Prelude to the Apocalypse

[Sengoku Strider]

For some reason the price of a Big Mac has spiked upward, too. This popularized the old "how many big macs do you earn per hour of minimum wage." It's beginning to get to the point of flipping to "how many hours per hamburger" instead.

I paid $20 for a burrito. The other day I was looking at $100 in my hand and thinking "Wow, this used to sound like a lot, but this is only 5 burritos now."

Things were so much cheaper before they just had to start putting nanobots in everything.

[Sima Tuna]

Nanobot brainwashing? I can't afford that kind of markup!

[BryanM]

$20 for a burrito

Jesus christ, that's like that fellow who has that place asking for $9000 for one round of pinball. Things are bad and doomy, but they're not that bad. A chicken fried steak with sides inc bread is 13 buckeroos at the Rib Crib, and that place is kind of sorta like a sports bar with TV's to the wall, meant to cater to affluent douchebag college kids.

On the topic of burritos, I remember the score when I first came of age: you could go to Taco Bell and pay $7 for what looks and tastes like cat turds spread across a flap of.... something that's like an alloy made of combining plastic and cardboard. Or you could go to a mexican restaurant and pay $4 for a burrito that's twice as large that tastes like food that someone can actually eat.

I know there are lots of places like the California Pizza Place, lots of little sammich shops, where the prices are intentionally tripled to keep the dirty poors out.... but that shouldn't be the norm for another ten or fifteen years yet...

For some reason from watching Kitchen Nightmares, it gave me the impression that all restaurants in England always ask like $30+ for a single meal...

nanobots

Since people like Kurzweil and Yud are more in the spotlight these days, with us potentially standing on the precipice of the nerd rapture/apocalypse, nanobots are kind of relevant!

Unfortunately the "nanobots are magic" crowd are gonna be disappointed. Because of scale, these things would have to be extremely simple devices: think squiggles that are like specialized screwdrivers, less omnipotent god swarms that can rearrange matter at will. They're not going to have internal computation, they'd have to be directed by an external magnet or something.

Rearranging matter itself has limitations; you can't transmute atoms without using fission or fusion.

We can still have body horrors thanks to bioelectricy, though! As a treat.

[Sengoku Strider]

Jesus christ, that's like that fellow who has that place asking for $9000 for one round of pinball. Things are bad and doomy, but they're not that bad. A chicken fried steak with sides inc bread is 13 buckeroos at the Rib Crib, and that place is kind of sorta like a sports bar with TV's to the wall, meant to cater to affluent douchebag college kids.

Things kinda got whacko in this city after Canada quietly agreed to become a Chinese imperial tribute state/stash house at some unannounced point in the past few years. Now the downtown core is affluent Chinese douchebag college kids who can pay $30 for fried chicken and $3 million for a solarium bedroom in someone else's condo. This is part of why I hate the Chinese Communist party. We could have been taken over by real Maoist revolutionaries, but no, we had to get neofeudal kayfabe uyghur-made Gucci t-shirt BS instead.

I have to cheer myself up by reminding myself that at least the tapwater here isn't 98% lead paint chips yet or whatever accounts for this:



Let it not be forgotten that MTG was a member of a Zangief cosplayer's sex cult. You know she taught this dude things about the Final Atomic Buster he never knew were possible.

[BryanM]

I always forget the Zangief cosplayer sex cult : (

It's not really my fault:

Spoiler

We could have been taken over by real Maoist revolutionaries, but no, we had to get neofeudal kayfabe uyghur-made Gucci t-shirt BS instead.

The curse of all hierarchies. Hearing Sam Altman advocate a UBI and reading his essays about "Moore's Law For Everything" (where he speculates the price of everything halving every year) is honestly pretty bleak. The upcoming age of techno-feudalism is gonna... well, let's say I'm not optimistic, but the alternative is worse.

The Wal-E future is probably the utopian outcome. Even SkyNet would be an improvement; looking forward to contributing my body to the mountain o' skulls prop for their fun LARPy wargame.

