Anyone still remember Threads? No Twitter, No Threads, where are you guys now?
I have to admit, Barbie becoming a Chinese feminist icon was not on my 2023 bingo card. Anyone taking bets on when we're gonna get a kpop version of this classic?
They're doing it because it worked in the 90s. Different companies involved, but same ballgame, same playbook.
Here's some relevant info from a Reddit post 6 years ago from Bruce Kushnick, well known for his activism and writing on the topic:
I've been tracking the telco deployments of fiber optics since 1991 when they were announced as something called the Information Superhighway. The plan was to have America be the first fiber optic country -- and each phone company went to their state commissions and legislatures and got tax breaks and rate increases to fund these 'utility' network upgrades that were supposed to replace the existing copper wires with fiber optics -- starting in 1992. And it was all a con. As a former senior telecom analyst (and the telcos my clients) i realized that they had submitted fraudulent cost models, and fabricated the deployment plans. The first book, 1998, laid out some of the history "The Unauthorized Bio" with foreword by Dr. Bob Metcalfe (co-inventor of Ethernet networking). I then released "$200 Billion Broadband Scandal" in 2005, which gave the details as by then more than 1/2 of America should have been completed -- but wasn't. And the mergers to make the companies larger were also supposed to bring broadband-- but didn't. I updated the book in 2015 "The Book of Broken Promises $400 Billion broadband Scandal and Free the Net", but realized that there were other scams along side this -- like manipulating the accounting.
We paid about 9 times for upgrades to fiber for home or schools and we got nothing to show for it -- about $4000-7000 per household (though it varies by state and telco). By 2017 it's over 1/2 trillion.
Finally, I note. These are not "ISPs"; they are state utility telecommunications companies that were able to take over the other businesses (like ISPs) thanks to the FCC under Mike Powell, now the head of the cable association. They got away with it because they could create a fake history that reporters and politicians kept repeating. No state has ever done a full audit of the monies collected in the name of broadband; no state ever went back and reduced rates or held the companies accountable. And no company ever 'outed' the other companies-- i.e., Verizon NJ never said that AT&T California didn't do the upgrades. --that's because they all did it, more or less. I do note that Verizon at least rolled out some fiber. AT&T pulled a bait and switch and deployed U-Verse over the aging copper wires (with a 'fiber node' within 1/2 mile from the location).
Here's a direct link to the PDF of his book,The Book of Broken Promises: $400 Billion Broadband Scandal & Free the Net that he still provides for free from his website, www.irregulators.org.
For reference sake, here's the link to his post on the bad place. Note I usually try to use better sourcing than Reddit, but Google's search on this topic is either flailing or details on how this went down have undergone an active scrubbing attempt.
Just an example number for the math. And actually my company has a bunch of customer service reps that work from home at that rate when they start. It's more common than you may think.
Upvote - thanks for the clarification and edits, and my apologies for the insinuation. Just used to slick tricks like this from the alt-right and I assumed that the hashtag wasn't tongue in cheek.
While I agree with the article's premises that treason should carry the death penalty, that presidents are not above the law, and that Trump is likely guilty of treason, this is some claptrap alt-right ragebait designed to rile their base.
However, credit where credit is due - clever of use of the misleading headline and the #hope tag - that's some deft upvote farming and propaganda seeding. And I do love this line:
...we may be watching footage of Trump enjoying one last Big Mac and fries in his cell before he is led down the hallway to be strapped into Old Sparky.
hope indeed... but also #altright #ragebait #propaganda #trash
EDIT: OP responded below and the #hope hashtag was just missing its /s - hats off for the edits and clarification.
Definitely - the personal benefits go far beyond the cost savings. Just pointing out that at the end of the day, what they're doing when they ask you to return to the office is asking you to take a very real pay cut and add unpaid hours to your daily schedule.
Yep, you can't fight basic math.
With a half-hour commute, you're dropping at least $250/mo on gas (more if you use proper mileage calculations and include car insurance costs) and spending an additional 32 hours of your time in unpaid travel for work. If your hourly rate is $15/hr, that means another potential $380 in earnings a month out the door.
Since that $15/hr brings you in $2600 before taxes, that means in this scenario you're spending roughly 10% of your gross income on travel expenses, and losing out on a potential income increase of 14%.
This is why, despite the fact they were a great company I had thought about joining for years, last year I turned down an offer that was a 50% raise from my previously held position.
I got the same amount in an offer from a separate company that enabled work from home, and when I did the math, the value between the two was striking - it was the clear winner, despite the fact that the first company only wanted me to travel across town.
These are teenagers - if you make a law telling them not to do something, you're just making them want to do it. There's a reason why young Russian hackers are some of the best - it's a direct result of the restrictions Putin put on the Russian internet. The CCP just made the dark web cool, and I have a feeling that once this law goes into effect, we're going to see a whole generation of Chinese hackers inspired to hone their craft as a result.
