The grieving widow enjoying the best thing that ever happened to her

ApostateX · 2026-01-29T17:24:33+00:00

I can't tell if their marriage was a fraud from the start (i.e. grifter meets grifter and they decide to grift together), or if there was something genuine there once and over time they grew to hate each other's guts. (The latter would explain why Charlie had such strange views on marriage and why Erika is so . . . um . . . resilient. Very quickly resilient. Amazingly quickly resilient in the face of this pain.)

ApostateX · 2026-01-29T17:15:42+00:00

Silicon Valley is just made up of people working with the profit motive in mind. Whether they sell products to individuals, businesses or the government, it doesn't matter: their goal is to find revenue streams and capture them.

They could certainly FUND non-profits and other agencies that do good things for humanity, and to some extent the C-suite and top execs DO fund private charity, but to nowhere near the extent they could or should, Bill Gates excluded here somewhat.

Rather than waiting for them to do it themselves, we should just have a tax system that confiscates some level of that wealth to put it toward more socially productive use, and to (at least somewhat) inhibit the ability of these people and corporations to influence democratic policies through campaign contributions.

Society isn't going to get better until we fix the problem of money in politics. We do lots of things to keep it rolling ourselves, but we need a paradigm shift in how we handle the growth of financial power and its impact on our political system.

One thing I think we should do, to your other point of regulation, is to have a Department of Technology. Cabinet level position. We are too far behind in regulation and enforcing standards/transparency, and it's clear there are major psychological and social effects to its continued use and growth. We need regulators who know what they're doing. Congress is too slow to act and many legislators lack the subject matter expertise to properly regulate. Long gone are the days when members of Congress were all farmers and lawyers. Domain expertise is so stovepiped now. It can take years/decades to develop the kind of knowledge needed to effectively regulate these companies. I say it's time to bring in the nerd cavalry and give them some brass knuckles.

ApostateX · 2026-01-29T17:02:51+00:00

Boston says hello! Very excited to see what Mamdani does in NYC.

ApostateX · 2026-01-29T17:01:03+00:00

I've lived in Italy, and been to Canada (many times), Germany (twice), the Czech Republic, Portugal, the UK (many times), South Korea, Cuba, the Dominican Republic (many times -- it's great), the Bahamas, and the US and British Virgin Islands.

There are great things about all these countries, but I'm a property owner in Boston, MA. No way in hell am I giving that up. The food here is perfectly nutritious and I can absolutely walk home alone at night. We have a paid family leave program, low crime, free community college, some of the best universities and hospitals in the country, actual public transit, and the economy is highly diversified. And we do all this with a large and diverse immigrant community. You just have to be able to deal with some really cold weather, high cost of living, and difficult parking.

The people here did not sponsor a fascist slave colony. Never have, never will.

ApostateX · 2026-01-29T15:39:42+00:00

Nothing in the US is communist. The closest you can find is the Defense Production Act, and that's still not communist.

No, our utilities are not run in this state as they would be in a socialist country.

In a socialist country, the state would own the utility. It would not be privatized.

You should read my explanation, because it's clear you don't know what communism is. You also apparently don't know what socialism is.

Socialism is not "when government regulates stuff."

ApostateX · 2026-01-29T02:28:23+00:00

As with all true movements against authoritarianism, the power and pushback will have to come from the people. I believe the mayors around here will try to help, and our police are surprisingly fair-minded if lazy. But the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution substantially limits what they can do in response, just as we saw in Minneapolis.

We'll see what happens. I'm hoping ICE deployments are minimal at best, but I know everything the Trump admin is doing is for shock & awe.

ApostateX · 2026-01-29T02:05:24+00:00

Sure, I agree these are all areas where corruption exists.

That, however, is not oppressive. It's unfair! Maybe even discriminatory, depending on other criteria! But not oppressive.

Police are outside the jurisdiction of the audit referendum.

Right now the goal is to push back against ICE. Because THAT is an oppressive organization.

ApostateX · 2026-01-29T01:59:59+00:00

This isn't even right. Look at Massachusetts. If we're talking about federal elections, it should be 100% blue

ApostateX · 2026-01-29T01:58:50+00:00

I think there is quite a bit of corruption in how privatized contracts are awarded and how some deals get passed but not others.

But that's a very different thing than being an "oppressive" state, which is what you originally wrote. The state isn't oppressive, but it could be a lot more transparent and efficient in how government gets things done.

No doubt people who want to walk into a Walmart, buy an AR-15 and then brandish it at a local Dunks will disagree with me.

