may be rude

bill crystal is quite brilliant. there absolutely are sane conservatives, many openly are telling voters to vote democrat because there is an important distinction between conservatism and the national republican party. they are two distinct things. sane conservatives are where i'm finding a lot of the best takes in the last few years, like the bulwark circle. people who come from conservatism but recognize where the republican party is at right now. yeah in that podcast the guest is like a serious military type who seems very well-informed on the current state of the ukraine war as well as its place in the broader context of us international diplomacy and military strategy. great example of the difference between real info and pretend junk that goes around btw bias is an extremely commonly used manipulation trick. everyone has implicit bias. it's something you can say about anything. this is how the real manipulators and deceivers are tricking people into: not following journalism. it's a nice trick because you can't prove anyone is not biased. one of the treacherous aspects of the modern info space is that it's not hard to slander someone or something. so, it's easy for bad actors to undermine good sources of information that inconveniently report on their bad actions. one of the root causes of problems in the world right now is that people don't know who to believe, because good sources of info are targeted by bad actors. anyway i'm not an expert on the thinktank and to do a thorough analysis of bias is kind of a red herring and ad hominem fallacy. either facts are well supported and analysis is accurate and insightful or they're not. i can tell you bill crystal is a great person to follow for insight these days. at the end of the day, what you want is people who act in good faith and know how to be careful with information. people who will accept being corrected. journalism is either fact reporting or analysis. fact reporting can be verified. analysis is either insightful or it's not. it's utterly possible to get good at identifying people who are sloppy with info or who are willing spreaders of junk. but then even good people sometimes are wrong. there's that too. it's rough out there for people to figure out what's real in 2024. there are the deceivers, the marks, and the in-between. in-between is the biggest segment by far. basically careless people offering the koolaid, drinking the koolaid, and shirking responsibility for the quality of the info they share. the whole dynamic changed in the last 20 years, info previously was propagated very differently and we had arrived at some checks and balances, however imperfect, through trial and error over hundreds and thousands of years. now we need to do that again in this new more complex space and in new ways that we don't even understand yet. one of the new social norms for this modern world is to tell people about good or bad info sources, and to share good info sources, so i appreciate you opening that up for conversation. i shared that video specifically because crystal is one of the great commentators right now and that episode has great info on the present moment of the ukraine conflict.

good info

on celebrity apprentice he was known to regularly shit himself. people say it's because of decades of ritalin abuse and mcdonalds. apparently he may have shit himself in court a couple weeks ago

yes brother laugh but i'm right. people share a lot of innuendo, 10th-hand brain garbage. with 6 months of consequence amplification, and ample facts to use, an individual applying themself could turn a state. no one will ever know that history was altered but you can do it. telling a single good fact to a single individual can have cascading consequences that could change the course of world history and even avert nuclear armaggeddon. prove me wrong

presidential election is not by popular vote. it's about 8 swing states. arizona georgia michigan minnesota nevada pennsylvannia ohio wisconsin AZ is looking safer for biden because they put a draconian abortion thing on the ballot GA is looking harder for biden than it was in 2020. they don't have the senate races. last polls have trump up by 6 or 7 MI had trump polling ahead recently but the most recent poll shows biden up by 1 MN show biden leading in last polls NV has trump ahead by 5 or 10 points OH is considered a redder swing state like florida these days PA has trump up by one point in latest poll WI has trump up in latest polls https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/arizona/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/georgia/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/michigan/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/minnesota/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/nevada/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/pennsylvania/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/ohio/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/wisconsin/ 270towin has an interactive presidential election map https://www.270towin.com/ you can start at "2020 actual" and then give trump GA, PA and WI and he wins georgia was won by 12,000 votes in 2020 arizona was won by 10,000 votes in 2020 wisconsin was won by 20,000 votes in 2020 2020 was won by citizens who fought in the information war. we win this by sharing good facts with people. like: did you know that in january 2021, for the first time in american history, all living former secretaries of defense signed a public letter saying that the military must stay out of any election dispute? that's because the military was worried about being used in trump's coup attempt. https://apnews.com/article/10-former-pentagon-chiefs-trump-warning-eac5170301db792231b94537bfbbceff when talking to people about politics and the election, this dimension of "good facts" is the key dimension to keep your eye on. you want to select for sharing information that is good facts. facts that are relevant, interesting, well-substantiated, easy to check. btw these polls are in one-on-one match-ups. RFK (whose family publicly endorsed biden) and whoever else will complicate it.

