I don’t think that the files are weakened by allegations from anonymous tips. But, if that’s the pillar they’re using to build their case against Trump, that’s pretty worrisome. Holding a press conference about allegations from an anonymous tip line is the equivalent of an attack ad with ominous music and vague, unprovable statements.

If that’s what they’re going to lead with, they better at least take the angle “and it’s very telling that nobody followed up on these incredibly disturbing claims. Why weren’t they investigated?”

It would be a lot more meaningful if it were “credible allegations” or “credible evidence” or “substantiated reports”. An allegation is just a claim. Some of the stuff in the Epstein files is just calls that were made to a tip line, without any follow-up investigation. I wouldn’t be surprised if a high-profile tip line also has allegations that Trump is a lizard person, or that Epstein had psychic powers.

It’s not that I doubt that Trump did it, it’s just that a mere allegation is nothing. If all they have is allegations, then the case against him is a lot weaker than it actually seems. If these claims were actually investigated, not just written down, they should say that. Even if the claims weren’t investigated and it’s because the FBI was ordered not to investigate, say that. Surely among the 3.5 million pages they’ve released, there’s more than just allegations. Otherwise it seems like they’re trying to pull a fast one, making it seem like a mere allegation is a sign of guilt.

That’s all of them, isn’t it? For all other tariffs he would have had to use the legislative branch, which he didn’t.

Across the aisle repubs and dems are mostly pro-business, pro-trade

Well, plenty of the MAGA republicans are pro-tectionist more than they are pro-trade. If he’d tried to pass new tariffs on day 1 of his administration there’s a chance that they might have had enough votes to do it. But, that was the slow way that required negotiating and compromise.

Now that people have seen just how awful the tariffs are, I think a lot of the MAGA republicans wouldn’t pass the legislation. They could have claimed ignorance before the tariffs passed, but now it’s hard for them to argue with a straight face that they’ll be good for America.

It’s not really a matter of timing. If this ruling had come out a year ago, it’s not like there were enforcers ready to go. As soon as Trump took over he made sure that nothing in the executive branch was going to stand in his way. And his toadies in the legislative branch have been rolling over for him since the inauguration.

They’re not really summarizing it. Summarizing means to express something in a more concise form. The original was a tweet, so if anything they un-summarized the bullet points in the tweet.

But, I know the “newspaper articles” you mean, and they are much worse. They seem to specialize in talking around the content of the tweets, and the reaction to the tweets, and the reactions to those reactions. But, if you want to actually know the actual content of the original tweet you have to keep scrolling and scrolling as you pass ad after ad (hopefully you’re blocking the ads so you just get blank space after blank space). Those are so frustrating when all you want to know is what the actual tweet said.

countries trade for what they cannot make

That’s the North Korea model. I don’t think people in North Korea enjoy life much.

“Countries trade for what they’re not specialized at” is the South Korean model. They import almost everything, and export high-end electronics, cargo ships, cars, etc.

I would rather live in South Korea, don’t know about you.

Countries should be relatively self-reliant, as should cities, as should individual homes. It’s good to have a little garden if you can, and to be able to make bread from scratch if the supermarket is out of loaves.

But, too much self-reliance is a miserable way to live. Try living on a subsistence farm, and see how much work that is. And even then, you’re not really self-reliant. You’re probably buying refined diesel for your tractor, a tractor you bought from a tractor manufacturer, and so on. On the other hand if a farmer specializes in just one crop, say wheat, they’re no longer self-sufficient, but they’re probably more efficient, and they use the money they get from selling wheat to buy corn, tomatoes, and carrots from other specialists.

Not relying on other people has a major cost. It’s much less efficient, and much more work. In the modern world, it’s next to impossible. Even the Amish regularly buy and sell with the “English” world.

It’s the same for countries. You can grow wine in England, and I’m sure some of it is good. But, it doesn’t have the climate that France or Spain do. Instead of every country producing its own wine and only consuming domestic wine, why not get higher quality wine from the countries best at making it, and export to them the things you’re best at producing.

Sometimes, relying on other countries can lead to problems. When it works it’s cheaper and more efficient, but when it fails it can be bad. For example, Germany relied too much on cheap Russian gas. So, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Germany couldn’t fully boycott Russia and had to keep paying them for gas until it could totally rework its energy infrastructure. Otherwise Germans would freeze in the winter.

But, Brexit was about leaving the EU. The EU isn’t just a bunch of random trade partners. Russia is in Europe, but was never part of the EU. There’s a reason why. Being part of the EU was supposed to also be a commitment to a common set of values: freedom, democracy, equality, human rights, etc. Not every country fully agreed with every other country’s interpretation of values. But, that’s ok, even within a country there were pretty major differences between people. Britain was part of the EU community, not merely a trade partner with EU countries.

Being part of the EU allowed the UK to have access to oranges at the lowest possible cost. They had to rely on Spain to grow those oranges, but Spain and England share many of the same interests and values, so that should have been fine. In exchange, they could sell things to Spain that Spain didn’t produce locally, like whiskey.

