Yeah it was crazy.

Sorry for the late response. Disasters happen!

I will not vote for the democrats and no argument will convince me.

I do want to participate in the electoral system and am not forced to vote for people or parties I have no interest in.

You aren’t going to convince anyone with the most important election rhetoric. If a person isn’t already saying it along with you then they’ll be driven away by those words.

I’m not throwing away my vote. It’ll be counted just like all the others. I know this from being involved in the process of elections.

I’m not concerned with what the fascist want.

If the democrats want my vote they can adopt a platform I support, actively pursue it to some real material ends and maybe I’ll cast a ballot for them in two years or four years.

Hey, in case you’re not familiar with it, the Party for Socialism and Liberation is a communist party, not some right wing formation like the tea party or whatever.

So nothing about my support for that party would make me a supporter of trump.

I’m voting party for Socialism and Liberation in November and you can too.

They’re running on a platform of Palestinian statehood and an end to arms shipments to Israel.

No word on their position with regard to Israel’s war with Lebanon, but I’m confident it’s one that I’ll support.

here’s hoping i showed enough civility to not catch a ban.

Im making this reply to help you better respond to people, not to start a fight:

Hey, just a heads up, your cfr link directly cites Adrian zenz, the person many people don’t trust to make even handed statements about China, directly twice.

The vox link sources statements from him several times. I tried to just quickly parse what was what but I came up with seven different statements.

The bbc article seems to reference zenz in six different claims.

I wasn’t able to give these articles a deep read, or check if the other sources also pull from that particular controversial figure or his organizations.

The bolt is a subcompact, the Camry is a midsize.

The Camry is three feet longer, has two more doors and weighs 200lbs less.

A better comparison would be to the Yaris, Toyotas subcompact gas hatchback which weighs between 900 and 1400lbs less depending on options.

Yes and no.

Yes it’s possible. No it’s not scalable or affordable.

Synthetic plastics (all plastics for the purposes of this conversation) are byproducts of the petroleum industry. They’re making gas out of oil and are left over with plastic precursors so those get made into something and everyone wins* because the materials are basically free.

Last I looked we were creeping up on two billion tires a year.

I must be missing something. It sounds from all the articles you posted that the crime was covering up payments.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but each of the 34 counts refers to a payment made in an attempt to conceal the hush money as legal expenses. If paying hush money were illegal I bet there would be many fewer out of court settlements…

I guess I don’t take your meaning…

Yeah I’m with you. That line of thinking will only attract support from conservatives.

Not in the slightest.

My understandings is that the convictions were for not keeping records of what he did, not reporting what he did with the money and trying to cover up what he did with the money, not for what he did with the money.

Falsifying business records are the 34 different counts he was found guilty on.

That’s not illegal.

The crime is not reporting it.

It’s reported on a filing. Sometimes electronic but paperwork in spirit.

If the “problem” in your words is the crime, then the problem is paperwork.

The crimes are falsifying business records, not paying hush money.

The hush money was paid by trumps attorney who was then reimbursed with campaign funds. The crime is not paying hush money, the crime is covering it up.

As I said before, I don’t think it’s a very good idea to try to beat trump over the head with the convictions. At best you appeal to reactionary voters who have regressive ideas about crime and justice and at worst you have to reply to questions like “it’s legal to pay hush money out of campaign funds?”

Yeah I didn’t say that I think it’s a mistake, I said I think it’s not a good idea for the democrats to use the convictions as a lane of attack.

I even said that trump probably systemically doesn’t file paperwork he’s supposed to and that it’s common for people to do that.

I honestly think it’s more likely that like almost every business, nonprofit and other organization I’ve had any experience with, trump doesn’t have a “proactive” filing regimen.

An old ass accountant I used to work with explained why it’s like this: why give them something to beat you over the head with? Just know the requirements, know the punishment and give the least amount of information you possibly can until compelled.

Of course, larger, richer groups are more able to take that strategy, but that’s a systemic problem.

But it doesn’t matter for the purposes of the crimes in question if it was an “innocent” mistake or purposeful omission.

I think it’s pretty disingenuous for the democrat message to be an attack on trump for simply having been convicted because democrats are at the same time trying to catch lefty and otherwise third party voters who see that criminal justice system as having serious fundamental flaws.

I think getting bogged down in the details of trumps convictions isn’t helpful to the democrats either because explaining them to people makes trump relatable. Nothing he actually did with money was a crime. It was not filing paperwork that was the crime.

The whole thing becomes more akin to having to pay a ticket for a taillight you got fixed because you didn’t bring the receipts to court.

“Your honor, the taillight in question is new, intact and installed on my car”

“Your car isn’t in my courtroom”

“It’s in the parking lot 80 feet to the west of your courtroom. I have a picture of it right here.”

“I will only admit a receipt”

Tbh the conviction rhetoric only appeals to reactionary right wing voters who want to punish people with records or makes him incredibly relatable to normal people.

If anything it seems like a hedge to move towards the right.

It’s really funny seeing ppl make the surprised pikachu face about fetterman.

I don’t agree with his reasoning, but I do agree with his assessment that it’s a mistake to push the felon message so hard with trump.

If simply being convicted of a crime makes you a person not worthy of serious consideration in the political sphere, is that implicit endorsement of the legal system? Seems pretty conservative if you ask me.

Even if a person was to believe that our legal system is infallible and that there’s nothing wrong with weaponizing its decisions against one’s enemies, doesn’t bringing up the felony convictions beg the question of what they’re for? That hasn’t been a powerful message for democrats.

I have no love for trump, democrats seem to be messing up here though.

69

you really might not.

before there were mobile phones there was analog dtmf wired telephones. they replaced pulse dialing and allowed for all kinds of additional signalling and triggering. ring a bell, operate a relay, kick people off so you could call the president, entire automated analog switching centers, you name it.

when mobile networks came on the scene there were all sorts of additional triggers but because the (second gen? the ones that could do sms) signals were actually digital, there was a much wider array of possibilities. dtmf had a handful of frequencies it supported and if you wanted to do something more you had to basically make sure the entire network you were using could send, transport and receive those frequencies.

now imagine instead of sixteen combinations of frequencies played at the same time you have access to thousands of possible triggers. once you have simple stuff like the basic receiving of text and lighting a led or playing one of several legally distinct jingles covered, you could do do much more. and people did. there were all kinds of things pagers could do through combinations of local interface and digital communication with a cell tower, all mediated through a handful of baseband chips on the pager pcb that could have the pins for stuff they wouldn’t be used for disconnected.

but how would you make a pager set off an explosive?

well, the same way you use a casio f91w wristwatch to. you use its built in functionality (the speaker when the alarm goes off) to trigger a battery that can deliver enough electricity into a resistor to heat it up enough to make your (primary) explosive detonate.

in the case of a pager, those baseband chips have all kinds of on and off switching built in. it’s not hard to imagine that basic, out of the box functionality would include pulling a pin high when it gets “*97” or some such. now tie that pin to the base of a transistor across the positive and negative terminals of the battery and sitting against a little petn and you got yourself a remotely triggered explosive.

you wouldn’t even need a pcb.

there’s probably a lot of stuff thats incorrect in this reply. it’s late and this is off the dome.

it is?

Any chance vtc will also turn off up votes some time in the future?