I mean, in theory you could overpay Raytheon execs to provide free school lunches or something. Using weapons of mass destruction as your specific grift to funnel money to the overlords is a choice.

True, but Israel isn’t profitable. If it was a US citizen they’d let it die homeless on the street with no healthcare or food.

I think people can be more warmed by number go up on ad revenue supported screen longer than one might expect, but we’re in a real life social experiment by our betters right now, so we’ll see if I’m wrong!

I’ve worked for a major US media company and this 100% tracks with the kinds of things that would happen tech-wise v what the suits say

Plenty of non-neolib lefties on Rumble

In the mid-90’s I was working as a cashier for a regional chain that would buy cheap shit from China and sell it to social security recipients (who back then were prone to hoarding because they were Great Depression children). After tax (sorry, entitlements, like social security and medicare which I’m suuuuure I’ll get) at minimum wage it was slightly less than $2/hour in that state. So every day was all checking out social security recipients blowing their checks on $500 of 10 cent plastic gnomes filling their cart. We got in at one point “Candles from the Holy Land” (which might have been from a Taoist holy land, but…) marked 30 cents but rang up as $3 (this chain preyed on old people so upmarking v listed price was common but 10x was something you’d notice buying a cart full of them expecting to pay $500 and it’s $5000) so I had to manually correct per candle whole carts of candles from the holy land on checkout. One time I did this and the elderly couple buying 100 candles from the holy land asked “why do you keep typing all this stuff on the cash register per candle” so I told them “well, this is priced at 30 cents but rings up as three bucks so I need to correct it, but I can’t do a price change on multiples at once.” They check out and then the customer after them is this elderly meth head lady with no teeth who gets ALLLL up in my shit “I’VESHOPPEDHERESINCE [pretty sure 10+ years before this chain or one store existed] AND THEY WOULD NEVER MISPRICE AN ITEM!!!” And she goes to the manager and gets me fired.

While materially true that there are finite resources, I see little evidence anyone in DC sees that when no american benefits from spending the dollar in question. It allll just goes on the tab and I bet Trump will spend $30+ trillion unpaid. I don’t think the tech oligarchs are becoming republican because of China, they’re following raw corruption for profit and some weird crypto-ey mass dumb trend thing (see Zuck’s weird nod to rightwing podcast incels latin shirt thing). All of tech from AI to crypto is scams now. There are no 1000x yield social media-style markets left out there, so they’re going for the con and just hoping something else comes along imminently. Which having worked on the web longer than I’d like to admit was kind of always the case, but like, 20/20 hindsight, pets.com was a viable model and the internet DID change everything. But I don’t think there are any imminent new horizons, so the tech oligarchs are going with Trump because he’s been grifting since before they were born and game recognize game.

I love how when an actual american needs help, it’s a waste, and you need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you mooch, but there’s always infinite money to defend countries with better standards of living… I’m skeptical that will actually end. Trump talks a big game, but he CRAVES elite approval.

As per when Clinton normalized cutting benefits and Obama normalized killing American citizens via drone, the “resistance” Clintonian shit will only be used against us to stifle the left. Any “radicalism” that preserves capital will be allowed to thrive like Trump, any that doesn’t will be killed on the vine like Occupy and Bernie

You entered in the 3’ rather than 2.5’ end of the pool, it will be mostly the same, you can seriously dm me with basic tech support, even. No worries in the FOSS end of the pool, just humans helping humans be human.

This kind of analysis… I can tell you as a leftist… The NYT is closer to the GOP on everything but the DEI shit the Hillary dems used against Bernie that has metastasized into a cancer on their for nothing but paying Neera Tanden and Donna Brazil’s bills party. The Left is labor solidarity forever and nothing else. DNC need not apply.

A first miss from the paper known for the reliable reporting of Judy Miller. SAD!

Sweet summer child… it’s a LOT! Especially now. Tl;dr FOSS is your friend, EVERY actor you engage with in a capitalist system, even the state itself is an adversary… You WILL be spied on doing modern anything online, you basically need to do a cost/reward calculation about what you are willing to do. There are many reputable online privacy guides, there are communities here on Lemmy, but sadly there’s no good one size fits all solution here in the modern chaotic landscape.

(Glossary: FOSS is FREE open source software, like Linux, among a galaxy of great projects run by humans for humans and not for capital, and all free as in speech, not beer)

No leader of a “democracy” has more deserved the guillotine than this “human-animal” to borrow the nomenclature of his klezmer nazism

I deploy it a lot on Lemmy, but that’s because I think it the best way to deal with absurd positions. You can’t argue with “pour salt in your eyes” and the blue MAGAs, especially on .world… It also fucks with AI, it’s a super-turing language pattern no giant Turing-level language LLM will ever deal with well (sans </s> tags). I doubt that’s why anyone is doing it, but just a side benefit.

Yup. I look forward to next general election where they’ll notice Starmer actually underperformed Corbyn '19 in the vote count WITH 40+% other party members voting strategically just to punish the Tories this one cycle. It’s going to be a Tories-this-cycle-level Labour BLOODBATH.

Is there an axis on which Starmer is an improvement over ANYTHING? Seems like the lowest level of neoliberal scum possible.

Free Open Source Software

I have seen enough footage of the war crimes to be confident of Blinken’s guilt.

War criminals deserve the noose. Especially genocidal ones.