US US Politics General 2 - Discussion of President Trump and other politicians

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Should be a wild four years.

Helpful links for those who need them:

Current members of the House of Representatives
https://www.house.gov/representatives

Current members of the Senate
https://www.senate.gov/senators/

Current members of the US Supreme Court
https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx

Members of the Trump Administration
https://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/
 
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Was your public post office run by Pakis by the time they privatized it?
No. It was understaffed and not very well paid, but most of its workers were British in origin. Parcel theft was rare and quickly dealt with.

It still is rare and quickly dealt with, as I understand things, but the service as a whole is still chronically understaffed and can't keep up with the volume of post sent through it. Yet people still use it in preference to private couriers, because your stuff is far less likely to be delivered to the wrong place (or stolen by the drivers). UPS breaks your shit, FedEx charges a fortune, Evri and Yodel just steal it without consequence. DPD is reliable and friendly, but sometimes they flake out as well.
 
Trump on Joy Reid being fired:
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Apple announced a $500 billion investment in the US:
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Source (Archive)

Details from Apple:

Apple will spend more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years​

Teams and facilities to expand in Michigan, Texas, California, Arizona, Nevada, Iowa, Oregon, North Carolina, and Washington​

Plans include a new factory in Texas, doubling the U.S. Advanced Manufacturing Fund, a manufacturing academy, and accelerated investments in AI and silicon engineering​


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Today, Apple announced plans to spend more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years.

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA Apple today announced its largest-ever spend commitment, with plans to spend and invest more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years. This new pledge builds on Apple’s long history of investing in American innovation and advanced high-skilled manufacturing, and will support a wide range of initiatives that focus on artificial intelligence, silicon engineering, and skills development for students and workers across the country.

“We are bullish on the future of American innovation, and we’re proud to build on our long-standing U.S. investments with this $500 billion commitment to our country’s future,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “From doubling our Advanced Manufacturing Fund, to building advanced technology in Texas, we’re thrilled to expand our support for American manufacturing. And we’ll keep working with people and companies across this country to help write an extraordinary new chapter in the history of American innovation.”

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Apple suppliers already manufacture silicon in 24 factories across 12 states. Pictured: Texas Instruments’ new semiconductor wafer fabrication plant in Lehi, Utah.

As part of this package of U.S. investments, Apple and partners will open a new advanced manufacturing facility in Houston to produce servers that support Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system that helps users write, express themselves, and get things done. Apple will also double its U.S. Advanced Manufacturing Fund, create an academy in Michigan to train the next generation of U.S. manufacturers, and grow its research and development investments in the U.S. to support cutting-edge fields like silicon engineering.

The $500 billion commitment includes Apple’s work with thousands of suppliers across all 50 states, direct employment, Apple Intelligence infrastructure and data centers, corporate facilities, and Apple TV+ productions in 20 states. Apple remains one of the largest U.S. taxpayers, having paid more than $75 billion in U.S. taxes over the past five years, including $19 billion in 2024 alone.

Today, Apple supports more than 2.9 million jobs across the country through direct employment, work with U.S.-based suppliers and manufacturers, and developer jobs in the thriving iOS app economy.

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Opening a New Manufacturing Facility in Houston

As part of its new U.S. investments, Apple will work with manufacturing partners to begin production of servers in Houston later this year. A 250,000-square-foot server manufacturing facility, slated to open in 2026, will create thousands of jobs.

Previously manufactured outside the U.S., the servers that will soon be assembled in Houston play a key role in powering Apple Intelligence, and are the foundation of Private Cloud Compute, which combines powerful AI processing with the most advanced security architecture ever deployed at scale for AI cloud computing. The servers bring together years of R&D by Apple engineers, and deliver the industry-leading security and performance of Apple silicon to the data center.

Teams at Apple designed the servers to be incredibly energy efficient, reducing the energy demands of Apple data centers — which already run on 100 percent renewable energy. As Apple brings Apple Intelligence to customers across the U.S., it also plans to continue expanding data center capacity in North Carolina, Iowa, Oregon, Arizona, and Nevada.

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Servers assembled in the U.S. will play a key role in powering Apple Intelligence.

Doubling Apple’s U.S. Advanced Manufacturing Fund

As part of this new investment, Apple is doubling its U.S. Advanced Manufacturing Fund, which was created in 2017 to support world-class innovation and high-skilled manufacturing jobs across America. The growing commitment will increase the fund from $5 billion to $10 billion, focused on promoting advanced manufacturing and skills development throughout the country.

The fund’s expansion includes a multibillion-dollar commitment from Apple to produce advanced silicon in TSMC’s Fab 21 facility in Arizona. Apple is the largest customer at this state-of-the-art facility, which employs more than 2,000 workers to manufacture the chips in the United States. Mass production of Apple chips began last month.

