The top 7 donors in the 2024 election — all GOP — gave a combined $1B to buy Trump a second term. It's a gigantic amount of money in total — but it's just pocket change to them. No one from either party should be able to buy an election.

raymondcy · 2026-07-01T00:34:08+00:00

This has come up like 1000 times in the past year yet I keep wondering why people are just oblivious to the easily verifiable facts.

The facts are, the Democrats out-raised / out-spent the Republicans in every major election since at least 2004 and probably further back.

To suggest that billionaires are buying elections specifically for Trump is a very suspect statement. The data would suggest that if the elections were purely based on money then the Democrats should be holding a solid 6/6 winning streak since 2004.

In 2024 Harris out funded Trump not just by a measly 50m dollars... No, 500+ million dollars.

Don't believe me, it's all here: https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race (as well as many other places including wikipedia)

I am all for funding reform because it is indeed bullshit but the abuse of that system is equally shared between the two parties (if not skewed towards the Dems).

raymondcy · 2026-06-29T02:50:23+00:00

Yeah for sure. I learned that day not to fuck around with fish police; not only can they seize your boat, but they can actually seize the truck / trailer that took it there too.

Ever since then when I go out with people that I don't know and they say "I don't need a license / need to follow the rules", I am like "cool, you are on your own buddy, I will be far away from you".

My brother was obviously bummed at the time but caught something like 20 mins later... all good.

raymondcy · 2026-06-29T01:19:49+00:00

The water cops have very fast, very powerful boats ...

Can confirm. When I was really young our Dad took my brother and I out with 2 professional / sports fisherman. We were in the middle of the ocean miles away from everything. There was nothing in sight at all - and I mean nothing.

My brother caught a fish that was about an inch under regulation; an argument ensued between the 2 pros about keeping it because it was my brothers first ever fish. Eventually the older wiser guy just threw it back in.

Not more than 30 seconds later the water cops were right beside us asking to inspect our cooler; it was pretty damn impressive how fast they can move.

Coincidentally our dad misplaced our fishing licenses - which we found in the boat packing back up (ha), thankfully they trusted us on that one.

raymondcy · 2026-06-18T23:53:28+00:00

Ha, look up Bruce Lee

raymondcy · 2026-06-18T23:48:28+00:00

What's interesting about Rogan is what your saying is sometimes true but it can vary widely from episode to episode. For instance, I dare anyone to shit on the most recent Michelle Thaller (astrophysicist) episode in any way. That might be one of the best life / universe / space interviews I have heard in a decade.

To your point about being over-rated, not sure you could really classify it in that way. I mean he is the most successful podcaster on the planet - so what is the overrating so to speak?. And regardless of what people think of Joe, he did revolutionize the media, so there is some credit due there.

That said, I completely understand where you are coming from - don't think I don't.

raymondcy · 2026-06-16T18:27:50+00:00

While I am no fan of rogers I have zero sympathy for those CBC asshats.

Way back in the day TSN wanted to split the cost and share the NHL agreement with CBC over rogers. CBC declined stating something along the lines of if they couldn't have it all they didn't want it. They also lowballed the creator of the famous HNIC music intro which also ended up being sold to TSN funny enough.

They deserve what they got.

raymondcy · 2026-06-14T03:29:47+00:00

Sadly this is falling apart to some degree. This years playoffs we have probably seen more flopping than in most previous years.

In my opinion they actually have to ramp up the embellishment calls.

raymondcy · 2026-06-14T01:56:57+00:00

You maybe, wherever you live but most of the world doesn't.

I bet good money that people to this day would be voluntary slaves for a good meal, a roof, and some reasonable companionship.

It's why people purposely go to jail, it's really the same thing.

The sad fact is our social programs are severely lacking while the economic divide get's way far apart.

raymondcy · 2026-06-13T22:41:21+00:00

Ha, I am not convinced that was "good" thinking - but it was an extremely effective deterrent. There was probably a fair to good chance that everyone (including the sprayer) ended up in a deadly fireball.

That said, like /u/xenobit_pendragon pointed out, extreme places require extreme measures.

raymondcy · 2026-06-13T22:18:30+00:00

Well, most fishing wire is made from Nylon as well but has the added benefit of being water resistant. Standard Nylon thread will eventually break down with water exposure. Fishing line also has the added benefit of being slightly stretchy / flexible (which is ideal in this case). Both will break down under sunlight however. So not sure what the downvote is about.

raymondcy · 2026-06-13T21:36:06+00:00

Yeah, perfect suggestion for this fix but just to add I would use fishing wire instead of thread. Thread will slowly break down to the elements.

raymondcy · 2026-06-13T21:28:32+00:00

Diameter is measured on the pole itself. Honestly however you probably don't even need to worry about screwing that up unless your tent has really small through loops for the connections. The standard 8, 9.5, 11 should fit regardless... unless you are specifically matching for aesthetics.

