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US special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400k on Maduro raid

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Re: US special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400k on Maduro raid

#691

Post by criddell »

Tangurena2 wrote: post #433
criddell wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you define gambling? Would it make trading stocks illegal?

If it is based on chance, then it is gambling. Until the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, Collateral Debt Obligations were regulated differently in different states. Some said it was insurance, and thus regulated it like insurance. Some said it was gambling and banned it outright. Instead, regulation was handed to a toothless new agency who got little funding for enforcement and the rest of the world got…

> If it is based on chance, then it is gambling.

Is there much difference between picking a horse at the track or a stock on an exchange?

Re: US special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400k on Maduro raid

#692

Post by SomewhatLikely »

pavlov wrote: post #224

What’s the point of prediction markets? They are just ordinary gambling unless you allow insider trading and manipulation, because that’s the only way the market can acquire and represent novel useful information. But if you allow those things, you run into a host of well-documented problems which are the reason why those things are forbidden in other markets. As it stands, prediction markets seem like a tech-aligned…

There would still be a point to encourage better predictions from the public information through better modeling. We aren't always using the optimal models to predict. One example: LLMs are "just" predicting the next token given the public information of the tokens that came before, but they work considerably better at making that prediction than the models that came before them.

Re: US special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400k on Maduro raid

#693

Post by majormajor »

alistairSH wrote: post #383
samsari wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're almost right, but "class" and "caste" are not synonyms and cannot be used interchangeably.

Except in the United States it is true. Something like 80% of new military recruits come from military families (parent, sibling, uncle/aunt, or grandparent). Similarly over the last few decades the number of medical doctors who have immediate family who are also doctors has grown. Social and economic class in the US is increasingly set in stone and hereditary.

>(parent, sibling, uncle/aunt, or grandparent)

That's a pretty wide net. What percentage of the total population has a military connection in that many degrees?

Re: US special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400k on Maduro raid

#694

Post by Larrikin »

wholinator2 wrote: post #504
pmc123 wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed the same trend with SWEs tbh. Many new grads from the top schools have parents who were SWEs or SWE adjaent

In the United States i suspect some portion of this is due to "legacy" admissions whereby some child is admitted to a competitive program or given very advantageous scholarships not because of their hard work and displayed competence, but because of their parents. I know that it will be very possible for my children to end up at ivy league if they take the legacy advantage I've given them, even though ivy league has…

Legacy admission was removed in response to affirmative action being destroyed by the Trump administration.

Re: US special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400k on Maduro raid

#695

Post by watwut »

dnautics wrote: post #598
hx8 wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of sovereignty is a cornerstone of how we organize our global society. This was an overt statement that the US controls South America, and that South America doesn't rule itself. Previously, we were relaying on covert methods for influence. The relationship with SA has materially changed. 1. The United States is willing to violate South American sovereignty. 2. South America has offered little resistance to…

> The idea of sovereignty is a cornerstone of how we organize our global society. It is, but it's kind of a thin lie. How's sovereignty going for ukraine? Hong kong? Chechnya, South ossetia, and abkhazia? Puerto Rico? Western Sahara? Parts of Sudan? Border regions of bhutan? South american fisheries? People trying to set up micronations?

Ukraine is still sovereign nation. And willing to sacrifice a lot to remain one.

Re: US special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400k on Maduro raid

#696

Post by vlan0 »

scottyah wrote: post #633
vlan0 wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. They live in houses with glass windows. We could take this world any time we choose.

But then you'd have to live in it, and it sounds like you'd have a world where people with nice things don't live long

Nah, nothing wrong with nice things. But if those nice things only exist because someone else on the planet had to suffer....

Re: US special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400k on Maduro raid

#697

Post by watwut »

themanualstates wrote: post #657
libertine wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's correct that sovereignty is a cornerstone, but since the founding of the UN that doesn't mean you have a blank check to do whatever you want within the sovereignty of a country. Things like genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, violating other countries sovereignty with no strong justification, development of nuclear weapons, etc. So there's a bunch of red lines that clearly some countries will step o…

Only genocide has a 'duty to prevent and punish'; with UN Security Council approval of course. Restrictions on building nuclear bombs are defined in the voluntary Non-Proliferation Treaty, and is not applicaple to non-parties (India, Israel, Pakistan, South Sudan). Every foreign intervention done by US / NATO through-out has backfired, and worsened the problem it tried to solve. Case in point: CIA covertly arms Afgha…

Regular remainder: NATO acted exactly once, in afghanistant after USA was attacked. NATO as such was not doing "early interventions".

NATO member states are free to pursue interventions, but they then do not get NATO protection.

Re: US special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400k on Maduro raid

#698

Post by mrguyorama »

ErneX wrote: post #618
mrguyorama wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we did not depose his regime, we just stole him. Not like the US could reliably depose a foreign regime anyway, but this shouldn't be accepted as an excuse. He indeed was an illegitimate ruler, but that is completely unrelated to what we did.

I’m not debating that. But as Venezuelan I’d like to put that in context. Because it’s important as well. For us even if you think it’s weird it is a glimmer of hope. A bit of justice even if the regime is still in power.

I want to reject such complicated feelings because I don't want the mild support of what our Administration did, and the intrinsic violation of Venezuelan sovereignty, but real life is complicated and things are complicated.

I just want better. But we so rarely get that.

Good Luck. Hopefully we are done with our meddling for now.

Re: US special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400k on Maduro raid

#699

Post by Forgeties79 »

k12sosse wrote: post #681
Forgeties79 wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike Trump with a passion that is very hard to over emphasize. However, he did win the 2016 and 2024 elections. Maduro stole his seat.

2024 is up for debate, last I checked, not that anyone would challenge it.

It's not up for debate. Don't play Trump's games. It legitimizes his nonsense take on 2020.

Trump lost in 2020. Harris lost in 2024. We have all sorts of external influence and nonsense happening in our social/political lives and yes many states are messing with people's ability to actually vote, but when it comes to what happens in the voting booth, US elections are incredibly secure and fraud/ballot tampering is so rare that calling it "rare" doesn't properly emphasize reality.

The vote count was accurate, Trump won, and we are all paying a horrible price for the self-inflicted chaos and regression that has ensued.

>Not that anyone would challenge it

If there were legitimate grounds to question it there is no way we wouldn't see action on it

Re: US special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400k on Maduro raid

#700

Post by SarasaNews »

ErneX wrote: post #618
mrguyorama wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we did not depose his regime, we just stole him. Not like the US could reliably depose a foreign regime anyway, but this shouldn't be accepted as an excuse. He indeed was an illegitimate ruler, but that is completely unrelated to what we did.

I’m not debating that. But as Venezuelan I’d like to put that in context. Because it’s important as well. For us even if you think it’s weird it is a glimmer of hope. A bit of justice even if the regime is still in power.

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