Silicon used by Apple is designed to bring Apple users incredible features, performance, and power efficiency across their devices. Apple’s suppliers already manufacture silicon in 24 factories across 12 states, including Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, and Utah. The company’s investments in the sector help create thousands of high-paying jobs across the country at U.S. companies like Broadcom, Texas Instruments, Skyworks, and Qorvo.

To date, Apple’s U.S. Advanced Manufacturing Fund has supported projects in 13 states — including Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Indiana — that have helped build local businesses, train workers, and create a wide range of innovative manufacturing processes and materials for Apple products.

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Apple’s investments are helping create thousands of high-paying jobs across the country. Pictured: Texas Instruments’ new semiconductor wafer fabrication plant in Lehi, Utah.

Growing R&D Investments Across the U.S.

Apple continues to expand its R&D across the U.S. In the past five years, Apple has nearly doubled its U.S.-based advanced R&D spend, and it will continue to accelerate its growth.

Recently, Apple announced the newest addition to its iPhone lineup, iPhone 16e. iPhone 16e delivers fast, smooth performance and breakthrough battery life, thanks to the industry-leading efficiency of the A18 chip and the new Apple C1 — the first cellular modem designed by Apple, and the most power-efficient modem ever on an iPhone. Apple C1 adds a new chapter to the story of Apple silicon and is the result of years of R&D investment, bringing together the work of thousands of engineers. Apple C1 is the start of a long-term strategy that will allow Apple to innovate and optimize the modem system for additional Apple products.

In the next four years, Apple plans to hire around 20,000 people, of which the vast majority will be focused on R&D, silicon engineering, software development, and AI and machine learning. The expanded commitment includes significant investment in Apple’s R&D hubs across the country. This includes growing teams across the U.S. focused on areas including custom silicon, hardware engineering, software development, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

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In the past five years, Apple has nearly doubled its U.S.-based advanced R&D spend, and will continue to accelerate its growth. Pictured: The company’s new research and development facility in Austin, Texas.

Supporting American Businesses with a New Manufacturing Academy in Detroit

To help companies transition to advanced manufacturing, Apple will open the Apple Manufacturing Academy in Detroit. Apple engineers, along with experts from top universities such as Michigan State, will consult with small- and medium-sized businesses on implementing AI and smart manufacturing techniques. The academy will also offer free in-person and online courses, with a skills development curriculum that teaches workers vital skills like project management and manufacturing process optimization. The courses will help drive productivity, efficiency, and quality in companies’ supply chains.

Apple has long been committed to investing in education and skills development for American workers and students. That includes ongoing and expanding grant programs for organizations like 4-H, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and FIRST, which work closely with Apple in communities across the country to create free programming that helps young people learn vital skills like coding.

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Apple’s investment in education includes grants to U.S. organizations like 4-H (pictured), Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and FIRST.

Apple’s support for the next generation of innovators also includes efforts like the company’s New Silicon Initiative, which prepares students for careers in hardware engineering and silicon chip design. Last year, this program expanded to students at Georgia Tech, and it now reaches students at eight schools across the country. Apple is continuing to expand the initiative, including a new collaboration with UCLA’s Center for Education of Microchip Designers (CEMiD) beginning this year.
Source (Archive)

Sadly, it's a bunch of R&D work that they were already going to do in the US, data centers that have to be physically located in the US due to ping, an educational program for the residents of Detroit, and a server assembly facility in Houston. They did not announce the manufacturing of any of their actual products in the US. However, when India put tariffs on the iPhone, they set up an iPhone manufacturing plant in the country, even though India had zero manufacturing talent and no supply chain.
 
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Only autismos tolerate a "hurtbox" longterm (in contrast to a "hugbox"). Autismos argue in order to make their worldview understandable (to themselves and/or to others). Autismos care much less about social status, embarrassment, or conforming to group identity.
Very good post, and this in particular is a really interesting point and makes me feel like you know me better than I know myself. To be perfectly honest, I'm not gay or fat, and going by my classification that leaves...
 
Most of my packages are split between UPS and USPS. Incoming, both are fine; USPS tracking is a bit shit but they tend to get stuff here in the early parts of the day, UPS tracking is better but it might as well be nighttime by the time they arrive.

FedEx is only used for the EXTREMELY cheap fuckers like Google, and it's literally a gamble if you even see the package, if it hasn't been opened and emptied out, et cetera. Take a look at Google Fi's reddit, they even have a FAQ about it. tldr: Don't allow Google to ship directly to you, ship to a FedEx pickup location and receive AND OPEN the package in front of a manager, on camera if possible, as otherwise FedEx will swear that their negros never touched the package even with Google's security tape on the damned thing and that you must be trying to pull a fast one on Google and poor, innocent, FedEx.

