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Cake day: October 20th, 2023

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  • Considerably less than that.

    “The 1%” is, ironically, a way to protect the elites and keep us divided amongst ourselves. But that ignores the wealth inequality issues and how many people aren’t even “middle class”.

    In plenty of states? Making low six figures is already enough to put you as a “one percenter” for your demographic. Especially if you have a partner who makes a similar amount of money. And that scales with cost of living. A couple years ago (during the pandemic) I saw a really good breakdown that basically showed “if you can afford to live on your own, you are probably at least a top 5% earner”

    And those people are just as vulnerable to an illness that insurance doesn’t cover.

    No. The people benefiting aren’t even the “1%”. It is a ridiculously small percentage of the population.

    Because the population of the US is 346.3 million people. One percent of that is about 3.5 million people. You are almost guaranteed to know some “one percenters” and they are probably actually great people who are having a lot of the same struggles as you. Maybe they can afford to buy fast food but they are still only one or two bad days away from being destitute. Which tempers anger and rage and protects the people who actually have the vast majority of the wealth in this country.


  • Because, as many of us pointed out, he was never some super meticulous hitman. He exhibited basic knowledge of firearms and got his stalker on like the ceo what got got was a pretty girl who asked to borrow a pencil that one time in biology class. The rest was taking a bus and wearing a face mask most of the time. It was inevitable that he would be caught unless he fled the country.

    Mostly this just highlighted how incompetent cops are. And… might be used to further efforts to just use computer vision and rudimentary “AI” to process security camera footage in the future.

    As for why he would keep his gun on him? The manifesto kind of says it all (and, to my knowledge, Luigi has not disputed THAT aspect of it). He wanted to get caught. Probably after making it clear he could have escaped if he wanted to (because getting on a flight out of the US would have been trivial).


    To be clear. If he were to have disputed the gun and manifesto I would VERY rapidly be on the side of "cops are planting shit yet again’. But the fact that he hasn’t (to my knowledge) while disputing other potentially planted or misinterpreted evidence puts the kibosh on that.


  • A LOT of yesterday’s arrest is REALLY suspicious. Dude who could easily have fled the country (for a lot of reasons) and had done such a great job of covering his tracks is sitting in a mickey d’s with his murder weapon and a manifesto.

    But… a lot of his social media history (which is not impossible to fake but…) kind of suggests he was very mentally unwell. Which… uh doy? And he is mostly focused on the money (super easy to plant) and the “faraday bag”.

    As for the faraday bag? A LOT of dry bags (an internal bag you put electronics and valuables into if you are going to hike in the rain or go rafting/boating) have a metal mesh. Because they need to withstand abrasians either from being near other gear (you would be shocked how much jagged metal is in a backpack when you go on a proper alpine overnight) or just being able to survive falling overboard and bouncing on the end of a rope in rapids. And guess what a metal mesh does?

    So he presumably got a dry bag of some form to stash his personal shit in while he stashed the second backpack. And I know plenty of hikers and climbers who learn the fun way that the phone they carried “in case someone needs to get a hold of me” had zero signal the entire time it was protected from the rain.



  • I mean, it is pretty obvious they care less about using the shoes and more about building a Brand for whatever reason.

    I’ll also add that this is going to chafe like hell. And even if OP has perfect orthopedic health… they won’t after wearing these for an extended period of time. All but the cheapest of crocs put a bit of effort into the footbed to cushion things and a layer of rigid TPU ain’t it.


  • Except that was absolutely not true the last time I flew. Let me guess, I used the wrong kind of noise canceling headphones.

    Apparently

    Really? It’s a normal thing to demand that I get the comfortable seat and my wife and daughter don’t?

    Nobody is telling you to fly first class. In fact, I specifically mentioned an aisle seat because I am cheap as hell. If you rae buying three adjacent seats you probably have one of those anyway

    And, apparently, the solution you’re offering me is to make them uncomfortable at my expense.

    Yes. I am specifically telling you that you must put your child in a shirt made out of human hairs to flight

    Why do you care if I don’t like flying anyway?

    I don’t give a fuck what you do. In fact, it amuses me that you are the kind of miserable sad sack who has to complain that the entire world is conspiring against you.

    But I also think you’re spewing nonsense and it is fun to highlight that so that nobody takes you seriously.


  • I’ll just ignore my family with noise-cancelling headphones

    Have you ever tried noise cancelling headphones? They are great for background noise and conversations that aren’t right next to you but you’ll have no problem actually talking to your precious family during said flight. In fact, it makes it a lot easier to hear the person next to you

    demand I sit in a specific seat

    Yeah? That is a pretty normal thing if you aren’t buying the most budget of budget tickets. And you wouldn’t subject your family to Ryanair, now would you?

    and make my wife and child sit elsewhere.

    You do you. But generally speaking, seats come in 2s and 3s. So you should be fine to sit with them. Or not. Up to you.

    So… what is next on the docket to establish why your suffering is unique and the entire world should reconfigure to make you happy?





