booly

Oh, he knows. They took him on an airplane and made him eat food he had just called "poison" for a photo shoot.

He couldn't say no, because of the implication.

The "what is a bank" question is complicated, so "fintechs" have been operating in areas that are in some gray areas in between "definitely a bank" versus "definitely not a bank."

At the most informal, you've got things like a roommate who collects everyone's fair share of rent before sending one payment to the landlord, or a parent who keeps track of their kids' virtual balances of what the kids are allowed to spend. These definitely aren't banks.

Then you've got things like short term balances between people who deal with each other: an employer who keeps track of hours and pays the employee at the end of the pay period, a retail customer who has some store credit from a returned item, a contractor who periodically invoices a customer for work performed, etc. Despite the "credit" and "balances," these aren't bank accounts.

Some gray areas get a little bit more complicated. You have airline mileage and hotel point programs where the miles/points can be used to purchase goods and services, including sometimes those not even being offered by the business where the miles were accumulated.

Then you get into banking-like structures that might be, or might not be banks. Is it banking when you buy something on a periodic payment plan? What about when you put down a deposit to reserve a preorder for something you expect to buy when that product is released? Or give someone a gift card for a specific store? Does it matter if these programs are administered by third parties separate from the buyer or seller?

Even things like Apple Cash or PayPal or Venmo or CashApp perform functions that can be bank-like, or not really bank-like.

Fintechs have looked at the constantly updated rules of what they can or can't do before needing to comply with certain banking regulations, and usually try to avoid accidentally triggering certain rules. And the rules don't divide into just bank versus not bank, as many of the rules apply to non-banks that do certain things, and many of the rules don't apply to even banks that stay out of certain product lines. So it's not a binary yes or no, but a series of complicated areas where some are yes and some are no.

The big problem, where this Synapse bankruptcy is hurting people, is when people worked with an entity that provides certain services, who relied on the back end on a middleman that provides other services, and then the middleman fails. People operating in the gray areas are exposing themselves to systemic risks they might not fully understand.

This isn't about shareholders being wiped out. It's about account holders of what they thought were bank accounts losing everything because their accounts were powered on the back end by a company they'd never heard of or directly dealt with.

Several states have rules that the mail-in ballots have to be dropped in the mail on election day, and the mail can take a few days to be received, confirmed as eligible/valid, and then counted.

Many states have rules that allow for people to submit provisional ballots to be submitted and set aside while the system verified that the voter is eligible, and they don't actually unseal and count the ballot until they confirm the voter's eligibility.

Some even have rules where if a ballot is going to be challenged for not meeting the criteria for voting, such as matching the voter's signature on file, the voter is given an opportunity to cure the defect. This can take weeks.

Significantly, the largest state, California, does all of these. They do 100% absentee voting, which increases the administrative overhead of counting (each envelope must be validated before being opened, many ballots not received by election day, a long process for disqualifying or curing ballots). So they're the slowest. And they have the most. But they also have high voter participation rates, which is the goal of these voter-friendly policies that slow down counting.

These are supposed to have AI facial recognition for matching to government issued IDs, which just sounds like a huge attack surface (or even unintentional bugs).

Cigarette vending machines used to be quite common. Even today, there are some alcohol vending machines in controlled areas (some fancy hotels have 24/7 vending machines stocked with a particular brand of champagne bottles).

According to Wikipedia, about 155.5 million people voted in 2020 and so far, there are about 150.2 votes counted this time (98% of votes counted).

These numbers exclude third parties and independents.

When those are included, 2020 included 158.4 million votes, and the current count so far in 2024 is about 153 million.

Less than 150 million voters in 2024.

It's more than 150 million. The current count is about 153 million, and there's still more left to count in California.

To whom?

All the creditors, as an entire body.

The victims seem fine getting less money

To be clear, it's only some of the victims that have said they're fine with less money. The trustee has a responsibility to make sure that the creditor body as a whole gets the most money. If some subset of creditors (the families willing to reduce their claims if the Onion buys the assets) are willing to reduce their claims as part of the bid, great, they should add that money to the pile and consider it as part of the bid.

But the families that do agree to take less money can't force the other families to take less money. It has to be voluntary for everyone.

And it sounds like the Jones-affiliated bidder is complaining about the auction procedures. If they followed the already-approved procedures perfectly, there's not much to talk about there. But if they changed the procedures at the last minute, or if the actual auction followed procedures that weren't described in the approved procedures (such as accepting creditors' reduction of their claims as part of the bid, or not allowing "topping bids" after the sealed bids were submitted), then it's normal to hold a hearing to make a decision on whether the auction followed the right procedures.

leftist themed nujob conspiracy mill

The Republican party is ripe for conspiracy theory targets.

Epstein had close ties with Trump and his attorney general Bill Barr (whose father hired Epstein to teach at a prestigious private high school without a college degree, where he was known for ogling the high school girls and showing up to parties where underage drinking was happening). The waitresses and hostesses at Trump's Mar a Lago were also regularly recruited to work at Epstein's island. Alex Acosta, the federal prosecutor who agreed to a secret plea deal where Epstein served a slap on the wrist in a local jail instead of real prison was later elevated to Trump's cabinet, as Labor Secretary.

Now, Trump has named another child sex trafficker as his nominee for Attorney General.

There are suspicious ties between the Saudi royal family and key members in Trump's orbit, including his son in law Jared Kushner. Elon Musk has been doing sketchy shit with the Saudis and the Russians, as well. Basically everyone in Trump's circle, including his nominee to be the director of national intelligence, has shady ties with foreign adversaries.

There's lots of other little things about financial profiteering by the Trump folks: an SBA COVID bailout that went to huge businesses, a move to privatize or sabotage the public postal service and the weather service to help the private competition, arbitrary or politically motivated regulations to help certain businesses while hurting others, etc.

I mean, it really wouldn't be hard.

As of 10:30am ET on November 11, populous states that have counted less than 95% of the expected votes include:

• California (72% counted): current count is 7.27 million to 4.79 million.
• Washington (91% counted): 2.07 million to 1.39 million.
• Maryland (86%): 1.66 million to 0.97 million.
• Oregon (87%): 1.16 million to 0.86 million.
• Colorado (94%): 1.69 million to 1.34 million
• Arizona (92%): 1.47 million to 1.65 million
• New Jersey (94%): 2.14 million to 1.91 million

Just eyeballing those, and a few other smaller states with a significant number left to count, it looks like we can probably expect a few million more Harris votes to be added, and maybe another million or two Trump votes to be added.

So a quick eyeball estimate is that the 2020 minus 2024 gap should probably shrink by about half when it's all counted.

As of right now, California is reporting about 72% of the expected total, at about 12 million votes. If the ratio is maintained, we can expect about 2.8 million more votes for Harris from California alone. And Trump can expect another 1.8 million from California.

There are a couple hundred thousand votes to count in each of Oregon, Maryland, and DC.