I found a real easy approach to any undesired solicitation - zero contact, no reaction. Works on telemarketers, panhandlers, salespeople etc.

I have no shame about ghosting you publicly when the only thing you’re after is my money. If I’m in the home generator store, sure thing bro talk to me about my home power needs. If I’m walking out the supermarket and you slide around a booth to “help me keep my home safe during unrest” nah fam you can fuck yourself.

Cold open sales is parallel to pick-up “artists” imo. You want the transactional outcome for yourself, and my consent is the only thing you’re concerned about taking care of.

This copypasta is a cute summary, but it literally means nothing when over 40% of voters are dead locked for Biden and Trump each. The mission isn’t convincing the progressive wing that he’s got left bonafides, the mission is slice off as many undeclared and moderates - who just now really started paying attention… and saw that performance.

Trump looked like an asshole who dodged questions and was hiding the truth, but he had energy and was lucid

FYI: A disorderly conduct charge is just “contempt of cop”, unless it makes sense in parallel with the other charges like DUI or public nudity.

Multiple cops have openly admitted in person to me that they use it for compliance where force isn’t justified. “Move along or you’re about to become disorderly”.

Meetings are rarely productive for anyone, neurotypical or not, once it gets bigger than like five people and/or hierarchy enters the room imo. Then it morphs into politics and showmanship.

Best meeting I’ve ever had was with two engineers. We were all on time, had prepared well, and lasted seven minutes because there were zero pleasantries, got right into breaking down the subject, and the answer was frank and forthright.

Sales team? Forget about keeping to schedule

To determine the true rulers of any society, all you must do is ask yourself this question: Who is it that I am not permitted to criticize?

Kevin Strom, 1993

It’s best not to (mis)quote Neo Nazis in general, especially so when you’re discussing Jews.

It’s not helpful discourse, provides cover for and platforms conspiracies, and gives the Zionists free ammo to point at any criticism as ‘antisemitism’ when these phrases are parroted. “Jews rule the world” is about as tired as it comes, and doesn’t do anything to help Palestinians

I had a former workplace like that, it was beautiful 🥹

We had a hot seat meeting where each department representative wasn’t even in the room until their individual staggered start time kicked in. One out, one in, cycling through each department until the meeting was over. They get to go back to their work and not be ‘meat’ in the room for fifteen minutes or more, we got focused reports from each as they filed in and out.

Sometimes I miss working for Germans, but “alles in Ordnung” cuts both ways - good luck breaking through the bureaucracy reporting chain and getting quick results

Remember! The S in IoT stands for security 😎

I love these false economies that some corporate bean counter thinks saves the company money

Because you see, whenever I see this trash in a cubicle, I lovingly build my own 8-ply, using more paper and burning company time

Now that their “star witness” has been outed as a paid liar, and that the money is coming from Trumpland? Yeah I’d start getting reaaaly quiet and hope everyone forgets the whole event too.

An American company that paid the now indicted FBI informant Alexander Smirnov in 2020 is connected to a UK company owned by Trump business associates in Dubai.

Smirnov is now accused of lying to the FBI about Hunter Biden and his father, President Joe Biden, alleging that they engaged in a bribery scheme served as a major justification of the House impeachment investigation into the Bidens.

• Fired the Supercharger head and the entire department

• Fired the lead of new vehicle development

• Previously fired head of battery development

• Constantly “one year away” from Tesla full self driving, whilst Mercedes just launched geofenced FSD, with Mercedes assuming 100% liability during FSD

• Elon just had a out of the blue trip to China, appears to have ‘kissed the ring’ of Beijing, and hyping TaaS robotaxis

What’s Tesla’s USP to an investor now? The supercharger ‘lock in’ and early head start at the EV game are Tesla’s biggest boons, but the former appears to have been gutted and the latter has been squandered on a slow model release schedule

I’ll say it again and again, before you call the cops for anything, you need to remember what you’re actually doing. You are willingly inviting an armed person, who will not lose a fight or back down, who is shielded from legal consequences, into your situation.

