34094 pts ยท June 17, 2018
The world economy is shifting toward the Chinese Yuan instead of USD. The value isn't disappearing, it's just moving laterally to a different superpower, and the ultra-wealthy have always acted on a global, multi-national scale to begin with. This is nothing new to them. And once things crash in the US, all the resources and people in dire need of relief will still be there, more desperate than ever, and thus ripe for the pickings as dirt cheap purchases to be exploited.
It means there's been some evidence uncovered that directly ties Melania to Epstein in some really damning way, and she's getting out in front of the story. Notice that she made specific denials about her own involvement, said nothing about Trump's involvement, and accused the media of lying in their claims. This is a full-bore CYOA move.
Addendum: "in that exact moment". Trump does a ton of shit that actively harms him immediately because he doesn't think further ahead than the current moment he's in. He has no capacity for planning ahead.
She's been short an arm since her introduction, but to be fair she's usually wearing long sleeves and is in the background of most panels. It's easy to overlook.
Plus, while the intensity of it varies from writer to writer, Superman is a genius scientist and the Fortress of Solitude is staffed with an entire team of super-genius robots doing cosmic levels of scientific research 24/7. Like, he literally has a galactic nature reserve of rescued endangered species from dying worlds, the entire Kandor civilization kept safe, and countless other works. The dude is not just a flying brick that hits people.
There's no way Trump wrote it. Even if his dementia dropped his inhibitions enough to freely swear in text the way he does in person, he would just write or autocorrect to "fucking". "Fuckin'" is too intentional for his style of ranting, nor does he tend to use dashes or em dashes. I skimmed his posts and those that do use dashes also don't appear to be in his wall'o'text style.
Yep, you nailed it with the last part there. Any unpopular shit he tries to pull is going to face major backlash, and he doesn't have Trump's gall to defy it. But if they sneak in illegal orders and move money around in the meantime, he can blame it on Trump to play innocent if it gets called out. Then just quietly pass out pardons as he pleases to cover his ass once attention has died down.
I've got that album too.
He would, as a smokescreen. Vance and Miller would churn out as many criminal EOs, pardons, and government contracts as they could in the meantime under Trump's name, then muddy the waters when they get called into question later. If Vance just openly does it all himself as the new president, he'd get way more immediate resistance and just doesn't have the force of personality that Trump does to shamelessly resist the pushback.
Nah, they're going to Weekend at Bernie's it for as long as possible with fake tweets and AI videos. Trump will have been dead for a week before the White House has no choice but to fess up to it, while Miller and Vance will have been churning out as many auto-penned EOs and pardons as they could in the meantime.
Even if that is the case, do we really expect either Trump or Hegseth to know/care about that or factor it into their behavior?
From what I've been seeing reported, it wasn't even that nefarious. Hegseth is apparently super paranoid about getting shitcanned by Trump and is taking out people who'd stand to be the most likely candidates to replace him. What makes it even worse is that Trump would just put any random jackass he happened to think of into the role anyway, so it's not like Hegseth is even doing anything that would help himself.
I used to do a similar thing when working under a manager who loved to plagiarize my work. It was especially effective in Word documents since there's an option to insert invisible text that doesn't appear in the character/word count, and can be revealed with a keystroke.
That's a big part that people just don't seem to get. Trump, and other wealthy people like him, literally have not ever experienced genuine hardship and thus have no sense of empathy. Those are alien, abstract concepts to them that they've never lived. The worst, most down-on-their-luck moment for them was still unimaginable luxury and security for everyone else.
I recently worked for a studio on highly-specific contextual translation and mechanical text, where a lot of our clients kept trying to shortcut the process with AI in hopes of reducing the cost. Every single AI submission was beyond useless and we had to spend a ton of time fixing the AI shit, then writing reports explaining to the clients why their AI shit wasted everyone's time, money, and energy. Yet they'd keep throwing money at AI rather than just come to us directly from the start.
They want to end birthright citizenship as well, so yeah. They'll use people up, then deny them any pay or benefits for their service on account of being "illegal" and then deport them.
Speaking from experience with an abusive parent (not to this extent, but still), how people cope with and process trauma is a widely varied spectrum. Some people jettison out, other people cling that much closer. It's a very fucked up and messy thing to be in, and responses to abuse are rarely logical.
He flat-out bragged about being more attracted to her than to his wife when she was a kid, has flat-out bragged that when he's attracted to someone he just goes for it, grabbing by the pussy, just kissing, like a magnet, move on her like a bitch, etc. He's a convicted rapist. He had unrestricted, unobserved access to, and control of, Ivanka for her whole childhood. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind he abused her every chance he had.