shit's gonna get weird if he gets in there

it's unfortunate that people have been waiting around for the trials to take care of the problem. a court commentator said that the soonest jack smith could start a trial for the coup charges would be last week of august, which would place the end of the trial at the end of october. it's technically possible that a trial could be scheduled close to the election. doj has an internal guidance - not even a rule - that for 60 days before an election there should be no overt investigative steps, like searching a property, or indictments of candidates. trial scheduling is something completely different. trump is already indicted. he should want to clear his name. the justice system doesn't wait around for when it's convenient for you to stand trial. the DOJ guidance is for the purpose of not being unfair by doing an overt investigative step or an indictment 60 days before an election because the person wouldn't get a chance to be tried before the election. but many doj analysts view it as unlikely that jack smith would attempt and succeed to get the trial scheduled at that soonest point. the NY state trial for the 2016 election scheme is very likely the only criminal trial we will see before the election.

it's a conceptual thing meant to create emotion in people and a sense of fear/urgency. no one is pulling up this hand/table saw art at a climate conference to explain science/geo politics/human predicament. it misinforms though, it doesn't accurately convey the urgency and risk. the real harm is way, way worse. that graphic is something the fossil fuel companies would put out to confuse people and delay action. 4+ is where we're heading. at 4, avoiding nuclear armaggeddon will be tough. past 4 is basically russian roulette with 5 bullets. people fail to connect the nuclear armaggeddon component. we cannot afford for world governments to descend into chaos and broader war.

does not accurately capture it at all. the difference between 2 and 3 is the difference between all world powers acting perfectly starting now and continually for decades (impossible hypothetical), versus a more realistic best case scenario. the difference between 3 and 4 is the difference between the best case scenario and what could happen if world powers remain oil-influenced for decades through the century. the difference between 4 and 5 is between that and if we're just overall bad at even trying and just resign to push the thing off the cliff, buying bullshit about geo engineering that will of course not reverse anything but rather further the destabilization. the difference between 5 and 6 is much of the same but at that point it doesn't make much difference because somewhere around 4 may be where the strain on societal stability is so bad that it seems like there's a high risk of broader wars that could result in a nuclear armaggeddon. funny thing about the "x degree" threshold is it takes... 2 decades of average temperature past that threshold! we already had a full year of average 1.5c hotter. by the time we're officially at 1.5 degrees it will be more than 2 degrees. by the time it's 2 degrees it will be 3 degrees. great. who came up with that? someone fix that.

lol I have no choice to engage with them. I don't get into a debate tho as it's not my style. a lot of people I deal with for work are between Arizona to Mississippi - hardly pro-Biden states. I probably run into more T supporters than Biden out in the wild. buy yeah... the end goal here should be to try and get more people to fall off the trump train. sadly this is not as easy as it should be. why tf anyone supports him is beyond reason. a critical move in the martial art of US political messaging is the tactic of finding the best fact to share and sharing it at the opportune moment, with an individual. often you have to feel out which fact and when is the moment, but you can also sometimes think about it ahead of time. a good fact is something that is very well established and not disputed among serious people is significant, relevant and not as commonly known as it should be the other person would find interesting. you want them to receive it in the spirit of it just being something interesting, significant and relevant. and if you do it right then they will, and they will go away with it and probably think about it some more. it may lead them to other things or change the way they think about some things. you may be surprised how impactful the cascading consequences of a single good fact can be. debates are actually quite difficult. great journalists commonly falter in live debate because it's just not easy to do effectively. it's one of the reasons why bullshit is allowed to fly so much. that's why the tactic of just focusing on a single quality fact is actually a really effective tactic. with trump there are so many, and counter-truth messaging is employed for each, by the fox-gop-etc consortium. that's why it's good to really try to think about what's the best one to share. i like: he tried to topple the us government. that's pretty bad. it's just plainly logically ridiculous to try to put someone like that into the office. unless they're in the burn-it-down segment, but that shouldn't be much more than 20% of the population, lol. anyway his coup attempt is pretty starkly apparent to anyone who decides to familiarize themselves with the information. the fake electors scheme, combined with the jeff clark doj scheme to use doj to threaten pressure, and deceive states governments like that of georgia, combined with eastman's plan to have pence decide the winner on january 6th, combined with trump's participation in a proud boys plot to disrupt the congressional proceeding. pence's life was seriously in danger as he hid with a handful of secret service in the overrun capital building, and trump was out there tweeting that pence fucked up rather than calling off the dogs. it was an outright coup attempt.

