distortionfield

where the government doesn't just force harms on the public whenever it will make them more money and voter's concerns about health and environmental impacts are listened to.

This is exactly what just happened in Utah et. al. with the new Stratos data center under western liberal democracy, btw.

They already have a balanced budget, why would they need to cave to these corporations?

Isn't this a non-sequitur though? Artemis presumably doesn't have to actually load up humans on the rockets to flight test them.

Yup, absolutely I do.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-s...

It’s not a “maybe”. This administration was collecting lists of people who spoke negatively about ICE from social media like a week ago. you really think they’re going to send them gift baskets or something?

Disagree. I have seen people pay more for less. Especially in the case of something like a PR where their job performance could be tied to the result.

We already have agentic payment workflows, this won’t stop it either as people are already willing (and able) to give their agent AIs a small budget to work with.

It’s going to lead to balkanization, and it seems at this point to be basically intentional.

There is little reason to believe that low hiring will be improved in any significant amount by removal of the H1B pool.

I’m familiar with those applications of exploitation, too, but they also wouldn’t apply here. This wasn’t demeaning work and wasn’t predicated on necessity, past their disability.

And of course, all work is exploitation under capitalism (from a true lefty point of view) but I didn’t perceive the original comment as referring to that level of exploitation. Just saying that this isn’t the hill to die on if one wants a case for capitalist exploitation.

I do understand the dangers of others being exploited down the line but again, that wasn’t what OP was saying either.

Really, if this is exploitative it’s only an indictment of profit incentives in healthcare, which are abhorrent.

Exploiting? I’m lefty, but this dude volunteered for the procedure and was fully reimbursed. I’m having a really hard time seeing “exploited” on this one.

Climate migration from South and Central America to North America has already started. If the US think they have an immigration problem right now, I can’t imagine how vicious immigration propaganda is going to get when that number goes up by an order of magnitude.

This is the natural end result of giving the president qualified immunity for acts in office. There is now no reason for them to follow the law.

Unrelated; but I am absolutely in love with this blog theme and color scheme.

Two heads of the same coin I guess! I agree though, we sorely need a counterweight to this administration. I keep asking my friends that support Trump if they’ll have the same staunch attitude towards strong executive branch powers if a Democrat gets elected next. I haven’t gotten a straight answer back.

You’re being downvoted but you’re right. The number of people who act like a web cam reproduces the in person experience perfectly, for good and bad, is hilarious to me.

Trump has already joined those ranks, he just failed at it. January 6th was a legitimate attempt at overturning the election results. He was impeached over it. Mike Pence was the only thing that stopped it, and I can’t believe how close we actually came to that timeline.

And you’re absolutely right about the denial. It manifests as the “nothing ever happens” meme.

Most numbers I can find say that about 65% of Americans are registered to vote. Let’s say 100% of them voted in 2024.

Of that, let’s call it a flat 51% voted for Trump. That means that about half of 65%, or roughly 32.5% of American citizens support Trump, and by extension, likely this policy move.

So yes, it actually is more than you need to win elections.

Republicans used to limit themselves out of of fear of a Democrat being able to do it the next time they won.

Now it seems like the republicans are trying to speed-run to a point where there won’t ever be another Democrat to worry about.

Which makes this situation all the more remarkable, since Trump called in the national guard without Newsom’s approval.

Not without it being received in earnest. You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.

Because the Chinese Room is a much better analogy for what LLMs are doing inside than the Turing test is.

The president is currently ignoring a Supreme Court order, not explaining why they’re ignoring it, and even if they tried to charge him, last year the Supreme Court ruled that he has immunity from everything anyway. So where exactly is it different from a dictatorship now?

A shocking amount, and it’s well spent, because it literally underpins everything else. The stability it provides (or rather, provided in the past) is what made America so appealing to build and invest in in the first place.

Lefty here. I didnt consider the WaPo left of center. I considered them moderate right.

What’s really interesting about this is that the Overton window has shifted so far to the right with this presidency that even moderate right is now experiencing a chilling effect of its discourse.

And now that we’re in debt for them, they’re using that massive debt, that they created, to argue for dismantling and privatizing those same systems.

That assumes that the corporations would be on the wrong side of the uncertainty.

To me, it seems that the political environment in the US is the most corporate -friendly it’s maybe ever been, so maybe the market priced that in but for the other direction.

Not only that, but that same Republican controlled congress has seemed more than happy to throw their hands up and let Trump stomp all over their authority. I guess because it hurts the Democrats more than them right now.

That is literally the entirety of a manager’s job: judging and evaluating people they manage.

That isn’t the point of this entire thread, though. It’s about what the default is, because like it or not, most people are crazy susceptible and have practically zero media literacy.