I’m in Season 2 of my rewatch of SG1 and Christopher Judge’s acting gets me every time. Seeing Teal’c with O’Neill’s personality is just so weird and jarring. What’s everyone’s favorite episode when the actor has to be someone different? Either a swap or like when Jack is inhabited by the organisms from the...
Former President Trump can delay paying E. Jean Carroll the $83.3 million a jury decided he owes her until after he exhausts all appeal options he has vowed to seek, The New York Times reports....
There was a big drive a few years back to modernize the meters and some of what I suspect are the types that became 5G kills you groups fought long and hard to block these new meters being swapped in.
The kicker is that it’s HIGHLY unlikely that those meters were 5G.
It’s muuuuch cheaper to get a CAT1 LTE radio module and go 4G WITH the added benefit that 4G has better distance/signal/etc than 5G does at a trade-off of a lower speed.
Where I am in the midwestern U.S., those meters are typically in people’s BASEMENTS.
5G would be a a combination of massive overkill for a few megabytes of data a MONTH and non-starter for connectivity reasons because getting bars to a tower through several feet of earth and cinder block is notably harder in the 30gHz+ frequency range when compared to the ~6gHz of 4G (or the 850mHz-2.1gHz of 3G).
These things are streaming text files full of usage data numbers. Netflix-capable connections are wholly unnecessary. Your old 2006 motorola razr flip phone could handle the data these meters are putting out without breaking a sweat.
“DO NOT TOW OR MOVE” will deter exactly zero tow truck drivers.
Shoot, being legally parked with all of your vehicle plates/tags/registration/etc in order isn’t enough to deter some tow truck drivers.
There’s a company in my area that actively, regularly engages in predatory towing. All they have to do is claim someone called about it and be unable to produce records because of some computer issue. If they choose their targets carefully, they either get:
A: free money
B: free salvage
Even if someone DOES manage to sue and win, that’s maybe 5% or less of the vehicles they tow. They seem to deem that an acceptable hit rate for free money.
Go ask anyone who tows inside the city limits of a major metropolitan area what percentage of vehicles get reclaimed after being towed.
If a company is willing to throw ethics out the window and drown the predatory tows in a flood of legitimate work, there’s apparently extra money to be made.
Worst case scenario the company that practices such things fires someone for “making too many mistakes on the job” and they go get a tow job elsewhere because there’s a massive shortage of tow trucks seemingly everywhere.
Much of the towing industry is a half-step above organized crime.
That would require proving that the decisions to do predatory towing were made all the way up at the top and actually written down or typed out somewhere.
These are carbon-copy and cash register businesses that just happen to HAVE computers. A few with bigger fleets and GPS in the trucks run dispatch calls through computers, but most of them (from what I’ve seen myself and heard from friends/acquaintances who work in tow yards) don’t actually USE them for the day-to-day work.
Any attempt at a case stops at discovery.
The cops don’t care and there’s no real threat of meaningful punishment for the companies at fault so it’ll continue.
Thanks for the suggestion though. It’s a thought I’ve had previously and looked into.
Any attempt to regulate towing companies further that might cut into this kind of business will see another city-wide tow slowdown, though. Things were REALLY bad when our major metropolitan area started talking about passing idling laws and requiring GPS dongles.
There was a 3+ day to a week backlog of cars waiting for tow. Local law enforcement was cutting deals with individual companies just to get accidents cleared to the side. They’re all private businesses so they don’t HAVE to operate if they don’t want to.
They do this all the time. Maybe Biden should call their bluff, execute his powers as Commander in Chief, and order the National Guard in Texas to turn on State Police.
Again, no court would uphold that Texas is being invaded.
Which is good because if we classify border-crossing migrants as “invaders” then not only does that mean really bad things for them, it means Abbott was funneling invaders further inside our borders by paying to bus them to denver or fly them to chicago or whatever else.
It’s pretty clear he didn’t think the treasonous implications of this particular initiative through very well.
So I looked up what “federalizing the National Guard” means in this case.
