Dylan reliably prints, without checking, what important people tell him, but even he had to backtrack.
Monday, December 22, 2025
Sunday, December 21, 2025
Protecting Victims
Ah I see. They had to remove picture of Trump with his victims to protect the victims. Makes sense.
DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE:
You can see in that photo, there's photographs of women. And so we learned after releasing that photograph that there were concerns about those women and the fact that we had put that photo up. So we pulled that photo down. It has nothing to do with President Trump. There are dozens of photos of President Trump already released to the public seeing him with Mr. Epstein. He has said that in the '90s and early 2000s he socialized with him. So the absurdity of us pulling down a photo, a single photo because President Trump was in it is laughable. And the fact that everybody's trying to act like that's the case is a reflection of their true motivation. But the reality is anybody, any victim, any victim's lawyers, any victims’ rights group can reach out to us and say, "Hey, Department of Justice, there's a document, there's a photo, there's something within the Epstein files that identifies me." And we will then of course pull that off and investigate it.
KRISTEN WELKER:
Are you saying that one or more of the women in one of the photos or several of the photos is a victim or a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein, and that's why you took those files down? And will they be put back up?
DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE:
No, that's not what I'm saying. Of course, if we knew that, if we believed that that photograph contained a survivor, we wouldn't have put it up in the first place without redacting the faces. But notwithstanding what we believe, we don't have perfect information. And so when we hear from victims' rights groups about this type of photograph, we pull it down and investigate. We're still investigating that photo. The photo will go back up. And the only question is whether there will be redactions on the photo. And, of course, if there are survivors in any of the photos, we will redact them as Congress expects us to do, as President Trump expects us to do, and as the attorney general and Director Patel have directed the department to do.
Wayless
I think "your road system gets completely clogged by stranded robotaxis" is actually a problem requiring a solution.
Waymo halted service in San Francisco as of Saturday at 8 p.m., following a power outage that left approximately 30% of the city without power. The autonomous cars have been causing traffic jams throughout the city, as the vehicles seem unable to function without traffic signals.
Many reasons, but one is that power outages might correspond to times when emergency vehicle need to move around.
Saturday, December 20, 2025
Social Murder
Musk's actions with USAID have inspired some appropriate commentary, but generally it is not acknowledged that bad policy decisions will kill people and that the people making those decisions are therefore murderers.
Redactions
If we make the reasonable assumption that every redacted nonvictim image in the Epstein files is a person too powerful/too close to power to have their identity revealed, what does that say?
There are a lot of redactions.
David Brooks not long ago.
I know a thing or two about the American elite, ahem, and if you’ve read my work, you may be sick of my assaults on the educated elites for being insular, self-indulgent and smug. But the phrase “the Epstein class” is inaccurate, unfair and irresponsible. Say what you will about our financial, educational, nonprofit and political elites, but they are not mass rapists.
Even if we accept that his personal appearance in the Epstein files is as innocent as such a thing can be - which is not as innocent as everyone wants us to believe - running interference for his pals is not.
America's Worst Humans
The identification of Valente brings calm to communities worried about a mass killer on the loose. But it also puts the lie to theories floated by right-wing influencers, including Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire.
In recent days, Maguire, acting as a self-appointed digital detective, has shared posts suggesting that an entirely different man was behind the crimes—a Palestinian student at Brown University. On December 16, in a post on X that has subsequently been deleted, Maguire speculated that “it seems very likely” that the student was behind the shooting, pointing to the fact that “Brown is actively scrubbing his online presence.”
In fact, the student’s digital footprints were being wiped as a protective measure against rampant, errant speculation about his link to the shootings.
Reciprocity
The important thing here is that RFKjr inteends to kill a lot of children, but realize that eventually everyone is going to need proof of vaccination to travel.
The Trump administration plans to shift the federal government away from directly recommending most vaccines for children and suggest they receive fewer shots to more closely align with Denmark’s immunization model, according to two people familiar with the matter.
They keep invoking Denmark but that is just cover. How can you object to Denmark, libtard?
Friday, December 19, 2025
MAGA Infighting
There isn't a simple answer to why, but it has long been notable that journalists regularly cover the antics of B- and C-list conservatives - and this is not a new Trump era/MAGA thing as, for example, the annual obsessive coverage of CPAC, predates that - while almost never doing similar coverage of The Left (broadly defined).
Kirk’s widow endorses Vance as MAGA infighting ragesOne consequence is that when journalists talk about The Left they are generally just making up a guy, and don't have any idea what they are talking baout.
Erika Kirk told a Turning Point USA conference that she would work to elect JD Vance president in 2028, at an event in which MAGA divisions were on full display.
Egos and $
The reason they are sitting on the report is that the egos and gravy trains of important people might be hurt.
The concern is not bad press from the report itself. The concern is the subsequent reaction by the people and organizations it blames.
The "DNC" is often held up as some all-powerful institution. It is not in the way people imagine. But it is the conduit through which money flows - in and, of course, out - and that does matter. A lot.
Greg is saying a lot, but I think you can draw some further implications yourselves.
The concern is not bad press from the report itself. The concern is the subsequent reaction by the people and organizations it blames.
The "DNC" is often held up as some all-powerful institution. It is not in the way people imagine. But it is the conduit through which money flows - in and, of course, out - and that does matter. A lot.
Greg is saying a lot, but I think you can draw some further implications yourselves.
Take, for instance, the Future Forward super PAC, which had a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars for the 2024 contest. Well before Election Day, the PAC came under harsh criticism from some Democrats who argued that it hadn’t spent sufficient money earlier in the campaign on ads attacking Trump, which may have allowed Trump to rehabilitate himself after his 2020 loss and the January 6 insurrection.Hint:
Other Democrats charged that Future Forward’s ad-testing model and addiction to traditional TV ads led to anodyne communications and that its flawed theory of politics caused it to refrain from sufficiently targeting Trump, letting him avoid blame for his first-term disasters on Covid-19 and the economy. Still others said the PAC didn’t innovate in digital communications, failing to reach and motivate young and nonwhite voters who helped tip the election to the president.
There are grounds for thinking the DNC report digs into these problems. According to a DNC official, the analysis found, among other things, that the party didn’t invest sufficiently in innovative digital tools; that its digital ads didn’t reach young voters who no longer engage with broadcast and cable TV; and that Trump—with the help of an ecosystem of right-wing podcasters and influencers—outworked the Democrats in the information wars. Democrats must play catchup in this department, the report found.
It’s unclear what the DNC analysis concludes about key decisions made by the Biden campaign’s high command—people like reelection chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and senior adviser Anita Dunn, who is now an adviser to Future Forward—including the decision to stay in the race too long.
Crypto
This is a "skeptical" article of crypto, by the standards of these things, but it really is an example of how if there is lots of money involved, then people feel inclined to take it seriously. Crypto is good for scams, various other crimes/money laundering, and speculation.
There are technical reasons for the slump, most notably an extreme buildup of leveraged positions — speculative bets that can turbocharge gains but come with extreme downside risks — that were liquidated in an early October flash crash. But the protracted slump appears to be about more than just a hangover from that crash.What are you investing in? Nothing!
Risk appetite hasn’t gone away, as the tech-heavy Nasdaq has done even better than the broader stock market. So why are investors shunning this particular flavor of risk?
One explanation is that crypto culture has refused to grow up, and it’s keeping would-be investors on the sidelines.
At least NFTs gave you a picture of a cartoon ape which you could pretend was yours.
Thursday, December 18, 2025
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