Hacker News Reader

intermerdaon How the US defense secretary circumvents official DoD communications equipment

I don't understand it either. It's not as if you can accidentally message war plans to unauthorized parties on Signal.

intermerdaon Only Teslas exempt from new auto tariffs thanks to 85% domestic content rule

Oh I thought the military takes orders from the Command-in-Chief. Silly me. Maybe Alito and Thomas can tell the Joint Chiefs to provide protection to the Proud Boys to storm the Capitol in 2028.

intermerdaon Only Teslas exempt from new auto tariffs thanks to 85% domestic content rule

You can extend the "free market ideologues" to include more groups such as those who were very concerned about free speech for exactly four years from 2021-2024. Same people were concerned about politicization of justice department, but only when certain Presidents are in office. Same goes for "respect for constitution". "Family values" was abandoned quite a while ago.

Wilhoit’s Law has never been truer.

intermerdaon ICE Deports 3 U.S. Citizen Children Held Incommunicado Prior to the Deportation

It's intentional. The cruelty is the point.

intermerdaon ICE Deports 3 U.S. Citizen Children Held Incommunicado Prior to the Deportation

The distrust of the press has been cultivated intentionally. A POTUS saying "What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening" would have been seen too farcical for a comedy. And yet here we are.

intermerdaon ICE Deports 3 U.S. Citizen Children Held Incommunicado Prior to the Deportation

I assume you believe it's important that the federal agents should raid every marijuana dispensary in the US and for the DOJ to prosecute dispensary owners and individuals who smoke and participate in weed consumption in each state. Is that correct? After all, technicalities matter.

intermerdaon Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

It is actually, unless you are unable to parse information without being spoon fed to you.

intermerdaon Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

I tried giving it a shot. It starts with an "executive summary", followed by an intro to how Wikipedia works. The very first link to any concrete evidence is by a guy who has a page on PragerU with gems like "Russian collusion hoax" and how the "mainstream media" is "fake news".

It's a pretty simple case of Wittgenstein's ruler for me. It tells me more about ADL as an org than the content.

intermerdaon Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

> Not defending it, but just saying that being on RT doesn't necessarily imply anything.

I'm not sure who's claiming that here. The RT appearance in question is about him spreading disinformation and Russian propaganda on the eve of Ukraine invasion.

intermerdaon A Scaled Down Look at Spending, Revenue, and What's Being Cut

> It's one of the countless missteps of the Dems to not do this themselves (but in the right way: provide valuable services while trimming waste). Another misstep is in not educating the public on the value the public gets from the tax dollars spent.

Murc’s law in action.

intermerdaon FBI arrests judge accused of helping man evade immigration authorities

Yeah Schindler should have been arrested too. Too bad a law breaker has been so celebrated in history.

intermerdaon U.S. citizen in Arizona detained by immigration officials for 10 days

Even in the past it was nothing but a coded language. They don't actually believe in it from a principled point of view. Lee Atwater 1981 interview has continued to remain relevant. From direct racial slurs to forced busing, states' rights. Then it morphed into small government, personal freedoms. And now it's DEI and trans.

intermerdaon Slouching towards San Francisco

> In a way, places like Texas and Georgia and Ohio are far more progressive than SF or California as a whole because a working class person can afford a home.

Ah the famously progressive Texas where women regularly die because of abortion ban, weed is illegal, and you can’t buy booze on a Sunday, and lawmakers want to overturn Obergefell to ban same sex marriage. Very progressive, much freedom.

> Housing costs are the shame and great hypocrisy of most “blue” cities.

Yes, housing costs are often high where people want to live.

intermerdaon Whistleblower details how DOGE may have taken sensitive NLRB data

> Am I reading it wrong?

Based on your comments, you're not reading the article at all.

intermerdaon Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

And you’re taking words of this administration at face value, correct?

intermerdaon Leaked data reveals Israeli govt campaign to remove pro-Palestine posts on Meta

They've discussed deporting US citizens to gulags - https://truthout.org/articles/white-house-press-sec-says-tru...

intermerdaon America Is Backsliding Toward Its Most Polluted Era

> This particular article is a gem, because it portrayed a 5.5% increase from 2016-2018 is a regression.

Did you read the article? It prefaces with Trump's false claim and provides proof of his lying.

> There was no follow-up article when air pollution decreased more than 40% the next year.

Perhaps Trump did not repeat that specific lie next year?

> Nor was there an article when pollution spiked 76% from the Trump-administration low during the Biden administration.

I've seen plenty of articles about how air pollution was at record lows during COVID.

intermerdaon Justice Dept. scales back crypto cases in line with Trump administration memo

> This is often said, but it's not true and it has nothing to do with anything that Trump is doing

This is not true. It has everything to do with what Trump is doing and has done.