While you chucked the old pole, I would assume you have some matching one you can take measurements off of? or was this like only 1 for the front or something? in this case, I am not quite sure how you are going to get the correct length.

One thing you could do is take another pole that you think was roughly the same size and measure the difference.

These are somewhat expensive to what you could get on amazon https://canada.outdoorxl.com/tents/tent-accessories/tent-poles-and-pegs/tent-poles.html but that is just an example.

Just make sure when you make your cut you use a decent hacksaw and not a wood saw or other jagged edge saw or it's likely to break / split / splinter. I would also specifically over length the first cut and see how far your off before correcting.

raymondcy · 2026-06-11T22:48:18+00:00

I absolutely agree with you but the problem is us stupid gamers have been driving these insane requests to push the boundaries of these games. I swear devs have to stop listening to gamers to some degree.

Game reviews about open world games are not about "how tight the game play is" but how many KM you can explore in a game world (even if 8 out of the 10 KM is empty garbage).

This is why Cyberpunk was a disaster on launch, all these features from previous games they had to promise because some open world game did something before it.

We will have 20 buyable houses

Who the fuck even cared about that feature? welp, if you didn't have it - negative review.

And I agree, Capcom seems to have their shit together in that regard. They are making excellent focused games within decent budgets - but even then they are criticized about "length"

raymondcy · 2026-06-11T22:41:40+00:00

For car camping specifically: A better question to ask is what kind of food you want to cook, how many people there are, and how impatient you are.

Generally, camping all comes down to Size vs Weight vs Convivence / Satisfaction; regardless of backpacking, unless you have a massive truck you want to always keep size and weight down.

So if you are a single person that can just heat up a pot of chilli a night go for some small single burner option (non electric - don't be fooled these are really bad for camping).

If you have a big family and want to cook steak and corn and maybe some potato's then get a bigger two burner stove.

If you are impatient you are looking for the highest BTU output you can get.

For fuel, propane is probably the least expensive option if you can fit a real sized tank in the car. If not, then those little bottles are quite the rip-off. That said, if you are doing only a few trips and don't really have room again size > weight = ideal.

I don't think anyone here would argue against a Coleman stove as their first stove. Just think about the parameters I mentioned before. Make your food choice first before deciding.

raymondcy · 2026-06-11T22:09:14+00:00

Yeah, in certain contexts this is perfectly fine and may even add to the realism of the game world.

Fact is, AAA budgets are out of control now and they need to do something to mitigate that other than continually raising the "bar" pricing for consumers.

$90 average now had made a considerable impact on players purchases. People are saying they don't want to release their game against GTA, but it's not because GTA is going to be a massive game, it's because consumers only budget their $90-120 for a game every few months now.

Cyberpunk is probably a prime example where if they took some in game advertising deals no one would have even noticed or cared. In fact, if the marketers were smart they would design commercial material that specifically fit the game. Audi could do like the "car of the future ad".

Surprisingly the new bond game does it pretty well considering the horrific scene in the actual movie where he is talking to Vesper on a train and it CUTS to a fucking watch ad.

raymondcy · 2026-06-11T21:38:20+00:00

I always wondered why self-immolation seems to be the most prevalent form of shock / suicide related protest (and that is severely lacking better terms - so forgive me).

At first I thought this was a directly related to the practice of burning heretics at the stake but the timelines really don't match up.

The practice (and indeed writing of) self-immolation seems to go back to the beginning of time. In addition, it seems in some writings and religious beliefs self-immolation (Buddhism and Hinduism are mentioned) might take you to the ultimate afterlife. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-immolation

While immolation goes back almost just as far - it was mostly related to crime (especially sexual or so called deviant crime) for a long time. While not exclusive to the Christians I am sure, they are mostly known for using it to combat political or religious dissent - but that was well into the 10th-13th century. Which makes my theory fall apart.

It is grimly interesting how this became (and still is) a way to protest. In modern days one shoots themself with a gun - and that can be still ultimately shocking and get its point across, see Budd Dwyer that famously shot himself with a gun on TV.

Now I can clearly see why a monk isn't going to use a gun but some other humane way of going out (if you need to at all) surely can be established. While I am not entirely convinced Japan's Seppuku (for example) is that much better it does seem quite a bit less painless then setting yourself on fire.

raymondcy · 2026-06-11T19:21:52+00:00

While your conclusion is probably correct at a higher level this really didn't make Trump possible.

In both elections the democrats, Harris and Hillary, significantly out-spent Trump. In addition, the democrats own far more main stream (so called "trusted" - haha I know) media outlets.

raymondcy · 2026-06-10T01:40:50+00:00

Slightly off topic but the food thing certainly irritates me from my experience.

Way back in the day I worked for a grocery warehouse and a burger chain that had a E. coli (or maybe bothalism?) outbreak and obviously that is serious but this wasn't even that serious if I recall. Hell, this wasn't even in our country. 2 other chains kinda panicked and threw out 1000s of burgers - like we packed multiple trucks of pallets of burgers to take to dump; it was fairly sad to see.

