We basically get two chances if you want to follow the normal procedure. Swing congress during the midterms and lock him up for the remainder of his term and or elect a democrat in four years who will tear up the stack of executive orders and make the rounds apologizing to everyone.
I mean both of those options (minus the locking up) were tried last time. Even if Democrats were to win elections as described, another round of apologies and saying nice things about institutionalism is not going to cut. I felt pretty sure Trump had a good chance of being re-elected from 2022 onward, Democrats simply didn't want to believe that a large part of the electorate are assholes or that they would need to change up their policy/electoral/comms game. Some of them still don't want to believe it.
This Harvard thing is just one example. Just saw a report this morning (Aus time) of an Australian detained, stripped, and held overnight in a US federal prison. She was just coming in to visit her husband.
Who the hell will want to come to the US now? You are going to suffer a massive reverse brain drain. You got a 30% tariff tax, kidnapping of random people off the street including US citizens, blatant and overwhelming corruption at the highest levels, weaponizing of government to target people, institutions and private companies.
So the US won't survive until 2029. That means it won't exist as a country? Or GDP will be down by at least 50%? Happy to bet against either at even odds.
I'm not the guy you were arguing with. But let me take a stab at defining "US".
To me, the US isn't just a geographic boundary. It's not even a collection of people. It's primarily the Constitution, and the limited government that flows from it.
If in 2029 we have a Constitution that is still theoretically in force, but in practice is ignored by the government, does the US still exist, or not? To me, even if something with that name exists, it's not the same US that existed in November 2024.
So I think that, if you're going to do this bet, you have to define the boundary conditions very carefully. Something with the "US" name will most likely exist in 2029. But will it be a zombie, or will it still be the same entity as it was before? And if it's a zombie, which of you wins the bet?
There's nothing stopping moderators, owners or the founder from fighting the gaming or at least making a public statement addressing the destruction of the society which has benefited them so greatly. But alas...true values are revealed in times of trouble.
This community is becoming a moral embarrassment and nearly not worth participating in any longer.
> what it proves is that users will flag unsubstantive flamewar posts on Hacker News, regardless of the topic or the commenter's position on the topic. This is a good thing!
I think it has to pass the moderators bar for acceptance: is this just antoher "MOT", or will it generate "curious" discussion. Combine that with the fact that the HN site gets a lot of these submissions and it's sort of a phenomenon that I like to call "no one goes there, it's too crowded!".
"Curious" discussion requires a free and open society and a sense of personal security. If that doesn't exist, then no one will dare make statements online that could result in persecution in the real. If they want to protect curious discussion, then they need to protect the society that fosters it.
But again...they are free to make public statements denouncing what is happening without having to interfere in the moderation. Yet they have not done so. Why not?
Instead, what do they ask for?...For people to "make good new things".
But sometimes, obstruction or even destruction is just as "good". One doesn't watch a cancer grow and say "hmmm....what good thing can i create in response?" No. You fucking destroy the cancer.
They don't want that though. "Good new things" are profitable. Destruction isn't. (Unless it's the destruction of moral constraints.)
And worse yet, destruction will inevitably result in the downfall of some of their very close friends and acquaintances. It's no surprise they aren't saying anything.
(I realize your response is neutral, or I at least read it as such, so please don't take my comment as an attack on you.)
Like it or not, that kind of statement plays right into Trump's playbook.
I also simply don't believe it. Because by that logic any AI topic as of late should be flagged as well. People just want to enjoy their circus even as the bombs outside go off.
Further, the people who have purchased this situation for us, and the wealthy tech VCs who are staying silent now, are all people this community once admired.
Must have missed the many Congress laws that can suspend such a disbursement by various parties of the Executive Branch: immediate, 7-day, 15-day, 90-day, reallocated, indefinite.
I just feel the cutting has to start someplace and with Trump not having to be elected again he has nothing to lose. I am sure a Democrat will win next term to try to right things. Trump is mart enough to see there is a problem but not smart enough to get in and fix it. It is like a farmer burning the fields for next season. Democrats will have a field to build back better on.
I think the war in Iraq really cost a lot of money and we have to pay for it here. Might as well start with Trump doing some slashing and burning. We will have build up from the ground up again.
We have to do this by choice rather than having it because our hand is forced. It's not a choice anybody wants, but it'll be less pain now than later.
I know republicans created these wars but now we just are all going to have to take the pain. Trump is starting with other people taking the pain first.
> Might as well start with Trump doing some slashing and burning. We will have build up from the ground up again.
Well, there's two ways to get a balanced budget.
1) You could increase the tax rate as was done for pretty much every single other war. This of course is not going to happen.
2) You have to lower expenses. The problem with this is that we know the US Budget and unless you cut anything from the big 3 (Defense, Social Security, Medicaid) you cannot have a balanced budget. The deficit is about ~1.75 Trillion per-year. Federal Employee Salaries is about 320 Billion/yr so you'd literally have to fire everybody and stop all non-big 3 spending (~1.5 Trillion) to have a balanced budget this way.
This is the problem, the approach is just not going to work and is going to cause a bunch of problems for the economy as it's enacted.
The people who voted for this to happen were told that the Cia and fbi are part of the "deep state" that stole the last election away from Trump and have been attempting to unjustly prosecute him for made up crimes
The explosive used was PETN which is very difficult to make and very difficult to detect. You pretty much need a spectroscope.
Generally airports and ports are set up for detecting things like explosives you cooked up yourself or stolen mining equipment or whatever. Military grade explosives are expected to be chemically tagged because they’re for, y’know, legit military use and not terrorism.
I can’t find anything on whether or not the PETN that Israel used was tagged. If not, it would be yet another layer of irresponsibility. Unexploded ordinance is very real, as the recent news about the WWII era bomb blowing a hole in that airport runway in Japan attests to.
The thing is, these explosives were meant to be hidden. I'm sure the swabbing and scanning would not work because Hezbollah would have access to the same tech.
It's a bit different from other military uses that are more open.
> Hezbollah examined the pagers after they were delivered to Lebanon, starting in 2022, including by travelling through airports with them to ensure they would not trigger alarms, two additional sources told Reuters.
i find this story very weird. hezbollah is a terrorist organisation. which airports allow terrorists to travel through them with pallets of electronic devices?
Hezbollah has 20,000 fighters, another 20,000 reservists. 97% of all shias, 35% of all sunnis, 25% of Christians in Lebanon support them for various reasons. Hezbollah is the king maker of Lebanon politics: whoever(esp politicians) goes against Hezbollah in Lebanon will get assassinated.
How many of them are on watch lists? Maybe, 100 to 200. Even the people who are on watch lists travel secretly on middle eastern carriers by using aliases.
I doubt that every member is on a list, and even if they are, there are fake ids. Maybe the airport in Beirut would be cooperative? And it also doesn’t say that they tested every device this way.
That quality filter may come from highly-tuned personalization.
I remember seeing low-quality but viral content on YouTube, so I kept telling it "Don't Recommend This" for quite a while (month-ish). Now it's better, but the recommendation algorithm needs a lot of samples labeled negative.
I've never had to do this much, just a few cases. However I'm also super-cautious not to view slop on my main account, instead doing so in a private tab.
So not feeding the algorithm seems to work as well.
Yeah, if you decide to check out slop once your feed will be drowned in spam. Similar to how I looked at a couple more pro-Russian videos to get s nuanced perspective and then my whole feed was filled with conspiracy shit and nazi stuff.
