Ertebolle @ Ertebolle @kbin.social

Posts

7

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466

Joined

2 yr. ago

Sure they do, they can fine them and if they don't comply they can go to state court to get it enforced. Individuals may be able to flout overdue tolls or traffic tickets or whatever for a while, but it's extremely easy to impose a fine on a public corporation.

How do they propose to enforce this, when browsers are free and open-source and can easily be downloaded from hosts outside of France?

Funny how nobody ever makes these sorts of comments about, say, money we spend paying farmers to not grow corn, or money we spend on overpriced or useless weapons systems for our own military, or even specifically the military aid we give to wealthier, less deserving countries like Saudi Arabia and Israel; it's always Ukraine that brings out the "how come we aren't spending money on X" people.

You accused your political opponents of supporting baby-murdering... sarcastically?

My impression has always been that the actual risk was vastly overstated; per Wikipedia:

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. said in 1958, "Most people agreed with Mayor La Guardia of New York in dismissing it as a 'cocktail putsch'".[51] In Schlesinger's summation of the affair in 1958, "No doubt, MacGuire did have some wild scheme in mind, though the gap between contemplation and execution was considerable, and it can hardly be supposed that the Republic was in much danger."[10]

Historian Robert F. Burk wrote, "At their core, the accusations probably consisted of a mixture of actual attempts at influence peddling by a small core of financiers with ties to veterans organizations and the self-serving accusations of Butler against the enemies of his pacifist and populist causes."[7]

Historian Hans Schmidt wrote, "Even if Butler was telling the truth, as there seems little reason to doubt, there remains the unfathomable problem of MacGuire's motives and veracity. He may have been working both ends against the middle, as Butler at one point suspected. In any case, MacGuire emerged from the HUAC hearings as an inconsequential trickster whose base dealings could not possibly be taken alone as verifying such a momentous undertaking. If he was acting as an intermediary in a genuine probe, or as agent provocateur sent to fool Butler, his employers were at least clever enough to keep their distance and see to it that he self-destructed on the witness stand."[8]

To clarify, this isn’t actually specifically about today’s threat - the lawyers have been jockeying for a few days about the conditions under which the government will produce discovery, and this order is mostly an attempt to speed up that process rather than let Trump’s people dither and delay. The business today just adds a bit of extra urgency to getting the trial done quickly.

That's not how I remember it

There are a couple sneaky ways states are trying to get around this.

The biggest one is the NPVIC - basically, states representing a majority of electoral votes (considerably fewer than the 3/4 required to ratify a constitutional amendment) would enter into an interstate compact agreeing to award all of their electoral votes - and hence the presidency - to whoever wins the national popular vote.

It might be struck down as unconstitutional, but it also might not - states have a lot of power over how to allocate their electoral votes. But even getting to the needed 270 electoral votes is a stretch; we're currently at 205, but that includes most of the low-hanging fruit, because populous hard-right states like Texas tend to view the current system as favoring Republicans (and indeed the 4 presidents in the last 150 years elected despite losing the popular vote were all Republicans) and so even if a popular vote would bolster their national influence they're still against it. And the non-Republican-dominated states that haven't entered it yet - MI/WI/PA/AZ/NV/GA/NC/NH - are all presidential swing states that enjoy outsized influence under the current system and have no incentive to disrupt it.

So realistically, the only way to eliminate the electoral college would be for a Democrat to win the electoral vote while losing the popular vote, thus gaining support from hard-right state legislatures eager to delegitimize the election winner.

Best ratio of screen time to cultural impact since Hannibal Lecter

Tesla Powerwall is 13.5, but that's mostly intended to store excess solar energy, not as a full backup power source.

A single 3.5-meter block could hold 10kWh of energy, and power a house for a day

That's... not a lot of energy; can use it up doing like 2 loads of laundry if you have an electric dryer, or running a central A/C for a few hours. (let alone charging an EV, where you can burn through it in a bit over an hour to add maybe 15% or so)

Preorders exploded after news came out about bear sex.

Sick burn, enjoy your elf-infused masturbation dude

Married to a wife who has no problem with watching actual porn, but thanks for playing

Puttshack is kind of fun - sort of like a combination of mini-golf and bowling. (better with a group of drunk friends though)

Harvard Square's got a bunch of nice museums and bookstores and restaurants and such, and it's pretty empty at the moment because we're past peak tourist season but the kids haven't come back yet. Brattle is showing "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" if you're a fan of second-tier Tarantino movies.

Socially acceptable T&A, same reason everybody was into The Witcher; with BG3 you can even tell your parents / girlfriend / whatever that it's a sequel to a beloved game you remember from your childhood.

It's just companies and influencers, nobody else is posting much there. And half of the influencers are only there to try to get you to follow them somewhere else. (feed is absolutely crammed with Taylor "not wearing a mask outdoors in 2023 is literally genocide" Lorenz hawking her new YouTube channel and I don't even follow her)

Meanwhile Mastodon continues growing steadily, and I'm getting as much engagement there as I ever did on Twitter with maybe 10% as many followers.

iOS

I'm glad this is happening while most of the Boomers are still alive, they can see exactly what kind of world they're passing on to their grandchildren before they go. (and if they suffer the brunt of the impact from heat-related illness I'm certainly not crying about that much)

This shit absolutely makes life worse for Chinese-Americans and the PRC absolutely doesn't give a fuck about that.