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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.
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US indicts former Cuban President Raúl Castro over 1996 downing of planes
Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged former Cuban President Raúl Castro with ordering the 1996 shootdown of civilian planes operated by Miami-based exiles, a major escalation of pressure by the Trump administration on the socialist government. President Donald Trump has set a calamitous energy blockade on the island and has been threatening military action ever since U.S. forces captured the Cuban government’s longtime patron, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. https://apnews.com/live/trump-administration-updates-05-20-2026
U.S. Charges Former Cuban President Raúl Castro With Murder
Cuba: The Justice Department indicted Raúl Castro, the former president and defense minister of Cuba, and five others on murder and conspiracy charges in the downing of two planes operated by a Cuban exile group in 1996.
Pressuring Havana: President Trump has issued ominous warnings in his pressure campaign against Cuba’s government, but said after the charges were announced that there was no need for “escalation.” He added that he didn’t “want to say” whether the United States would seek to capture Mr. Castro.
Rubio’s Goal: Secretary of State Marco Rubio has long sought to dismantle Cuba’s Communist government, which took power three years after his parents emigrated to the United States.
Cuba’s Response: President Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba said that his country had acted in self-defense after its airspace was repeatedly violated by “notorious terrorists.” Cuba shot down the planes after months of diplomatic wrangling.
The indictment, issued in Federal District Court in Miami, was an extraordinary escalation of the Trump administration’s multifaceted pressure campaign against Cuba’s Communist government at a moment when President Trump has been seeking to topple it. President Trump, speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One, declined to say whether he would use the military to extract Raúl Castro from Cuba in an operation like the one the United States used to capture the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro earlier this year. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/05/20/us/trump-news
Not sure if anything will come of this charge, especially after 30 years; I guess it might depend on whether or not Trump decides to capture Castro, like he did Maduro. I'm also unsure why Trump claimed that he doesn't want to escalate tensions with Cuba while simultaneously trying to mess with their (former) politicians. Doesn't this indictment do just that?
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On May 21 2026 08:11 Turbovolver wrote:
What about "if I have 90 tanks and you have 10, I have eight times more than you"?
Also, just to share around the "getting trolled by the usual crowd into actually posting" energy, I'd like to point out that GH is all about principles in this thread, "a vote for a lesser evil is still a vote for evil", but all his posts in the Russia thread were the complete opposite, realpolitik as his chosen lens (his words). "A wicked result with less harm is still less harm".
Tankies gonna tank (their credibility)
The thing that always cracks me up is when he blames non Americans for being “complicit in genocide “ while he’s in America, supporting it with his taxes and contributions to the economy. And even more than that, he is actively denying the genocide that China is currently doing systematically.
But as you say tankies going to tank, logic need to apply.
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On May 21 2026 06:22 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 06:01 Geiko wrote:On May 21 2026 05:54 Liquid`Drone wrote:On May 21 2026 04:31 dyhb wrote:On May 21 2026 01:58 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 04:49 oBlade wrote:
[quote]
Violent insurrection acquitted luckily. Child rape is open if you could prove it.
There's no precedent that indicates "losing wars" is a high crime/misdemeanor subject to impeachment, at any rate the war needs to be a bit more over to make such an assessment.
Appointing incompetent alcoholics would be a case of proving it... and then impeaching the incompetent alcoholic.
[quote]
You're for most of those things? You spend a lot of time pushing Democrats to team up on this rhetoric, hold some Republican feet to the fire, and make things happen, right? Maybe volunteer their detailed plans for him and everyone to adopt. As a voting American. That'd be a productive activity.
Don't be mad the wall wasn't built, be glad we didn't end up needing it.
The drug costs one is a great litmus test. Normal people go "Oh obviously he's just using the original price before elevation as the baseline for calculating because he loves big sounding numbers and wants any excuse in the world to use as exaggerated sounding figures as possible," get it in 2 seconds, and move on. Then there's you... you point out obviously nothing can decrease more than 100% because then it would be negative and a price can't just be negative, and it's a law you MUST use the EXACT current price as a baseline when calculating a decrease, which means Trump didn't choose a different baseline, that would be against the rules, and on the contrary you're a math genius towering above him, and you bring this up in... the middle of a conversation about the DOJ adjudicating settlement payouts for claims against the government. How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at? Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. To be fair it is funny, so why not have a little laugh? I don’t really know! It’s like there’s some people big-mad over others not being outraged enough in their posts. They appoint themselves inquisitors of Trump apologia and if I use words they don’t, my verdict is guilty and my sentence is excommunication from polite discussion. If you can’t laugh at the political parade, you’re just going to end up a frustrated and a bitter old crank. And Trump has another two and a half years in office, and he’ll probably be equally insane outside of office if people are still focused on Trump at that point. So you might as well enjoy the 5,900% savings on your formerly 600$ drugs. Tbh I'm largely in agreement with you here. I think oBlade should just go like 'yeah, Trump's math is obviously stupid and he's barely coherent, but I like his policies so whatever' and then you know, we're still gonna disagree with the part about liking his policies (but maybe not in the context of reducing drug prices?) and it's all good. But with you, you're pretty consistently critical of Trump, so I don't understand why you're getting the pushback you're getting. And while I think there are countless examples of reasons to be genuinely angry about Trump, him not knowing math or numbers isn't one of them. It's in sharpiegate-territory. It's ridiculous. I mean, if you want to use it as a platform for lamenting the death of intellectualism or whatever, fine, not really gonna disagree there, it's genuinely sad that the US has a genuine idiot as president, but we can still laugh at it. Sometimes, I'll even laugh with him - I genuinely laughed out loud at the AI pooping on the no kings protest, for example - I'm not gonna fucking let him take fun away from me in during the attempted destruction of the western liberal world order. Besides, I actually think you guys need to look at the post-Trump future. If Mandela can forgive white people, we can forgive MAGA. The problem isn't Trump being bad at math, or liking big numbers, it's as you said, that his followers can't even agree that this one time, he isn't making sense and laugh it off. Yeah but dyhb isn't a Trump supporter and he's saying that Trump isn't making sense and yet he's being attacked for essentially not being outraged enough. + Show Spoiler + oBlade is a different matter.
