Zaktor

joined 2 years ago
[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

No, I mean he could raise way more than his defense will cost. He's kind of one of the mythic figures of the resistance.

When the early revolution is recorded to history, we'll remember such luminaries as the Portland Frog, Polka Dot Lady, and Sandwich Guy.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 8 points 2 days ago (5 children)

If he hasn't crowd funded his legal expenses it's because he's actively choosing not to. He could be grifting this so hard.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 days ago

I keep worrying that he's going to use authoritarianism and a violation of the rule of law to do good things and people will normalize those things as ok, but he seems devoted to never helping anyone who isn't rich or armed.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 days ago

ProPublica does. The Escapist staff quit en masse and formed Second Wind. Value comes from the workers. When you don't have the overhead of printing presses and the gatekeepers of print distribution there's not that much that the parent company actually contributes to the business.

I'd contribute to a Kickstarter and then become an ongoing supporter.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 5 points 2 days ago

I think it would take some exceptional political gymnastics for Hochul to have personally campaigned with him and then justify how his election must be annulled. She'll just refuse all his plans that need state approval. The state has a lot of power to just try to make him fail in order to teach the people that only neoliberals can be trusted to lead.

Direct Federal fuckery is more likely.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Seriously. A year ago centrists were talking about what a win it would be to get an endorsement from this man. In reality he was so despised people are cheering his death. The centrists are just bad at politics.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 14 points 2 days ago

I hope they consider reforming independently. Value comes from the workers and they were valuable. I'd definitely contribute/pay for them.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 10 points 2 days ago

For every human that is moved into the state of Texas from New York you must transfer ownership of another human to the state.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What? Nothing here is evidence they want(ed) a shutdown. They're refusing a SNAP funding bill because they want the poorly funded program to be leverage for reopening the government.

That they view feeding people, many of which are their own voters, as something that only Democrats care about shows their utter disinterest in supporting the rubes that vote for them, but none of this is part of some Republican master plan or advancing Republican causes.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 14 points 3 days ago

The investigation concluded “there was no definitive evidence that WCI correctional custody, maintenance, or medical staff failed to perform their duties in such a manner that contributed to the death of Inmate Healy (sic).”

It's one of those no-fault dehydration deaths of an inmate fully under the control of the state. They did everything right and he just somehow didn't get water, wellness checks, or treatment.

Imagine if this was a child, another class of citizen that is assumed to be the responsibility of someone else who basically controls their lives and needs. The guardian, who doesn't have a full time paying job with training and oversight about caring for them, nor a network of cameras and logged activities, would be assumed to be negligent and put on trial in both court and the media.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

That's not what the problem is. It only fools systems that just feed the image straight into a race recognition model without trying to correct for it. You don't need to even retrain the model, just use basic image processing to color swap the tattoo before the model even gets it. The tattoos are easy to isolate computationally.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 5 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Facemasks work great. There's a reason the gestapo are using them.

People like the makeup because it looks like a cool cyberpunk future, but the moment a pipeline is designed to compensate for made up faces it will fail. Simple image processing can replace makeup hues and yield a roughly true color unobscured face.

 

A protester was acquitted Wednesday of charges that he assaulted a federal agent during widespread protests against immigration crackdowns in Los Angeles, just hours after one of the faces of President Trump’s enforcement policies took the stand to testify against him.

...

Bovino, who flew in to testify from Chicago, the latest city targeted for an immigration enforcement surge, said he witnessed the alleged assault committed by Ramos-Brito in Paramount on June 7.

...

The jury came back with the acquittal after a little over an hour of deliberations.

 

Over the last year or so I’ve seen a disturbing tendency in tech/startup/VC worlds to buy into the neoreactionary view that for startups to be successful they need to get on board the Trump train. Yes, there are the big name folks who everyone knows about and who didn’t really surprise anyone—Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, Elon Musk (pre-fallout)—but the more troubling trend has been watching younger entrepreneurs and VCs listen to their podcasts, read their posts and books, and slowly nod along to the idea that democracy is holding back innovation.

The logic might seem compelling at first: regulations slow us down, politicians don’t understand tech, wouldn’t it be better if someone who “gets it” could just cut through all the bureaucratic nonsense? But this line of thinking leads directly to the neoreactionary conclusion that what we really need is a “tech-friendly” strongman to sweep away democratic institutions and let the smart people (spoiler: they mean themselves) run things.