The National Guard is a unique entity in that it answers to both state and federal governments. Troops can be mobilized by a state governor or the president, depending on need. The National Guard personnel restricting access to Shelby Park are on state orders as part of Operation Lone Star, Abbott’s sweeping border security initiative.
In theory, the president or the defense secretary could divert those troops by tasking them with a federal mission.
“There are a variety of statutes that allow the president to federalize the National Guard in different circumstances. But the only one that would clearly apply in this case is the Insurrection Act,” said Joseph Nunn, counsel at the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program.
Nunn described the Insurrection Act as a “nuclear bomb hidden in the United States Code” and explained that using it would be politically costly.
“The Insurrection Act gives the president sole discretion to decide whether the criteria for invoking it are met,” he explained. “There are quite literally no safeguards to stop it from being abused.”
Historically, Nunn said, presidents have only invoked the act to federalize National Guard troops as a last resort. That was the case in 1957, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower mobilized the Arkansas National Guard to enforce a Supreme Court ruling on desegregation.
So, this would mean USURPING the Governor’s control of the Texas National Guard in order to get them to do something else.
THAT’S WHAT THEY WANT BIDEN TO DO.
THIS IS A STUNT.
THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SECESSION.
They want to be able to point to Biden’s actions in this and say “Bad” in twelve different ways.
They ALSO want someone to invoke the insurrection act so everyone can have carte blanche to use it whenever they want LATER, no matter who is in control.
This is a horrible precedent to set.
This whole situation is bad.
Rep. Joaquin Castro said: “Governor Greg Abbott is using the Texas National Guard to obstruct and create chaos at the border.”
The best option here might be to let his own idiocy backfire on him. I just hope there’s a way to do it without more loss of life.
The problem here is that all of the registration information that is listed for a number (OCN, LATA, etc) allows them to track back what TYPE of number it is based on what ILEC/CLEC it’s registered with and how it’s registered.
This means when I put my google voice number into some things, they can come back and yell that it’s not a mobile phone, or that it’s a virtual number, or whatever and disallow it.
As of December 18th of last year, publicly traded companies are now required to disclose breaches. (soz, material cybersecurity incidents).
Prior to that, they could …basically… just effectively sweep everything under the rug “like it never happened” minus a little handwaving and paper shuffling and nobody would find out about it until the information got sold and went public.
I’ll have to go looking but I would be SERIOUSLY surprised if the disclosures apply to credit card companies (the MOST breached, historically) because I’m not sure what exactly qualifies someone as an asset-backed issuer, but it’s at least a really good step for the REST of things.
It’s utterly atrocious for style but I still can’t wrap my brain around the legal word salad this dude threw out there.
Does anyone know what this is even for? Like…I’m pretty sure you have to volunteer for surety in any form, because it’d be pretty weird if the court could ORDER another person to shove their money into a deal they hadn’t somehow otherwise agreed to.
…and…the statutes and codes are statues and codes… Isn’t color of law is involved when an official is doing something that appears to be official but may not be?
Like, statutes and codes can’t be the SEMBLANCE of law…they ARE the fucking law?
How can you claim to not be under the law and then certify something under penalty of perjury UNDER THE FUCKING LAWS YOU JUST SAID HAVE NO JURIS-MY-DICTION OVER YOU?!?
If this was chanted in unison by a few people at once, it’d resemble a bad tv show witch’s “spell”.
Happy as in “all absolutely necessary for survival bills are getting paid on time, all outstanding debts are getting paid down regularly, and I can afford to eat at a restaurant slightly above fast food grade once a month or so?”
$308,740/yr for the first year would do it.
After that I could probably look at halving the salary and live, if not comfortably, at least without constant worry.
Maybe start putting something away so I can retire before I hit 70.
Happiness doesn’t come from money, but it sure would reduce stress.
Charles Littlejohn is an Internal Revenue Service consultant who is accused of “disclosing tax return information without authorization,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Details in the indictment match the New York Times’ reporting on former President Donald Trump’s tax returns, and ProPublica’s reporting on the tax returns of the nation’s billionaires, ProPublica reported.
