Really feels like Vance is being set up as the fall guy to blame when trump loses.
He was the bag man for Cryptobros. Trump puts him on the ticket and the money flows into the Trump campaign.
Now it's looking like a raw deal, as Trump has to spend all that new money defending his hideous little troll of a VP.
“If he had just picked someone else as VP, he would’ve won!” -conservatives in five months
Missed a perfectly good opportunity to run a horny VP like Kristi Noem or Laura Boebert or Hope Hicks.
Still would have lost, but at least we wouldn't need Vance's mug all over the TV.
So you think it should be illegal?
I think it's an example of partisan language that ends up being blandly homophobic.
You’re entirely ignoring my point
Why would putting up a giant sign reading "My neighbor murders dogs for fun" be a tort but a mural to the same effect be protected?
where someone spreads nudes around as a way to punish their current or former partner
I would consider, as an example, a student who created a vulgar AI porn display of another student or teacher out of some sense of spite an example of "revenge porn". Same with a coworker or boss trying to humiliate someone at the office.
Think about a political comic showing a pro-corporate politician performing a sex act with Jeff bezos.
That's another good example. The Trump/Putin kissing mural is a great example of something that ends up being homophobic rather than partisan.
it’s perfectly legal for me to generate and distribute a fake ai video of my neighbor shooting a puppy
If you used it to slander your neighbor, it would not be legal.
written for Taylor swift and not a random high schooler.
In a sane world, class action lawsuits would balance these scales.
there are fair use exceptions specifically to prevent copyright law from running afoul of the first amendment
Why would revenge porn constitute fair use? This seems more akin to slander.
the poor were always preferred to be sent to die in wars.
That's not actually true
I’d say most religious, nonreligious and atheist people are not preaching their religion or opposing others
Most successful religious movements are explicitly evangelical. And it isn't as though religious debate is uncommon in society.
The number of hard core missionaries and zealots are in the minority, but their success is predicated on a large financial and political base back home.
So every group will have a majority of neutrals and subsets who aren’t.
For any group, you're going to have a "standard" view which will be the baseline. And you'll have deviation from that baseline by degrees of orthodoxy or heresy.
But standard doesn't mean neutral. You can have a predominantly Catholic or Hindu or Taoist community with very staunch beliefs and taboos. You can also have a very segregated religious environment, where Pakistani Muslims and Chinese Buddhists or Afghan Muslims and Soviet Atheists or Chinese Falun Gong and Chinese Confuscians both hold to their views rigidly, while feuding over public policy as a result.
The majority doesn't have to be neutral. There may not even be a majority, in a significantly pluralist community.
This comic is a deliberate effort to categorise atheists as: all being anti-religion.
A lot of the staumcher atheists I know are people who were raised and then rejected a family/community faith. I don't think that's an unfair conclusion, but it ignores the cause (social structures that produce a hard divide between these cohorts).
We're not all neutral. There's a lot of intense feeling around religion
Have you not read anything about Roman army in frankly any period?
Ah, you're one of those. Thinking phrenology is 2500 years old.
How is this bundling even legal.
It's not being prosecuted, so its legal. Everyone's been properly paid off. If push comes to shove, Clarence Thomas will get a new RV and any lawsuits will be dismissed, but for now only the EU seems interested in internet regulation.
Is that what he's been doing? He needs better handlers. Dude's floundering on every new tv appearance.
Can't believe the guy who gave the eulogy at Strom Thurmond's funeral would be like this.
it is extremely easy not to make involuntary pornography of other people.
Eh. The term is ill-defined, so I can see some ultra-orthodox right-wing judge trying to argue that - say - jokes about JD Vance fucking a couch constitute violations of the revenge porn law. I can see some baroque interpretation by Scalia used to prohibit all forms of digitally transmitted pornography. I can also see some asshole trying to claim baby pictures on Facebook leave the company or even the parent liable for child pornography. Etc, etc.
But a lot of this boils down to vindictive and despicable politicians trying to inflict harm on political opponents by any means necessary. The notion that we can't have any kind of technology regulation because bad politicians and sadistic cops exist leaves us ceding the entire legislative process to the conservatives who we know are going to abuse the law.
We shouldn't be afraid to do the right thing now on the grounds that someone else might do the wrong thing tomorrow.
