Do they need to succeed?

The Koch brothers already have a new U.S. constitution drafted and a majority of the states they need to call a constitutional convention. They’ve had plans in motion for years.

I think Trump and Musk were always supposed to be the fall guys. But if they break enough, or reveal enough non-working about the current system, the plan we’re not supposed to realize is in play will succeed.

I told my friends back in mid-October of 2023 that I thought the Hamas attack was probably 1.) heavily influenced by Russia, and 2.) going to throw the election to Trump or whoever the Republican candidate was going to be unless he could get that thing zipped up and a peace deal in place within a month or two.

So stupid. Biden could have done better so easily. But here we are, I guess, witnessing the oligarchy take over the world, using Trump and Musk as patsy’s, letting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Ukrainians die by the hand of genocidal fuckwits.

The following should be taken as a bit of a ramble because I want to express this idea I have, and I don’t think it should be taken as any sort of attempt to correct or challenge what you’re saying because I don’t think what you’re saying is in any way incorrect.

I think the right wing shift is a mirage that is being perpetrated by corporate-owned media. That’s not to say that every media outlet is racist or is explicitly attempting to push a narrative, but I think that the large corporations in the U.S., at least, that own news media have a vested interest in not offending both monied and powerful interests. In that regard they are avoiding reporting on topics that will rally the public, or are outright changing how they report on certain topics.

Which is a lot of words to say that I think what we’re seeing is false consensus driven from the top down, rather than a ‘bottom up’ shift in opinion. I think many of the normal folks are ill-informed, or outright propagandized.
Doesn’t change the outcome, or the opinions held by so many, though… sigh

You know what?

Their body, their choice.

I support their right to choose to drink or inject bleach into their own body.
I wish them the best of luck.

Is he really an illegal immigrant? And is he guilty of the crime that he was in the hearing for?

If he’s here illegally, then deport him. If he’s here legally, let him have his trial, and let the rule of law prevail by meting out whatever justice is deemed necessary. Sure, a crime may invalidate a visa or legal standing or whatever, but you still have to have the damned trial. Innocent until proven guilty.

Trying to arrest him at his pre-hearing to rendition him is fucking wrong. And trying to punish the judge for trying to block that miscarriage of justice from happening is doubly so.

Since you’re bringing up language points, I’m wondering if you’d be willing to take a left turn with me.

What are your thoughts about applying the phrase “extraordinary rendition” to their situation?

I feel that it’s appropriate, but I haven’t seen anyone using it.

I found out from the ‘dies of cringe’ meme, then shared that on to my wife and her best friend, telling them that was how I found out - and that’s how they found out.

I bear the same name as my father and his father. They both died when I was a young - over 30 years ago. I sometimes still get texts asking me if I’d like to “sell my house at [the address of my grandfather’s house that sold when he died in 1989].”

If the best that data miners can do is text me because they think I’m a 100+ year-old, then Musk’s sloppy efforts are going to be even worse.
Waiting for the day I get arrested for not having paid my own child support.

Oh, snap, bringing me the magic I need, but didn’t know to look for.

I’ve been refusing to update because of video station. Looks like I’m saving your comment for later.

No, because there isn’t a single IP range or user agent, and many developers are going to lengths to defeat anti-scraping measures, which include user agent spoofing as well as vpns and the like to mask the source of the traffic.

It helps because just like all the things Reagan destroyed, the American people will never be able to get those things back. Even when they do vote in politicians that pretend to represent them, the U.S. political system is too easily swayed with donor money to allow in things that truly benefit people again.
And if the government can close or sell facilities by the time sane policies prevail again (if they ever do), then it still benefits ‘them’, because the government can’t just create land and buildings from nothing. The only places they would be able to do that are new towns and rural areas. (White flight areas and conservative areas) So, you know, destroyed government services can’t even be reliably recreated in population-dense areas. (Cities - liberal areas)

I mean, it doesn’t help normal people, but it sure helps all the businesses that trade well-being for dollars. They’re going to do great.

A shaken Stephen Miller is trying to figure out which family members he can threaten to deport to gain leverage over the ‘epic rap battles’ guys, so they can beatbox us into WW3.

Not without prosthetics.

The mask really gets in the way of eating ass, though.

They say regulations are written in blood.

Elaine Chao is a conservative government official who is famous for not enforcing safety rules or following up on safety complaints and may have violated ethics laws while Secretary of Transportation under Trump’s first regime. While in that role, she rubber stamped a sketchy driver control system implemented by Tesla that later helped kill her own sister (in addition to drunk driving).

Can the lightning bolt of consequences strike twice?

And for those who aren’t rich but have jobs with decent employer-provided healthcare, it will make those people fearful of undertaking any protest actions that may see them on the wrong side of a doxxing campaign or an illegal detention.

It’s about threading fear through the fabric of society.

Those darn millennials!
Such rascals.

Those are very well considered points, but Trump is an idiot.

Wait, wait, wait.

Trump, under the direction of parties unknown, is trying to force the EU to buy U.S. energy resources, and that’s the linchpin of his trade war with them?

Is he trying to give Europe a nudge back to Russian oil supplies?

Back then the internet was a bunch of coffee shops. Not literally, of course - but for me it was about 30 people on messenger, my favorite chatroom, a random message board, a small but far flung group of people on LiveJournal, and sometimes even my Neopets guild.
Each was my own retreat. The weird and funny stuff we shared there was created and shared because people had a passion for whatever. It also was great in that you could learn about something, and share it with another group that had not seen it yet.

Today the internet is the infinite cul-de-sacs of meme pages, political messaging groups, and disinformation rings on Facebook, along with approximately 6 people that keep showing up from your friends list of hundreds. Or it’s the screaming gladiatorial stadium of Reddit, where the sheer volume of noise smothers any particular voice. Maybe it’s the infinite lawless Walmart of X or even the carefully manicured Target that is BlueSky.
From mining your attention, to hawking trinkets amidst the spectacle, or attempting to sell a little bit of everything to anyone, the new internet lacks third places. It’s all business, all the time, and you can feel it. Every meme is created to engage with that platform’s broadest audience. Everything is homogenized and lacks uniqueness. All the content has been aggregated and reshared, and in the endless and futile search for validation from the algorithm it’s lost something that makes it meaningful.

And that’s why I like Lemmy. It’s a digital third place.