So here’s a dumb Puzzle Fighter story. When I was 18, many years ago now, my girlfriend at the time, my best friend and his girlfriend at the time went camping near a little lakeside resort town.

It was the last day of our trip, we’d been extremely frugal and so we all still had some spending money left. The girls wanted to go clothes shopping, my buddy and I weren’t as interested in that but we’re trying to be cool so we tagged along. Except, on a covered section of boardwalk we passed a 2-player Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo machine. The girls just left us behind, laughing that the boardwalk was a straight line and we could catch up.

3 hours later, we were both broke and my buddy had to borrow gas money from his girlfriend to get us home. The girls had ducked into a little café and also lost track of time. That was a 50 cent machine and we must have put over 50 bucks a piece into it. We just stood there, getting better and better in perfect lockstep, trading wins and getting more competitive for an entire afternoon, oblivious to the whole world.

That was a great trip. God, nostalgia like that makes me feel old.

I keep seeing headlines and links to substacks regarding this particular theory and while there’s some smoke - I remain unconvinced.

The timing of Leo’s purchase of that company is suspect. Pushing an uncertified update is suspect. The oddities in the numbers are suspect.

But no one has connected the dots in a satisfying way and that no one had pointed to what steps could be taken to verify suspicions. It feels half-baked. I would love to try and believe that more Americans voted for Kamala, but only for a “faith in humanity” kind of way. Proving widespread fraud feels a long way off.

The truth doesn’t really matter. Israel will get their war, and the US will lumber into it behind them.

What’s crazy to me is apparently the US has become so polarized, so used to division that pointing out Israel is acting like bloodthirsty psychos is somehow supporting Iran, or Hamas before that. It’s like their whole culture has evaporated any nuance at all. Only diametrically opposed good and evil battling forever. Professional wrestling stories with Heels and Faces divided by clear black lines.

I believe the old adage is that a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich. It’ll be interesting to see what steps are taken to either turn the inevitable trial into either a political stage show, or a black box tribunal. If they think they can spin it hard enough that their propaganda machine can make this woman look like she did something wrong, we’ll get that option. And I think that’s most likely, since it’s black woman and attacking her will be easy to get the base onboard for. But if they claim its all “national security” issues and refuse to have any press attention, we’ll know they have less than nothing.

Either way, anyone paying attention saw the original footage last month knows these people did nothing wrong.

I’m going to get darker than is probably warranted for a moment, and just ask, how are none of these authoritarian shitbags not dead already? I know stochastic terrorism is primarily a right-winger trait, but no type of human ugliness is universal to just one side of the aisle. You’d think more people would be taking a crack at Stephen Miller, Russ Vought, Pam Bondi and the other ghouls.

If you’ll forgive the cliche “Adulthood is realizing that Cheese is expensive and SO many people are on cocaine”.

I went in for chest pains at the end of last year, I was shocked at how fast I was seen. Once they established I wasn’t dying, I had a pretty long wait but overall service was really good and I paid nothing.

Well, not nothing, I’ve paid taxes my whole life. But I doubt I’ve paid the 6 figures amount that would’ve cost me in the US even if you add all my lifetime taxes together and during that time I still drove on roads and stuff.

Socialized medicine isn’t just a better option, it’s the only moral choice.

The short answer is - yes, there are a bunch of ways to be legally in the United States without a green card. These tend to be temporary, or contingent on other things, so harder to track and produce immediate evidence of.

The longer answer is, it doesn’t matter. Deportation is a tool in the government’s tool kit for dealing with those who entered the country illegally - but Deportation is a process, with steps, due process and it requires the ability for the potential deportee to argue their case to an immigration judge. Being grabbed by masked thugs off the street, taking a brief layover in Louisiana while they fuel the plane and then being deported to a torture facility in El Salvador without so much as ever speaking to your lawyer is a contravention of your rights. Your human rights, your 5th Amendment rights, take your pick.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, for example, was never formally granted asylum. He missed the filing deadline of one year. However, in his original deportation trial he showed significant evidence and credible testimony that he had fled El Salvador to escape being forced to join the gang that was shaking down his family for protection money. The only reason he wasn’t deported after that original hearing was that a Judge granted him hold order - stating he specifically could not be deported to El Salvador because his life would be in danger. It’s unlikely he has any simple card or document that shows that order he could carry with him. In direct violation of that order, ICE sent him anyway. He’s almost certainly dead.

