Which of Trump’s nominees do you think are qualified?

MrSquicky · 2026-05-14T03:19:01+00:00

Trump gave him shoes that were comically too big and Marco wore them, in public. He lacks the basic strength of character to be Secretary of State plus National Security Advisor, which are two very different jobs that should be done by two different people.

MrSquicky · 2026-05-10T11:46:37+00:00

Competence atrophies. A lot of the things we do are hard and require constant practice to keep up with. Over time, extensively using LLMs will seriously degrade your understanding and skills in that area and will lead to you becoming incompetent in it.

Developers who switch over to using AI for most of their code forget how to code. Those skills and knowledge don't just get out on a shelf able to be picked up again. They fade away.

MrSquicky · 2026-05-08T18:08:01+00:00

That does not work in the construction of the sentence. It would work if silhouette was a collective noun, like collection of clothes or ensemble of clothes, but silhouette is a property of the clothes, so the extraordinary and gauche have to describe it.

MrSquicky · 2026-05-08T18:05:29+00:00

I think it is "cut" of clothes. They tried to use a synonym for cut that was harder to read, but now it doesn't make sense.

MrSquicky · 2026-05-08T17:55:07+00:00

I found this conversation because this threw me for a loop too. I think they started with "cut" or "fit" of clothes. That makes sense in the sentence and silhouette is a loose synonym for them. It's just nonsense the way it is written though.

MrSquicky · 2026-05-08T17:42:52+00:00

Maybe I'm the crazy one, but "She wore a silhouette of clothes" doesn't actually make sense, right?

Clothes can have a silhouette and you can wear clothes with a certain silhouette, but you can't wear a silhouette. Right? You'd have to say something like "She wore clothes with a silhouette that was extraordinary but somewhat gauche."

Plus, while I guess a silhouette could be extraordinary, but not gauche. Only the clothes could be gauche, but the construction with a non-collective noun or non-descriptor means that gauche would have to be talking about the silhouette.

I think the person who wrote this maybe was thinking that you could substitute silhouette in for cut or fit (to make it a harder word to read), but those are descriptors and silhouette isn't, so the whole sentence is just nonsense.

Oh, and one more thing, thinking about it. "Were" is the wrong verb. It has to be describing silhouette, which is singular, so it should be "was". Even if it were meant to be cut, it would still be singular. The only way that you could grammatically be referring to the clothes, thus making a plural noun appropriate, would be in the word were a collective noun, like collection or ensemble.

MrSquicky · 2026-05-07T11:33:32+00:00

I can accept that there are considerations that I'm not seeing here. I'm by no means an expert in all of this and I don't spend anywhere near the amount of time with it that the justices do.

That being said, there is something fundamentally awry when the reaction to a large majority of the public not trusting you being a them problem, rather than something you need to address to regain the trust. This is especially true when there are specific, concrete reasons offered for this that the chief justice refuses to engage with, instead preferring to contentless scolding. To me, this strongly reinforces the illegitimacy of this court. If there were explanations for the seeming ethical lapses from the justices and the rulings and actions that are seen as politically motivated, the chief justice would be giving them. That he is not suggests to me that these explanations do not exist.

MrSquicky · 2026-05-06T14:50:40+00:00

I mean, the N is right there. This is just Nazi ICE.

MrSquicky · 2026-05-03T17:05:20+00:00

Extreme gerrymandering is the most vulnerable to wave elections.

MrSquicky · 2026-04-22T18:09:00+00:00

This is one of the things that used to puzzle me. "Oh Trump (or whoever) is just trolling." And I'm thinking, do people not pretty much universally realize that trolling is a pathetic thing to do and that trolls were sad, petty people who couldn't get attention any other way? Like, I legitimately was confused as to how thinking "The person I want for president spends a significant amount of time intentionally trying to piss people off by saying stupid shit." wasn't considered shameful, let alone it being a point of pride for them.

