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Messages - Tom Bishop

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: Today at 01:43:03 AM »
Quote
Of course it wasn't really the Department of Energy that suddenly, independently decided to fire a large number of employees at the exact same time that Musk and Trump have begun their promised purge of the federal workforce. That's obviously just how they're dressing it up. They gave the orders, and everyone fired is told "(insert agency/department name here) has determined that your position is now redundant," blah blah blah. That's obvious. And of course career officials at the Department of Energy would know that nuclear weapons would fall under their own purview. They wouldn't make that mistake. The two famously arrogant and not particularly bright businessmen now running this country, both of whom have spent their whole lives thinking they know better than everyone else? They would.

Correct. There are many justly layoffs occurring in the federal government right now. The DOE gave the orders, and they likely know what the NNSA is, so they should know if they are actually putting the nuclear stockpile at risk with the layoffs.

NBC says that the NNSA does more than manage American nuclear stockpiles, and seems to suggest that a recent international incident might have had something to do with the reversal in layoffs:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-administration-wants-un-fire-nuclear-safety-workers-cant-figure-rcna192345

    "The termination notices, which read “effective today,” came within hours of a Russian drone striking the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine. NNSA tracks nuclear risks in Ukraine, including through sensor systems."

Okay, so if this incident coincidentally involves them, the NNSA appears to be doing a lot more in the world than managing America's nuclear stockpiles. It is lunacy to conclude that the DOE firing 50 newhires actually put the nuclear stockpile in danger.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 15, 2025, 07:42:06 PM »
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/14/climate/nuclear-nnsa-firings-trump/index.html

Even if we take it for granted that the federal budget is in urgent need of cutting, and even if we take it for granted that this cutting needs to take the form of mass firings (despite the salaries of federal employees making up only a tiny part of the federal budget), this is ample evidence that Elon Musk and his team of broccoli-headed kids aren't the ones who should be doing it. They're morons.

I don't see "DOGE" or "Elon" mentioned anywhere in that article. It says "Congress is freaking out because it appears DOE didn’t really realize NNSA oversees the nuclear stockpile". Why wouldn't the Department of Energy know that the National Nuclear Security Administration maintains the nuclear stockpile? This article cites anonymous sources "with knowledge on the matter". That is code that they interviewed random nitwits.

Read the article, DOGE or Elon are not mentioned. It is accusing the Department of Energy of not knowing that the NNSA is, which is questionable. The article is also trying really hard to conflate Department of Energy officials with "Trump administration officials":

    Trump administration officials fired more than 300 staffers Thursday night at the National Nuclear Security Administration — the agency tasked with managing the nation’s nuclear stockpile — as part of broader Energy Department layoffs, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.

    Sources told CNN the officials did not seem to know this agency oversees America’s nuclear weapons.

    An Energy Department spokesperson disputed the number of personnel affected, telling CNN that “less than 50 people” were “dismissed” from NNSA, and that the dismissed staffers “held primarily administrative and clerical roles.”

The DOE spokesperson says that it is false alarmism. If you keep reading it turns out that the DOE had terminated new probationary employees, and then brought them back. If they fired them and brought them back it could be for a number of reasons, such as budget or priority revision, and it is a stretch to imply that there was ever a direct danger of nuclear accident without these people. The article heavily suggests that everyone in the NNSA is an incredibly important and critical part of nuclear safety, and that job losses undoubtedly put us all in grave danger, which is blatantly false. This is just fear mongering and yellow journalism.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 15, 2025, 02:05:33 PM »
Sure, I'm willing to sacrifice hypothetical lives who are saved from a hypothetical working future drug to get fraud out of government. Some of them may die, but it is a sacrifice I am willing to make.

right, but my question was -- why? even if there truly is a forced choice between the two, why is it better to sacrifice people's lives than it is to sacrifice some fraction of a public grant to waste/fraud/abuse?