According to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice, Littlejohn, while working at the IRS as a government contractor, “stole tax return information associated with a high-ranking government official (Public Official A) and disclosed it to a news organization (News Organization 1).”
The DOJ accuses Littlejohn of also stealing “tax return information for thousands of the nation’s wealthiest individuals, and disclosed this tax return information to another news organization (News Organization 2).
Littlejohn, 38, is from Washington D.C., according to Pro Publica. His full name is Charles Edward Littlejohn, the indictment says.
Here’s what you need to know:
Charles Littlejohn Is Accused of Releasing Donald Trump’s Tax Returns to The New York Times, Reports Say
ProPublica reported that the DOJ’s description of the second leak “appears to match The New York Times’ reporting on the taxes of Donald Trump.”
The DOJ statement does not name Trump. As Trump battled against release of his tax records, The New York Times reported that he did not pay income taxes in 10 of the past 15 years.
“Long-Concealed Records Show Trump’s Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance,” The Times’ headline says.
Littlejohn “is charged with one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax returns and return information. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison,” the DOJ said.
“Acting Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and Deputy Inspector General for Investigations Trevor Nelson of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) made the announcement,” the DOJ’s news release said, adding that TIGTA “is investigating the case.”
The complaint says that, from in or about 2018 until in or about 2020, “while Defendant was working on an IRS contract, he stole tax returns and return information associated with Public Official A and thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, including returns and return information dating back more than 15 years.”
It adds: “He thereafter disclosed the tax information associated with Public Official A to News Organization 1 and the other tax information to News Organization 2. Both news organizations published numerous articles describing the tax information they obtained from the Defendant.” 2. ProPublica Says the Charles Littlejohn Charges Appear Related to a ‘Trove of IRS data’ the News Organization Used in a ‘Secret IRA Files’ Series
One of the news organizations, ProPublica, reported that the DOJ’s description “of one of those leaks appears to refer to the trove of IRS data that ProPublica used to report its ‘Secret IRS Files’ series. The vast dataset contained details on thousands of wealthy Americans, and ProPublica reported dozens of stories based on an analysis of it.”
“As we have said from the beginning, we do not know the identity of the source, so we have nothing further to say about the charges filed today,” Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica’s editor in chief, said in the story.
ProPublica’s series announced, “A massive trove of tax information obtained by ProPublica, covering thousands of America’s wealthiest individuals, reveals what’s inside the billionaires’ bag of tricks for minimizing their personal tax bills — sometimes to nothing.”
The taxes returns covered in that series included information relating to Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett, all billionaires, according to Pro Publica. “The tax data was provided to ProPublica after we published a series of articles scrutinizing the IRS,” the article says, not naming its source.
The series reported:
<span style="color:#323232;">ProPublica has obtained a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years. The data provides an unprecedented look inside the financial lives of America’s titans, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. It shows not just their income and taxes, but also their investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and even the results of audits.
</span>
Charles Littlejohn Has Served as a Contractor to a Consulting Firm that Worked for the IRS, the Indictment Says
The indictment says “from in or about 2017 until in or about 2021, Defendant CHARLES EDWARD LITTLEJOHN served as a contractor to Company A, a consulting firm that serviced public and private clients.” The firm is not named.
“During the relevant period, Defendant primarily worked on contracts Company A had obtained with the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”). Pursuant to 26 U.S.C. § 6103(n), returns and return information were disclosed to Defendant for purposes of tax administration,” the indictment says.
According to Fox News, reported that “a guilty plea is in the works” and that Littlejohn was a contractor for the IRS when he is accused of stealing Trump’s tax returns and giving them to the New York Times. 4. Former President Donald Trump Accused the ‘Fake News Media’ of Publishing ‘Illegally Obtained Information’
<span style="color:#323232;">The Fake News Media, just like Election time 2016, is bringing up my Taxes & all sorts of other nonsense with illegally obtained information & only bad intent. I paid many millions of dollars in taxes but was entitled, like everyone else, to depreciation & tax credits…..
