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bolverk

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by bolverk

  1. When even Twice's full faith in the judicial system is shaken, it's time to take this shit serious.
  2. You're missing the key distinction between "gentleman's bet" and any other undefined "bet" or "wager," none of which require that money be involved. The difference is that there's no legally enforceable contract holding participants to it. Edit: So, what collateral are you willing to put up as part of this bet? It's got to have some value to you, or there are no stakes. If not money, is it your house, wife, children, pride, honor, internet points, time, labor, or something else?
  3. Yes, it was more "civil," but much of what Trump does/says is the more concentrated form of conservatism without mixers and little umbrellas to help choke it down.
  4. How old is your dad? Asking because "name calling, wealth shifting to the ultra rich, and conning people with christian values to vote for them" have been hallmarks of the "conservative movement" since the early 1980s, at least.
  5. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/08/business/trump-tariff-wall-street-reaction.html Wall Street billionaires are not used to being on the outside looking in. But that is where they find themselves after President Trump ignored their appeals to call off his tariff plans which they fear could endanger the economy. With the backdrop of rapidly mounting stock market losses, corporate titans have worked every angle — phone calls, social media and even a typically staid shareholder letter — to try to change Mr. Trump’s mind. The day after the president announced his most sweeping round of tariffs last week, chief executives from major banks, including Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, had a private meeting with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick organized by a lobbying group in Washington. But Mr. Lutnick was not persuaded to reverse course, three people briefed on the sit-down said. Over the weekend, megadonors to Mr. Trump’s re-election effort tried a different tack, pleading their case in calls to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, people familiar with the calls said. Those efforts also came up empty. By Monday, hedge fund billionaires — many of whom had been loud and proud boosters of Mr. Trump’s second term — were going public with their cries. “The global economy is being taken down because of bad math,” the hedge fund manager William A. Ackman posted Monday morning on X. He added, “The President’s advisors need to acknowledge their error before April 9th and make a course correction before the President makes a big mistake.” Others chimed in, calling for a stronger fight. Andrew Hall, a billionaire oil trader who has been critical of Mr. Trump in the past, saluted Mr. Ackman on Instagram for being a Trump supporter who was speaking out about tariffs. “At least he is willing to reverse himself and call out this stupidity,” Mr. Hall said of Mr. Ackman. “Where are the other ‘financial titans’? Why aren’t they speaking up?” A few are doing so, though more diplomatically and in dribbles. cont'd:
  6. Trump’s Tariffs Are Already Reducing Car Imports and Idling Factories A few carmakers have closed factories, laid off workers or shifted production in response to the auto tariffs that took effect last week. President Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on imported vehicles, which went into effect last week, are already sending tremors through the auto industry, prompting companies to stop shipping cars to the United States, shut down factories in Canada and Mexico and lay off workers in Michigan and other states. Jaguar Land Rover, based in Britain, said it would temporarily stop exporting its luxury cars to the United States. Stellantis idled factories in Canada and Mexico that make Chrysler and Jeep vehicles and laid off 900 U.S. workers who supply those factories with engines and other parts. Audi, the luxury division of Volkswagen, also paused exports of cars to the United States from Europe, telling dealers to sell whatever they still had on their lots. If other carmakers make similar moves, the economic impact could be severe, leading to higher car prices and widespread layoffs. The tariffs on cars are among the first of several industry-specific levies that Mr. Trump has in his sights and could offer early clues about how businesses will respond to his trade policies, including whether they raise prices or increase manufacturing in the United States. The president has said he also wants to tax the imports of medicines and computer chips. Applying the new tariff to imported cars could increase their cost to consumers by thousands of dollars, sharply reducing demand for those vehicles. For some Jaguar Land Rover or Audi models, the tariffs could amount to more than $20,000 per car. cont'd
  7. Please take a screenshot of the tweet and post it. Many here refuse to click links to Xitter.
  8. Don't forget to stop off at the Five & Dime while you're in town. They got a deal on Tuesdays, offering free oats for your horsies while they wait at the hitching post.
