No, the original poster is referencing, rightly or wrongly, the Hunter Biden receiving millions without seemingly performing work for a foreign national individual, then threatening the individual with retribution from both him and (potentially) his dad sitting next to him.
Really? Not the fake elector scheme? Or the attempt to overturn the results of the last election? Or the willful retention of classified documents and the attempts to evade returning them? Any one of those would be better candidates for watergate-squared.
The president's son allegedly committed quite a few crimes, including offering access to his father (The US President) for money. He has been charged for some of these crimes recently.
He was charged with not paying taxes and felony gun possession and plead guilty to the tax charges (the felony will go to trial later). I've read nothing about access for money.
But I don't think anyone is ignoring it. Everyone is aware Hunter has had a troubled life and made bad choices. Everyone I've spoken to about this, even the left leaning, is of the opinion that if he broke the law he should face punishment. No one is on the other side of the issue here. The truly newsworthy bit is that he's been charged and facing consequences which, if we look at past presidential children, is the outlier.
>The president's son allegedly committed quite a few crimes, including offering access to his father (The US President) for money. He has been charged for some of these crimes recently.
It's certainly plausible that the junior Biden may well have offered "access to his father" as a lure to obtain pecuniary benefit.
And while the optics are terrible, I'd note that the current US president held no elective or appointed office in any government when the telegram message that's been cited to "corroborate" the "influence peddling" allegations.
As such, It's not clear to me what, if anything, the senior Biden could have done, at that time, in that context.
I'm not defending anyone here, nor am I trying to skewer anyone. Rather, the narrative presented just doesn't make sense to me given the time frames involved.
You mean the previous Prez's son in law who somehow got a Multibillion dollar investment from the Saudi's while he ostensibly worked directly in the white house? Yeah that should be investigated for sure.
There's no way that could be Watergate-squared. The defining characteristic of Watergate was the audio tapes, so this has to be a reference to the "Bring some Cokes in, please" recording.
>There's no way that could be Watergate-squared. The defining characteristic of Watergate was the audio tapes, so this has to be a reference to the "Bring some Cokes in, please" recording.
I have to disagree. The defining characteristic of Watergate was the illegal (break-ins to steal political opponents' strategies and psychiatrists files) activities by a political organization (CREEP[0]) that were then covered up by those at the highest levels of the executive branch.
The issue wasn't that there were recordings of such a cover up, it was the cover up that was the problem. Unless, of course, you'd like to argue that something isn't illegal/immoral if you don't get caught.
Even under that different defining characteristic, the analogue would be the same modern event: the recording that gives lie to the cover-up narrative that he had used his psychic declassification superpowers.
>Even under that different defining characteristic, the analogue would be the same modern event: the recording that gives lie to the cover-up narrative that he had used his psychic declassification superpowers.
My apologies. I wasn't clear that I was responding to this:
The defining characteristic of Watergate was the audio tapes, so this has to
be a reference to the "Bring some Cokes in, please" recording.
And not at all responding to this:
There's no way that could be Watergate-squared.
I don't claim that the former president's legal issues are "Watergate-squared."
While there are some similarities between Watergate and the current situation, specifically a lack of ethics, enormous hubris and that it involves a (former) US President among other things, the cases are quite different and should be treated as such.
So far quite opposite is happening. Until about 15 years ago, Istanbul was very cosmopolitan city. You could meet people from all corners of Africa, Asia and Europe there. Even locals looked very white because of all slaves Ottomans brought into Istanbul. To some extend Istanbul was culturally not part of Turkey (something like London and UK).
Hovewer over last decade or so, Istanbul is being assimilated into Turkey. Many orthodox muslim turkish immigrants from east part of Turkey. More radicals... Foreigners are not so welcomed anymore...
That's a weird thing to say given that Turkish people themselves are complaining that Istanbul (in particular Fatih, which was the center of Constantinople) is being taken over by Arabs and Africans (Sub-Saharan). That seemed true to me a year ago when I was there. Are you sure you are not mistaking Arabs for Turks? The Turks I met are mostly white and the one living in Istanbul are quite "cosmopolitan".
> To some extend Istanbul was culturally not part of Turkey (something like London and UK).
This is a bit off topic, but I don't think it's right to say that London is not culturally part of the UK. As the only very large city London has its own identity, but I don't think you can usefully assign an identity to the UK or England minus London. The bigger divide lies along age, class, and education.
