Not everyone wins in a failing economy. If one billionaire makes out, three more lose money.

No, yeah, that’s true. But the billionaires are also competing with each other in a (perceived) zero-sum game and they believe the ones who are cozying closest to Trump will be the best ones positioned to make money - either in a corrupt or a failing economy. But every recession has been a golden opportunity for billionaires.

Heck, in post-collapse Russia, this is how oligarchs first appeared - the “shock therapy” of the 1990s transition to a market economy dropped the value of resources to nothing, and the rich at the time bought them and became the ultra-rich. Some didn’t make it. ( Like a super-bacteria forming from the ones not killed by antibiotics, the ones that survived were even more resistant to control.)

Let’s say the pre-Trump economy is worth $100 trillion, and a particular billionaire’s share is $2 billion. Let’s say Trump catastrophically decreases the economy’s value to $50 trillion, while increasing corruption such that that Trump is getting more power, and the billionaire’s share is $10 billion.

This is followed by a collapsing market that creates a dip in share prices or private valuation, the assets of which can be bought for pennies on the dollar, eventually leading to that billionaire having $30 billion in a total economy worth $20 trillion.

Win/win for Trump and the billionaire, at the cost of everyone else.

That’s basically what’s happening, and will continue to happen.

Crazy, I thought they’d wait until the IPO before they start going to the “bleed the users like penned cattle” phase of enshittification. They must need money sooner than they thought.

They’re explicitly differentiating from modifying the search results as a reason why the ads are transparent. I figure in one year they’ll start to insert ads into the answer proper with a disclaimer, and then next fully integrate it.

Honestly, I think the Daily Beast is demonstrating how it doesn’t think strategically about what stories to post, just to get clicks.

There’s no reason to legitimize the conservative “counter” to halftime with this comparison. It’s the same thing that Fox News did to legitimize wacko conservative beliefs starting in the 90s. Presenting fringe elements directly in comparison to legitimate ones only bleeds legitimacy onto the fringe.

This is not unexpected but incredibly depressing.

It’s hard to imagine the full effect of America’s modern self-sustaining fascist disinformation ecosystem. It’s an alternate reality that follows the same patterns as cult brainwashing, with the same cognitive effects and resistance to deprogramming. North Korea and Russia have a version of this but modern first-world algorithmic feeds and astroturfing / bots multiply the impact and resilience against real information by a thousand times. The people captured by it don’t know it’s there, even when it wraps them as tightly as a straight jacket.

So: I think the majority of conservatives in the US at least believe ICE is only targeting criminals, and the typically just the worst ones. They don’t even see stories like this unless they’re strong enough to break that propaganda bubble. And when they do, that fascist media treats it as an honest mistake and that the victims are overreacting.

I mean, you (if you’re American) and me. Taxpayers (via the BBB that Trump and his accomplices in congress) have given the DHS/ICE so much money, I doubt Noem would blink at spending tens of millions of our dollars on a PR stunt.

I mean, it’s all in the summary. The agents won’t even be forced to use them. As if this meaningless gesture couldn’t be more hollow and performative.

This is why all copy protection should be Dial-a-Pirate-based.

Yup, but also remember: “tedious” = “relaxed pace”.

We make things less tedious to get more efficiency out of our time. But the asymptote of the efficiency curve is living death.

Hmm, that’s both impressive and disappointing. I’d think for a 65" you’d need to be super close to tell. I assume it’s Samsung’s HDR10 (or +) standard since they refuse to put Dolby Vision on their sets.

You have an 8k screen? Honestly the first person I’ve seen in the wild. How big is it and can you see the resolution difference?

And being a dork isn’t even the problem. I’m a big dork. I like video games and computer nerd stuff. The problem is that incel culture overlaps heavily with nerd culture. Dorks with poor social skills think that it empowers them while it actually just exacerbates and reinforces their insecurities, and stops their emotional development.

His concept of “cool” never got past that 4chan edgelord phase, and he doesn’t even realize how pathetically embarrassing it is.

I’m confused and probably stupid, but…should the guy not be crawling 100 meters versus 1 km (1,000 meters)? What part of my brain has damage from being dropped as a child?

Not sure if police were on hand to arrest or not, but it looks like he was arrested:

The Office of Rep. Omar issued the following statement after the incident:

“During her town hall, an agitator tried to attack the Congresswoman by spraying an unknown substance with a syringe. Security and the Minneapolis Police Department quickly apprehended the individual. He is now in custody. The Congresswoman is okay. She continued with her town hall because she doesn’t let bullies win.”

I guess Trump made this specific accusation because he saw the headlines about him making at least $1.4 billion in his first year back in office, and felt he needed to poison the well.

I know the DOJ has no credibility anymore, but god, imagine a world where they did their job and investigated the $400 million jet, the hundreds of millions of untraceable crypto and meme coins he’s started that foreign actors could use anonymously in violation of FECA and Constitutional emoluments restrictions, the “Board of Peace” donation fund controlled by Trump personally…

Ehhh…The thing about the cycle of violence is it’s a circle. I’d feel better seeing her get just punishment for treason and aiding and abetting murder that lasts the rest of her life with no escape.

Not just circulated. DHS posted the photo on their Twitter in a post claiming the victim was a violent assailant and claiming the weapon in the picture was theirs.

It’s kind of amazing how Trump perfectly represents every type of narcissism, and there doesn’t even seem to be other dimensions to his personality except narcissism:

So yeah, this is what a narcissistic sociopath is. Some of us knew this before 2015 and so none of this is surprising. It’s just so so exhausting.

It’s like that point in a movie where you figured it how it ends and just want it to be over already, but it’s not over, and it’s your life, and also the movie might decide to kill you or kidnap you.