Vance: "I fucking knew it! You guys are assholes!"

So to be clear, you're literally telling me you're driving people toward the MAGA movement as a non-US citizen? Damn, I didn't know Putin's troll farms were allowed to go mask off now, that's confidence.

It's your party, do what you want.

You are right there with neo-liberals as MAGA's most valuable recruiters.

Why would he want his photo in the middle of that text? He's associating himself with negativity, I feel like this is marketing/propaganda 101. It honestly looks like a movie poster where he's the one leaking it.

The only good evidence against it I think is that, according to the article, these satellite images are from March 2024. But, it makes way more sense financially for these El Salvadorian prisons to have their "showroom" of prisoners that is too many for someone from a distance to tally, and meanwhile, cull the overflow so that taking US prisoners is still profitable.

There's a reason we don't hold them ourselves: it costs money. And the only reasons El Salvador would keep them alive is because of a justice system defending their rights, or 3rd parties auditing them for humane conditions. Neither of which are in place for these prisoners afaik.

Sure, maybe these splotches are nothing, but also, I'm fully convinced all the ingredients for a holocaust are there, and if it's ever going to go that far, I'd honestly be surprised if it hasn't already.

Obvious voter suppression is obvious.

It is a fact that there is a pattern termed a "death cross", and it is a fact that Tesla exhibits it.

It is also stated clearly in the article that, in the opinion of the author,

the chart pattern reading kinda strikes me as astrology for guys in suits.

And according to Reuters,

about half the time that a death cross appears, it marks the worst point for the index rather than a harbinger of a steeper decline.

Imagine reading an article before making inflammatory statements about it in 2025.

There is nothing to be gained from assuming your opponent is not acting rationally.

I know it's fun to circle-jerk around these headlines, but it's a misdirection to give lay-people something titter about because it's too difficult to explain what's really happening. His behaviour actually is rational, he's just an idiot.

For Trump's entire life, the US stocks/bonds markets have mapped closely to market greed/fear respectively. When the market gets spooked, they turn to more conservative investments, and US bonds have historically been that. (Government bonds are typically seen as the least risky investment, because it's unlikely that a country falls apart and fails to pay its debts).

Fast forward to today, the US has a bunch of debt that needs refinancing this year, and lately, we haven't been getting good interest rates on our bond sales (which indicates people are seeing US bonds as more risky than usual). So Trump said, "no problem, we just need to instill a bit of fear in the market to drive investors to bonds, which will cause the interest rate to drop, so we can refinance our debt at a better rate." So he announces a bunch of nonsensical tariffs, which tanks the stock market, and just like he expected the bond market saw a dip in interest rates......for about a day, followed by a sharp increase! That sharp increase is why Trump agreed to pause the tariffs. Not only did it not work how he thought, it would seem he exposed a pronounced decline in trust for the US' ability to pay its debts. Instead of running to US bonds, investors ran everywhere else (gold, the Swiss Franc, the Euro, etc.)

I don't know what his next move is, but I have to think he's feeling a bit desperate. He's going to probably try to up his "blame the Democrats for their spending" game, of course without acknowledging that he has also only increased spending (even with all of DOGE's hard fought, and definitely not half-baked, budget cuts).

But all his strategies seem to be overt market manipulation, and nothing else. I feel like it really highlights the difference between someone who can create actual value using intelligent planning and innovation, and someone who is a capitalist leech who has fooled themselves into thinking that buying low and selling high does something useful for someone.

I'm saying the corporations developing the AIs did that. They took the content without licensing it, and used it to build something else that they are now profiting from.

Ah yes, the ol' 'ostracize the core fanbase to gain a more ephemeral one' strategy. A popular choice these days, unfortunately.

Yeah, I put dozens of hours into Hunt with some friends. We would only be able to play every few months. So every time we logged in, they had made new mechanic changes, some of which made the game less of what we liked. I always appreciated that there were no respawns. If you killed someone, they were out, period. If I die, then i wasn't careful enough.

And then one day we come back to play, and kill someone, only to have them pop back to life behind us. I felt like the gameplay I enjoyed had been betrayed.

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but Hunt: Showdown is a pvpve experience set in a fictionalized horror-themed 1900s old west.

The guns have few shots and are very slow to reload. Often your best strategy is to move very slowly and deliberately, looking closely for any movement from other players, taking care not to make any errant noises. Every single sound you make, including right clicking to aim down sights, is audible to your opponent if they're close enough. One good shot is enough to down someone.

The result is a unique experience that can hit both extremes: agonizingly slow build up of anticipation, or a fast paced chase through the woods to cut off an escape.

An artist produces content. They offer the ability to view the content in exchange for money. They rely on this income to make a living. Instead, you find a way to view the content without giving them money. A portion of their income that they would have otherwise received exists in your pocket instead of theirs.

Maybe it will help to think of it as a service: if you get a haircut, and then leave without paying, have you stolen anything?

Look, I'm not saying that stealing is always unethical. Robinhood is a story of someone who steals from the rich to give to the poor, and only temporarily embarrassed Prince Johns would say he's not the good guy in that story. I'm just saying let's be honest about it. Call a spade a spade.

If you deliberately execute only the half of a transaction that is favorable to you, that's stealing. If you sneak into a movie theater without paying, you're stealing. If you download music without paying for it, you're stealing. If a corporation takes art without paying to train a machine to produce facsimiles of that art to make money, they are stealing.

Honestly, if we still disagree, fine. This discussion feels like one of semantics, completely tangential to the point I was making. Cheers.

Free speech applies to individuals, not government agencies. A more obvious example would be a local government deciding to fly the christian flag. Obviously, that should not be allowed, but if an individual decides to do it, it's protected speech.

That said, I'm all for whoever is keeping these flags up. Obviously there's nothing unconstitutional about representation, and obviously the right wingers are just feeling emboldened to power trip.

I agree with you that it's not theft. Theft legally well defined and distinct from copyright infringement. I'm saying copyright infringement is stealing. You are taking from an artist their living. It's honestly baffling to me that one could mental gymnastics themselves into believing otherwise.

Oh wow, that's refreshing haha. Hope it can stay that way.

But how do you know the "algorithm free timeline" is algorithm free? Are they just in chronological order, and it never leaves anything out?

As someone who doesn't know the first thing about bsky, IMO as long as they're centralized and closed source, it's not possible to call their algorithm opt-in, nor configurable. You simply can't know how they've arrived at the content they are (or more importantly, are not) serving you.

But yes, I do think lemmy and ActivityPub services in general need to prioritize user control over custom "algorithms" for filtering and prioritizing content.

I wonder how successful a crowd-funded fediverse marketing push would be. I really think that's the main thing that pushed people to bsky over mastodon.

A huge number of Twitter->bsky converts were people happy to just stay in their bubble, until eventually enough of their bubble engaged with a bsky ad they were served somewhere.

A good chunk of crowd funded ads to push the benefits of mastodon, Lemmy, etc could be the lowest hanging fruit right now.