I mean, when you put it that way… Maybe the kids are alright after all.

trump back in 2016 was genuinely charismatic… to his base. He was able to quickly spin nonsense schoolyard bully insults against anyone who went up against him (“Little marco rubio” and so forth). Combine that with Hilary having almost two decades of smear campaign tactics against her at that point and not committing one way or another towards decorum or “you fuckers are weird” and… yeah.

trump in 2024 won because the left blames Biden for the economy and the chuds wanted their hitler back.

In a lot of ways, Obama winning kind of broke the country.

He was a Democrat that people genuinely loved because of how charismatic he was (which was REAL nice after Dubyah…). Or, as a certain Former President put it, he was a Clean And Articulate Gentleman.

The problem being, his very existence set off all the chuds. It completely destroyed their minds that a black man could possibly be President. And it is a big chunk of what set for the “never again” mindset we are seeing.

I hope Mamdani proves he can pull it off. We’ll see what happens in the general. And I really hope he can continue to push a hard line once he gets on a stage where bills are so intertwined that it is nigh impossible to NOT support evil in the form of pork and the like.

My suspicion is that we are going to see a lot of concessions at even the Mayoral level. Let alone if he moves on to Congress. My hope is that we have actually achieved progress (hey, look at that) and the baseline of education has advanced that we can continue to push the line farther and further and actually oppose anti-semitism while also vehemently opposing zionism.

You seem to be well-meaning, but that’s Zionist propaganda. The full phrase is “Palestine will be free, trom the river to the sea,” and there is literally nothing objectionable about this.

It is Zionist propaganda in that the Zionists actually said it too in the past as justification/motivation for stealing the land from Palestine et al to begin with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_river_to_the_sea

There are definitely well meaning individuals who use that and I don’t think it inherently means someone is part of Hamas or the IDF. But it is a phrase that literally began as Zionist propaganda to justify their occupation of the region and it is one that, in most readings, fundamentally precludes a two state solution. It is saying that the entirety of the region must belong to one group/subset of groups.

Now, whether a two state solution has been possible for closer to 50 years than not is a much more depressing topic. But when your statement of peace is also largely synonymous with past and present efforts to ethnically cleanse a region… maybe pick some different words.

Which… brings us back to the balance of politics and ideology and not trusting the masses to sit and listen to your long winded explanation of why your slogan just sounds bad but is actually good when you use it.

I am not going to pretend I agree with how AOC handled the Anti-semitism Panel or whatever it was.

But I will say this: NYC tends to be very Jewish and Jewish friendly. And people are stupid. Explaining “I am opposed to anti-semitism but I am not opposed to anti-zionism. Okay, let me explain to you what the difference is” isn’t going to fly. Hell, just look around any message board (including these) and see what happens if you actually link someone to an article or page explaining why they misunderstood something.

And… a lot of the verbiage early on (mostly when Hamas still had any meaningful capabilities in the region) really WERE crossing the line. Stuff like “from the river to the sea” is really hard to support in a good faith reading of the conflict in the region. Which is why most politicians have stopped using phrases like that while arguing for Palestinian survival.

Which gets back to the realities of politics. In theory, an elected official is there not to push their own politics but to represent the will of the people who elected them. And if it is going to take a ten minute history lesson to explain why you snubbed a panel on Anti-Semitism to the people who voted for you…

Which is also why all of this is so insidious. Because the zionists know that they have these actually very reasonable stances to take and use them to cover for genocide.

But, as the DSA themselves admit in that press release, AOC has voted heavily in favor of Palestine in many resolutions.

Ehhhhhh

People have a very weird idea of what the veep actually is. In theory, it is the person waiting in the wings, learning from the POTUS, picking up the slack, and preparing to take command if needed. In practice? It is someone The Party saddled the POTUS with and is an active threat to their legitimacy and legacy. For the past few decades, the frigging First Lady seems to have more accomplishments than most VPOTUSes.

And considering that Biden became increasingly infirm over his term and there are good odds trump straight up dies in office (woo!), a lot of eyes will be on the VP. Which has good odds of triggering the palin effect of “oh dear god… what if the old white guy dies and we are left with THAT???”

With a POTUS who genuinely likes AOC and believes in her politics? Yeah, it would be spectacular. In the world and DNC we live in… expect the same “What the hell did she even do?” smear campaign Kamala has been getting since late 2023 (I wonder why).

I like AOC a lot. She started as any other member of The Squad but has actually learned how politics work and is doing a, mostly, spectacular job of balancing ideology, the will of her constituents, and generation of political capital. In so many ways, she is what Sanders would have been if he got his head out of his ass twenty some odd years ago.

If she runs for POTUS in 2028, she is a god damned idiot. I am still skeptical if this country will EVER elect a woman for POTUS. But she is also still quite young but has almost an entire Hilary Clinton worth of chud-hate and attacks. Whereas Senate makes perfect sense for her.

