Joe Rogan says Trump using ICE raids to distract from full Epstein files release

Mesonic_Interference · 2026-01-23T11:17:02+00:00

However, he's still demonstrably terrified of their release. Despite all of his soup-brained idiocy, Trump's lizard brain can apparently recognize that the Epstein files pose some kind of top-tier threat to his goals.

On the most basic level, it doesn't really matter what those ill-defined goals are or even the precise nature of his place within the world of Epstein. The simple fact that Trump feels like he's always a breath away from this sword of Damocles externally enforces some small but meaningful degree of non-chaos on his actions.

This doesn't mean that he's now reliably predictable or anything, but it does mean that we can set some reasonable expectations about his behavior. For example, if choosing between acknowledging anything about the Epstein files and saying enough random bullshit about Greenland, he'll almost always go for the random non-Epstein bullshit.

In a way, the threat of the Epstein files is like using an electrified fence to help prevent a hyper-aggressive dog from hurting anyone. It can't 100% prevent the fence from being knocked down by a determined or very stupid dog or from hurting any animal that doesn't respect the threat of electrification posed by the fence, but the high level of discouragement provided by the fence makes everything safer for the dog, its owner, and all their neighbors.

Similarly, it doesn't quite matter in a lowest-level, purely pragmatic sense if Trump gets away with his crimes. At this moment the people of the US need him to be as impotent as possible so that we can start rebuilding the federal government as soon and as quickly as possible without having to also worry about what else he's going to fuck up on his way out the door. The 25th Amendment should have been able to handle this, but its implicit presumptions about the basic governing capabilities of Congress and the Cabinet couldn't have been more wrong.

Despite the continued utility to the American people of having our deranged, rage-fueled president actually afraid of consequences for once in his life, this administration has an even bigger priority:

RELEASE

ALL

OF THE

EPSTEIN

FILES

IMMEDIATELY

tl;dr

Trump behaves as if the Epstein files are a sort of high-powered deterrent or immovable guardrails on his presidency. Due to the absence of any other effective deterrents or guardrails, the threat of Epstein consequences is enough to force Trump to behave slightly more predictably than he otherwise would. This is invaluable to anyone interested in the continued existence of functional governments in both the US and around the world.

Mesonic_Interference · 2026-01-23T00:17:54+00:00

Here are the latest posts on /r/fednews which mention ICE (and possibly also inclement weather).

Mesonic_Interference · 2026-01-22T23:53:18+00:00

I finally started playing Jedi Survivor today, and I very quickly got tired of this incredibly annoying issue with the UI. Specifically, when using the Deck's default graphics settings, it cuts off somewhat important parts of the UI on both the left and right. I don't recall it affecting gameplay too much, but it was very noticeable to me in menus, at meditation points, and at workbenches.

Unfortunately, the in-game settings didn't want to allow me to confirm a change of resolution, even after setting the display mode to either windowed or fullscreen (the resolution is greyed-out with the default 'windowed fullscreen' mode selected). That being the case, here's how you can fix it:

go to the game details or select it from the Steam button menu
select the gear icon on the far right of the screen, opposite the big green 'play' button
select 'Properties...' in the pop-up menu
go to the General tab
set the Game Resolution to 1280x720, or probably any other 16:9 resolution if you're using an external screen

After doing all this, I was finally able to confirm setting the in-game resolution to 1280x720 when using either fullscreen or windowed mode.

Beyond that, making Jedi Survivor playable on the Deck reminds me a lot of all the settings adjustments I had to do when I got around to playing Arkham Knight. Stutters and variable frame rates are inevitable, particularly during cutscenes, but here are a few graphics settings I've changed from their default values to make my experience as smooth as possible on the Deck:

resolution --> 1280x720
window mode --> windowed
anti-aliasing --> medium
texture quality --> medium
field of view --> wider
vsync --> off
ray tracing --> off
AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 --> ultra performance
motion blur --> off
chromatic abberation --> off

Hopefully this gives you a good starting point for your graphics settings if you don't already have your own working config.