The bill only applies where there is an “intent to distribute”
That's a predicate for any law bound to the Commerce Clause. You need to demonstrate the regulation is being applied to interstate traffic. Anything else would be limited to state/municipal regulations.
The bill talks about damages being calculated based on the profit of the defendant
That's arguably a better rule than the more traditional flat-fee penalties, as it curbs the impulse to treat violations as cost-of-business. A firm that makes $1B/year isn't going to blink at a handful of $1000 judgements.
The bill also states that you can’t label the image as AI generated or rely on the context of publication to avoid running afoul of this law.
A revenge-porn law that can be evaded by asserting "This isn't Taylor Swift, its Tay Swiff and any resemblance of an existing celebrity is purely coincidental" would be toothless. We already apply these rules for traditional animated assets. You'd be liable for producing an animated short staring "Definitely Not Mickey Mouse" under the same reasoning.
This doesn't prevent you from creating a unique art asset. And certainly there's a superabundance of original pornographic art models and porn models generated with the consent of the living model. The hitch here is obvious, though. You're presumed to own your own likeness.
My biggest complaint is that it only seems to apply to pornography. And I suspect we'll see people challenge the application of the law by producing "parody" porn or "news commentary" porn. What the SCOTUS does with that remains to be seen.
If you start from a position of neutrality and follow evidence-based reasoning, the conclusion is either atheism or agnosticism.
I'm sure you can find some Ontological Arguments to the contrary. Regardless, its weird to suggest atheists - who have clearly staked out a philosophical position - are "neutral" on the subject of religious belief. It reeks of the terminally online conservatives who would scream "Not An Argument" at anyone they disagreed with, to shut them up.
Evangelical atheism is a subset of atheism
Sure, fine, whatever. But what does this have to do with "neutrality"? Is he confusing atheists and agnostics?
I mean, fuck John McCain. But also yes, he's a shameless bully and social parasite.
Sure. All staff must be paid a minimum wage under the federal guidelines. The catch is that tipped income goes to meet that wage obligation, which means they have to get paid to the minimum first under law.
But (a) wage theft in the US is rampant, with tipped workers routinely being underpaid or shorted by non-compliant management. And (b) even under the guidelines, min wage is a pittance. You can't survive on $7.25/hr in a normal 40 hr work week.
So even if employers are compliant (which they're often not), you're talking about people trying to live on $14k/year in a country where apartments rents bottom out at the $6-8k/year range in the slums and even the meagerest grocery bills easily run into $4-5k/year range in the wake of inflation. Nevermind utilities, transport, health care, clothing, etc.
Utterly unsustainable.
it isn’t proof
Witness testimony is literally proof.
How do you think any witness testimony was handled before the advent of cameras and tape recorders?
My friend JD Vance has never cuddled a couch.
It's not true, folks. The lying liberal media wants you to think he'd shag a settee. That he'd bone a book stand. That he's creamied on the credenza.
Don't trust them. My beautiful boy JD, he'd never do it! He's chaste with the chaises. He's never loved a loveseat.
My VP would never fuck furniture.
Mayor London Breed said a "very aggressive" sweep of San Francisco homeless encampments will start in August after a recent Supreme Court ruling cleared the path for officials to widespread enforcement.
Mayor London Breed said a “very aggressive” sweep of San Francisco homeless encampments will start in August, after a recent Supreme Court ruling cleared the path for widespread enforcement.
In June, the Supreme Court ruled that enforcing rules against homeless people for sleeping outside doesn’t violate the Eighth Amendment’s “cruel and unusual punishment” clause.
On Thursday, Breed celebrated the ruling and said the city plans to change its protocols and may begin issuing criminal penalties against homeless people.
“Thank goodness for the change in the Supreme Court decision,” Breed said at an election debate hosted by a local firefighter’s union. “Effective August, we are going to be very aggressive and assertive in moving encampments, which may even include criminal penalties.”
When Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981, a doctor is said to have told him: ‘Today, Mr. President, we're all Republicans.’ Today, stand by Trump.
When Ronald Reagan was shot on 30 March 1981, his wound was not immediately noticed. It wasn’t until he started bleeding from the mouth that the car was diverted from the White House to the hospital. The story goes that upon arrival, the president said to the surgeons, ‘I just hope you’re Republicans.’ A doctor is said to have replied: ‘Today, Mr. President, we’re all Republicans.’
