|
Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
On April 16 2026 04:37 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2026 04:16 oBlade wrote:On April 16 2026 00:31 LightSpectra wrote:
A trial by jury in a court of law finding Trump to have raped someone required more evidence, objectively, than Swalwell resigning from Congress and a gubernatorial election because of accusations made outside of a court of law. And you know what? He was right to resign. I hope he's indicted, convicted, and imprisoned. Trump is still an adjudicated rapist and he's still blocking release of millions of Epstein files he swore he'd release. The point was not hard to understand it's that resigning immediately and going "I'm sorry" is different than "This whole system's out of order" and flipping a table in terms of how it affects people's priors about how they lean towards you being guilty. I personally think Swalwell is clearly a sleaze and clearly not a rapist and as different people react differently to pressure I wouldn't hold his reaction against him as dyhb might. That said you're now saying you hope Swalwell is convicted after all he did was resign, and you said that resigning is something which required LESS evidence than Trump not being convicted took. You shouldn't want him to be convicted on such flimsy grounds if you have no high standard to show he's guilty. You should want him not to be convicted because you should want him not to be guilty. You shouldn't be hoping for Swalwell to be a rapist. You shouldn't want it to have been possible for a Democrat rapist to be in the House for years and only have the shocking truth come out once he starts to look weak in a governor's race and someone wants him out. Horrible opinion from a horrible person, especially considering your justification for why we need secret police and detention camps to combat illegal immigration is because some of them are rapists. Why don't you apply that logic there, too? Just believe in your heart that no illegal immigrants have ever raped anyone and voila, they're innocent.
Swalwell certainly could have raped someone. But I wouldn't want him to be imprisoned if he didn't, just because rape is bad.
On April 16 2026 04:17 Fleetfeet wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2026 19:11 oBlade wrote:On April 15 2026 07:32 Fleetfeet wrote:
It's trivial to think of examples of myself in my own personal life exhibiting sexism, be it misgendering a female character in a game because male is the default (I did this literally last night many times) Was she particularly hurt and did you apologize or how did you rectify this? That isn't sexism. Do you think men are better than women and is thinking male characters are better than female characters a manifestation of that? Thanks for asking! Yes, there was a female present who pointed out (and rightly so) that 'male' is the norm in gaming spaces, and referring to female characters as male in that space contributes to 'othering' non-males in male spaces. It is sexist to default to an entity being male in that scenario. It's statistically probable and extremely minor, wasn't likely to lead to anyone crying or dying, but there's absolutely no value in me misgendering a character so even an extremely minor negative seems like reason enough to not do that. It's also literally sexist on account of literally being me taking an action based on an implicit bias towards gender. I hope you take this education to heart, though you tend to run around actively avoiding truth so I'm not holding out hope.
Referring to a female video game character as male if everyone else is male would not be "othering," it would be "sameing." Othering is you're planning a birthday party for your kid and say "What about the Jewish kid Sammy?" There was no reason to bring up that he's Jewish when everyone else is "normal," i.e., not.
You said you "misgendered" because male is the default. I took this to mean it was unintentional, you were just wrong. Is that right or were you trolling on purpose? How did this happen so many times if someone was there who knew and could say "She's a girl" the first time you made the mistake. This story is weird or I'm missing something.
Are you going to misgender everyone as female in the future since it's the opposite of default? That would lead to being wrong more often.
It sounds like you sat there and took a lecture for being wrong about whether an imaginary character was a boy or girl and are still going to assume genders in the future anyway.
Now if it's a real living human, unlike your video game character, you could ask directly before gendering whatsoever. But here's the thing. The essence of being wrong is you don't know you're wrong. If you only ask when you're not sure, you will be in huge trouble in the cases where you are sure, but also wrong, and don't ask because you think you're right, and then discover that you were wrong. Like happened to you and the video game character (assuming again it wasn't on purpose). So to fix this behavior of calling a video game character the wrong gender, you would have to ask someone else (every time). But other people have the same predicament you do. They can't say they're sure either because they aren't the character. It's not like asking someone their own gender, which is about themselves which they can be sure about.
