I think this is something that’s not being considered enough. This really struck me a few months ago when Trump was talking about Portland being some lawless, smoldering ruin when everything there was just fine (except for the ICE presence ofc). Obviously Trump lies about everything but the way he talked about Portland was odd, like he really believed it. Also just a weird thing to lie about, when it’s so obviously not only not true but incredibly not true.

I think the people around Trump were feeding him false info about Portland. Probably telling him things like “sir Portland is literally burning to the ground and crime is out of control”. I honestly think they are probably feeding him a steady diet of AI slop videos and telling him it’s what’s actually happening in the world.

GM, hands down. Ford is also very good. I would personally feel very safe in either one. I am hoping to buy an Equinox soon.

They both just have an entirely different philosophy from Tesla. Tesla, being from Musk, has these ideas of the car (trying) to be this cool piece of tech that does everything for you, but without putting in the real work to make that happen. Musk wants to take the human out of driving entirely and we’re just not there yet.

For GM and Ford (and really, everyone who isn’t Tesla), they see self-driving more as a way to assist you in driving on the highways, not some replacement. If you take your eyes for the road for more than a couple seconds it starts to warn you. Then it takes increasing measures to get to you to pay attention, eventually it will just pull itself over the to shoulder.

BYD doesn’t have that in the US at least (I don’t know about China) because you need to to have the US highways all mapped out in detail and keep it updated.

As someone who has followed the self-driving car news for nearly a decade, I can say that Tesla’s is dogshit. Even going back to 2017/18, people who understand these systems were saying that while Tesla was first out the gate, their system had inherent, unresolvable issues and they would eventually be surpassed by the legacy manufacturers who were taking a slower but more measured and thought-out approach to self-driving, with systems that would surpass Tesla in short order.

Fast forward to today. Ford and GM both have self-driving systems for highways that are truly remarkable. GM’s Super Cruise has 700 million miles recorded and no reported accidents, which is truly incredible. Now that we have such safe and reliable systems, Tesla has no business selling cars with Autopilot, IMO it should be banned.

Understanding this helped me understand how the Romans would tell a Germanic tribe “hey sure we’ve got some open land over in Aquitaine, just settle there and pay us taxes”. Thinking of it terms of borders as lines on a map just left me more confused.

Honestly, I am hoping it really is just him whine bragging like he always does. He seems bothered that Americans don’t realize how “great” the economy is, so maybe he’s gonna try and talk about that. Anything that isn’t a declaration of war against Venezuela (or anyone else for that matter) I will be relieved by.

I want to thank everyone for their suggestions. I’m going to reference this post in the future and will definitely use it. It just so happens that I mentioned this IRL and the DM of my game gifted me his unopened copy of Dungeons & Kittens, so I’m gonna start with that. But lots of great ideas here, I will use this to guide upcoming purchases.

I’ll add that Disney+ is on the BDS list, so I consider pirating Andor to be a moral imperative.

Nova

I know plenty of people who think saying the earth is >10,000 years old is propaganda.

It’s remarkable how 5 years ago, I would not have been able to do my job just with web apps. Just recently I used my personal Linux laptop for 3 weeks while away from home. It worked perfectly for the job with two minor exceptions:

‘1. There’s a proprietary web app that requires you to upload a specifically-formatted .xlsx file, couldn’t get that to work.

‘2. MS Teams - unless you have the web page pulled up and are looking at it, it will show you as Away instead of Available. Workaround was to just leave Teams open on my phone and have the screen always on.

“Moderating content” is the whole reason why the US government forced the sale and Larry Ellison bought it. It was never about “national security”, it was about controlling narratives and making sure Americans never hear anything about Palestinians again other than Zionist hasbara.

I think the user darkcalling, in commenting on this story in the current Hexbear news mega thread, had a spot on analysis of this:

Section 230 repeal is game over.

No more VPNs because they’re liable for CSAM, terrorism, death threats, copyright abuse, etc. Even if they’re off-shore and dare to thumb their noses at the US their domestic hosting partners will drop them out of liability concerns themselves. This is a terrifying unraveling of the internet as we knew it. Far more drastic than the death of blogs and forums and the rise of centralized social media. Far more drastic than even AI spam washing over everything and making real content hard to find.

There really are no alternatives waiting in the wings. You’re not going to be able to torrent blurays over L2P or Tor. You’re not going to be able to watch streaming videos with friends. For a while you’ll be able to use Canadian servers, maybe Mexico (don’t know what their laws are like) until they pass similar laws and tier one ISPs start throttling that type of traffic into/out of the US.

