That’s some blatant Russian propaganda there. Blame NATO twice for Russian imperialism.

The “Russia had to invade a sovereign nation because they were talking about joining NATO to prevent Russia from invading them” logic has some holes to it.

The fact that Russia has invaded their neighbors 14 times since the end of the cold war tells you why one of their neighbors would want to join NATO.

Also, remember that time that Russia shot down a commercial airliner? The Ukrainians sure as hell do. That was the true beginning of the invasion, which is why Ukraine was in talks to join NATO.

And yes, people have the right to defend themselves. But the Israeli government has locked down the anti-terror propaganda, because Hamas is pretty vile as far as organizations go. It’s why Israel let Hamas grow and become powerful, and why the Israelis paid to keep Hamas in power for the last decade or so.

As long as Israel can point at Hamas, they have just enough of an excuse to claim their ethnic cleansing is actually just an anti-terror campaign.

Hamas is a full on terrorist organization, not that all terrorist organizations are bad. Or rather, there are some causes where a terrorist organization is the appropriate response. John Brown tried it. So did Nelson Mandela. But Hamas is a religious extremist terrorist organization. One that has distasteful views, and was sort of put in place by Israel for those views.

You see what I’m getting at here? Hamas is fucking evil, and Israel has mostly succeeded in making Hamas the face of Palestinian resistance against Israel.

I doubt many of the original leaders of Hamas are still alive, but that doesn’t matter either when Israel can just lie and say that whoever they kill is Hamas. It’s a bit maddening, and I doubt there’s an answer to it all except for the other Palestinian resistance groups to step up their social media game.

There was no economic or rational factors. The only thing that makes a lick of sense is the irrational.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/putin-dictator-trap-russia-ukraine/627064/

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/3/24/22982864/vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-war-brian-klaas

Those are a warm-up, but then you have the purges since the invasion began.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-purges-in-putins-shrinking-inner-circle

Putin has sort of been the butt of jokes for years for killing anyone who looks at him funny. He’s a KGB stooge, who made his career out of backstabbing and paranoia. His entire inner circle were afraid to tell him the truth, because he would kill them if they did.

He’s never been “savvy”, he’s just been willing to kill as many people as necessary to secure his own power.

The classic authoritarian dictator who throws people out of windows for saying no. And whose vaulted military had body armor made of cardboard, because the corruption was so ingrained that every single level was accepting bribes and stealing shit.

I’m surprised that they’re still going, but Russia has shown the world that they’re a third rate military, at best.

As to Palestine. It doesn’t matter what the resistance movements call themselves now. Israel will just say they’re Hamas, and no one likes Hamas. There are good reasons not to like Hamas, they’re religious extremists who want to kill all Jews.

And for decades, Israel has funded Hamas behind the scenes, while coming down extra heavy on any other resistance movement. And now it’s all paid off for them because they can just claim that anyone they kill was actually Hamas.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/07/30/how-israel-helped-create-hamas/

This tactic of creating the perfectly detestable opposition has been used in quite a few places. For example, Greenpeace gets a lot of money from oil company heirs. Specifically the Rockefeller family.

I doubt anyone from Hamas, or Greenpeace, ever took orders from the people giving them money. They were given the money with no strings attached, because they were already jackasses. The money just extended their reach.

Everyone knows Putin invaded Ukraine because he’s a dumbass dictator who started to believe his own propaganda. It’s the dictator trap. Putin surrounded himself with backstabbing yes men by literally killing anyone who wasn’t.

As to Palestinian resistance. I don’t think Hamas is a good resistance movement. For a whole host of reasons. Which is why the Israeli government has been propping them up since the 80s.

An unsympathetic resistance movement can do more to damage a cause than not having a movement at all.

From now until the ethnic cleansing is complete, Israel will call any resistance movement Hamas, regardless of their actual name or beliefs. I’m not sure how to fight that… I don’t think anyone really knows beyond screaming the truth everywhere we can.

It didn’t work in the 1920s in Europe. But maybe with the Internet… Likely not though.

Yeah, while there are dozens or possibly hundreds of flavors of “wicca”. The first tenent is almost always some variation on “do no harm”. Normally phrased something like “as it harms none, do as thou will”… Which is odd phrasing for something written in the last century.

The main exception is those who follow Crowley. His whole deal was “do what thou will shall be the whole of the law”.