Which, do you do that by the way? Ask every single person you meet for the first time? Seems like the only way to avoid mistakes if the mistakes come from your assumptions occasionally being wrong. On the other hand, this seemingly accommodating approach fails to weigh against the incredible annoyance and spam it would bring going through the world that way.
|
|
|
On April 16 2026 05:19 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
they are not "secret police".
Kristi Noem is gone and that Beavis and Butthead Gym Teacher guy that was running things in Minnesota got re-assigned. If this were a real "secret police" these two clowns would still be in their current positions.
You almost have constructed a logical argument here, but you appear to have forgotten the deduction, so it's just left dangling. "If ICE were secret police, Noem/Bovino wouldn't have been fired, because ..."?
ICE
(a) Operates under laws
ICE says it doesn't need judicial warrants to enter homes. Fourth Amendment scholars and immigration law experts said ICE's new policy flies in the face of the U.S. Constitution. In 2024, a federal judge in California reached the same conclusion, banning ICE agents from entering homes without a judge’s warrant and declaring that such actions "violate the Fourth Amendment."
(2) Courts can intervene
Judge Says ICE Violated Court Orders in 74 Cases
(bronze) Mission is law enforcement, not political repression
ICE Wants to Go After Dissenters as well as Immigrants
(iv)Exists within a democratic system
Means jack shit if they're not following the laws or courts, does it?
|
On April 16 2026 12:36 Turbovolver wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2026 01:34 GreenHorizons wrote:
I think part of what both Intro and Wombat are getting at is:
If I say there are too many calories in fast food and I prefer not to be obese. Who should I be mad at for still being fat? The Democrats
No, it's the Republicans silly.
|
Should Democrats have integrity and represent their voters interests or should they cave to the leverage being used by billionaires in support of poorly regulated data centers at the expense of their voters believing it helps secure their electoral victory?
Democrats planning to run in November’s midterm elections have been advised not to antagonise pro-AI campaign groups that have amassed almost $300mn to fight for the industry’s priorities.
The warnings by top party consultants, corroborated by people close to four different campaigns and party strategists speaking on the condition of anonymity, come despite internal polling for Democrats showing widespread public support for tougher AI rules.
www.ft.com
|
Everyone hates techbro's and datacenters jacking up everyone's electric bill, water and causing a global chip shortage.
They should fight and it should be an easy fight to win, there are literally no real upsides to AI at this point.
So I'm sure the Democrats will find a way to lose said fight...
|
Maine Democrats got new data centers banned entirely. But most Dems don't even have to go that far, they just need to be for some regulation to make LLM companies pay extra if water and power rates go up.
|
On April 16 2026 23:41 LightSpectra wrote:
Maine Democrats got new data centers banned entirely. But most Dems don't even have to go that far, they just need to be for some regulation to make LLM companies pay extra if water and power rates go up. Definitely a tougher fight in Virginia.
Two weeks before lawmakers return to Richmond, Democrats still have not resolved a dispute over whether to phase out the sales and use tax exemption for data centers.
“With all the bills that we introduce and pass during the year, the budget’s the most important one,” said Democratic State Senator Creigh Deeds. “It overrides everything else.”
“The problem is very simple,” Deeds said. “We’ve got a structurally deficient budget...We’re about a half a billion dollars short.”
Senate Democrats, most prominently Senator Lucas, want to end the exemption and use that money to fund other state programs. But those in the House of Delegates, led by Delegate Luke Torian, want to hold onto the tax exemption. Spanberger has also expressed her aversion to repealing the tax break, cautioning against “going back on the agreements Virginia has signed with companies that have created tens of thousands of jobs and brought significant investment to Virginia communities.”
Schapiro says that position likely supports Spanberger’s efforts to convey herself as a “can-do centrist.”
“Comporting herself as someone who is business friendly complements that image, and that’s one of the reasons why she’s been so supportive of preserving these tax breaks for data centers,” Schapiro said.
https://www.29news.com/2026/04/09/no-agreements-va-budget-reached-yet-democrats-continue-spar-over-data-center-tax-break/
Seems the governor is trying to have her cake and eat it too.
