Trump has a lot of wealth on paper, but a lot of it is tied up in real estate, which isn’t the easiest thing to turn into cash when you need it. And a lot is tied up in stock, but since he got caught fixing the books for the Trump Organization, he can’t really use that as his personal piggybank without a lot of scrutiny. And Truth Social is worth over a billion on paper but will crash if he starts to sell any of his stock, which would cause a lot of new problems right now.

Meanwhile, he is burning through money at an insane rate. I mean historically, he’s lost far more money than he’s ever been worth. He’s always had to have new businesses and schemes to cycle through as the old ones crumble. He basically never made a profit until the Apprentice, and that actually caused problems because he’d structured his operations around losing money, leaving other people holding the bag when things go completely south, writing off the loses for tax purposes, and, well, cooking the books.

But with hundreds of millions in judgements against him, on top of the hundred million plus in legal fees, he’s in a bit of a bind. He already had to put a $175 million up for bond to appeal the judgment civil judgment against the Trump Organization. If he loses the appeal, he’s out not just the $175 million, but the full $489 million judgement, plus about $115k a day in interest. Plus he’s got the E Jean Carroll judgments and ongoing cases because he’s a dumb bastard that can’t stop himself from committing defamation every time he leaves a courthouse after losing a defamation case.

While he has been funneling money from his PAC to cover his legal bills that only goes so far, and as I understand it, he can’t use that for actual judgements against him. If he loses the election, he may be fighting legal battles for years to come, that PAC money will likely dry up, and if he doesn’t have the cash when the court demands it, he could see his assets seized and auctioned off. If he wins the election, he can do basically anything and we’re all fucked.

So to simplify this a bit, imagine that he spent almost all his money on a lot of properties without getting a single monopoly, while his opponent has hotels on the dark blue and green properties. He keeps trying to survive the gauntlet and pass go to stay in the game, and maybe he can survive by mortgaging everything, but it’s much easier for him if he has the cash to pay the bill.

Meanwhile Russia’s spraying the country with a firehose of lies, and illegally funneling money in to influence the election. IIRC Johnson got a hefty campaign donation from Russia, which he had to return when it was noticed.

But no, this is clearly the real outrage. Just because he didn’t endorse any politician or party and didn’t appear with any presidential candidate doesn’t mean that this wasn’t obviously election interference. Just look what he’s doing, reminding people that Ukraine exists and shaking hands with American workers who build the shells that are helping to save his country. What could be more sinister?

For real though, the pro-Putin wing is desperate to spin this story because it clearly shows how full of shit they are when they bitch about spending money on Ukraine instead of keeping it in the US. Supporting Ukraine isn’t just good for upholding the international order, safeguarding allies, and degrading Russia’s capabilities for remarkably little cost, but it’s also supporting domestic manufacturing jobs.

If they lie and tell people that their votes were counted when they weren’t in order to disenfranchise them by robbing them of their opportunity to correct the ballot, I believe they could face fraud charges. That’s in addition to any potential legal consequences for violating this court order.

I have to ask, have you read Orconomics? It’s a parody of fantasy, gaming, and economics. I recommend it to anyone who likes Pratchett, and especially if you’re into the extremely specific niche of financial fantasy satire.

The Dresden Files: A wizard working as a detective in Chicago. Fun, pulpy, and has an expanding world and scope as the series goes on. Often described as Harry Potter for adults.

Children of Time: Humans escaping a dying earth encounter a planet where a terraforming project accidentally created sapient spiders. Very thoughtful and creative. Explores the evolution of the spiders as a species and civilization and the ways they would be both similar and different from humans.

Dungeon Crawler Carl: OK, this is a hard one to describe in a blurb, but basically aliens invaded and turned earth into a massive reality show / video game. Our pantsless hero Carl and his cat Donut are among the survivors being whittled down level by level in an insane fantasy dungeon crawl. Has much better world building and character development than you would ever expect, is compelling while also being hilarious, and despite the very dark subject matter, it stays fun and avoids getting bogged down by misery. I highly recommend the audiobook version as it is absolutely first rate and adds so much more to the experience.