The boot is finally here, the death of the open internet will occur if that passes. Total narrative control. Social media companies seized by the throat by the US government, either cooperate in censoring what they want or they actually hold you accountable for everything your users do. Have good users? Here are some fed infiltrators and zionist intelligence companies who are going to spam you with illegal stuff and report it to us so you’ll be done anyways.

The speed at which western governments have been moving recently to erode privacy, and thus a free internet, really has been staggering to me, and I’ve been following this stuff for a while. There’s been a total blitz against 3 pillars of freedom: 1.) destroy our ability to have private conversations (chat control), 2.) know exactly who everyone is online and identify all your online activity (age verification), and 3.) effectively destroy user generated content - at least content which is a threat to power (this attack on Section 230).

Personally, I think this recent all-out attack is due to 2 things. The first is the genocide in Gaza. The ruling classes were caught off guard there. They had previously been operating under the assumption that their control of mainstream tradition media meant they can control whatever narrative they want. Social media was for kids and they’re not politically relevant, so who cares. But having a genocide live-streamed completely destroyed decades of hard work at crafting a pro-Zionist public in the west. They’re not going to let that happen again, so bye-bye TikTok (the other platforms like Instagram were already compromised, TikTok was the only one outside of their grasp).

The second factor though, despite all the bluster and bravado about how “great” the economy is from Trump and the media (and tbf, Biden and the dems before him), I think the ruling classes know damn well just how bad things are. More than that, they know things are gonna get a lot worse. Neoliberalism was the method by which capitalism was able to extend its life. The crises it faced in the late 60s and 70s were really just an extension of the Great Depression. The only way the capitalist world was able to pull itself out of that was through a global war that destroyed so much capital that they got an economic boom for 2-3 decades just from rebuilding the world order. But now neoliberalism has spent itself and they have no answers for what to do next. Thus, they are fully expecting the people to fight back. The internet is maybe the most powerful tool that people have for organizing themselves and fighting back, so that MUST be brought under lockdown by the capitalists before it’s too late.

EDIT: I also wanted to ask, since I’m fairly new to federation… how would repealing Section 230 affect the fediverse specifically?

I have an N64 and a Sony PVM, so I play a lot of games on that. But there’s two I play much more regularly than all the others: Mario Golf and Mario Tennis. They both hold up incredibly well.

Sincere answer: Fred Hampton. There’s a reason they killed him. He was someone who could truly mobilize marginalized folks (and plenty of non-marginalized folks as well).

I second this. I enjoyed reading Lenin’s Imperialism very much, but it also felt very dated (as it should, it’s well over 100 years old now). I can’t help but think that if Lenin were alive today, he’d agree. That doesn’t mean it’s not an incredibly important work that we can’t draw from today, but we should also understand how the world has changed since.

I haven’t read John Smith’s Imperialism in the 21st Century yet, but I’ve heard it’s a very good update.

Worth noting that usually, the public pays for the stadium in whole or in a significant part, but the sports team owners are the ones who pocket the proceeds from the naming rights.

When you read about this man’s life - what he did for the revolution as well as the incredible theory he developed - you really begin to understand the reverence people had for him.

Lenin Walks Around the World.

Yes, I think my advice applies more to an interview than something you would put down on paper on a questionnaire.

I am going to go against the grain of conventional advice and say you should just outline it like you did here. I have been in the position of hiring people before. I much prefer to know the real reason why someone left a company. Granted, if someone says “my boss was an asshole”, I would probably just see that as likely making excuses. But, if someone says “I left because I was subjected to verbal and emotional harassment by my boss, and if you want me to provide specific examples I can do so”, that’s actually information I would prefer to know. I think your situation falls into that later example for sure.

The idea that you should never speak ill of a former employer regardless of the circumstances IMO is bad advice.

Imagine a world where aliens like The Dominion in DS9 took over earth. They appoint one person as viceroy of the planet, where they will help them enforce whatever this viceroy wants.

Imagine a planet ruled by Ms. Rachel.

NOW imagine a planet ruled Ben-Gvir…

Regarding the music festival, Asa Winstanley with The Electronic Intifada has done excellent work. Western media really just bought Israel’a line *we must immediately bury all these cars and any other physical evidence of the festival forever before anyone can investigate further because reasons…”