The amendments handed down from Spanberger strike out the explicit cost shift mechanism in the bills, preventing the capacity and distribution infrastructure costs from being placed on the high-load customers.
https://virginiamercury.com/2026/04/16/lawmakers-dominion-say-spanbergers-amendments-weaken-bill-to-shift-costs-onto-data-centers/
Suppose public opinion is somewhat relevant here:
...the poll found that 26 percent of Virginia voters support continuing the sales-tax exemption for data centers that meet investment requirements, while 67 percent want to end those incentives. State lawmakers are weighing whether to gut the incentives.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/04/15/data-centers-poll-virginia/
|
It's going to be tough to get rid of data centers that were built there partially do to favorable handouts that the states gave the corporations to locate them in their state. The origins are literally back in Hillary's VP candidate, Tim Kaine.
Spanberger is trying to market herself as a centrist, despite the culture war and gerrymandering stuff, so I think she'll try to preserve the tax breaks.
|
I was afraid my 401K would get savaged by this war. I was ready to move another ~20% of my savings into gold/silver. My sister-in-law, the financial wizard that she is, talked me out of it.
I am pleasantly surprised how well the stock market is holding up. I am glad I was wrong on that one. It is weird how some super negative people get angry with good news.
Are you surprised how well the stock market has held up?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/markets-april-13-9.7161390
On April 17 2026 00:37 dyhb wrote:
It's going to be tough to get rid of data centers that were built there partially do to favorable handouts that the states gave the corporations to locate them in their state. The origins are literally back in Hillary's VP candidate, Tim Kaine.
Spanberger is trying to market herself as a centrist, despite the culture war and gerrymandering stuff, so I think she'll try to preserve the tax breaks.
Pretending to be a centrist... Sure. However, didn't she introduce a bazillion lefty initiatives on her first day in office? The native Virginians on my wife's side of the fam think she is a lefty.
https://www.29news.com/2026/04/01/spanberger-signs-first-set-bills-though-many-still-await-action-april-deadline-looms/
“She ran as a moderate, and the Democrats in the General Assembly have rolled out to her some of the most liberal bills that they have generated in my time in the General Assembly,” said State Senator Mark Obenshain
|
Eh, this glorifying violence instead of reserving it as something God alone should mete out seems entirely in-character. I wouldn't be surprised if they write themselves a new King Trump Bible that actually uses the Pulp Fiction version instead of even trying to faithfully translate the original texts.
|
I think that the stock market is completely divorced from reality and it's been so for at least 5 years.
There are insane amounts of market manipulation going on all the time, meme, stupid companies have insane valuations and market caps while real companies with real products and assets look like shit.
Novo Nordisk comes out with Ozempic, has 12 month trailing revenue of almost $50 B and P/E ratio is approximately 10.5–11.4, they lost 40 % of their stock price over the same period.
Tesla, with $24.90 billion in revenue has a 364 P/E ratio and for some reason keeps going up despite their Q4 revenue dropping 3.1% year-over-year and them showing no signs of anything that would justify even a fraction of that evaluation.
It's all just vibes, stock market has basically turned into Crypto, market manipulation is a new normal, SEC basically doesn't exist anymore and deregulation is rampart.
I'd say all of this is going to end in disaster but that's the prediction I've been making for like 4 years and GME, TSLA and a bunch of other stupid, stupid fucking stocks keep on going up, the AI bubble keeps growing and everything keeps on chugging along, so maybe I'm just too stupid to understand how great actually everything is.
|
United States43904 Posts
There’s nowhere else to put the constantly expanding money supply that concentrates at the top. They can’t spend it and they don’t want to let it degrade from inflation and so it has to go into ownership of the memes of production like TSLA.
|
On April 17 2026 01:25 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2026 00:37 dyhb wrote:
It's going to be tough to get rid of data centers that were built there partially do to favorable handouts that the states gave the corporations to locate them in their state. The origins are literally back in Hillary's VP candidate, Tim Kaine.