> What they ruled is that he can't be _prosecuted_ for most actions he takes as president.

Again untrue. What they ruled is that he cannot be held criminally liable for any official actions. Unofficial actions are still up for debate. And you'd have to be extremely naive to wonder why they didn't give any guideline regarding distinction between official and unofficial actions. Or wonder why they refused to take up the exact same issue when asked by the prosecutor.

> And as much as Democrats complained about it at the time, it's probably the only thing keeping Biden from facing some kind of phony indictment right now.

This isn't true as well. If they wanted to, they can still go after Biden and claim that his acts were "unofficial".

> The _only_ thing that is allowing Trump to get away with this is Congress's inability to act, or passive acquiescence to what he's doing.

Definitely not the only thing, but one of the reasons why Congress doesn't act is because of violent backlash from the MAGA crowd. Like when credible death threats pressured the NC senator into voting for the SecDef - https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/politics/cowardice-gop-faces-...

intermerdaon The New Legislators of Silicon Valley

Has the tech industry always been this depraved? Or something fundamentally change within these people with the advent of Trumpism?

intermerdaon Bond rout starting to sound market alarm bells

> It's hard to say where the lower bound for the value of American companies is now. Is it zero?

Come on, it's definitely not zero for most of the companies, even if tons of small businesses go bankrupt.

> But the current administration seems to be set on redirecting those earnings away from investors towards the government. And I don't see what could limit the extent to which they do so.

The objective of the current administration is to implement fascism. Companies can operate and make profit, as long as it’s allowed by the government. See the blackmailing of law firms and tech companies for examples.

Ironically, Thomas Sowell made that argument back when Obama dared to give Americans healthcare - https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/06/12/socialist-.... And he also rang similar alarm bells during the Biden administration - https://www.foxnews.com/media/thomas-sowell-systemic-racism-.... But he has offered nothing more than milquetoast commentary about tariffs being bad when it comes to the current administration.

intermerdaon Trump's Tariffs Wipe Out over $6T on Wall Street in Epic Two-Day Rout

Yes, that's why Florida is considering bringing back child labor - https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/25/business/florida-child-labor-....

intermerdaon Dow plunges 2,200 points, Nasdaq enters bear market

The coherent endgame is to ensure a fascist takeover of America by ensuring CEOs are at the mercy of POTUS. First the political party fell, then its representatives in Congress, then judiciary. The control of political institutions and education system has been assumed.

But free trade and commerce is antithetical to fascism. Unless the dictator can assume total control, his position is untenable. The goal is to form an equivalent of CCP Politburo and Putin in the form of POTUS + small number of hand-picked techbros. You can't achieve that goal unless you control commerce.

All of this is laid out in writings of Dark Enlightenment adherents and sanitized through Project 2025. Ironically, the people who complain the most about their freedoms being destroyed because their Facebook post saying COVID is a hoax was deleted not only will willingly submit to this, but also be its key enablers.

intermerdaon US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

Or anyone who worked as a switchboard operator. Nobody did anything to protect their jobs!

intermerdaon US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

Well they can always go back to child labor like Florida is planning to - https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/25/business/florida-child-labor-...

intermerdaon Trump's US Commerce Secretary publicly recommends to buy TSLA

https://www.ernst.senate.gov/news/press-releases/ernst-to-bi...

> The levers of government should never be used to pick winners and losers based on political priorities.

From six months ago. Six.

intermerdaon uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

Do you mind sharing which uBlock Origin script you use for blocking ads on Twitch? I tried one a while ago but didn't get it to work.

intermerdaon Sam Bankman-Fried thrown into solitary over Tucker Carlson interview: report

> Ask any attorney: the relationship with the state is adversarial; the state is not your friend in matters of jurisprudence, it is your adversary. What kind of person gives the benefit of the doubt to their adversary? No rational person for sure. Conclusion: you either are the state (represent the state) or you're irrational.

Huh? If a someone commits unspeakable crimes against a loved one of yours and the state is mounting a case against that person, you'd view it as an adversary?

intermerdaon A few words about FiveThirtyEight

Nearly all of them, yes.

intermerdaon The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed"

You do realize that many of these actions have been deemed illegal by the courts, right?

> forgotten about manners

Why are you complaining about manners? Why not just say "I like that!" or "I agree with that!" and then get on with the rest of an argument? See where this is going?

> - forgotten about the logical fallacies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

This isn't your high school debate club. But just to humor you, you are engaging in "fallacy fallacy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

intermerdaon Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting

Agreed. Chamberlain used Britain's soft power for world peace with great effect.