Wouldn’t be surprised if there was an exceptionally well funded US startup that makes a debut before TikTok is blocked if they don’t sell. TikTok has to weigh the possibility that they can’t compete if they don’t exist.

If the pharmacy companies and insurers weren’t sleeping together then the insurers might be doing some kind of collective bargaining. But nope.

I think the rules are typically negotiable in advance, especially when it’s down to just 2 contenders.

Debates have the potential to show more than eloquence or intelligence, they also show soft skills like whether the candidate can control the conversation, control under pressure, how easily they succumb when bullied, and give the audience an opportunity to read their body language, which may develop (or remove) trust.

Biden famously told Trump in a debate: “would you shut up, man?” And in that moment quite a few Americans were swayed to select him believing he’s not susceptible to getting run over by trump mouth diarrhea attack like so many other politicians are.

Tribes, man. Fucking tribes.

The bible is not univocal. So saying “pick up a bible” to understand his views perhaps includes killing those who wear mixed fabrics and giving women instructions for abortions. Maybe it also includes killing his firstborn son whenever the voices say he should. Or maybe he doesn’t think those parts mean what they say, but other parts do?

Apologetics is an amazing thing! You’ll never guess how that one thing doesn’t mean what you think it means, and I’m the sole authority to tell you why!

IMO all forms of taking care of yourself are self care. You have to love yourself before you can offer anything to anybody else.

The effort starts an upward spiral of increasing rewards. You feel better about yourself, people treat you differently, you feel more confident, and the cycle repeats.

Does this kind of jury tampering increase the risk of a mistrial?

The article surmises:

What will happen when voters can’t separate truth from lies? And what are the stakes?

Regrettably this has been true since the beginning of time about many issues and is not something that legislation can ever hope to change.

I think we’ve all seen that the abuse of deepfakes is coming at society like a tidal wave. But I don’t think legislating away the technology that makes it possible is even remotely going the right direction. That cat is already out of the bag, so to speak.

What needs to be be legislated, however, is personal responsibility for creating (with some limitations) or distributing sexual content that is designed to harm. As a society we already believe this when it comes to revenge porn. But I don’t think it’s as simple.

Creation is not necessarily a crime, but the intent or positioning during distribution may make something that’s innocent become a crime. Perhaps we cover that with libel laws already. If a picture is true and serves the public interest, it probably doesn’t qualify as libel even if it could harm the target. Obviously, an appropriate venue is necessary, because seeing graphic adult content can also be harmful in its own right, which is why we put porn on porn dedicated websites.

I guess to sum up my ideas… There’s not much we can do to prevent somebody from generating AI pictures depicting AOC - or your high school crush - in some sort of abusive sexualized graphic state. But we can, and should, impose a high penalty for distributing that material as truth. And there should also be a social penalty for distributing that material even if it’s labeled as fake or imaginary from the beginning.

Geez. Imagine New York state has to sue Knight to get them to pay up on behalf of Trump after he looses this boneheaded appeal and owes the now 1 billion (plus or minus, whatever) that will have accumulated on top of his judgement.

That’s another 5m in legal expenses for NY and probably 3 years out the door.

That’s enough time for Trump to age out of this planet and for his family to have somehow moved most or all of the income producing assets to a new business.

Articles like this leave me feeling giddy. Hopefully Texas gets an upgrade this November.

My solution is a bit old school: A raspberry pi connected to my network and running miniDLNA. It has an externally powered USB hard drive. My TV runs Android and I have VLC installed. Any DLNA client works including Xbox and mobile phone apps too.

I don’t think mini DLNA is even updated anymore so eventually my solution might stop working but it’s been running solid for 10 years

The billion number is because the suretors project he’ll lose on appeal and then they will need to collect on his assets which he will fight tooth and nail for again.

So by the time they finally get it they’d only net a tiny profit for the pain. Hardly worth it.

Either that or the price tag is the “We don’t want to do business with you but we’re also not going to say no” price.

WITCH HUNT!

-Rapist with a half billion judgement against him

Nobody has 467+ million dollars in cash ready for transfer at any given moment, especially for something like this. That would be poor financial planning even for a billionaire. However… It’s not like he didn’t have a heads up that it’s coming, so it seems like he didn’t have his ducks in a row here.

I’m sure even Elon or Bill would have to make some annoyingly painful decisions to get that amount of cash on short notice.

It’s telling that he is struggling to borrow against his properties to raise the capital. It suggests that behind the scenes banks are not offering him favorable terms. And even if he were to win on appeal, it will still be quite expensive for him. I’m guessing that in the bank’s internal analysis they project the original judgment will stand and therefore are considering how much they will earn after they foreclose on his buildings and sell them. It’s potentially sizable…

If the Trump name were removed from the tower the value might actually increase lol.

On the other hand, unless Trump is delusional (granted, it’s possible), he must also know that winning on appeal is a long shot and therefore this money, once he puts it up, is gone. I guess his efforts to borrow rather than sell to raise capital are his version of YOLO. Because he’s either president and figures out how to stall, or he’s old already in the consequences will be short-lived.

What’s the saying… You can’t use logic to reason people out of beliefs that they didn’t use logic to get themselves into?

How could there could possibly be moderates at this point. People who are like… Hmm, I better wait until the next debate or I’m still thinking about it. We already know what we’re going to get… With both guys!

If you haven’t been paying attention for this long then this is one time when you should probably not show up to vote.

Guaranteed they do

When life gives you lemonade…

My bike is made from an element that has been shaped by man into a more useful… shape.

Yes. I want to put it into cloud storage that I control and can move around as required, so that I can’t run out of space. And so that I don’t need to manage a local physical drive.