This is going to be my eternal punishment in Hell. Just infinite spreadsheets one after another.

Problem is they’re not hand crafted meaningful side quests. They’re Bethesda-style radiant quests, endless repetitions of the same thing.

Exactly. Behind the scenes they were pressuring Israel Egypt to open up “temporary” refugee camps in the Sinai to accept large numbers of Gazans. Israel would inevitably close the border after the Gazans were expelled. The Biden admin got the ball rolling on ethnic cleansing; they just tried to portray it as a humanitarian operation.

The Biden admin was speaking out of both sides of its mouth.

https://www.reuters.com/world/egypt-discussing-plans-provide-aid-gaza-under-limited-ceasefire-security-sources-2023-10-11/

https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/plan-to-force-palestinians-to-sinai-yet-another-biden-disaster/

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-white-house-accused-endorsing-displacement

Again, like I said, they proposed it in a way that was much less trashy than the Trump administration. The Biden admin didn’t propose forcibly relocating the Gaza population. Rather, they pressured Egypt to open up “humanitarian corridors” to accept large numbers of Gazan refugees. The plan was that Israel would drive the population of Gaza into the Sinai, into “temporary” refugee areas. Then they would inevitably close the border behind them and prevent them from returning. Israel has used this exact MO numerous times in the past.

The main difference between them is that Trump practices vice signalling while Biden practiced virtue signalling. Trump revels in being performatively cruel, while Biden portrayed his ethic cleansing plan as a humanitarian mission.

The Biden admin was the first to openly propose relocating the population of Gaza. They got the ball rolling on ethnic cleansing. Trump just made it trashy as well as cruel.

Into the room of course! Will give the place a nice sauna vibe.

Perfect spot for a Lorderan 250L Vertical Sterilizer Autoclave.

One of the risky conditions is depression. I’m depressed I’m living in a collapsing nation whose leaders no longer respect medical science.

Can God just lightning strike this traitorous sack of human shit already? The man objectively deserves to die.

The proper way to dispose of a US flag is to use it to wipe up cat vomit and then throw it in the garbage. A flag is just a piece of cloth. It’s what it represents, the values and ideals behind it, that are important. Obsession with the cloth itself is just a secular form of idolotry. You’re treating a flag as some sort of sacred object. Nah, I say deliberately harm and disrespect the flag. If we really are a nation that cares about freedoms, we should deliberately put very little emphasis and reference to symbols like this. Hell, if we really want to celebrate freedom, we should disrespect our flag whenever possible. We should all be using American flag toilet paper. Do this just to show that we’re supposed to remember the ideals the flag stands for, not care for the cloth itself.

He’s going to end up running a consultancy where he charges absurd sums to give talks to corporate leaders on how to prevent this sort of attack. 😁

The difference is, the rich and powerful do their crimes with lawyers. A contractor could actually write something into their contract that allowed them to install such a kill switch. And it would be perfectly legal. No different than if you stop paying for a software license and the program stops working. But regular employees don’t have the leverage to demand such a kill switch. Maybe more programmers should form unions. Write it into the contract that if the contract ever expires before a new one is signed, the union has the right to remotely activate a kill switch, shutting down crucial operations within the company. As long as this was all disclosed and signed to, it would be perfectly legal.

Is it even possible to do this in a way that can’t be tracked back to you? Unless you’re a Hollywood hacker that will rig something up to literally burn down the building the server the malicious code is contained on, there will always be some fingerprints left behind in the software. And there will almost always be a relatively short list of possible suspects. Even at large companies, there won’t ever be more than a handful of people with the skills, motive, and access needed to pull something like this off. Oh, the company’s entire database suddenly and mysteriously deleted itself? I wonder who caused that, maybe the disgruntled sysadmin we just fired? There really aren’t that many suspects in situations like this. And once you’re a suspect, they can get a warrant, seize all your computers, and scour them to dig up even more evidence against you. Hell, even just documentation of ill will against your old employer would be evidence in court. You better hope you really left no trace, otherwise you will be found out very quickly.

