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source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/health/skin-substitutes-medicare-costs.html
I decided to check out the associated YouTube channel, curious whether it's a channel with a bunch of wingnut content.
The channel -- Beyond Realities -- turns out to be basically a daily (or twice-daily) Elon Musk shilling channel. Many of its videos have four or five digit viewcounts, though some have broken into the six digits and a few have gone further, probably from being randomly suggested to people. This includes the one I ran across, which has over 2.1 million views. There are a few other videos featuring other people, including one involving J.D. Vance which has about 1.5 million views.
I am not kidding about it being an Elon Musk shilling channel. Here are its last twelve uploads:
Every one of these is 1.5 to 2.5 hours long.
The best part is this: on the channel description it says "The stories presented on this channel are entirely fictional and crafted solely for entertainment. Any resemblance to real events, individuals, or situations is purely coincidental and unintentional. These narratives are not intended to depict, reference, or represent any actual occurrences, persons, or entities."
So it's a bunch of lies. But the resemblance to real individuals does seem to be *quite* intentional...
The rate at which it pumps out content aroused my suspicion, and then checking further I noticed that there is at least one preview pic that has an item that I don't think exists in real life.
Only curious wrinkle is that the account started uploading videos (at this breakneck pace) four months ago, in January, whereas the account was created in September 2013. I'm curious (though I'm not sure I'll ever find out) whether it's a hijacked or purchased account that's been repurposed.
Also, I've recently been meaning to ask you. What's the deal with passport requirement for voting? Like, around here we're all issued with an ID card that's then required for all bureaucratic stuff, voting included. You gotta be a registered voter at a given place, they see if it checks out, we sign on a list, here's your ballot. So on one hand I understand there must be some sinister ploy to it if there's so much fuss on both sides, on the other it doesn't sound so when taken purely at face value.
I thought that was a given.
That's probably what the internet will look like in a couple years.
Same here.
The closest thing I know is the US's Social Security Number weirdness, where it's not supposed to be a form of identification but it's still used as some sort of personal (secret) password for important non-governmental stuff.
(You can check the channel without playing any videos.)
There's no nationwide ID card, or even statewide ID card.
Also, voter lists are usually maintained locally (at the county level).
Generally, it's states that decide what form of identification people have to bring to verify their identity at a polling place in order to vote. States also issue driver's licenses, which commonly serve as ID. (The same state agencies that issue driver's licenses generally issue non-driver IDs, which are uncommon because driving is sadly pretty much required to do anything as an adult in the U.S., but do exist.)
But there's a level of politicization surrounding what forms of ID are acceptable to admit a voter. For example, which of the following should be allowed?
* student IDs for universities
* firearms licenses
* voter registration/information card (a card issued by the local registrar of voters, that contains the voter's name, reg number, district numbers, polling place, etc.)
Those first two are a good illustration of how it can be politicized. If you want to facilitate students participating in the electoral process, change the rules to allow this form of ID. If you want students to be inconvenienced and discouraged from voting, change the rules so that student IDs aren't allowed (and students would have to go out of their way to request a state-issued ID, for example). So you'll see stuff like, in some Republican/conservative/right-leaning places, there may be policies and/or policy proposals that say things like student IDs aren't allowed but firearms licenses are, because gun owners typically lean Republican while students typically lean Democratic. These sorts of policy aspects can make a difference in close races, and more generally put more burden to drive turnout on whoever's inconvenienced and their political allies.
Also, due to the perceived risk of in-person voter fraud, it's popular to require that IDs contain a photo of the voter -- something that driver's licenses generally have, though voter registration cards (like what I mentioned above) often don't. (Though, research has shown that in-person voter fraud -- i.e. people going to a polling place pretending to be someone else -- is quite rare.)
Traditionally, it's been held that the more people participating, the better. In the matter of actual implementation, there are more wrinkles, however. Over the past few decades, the conventional wisdom has been that liberals want to make voting easy and accessible to more people, while conservatives want to make voting more secure and deter illegitimate voters, in part because the Democratic/liberal coalition has traditionally had more poor people and disadvantaged minorities while the Republican/conservative coalition has traditionally had people with more financial and social means. These coalitions may be changing over time, though, what with the Dem coalition picking up more college-educated voters who are generally plugged in to political happenings, while the Repub coalition has proven (under the influence of Trump at least) to have picked up various voters who are less typically engaged by the political process.
Absentee/mail ballots and early voting are also aspects that have, unsurprisingly, had curious political dimensions. It used to be conventional wisdom that absentee ballots favored Republicans while early voting favored Democrats, but this basically got turned on its head over the pandemic, for reasons (partly related to COVID skepticism on right).