Spanberger is trying to market herself as a centrist, despite the culture war and gerrymandering stuff, so I think she'll try to preserve the tax breaks. Pretending to be a centrist... Sure. However, didn't she introduce a bazillion lefty initiatives on her first day in office? The native Virginians on my wife's side of the fam think she is a lefty. https://www.29news.com/2026/04/01/spanberger-signs-first-set-bills-though-many-still-await-action-april-deadline-looms/“She ran as a moderate, and the Democrats in the General Assembly have rolled out to her some of the most liberal bills that they have generated in my time in the General Assembly,” said State Senator Mark Obenshain I'm trying to be fair to any centrists out there that voted for her and think leftist-associated culture war stances and pro-business stances are a mix of left and right, thus one definition of centrism (among many). She isn't moderate by any means on the culture war stuff and ICE stuff (the progressive left wouldn't want her to be, these are essentially moral mandates), since you're basically correct on the pace and content of your executive orders, supported bills, and other actions.
I have heard news stories on right-of-center Virginians who obviously think she campaigned as a moderate but has governed as nothing of the kind. But partisanship and bias affect that. I haven't seen anything from the liberal-left and center-left that might believe themselves deceived, so who knows. Her opponent ran a really stupid campaign, so it was easy for Spanberger to win while claiming the attacks against her were false.
|
Canada11493 Posts
|
On April 16 2026 19:50 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2026 04:37 LightSpectra wrote:On April 16 2026 04:16 oBlade wrote:On April 16 2026 00:31 LightSpectra wrote:
A trial by jury in a court of law finding Trump to have raped someone required more evidence, objectively, than Swalwell resigning from Congress and a gubernatorial election because of accusations made outside of a court of law. And you know what? He was right to resign. I hope he's indicted, convicted, and imprisoned. Trump is still an adjudicated rapist and he's still blocking release of millions of Epstein files he swore he'd release. The point was not hard to understand it's that resigning immediately and going "I'm sorry" is different than "This whole system's out of order" and flipping a table in terms of how it affects people's priors about how they lean towards you being guilty. I personally think Swalwell is clearly a sleaze and clearly not a rapist and as different people react differently to pressure I wouldn't hold his reaction against him as dyhb might. That said you're now saying you hope Swalwell is convicted after all he did was resign, and you said that resigning is something which required LESS evidence than Trump not being convicted took. You shouldn't want him to be convicted on such flimsy grounds if you have no high standard to show he's guilty. You should want him not to be convicted because you should want him not to be guilty. You shouldn't be hoping for Swalwell to be a rapist. You shouldn't want it to have been possible for a Democrat rapist to be in the House for years and only have the shocking truth come out once he starts to look weak in a governor's race and someone wants him out. Horrible opinion from a horrible person, especially considering your justification for why we need secret police and detention camps to combat illegal immigration is because some of them are rapists. Why don't you apply that logic there, too? Just believe in your heart that no illegal immigrants have ever raped anyone and voila, they're innocent. Swalwell certainly could have raped someone. But I wouldn't want him to be imprisoned if he didn't, just because rape is bad. Show nested quote +On April 16 2026 04:17 Fleetfeet wrote:On April 15 2026 19:11 oBlade wrote:On April 15 2026 07:32 Fleetfeet wrote:
It's trivial to think of examples of myself in my own personal life exhibiting sexism, be it misgendering a female character in a game because male is the default (I did this literally last night many times) Was she particularly hurt and did you apologize or how did you rectify this? That isn't sexism. Do you think men are better than women and is thinking male characters are better than female characters a manifestation of that? Thanks for asking! Yes, there was a female present who pointed out (and rightly so) that 'male' is the norm in gaming spaces, and referring to female characters as male in that space contributes to 'othering' non-males in male spaces. It is sexist to default to an entity being male in that scenario. It's statistically probable and extremely minor, wasn't likely to lead to anyone crying or dying, but there's absolutely no value in me misgendering a character so even an extremely minor negative seems like reason enough to not do that. It's also literally sexist on account of literally being me taking an action based on an implicit bias towards gender. I hope you take this education to