MSC

Was literally about to respond to @MigLabout this; what surprises me is that while I see news articles talking about this impossible hypothetical, none of them mention the 12th amendment in regards to this. It's pretty straightforward, the 22nd amendment makes Trump ineligible to run again as president, therefore he is the definition of constitutionally ineligible. The only time I've heard them use the 12th amendment to discuss Trump eligibility was when he was being impeached and they were talking about him potentially being made ineligible via Senate impeachment conviction. It's like people just forget it's a thing, why is anyone even entertaining the idea of him being VP? Why even write the story? It can't happen. What exactly would the SCOTUS argument in favour of that look like? There is mental gymnastics and then there is impossible. Same rules apply for him running for a third term, without a constitutional amendment, it's just not possible. Sorry, not sorry! I think we have to start asking; have some people's Internet news bubbles, become completely non-porous to reality getting in?

This makes me wonder, what is ultimately more dangerous for society? Stupid in charge, or evil in charge? I'd argue stupid, because evil loves to take advantage of stupid. There is also a profound danger that will maybe materialize in the next election, assuming Trump definitely won't be able to run, and that is, who is Trump going to open the door for? I recall during the primaries a lot of people were worried that if someone more like Putin were to win the Republican primary, it could be worse than Trump. An example that springs to mind is DeSantis.

Yes I remember that of Wittgenstein. What I hadn't thought about much was the inverse of limiting it. I explained his work to a friend of mine by providing this example; Imagine that instead of the term lying in the English language, imagine instead there had been a specific words for different types of falsehoods in different contexts. Lying to a friend would have a different word than say deceiving an enemy. Now what would this world look like if you had always conceived of falsehoods in this way? How would this line of thinking impact someone like Kant for example? One problem with Kants arguments against lying is that it doesn't address using someone as a means, to thwart them doing it to someone else, so protecting that person is your end. The thought scenario Kant applies of someone showing up to murder a loved one and your telling the truth leading to their death, is only one outcome and I'd argue that more often than not, lying to this "enemy" would not lead to them being able to carry out their threat but more often than not would effectively shield someone from harm. I guess ultimately I also just cannot imagine a world where people don't engage in some kind of falsehood. So which falsehoods are right and which ones are wrong? I can't have a categorical imperative to not engage in falsehoods when I can't conceive of a world where it can't happen, not unless we are all omniscient and omnipresent. Rounding back to something I talked about earlier in a different thread but is related to the topic of free speech and what I've talked about here; Would it be immoral of me, to fabricate a conspiracy theory that paints someone in a negative light, when believing the truth about them would do the same? For example there is no public conclusive proof that 47 is a willing Russian asset, engaged in a conspiracy with Putin. However since the truth of the matter is that he is a threat to democracy, the environment, free speech, US citizens, people in general etc, and since he is going to lie his pants off anyway, why shouldn't there be a counter flooding of the zone, with what we would call defensive lies that are designed to push people away from him ideologically? He plays on certain fears, so should Democrats and old school republicans play to different ones? The fear of being lied to, manipulated, changed over time against your will, abused etc. Also apologies if I've crossed the bounds of being OT with some of this, I'd been wanting to do a thread in the ethics section about the study of falsehoods through Wittgensteins pragmatic lense but was hesitant because I don't feel entirely ready to defend it here. But hey ho, it came up.

https://newrepublic.com/post/193395/agriculture-department-ban-words-safe-drinking-water Stupid doesn't even come close to describing this. This is just becoming insane. It's not even funny "safe drinking water" banned? What on the hell kind of lunatics world are we living in? Is it free speech that is under attack or is it just truth and facts that are under attack? Feels like lies have become the currency of the day in the USA.

https://nypost.com/2025/03/28/opinion/youtubes-ms-rachel-and-the-leftists-coming-after-our-kids/ Is it just me or does this read like it's written by an extremely jealous woman trying to tear down another women and attempting to make it sound like it's over something people should actually care about? Sharing this here because it's starting to feel like not only are peoples free speech rights under attack for what they do say, but now here they are being attacked for what they didn't say. It wasn't enough for the writer of this trash when Ms Rachel said "All children deserve to be safe", no they wanted an explicit mention of a few children in a very specific circumstance. It seems the tables have turned a little because now one side is saying "all lives" while the other is demanding an explicit specific mention of a certain group, in a complete switcheroo. I am noticing an uptick in my mixed news app of content like this, what I call "The world according to MAGA" articles. Knowing that pieces like this are only going to show up more frequently, as this administration does it's best to snuff out credible sources of information, I can't help but feel very afraid for how this is going to impact children who are going to grow up in an anti-scientific hateful society fueled by misinformation, lies and fake images. Also; how dare this woman take Mr Rogers name in vein! His widow hated the current president and said he was completely at odds with everything Fred stood for!

