Good riddance, though a plane crash seems like a relatively easy way to “kill” someone while they go into hiding.

Sure, as long as we also have a competency test for retirees as well.

I wonder who scores better?

I think too often we get caught up on “the game” and try to frame decisions solely in that context.

The reality is that sometimes in politics people hold genuine beliefs, and when it comes to the GOP I think a non-insignificant caucus of them genuinely opposes abortion for various personal reasons.

Of course, it’s just his “get out of jail free” card to save face publicly when he starts rejecting requests.

He qualified it by specifying it’s if you were “unfairly” facing repercussions, which of course means he can deny or accept anyone he wants for any reason that he wants and still claim he’s upholding his pledge.

Haven’t used my desktop in ages, has been completely replaced by my personal and work laptops.

It’s so incredibly frustrating. One of the main reasons Trump rose to popularity was his campaigning against D.C. ineptitude and corruption. Drain the swamp and all of that. And now we have the perfect encapsulation of why those issues exist. He is the ineptitude and corruption. But the people who are supposedly railing against that are embracing him without wavering. Now they’re about to nominate someone who had a laundry list of indictments.

If you can’t hold yourselves accountable how could you ever expect to hold others accountable? It doesn’t work like that. The GOP is broken, but perhaps more concerning are the supposed independents who for one reason or another just don’t seem to care.

He’d probably have to put all of his eggs in the reincarnation basket and start doing some good deeds.

Or bad deeds, depending on your opinion of actors.

This line from Schindler’s List always stuck with me:

“Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.”

The context is that at the end of the movie Schindler is distraught thinking of how many more he could have saved if he just did certain things differently, like selling a ring and using that money to hire another Jewish worker. One of the people he saved tells him the above line.

It’s stuck with me for two reasons, I think.

First, it’s an interesting perspective on individuality. Each person has their own unique perspective of the world. When that person dies, that perspective is gone forever. An entire universe dies with them, never to be seen again. I think that’s a powerful way to view the individual.

Second, it’s a reminder that we do what we can, and while it may be imperfect, it’s enough. You can’t save everyone, just live well and help those you can in the capacity that you can. If you save one of those people, you’ve saved the world.

The Exorcist got me pretty good

In this case the article states Meta did not comply with the requests and responded to the FBI with concerns about the accounts being flagged. It also states that Meta was not pressured to comply with the requests.

I think this is a tricky situation. It’s in the interest of social media companies to limit the spread of misinformation on their platforms. When that misinformation is coming from state actors (e.g. Russia) it’s not uncommon for the US Government to have the best knowledge of those efforts. It follows that the social media company would want to consult with the US Government to improve their efforts. But the US Government obviously also has its own interests and biases that can very easily corrupt those efforts.

There has been cases (as pointed out in the last court case) where I think the government did cross the line from advisory to directive. I think that’s a problem that absolutely needs to be addressed.

IMO the answer to this is a bit of a one-way communication and transparency. The US Government should keep a publicly accessible database of what it believes to be misinformation efforts including posts, accounts, etc. Third parties can audit that DB and conduct their own reviews. It would then be up to them whether or not to use that information to aid their own efforts. The public can also review that information and they (and the media) can point out the flaws and mistakes they believe are being made.

I don’t think you solve one problem by introducing another problem. The solution to over-criminalization is to decriminalize things. If a person is a danger to society, charge them with a crime and let a jury of their peers decide their guilt. Hacking into someone’s property so that you can spy on them is absolutely not an alternative worth entertaining.