TrickstaPriest

Right, this is the behavior I more or less expected of the campaign, and why I haven't taken any of their assertions to heart. Trump's style has always been "making it up as I go", and nothing his administration says or does has ever said "I took the time to figure this out in any fashion". Unless it's been handed to them by the entire Republican party on a platter. There's probably some voter fraud going on. There could even be bad actors sneaking into the system. That's why I'm happy to have an investigation. But they are saying "The democrats are cheaty cheaty cheaters big fraud everywhere". That's not the messaging of a well-reasoning party with evidence of anything. That's conmen trying to stay on top of the water, and grasping at straws. Be vague enough and anything you say is true, or at least feels true... right? It's frustrating to me and I continue to push against that. It's not just an accusation. It's literally going to tear this country apart. No one will ever forgive any of this, even though campaign-wide massive cheats are incredibly unlikely. All just so Trump can stay in office. So the Trump campaign has gone from "I'm fighting for you" to "I'm fighting for you but I'm really fighting for me and I'll destroy any chance of reconciliation and cooperation this country will ever have for 100 years just so I can stay President for one more term". Did I mention how they (Trump's campaign) leaked ~164k names, addresses, and last 4 SSNs of likely Republican-voters in my area again? 😕 I'd like to know how and why they had a database like that to begin with. I know people who came close to getting burned by that.

I will add - I'm being specific in wording. I appreciate truths regardless of who they are in support for. But I do not let lies pass if it causes people literal, actual danger. This is regardless of the subject

I did see a few jokes in here on Biden. But I won't give any leeway on jokes deliberately spreading "fake news" that I'm aware of. This is doubly true of fake news in support of a president (and his major supporters) that appears to have tried to incite a civil war. I'm still angry about what Alex Jones did here.

You are a better person than I. But I think a 'top five-or-six worst candidates' is a compromise. I've heard so much stuff in the last four years that should have gotten people arrested that I actually have literally forgotten who said what. It's become such a shocking blur of it.

https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2020/10/donald-trump-jr-says-dads-next-move-is-to-break-up-fbi-he-has-to-get-rid-of-these-things/ I'd feel more merciful if Trump wasn't "beheading" and tearing apart every institution in the government that gets in his way. Like a literal, real, actual dictator. See EPA, FDA, CDC, the Justice Department, Agriculture, Treasury I think... (edit) Can't forget Mad Dog, so Defense...

Good point, and I'm sorry for the diatribe on that Hugh. To finish my thought though. Automation just sort of runs over the entire issue with a steamroller. In the example, a more realistic contract would be $10+ million, maybe even $15 million, for 100k machines. But that functionally means each machine is being maintained/run for $150 a year. Even if the value of the dollar collapsed, that would effectively mean they would just find or train workers willing to maintain those machines for the new economy, for effectively costing themselves the same rough rate. The only change to that value rate is how difficult the task is to automate, and how much wear the machine parts take. The former is the only real holdup, and only because of initial investment capital to take it that far. Once they get it to the point customers will utilize the automated tools, the entire pay rate becomes irrelevant.

The argument is also versus automation, which is ridiculous. If you want to know why foreign workers are being paid to do work, it's because they earn 1/10th of what we do. This is literal - at a previous company, our team got wind of that. And we were underpaid, as a team, for our work, by a significant degree. Everyone at the company was. So just to compete with a foreign worker, you are not talking about minimum wage. You are talking about competing with someone paid 5k a year. Now, let's talk about machines. Paying a few people part time to maintain a set of machines is a fair investment. But there will be service companies competing to lower prices on that. Your service contract will not be high. Even if it's a million dollars, that could be to literally maintain nearly a hundred thousand such devices. Each of those devices doing the work of at least one person, much more quickly and expediently. The only exception to this right now is mechanical work, like factories. But workers there are trained within weeks or months. There's no point in them caring overly much if they fire such people - only the real dedicated ones are kept happy. The rest they can easily undercut and underfund. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft#:~:text=Nationally it is estimated that,all forms of wage theft. The other reason I mention mechanical parts is because they break down faster than electronic ones. Of course, videos advertising displaying new tech for free movement across factory floors with minimal mechanical parts has been out for a few months now...

https://www.npr.org/2020/11/01/930140373/fact-check-trump-falsely-claims-that-votes-shouldnt-be-counted-after-election-da https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/midnight-tonight/616970/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/01/us/politics/trump-ballot-counting-election.html Just part of the public record that yes, Trump did push to literally stop ballot counting on election night. https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/11/03/the-starkest-choice-since-1964-johnson-goldwater-battle/

As I literally said a day or two ago, people are forgetting that Trump had four years to open any kind of commission or investigation he wanted to in our election process. He refused to do so. He didn't care to do so. His entire administration he's been making up outrageous claims, from Ted Cruz's father being the assassin of JFK, to Fox News treating him unfairly in very basic interviews. It's not as though there might not be election shenanigans, it's whether those shenanigans are significant. The point, as we've said for over a month, isn't to try and demonstrate or improve anything, just to tear down what exists if it's in his way, personally. (edited to make this less personal. I admit my own ire) My point, I guess, is that we don't improve a democratic process by tearing down the fundamental institutions that are in the way of a specific politician. That's how we lose those things. (edit) The way people share this is what's frustrating me personally so much. Like there's literally no context and he hasn't been saying and talking like this for months, trying to shut down even vote counting past midnight despite how insane that is.

