This is really one of the most promising treatments I’ve read about, hope this actually pans out and becomes available soon.

Was gonna say, checks out because of the spelling

The game, exposition 33 is actually a treat, relatively small French studio. Guessing Xbox is trying to cash in on the fact that it just swept the video game awards to get some easy engagement farming, so still worthy of derision.

Haha we live in a time of wondrous contrasts don’t we…

I saw this recently as a boarding method and it was a total shitshow. The scanners they were using must’ve been touchy, because the staff were super aggro about how it had to be approached down a lane one at a time, it was like a 6’ lane and people kept getting yelled at for encroaching into it. The worst part was they expected a woman’s 2 year old child to do this by themselves, like literally what the fuck guys, you think 2 year olds are gonna be happy being separated from mom and told to walk alone, etc. I was so pissed generally about the stupid thing and it didn’t make the boarding process faster or easier, just more tense. We still all got stuck in the boarding tunnel for 10 minutes. It was also the third obvious facial recognition scan we were expected to just accept during the security/immigration/boarding process.

o7 thank you for your service!

I’ll take a swing at a couple, rake with a grain of salt, because it’s a huge and complex topic and I’m by no means an expert.

Yes, there are party directed funds and they can be used discipline or shape acceptable candidates. Example would be corporate dems funneling money to try and block more progressive primary challengers, or funding really wild fringe republican primary runners hoping to trap the race with an unwinnable candidate (this has backfired multiple times, where the unelectable person got elected, so not a great strategy). A lot of donation money, both at the party level and per candidate gets funneled to a consultant caste that exists specifically to accept this money and tell them what they already want to hear.

Parties can also leverage access to committee positions and other items to try and bring candidates back Into the fold, but this probably isn’t the most major factor.

Since Citizens United Supreme Court descison, the normal campaign funding is less of the big picture though—it’s now possible to funnel nearly unlimited funding to things called Political Action Funds (PACS) that can buy ads, pay for consultants, pretty much anything a candidate could do. There are some loose rules, for example candidates and PACS are not supposed to “coordinate” but you can imagine how many ways that can be sidestepped.

Candidates dont have to give donations back—whatever they don’t spend, gets rolled into their future campaign funds, is often referred to as the “war chest”. One of the reasons they went with Harris as the dem candidate, even though it seemed like a fairly obviously bad idea, was because she had access to the campaign war chest, as she was on the ticket. It was a huge amount of money, money that likely could not have used if she had not run, and she was technically the only person who could use it. (Perhaps you could have her run, nominate her VP who is who you really want, then have her drop out, but this would probably be pretty borderline). I’m not sure what happens when you have a war chest but retire from politics—perhaps this is how they find presidential libraries, perhaps other types of politicians donate to charity or back into public financing systems, not sure. Campaigns do return money, but usually it’s because someone or something publically acceptable has donated. So like if a rich guy donated a to a campaign or PAC, and then it comes out that he’s a child molester, the candidate might return the money. Or not, as is frequently the case in current times, if you think about certain famous New Yorkers who definitely, absolutely suicide in prison.

Candidates do dip into campaign money, it’s illegal, but it happens all the time and sometimes they get caught. George Santos was prosecuted and sent to jail for exactly that, but was recently pardoned by Trump, because, corruption is good I guess.

Senate positions are longer and tend to be more career oriented (now at least, but wasn’t always this way) but in HOR a lot of them are there to serve a term or two, and then parlay that “experience/access” into high paying lobbying or consulting jobs, or corporate positions where they trade access to contacts for board positions and cushy stipends. This pipeline is super prevalent now and is one of the biggest things messing up basic congressional politics. The really unacceptable characters angle for media positions with fringe outlets, or start podcasts and supplement businesses.

Some reps are very focused on their local constituents and their needs, while many others are in it for fame, grift, exposure. Others want to springboard higher into more power. Campaigns have become very expensive to run, thanks to consultants, groupthink/echo chamber of political class and advertising so they all complain about having to constantly raise money. This means they’re more and more responsive to big donors. You see people like Ritchie Torres stumping for AIPAC, despite the fact that the Israel issue doesn’t necessarily have much to do with the concerns of many of his queens, NY constituents. Running afoul of some of these powerful donors, whether lobby groups or very wealthy people or corporations is not just you losing money, it’s also them funding your opponent, paying into PACS against you and funding things like attack ads, oppo, hit pieces etc. not defending the practice, just how the system has been warped to suit the needs of the powerful. If you are genuine, have no skeletons and have a very consistent ideology, you can avoid this kind of pressure, but these people are super rare. If you are personally wealthy, like very wealthy, you can also sort of avoid this pressure, which is part of why you see people constantly floating people like Mike Bloomberg and JB Pritzker as dem candidates all the time, because regardless of their character, they’re both so rich they could self-fund, and therefore would be less vulnerable to large donor pressure. You know the system is well designed when the only way avoid being compromised and corrupt is to be a robber-baron or a ideologically repetitive saint. And you ca guess how common they are compared to power-hungry / ambitious sociopaths.

