I don’t like him at all, but he was articulate and not at all unhinged.

I get what you mean here, but it’s also what makes Vance and whatever else comes after Trump so dangerous: the bar has been lowered so far that people now view “able to form coherent sentences” as “not at all unhinged.”

The man stood there and repeated the bald faced lie about Haitian migrants’ legal status and then had a temper tantrum that the rules said he wasn’t supposed to be fact-checked.

The substance of what he was saying was absolutely unhinged. But the Overton window has shifted so far that, because his delivery was neatly packaged, it doesn’t look that bad compared to what we’ve gotten used to.

I’ve honestly ran out of ways to keep saying the two very basic points here

Repeating yourself does seem to be your priority here.

If you had actually read through the piece I linked instead of looking for something to immediately disagree with in the snippet I quoted, you’d see she linked to this story. The entire reason we’re hearing about this now is because Trump was briefed on the threat by US intelligence and Trump is literally incapable of not immediately repeating what he’s been told.

And if you took 20 seconds to Google after that, you’d find that the DNI has publicly confirmed that the briefing with Trump happened. Additionally, the same story has Anthony Blinken confirming that the US has been tracking Iranian threats against Trump as well as other past and current officials. It even links to multiple previous reports discussing an increased threat profile dating back months just like I said was the case.

My point is that Trump is not the only source and that there’s been corroboration from parties who really don’t care about making Trump look good. I’m not inclined to believe the story because Trump said it and, yes, Trump is absolutely a liar; I’m inclined to believe it because it’s been fairly widely reported well before Trump said anything at all.

My “misunderstanding” is having followed this story for more than a single headline.

Marcy Wheeler has written extensively about it for months now. She’s been at the center of the story to the extent that she was one of the journalists that (presumably Iran) attempted to leak hacked Trump campaign documents through. She’s very adamantly of the stance that there is a real threat because it’s been corroborated by multiple sources who don’t have any interest in propping up Trump.

https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/09/25/dont-make-the-same-mistake-with-iran-that-denialists-made-with-russia/

I fear that, because of the polarization Trump has deliberately stoked, many lefties are doing the same thing that Trump’s MAGAts did with Russia: treat credible allegations that Iran is targeting him, both for hacking and assassination, as a hoax.

Regarding the hacking, as happened in 2016, it is not just the Intelligence Community (one, two) attributing the hack in real time. Both Microsoft and Google have described the operation. As I explained repeatedly regarding the 2016 Russian attack, big American tech companies have a similar kind of global reach as the NSA, and when someone uses their infrastructure to target someone, they have both the tools and an independent incentive to get the attribution right. There’s really no reason to doubt the attribution, from three of the entities with the best global reach in the world, that Iran targeted Trump’s campaign.

Regarding Iran’s attempt to assassinate Trump, there’s also no reason to doubt that. While the case against Asif Merchant, whom DOJ accused of trying to solicit a variety of operations targeting Trump, does rely on undercover FBI employees posing as wannabe hitmen, the underlying tip — from the guy Merchant allegedly asked for help recruiting a hit team — appears to be organic, just someone calling the cops. Plus, the effort bears certain resemblance to the effort to solicit assassins for John Bolton, arising from the same motive of revenge for the Qassem Soleimani killing.

Trump’s a blowhard. He’s absolutely going to use the story as a wedge. Don’t do his work for him by dismissing the possibility of what appear to be real threats out of hand.

I’m not saying we know the exact nature of what’s going on or that any threat is particularly immediate; what I am saying is that there’s enough information available from sources that aren’t affiliated with Trump that the possibility should be taken seriously.

Court documents do not identify any of the potential targets. But U.S. officials acknowledged in July that a threat on Donald Trump’s life from Iran prompted additional security in the days before a Pennsylvania rally in which Trump was injured by a shooter’s bullet. That July 13 shooting, carried out by a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man, was unrelated to the Iran threat and Merchant’s arrest has no connection to the Trump assassination attempt, a law enforcement official said.

https://apnews.com/article/iran-pakistan-murderforhire-trump-justice-department-5a3abe0895ae7c2be14f89fc4e49bc53

This is a story that has been building for a few months. While I’m not particularly convinced that this specific threat was particularly credible, there’s been plenty of reporting that the Biden DOJ is taking this seriously.

