Yeah, VPN’s are unfortunately essential. If I hadn’t made it a project to request deletion of my info off the top 30 background check sites, I’d be using something like DeleteMe too.

They’ve been enshittifying it for over a year.

Use LibreOffice instead. It’s available on both Windows and Linux.

Meanwhile China is positioning itself as a leader in the energy sectors of the future.

It’s depressing to watch these displays, but even more depressing in the knowledge that our nation’s power is (as usual) being squandered to make a demented old man feel like a big boy and for keeping a handful of billionaires marginally richer with money they’ll never actually live to spend anyway.

Unsubscribe from all the things.

Yeah. Keep finger wagging. Worked wonders for you in electoral politics.

Fucking Christ, I hate this country.

This is followed by a collapsing market that creates a dip in share prices or private valuation

I am not a billionaire, just an average joe lucky to be able to borrow a few thousand from my Roth 401k in order to buy oil stocks in March 2020 at 90% off.

I earned between 15x and 20x what I invested and paid off my student loans when the market recovered.

It’s not just for the billionaires, but you’re right, all of this is intentional and the wealthiest will profit the most.

As an American, I just may do the same.

Love to see it.

Anything that diminishes Visa and MC’s power is probably a good thing.

Bleak.

Yeah, characterizing any of this as a ‘demand’ is legit funny.

Interesting take. Thank you.

Ah, so as usual, it would really only be performative.

That makes more sense. Dems love pretending to be principled when the only requirement is that it be consequence free for the ruling class.

Any time I hear about Benji calling for an emergency meeting with Donald Trump, I just assume that he’s going to make a demand and remind Donald that he has all the videos, all the photos, and all the material that Epstein used to manipulate him in the past.

In this case it’s a demand for a full-scale war with Iran, but one of the few good things about Donald is his reticence to embroil the US in a protracted war that would invariably be exceedingly unpopular. Sure, the US would probably get a lot of bombs off and kill tens of thousands of Iranians, but it’s hard to imagine that they’d truly “win” a war where our opponent can completely destabilize global energy markets.

And good on Iran for telling US diplomats outright that if they bomb Iran again, then negotiations are off and it’s war.

If this shutdown has the ability to target only DHS, why is it even a fucking question? They’re literally killing people, celebrating it, and threatening to escalate and kill even more.

This is a layup.

At least, it’s a layup if you aren’t a limp-dick collaborator like Jeffries or Schumer.

Huh, wow.

Could be I’m wrong.

It makes sense that it wouldn’t be story on corporate news sites though.

I am so glad I never got into Ring. or Alexa, or voice assistants, but I have a roomba so I’m well aware that there’s a minor surveillance appliance in my home too. I regularly go into my privacy settings and wipe my data on Roomba because of it, but unless you’re putting your phone in a faraday cage/bag or storing it securely when you’re not using it, you’re being tracked too.

What’s wild to me is that I’m not on corporate social media, and the outrage has absolutely exploded on Mastodon and Lemmy. I wonder how bad it has gotten on the corporate media sites, because there’s no way the algorithm hasn’t noticed it.

It reminds me of when OnlyFans (stupidly) told us all they weren’t going to allow porn anymore, as if that wasn’t the core of their business.

Ricky understands that part of his business is looking good, and good on him for taking good care of his body and staying in great shape. That’s teen idol stuff.

Kid Rock, well, he’s just a walking dumpster fire and always has been. If he hadn’t broken into the music industry he’d be an incel.

Garth… that was a haiku.