Hoard.

And if my experience with TES is any indication, they would spend it all buying 30 sets of lightly used bandit armour with bloodstains on it from wandering adventurers~

@ToxicFrog meh. These are the lizards that didn't get stuck doing that

Huh. So Tumblr having decided that self-destructing sounds like a great idea, Facebook is apparently following their lead:

FYI the lizard I played as is dressed in Daedric Armor and weilding Dragon Bone axes

@Ash downthread someone mentions that Facebook has been talking about starting a (for-pay) dating app and speculates that this is a move to drive traffic there

I'm not sure whether I think it's more likely that or typical silicon valley puritanicalism

Also, "using sexual hints such as mentioning [...] sexual partner preference"

RIP every queer group on FB

@Ash it would be hella stupid, but also, Facebook's moderation is heavily report-driven and largely uncritical; I fully expect to see brigades of shitheads reporting everything they can and citing this rule as the violation in question

And I expect FB to blindly accept those reports just like they do mass reports of Real Names violations and the like

And yeah, their intent may be "don't use FB to buy or sell sex" but that is not fact what they wrote down; they have basically defined "implicit sexual solicitation" as "literally any discussion of sex or sexuality regardless of context"

And to the extent that rules like this are enforced, they are not enforced by the people who wrote them, they are enforced by anyone who hits the "report" button, by a cubicle farm full of people who have been given the text of the rules, and by a machine learning system that learns from both of those

Yep.

Tumblr at least we get to laugh at while the wheels come off as it flags cats, fish, dinosaurs, Kirby, and their own post announcing the new rules as inappropriate concent.

Yeah, sorry, I just needed to vent for the audience for a bit.

The Blogger porn fiasco was holy fuck was it back in 2015? That long ago?

Anyways, that's still fresh in my mind and it's frustrating to see the whole thing happening all over again only somehow even dumber.

Yeah :/

@GodEmperorDune lol

@Ash the best idea I’ve heard so far is to not allow sites to grow so large that well trained human moderators can’t handle it. Unfortunately that conflicts with everything baked into the current tech industry and capitalism in general

@Ash yeah extremely this too

Lena Dunham goddammit

@GodEmperorDune Imagine YouTube with like a thousand users total. That sounds terrible.

Even a hundred thousand

Hmmm

defense in commonwealth v fields will call 2 witnesses tomorrow and rest. the admission of the two phone calls appears to have taken the wind out of the defense's sails, and they are abandoning the mental health angle altogether

they called 6 today including 2 UTR participants, and a surprise forensic data expert who testified that fields did a maps search for his home town minutes before the attack

fields mother was in the courtroom, which means they will not call her

@Ash yeah like I want her to just stop everything because no matter what she does it is bad

@Unionhawk what is the maps search supposed to prove? That he was lost?

@GodEmperorDune I guess just that he intended to go home

Molly was concerned they were going to go with "Google maps said accelerate over a speed bump, bottom out, hit the brakes briefly, then continue accelerating into another car and a crowd of people" but that's not where they went

So wait who did what?

On August 12, 2017, James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car into a group of antiracist activists in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing Heather Heyer, and injuring dozens more.

He is being charged by the commonwealth of Virginia with one count of first degree, intentional murder, five counts of aggravated malicious wounding, three counts of malicious wounding, and one count of fleeing the scene of an accident resulting in a death

Crazy people. Or some retard thinking there is a such thing as a superior race

He is also being charged by the federal government of one count of hate crime acts resulting in the death of Heather Heyer, 28 counts of hate crime acts resulting in bodily injury with intent to kill, and one count of racially motivated violent interference with a federally protected activity

@TheMattbat999 no mental health slurs please

Jerk generally works in the noun context, ridiculous as an adjective

@GodEmperorDune sorry @Ash

No worries, just remember next time

Ok. Well some jerk doing something ridiculous.

@GodEmperorDune my theory is it's just the Lionel Hutz surprise witnesses plan

@Unionhawk no, money down!

