The best part about this is that unlike a lot of the other illegal shit his PACs are doing, Musk can't separate himself from it and say he wasn't personally involved. He personally handed out the giant check.

If Harris wins, and if her administration actually decides to crack down on this shit, Musk could end up behind bars. I'm not holding my breath, but it's a still a pleasant thought.

Actually, you probably could get a fair amount of traction by going to those houses and just saying shit like "they thought they could beat Trump on January 6th but once he's back in office, he's promised to pardon the J6 patriots and send the justice department and military out to get even with the traitors that tried to take him down." Just remind people of the worst shit Trump has said and done in a way that doesn't associate you with the Democrats.

You could even have a bad response ready for each issue, like how "he's going to fix inflation with tariffs, because it was those other countries disrupting supplies that made inflation, so we'll tax the stuff they bring in to teach them a lesson." Anyone who agrees with you was probably a lost cause, but there will also be quite a few who find your pitch deeply unappealing. And best of all, you could use real Trump quotes to make the whole thing legit.

You'd probably get fired if anyone finds out, since I assume there's a script and/or talking points you're supposed to follow. But they clearly aren't keeping close tabs on the actual work being done, just locations, so who knows.

While no one is knowingly paying for fake polls, there is big money to be made in sketchy, rigged polls. Partisan polling firms have been doing it for decades.

I'm fairly certain it's no coincidence that a a lot of low quality polls from less than reliable polling firms started bumping numbers up for Trump. And right around the time that someone dropped 30 million into the betting markets to shift the odds to favor Trump. And that both of these coincide with the ramping up of Musk's involvement.

I wonder what safeguards they would have to stop someone from taking their money and then going around and canvassing for Harris?

Counties are very static in shape and number. Districts can change every ten years, because the number of districts (and therefore representatives) is determined by the population of the state relative to the national population. When states gain or lose seats, they have to redraw the districts. And even if they stay the same, population numbers within each district can shift and you would need to adjust the map to make it "fair" again.

Given the number of godlike beings, the prevalence of mental powers, and the fact that they've clearly stated that thought is the foundation of reality, it wouldn't actually be that inconsistent to have a tarot deck in Star Trek that actually works.

His die hard supporters will go along with almost anything. I do think there's a line somewhere that he could cross that would cause some of them to leave, but every time some new thing comes up and they go along with it, that line moves a little farther away.

However, he needs more than just the flavor-aid connoisseurs to win an election. A lot of the people who vote for him will be doing so simply because the feel like things aren't great and want a change. They will vote while holding their nose, or just ignoring all the insanity around Trump because after a while it turns to white noise.

Convincing those voters that Trump isn't going to be a better alternative is possible, and it's probably easier to convince them Trump is old and unfit than it is to win them over on policy arguments. Way too many people vote (or not) based on vibes, and this line of attack works on that level.

But it is your job to post this shit?

And I like to learn new things wherever I go. I would think that a lot of people browsing the news and politics sections of a link sharing site would be hoping to learn something. And the comments are often full of additional information which can be quite valuable.

Of course, not everyone is interested in engaging in discussion and the free exchange of ideas. Some people just get off on petty bickering and being assholes to others. And you've managed to distill that into its purest form, removing any actual content from the argument and leaving only the hostility and smug sense of superiority.

"You're wrong!"

"About what?"

"Oh, wouldn't you like to know..."

We're here in the great information orgy, and you're just staring in a mirror jacking off.

One of the things that sets the original apart from a lot of other open world survival craft games is that it was designed to be a single-player experience. Hopefully they can make it work well for both solo and co-op, but that's a tricky balance.

One thing I'd really like to see is for creatures to be able to damage structures, and to balance that by having defenses to protect those structures. Being able to throw together an invincible fortress in seconds made some of the dangerous areas a lot less threatening.

Your comment contributes nothing of value.

Why should I give more of a shit about your argument than you do? You can't be bothered to explain what your assertion is, but I'm supposed to go "educate" myself? Even if it was reasonable for me to drop everything to go do research on a topic to figure out what your point is supposed to be, there's no way for me to ever know that I found the specific thing you're talking about.

Have they tried telling them that the baby was protesting police violence, and was only shaken in self defense?

Slow compared to what? EV sales are increasing, they've been increasing consistently for years, and yet we keep getting headlines that make it sound like the EV market is collapsing.

The coverage is infuriating. It would be like having headlines about Biden sending checks out to millions of households (and media like Fox News calling it an expensive handout) when tax refunds start going out every year.

We shouldn't be treating it as special and noteworthy when the executive branch faithfully executes the laws. Instead, we should be focusing on how fucked up it is that the previous administration ignored the law and its constitutional duty in order to pointlessly screw over people.

And I wish him as much success in that endeavor as he had building the hyper loop, sending people to mars, and predicting the release date of full self driving.

Because they can't find him on a golf course anymore?

My point wasn't how American they are, just that they aren't the kind of thing that would get thrown into a foreign films section. The cultural barriers between these movies and American audiences are almost nonexistent. Basically no one who consumes movies coming out of Hollywood is going to turn their nose up at Harry Potter the way a lot would for something like Seven Samurai, Rashomon, or Taare Zameen Par.

Obviously they are very British in nature, but it was produced by Warner Bros. which would classify it as an American production.

I suspect part of this is that your classic "film buff" is probably significantly overrepresented here, and that that demographic skews male.

That would certainly explain a lot about the two lists. The women's list is much more modern and mainstream popular movies, while the men's list has a lot of classics that I think it's fair to say the average person today is far less likely to have seen. The type of person who watches a lot of old classic and foreign movies is probably likely to be the same kind of person who has a lower than average opinion of most mainstream movies coming out today.

I think it's fair to say that the women's list has a lot of focus on relationships, but I don’t think that difference in the nature of conflicts is quite as clear between the two lists.

Harry Potter has the loss of family as a part of his motivation, but the actual conflict in the series is with the external threat that he and his friends need to overcome, generally starting as a conflict between students and faculty and ending in a forceful struggle between our heroes and actual villains. That plus Wonder Woman and Hunger Games makes a fairly sizable portion of the list where the conflict is a more direct fight.

On the other side of the equation Rashomon is a murder investigation that's about conflicting stories rather than a direct conflict between characters. Seven Samurai is far more focused on the tension between the samurai and the villagers than the fight with the bandits. Rocky isn't about the conflict with his opponent, it's about struggling to follow a dream, finding self worth, and living up to your potential with a romantic relationship in there for good measure. Casino isn't about an external conflict, it's more of a "rise and fall of" story, where the authorities aren't really characters at all, just an inevitable consequence of the choices the main characters made, and the fallout from their relationships with each other crumbling. Lawrence of Arabia is set during a war but is about Lawrence and the relationship he forges with his Arab allies. The Great Escape has conflict that is all about avoiding violence, I don't think there is even a single instance of the heroes solving a problem through violence. And that's just the ones I know off the top of my head.

I'm not saying there's nothing to the observation, just that I don't think it's clear cut at all.

It's been nice seeing the FTC actually doing stuff lately. Guess we'll find out in few weeks if this is going to continue or if they'll be taking the next 4 years off.