Thanks for understanding and being willing to consider a stranger’s point of view, I appreciate it.

what happened was a logical and known potential outcome and consequence of signing up

It certainly is, but when the burden of responsibility is only placed on the person at the end of the line, it lets the fuckers at the top with the unequal power skirt their responsibility. Perhaps “blame” is too far, but it doss seem like you’ve perhaps disproportionately assigned blame to thus one shouting guy and his kid.

You make it sound as if the choice is binary between starving and joining the military: it’s not.

Not at all, but I do acknowledge that for many, and in increasing amounts, the decision has indeed become very close to that binary. US hegemony relies on people to do the enforcement. That’s obviously dangerous, and thankfully, despite pervasive cultural conditioning, most people aren’t interested in killing others overseas while living in an overcrowded dorm eating slop. So the conditions have been put in place by the ruling class to force people into doing it.

If you’re unlucky enough to be born in Podunk Nowhere, where disaster capitalism has resulted in the only employers being Walmart, mcdonalds or the shady abattoir that “hires” minors, you don’t start with many options. Add in an “education” from a system that has been rotted from within by zealots, complete with in-school army recruiter. Add in a culture that loves guns. Add in a family member in debt from medical accident (probably at the abattoir), or an unplanned pregnancy because of no access to abortion. Maybe they’re also living at home with a parent who is addicted to meth out of desperation to avoid their poverty and misery… and the military starts looking like a very tempting option.

You have the chance of dying and disability in the military, and the likelihood that you’re forced to murder, but also the glimmer of hope of an education, family healthcare and a way out of Podunk’s cycle of poverty. That’s a powerful motivator for someone who doesn’t see any other realistic options. It’s a deliberate funnel into committing murder through economic coercion and military worship culture, and the fault lies with the trap makers, not the trapped.

The only thing that makes the last 80 years different is the efficiency of murder and the new murder weapons they have access to.

And the extent of its reach. A century ago, the US was pretty limited to war on North American soil, and land it claims. When the war is that close, the realities of suffering are hard to conceal from the people whom you need to inflict it. Wars in other continents though can be sanitized by the media, and the people who are caught in the military funnel trap find out after they’ve signed the contract.

Thankfully the prevalence of video tech has allowed us to mitigate some of that media sanitization, but again, putting the burden of responsibility on the 18 year old who has never been taught critical thinking skills allows the 65+ year old networked decision makers at the top to slide off the hook.

Tl;dr I think it’s OK to acknowledge everything on all fronts is fucked for everyone except the ruling class. I also think it’s OK to shout at the ruling class, even in their house, when you were invited to be there.

Blaming the people who need to eat instead of the people creating an economy out of death and misery is counter-productive. US foreign policy and economics have centered around war for at least 80 years, Biden has played a crucial role in facilitating it for a few decades.

And the fact a person has been arrested for shouting at the president in the same location where people literally stormed it and engaged in literal violence and walked away free that day? Amazing.

Biden might be infinitely better than the alternative for most citizens of the US (and likely the entire world) - but the non-US part of the world has been bearing the costs of the US military economy that has provided the privileges US citizens currently enjoy.

But fuck the guy who lost his kid, right? He’s the real problem. /s

Israel Appropriates. Very interesting language.

All the reports Reuters makes on the
Russia war treats land ownership quite differently. When Ukraine takes land they say “Ukraine regains (number)km/ (TownName)”. Russians taking land is either seemingly not reported or phrased as “Russia says its forces have improved positions in / captured (Location)”. Only mentions of Russian gains are phrased to reference killing (forces is a useful homonym). Ukraine gains are phrased as the entire country reclaiming rightful stake (regains implies they were there first, and the region’s history is vastly more complex than that).

Israel headlines though refer to either the entire country “appropriating” space or for the really murderous stuff it specifies the IDF as the perpetrators. The whole country headline versions sound temporary and even morally neutral, while the obviously indefensible genocide can be compartmentalised as only being the military and harsh realities of war. They even get to disconnect the word Israel by only ever saying the initialism IDF.

They’re three different characterisations entirely of the same act by different countries - killing each other to control politically strategic physical space ownership.