(fwiu his lawyers are good, but, like, how can you even approach this defense)

(especially when a recording of your angry client on the phone was just admitted)

@Unionhawk make it about how scary antifa were and it was self defense or accidental, maybe

Right but that's clearly false and goes against multiple witness testimony and surveillance footage

@Unionhawk claim that witness testimony is faulty (which happens to be accurate) and the footage is fake news

It's well established that there was nobody around the car before it accelerated

@Unionhawk he was scared of them from a distance

of what they were doing to his country, etc

That's what they've been trying to go with, hybriding with mental health, but it's all just, Nazi conspiracy theories (mental health probably would have played better on its own until those calls were admitted)

@Unionhawk i mean sure but there's not a whole lot else

I am not a juror, but it seems more likely than not that james fields will be found guilty on all counts

meanwhile

The defense made no friends early on with aggressive cross examination of victims, and appear to be floundering now

bezos bot is angry

@TheMattbat999 If that was the case, they'd be okay with cats as pets.

those sound like 3 absolute bullshit orgs lol

Wait the Federalist Society's president is a reverse "Erick Erickson" situation?

"yeah I donate to the alexandria VA based 501(c)(4) called 'money in politics'"

wait that's a C3?

how are they allowed to contribute to the federalist society

the nonprofit industrial complex churns on

I'm not looking them up but my headcanon of an Alexandria c3 called Donor's Trust is that it launders rich people's money toward right wing causes through a tax deductible channel

VICE union is continuing negotiations today. I think the contract expires today. Negotiations went like 14 hours yesterday until management bailed.

> He [Hitler] took 7 million Germans out of poverty in less than a decade.

uhhh

uhhh

@Yuuki Big whoop. Mao did it for 10X as many people in 4 years

It's on a drama thread about /r/Spain debating Hitler.

This line is pretty great though.

> Before Hitler, Germany was the most powerful country in Europe. After Hitler, Germany was the fifth most powerful country in Berlin.

@Yuuki USA, UK, France, USSR... Math checks out

(WP editorial: "The president has been shockingly presidential for the last six minutes")

> Still, since then, for the last six minutes, the president has been remarkably restrained. His behavior over these stellar 360 seconds is leading some to think he is turning over a new leaf in his presidency, one not marked by the vitriol and chaos of the preceding every minute of every day for the past two years. He refrained from personal insults, did not refer to the press as the enemy of the people and tweeted nothing at all. This commendable restraint was a striking departure.

> No, I’m sorry. Um. Ahem.

> For the last eight seconds, President Trump has been notably subdued. Could this, observers wonder, be the start of a new era?

> Anyone who filed a support ticket for Fallout 76 Power Armor Edition purchases at Bethesda's site was receiving a lot of replies to their threads. As in, every ticket going through the system.

Cool, animals: How geckos run on water

lmao

gtfo

@Unionhawk Like this is so unbelievably dumb even Cillizza gets it

@Unionhawk way to champion undoing democracy nyt

lol imagine messing up so badly that other NC Republicans are like "Woah now"

do we have confirmation on the s there

or just one so far

I mean

Fair

> Ethereum falls below $100—down 93 percent from its January high

cc @Unionhawk

@TimStone >"We are not ready to call for a new election yet," Woodhouse added. "I think we have to let the board of elections come show their hand if they can show that this conceivably could have flipped the race in that neighborhood, we will absolutely support a new election."

so you vomited just learning about it but thats not enough for a new election?

or maybe this was a happiness vomit?

lol

after he cleaned himself up, everybody in his house clapped because of how brave he was

Can't wait for our big boy to get back online

lmao

defense in commonwealth v fields can't find their last witness

sheriff is looking for them now (likely the third UTR participant that fields gave a ride to prior to the attack)

oh wait they found him

that thing you do when you want to appear credible to the jury so you arrest your last witness to make sure he will be there instead of just saying "screw it"

Good news from psychology's replication crisis

(apparently it is actually Josh Kusher's company but details)

twenty four thousand dollars

Hey it's a good deal if you have a large family where everyone has a life-threatening illness!

That classic scenario

How is the premium so high though? It's obviously intended to be money-making bullshit but isn't that still more than other plans? 🤔

@Ash Me too! I'm a big science fan and unlocking our brains is a great pursuit. I'm glad they're purging the silliness.

It's helpful to me to know stuff like how companies manipulate me via their pricing systems so I can make better decisions.