It’s not really surprising to me that Iran would want Trump dead. I don’t think they were anywhere close to actually accomplishing that, but I can certainly believe they’d try.

Yes, Trump and the rest of the rightwing are going to blow it up into something bigger than what actually happened, but it’s important to understand the truth in the lie because the story is potentially consequential in the wider relationship between the US and Iran.

The DOJ announced the arrest of a man working on behalf of Iran attempting to recruit assassins a couple of weeks ago:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/pakistani-national-ties-iran-charged-connection-foiled-plot-assassinate-politician-or-us-0

The interesting thing is that it’s actually Gen X where Trump has disproportionately high support among women.

Oh, I don’t disagree at all.

Like I said, Nate’s definitely increasingly treaded into questionable territory in the past few years and I don’t have a sense for whether it’s impacted the model since I’ve honestly not been paying close attention to the horse race this cycle.

I was mostly pointing out that while the dude has almost always been a bad take generator, the 2016 model very arguably outperformed its contemporaries despite the popular view that they blew it. I wouldn’t be shocked if Nate’s sponsors and general ideological drift has impacted the model this cycle (*especially given Peter Thiel’s involvement), but I don’t have a strong sense for whether that’s the case either. I also wouldn’t be particularly surprised if he sufficiently separated the stats from the dumb ideas to produce a reasonable model either. I just don’t have enough info to have formed an opinion there.

That’s what makes this exceptionally stupid: ballots in Georgia are fully electronic.

You make your selections on a touchscreen voting machine. The machine records your selections. “Counting” is literally a matter of taking the output from the machine and telling a server to add up the totals.

The paper ballot is literally just a laser printer next to the machine that spits out a sheet of paper showing what the voter selected. The paper ballots are supposed to just be a backup in case there are problems with the machines.

A lot of other models were saying something ridiculous like Clinton had 95% chance to win or something. Nate Silver’s model seems better than others based on this, if anything.

The constant attacks on how 538’s model performed in 2016 says more about statistics literacy than it does about the model.

There is plenty to criticize Nate Silver for. Take your pick. Personally, the political nihilism that’s increasingly flirted with “anti-woke” sentiment is good enough for me. Some people might prefer taking issue with the degenerate gambling. The guy has pumped out plenty of really dumb hot takes over the years, so you have your options.

But his models, historically, have performed relatively well if you understand that they’re models and not absolute predictors.

She leads in every demo but 51-64, where she’s slightly behind. Interestingly enough, she’s got the 64+ demo by a good margin.

So the very last of the boomers and early Gen X. Definitely interesting.

The Fairness Doctrine is a red herring in the conversation either way. Even if it hadn’t been rescinded, it would have eventually become irrelevant.

The Fairness Doctrine only ever applied to radio and TV broadcasters, i.e., broadcasters operating using the limited, publicly owned radio spectrum. It was only Constitutionally enforceable because it was intended to ensure equal access to what was essentially a public space.

Cable TV and the Internet turned that completely on its head. Attempting to regulate speech over a privately owned medium is a very, very different legal hill to climb. The most problematic sources of misinformation and bias today tend not to be AM radio but things like NewsMax or Libsoftiktok.

It’s a huge problem, but it’s not one the Fairness Doctrine would solve.

why is that move considered political?

Political lobbying is kind of inherently political, no? They weren’t passive observers or commentators; they hired lobbyists to influence the legislative outcome.

Actively working to shape the legal structure of the country to better suit their company is politics. It’s different from culture war politics, but it’s still politics.

If anything, economic politics are what traditionally drove a lot of the political divide in this country. That’s taken a back seat to a degree, but it hasn’t made it not political.

they didn’t want their non-political national brand associated with extremely politically decisive right wing media

Worth noting: Dunkin is owned by Inspire Brands, who went out of their way to toot their own horn about how they were successful in lobbying to kill inclusion of a minimum wage hike as part of COVID relief:

https://www.newsweek.com/this-fast-food-giant-bragged-about-killing-15-minimum-wage-1579273

So they’re perfectly happy to take political positions; they just recognize these platforms are even more radioactive than bragging about opposing living wages for their workers.

Further, Inspire is owned by Roark Capital – a company literally named after an Ayn Rand character. That’s how far out in the loonie bin these folks are. And the MAGAs are too far over the line even for them, lol.