  9. This analysis piece and the other following story (below) about China doubling down on industrial output should be read together. For Xi, China’s Strongman Leader, Ceding to Trump Is Not an Option China sees little to gain in capitulating to President Trump’s tariff threats, labeling them “blackmail” and vowing to “fight to the end.” Xi Jinping wants you to know that he will not be cowed. Confronted with the latest threat from President Trump of an additional 50 percent tariff on Chinese goods unless Beijing reverses its retaliatory levies on U.S. imports, China’s top leader has remained defiant. His Ministry of Commerce on Tuesday accused the United States of “blackmail” and declared that Beijing would “fight to the end.” But behind the bravado is a more complicated set of realities for Mr. Xi that makes it politically and economically untenable to offer concessions to the country’s single largest trading partner and chief rival for global influence. With Mr. Trump also refusing to back down, a devastating trade war between the two largest economies may be inevitable — a showdown with painful consequences that will be felt across the world. The dilemma for Mr. Xi is that looking weak is not an option, but hitting back risks further escalation. The Chinese leader has cast himself as a national savior who is rejuvenating his country’s greatness. As a result, Beijing has less flexibility to back down from a fight with Washington, as other U.S. trading partners like Vietnam have tried, because it could undercut Mr. Xi’s legitimacy, analysts say. “Beijing’s response to date has emphasized three things: resolve, resilience, and retaliation,” said Julian Gewirtz, a former senior China policy official at the White House and State Department under President Biden who is now writing a book on U.S.-China relations. “Xi has built up an image of himself as a defiant strongman helming a powerful country, and China’s official messaging is conveying that they are determined to stand up to U.S. pressure even at high costs,” he said. That helps explain why China scuttled a deal to sell a portion of TikTok to American investors last week in response to Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs, and why it is resisting a sale of the ports owned by the Hong Kong company CK Hutchison along the Panama Canal. cont'd ‘The Tsunami Is Coming’: China’s Global Exports Are Just Getting Started A staggering $1.9 trillion in extra industrial lending is fueling a continued flood of exports that could be spread even wider across the world by the Trump tariffs. For decades, the world’s largest car factory was Volkswagen’s complex in Wolfsburg, Germany. But BYD, the Chinese electric carmaker, is building two factories in China, each capable of producing twice as many cars as Wolfsburg. Recent data from China’s central bank shows that state-controlled banks lent an extra $1.9 trillion to industrial borrowers over the past four years. On the fringes of cities all over China, new factories are being built day and night, and existing factories are being upgraded with robots and automation. China’s investments and advances in manufacturing are producing a wave of exports that threatens to cause factory closings and layoffs not just in the United States but also around the globe. “The tsunami is coming for everyone,” said Katherine Tai, who was the United States trade representative for former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. President Trump’s steep tariffs announced on Wednesday, which have caused stocks in Asia and elsewhere to plunge, were the most drastic response yet to China’s export push. From Brazil and Indonesia to Thailand and the European Union, many countries have already moved more quietly to increase tariffs as well. Chinese leaders are furious at the recent proliferation of trade barriers, and particularly Mr. Trump’s latest tariffs. They take pride in China’s high savings rate, long work hours and abundance of engineers and software programmers, as well as its legions of electricians, welders, mechanics, construction workers and other skilled tradesmen. On state television Saturday night, an anchor solemnly read a government statement condemning the United States: “It is using tariffs to subvert the existing international economic and trade order” so as “to serve the hegemonic interests of the United States.” Five years ago, before a housing bubble burst, cranes putting up apartment towers dotted practically every city in China. Today, many of those cranes are gone and the ones that are left seldom move. At Beijing’s behest, banks have rapidly shifted their lending from real estate to industry. China is using more factory robots than the rest of the world combined, and most of them are made in China by Chinese companies, although some components are still imported. After several years of rapid growth, overall installations of new factory equipment have already jumped another 18 percent this year. When Zeekr, a Chinese electric carmaker, opened a factory four years ago in Ningbo, a two-hour drive south of Shanghai, the facility had 500 robots. Now it has 820, and many more are planned. As new factories come online, China’s exports are rapidly accelerating. They rose 13.3 percent in 2023 and then another 17.3 percent last year. cont'd
  10. So much of social conservatism is rooted in self-loathing.
  11. When the legislative branch fails to rein in the Executive, And the Judiciary fails to stop the Executive. All that's left is the Executive.
  12. Wordle 1,389 2/6 🟩⬛🟩⬛🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #667 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🙂 Daily Quordle 1170 6️⃣5️⃣ 4️⃣7️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/ ⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜ 🟨⬜⬜🟨🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨 ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜ 🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜🟩🟨 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
  13. I wonder when we start to watch what we say and begin to self-censor, even here on Surly. Almost all of us could be traced—if one had the means and were so inclined—in some way or another through our IP addresses, our 3.50 subscriptions, emails used to sign up, etc. Obviously, we're not that big of a deal and could be pretty far down on a watch list, but we also have some connected people and some stark-raving lunatic true believers who might have some other dubious connections.
  14. Are you willing to share, at least vaguely, what kind of research it was? Asking solely for when I'm arguing with one particular person IRL in mind and he says, "Maybe they should've pulled the plug, dude."