I hope one day people can realise we’re all just being used as disposable pawns targeting other humans, who are also just trying to live peacefully in this dystopian civilisation. None of the headlines about suffering ever needed to happen. We all need to stop whatever it is we do that contributes to those who rule us and would have us die for them.

That is not a level of power I officially possess, but it is a level of power that I am able to unofficially implement for the people who solely report to me. I am also able to tailor their roles and responsibilities to whatever causes them the least pain because their job titles are extremely non-specific, which is very helpful for both of us.

Both manager and non-managers are economically coerced into providing our time and energy. I try my best to reduce that burden for as many people as I can without being noticed by the people who are willing to suck the life out of others for personal gain.

The people who are marginalised by the process are the ones who will be doing the real suffering.

Hobbies indicate interest and aptitude. Someone who collects things might enjoy jobs and tasks related to organisation but not necessarily enjoy highly collaborative work that requires many meetings, whereas someone who enjoys team sports might enjoy the more collaborative social meeting type work instead of solo detailed organisation etc.

It is far from the first thing I would use as a hiring choice, but it does give me an idea of questions I might ask someone to figure out what would make them happiest.

I never want to hear anyone try to say NATO isn’t just an international military that is guided / deeply influenced by American foreign policy ever again. One of the few good things to ever come from the Trump fiasco is that they’re finally saying the quiet parts out loud, but the fact that this will receive no coverage, let alone criticism, means that might just be even more dangerous for all of us, even outside the Atlantic.

The world is on fire and humanity is prioritising manufacturing our own suicide above investing in fire extinguishers.

Can we… see them?

Edit: some quick math, the minimum recommended space between trees is 3m, 200 million of those is 600km² / 148k ac , which would make the space required bigger than 17 countries (larger than Andorra but very slightly smaller than Saint Lucia). They have a blog with their tree planting updates but I wish there were more photos.

5 months ago, mod, Removed Post Reddit is dangerous. The admins are out of control. Humanity needs a viable alternative. – Blog covering the Reddit admins retaliating against me, reason: rule 4

I thought I recognised your name. I happen to be experimenting with my own gut-brain axis, so I recall skimming your project.

Here’s the problem.

Reddit will not act on people insulting your personal project unless they consider it a legal, financial or reputational risk not to do so.

Lawyers will not take on your case unless they think there is a solid chance of financial or reputational gain beyond the standard hourly fee. They are telling you in the most professional way possible that they see no merit in spending their time on your theory’s reputation. My suspicion is that they feel your… zeal and passion for your theory is bordering on fanatical. They don’t want to work with fanatics.

Without substantial and demonstrable effects on your finances, what you are left with is just some low level insults on the internet, and one or more relatively anonymous individuals who know that trolling you will get them the reaction they desire. If you continue to react like this, they will continue to try to get a reaction from you.

These concepts have been explained to you previously.

I understand that you believe you have found answers that have previously been ignored by medicine. I know how that feels. But research is already being done in this area and will take time to bear fruit.

Additionally, continuing to post your site as a response to threads that lightly touch on adjacent topics does not do much more than highlight you as a self-promoting spammer who might be fun to troll. It also does not endear you to admins or mods, let alone anyone who might positively engage with the topic. Threads like this let trolls know their efforts to annoy you are working extremely well. Using your real name to do so just makes it much easier for them to harass you.

I do not like victim blaming, but I hope you are able to reflect on how your reactions and inability to let minor insults slide might be compromising your ability to have your project and theories taken more seriously and treated with respect. If you are very serious about legal recourse, then regrettably you need to monetize your project and accurately document negative effects caused by specific people.

A lot of accounts are interacting (voting, posting, etc.) on lemmy-visible activitypub services within a 6 month timespan, but most accounts are not active users interacting every month.

It’s actually a very positive graph. Many of the new accounts would be spammers, bots, throwaway accounts, alts of banned users, users making account on multiple instances because of downtime, etc. So it’s normal to see growth over longer spans of time that aren’t completely reflected in monthly active user statistics.

The current plateau is probably for the best, it gives developers time to catch up somewhat with the last growth spurt. There will be other social media platform clusterfucks in the future that will kick off future growth spurts.

