That NYT article on the relationship between JP Morgan and Epstein was completely damning. JP Morgan executives intentionally subverted bank oversight processes which repeatedly flagged Epstein, with the knowledge that Epstein was engaging in crime and that they were facilitating those crimes. They decided that the risk was worth it. At least one of the JP Morgan executives involved raped an Epstein victim, he admitted it under oath. It looks very likely that JP Morgan executives and former executives are going to be heavily implicated if the Epstein files ever get released.

It’s a very small fine in Argentina, less than a dollar.

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With the way things are going, I’m glad I don’t need to fly anywhere. The holiday travel season this year is going to be a disaster.

That is correct, it’s been quite awhile now since UEFI became standard but almost everyone still calls it the BIOS. Although I’ve noticed the word firmware is starting to be used more as well.

This is exactly the kind of dumbass racist loser you expect to find working at ICE. Not even qualified to take care of his own children but ICE is happy to let him run around in a mask with a gun and kidnap people.

There are ones that are really just normal pfas pans that copied the look but you’re still not supposed to use metal utensils with them. The world of cookware is really confusing, it’s a huge industry and doesn’t seem to really be regulated or monitored for safety in any significant way.

Ceramic nonstick sketches me out. It’s got silicone embedded in the material, which effectively lubricates the pan to produce the nonstick effect until it all eventually leaches out. It seems safe because a little silicone in your food is not considered dangerous currently. I recently started using the pans with a metal grid in them that’s supposed to produce a nonstick effect from its physical structure. They work well enough it’s not been a problem even though they aren’t quite as nonstick as pfas or silicone. They are stupid expensive unfortunately.

Edit: Misremembered, its “organic silicon compounds” and not silicone.

Even the ones that were convicted often barely received punishment. Earlier today I was reading about one of the Nazi spies who infiltrated the German resistance and got lots of people executed or sent to the death camps. He was convicted after the war and sentenced to 15 years. He was out in less than 2. After he got out he had a family and went on to be a Stasi informer who snitched on his own daughter.

I don’t think its linked in the article so here is the guys gofundme: https://www.gofundme.com/f/us-citizen-being-held-in-canada/donate?source=btn_story_donate

Yikes. If he is willing to engage in what he obviously knows is deeply unethical conduct like this, it makes you wonder what else he has been getting up to behind the scenes. The Atlantic has some explaining to do, and I don’t see how Frum can continue working there after such egregious behavior has been exposed. How many other pieces has he published with secret conflicts of interest like this?

I am trying to think of a corporate gig that would be comparable. Being a murderous dictator who has journalists butchered is generally viewed as being significantly worse than your average CEO by most people. Maybe you could say taking money from Erik Prince is sort of on par? I would expect there to be a somewhat equivalent level of outrage in that scenario. Bill Burr whoring it out for a more normal corporate overlord who isn’t directly involved in torturing and murdering people isn’t going to draw the same kind of condemnation though.

I agree that the only slightly compelling argument in this is that there is some greater good being served here, but it is impossible to ignore the reality of the situation. MBS is directly paying them, there are rules about what they are allowed to say, the audience is a bunch of wealthy elites who already have easy access to anything they want, and the intent of the whole thing is very obviously part of the larger image rehabilitation campaign that MBS has been attempting to pull off for the past few years by throwing his blood money around. Burr got crucified for what he said because it is exactly what MBS wants him to say. Burr saw a bunch of fast food places and that was enough for him because he is being paid, and he knows if he said some real shit about MBS it would be a problem.

I do tend to go this hard on whoever. If they want to associate with someone like MBS I am going to judge the shit out of them for it just like I would anyone else. It’s disgusting behavior whoring yourself out to a dictator. I don’t need people like that in my life and I regret that I have to share this planet with them.

To me this does not feel like an especially lofty standard. Particularly for someone like Burr who is already wealthy and established enough that a $1m paycheck isn’t life changing money.

I do agree that religious fundamentalists could use more exposure to people speaking freely and openly, but that is not what this is. Besides the government imposed restrictions on topics they were allowed to mention in their sets, the audience itself is the wealthy elite from Riyadh who are the least religious and most secular segment of Saudi society. These are a bunch of rich folks who can fly to NYC whenever they want to catch any comedy show they want to see.

The reason that performers and comedians in particular piss people off is because of the whole free speech thing. It is a gross look to be someone reliant on freedom of expression for your career to take money from the guy who notoriously had a journalist brutally tortured and chopped up with a bone saw. And it’s not like that is the only horrific thing MBS has done either, it wasn’t even the first or last journalist he has murdered. If they were just performing in Saudi Arabia for some kind of private org and the money wasn’t being paid directly by MBS there would be significantly less anger or sense of betrayal from their fans. MBS is a notorious psychopath directly responsible for horrific crimes and anyone who associates with him is going to be tainted by it, there is no getting around that.

You don’t need to be a moral paragon to recognize that taking money from the fucking bone saw guy to whitewash his shitty dictatorship is bad and will piss off your audience. Where is the line for you? If you think Burr is excused for this because his claim to fame is being a piece of shit, could he do anything you actually find unacceptable?

US imports of Saudi oil have not been significant for awhile now, North American oil production has increased massively over the past several decades. The US has actually been energy independent and a net exporter for around 5 years or so I think.

I don’t think many Americans are happy about the US relationship with Saudi Arabia but it doesn’t get shoved in their faces often so when comedians act like this it becomes an avenue for that anger to be expressed. Many Americans have parasocial relationships with comedians, and/or have this idea that they are “fearless truth-tellers”, so it hits a lot different compared to abstract foreign policy and people get a lot more easily riled up about it.

Palestine was not the sole reason Democrats lost or the single biggest issue for voters according to the polling data. There was a small percentage for whom it was their sole or primary motivation in voting.

I’m opposed to the death penalty but definitely agree this is a category of crime that deserves maximum punishment comparable to first degree murder in order to create the maximum deterrence possible.

This punishment is ridiculously inadequate for that level of misconduct. Even when there’s “justice”, it is barely justice.

It is possible to have a political allegiance while still not being fully blinded by partisanship. That said, there are huge numbers of people in the US who are completely ignorant of politics beyond what seeps in via pop culture. Those are the kinds of people I was thinking of, someone who occasionally might watch the local news but is really just out there living their life without any significant curiosity about how the world works or a desire to improve anything beyond their personal circumstances. It could be that I am being a little naive and hopeful here and even these people are too sucked into the Republican propaganda ecosystem now. I just know I’ve met a lot of people who have these ideas like “fiscal conservative, social liberal” and that is the full depth of their political beliefs or knowledge, not counting the vague and often weird ideas they’ve picked up about the parties or how the government functions from all the propaganda that is inescapable these days.

It really exposes the lie that the Republican reaction to Kirk is anything other than performative. Not that it wasn’t already clear, but their response to this attack makes their hysteria around Kirk undeniable to anyone who hasn’t been fully blinded by partisanship.