It’s funny, this kinda stuff reminds me of the best parts of the (largely bygone) punk rock and hacker subcultures. Feels like almost the specific overlap between the two. And lately it feels like there’s been more and more of that, like the condition of the world is causing those ethos to reawaken, to recapitulate their evergreen salience, maybe even to combine.

Probably projecting a bit, to be fair. I feel I’ve internally stayed an old punk rocker and hacker, and feel those old flames reigniting, despite the indignities and compromises that come with middle age and spending eventual adulthood trying to survive in corporate America. Not so punk after all, lmao

Edit: minor grammar

:(

Yep, this is what’s going on. As is usual with Trump, there’s no actual ideology or goal, it’s all scam all the time. When you can unilaterally announce at any moment of any day that you are about to grenade the global economy, that’s going to have a guaranteed response from the markets. Predictable as the fuckin sunrise. Especially because everyone rightly knows Trump truly doesn’t give a shit about the consequences and absolutely might just do it.

Then he says some wildly different shit a different day, with again 100% predictable market movements (even announcing on Truth Social ahead of time to buy, which is truly beyond the pale), and everyone he knows gets even richer, again. That grift will wear out and stop working and he’ll switch to something else.

And again, and again, and again. All scam, all the time. I mean, plebes like us are aware of multiple concurrent grifts the guy is using the presidency for. Imagine what we don’t know about! It’s kleptocracy of the highest order.

Any interesting patterns in the users being systematically targeted for downvotes? Wondering if this is personal grudge or enemy action, basically.

“Shoulda kept me in, now look what ya did, there’s folks even shittier than me who’ve been waiting for this opportunity”

True or not, these are the words of a guaranteed abuser lmao

Sounds like a RINO to me lol

I called this shit from the beginning, that the tariff bullshit was just a legit-seeming way to make the market do stuff he could easily predict (by directly causing). Didn’t realize he was literally communicating, nakedly, when to buy and sell though. Fucking WILD. And I promise before long he uses that exact mechanism to do the opposite thing and fuck all the folks who get used to listening to such announcements.

And nothing will be done. Stock market itself is such a fuckin scam, and I say that as a dude with a 401k.

Edit: actually, to add, one thing I didn’t notice initially is that these naked manipulations, with some ability for randos to profit too during the ride, that really has the Musk stink all over it. Same shit he’s gotten away with often, just now with the goddamn US President as the mouthpiece, scamcoins and all. Truly bananas, where we’re at.

I mean, “theft” implies depriving someone of something, to me. But I don’t want to bicker about definitions if your position is more about morality of taking something for free than about the definition of theft.

For myself, I’ll happily pay for things that provide fair value and a fair agreement / relationship. That includes donating to stuff that is offered for free - there are a handful of content creators and other services (Internet Archive, Signal, etc.) that I directly support, every month. And by the same token, I don’t feel bad at all about enjoying something, for free and against their wishes, from a company or publisher that only offers unacceptable (to me) terms.

To me those are perfectly consistent. My dollars go to individuals and publishers that produce the kind of media ecosystem I think is good for us. Because - we must be clear - it’s not a level playing field, and the shift away from consumer ownership is a plague of exploitation inflicted upon us. It’s now metastasizing away from strictly digital domains, now to physical hardware, which is outrageous. Roku, for instance, can update your streaming device overnight and force you to accept their new terms, in order to keep using your device. This is not hypothetical, it happened (may have gotten company wrong).

Do you think the companies enacting policies, particularly ones prohibiting ownership outright, are operating from an ethical or moral framework? I promise they don’t believe in anything like that. They screw us precisely as hard as the courts, and the court of public opinion, allow. And they’re always trying to move that line in their favor.

Why do you care about pirating? Who or what are you standing up for, I guess I’m asking?

Oh, yeah that makes sense too. Bad premise all around I guess.

I mean, are you taking your definition of “theft” from the law? Or from your own internal set of ethics for right and wrong? Is it theft if no one is deprived of anything, because bits copy, and because you’d never trade dollars for the privilege of maintaining an exploitative relationship with a company but that is all they’ve made available?

If you’re hung up on whether the legal system thinks it’s theft - I dunno what to tell ya, it obviously does.

Edit: uh, maybe you’re literally asking for how the logic in that statement works, which I read as just “if it can’t be owned, how can it be stolen?”

The idea of elegant old French women doing sick vape tricks is just…really something.

What is it about carpet stores in particular?! We had a “Shag-Rug-La” by us for a while and I wanted to give myself a lobotomy every time I drove past it. Lawrence of La Brea Carpets is egregious. Weapons-grade.

Oof, my company is doing only 1 or 1.5 of those things, I am great at back end engineering and delivering in the face of fuckery of all kinds, can I plz haz job

Dang, I know how that goes. Makes for a good dish for folks like us in that case, lot of it keeps for quite a while lol

That is a LOT of stuff hahaha I wanna try it!

That does make it tasty, I can stand to do a bit more of that too. Here’s my decadent unconventional (but extremely easy) sandwich topper - crunch-less, sadly, but could probably be improved with some cheese crustin.

I like to melt some butter with red miso, about 50/50 or so? You’ll know the consistency after messing around a bit. Red miso is super dense flavor wise of course and also doesn’t mix easily, so yeah. Today I put it thinly on half a bagel, cream cheese on the other half, toasted, random stuff in between. You can add brown sugar to make it sweeter, or any kind of spice, also both lol.

Easy, teeth mash the plants into plastic 👍 makes sense if you squint real hard and have a few TBIs

Um. Think for a moment, who’d be granting these licenses?

Disappointing you, myself, and so, so many taste buds

Oof, I’ve never put nearly that much flavorful stuff into tuna for a sandwich, this sounds amazing. What have I been doing?!