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 28, 2020
</span>
Trump railed at the news media after the publication of his tax returns. “The Fake News Media, just like Election time 2016, is bringing up my Taxes & all sorts of other nonsense with illegally obtained information & only bad intent. I paid many millions of dollars in taxes but was entitled, like everyone else, to depreciation & tax credits……” he wrote on X.
He added, “Also, if you look at the extraordinary assets owned by me, which the Fake News hasn’t, I am extremely under leveraged – I have very little debt compared to the value of assets. Much of this information is already on file, but I have long said that I may release.
“Financial Statements, from the time I announced I was going to run for President, showing all properties, assets and debts. It is a very IMPRESSIVE Statement, and also shows that I am the only President on record to give up my yearly $400,000 plus Presidential Salary!” Trump wrote. 5. The IRS Has ‘Tightened Security,” Reports Say
<span style="color:#323232;">🚨BREAKING: An IRS contractor has been charged with STEALING President Trump's tax returns and providing them to a "news organization" Charles Littlejohn, 38, of Washington, DC is facing up to FIVE YEARS in prison on this charge. https://t.co/BLiHKfOAGX pic.twitter.com/hZq5TCQQWz
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">— Will Goren (@RealWillGoren) September 29, 2023
</span>
According to the Associated Press, the IRS declined to comment specifically on the Littlejohn indictment.
However, Commissioner Danny Werfel said “any disclosure of taxpayer information is unacceptable,” the AP reported, adding that “the agency has since tightened security.”
According to Politico, Ken Griffin, “a prominent hedge fund manager,” sued the IRS “for failing to protect his tax filings,” and the government argued in court that “there was no evidence that leak came from a government employee.”
“The government has a fundamental obligation to protect the confidentiality of Americans’ sensitive information, whether it be tax records or healthcare records,” Griffin told Politico.
A brief evolution of Rogue. Thousands of sites exist on the topic, so I won’t go into a lot of repeat here, but I thought you might enjoy a quick gaming history lesson....
Tolkein, from Europe, and Gygax … from America, detested one another
Uhh. Where’d that idea come from? I read somewhere that Gygax thoroughly enjoyed The Hobbit, although he apparently thought some of Tolkien’s writing was “boring”. I don’t recall ever hearing Tolkien saying anything at all about Gygax. Gary didn’t even get started on the precursors to D&D until right before Tolkien’s death.
in 1973, Gary Gygax, who had the strongest impact on the fantasy elements of the game, denied any direct influences from fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien Died 2 September 1973 (aged 81) Bournemouth, Hampshire, England
Dragon magazine reported on several occassions wherein the two met and banged heads. Although fans rarely saw them argue, it happened.
There’s REALLY not a lot of overlap for that to have happened, to say nothing of the distance between Hampshire and Wisconsin.
Also, what is this?
She nearly succeeded too, creating Wizard’s of the Coast
Unless Mary Jo Powell or Gail Carpenter were Peter Adkinson in disguise, that statement seems pretty far off base.
Wow, it wasn’t that long ago when production was moved to the States because of Japan’s high labor costs.
I know Nissan US will likely try to BLAME it on things like unions or rising labor costs, but there’s NO WAY that amounts to a >20% rise in production costs even if you cite “hidden” costs behind the 6.6% or whatever they got. Keep in mind that costs were LOWER here and NOW they’re TWENTY PERCENT LOWER in japan. That means we rose a BUNCH more than where we were at because there’s no way they moved it here if we were 1% lower than japan.
Which part of the raw-materials-to-auto-parts chain is inflating the hell out of costs to declare record profits this time?
It’s an old enough nickname that the origins are likely lost to obscurity.
It’s been said that it’s a shortened version of “chip off the old block” but I find it more likely that it’s an evolution of “chib” as it seems to predate the phrase, from what I can tell.
Four justices appeared absolutely determined, on Wednesday, to overrule one of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions in the Court’s entire history....
It would be hilarious if this was overturned, Biden was elected and he filled the nation with progressive justices.
…who then use their newfound power to close a crapload of loopholes, then re-write chevron in a way that it can’t be taken down so easily again so it becomes much harder to create more loopholes or abolish good laws when people with bad intentions have power.
