• 0 Posts
  • 589 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 16th, 2023

help-circle

  • Blackmail is the first step, to get them to comply.

    Next comes the bribes and money. That’s what the Republicans are addicted to and afraid of losing. Russia spends a LOT of money on a LOT of politicians, and they step out of line, the faucet gets turned off.

    After the bribes come the subtle threats and constant low-key demonstrations of power. This is where Russia notices someone is toeing the line or stepping out of control and they reign them back in with a well-placed threat delivered in a way even Boebert can understand. This is the “we picked your kids up at school and dropped them off at their grandparents house today” kind of thing.

    They’re in deep and can’t get out without serious harm to themselves and probably their families. I’d feel sorry for them, but they’re all a bunch of shithead traitors who did this to themselves, and are now destroying our country.


  • I’m not one for conspiracy theories, and we don’t have any evidence to back up any sort of claims of rigging or election fraud. In fact, the various lawsuits Trump initiated in the last cycle and audits and recounts and so on provided a pretty damning pile of evidence for “not rigged”.

    Republicans aren’t rigging elections themselves. There’s no tomfoolery going on with voting machines, or people voting twice, or similar. They’re “rigging” it with legal means – disenfranchising voters, suppressing turnout, financing third party candidates to peel votes away from the other side, gerrymandering districts, and using massive propaganda systems to influence who decides to vote and what they choose when they do vote.

    All said, though, we can always make the system more robust, and increase both voters’ confidence in the system and allay any fears of actual rigging. But election reforms are often a “Democrat” issue, so almost any Republican will oppose meaningful reforms that don’t do one of the things above to suppress voters.


  • Yeah – The goal is not to keep servers, etc. working at minimum wage, it’s to eliminate tips in favor of employers paying a livable wage.

    I’d rather the menu prices reflect the actual cost of the item, including the service workers’ wages, than have to tack on another n% at the end. And, at least back in the before-times for the like, month, I worked as a server, I would’ve loved to go to work and not worry about “Oh shit, it’s the Sunday church crowd” and resign myself to not making any money that shift.


  • I’ve been around the Internet since the BBS days and I can’t think of a single time where a de-centralized platform has out competed a centralized platform with “normal” users.

    I’m right there with you. I’d love to see the dream of the decentralized media return, but it’s long-dead. The “Normal” user doesn’t give a fuck about the benefits and even the moderate barrier to entry over some centralized platform is enough to keep them away.

    Tech-minded people seem to often forget that even the most simplistic choices like “Choose an instance” is a big deal for people. The platform that’s the most familiar, and easiest to use is going to be the one that wins, and, right now, that looks like it’s Bluesky.








  • There’s a problem there, though. The propaganda was basically various versions of “The government (when run by Democrats) is bad, don’t trust the government.”

    If they put up a notice saying, “This domain was seized, here’s the real facts!” the target of the propaganda isn’t going to buy it for a hot minute.

    If they put up replacement content that doesn’t mention the government seizure, tha target of the propaganda is already primed to shout, “Fake news!” at anything that disputes their existing worldview.

    It’s best to just let those domains return like a 504 Internal Server Error and die a quiet death.