War of the Worlds: The adaptations have never done thr original justice. It’s a simple story, but very effective. And I just have a soft spot for really old classic sci-fi, what with the lumbering mechanical monstrocities and their heat rays assaulting pre-WWI military units.

Discworld is a strong recommendation from me as well, though Guards Guards is my preferred starting point

This reading order guide is quite good, though I’m pretty sure the note saying where the author said to start is wrong. IIRC, Pratchett’s recommendation was to start at Mort, skip Sourcery, and read through chronologically.

I also highly recommend the Orconomics trilogy. It’s clever, witty, satirical, and very, very Pratchettesque.

Isn’t this the same attorney general that refused to release prisoners that had been exonerated?

For physical tasks that require little higher brain function but just need me to not zone out or chase a distraction, I listen to audiobooks and podcasts. It’s about the only way I can get stuff done around the house.

For tasks that require real brain power, I stick to original scores from movies and games. No lyrics, easy to find something with the right level of intensity for your mood, and generally designed to compliment an existing experience rather than be your sole focus.

Extended loops of Brothers in Arms from Mad Max Fury Road and Mountains from Interstellar have saved my ass in many a crisis. And the hour long Skyrim morning exploration mix and Witcher relaxation mix combined have probably doubled my creative output.

Trump has been hollowing out the Republican party and filling it with his minions for the last 8 years. If they lose this election badly enough, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some intense infighting and a big push to clean out a lot of Trump’s people. While it’s not inconceivable that you could see an offshoot try to replace the Republicans, I doubt it would happen. I think it’s more plausible that the die hard MAGA idiots that can’t read the room will get purged in favor of those who can at least appear to be more traditional, establishment Republicans. The party changes (as they do over time) but it doesn’t go away.

Of course, I think the most likely outcome is that any rise of more moderate Republicans isn’t going to be sufficient to fully dislodge the MAGA loyalists and you’ll just see a much deeper divide. Without pressure from Trump constantly crushing them down, the more moderate side of the party can probably be more effective in uniting against the extreme right wing, but not enough to fully take over.

Which valuation is reasonable depends entirely on whether or not it’s been cleaned.

The problem is we don’t have a federal agency for handling trash removal.

Let’s also not forget that this is the guy who argued that “some folks need killing” and seemed to be saying that this was a reasonable (perhaps even necessary) response to people getting “cancelled” and social media banning people for the things they say.

Or did the right thing.

Not this time, obviously, but sometimes.

8th Doctor.

Babylon 5 has a pretty weak pilot movie, a somewhat shaky first season, and then gradually becomes the greatest thing in human history.

Farscape is basically Guardians of the Galaxy if it were a show on sci-fi a decade earlier, with muppets. Mostly very fun, occasionally hits a lot harder than you’d expect.

TNG is the best at being Star Trek

DS9 is the best show in Star Trek

I expect it to be a buggy mess that has lots of potential and doesn’t deliver on half of what it seems like it should do. Then after a year or two it will finally be patched into being mostly stable and mods will have reached a point where it can mostly be turned into the game I actually want. However there will be a few creative decisions that I absolutely hate but which are so unnecessarily locked in that even mods can’t fix them, so I’ll have to just accept them as an irritant that I will do my best to ignore.

Being recognized as the only sane choice by people across the political spectrum and by nonpartisan organizations that rarely if ever endorse presidential candidates is generally going to be helpful for a campaign.

While there are plenty of people on Lemmy acting like this is a deal breaker, I highly doubt any of those people were ever going to vote for Harris.

And even if there is a nonzero number of votes lost to third parties or staying home because of this endorsement, those lost votes are almost certainly less likely to be in battleground states, and are only worth half as much as any independent or republican leaning votes that would otherwise have gone to Trump.

Who would have guessed that they were all communist, fascist, Marxist RINOs?

Obviously these former elected officials, military leaders, national security experts, etc from every administration in the last 40 years are all just trying to destroy America.

A lot of talk about how the law prevents the president from stopping funding for policies they might oppose. Which should last for all of 5 minutes if Trump gets back into office.