I thoroughyl expect the Deparment of Government Efficiency to recommend U.S. Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) be shut down to save previous taxpayer dollars.
Am I the only one that is not excited about the next four years being constant banter of this nature? I loathe it. Nothing personal against your comment but the new administration hasn't even gone into office and I cannot get away from this.
Let's not pretend everyone is aghast at the goals of this administration. We just had an election and these viewpoints resoundingly won the day.
A non-trivial component to this election was this constant, smug nagging. "We know better, you're all so stupid".
If you turn out to be right, enjoy your smug "I told you so", but until then - these views are a minority and are very tiring to constantly see/hear/read.
That's a pretty simplistic analysis. People largely voted on immigration and inflation. You can't infer anything about what they thought on other issues.
The last COVID stimulus package added from 1 to 4% to inflation, but that was transitory. The wider rise was largely due to other factors such as supply chain disruptions from the pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The latter significantly raised oil prices worldwide which in turn raised costs for all kinds of things.
Here's an article that covers a lot of the factors [1].
Wait, when you see someone say "department of government efficiency" and mention corruption you hear "hitler hitler hitler"?
Maybe you're just really tired of hearing any criticism of blatant corruption and I'm sorry you're feeling that way. I bet that feels really discouraging and tedious and adversarial.
To me this comment reads as a callout of corruption, not fascism. The hitler criticisms you mentioned, in my experience, have been for things like the maga hats with the nazi font, the republican convention stage in the shape of the SS glyph, and the claim that immigrants are watering down the proper American bloodlines.
To your other request that people stop sharing their concerns: just because a lot of people vote for something doesn't mean it's inherently ethical nor does it mean people should be silenced. My assumption is most people don't want corruption or abuse or racism or fascism; if you think that too then you might have better success helping people understand why they are mistaken about what looks like corruption instead of telling people to just stop sharing opinions you're personally tired of reading.
Doesn't Fox News have the highest viewer numbers of any of the news stations? What fraction of local news stations are owned by Sinclair? I don't think you get to call "legacy media" out for being liberal when such a large part is not.
The vote was like 50.1 to 48.2 at latest (accurate) count. Which is terrible news to everyone. Because, unless my math is wrong, that means there were more people who were so unmoved by either party that they couldn't be arsed to go out and vote, than there were voters for either party.
And all those people are pissed off.
Personally, I think stuff like comments on HN and Twitter are gonna be a good pressure valve over the next few years. Maybe even some Onion, Saturday Night Live and Daily Show for those masses. Because if those people ever get what they perceive to be a reason? I mean, they've already shown fairly consistently that they're no longer interested in the whole non-violent democratic norm of voting thing. And if a guy like Trump can't even bring them out, that means they're not at all interested in anything either side is selling.
After looking at those numbers, I guess I just wouldn't be so sure that the people making these comments are liberals. Or even independents for that matter. Independents on the sidelines are, at least, reasonable and vote. What we have boiling outside the stadium, so to speak, is something different entirely. And if they'll satisfy themselves yelling insults at the people inside the stadium then we should all probably let them. Don't make the mistake of thinking it's a bad thing.
If a lion starts chewing on your football, let it have the football. Don't be foolish. Just back away and go get another ball to continue your game with the opposing team.
Not only do other HN commenters largely agree that it belongs to HN, they decided that it deserves to be the top comment on this discussion, at the time I authored this comment
Which is sad for someone who has been here for well over a decade. I never came here for political banter, I came for technical discussion. Facts, truths and subject matter experts. HN is slowly becoming less concentrated version of that.
"I don't want to discuss politics" when it's directly related to the topic at hand, is a complaint from the decadent class. It affects peoples lives, it's relevant, it's entirely plausible given the situation.
People are going to have to deal with the presence of politics in regular life for the unforeseen future, because the luxury of avoiding politics is generally the sign of having good governance.
Pretending that “politics” exists as something separate or invasive is not only ignorant, it’s dangerous.
If this were a thread about IBM machines of the 1930s, would it be playing “politics” to note that those machines were sold to Nazis and supported by IBM through sub-contractors even while we were at war with them? Is it crossing a line to mention they were used to facilitate the Holocaust?
You are not alone in this sentiment. It is beyond the pale that the denizens of a 'hacker forum' are often so narrow-minded when it comes to engaging those who think outside of the personal zone of ideological preference. The same people who have been yammering about the importance of 'diversity' are dead set against diversity of opinion. Grow up, folks, get outside your comfort zone and engage some of those deplorables, irredeemables, garbage, rednecks, hillbillies and bible thumpers instead of howling along with the masses. Go ahead and try, you may find they are more like you than you've been told by the chattering classes. Sure you'll have disagreements over certain things but that does not make them the evil monsters your moral mentors have been claiming they are. Just... grow up.