I imagine part of it is that they see themselves and how they talk about Democrats in dyhb when dyhb talks about Trump/MAGA.
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Northern Ireland26856 Posts
On May 21 2026 09:02 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 06:22 Liquid`Drone wrote:On May 21 2026 06:01 Geiko wrote:On May 21 2026 05:54 Liquid`Drone wrote:On May 21 2026 04:31 dyhb wrote:On May 21 2026 01:58 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:
[quote]
How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at?
Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. To be fair it is funny, so why not have a little laugh? I don’t really know! It’s like there’s some people big-mad over others not being outraged enough in their posts. They appoint themselves inquisitors of Trump apologia and if I use words they don’t, my verdict is guilty and my sentence is excommunication from polite discussion. If you can’t laugh at the political parade, you’re just going to end up a frustrated and a bitter old crank. And Trump has another two and a half years in office, and he’ll probably be equally insane outside of office if people are still focused on Trump at that point. So you might as well enjoy the 5,900% savings on your formerly 600$ drugs. Tbh I'm largely in agreement with you here. I think oBlade should just go like 'yeah, Trump's math is obviously stupid and he's barely coherent, but I like his policies so whatever' and then you know, we're still gonna disagree with the part about liking his policies (but maybe not in the context of reducing drug prices?) and it's all good. But with you, you're pretty consistently critical of Trump, so I don't understand why you're getting the pushback you're getting. And while I think there are countless examples of reasons to be genuinely angry about Trump, him not knowing math or numbers isn't one of them. It's in sharpiegate-territory. It's ridiculous. I mean, if you want to use it as a platform for lamenting the death of intellectualism or whatever, fine, not really gonna disagree there, it's genuinely sad that the US has a genuine idiot as president, but we can still laugh at it. Sometimes, I'll even laugh with him - I genuinely laughed out loud at the AI pooping on the no kings protest, for example - I'm not gonna fucking let him take fun away from me in during the attempted destruction of the western liberal world order. Besides, I actually think you guys need to look at the post-Trump future. If Mandela can forgive white people, we can forgive MAGA. The problem isn't Trump being bad at math, or liking big numbers, it's as you said, that his followers can't even agree that this one time, he isn't making sense and laugh it off. Yeah but dyhb isn't a Trump supporter and he's saying that Trump isn't making sense and yet he's being attacked for essentially not being outraged enough. + Show Spoiler + oBlade is a different matter. I imagine part of it is that they see themselves and how they talk about Democrats in dyhb when dyhb talks about Trump/MAGA.
You imagine rather a lot of things
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Northern Ireland26856 Posts
On May 21 2026 08:42 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +US indicts former Cuban President Raúl Castro over 1996 downing of planes
Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged former Cuban President Raúl Castro with ordering the 1996 shootdown of civilian planes operated by Miami-based exiles, a major escalation of pressure by the Trump administration on the socialist government. President Donald Trump has set a calamitous energy blockade on the island and has been threatening military action ever since U.S. forces captured the Cuban government’s longtime patron, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. https://apnews.com/live/trump-administration-updates-05-20-2026 Show nested quote +U.S. Charges Former Cuban President Raúl Castro With Murder
Cuba: The Justice Department indicted Raúl Castro, the former president and defense minister of Cuba, and five others on murder and conspiracy charges in the downing of two planes operated by a Cuban exile group in 1996.
Pressuring Havana: President Trump has issued ominous warnings in his pressure campaign against Cuba’s government, but said after the charges were announced that there was no need for “escalation.” He added that he didn’t “want to say” whether the United States would seek to capture Mr. Castro.
Rubio’s Goal: Secretary of State Marco Rubio has long sought to dismantle Cuba’s Communist government, which took power three years after his parents emigrated to the United States.
Cuba’s Response: President Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba said that his country had acted in self-defense after its airspace was repeatedly violated by “notorious terrorists.” Cuba shot down the planes after months of diplomatic wrangling.
The indictment, issued in Federal District Court in Miami, was an extraordinary escalation of the Trump administration’s multifaceted pressure campaign against Cuba’s Communist government at a moment when President Trump has been seeking to topple it. President Trump, speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One, declined to say whether he would use the military to extract Raúl Castro from Cuba in an operation like the one the United States used to capture the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro earlier this year. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/05/20/us/trump-news Not sure if anything will come of this charge, especially after 30 years; I guess it might depend on whether or not Trump decides to capture Castro, like he did Maduro. I'm also unsure why Trump claimed that he doesn't want to escalate tensions with Cuba while simultaneously trying to mess with their (former) politicians. Doesn't this indictment do just that?
Trump does say a lot of things doesn’t he?
Would be very on brand for this admin to nab Castro for the accusations, which are of course totally different and much worse than making a virtue of blowing up ships in foreign waters. All of which were of course dangerous drug dealers, pinky promise
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1296 Posts
On May 21 2026 06:18 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 06:07 Simberto wrote:On May 21 2026 05:54 Liquid`Drone wrote:On May 21 2026 04:31 dyhb wrote:On May 21 2026 01:58 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 20 2026 04:49 oBlade wrote:
[quote]
Violent insurrection acquitted luckily. Child rape is open if you could prove it.
There's no precedent that indicates "losing wars" is a high crime/misdemeanor subject to impeachment, at any rate the war needs to be a bit more over to make such an assessment.
Appointing incompetent alcoholics would be a case of proving it... and then impeaching the incompetent alcoholic.
[quote]
You're for most of those things? You spend a lot of time pushing Democrats to team up on this rhetoric, hold some Republican feet to the fire, and make things happen, right? Maybe volunteer their detailed plans for him and everyone to adopt. As a voting American. That'd be a productive activity.