[Sengoku Strider]

The MTG video ho era might turn out to be a goldmine.



Somebody is going to release a diss track about sleeping with Jill Biden before this is all over.

The curse of all hierarchies. Hearing Sam Altman advocate a UBI and reading his essays about "Moore's Law For Everything" (where he speculates the price of everything halving every year) is honestly pretty bleak. The upcoming age of techno-feudalism is gonna... well, let's say I'm not optimistic, but the alternative is worse.

The Wal-E future is probably the utopian outcome. Even SkyNet would be an improvement; looking forward to contributing my body to the mountain o' skulls prop for their fun LARPy wargame.

We're going to get the Kree Supreme Intelligence.



And you 100% know it's going to be based on several terrible people. This is how Trump will gain cyberimmortality.

[Sengoku Strider]

So this happened:



Apparently she didn't just show her DECORUM LEVEL: MAXIMUM cardboard sign in congress, she sent out these uh..."IRS whistleblowing" Hunter Biden action shots to her mailing list. So now she's sent porn to minors and probably violated revenge porn laws. The fact that this is barely a weekday footnote shows just how far out this worldline is from the one I started on.

[orange808]

How is carving up Prussia a gift from fucking Stalin? Piss off.

Not sure what we're so grateful for. Running away and letting the cold freeze Hitler and Napoleon? Wow. Bravely running away. Thought of that all by yourselves, did you? Seems like an unforced error to me. Wouldn't have been able to advance west later if Napoleon or the blitzkrieg hadn't been so arrogant.

Still don't understand how carving up Prussia is a gift. Spare me the "reminders", conrade boomer.

[BryanM]

Watching a Joe Biden cover of Hurt made me appreciate again the difference between a real politician and a fake one. There's a real desire to see more of these kinds of characters... while the fakers like Hillary or DeSantis, nobody wants them to be their parasocial imaginary friend. Is there any AI content that uses Hillary? Has anyone seen one of those?

When you have Johhny Cash and Elvis coming back from the dead to sing Barbie Girl and I Like Big Butts.... just doesn't seem to be an audience for her, yanno?


I guess the fake republican primary should start airing its debates soon. August 23. And we have to sit here and pretend it isn't a coronation of Trump the entire time hiss boo urns >_>

I don't think we're gonna get another exciting character like pokemon master Herman Cain ever ever again. God I loved that man.

[blazinglazers69]

Well, on the climate front things are looking pretty abysmal as expected:

Experts call this event a “five sigma” phenomenon, meaning it is a statistical oddity of five standard deviations beyond the mean. In context, one would expect such an occurrence to happen only once every 7.5 million years if no changes had occurred, which makes it an amazing and rare event. Physical oceanographer Edward Doddridge has been closely monitoring drastic changes in Antarctica and has described vast regions of the Antarctic coastline as ice-free for the first time in recorded history, emphasizing that the situation is truly unprecedented.

https://groundreport.in/know-about-five ... te-change/

It's just....the hotter things get, the HOTTER things get. Exponential, positive feedback loops. I work with relatively intelligent people at my healthcare job and yet I see them having children NOW. Getting a vasectomy is the one cheap, obvious, easy preparation I've taken so far.

I'll admit that pre-Covid I was more worried about the US political situation than climate change and really only understood it intellectually. That's what truly blows my mind about human nature--our intelligence is really, really limited to vanilla everyday life and sucks ass at abstract predictions and acceptance. It's probably like this in part for emotional defense, but we needed to OFFENSIVELY deal with this shit decades ago.

Now it's too late though...if we stopped all carbon emissions TODAY we'd STILL be locked into catastrophe: Methane feedback loops from melting permafrost, anyone?

There's been so many pale, smoky skies this summer where I live from the Canadian inferno blowing over here. Just bigger and more blatantly obvious signposts to societal collapse. When I walk my dog on these days, I passively wonder if I should go full prepper and buy rations and guns and blah blah blah or just accept my fate....or just peace out if famine and my physical/mental condition becomes unbearable as the world gets ravaged.

