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My wife's company did not care if you were tested they enforced it as vax only. Several other companies I was familiar with similar. Mine gave a quasi way out, where you could attest you had a vax but didn't have to show proof. The practical implementations, especially in blue areas, were more severe. You don't think the government spending and printing money, tripling the money supply, causes prices to increase? If the government didn't have to print money to pay these people and their vast patronage network you think they would print money indescriminitely as they have since 2008?

I said I don't want to pay $100 for a hamburger I'm not flying in a 100LL airplane to get. I don't want the money supply tripled again so we can pretend to pay for gay trans musicals in Gaza while lining people's pockets with tax money.

Seriously? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59989476 Disinformation on social media was Trump's thing?

The media did cause 40 somethings whose risk from Covid was roughly on par to a weekend of skydiving to act like they were playing Russian roulette by walking their dog. I saw a person run into traffic because someone got 20 ft away from them. These people that believed normal society was now Russian roulette were made that way by the media that conflated a high IFR in 80 year olds with the general population risk. Biden directly tried to force private companies under OSHA to fire people unwilling to vaccinate. I know people who worked at companies remotely that were impacted.

How could you not believe it?

Can you explain how when wages remain constant and prices for housing, insurance, education and food triples everyone is supposed to afford life and basic necessities? Anecdotally I'm paying the same or more in a medium cost of living city as I did living in Santa Monica 7 years ago. The decision is between 2-4 million possibly impacted (if you add contractors) and all 170 million labor age people in the country losing the ability to pay for basic necessities. I worked/do work in the private sector, so I don't really see the comparison. I just wanted to be left alone. This USAID/InterNews system seems to have been weaponized directly at many people. Just from the media and Internet censorship and narratives that caused Covid and to make people hysterical, yeah I want anyone involved in that to go back to working in Starbucks so they can't wield power over anyone ever again.

What specifically? The fact every media org had the same messaging (even ones that should have had differing views) seems like a good indicator it's not bullshit. If you look here I voted for Elon and Vance over Trump so yeah, this is what I was hoping would happen. Whether it sticks and isn't just performative is another matter. I'd rather the $100 hamburger not be because our country has been looted for the last two decades. Make the $100 hamburger an aviation thing again. Something had to be done about this chart.

They've been fairly clear all political sides benefit from this. Benz specifically pointed out InterNews turned domestic after 2016 and he is right leaning. But the data shows tons of Republicans benefited from the payments USAID made. For Benz ended up focusing on internet censorship I don't remember the reasons.

The big two, one of which is not found by DOGE: 1) USAID turned it's overseas propaganda network inward after the 2016 election (InterNews is one of primary orgs). There was a theory on the new/dissident right that the consistent messaging across academia and the news networks was because of a concept called "the cathedral". It was similar to the iron polygon but a fusing of the bureaucracy and press/academia. This theory, which I bought, seems to be wrong. It turns out it was just good old fashion money and people with guns. Mike Benz was on a press tour discussing it a couple of months ago. Maybe that was by design to help get the word out given it seems to be an early target. In addition, politicians are directly on boards of charities funded by USAID, in some cases pulling in 500k salaries. So the whole thing seems to work like a patronage network. Part of the database is online and searchable here: https://datarepublican.com/ if you want to know if any of your local charities are funded by it. That account regularly interacts with Elon and direct action seems to have come from it. 2) There appears to be $100b in entitlement payments to entities with no SSN. Seems to be directly from DOGE Apparently Musk bought ads for Superbowl with his own money to explain some of it.

Weird read on it: > I just had a good call with President Trump. Canada is implementing our $1.3 billion border plan — reinforcing the border with new choppers, technology and personnel, enhanced coordination with our American partners, and increased resources to stop the flow of fentanyl. Nearly 10,000 frontline personnel are and will be working on protecting the border. > In addition, Canada is making new commitments to appoint a Fentanyl Czar, we will list cartels as terrorists, ensure 24/7 eyes on the border, launch a Canada- U.S. Joint Strike Force to combat organized crime, fentanyl and money laundering. I have also signed a new intelligence directive on organized crime and fentanyl and we will be backing it with $200 million. > Proposed tariffs will be paused for at least 30 days while we work together https://x.com/JustinTrudeau/status/1886529228193022429

People use telephones to sell drugs, maybe you'd advocate putting telecom execs in jail? Ross got more time than El Chapo and some of the evidence brought to light was fabricated. He did 12 years as a first time offender. Think he paid his due.