Fraud begets fraud and is connected to morality. If they are willing to steal money from the public then then there is a higher likelihood to cut corners on research and push out dangerous and questionable therapies. There is a greater danger in allowing fraud. The billions lost to government waste and fraud could be used to save lives elsewhere, such the homeless situation.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 13, 2025, 10:40:22 PM »
Sure, I'm willing to sacrifice hypothetical lives who are saved from a hypothetical working future drug to get fraud out of government. Some of them may die, but it is a sacrifice I am willing to make.
It's interesting how much you lot care about embryos.
And how little you care about humans when they've actually been born.

The loss of hypothetical lives of people who can't take a hypothetical drug, which for some reason there is no alternative and no other country or organization is researching a treatment, isn't really the same thing as the at-will mass abortion of human life. One is a hypothetical loss of life, and the other is not.

But if you really need to query me on this as well, I have already given you the go ahead to abort your offspring in a previous thread.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 13, 2025, 07:03:09 PM »
Sure, I'm willing to sacrifice hypothetical lives who are saved from a hypothetical working future drug to get fraud out of government. Some of them may die, but it is a sacrifice I am willing to make.

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Flat Earth Theory / Re: Relativity and frames question
« on: February 13, 2025, 06:55:06 AM »
The idea that the earth's surface is accelerating upwards is so prominent that the upwards acceleration of the earth's surface is the current theory of Gravity in Round Earth Theory, with some modifications to the nature of space to make it work.

See: General Relativity and Accelerating Upwards
 

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 12, 2025, 07:16:37 AM »
So the reason it didn't give out grants is because it's not suppose to.  It wasn't made to give out grants.

I understand that they have a disclaimer that they don't actually use the money for cancer research, but this is at odds with their mission statement:

Quote from: NY Post
The Biden Cancer Initiative was founded in 2017 by the former vice president and his wife, Jill Biden, to “develop and drive implementation of solutions to accelerate progress in cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis, research and care and to reduce disparities in cancer outcomes,” according to its IRS mission statement. But it gave out no grants in its first two years, and spent millions on the salaries of former Washington, DC, aides it hired.

Apparently "develop and drive implementation of solutions to accelerate progress in cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis, research and care" means paying themselves and their friends hundreds of thousands of dollars each to hold some conferences and suggest that other cancer organizations do better.

The organization was open for about two years and then suddenly closed to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

https://fortune.com/2019/07/15/joe-biden-cancer-initiative/

Quote
The Vermont-based institute said it would stop accepting donations and suspend all operations by the end of May “so there could not even be an appearance of impropriety,” Jane Sanders said.

It is rather odd that a totally legitimate organization would just close its doors like that and interrupt such important progress.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 12, 2025, 12:58:52 AM »
I'm not sure why you think that everyone should unquestioningly agree with all medical research. Big Pharma is not interested in treating or even investigating the root of the issue, only treating the symptoms, meaning that you pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for an extra few years of suffering instead of doing something that actually fixes the root issue.

But aside from that major concern, I don't see a problem with cancer organizations being shuttered if they are defrauding the public. See this one, for instance.

https://nypost.com/2020/11/14/biden-cancer-initiative-spent-millions-on-payroll-zero-on-research-report/


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Technology & Information / Re: Ask Rushy about Bitcoins.
« on: February 10, 2025, 06:09:27 PM »
They wouldn't be spending significant time going through "years of rubbish" though. They are sampling different areas to determine which small portion needs to be analyzed further. What I described could probably be done by two or three people in a couple of weeks to find the area. First they map out the entire landfill, and have two guys in protective gear who do nothing except look at the dates and addresses in the garbage, radioing in the results to a third guy with the maps and data who compiles the information and directs them on which coordinates to go to next, which is basically the children's prediction game of "Hotter, Hotter, Colder Colder". All the data to refine and direct the search is in the garbage.