And really even in the best case scenario you still end up under heavy investigation, get all your computers seized, probably lose your new job, etc. Even if they can’t pin it on you, if you are the only one with the means, motive, and opportunity? They’ll tear your life upside down for years trying to prove it. Even if you are so good you can literally do it with no trace, no evidence in the code at all? It still won’t prevent your life from being torn apart. It will just keep you out of jail at best.

Hand them a history book of the last two centuries of democracies. Give them some more and modern examples of what makes democracies succeed and fail.

We really don’t know the details here, and I think that’s key. There are scenarios where charging a homeowner make sense. Like you see an intruder with a knife. You whack them with a bat. And you knock them to the ground. And then you just…keep doing it. The guy is literally on the ground, skull half caved in, just begging you to call a fucking ambulance, completely at your mercy…and you’re still whacking him. Force can easily escalate well past what is needed for any reasonable level of self defense. Just because someone breaks into your home does not give you legal permission to torture them or murder them in cold blood. Maybe the homeowner tied the intruder up and literally tortured him.

A prosecutor knows how unpopular prosecuting a homeowner for attacking a break-in victim would be. It would be an obvious political lightning rod. I’m inclined to believe that if they’re willing to go to all that trouble, the homeowner likely did something that went well beyond what any jury would consider reasonable self defense. This is the kind of case you do not as a prosecutor make unless you can be damn sure you’re getting a conviction.

So they claim…

It makes sense if you use realistic occupancy rates. Apparently they’re up to 70% in many cases. But even 50% occupancy changes the numbers completely. The thing to remember is it’s not all about weekends. People book week-long trips all the time. And AIrBnBs cater better to those longer vacations than hotels do. It’s nice to have some room to spread out if you’re going to be there for a week.

The other thing is that many of these properties were bought before the most recent property price boom, and the owners have low interest rate mortgages locked in. That property you stayed at might have been purchased for $300k with a 30 year mortgage at 2.75%. In that scenario, the owner put $60k down and has a payment of $980/month without taxes and insurance. Maybe $1300/month with? So that would be $15,600 per year. And if they manage a 50% occupancy rate at $100/night, that would be $18,200 per year in income. They would need some for maintenance and cleaning, but the property could still easily be cashflow-positive or nearly so. Even if they get no net monthly income on the property, they now have an expensive appreciating asset that they’re not making net monthly payments on. And in the few years since they bough the $300k property, it’s now appreciated to $500k, earning them $200k in pure profit. If they bought five years ago, they might have turned their $60k investment into $260k in equity in just 5 years. That’s one hell of a rate of return.

Eh. I think it’s quite hyperbolic to cite that hotel regulations are written in blood, when talking about rental cottages. Hotels are heavily regulated primarily due to their scale. A single hotel burning down could kills hundreds of people. If the cottage catches on fire, you just walk out the door or break a window. A poorly managed hotel can also turn into a source of substantial blight to a community. You can end up with drug dealers using hotel rooms as storefronts, sex traffickers using them for involuntary sex work, etc. But a cottage? There’s only so much blight that can fit into a tiny cottage. A cottage intrinsically needs far less regulation than a hotel.

Is it possible an owner will neglect maintenance of a cottage and let it go to hell? Sure. But we’re talking about cottages rented on vacation sites where people can leave reviews. And it’s not like anyone is going to get stuck in a year lease living in one of these things. If it’s a rat-infested hellhole, you’re only there a short time. Short-term rental owners have a lot more incentive to keep their properties in decent maintenance than regular landlords do.

Right wingers masturbate to videos of Trump while using their AR-15 as a dildo. They welcome fascism. They literally get off to it.

Ships float because their hulls are made from a special form of foamed steel that is lighter than water. A great amount of air is forced into the steel as it cools, generating a steel bubble lattice that on net is lighter than water. This allows steel ships to float, even though the density of solid steel is about 490 lb/ft^3, while water is 62.4 lb/ft^3.

/s