I’ve engaged with these people a good bit actually. They’re very normal people, in that they largely don’t know much about politics but have strong opinions.
Hacker News' eventual death started the moment it joined the hysteria over the Lab Leak Theory. Since then it has trended more and more to be like Reddit, with ideological tribal concerns occupying an increasingly large mindshare. This drives away people who want to have earnest conversations in good faith, giving even more power to the ideologues. It will be a long death spiral but you can see it happening day by day.
I've genuinely never seen "hysteria" from the people talking about the lab leak theory. The closest I've seen is from people who were extremely keen for no one to mention the theory. Not because of some cover-up, but I think just because that was what everyone was telling everyone else to do, hysteria-style.
The idea that the novel coronavirus didn't escape from the local coronavirus R&D laboratory never had anywhere near enough evidence to be credible.
It was pretty much the WHO simply repeating the claims of the Chinese government, who had already tried to cover up the outbreak (with any warnings sent to the WHO coming from Taiwan instead).
It was about as believable as the completely baseless claims that the emergency use authorised vaccine was safe and effective.
In this context, diversity refers to characteristics, not to differences of opinion. That said, diverse thinking can be valuable when used for prosocial purposes.
Respectfully, why not?
That's the whole point of campaigning. I seriously hope an incoming administration has a plan before they get to office. "I wouldn't change anything" fortunately doesn't seem to win elections when everything's sideways.
Campaigning is done right happens between elections. In most countries you only have 4/6 weeks. As Kim Campbell of Canada famously said an election is not the time to debate issues. Now the US has a much longer campaign period.. and elections every 2 years. They are always campaigning.
Many other countries have that. It’s like not giving you admin credentials before you contract start. But there’s no credential, the admin power comes from talking. And as a manager of managers, they has to restrain themselfes.
A certain faction always think the rule on keeping politics out of forums doesn't apply to them, because their politics are too correct and important. I experience this problem in groupchats where the very people who furiously demanded people not bring politics into the group and to make the group politics-free routinely push their own politics. They say their politics are too important to not bring up.
These same people LEFT other groups dedicated to politics so presumably if others respond in kind by discussing their own politics, they will leave the last groupchats too. This is why a certain faction is such an echo chamber. Incidentally, I was just banned from r/Archaeology for arguing that a post arguing that archeologists should prepare to fight the fascist takeover was too political.
It doesn’t suck for the majority of people in the country. For them, it’s what they’d love to see.
Funnily enough, comments like yours are also what they’d love to see. Seeing leftists in tears over the policy changes we’re going to see is a great form of entertainment for many people.
They are planning to appoint a nutjob who has publicly that he admitted cutting off the heads of whale carcasses with a chainsaw and dumping dead bears in the Central Park for "fun". Presumably he is also consuming those rotting animals carcasses that he keeps finding somehow (how else do you get brain worms?) to be the new US health secretary.
What do I need to know? Tech oriented, factually grounded discussion. The thing I come here for that allows me to partially escape reality and enjoy the finer things in life. I can tune into Fox, CNN, Facebook, or a myriad of places for political banter.
These people have been inundated with the drivel of a billion dollar propaganda machine run by the most expensive campaign in history.
It's gonna take a while before they're back to normal again. I've heard so many "office of government efficiency" jokes in the last week I am tired of it too. But, in their defense if all you hear is how this administration is going to be the fourth reich (lol), destroy the country (lol), introduce fascism (lol), kill people (lol), etc you're going to react in a sarcastic way to anything you can grasp onto.
Though tbf, again, "office of government efficiency" seems like an oxymoron.
edit:
But then again P.A.T.R.I.O.T act etc is a thing so hard to tell if actual joke or just going with how US politicians like to be witty while naming stuff.
I love the argument you’re making. If you’re against socialist policies, it serves as indication you don’t like the things I find good.
Please don’t ask me to fund anyone else’s EV purchase. It doesn’t matter to me one bit who’s in office to get rid of that evil policy, I’d still love it.
They have already announced what they are going to do, with the pro-Trump side saying he's not serious or will mellow out the plan before he takes office, and the anti-Trump side saying he will do exactly what he says he's going to do.
not a repeat of 2016 at all. he's got every lever of the government at his disposal. stacked supreme court, three branches of government on his side. hiring the worst people for every job possible and hiring only for fealty to him.
He had both chambers in 2016 too, on similarly narrow majorities. The hiring has consistently been for allegiance. The court has changed a little. One thing you don't mention that is perhaps the biggest thing is temperance for reelection. But overall, I don't see much reason that it will be that much different from last time. Talking about things being much worse seems like an emotional statement.