Don't be mad the wall wasn't built, be glad we didn't end up needing it.
The drug costs one is a great litmus test. Normal people go "Oh obviously he's just using the original price before elevation as the baseline for calculating because he loves big sounding numbers and wants any excuse in the world to use as exaggerated sounding figures as possible," get it in 2 seconds, and move on. Then there's you... you point out obviously nothing can decrease more than 100% because then it would be negative and a price can't just be negative, and it's a law you MUST use the EXACT current price as a baseline when calculating a decrease, which means Trump didn't choose a different baseline, that would be against the rules, and on the contrary you're a math genius towering above him, and you bring this up in... the middle of a conversation about the DOJ adjudicating settlement payouts for claims against the government. How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at? Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. To be fair it is funny, so why not have a little laugh? I don’t really know! It’s like there’s some people big-mad over others not being outraged enough in their posts. They appoint themselves inquisitors of Trump apologia and if I use words they don’t, my verdict is guilty and my sentence is excommunication from polite discussion. If you can’t laugh at the political parade, you’re just going to end up a frustrated and a bitter old crank. And Trump has another two and a half years in office, and he’ll probably be equally insane outside of office if people are still focused on Trump at that point. So you might as well enjoy the 5,900% savings on your formerly 600$ drugs. Tbh I'm largely in agreement with you here. I think oBlade should just go like 'yeah, Trump's math is obviously stupid and he's barely coherent, but I like his policies so whatever' and then you know, we're still gonna disagree with the part about liking his policies (but maybe not in the context of reducing drug prices?) and it's all good. But with you, you're pretty consistently critical of Trump, so I don't understand why you're getting the pushback you're getting. And while I think there are countless examples of reasons to be genuinely angry about Trump, him not knowing math or numbers isn't one of them. It's in sharpiegate-territory. It's ridiculous. I mean, if you want to use it as a platform for lamenting the death of intellectualism or whatever, fine, not really gonna disagree there, it's genuinely sad that the US has a genuine idiot as president, but we can still laugh at it. Sometimes, I'll even laugh with him - I genuinely laughed out loud at the AI pooping on the no kings protest, for example - I'm not gonna fucking let him take fun away from me in during the attempted destruction of the western liberal world order. Besides, I actually think you guys need to look at the post-Trump future. If Mandela can forgive white people, we can forgive MAGA. I think it is important to keep perspective here. Imagine any pre-Trump president doing this. It would have been an absolutely massive scandal that the president is so uneducated. And rightfully so. The president of the United States of America should be able to somewhat reliably do middle school math. Anything else is just ridiculous and embarrassing. But Trump just shifted shit so far, has so many scandals constantly going on, that this is at best a minor thing with him. We should hold Trump to the same standards that we held previous presidents, instead of holding him to the standard of some angry special needs kid, where you can excuse a lot of things. I could totally see Dubya do something like this. One of our leading newspapers had a column called 'Bush of the day' during his first term at least (I stopped buying the paper regularly at some point, so I dunno when they stopped), and well, that column consisted of one stupid quote by Dubya per day, like 'I know the man and fish can coexist peacefully'. I'd laugh at that, and then participate in marches against the invasion of Iraq, because that shit actually pissed me off, but the dumb incoherent statements were ridiculous. And yes, it's ridiculous - and even embarassing. I see dyhb as being entirely in agreement with that. But while there's a bunch of shit Trump does that is outrageous, this, to me, isn't one of them. To be fair I can understand how math teachers might have grounds to be more appalled than others.
I can't believe I'm on this side of the issue... but... yeah, I'm not that surprised or outraged at this either. Sure the late night talk show hosts and the era relevant equivalent of John Stewart would have mocked said previous president... but I don't think it would have been a big scandal.
Maths, even very basic stuff like simple arithmetics, algebra or even times table are a 'use it or lose it' thing. Trump's main skill seems to be marketing/reading the room. His main strength is promising things, and knowing what to promise his target audience, in essence he is a salesman.
Just going off many salesmen (eg marketing, representatives etc) I've met and worked with in the past. People not being able to do very basic maths is depressingly common, people who are otherwise smart, capable, articulate people. People, who I'm pretty sure, have at some stage have been taught this at school and were at some stage able to answer questions on tests on this stuff.
Sometimes I still double take when it becomes apparent when seemingly normal people around me don't know even their high single digit times tables. Possibly more than half of all people where this has come up with, who do not specifically work in a technical field, cannot do very very simple algebra in their head.
Not knowing how percentages work? Eh I think you will be suprised how common that is.
You know that age old question of 'when will I ever use this' when it comes to maths in school? As it turns out, we are surrounded by people who genuinely have no intention of using maths at all in their lives, short of counting, and very basic addition/subtraction.
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On May 21 2026 14:20 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 06:18 Liquid`Drone wrote:On May 21 2026 06:07 Simberto wrote:On May 21 2026 05:54 Liquid`Drone wrote:On May 21 2026 04:31 dyhb wrote:On May 21 2026 01:58 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 20 2026 06:05 EnDeR_ wrote:
[quote]
How does that particular math work? Let's aim for a trumpian 1000% decrease. Say the current price is 100 dollars. What number would that trumpian decrease be? Like, if I'm using a baseline of say 90 dollars, what is the final number that I'm arriving at?
Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars? "Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000? (A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. To be fair it is funny, so why not have a little laugh? I don’t really know! It’s like there’s some people big-mad over others not being outraged enough in their posts. They appoint themselves inquisitors of Trump apologia and if I use words they don’t, my verdict is guilty and my sentence is excommunication from polite discussion. If you can’t laugh at the political parade, you’re just going to end up a frustrated and a bitter old crank. And Trump has another two and a half years in office, and he’ll probably be equally insane outside of office if people are still focused on Trump at that point. So you might as well enjoy the 5,900% savings on your formerly 600$ drugs. Tbh I'm largely in agreement with you here. I think oBlade should just go like 'yeah, Trump's math is obviously stupid and he's barely coherent, but I like his policies so whatever' and then you know, we're still gonna disagree with the part about liking his policies (but maybe not in the context of reducing drug prices?) and it's all good. But with you, you're pretty consistently critical of Trump, so I don't understand why you're getting the pushback you're getting. And while I think there are countless examples of reasons to be genuinely angry about Trump, him not knowing math or numbers isn't one of them. It's in sharpiegate-territory. It's ridiculous. I mean, if you want to use it as a platform for lamenting the death of intellectualism or whatever, fine, not really gonna disagree there, it's genuinely sad that the US has a genuine idiot as president, but we can still laugh at it. Sometimes, I'll even laugh with him - I genuinely laughed out loud at the AI pooping on the no kings protest, for example - I'm not gonna fucking let him take fun away from me in during the attempted destruction of the western liberal world order. Besides, I actually think you guys need to look at the post-Trump future. If Mandela can forgive white people, we can forgive MAGA. I think it is important to keep perspective here. Imagine any pre-Trump president doing this. It would have been an absolutely massive scandal that the president is so uneducated. And rightfully so. The president of the United States of America should be able to somewhat reliably do middle school math. Anything else is just ridiculous and embarrassing. But Trump just shifted shit so far, has so many scandals constantly going on, that this is at best a minor thing with him. We should hold Trump to the same standards that we held previous presidents, instead of holding him to the standard of some angry special needs kid, where you can excuse a lot of things. I could totally see Dubya do something like this. One of our leading newspapers had a column called 'Bush of the day' during his first term at least (I stopped buying the paper regularly at some point, so I dunno when they stopped), and well, that column consisted of one stupid quote by Dubya per day, like 'I know the man and fish can coexist peacefully'. I'd laugh at that, and then participate in marches against the invasion of Iraq, because that shit actually pissed me off, but the dumb incoherent statements were ridiculous. And yes, it's ridiculous - and even embarassing. I see dyhb as being entirely in agreement with that. But while there's a bunch of shit Trump does that is outrageous, this, to me, isn't one of them. To be fair I can understand how math teachers might have grounds to be more appalled than others. I can't believe I'm on this side of the issue... but... yeah, I'm not that surprised or outraged at this either. Sure the late night talk show hosts and the era relevant equivalent of John Stewart would have mocked said previous president... but I don't think it would have been a big scandal. Maths, even very basic stuff like simple arithmetics, algebra or even times table are a 'use it or lose it' thing. Trump's main skill seems to be marketing/reading the room. His main strength is promising things, and knowing what to promise his target audience, in essence he is a salesman. Just going off many salesmen (eg marketing, representatives etc) I've met and worked with in the past. People not being able to do very basic maths is depressingly common, people who are otherwise smart, capable, articulate people. People, who I'm pretty sure, have at some stage have been taught this at school and were at some stage able to answer questions on tests on this stuff. Sometimes I still double take when it becomes apparent when seemingly normal people around me don't know even their high single digit times tables. Possibly more than half of all people where this has come up with, who do not specifically work in a technical field, cannot do very very simple algebra in their head. Not knowing how percentages work? Eh I think you will be suprised how common that is. You know that age old question of 'when will I ever use this' when it comes to maths in school? As it turns out, we are surrounded by people who genuinely have no intention of using maths at all in their lives, short of counting, and very basic addition/subtraction.
I mean, sure, but he said in the same line that he wasn't going to just lower prices by 30-40%, he was going to reduce them by 1000%. If you are dividing initial price by final price and multiplying by 100 (I keep picturing him using an oversized calculator with bright buttons and looking at the result with a puzzled expression), then a 33% decrease is actually a tripling of the original price. You can't have it both ways.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1296 Posts
On May 21 2026 15:50 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 14:20 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On May 21 2026 06:18 Liquid`Drone wrote:On May 21 2026 06:07 Simberto wrote:On May 21 2026 05:54 Liquid`Drone wrote:On May 21 2026 04:31 dyhb wrote:On May 21 2026 01:58 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 06:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
[quote]
Ninety would probably reduce by nine hundred, I guess? $900 off a $90 item, so a free item plus 810 free additional dollars?
"Buying" an originally-priced $100 item costs you zero dollars and you get an additional $900 with that now-free item? Since $100 would reduce by $1,000?