Crowley was mostly in it for the shock value.

And again, Crowley’s “ancient wisdom” is newer than the invention of photography. We even have recordings of him speaking.

The main reason to electroplate things in gold is that corrosion resistance.

The thinner the coating, the better. Mostly because gold isn’t a very good conductor.

Copper is one of the best conductors available. But the corrosion is the problem. It’s nonconductive.

Also a fun fact. Stainless steel is a better conductor than gold. But gold is slightly easier to use in electroplating.

I’ll add in, Ranked Choice is a bad choice. The “edge cases” mentioned in the post can happen in any and every election using the system.

If Ranked Choice were the only option besides what we have, it would be a slight improvement, but there are far better options.

STAR is simple, and does everything that RCV claims to do, but actually fails to do.

Something to keep in mind for the push to reform voting laws after this election.

Republicans cannot replace Trump. He’s got the party by the balls. His daughter in law is the chair of the party.

He’s also funneling all donations to the party into his own pocket.

When Trump loses, the Republican party will implode under all the fraud. I’m all for it.

The Texas way. This lawsuit is pure SLAPP. Texas does not have an anti-SLAPP law, and Musk went judge shopping for this specific asshole.

It’s already happened once.

The Big Mike banana was super popular until the 1950s, when a fungal infection basically wiped them out. (they’re still grown in a few places, but are super susceptible to infection)

So, the banana growers switched over to the Cavendish banana. It was resistant to the fungus.

But the days of the Cavendish were always numbered because of how they’re grown. A seedless banana can only grow via cuttings. Which is how they’ve been grown since the beginning. Every single banana on the shelf at your local supermarket is genetically identical. They’ve been identical since the 50s, and the fungus has adapted to them. Worse still, the particular fungus that’s now attacking the Cavendish cultivar is extremely resistant to fungicides.

So yeah, without some sort of massive shift in genetic diversity, the Banana will no longer be a thing in Central America. Do note, that the banana is not a native plant in the Americas, and is cultivated widely in Southeast Asia. So yeah, the Banana will not go extinct, but it will vanish from American and European stores.

Lithium fires need to be doused in salt to put out. Or, technically you can put out a metal fire with gasoline.

You go from a class D fire to a class B fire, and then you can put that out as normal. But yeah, salt is better.

Water is the last thing you want to use on class D fires, followed by CO2. Both have the oxygen ripped off by the burning metal, making the fire burn hotter.

Just after Elden Ring came out, Musk tweeted out his build. Internet sleuths figured out he would have needed to play about 12 hours a day to have that build, and that it was kind of shit.

The scale is likely the Kinsey scale. A 0-6 scale of sexuality. Zero is completely straight and six is completely gay.

Most people find themselves somewhere in the middle, even if they don’t admit it.

I’m somewhere in the range of 1–1.5

I’m firmly attracted to the opposite gender, but might make an exception if the person had a personality that was super compatible with my own. But it’s not something I’m going to seek out.

Both Trump and the Shooter surviving would have been best. If the kid was able to say exactly why he did it, then all the conspiracy would die. An Trump would have some uncomfortable questions about his involvement with Epstein. That second part might still happen. But likely won’t.

One of ten producers. And the one who was mostly in charge fundraising.

The people who were actually in charge of safety and the guns told Baldwin it was safe.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fgu4ppsviyqad1.jpeg

Here’s a slightly better version that’s just things spelled out in the actual project2025.

Legally, at this point, Kamala is the only person who can take over Joe’s election war chest.

And remember, laws still apply to democrats, so we’re kind of fucked.

Malfunctioned in this case means that the system wasn’t configured to record properly. You could watch it live on the monitor, but couldn’t pull up the recordings. This was for two cameras, one of which the recordings were recoverable.

As to forcing his hand, probably. It’s a hell of a lot easier to do, and the prime suspect for passing the message along would have been Epstein’s own lawyer. All he would have to say is something along the lines of “you kill yourself, or they’re going to pull strings and get you put in General Population again.”

But notice that “again”. See, he was in general population and had been attacked already. Then they put him on suicide watch, which is hellish on its own.

My theory is that Epstein killed himself while Trump and company were still scrambling to figure out what they were going to do, because they had no plans at all for that sort of situation. Because my real theory is that no one is actually good at what they do, they’re all lying to themselves and each other about it, but that everyone, literally everyone on earth is generally some sort of fuckup, especially when shit comes out of nowhere. Like a powerful pedo who had fallen out of favor, showing that he was still a pedo and getting arrested for it.

