Correlation is not causation. This is Statistics 101… I can point to other things that are correlated with the rise in the far right. For example, centralization, the increase in monopolies, the number of years since World War II, the average temperature of the earth, the number of years into the new millennium.

Anyway, when I read your comment on the whole what I actually see is that your concerned that social media is too centralized and therefore ripe for abuse. That’s vastly different from saying that social media itself is inherently going to be abused.

No, it’s not normal. Almost no internet companies around the world try to do anything similar to what Meta did and does. Even if you focus on social media companies, I believe that only a small minority try to do that kind of thing.

For example, here we are on social media. Do you see any targeted advertising? Is it being done by the Lemmy instance? And how many instances are there? Then we could look at Mastodon, or discussion forums, or comment boards, or you name it. Of course you would expect some targeted advertising, like you might find computer advertisements if you’re on a computer tech forum, but that’s different from targeting users who are in a weak state of mind, precisely because it’s targeting their overtly expressed general interests and not their temporary vulnerabilities.

Finally, I think you should go back and read the article. You ranted about companies trying to shove things down your throats, but the article was about how to misuse targeted advertising.

What you said is true some of the time. In this particular situation I don’t think it’s accurate. I think the prosecution really does want to execute the guy, because they don’t like the example set. They don’t like the notion of random white American men taking out CEOs. The prosecution wants to protect their rich friends.

Also, prosecutors have an ethical responsibility to not bring charges or punishments that they don’t think fit. In other words, if they want to try to get the death penalty, they have to actually believe that the evidence justifies asking for it. Ethically they are not allowed to throw every charge at the defendant and see what sticks. In reality, prosecutors ignore the ethical rules that they are sworn to uphold on a regular basis, and only rarely to judges regulate them for it.

I don’t think the judge will agree with you on this, although of course it remains to be seen. Police and prosecutors often make some statements, but the reality is that many potential jurors aren’t watching the news. For example, I didn’t know about this particular statement until I read this article.

Of course almost everyone knows about Luigi himself. That’s not what I’m saying. But if the claim is that a third party government statement has jeopardized the possibility of him getting a fair trial on a death penalty case, that seems to be factually dependent on who’s on the jury and what they saw.

I think the title is simply incorrect. This isn’t a game of chicken. In reality the Chinese government was ready for Trump’s tariffs because he played the tariff card the last time he was in office. They have a lot of strong tools at their disposal, and they will use those as they need to.

It’s somewhat ridiculous for Americans to say that China needs to make a deal when Trump is the one who created the recent problem. If you want to talk about trade imbalances, we can talk about trade imbalances, but massive tariffs that escalate overnight have nothing to do with reasonable international negotiation.

Actually the article has good information in it, but the title itself is meh.

I agree with what you said, but I don’t trust New York Times articles. They’re so bad on national politics. Even with that article, they were qualifying the claim, right? But they could have made it firm. There was no need to hedge, the reasoning with solid, but they were scared so they waffled.

Washington Dems who have tried to be pro-border security are part of the problem. A major part. Their support for racist xenophobic policies made it easier for the average American to lose sight of basic human equality.

In reality Trump wants all of these people to stay, and stay undocumented, so they can be used as borderline slave labor. The problem is that when Democrats talk about being tough on immigration, they may get easier for him to get away with evil policies like this. What worries me more is that I think many of those Democrats actually believed in their anti-immigrant racist xenophobic policies.

AI should scare you. People will just dump everything on AI and then let it fuck over your life. What happens if AI flags you as a terrorist and your drivers license is suspended, or your health care is cancelled? What happens if AI says you’re fraudulently collecting social security? There’s nobody to blame, because they’ll just blame the computer.

Well no. Actually we aren’t supposed to trust the government. That’s why we have (in theory) a system of checks and balances. The whole point is that we rely on them and hope they’ll do the right thing, but we need to be paying some attention some of the time, because they will occasionally get things wrong.

There was a time when people were dependent on defined benefit pensions. Then the U.S. pivoted to defined contribution plans, 401Ks. This of course put retirees at risk of a situation like the present one.

Could they have diversified their portfolio better? Sure. Should you blame them for Trump being an evil asshole? Only if you are one, too. The system itself was redesigned to fuck over the elderly, my friend. Then it did.

Who is confused? I think most of us understand what happened and think it’s total shit.

That alone is not the crazy part, though. Of course many laws have edge cases where you should ignore them for practical reasons in rare circumstances. But here, it’s not an edge case. It’s right there in open sight.

Not really though. Starlinkn doesn’t scale up well. And it only makes sense in niche circumstances. And it is vulnerable. You could easily imagine a future president just taking it over for national safety reasons.

What are you asking? If you get fired, you go find a different job or go on strike.

The US needs to add long-term contracts to all jobs so this shit can’t happen again, but most Americans don’t seem to realize how US labor law is shit.

Then they will offer shit support to avoid doing so. Simpler and safer to just make unlocking legit from the start.

Of course it would not.

No, it’s not even close to one of the greatest threats. Of course it’s up to shady s***, of that there can be no doubt, but it’s not ranked in the top five.

Classic baitclick.

No. Not really. That depends on the tax rates, my friend.

You’re making a legal claim, and that claim that should be examined closely in court to establish its veracity. For example, I disagree with your analysis. I think that everyone understands what’s actually being offered: money for a vote. I think that a jury could convict, and that there is probable cause to arrest and charge right now.

And the reasoning is quite simple, right? You want to give money for the vote but you know that would be illegal so instead you say something that’s almost the same as the vote and then wink a few times. Everyone has communicated clearly. Everyone knows exactly what they’re supposed to do, and why. Just because you wrote down some words cleverly on paper doesn’t change the causes or effects.

But that’s my opinion, and I’m not a judge in that state. Neither are you. Neither are any of us here in the comment section. That’s why it ought to go before a judge in that state.

And risk your own personal safety? That’s a terrible idea.