That said? I could see a world where AOC could… once again be the anti-Bernie. Run for POTUS in the primary. Energize basically the entire youth of the nation. Then lose and immediately endorse the winner while leveraging her influence to get important action items on the ticket. But… I want AOC as a leader and not just as the bait and switch.

Congrats. You just propagated some FUD

https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/05/08/robin-hood-russell-crowe-2010-amazon/

But, to summarize: They likely just sourced the video from an international version. This is not at all uncommon with the idea being that the English (or Chinese or Korean or whatever) text is not rendered so it can be more easily replaced either with a subtitles track or a localization team burning in their own text. But if you do neither it just ends up being blank and everyone gets confused.

One of the really cool side effects of these kinds of errors is you learn just how much text is digitally added to a lot of scenes/movies. I forget what exactly it was (I want to say a Takashi Miike crime action/drama?) but I remember watching a movie with a friend and both of us getting really confused when all the computer screens were blank. Looked it up online and those looked perfectly normal in the youtube clips and it was just a LOT of effort put in to put text on a fake LCD.

First and foremost: That is not what this is about. Well, that isn’t what the sane parts of this is about. It isn’t that tiktok is too popular.

It is that it is very blatantly a tool of the CCP. Much like facebook and twitter are tools of the US government. There are many articles documenting how facebook has been used to steal elections and… fuel coups. And musk et al are pretty open that they did the same with twitter and the 2024 US Presidential election. And… it is hard to not be suspicious when “tiktok is the only streaming platform that is willing to talk about the genocide in Palestine” and “I refuse to vote for genocide, full stop” were so tightly coupled.

No country should allow such blatant manipulation of its people by a foreign nation. Whether it is the US, Russia (see: RT getting banned the fuck out of most western nations), China, or even frigging Mauritius.

Second… Do you really think People have that much agency? Not individuals, but People.

I think Andor is as safe as basically anything else on streaming. Yes, anyone who actually watches it will see a show that is not afraid to vilify the kinds of people who would join a rebellion while pointing out the far greater evil that makes those bastards acceptable in the here and now. It is a show that is very conscious of both indigenous people and class politics that is not at all afraid of showing the far greater strength the many have AND the cost of using that strength. And season 2 straight up is about genocide and manufactured conflict.

But… nobody is going to actually watch that without being into it. It is a “prestige” show in SFF. To all the chuds (and the vast majority of the rest) it is just something that you say you’re going to watch some day but never actually do because Ow My Balls repeats are on.

Which kind of sums up a lot of the pundits “on the left”. They are focused on being right, not on being a party (in large part because the Democrats have increasingly been “We are not republicans” for decades now but…).

I don’t think there is anyone who wasn’t concerned about Biden’s age. But we were past the point for a real primary and he was the candidate. So you support his senile ass. Because he is the candidate and we need to win. And when he finally got kicked out and it was Kamala’s turn? You support fucking Kamala. There is plenty of time to do after actions after we lose. NOBODY was going to win a presidential campaign in, what was it, like four months? But they sure as hell weren’t going to win if they were the third candidate in three weeks. You keep that kind of shit behind closed doors until we know one way or another.

Contrast that with the chuds where they all click their heels and start goose stepping once the primaries are over.

The “shit” isn’t about pointing out very real concerns. The “shit” is about doing the republican’s jobs for them.

How does one clear space in a jail?

It varies but it mostly boils down to understanding the difference between jail and prison. In a nutshell, jail is where you are put if you are too poor to wait for prison in your own home.

So yeah. Some people get released on parole or house arrest. Some people just get accelerated trials or sent to prison regardless. And a few people inevitably get disappeared.

That said, it isn’t overly uncommon before protests/riots/sporting events where a high number of arrests/detainings are expected to occur.

I wouldn’t count on it. Stewart has done a LOT of tone policing of the left over the years and just a few days ago (?) criticized people for cheering over the death of a nazi.

Which lines up. Stewart has ALWAYS been a “both sides” kind of guy. His coverage tends to involve facts which means it leans left but there is a reason he had carlson and the like on his show back in the day. So his politics are very much going to disappoint. Just going to be a question of if his hatred of censoring comedians (no matter how shitty) takes precedence.

I think Oliver is more likely to go off on Saturday/Sunday. But you can bet that Business Daddy is talking to him constantly and he does have a whole team he needs to provide for so…

Chuds who are afraid to admit they are chuds drastically lessens their power and reach.

Some nazi getting got and a good chunk of the country starts ripping their shirts off and sobbing? That has massive impact and makes it clear to media outlets which way the wind is blowing.

Some nazi getting got and the majority of the country staying quiet? Much less emboldening.

Hate is not genetic so please stop using eugenics oriented language.

And this will have fairly quick results. In a lot of ways it already has. Just look at any dating app and see how many people are “apolitical” or “moderate”. Only the craziest of the crazy will call themselves “conservative” beccause… they wanna get laid. Similarly, there were a few articles recently about men “faking” having style and culture to attract partners.