Also really well rendered.
More like a mobile hotel, I suppose? I was under the impression that modern cruise ships are basically floating resorts with stuff well beyond a nice place to stay and eat.
Doubly so since Trump loves reciting "The Snake" poem by Oscar Brown Jr. There's plenty of videos of him doing it at his rallies if you can stand to listen to him.Trump likes to use it as an anti-immigrant attack, while Brown Jr.'s daughter has flat-out said that Trump is the living embodiment of that snake, and the family has sent cease-and-desists trying to get him to stop reciting it because he's antithetical to all their father stood for as part of the civil rights movement.
Likely not war prep, given how fast they asked for it. If the military was actually using its budget properly they wouldn't immediately need a 200b after a few days. Which means either the set budget or the 200b are being misappropriated with defense as an excuse. Likely both, but in different ways, especially given that the idiots Trump put in charge are actively stuffing bills into their pockets on the daily.
Okay, but why is the cabbage guy Piccolo? I thought it might be Saibaman or even Cell because of the head shape, but they don't have the arm designs
Yep, there's always the "all Christians are like this!" folk who ignore that these idiots are 100% not Christian. I always try to get the idea through as "If someone claims to be vegetarian, yet exclusively eats meat, you wouldn't say 'All vegetarians do this', you'd rightly call that person a liar". People are way too eager to misconstrue all religion or all religious people with the heinous shit evil idiots do using religion as a mask, which is literally EXACTLY what those evil idiots want.
Yep, there was just so much that it could've been. Elements that were in there, threads that had been laid, and all of it was just tossed aside because Disney chickened out at the barest hint of fanboy criticisms. Where did all that ballsy "we don't need a plan, we can just wing it!" bravado go, huh?
Also because the story is constantly changing, both among Trump and the rest of the GOP, as they make every excuse under the sun. Anyone who makes a statement and sticks by it instantly has way more credibility. Trump just spouts a new lie every time he opens his mouth, regardless of whether they make any sense whatsoever or even blatantly contradict the last lie he presented, and is in the midst of taking actions that also contradict what he's saying.
I will forever rage about the complete waste of potential in Finn, Phasma, and the entire Stormtrooper concept those movies fumbled. There was SO MUCH narrative meat there and they just tossed it aside in lieu of garbage filler nonsense and character assassination.
The world economy is shifting toward the Chinese Yuan instead of USD. The value isn't disappearing, it's just moving laterally to a different superpower, and the ultra-wealthy have always acted on a global, multi-national scale to begin with. This is nothing new to them. And once things crash in the US, all the resources and people in dire need of relief will still be there, more desperate than ever, and thus ripe for the pickings as dirt cheap purchases to be exploited.
It means there's been some evidence uncovered that directly ties Melania to Epstein in some really damning way, and she's getting out in front of the story. Notice that she made specific denials about her own involvement, said nothing about Trump's involvement, and accused the media of lying in their claims. This is a full-bore CYOA move.
Addendum: "in that exact moment". Trump does a ton of shit that actively harms him immediately because he doesn't think further ahead than the current moment he's in. He has no capacity for planning ahead.
She's been short an arm since her introduction, but to be fair she's usually wearing long sleeves and is in the background of most panels. It's easy to overlook.
Plus, while the intensity of it varies from writer to writer, Superman is a genius scientist and the Fortress of Solitude is staffed with an entire team of super-genius robots doing cosmic levels of scientific research 24/7. Like, he literally has a galactic nature reserve of rescued endangered species from dying worlds, the entire Kandor civilization kept safe, and countless other works. The dude is not just a flying brick that hits people.
There's no way Trump wrote it. Even if his dementia dropped his inhibitions enough to freely swear in text the way he does in person, he would just write or autocorrect to "fucking". "Fuckin'" is too intentional for his style of ranting, nor does he tend to use dashes or em dashes. I skimmed his posts and those that do use dashes also don't appear to be in his wall'o'text style.
Yep, you nailed it with the last part there. Any unpopular shit he tries to pull is going to face major backlash, and he doesn't have Trump's gall to defy it. But if they sneak in illegal orders and move money around in the meantime, he can blame it on Trump to play innocent if it gets called out. Then just quietly pass out pardons as he pleases to cover his ass once attention has died down.
I've got that album too.
He would, as a smokescreen. Vance and Miller would churn out as many criminal EOs, pardons, and government contracts as they could in the meantime under Trump's name, then muddy the waters when they get called into question later. If Vance just openly does it all himself as the new president, he'd get way more immediate resistance and just doesn't have the force of personality that Trump does to shamelessly resist the pushback.