heart, though you tend to run around actively avoiding truth so I'm not holding out hope. Referring to a female video game character as male if everyone else is male would not be "othering," it would be "sameing." Othering is you're planning a birthday party for your kid and say "What about the Jewish kid Sammy?" There was no reason to bring up that he's Jewish when everyone else is "normal," i.e., not. You said you "misgendered" because male is the default. I took this to mean it was unintentional, you were just wrong. Is that right or were you trolling on purpose? How did this happen so many times if someone was there who knew and could say "She's a girl" the first time you made the mistake. This story is weird or I'm missing something. Are you going to misgender everyone as female in the future since it's the opposite of default? That would lead to being wrong more often. It sounds like you sat there and took a lecture for being wrong about whether an imaginary character was a boy or girl and are still going to assume genders in the future anyway. Now if it's a real living human, unlike your video game character, you could ask directly before gendering whatsoever. But here's the thing. The essence of being wrong is you don't know you're wrong. If you only ask when you're not sure, you will be in huge trouble in the cases where you are sure, but also wrong, and don't ask because you think you're right, and then discover that you were wrong. Like happened to you and the video game character (assuming again it wasn't on purpose). So to fix this behavior of calling a video game character the wrong gender, you would have to ask someone else (every time). But other people have the same predicament you do. They can't say they're sure either because they aren't the character. It's not like asking someone their own gender, which is about themselves which they can be sure about. Which, do you do that by the way? Ask every single person you meet for the first time? Seems like the only way to avoid mistakes if the mistakes come from your assumptions occasionally being wrong. On the other hand, this seemingly accommodating approach fails to weigh against the incredible annoyance and spam it would bring going through the world that way.
Not gonna read all this because you're oBlade, but I wil suggest that maybe you should calm down. I know someone admitting they made a mistake is so foreign to you that it's more likely the scenario is invented or some shit, but I made a small mistake and it's an example of sexism that exists in our culture and ourselves.
You're putting a lot of work into defending a mistake I'm content to admit I made. Think on that for a minute.
|
doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1281 Posts
On April 16 2026 23:23 GreenHorizons wrote:Should Democrats have integrity and represent their voters interests or should they cave to the leverage being used by billionaires in support of poorly regulated data centers at the expense of their voters believing it helps secure their electoral victory? Show nested quote +Democrats planning to run in November’s midterm elections have been advised not to antagonise pro-AI campaign groups that have amassed almost $300mn to fight for the industry’s priorities.
The warnings by top party consultants, corroborated by people close to four different campaigns and party strategists speaking on the condition of anonymity, come despite internal polling for Democrats showing widespread public support for tougher AI rules. www.ft.com
You know, given how much the everyday person hates AI. There could be something there for a populist campaign raging against this exact issue, they might even get something done about campaign financing/Citizens United for once.
Too bad Bernie is too old to run, and I can't think of anyone else well known to run such a populist campaign. So likely they are going to need someone new out of the blue, which vastly hurts their chances.
Doesn't help that the DNC/Dem establishment would likely close ranks to push them out of running anyway.
I just don't see any way out of it for you guys other than just running headlong into AI crash and picking up the pieces afterwards. God knows how anyone is going to be able to do anything about campaign finances.
|
Northern Ireland26613 Posts
On April 17 2026 01:41 Jankisa wrote:
I think that the stock market is completely divorced from reality and it's been so for at least 5 years.
There are insane amounts of market manipulation going on all the time, meme, stupid companies have insane valuations and market caps while real companies with real products and assets look like shit.
Novo Nordisk comes out with Ozempic, has 12 month trailing revenue of almost $50 B and P/E ratio is approximately 10.5–11.4, they lost 40 % of their stock price over the same period.
Tesla, with $24.90 billion in revenue has a 364 P/E ratio and for some reason keeps going up despite their Q4 revenue dropping 3.1% year-over-year and them showing no signs of anything that would justify even a fraction of that evaluation.