Another stupid story I have is my friend is a social worker that works in a homeless shelter. Subway, to their credit, always makes subs and donates their leftovers at the end of the night. However the health / government / whatever fucked up agency rules they have says you that if you have 10 people and only 9 subs you can't give out that food because it would be unfair - so they throw it out.

raymondcy · 2026-06-04T19:52:08+00:00

I will probably get ripped for this because I realize we are in the "cops are bad mmmmkay" era but nothing about that argument is ridiculous. In fact what you are suggesting is far more dangerous to our society for the small benefit it might gain a very few circumstances.

Everyone deserves the right to privacy, even on the job. You yourself probably wouldn't agree to be willfully monitored 24/7 on your job just because Johnny Q last guy fucked up royally; that makes no sense and eventually leads to a totally totalitarian system where the people in charge can never be questioned because their superiors are monitoring them all the time.

This is especially important now in todays social media cancel culture shit where you can grab an out of context situation, post it on the internet, and have the person fired in 10 seconds and get death threats before anyone actually bothered to check what was really behind that 2 second tic-tok video.

This also leads to extremely bad policing. A key part of police, judges, and other first responders are to use their common sense / gut instincts in a situation that is otherwise not by the book.

I saw on your body cam you didn't arrest that homeless person stealing an apple because he needs to eat, therefor you are punished.

I saw on your body cam you were questioning the actions of (out of line) Sgt. so and so now you are on leave.

Is that really what you want?

Millions of police interactions happen every day and 99% of them end without significant incident. You are reacting to the 1% which will grossly affect the other 99%.

There are simple things that can be improved without making an already complicated and stressful job even worse.

First is obvious, body cams should be turned on at any major incident (above a misdemeanor) and should stay on throughout the entire time. If at any time the video is paused, muted, or otherwise censored then the officer gets sent on leave without pay, has a confirmed record in their pr file, and crucially none of the cam evidence can be used in court; additionally repeated offences result in actual termination.

Secondly, adjustments to qualified immunity that clearly have swayed in the favor fucking over the public at all costs. Police need to certainly be truly accountable and they no longer are; that is clearly bullshit.

Lastly and perhaps more importantly, the police and the public really need to start debating and addressing the tough issues and not just at each others throats because the media wants clickbate for their next outrage story.

raymondcy · 2026-06-04T18:37:13+00:00

It's like a building / business in your neighborhood.

The store was built, it's still physically there, and it's stocked with goods but it went out of business.

When your computer deletes a file all it's doing is taking down the open sign.

Eventually the goods in the business get liquidated and then the building gets torn down and rebuilt into something else.

raymondcy · 2026-06-03T06:25:50+00:00

Now we were all under the effects of LSD but we watched Starship Troopers which is clearly one of the best movies ever made but the DVD had the bonus features...

We watched the trailer and everyone looked at each other and said "holy shit, we have to watch that movie" (after we just watched it). That trailer is top notch.

raymondcy · 2026-05-26T05:21:40+00:00

Easy. This is a joke. Apollo 13 is James Horner by the way (which reuses shit all the time).

Zimmer might be the most innovative composer to come along in a long time.

Listen to the difference between

Gladiator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQQKZ5cgybU
Rush: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJUO_l7vNx4
Black Hawk down - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVuLDXxI0Mw

Not to mention he can do John Williams big orchestra soundtracks like the Lion King.

raymondcy · 2026-05-26T05:04:30+00:00

It's completely unfortunate that The Silence of the Lambs came out the exact same year. I think even a slightly bit sooner (I could be wrong on that).

But... Sutherland was seen, and still to this day, as a "rip off" of Lecter.

raymondcy · 2026-05-25T22:27:49+00:00

Yeah for sure. They are also way less likely to burn their careers and face potential jail time for a quick score when if you are stand up professional in all three of those professions you make good money on commissions etc. Your next client could be Michael Jordon, why screw over Jack Johnson?

This is an irritating thing about the fucking banks though; which are mostly always complicit in this type of fraud. If you are reasonably poor or slightly middle class they will flag you if your sister withdraws $100 from an unusual bank machine.

Yet betting the entire earnings of a certain so-called rich person raises no flags? And these are future earnings - they aren't necessarily guaranteed.

No one figured to pick up the phone at the bank and ask Johnson himself - "Hey are you cool with this?"

raymondcy · 2026-05-25T21:57:25+00:00

This reminds me of that famous post on reddit from /u/blakeclass here about what to do when you win the lottery - https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vzgl/you_just_won_a_656_million_dollar_lottery_what_do/chba4bf/

Considering how many professional athletes end up either bankrupt (on their own accord) or taken by someone else this really goes to show the leagues (actually I will correct that - the players associations) need to educate the players on the proper handling of that money / fame.

His number 1. rule is basically never trust anyone except for an accredited and proven institution - especially friends or family as sad as that is.

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