I mean he believes it's a 50/50 chance we are living in a simulation so wouldn't surprise me.

Honestly they could just feel free to be reckless because they really don't believe they will be held accountable for anything they do when the DOJ is completely devoted to 47 right now. The DOJ has become a political weapon and everybody knows it. This may be a separate discussion; but the influence of knowing that if you're against 47, there is nobody coming to save you if targeted, cannot be overstated. Take a look at what is going on with schools, libraries and museums under this regime and the capitulation of some schools towards it; on the surface you have threats to pull funding, behind the scenes, what sort of other threats are being made? The Democrats are also being very hesitant and indecisive with how to respond to 47. At this point we aren't even out of jeopardy if he naturally passes, he's blowing up guardrails and setting up a mechanism by which any number of unscrupulous people can take advantage of and become a dictator.

I mean the guy literally forgot the word "criminals" and fumbled to "people of crime" the other day. Dude probably can't even spell Lithuania. As far as I am aware everyone would have access, however if they just trusted the convener/inviter enough to not be careless they probably wouldn't think to check. I mean you wouldn't expect organized criminals to ask everyone to double check their phones to make sure nobody butt dialed 911.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/healthcare/3362851/rfk-jr-states-remove-soda-from-snap-coverage/ The Joke here is that RFK thinks SNAP isn't on MAGAs hit list.

You answer your own question pretty quickly when you say "mind" is the mind alive, since we aren't suggesting the mind is also part of the illusion. Yes, our mind or brains conjure an attempt at a pragmatic to life approximation of what is "outside" through sensory data. However there is no smoke without a fire, whether you're a brain in a vat, a simulation, a hallucination in the mind of some other being or just living in cold hard reality, you have an existence, all that changes between those things is the nature of that existence. You're alive because you are aware of a thinking mind that you recognize having some ownership of. Doesn't matter if it's code, the guy that coded you has the same problem of wondering if he is or isn't in a simulation. Suffice it to say, there is nothing scientific about the idea of deriving knowledge from something other than sensory data. What else is there?

Oh he is probably pushing the public hard to protest so he can try declare martial law and postpone indefinitely elections under the guise of "protecting law and order"

Also a possibility that they will throw whomever under the bus as a "traitorous leaker" to the press.

Maybe, I haven't exactly been sleeping well recently either but yeah if y'all are all checking my rationality here I can only conclude there is nothing to it absent harder evidence. Now the Witkoffs phone as a possible deadrop of other messages between Trump and Putin; is that one feasible? How credible is the idea that there is a secret line of communication between Trump and Putin?

That I agree with; however I would point out that when dealing with a potential conspiracy between this administration and the Kremlin, the pool of bad actors to worry about is bigger and more sophisticated. We can't rule out feigned incompetence with an ulterior motive, in the same way we can't rule out actual incompetence. My point is simply that if we are going to speculate on one, why not the other? But I suppose in order to give my hypothesis a bit more weight we'd need to ask if the leak to a journalist could have at all benefitted Trump's administration or Putin's? If the answer is no, then there would be no need for me to speculate. But is the answer no? I'll need to think on it for a bit.

Greys law "Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice." Hanlons razor is a useful interpersonal safeguard in your personal life. Applied to politics, organizing, or any setting where you're dealing with relative strangers? You're setting yourself up to be taken advantage of. Bad actors WILL be part of the group, they WILL notice you deliberately putting yourself in "gullible person" mode, and they WILL exploit your hesitance to call out malice as malice.

You don't find it suspicious that a journalist was included in the chat and this just happened to be a mistake? It's less that I am overestimating the movement but not underestimating the ability of individuals and groups within said movement, they can figure out ways of taking advantage of the fractured state of news media consumption sources. Now that's something that is definitely incompetence and idiocy driven.

Yes he was the adopted son and a few other family relations to Claudius. It would be more accurate to say that Claudius was the only surviving male heir capable of assuming power at the time. Nero would have been four when Claudius became emperor.

I was asking about why Claudius specifically survived. Because Agrippina the Elder, Tiberius and Caligula did not see him as a threat, so he survived many purges and was overlooked as a potential assassination target. His disabilities made everyone underestimate him and at times he definitely played them up and acted the simpleton. So my suggestion is that we stop assuming incompetence drives every decision and move the MAGA movement makes.