I’m feeling very attacked.

Depends who you ask. He is anti-science pro-capitalism and willing to be a puppet leader for the US. Whether that ultimately benefits the average Argentinian or not remains to be seen, but historically far-right policy has only ever benefited those who currently hold the most power.

I think it’s also worth mentioning Argentina is a place where a lot of prominent fascists fled to after WW2 with the assistance of Perón, and the country has somewhat of a reputation in South America for being extremely proud of their European heritage.

My condolences, especially to the marginalised groups and scientific community in Argentina. I see you and grieve with you. Qué bajón. (I hope I’m using this correctly)

He bought it because he couldn’t stop being an arrogant edgelord keyboard shit-talker, and he accidentally made himself personally legally liable doing so. The Twitter board called his bluff, seeing the most amazing opportunity to rid themselves of an expensive and slowly dying company, and Musk had already pissed off the SEC (or one of the other financial government services) enough that he was at risk of having his finances in other companies audited.

So he was forced to buy it because he’s an impulsive troll. Everything else since then is pretty incidental, and unsurprisingly dripping with hypocrisy like this.

Understood! Thanks for the detailed insight, I appreciate it. I have witnessed business excess but I’m not in the financial professions, so the exact mechanics of how they get away with it were somewhat opaque to me. Breaking it up into small invoices across multiple companies and payments makes perfect sense though.

It’s also nice to know there are accountants who take this seriously enough to personally check.

If I’d tried to deliberately pass off a gold toilet as a business expense for a client, I wouldn’t just have gotten fired

But I’m guessing you probably wouldn’t think twice about an invoice for a contracted architecture firm for renovation plans, or a plumber’s parts and labor for extensive work. It’s not like accountants are inspecting all the invoices and checking the boss’ private bathroom for signs of excessively expensive and gaudy taste. Especially if you’re a contracted third party. Do you even technically need to be on the same continent?

Multinational firms will have to pay that level of tax on all of the profits they make worldwide, regardless of where the profits are generated.

If I have understood correctly from the article, this tax seems to apply to profits instead of revenue. If that is the case then all this does is justify companies hiring 10 more accountants and lawyers to find more novel ways to launder real corporate profit from exploitation into personal profit. Publicly traded companies might take a small hit to their next annual reports, but private businesses will experience almost no effect at all.

If a company has bought and “loaned” or given their executives cars, phones, food and rent stipends, paid for lavish parties with friends clients, bought out their family’s “startup” and put their kids on the payroll, started their own charity that functionally does nothing, and employed people to be their personal butler assistant, and contracted out their everything to other friend’s businesses, then those are considered “expenses”. The actual profit has been “reinvested back into the business” and the tax is applied to what is basically pocket change because the money has been spent. It doesn’t matter that the gold toilet in the CEO’s personal office bathroom isn’t necessary, it still counts as an expense. The core problem persists, the only thing it just changes the numbers on the documents.

“Reducing tax” is how companies strengthen social imbalance by consolidating power amongst a small group of people and exploit global markets. It’s not something to write off as an understandable necessity. This is why GDPR specifically targetted revenue instead of profits as the base value.

But it’s late and I may have missed a key phrase or three in the article. That also happens.

This is great in theory, but many companies just redirect actual profits back into “expenses” like donations, bonuses, consultancy fees, etc. Whatever writes off more taxes.

This will apply to all such companies and large-scale domestic groups with turnover above 750 million euros ($800 million) per year.

Yeah, OK. If they’re doing that kind of turnover the business most certainly has an accounting department and financial “strategy” in place. If Germany wanted to make it real they would have approached it like GDPR fines where it is based on global revenue, not profits.

This looks like political theater to me, and the unanimous party support seems to back that theory, but i don’t have enough German ability or the desire to dig further.

This forces my team to find creative ways to keep them working while also taking measures to isolate them as much as possible. I also use them to teach old exploits that have been patched in more recent versions, walking people through how it worked and why it existed.

I am interested in learning more about this. I know a fair bit about networks but exploit history and modern attack / defense strategies and server hardening are not my main specialty. Do you have any good links or resources that you can share?