  15. Dems have been warning the Olds for 25 years that Republicans were coming after their SS and Medicare, but by and large, the Olds continued to vote for them. I guess that prospect wasn't as scary as non-white people and gays
  16. It goes back several years. In the US, we spray/dip/apply (I can't remember which) dead chickens that have been plucked with bleach before selling them. In Europe, they don't/can't for whatever regulatory purpose (sounds unhealthily to me). So, we aren't allowed to export our dead poultry there for consumption.
  17. Supposedly blocked on the grounds of which court should hear the case. Meanwhile, they'll continue deporting people, who I'm sure will get their own judicial review after they've wasted away for months/years in a Salvadoran gulag under the guise of the Venezuelan war we find ourselves fighting. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/us/politics/supreme-court-trump-venezuelan-deportations.html The Supreme Court ruled on Monday night that the Trump administration could continue to deport Venezuelan migrants based on a wartime powers act for now, overturning a lower court that had put a temporary stop to the deportations. The decision marks a victory for the Trump administration, although the ruling is narrow and focused on the proper venue for the cases, rather than on the administration’s use of a centuries-old law to justify its decision to send planeloads of Venezuelans to El Salvador with little to no due process. The justices did not address the question of whether the Trump administration improperly categorized the Venezuelans as deportable under the Alien Enemies Act, finding the migrants had improperly challenged their deportations in Washington, D.C. The justices determined that the migrants should have raised challenges in Texas, where they were being held. “The detainees are confined in Texas, so venue is improper in the District of Columbia,” according to the court’s order, which was brief and unsigned, as is typical in such emergency applications. In a concurrence, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh stressed that the justices were in agreement that the migrants should receive judicial review, but that they were divided over where the case should be heard. “As the court stresses, the court’s disagreement with the dissenters is not over whether the detainees receive judicial review of their transfers — all nine members of the court agree that judicial review is available,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote. “The only question is where that judicial review should occur.” The case is perhaps the most high-profile of the eight emergency applications the Trump administration has filed with the Supreme Court so far, and it presents a direct collision between the judicial and executive branches. The administration had asked the justices to weigh in on its effort to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport more than 100 Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador. The administration claims the migrants are all members of Tren de Aragua, a violent street gang rooted in Venezuela, and that their removals are allowed under the act, which grants the president authority to detain or deport citizens of enemy nations. The president may invoke the law in times of “declared war” or when a foreign government invades the United States. On March 14, President Trump signed a proclamation that targeted members of Tren de Aragua, claiming that there was an “invasion” and a “predatory incursion” underway as he invoked the wartime law. In the proclamation, Mr. Trump claimed that the gang was “undertaking hostile actions” against the United States “at the direction, clandestine or otherwise” of the Venezuelan government. Lawyers representing some of those targeted then challenged the order in federal court in Washington. That same day, planeloads of the deportees were sent to El Salvador, which had entered an agreement with the Trump administration to take the Venezuelans and detain them. A federal judge, James E. Boasberg, directed the administration to stop the flights. He subsequently issued a written order temporarily pausing the administration’s plan while the court case proceeded. The Trump administration appealed Judge Boasberg’s temporary restraining order, and a divided panel of three appellate court judges in Washington sided with the migrants, keeping the pause in place. One judge wrote that the government’s deportation plan had denied the Venezuelans “even a gossamer thread of due process.” At that point, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to weigh in, arguing in its application that the case presented “fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national-security-related operations in this country.” Lawyers for the migrants responded sharply, arguing that the temporary pause by Judge Boasberg was “the only thing” standing in the way of the government sending migrants “to a prison in El Salvador, perhaps never to be seen again, without any kind of procedural protection, much less judicial review.” The American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward, the groups representing the Venezuelan migrants, said that the president had bent the law in an “effort to shoehorn a criminal gang” into the wartime law in a manner that was “completely at odds with the limited delegation of wartime authority Congress chose to give him through the statute.” Lawyers for the migrants said the migrants sent to El Salvador “have been confined, incommunicado, in one of most brutal prisons in the world, where torture and other human rights abuses are rampant.” The Trump administration replied on Wednesday in a brief that contended that the government was not denying that the Venezuelan migrants should receive “judicial review.” “They obviously do,” the acting solicitor general, Sarah M. Harris, wrote. Rather, the government argued, that “the pressing issues right now are ‘procedural issues’ about where and how detainees should challenge their designations as enemy aliens.” Ms. Harris argued that the migrants should have filed their legal challenge in Texas, where they had been detained before the deportation flights, rather than in Washington. She asked the justices to lift the temporary block on Mr. Trump’s order, calling the pause “an intolerably long time for a court to block the executive’s conduct of foreign-policy and national-security operations.” Ms. Harris claimed that the migrants’ lawyers had offered a “sensationalized” narrative. She added that the government denied that the migrants might face torture in El Salvador, writing that the government’s position is “to abhor torture, not to invite brutalization.”