So Manchester, Bristol, and many of the university cities end up being more culturally similar to inner London. They are all places younger people with degrees move for education and employment and many spend a decade in London starting their careers after finishing their degrees elsewhere, before moving on again to find more space for a family.
Then on the other side of the divide you have parts of outer east London like Dagenham which are perhaps more culturally similar to other struggling post-industrial places like Stoke or Middlesborough.
This has more in common with Austin, Texas. Everyone is grumpy about all the people moving there, but the vast, vast majority are moving there from other parts of Texas rather than out of state.
That sounds incredibly unlikely to me. Or, I suppose it could make sense, but only under a couple of circumstances:
1. Each year’s crop of UT students constitutes a large fraction of Austin transplants. But that doesn’t seem possible, as I can’t imagine that’s more than 20k a year.
2. Most transplants are from Texas, but every other Texas metro is experiencing similar intra-state migration, and so every big city in Texas is hollowing out the state’s hinterlands.
> because of all slaves Ottomans brought into Istanbul.
The genetic makeup of Anatolia did not change that much due to the Turkic invasion. Moat people in Turkey are still descendants of the Greeks, Armenians, Kurds and other who lived there for thousands of years before the invasions.
There was a significant influx from the Balkans and Ukrainian steppes etc. during the the Ottoman period due to the extensive importation of slaves.
But otherwise the Turkish population at least in the west and most other coastal regions os indistinguishable from the rest of the Mediterranean region genetically.
Is it that foreigners are less welcome, or is it that anyone with other options for places to live is leaving the country to avoid the tanking ecomomy?
> freedom money can buy as it relates to your work.
> power of money resides in its ability to provide a better life for our families.
I really hate this mentality, it sees money as power to buy freedom and eventually to "buy family".
For me the key is to minimize expenses to some reasonable minimum. It does not matter how much I make, it does not affect my lifestyle much. Maybe I would buy a nicer laptop. I gave up on being slave to money long time ago.
That includes being a slave to family! I am open to serious relationship, but most people think I am cheap bum. I have no reason to change their opinions!
Look into article, it is all Phase 1, Phase 2.... like an elevator. And absolute top is helping community like proper tradcon. It does not even count with possibility, that people do not really care about such things. There is no basic reasoning about "should we do it"? Usual endgame is to settle down with bad partner.
I like hiking and traveling. I am always in climate that has nice temperatures, usually near sea. Sometimes I sleep on beach, sometimes in hotel. All via super cheap deals (you get very good at that over time).
If I would have less money, I would probably live healthier lifestyle. I would cut alcohol and meat, eat more veggies. I would also take long term lease, make some friends, that is another win for mental health.
If you're in a position of saying "if I had less money [...] I'd take a long term lease" you already pretty far on the "buy freedom with money" ladder compared to a lot of people. (Or underestimating the difficulty in many places of getting a long term lease without having much money or steady employment without sacrificing some of your other things like nice climate.)
You just did a different thing with your freedom. So the part of the mentality you just hate is that "once you have freedom you can provide for your family"?
Had to look up "tradcon". Sounds pejorative. "...but should we?" is a good question, I agree. You mention that people _assume_ "building community" is a good thing we should do, and that you are unconvinced that people really care about such things.
You end your paragraph suggesting that longer term lease (a more stable physical location) + make some friends = win for mental health. This would be my basic description of building community. What do you think?
Changing locations every few weeks wears you down, some recovery is needed.. And "making some friends" is an euphemism for mating if you have to know, very hard to get quality stuff if you are just passing through.
I get the whole "building community", some people are really into it, but some others are not!
Well it seems like you do agree that there is value in building a community and even stability. It's not that you refute the value, you just don't want it forced down everyone's throats as some self-righteous ideal and measure of a man. I agree with that.
edit to add: re: "...very hard to get quality stuff" lol yeah that's funny, I came back to this because "the good stuff" in my experience has to do with intimacy, and that takes some kind of earned connection over time, I don't want to make any moral argument, connections can come in various ways, who am I to say. So purely observational, interesting to think about the idea of quality (physical) connections whether there is some necessity for more "tradcon" concepts as you mention.
Your position seems a little hypocritical? Your life style wouldn't be possible without other people valuing community - nothing wrong with it or for pointing out other ways of living, but you are coming off as kind of hostile towards a structure you depend on and it bothers me.