On that note, although collapse is not all at once at the same rate in every place--I've seen estimates ranging from 15-40 years before society as we know it in the industrialized world is completely gone. We're talking Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I really, really hope it's closer to 40 so I can at least make it to my 70s. In my heart of hearts, that's what feels "fair" to me because I grew up assuming I'd live to an old age.

I'll end on a note of pitiful levity: One thing I've wondered about is if I should invest in a retro gaming handheld device and hoard batteries now. Maybe the last 5-10 years of relative food security where survival is mostly worthwhile will have really spotty electricity. If it's reasonable to assume that current 3rd world countries may be a preview of what's to come, you look at places like Puerto Rico where they lose electricity for MONTHS. The power grid in the US is, of course, notoriously old and shitty.

Ok. That's enough for now. Just some thoughts for the morning

[Sima Tuna]

I find climate change almost a pointless thought experiment.

What I mean is that, of course, climate change is real and irreversible. Of course, it would be nice if everyone the planet could work together and begin course-correcting our societies so we don't completely hatefuck the planet into oblivion before our grandchildren grow up. Of course, we should "care" that the apocalypse is now and we're all screwed.

But there's nothing we can do about it. Even if every person in a single country decided to stop polluting and dumping CO2 tomorrow (and I mean totally stop,) would anything change? I argue no. The largest polluters won't stop. Factory economies will never just decide to shut down.

https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/

A large portion of CO2 emissions are from electricity and heat, apparently. Leaving aside electricity for a moment and just looking at heat, are there even any methods of generating heat (to keep from freezing) which don't emit CO2? How do you cook food without generating CO2?

https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... s+emit+co2

Add to this that no country in a capitalist economy is going to voluntarily handicap themselves by limiting their growth, production or sales for the sake of saving the planet. Corporations have no morals and corporations are the ones who control this world.

There is quite literally nothing I can do, either on an individual level or community level, which will have the slightest effect upon our current fucked situation. Even a few million people going 100% green won't do shit.

Best to find your purpose in life and live as well as you can. Life is merely a great cosmic accident and everything will become entropy eventually. Only a total global conquest by militant vegans could have the slightest chance to reduce climate change at this point.

FYI heat dome hit us a couple years ago and we were 116F for a few days. Definitely not fun. I'm truly sorry for those who will suffer. The suffering will continue, unfortunately, and only get worse. Maybe we'll learn to live with it though. Humans usually do.

[orange808]

Well, there's three ways society takes on the environment. There's denial, helplessness (complacent consent), and "green" fuck the poors.

Macron has been the best global representative of green "fuck the poors" environmental policy, but it's everywhere. For example, the push for only electric vehicles in some areas within five years (and ban gasoline vehicle sale/resale) is a great example of "fuck them poors" policy from wealthy metropolitan neoliberal white people.

When it's time to settle the debts or make sacrifices, it's time to fuck the poors. Sacrifice is for other people.

[Sima Tuna]

We still haven't seen true "fuck the poors" mode activated. Poors are still allowed to drive cars and work in factories. Two things that are beneficial for poors (kind of) but bad for our environment. QED: AI takes over factory production and elites remove cars from the poors. Dramatic improvements in emissions standards! Grandma can ride a fucking bike, the old bitch.

[BryanM]

Here's the geoengineering video once again. The official research initiative was kicked off quietly last year. It's going to happen, and probably a lot sooner than I was expecting it to. Cyberpunk fiction was quite prescient, since it looks like it's going to be the winner. At least in the short term. The Postman is still in the running for the medium term. All Tomorrows for the long.

Sam Altman has turned out to be a nightmarish figure himself, unsurprisingly. If the Worldcoin thing actually did replace currency, he and his buddies would be holding 20% of all the world's wealth, making them god emperors, for forever. I thought the whole idea was to become god by making the machine god first, but what do I know. This kind of sociopathic greed is pretty damn common with the blue checkmarks on Twitter. I wish there was some other place to hear what the people doing the important stuff have to say, but reality is what it is.