Yes, but buying that game a 4th time seems excessive.

Not my kind of game, but I have friend who will be very into this.

Terrific somebody already did the work. I only got to Lemmy last month. This kind of thing might happen to me a lot…

Depends on the path they take. If they just “wait it out” we’ll all be dead before Canadians go back to the way things were. If they hit some kind of breaking point and drag that rapist prick and his sycophants out of their White House in leg irons- I would be willing to negotiate an expedited process.

That woman, is a dangerous gang member? THAT woman? And her screaming, terrified 18-year-old daughter who had the audacity to demand cops show a fucking warrant.

If you aren’t filled with rage at this point, you’re either evil, or painfully ignorant.

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“Inspire” might be a better word. They’re not all stupid, you know. Indoctrination doesn’t care how smart you are. They get you young enough, beat the drum steady for long enough, smart people can be convinced of very stupid things.

Lets get in their face. No more false humility. Let’s show them that, imperfect and broken as we are, we know a better way to do some of this stuff. Follow our lead, make your country a better place.

In before MAGAs are on your case wondering what mushrooms have to do with anything.

You hear about Pluto? That’s messed up.

Ah ha - I see, we’re talked over each other a bit but I think I get it now. You have to adjust for the assumed 7% in growth that would be considered “standard”. We’re not really at -2%, because we should be aiming for +7% at minimum. Which means the short fall is more than 4 times what it appears to be to my layman ass. I think I get it.

Right, and I can see that. But if you back out that line graph over a longer period of time, this dip would be miniscule compared to the overall upward trajectory. If the Y Axis tracking the market starts at 0 (which it wouldn’t I get that, but go with me here) and the X axis tracks time and we set it to say, a 3 year period - then the result is that the line has exploded upwards. The tiny tip at the end which represents the last 6 months barely registers. The average closing price in 2023 was 34,121. The close today was 42,454. So even if the market has dropped significantly in the last few months - it’s 25% higher than it was 2 years ago.

Again, I trust that people know what they’re talking about. I am certain I do NOT know what I’m talking about. I am not saying I don’t believe them, or that I’m right - I just want someone to explain the factor I’m missing. I have theories, but no way to confirm them because I lack the base knowledge to even phrase the question right.

Is the stock market supposed to have a “default growth” element that we have to account for? Like, is the fact that the market twice as high as it was 3 years ago an illusion because constant growth is just a necessary element of the market functioning at all? Does that default growth make longer timelines less useful as comparative tools?

Or is it that more that the market was projected to grow and then shrunk instead, so the relevant comparison isn’t to history, but to projections, which is why even a small dip seems more catastrophic? Because it was supposed to continue skyrocketing.

Or am I asking the impossible? Does gaining context for the larger momentum of the stock market take a degree in finance and by asking for someone for a simple explanation I’m just further showing my ignorance?

Did it? I really can’t wrap my head around trying to reconcile what the people who know about this stuff say and what the numbers on page seem to say. I’m just not smart enough. I know I’m not the brightest bulb in the box, but I’ve been trying to figure out the real impact of all this on the market and it honestly seems to be really minimal. Yes, it’s trending down and recession seems likely and a couple days had really big drops this month - but it’s nowhere near even its average, never mind its lows from the past 2 or 3 year periods. Just 3 years ago the market was at like 28,000 points. It doubled in 3 years and now that its shrinking a bit, that is a crisis? What do I not get?

This isn’t so much the market “plummeting” as it looks like to me a massive bubble bursting that was based on nothing to begin with.

But then, I’m the guy who thinks “The Big Short” was a smart movie. I’ll freely admit I’m a fucking moron who knows nothing about finance.

A couple of op-eds for a Student newspaper criticizing Israel? I thought I saw the pieces linked earlier but I don’t see them now. The article linked on this post says it supported a student divestment program and referenced the International Criminal Court calling attacks on Gaza a genocide.

Hardly spicy compared to your average social media post.