Oh man remember when he said Trump would clean up corruption in the western world?

Pretty excited, but wish they'd just combine the two rtk kunio games into one.

Elon Musk also the richest child pornographer in the world!

forbes article

As far as I can tell, the money goes towards lawyers who say stupid shit.

I thought this said Gunsmith Cats simulator and got excited

Just because it sucks doesn't mean it can't also be the best game Bethesda ever made.

Ooh, free trailer!

Burrito of Peace wrote on Aug 14, 2024, 22:52:

NKD wrote on Aug 14, 2024, 22:12:
Just keep posting images of Musk engaged in gay interracial porn, he'll put censorship on that thing so fast.

Or the image of him balding before he got the hair plugs.
Or the image of him trying to pretend he was in the Matrix.

For such a wannabe edgelord, he is one thin skinned motherfucker.

Dude changed his entire political belief system because he wasn't invited to a party at the white house.
Could be a little bit thin skinned yeah.

Ah crap I already own like every game in that bundle

When this all went down I was telling people on Reddit that dude was obviously guilty to anyone with the faintest hint of street smarts and got a lot of comments saying I was stupid which were then later deleted.

cappy wrote on Aug 13, 2024, 20:25:

Eldaron Imotholin wrote on Aug 13, 2024, 11:56:
It's all just a disgusting, fucking wasteland. Trump is a clown, Republicans are fools, Biden is so senile it's elder abuse by now, Harris has nothing. The media is biased as fuck. Maybe I see this because I'm an immigrant and brought some of that measured cynicism from Europe. Otherwise, I have literally no clue whatsoever how everyone here can be so fucking partisan they can't see the shit they're being fed.

I swear, even if both nominees are shit eating chimpanzees, a strong Republican base will still gleefully vote for the red ape and the Democrats for the blue ape.

Politics in the US is like a fucking football game, with the bombastic campaigns, the billions in ads, the irrational partisanship that's fine in sports but disgusting in politics, etc. I fucking love the US for a million reasons, but this part of the culture I hate vehemently.

/rant 😂

It's the system we are stuck with. The founders didn't have many examples to choose from back in the late 1700s. So they went with the republic system because there were no parliamentary systems like became so prevalent in the 20th century (parliament in the 1700s existed, but was considerably different than the power of the parliament and prime ministers in today's systems).

The founders also went with a system that guaranteed a great deal of deadlock and difficulty in getting things done - because it perfectly mirrored how deadlocked the founders and the colonies they represented were. Nowadays, the "checks and balances" are sold as some kind of great benefit of the U.S. system. But the deadlocking means voters are disenchanted and results in pathetically low voter turnout rates compared with many other democratic countries. And the 2-party system leaves many voters feeling disenfranchised.

It's notable that the U.S. formed parliamentary systems for both Germany and Japan following WW2, rather than trying to emulate the supposedly exceptional republic system of government of the U.S. Also notable is the high (pretty much 100%) failure rate of republics which the U.S. has so far managed to avoid. But the actions and stated ambitions of Trump and the extremists in the GOP and conservative movement have certainly laid bare the myths that the U.S. system could be immune to the kind of soft takeovers that have befallen others.

Parliamentary systems are certainly not perfect - no system of government is. But they do provide for more parties and allow voters to better align with their values and interests, and allow for coalition-forming where an outright majority isn't met. And do away with voting directly for the leader, while making it easier for the majority in power to actually accomplish the agenda they were supposedly supposed to do, having attained that majority.

Granted, the founders of the U.S. in many respects distrusted the will of the majority, and certainly there are many instances where the majority is wrong and protecting interests of those with less of a voice is the right thing to do. And yet, most of the other modern world democracies have managed to meet or exceed (and often far earlier) many of the gains eked out by the U.S. system's supposed superiority in protecting minority interests against the will of a majority.

Parliamentary systems are great - you end up with tiny fringe parties, usually a few for the white supremacists, and that keeps them from being an important part of a major party that then ends up needing to be heavily catered to.

Instead we got this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_8E3ENrKrQ

The Flying Penguin wrote on Aug 13, 2024, 12:34:
We have 4 years of Trump as an example. The sequel will not come with guard rails.

So yeah, I do think it's an existential crisis. Trump IS that bad, and the cronies he will bring along to actually run things will be even worse.

I am a moderate Independent. I do not knee jerk vote for Dems, although I generally tend to lean to the left. I vote for the person who I think will do the better job, in both national and local elections. I voted for Obama in 2008, and against him for Mitt Romney 2012 (to the consternation of friends and family on the left and the right). I did not vote for Reagan, but I concede that he was probably one of our best Presidents in our lifetime. I did not vote for George Bush Sr, but I concede he was overall a good president in the mold of Reagan.