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American politics has sunk so low into the cesspit of political despair, there will be a rare few who can’t bring themselves to say this. Rather than muster up the humour of Reagan, or the humanity of the doctors, they won’t hesitate to keep pouring petrol onto a nation already ablaze. Those takes won’t be received very well. If there is anything left tying America’s national fabric together, it’s that such instances of violence can’t be tolerated.
Military spending is up, social and economic funding is down since 2022
https://stephensemler.substack.com/p/military-spending-is-up-social-and
The Pentagon’s floating pier off Gaza, announced by President Biden in March, has been sidelined several times by poor weather and rough seas.
Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a spokesman, said in a statement that U.S. troops tried to reconnect the floating pier to the shoreline Wednesday but were unable to do so because of “technical and weather-related issues.” The pier and its support vessels were taken back to the Israeli port of Ashdod, where they had sheltered amid the latest spell of rough waves, and will remain there until further notice, Ryder said.
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The operation has delivered nearly 20 million pounds of food ashore since it began on May 17. It’s a fraction of what humanitarian groups say is needed as Palestinians trapped by the fighting between Israel and Hamas face starvation and Israeli officials resist U.S. and international demands to let more aid into Gaza via land routes.
Moreover, distribution from the pier has been challenged by aid groups’ fears for their workers’ safety as the war’s staggering number of civilian casualties continues to climb. Until recently, arriving supplies were left to pile up in a staging area along the beach. A U.S. defense official familiar with the issue, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss recent developments, said a significant amount of that aid has been moved to other locations, leaving room for new deliveries if the pier can get up and running again.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, which coordinates with the humanitarian groups working in Gaza, will continue to use all available routes into the territory to get food and medicine to Palestinian civilians in need, an official there said. Those groups have begun using the port at Ashdod, north of Gaza, for additional aid deliveries, the official said.
Trump's authoritarian game plan is breaking through to people who haven't heard of it — and it's scaring them
The over 900-page document, commissioned by the people expected to run another Trump White House, is a laundry list of the far-right's most politically toxic ideas, from banning abortion nationwide to mass firing federal officials who believe in protecting public health and safety. One would think that Trump and his allies would try to keep their sinister plans out of public view. Instead, Team Trump published their fascistic blueprint on a website for anyone to read,. They even proudly display the menacing "Project 2025" label on the front page.
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On Sunday, actress Taraji P. Henson took a break during the BET Awards, which she was hosting, to speak out about Project 2025. "The Project 2025 plan is not a game. Look it up!" she told viewers. "I’m talking to all the mad people that don’t want to vote. You’re going to be mad about a lot of things if you don’t vote."
The clip went viral, amplified by other celebrities like Mark Ruffalo. So the MAGA forces swung into action on social media, accusing Henson and Ruffalo and other progressives of making it all up. "Is Project 2025 in the room with you?" a blue-checked user sneered under Ruffalo's tweet. These efforts at gaslighting people run against a real problem, however: The drafters of Project 2025 seek to promote their authoritarian playbook. Thus, a simple Google search generates a slew of explainers from various news organizations, with even more coming out rapidly, as a response to the rising number of people asking, "What's Project 2025?"
"We received a flood of reader inquiries asking if Project 2025 was a real effort," the fact-checking team at Snopes wrote in their lengthy explainer published Tuesday. Google Trends confirms that the number of searches for "project 2025" has grown dramatically in recent days.
The 4th of July feels like a sad holiday to me. We celebrate an independence won over two centuries ago, like an out of shape former athlete reminiscing about his glory days on the high school football team.
What we need independence from today isn’t the British — who seem about as threatening as a glass of warm Ovaltine — but from modern tyrannies like big business and, of course, the national security state.
A group of undecided Latino voters said they would support President Joe Biden over former President Donald Trump.
A group of undecided Latino voters said they would vote for President Joe Biden after watching his Thursday night debate with former President Donald Trump.
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A clip posted on X shows the group being interviewed by a journalist. One man said he would vote for Biden because "Trump sounded like a crazy liar," according to Matt A. Barreto, professor of Political Science and Chicana/o & Central American Studies at UCLA.