It would be interesting to track other stats. With alcohol person can be active while intoxicated, they can move and talk... Some other drugs may knock them out much earlier.
So if people start using harder substitute drugs, there may be raise of drug overdose, while domestic violence goes down.
Also in some countries effect may be opposite. During covid lockdowns people were not allowed to go to pubs (leave home) and domestic violence raised. Lockdowns were effectively strong prohibition.
Most countries have penalty points on driving license. If some driver is violating traffic rules too often, they should lose driving license! Self driving cars should not have an exception!
are you suggesting this on a per car basis, or all cars working off of the same point system? accruing enough points to unlock "suspended license" achievement would seem appropriate to be applied to the entire fleet since it's the same "AI".
Per driving license. It already works like that with truck driver and other professional drivers. They may have 5x more accidents than normal person, but they drive 20x more miles.
Truck drivers are individual people making discrete decisions. A robocar company all uses the same training data to make the same results.
Put 10 different human drivers in the same situation, you'd expect a variance of decisions being made. Put 10 robocars in the same situation, you'd expect 1 decision being made. Is this not how they are being tested? Am I crazy to assume this?
Absolutely, however holding the entire fleet responsible for the number of faults that would disqualify a single driver also seems wrong. If a taxi driver drives 8 hours a day, then 10 robotaxis will drive 80 hours in that same day and statistically be subject to perform 10x the number of faults, if we're holding them to the same standard.
Now, if 12 points loses your license, you have 10 cars, and rack up 120 points across the fleet, it seems obvious that on the whole the fleet is performing worse than a fleet of human drivers we would otherwise ban.
Not an easy problem, to be sure. On one hand, companies can't be allowed free reign to clog up the roads and cause havoc without consequence. On the other, if we NIMBY the development too much, we will be stuck behind countries that don't. In my opinion, we're near the right balance but probably need to take some short term action to make it clear to companies that a remedy for the current behavior around emergency vehicles needs to be priority 0.
If you take 10 exact same calculators and perform the same operation, you're going to get the same result on all 10. Why? It's a program running on the same hardware. If this hypothetical fleet of robocars are all on the same hardware using the same software, they are essentially the same machine. This one of the key things we've been told about how much safer robocars will be compared to humans. These robocars are not sentient making unique decisions. They all have the same set of logic in them. Your logic just does not compute with me.
Edit: also, it's the same as a recall to me. If one part is deployed to thousands of cars, all of them are recalled. Same applies here for me.
It should be per software. Maybe per software version, if the company can conclusively prove that the prior problems that led to points cannot happen again.
Stuff like this is why I prefer to take a bus in Germany.
Trains are overbooked with free tickets and promotions (free pass for entire summer for 50 euro). While underlying infrastructure is not ready for such load. It leads to delays and mistakes. Plus railway stations in Germany look like homeless shelters!
On other side Germany has excellent motorway network. Flixbus is very cheap, quite comfortable, goes all the way to airport, and always on time!
Let's see. Cologne to Berlin takes ~4:40 hours by train. Flixbus takes 9-10 hours, not counting the time it takes to get to their departure station which would involve a train journey as it's not actually in the city centre.
Flixbus is 50€ cheaper when traveling that route tomorrow but that's about all it has going for it.
Even if you aren't at the airport that early, it still takes you an hour to get from the airport to the city centre in Berlin, and about half an hour to get to the airport from Cologne's city centre. That's by train, by car it takes even longer.
Sure but assuming you're traveling from centre to centre, which is where population densities are highest, is a sound assumption. Otherwise you can always find spots where getting to the airport, train station, flixbus stop or whatever takes extremely long with one mode of transport over the other.
Doesn't distract from the point that long distances busses are very much not an alternative to rail (or planes for that matter) unless price is the deciding factor. And even the latter is questionable in many cases thanks to the 49€ ticket.
> product managers need to influence others without authority.
This is BS! If manager has no authority, he does not matter! It is probably just some BS role to tick the checkbox!
Manager handles resource allocation. It protects its workers from being allocated away by other managers and departments. It also needs to make sure they are actually working on stuff that is needed!
This "trust" argument just offloads responsibility from management to low level workers.
And yet, software product managers mostly do not have managerial authority.
They manage the product, not the people. But they need to influence the people anyway.