With Brexit, England still can’t grow oranges locally, and still has to import them from Spain. Spain still doesn’t make much whiskey locally, and has to import it from England, but now there are barriers. Oranges are a true unique advantage that Spain has. Almost no other country in Spain can grow them as well. For the UK, their specialty wasn’t as special. Sure, they have a lot of history with whisky, but pre-Brexit a lot of the specialization was finance, accounting, legal services, consulting, etc. That kind of expertise is easy to transfer to another country. It doesn’t require a special climate, just trained people. So, when Brexit happened and trade barriers went up, it was easy for a company in France to switch to a financial services company out of Switzerland instead, and it was easy for financial services experts in London to just pick up and move (often move back) to the EU.

No country in the modern world is fully self-reliant, even North Korea trades with China. So, the real question is how self-reliant to be. Most people thought that the UK had it good. As one of the founding members of the EU it had managed to negotiate a few exceptions that were in its own interest. The British specialties of financial services, banking, insurance, accounting, consultancy, etc. were big revenue generators both from taxing the companies and from taxing the well paid white collar employees. The UK had a comparative advantage there not because of geography or climate, but just because of momentum. Companies were based out of London, and there was no reason to move, so that’s where they stayed. But, as time goes on, it’s likely that the slight friction between the UK and EU will mean that there will be a gradual migration out of London and over to Zurich, or Berlin or Paris.

Finally, since the UK and EU values and culture are so similar, even though the UK can make its own laws on all kinds of things now, they are still largely following the EU laws. The UK is free to change its food labelling laws to be more similar to the US, for example. But, UK people still want laws more similar to Europe than the US. One example of this is female sanitary products (tampons, etc.). One change the UK made after Brexit was to eliminate the VAT on those. But, this isn’t because the UK cares more about women’s needs than the EU, and this required an extreme decision like Brexit. A push towards a zero rate is happening in many EU countries, it’s just going a bit slower.

In the end, the UK has maybe gained a little more self reliance by leaving a community of like-minded countries. But, the result is a big hit to its economy. It now has the ability to change its laws and regulations to reflect British values instead of European values. But, for the most part, nothing much has changed because for the most part British values and European values are pretty similar. It still has to import oranges from Spain, there’s now just more paperwork. There are always tradeoffs. Often if the domestic manufacturing for something is small (say wine in the UK) it’s because another country has a comparative advantage. You can shore up UK wine-making, but if you do that you’re probably going to make wine more expensive for consumers, and probably make it lower quality as well. The EU is a community of like-minded countries that share interests and values, and has a lot of countries with pretty similar levels of economic development. Despite the rhetoric, Britons weren’t losing their jobs because of foreign labour. Brexit didn’t result in a big drop in the unemployment rate. It was already near historic lows. Basically, in the end, there was no need for Brexit, no advantage in Brexit, and a lot of costs once it was done.

Wow, this is an awful submission.

It’s a very short article that is essentially restating a tweet but in paragraphs instead of bullet points. That tweet simply has a picture of something that looks like it might be an article published in a journal, or something?

If you actually want to see the source, you have to read the words on the picture in the tweet and search for them. That will eventually lead you to this working paper.

I’m not saying that the article didn’t summarize the tweet properly, or that the tweet didn’t summarize the working paper well. But, surely we can do better than articles which summarize tweets.

It this were a proper, well regulated capitalist marketplace with actual competition, the company that sold you the widget might offer you a rebate on your next order so that they could keep your business. But, when your only real option is Amazon, they know you’re not going anywhere, so they’ll keep the tariff repayment and just wait for your next order.

I’m sure that for Taiwan and South Korea, China is the biggest threat. For Poland, the biggest threat is Russia. It’s obvious why the US is the biggest threat for Canada.

Even if the border weren’t open and undefended, the two countries’ economies have been getting more and more integrated for decades. Canada’s economy depends on a stable and sane USA. For a long time that was a safe bet, but now the US is attacking Canada. And, even if it weren’t for the tariffs and other attacks, the absolute chaos that Trump is doing to the American economy would reverberate into Canada’s economy.

Russia threatens European power. U.S. threatens the Western Hemisphere and

It was nice of the CIA agent to hit “submit” after offing you.

It’s having grown up on sci-fi that has allowed me to see that LLMs are not “AI”, so there’s no surprise I’m against “imitation AI”.

I like the idea of working around the US. But, I don’t like that these trade deals are typically designed to help big businesses, not individuals. Like, even back in the good ol’ days when NAFTA was in place, maybe Canadian businesses could import from the US without any tariffs. But, I, as an individual consumer, couldn’t buy something from the US without being hit with a big duty payment. In addition, the deals often have things in them that prevent participating countries from having sane laws if those laws interfere with businesses at all. For example, the only reason that anti-circumvention measures exist in Canada is that it was a condition of trade deals that Canada adopt the worst parts of the DMCA.