The man being interviewed said Trump "said the same thing time after time" and was not answering questions or "saying how he would fix things," according to a Newsweek translation.
He went on to admit that "Biden was indeed a bit slow in talking," saying the president "has a stutter" but believes Biden explained "what he has done and what he is still doing while president.
"After being undecided for a little while, I think today, I switched to Biden," he added.
President Biden has a diverse group of advisers, but few have the influence of three men in his inner circle during his final campaign.
Multiple times each day, President Biden dials up Mike Donilon, a close adviser since the 1980s, to chew on the latest polls and headlines.
“What’s your instinct? What do you think?” Mr. Biden will ask Mr. Donilon, who recently left the White House for the campaign’s Delaware headquarters.
Once a week, Mr. Biden summons Ron Klain, his former chief of staff, to workshop the best attacks to use against former President Donald J. Trump as the presidential debate draws closer.
When he leaves for Delaware on weekends, Mr. Biden seeks out Ted Kaufman, a confidant who represents the president’s ties to the state that introduced him to the national stage more than a half-century ago.
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The three are at the center of the Biden world, part of an echo chamber where dissent is rare. In important moments, each has told the president news he did not want to hear, although not one of them said no when the president was considering whether to run for a second term. They are also decades older than the young voters who could decide the election, which worries many of the president’s allies.
Grocery store prices are changing faster than ever before — literally. This month, Walmart became the latest retailer to announce it’s replacing the price stickers in its aisles with electronic shelf.
The new labels allow employees to change prices as often as every ten seconds.
“If it’s hot outside, we can raise the price of water and ice cream. If there's something that’s close to the expiration date, we can lower the price — that’s the good news,” said Phil Lempert, a grocery industry analyst.
Apps like Uber already use surge pricing, in which higher demand leads to higher prices in real time. Companies across industries have caused controversy with talk of implementing surge pricing, with fast-food restaurant Wendy’s making headlines most recently. Electronic shelf labels allow the same strategy to be applied at grocery stores, but are not the only reason why retailers may make the switch.
Doctor accused of illegally obtaining health data of Texas Children's patients, in crusade against Transgender medical treatments
The doctor has publicly identified himself as the person who released information to a conservative activist about the transgender care program at Texas Children's. Citing "whistleblower documents," the activist published a story in May 2023 saying Texas Children's provided transgender care, which was legal at the time, "in secret."
Texas Children's on Monday declined to comment on the charges against Haim. In previous statements, hospital officials said its doctors have always provided care within the law.
Transgender care has become a popular talking point in Texas and other Republican-dominated states where lawmakers claim such treatment is harmful to children. It describes a range of different social, psychological, behavioral or medical interventions that support people whose assigned sex at birth does not align with their gender identity. This can include mental health counseling, hormone therapy or surgery, which is rare for people under 18.
Such treatment, which is supported by every major medical association in the U.S., was offered at Texas Children's and other pediatric hospitals in Texas. Lawmakers have since implemented a statewide ban, and Texas Children's said it would discontinue its program.
Meanwhile, Haim has publicly decried the investigation against him as "political."
In the arraignment hearing, Ho said the indictment identified three different patients whose health information was compromised. Addressing reporters, Patrick declined to speak about the facts of the case but described the charges against his client as a "huge contradiction."
More than 40 people are alleged to have died as a result of Greek coastguard actions, BBC analysis reveals.
> The Greek coastguard has caused the deaths of dozens of migrants in the Mediterranean over a three-year period, witnesses say, including nine who were deliberately thrown into the water.
> The nine are among more than 40 people alleged to have died as a result of being forced out of Greek territorial waters, or taken back out to sea after reaching Greek islands, BBC analysis has found.
> The Greek coastguard told our investigation it strongly rejects all accusations of illegal activities.
> We showed footage of 12 people being loaded into a Greek coastguard boat, and then abandoned on a dinghy, to a former senior Greek coastguard officer. When he got up from his chair, and with his mic still on, he said it was "obviously illegal" and "an international crime".
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> In five of the incidents, migrants said they were thrown directly into the sea by the Greek authorities. In four of those cases they explained how they had landed on Greek islands but were hunted down. In several other incidents, migrants said they had been put onto inflatable rafts without motors which then deflated, or appeared to have been punctured.