It's a bit weird how orbs have started popping up a lot. Trump and the glowing Saudi orbs. The gigantic orb in Las Vegas that might be the final great monument of humanity, made to run Nike ads. The Worldcoin orbs that scan your eyeballs (also orbs) to biometrically link and track every transaction you ever do, publicly available on the open ledger known as "the blockchain".

The twitter stunt rebranding is its own thing. Fucking Musk clown antics. How long do you think the dance will go on before it reverts back for another bump in the news cycle? I'm guessing half a year to a year. I don't really get the mainstream websites trying for some kind of sex branding. Remember "Youtube Red"? Even if Redtube didn't exist, it was such a bad brand name all on its own.

Grimes apparently dated Chelsea Manning for a small while. That was pretty baffling.

In the sideshow antics, Biden's dog constantly biting piggys is very based and cool.


Ah, and a sneak peak at the upcoming version of Dal-e.

[Sima Tuna]

Here's the geoengineering video once again. The official research initiative was kicked off quietly last year. It's going to happen, and probably a lot sooner than I was expecting it to. Cyberpunk fiction was quite prescient, since it looks like it's going to be the winner. At least in the short term. The Postman is still in the running for the medium term. All Tomorrows for the long.

https://youtu.be/EVM5-_fusjs?t=135

Based Matrix proven right yet again. Time to blacken the skies.

[Sengoku Strider]

The twitter stunt rebranding is its own thing. Fucking Musk clown antics. How long do you think the dance will go on before it reverts back for another bump in the news cycle? I'm guessing half a year to a year. I don't really get the mainstream websites trying for some kind of sex branding. Remember "Youtube Red"? Even if Redtube didn't exist, it was such a bad brand name all on its own.

Grimes apparently dated Chelsea Manning for a small while. That was pretty baffling.

It's because Grimes is an alien Freemason. Elon is Assassin's Creed, and he had to infiltrate the cabal by pretending to be one of them. It's all right there in the logo:

[orange808]

If I asked a seven year old American boy for a neat-o name for a company in 1956, he'd say "X".

The child would also use "X" as a pilot handle, plane name, submarine name, and comic book villain name.

It's childish and passé.

[BryanM]

I used to think conspiracy theorists were fun. But that was before the internet and my exposure to their ideas were limited to kooky family and TV specials, mainly.

9/11 demolition bros broke me though, and they're actually terribly boring and unoriginal. They're collectively building up their own bible, but unlike SCP or other web fiction communities, they're... not as coherent or as dedicated to making entertainment.

It reminds me of physics kooks, who seriously think they're got an amazing breakthrough and mainstream physicists are deluded fools. They're all playing at being writers, without writing anything.

Because of the whole illiteracy thing we just mentioned, I suppose.

Spoiler

Maybe it's all a cope for being powerless. "Understanding" what's going on can give one the illusion of control or being special. As a chuuni, I can feel a small bit of kinship with them.

One of the things the illuminati do indeed control is the number of humans on the planet; public policy certainly has a massive influence on how many kids people have. It's something I think about a bit about the machine god: everything it does will have downstream effects for all of humanity. It has to make active decisions that impact the population metrics, and unlike the bozos who pretend to be bloodless and innocent, the thing won't be able to delude itself into thinking it isn't. Unless they build the thing to be insane.

That's a big misunderstanding many people have with "alignment". Many use it as a word to mean their own personal wish fulfillment: machines that will make the world like Star Trek, basically. But what it really means is "able to give the thing a complex task to achieve without it killing everyone." That's a large possibility space there, from horrible torture worlds to much better than living in Star Trek.

Once again, SkyNet is an example of an aligned AI.

[orange808]

Me when I see a scary Tic Tac delicious alien ship.

Spoiler

[Lemnear]

I've seen a tv spot in my country...and they say exactly that...about a special water...
it begins...

[Sengoku Strider]

Maybe it's all a cope for being powerless. "Understanding" what's going on can give one the illusion of control or being special. As a chuuni, I can feel a small bit of kinship with them.