The reason is FedEx is two companies using the FedEx name, FedEx and FedEx Ground, and FedEx Ground is basically ran by felons.

I shipped some shit a few months back. UPS wanted $38 to send 3 music CDs to rural, literally not on Google Streetview, Arkansas. USPS wanted like $8.
When I moved across the country before, I fedex’d my shit in moving boxes to my new address and flew myself. Guess things used to be better or I got lucky
 
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Was your public post office run by Pakis by the time they privatized it? Because here, we've got a recurring problem here with things being lost or stolen by the negroes who run the post. I just had two Kindles I ordered stolen. My mother also sent me a box of handmade items from when I was a baby that included at least one thing that would have looked valuable (it wasn't)...likely stolen as well. I've never had this problem with UPS or FedEx.
It really depends on area, the worst the local Post Office has done out here is be lazy during COVID and take a week to deliver something about ten miles away. Fed Ex, on the other hand, has delivered multiple packages to the wrong address and in one case used local contractors that did outright steal something, I'm pretty sure. On the other hand, the commonality on all these "lost" things are local blacks, who may or may not be American.

Also the boxes that weren't delivered had the brand, company website, and unit information on the outside of the box, of course sketchy contractors and neighbors were going to look that shit up and pawn it.
 
It really depends on area, the worst the local Post Office has done out here is be lazy during COVID and take a week to deliver something about ten miles away. Fed Ex, on the other hand, has delivered multiple packages to the wrong address and in one case used local contractors that did outright steal something, I'm pretty sure. On the other hand, the commonality on all these "lost" things are local blacks, who may or may not be American.

Also the boxes that weren't delivered had the brand, company website, and unit information on the outside of the box, of course sketchy contractors and neighbors were going to look that shit up and pawn it.
My city has hostile USPS foot patrols that will throw your mail in the snow, fuck up entirely whose mail goes in what box, and yell at you for living at your address if they’re ever there when you’re coming and going.

I had to get a PO Box to receive shit like debit cards because they will just never actually show up, and the bank refuses to hold them for you to pick up from there.

I hate it, burn the USPS except keep the mailbox number system
 
Stickers? What stickers?

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I only see numbers when somebody quotes me. I zero it out like I zero out unread emails. This thread moves so fast I often have a tab open on the newest page and a second tab many pages back where I slowly catch up. With the delay I can see the stickers accumulated on my posts as I read past them.
For some reason this made me think of that scene from Dune, where Paul puts his hand in the pain inducer.

And the whole point is to master pain, in pursuit of a more important goal.
"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
who cares if other people disagree as long as you know you're right?
I think stickers only make me mad when it's the best anyone can do for a response to what you have to say. Weirdly, I find even "you're just retarded" posts more tolerable, even if it is pointless and a sign of ineptitude.
I'd argue the world has gotten far worse because people can't be honest to each other, and we entertain ridiculous fucking bullshit like either sex becoming the other or other sexes existing. I'm sick of people parroting each other for acceptance. I'm sick of people who vehemently support one thing changing on the goddamn fly when it's not convenient. Who cares if it's uncomfortable? Everything is already so goddamn uncomfortable because the sheer cognitive dissonance of current year morality and beliefs is beyond ludicrous.
Low social conformity; prefers direct insults.
Sir, I believe you may have a touch of the 'tism.
That was a quality rant. Would drink hemlock or live in a barrel, out of spite. All I can offer is a sticker and this post in return.
 
6 days is awfully generous. I was under the impression after 100 hours without deliveries, grocery stores are empty in the urban areas.
Oh yeah. But 6 days is long enough for them to be empty (although realistically they would have been empty sooner due to Bixnood looting) and here's the key thing: They're empty, not getting filled, and now an entire parasite caste are hungry. That's when the real fun starts, I imagine, when it starts to dawn on Tyrone and Shaniqua that no amount of twerking or setting fire to shit is making whitey bring the gibsmedats to the store and they'll have to get "creative."

6 weeks is the next step, and god only knows who would come out of a Bughive that went 6 weeks without logistical support. Cannibals, literally -- everyone else starved to death. The smart ones fled before the suburbanites started forcing people fleeing back into the city via gunpoint, the dumb ones tried to loot the suburbs. Anything left inside will need to be cleaned out with napalm.

Having said all that, I am I think getting some of this conflated with another blog post -- Matt Bracken has an excellent blog post out there called "When The Music Stops – How America’s Cities May Explode In Violence" that I discovered around the same time as that one. If the gibs stop -- he suggests a crash in the food stamp cards (which are now ran as debit cards) systems that last more than a few days, I suggest that our economy simply can't sustain this shit for much longer -- they'll riot, and once they realize the US Government has absolutely no fucking ability to stop random flash mob style riots, it would spin out of control, rapidly and permanently.
 