(A discount of more than 100% is typically nonsensical in most real purchases. Obviously, Trump doesn't understand middle school math, which is why even his niece said he had to cheat on the SATs.) And you complaining about US healthcare... On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest. quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect. "A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase "A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent. May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. To be fair it is funny, so why not have a little laugh? I don’t really know! It’s like there’s some people big-mad over others not being outraged enough in their posts. They appoint themselves inquisitors of Trump apologia and if I use words they don’t, my verdict is guilty and my sentence is excommunication from polite discussion. If you can’t laugh at the political parade, you’re just going to end up a frustrated and a bitter old crank. And Trump has another two and a half years in office, and he’ll probably be equally insane outside of office if people are still focused on Trump at that point. So you might as well enjoy the 5,900% savings on your formerly 600$ drugs. Tbh I'm largely in agreement with you here. I think oBlade should just go like 'yeah, Trump's math is obviously stupid and he's barely coherent, but I like his policies so whatever' and then you know, we're still gonna disagree with the part about liking his policies (but maybe not in the context of reducing drug prices?) and it's all good. But with you, you're pretty consistently critical of Trump, so I don't understand why you're getting the pushback you're getting. And while I think there are countless examples of reasons to be genuinely angry about Trump, him not knowing math or numbers isn't one of them. It's in sharpiegate-territory. It's ridiculous. I mean, if you want to use it as a platform for lamenting the death of intellectualism or whatever, fine, not really gonna disagree there, it's genuinely sad that the US has a genuine idiot as president, but we can still laugh at it. Sometimes, I'll even laugh with him - I genuinely laughed out loud at the AI pooping on the no kings protest, for example - I'm not gonna fucking let him take fun away from me in during the attempted destruction of the western liberal world order. Besides, I actually think you guys need to look at the post-Trump future. If Mandela can forgive white people, we can forgive MAGA. I think it is important to keep perspective here. Imagine any pre-Trump president doing this. It would have been an absolutely massive scandal that the president is so uneducated. And rightfully so. The president of the United States of America should be able to somewhat reliably do middle school math. Anything else is just ridiculous and embarrassing. But Trump just shifted shit so far, has so many scandals constantly going on, that this is at best a minor thing with him. We should hold Trump to the same standards that we held previous presidents, instead of holding him to the standard of some angry special needs kid, where you can excuse a lot of things. I could totally see Dubya do something like this. One of our leading newspapers had a column called 'Bush of the day' during his first term at least (I stopped buying the paper regularly at some point, so I dunno when they stopped), and well, that column consisted of one stupid quote by Dubya per day, like 'I know the man and fish can coexist peacefully'. I'd laugh at that, and then participate in marches against the invasion of Iraq, because that shit actually pissed me off, but the dumb incoherent statements were ridiculous. And yes, it's ridiculous - and even embarassing. I see dyhb as being entirely in agreement with that. But while there's a bunch of shit Trump does that is outrageous, this, to me, isn't one of them. To be fair I can understand how math teachers might have grounds to be more appalled than others. I can't believe I'm on this side of the issue... but... yeah, I'm not that surprised or outraged at this either. Sure the late night talk show hosts and the era relevant equivalent of John Stewart would have mocked said previous president... but I don't think it would have been a big scandal. Maths, even very basic stuff like simple arithmetics, algebra or even times table are a 'use it or lose it' thing. Trump's main skill seems to be marketing/reading the room. His main strength is promising things, and knowing what to promise his target audience, in essence he is a salesman. Just going off many salesmen (eg marketing, representatives etc) I've met and worked with in the past. People not being able to do very basic maths is depressingly common, people who are otherwise smart, capable, articulate people. People, who I'm pretty sure, have at some stage have been taught this at school and were at some stage able to answer questions on tests on this stuff. Sometimes I still double take when it becomes apparent when seemingly normal people around me don't know even their high single digit times tables. Possibly more than half of all people where this has come up with, who do not specifically work in a technical field, cannot do very very simple algebra in their head. Not knowing how percentages work? Eh I think you will be suprised how common that is. You know that age old question of 'when will I ever use this' when it comes to maths in school? As it turns out, we are surrounded by people who genuinely have no intention of using maths at all in their lives, short of counting, and very basic addition/subtraction. I mean, sure, but he said in the same line that he wasn't going to just lower prices by 30-40%, he was going to reduce them by 1000%. If you are dividing initial price by final price and multiplying by 100 (I keep picturing him using an oversized calculator with bright buttons and looking at the result with a puzzled expression), then a 33% decrease is actually a tripling of the original price. You can't have it both ways.
I'm not having it both ways, he either doesn't know, or doesn't care how percentages actually work.
If he doesn't care, again, he's primarily a salesman (and one that is liberal with obvious, observable, demonstrable truth), he's just going to go with big number.
Very likely, he actually doesn't know how percentages work, again, this is surprisingly common among non-technical people.
My contention isn't that he's right, or nearly right, or even wrong in some understandable way. My contention is that a lot of people who don't professionally use any maths... are really bad at maths, like a surprising, depressing amount of people. And they are bad at basic maths in a way, that prior to my coming to understand that we are surrounded by these people, probably a couple of decades ago now, I would have thought this level of maths inaptitude would be debilitating in their everyday lives. Turns out, lots of people get along just fine literally not being able to do primary school maths.
It could very well be a combination of both, in that he neither knows, nor cares how percentages work. He has made up in his head some way this is a 1000% reduction. (it's obviously not actually correct, and even doing percentages wrong there is no guarantee he even did the arithmetic correctly while doing percentages wrong, there is, additionally, no guarantee he did any maths at all, and could have just picked a number that sounded nice and big). And in the great American tradition of being loudly and confidently wrong, he just rolled with it, loudly and confidently, it's a modus operandi that has worked well for him so far.
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On May 21 2026 16:10 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 15:50 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 21 2026 14:20 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On May 21 2026 06:18 Liquid`Drone wrote:On May 21 2026 06:07 Simberto wrote:On May 21 2026 05:54 Liquid`Drone wrote:On May 21 2026 04:31 dyhb wrote:On May 21 2026 01:58 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:On May 20 2026 22:52 Razyda wrote:
[quote]
And you complaining about US healthcare...
On even less serious note, since I enjoy math puzzles, and now apparently also dissecting logic of stupid people, it seems like Simberto was closest.
quotes of trump statements are from AI so may not be perfect.
"A pill that costs $10 in London costs $130 in New York or Los Angeles." that would be 1200% increase
"A drug that costs $86 in Berlin cost $1,300 in New York." that would be roughly 1400% increase
So I would guess in Trump mind if you take away the difference you decreasing by the same percent.