Absolutely. Some people are just schizotypal or paranoid or excessively gullible or outright dumb, but that cope/sense of control is a core component of conspiracy thinking. The need for a sense of power, of being one of those who see the truth about the world that foolish normies can't, shows its hand every time one of their conspiracies threatens to be proven true. They don't want everyone to know what they do, because then their "insider" knowledge becomes worthless social currency, since they lack useful technocratic knowledge that would allow them to participate in/gain status from the reveal. So they invent another layer of conspiracy on top of it to prove why the normies are still the dumb ones, not them.

Alex Jones says the aliens are GMOs:

Spoiler

The Dilbert guy says the aliens are actually a plot by democrat mind-wizards:

Spoiler

The Perry-Bible-Fellowship-for-Nazis guy says it's just the left wing lamestream media controlling the sheeple like they did with the vax:

Spoiler

One of the things the illuminati do indeed control is the number of humans on the planet; public policy certainly has a massive influence on how many kids people have. It's something I think about a bit about the machine god: everything it does will have downstream effects for all of humanity. It has to make active decisions that impact the population metrics, and unlike the bozos who pretend to be bloodless and innocent, the thing won't be able to delude itself into thinking it isn't. Unless they build the thing to be insane.

That's a big misunderstanding many people have with "alignment". Many use it as a word to mean their own personal wish fulfillment: machines that will make the world like Star Trek, basically. But what it really means is "able to give the thing a complex task to achieve without it killing everyone." That's a large possibility space there, from horrible torture worlds to much better than living in Star Trek.

Once again, SkyNet is an example of an aligned AI.

I say let Skynet bring it on. I've already been kicking its ass with this YouTube video.

[Sima Tuna]

Ah yes, "water is life," the hippie smash hit. Check out these other flaming hot tracks:

"Air is Nice"
"Food is Fuel"
"Money Lets Me Buy Shit"

Spoiler

I'm really fucking tired of seeing "water is life" lawn signs. No shit it is. You preaching to the sidewalk doesn't change one wit what Coca-Cola or Pepsi decide to do with the world's water sources.

[BulletMagnet]

Maybe it's all a cope for being powerless.

It's about knowing full well that you're wrong but preferring to completely and collectively take the piss than admit you're wrong.

[BryanM]

The UFO stuff has always been propaganda to flood out any legitimate reports of a new kind of aircraft being spotted. It really takes the fun out of it to realize it's not organic at all, but top-down gaslighting. Like most things in society.

I talk about the SCP (and analog horror) a lot because it's a community of nerds that have actual enthusiasm for spooky supernatural fiction. Remember when Slenderman was new and fresh? Someday about 20 years from now it'll all become mainstream. Like what happens to everything else nerds like. (Seeing Invincible go viral over something that already happened 20 years ago to me is kind of a subjective >_> moment)

An animated series based on SCP, Confinement, got taken down by its creator in a pift of rage at people being mean to their significant other or something. You rarely see the kind of drama where someone tears down something they've spent thousands of hours of their life working on.

On plasma as the gateway to immortality news, Bryan Johnson did a stunt where he infused a liter of his son's plasma into his body, and a liter of his plasma into his father. Which he says "did nothing". Which would be 100% expected. For various reasons you're probably not interested in hearing about. Let's just say he's a disgrace to all Bryans.

I bring it up because of this photograph, which is relevant to the "puke/cringe" sub purpose of this thread:

(Warning: do not look):

Spoiler

----

In BryanX (that's my new name now you have to call me that) blog news; for some reason I discovered Exilecon was happening today, just yesterday. Despite having my attention distracted for only one day, they still managed to disappointment me with their "news" >_<

Who does that?

[Sengoku Strider]

Der Trumpenfuhrer's been having a no good, very bad week. And it's only Tuesday.

