TL;DR: Capitalism sucks.

So that was a bit of a depressive read. Can’t say I’m really surprised as I grew up in the 70’s and was around to see how Ruhr in Germany spew out enough sulfur to poison the lakes even in the Nordics.

The ruthless effectiveness of the suppression of any opposition is what gets me about all this and that is the major difference about how the debate was back then. I’m not saying that the perpetrators were any better back then, it’s that they get away with methods and arguments that simply wouldn’t fly in the 70’s. The press would have had a field day taking down someone trying to lie or suppress to the extent they get away with today. More often anyway, not saying it was perfect in any way shape or form, but the press had more freedom and was actually feared because they could make a difference and was much freer to do so. The reliance on ad money instead of subscribers is a large part of what killed the free press. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Media owners do and did obviously play a large part on what stories and spin they allow, but if the spin was too blatant, competing media would be oh so happy to point that out and shame them for it. This does not happen today because all media that counts is owned by a small click of people with the same interests and goals.

Any left leaning media have had a much tougher time switching to a mainly ad based revenue streams because the ones buying ads have an interest in keeping the status quo and why would they buy ads in media that works against their interests? There are basically no left leaning mainstream media outlets left, even in the paradise on earth that is the EU, and for a smaller outfit it is basically impossible to get a dissenting view heard.

*This comes from a European perspective, where the difference is more pronounced between then and now, but the difference is there for US media too, albeit to a lesser degree. There were still large outlets with a bit of a backbone willing to run a story that was embarrassing to or was contrary to the wishes of powerful people back then. Not so today but for slightly different reasons in the US.

*By left in this post I mean European left, not the hard right Democrats that the US define as left.

Sure they are. It’s just that notifications are evil too.

Don’t remind me of fucking Y2K, please. The amount of code I checked for compatibility still gives me nightmares. Some nights I still wake up screaming from sheer boredom. Not really, but it wasn’t fun.

As others has commented as well, this is just ripples. Trump is so thoroughly corrupt and bought this doesn’t even register. If you’re a strong man dictator, you don’t even have to buy him, he’s free to play. I think what the money is starting to realize is that he won’t reliably stay bought and is unpredictable because of it. Even Putin had to brake the spy manual rules and very visibly have the handlers meet him much more frequently and openly for such a high visibility asset. But as this is Trump, the rules do not apply.

As for the money, they aren’t really used to this way of operating and since it is literally impossible to keep Trump on script they get very nervous about what he’ll say if they get on his bad side or even by accident through his less than coherent ramblings. It is not easy dealing with a petulant, half senile old crook with the demeanor and attention span of a coked up five year old that always gets his way. Everyone with half a brain that have spent time with him knows this. The look on that reporters’ face when he was handed that crayon painting tells the whole story. I guess the people that voted for him get that look all the time and believe it is something positive? They mistake a tired “sure, buddy, whatever you say” as actual agreement?

What is positive is that the money seem to have gotten the message by now and they are slowly edging away from Trump. Without being too obvious, of course, bets needs to be hedged. The number of news pieces without unabashedly obvious Trump/Republican spin has slowly increased lately. This has nothing to do with any reporters suddenly growing a brain of course, it is all mandated from above. The money got the message that Trump is bad for business and they are acting on it.

That’s my take and I’m not known for having a positive outlook on current events. Still very much not a fan of what the atrocity helpers of the dems are doing. It is arguably even worse when you consider that they aren’t halfwits like Trump and presumably actually know what they are doing and still aid an actual fucking genocide that wouldn’t even be possible without US help. Despicable.

This is a sure sign that the NSA have been reading everything encrypted with standard cryptos for quite some time but they see that the opposition (China in this case) is showing signs of catching up. Can’t have that, even if it means losing capability for themselves. They have other ways in so the drop in capability is not as big as one would think.

I personally wouldn’t trust anything but one time cryptos to be safe and I don’t trust any algorithm from that source to be safe. It certainly should be and it is very much in their and our interest to make sure that it is, but the possibility that they are trying to eat the cake and pull a fast one is frighteningly far from zero. It would be monumentally stupid to try because shit like that always gets out and that would jeopardize every system in the world. Stupid isn’t exactly in short supply these days.

