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.

“ah you see this is my dissertation, totally academic, and also I tattooed this symbol on my arm”

The EU had an 8% decline in emissions last year.

The US peaked at 23.1 tonnes of carbon emissions per capita in 1973. It came off that peak but stayed pretty flat through 2007 or so, at 20.2 tonnes per person. Since then, it’s steadily come down, and is now at about 14.9.

There’s still a long way to go, but the 35% reduction that the US has already accomplished shows that it’s possible to keep making progress.

Yeah, the IRA and Infrastructure Bill steer about $67 billion to railways, $80 billion to transit systems. And even though a lot of the other spending goes towards the status quo of car-based passenger transportation, electrifying that will go a long way towards reducing carbon emissions.

And there are some more ambitious ideas baked in, too: redesigning cities to require less car infrastructure and overall energy use, etc.

I thought it was a big deal when passed and honestly can’t understand why people who care about climate don’t acknowledge just how big of a deal it was (and how devastating that so much of the money authorized will now be in control of a Trump administration).

The Inflation Reduction Act included $65 million in research grants for low emission aviation and $245 million in development of biofuel based Sustainable Aviation Fuel (aka SAF). And the $3 billion in loan guarantees for manufacturing advanced vehicle technologies included certain aircraft.

There were also $5 billion in loan guarantees for shutting down our heaviest polluting power plants or retooling them to greener generation methods.

There was $3 billion in buying zero emissions vehicles and charging infrastructure for the postal service.

The Inflation Reduction Act, which inherited a lot of the stuff from the Green New Deal, was a lot of things, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard it called deeply unserious before today.

I haven’t combed through the data in a minute, but I want to also say that they’re also leading in fossil fuel deployment too.

Yup, China is also leading the planet on new coal plant construction. As of 2 months ago, it seemed to be on track to add 80GW of coal generation capacity in 2024 alone, and accounts for more than 90% of new coal construction.

By way of comparison, the US peaked in total coal plant capacity in 2011 at 318GW, and has since closed about 134GW of capacity, with more to come.

In context, what we’re seeing is massive, massive expansion of electricity generation and transmission capacity, both clean and dirty, in China. We can expect China to increase its total carbon emissions each year to be closer to the West, while the United States reduces its own from a much higher starting point. Maybe the two countries will cross in per capita emissions around 2030 if current trends continue, but there’s no guarantee that current trends will continue: will the United States continue to shift from coal to gas? Where does grid scale storage, electrification of passenger vehicles, demand shifting, or dispatchable carbon free power go from here, in a future Trump administration? What’s going to happen with the Chinese economy over the next 5 years? What technology will be invented to change things?

He just turned off the switch in the breaker, right behind the meter. The meter itself is still hooked up, so from the power company’s perspective, he has an account and everything.

At least that’s how I read the article he wrote last year:

Nevertheless, I opened the main circuit, disconnecting my apartment from the grid and committing myself to solving what problems arose as they came. As I type these words in January, I’m in my eighth month. My Con-Ed bills continue to show zero kilowatt-hours.

Clark Kent probably draws a salary, but I’m guessing he keeps that legal identity totally separate, with separate ownership of stuff.

But there are ways to make income without another person agreeing to payment:

• Lost, abandoned, or mislaid property may be claimed by the finder as their own in some circumstances.
• Certain types of buried treasure can be claimed by the finder, as well.
• Certain natural resources can be claimed by the people who extract them, especially from land or sea or even space that isn’t owned by anyone. For example, the Guano Islands Act authorized explorers to claim islands covered in bird shit on behalf of the United States, and bring back all that valuable bird shit.
• At sea, the law of salvage entities a rescuer to some reward for saving a ship or its cargo. There are other reward systems out there, too, including for tips that get criminals arrested/convicted, whistleblower rewards, etc. Maybe fighting crime can pay through those mechanisms.
• Once he actually has property in hand, Superman can also make it more valuable. Processed lumber is more valuable than raw timber, steel is more valuable than the constituent elements that went into making it. And, uh, he could always start a business and sell the stock.

And you don’t need an agreement to receive property as gifts after the fact. He might not charge people for his services, but if he’s willing to accept their thanks in the form of something valuable, maybe that’s something he can make money off of.

Alternatively, he’s just been stealing from Lex Luthor.

Watch him try to open this truck door. He looks frail and uncoordinated.

Well I’m actually sitting at a computer right now so I might as well provide citations in support of what I was saying.

It wasn’t a close case back then

Here’s the judicial ruling. Note that the plaintiff lost on three independent issues, each of which was enough by itself for Pepsi to win:

• Advertisements are almost never binding offers, and this ad didn’t fall within the requirements to be a binding offer. In fact, even order forms and pricing lists/catalogs printed by the merchant aren’t binding offers by the merchant to sell the items on the list at the listed price, and must be affirmatively accepted by the merchant in order to form a binding contract.
• No reasonable person would understand this joke as an offer, even if it weren’t an advertisement, so even if analyzed outside of the advertising context Pepsi would still win.
• There’s no written contract, and contracts for the sale of physical goods worth over $500 require a written contract. The actual written materials in the points program all indicated that the only items available are those within the points catalog, and there was no Harrier jet in the actual printed catalog.

Then, on appeal, three other appellate judges unanimously ruled that the district court got it exactly right.

There’s been some reporting that Musk’s Super PAC has been paying its workers so well that it’s poached a bunch of the volunteers from the official campaign, and is so poorly run/audited that a lot of the workers are entering false data into the canvassing reports to qualify for bonuses. If that turns out to be true, then it will have been the case that Musk is burning his own money while hurting the Trump campaign.

I’m not ready to call the race, but stories like this at least reassure me that for Republicans, they’re not sending their best.

I made my own “cell phone service” but it only works within 10m of my home.