Grandpa isn’t answering his phone or the door and you’re worried? Call a locksmith, not the cops. Cops will just kick the door or call the locksmith anyway, now you have extra problems

I used to live nearby! Loved that silly thing, just don’t treat it like one big roundabout - it’s six chained roundabouts that you can use individually; both green and red routes are valid and legal for the same destination:

…now that the marketplace has been altered.

Zoom was disruptive in the market because the other options SUCKED - Skype, GotomyPC, WebEx, etc all did a lot of rapid maturing during the pandemic to catch up to Zoom, and this ‘bundling’ of Teams with Office has built user lock-in via Office 365.

Well played Microsoft, once again ducking a well deserved anti-trust suit. ‘Historic injury’ should count equally as ‘current injury’ for prosecution, arguably especially so if that historic injury is what created your current market share

Firstly, positive to see more criticism and friction between Israel and US officials, and that resulting in unilateral action against extreme elements of Israeli society. I recognize that international and domestic politics are hard to balance, and its campaign season.

But holy shit this solves nothing. “It’s a start” certainly, but there shouldn’t even be settlers. Oslo II very clearly, with lines on the map agreed to by both sides, set out that the West Bank and Gaza is Palestinian, for Palestinians.

At what point does the US alliance with Israel cost us more than it’s worth, especially when this unlimited support is directly harmful to other regional allies like Jordan or Egypt?

Back in my day trolling meant something. It meant you cared enough to actually form a real argument that withstands scrutiny, just to setup for the rug pull. The better your polemic, the more engagement as people debated if you were for real or not.

Shitposting controversial hot takes or dog whistle memes is mid af, do better

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.“ Matthew 6:5, NIV

Now, I don’t make a habit of quoting holy books, but it certainly can have some absolute zingers if you know even A LITTLE of its content and can spot hypocrisy.

When the culture and the legal system that is supposed to punish illegal activity like this, fails to do its job, the message to each individual is clear if not codified.

Behave as you want, because your leadership controls the information coming out to the wider world. Journalists are intimidated and killed.

If you are discovered, you will be quietly reassigned but not actually disciplined. Protests from the UN or other nations are dismissed using various tired phrases or tactics.

If you actually go to trial, the state will bow to pressure from the public and government officials and not sufficiently punish you for even crimes like murder. 18 months for a summary execution that was clearly premeditated and filmed. It doesn’t matter if the prosecution proves mens rea or that you were filmed loading a weapon first before slow walking over to your victim. You will get a downgraded charge to manslaughter and the broad public will push for your immediate release.

When you read about the Holocaust and the Nazis, you like to imagine you'd be the good guy. You'd fight the Nazis, you'd free the concentration camps. But apparently I wouldn't. Apparently I would have just sat there paralyzed, incapable of doing anything about the genocide I see every day. Unable to think of any way to help. All I can do is retweet and protest and write a stupid blog post. I feel so stupid.

Paul wrote this over three months ago, and nothing has substantially changed. I’m sickened by the news and images I see, but shaken to the core that people are okay with this. That there’s people, far farrrr away from the looming specter of state violence or non-state terrorism, who are cheering for more death and destruction

Web search is failing me for a primary source under the deluge of web/pop culture fascination with katanas, but I swear I’ve read that their primary killing tool in battle was the Yumi bow, usually fired from horseback.

Guns displaced every warrior-caste from multiple different societies; the samurai held on to power through arms control first for swords, then later guns once the colonial powers forced Japan to end its self imposed isolation.

ISIS over here beefing with everyone, ride or die for the caliphate inshallah

Watching an MSF volunteer doctor describe WCNSF while the interviewer sat mute and emotionless was telling.

