He's definitely selling pardons for cash, but it goes even beyond that.

I think Trump is creating a network of the most high-profile and unrepentant lawbreakers in the world, with him loosely at the head of it. Billionaires, heads of state, celebrities... He's a career criminal so why wouldn't he?

Oh, the strikes were *intended* to be lethal. I can't wait for him to try this defense in court.

Actually I was being ironic, but it could well be something normal like that, or maybe he searched to see if people were already looking for him. Even a glitch related to time zones or data aggregation or whatever. More information is needed.

Lone gunman searching for his own name, no doubt

I think it's that Smith loves the drama. She's nothing more than a mini-Trump who craves the same drama & attention.

It doesn't even matter if it's her own voters who lose out on medical care or get hit with huge bills, this provides more jolts than doing the boring job of governing competently.

Based on how the vaccine system was rolled out by the UCP, the renewal process will contain a bunch of annoyances and extra steps so that many people will inevitably fall through the cracks.

Haven't seen Homeland but I totally agree about the historical protocols excruciatingly obeyed in the Diplomat. The whole thing is a really great series but I keep imaging Trump administration officials clomping through the scene like a bunch of rhinoceroses.

The chortling assumption that Canada would be gifted "state" status and representation in the US house/senate/electoral college.

This lunatic outburst should dog him until the day he dies. There's only a microscopic number of people who think doing this is OK.

This path leads to chaos.

Yeah that's exactly what I said

Well for one thing, the deportation terror is a dry run for giving illegal orders to the National Guard/Pentagon and defying the courts.

You don't just full-on declare martial law all at once, you do it by stages so you can identify and weed out anyone in a position of power who resists.

The foreign policy is aggressive, deranged and dangerous, but as a Canadian I feel the first thing the US needs to address is the secret police disappearing people for indefinite imprisonment and torture beyond the reach of any justice system. How this is being allowed to continue I have no idea.

Waiting for Guffman at number 5... Save me from "best" lists compiled by professional critics. Guffman is about the 5th best CHRISTOPHER GUEST film.

I hope someone is making a database of the countless MAGA engagement farming accounts and where they're based -- before they all start using VPNs to disguise their identities.

LOL well I sure don't like LLMs or believe they can be intelligent.

I just think that even for villains like Peter Thiel, AI is intended to be a way of monopolizing advanced intelligence and exerting power over knowledge & decision making, but not making people objectively dumber.

I'm not reflexively disagreeing but most of the people behind it rely on (or even worship) AI themselves, a lot more than the average person.

I do agree they want to control the output & ultimately control "truth", but AI actively makes users dumber & I don't think that's an intentional consequence

That last sentence is a pretty good explanation for many of his words and actions.

I think maybe he glommed on to a buzzword like "transparency" and decided to deliver it without considering how UN-transparent his propaganda engine really is, especially since he took it private.

Why did Musk do this? Does this stem from his mind, or was it some organizational thing that wasn't thought through?

Anyone could have foreseen many influencer accounts would have misleading origins and might not be covering their tracks carefully as they never expected to be outed in this way.