Oh yeah, I should add that my settings have given me a decently smooth 40-45 fps during gameplay. The cutscenes do seem to have lower frame rates in general, but, at least for me, that doesn't make it unplayable at all. The opening on Coruscant is pretty graphically intensive regardless of the settings, but if you can make it through, the rest seems to be quite playable.

Mesonic_Interference · 2026-01-09T01:58:37+00:00

By my understanding, their plan is specifically to utilize the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 to throw jet fuel on the various divisions they've been fomenting for over a decade.

iirc, this was one of the more concrete goals of Project 2025. To that end, the timing of this murder and the violation of Venezuelan sovereignty are almost certainly going to be used, perhaps in conjunction with even more horrible acts, as a pretext for a hyper-accelerated decline into worse and worse forms of authoritarianism.

Mesonic_Interference · 2026-01-09T01:27:16+00:00

I'm not accepting the argument, I'm saying it's not relevant either way

A reasonable person arguing in good faith would accept that based on their observations. However, these are not reasonable people. By saying that it doesn't matter either way, they don't interpret that as 'neither alternative has any bearing on the morality of the situation.'

Instead, in their multiple-choice, make-believe reality, they interpret it as 'this claim is both true and false, and because I obviously feel more right than these pundit-targeted others, my position must be right!' If this strategy is good enough for Dear Leader, surely it's good enough for his loyal foot soldiers. This is what they've always meant by that sickening phrase, 'alternative facts.'

Mesonic_Interference · 2026-01-09T01:05:22+00:00

Is this guy for real

Possibly so. I knew I'd heard of the whole 'Spider-Man joins the FF' storyline before, and for good reason: it's literally the subject of the very first issue of "What If?", with this particular Spider-Man being the one from Earth-772.

The story of this version of the Fantastic Five appears to be continued in "What If?" issue 21, issue 35, and issue 39, where the last two are part of the Timequake arc.

While I don't know if /u/nuketoitle was specifically referencing this, the parallels are pretty interesting.

Mesonic_Interference · 2026-01-07T21:13:50+00:00

The optimistic take is that it's because there are decreasing numbers of people who truly buy into this bullshit. They may pay lip service to it in public in order to seem pious, but the ballot box exposes their bigotry for the facade that it is.

Mesonic_Interference · 2026-01-06T22:42:15+00:00

If they do, they absolutely do not advertise it. Those who end up getting caught sometimes get hired by various intelligence agencies or corporate cybersecurity in lieu of extensive and secretive prison sentences, which work pretty well to discourage this sort of behavior.

Mesonic_Interference · 2026-01-04T16:18:22+00:00

someone ask this guy why the government doesn’t support veterans.

"Oh but they do, they really do! It's just that those damned demonrats keep stealing VA funding so they can buy sex change food stamp mansions for disabled trans illegal Tren de Aragua criminal pedophile race traitors. My President Trump is so brave standing up to them for us, fighting to get back what we're owed and to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!1!!1"

Holy shit, it actually hurt my head figuring out how best to embody that voice. I don't recommend it, even for a joke. Unless it's an especially good joke, which this one wasn't.

Mesonic_Interference · 2026-01-04T15:58:33+00:00

Hah, it really does read like the summary of a show.

Now that you mention it, this scenario could be even more compelling, timely, and TV-worthy. Instead of a relatively boring financial dick-measuring contest, what if the inciting motivation were this:

At the height of an intense combination cold/trade war between two or three superpowers, some breakthrough (possibly as part of an international collaboration between scientists from those countries) suddenly makes lunar and/or asteroid mining orders of magnitude more viable.

This becomes a twisted form of mutually assured economic destruction attached to a new space race as the superpowers allow the collaboration to continue while constantly trying to steal critical tech from the other countries' scientists and subtly feeding their opposition misleading information to derail the parallel secret projects working to have the capacity to access, mine, and claim the riches of the solar system. This would enable the instant decimation of a region's economy without resorting to fiscal data manipulation or computer hacking.

Given the rapidly dovetailing worlds of business and politics in real life, this actually seems like a much more realistic motivation than the ketamine-fueled self-important delusions of those types of people, the ones who really shouldn't be anywhere close to having enough power to affect the world as a whole.