The first rule about no Github club is that we don't talk about no Github club
Y'all are beginning to crack me up. You know each time you drop a reply, you're increasing the exposure of this particular theoretical site right? I didn't say they had perfect plausible deniability, just an extra layer of it, and whatever action taken against it won't stop the servers they're aggregating from, which are accessed by a lot of other apps that do exactly the same thing. Nuking this theoretical aggregator is like plucking a dandelion and thinking you're done with weeding the lawn - it's really just not worth the time unless they go after the servers themselves.
NSFW Removed
How to Get the Owner of an NFT
Jump
NSFW NFTs? Check your settings... ;)
Possibly true, but what you're theoretically looking at isn't hosting pirated content. It's a link aggregator that finds an available file to stream to you from servers that already have the full file, which may or may not have been assembled from a legitimate source or torrent. Legally, this gives them a layer of plausible deniability - disclaimer IANAL.
So if this one goes down, as it probably will, someone else will just build another streaming link aggregator that does the exact same thing - there's more than few out there. This is just basically round 238,592,394,321 of internet whack-a-mole.
I'm loving this bit of info:
In this case, Trump is also facing a serious Washington, D.C., federal judge with years of experience, Tobias said. The case has been assigned to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan.
According to The Associated Press, Chutkan stood out for her tough punishment for Jan. 6 rioters. In at least seven cases examined by the AP, Chutkan imposed harsher penalties than what federal prosecutors sought for those rioters.
The AP wrote, "Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, has consistently taken the hardest line against Jan. 6 defendants of any judge serving on Washington's federal trial court, which is handling the more than 800 cases brought so far in the largest prosecution in Justice Department history.
This is Trump's worst nightmare - on trial for the crime of the century before a judge appointed by his nemesis, who just happens to be a black woman from Jamaicia. I betting you could make a Jackson Pollock painting out of all the ketchup on the walls at Mar A Lago right now.
Detail I tracked down when this was posted yesterday, reposted here for a bit of additional info:
Prestige Biotech was a creditor for and acquired the assets of Universal Meditech when the company collapsed. Prestige was storing what was left of Universal in this warehouse.
Universal Meditech was selling SARS test kits that got recalled in February of last year, which likely led to their bankruptcy. My guess is that Prestige didn't have the available funding to properly dispose of the biohazards or care for the test subjects, ended up with a bunch of infectious mice that they couldn't get rid of legally, and just decided to warehouse them in Fresno until they came up with a solution.
The OP's article adds the important detail that Prestige wasn't licensed in California, so I theorize this may become a criminal case, especially given the press it's getting.
For all the Redditors now breathing a sigh of relief, grab a beer, take a load off, and remember, remember, the 5th of November.
Okay, before people start beating me up, I'm not arguing for complacency, but this headline is more than a bit click-baity.
This is a small poll, and per the poll's methodology (scroll down, keep scrolling.... nope keep going... ok... there you go - emphasis mine):
The New York Times/Siena College poll of 1,329 registered voters nationwide, including an oversample of 818 registered Republican voters, was conducted in English and Spanish on cellular and landline telephones from July 23-27, 2023. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.67 percentage points for all registered voters and plus or minus 3.96 percentage points for the likely Republican primary electorate.
Not only did they over sample Republicans, their margin of error is almost 4% within that group.
This feels like the NYT attempting to establish a narrative based on a very small, biased sampling of data. Remember that the mass media wants to amp up the uncertainty levels (which drive engagement and advertising revenue), and with Trump basically blowing out the primary, they'll need another spectacle to ensure that it appears to be a close contest down to the finish line. The timing of the poll release and the headline is also suspect, especially as this poll was taken before the news of the latest indictment, yet presented as if it's a reaction to today's news.
That being said, I think it is an accurate portrayal of sentiment from those who still consider themselves Republicans. I don't believe, given the small sample sizes and admitted bias, that it's an accurate picture of the country.
Again, that's not an argument for political complacency - rather, it's one against media driven narratives relying on biased polling that make you scroll down six pages of tables to find their methodology.
Salute for reposting this from the previously deleted thread.
Holy shit @PoppinKREAM - glad to see your work here! You have my award for best citizen journalist to ever post on Reddit. Welcome to the Fediverse!
I had a feeling that once the big money pulled out of the Trump train, as was seen with Rupert Murdoch's choices after the Dominion lawsuit, we'd see this acceleration in the collapse of the GOP to that of a regional party.
I'm seeing a small hope in this news that the big money will sit this one out if Trump wins the primary, as the Biden administration is relatively business friendly, and the GOP's recent actions (aka the DeSantis Disney debacle, Trump's China tradewar, etc) indicate a significant threat to not only fundamental business rights and years of contractual law precedent, but international trade. There's also a general lack of faith in the RNC's ability to effectively strategize after the midterm losses and their budget issues last year, and the infighting in the House only adds to the trope that the GOP has lost control of itself, and no longer has the unity to deliver results back to the various members of the corporate oligarchy.
Honestly, they're going to get better bang for their buck with lobbying the Democrats this time around and making sure that their influence results in pro-business legislative action (or simply keeps the status quo) than continuing to fund fringe candidates that alienate independents and don't have the sense to budget properly (a mortal sin in conservative circles).
Here to throw Kbin into the ring. Does a great job of rounding up both lemming squeaks and random mastodon toots.