carlson show this week. Is this not exactly what I said her goal was when she ran her spoiler campaign in the 2020 primary?

Here's Jimmy Dore performing mental gymnastics to spin things in a good light after Tulsi actually sold out on Medicare for all. It's not like the word "single" is included in the name single-payer for a reason or anything.

But AOC and the squad are the real problem, amiright?

[Sengoku Strider]

This insane roller coaster of evil can only end with the reveal of the ultimate truth of Putin's kompromat: incontrovertible evidence that Trump was born in Kenya. Provided to the Russians by Steven Segal. Who knew because he was also born in Kenya.



Also that Trump wrote season 8 of Game of Thrones. In exchange for $25 million from Hitler's secret New Berlin base under Antarctica. In comic sans.

[vol.2]

Armed man crashes into barricade near US Capitol before killing himself.

Welp, there doesn't appear on the surface to be a political motivation, but it's early days. Perhaps they just wanted to go out in a spectacular way.

[BryanM]

... argh, I've accepted that Jones is probably going to make money from his trials. This one will cost him a little under a mil, but how much money did he make from calling the judge a dwarf-lookin' goblin alone? A national TV ad costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, the guy's coming out ahead of all this.

As stupid and gross as he appears on the outside, and probably is on the inside... defining intelligence as one's ability to accomplish their terminal goals, he's a fucking genius. Act like a clown, get press, terminate the trial as soon as possible, (possibly) give a small cut of the loot to the parents this parasite's tormenting...

Tulsi Gabbard guest-hosted the Tucker Carlson show this week.

Yeah, she's doo-doo. I gave her a lot of leeway for being on the right side of the line back in 2015 (99.9% apocalypse versus 100% apocalypse, I was really emotionally invested in that election sheesh). Even back then I didn't feel like she was a leftist, as she was not beating a drum for Universal Healthcare or any other pro-labor goal. Her interview on your guy Jimmy's show was a hoot, as he ranted at her for 80% of it and she was in like ": |" politician mode.

Secular Talk Kyle's incomprehensible love for Ro Khanna for a few years always made me chuckle a bit. I skim the Something Awful forums a bit, and a few of the guys there have an ear to the ground in DC culture. Ro, like most politicians, will go where the wind and money blows. Anecdotal stories of him offering to superficially champion a cause in exchange for a dollar weren't uncommon.

I rationalized Kyle's love of the guy maybe being based largely on the dude's personality appealing to him; that Ro could be an avatar he could live through vicariously. And also hope that some people in positions of power or close to it aren't bought and paid for. The actual world we live in, where the pols who aren't Mr.Smithers or worse are only one senator on the brink of dying of old age, and a few people in the house... it's a bleak grimdark few actually want to live in. Retreating to a fantasy world is preferable for most. Hope is how they really fuck you.

Bernie gave a little pep talk for those depressed about this being the last generation of humans.

During the Roe termination, Chairman Daou made a useful little internet post. Peter is really the only anti-apocalypse thing I've seen in... ever?

Armed man crashes into barricade near US Capitol before killing himself.

I'm a little surprised this story only happens once every couple years. Weird.

[Sengoku Strider]

Rand Paul calls for repeal of Espionage Act after Trump FBI search

"It is long past time to repeal this egregious affront to the 1st Amendment"



I can't stop laughing.

I can't.

Law & order Republicans.



Send help.

[Sengoku Strider]

"The espionage act was abused from the beginning to jail dissenters of WWI" Paul tweeted on Saturday

Yeah but whatabout World War I protestors? Why isn't anyone talking about this hot button issue?

Sure maybe the terrorists get the nuclear plans but FREE SPEECH! What if there's tyranny??



I'm gonna pee my pants

Help

[BulletMagnet]

My head's seriously about to split open from the onslaught of "How Goddamn Dumb Do You Have To Play To Pretend To Believe This" takes of late:

To understand this logic, let’s apply a football analogy since the season is right around the corner.

Let’s say Team X is beating Team Y 42-0 in the third quarter of a game. But in the fourth quarter, neither team scores, and the game ends 42-0.

Team Y’s coach runs to the podium of a post-game press conference and declares his losing team tied Team X 0-0. Team Y’s coach ignores the first three horrible quarters in making his argument and focuses on just one quarter in declaring the tie.

The thing is, Biden didn't say anything remotely resembling that; what he said was that inflation was technically flat just in July, so if you wanted to stick to the football coach example he would have said that the teams played evenly just for the fourth quarter, not for the whole game. Mind you, you could easily argue that Biden's putting lipstick on a pig here, since we still have a long way to go to bring inflation back down (and that's assuming the current trend continues for quite some time), but this interpretation just blatantly misrepresents what he said. Again, in any other career a bad-faith performance like this would get you fired on the spot and barred from ever working in the field again; seriously, does the right have any lingering sense of self-respect left at this point?

Oh, and while we're here, even GOP lawmakers are being threatened by the "how dare you enforce the law when it makes us feel bad" faction of their base...oh, and they might not even have recovered everything from Trump yet.

EDIT: ...despite the fact that one of Trump's lawyers signed a statement back in June attesting that they'd already returned everything.

[BryanM]

5% inflation per year would result in a 40% decrease in purchasing power per dollar after ten years, I really don't see how things can remain stable if it comes to that.

I guess that's one of the effective illusions servants of capitalism like to prop up - that the crashes and recessions are independent black swan events, as opposed to periodic low points. The same policies and worse back in 2007 continue on here in 2022.

[Sengoku Strider]

...oh, and they might not even have recovered everything from Trump yet.

"The Justice Department also subpoenaed surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago recorded over a 60-day period, including views from outside the storage room. According to a person briefed on the matter, the footage showed that, after one instance in which Justice Department officials were in contact with Mr. Trump’s team, boxes were moved in and out of the room"

They finally found the missing Georgia votes!