May be completely wrong, however this seems most probable. It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price. Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. To be fair it is funny, so why not have a little laugh? I don’t really know! It’s like there’s some people big-mad over others not being outraged enough in their posts. They appoint themselves inquisitors of Trump apologia and if I use words they don’t, my verdict is guilty and my sentence is excommunication from polite discussion. If you can’t laugh at the political parade, you’re just going to end up a frustrated and a bitter old crank. And Trump has another two and a half years in office, and he’ll probably be equally insane outside of office if people are still focused on Trump at that point. So you might as well enjoy the 5,900% savings on your formerly 600$ drugs. Tbh I'm largely in agreement with you here. I think oBlade should just go like 'yeah, Trump's math is obviously stupid and he's barely coherent, but I like his policies so whatever' and then you know, we're still gonna disagree with the part about liking his policies (but maybe not in the context of reducing drug prices?) and it's all good. But with you, you're pretty consistently critical of Trump, so I don't understand why you're getting the pushback you're getting. And while I think there are countless examples of reasons to be genuinely angry about Trump, him not knowing math or numbers isn't one of them. It's in sharpiegate-territory. It's ridiculous. I mean, if you want to use it as a platform for lamenting the death of intellectualism or whatever, fine, not really gonna disagree there, it's genuinely sad that the US has a genuine idiot as president, but we can still laugh at it. Sometimes, I'll even laugh with him - I genuinely laughed out loud at the AI pooping on the no kings protest, for example - I'm not gonna fucking let him take fun away from me in during the attempted destruction of the western liberal world order. Besides, I actually think you guys need to look at the post-Trump future. If Mandela can forgive white people, we can forgive MAGA. I think it is important to keep perspective here. Imagine any pre-Trump president doing this. It would have been an absolutely massive scandal that the president is so uneducated. And rightfully so. The president of the United States of America should be able to somewhat reliably do middle school math. Anything else is just ridiculous and embarrassing. But Trump just shifted shit so far, has so many scandals constantly going on, that this is at best a minor thing with him. We should hold Trump to the same standards that we held previous presidents, instead of holding him to the standard of some angry special needs kid, where you can excuse a lot of things. I could totally see Dubya do something like this. One of our leading newspapers had a column called 'Bush of the day' during his first term at least (I stopped buying the paper regularly at some point, so I dunno when they stopped), and well, that column consisted of one stupid quote by Dubya per day, like 'I know the man and fish can coexist peacefully'. I'd laugh at that, and then participate in marches against the invasion of Iraq, because that shit actually pissed me off, but the dumb incoherent statements were ridiculous. And yes, it's ridiculous - and even embarassing. I see dyhb as being entirely in agreement with that. But while there's a bunch of shit Trump does that is outrageous, this, to me, isn't one of them. To be fair I can understand how math teachers might have grounds to be more appalled than others. I can't believe I'm on this side of the issue... but... yeah, I'm not that surprised or outraged at this either. Sure the late night talk show hosts and the era relevant equivalent of John Stewart would have mocked said previous president... but I don't think it would have been a big scandal. Maths, even very basic stuff like simple arithmetics, algebra or even times table are a 'use it or lose it' thing. Trump's main skill seems to be marketing/reading the room. His main strength is promising things, and knowing what to promise his target audience, in essence he is a salesman. Just going off many salesmen (eg marketing, representatives etc) I've met and worked with in the past. People not being able to do very basic maths is depressingly common, people who are otherwise smart, capable, articulate people. People, who I'm pretty sure, have at some stage have been taught this at school and were at some stage able to answer questions on tests on this stuff. Sometimes I still double take when it becomes apparent when seemingly normal people around me don't know even their high single digit times tables. Possibly more than half of all people where this has come up with, who do not specifically work in a technical field, cannot do very very simple algebra in their head. Not knowing how percentages work? Eh I think you will be suprised how common that is. You know that age old question of 'when will I ever use this' when it comes to maths in school? As it turns out, we are surrounded by people who genuinely have no intention of using maths at all in their lives, short of counting, and very basic addition/subtraction. I mean, sure, but he said in the same line that he wasn't going to just lower prices by 30-40%, he was going to reduce them by 1000%. If you are dividing initial price by final price and multiplying by 100 (I keep picturing him using an oversized calculator with bright buttons and looking at the result with a puzzled expression), then a 33% decrease is actually a tripling of the original price. You can't have it both ways. I'm not having it both ways, he either doesn't know, or doesn't care how percentages actually work. If he doesn't care, again, he's primarily a salesman (and one that is liberal with obvious, observable, demonstrable truth), he's just going to go with big number. Very likely, he actually doesn't know how percentages work, again, this is surprisingly common among non-technical people. It could very well be a combination of both, in that he neither knows, nor cares how percentages work. He has made up in his head some way this is a 1000% reduction. (it's obviously not actually correct, and even doing percentages wrong there is no guarantee he even did the arithmetic correctly while doing percentages wrong, there is, additionally, no guarantee he did any maths at all, and could have just picked a number that sounded nice and big). And in the great American tradition of being loudly and confidently wrong, he just rolled with it, loudly and confidently, it's a modus operandi that has worked well for him so far.
And this would've died with this very obvious conclusion if we didn't have a few "but akshually the math totally makes sense" walls of text from oBlade.
This is far less about the president. He's dumb as a brick, and very arrogant about his utter ignorance. That was already established in his first term when he extended the hurricane's projected path with a sharpie. Him just throwing out big numbers to sound impressive is fully on-brand and quite unsurprising. It's the cult of MAGA the argument is with, who are increasingly incapable of saying "yeah, he doesn't know math, or understand basic science, but we don't care", and instead double down on that what he says must be correct and sensible.
I mean, did you open that spoiler oBlade wrote to "prove" the math is correct? It's impressive in its gishgalloping length and gibberishness. I am not sure an LLM is capable of creating that level of word soup, so I err on the side of him actually typing all of that.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1296 Posts
On May 21 2026 16:36 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 16:10 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On May 21 2026 15:50 EnDeR_ wrote:On May 21 2026 14:20 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On May 21 2026 06:18 Liquid`Drone wrote:On May 21 2026 06:07 Simberto wrote:On May 21 2026 05:54 Liquid`Drone wrote:On May 21 2026 04:31 dyhb wrote:On May 21 2026 01:58 Razyda wrote:On May 20 2026 23:35 dyhb wrote:
[quote]It also sounded like a sloppy description using percentages to me. The original markup was 500%, so when you slash the markup you claim you've reduced it by 400%. But that's sloppy language on reducing the percentage of increase, not the actual price.