This is the best pair of videos I can use to describe the interaction of power and automation. Specifically about things like banana republics, and the minimum infrastructure necessary to support it:

Problem has to do with the balance of power. In a stable democracy, our chief resource is skilled workers. This is because companies have to compete for skilled workers, the government has to provide amenities (like hospitals), and classes. We've seen a trend cutting back all of these things. It's just my opinion, but I believe it's because America is less interested in the benefits of having skilled workers anymore, and fewer and fewer skilled workers need to exist. McDonalds is a perfect example of that. They can easily fire and replace those people in weeks. But cutting a salaried skill worker, on average, apparently costs the company 2.5x that persons' salary to replace. They want to keep them. This doesn't mean low-skilled workers shouldn't be treated well. It's why I argue for such benefits. But when the balance of power shifts too much, and workers have too little power, there's no point in maintaining any of the societal benefits needed to begin with

I wholly agree on both of those - companies moving towards part timers are in what's called "race to the bottom", where no one knows anything about the company. We had that starting to happen at a previous company I was working at, and when all the skilled people left, it crippled the company. The problem with using McDonalds is that they want kiosks over people. There's so little point in having a full timer in the business. Pushing for a higher minimum wage -did- make that automate faster, but the minimum wage is already so low you can't live on it for 40 hours a week. It's actually impossible in many locations. Blaming the minimum wage on that just doesn't track. A kiosk does the work of a thousand humans compared to the cost. Firing all your humans for one or two machines is always the end goal, and minimum wage only sped that up by less than a decade. Wells Fargo announced many months before the election was even talked about that everyone at the company better learn about machine learning, or they are (edit: probably) getting canned. Those people definitely earn more than minimum wage. But that's not the point. The point is even if there was no minimum wage, your payment would be the same as a slave in China in order to compete with the trend you are talking about.

I don't get this argument. It's blatantly wrong. How much do you think you need to be paid to compete with a kiosk? Less than $1 an hour. Minimum wage or not, less people and more kiosks up front.

Prominent ex member of Trump's cabinet or advisory board? Man, it's been so long... and so many names. I'm sure he doesn't see it that way. Because this is all about winning for the sake of ruling, not for anything else.

There seems to be a direct appeal from Trump's most loyal associates to murder the people judging/investigating/prosecuting them. While arguing for their (edit: own) innocence at the same time. And people wonder why I don't like this person.

Another thread that could be looked into, no idea if it's accurate. Just something for someone with more time to dig down in:

Good times. 😕 And I'm not surprised so many people are trying to incite even more violence. We (democrats) always look the other way on it, even when they call people like us literal demons. So of course threats of violence become more and more appealing... because they are certain they'll win, and then everything will be better. Anyway, just my headspace today. The 'revolutionaries' seem more interested in killing other upset voters, or officials, than trying to put in the work to actually fix the country. While people like me are putting in the work to talk to people and trying to fix the country, as we get death threats from the revolutionaries. So I guess we are supposed to accept death threats against judges from more of Trump's (ex)staff? (edit: I haven't exactly forgotten Stone, hence the picture)

Well. I didn't know he had been arrested.

I mean, sources are pretty valuable for this kind of question...

I do want them to have a correct tally. But I did literally just post that this story is being spread by a known disinformation agent. So we'll see.

At this point I'm just concerned about whether there is going to be a violent uprising over some of the tally issues and rumor mongering going on in MI.

In case you see these tweets - https://twitter.com/@stillgray lives in (edit) Malaysia Singapore and is known to promote false information. That doesn't mean anything for or against what he's tweeting about in this case, but he's very much identified as a disinformation source and possibly trying to incite unrest and violence.

I am not unsympathetic to people who don't understand or who are afraid of shenanigans going on. But my point to those people is that Trump literally had four years, and two years of an entire Republican congress, to investigate or create commissions for this sort of thing. He could have done anything to assist in this process. He did not. I don't think he cared to. I didn't know you were a software guy

Good. Calls to violence should get him arrested.

Literally what I expected. People are talking about fraud like Trump wasn't President for 4 years. With the power to open a commission, a committee, an investigation, anything. If anyone cares about fraud, blame Trump for not even trying to do anything about it, just so he can use it as an excuse at best... or that he's completely ad-libbing at the last minute on this and every other issue.