Future deals should allow individual people to buy things cheaply overseas, and not just allow businesses to do that. They should also address the freer movement of people between countries. And, they shouldn’t prevent countries from adding laws that protect people or the environment.

USMCA is better?

If the RAM they were building for the datacenters was identical to the RAM for PCs, then maybe. Instead, I think they’ll have to slowly switch back to making regular PC RAM, and the shortages will continue.

What seems possible is China intervening. RAM isn’t as difficult to produce as other chips, so it’s possible they might spin up fabs and factories to supply their own domestic market, and eventually start exporting too. Currently 90%+ of RAM is made by Micron (USA), SK Hynix (South Korea) and Samsung (South Korea). China doesn’t like to depend on other countries, and it probably has the capacity to manufacture RAM. And, it probably knows that if it gets good at making RAM it has a good chance at outcompeting the other 3 in the long run. So, I don’t expect any short term fixes, but in the long run this might mean cheaper RAM with a 4th major supplier.

Not FOSS, just public domain.

It really is a huge stretch.

“Grab 'em by the pussy” was about adults. It was presumably about over-the-clothes groping. It’s something that you can talk about in public, as evidenced from the fact that the famous clip comes from a time when Trump was bragging about it to someone.

The phrase “He measured the children’s vulva and vaginas by entering a finger and rated the children on tightness” is not something you’d expect to hear except in a courtroom where someone is being tried for child sexual abuse. And, we’re supposed to believe that happened at “Calendar Girl” parties at Mar-A-Lago? I just don’t buy it. This would have leaked a lot earlier if it were true. I mean, this isn’t even about a private island where it’s easy to control every person who comes and goes. Mar-A-Lago is just some private club in West Palm Beach, Florida, which presumably has a lot of cooks, janitors, waiters, security guards, groundskeepers, IT people, etc. coming on and off-site regularly just to keep the place running. Even if you think that somehow there was a cabal of child sex predators who were buddies and were honest enough to all trust one-another and not turn each-other in. Somehow, you’re also avoiding any of the staff noticing what’s going on?

Keep in mind that we know how lax the security was at Mar-A-Lago, from the fact that classified docs were found just piled in a random bathroom. If we were talking about some place that was known for ultra tight security, where there were presumably back rooms that were guarded at all times and where something secret might have been happening, then maybe I could believe that this might have happened. But, not at Mar-A-Lago.

So, it’s not that Trump might do this that’s hard to believe. I can easily believe he’d do something depraved like that. But, not at a party, in front of a crowd of people who could identify him, at his semi-public golf club.

My crimes will be explored in as much depth as possible in any extensive biography

Probably not. Without any investigation it will all be speculation. Biographies are written for a commercial audience. Who’s going to buy a biography of Andrew? People who like the royals, not people who hate them. If he’d actually appeared in court, the biography would have to address it. But, with it all just speculation, they can mention the speculation and move on.

It’s possible that some of the people who met with Epstein did it because they knew he could introduce them to other rich and powerful people. They might not have known about the child sexual abuse. Or they suspected something, but thought that Epstein was always seen with barely legal 18-year-olds, and that that was the extent of it.

I personally don’t think that Epstein introduced himself to billionaires by saying “Hi, I’m Jeff Epstein, I rape children, are you interested in raping children too?” I don’t believe that being a billionaire automatically means you not only enjoy raping children, but are excited to share that hobby with other people. Epstein probably sounded them out, investigated them, and only went into details with the ones who weren’t going to expose him. And, most likely, he got blackmail material on anybody who he did share his “hobby” with. He probably kept anybody who he thought might expose him at arms length, and he only let them see him with girls who were 18+.

So, while that plausible deniability exists, I’m sure Andrew wants to be able to claim that he was buddies with Epstein, but was so clueless that he never knew about the child sexual abuse.

Look, the kind of people who show up in Epstein’s files are the kind that deserve zero sympathy. They’re the kinds of ultra-rich people who should be lined up for the guillotine just because of their obscene wealth hoards, even if they had nothing to do with child sex abuse.

But, just look at the phenomenon of SWATting. People phone in a malicious tip to the police in the hope that they kick down someone’s door. In addition to malicious people, a tip line is going to get people having schizophrenic episodes, people suffering carbon monoxide poisoning, etc.

To me, these allegations seem about as likely as there being a secret basement at Comet Ping Pong pizzeria where the elites were draining children of their adrenachrome. And, I’d really like it if my side didn’t go all Q-Anon and start believing every possible rumour just because it makes someone they hate look bad.

It was a bribe, but they still made a movie, and they still put that movie in theatres. It’s still going to be embarrassing if nobody sees the movie. There are reports of movie theatres where there are 3-4 people in the audience, and every one of them is being paid to be there because they have to write a review of the movie.

They could have paid Melania for her life rights, pretended to make a movie, and then not released it, or made it streaming-only, making some excuse about protesters, the safety of the theatre goers, etc. Instead they actually put it out into the world and invited the kind of ridicule it deserves.