  18. "This could've been a dating quarrel. Do you know the sexual orientation of the boys involved?" "What if it comes out Metcalf called Anthony the "n" word?"
  19. https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/the-false-tariff-headline-that-sent-stocks-on-a-2-trillion-ride-2224ef75 https://archive.is/98rc1 A wild stock-market swing based on false information added $2.4 trillion in value and erased it almost as quickly Monday morning. The episode played out in just over half an hour, all based on misleading reports that said President Trump was considering a 90-day pause to implementing tariffs. The rally-turned-rout underscored how feverish many investors are for any information that might calm the market and how easily misinformation and Wall Street’s high-frequency trading strategies that react to headlines in seconds can impact asset prices. News that tariff-shocked investors had been dying to see began circulating on social media shortly after 10:10 a.m. in New York: “HASSETT: TRUMP IS CONSIDERING A 90-DAY PAUSE IN TARIFFS FOR ALL COUNTRIES EXCEPT CHINA,” the headline read, in an apparent reference to words from Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council. Stock indexes soared. After trading as much as 4.7% lower early in the session, the S&P 500 rose to trade up 3.4% in a jarring intraday reversal. The broad-based index added $2.4 trillion in market value in the 10 minutes from 10:08 to 10:18 a.m., according to Dow Jones Market Data. By 10:41 a.m. it had all been wiped out. The S&P 500 erased $2.5 trillion in value in around 23 minutes after the White House quickly denied that such a pause was being discussed. After the false headline caused the S&P 500 to trade in its widest intraday range since March 2020, the index closed down just 0.2%. The origin of the report remains unclear. The headline was circulating on social media by 10:13 a.m., when a widely followed X account known as Walter Bloomberg posted it. The anonymous account has for years posted trading-related news throughout the market day, often in the form of all-caps newswire headlines copy-and-pasted from the Bloomberg Terminal. The account, which has nearly one million followers, isn’t associated with Bloomberg News. The Walter Bloomberg account and others like it are popular with market watchers who don’t have access to Bloomberg’s expensive news-and-data terminals. The headline in question didn’t come from Bloomberg’s newswires, however. And the news was quickly gaining steam with major outlets. A CNBC anchor read the news live on air around 10:15 a.m., before warning viewers that, “We’ll try and source that, exactly where that came from.” At 10:20, Reuters sent the same news over its wires, attributing it to CNBC. “As we were chasing the news of the market moves in real-time, we aired unconfirmed information in a banner. Our reporters quickly made a correction on air,” a CNBC spokeswoman said. A Reuters spokeswoman said: “Reuters, drawing from a headline on CNBC, published a story on April 7 saying White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett had said that President Trump was considering a 90-day tariff pause on all countries except China. The White House denied the report. Reuters has withdrawn the incorrect report and regrets its error.” The original headline might have been an inaccurate summary of an interview Hassett gave on Fox News earlier Monday morning. In a “Fox & Friends” interview before the market opened, Hassett was asked if the White House would consider a 90-day pause on the tariffs. “Yeah, I think the president is going to decide what the president is going to decide. There are more than 50 countries in negotiation with the president,” Hassett said, without elaborating further on a potential pause.
  20. Is this another one of those "they didn't come for me so I didn't speak out" kind of situations? Like when we all saw the State's security apparatus swoop in on a college campus and start prematurely cracking heads because they didn't like the speech or who was speaking but pretended it had something to do with disrupting classes and blocking sidewalks? Like when a prominent university starts firing academic staff over their disagreements with how that college is handling its shit because, again, we didn't like the people they're attempting to protect? Like when a governor pardons a murderer because the victim held an opinion he didn't like? Just asking questions so that we're clear if future signs start cropping up.
  21. No. White people absolutely do accept their benefits (which come in many variable ways), but they'll say stuff like, "well, I paid into it and deserve my check," while pretending others don't also contribute to our national well-being because anyone who isn't white must necessarily be a welfare queen and, therefore, is wholly undeserving of any sort of assistance.
  22. Understanding what's moving the market and where it will go is now more a matter of comprehending the psychology of a single man and how investors respond to his megalomania than anything you might have learned in B school.
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