fallout is the best new series i've seen. it's very well done and it even has agent cooper. jonathan nolan and lisa joy executive producing, and jonathan nolan directed 3 of the episodes. kind of funny how it is similar to westworld, which was itself inspired by video games. i have greater appreciation for the fallout series now and it seems like a perfect backdrop for a show. the writers did a pretty good job.

noteworthy that trump's new york state criminal trial is anticipated to result in conviction and sentencing for conviction could be upwards of 3 or 4 years prison.

inflation is not rising, it is coming down. inflation was a global consequence of the pandemic and USA under biden has been recovering well. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/ he inherited a great economy from obama and he tanked it. the covid impact didn't have to be as bad as it was, trump bears responsibility. that's what happened. if obama were president when covid hit then things would have been very different and not nearly as bad. those positions of trump supporters are not logically well-supported. biden didn't cause inflation, but he's just about fixed it. trump wasn't good for the economy, he inherited a good one and messed it up. biden brought it back. that's awesome that you're engaging with people like that. it's not easy but those difficult conversations are a necessary part of the way out of this mess.

i really like that biden is focusing on cold fusion, among other great climate policies. cold fusion is one of the most important technological innovations that we need regarding the greenhouse gas problem. there have been really significant fusion breakthroughs in the last few years. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-japan-announce-joint-partnership-accelerate-nuclear-fusion-sources-2024-04-10/ i also like the cancer "moonshot" initiative. i think these are great examples of what good american leadership can look like. https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2024/03/08/fact-sheet-biden-cancer-moonshot-announces-commitments-from-leading-health-insurers-and-oncology-providers-to-make-navigation-services-accessible-to-more-than-150-million-americans/ I'm not trying to take the piss or anything but sincerely asking how much of this was due to Biden and how much was due to a competent administration / cabinet / advisors / etc. I get what we're up against with orange T, that backing his challenger is important and the situation is different because we have a 1-term incumbent and so forth... Even if the answer is that a lot of it was due to the administration, that's still not a reason to vote against Biden, just want to be clear and honest about all this. i think some credit accrues to the chief executive even when their people are entrusted with decisions because the leadership is a factor in the result. inherently we have limited visibility but we do see examples of biden's individual talents and personal responsibility. particularly in national defense, the chief of command is visible because they are ultimately responsible. leaving afghanistan is something we wanted every president to do and it took 20 years and biden got it done, even in the face of unfortunate circumstances. strategically helping ukraine with public info dumps in february of 2022 that prebunked a planned russian false flag, for example, was unprecedented and shows adroitness in profound moments. recently he is criticized for continuing the long american tradition of israel support and he has actually taken actions that were both effective and highly unusual for an american president, working toward preventing the violence in gaza, such as abstaining from the recent UN security council vote, much aid delivery, and effectively counseling, advising, and persuading the israeli government to not cause civilian harm. go ahead and point out that everything's not perfect but it remains true that biden is pushing back on israel strongly and effectively to an extent that is very unusual for an american president. another thing comes to mind. when he entered office, there was no vaccine deployment strategy. trump administration had nothing in place for that. biden's team promptly spun it up from scratch and it was very effective, that winter into spring getting the vaccines to most people who wanted them, very much resolving the worst of the pandemic. taking unemployment from 10% to 3.5%. inflation is currently at 3% which is roughly normal, biden brought it down after trump helped ratfuck covid, contributing to the global inflation that countries around the world experienced. cranking the GDP and job creation, continually. these are significant accomplishments that surely his team was involved in but also i don't think you can take them away from him as though they occurred despite him. they were a result of his administration.