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TwiceHorn

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Everything posted by TwiceHorn

  1. A priest may have blown something, but it was a breeze that got your hair.
  2. A rather perfect analogy for Trump and Elmo here is Chainsaw Al Dunlap. Apparently remarkably skilled at downsizing an operation, also at accounting fraud. I suspect the results of this operation, if it continues to be "successful," will be similar to those obtained by Chainsaw Al. Bankruptcy. I mean shit, look at Elmo's work at Twatter.
  3. Still, though, "Trump is a good president" remains an opinion. An objectively bad opinion, but an opinion nonetheless. It's funny, as law dogs, we encounter "questions of fact" and "questions of law," which correspond mostly to "facts" and "opinions." This is an important question to law dogs, because as a general rule, courts of appeal can reverse or undo questions of law, but can't touch questions of fact. Something quite similar comes into play in defamation law, where statements of opinion by and large can't be defamatory, while statements of false or incorrect fact can be. At first blush, what is fact and what is law, or, similarly, fact and opinion, seems quite straightforward. But law dogs soon learn it is not. One legal talent is the ability to recast matters factual into matters of opinion or law, and vice-versa. None of this really matters when it comes to the Trump cult, who are wrong on actual facts most of the time, as well as holding objectively and subjectively horrible opinions. Just pointing out the rhetorical trap that fact vs. opinion holds for most.
  4. Appears to be false. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/coi/high-school-graduation-rates?utm_source=coe_share&utm_medium=figure_tool&utm_campaign=copied_url#1 Behind such educational stalwarts as MA, WI, KY, TN and the leader in West Virginia. Aaand, I'm not sure graduation rate is any indication of educational quality, see, e.g. West Virginia.
  5. Why not? Could it be because you haven't really thought about it very much and just swallowed the propaganda whole? You didn't do your own research? Let's just take an example of this. These people are rooting around in the treasury, freezing payments to everyone, because some of them are "fraudulent" or "not in compliance with law." Whatever the fuck that means. In this particular instance, Treasury is like the payroll and A/R A/P department at your work. They pay the bills other departments approve. If payments are "not in compliance with law," you look to the people that authorized the payment, not the ones who cut the checks. This is like going to accounting and lighting all the checkbooks on fire because you don't like the way the company is spending money. Or you think certain people should be fired. They have these inexperienced code-monkey savants that don't know shit rooting around in private data, fucking up people's lives and livelihoods, and compromising the security of US government IT systems. It's maybe not the same thing going on everywhere, but it's exemplary of the stupidity that's going on here. Do you really think any of this is any better thought through?
  6. Not like this. Not by them. Not by Trump. Any "corruption" he accidentally eliminates, he will more than make up for, personally.
  7. I mean hot wheels and his compatriots have been in charge for 30 years, why not done? Texas state government should be a paragon of efficiency if you believe what these assmonkeys tell us. Take, for example, DPS.
  8. Well, the point in that particular case being that a guy with Musk's recent, admitted drug history couldn't get a high-level security clearance.
  9. Well, nothing really. But, the federal judiciary is divvied up among districts. And districts have Trumpy judges and non-Trumpy judges, and it would be difficult to strangle the non-Trumpy judges without also strangling the Trumpy judges. Also, one thing the plutocrats don't acknowledge but may know to a greater or lesser extent: they are heavily dependent on a status-quo, rule-based judiciary in their business and personal lives and they fuck with that at their peril. And, they are also politically heavily reliant on a friendly judiciary at this point. Also perilous for them. Finally, I think when push comes to shove, the judiciary is going to do a better job of protecting its power than the legislative branch has done.
  10. She should do a Dante Pignetti. Love that movie and the book is better.
  11. Yeah, this goes back to what I was saying. One of the fundamental tools of engineering analysis is to make assumptions and ignore factors ("noise") that you know exist but hope don't affect the outcome. Ordinarily, those assumptions and ignored factors are based on sound reasoning, that is something that you believe to be of such small relative magnitude that it can be successfully ignored, or that you have great difficulty analyzing/calculating so you hope you can ignore. But you won't know until you see the outcome, then you go back and "adjust." So, to an extent, "move fast and break things." But when you're talking socio-economic-philosophical-political things, it's not as easy to do that and the assumptions and ignored factors often swallow correct answers whole and destroy good outcomes. Plus, there's not as much reasoned basis for making assumptions and ignoring noise: it winds up being dictated by personal biases, ie "feels." Thus, extremism masquerading as logical thought. This is not a completely binary thing, though. What I'll call "left-brain thinking" (scientists, engineers) has value in the "right-brain" sphere, and vice-versa. But these are the initial tendencies.
  12. Ackshually, I think what should happen is offending parties, like school districts in the case of Brown, are sued in the local district before a friendly or at least law-abiding judge and you get ongoing supervision from a Barefoot Sanders or Billy Wayne Justice and Texas prisons. Or Janis Jack with the foster-care system. But, that assumes a non-feckless 5th Circuit. Then again, if it is a Supreme Court order, the 5th can't really disobey it.
  13. That should result in an historic judgment for copyright infringement. Historic in the sense of magnitude.
  14. Funny thing, the output of and LLM is, itself, unprotected by most IP schemes.
  15. On the one hand, I agree with Bozo's contention that you can't disengage on any battlefield. But twitter seems like a real shitty battlefield. And I can't help but wonder if just trashing the battlefield might be a better tactic. One might think if most or all of the decent people leave, it becomes an overgrown Parler or Truth Social. But I suppose that's hope in one hand shit in the other.
  16. No doubt, but I think Sark's philosophy as a recovering person means he lets Cook do what he's gonna do, mostly without interference. By the same token if UW coaches had asked, I'd imagine he'd be honest with them. Yeah, at this point he's a candidate for sympathy more than scorn. He's not being a garden-variety asshole.
  17. As a person who went from STEM to something of the ultimate in applied liberal arts, law, there's a lot to this. One aspect of a lot of technical work and education is that you try to simplify problems and make certain assumptions about things and ignore "noise" if you can. Whereas in addressing societal issues, you can't assume very much or ignore much noise, because that is often exactly where the problem lies. This in itself is an oversimplification as part of technical problem solving does involve figuring out which assumptions can be made and what "noise" can and can't be successfully ignored. Technical people tend to do that deductively, while non-technical do it inductively. This shit is a classic case of deductive experimentation.
  18. I tried to Google this guy (duckduckgo actually ftr), and this particular chud never showed up. But there are a number of Marko Elezes in the world, all Serbian. Serbians have a recent record not altogether different from Afrikaaners.
  19. Yeah, I have attempted to study Asian business and innovation culture, and that seems to be the thing. The deferential, polite, "top-down" aspects of their cultures and societies seems to work against innovation except possibly "improvements" on the "original" ideas of others. They are certainly good at the latter.
  20. Only the ones at the top can say that shit out loud.
  21. Thing is, though, from what I have learned factually about Miami in that era, the over-the-top characterizations were not that far off, really.
  22. All you wanted to know about that. https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/will-employees-who-resign-have-a-remedy Receiving severance past the March 14 budget authorization is a very dicey proposition, as is entering a contract with the government for severance pay, period. The documents also have releases purporting to prevent suits against the government.
  23. Hey-ell hell? Tell her about that bloody booger you came up with that time?
  24. Congressional abdication is not new, if it is at an all-time high. A UT history professor's view.
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