Do you support intelligence officials who are supposed to be non partisan distributing propaganda for one party over another? What about drumming up support for a war on false pretenses, ala Iraq?

There's a lot of talk about this in conservative circles online. It's referred to sometimes as "ideologies" fulfilling the void left by "God is Dead" of the postmodern era. Veganism, transgenderism, CrossFit and even skydiving fill the void. Skydiving has real sacrifice and sometimes the angry sky gods punish indescriminitely for no reason, despite doing everything correctly. The punishment for the sin of 200 jump wonder on a cross braced canopy can be swift as well. Always thought it mapped nicely as a religion replacement when I was younger.

The capital class shipped all the manufacturing jobs to Mexico and Asia depending on industry. When the peasants complain they just say, but robots will take your job or we will bring in more immigrants! Learn to code dummy! Oh wait, now we will import those too. Glad you are too unmotivated to revolt, and when you knock over some barrier ropes in the Capitol we can clutch our pearls about it being worse than Pearl harbor then bring in even more people. The only people that can live like a 1990s truck driver with a below average IQ are immigrants willing to work half market rate because they have some fake qualifications. Before anyone suggests it, yes I generally agree with a minimum wage that matches inflation, but I don't know how that fixed driving 2 hours to your McDonald's job in a metro willing to pay it.

I didn't say genius level, I said top 5%. Iirc genius is a 150 IQ which from a Google is somewhere between 1% and 0.1%. I'm fine with the bar being 1% if that's what you are arguing. I'm trying to allow for mistakes and bad days and setting the bar at 5%.

It doesn't appear to be rigorous in all cases. I've worked with H1Bs that are incredibly competent but it's the exception and not the rule. Coupled with some of the cheats like Infosys and the sheer number I've seen, I find it hard to believe it's not abused en masse. I was at a cafe at Amazon and it was almost 80% Indian. About two decades ago I was on a team at Verizon that had 3 white people out of 40, the rest Indian H1B. They primarily hired agency so the H1B was held by the agency and not Verizon. A lot of people I've worked with end up citizens (H1B is supposed to be non immigrant). A H1B on my team I gave the renewal for just reached out for a reference. She worked with me longer than six years ago and still doesn't have a green card. I know a lot of H1Bs that are here longer than a decade.

It's the 95th percentile. Top 5% seems like a good line.

There should be tests that allow people in that are sufficiently rigorous. Illegal is sufficiently vague. Did they rape someone or get caught up working long hours at a startup?

I'm not making an argument that it's always been this way just the form of a particular type of killer changes. The subset of incel type killers in particular.

Elon had a 1400 on the SAT. That's about the bar where we should let people in. There are probably other tests (Google interview would be an example) that would make sense, so long as Google isn't using it to suppress wages. Transparency would go a long way.

That would be the incel mentioned above. To be more explicit evil exists and takes whatever form of the society around it religious or not. Today it's columbine style school shooters before 1990s it was serial killers. https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/what-explains-the-decline-of-serial-killers

Yes. That pool is much smaller depending on where the line is drawn. Melania vs a couple of thousand home coming queens.

Tested against whatever your favorite benchmark: Google interview panel, IQ Test, SAT, all of them you don't think he would score high enough to warrant admission? It's reported he got a 1420 on the SAT which puts him in the top 5%. I'm fine bringing whoever over if they can raise/bring money to start a business or if say the cap is $200K a year on salaries. I don't think we should bring retail managers or basic development jobs over.

Choose the form of your destructor. In an Islamic society you get suicide vest bombers. In our society you get disaffected young men shooting up schools. Numerous myths cover the phenomenon.

I think it's more helpful to classify which oligarchs form a symbiosis with the movements. Tea Party was solidly from the Koch era. GW Bush was an era by oil and gas, defense. Team blue had finance, tech, academia and media through most of the 2000s. The new tech side grew in power in this time and the old guard wanted to bring them to heel. You see things like Zuckerberg being brought before Congress and beat into submission. What you see today is a new class, the new tech, not getting their due and in some cases revolting the pressure put on them by the old guard. A subset revolted (Thiel, Elon, Andresson) and has now remade the Republican party. The party in 2024 is not the same as 2010 or 2001.