The worst that happens is that you lose out on a few weeks and a few thousand to your helper friends in doing this. The best that happens is that you find the hard drive and the magnetics are still recoverable enough for a treasure of £620 Million.

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Technology & Information / Re: Ask Rushy about Bitcoins.
« on: February 10, 2025, 05:00:56 PM »
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj3eg3n11gvo

This clown has been getting a lot of coverage in the press over here.
There's zero chance that he will ever find the hard drive. If he ever did it would pretty likely be broken anyway.

Why is there "zero chance" to find the hard drive? It sounds pretty straight forward to me. Since much of the garbage is in plastic bags and protected by the garbage above and around it, printed text is often preserved for some time. Map out and visually split the landfill into various sections and layers. Take 5 random samples of expired food labels at different points to identify which sections/layers belong to which years, and then use the samples to estimate and further narrow down the area for further sample collecting. Once the year is found, divide it into smaller areas and take further samples and find the correct quarter or month.

Next, divide that area further and find the correct neighborhood based on the postal addresses on the mail, refining again based on nearby neighborhoods. With systematic randomized sampling and directed refining of the sample collection process, it should be possible to narrow it down. The general process can be adjusted depending on whether the garbage is primarily allocated by time or origin location. Whether the hard drive is still recoverable is questionable, but the chance of finding it is definitely above zero.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 08, 2025, 06:43:27 PM »
The pendulum is beyond its apex and is definitely swinging to the other direction now. The Left may never fully recover.


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Science & Alternative Science / The Science of Faith Healing
« on: February 07, 2025, 06:11:07 PM »
I came across a book at my local alternative science book peddler titled "Where Science Meets Spirit: The Formula for Miracles". This book was purportedly written by an MIT-trained engineer who developed a life-altering muscular sickness, which kept him in constant pain and prevented him from working. He began trying every traditional and non-traditional healing protocol without success, finally reaching the bottom of the barrel in his desperation: Faith Healing. He found a practitioner and Faith Healing apparently helped his issues dramatically. He even proceeded to change careers in pursuit of this practice and now helps others, with many interesting testimonials and anecdotes shared in the book.

The procedure can be simplified as thus: If you have a pain, all you need to do is touch near where it hurts and tell the pain to go away. The pain will then go away and you feel better. Some suggest that it is helpful to command that the pain dispel and leave, and to tell it that you have the right to live your own life. This process will need to be repeated when the pain recurs, which results in the pain becoming less and less prominent until full healing is achieved.

Other elements of the protocol appear to be related to convincing yourself that you are ready to heal, which is a necessary component. Surprisingly, none of what is described appears to directly deal with faith in the religious sense at all. Faith appears to refer to the faith that it will work despite not knowing how it can work. My own interpretation is that this is the placebo effect. The placebo effect is a known curiosity where if someone thinks that a false pill will heal them, somehow it does help them. The placebo effect is pretty much equivalent to how faith healing is described in this work, since a non-active pill apparently results in healing based on the faith of the patient.

The author of the book describes that he believes that something metaphysical is occurring, and there are apparently a number of spiritual interpretations. However, I tend to believe that placebo effect and faith healing anecdotes can be described with known concepts. We know that the body is able to clear out its diseases naturally. There is no disease that which kills 100% of the people it infects, or makes all people chronically ill, and many recover on their own from the same disease, which proves that there is a possible physical self recovery process in the bodily machinery. Once you choose to heal your mind, your body physiology can then relax the the countless stressed tissues and components in your body, allowing plumbing and connections to work better with a more normal state and flush out the disease. The body may also be able to utilize water and nutrition more efficiently to create what is necessary to heal.

The connection between good psychology and good health has been recognized throughout history. Ancient Buddhists describe that a healthy mind creates a healthy body. It is not necessarily to know exactly how the placebo effect and faith healing works, only that there are enough accumulated anecdotes that there may be something there. Faith healing practitioners have refined their techniques over the years, and now offer an array of engaging courses and programs to prepare the mind and compel the action of the placebo effect for our own benefit.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 06, 2025, 11:01:19 PM »
Quote from: Lord Dave
But I think the sports agencies and such should determine that, not the president.

