Nobody Cares: PRS

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Trump tried to get DOJ to go after Saturday Night Live for mocking him

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Trump tried to get DOJ to go after Saturday Night Live for mocking him

Reminds me of this Usenet troll who used to send mail to people's bosses complaining that posting anything vaguely political to Usenet from work accounts required the company to file paperwork because they were making a campaign donation. Some people got in trouble for it.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

That's actually a scary idea, because there are some jokers in the districts and the Supreme Court right now who would absolutely be like "if corporate campaign donations count as speech then of course speech can count as a campaign donation" and then use clown logic to determine the net monetary value of Trump jokes in such a way that inevitably makes NBC guilty of violating the donation limit.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

That's actually a scary idea, because there are some jokers in the districts and the Supreme Court right now who would absolutely be like "if corporate campaign donations count as speech then of course speech can count as a campaign donation" and then use clown logic to determine the net monetary value of Trump jokes in such a way that inevitably makes NBC guilty of violating the donation limit.

But the reasoning behind Citizens United was that contributions to PACs, as opposed to a candidate's campaign funds, were a form of protected speech. If you remove protections on speech because forms of speech are said to have some monetary value, then the whole argument collapseds in on itself, since money clearly has a monetary value, too.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

That's actually a scary idea, because there are some jokers in the districts and the Supreme Court right now who would absolutely be like "if corporate campaign donations count as speech then of course speech can count as a campaign donation" and then use clown logic to determine the net monetary value of Trump jokes in such a way that inevitably makes NBC guilty of violating the donation limit.

But the reasoning behind Citizens United was that contributions to PACs, as opposed to a candidate's campaign funds, were a form of protected speech. If you remove protections on speech because forms of speech are said to have some monetary value, then the whole argument collapseds in on itself, since money clearly has a monetary value, too.

 

[Free]

Ooh, duplicate replies. Something must have triggered Innula.

 

[Free]

“HAIL HOLY TERROR”: Two US citizens charged for running online “Terrorgram Collective”

White accelerationist terror meets social media.

arstechnica.com

The US government recently announced multiple charges against the alleged leaders of the "Terrorgram Collective," which does just what it sounds like—it promotes terrorism on the Telegram messaging platform. In this case, the terrorism was white racial terror, complete with a "hit list" of US officials and activists, a homemade "White Terror" video glorifying "saints" who had killed others, and instructions for taking down US infrastructure such as electrical substation transformers. (Read the indictment.)

Chaos was the point. Terrorgram promoted "white supremacist accelerationism," which believes that society must be incited into a civil war or apocalyptic confrontation in order to bring down the existing system of government and establish a white nationalist state.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Ooh, duplicate replies. Something must have triggered Innula.

My WiFi seems to be acting up.

 

[Soen Eber]

That's actually a scary idea, because there are some jokers in the districts and the Supreme Court right now who would absolutely be like "if corporate campaign donations count as speech then of course speech can count as a campaign donation" and then use clown logic to determine the net monetary value of Trump jokes in such a way that inevitably makes NBC guilty of violating the donation limit.

Satire is very firmly in the "protected speech" camp, and has survived numerous challenges. If the Supreme Court went that far to block it, they would become a laughing stock, and Roberts has enough self-respect to understand that.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Rad: Jon Bon Jovi helps talk woman down from ledge on Nashville bridge | AP News

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

She was half way there, Jon answered her prayer.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

Laura Loomer’s response to Lindsey Graham urging Trump to ditch her? ‘We all know you’re gay’

Last night, far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer posted a racist tweet about Vice President Kamala Harris’ Indian heritage. She received backlash from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) who told her to delete the tweets. In response, Loomer said Greene is an anti-semitic, “miserable lying bitch.”

And now that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said that former President Donald Trump should distance himself from Loomer, who is currently traveling with the former president to campaign rallies and events, Loomer has some choice words for Graham, too.

Speaking to reporters today on Capitol Hill, Graham said Loomer is “toxic” and her presence near Trump isn’t “helpful at all.”

“What [Loomer] said about Kamala Harris and the White House is abhorrent, but it’s deeper than that,” Graham told HuffPost. “I think that the president would serve himself well to make sure this doesn’t become a bigger story.”

In a tweet posted this afternoon, Loomer said Graham “has never been loyal to President Trump” and shouldn’t be giving advice to him. She also alleged that Graham is gay and scared to come out.