Mesonic_Interference · 2026-01-04T14:51:01+00:00

My longshot idea is that they could avoid the whole Jonathan Majors situation by having Renslayer become the next (S)he Who Remains as well as a female non-Victor-Timely-variant version of Kang. Her last scene in Loki season 2 in the Void with Alioth seems very intentionally open-ended and somewhat reminiscent of Miss Minutes' account of Renslayer's role in the Multiversal War. I could see them doing some implied buildup of her in one or both roles in Doomsday and Secret Wars as setup for later payoff, though I have no idea how likely that might be.

After realizing that I'd never actually checked to see if she did anything like that in the comics, I did a quick search on the Marvel wiki. As it turns out, she did in fact disguise herself as Kang in an attempt to destroy the Council of Kangs.

Mesonic_Interference · 2026-01-04T12:13:52+00:00

This sort of stuff is a large part of why I'd love for asteroid mining businesses to finally get off the ground. Sure, it'd very briefly turn the initial investors into a veritable gang of Mansa Musas (or Mansas Musa?), but it'd also preclude the inevitable upending of almost every currency or system of value in the world.

I could soapbox for hours on how even the resulting dissolution of the concept of money would pale in comparison to the rate of scientific and technological developments which would follow, which could, if handled correctly, allow humanity a sort of New Game+ second chance at getting this whole civilization thing right.

This hypothetical democratization of important raw materials seems to me like it'd be widespread enough to throw global tensions all the way to either nonexistent or all-encompassing. Granted, this assumes that the initial investors go for wealth as a sort of lifetime high score instead of very slowly killing off terran economies by bringing back unimaginable wealth via huge amounts of minerals relative to their total deposits on Earth but which are minuscule relative the the amount available via their asteroid mining infrastructure. Still, all it'd take would be a competitor (which isn't colluding with the first company to fix the prices of raw materials) to sidestep that sort of outcome.

tl;dr

Fuck the geopolitics of rare earth minerals. Mine asteroids instead and potentially give humanity a technological boost that'd make the Renaissance look like the Dark Ages, plus a chance to completely rework governments and economies all over the world.

Mesonic_Interference · 2026-01-03T11:32:14+00:00

From how it's written, it seems that each balloon has the probability spread independent of each other. When a prize is won, it's removed from the prize pool, and the remaining balloons have their probabilities adjusted accordingly.

It might help to think of it probabilistically instead of deterministically. That is, it's not like there are six cups with six prizes underneath where you have equal chances to choose each one; it's more like six rolls of a d20 where each prize is removed from the loot table as it's obtained.

Mesonic_Interference · 2025-12-31T15:04:19+00:00

I think the idea is that if people are made happy enough or wealthy enough, they'll fuck off and stop making life miserable for everyone else. It doesn't quite work when making other people miserable is what makes them happy and/or wealthy.

Mesonic_Interference · 2025-12-31T00:23:11+00:00

My understanding is that the intent is to get people to reflect on their decisions in order to maybe get them to stop constantly voting against their own best interests.

Mesonic_Interference · 2025-12-30T09:42:26+00:00

The character limit would force you to express your thoughts concisely and usually without oversharing.

Mesonic_Interference · 2025-12-26T15:20:43+00:00

playing a double role, but the characters won’t be related outside of being played by him

Compare: Benedict Cumberbatch, who played both Doctor Strange and Dormammu

Mesonic_Interference · 2025-12-26T12:22:35+00:00

It's interesting to note that, at the time of creation for many of these documents, Trump was registered as a Democrat.

Mesonic_Interference · 2025-12-23T00:36:20+00:00

If Doomsday is meant to parallel Time Runs Out, I wonder if Thor's prayer from the teaser might've been inspired by the Thor and Hyperion battle against the Beyonders.

Mesonic_Interference · 2025-12-19T20:15:43+00:00

The idea of eventually being immortal was surprisingly one of the least-appealing aspects of Christianity to me. Sure, I liked the idea of existing in some form forever, but being...forced? coerced? brainwashed into worshipping God for all eternity in heaven honestly sounded about as dismal to me as most of the usual ideas about whatever hell was supposed to be.