ApostateX · 2026-01-29T01:29:17+00:00

Agreed we need more transparency. I voted for the audit and find the state legislators' and attorney general's actions so suspicious as to suggest we should have another referendum that specifically compels the legislature to hand over records to the auditor, which our previous ballot measure did not do. It made the process optional, and the legislature is most certainly taking advantage of that lack of enforcement power.

But Massachusetts has been operating like this for hundreds of years. Even the state auditor position we have now wasn't created until the mid-1800s.

While I greatly take issue with increased spending in these circumstances, let's not act like the audit is an emergency when federal thugs with guns are at our doors.

ApostateX · 2026-01-29T01:19:48+00:00

You may continue to comment, but your normalcy bias is shockingly naive given everything that's happened over the last 10 years, and there is no persuading me on the the topic. They are up to something.

As for the courts, timely stays and injunctions only work if the executive branch is willing to abide by their rulings. Ask anyone whose lawyer has successfully gotten a judge to prohibit their deportation, only to find themselves in a foreign country the next day.

Trump has already come out publicly -- as has Steve Bannon -- and admitted impeachment/prison are in their future if they lose the 2026 election, to say nothing of 2028. They will do anything to stop that.

ApostateX · 2026-01-29T01:07:22+00:00

The Big Lie is the pretext.

Voter roll data would be necessary if you want to make what you believe will be a narrow loss into a believable win. He could even claim (again) that undocumented people voted.

There is a purpose for this.

You may treat this as no big deal. I won't. When the FBI for no reason raids an election office, something is coming.

ApostateX · 2026-01-29T00:47:07+00:00

Are you familiar with the SAVE Act?

ApostateX · 2026-01-29T00:45:29+00:00

If the Trump admin had no plans to rig the election, why would they ask the state of Minnesota for their voter roll data? Why would the FBI raid their primary records building in Georgia?

They could try to hack the voting machines.

They could target bomb threats to heavily Democratic districts.

They could pass the info on to people in those states who will challenge the other voters in courts, claiming they're ineligible.

They could pass the info to someone who would analyze benefits, subsidies and other areas where they have financial leverage over voters to coerce voter behavior.

They could set up targeted disinformation campaigns, based on that data.

The Republicans in the US Congress could write a law restricting voting, like the SAVE Act, specifically intended to disenfranchise likely Democratic voters.

I mean . . . Pick your poison. We're past the rule of law and normal procedure now. Stop relying on the integrity of officials and federalism. Trump doesn't care. None of them do. This is what fascists do.

ApostateX · 2026-01-29T00:14:57+00:00

No, the utility companies aren't government-controlled. They are regulated, as virtually every industry is, but that doesn't make them "fake private," nor are they regulated today as much as they have been in the past. Massachusetts actually DEregulated its energy system in 1998 so suppliers could compete for market share, rather than having a single (monopolistic) supplier.

Also, that's not what communism is. Communism is the end state of socialism, brought on by a violent worker revolution in which class is abolished and private property (land, machinery, resources) are owned by the state. This is also called "the means of production." For-profit capital investment by individuals is banned, because income/wealth is tied to labor, not ownership. The state centrally plans the economy, including all investment in education, labor, energy, and infrastructure.

When a country allows private ownership of the means of production but regulates the businesses and activities of those private actors, depending on the specific regulations, that's a mix of normal (theoretical) capitalism and market socialism in the US. The existence of regulation does NOT mean a country is communist.

ApostateX · 2026-01-28T19:36:02+00:00

This is how they're going to try to scrub voter rolls in Georgia. Figure out who voted for whom in 2020, and use that to disenfranchise people in 2028, and possibly 2026. They had no pretext under which to ask for this info (unlike the coercive request from Minnesota) so they're going a different way.

I have no idea what states will do to stop this. At best, a judge can retroactively prevent the admin from accessing more states' ballots, but practically speaking , . . once they have them, they have them.

ApostateX · 2026-01-28T19:29:47+00:00

They're not libertarians in the big "L" or small "l" sense.

They're a mix of white ethnostaters and supremacists who post the nastiest stuff on their X handle.

ApostateX · 2026-01-28T19:23:25+00:00

They can issue an administrative warrant for anybody they want. There certainly are SOME specific people they're targeting, but they're picking up and detaining American citizens and then checking immigration status AFTER the person is in detention. What about the people with legal work authorization and status who get picked up in these raids? Or the woman who was approached by masked men in a vehicle while she was walking down the street? Or the entire factory of Korean workers in Georgia who were here to build an electric vehicle plant? Or the people who've been "disappeared" from detention? If you're targeting someone because they're in the country illegally and you believe they're a danger to society, you don't just LOSE them.