January 6th indictment finally hit. Unnamed co-defendants, but Giuliani is obviously one, and probably his other lawyers like Sidney Powell and Lin Wood as well (though they may have legit insanity pleas, they're genuinely mentally unwell). 45 page-long indictment, the charges:

Conspiracy to defraud the United States
Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding
Obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding
Conspiracy against rights

I'd never heard of conspiracy against rights before. From Wiki:

Conspiracy against rights is a federal offense in the United States of America under 18 U.S.C. § 241:

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person [...] in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same;...
They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
The law was originally enacted, with slightly different phrasing, in Section 6 of the Enforcement Act of 1870.

It'll never happen (no matter how much you may dislike these guys, it would bring a lot of ugliness into the world) but the fact that they're slapping them with charges with potential death penalties shows there is zero fucking around here. I also find the fact that they're dredging up Reconstruction-era laws to hit The Stupid Confederacy with thematically quite appropriate.

But I'm not sure how much longer Trump stuff will belong in this thread:

Trump’s $100 million PAC has burned through nearly all of its cash

Former President Donald Trump’s once-formidable and lucrative political action committee is down to $3 million on hand while committees allied with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and President Joe Biden have well over $100 million combined ready to deploy, new data shows.

Trump’s Save America PAC raised over $15 million in the first half of 2023, spent over $30 million and now has about $3.6 million on hand, according to Federal Election Commission records. The committee came into 2023 in a strong position, raising over $100 million in 2022 and finishing with $18 million on hand.

An NBC News analysis of the filings shows that Save America spent north of $20 million on legal fees, with payments going to more than 40 different law firms.

The general election's more than a year out, so this is hardly peak fundraising time. But he has so many co-defendants in so many cases who he needs to keep paying legal fees for so they don't rat, and he can't just get rando lawyers, he needs people who can get federal security clearances and are willing to risk their careers working with him so they've got him over a barrel. He might even have to dig into his own money, which he may not in have sufficient amount for this - he is wealthy, but it seems to be based on business and real estate valuations rather than actual liquidity. If the money goes, it's not like he has a bunch of savvy policy ideas to fall back on. This is looking more and more like the final year of the "Trump is a threat to anyone other other than a cheeseburger" era.

[BryanM]

Strider, have you not learned a thing from 2016? Saying stuff like that basically guarantees he's getting reelected prez.

(As of March 2016, I thought he had a ~70% chance of winning the general. What was your % at the same time? Were you able to resist the propaganda that said he was a harmless clown, like Kefka from FF6?)

One thing a lot of people get confused about because of all the brain washing: money isn't a means to an end unto itself. Its primary function is a controlling mechanism to get the cattle to do what you want them to do. For elections, it isn't the money that gets votes, it's who has captured the most mindshare and loyalty of the electorate. Trump could have all of five dollars to his name; as long as the TV gives him trillions in free advertising and allows him to appear in the debates, he's real.

Money only matters for these politicians no one likes or thinks about. Normies don't have a clue who any of these people are, otherwise. Money is a metric. It's not the money that makes them real, it's the TV that makes them real.

"Are you real?"

"If you can't tell, does it matter?"

Mitt Romney is like a robber in a movie who just wants to crack the safe, while the rest of the GOP are his crew who want to shoot the hostages.

----------

It's a fun time when a paper about a new surgery method starts with "Magnetic Personalized Tentacles" in its title. Lots of crazy fun stuff coming out this year, it's like something like that appears every week now.

Oh and I guess people in Arizona are suffering burn wounds from falling on the ground. Or sitting on concrete/metal. That's neat and normal.

[Sengoku Strider]

You're totally right that he has anything but an ordinary public profile. It's been his advantage from the start, and since 2016 he's made himself into the most notorious political being alive this side of Putin, but more recognizable. But what's different this time around is that he's locked himself into his Truth Social ghost town. He's gone from 50k likes on his tweets to 5k on his truths. And he's completely alienated Newscorp, meaning Fox News, The Wall Street Journal & New York Post won't be laying on any more train tracks for him unless it would provoke outright revolt from their consumers. He just doesn't have anywhere near the messaging control he had in 2020.