There's an acronym that's unique to the Gaza Strip, it's WCNSF - wounded child, no surviving family - and it's not used infrequently

She almost broke down mid sentence, the host was ready to move on to the next segment piece of the broadcast…

... This ghoul seriously forced in a talking point asking for more equipment? To grieving parents who watched their kids die while the police were derelict in their duty? 50% of the city budget isn’t enough huh?

The report for the Uvalde city council… was conducted by Jesse Prado, an Austin-based investigator and former police detective.

Ah. “We’ve investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing” despite the feds openly stating the opposite

Genuinely convinced that she’s only staying in the race because;

• If Trump does (plzplzplz) get disqualified/jailed, she’s the Republican candidate with the ‘best’ chance
• There’s hella liberal dark money and back room deals propping her up to split the “never Trump again” conservative vote
• She’s grifting campaign funds via the classic loopholes after she loses the general

She’s pissed off Donnie and the MAGAs so a cabinet slot or ambassadorship is out - what’s her angle otherwise?

Texas and the associations immediately sued the administration, saying the guidance interfered with the state’s right to restrict abortion [regardless of risk to the mother’s life in the ER]. A lower court judge in August 2022 agreed

Fuck me. What premise to hang a judicial argument on. They openly are fighting for “no exemptions, no matter what” and are willing to force doctors and nurses to break their medical oaths to do that, under color of law.

If you’re a medical professional who has any dealings with women, it’s time to leave Texas. The goals of the state, and yours as a medical practitioner, irrefutably do not align. Ken Paxton will hunt you down via lawfare, slander your name in public, and ruin your life if you dare to care for a dying patient that you can save from death.

The hydra feeds upon its many heads, hurting itself in the confusion but somehow does not die

Can the Republicans just have their party schism already? The MAGA crowd took over the RNC leadership years ago, just admit it and make a new party - or better yet clean house and oust them from your ranks.

“Doesn’t he look tired?”

I will never get tired of seeing headlines that start with “Gay furry hackers” because if the Venn diagram is that intersectional, it’s schaudenfreude story time with spicy drops! 🍿

“So I went to the Saudis - lovely people by the way with the best camels, just amazing - and I said hey, I’ve got this problem with a judge and I need half a billion. And they said ‘Donald, don’t worry about it, we got you’ and that’s how I got rid of those crooked Democrats and their election interference case”

We are about to witness either;

• An epic fire sale of Trump world assets to cover this judgment bill
• Donald trying to weasel out of this, as long as the courts allow
• The biggest foreign influence operation this country has ever seen

Edit: Not a defense of today’s Republicans, comparative damnation just as Biden did.

Worse than that piece of shit?

• Kept himself awake to subject the Senate to over 24 continuous hours, of non-stop verbal diarrhea. Just to delay (Delay! Not stop) the inevitable passage of the Civil Rights Act. Still the record holder for filibuster
• A ardent segregationist, and a big proponent of the ‘states rights’ argument for permitting segregation.
• At age 22 gets the family’s house servant pregnant - she turns 16 before giving birth to his child. Strom never acknowledged Essie as his own child, but paid for her education and ‘checked in’ periodically.

Oh btw, he was a Senator representing South Carolina from 1954… through until 2003, before dying shortly after resigning.

The stock market is broken, and is only getting more so with new AI trading models being coupled with existing High Frequency Trading.

The goal of this, is basically to skim a veeery small percentage of the price delta between buyers and sellers as a stock/bond/instrument moves up or down. The fund might make a fraction of a penny on each trade, but if they push thousands of trades on each stock, each time the price moves, the money flows in

And because the computer is making 100% of the buy/sell orders without human intervention, it uses these kind of low-effort “business journalism” reformatted corpo press releases to make buying decisions according to human defined limits

So it doesn’t necessarily matter if the company is actually doing well, or has a solid growth plan, wants a stock split, etc because it’s a lot of computers trading thousands of times each second, all trying to out-scalp each other based on perception

You can’t play that game, let alone win. Value investing and holding long is the only way left for regular people

Wow! You’re telling me that onerous and crony copyright laws stifle innovation and creativity? Thanks for solving the mystery guys, we never knew that!