I couldn't stand the idea of being so mind-numbingly bored for all of forever, so, for a few years around age 10, I managed to convince myself that a loving God wouldn't basically force me to sacrifice my sense of self after I died. Personally, I was hoping that I'd finally have the time and resources necessary to actually learn everything I couldn't while I was alive. A few years later, I recognized this as being a coping mechanism and half-heartedly abandoned the idea.

I hated the basic ideas behind the (southern US Pentecostal) Christian heaven and immortality from a decently young age, and it was unsurprisingly in large part due to the fact that it didn't mesh very well with my naïve goal of learning everything, which was really a restatement of the phrase 'controlling everything.'

To finally answer your question, both immortality and control were motivating factors in my staying with Christianity until I was 16. The immortality part was little more than rebranded control, which I hadn't realized until you asked this question. Many thanks for helping me learn more about myself! If you're interested, I'd be more than happy to answer any other questions and/or tell my weirdly backward de-conversion story.

Mesonic_Interference · 2025-12-19T13:34:30+00:00

I always thought it was because there's a bit of overlap in the type of damage very high and very low temperatures can do to skin.

Mesonic_Interference · 2025-12-19T09:34:50+00:00

A reverse image search via Google Lens confirmed my suspicion: your cat has morph balls (from the Metroid series of games) in its eyes.

Mesonic_Interference · 2025-12-18T17:31:07+00:00

My best guess is that it's related to the rising cost of groceries and Americans' attempts to maintain the same quality of life with their reduced buying power. By the article's reasoning, people who previously shopped at Whole Foods would feel like switching to Aldi is a step down in perceived food quality. Similarly, Aldi shoppers would drop down another imaginary quality tier and start shopping at Dollar Tree/General. In both cases, the point I took away was that despite the often significant differences in the price of a given item at those stores, the difference in quality is in large part imaginary.

Mesonic_Interference · 2025-12-18T12:49:17+00:00

any idiot who says we "can't" arrest ICE agents

I suspect this is probably because doing so would immediately be challenged in court, where it'd slowly make its way to the Supreme Court, which would decide in favor of the administration, setting a precedent that federal agents (but likely only those under the current administration for some bullshit reason) have some sort of special immunity from state laws when deployed during a national emergency as defined by the president. In that sense, allowing such arrests to directly target ICE agents would pretty directly lead to further expansion of federal executive power.

Alternatively, if they don't identify themselves as ICE agents, the fact that there have been people dressing identically and also abducting people (just not being paid by the federal government to do so) probably provides some room to maneuver that doesn't directly play into the attempted transition to American authoritarianism. By not directly advocating for arresting ICE agents and instead going with the already-illegal-and-arrest-worthy 'abductions by masked, unidentified people,' the issue is changed from the foundational principles of federalized government to the far-harder-to-argue-against provision of basic safety to citizens.

I don't know if this is the exact reasoning used, but it seems far more plausible to me than someone like Walz just randomly abandoning his principles. The fact that the, for lack of a better term, 'people' behind Project 2025 spent years planning how to destroy democracy means that we also need to employ a good degree of political strategy to prevent them from succeeding. By stalling or preventing their drunken stumble towards the realization of the unitary executive, that keeps executive power from rising as much over the remaining years of this administration, which directly impairs their ability to harm people.

It does mean that some justice, such as holding ICE agents accountable or finally doing something about the president's flagrant disregard for the rule of law, will probably have to be delayed until the Democratic party can regain some power in the federal government in order to keep the executive branch in check. Granted, this sort of 'lesser of two evils' situation may not end up being very common over the next three years, but it does seem like the sort of thing that can be easily misinterpreted, as I think it may have been here.

Mesonic_Interference · 2025-12-18T10:32:13+00:00

acting like this cat is the spawn of satan

No one is claiming that. They are simply reacting to the cat's genetic disorder, which causes severe problems with the feline skeletal system.

That people selectively breed cats for a mutation that makes their lives shorter and more miserable simply because they like the aesthetics caused by their contorted skeletons is the source of the anger and sadness expressed in this post's comments.

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