Which I do think people know, but the temptation to transition to the dunk phase, or the mock and gawk phase, is great. To be fair it is funny, so why not have a little laugh? I don’t really know! It’s like there’s some people big-mad over others not being outraged enough in their posts. They appoint themselves inquisitors of Trump apologia and if I use words they don’t, my verdict is guilty and my sentence is excommunication from polite discussion. If you can’t laugh at the political parade, you’re just going to end up a frustrated and a bitter old crank. And Trump has another two and a half years in office, and he’ll probably be equally insane outside of office if people are still focused on Trump at that point. So you might as well enjoy the 5,900% savings on your formerly 600$ drugs. Tbh I'm largely in agreement with you here. I think oBlade should just go like 'yeah, Trump's math is obviously stupid and he's barely coherent, but I like his policies so whatever' and then you know, we're still gonna disagree with the part about liking his policies (but maybe not in the context of reducing drug prices?) and it's all good. But with you, you're pretty consistently critical of Trump, so I don't understand why you're getting the pushback you're getting. And while I think there are countless examples of reasons to be genuinely angry about Trump, him not knowing math or numbers isn't one of them. It's in sharpiegate-territory. It's ridiculous. I mean, if you want to use it as a platform for lamenting the death of intellectualism or whatever, fine, not really gonna disagree there, it's genuinely sad that the US has a genuine idiot as president, but we can still laugh at it. Sometimes, I'll even laugh with him - I genuinely laughed out loud at the AI pooping on the no kings protest, for example - I'm not gonna fucking let him take fun away from me in during the attempted destruction of the western liberal world order. Besides, I actually think you guys need to look at the post-Trump future. If Mandela can forgive white people, we can forgive MAGA. I think it is important to keep perspective here. Imagine any pre-Trump president doing this. It would have been an absolutely massive scandal that the president is so uneducated. And rightfully so. The president of the United States of America should be able to somewhat reliably do middle school math. Anything else is just ridiculous and embarrassing. But Trump just shifted shit so far, has so many scandals constantly going on, that this is at best a minor thing with him. We should hold Trump to the same standards that we held previous presidents, instead of holding him to the standard of some angry special needs kid, where you can excuse a lot of things. I could totally see Dubya do something like this. One of our leading newspapers had a column called 'Bush of the day' during his first term at least (I stopped buying the paper regularly at some point, so I dunno when they stopped), and well, that column consisted of one stupid quote by Dubya per day, like 'I know the man and fish can coexist peacefully'. I'd laugh at that, and then participate in marches against the invasion of Iraq, because that shit actually pissed me off, but the dumb incoherent statements were ridiculous. And yes, it's ridiculous - and even embarassing. I see dyhb as being entirely in agreement with that. But while there's a bunch of shit Trump does that is outrageous, this, to me, isn't one of them. To be fair I can understand how math teachers might have grounds to be more appalled than others. I can't believe I'm on this side of the issue... but... yeah, I'm not that surprised or outraged at this either. Sure the late night talk show hosts and the era relevant equivalent of John Stewart would have mocked said previous president... but I don't think it would have been a big scandal. Maths, even very basic stuff like simple arithmetics, algebra or even times table are a 'use it or lose it' thing. Trump's main skill seems to be marketing/reading the room. His main strength is promising things, and knowing what to promise his target audience, in essence he is a salesman. Just going off many salesmen (eg marketing, representatives etc) I've met and worked with in the past. People not being able to do very basic maths is depressingly common, people who are otherwise smart, capable, articulate people. People, who I'm pretty sure, have at some stage have been taught this at school and were at some stage able to answer questions on tests on this stuff. Sometimes I still double take when it becomes apparent when seemingly normal people around me don't know even their high single digit times tables. Possibly more than half of all people where this has come up with, who do not specifically work in a technical field, cannot do very very simple algebra in their head. Not knowing how percentages work? Eh I think you will be suprised how common that is. You know that age old question of 'when will I ever use this' when it comes to maths in school? As it turns out, we are surrounded by people who genuinely have no intention of using maths at all in their lives, short of counting, and very basic addition/subtraction. I mean, sure, but he said in the same line that he wasn't going to just lower prices by 30-40%, he was going to reduce them by 1000%. If you are dividing initial price by final price and multiplying by 100 (I keep picturing him using an oversized calculator with bright buttons and looking at the result with a puzzled expression), then a 33% decrease is actually a tripling of the original price. You can't have it both ways. I'm not having it both ways, he either doesn't know, or doesn't care how percentages actually work. If he doesn't care, again, he's primarily a salesman (and one that is liberal with obvious, observable, demonstrable truth), he's just going to go with big number. Very likely, he actually doesn't know how percentages work, again, this is surprisingly common among non-technical people. It could very well be a combination of both, in that he neither knows, nor cares how percentages work. He has made up in his head some way this is a 1000% reduction. (it's obviously not actually correct, and even doing percentages wrong there is no guarantee he even did the arithmetic correctly while doing percentages wrong, there is, additionally, no guarantee he did any maths at all, and could have just picked a number that sounded nice and big). And in the great American tradition of being loudly and confidently wrong, he just rolled with it, loudly and confidently, it's a modus operandi that has worked well for him so far. And this would've died with this very obvious conclusion if we didn't have a few "but akshually the math totally makes sense" walls of text from oBlade. This is far less about the president. He's dumb as a brick, and very arrogant about his utter ignorance. That was already established in his first term when he extended the hurricane's projected path with a sharpie. Him just throwing out big numbers to sound impressive is fully on-brand and quite unsurprising. It's the cult of MAGA the argument is with, who are increasingly incapable of saying "yeah, he doesn't know math, or understand basic science, but we don't care", and instead double down on that what he says must be correct and sensible. I mean, did you open that spoiler oBlade wrote to "prove" the math is correct? It's impressive in its gishgalloping length and gibberishness. I am not sure an LLM is capable of creating that level of word soup, so I err on the side of him actually typing all of that.
I mean, yes, I opened up that spoiler, there just wasn't anything there I cared to engage with  . After seeing the claim I'm just working under the assumption that Trump is one of these non-technical people who can't do basic maths. Past that point, he might have, again, done something wrong with calculating percentages, done something wrong AND also did the arithmetics wrong or picked a number out of the thin air that he liked, there's basically no meaningful information on what he actually did if you can't assume someone is using either the correct method OR did the calculation correctly.