> An employee of the golf course drives her and a group of others to work every day, she says, because it is known that they cannot legally obtain driver’s licenses

Not that it's at all surprising at this point, but

I'm sorry the Presidential what now

If you thought that Lena Dunham would have the worst if celebrity bad takes this week you would be wrong

Love to take credit for a thing that has been happening for hundreds of years

@Unionhawk it's amazing how transparent the NYT is about cheerleading for the republicans.

As for popularizing it, 70s hippies are on the line

@TimStone It's not like they made the train to carry his body.

It already existed for quite some time and Bush dedicated/commemorated it or something when it was completed.

(it's also not single purpose, it appears to be in service for union-pacific)

lmao

Ah weird how peculiar

@TimStone Running translation... "We've figured out how to monopolize selling contraband to inmates."

@TimStone Had a friend who used to be a corrections officer, I can confirm that jail staff deal hella contraband.

But also "survey of the news" is a bit off-putting.

I mean, it's not like jails will regularly report how much contraband they confiscated and from where to the Washington Post regularly.

> The United States Chamber of Commerce (USCC) is a business-oriented American lobbying group. It is not an agency of the United States government.

yeah

I believe that is true of all chambers of commerce

I like that that second sentence is there on the Wikipedia article.

but I added the qualifier "I believe" there just in case there happens to be one or more cities with an in-government chamber of commerce

@Yuuki I mean but they should be able to cite those figures if they're using them as cover for the change, which they can't because it would undermine the argument

so that nobody can be pedantic at me

preemptive strike

@Unionhawk Too late, I'm going to be pedantic anyway

please do not respond to my posts

oh wait, I misread the wikipedia article

it's complicated for Belgium

@Unionhawk >:)

Ah yes, the guy who recommended the Iran-Contra pardons and said there was more to the Uranium One story than Trump's Russia ties

The natural candidate 🤔

Finally, the only aspect of that crap that actually mattered

@GodEmperorDune Ah no he got sick because he knew it'd eventually come back to him it makes sense now

@TimStone the VEINS

@TimStone Remind me again why it's the states that run federal elections? And don't say "Because it's in the constitution" because that's a cop-out.

@MBraedley Literally because people are lazy.

S T A T E S R I G H T S

there is no federally protected right to vote

Of all the things that need to be fixed with the US electoral system, this seems to be both the easiest thing to fix, and also the thing that would bring about the biggest net benefit.

benefit to whom, though

Even if it would require a constitutional amendment.

@Unionhawk society in general

Basically anyone who isn't a rich white Republican dude.

It would not be wise for the rich white Republican dudes to allow that, then

lol

@Unionhawk Everyone should have the opportunity to give insurance companies all their money.

Excellent, we're edging closer to my goal of political Thunderdome

Subway's not broken if you don't take it taps head

@TimStone rick wilson and corey lewendowski enter, neither leaves

In this case he was beefing with Florida Republicans so I'll still take it

noted subject of Waymo v Uber

@MBraedley I don't believe that tighter federal voting laws would require a constitutional amendment. After all, the voting rights act of 1965 was passed via normal means, and set all sorts of restrictions on behaviors of states and localities

it would in this court makeup

Not necessarily. The court enforces the laws passed by congress.

The recent striking down of a portion of the civil rights act wasn't a "you can't do this"

@BradC To do it the right way, it would. IIRC, it's quite explicit that the responsibility or running elections falls to the states.

it was a "the details of this section are out of date, pass another law updating them"

@Unionhawk lol

That's too much for one day I'm gonna need someone to reschedule

Let's start with just keeping Papadopoulos in prison for a while longer

@MBraedley Like I said, the voting rights act makes all sorts of demands on exactly how states can manage elections, it didn't require an amendment.

lol, UTR participant Joshua Matthews testified today, and was then immediately detained again for contempt of court for forcing the court to track him down

Congress could pass a law with updates to it (not that the Senate would do so, or Trump would sign it)

@Unionhawk Excellent

jury instructions started 48 minutes ago is my last update I see, closing arguments should be soon, and then after that this case is in the hands of the jury

lol

But updates to the voting rights act wouldn't be (necessarily) unconstitutional. For example, the voting rights act explicitly disallows certain practices (like poll taxes and literacy tests). At the time, these were defended as (facially) neutral, while in practice they were clearly used to discriminate.