So Kamala was also invited to speak, but she had to be at a funeral and couldn’t come. She offered to do it on Zoom, but the NABJ declined. To me this is more an indictment of them

I’m willing to give them a pass on this because Trump complained that he had wanted to do the interview remotely and they had also declined for him.

It sounds like the ground rules for both included “it has to be in person” and the NABJ stuck to their guns on that.

This is really the point to open a second front and start openly, explocitly calling him a coward.

Weird is effective at highlighting how far outside the mainstream these people are.

Coward directly pokes holes in and deflates his strongman image. It hits enthusiasm within the cult.

Beyond physical injury, Trump’s description of the event – along with Wray saying the FBI is unsure – really makes me lean toward it not being a direct wound.

Trump said he heard bullets “whizzing” by. A supersonic bullet directly next to your ear isn’t going to make a whizzing sound like on TV; there’s going to be a loud, distinct crack from the sonic boom as it passes by.

I fully believe Trump would be leaning into that hard if that’s what he’d heard. “It was like thunder next to my head. The loudest thunder. The greatest thunder you’ve ever heard. HUEG thunder.” It’s exactly the kind of thing he loves to play up.

our last “just war” that was even a little cut and dry was world war two.

The Balkans were pretty cut and dry in justified intent.

It was an intervention into the worst genocide in Europe since WW2. We’re talking not only wholesale slaughter of civilians, but even the establishment of literal rape camps as part of an organized, systemic campaign of ethnic cleansing. What was happening in the former Yugoslavia was absolutely horrific and the US and NATO stepping in to put an end to it was an unequivocally good thing.

That said, there were still questionable incidents like the “accidental” bombing of the Chinese embassy or the numerous cases of civilians killed by NATO bombs. But that mostly emphasizes the fact that there’s no such thing as a clean war. War is always going to leave blood on your hands, even if it’s being fought for the right reasons.

As somebody that’s a paying Kagi user and generally happy with the service, it is interesting seeing exactly where the tradeoffs are.

While I’d say Kagi pretty much universally returns better results for technical information or things like recipes where it deprioritizes search spam, it’s also pretty clear that there are other areas where the absence of targeting hurts results. Any type of localized results, e.g., searching for nearby restaurants or other businesses tends to be really hit or miss and I tend to fall back to Google there.

Of course, that’s because Kagi is avoiding targeting to the point where they don’t even use your general location to prioritize results. It’s an interesting balancing act and I’m not quite sure they’ve hit the sweet spot yet, at least for me personally, but I like the overall mission and the results for most searches so I’m happy with the overall experience currently.

Searches are supposed to be fast at giving you the answer you’re looking for. But that is antithetical to advertising.

And we have evidence that this is exactly why it happened, too:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

While I’d highly recommend giving either the article a read or the companion podcast a listen because Ed Zitron did some fantastic reporting on this, the tl;dr is that a couple of years ago, there was direct conflict between the search and advertising wings of Google over search query metrics.

The advertising teams wanted the metrics to go up to help juice ad numbers. The search team rightly understood that there were plenty of ways they could do so, but that it would make for a worse user experience. The advertising team won.

The head of the advertising team during this was a man named Prabhakar Raghavan. Roughly a year later, he became the head of Google Search. And the timing of all this lines up with when people started noting Google just getting worse and worse to actually use.

Oh, and the icing on the cake? Raghavan’s previous job? Head of Yahoo Search just before that business cratered to the point that Yahoo decided to just become a bing frontend.

Zitron is fond of saying that these people have names and it’s important that we know who’s making the decisions that are actively making the world of tech worse for everyone; I tend to agree.

Tree nested communication is much more superior than traditional thread based communication

Heavily depends, IMO.

Nested threads are great temporary discussion of a specific story or idea. They’re absolutely miserable for long-running discussions. New posts get lost in the tree and information ends up scattered across multiple threads as a result.

It’s also been my personal experience that the nested threads format just doesn’t seem to build communities in the same way forums did. I have real-life friendships that were made on forums decades ago and I never had that experience with reddit despite being a very early user.

I don’t think that’s entirely due to the ephemeral format, but I do think it plays a part in it. A deep thread between two people on Reddit might last a few hours and a dozen replies before it falls off the page. On forums threads running months or years were pretty common, and that kind of engagement with the same people certainly changes how your relationships develop with them.