All politicians are flawed creatures. You pick the best you can, based on your heart.

If you choose not to vote, that is certainly your right. But don't complain about whichever administration winds up in the White House.

I mean there was the time that Reagan sold arms to our enemies for profit and to fund another illegal war in defiance of a bill passed 411-0 and that he signed into law.

Gave a great speech after the Challenger disaster he helped cause. I hope Trump has a real good one for Boeing.

Raised taxes more times than any other president - after his initial tax cuts for the rich because he thought they'd spur economic growth, but the rich tend to hoard so instead we tripled our national deficit.

Didn't really handle the AIDS crisis particularly well either I'd say, and his press secretary accusing reporters of being gay for even asking about it probably was not one of our finest moments as a nation.

Also invaded U.K. territory and forgot to notify Thatcher. Could have been the alzheimer's.

Also wasn't that around the time that the most influential Republican strategist of all time (Lee Atwater) was recorded admitting the Republican party was tailored to appeal to racists because they were a huge voting bloc?

The Nixon tapes definitely let you know how Reagan felt about race personally.

Also just a little weird for a president to have a court astrologer?

Kxmode wrote on Aug 12, 2024, 21:13:

Sheik Rattle Enroll wrote on Aug 12, 2024, 20:01:
I want a terminator crpg. Why can't I have that?

Would that take place in present day or the future war?

Oh man, both I guess, time travel seems like a prerequisite here

I want a terminator crpg. Why can't I have that?

A google search would have found it for you, but try "Elon Musk child sexual abuse material".
Or "Elon Musk Dom Luchre" or "Elon Musk Australian Parliament".

Cutter wrote on Aug 9, 2024, 20:47:
Guy's a bottom feeder. How can anyone be surprised by any of it. All the mouth breathers who are on board with this shit deserve what they get and more.

I mean is Elon Musk a bottom feeder for literally personally unbanning and then paying a guy who posted child pornography to his social media platform?

I personally save my hatred for him and not the guy building wells in Africa regardless of the fact that he makes a lot of money.

Musk illegally immigrated to this country and then complained about how little money he made from the briefcase full of precious gems he smuggled in, now rants about how evil illegal immigrants are.

There's way way way better people to hate than Mr. Beast out there.

Mr. Tact wrote on Aug 8, 2024, 17:21:

RogueSix wrote on Aug 8, 2024, 17:05:
And let's face it: Without US pressure there would not be a TSMC in Arizona because TSMC, among many other reasons, knew that they won't find the same working culture as in Taiwan anywhere else on the planet.

I absolutely agree with most everything you said, the cultural differences play a huge part in this. However, I am less sure about this last sentence. I mean, obviously it was unlikely to happen without US interest and support, but isn't in the interest of TSMC to expand outside Taiwan? I don't know what the likelihood of China taking over Taiwan is, but it ain't zero. And if that happens in a hostile way, then having plants in the US, Germany and elsewhere is going to be very good thing.

I'm sure that factors in but also that people will be more willing to defend something if it's unique.

If I was a lawyer for the advertisers I'd point out how Musk personally interceded to unban someone who distributed child pornography and then even paid him for that month of content.

Seems unlikely a court would agree that Musk should be allowed to force advertisers to advertise under those circumstances.

Tom wrote on Aug 6, 2024, 16:11:
I'm not sure why people like PowerShell. It seems like a total failure as both a shell (interactive use) and a scripting language. The syntax is ugly as hell, verbose, and unintuitive despite trying to use plain English names for most things. Pretty much anything other than Perl would be better IMO. It can't decide whether it wants to be more like DOS, UNIX, or its own weird thing, generally opting for a "worst of all worlds" approach. Its versioning/deployment has been a trainwreck, with the version built into Windows hopelessly obsolete for stupid reasons. And of course "Windows PowerShell" and "PowerShell" are totally different things that install side-by-side. WTF? Oh right, it's Microsoft.

I dunno, I've got a script that's 150 lines that creates an entire UI and uses winget and chocolatey to pull from a csv file that contains a table of ~100 pieces of software.

Bash scripting is fine too, I use it all the time at work, but I don't find it to be like vastly superior in some meaningful way.

But yes it is mildly annoying that Windows Terminal and the newer powershell don't come automagically.

Powershell is pretty dope, I use it to automate a lot of machine setup.
You can also even create GUIs in it, and GPT is pretty good at writing scripts for it.