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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Refresher on McCabe from The Guardian:

    McCabe was part of FBI leadership, briefly as acting director, during investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election and links between Trump and Moscow. Trump fired McCabe in March 2018, two days before he was due to retire. McCabe was then the subject of a criminal investigation, for allegedly lying about a media leak. The investigation was dropped in 2020. In October 2021, McCabe settled a lawsuit against the justice department.

    I mention this because y’all know that Trumpers will immediately brush off McCabe’s comments as a known-bad-guy who was fired for being so awful and is now trying to get revenge.


  • You’re right. I hear you. Intellectually, I understand that the conservative/fundamentalist mindset gives higher importance to following leaders and is more triggered by moral disgust. I understand that a conservative may feel a liberal is less moral because liberals ‘lack’ a moral imperative to follow leaders simply because they are leaders. I even accept that agreeing to a premise has utility by getting everyone to work towards a common goal. Unfortunately, I get stuck on the bit where the premise seems illogical to me, or the leader seems to be obviously lying. That’s the part where any intellectual understanding of why someone might choose to ignore obvious red flags flies to the wayside and I can’t figure out what to do about it.

    I’m pretty sure that journalists should continuously report which things are unfounded lies, but I don’t think that will sway those who believe those lies. It might, however, convince the continuously emerging crop of newly interested people to be skeptical.


  • I spent a good while writing up a reply, but it was long and the main point was: while any group of 100+ people is likely to have a bad actor, you look for credible proof (like Edward Snowden showing evidence rather than Sidney Powell saying she had ‘visions’). Side bit: tales of killing/eating/sexually-exploiting babies and pets by a GROUP should always be taken as a manipulative lie because it always is. When some whacko actually tries that crap, the Boys in Blue get up in arms – even if it means ignoring pressure from their bosses, “He’s Illuminati. Let it go.” No. That sort of thing gets exposed.










  • There are additional details from ammoland.com (emphasis from source article):

    Mr. Soukaneh claims that Officer Andrzejewski demanded that he tell the officer where the prostitute and drugs were located. The officer searched Soukaneh pulled out pills from the man’s pocket. The officer thought he found illicit drugs. In reality, what the officer discovered was Soukaneh’s nitroglycerin pills for his heart condition. In addition to the heart medication, the officer seized the $320 in cash plus a flash drive that contained pictures and videos of Soukaneh’s deceased father. Neither the flash drive nor the money was returned to Soukaneh.

    They also mention that the cops DID run a check on the gun permit before figuring out how to write Soukaneh up.

    Officer Andrzejewski ran Soukaneh’s gun permit and found it to be valid. Shortly after, another officer and a sergeant arrived on the scene. Andrzejewski asked the two what he should “write him up for.” The sergeant told Andrzejewski what to write into the computer system.

    Note, however, that the PDF of the ruling linked by techdirt has a footnote on page 6 saying, "It is unclear from the record when Andrzejewski determined that Soukaneh held a valid firearms license, and whether that determination occurred before, after, or during Andrzejewski’s search of Soukaneh’s car. Andrzejewski does not specify whether he ran the check on the firearm license before or after he searched Soukaneh’s vehicle. "

    Of course, the medication, cash and flash drive were all found through an illegal search of the car, so that whole chunk is somewhat irrelevant, and thankfully, it looks like the lawyers all knew that because the PDF suggests it was only the cop who suggested a legal gun was probable cause to search the car.

    So Soukaneh is suing the cop. It has now gone through two courts. Per the Techdirt piece:

    Unsurprisingly, the lower court rejected the officer’s request for immunity, pointing out that while the initial encounter may have been justified, nothing that followed that (pulling Soukaneh from the car, handcuffing him, searching his vehicle, detaining him for another half-hour while trying to figure out what to cite him with) was supported by probable cause.

    The Second Circuit comes to the same conclusion. Simply being made aware Soukaneh possessed an item millions of Americans also own legally is not probable cause for anything the officer did past that point.


  • You can adjust them, but it is better if you get them adjusted wherever you bought them because they know how to do it properly. In particular, the spot where they touch your nose might get sore, and maybe moreso on one side than the other. That’d be a sign to get them adjusted. Some people even have one ear slightly lower than the other, needing an adjustment to the arms.

    Glasses have an optimum focal point so your glasses were meant to be a particular distance from your eyes and over adjusting might change that. On the other hand, the change is going to be so small that it probably only matters to the people selling glasses rather than the wearers.