As Action80 stated, Trump isn't banning sports agencies from doing what they want with trans people. There can still be an organization that competes trans people against biological women. He is simply removing federal funding from organizations who want to do that, since it violates equal opportunity regulations.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/keeping-men-out-of-womens-sports/

    Moreover, under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 (Title IX), educational institutions receiving Federal funds cannot deny women an equal opportunity to participate in sports. As some Federal courts have recognized, “ignoring fundamental biological truths between the two sexes deprives women and girls of meaningful access to educational facilities.”  Tennessee v. Cardona, 24-cv-00072 at 73 (E.D. Ky. 2024). See also Kansas v. U.S. Dept. of Education, 24-cv-04041 at 23 (D. Kan. 2024) (highlighting “Congress’ goals of protecting biological women in education”).

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs receiving Federal financial assistance. The word sex refers to sexual biology, not social gender.

If someone somewhere wants to run an organization that does it, it does not appear to be banned. Just don't expect to be associated with federal tax dollars.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 06, 2025, 09:38:02 AM »
But does that insulate the president from impeachment?  There is the notion that you can't (or, at least, shouldn't) enforce the law by breaking the law.

Impeachment is an internal process that provides the label of "impeached", and it is not clear that Congress can actually take the next step and use it to enforce an order to remove a President, considering that in practice they can't actually enforce anything they order if the executive branch disagrees.

If I am a military general and I am reading that Congressional orders and laws can and are often ignored by the President as regular practice, and that the President has the power to overthrow Congress at will without fear of arrest, it would be clear to me that the ultimate power is with the President and not Congress. The removal order is going into the trash.

Quote from: markjo
The courts don't make laws at all.  They interpret laws to determine if they are valid and if they apply to individual cases.  Congress makes the laws and the executive branch enforces those laws.

The courts do create laws, which is how "right to privacy" turned into "abortion for all". This knowledge is at our fingertips. We can simply ask our friend Google AI.

> do the courts create laws

Google AI: Yes, courts create law in the United States, but they do so by interpreting existing laws and the Constitution. This process is called judicial review.

Quote from: honk
That's a dubious piece of hyperbole, but even if we assume it to be true, there's an easy answer - because the Supreme Court, the body representing the judicial branch of government, chose to allow him to. They didn't have to. They could have - and, needless to say, absolutely should have - ruled against him, and if they had, Trump couldn't have done anything about it, just as Biden couldn't do anything about them ruling in Trump's favor. Like Congress, the Supreme Court has a number of ways to check Trump's power, and also like Congress, they're refusing to use them.

The main reason that the President can be interpreted to be above the law is because the founders of the United States
didn't create anything truly original and just fixed what was there, which is the logical thing to do when something is broken. They adopted large parts of the the English system of government and gave the President the powers and role of the King, with modification that it was an elected King. In traditional and medieval monarchies the King embodies the law. The law flows through the monarch and spreads over his realm. The King could not break the law because he was the law.

Similar language that the US President embodies the law is apparent, and in 246 years of practice the President has been able to ignore and nullify orders and laws issued by the courts and Congress, demonstrating that he is genuinely above the law.

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As far as can be determined most civilizations concluded that the Earth was flat, even those who were highly adept at astronomy and astronomical prediction such as the Babylonians. The Greeks were the first to speculate on a round earth. It is not a view which appeared organically in any other civilization.