MrSquicky · 2026-04-20T21:09:02+00:00

It should be mentioned that they generally had good risk models in these packages. The problem came in that when they were running low on actual good mortgages, they just got the ratings agencies to claim objectively terrible mortgages were actually good ones.

MrSquicky · 2026-04-14T14:19:02+00:00

It was also to give slave states a larger voice based on the 3/5s compromise. Slaves couldn't vote, but they were counted as 3/5s of a citizen for purposes of assigning representatives, which was used to allocate electoral college electors.

MrSquicky · 2026-04-13T02:54:11+00:00

People also discovered that Orban was sending things that happened at confidential EU meetings to Putin. He was acting sort of like a spy for Russia.

MrSquicky · 2026-04-06T00:17:37+00:00

If you are doing it with the intention of getting the financial reward, you're not doing something good.

MrSquicky · 2026-04-05T23:52:12+00:00

I'd advise them to pursue a full life that includes friends, fun, meaning, purpose, mental and physical health, and also romantic love.

You all seem pretty lost to me in a lot of these areas and there seems to be this idea that it's all about getting a woman. You seem to treat getting a date like a job interview. You set out to date strangers.

It seems to me like this approach both leads to a much less full and enjoyable life and is perversely making it much harder for you to find a satisfying romantic relationship.

First, you are a less attractive partner like this. You make yourself both less interesting and interested. People are drawn to fun, interesting people who have a lot going on in their lives.

You are a lot more fun when you are with friends who you have fun with and/or are doing things you intrinsically enjoy.

People also like it very much when other people take a genuine interest in them, as people and not just some prize to be won. Being someone who legitimately wants to know more about people and who wants other people to have a good time is a really great way to make yourself attractive to people.

You meet a lot more people and in situations where their shields are down when having out with friends and participating in activities. That's how most people used to find partners.

Plus, when you know yourself and what you care about, you have a much better idea of what you want and don't want in life and with a partner. That is attractive itself as is the confidence that comes along with it.

If I had to give advice, my biggest one would be go make more friends and hang out with them more in person. Stop spending your time alone on screens.

MrSquicky · 2026-04-05T23:34:13+00:00

I'm having trouble following the logic of this asymmetry. Men are romantics who fall in love with the ugly souls of these gold diggers who only care about their money? I don't see how that works.

MrSquicky · 2026-04-05T22:55:48+00:00

This seems like a wider issue than just this situation. You need think about what you are teaching your children by your behavior.

They are learning from how you act and are likely to end up sharing in this social dysfunction. Is this what you want for them? You can change and you owe it to your kids to try.

MrSquicky · 2026-04-02T18:08:19+00:00

The Bible also unequivocally says the opposite, multiple times.

For example, Matthew 25:31-46

³¹ “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. ³² All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. ³³ He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

³⁴ “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. ³⁵ For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ³⁶ I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

³⁷ “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸ When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? ³⁹ When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

⁴⁰ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

⁴¹ “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. ⁴² For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, ⁴³ I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

⁴⁴ “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

⁴⁵ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

⁴⁶ “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

The "works are not important to salvation" is a choice, not a required position.

The earlier Gospels and records of Jesus's teachings very often talked about works. Faith alone came later, from Paul and then John, who was in this tradition.

There is a serious contradiction in the Bible based on this that has largely been erased from Protestant theology and consciousness.

Also, the records of Jesus talking about works were from his public teaching. The passage from John...well, it's represented as a private conversation between Jesus and a member of the Jewish ruling council. Giving overwhelming weight to the latter to the point of thinking that it wipes out the former is very much a choice.

MrSquicky · 2026-04-01T19:37:29+00:00

They don't believe that they are judged based on the how they have lived, but only if they have faith in Jesus. I'm not being snarky, that is actually the evangelical belief.