“When is Lindsey coming out of the closet? We all know you’re Gay, Lindsey…. And that’s ok. It’s ok. It’s 2024. There’s nothing wrong with Gay people,” Loomer tweeted. “Just be honest about it. Nobody is going to judge you for being open about who you are.”

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Laura Loomer’s response to Lindsey Graham urging Trump to ditch her? ‘We all know you’re gay’

She’s gonna turn up in the trunk of a car at this rate.

 

[detrius]

But the reasoning behind Citizens United was that contributions to PACs, as opposed to a candidate's campaign funds, were a form of protected speech. If you remove protections on speech because forms of speech are said to have some monetary value, then the whole argument collapseds in on itself, since money clearly has a monetary value, too.

You're assuming that the US Supreme Court doesn't operate on the "It's fine if Republicans do it"-principle.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Just started reading the latest thriller, Instruments of Darkness, by one of my favourite thriller-writers, John Connolly. In the first chapter, Charlie Parker, the detective, has just finished a breakfast meeting with Moxie Castin, a lawyer for whom he frequently works,:

We stood to go. Moxie pulled a mask from his pocket and put it on to pass through the line of people by the door. The mask was black, with the words CALL MOXIE written on it in white, along with his number.

“I got a trunk full of these,” he said. “I’m determined to get some use out of them—and fuck what that CDC says about COVID, because I still wouldn’t want anyone north of Bangor coughing on me. And mark my words, there’ll be something else along soon enough. You know, if COVID had given people warts or facial blisters, every fucking person in this state would have been fighting for a jab and a hazmat suit. You want a box of these masks, just in case?”

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

I don't know if I want to read the other 20 books in the series to get to that line but I'm tempted to buy it just for that if it's readable standalone.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I don't know if I want to read the other 20 books in the series to get to that line but I'm tempted to buy it just for that if it's readable standalone.

I've been following the series pretty much since it started, but I think almost all the books work standalone. They're certainly very readable. Here's a passage from The Furies, which I think is the book before this one:

When Horace passed away, not long after the flood of 2011, Ida kept on working for Edwin until her knees began to give out, by which point she had paved the way for her daughter Marie to take her place. The daughter was a virtual facsimile of the mother, right down to the lock on her mouth, because there were far worse ways – and far harder – to make a living in Athens than by cooking and cleaning for an old man who kept his hands to himself and didn’t leave too much of a mess after using the bathroom. Sometimes Marie’s own husband didn’t seem to know where he was pointing that thing. Why he couldn’t just sit when he peed, like a sensible human being, she’d never been able to establish. Lord knows, he took every other opportunity to sit when it was offered, so there appeared to be no comprehensible reason why he couldn’t have extended that policy to peeing, too.

I should mention that the supernatural often plays something of a role in Connolly's thrillers. It's not generally a major element, and even when it is, the novels are still firmly within the private eye thriller genre rather than ghost stories or urban fantasies, but it's certainly an element in most of them. And, strangely enough, when it does play an important role, it's curiously believable.

I'd certainly give him a try.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

SCMP, a Chinese newspaper, is claiming that Chinese scientists have found a way to passively track American stealth fighters using the electromagnetic radiations emitted by the Starlink satellite network.

Normal radar has the problem that the source of its emission can be easily tracked and destroyed, but here since ambiant emissions are being used this is not an option any longer. So if these claims are true it means that the stealth fighters are loosing big chunks of their technilogical advantage and can't do much about it.

How Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites could help China detect US stealth fighters

A team of Chinese scientists have developed a groundbreaking method for detecting stealth objects on radar.

www.scmp.com

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

LOLOL

The Starlink signals are encrypted, and SpaceX founder Elon Musk does not provide services for Chinese users.

Who cares if they're encrypted? They're just being used for illumination. Was this a clueless journo or a stupid editor white-knighting for Phony Stark?

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

I mean...is this method really "ground-breaking"? They're basically just passively listening for a signal variance that shows something has passed between the Starlink satellite and the ground listening station. It's the equivalent of a person walking past your door briefly blocking out the hallway light that's visible beneath it. It seems so simple it's kinda hard for me to believe this is the first time anyone has thought of it; in fact I know for a fact it's not, because this is exactly one way that we detect exoplanets passing in front of their parent stars.