I doubt anyone planned for that, they had mostly forgotten Epstein after getting him that sweetheart plea deal a decade or so earlier. A lot of rich and powerful people had quietly cut ties at that point.

They then wake up one day and hear that their old pal is in jail for more pedo shit, and they collectively shit themselves, but can’t do anything overt because then they would be seen doing overt shit to cover their own asses, and that’s almost as bad as Epstein talking.

I’m sure there were a bunch of hushed conversations in secluded rooms about doing something to make it go away, and then realizing that they didn’t actually have any way to do so. And then Epstein killed himself anyway and saved them the trouble.

After all, he was extremely rich, and had been accustomed to being extremely rich. He went from silk sheets to sheets made by the lowest bidder. He went from palatial living, to living in a cell, with the rest of his life being in a cell, with beatings thrown in for measure. All because he was guilty as sin, and had a prior conviction. Even if he never talked, he was getting life imprisonment. And I’m betting he was selfish enough to take the easy way out, all on his own.

Unless she’s your slave concubine, then you’re fine. But you should free your own children.

Also, Sally Hemings was very likely the daughter of John Wayles, Jefferson’s father-in-law. Which makes Sally Hemings the half-sister of Jefferson’s, by then, dead wife.

She was also between 14 and 16 when Jefferson took her as a concubine.

https://www.factcheck.org/2019/08/unproven-claim-of-camera-malfunction-before-epsteins-death/

The updates are key;

Update, Aug. 19: The New York City Chief Medical Examiner’s Office on Aug. 16 publicly reported that, after a “careful review of all investigative information, including complete autopsy findings,” the determined cause of death for Epstein was “hanging” and the manner of death was “suicide.”

Update, Aug. 30: More than two weeks after Epstein’s death and this story’s publication date, news outlets, citing unnamed law enforcement sources, reported that two cameras outside of Epstein’s cell malfunctioned and were being analyzed by FBI experts. The Washington Post reported that footage from “at least one camera in the hallway outside [Epstein’s] cell” was “unusable,” but “other, clearer footage was captured in the area.” These reports have not been publicly confirmed by federal officials.

Update, Dec. 2: Federal prosecutors in Manhattan on Nov. 19 announced an indictment against two correctional officers working at the MCC on the night of Epstein’s death – charging them with falsifying records because they did not conduct mandatory checks on inmates. The indictment revealed that there was video footage captured in the Special Housing Unit, located on the prison’s ninth floor, where Epstein’s cell was located.

Specifically, the indictment said that “aside from those two officers, as confirmed by video surveillance, no one else entered the SHU, no one conducted any counts or rounds throughout the night, and no one entered the tier in which Epstein was housed.” Epstein was “assigned to the cell closest to the correctional officers’ desk in the common area of the SHU, which was approximately fifteen feet from the cell.”

So, at least some cameras in the prison properly recorded footage the night of Epstein’s death — showing, for example, that no one entered the tier where Epstein’s cell was located. The indictment does not shed light on other cameras in the prison or reports of a “camera malfunction.” We’ll update this story again if more information becomes available.

Except the cameras didn’t malfunction. There’s video of the cell block that shows an empty hallway. Now, there’s no video of inside the cells due to privacy concerns. There’s never cameras that show the inside of cells. This privacy feature has been turned into a “There’s no video from the cell because of broken cameras” by conspiracy nutjobs who don’t actually know anything.

As to the guards sleeping or playing on their phones… There were only two for that section of the prison, and they had been sleeping or otherwise faking their rounds for weeks, if not months. The video evidence from the cell block is how they were caught.

Epstein had been specifically pulled off suicide watch, even after attempting suicide previously. That’s the part that’s sketchy. He also had a visit from his lawyer a few days before where he changed his will to fuck over his victims.

But no, idiot meme lords think some shadowy government figures came in and killed him without leaving any evidence of existing.

I’ve read actual accounts of things the CIA does, and they wish they were even half as competent as the nutjobs make them out to be. Remember, these are the same people who used “pizza” as a code word in Lebanon to mean, “go to the Pizza Hut for more orders”, and then let Hezbollah sit and watch about a dozen agents and informants meeting at Pizza Hut.