The only thing that matters is how justice G, coach K, and the 3 others vote.

We need to update that section to include other (modern) "neutral" practices that clearly disinfranchise certain groups of voters (over-restrictive ID requirements, poll closing, insufficient poll locations, etc)

They'll thread any needle they have to

@Unionhawk So you work with constitutional scholars to button the language up tight

@BradC My point is this doesn't actually solve the root problem, because states can still do whatever they want and face few consequences. Taking federal elections out of the control of the states is the only sure fire way to fix the issues with states running the election.

@MBraedley I'm not convinced that is true. Southern states certainly weren't happy with provisions of the 65 voting rights act, and the federal government certainly enforced it where they had to.

And does that mean the federal government running state and local elections as well? Or do you have two parallel systems?

Step 1 (easy): update the language of the section struck down by the supreme court so that ALL states have to get voting changes pre-approved by the DOJ

@BradC I'm fine with parallel systems. That's largely how it's done elsewhere. (There's some peculiarities WRT municipal elections in most parts of Canada, where they're largely run by the provinces, but that's a different matter.)

The flip side of this coin though is that, if you were in a state with progressive voting currently, you'd benefit from e.g. the election equivalent of Trump's EPA

The real step 1 is to become an anarcho communist of some variety

tbh

@MBraedley I have no idea how parallel voting management would work, and it seems weird and redundant. Do two different managers both have to negotiate polling locations and workers? Are there separate ballots? Might you have to drive to 2 different locations on the same day?

Just put in meaningful rules (outlaw certain kinds of voting machines, require paper ballots or a paper trail, require random recount checks for validation)

Heck, you could mandate that all 50 states allow voting by mail

You could, and hear me out, not run

Let's give that a go first

Or, and let's really consider all of our options here

You could do both

not run, and shut down politics.bloomberg

I mean I don't know offhand that firing political reporters at Bloomberg would be of benefit

@BradC That's just a difference between theory and practice, and I'll try to explain it by how Canada runs national elections. In theory, there's only one person that runs the entire election, and that's the Chief Returning Officer for the federal government. In practice, the Chief Returning Officers of the provinces run the election in their given province, but report directly to the Chief Returning Officer, and run the election exclusively by federal rules.

Not entirely positive, but I have a hard time thinking that the Democratic base would put up with a Republicrat like Bloombert

@TimStone fine then as a compromise, he can close opinion.bloomberg instead

100% accepted

Canada also has the benefit that federal and provincial (and municipal for that matter) elections can't occur on the same day, although election periods can overlap.

No more oped sections until we figure out what's going on

You can wait for the 2018 kitchen gift guide to go out though, mike

that'd be fine honestly

it's the 15th anniversary

after all

@MBraedley Yeah, I don't think that would fly in the US. The Federal government applying rules that the states have to follow is more our style.

lol oh my god last year's is ten thousand words

how much can bloomberg possibly have paid mcardle to justify ten thousand words

I figured it was an inverse situation where you have to pay her to not write anything

@BradC But without more direct control, there's no set of rules that the feds can come with that won't be challenged by at least one state for one reason or another.

@MBraedley You are right that there is almost literally nothing the federal government can do without one or more states complaining and/or filing lawsuits. That doesn't mean they always succeed, and it doesn't mean that the Federal government doesn't have ways to enforce its rules

Like "we won't accept your votes for president/senate/house (which are federal offices) unless you follow our rules"

Or if you prefer the carrot to the stick, it could be something more like "here is a new federal election fund available to states that follow these rules..."

Frankly I'll bet there is already something like that in place, and they'd just be changing the rules for how to qualify for it

Even now the US House (for example) can refuse to swear in a member

(this appears likely this year, if Harris (is that his name?) from the 9th district tries to go to DC)

(Referencing the NC 9th district, if you've been out of the loop: Hold a new election in NC’s tainted 9th District)

lmao I didn't know this detail of 501:

> Section 501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Code provides for the exemption of business leagues, chambers of commerce, real estate boards, boards of trade and professional football leagues

(iirc, the NFL stopped being a nonprofit in 2016)