That’d be the best outcome of it getting overturned in my mind, anyway.
The problem isn’t that the courts are deferring to the agencies. The problem is the degree of deference. I have no problem with presuming agency policies are valid, provided a plaintiff is afforded the opportunity to rebut that presumption in court.
Okay, but isn’t the current setup such that deference is only a concern for issues that have already passed through formal law?
Deference only applies where the law is not specific.
But it only applies to to laws. Unless I misunderstand what you mean by “policies”, it shouldn’t apply there. Since it sounds like you’re worried about overreach due to application of chevron deference, I was trying to see if I followed your train of thought correctly.
In my extremely limited understanding, the issue with the RIFO and Chevron Deference is that the gap is so damned wide with regards to how to regulate the internet that there needs to be a better test than “does the solution proposed in the RIFO fill the gap?” I would consider the RIFO to be such an outlier in cases of chevron deference law that it almost looks like a strawman when compared to other uses of chevron deference. We should definitely shore something up to allow future questioning of the wisdom of courses of action recommended by agencies when consulted in deference matters once the consequences of such deference have come to fruition, but that very possibility (as I understand it) is part of WHY the deference to agencies occurs instead of simply allowing judges to decide. The people at the agencies, being theoretically put in power for a set term, have more to lose from bad decision-making than judges-for-life do.
Every time some boneheaded CEO follows the whims of these billionaire types, the press should start running articles as though the company’s days are numbered.
“More sudden layoffs! Is Google worried about its own long term prospects?” … “Google’s stance has changed from cutting edge innovation and growth to shoring up its flagship products in the hopes it can weather the storm. Battening down the hatches is the order of the day, and anything not deemed ship shape is left to flounder until it sinks.” Cite that most companies only cut staff like that when they’re looking to artificially inflate their valuation for some reason. Question if the impact of any recent bad moves are worse than expected.
The press should circle layoff-prone companies like sharks until they stop listening to stupid advice.
Make them stop and THINK about what they’re doing first. Teach the people in charge how to recognize when they’re being manipulated.
We give CEO’s entirely too much leeway to do incredibly dumb shit.
Carly Fiorina, John Roth, Frank Dunn, Mike Zafirovski, I don’t know if John Riccitiello is it at fault for the unity debacle, but he should have been able to stop it, John Wendell Thompson, Bob Allen, Kenneth Lay, John Sculley, Stephen Elop (How the fuck do you destroy NOKIA?!?!), Martin Shkreli, Carol Bartz, Leo Apotheker, the list is ENDLESS.
C levels have too much power to make RADICAL decisions and the fact that boards of directors are broken-record-skipping on the words “short term profit” is what keeps causing it to happen.
The billionaires and other CEO’s are on Ron Vachris’ ass every time there’s a group call because he keeps making them look bad, but he’s proven that his way is SUSTAINABLE.
It’s time to nudge things back into healthier directions.
Okay, can someone explain THIS giant load of seeming bullshit to me?
In 2023, the U.S. economy vastly outperformed expectations. A widely predicted recession never happened. Many economists (though not me) argued that getting inflation down would require years of high unemployment; instead, we’ve experienced immaculate disinflation, rapidly falling inflation at no visible cost.
By every marker that matters to the POPULACE (costs of food, shelter, energy for shelter, cars, gas for cars, and medical insurance (required)) inflation has gone WAY THE HELL UP, shows no signs of abating, and jobs (in the tech sector at least) are taking a dive. Wages are not keeping pace with costs of living, and people I knew who were on the low end of “rich” are now starting to be as scared as the upper middle class.
Everyone keeps saying the economy is fricking awesome, but rent is astronomical, groceries are bonkers, gas prices are still at “I DID THIS” sticker stupidity levels, few people can get a home, used cars are going for 5 to 10 times what they’re worth, and everyone I know around the country is running a much tighter ship than they were during COVID LOCKDOWN.
All of these “new jobs” we keep hearing about are just a small percentage of positions vacated by layoffs. Companies let tons of people go in one fell swoop and hire new people for 1/10th to 1/5th of the positions at lower wages with worse “total compensation” packages.