 

A former U.S. Marine Corps reservist has been arrested and charged with attempted murder in connection with an attack at a Texas immigration detention center in which a police officer was shot in the neck, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

Benjamin Hanil Song, 32, is the latest person charged in the Fourth of July assault in which attackers dressed in black military-style clothing opened fire outside the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, southwest of Dallas, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas.

Song, from Dallas, was arrested after a weeklong search and has been charged with three counts of attempted murder of federal agents and three counts of discharging a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, the office said in a statement. He is accused of purchasing four of the guns linked to the attack, it said.

 

Mamdani's emphasis on socialism and redistribution of wealth runs counter to Wall Street's preference for unbridled capitalism and policies that support growth, such as deregulation and low taxes. The 33-year-old has supported taxing the ultra-wealthy, financial transactions and passive income like dividends. He has also endorsed a state-level wealth tax and increased marginal income tax rates on high earners.

Hedge fund magnate Bill Ackman said he woke up Wednesday "a bit depressed" by Mamdani's victory. The Pershing Square chief said he's now looking at the logistics for another candidate, not himself, to run.

Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury Secretary and president of Harvard University, also expressed his distaste Mamdani's nomination.

Guys, Bill Ackman and Larry Summers are sad. 😂

 

The pushback against immigration raids is evolving into an organic movement that is making things more difficult for officers in charge of Trump’s deportation drive.

 

Many of those who were loudest in denouncing cancel culture then are now curiously silent in the face of Donald Trump’s assaults on free speech.

 

A Democratic National Committee subcommittee on Monday recommended that the organization invalidate one of its February vice-chair votes over claims that it unfairly disadvantaged female candidates.

The move, which won't be official unless the entire DNC votes to approve it, could open up new races for the positions held by David Hogg, a Florida activist, and Malcolm Kenyatta, a Pennsylvania state legislator.

The challenge by Oklahoma Democratic Committeewoman Kalyn Free, who unsuccessfully ran against Hogg and Kenyatta in the February race for vice chair, is not related to the ongoing tension between Hogg and the national party over his push to support primary challenges against incumbent Democrats.

Instead, it was based off Free's claim that the handling of the vice-chair vote gave the two men an unfair advantage amid the national party's requirements that its executive committee achieve gender balance.

 

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday cleared a national defense authorization bill celebrated for troop pay raises but condemned by Democrats for targeting transgender children in military families, sending the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk.

Senators voted 83-12, with five not voting, to approve the $884.9 billion National Defense Authorization Act that received bipartisan praise for the pay bump, upgrades to military housing and investments in artificial intelligence and other advanced technology.

But the annual legislation drew ire this year from Democrats for a provision banning the military’s health program from covering certain treatments for youth experiencing gender dysphoria, defined by doctors as the mismatch between a person’s sex assigned at birth and the gender they experience in everyday life.

All Democrats present for the Dec. 11 U.S. House vote opposed the defense package, which passed along party lines under the Republican majority.

The White House has not released its position on the bill, as it generally does with legislation ready for the president’s signature.

 

Harris only received five percent of Republican votes — less than the six percent Joe Biden won in 2020 when he beat Trump, as well as the seven percent won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 when she lost to him. While Harris won independents and moderates, she did so by smaller margins than Biden did in 2020.

Meanwhile, Harris lost households earning under $100,000, while Democratic turnout collapsed. Votes are still being counted, but Harris is on pace to underperform Biden’s 2020 totals by millions of votes.

 

The editors of Israel's oldest newspaper on Wednesday published an editorial decrying the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza amid a ferocious Israeli offensive there that's killed more than 1,000 people over the past three weeks.

Original paywalled editorial in Haaretz.

 

Vice President Kamala Harris proposed increasing the long-term capital gains tax rate to 28% for wealthy Americans during an economic speech in New Hampshire on Wednesday, breaking with the policy laid out by President Joe Biden in his 2025 budget by suggesting a lower rate.

The current long-term capital gains tax rate – 20%, plus an additional 3.8% tax on higher earners – is paid when an investment is sold, or gains are realized. The Biden budget proposes raising that rate to the top rate he wants to levy on ordinary income – 39.6% – for households with taxable income over $1 million. Harris, the people familiar with the matter say, believes 39.6% is too high.

While Harris still supports taxing the wealthiest individuals and corporations at higher rates – as Biden’s budget also calls for – she believes that a lower capital gains rate would incentivize investors to put more money into startups and small businesses. She has also proposed increasing the corporate tax rate to 28%, up from the current 21% rate set by Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

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