Like I said, take this with a grain of salt, a lot of this is my opinion. But that said, passing reforms like only allowing a public funding option for all candidates, adding better checks against revolving door/conflict of interest stuff like becoming a consultant after, barring having stocks while in public office, ranked choice voting, total term limits and universal recall laws that can be brought to bear at any time could help return some of the responsiveness to a lot of our representation. Perhaps more controversially, establishing laws that allowed for more parties to be viable for voting (the two dominant parties have it so it’s very hard to establish new parties on a nationwide scale) might help make everyone more responsive as well, but parliamentary multi-party systems are also not without their problems there. It is possible to buck a party and run independent, but typically you have to already be well known and leaving an established party, and typically you’d have already have served for a while. So Bernie being a democrat, then switching to independent, etc. other people can and have run as independents (I think Ross Perot did this, or at least was third party) but I suspect it’s very hard for that to work if you aren’t already established (Perot made it pretty far for a third party at the time, but never won, and these types of positions are always used to say that you stole votes from the losing party that you were closest to positions)

Problem is, even if there are good ideas of how to reform this system, it would require a political body that had a will to do that and wasn’t already corrupt and compromised, so kinda a catch-22. They’re not all bad or corrupt and a lot probably start out with some ideals, but the system grinds them down pretty quick. The whole framework probably has to seriously bust before meaningful reform can happen given the amount of corporate/capital capture of government that is at play right now.

“I’ma pay you back in sex 
I’m pretty good at sex 
Significantly better than I am at getting checks”

https://youtu.be/ewv-3t7DKTs

What is a battle rhythm, do you think they have mandatory trainings on “warfighting 9-5: tips for enhancing your battle rhythms in the modern office battle-space”?

Haha I don’t know man, but I’m there for it. If you knew you would’ve cloned and humiliated and forced to do things you hate it might actually be some mild deterrent lol

It’s not a terrible concept—historic baddie, name 30% of the next gen the name “to remember” treat being named that as an honor, or something. Dunno the kids named it would probably hate it. But Jeff Epstein has gotta be a pretty common name so feel bad for the poor schmos who got stuck with endless jokes and weird looks for the next 20 years.

“No way, why should I change? He’s the one who sucks!”

Yeah that’s probably accurate—like the general center to right position is that Venezuela should be toppled, so they just require the skimpiest of fig leaves to hide under to lend their support.

I saw reporting on a poll yesterday where it claimed 48 % of US disapproved of a military campaign, and it was being presented as an example of how this was unpopular. To me, the fact tha 52ish % of the pop either supports it or doesn’t have a strong opinion is absurd. I remember the bush years and the constant let’s get Chavez bullshit, but like what has Venezuela actually ever done to the US other than attempt to remain sovereign and do what they want in their country… and more than half the US wants to blow up their country for that? If I thought they all subconsciously understood the oil angle and were supportive because it would be a good exploitive opportunity, I could at least see logic, but I don’t think the majority of them are cold hard realists.

Yeah this was strange—the boat strikes have been explained as hitting drug boats, and ground target strikes have been discussed as “going after drug locations” so either that’s a tanker full of fent, or they’ll say something mundane like the oil revenue is used by Maduro to fun his sun cartel. Either way, it’s just piracy out in the open. It’s amusing that they’re using DOJ comms to brag about it, like which is it, a law enforcement operation (nope you specifically made it mil so you could better get away with murder) or a military conflict, in which case what the fuck does bondi have to do with it.

Graduating from murder to grand theft. This whole thing is so surreal—completely fabricated without even a basic effort at misdirection, and this time, everything’s broken enough that everyone’s just like “when do the air strikes start”

Shit yeah I neglected to consider the rows in front and back, you’re definitely gonna have to listen to them as well, sigh.

But people are picking the Trump and RFK row and I think they’re forgetting how bad Trump is supposed to smell. RFK would probably keep offering you tinctures and months old jerky he made from dead birds he found around Washington so I don’t buy that that’s a good option.

I mean 4 is so obviously better than alternatives, the quiz feels like a non choice. I get papa John AND Alex jones???

My guess for how: they used an AI content generation or research system, which picked up the Beaverton “quote” during search and had no ability to discern satire from reality.

deleted by creator

Actually just looked at the article/larger chart. It does have income section and it plays out like you would imagine, but the gap between lib-conservative stays more or less constant. I don’t see an obvious display of proportion of each, but he does say the average American rates about 58-60 score so I suppose you could sort of backwards engineer from there.