It's all just vibes, stock market has basically turned into Crypto, market manipulation is a new normal, SEC basically doesn't exist anymore and deregulation is rampart.
I'd say all of this is going to end in disaster but that's the prediction I've been making for like 4 years and GME, TSLA and a bunch of other stupid, stupid fucking stocks keep on going up, the AI bubble keeps growing and everything keeps on chugging along, so maybe I'm just too stupid to understand how great actually everything is.
It does seem rather strange to me, albeit I’ll confess not a particularly strong area for me (assuming I have any that is!)
Weren’t Tesla’s shares at one point worth more than the next 10 top automobile manufacturers combined or something bonkers?
Of course bullshit stock valuations or attempts at manipulation certainly aren’t anything new, but it does feel both more pronounced in the recent past, plus more pervasive across wider sectors, as opposed to the odd company.
As I confessed, not my strong area so interested to hear takes from those more adept!
I have heard it claimed that the uncertainty and upheaval caused by multiple global economic shocks has somewhat precipitated more gambling on nascent industries, or hell regular gambling rather than a more safe approach to investing. I mean why invest extra capital in safe, low-return portfolios if either you’ve been burned before by x economic crisis, or there could be another one round the corner? May as well go big or go home right?
Which I think makes sense in regular Joe and Janes going into crypto or whatever, albeit to my noob sensibilities it doesn’t fully explain some of the wonkiness.
On April 17 2026 07:24 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2026 23:23 GreenHorizons wrote:Should Democrats have integrity and represent their voters interests or should they cave to the leverage being used by billionaires in support of poorly regulated data centers at the expense of their voters believing it helps secure their electoral victory? Democrats planning to run in November’s midterm elections have been advised not to antagonise pro-AI campaign groups that have amassed almost $300mn to fight for the industry’s priorities.
The warnings by top party consultants, corroborated by people close to four different campaigns and party strategists speaking on the condition of anonymity, come despite internal polling for Democrats showing widespread public support for tougher AI rules. www.ft.com You know, given how much the everyday person hates AI. There could be something there for a populist campaign raging against this exact issue, they might even get something done about campaign financing/Citizens United for once. Too bad Bernie is too old to run, and I can't think of anyone else well known to run such a populist campaign. So likely they are going to need someone new out of the blue, which vastly hurts their chances. Doesn't help that the DNC/Dem establishment would likely close ranks to push them out of running anyway. I just don't see any way out of it for you guys other than just running headlong into AI crash and picking up the pieces afterwards. God knows how anyone is going to be able to do anything about campaign finances.
One would think so.
The crazy part to me is I don’t even think you have to do all that much. It’s difficult to gauge and depends on what circles you run in, many of mine I think are more stridently anti-AI than genpop if I were to guess.
I may be wrong, I think the wider population probably want at least some sensible regulation, be it in how these things are trained or employed, or in mitigating the potential problems of data centre expansions etc. Or safeguarding against labour displacement.
As opposed to well, basically nothing.
I don’t think the Dems have to go remotely radical on this issue to placate a lot of people, of course their priorities may play elsewhere.
I mean I’d personally go a lot further in my ideal world, but I don’t think the Dems had to remotely go near those domains to score some pretty solid political wins.
|
On April 17 2026 08:01 WombaT wrote:
Weren’t Tesla’s shares at one point worth more than the next 10 top automobile manufacturers combined or something bonkers?
A Tesla spontaneously exploded in my grandma's neighbourhood last night.
https://imgur.com/a/zoppisG
This is just west of Toronto.
The fire is in the front half of the vehicle. Insurance companies have been making a killing off of Tesla vehicles.
Seeing as we're discussing 90s tarantino movies I'll borrow a quote from Jackie Brown.
"I am tellin' ya Louis start adding these motherfucking figures up ... Tell me this isn't the binez to be in!"
|
Musings.
Anyway, EU grew tired of the aggressive ‚marketing’ and interference. It‘s incredibly hectic to even keep up with the daily thing that happens over there that can spill over here and whatnot.
The US has a ton of money they don‘t want to redistribute from rich to poor/middle class for ideological reasons.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