I’m thinking Denmark gets a bit of a boost in these numbers from Swedes going across the border to buy cheaper alcohol. It’s legal to do, but they fine a lot of Swedes for overloaded cars and trailers coming back.

I doubt many Swedes living close to Denmark even knows where their local monopoly is. Just kidding, all Swedes can sense where the Systembolag is.

Eh, close enough.

Weird, I’ve never thought so. People say it’s so thick and heavy and you can just drink one or whatever, but I find it more filling to drink lager. It is ackshually more calories in a standard lager than in a Guinness, or so I heard. Feel free to fact check as I can’t be arsed.

Fire. Round fire.

That article almost hurt to read.

His whole look is very not butch. That beard is very well groomed and his hair is immaculate. His skin also looks very cared for. I do believe his dear papa may have been a lumberjack.

Nothing wrong with that of course, but I think he would be a lot happier if he just embraced it, poor thing.

Yeah, there’s no umlaut in Bifrost. Umlauts may look very 70s - 80s heavy metal cool and it arguably worked for Motörhead, but not for anyone else, sorry. No, Mötley Crüe is not a valid counterexample.

Btw, “ö” is pronounced like the “i” in “girl”. Now pronounce the words above out loud and you’ll realize how you look to half of Europe. (Much less actually, but why let facts ruin a perfectly good argument.) Ø is pretty much the same letter and is pronounced similarly, except maybe in Danish, but Danish sounds eerily similar to goats choking on their second helping of shrooms, so there’s just no way to know which sound is meant to be “Ø”. Or any other letter, but I digress.

Bifrost is actually pronounced like “Bifröst” in several Swedish dialects, but that too is severely uncool so my point still stands. If I were to make a comparison, those dialects are about as sexy as, say, a Yorkshire, a Cockney or any US dialect. You don’t want to sound like that, now do you? Of course not.

But for a glorious few moments you’d be in nerdvana. Worth it. Refresh rate will simply be calculated by how many electrons hit the screen per second, so not quite infinite. Bet the number is pretty high, though.

Right. So, it’s bad because… Nah, I got nothing.

Neanderthal me be. We aren’t all extinct, thank you very much.

“Son, always be a good boy, don’t ever play with guns, but I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.”

Folsom prison blues Johnny Cash

You are absolutely right. They need to be split up in six different pieces instead, thereby forcing them to compete. That’s what functioning democracies do to companies that are so dominant they are de facto monopolies and thereby making any real competition virtually impossible. The US isn’t a functioning democracy anymore so don’t you worry little one, It’s not gonna happen to any of the mega-conglomerates you have such a special bond with.

It is the only time when I can really pump up the jam and go nuts. You can’t do it at home because your neighbors will murder you if you are loud enough. It is also unfair to lay all the dB’s on the same people all the time. That said, I only use the kind of volume that makes it hard to see straight during the morning commute. It is annoying for the closest 400 cars, but not as annoying as if I fall asleep and plow right into you. Yes, I have already OD’d on coffee to the point of seeing god in the rear view mirror by that time, but I am still fully capable of falling spontaneously asleep, thank you very much. So think before you get too annoyed in the future. That obnoxiously loud asshole may just have saved your life by playing bagpipe music at a volume that makes the clouds shift above her car. You’re welcome.

Edit: ohhh, that wasn’t very popular at all, was it? Some folks even took it seriously. To be fair, I actually started sort of seriously, but the post got away from me. Hate when that happens. I like loud music and the only time you can ramp it up a bit is in the car. That much is serious. The rest was an attempt at humour, but I see I failed. Again.

I actually play loud music to sing along with as voice training as I spend maybe 2h in the car every day on average. Whitney’s got nothing on me, lemme tell you. She is dead after all.

Math checks out.

Yeah, I haven’t read the study of course. Only read about it. Which makes the claim above even more dubious. But hey, this is the future, who has the time to fact check anymore?