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3 yr. ago

  • The reason they don't admit that they got a head start is that they actually don't believe it.

    The daughter of a family friend of mine grew up middle class. Her mom was a social worker, her did had an office job. She managed to marry a man who's the son that's inheriting his dad's oil business, worth tens of millions. She is now a housewife / stay at home mom. She now has a city home, a cottage (which is fully a house, just in a more rural location) and a summer home. One of her daughters competes in sailing races (and anybody who knows sailing knows just how expensive that hobby can be), the other is into horse riding.

    I've asked her what it's like for her kids to grow up rich, and she doesn't get it. She doesn't think she's rich. She says that there are houses around where she lives that are even bigger than hers, and that her husband works hard. I'm sure that's true, but she's still in the top 0.1%. And this is someone who grew up middle class, and should remember what it was like.

    I guarantee that most of the kids that come from rich families have no idea what it's like not to be rich. As a result, they don't ever consider that it might not be normal to be able to have your dad's lawyer look over the contracts for your new company free of charge. They never think of how easy they had it to find investors for their company, and how forgiving those investors were. It never occurred to them that during those lean months at the beginning when their company hadn't yet started generating real revenue, that it was unusual to be able to live in their parents' spare apartment in the city, and to have dad pay off their credit card.

  • Putin is hardly a charismatic leader. Might as well throw in Maduro or Noriega, or Saddam Hussein if you're going to talk about leaders who ruled through fear and force rather than charisma.

  • But not charismatic enough to challenge him. That's key.

  • If you think about it, the USA is a Nazi bar.

  • "We" being individual mastodon admins who each choose if they think the server should be defederated or not? That sounds good.

    As for bluesky, what they're doing makes sense for a global non-federated site. Allow anyone to make an account, and allow them to post as long as they don't break the rules. If a user doesn't like that organization they're free to block or mute them. Anything else and you're asking bluesky to draw an arbitrary line somewhere. If they forbid ICE from creating an account, which government entities are allowed? FBI? National Weather Service? FDA? POTUS? Supreme Court? Federal Reserve?

    I would bet if you say bluesky should ban "problematic" accounts and asked 100 people which accounts should be banned, you'd get 100 completely different answers. Just use your own judgment and your own block button.

  • Vance may be champing at the bit, but he's also fucking at the couch, and there's no way that MAGA will fall in line behind him.

  • The worst is when you can smell people walking past you when you're outside... before they pass you.

  • This is why I like taste tests.

    They routinely prove that even experts can't distinguish between $20 wine and $200 wine.

  • Most of them weren't caught doing anything more than breaking into the capitol building. The ones who actually attacked cops or did something violent got standard prison sentences for those kinds of crimes. Sure, I would have liked longer sentences. But, these were mostly first-time offenders who didn't do a violent crime, so they got sentences that go with that. The aim of the justice department wasn't to try to put them in prison for as long as possible, but to treat them the same as any other criminal. Maybe the idea was that that was going to make the cases harder to overturn on appeal because there wasn't any hint of political bias in the sentencing.

    I think it would have had a pretty solid deterrent effect if Trump hadn't come back and commuted their sentences / pardoned them. But, pardoning them is yet another way he's completely throwing away the rule book.

  • Trump is a one in a million manipulator. There's a reason this hasn't happened since Hitler and Mussolini. Various others like Marco Rubio, Ron DeSantis, etc. have all tried to use the same playbook and failed completely. If you think MAGA is going to fall in line behind couchfucker JD Vance, you're deluded. A big reason that Trump picked him as VP is that he knew Vance was no threat to him.

  • IMO they're just being lazy. If you just reboot you don't have to worry about resolving the dependencies for things you upgraded.

  • And cops are well respected compared to ICE agents, in every way. I'd say about 70% of the US hates ICE agents, whereas about 50% truly like and respect cops. But, even among the die-hard MAGA Republicans who want ICE to snatch people off the street and beat up the non-whites, they still don't respect them. They're thugs who are working for their own side.

  • Fuck that reboot. It's almost never necessary under Linux. Unnecessary, forced reboots in Windows are one of the last straws that made me fully switch my last remaining Windows system over to Linux.

  • Meanwhile, the ad companies do not care.

    The right wants to claim these companies are on their side. The companies aren't on their side, they're not on anybody's side. If they think they can generate more sales with a fat, black model in a bikini, they'll do it. If it's a thin trans model, they'll do that. If it's a slim blonde with big tits and a swastika tattoo, they'll do that instead. Whatever moves product.

  • Jan 6 rioters got a pass because Trump was elected. Once Trump is dead, that's no longer going to be possible.

  • What I want to see is people telling these ICE agents the truth.

    Point out Trump's failing health, and that he might not even live long enough to finish his term. Show them that he has attacked anybody who could be his successor so the MAGA movement will collapse as soon as he's gone.

    Let them know that they will be prosecuted like the guards for Hitler's concentration camps. Just following orders won't be any excuse. Even if they manage to avoid prison time, the fact they worked for ICE means that when Trump's out of office, nobody will ever hire them again. It doesn't matter if they were just doing it to feed their families, being a former ICE member will be seen like being a former member of the Gestapo, a mark of shame for their families for decades to come.

    Tell them that hiding their faces isn't enough. Ask them if they fully trust every other ICE agent, or if ICE might have been infiltrated by protesters. Point out that their fellow agents have already screwed up and left behind lists of ICE agents when they've had to leave a place in a hurry. Tell them that with modern cameras it's just a matter of time before an unusual mole or the edges of a tattoo are enough to identify them.

    Then tell them that there's only one way to salvage their reputations and their future career prospects, and that's to become whistle blowers.

  • Why wouldn't they?