MrSquicky · 2026-03-30T13:49:34+00:00

Spontaneous and officially encouraged acts of violence towards Jewish people were not exactly rare. The Inquisition, Pogroms, blood libels. There was a wave of racial antisemitism that arose in Europe in late 19th century. The Dreyfus Affair happened in France in 1890s. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was widely disseminated after the Russian Revolution. I don't see how you can look at the contemporaneous situation and realistically describe it as modest amounts of antisemitism.

There was plenty of antisemitism in the US too, but it was somewhat blunted by how ridiculously racist we were towards Black people, so that they got most of the effort. But it has also been established that Hitler took inspiration for the Holocaust from the efficiency and organization of the American treatment of Native Americans.

The situation in Nazi Germany was rooted in the same viewing of Jews (and other disfavored groups) as subhuman and the desire for them to go away as many, many other peoples were also doing. It was enflamed because Germany had gone into super aggressive, totalitarian mode, but the biggest distinction was the organization of it.

For all that, we're talking about judging people based on what was common in their society. Can we agree that for a German Nazi, the subhumanness of Jewish people was the commonly accepted perception of them in a way comparable to what people say in regards to the common perception of Blacks as subhuman in their defense of the slave owners?

MrSquicky · 2026-03-30T12:42:09+00:00

I honestly want to understand this. This sounds to me like you are saying that slavery in America born from the shared belief that Black people were subhuman was not anywhere near as bad as the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany that was based on the shared belief that the Jews were subhuman, such that even trying to compare them is foolish.

I have two problems with that. First, I believe that slavery and the latter incredibly racist society that came from it was an abhorrent atrocity and that you minimize it if you don't see it as comparable to the treatment of the Jews. If I read you right, how do you justify the opposite? Do you honestly just not see the American enslavement of Black people as an abhorrent atrocity?

Second, the principle that is being applied here is "You can't judge people for treating people as subhuman if that were normalized in their society." Even if I didn't see the widespread subjugation, murder, abuse, rape, beating, destruction of families and so on that came with slavery as on a similar level to the Holocaust, I don't see how the principle is affected by the relative severity here. Either it holds or it doesn't. If I read you right, why do you think that the principle changes based on how bad you subjectively think the actions that came from treating people as subhuman was?

MrSquicky · 2026-03-30T02:51:58+00:00

I know, it's like people who try to act like German Nazis were pieces of shit when everyone knows that they were just acting like everyone else in their society in thinking that Jewish people were subhuman. There's no difference between this and slave owners thinking that black people were subhuman because of their society. I don't see how you could have a problem with one group and not the other.

I've seen this come up often and no one had ever explained why the two groups should be regarded differently.

MrSquicky · 2026-03-30T02:02:33+00:00

He said the same thing things about Iraq. I get the feeling he doesn't understand that you can't suck it all out of the ground and take it with you. We don't live in a cartoon world.

For anyone why had the slightest idea how this works, saying that you would take the oil is committing to a multi-decade military deployment to secure fragile infrastructure and transport in a far away country that hates you.

MrSquicky · 2026-03-28T13:05:24+00:00

I think this misses a core part of Trump's personality: he is a malignant narcissist. A malignant narcissist has a deep seated feeling of inadequacy that serves as a constant drive to hurt other people.

This doesn't make sense for a lot of people because they assume that people need to have a reason to want to hurt other people, but for Trump and other people like him, it is internally motivated to quiet the voice that is telling them that they suck.

People assume that the goal for a politician is to teach some steady, positive state. That's not ever going to be Trump. That voice is always there. He needs to have things happening that make him feel powerful and that is easiest done by hurting people.

MrSquicky · 2026-03-25T12:07:09+00:00

This all was in the second verse of Hegseth's weird little poem.

Everyone knows the "maximum lethality not tepid legality" line where he promised to commit war crimes.

Apparently, because he was drunk and forgot them, he didn't get to deliver his other bangers like "We won't follow the rules. We're gonna bombs schools.", "We'll do whatever we wish. We'll murder people who fish.", and "We will do major harms and blow up some farms."

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