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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • It’s not creditors - lawyers from his supplement company were attempting to get a bankruptcy judge to shut down InfoWars’ parent company. I don’t fully disagree with a lot of assessments saying this is pretty clearly Jones trying to manufacture a crisis to drum up cash (probably to pay the giant settlement he owes in CT). On the other hand, the judge handling his bankruptcy case is expected to make a decision on whether or not Free Speech Systems will continue operating by the end of next week, so Dan and Jordan may have to find someone else to style on for their podcast.

    And that’s my bright spot.


  • You would be VERY surprised - bigots are usually very willing to shoot themselves in the foot. I mentioned going to my city’s Pride parade once to a prospective landlord I was touring an apartment with, and they all but told me outright “I won’t rent to you”. I’ve also seen this happen with friends buying cars - a buddy asked me to go kick tires with him when he was looking for a new car, and since I’m white and he isn’t, the salesman that came out to talk with us IMMEDIATELY assumed I was the one buying the car.

    I also used to work commission-based sales myself as a cellphone salesperson. One common complaint I had from a lot of my Black and Hispanic clientele was that the anchor store sales staff (who were closer to them and better-stocked) would almost always assume they wanted to see the worst, shittiest phones (this was back right as the iPhone 5 was coming out), even if they had walked in ready to drop several thousand dollars on new Apple phones (which got us a commission of about $100 per device). These people would drive 20-30 minutes past THAT store to come to my store (the next closest) just so they didn’t have to deal with those salespeople.



  • Ehh, populism isn’t limited to politics, at least not tactics-wise. Lots of televangelists and the like use the same sort of tactics - boil down everything wrong in your life to a single, easily-solvable datapoint that YOU can take action on.

    At the same time, I think it’s important to recognize that not all Trump voters are “stupid” or “ignorant”. While those exist, cults can - and HAVE - suckered in people with high-paying jobs, with degrees and education and accolades. Trump’s cult of personality is no different - a LOT of Trump voters aren’t stupid or ignorant or anything, they might vote for him for dozens of reasons, from “well I’m a shitty racist as well” to “well he wears the trappings of success” to “he sounds confident”, and it’s important to recognize that anyone can fall victim to a cult like that through the sheer momentum of peer pressure. Jonestown was full of people who were desperately seeking a better world, and a lot of them were fairly well-educated engineers and doctors and lawyers and the like. Aum Shinrikyo was FULL of PhDs and MDs. Trump has lost a lot of the more well-informed and well-educated people in his camp, but characterizing his entire voter base as “dumb hicks waiting to be conned” is unhelpful at best and harmful at worst.



  • The issue is that none of those have the energy density of nuclear power. A single mid-sized nuclear plant can power a small city, where that same city would need at least a half-dozen solar farms around the area (assuming there’s enough cleared land to support it - rooftop solar can offset, but it generally will not replace mains power), or tons of wind turbines (again, subject to area - not every place is a good candidate). Geothermal and hydroelectric are subject to that same issue - you can’t place them anywhere, there are very specific requirements to get one up and running.

    I agree we should work towards 100% green energy, but nuclear is an effective option dollar-for-dollar and acre-for-acre until we figure out a good way to increase energy density of wind or solar to a point where we don’t need enormous tracts of land dedicated to them in order to support places where people live.







  • Historically, large-scale withdrawals of drugs from markets ONLY occur, and large-scale marketing ONLY is barred when the side effects are deemed dangerous enough to not risk at any significant percentage. If you look through the list of withdrawn drugs throughout the world, almost all of them are withdrawn for either abuse reasons, or significant side effects like organ toxicity, serious risk of overdose even inside prescriber control, carcinogenicity, or neurological reactions (like some fungicides/bactericides causing blindness/deafness even when used properly).

    SOME of these have been returned to market (like thalidomide) under very strict guidelines, used for very strict reasons (thalidomide is used for leprosy and multiple myeloma treatment now in certain situations, in combination with certain drugs to help reduce teratogenicity). Others, which were formerly seen as helpful, have been removed from markets because of newly-found dangers involving them (like Zantac, which was found to spontaneously break down into a carcinogenic compound).



  • Pretty much this. Elon was never interested in what he SHOULD HAVE BEEN: making an inexpensive electric vehicle that’s widely available. Tesla had the tech to do so, but they were being driven to make insane decisions like moving the gearshift to a touchscreen (gee, I love taking my eyes off the road to shift gears), or making “futuristic” doors that actually cannot physically open from the inside (whoops, guess those just can’t be recalled since DOT has literally no teeth).