Skiluros

US authorities didn’t even bother prosecuting specific individuals from HSBC’s US branch involved in money laundering for cartels, HSBC’s US branch only had to pay a fine.

I overall sympathize with the message of this article. Defeatism is of course never an option and historically oligarch/plutocratic regimes tend to succumb under the weight of their own contradictions (I am talking in the long term).

However, the last paragraph doesn’t sit well with me:

The Trumpist movement that ascended to power on Monday is relying on a tired, defeated America, one too diminished to do anything but submit to their demands and schemes. But the American spirit is indefatigable: it loves freedom and equality, abhors tyranny, values minding your own business and hates, above all, to be told what to do. When Trump was last in office, Americans found, at the end, that they did not like it. They will not like it now, either, and that dislike, however tardy, will have political consequences.

People in other countries do enjoy being told what to do? In many, many countries people have fought (and continue to fight) against such overwhelming odds that are inconceivable to the average American. And is it wrong to say that perhaps at least some Americans do like being told what to do? As long as the correct marketing/polemical approach is used (e.g. oligarchs promoting their interests/corruption via PR strategies that leverage copytext with an emphasis on polemics around “freedom” and “individuality”). This is of course not unique to the US.

Either way, we are all in for some interesting times.

This is like a weird personal thing that I can’t even explain. For whatever reason, the Y axis becomes labelled as X in my mind in random situations. And I use charts (and other data visualizations a lot).

The funny thing is when I am thinking of X, I don’t have this urge to call it Y. If I am looking at horizontal, X is the first thing that comes to mind. But not with Y.

Yes, of course the Y axis.

I work with charts/vizualizations/data a lot, but for whatever reason I reflexively mistake X/Y a lot. It’s not even funny.

It was an error on my part.

To be fair, the Y-Axis doesn’t start from zero.

That being said, 10% account growth in 2 days is pretty solid. Let’s hope both account creation and engagement metrics (MAUs/DAUs) keep growing.

EDIT: Correct Axis type.

Nah, you’re just a vile genocide whitewashing scoundrel hiding under big words about “your propaganda”. We both know this.

When I see individuals like you, for some reason the fate of Donbas cowboy, Russell Bentley, comes to mind:

Bentley, whose military call sign was Texas, went missing in Donetsk in April.

According to the Investigative Committee, Vansyatsky, Agaltsev, and Iordanov tortured Bentley on April 8, and he died shortly afterward.

Vansyatsky and Agaltsev are suspected of blowing up a car with Bentley’s body in it and ordering Bazhin to get rid of what was left of his remains.

It’s a factual description. Far left supporters of russian/Chinese genocidal imperialism and authoritarianism.

I used tankie in the specific meaning of the word.

Far left individuals who white-wash the crimes of states like USSR (Russia), China, support authoritarianism and oppose self-determination for countries who suffer from the yoke of russian genocidal imperialism.

You’re just playing dumb.

In principle, this seems like a solid rule change.

However, considering that lemmy unfortunately has a large number of tankies, I could see how it could be abused lower the quality of discussion and spread tankie propaganda and genocide whitewashing.

How is this censorship though?

You can always start joinfediversefreespeechstan.io or whatever. The code is even available, no?

I could never understand american-style preference for “free speech” themed theatrics.

Point 1 and 2 really need to be addressed.

It would be so much better if lemmy wasn’t developed by genocide white-washing tankies.

Twitter seems to be in (early phases) of a terminal decline. Advertisers (in the US?) might try to suck up to Musk for political reasons but at the end of the day they want a return on marketing spend.

Getting government services and public institutions off Twitter is a good initiative. Albeit in many countries, Twitter never really had the same impact as in the US. Where I live, Telegram is the source for notifications, updates and news.

Some of Musk’s products already have a stigma attached to them. Considering Musk’s degeneracy seems to be accelerating, I will speculate this will only get worse.

The people who are not comfortable with Musk and his plutocracy have left or will eventually leave his companies. The rest don’t care and arguably their attitude is part of the problem as well.

It will likely take a rather significant change in social attitudes (in the US, but not only) towards oligarchs and corruption to make Musk and other oligarchs take responsibility for their actions and to send them to jail.

The above-mentioned point will take time and if anything it looks like it’s only going to get worse (global rise of right wing movements supporting corruption and oligarchs). The silver lining is that eventually such systems start to implode due to their internal contradictions. Our current institutions (political, regulatory, economic, social) are simply not suited to the complexity and global nature of modern business, the externalities inherent to the information age and the challenges of our time. “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.” I don’t intend to defeatist, on the contrary, I am pointing out that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It just might take a lot of time (and suffering) to get there.