Politicians bend the truth or promise what they are later unable to deliver (and often had no chance of delivering). But I think Trump usually tries to deliver on whatever he said in the campaign (like in 2016), like you can expect wide reaching tariffs in January or February (especially since half-way competent advisors, congress, and the courts are probably not going to moderate him as much this time).
Maybe make any computer purchases in December just to be safe.
Why would it be ironic? He has less regard for the political group and general stability than a more run of the mill politician and now there is explicit immunity for anything he wants to do, like when he sold classified documents but "declassified them in his mind" right before once he got caught.
We watched four years of this already, including a rally with gallows being built in the crowd being told to march on the Capitol (he claims figuratively, and everyone just misunderstood, despite all the posts and planning and travel and tour groups). Last time it was absurd news headline after headline just to distract from the other things going on. We saw some bonkers stuff that would have disqualified other candidates in the past (or at least most candidates probably thought it would).
At this point I think his promises are easier to deliver on and he doesn't care about (and has been made immune from) the consequences that usually temper a politician's ability to deliver. Tariffs, no health plan, another wall (remember when he pardoned bannon for stealing the money they raised for the wall?), "stopping the war in Ukraine" but without a free Ukraine at the end, and decimating government regulatory agencies.
The weirdest part of this narrative for me is how the supporters say he wont do what he promises and the detractors fear he will. I don't know enough history to know if that is common but it sure feels backwards to me.
Trump is probably the first politician in history where supporters claim he isn’t going to do what he says he is going to do (“take Trump seriously, not literally!”) while his detractors claim that he is. It’s already a weird spot in history.
They are like this literally any time a Republican is in the White House. They were like this when Dubya was President too, even though today they act like he's some sort of elder statesman just because he hates Trump.
What? Dubya was selected by the Supreme Court. He started a war after peddling bullshit evidence in front of the whole world. Dubya was and is a piece of shit.
There were some people (former staff of his) openly asking him, before the election, to denounce Trump. He didn't do that. November 6, he issued a congratulations to Trump. A piece of shit and a coward .
As a non-american watching the election, this was one of the reasons I didn't want the result to be the way it went. Just for having to hear about it constantly from everywhere.
This is why we need the Department of Department of Government Efficiency Efficiency so we can ensure the governmental efficiency of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Nobody needs to take notes, we’ve known what this is for a hundred years. We spent most of the last century trying to get rid of autocracy in various places, there’s entire libraries worth of books detailing this playbook at this point.
autocracy is about concentration of power, correct. bureaucratic is not autocratic. it‘s the opposite. Removing checks and balances is a bad thing, yes.
Diesel gate involved also many others manufacturers
> Opel (General Motors) publicly demonstrated (while representatives from the TÜV Hessen were present) a Zafira that met the NOx emission limits. At the same time, Opel started clandestinely pushing an engine software update that limited NOx emissions in Zafiras that were already on the road.
> German newspaper Bild am Sonntag reported that US authorities investigating Mercedes have discovered that its vehicles are equipped with illegal software to help them pass United States' stringent emission tests. The claimed defeat devices include a Bit 15 mode to switch off emissions control after 16 miles of driving (the length of an official U.S. emissions test), and Slipguard which tries to directly determine if the car is being tested based on speed and acceleration profiles
> Dodge Ram 1500 and Jeep Grand Cherokee trucks, had software that allowed them to exceed NOx pollution limits, undetected by the usual testing methods.
>
BMW was sued in 2018 when certain models were named as producing several times more nitrogen oxide emissions than laboratory tests indicated
UK, French and German government agencies lobbied for weaker testing. Probably because of car industry lobbyists, and all the blah blah about "we sell cars, people stay employed, economy keeps going, you get reelected.". Ah, isn't democracy beautiful...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/24/uk-franc...
A president can't pardon himself. He can still be held responsible for this crimes that he's already done. they'll just be shelved for a time. With any justice we'll come back to his crimes after this presidency proves to be a complete failure. I personally don't believe that Americans will allow anyone to become dictator.
He does not need to pardon himself if he has presidental immunity for offical acts for the rest of his life. That just hinges on the definition of offical acts, which will be made by a partisan and corrupt supreme court.
Well, they have certainly allowed a convicted felon to become president, so I’m not as convinced of their ability to defend themselves. Any Netflix showrunner designing Trump as a character would have been called of for such a flat caricature of a narcissistic villain, but somehow people thought that would be a good leader.
Even if Trump does not ruin the USA, I have forever lost my respect for its citizens.