Egypt is mad as fuck throughout this whole ordeal, they’ve been forced (repeatedly) into a bad situation;

• Suez traffic is down after Houthi attacks on shipping, reducing government income from Suez transit fees - 2% of GDP is no joke to lose overnight, especially for a poorer nation like Egypt
• Domestic pressure from within, ranging from Arab/Muslim/humanitarian solidarity with Gaza, to their own Palestinian diaspora population that wants their government to be more forceful with Israel and/or the international community
• Political pressure from without, to maintain a status quo that increasingly does not serve their interests
• Forced to be the only viable transit point for aid and personnel in/out of Gaza, a security nightmare they never wanted
• And now Israel is saying that THEY need to take over the land along the border, because “any other arrangement would not ensure the demilitarization that we seek”

All while Israel consistently blames Egypt for all smuggling that occurs into Gaza. And Egypt is moving military hardware to the border now.

Your move Biden, you can stop this TODAY.

I will tell you something about the Holocaust. It would be nice to believe that people who have undergone suffering have been purified by suffering. But it's the opposite, it makes them worse. It corrupts. There is something in suffering that creates a kind of egoism. And when such monstrous things have happened to your people, you feel nothing can be compared to it. You get a moral "power of attorney", a permit to do anything you want – because nothing can compare to what has happened to us. This is a moral immunity which is very clearly felt in Israel.

Uri Avery, speaking after the IDF’s massacre at Sabra and Shatila

Uri was a Zionist poster child - his immediate family fled to (then mandatory Palestine) after the Nazis took power; every other relative who stayed in Germany was murdered in the Holocaust. During his youth in 1938 he joined the Zionist terrorist group Irgun, in reaction to the first execution of a Jew for the attempted bombing of an Arab bus. He remained a member in the group until partway through most of WWII, when he leaned into nationalism publishing far-right news articles and opinion pieces.

The turning point for Uri was his time in the IDF during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and the ethnic cleansing and displacement that occurred, percolating through decades of his life until during the 1982 Lebanon War he became the first Israeli to meet Yasser Arafat for an interview.

Think of the range of uses that’ll get totally whitewashed and normalized

• “We’ve added AI ‘chat seeders’ to help get posts initial traction with comments and voting”
• “Certain issues and topics attract controversy, so we’re unveiling new tools for moderators to help ‘guide’ the conversation towards positive dialogue”
• “To fight brigading, we’ve empowered our AI moderator to automatically shadow ban certain comments that violate our ToS & ToU.”
• “With the newly added ‘Debate and Discussion’ feature, all users will see more high quality and well researched posts (powered by OpenAI)”

Rules for Vlad, but none for Bibi? What a joke.

They aren’t even waiting to hear out the case put forth to the judicial tripartite before threatening ‘rebuke’ or sanctions

Avdiikva is a big loss, but just like Bahkmut it was inevitable as long as Russia will throw away men and materiel into the meat grinder, whilst Ukraine values their soldiers lives

They’ve made the Russians really pay for all their ‘big wins’ and ran a serious defense throughout, it was common to see 10+ Russian tanks and IFVs destroyed each day. The troop losses have been so numerous, that’s been hard to keep track of

Traffic lights make roundabouts pointless, unless they’re on a quick cycle used to ‘group’ cars entering a multi-lane roundabout.

If your population didn’t grow up with roundabouts though, and treats them like YOLO free for alls… then you might need lights

“according to a study conducted”

59 people surveyed

This is why paid, professional journalism is important. Basic editorial effort would refuse to publish lines regurgitating junk science

Me starting a project “What kind of alcoholic simpleton set up THIS CONTRAPTION?!? This is why we need professionals”

Also me, finishing a project “I’m done fiddling with this godforsaken piping. That’s good enough, leave it for the next person”

And thus the cycle continues anew