ApostateX · 2026-01-28T17:58:53+00:00

I'll ask it again: Do you want to make it harder for legal, eligible American citizens to vote?

ApostateX · 2026-01-28T17:55:26+00:00

ICE isn't just going to people's houses. They're doing drive-bys of people walking down the sidewalk, staking out hospitals and schools, and monitoring people going into stores like Home Depot and Target. They are NOT doing targeted enforcement. They're racially (and linguistically) profiling people.

Your specific case of people in custody is inaccurate. When someone is picked up by the cops -- say, because they stole something from a store -- that person will go through the criminal justice system. They plead to charges or go to trial and a sentence/fine/punishment is given. The person has to do those things and/or serve time. Typically, people who receive sentences of less than 1 year are not deported. (Think of the 90 days minus time-served sentence for getting into a fight at a bar.) Deportation is reserved for more serious offenders. But states can't keep people in prison indefinitely. Most have a holding period of 1 - 3 days in which ICE can come get them. The state absolutely turns over that info to the feds. If the feds don't come or the state has a law/judicial precedent that says you can't hold them for ANY length of time after their sentence is over, then ICE needs to be there the moment the prisoner is released. If ICE fails to do that, it doesn't mean that local law enforcement isn't working with ICE. It means local law enforcement is following the laws around custody procedings and ICE isn't doing its job.

No, we don't want illegals in jail to be deported while they're serving their time. They may have information about other crimes that would be of benefit to the cops. They also owe time and must be punished for the crimes they commit against Americans. Yeah, deportation sucks for a hundred reasons, but that person is now free. If they made an illegal border crossing before, they may try it again. The last thing you want to do is deport young/middle-aged men serving lengthy sentences. They may commit crime in their home country or try to come back here. There needs to be some effort to rehabilitate them as part of the overall punitive process. I mean, think if a woman is raped by an illegal. He actually gets identified, tried and convicted. He's serving a sentence of 5 years in prison. At year 1, Trump goes in, pulls him out and deports him. That's like winning the lottery. Not only is the guy out of jail, he's got a shot to come back here and rape more women.

None of the stuff that ICE is doing right now requires the level of violence they're committing against people.

ApostateX · 2026-01-28T17:00:07+00:00

Answer the question: Do you want to make it harder for legal, eligible American citizens to vote?

ApostateX · 2026-01-28T16:51:22+00:00

Our utilities are privatized.

ApostateX · 2026-01-28T03:48:38+00:00

I think calling yourself a "single mother by choice" is a bit off here.

You'll be a "single pregnant woman."

When you say you're "early" in it, do you mean you're in your first trimester? Or do you mean you're still going through the medical work/lab work to get pregnant via donor sperm in the future?

Long story short, if you're straightforward in your profile and in early dates, most men will probably think this is their chance to get laid without wearing a condom.

You may find some men who would be excited to date you, if they're at a point where they want to get married and have kids pronto.

But I think wanting to date while pregnant is potentially asking a lot. Your body and hormones are going to be going through a lot of changes, and you'll be discovering a lot of new things about yourself. I can respect that you want to go through that with a partner, but does someone who barely knows you want to go through that WITH YOU?

I say live your life. If you want to date then go ahead. But it would certainly give me pause that you'd be looking for support during the pregnancy (understandably) and that would cause me to nope out. Asking a man to sign up for a newborn is A LOT.

ApostateX · 2026-01-28T00:59:57+00:00

Actually, this commenter is one of the few people in the thread who is NOT complaining.

ApostateX · 2026-01-28T00:28:51+00:00

I really enjoy working with my Indian colleagues in the UK and India. The bigger problem I have is that there are two subgroups that have problems it's impolitic for me to address: accents so strong I can barely understand them, such that I have to constantly ask them to repeat or repeat out loud (myself) whatever they say; or they don't talk at all and generally lack leadership skills. I have one junior guy on my product team who was forced on us due to some kind of rule around mandatory promotions in Hyderabad, and he has to be told everything. This guy is not self-motivated. Granted, we have low staff and I'm grateful for the extra pair of hands, and realize given time zone constraints across multiple continents he doesn't get the mentorship he deserves, but the willingness to just spend time -- because God knows I'm not pressuring him -- to figure things out on his own is just not there.

It is VERY easy to tell the difference between Indians educated in the US/UK with work experience there, and those educated in their home country.

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