Excellent! Now do you know why, he was the last surviving male heir? Perfect! I don't know that I am overthinking it, that's not even to say I think I am absolutely right, but amongst "flooding the zone with shit" there are obviously going to be more behind the scenes plans going on. These folks are literally conspiring to establish a de facto dictatorship with the intention of making it de jure. We need to remember there are a lot of different factions within MAGA not all with the same intentions, motivations or MOs. Another reason to examine my conspiracy hypothesis, is to examine a question; Should the response to Trump be to also "flood the zone"? Take what I said as an example, would it be immoral to flood the zone with counter-propaganda, conspiracy theories all with a theme that 47 and the Republican party are hurting and manipulating people through a series of entertaining narratives where speculation is allowed to run wild? Is there value in that? I don't know, just a thought.

I'd be really interested to see that, cryptography is a part time hobby, however I don't think we can rule out the possibility of misdirection either. I personally still find it very suspicious that they included a journalist in the chat and I've now seen a few different explanations as to why, and the name given isn't consistently the same. Sounds like the "condoms for the Taliban" Chinese whisper thing again that they did with lying to people about what USAID does. Starting to suspect something a little more sinister at work in this "flood the zone" strategy and one which helps explain why Trump retains base support. Put simply, with all the different lies and spins etc, Trump doesn't just have a megaphone, but a customisable one. Fake news writers can make Trump look like a lot of different things through a lot of different people's electronic windows. Now, I know we keep saying this is an incompetently driven thing, but maybe we need to realize they are playing an entirely different game, with different rules. All we have to go on, when thinking about who these people are, and I'm not even talking about AHOTUS (Yes I liked that one) I'm talking about the people behind project 2025 and whatever psychopaths Trump can get into whatever positions of authority he can. Like a lot of rotten eggs in a basket making one great stinking basket. All we have to go on, is what they do openly, which is pretty bad.... What do they do in the shadows? Oh God, now I sound like those conspiracy Wacko's. Seriously though, is anyone familiar with Emperor Claudius? Are we being punked right now?

Funny you should say that; guess who the US envoy to the Middle East was with, at the exact same time the chat was opened... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-envoy-steve-witkoff-signal-text-group-chat-russia-putin/ Apparently Witkoff was in a meeting with Putin for about an hour and a half after the signal chat was started. Oh just saw your post about this on the previous page, sorry I missed that. A thought occurs to me though; let's say I had some sensitive messages or information or data to share with someone, that in public I am not meant to share any of that kind of information with. Lots of eyes on me etc, maybe the messages are from Trump to Putin and I want him to get those messages. Maybe I'm an envoy able to travel to Russia with an unsecure phone, a honey pot hackers dead drop.

Of course not! Is betrayal to Mother Russia, Putin will order court martial, then shortly after, firing squad. Is how they do, in Russia, you not go to court martial, court martial go to you.

That still sounds like it could be about TFG! Felon-in-Chief. There, that's its new title, still begins with an F, just not the one that begins with F that it wants... FIC, can that be confused with anything else? I'll call it that if someone drives the nose of it right up his... Peepee hole.

I must have missed that executive order and it's really fucked up, that Trump is so deranged and ridiculous that if you told me he had legit signed an executive order trying to claim Obama is Kenyan, I'd probably believe it. Oh my God has he actually done that? Yeah I need to start thwarting keyword exploits now and may have to pare down my online presence and hide anything anti-TFG I've said. Still waiting for the conditions on my GC to be removed and they are demanding immigrants social media info now to apply for new GCs or to naturalise. I was going to become a citizen of the USA in a few short years from now, but with Trump in the Whitehouse and the USA going to hell, might be better to just keep my British citizenship as an exit clause. Honestly if my daughter wasn't American I'd already be gone. She and my girlfriend are all that keep me here at this point. That said, if things start to get a little to... Reich like, I'd rather be where the resistance to that needs to be, but maybe I'd send my daughter back to the UK at least. Solidaridad immigrante!

This makes me think of two scenarios that would be hilarious to see go down. Scenario one, Trump succeeds in making Canada a new US state, then with their new reps and electoral college votes, vote Republicans down into catastrophic election defeats. Scenario two, Trump succeeds in making a third presidential term legal, but then Obama beats his ass in an election. I know both of these scenarios are unlikely but yeah, those would be some good examples of critical backfires and self owns.