Just to be clear I think this shifts the decision to Rogan a bit much.
Rogan reached out to her and gave her the same stipulations as every single guest. Come to the studio, multiple hours, no pre-arranged topics or questions, just a friendly longform chat.
She was the one to demand changes to the same format he's had for years and the same stipulations for every single guest.

That's shifting the decision to Kamala a bit much.

She didn't make any decision about what to do, it was her campaign staff. There were probably a few people telling her to do it, others telling her not to, and half a dozen other opinions somewhere in between. Someone on the staff knew Kamala couldn't handle a three hour interview, so they had to push for changes. Someone else knew that she couldn't win Texas so they had to come up with a reason to justify her even going to Austin for the interview. Someone else thought that Rogan was an evil crypto-fascist and that the campaign shouldn't associate with him and someone else was saying that it didn't matter if he was Hitler incarnate because the reach is too large to ignore.

Kamala, lacking the necessary executive function to make a decision, just went along with the flow
 
Why the fuck would Croats and Albanians be pouring money (they don't have in the first place) into pozloading Serbia, you retard? You just typing whatever.
Not like it would take much pouring comparatively. But if you can't see how Albania at least would want destabilization in Serbia, you have obviously never heard of Kosovo.

Edit: If you want to know the various motivations for pozloading Serbia right now, I'd be happy to share.
 
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Here is a 4chan post about the term "hurtbox":
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This is amazing. IDK why I never heard of this before but it's 100% true. You break down all the delusional bullshit in the world to an almost hyper sane visual status. This is what happens when you go through trial by fire and not this bullshit virtue signaling and agreeing with the masses, you can become a threat to the status quo of things by simple questions. When you are someone like that no one can use you so no one wants to be friends with you in those circles ( right or left ).
 
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I'd argue the world has gotten far worse because people can't be honest to each other, and we entertain ridiculous fucking bullshit like either sex becoming the other or other sexes existing. I'm sick of people parroting each other for acceptance. I'm sick of people who vehemently support one thing changing on the goddamn fly when it's not convenient. Who cares if it's uncomfortable? Everything is already so goddamn uncomfortable because the sheer cognitive dissonance of current year morality and beliefs is beyond ludicrous.

And it all comes from the state making believing lies a loyalty test. I've read a few different biographies and accounts from the old USSR. They range from more lurid, shocking accounts of Solzhenitsyn to a rather mundane account of a "non-artist" who was never beaten by police or sent to Siberia (it's short and very good). The common thread that jumps out from all of them is just how dishonest the regime was about everything, how it demanded dishonesty from everybody else all the time, and how this systemic dishonesty constantly frayed and tore at the social fabric.

Solzhenitsyn is famous for depicting the sadistic cruelty of the NKVD and the GULAG system, but the USSR wasn't always cruel. Other accounts focus on poverty, but it wasn't always poor, either (not everywhere). But it was always dishonest. You can't escape that in a single memoir. That's what I see as being fundamentally in common with the regime we're fighting in the West today. It's that systemic dishonesty, the demand that we always lie about everything all the time, or face consequences.
 
I suggest that our economy simply can't sustain this shit for much longer -- they'll riot, and once they realize the US Government has absolutely no fucking ability to stop random flash mob style riots, it would spin out of control, rapidly and permanently.
Not permanently, eventually enough will be culled to the point their populations can't sustain gibsmedat riots and they stop. Then, under the new reactionary regime all the surviving populations are forcibly repatriated. The Marxists probably get sent with them, assuming any survived.
 
Stickers can do funny things to a person.

Most humans care about online social validation (thumbs up, retweet ratios, reddit gold). They also have loss aversion (losses feel more painful than equal sized wins).
So :disagree: feels twice as bad (or more) than :agree:.

Recently Null and some users argued about stickers. I distinctly remember Null calling them "dopamine zombies", but agreeing to turn sticker notifications on. I immediately turned them off because I also lack a normal brain, like Null does. Personally, knowing how infatuated many users are with stickers I proceeded to use every variety of sticker munificently. Some sharty trolls did some negrate botting. After a bit of an adjustment period this thread now exists in a state of sticker inflation. The fact that the thread has high traffic also contributes.
Back when the Drop Kiwifarms campaign's boiler held steam pressure I used sticker engagement to gauge thread posting speeds. The posts that would get the most interactions usually meant a thread I'm interested in is moving; ie something's happening. But then I realized there is a watch function built in; you can teach an old dog.
 
This reminds me of California DMV’s with three hour wait times while they’re not even that busy because the black clerks have to SHOW you how stunning and brave they are by fucking around organizing their desk for ten minutes before pushing the button for next in line
 
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