RickJWagner

Nun of those kinds of jokes here, please.

How is this supposed to stop development outside of the US?

If AI turns evil, it will probably not discriminate on which countries to destroy. So Sanders kneecapping the USA won’t slow China, which could result in global destruction anyway.

Without global agreement ( and intrusive monitoring ), it doesn’t seem useful.

You wrote: “They ( problems in elections ) do exist. What's interesting is that those are problems created by the same people who are currently trying to disenfranchise people…”

Under discussion was the New Jersey ineligible voter problem, to which you responded with problems in perceived over zealous voter restrictions.

Clearly, not all the problems are caused by Republicans. There’s room for examination and correction in more than one place.

I don’t oppose that. What makes you think all Republicans would?

I want every single voter to have access to their vote, and I want strict proof that every vote cast was the knowledgeable will of that voter ( and only that voter. I’m thinking of ballot dumps at collection boxes here. )

The distinction between fraud and error doesn’t matter to me. The system has problems, ineligible voters have been casting votes. Nobody should oppose efforts to fix it.

Explain how Republicans caused the ineligible votes in New Jersey, please.

I am asserting that errors happened. Invalid votes were cast, thousands more potentially could be cast. Just in one state. What about the rest? Clearly, there is potential for more problem areas.

The American public overwhelmingly wants voter ID, as other countries have, but this is a topic not entertained by one side of the political aisle. Or rather, by the party leaders—- the majority of their voters want voter ID, but the party won’t pursue it!

We can’t just shrug these things off. They are real.

I’d say there is enough to see here that more scrutiny is warranted. It should be bipartisan.

Sure, fix those problems too.

What you are showing is that problems exist. Clearly, work on election integrity is needed.

Note that in New Jersey, bipartisan work is being done.

New Jersey had 6600 hundred non citizens get ballots.

If you were writing software, would you overlook a problem like that?

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/30/new-jerseys-nonciti...

Rigor is needed.

Here’s an article talking about 6000 ineligible voters in New Jersey getting ballots.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/30/new-jerseys-nonciti...

Surely you agree this is problematic, and oversight is needed?

Then extend that one step farther. It wouldn’t be fair to scrutinize only blue states like New Jersey. Red states like Wyoming should be held accountable too, right?

The article you’ve provided clearly says Trumps dialogue is not to be taken literally. ( It does say there are other ways the election might be tinkered with, but these are for another discussion. )

I don’t find that article to be particularly worrying.

A good majority of Americans want voter id.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/28/politics/video/the-odds-voter...

So a party calling for voter id is following the will of the people, while politicians opposing the will of the people are justifying the need for a fix, right?

Source, please.

An impressive list of signatories. It’ll be interesting to see how much traction this gets.

Odd you should pick Favre. How about Elizabeth Warren, who cheated deserving minorities out of benefits, then going on to be fabulously wealthy as a modestly paid public servant? Does she trip your rage trigger as well?

In the mid 80s I lived in Monterrey, at the Defense Language Institute.

I got the chance to volunteer as Security for a race at Laguna Seca. Looking back, I should have looked for a way to get into Car Week!

Interesting.

Per Google, the current world’s highest IQ belongs to Younghun Kim, with 276. That’s disputed, of course.

Next up is Terence Tao with 230.

I guess there isn’t a single standard.

It’s funny you picked 160.

Buffett famously said “You don’t need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with a 130 IQ. Rationality is essential”

Buffett said it in the book, “Warren Buffett Speaks.”

He also said if you do have an IQ of 160, you might as well give away 30 points, they’re not going to help you be a better investor.

Maybe he’s wrong, but at this time he’s regarded as one of the most successful investors ever, if not the very best.

Here’s one his quotes.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/12/heres-the-iq-score-warren-bu...

Lots of reasons, I suspect.

Smart people are smarter than stupid people, but not that much smarter. They are subject to thinking they’ve got it all figured out, when really they don’t. Warren Buffett spoke several times about this, saying that he’d much rather deal with a person of middling IQ and some humility rather than a person with very high IQ but not as smart as they think.

Then there are other attributes like discipline. A very smart person with little discipline could easily end up in a worse state than someone with good discipline and less intelligence. Sort of the Forest Gump model, if you like.

Superior intelligence is absolutely a gift. But not the only kind of gift, and not necessarily the best one. Ask someone like Stephen Hawking.

You can see it moving, hear it revving, and watch the huge clouds of tire smoke.

The social contract says you have to follow the laws our representatives write and our police enforce. A good citizen fights the cops in court, with laws. A criminal flaunts the law and uses a car to try to evade apprehension.

Surprising that AI isn’t the central villain.

I did the same math and had the same question.

But wait, something was learned! I typed in the start of the equation and after hitting space after the equal sign it yielded the answer! The Hacker News comment box can do the math for you!

I see this akin to what the great Thomas Sowell calls ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’.

Eventually this will lower the bar for everyone.

I remember a gunman that shot Reagan, yes. One gunman.

Trump has had the kid that shot up the rally ( and yielded the iconic photo ), the golf course gunman, the guy that shot up the annual press dinner and now the Iranians.

Do you remember it being as bad for other presidents? Provide reasons why, by my count Trump seems to draw the assassins out.

You’re joking, right?

This was a preemptive security move, and the president is still alive. Crazy people have tried to kill Trump multiple times already. Every minute of every day must be guarded, especially as the president travels.

The Secret Service is rising to the biggest challenge it’s ever had, and thus far it is succeeding.

It is amazing to me that this could happen. The claims made by the plagiarist were numerous and far beyond belief. Why didn’t common sense come into play here?

I’d like to understand how they defined capitalism vs free enterprise for the poll participants.

I’m encouraged by parts of the poll, especially independents responses. I think a good many Americans perceive benefits to some degree of socialism ( ie healthcare ), but without going overboard.

I’m with you. Vandalism is not the right path.

When I got my first corporate job, I was placed in a group of 20 trainees in a rigorous COBOL course. We were given assignments and a schedule to complete them.

Most of us read the specs, then raced into the coding phase, hands to IBM mechanical keyboards. One guy took a different approach. He took a legal pad and pencil, and wrote his whole program on paper before he ever approached a terminal. He’d do his own bug checking and syntax checking, instead of having the compiler do it ( compiles took longer in those days, and required JCL ). He avoided the entire compile/wait/read-with-dismay/quickly-try-again loop.

He was one of the top students, of course. And a lot less stressed, as I recall.

Siphoning money out of…? Really?

What about when you reach retirement age? Will you consider medical care, a new house, or a cruise to be siphoning off of money that presumably belongs to someone else?

The money is theirs to use as they see fit. Maybe they earned it, maybe they inherited it. It doesn’t matter. You make your own fortune in this world, and then you get to decide how to spend it.