I was mostly agreeing with Drone that this is not that outrageous, disagreeing with Simberto that this would have been a scandal in the past. Hilarious and inviting ridicule? Absolutely. Scandal? meh, elected officials have not been technical folk in the US in any meaningful numbers for a very long time, if ever. If anything not understanding percentages might, for a depressingly large (and sometimes wealthy/successful!) portion of the population, not just the US population either, be relatable.
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It's incredible to me that we can have a discussion about the most powerful man in the world, more or less, being let off the hook for making retarded statements only a senile old man or someone with light to moderate cognitive impairment could make. He absolutely should be held the absolute highest standard regarding speech. He's representing the entire country and by some exentsion the Western world. Making him the megaphone of stupidity is should be something to ashamed of, but instead, because we're living in a hyperpartisan tribal world, it's just silly and funny.
Maybe the US doesn't need a president at all, if this clown can occupy office.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1296 Posts
On May 21 2026 18:03 Uldridge wrote:
It's incredible to me that we can have a discussion about the most powerful man in the world, more or less, being let off the hook for making retarded statements...
As it turns out in reality, the single most common and effective prerequisite for getting to a position of immense power, is the hunger for power.
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United States44012 Posts
On May 21 2026 13:50 oBlade wrote:Speaking of charges, one of the Feeding Our Future fraud defendants in Minnesota was just charged with $4.6 million in wire fraud after her daycare operation closed shortly after being exposed in a Nick Shirley video.
100% of the people in Minnesota were charged with wire fraud?!
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On May 21 2026 18:03 Uldridge wrote:
It's incredible to me that we can have a discussion about the most powerful man in the world, more or less, being let off the hook for making retarded statements only a senile old man or someone with light to moderate cognitive impairment could make. He absolutely should be held the absolute highest standard regarding speech. He's representing the entire country and by some exentsion the Western world. Making him the megaphone of stupidity is should be something to ashamed of, but instead, because we're living in a hyperpartisan tribal world, it's just silly and funny.
Maybe the US doesn't need a president at all, if this clown can occupy office.
I also like to think that the president should be one of the best and smartest people the nation can offer. I simply cannot square that with him being unable to do basic percentage math.
Even if your average idiot is not capable of doing basic math, the president should not be average.
With your last point, i wonder how the US would do with president stone. He is just a stone. Lying in the oval office. I think he would do a lot better than Trump. And he also cannot do percentage math, so he should be okay for the morons too, i guess? We could use some old and white rock, which should make him immediately electable.
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On May 21 2026 18:51 KwarK wrote:100% of the people in Minnesota were charged with wire fraud?!
Grow up.
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On May 21 2026 18:12 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 18:03 Uldridge wrote:
It's incredible to me that we can have a discussion about the most powerful man in the world, more or less, being let off the hook for making retarded statements... As it turns out in reality, the single most common and effective prerequisite for getting to a position of immense power, is the hunger for power.
It doesn'tmatter how hungry someone is for that power. What matters is that there's accountability and responsibility tied to it.
You fuck up or you turn out to be incompetent: you're out.
But the entire power structure is indeed (both sides) set up in such a way that staying in power with all the advantages that brings seems more an incentive than serving the people, which is kind of like a sidequest at this point.
The people have been shoved to the sidelines in politics' interative processes. Prodecuralism and esoteric rulesets are the only things that are left and you only get to be a part of it when you are welcomed in the club or actually have a large enough platform to demand change. Where is the middle ground? Everything else is performative, dictated by the highest bidder.
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United States44012 Posts
On May 21 2026 19:12 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 18:51 KwarK wrote:On May 21 2026 13:50 oBlade wrote:Speaking of charges, one of the Feeding Our Future fraud defendants in Minnesota was just charged with $4.6 million in wire fraud after her daycare operation closed shortly after being exposed in a Nick Shirley video. 100% of the people in Minnesota were charged with wire fraud?! Grow up.
Learn how percentages work.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1296 Posts
On May 21 2026 19:16 Uldridge wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 18:12 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On May 21 2026 18:03 Uldridge wrote:
It's incredible to me that we can have a discussion about the most powerful man in the world, more or less, being let off the hook for making retarded statements... As it turns out in reality, the single most common and effective prerequisite for getting to a position of immense power, is the hunger for power. It doesn'tmatter how hungry someone is for that power. What matters is that there's accountability and responsibility tied to it. You fuck up or you turn out to be incompetent: you're out. But the entire power structure is indeed (both sides) set up in such a way that staying in power with all the advantages that brings seems more an incentive than serving the people, which is kind of like a sidequest at this point. The people have been shoved to the sidelines in politics' interative processes. Prodecuralism and esoteric rulesets are the only things that are left and you only get to be a part of it when you are welcomed in the club or actually have a large enough platform to demand change. Where is the middle ground? Everything else is performative, dictated by the highest bidder.
Ahh if i knew where the middle ground was, I'd have solved politics.
It seems to be the system has to constantly change. Because whatever your system is, the power lies somewhere. Be it in cultural influence, in media, in money, in the military, in religion, in the workforce... somewhere.
The worst kind of power hungry people inevitably gravitate towards where the power lies in the system. In some sense, it's inevitable once people have a good idea where the power is, the annals of power, as it were, are just clogged with the power hungry.
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On May 21 2026 20:14 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2026 19:12 oBlade wrote:On May 21 2026 18:51 KwarK wrote:On May 21 2026 13:50 oBlade wrote:Speaking of charges, one of the Feeding Our Future fraud defendants in Minnesota was just charged with $4.6 million in wire fraud after her daycare operation closed shortly after being exposed in a Nick Shirley video. 100% of the people in Minnesota were charged with wire fraud?! Grow up. Learn how percentages work.
Following your advice, I have just learned: There's more than one person in Minnesota. Your claim of 100% is therefore dubious.
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EPT