Nah, they're going to Weekend at Bernie's it for as long as possible with fake tweets and AI videos. Trump will have been dead for a week before the White House has no choice but to fess up to it, while Miller and Vance will have been churning out as many auto-penned EOs and pardons as they could in the meantime.
Even if that is the case, do we really expect either Trump or Hegseth to know/care about that or factor it into their behavior?
From what I've been seeing reported, it wasn't even that nefarious. Hegseth is apparently super paranoid about getting shitcanned by Trump and is taking out people who'd stand to be the most likely candidates to replace him. What makes it even worse is that Trump would just put any random jackass he happened to think of into the role anyway, so it's not like Hegseth is even doing anything that would help himself.
I used to do a similar thing when working under a manager who loved to plagiarize my work. It was especially effective in Word documents since there's an option to insert invisible text that doesn't appear in the character/word count, and can be revealed with a keystroke.
That's a big part that people just don't seem to get. Trump, and other wealthy people like him, literally have not ever experienced genuine hardship and thus have no sense of empathy. Those are alien, abstract concepts to them that they've never lived. The worst, most down-on-their-luck moment for them was still unimaginable luxury and security for everyone else.
I recently worked for a studio on highly-specific contextual translation and mechanical text, where a lot of our clients kept trying to shortcut the process with AI in hopes of reducing the cost. Every single AI submission was beyond useless and we had to spend a ton of time fixing the AI shit, then writing reports explaining to the clients why their AI shit wasted everyone's time, money, and energy. Yet they'd keep throwing money at AI rather than just come to us directly from the start.
They want to end birthright citizenship as well, so yeah. They'll use people up, then deny them any pay or benefits for their service on account of being "illegal" and then deport them.
Speaking from experience with an abusive parent (not to this extent, but still), how people cope with and process trauma is a widely varied spectrum. Some people jettison out, other people cling that much closer. It's a very fucked up and messy thing to be in, and responses to abuse are rarely logical.
He flat-out bragged about being more attracted to her than to his wife when she was a kid, has flat-out bragged that when he's attracted to someone he just goes for it, grabbing by the pussy, just kissing, like a magnet, move on her like a bitch, etc. He's a convicted rapist. He had unrestricted, unobserved access to, and control of, Ivanka for her whole childhood. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind he abused her every chance he had.
Also really well rendered.
More like a mobile hotel, I suppose? I was under the impression that modern cruise ships are basically floating resorts with stuff well beyond a nice place to stay and eat.
Doubly so since Trump loves reciting "The Snake" poem by Oscar Brown Jr. There's plenty of videos of him doing it at his rallies if you can stand to listen to him.
Trump likes to use it as an anti-immigrant attack, while Brown Jr.'s daughter has flat-out said that Trump is the living embodiment of that snake, and the family has sent cease-and-desists trying to get him to stop reciting it because he's antithetical to all their father stood for as part of the civil rights movement.
Likely not war prep, given how fast they asked for it. If the military was actually using its budget properly they wouldn't immediately need a 200b after a few days. Which means either the set budget or the 200b are being misappropriated with defense as an excuse. Likely both, but in different ways, especially given that the idiots Trump put in charge are actively stuffing bills into their pockets on the daily.
Okay, but why is the cabbage guy Piccolo? I thought it might be Saibaman or even Cell because of the head shape, but they don't have the arm designs
Yep, there's always the "all Christians are like this!" folk who ignore that these idiots are 100% not Christian. I always try to get the idea through as "If someone claims to be vegetarian, yet exclusively eats meat, you wouldn't say 'All vegetarians do this', you'd rightly call that person a liar". People are way too eager to misconstrue all religion or all religious people with the heinous shit evil idiots do using religion as a mask, which is literally EXACTLY what those evil idiots want.
Yep, there was just so much that it could've been. Elements that were in there, threads that had been laid, and all of it was just tossed aside because Disney chickened out at the barest hint of fanboy criticisms. Where did all that ballsy "we don't need a plan, we can just wing it!" bravado go, huh?
Also because the story is constantly changing, both among Trump and the rest of the GOP, as they make every excuse under the sun. Anyone who makes a statement and sticks by it instantly has way more credibility. Trump just spouts a new lie every time he opens his mouth, regardless of whether they make any sense whatsoever or even blatantly contradict the last lie he presented, and is in the midst of taking actions that also contradict what he's saying.
I will forever rage about the complete waste of potential in Finn, Phasma, and the entire Stormtrooper concept those movies fumbled. There was SO MUCH narrative meat there and they just tossed it aside in lieu of garbage filler nonsense and character assassination.