And the concept of a Sex Strike has had… varying levels of effectiveness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_strike

Fair enough. I was mostly just thinking back to when I was researching luggage tags and the general guidance was “airtags have the best coverage in the US and some Western European countries. For East Asia, it is generally fine but a lot more hit and miss as most countries vastly prefer Samsung Androids”. And my experience in Japan and Korea lined up with that where my luggage had ridiculously high fidelity with a samsung tag or whatever they are called.

But the point still stands. If you have a high end phone that basically nobody around you will have, you’ll stand out.

Oh I 500% assume racism is a big part of this too.

Not familiar with Catalonia but I assume there are at least a few ethnic groups that are associated with “rich” and this is a way to group them in.

Which, funny enough, was also kind of the deal with Blackberries. Yeah, Dealers had them. Because Dealers like buying expensive shit (See also: really expensive Rolex in a neighborhood where everyone is on food stamps) AND because they were ridiculously ahead of their time tech wise. You know who else had them? Business and (proto-)tech folk. And cops LOVED to say that the kid who actually made something of themselves going back home to visit family must be a Dealer because they have the same phone all their co-workers do.

Which gets back to: As part of an investigation, it is good. It is one part of a potential puzzle. In the reality of ACAB… ACAB.

Funny enough, I actually have tried with chatgpt. The problem is the same one with all these LLM based tools: Training data.

And if you actually google this yourself, the vast majority of what you find are people not understanding what is being asked or referencing a REALLY REALLY old UI (possibly dating to the open or even star days). And the LLMs are effectively scraping that so you get the equivalent of “This was already answered HERE. Closing duplicate question” response.

(I usually DO end up figuring it out after a bit of deep diving when I really care but I go through so much FUD in the process that I inevitably forget a month or two later).

Those articles don’t really support the claim? At all?

https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-organized-crime-preferred-phone-3573578/ is unsourced but, taking at face value, seems like what one would expect. People aren’t getting stopped at checkpoints and forced to divulge what OS their phone is running and being taken to a black site if they run GrapheneOS. But someone holding up a pixel in a sea of cheap motorolas DOES raise some eyebrows. Same as someone with a ridiculously expensive rolex walking around The Hood and so forth. And, presumably, people who have been arrested for other reasons raise even more eyebrows if their phone isn’t running a stock OS which…

Look, with a just police force (ha!), that actually is a very reasonable stance. Back in the day it was having a Blackberry. For a decade or so it was having two phones until people learned to not do anything personal on a work phone and that became kinda normal. There are activities that are generally associated with “weirdos” and “criminals” and I think even the GraphenOS devs would acknowledge their userbase fall firmly into the former. If you see someone with a Blackberry hanging out leaning against a 7-11? You maybe hang out across the street for an hour and keep an eye on them. Arrest someone and they have three burner phones in their pants pockets? Maybe you look a bit deeper.

That is actual investigative work. Of course, the problem is that it instead becomes “That gameboy looks like a drug dealer’s phone. We are going to stop and frisk you and maybe sexually assault you in the back of the cruiser if we are bored”.

I’m keyed in on a lot of “high level” protest discussion as well as what investigative journalists need to do for actual safety. And one of the biggest topics that regularly comes up is the idea of “the burner”. In theory, if you are crossing a questionable border or think you might be stopped, you bring a completely blank burner. If they hack into it, you are safe, right?

Wrong. Because you are now an anomaly. NOBODY has no social media and NOBODY has no documents on their laptop. So what are you hiding? Let’s beat it out of you.

Which is why general best practices are often considered to have a real device that you actually use everyday and take through those checkpoints and on the riskier protests. But you make damned sure there is nothing incriminating or sensitive on there. Optimally through having your “burner” be the one you do said activities on, but also through just removing it well before you get on the plane or get in the car.

And a lot of that applies to device choice too. That cool ass Linux Phone might seem like a great idea but now you stand out from the crowd quite a bit. Same with taking your top of the line iphone to Korea where Samsungs grow on trees and so forth.

Its worth understanding that microsoft, like most companies, is rapidly rebranding most of their existing stuff as “AI”. A couple weeks (months?) back at work we managed to convince the boss that maybe it wasn’t a good idea to put all of our sensitive internal data into Teams and convinced him to turn off copilot. Literally minutes later he lost his shit because auto-transcripts no longer worked and IT turned it back on.

But that is what we are seeing with a LOT of companies. ANYTHING that can be sold as “AI” is getting re-branded as it. So it makes perfect sense that MS will rebrand it as “installing copilot AI” rather than “not removing clippy”.

That said: MS have also been ahead of the curve on adding even more bullshit and spyware to everything they do so… have you heard the good word about Linux? Libre Office gets personal users most of the way there (and if they worked on their documentation, all the way there. I STILL don’t fucking know how to get row/column headings to work in Calc…). And for business/power use, the browser/cloud based solutions are probably what you want anyway since none of that data should live on your laptop/desktop and should instead live in the company approved data store.