The recruiters have COMPLETELY stopped hitting up myself and my employed friends. Not a single fricking “you look like a great blahblahblah” for almost a month when it was previously multiple hits a day.
As far as I can tell, we’re IN a recession, we’re just calling it a recovery for some reason.
The handwaving that typically occurs when people try to throw a layer of obfuscation into economic conversations is both disingenuous and counterproductive to actual fruitful discussion about the current state of things.
You might as well just say “money is wealth” or “what’s good for the goose”.
The reality is we’ve been chasing a short run fallacy for a really, really long time now and there’s more and more in the way of misrepresented statistics in order to keep everyone from examining all of the indirect consequences.
As House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) stares down growing threats of removal from his rebellious right flank, Democrats are debating whether they would save him or or vote to oust him like they did former Speaker Kevin McCarthy....
It’s worth noting that the whole reason MTG wants to oust him (IN HER OWN WORDS) is because he’s reaching across the aisle to pass a bill that includes things that support Ukraine.
Johnson is one of them in all aspects and they still want to oust him.
Read this one correctly folks – Going against Russian interests is the real problem here.
Some of these GOP folks are bought and paid for by Russia.
It does not matter how hard you toe the party line, if you go against Russian interests, the far reachers of the party will try to get you removed from power and replaced with someone who can be bought.
This is what takes them so long to find someone to fill the seat.
Holiday Episode
I’m in Season 2 of my rewatch of SG1 and Christopher Judge’s acting gets me every time. Seeing Teal’c with O’Neill’s personality is just so weird and jarring. What’s everyone’s favorite episode when the actor has to be someone different? Either a swap or like when Jack is inhabited by the organisms from the...
Trump can delay paying full E. Jean Carroll damages until after appeal: report (thehill.com)
Former President Trump can delay paying E. Jean Carroll the $83.3 million a jury decided he owes her until after he exhausts all appeal options he has vowed to seek, The New York Times reports....
Sovereign citizen changed their gas and electricity meters, that didn't go over so well. (lemmy.world)
No More Avatar Reckoning, it has been cancelled (gengamer.in)
A homemade license plate will surely work, sovcit. (lemmy.world)
Extremists Call for ‘Civil War’ and ‘Secession’ Over Texas Border Ruling (www.vice.com)
They do this all the time. Maybe Biden should call their bluff, execute his powers as Commander in Chief, and order the National Guard in Texas to turn on State Police.
Joe Biden Faces Growing Calls to Federalize Texas National Guard (www.newsweek.com)
Why the ‘mother of all breaches’ is a wake up call for everyone (www.itpro.com)
Sovereign citizen files a 'notice of mistake ', a fine piece of legal documentation, complete with the classic sovcit red thumbprint. (lemmy.world)
What salary do you think would make you happy?
Irish prime minister affirms 'one China policy' (www.taiwannews.com.tw)
He is my hero (lemmy.ml)
Brief Roguelike history. (lemmy.world)
A brief evolution of Rogue. Thousands of sites exist on the topic, so I won’t go into a lot of repeat here, but I thought you might enjoy a quick gaming history lesson....
Nissan Threatens To Move Rogue Production Out Of The U.S. If Suppliers Don’t Slash Prices (www.carscoops.com)
House Republicans Are at Each Other's Throats Over the Border (www.rollingstone.com)
When one asks what’s killing the GOP’s ability to advance their immigration agenda, it’s clear the call is coming from inside the House...
John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett are unsure if they should crown themselves king and queen (www.vox.com)
Four justices appeared absolutely determined, on Wednesday, to overrule one of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions in the Court’s entire history....
A billionaire wrote this letter to Google a year ago. How likely is that Google's layoffs and actions since then are at least partly because of this? (lemmy.world)
China’s Economy Is in Serious Trouble (www.nytimes.com)
House Democrats weigh Mike Johnson's fate as discord roils GOP (www.axios.com)
As House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) stares down growing threats of removal from his rebellious right flank, Democrats are debating whether they would save him or or vote to oust him like they did former Speaker Kevin McCarthy....