See this quote from https://wiki.tfes.org/The_Ancient_Greeks

“ Although we condemn flat-Earth thinking as an example of foolish ignorance, a spherical Earth is actually counterintuitive. It’s such a radical idea that it has been ‘discovered’ only once, in Athens after 400 BCE. The concept of the Earth being round didn’t appear in any other civilisation. India and the Islamic world learnt it from the Greeks, while China had to wait until the Jesuits arrived in the 16th century and turned the Chinese view of the Universe upside down. ” —Historian of science Dr. James Hannam, author of "God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science" (bio, source)

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 05, 2025, 02:01:15 PM »
Since the President is clearly above the powers of other branches a more accurate statement is that he provides the permission for his actions. The President is the check against the other branches, not vice-versa. You guys have that backwards.

Another example is the recent "TikTok ban". It was passed legally by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court. TikTok went offline for a while and then it was brought back online by internet telecommunication companies after declarations from Trump. Trump issued statements and an EO that he will put the orders for the TikTok ban on pause and not uphold it, demonstrating that he is above those powers and can simply ignore the orders.

The best Congress can do is impeach him and give him that label, but whether they have the power to actually forcefully remove him against his will is in debate since it has never been done and the President has an encompassing enforcement power that nullifies other branches. In fact, the article I posted a couple of posts back says that he can overturn or overthrow Congress in his official capacity without fear of arrest. It is interesting to speculate about the limits of the President's vast power, but it is nonetheless very clear that he is incredibly powerful in likeness to a king.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 05, 2025, 07:26:38 AM »
And yet he wasn't able to freeze funds.  The courts stopped him.

The President can respect that decision, or not. Since the President is responsible for enforcing the order, he can simply tell his law enforcers not to enforce it.

There are numerous examples of the executive branch declining to enforce laws and orders, such as the declining to enforce and prosecute marijuana laws. The executive branch said that they won't enforce it, with the result that people now take it and grow it at will and treat it as legal. This is a well known example of the executive giving the finger to the courts, and a demonstration that he is above the laws.

This is also why the President has unlimited pardon power. If a judge issues an order that someone is to be imprisoned or fined, the President can choose not to enforce it and let the person go free. Here we have an example that has been exercised many times in the past that the President can ignore direct court orders, beyond just ignoring laws. He is truly above the courts.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 05, 2025, 05:50:57 AM »
Okay, there's a lot of wildly incorrect stuff being posted here. No, the president is not a king

Then why does the President have the power to assassinate US Citizens at will?

See: The President Can Now Assassinate You, Officially

    The Supreme Court today ruled that presidents are entitled to “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for official acts, then contended that pressuring the vice president and the Department of Justice to overthrow the government was an “official act,” then said that talking to advisers or making public statements are “official acts” as well, and then determined that evidence of what presidents say and do cannot be used against them to establish that their acts are “unofficial.”

If the US President can murder a US Citizen then he obviously has great king-like power. The president is at the seat of power which executes justice, and the Supreme Court has ruled that he is therefore above the law, just as a king is. If he breaks some law in actions, it doesn't matter. Since he himself is responsible for enforcing the law, the laws do not apply to him.

The President is the country's Commander in Chief, and is an executor of justice above the law, very similar to the role of a medieval king. The courts can make laws, but they don't apply to him. The courts are therefore inferior entities meant for normal citizens, not the President who is superior.

You guys will have a tough time doing anything against Donald Trump, so it's probably best to quit whining about it.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 05, 2025, 01:19:55 AM »
Quote from: AATW
I would have thought that it's pretty self evident that laws which affect the citizens of an entire country should be made by a group rather than an individual.

Actually it is self evident to me that experts and politicians endlessly argue with each other. If you argue and create division then you get nothing done. The US Congress and the UK Parliament are regularly criticized for this. Luckily for America Congress's power is limited we have an attentive commander named Donald Trump who has the power to get many things done.

The US President has a system which has invested trillions in giving him the best in foreign and domestic intelligence. The President has access to top strategists, the top experts, has his own staff and departments which make recommendations for executive actions for specific sectors, and it is laughable to characterize the President's actions as the result of a single person. Trump did not solely come up with the dozens of Executive Orders he has signed so far.

Instead of whining about Trump and stating falsities you should focus on your own country.

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