  • Because that would be sanders actually accomplishing something rather than just talking a big game while not getting in the way.

    That has been his entire career. He talks shit but doesn’t accomplish much. And the few times he DOES actually act he mostly just shoots himself in the foot and pisses away any influence he has left.

    Also: The world is catching on fire at an alarming rate and china is trying to intimidate Taiwan again. The last thing sanders wants is to be the guy stopping a military/intel funding bill when that war goes hot.


  • Airplanes are loud,

    Active Noise Cancelling headphones (earbuds if you only fly short hop domestic) are your friends. Failing that? Consider earplugs but those tend to exacerbate pressure issues.

    the seats are cramped and uncomfortable

    Anything short of a car (and even then) in the US is going to be uncomfortable. Buses are somehow worse and even trains aren’t great for extended periods of time unless you pay out the nose. Hell, even a Japanese train gets bothersome after a few hours.

    What works for me is to sit in the aisle seat. For short hops it doesn’t matter. For longer flights? Being able to just get up and walk to the bathroom (or just pretend you are) once an hour goes a long way.

    and the passengers are often obnoxious.

    See above regarding anything but a personal car (and even then). But also? ANC Headphones help with this too

    Maybe you’re okay with unpleasant loud noise, discomfort and annoyance, but considering how much people hate those things in general, I think you’re in a small minority.

    Nobody likes the above. But we tend to like the places we are going a whole lot more. And we are willing to put up with a bit of discomfort in exchange for seeing the world.





  • “The first 48 (hours)” is misleading.

    First, it is mostly a function of how much the cops care. If they care about finding someone they will get off their asses. If they don’t, they will just procrastinate and ignore it. This is why you have stories of families frantically trying to get any help at all to find their loved one that was written off as “a junkie” or “a slut”.

    Second, it matters more when you are dependent on grocery store security cameras and the like that might only have 24 hours of capacity anyway. Less so when you are relying on train stations and bus stations that got all that 9-11 money.

    Third? The cops likely already have all they need to identify him. He was allegedly tracked to having got on a bus in Atlanta. They have a few photos of his face. And basically everyone is in the DMV databases. That gives a general tri-state area (possibly an outright car if they check long term parking for the period he was away) and they can narrow that down by employment status (taking a few weeks off to go off grid is not something a Starbucks barista is allowed to do) and even UHC records to see who was denied a claim in the past few years (fortunately THAT doesn’t narrow shit down at all).

    So they can eventually find him. It is inevitable.

    That said: This is the cops. The first white guy who looks vaguely like the shooter and who has no alibi will be heroically killed by the cops when they went to ask him questions and he opened fire while screaming “I am the guy who killed the UHC CEO and I feel really really bad about it and only did it because I am woke and hate my life and please forgive me officer but I will never be taken alive. Also I am pro illegal immigrants and am spraying fentanyl around in case any cops piss hot after this.”. Also he had a dime bag of weed on him for some reason. Sorry, half a dime bag.


  • Eh. Read up on some of the other big mysteries (stuff like The Somerton Man). Every few years someone who has made it their career/identify has some irrefutable evidence that is either refuted or determined to not be that unique. Or it has been solved for decades but nobody cared enough to make it official and the people writing books/doing talk shows benefit from a “mystery”.

    And in this case? McCoy had already been arrested for a similar crime and is long dead. Nobody really cared to keep searching.

    But also? We have a LOT more cameras these days and a LOT more ability to process that data without human intervention.


    Also, just to make it clear: even if the shooter escaped the country, they are going to be identified (flying on a fake ID is a lot harder and you can bet all the passengers are being checked against the pictures). But it won’t be US cops that catch him (probably just as dead if he doesn’t completely disappear though).


  • The reality is: Unless he fled the country he was always going to be caught. That is the point of living in a surveillance state. It was just a matter of time.

    As a thought exercise, imagine a bathroom. Ten people go in. One person flips their jacket inside out. Ten people come out. Do you suddenly lose that one person who now has a green jacket instead of a red one? No. You realize the person with a green jacket never “entered” and know something was up.

    And now extend that to every single traffic camera, security camera, and so forth in the city and in the country. Because now that “bathroom” is a camera at every major exit in and out of Central Park as well as places where the shrubbery is low enough that you can hop a fence.

    And yes, that is a VERY large amount of data. If only we had spent the past few decades learning to represent things as graph problems, how to use computer vision to automate recognition, and so forth.

    It was obviously dramatized (and is fascinating from a production standpoint and how much effort they put in to keep the nazi from killing anyone…) but Person of Interest wasn’t some dystopic future. It was, if anything, underestimating what is already possible.

    So… here is hoping that ridiculously handsome G went straight to the airport and flew to a non extradition treaty country. Probably didn’t though and is probably going to get picked up at a bus station.


    Also: For all the gun nuts who think you rae going to use your closet full of AR-15s to scream “WILDCATS” and fight off the fascists or invaders or whatever? They’ll have access to those cameras too and will be able to figure out what house or cave you are hiding in and send a few drones. So… yeah