Setting aside corporate surveillance, I have started to have a love/hate relationship with AI transcriptions in meetings. My auditory processing isn’t great, so it is nice to have notes. And it’s not replacing a job that someone was doing before. At the same time, it makes me feel more on edge. Everything I say becomes part of a permanent record. And I am part of a public institution, so that is subject to FOIA requests AFAIK.

It isn’t really an imperial thing. It’s that, 250 years ago, when the tiny, newly independent nation was deciding on a name, no one bothered themselves with a new and unique name. And as you noted, American is the only part of that name that works as a description of a resident, even if it’s nonsensical.

If so, then okay. The idea is that single use plastic is used because plastic is so damn cheap. From what I understand, the precursor is basically a waste product from oil extraction. But add a small tax and it breaks the model.

A single cheap fork is less than US$0.01 on a commercial restaurant website. For many restaurants, that is easier to deal with than washing dishes. But let’s tack on a $0.05 tax per single use item or $0.50 single use tax. Pass it directly on to the customer on the check.

That puts single use more on an equal footing with restaurants that are reusing dishes. Single use plastic doesn’t have its true cost built in. A tax can do that in a transparent way.

I read a bit of the stuff from the tip line. Some of it is very raw, and that’s putting it nicely. Like, I had a neighbor who was troubled by delusions. Some sounded spot on like that, a story that wasn’t just absolutely wild, but didn’t fit with some known facts.

deleted by creator

Wish granted. Those apps are now all rewritten as Swing Java applets.

No president has done it and it certainly was not the intent of the pardon power. But it is not explicitly forbidden. Hopefully if he tries it it gets ruled against, but after SCOTUS made that horrible ruling about presidential immunity I have little confidence.

Trump getting away with a pardon and then getting assassinated is, in my mind, one of the worst scenarios. It martyrs him in the eyes of his cult. At the same time, it sets out legal precedent for a future fascist/authoritarian to pardon themselves for misdeeds in office. He’s an old man anyway and won’t last much longer. Let’s hope it does not come to pass.

It is hard to go after a federal official for state crime. They have a lot of immunity around official acts. And for good reason. Imagine a right wing state criminalizing something based on their agenda, then prosecuting Democratic officials to enact a nationwide right wing agenda based on those laws. It would be chaos.

Trump is 100% going to pardon himself. And I have little confidence that the courts will stop him. They will talk about history and tradition when it suits them, but I can totally see them making an exception for yet another unprecedented action.

Exactly, and those take resources to grow. Water, fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, oil, farm equipment, and so on.

Sure, not a fascimile. Who Framed Roger Rabbit had characters from competing studios. Apparently Steven Spielberg had enough clout that he was able to get cross licensing deals made.

Yup, like, what is it replacing? If it’s food that goes directly to humans, let’s not do that. If it’s corn for ethanol, that has little worth. Covering it with solar panels isn’t terrible by any means.

Need more Who Framed Roger Rabbit type work.

Nah, timeline’s off. He had a stroke before being elected.

US Senators have no recall mechanism. Fetterman is up for reelection in 2028. We will see what happens then.