> One of the most chilling accounts was given by a Cameroonian man, who says he was hunted by Greek authorities after landing on the island of Samos in September 2021.
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> “They started with the [other] Cameroonian. They threw him in the water. The Ivorian man said: ‘Save me, I don’t want to die'… and then eventually only his hand was above water, and his body was below.
> "Slowly his hand slipped under, and the water engulfed him."
> Our interviewee says his abductors beat him.
> "Punches were raining down on my head. It was like they were punching an animal." And then he says they pushed him, too, into the water - without a life jacket. He was able to swim to shore, but the bodies of the other two - Sidy Keita and Didier Martial Kouamou Nana - were recovered on the Turkish coastline.
Gen Z influencers who supported Biden in 2020 turn against him
“I have noticed that there have been a lot more events with creators, but the creators that are getting invited are the creators who are very pro Biden and just parroting talking points or sharing photo ops of them smiling with the President. Not the creators who have been critical,” said Kahlil Greene, a history content creator and education advocate in Washington who said he hasn’t been invited to the White House since he criticized the administration over the TikTok ban and the war in Gaza.
Annie Wu Henry, a political influencer and digital strategist who has worked on Democratic campaigns, agreed. While the White House once treated creators as independent media, she said, they now seem to be playing favorites.
Biden’s team “is trying to say that they’re handling influencers like the press. But the thing is, the press briefing room has to have Fox News no matter what. They have to allow all of the media in,” Henry said. “When it comes to influencers, they only let in people who agree, and anyone who gives even a little bit of pushback is not welcome.”
Guy Sims Fitch had a lot to say about the world economy in the 1950s and 60s. He wrote articles in newspapers around the globe as an authoritative voice on economic issues during the Cold War. Fitch was a big believer in private American investment and advocated for it as a liberating force internat...
Guy Sims Fitch was created by the United States Information Agency (USIA), America’s official news distribution service for the rest of the world. Today, people find the term “propaganda” to be incredibly loaded and even negative. But employees of the USIA used the term freely and proudly in the 1950s and 60s, believing that they were fighting a noble and just cause against the Soviet Union and the spread of Communism. And Guy Sims Fitch was just one tool in the diverse toolbox of the USIA propaganda machine.
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I recently filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA to get more information about Guy Sims Fitch, this fictional character that journalists and editors of the USIA would use to promote American economic interests abroad. The twist? The CIA wants to make sure that the privacy rights of this fictional character aren’t violated. Or, perhaps, that the privacy rights of the people who wrote under that name aren’t violated.
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How do we, as Americans, know about Guy Sims Fitch at all? The USIA was prohibited from disseminating news inside the United States under laws that restricted the government from producing propaganda for domestic consumption. So, as best I can tell, Fitch never showed up in any American newspapers. That, however, didn’t stop a lot of other USIA and CIA disinformation campaigns from leaking into American news.
In fact, the CIA had to acknowledge during 1977 congressional hearings that the disinformation they were helping to get published through a variety of media around the world would often find its way into American news outlets. It was during those same hearings that it was revealed the CIA had helped covertly finance the publication of about 1,000 books. And Congress made the CIA pinkie-swear that “under no circumstances” would it publish any newspapers, magazines, or books in the United States. Clandestine financing of publishing efforts outside of the US in any language that wasn’t English was just fine, according to Congress.
The Biden campaign is trying to work its way into social media feeds. But the young, left-leaning voices that control the conversation aren’t making it easy.
Influencers have been given exclusive tours of the White House and campaign headquarters and been invited to briefings with policy advisers. They’ve been wined and dined at lavish parties in New York and at State of the Union watch parties in the White House. And they’ve been promised extraordinary access to party officials at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, where for the first time ever they’ll be given a special room of their own, outfitted with quiet spaces for making videos.
At least one has been offered an interview with the president at the convention, but said he was asked not to bring up Gaza.
Priorities USA, a super PAC supporting Mr. Biden’s campaign, has pledged to spend at least $1 million on influencers, some of whom will be paid to share talking points online. The Democratic National Committee is using a smartphone app to train thousands of volunteers on how to share content in their social networks.