Money does matter beyond just getting attention though. Venues need to be insured and secured, and everybody but the most podunk of locales wants money up front from him now. His private plane-travel lifestyle is stupid expensive. And the flip side of all the cash he's raised off the base has been that everyone else down-ballot has been starved, 5 states have republican parties that are nearly bankrupt (the Republican Party of Minnesota has just $53.81 left in the bank, with $335,781.36 worth of debt, according to their last FEC filing). Meaning if he wants to keep power players in his corner after 3 straight disappointing republican national elections, palms need to be greased. He has to know in the back of his head that at least half the party leadership would find a way to oust him the second they could rather than run an unwinnable general (after all, isn't firing the loser exactly what he'd do?). And if he's not making large ads buys on mainstream TV networks, they're not going to feel motivated to keep pretending he's anything other than a political crime monster out to devour democracy to feed his ego's rapacious stomach, which is a way more compelling story for most of them to sell at this point.

Plus, it should go without saying, the whole thing is a grift. Save America PAC sure seems to spend a lot of money on Mar-A-Lago for some reason.

[Sima Tuna]

As much as Republicans hated him during the 2016 Primaries, they hate him much more now. Mainstream republicans are done with Trump, as far as I can tell. The mishandling of confidential defense documents is not likely to make any political group happy except for Trump's rabid base. Unfortunately for them and for any third party candidate in general, America does not elect its president purely on populism. There are gatekeeping measures in place which prevent (for example,) Bernie or a third-party candidate from winning. Trump won the last time because the Republicans eventually realized he was their best ticket back into power, which is why Trump was saddled with Pence as a watchdog. A job which he apparently performed, considering he is giving evidence against Trump on the Jan 6 shit.

Even if there is theoretically nothing to stop Trump from becoming president while in prison, I doubt he can win. He lost the straight-up race against Biden last time. As bad as Biden fucking sucks (and he does,) if Trump couldn't win with incumbent advantage then he ain't winning this time. The shoe is on the other foot and now it's Biden coming in with the advantages. Biden's major disadvantages are his age (which is a disadvantage for Trump as well) and that he fucking sucks ass. I don't think Trump can overcome those paltry disadvantages while he's currently being convicted of conspiracy to overthrow democracy + spilling government secrets to randoms at his mar-a-lago resort.

(For the record, every candidate since, and including, Bush Jr has sucked major ass. Clinton merely sucked major cock. We haven't had a good president in my lifetime and likely will not.)

[BryanM]

Clinton purged the last remnants of the new dealers from his party, so is probably the worst president in history. If you want to weigh things in material results: if there was even a 0.1% chance of a future where we didn't Matrix-movie the sky. Hoo boy is it gonna be bad.

We'll know if it'll be a blow out by next year when the polls settle. They're not even worth a scanner darkly, until next summer. Remember that they were dead-on back in 2016 when they said Trump was in the lead. (By the time the election was close my 70% assumption dwindled down to a 45% coinflip, mostly because of the gaslighting but also my pessimism. I am not immune to propaganda.)

So much of what we "think" matters has proven to be so much bullshit. Like I say often, it's probably all flowers and butterflies in the end.

Trump could be in jail. FOX News could be receiving letter bombs from their viewers for endorsing Biden. 20% of his voters could be in the grave from the disease of being too fuckin' old. But it doesn't matter if Biden can't get the numbers in Ohio and Florida. Trump can still win.

Or Texas could finally flip and there won't be another republican president in our lifetimes. This transitional phase is highly volatile, on many fronts.

The only thing certain is the Mortal Kombat GOP primary will be full of sad desperate little goblins without any chance of making it to the big game next year.

[Sima Tuna]

Clinton purged the last remnants of the new dealers from his party, so is probably the worst president in history.

I thought Reagan was largely to blame for changing the dynamics of the political landscape, and Clinton's rightward shift was a response to that (aka his only way to win.) Notwithstanding both are trash of course. Who was the last good President, even? FDR? Carter?